forget everything you saw | open & closed

[fogsong]

Who: Sharon Da Silva & You
What: September Catch-all, including TDM Prompts & Event Starters
When: Throughout the month of September
Where: Trench & the pocket dimension version of Trench

Content Warnings: graphic violence, gore, razor wires tearing up through a woman, cults, a massacre, burned flesh, cursing, and maybe more. will edit when necessary. starters will have warnings.

 

Comments

memory of a massacre | tdm memshare

[fogsong]

[ The massacre in the church. CW: woman penetrated by razor wires and torn in two (timestamp to skip: 4:00-4:50), people crushed and ripped apart, gore, stabbing, religious violence, regular violence.

This can go any number of ways for your character. If they stick with Rose, they die when Dark Alessa touches them. If not, they have to avoid the spooky girl and deal with the horrors around them until Alessa's vengeance is completed. They can come away with Christabella's ceremonial knife or a boatload of gore. ]

You are bound tightly to a ladder, the rungs dig into your back just as the carefully knotted ropes that bind you there dig into your arms and your legs, and your chest. You can do nothing but watch in horror as the events play out before you. As your mother—Your mother?—falls to her knees; as dark blood gushes from the wound; as the crowd cries out for her to burn. You can only struggle against the bindings as the church falls into darkness, an echo of a siren sounding in your ears like the warning it is, and can only cry out as the floor opens up like a gaping maw and devours the wood that had been piled up high for your burning.

No matter what you do as the chaos unfolds, there’s no completely blocking out the horrors. There’s no ignoring the wet sounds of bodies hitting the ground and the walls near you or the shrill, pained screams of those men and women trapped. Worse yet, there is no ignoring the sense that someone is watching you closely.

If you look around and dare to take in the violence, you’ll spot her before Rose cuts into the ropes that bind you: beneath you, at the bottom of the ladder, is a little girl. Her long, dark hair is matted and her pale, cherub face is streaked with blood and ash and she watches you with a burning hunger in her cold, blue gaze. You have something she wants and she will do whatever it takes to get it.

[dohaeris]

[for a moment sansa thinks she's fallen into the massacre at the twins. then she realizes that it is not in fact her mother on the floor, but a woman she knows from somewhere else. the rest clicks into place; sharon's memories on the network, the book she had been reading, the wood for burning. she lets her arms go slack and shouts.]

Rose!

[it's not sansa's voice. rose somehow cuts the ropes, and there's a little girl...something in her gaze reminds her of the white walkers in her dream. sansa scrabbles backwards, grasping for rose. part of her thinks of arya, of jinx, of alayne stone. she shouldn't give up on this girl because she unsettles her, but she doesn't think she has a choice.]

Rose, we have to leave!

[fogsong]

[ Rose scoops Sansa up like she weighs nothing at all and holds her tight to her chest. Her clothes are stained red, still wet with blood, and she presses her lips to her daughter's head. ]

Shhh, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. [ She whispers relentlessly as if her voice could drown out the sounds of horror and chaos erupting around them. ] It's just a bad dream, baby.

[ She moves them away from the edge of the balcony and tries to lower them both to the damp, musty floor. ]

[dohaeris]

[sansa doesn't bother struggling out of rose's arms. her limbs are still weak.]

I'm not frightened, but we need to run. I think there's something coming after us...

[she flexes one leg and then the other, trying to shake some life into them, and grasps rose's shoulder to peer over it.]

Here, I can keep watch, but you have to keep moving. We might be faster if you set me down.

[martyrofduty]

Though he lacks context for a great deal of what's going on, Duty pays attention when he cannot do anything else. The room is locked shut with no one getting out. Most people are dying; it couldn't happen to a nicer cult.

Once the ropes are free, Duty doesn't stay in his mother's arms. Things are far from okay, and closing his eyes and hugging it out doesn't solve their problems. He picks up the knife where Rose dropped it, and leads the way out the way she came. Down below, most of the space is occupied by sharp razor wires, but the wire doesn't seem to target them. Good since a knife can do little against sharp razor wires controlled like tentacles.

The little girl stares down from the balcony where they just were, not upset or angry but intense. Great, he thinks. However, he doesn't talk, so as not to draw additional attention to them. The little girl has seen them, but he's less sure about the being at the center of the razor wires. As softly as an exhausted young girl's body can move, he moves.

[fogsong]

Rose follows after, calling after Duty, her voice strong and tight and full of the concern and worry only a mother could hold for their child during such a hectic, horrifying situation. The last thing she wanted for her daughter, after everything in this place, was for her to witness Alessa's brutal vengeance on the Brethren but her daughter seems driven and focused. More than she thought could be possible.

