006: So tell me where to put my love

[payingfordeliverance]

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.

Comments

[velvet_teen]

They look very alike, but I might be thinking about their weapons and clothes.

[ Alice looks speculatively at Break's wardrobe - no, she cannot give up her laundry basket raids. ]

...I can't use a sword now ever, everyone would think I am your blood relation!

[payingfordeliverance]

I have it on good authority that Miss Ruby dresses as she does because she wants to be very much like Mister Qrow, yes. From what I've learned, she's really the spitting image of her mother.

[He sees that look, and it confirms his suspicions as to where exactly his favorite oversized stripey cardigan has wound up. Break makes a mental note to hide something wicked and startling in the wardrobe, even as he continues to munch away on this ridiculous sundae the thief in question has brought him.]

Anyway, if you really wished it, we'd just get you a red sword instead of a purple one. Ruby and Qrow are both red and that really makes a difference, don't you think? If you ask me, people are more liable to think you're related to them than to me, with your hair so dark too.

[...Break's darkblood blade does shift from purple to red when his temper is flaring. But to be fair he's much cooler when he's got murder on his mind than he is when he's flapping around about cake, so probably this can be forgiven.]

[velvet_teen]

[ ...Yes. This pleases her. The thought at being mistaken for blood family, not the potential future in which she opens a wardrobe and has a bucket of kelp land on her head. And also having things in common with Ruby, since she does look so much like this woman she doesn't know terribly well but acts like an uncle.

The cardigan is especially cozy and flowy for those early morning adventures. ]

Red and black are the best colors. I respect that you frequently wear worse colors, so that we don't match.

[ She is very aware that Break can sometimes be very cool but she can't tell him that he would be so insufferable about it. ]

Purple is all right, though.

[ This could be taken as Alice indirectly saying she approves of him in a poetic way but Alice isn't that indirect. She's just defending her own eye color in this case. If she's being meaningful it is all subconscious. ]

[payingfordeliverance]

Well, your sister is fond of it too, so I'm afraid you'll simply have to tolerate it.

[The pale twin being a reason much of this uncle business started in the first place, of course. There's no way in hell Break can abide being mistaken as her father; even outside of his own issues with the notion, the sort of nonsense their actual father pulled is just too repulsive for him to accept being associated with him in any capacity. But, given their coloring, it's much easier to get away with claiming their relation is a little to the left than it is to claim there isn't one at all.

In his head Break is the uncle on Lacie's side of things. The red eyes make it make sense, she at least to all appearances meant well rather than simply being a bored asshole, and it pleases him in a petty way to think of himself as being older than Oswald and thus justified in beating him up a little for being a moron.

None of this is relevant but it is a fun bit of seasoning to our lives here in Trench.]

...you know, Miss Alice. If you were to go down to the movie room, I daresay you might find something in it that's meant for you.

[Baltus may or may not have been getting that sorted out in the background of this conversation the whole time. It simply wouldn't do for Break to accidentally wind up giving this Alice her present -- because of course he made her one too -- in person. Neither of them want to deal with that. In fact, Break is pretty sure this will be a great way to be rid of her entirely for the afternoon.]

[velvet_teen]

[ Alice, for her part, is completely unaware that she has a dad. She has learned a little bit about the whole process of creating a child. She has even put together a little bit, that people usually having a dad could very well mean that she has a dad. She has not even that little bit put together that having a dad means that that dad could be an actual person instead of a vaguely defined stick figure. This is probably for the best. ]

More than everything in the house that is not cake is meant for me?

[ We use humor to deflect from the implication that the clown has perhaps given her some manner of.... present? Either it is unforgivably soppy or it is an exploding box full of glitter and scorpions. Alice goes forth to inspect The Something. ]

[payingfordeliverance]

[Alas. The Something is unforgivably soppy. Alice is, for all intents and purposes, painfully easy to acquire gifts for should the need arise. She is bluntly open about what she wants at pretty much all times and treats anything given to her as her due tribute. Except...well, sometimes she isn't open about things at all. Because she's a poorly socialized little girl who was left alone too long and is still figuring out this whole people thing and how she fits into it, and there are things she's only starting to be able to express, often unconsciously.

For instance, telling Break he ought to marry Qrow because she wants him and Ruby to be part of their family. That she's come to see the household as "family" at all is new information, never mind that she's apparently been trying to figure out how to get her other favorites to be properly a part of it.

Because of this, Break thinks, he has done better than he thought with her special darkblood bender gift. Because the last time he was ill in this way, she was so generous as to share with him a movie that struck her enough that she actually pays attention to it all the way through, and that movie was James and the Giant Peach. A movie about losing one's blood family, and the happiness that can be found in building a ramshackle new one out of weirdos you get into big adventures with. To that end there is a new chair in the movie room and that chair is shaped like a part of a peach, and being that it is intended to stay down low on the ground, it's just right for providing a comfy place to sit while one amuses oneself at the low craft table during the movie.

There are things Alice doesn't say outright just yet. Even so, Break is listening.]

[velvet_teen]

[ What Alice says, or at least is thinking very loudly at this moment is: I like this, I'm glad you put this much effort into making me feel at home and appreciated, how dare you make me feel so warm and loved, you of all people, this is something obviously just for me and made with lots of thought, I am an amateur crafter of sorts and I can tell these things, also thank you for not being in this room making horrible clown faces while I have feelings.

What she says out loud while trying to say all this at once is something that sounds very much like: ]

Blargle?!

[ And then she flops down upon it and is pleasantly cozy for the rest of the day. ]