payingfordeliverance: (Sharon: Take my hand)
Xerxes Break ([personal profile] payingfordeliverance) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-08-25 10:06 pm

006: So tell me where to put my love

Who: Xerxes Break, close CR, possibly new people
What: Break runs afoul of the Lavish Desires prompt and goes on a darkblood bender about conjuring up unbirthday presents. Some prompts closed, two prompts open to all.
When: Second half of August
Where: Pandora House + avoiding Pandora House so his kids don't yell at him for overdoing stupid shit again

Content Warnings: Obsessive feelings and mania, flooding, drowning, PTSD, withering illness and struggling to breathe, that whole thing where he used to be a serial killer back in the day; others added as necessary




As so often happens for Xerxes Break, Trench's latest idiotic curse on him appears, at first glance, to be little more than a fit of nerves about his usual problems.
 
First, he becomes thoroughly gripped by the notion that he needs to train harder and harder in the darkblood powers he was so afraid of for so long and still doesn't entirely trust -- well, that makes fine sense. Even outside of his concern about keeping up with those who are stronger than he is in this place, incidents in July proved to him that the practical applications of his work will be worth the risks. Break also finds himself haunted by an awkward need to express his affections to the people he's grown so attached to here. This, too, mostly just feels like a preoccupation that is a long time coming. The first anniversary of his arrival in Trench is swift approaching and Break is painfully aware of it. The many regrets he's been fostering about how he wasn't able to truly reach out to his loved ones in his last life until the very end of it are all the more potent now, and a recent decision to really try to be honest about things was enough to halt Ange's progressing beasthood even if he wasn't able to reverse it. Then, too, Oz Vessalius returned to the sea recently and left the whole house in a pall of grief in his wake. Loss has made Break restless and searching for motivation for as long as he can remember. The main ways he can find to cope with this one all have to do with pouring his attention into others who are still around to need him.

So, it seems only natural when all this culminates in an urge to conjure up unbirthday presents for everyone. This is way easier and less embarrassing than words, and also it will give him plenty of conjuring practice. Definitely this is just Xerxes Break thinking his thoughts and has nothing to do with a dunk in icky cursed floodwaters.

Break's omen, of course, catches on quickly to this whole thing where it devolves into a manic obsession almost immediately. Baltus decides, in his wisdom, to simply let Break have at it. For one thing, it will be good to give him the opportunity to actually catch himself and reach out for help on his own, even if chances are slim to nonexistent that this will happen. For another, Break is the sort of person who needs to learn things the hard way sometimes -- and, if Baltus intervenes, it will just clue Break in to ways he could and should be sneakier about his bad behaviors. If Break is permitted to crash and burn, the kids will notice, and he won't be able to hide the very specific warning signs they need to be keeping an eye out for in the future.

Meh. If Break starts growing beast parts in all this, Baltus will sound the alarm. And so begins the unbirthday bender.

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