"Sharon, baby...?" The burned girl in the bed at the center of the chaos looks their way but it lasts a single moment, her focus returning to the cultists still panicking and pushing against one another as if they could escape with just enough distance. The dark mirror of Duty's current form leans over the balustrade of the transept balcony, her gaze cold and focused, and pulls herself over the edge, tiny feet pressing into one rung of the ladder after the other, slowly returning to the ground floor.

A good glance around the back wall of the church will reveal heavy set doors beneath each balcony. If Duty knows anything about churches, he might know it leads to the sacristy. If not, well, those doors lead somewhere else and the more distance between him and that child, the better.

[martyrofduty]

Memories don't work quite the same way as life. In some ways it's more like a dream. Duty still leans into his experiences because spy work still applies. Expectations and meeting them. Guiding people without being hamfisted. Admittedly 'small child runs away from scary ass shit' isn't a hard sell. Shouldn't be, he thinks. Fight or flight or freeze. It's option two.

He doesn't know exactly which terms of endearment this child usually uses. It wasn't covered in what he read before showing up. Hopefully the memory, like a dream, allows some leeway.

"I want to be safe, Mama," he says. The exhaustion and child's voice add to the performance.

Duty continues on then, aware of the slow inexorable progress of the other child in this strange game of tag, toward another set of doors. Out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps with the razor wire construct if not the little girl. It's a long game, so much as he can stretch it. Delay delay delay.

Aw man. Luz so missed Rose:(

[imaglyphwitch]

Oh boy. This again.

Luz remembered this pretty well from Rose's memory: this was not something that you could easily forget, no matter what you tried to tell yourself. Being tied to a latter with rungs at her back just has her quietly sighing to herself: she was REALLY getting exasperated constantly being the damsel in distress to some pretty horrific memories. This one was particularly bad, just reinforcing the idea more than before that Luz absolutely was not going to go with violence as the easiest option to making horrible people pay.

Of course, Luz knew very well what these people had done and would continue to do, so she couldn't exactly have a lot of sympathy. Still, seeing all violence and the blood and gore was still pretty nausea inducing, and she swallowed, looking down and seeing her.

HER. She certainly had seen a glimpse of her in Sharon, the girl that sought vengeance, the one that waited to be let in. Luz felt a thrill of fear in her and then she felt the binding come down and there SHE was: Rose.

Luz couldn't help but manage a small, sad smile. After all, Rose had literally done this in the farm, cut her down from an imprisonment of being slowly drained of her blood. She fell into Rose's arms, trembling slightly.

If only...

[fogsong]

Rose scoops Luz up, cradling her daughter's body to her chest as she murmurs quiet words to help soothe her terror. She stumbles away from the edge of the balcony and presses her body against the wall before she sinks down it until she can barely see the tendrils of wire coursing through the air over the railing.

She brushes a hand through Luz's hair. "Just close your eyes, baby. It's just a bad dream."

Perfect icon for what Luz is seeing, I'll hear no argument otherwise

[imaglyphwitch]

Of course Luz couldn't really do that. It was akin to seeing a car wreck: disturbing but you can't look away, and Luz couldn't at this point. She'd seen this through Rose's eyes, but seeing it through Sharon's was still daunting, still dark and frightening and a reminder of how much she hated the idea of people so willing to throw away their lives so they could live out a cult that so cruelly punished people.

It made her think of the cultists who had kidnapped her several months ago. They had done horrible things to people that Luz didn't even like thinking about. A part of her absolutely understood why Sharon would want to seek them out.

For now though, Luz is trying to quietly endure this particularly gruesome memory. She had to imagine here was where the source of Sharon's anger and horror intersected, where she was Alessa.

overdue for new endeavors | bloodsport | closed to D

[fogsong]

[ Sharon had paid no heed to the fresh, unfamiliar thrum of energy under her skin for too long. She thought it was related to the exhaustion she felt. Between the early morning chills that left her doubling up on sweaters to the mid-afternoon weight of this month’s humidity, the blood effects of this month made the strange, vibrating irritability just another thing to push herself through.

It wasn’t until she started to faint that she realized there might be more to it and, by then, it was already too late, swept up by shadows and deposited onto the sandy earthen floor of the arena.

It’s the deafening roar of the crowds in the stands that startle her to her feet. Despite the haze of sleep-induced confusion, Sharon knew almost immediately where she was. She’d been to the Gate before, had even fought in the arena before, but back then it had been of her own accord. Now she stood, wide-eyed, without her leathers, without any weapons, before absolute strangers. It felt like one of those nightmares she’d had as a kid, the ones where she’d show up to school without her shoes.

Except it wasn’t a nightmare.

A voice boomed through the coliseum, dictating terms to a battle she’d never agreed to. To the death. Her heart rate picked up as dread found a home in her belly. That dread turned cold when she finally pulled her gaze from the many faces peering down at her from the stands closest to her to the other side of the arena. D stood out among all the bright, warm tones around him and her heart stuttered in her chest. Finally, she found her words. ]

What——No! [ Her face pinched with rage, teeth bared, as she pulled her shadowed gaze from him to search the stands for anyone she could speak to, leader or announcer or someone with weight in this stupid place. Finally, she yelled. ] I didn't agree to this, I refuse!

[ She wasn't afraid to die. Hell, she would die willingly if it was necessary. But she wouldn't fight D. She cared too much about him and she wouldn't give this crowd the satisfaction of forcing her into it. ]

[distant_one]

[D didn't go to this area of Trench if he could help it. He avoided it even more than the Luminarium. That at least he had reasons to visit to see people and endure the smell of blood.

This place, he had no reason to come to.

There was a blank space in his memory where he'd lost consciousness. It wasn't too dissimilar to sunlight syndrome in that, but was clearly something else.

D rose to his feet in a fluid motion and took assessment of the situation. A fight to the death, Sharon. A cheering crowd. D would just as soon kill everyone in the stands, but he suspected that would go poorly. This was the result of pthumerian interference, somehow.

There was an easier solution.]

Do you trust me, Sharon?

[D was more than capable of giving the appearance of death to an opponent without actually killing them.]

[fogsong]

What? [ Her attention snaps back to him, the question catching her off-guard, eyes wide. Her fear and anger at the situation take a momentary backseat to a sinking, curious worry. She can't be certain where he's going with this. ]

Of course I trust you. [ The way she says it implies that it's not something he should have ever had the need to ask. She would have never told him about her past if she hadn't trusted him, let alone take him up on his offer to let her stay in that coffin. ]

Where are you going with this? [ She steps towards him. Here, she lets a flash of her fear show. This has her off-kilter, as fearful as she is angry at the suddenness of the situation. ] I don't want to give them a show, D.

[distant_one]

They may not all be here by choice either, not really. Don't think of it as a show, this is just practice.

You'll work on your spear work, I'll show you a few sword techniques.

[D draws his sword slowly, the mellifluous sound it makes clear even over the roar of the crowd.]

nobody lonely like I'm lonely | leap of faith | ota

[fogsong]

[ Sharon had been on edge since the moment she’d slipped through the cracks of one Trench into the crumbling version of another. Her mind kept stumbling over similarities. The dense, choking fog was different enough from the one in her memories that she could push it to the back of her mind. It was the same with the buildings that seemed to be disintegrating away as if the years had come and gone and had eaten away at their facade until there were just shells of them left. Even the monsters that haunted the shadows, that hid in dark corners or waited in alleys. She could write all of that away. Trench had always been a little bit like Silent Hill.

She eventually came across a tiny little group garbed in drab greys and looking worse for wear but surprisingly chipper for the situation. She’d initially felt such a wave of relief to have found more people that she ignored the warnings that now seemed so big and bold and in her face. They’d had a reverence to the way they spoke when mentioning this world and something about the fervent passion they had rung alarm bell after alarm bell in her mind until they spoke of their sanctuaries.

It was then all of the excuses and distance she’d built up between all these similarities to the horrors of Silent Hill fractured and fell into one another. The fog, the crumbling buildings, the monsters. They hit her one after another now. She couldn’t hear what the group was chatting about now through the rush of blood in her ears. One of them asked her something. She shook her head. She stumbled back. She turned her heel and ran.

She ran down vaguely familiar roads, bounded around corners, and dashed through tight alleyways. She ran until her lungs burned and her legs ached and then she ran some more. She ran until she was certain she was alone. And then she pressed her back into a broken brick wall and slid down it until she crumbled on the ground.

The panic that she’d been swallowing down since her arrival here hit her like a ton of bricks and there was nothing she could do to stop the sob that escaped her except to slap her hands over her mouth in a desperate attempt to muffle to sound. She wanted to scream but feared the attention it would draw so she just sobbed into her hands. She sobbed and shook and rocked and clung to herself, barely aware of her surroundings. ]

[cuddlery]

[It was very easy to get lost when exploring this mysterious other world. Between the fog and most of the town being in ruins, she couldn't find any familiar places to take shelter. It was lonely, frightening and nerve-wracking. So Scorpia wandered around carefully and doing what she could to avoid monsters in order to minimize her risks and conserve her energy.

These movements eventually brought her to a certain area by chance. Scorpia realized she wasn't alone over here - and that the other being wasn't a monster. It was a person, huddled over and crying by a wall. All of Scorpia's caution went out the window as the tall scorpion woman rushed over to her aid.]

H-hey! Hey there! What's wrong? [She tries to sound soothing as she approaches her and tries to assess her condition by looking her over.]

[fogsong]

[ The moment she hears Scorpia's heavy footfalls, Sharon tries to scramble back, one hand pressing up against the broken wall to pull herself back to her feet, blue eyes wide with fear. She almost can't process the tall woman's words, mind addled with panic, but the soothing way she speaks seems to get her to pause. She blinks up at her clearly attempting to catch the panic and shove it away. ]

I—I—[ Her words get caught in her throat as she takes in another gasping breath of air. ]

You're not gonna—You're not gonna take me to them, are you? [ She feels like she's nine again, trying to hide from the men in old, dirtied miners gear. ]

[cuddlery]

[Scorpia comes a halt a few feet away from the girl, noticing the way she seems to react to her approach. She does have enough self awareness to know that some of scorpion features might seem a bit intimidating to others. And her words further full Scorpia with concern for this girl and what she could have gone through.]

N-no! No. [She raises her pincers to try to make placating gestures.] I'm not bringing you to anyone. At least not to anyone you don't want to go to. I'm just one lost scorpion gal who wants to help. Are you hurt?

[She tentatively tries to step closer.]

[possessum]

( This isn't the first time that Peter's been brought into some kind of nightmare world. Deerington had its times, and Trench has transported him into horrific places once or twice — when he first looks around, wide-eyed and trembling uncontrollably, he thinks maybe he's back in the Tower, in the Sleeper Farm.

But no, this is something... different. Different but eerily similar to the city, almost like some mirror version of it. But despite that fact, it's impossible to make sense of where he is; buildings crumble inwards, the fog is thick and black and burns to breathe in. Thunder rolls and ripples ominously overhead, and cracks of lightening split the air in random intervals.

When Peter thinks of Hell, it's something like this. And maybe that's what it is. Maybe this is where he's supposed to be. Where he's always been leading towards.

But then he hears people calling out through the gloom to anyone who passes by, voices a rising wail, hoping to draw attention — mentioning the Old Ones and the Nightmare. Those sound too much like Trench terms. And then he hears Sodder's name, and he's frozen in shock for a few long moments, before hurrying away. Maybe he should try to find out more about whatever the fuck's going on, but he's always flinched away from it, even back in Deerington. He'd seen Sodder for himself once, in a hospital. He'd never wanted to see her again. He never really wanted to know the truth. Never wanted to face it.

So Peter's moving away from the small hoards of townspeople, heart pounding, head spinning. This isn't Hell — at least not his own personal one. This is... something still connected to Trench. He just has to find the way back out. There's always a way back out. ...And Paimon will protect him until he can find it; he can feel the demon there, its ancient spirit crackling with awareness and alarm. Sometimes random objects around Peter lift or are sent flying through the air from the demon's energy pulsing so loudly.

He doesn't know how long he wanders through the devastated remains of the city, arms wrapped tightly around himself, keeping close to the broken walls of buildings and alleyways. His clothing's filthy, lungs aching from breathing in the thick, polluted fog. And he almost doesn't see the person crumpled on the ground and crying into their hands. Maybe it's Paimon who senses something familiar and alerts him to it, but all of a sudden Peter finds himself just staring right at the person, eyes wide. He hesitates at first, but then slowly moves a little closer as he realises it's someone crying — sobbing so hard it looks like it hurts. A young woman.

Wait... Is that— )

Sharon?

( Some weird, awful mixture of relief to see someone familiar and horrific alarm snaps in Peter like a string pulled past its limits. He's immediately rushing forwards, kneeling down close to her as she rocks like that, lifting his hands but not touching her just yet. She's bad off, really bad off, he can tell that right away as his horror grows. )

God, Sharon— C-can you hear me? It's Peter. I'm Peter.

[fogsong]

[ It was as if everything inside her had been undone. Like someone had found the single loose string of her patchwork soul and ripped it so violently that she could not knit herself back together again. Her head throbbed with every sharp, aching gasp and no matter how many times she breathed in, it never managed to fill her lungs.

She couldn't make herself stop. She couldn't push the panic back into its cage. Her mind was fighting against the tide of familiarity and echoes of childhood memories that she'd once thought were nothing but nightmares; of a fog-filled town and a kindly, dirty woman, and men in miner's gear with brutal, rough hands; of a church and a siren and the sounds and smells of a woman burning.

When Peter approaches, Sharon tries to scramble away, her eyes painfully wide, pupils so dilated they were just pinpricks in a sea of blue. Her legs don't want to work and her back is already pressed so tightly against the wall that she could feel each individual brick beneath her dingy sweater. She has trouble parsing his words as if he were speaking some wholly alien language but... Peter. His name is what clicks. The fear in her expression shatters with the realization that he was safe.

Her tongue feels too heavy and thick in her mouth to speak, mind humming as if she were drunk on the terror in her veins, but she reaches for him. She grabs him. She pushes herself to her knees to wrap her arms around him with a strange, unusual desperation for touch. She clings as she chokes on her sobs. ]

hope this is okay!

[shiro2hero]

[Shiro lasted maybe ten minutes in one of the churches. Maybe ten minutes without threatening one of the cultists there. It's not like him - not like him at all - to fly off the handle like that. But as soon as they started yammering on about how they knew best for Sodder, how they had all of the answers about Julia...]

[It took more effort than it should have to restrain himself.]

[So needless to say, he's been on the run for a long time now. Ducking through alleyways, sprinting though broken streets, and generally trying to keep a low profile throughout the city for the time being. Only to jerk to a halt, hearing what sounds for all the world like someone crying. Someone human - though what did he know? At this point, it could very well be a Beast.]

[His approach is slow, through the alley, along the wall, until he can actually see the person ahead. And it is, very much, just a person. So Shiro stops in his tracks. He stays hunkered down, in an effort to make himself look less like a linebacker.]

Hey... [His voice is quiet, concerned.] Hey, can you hear me? Are you hurt?

you're perfect. apologies that i hadn't gotten to your tl, wound up with covid and recovery is slow

[fogsong]

[ she feels like a child again. lost in the streets of Silent Hill, alone in the fog and the ash, desperately wishing for her mother to swoop in and protect her.

when Shiro approaches, his voice soft and gentle, her head snaps up, broken sobs cutting off in her throat as she tries to scramble to her feet. but she's clumsy in her panic. thoughtless. she stumbles as she stands and has to use the wall behind her to steady herself.

she watches him with a wide, panic-stricken gaze. her mind is fumbling to place him in the proper category: danger or safe. he's not dirtied by weeks in this fog and he looks at her with concern. but concern can be a useful mask. ]

Who do you worship? [ she grinds the question out. forces her voice to be steady even as her whole body trembles with terror. she's pulling herself together out of a different kind of fear and uncertainty. ]

know i created myself | closed to Duty

[fogsong]

It's been nearly a month since she had company over. Before she came to Trench, the idea of having someone come to her house set off a thousand different alarms in her head. People were a danger to both her father and herself. No one was allowed to know where she lived or what her real name was or where she'd moved from. She had her father and that was it.

Even after arriving here, it took months before she felt bold enough to have someone visit. Letting someone cross the threshold felt revealing. The home was such a personal, sacred space to her. It was where she felt safe enough to cry or scream or paint.

Every person who has ever stepped into this little cottage home has been someone she felt she could trust. Now, she sent the directions to someone she wasn't a hundred percent sure of. It put her on edge and she lingers in the kitchen as she waits for Duty to arrive, water heating on the stove for tea.

[martyrofduty]

Living in Gaze, the walk isn't that long even if it comes with the eternal sensation of being watched. Duty hardly minds the sensation. In or out of Gaze, he's sure many Pthumerians can watch when they want. The set and level of interest might change from place to place and person to person, but it's always a good reminder. You're never truly alone.

He knocks, dressed as usual for the Outpost so it's one more familiar aspect even though it meant leaving his rapier at home. They'll start the conversation with one relationship and end it with another. What one exactly, he doesn't know, but Duty knows himself. It's impossible not to be greatly affected when someone else understands a significant portion of an isolating experience.

[fogsong]

Her home is a modest-sized Victorian-style cottage with a neat little wraparound porch. The outside is paneled in soft creams and greys and lilacs. That same pastel color scheme extends into the entryway of the house, all pale cream walls. The room itself is welcoming, with a red worn rug in the middle of the room, and a pastel pink chair sitting in the corner, right next to a door leading into a kitchen. To the left are stairs that lead up to the second floor and directly across from them is another doorway leading into the living room.

Sharon answers the door quickly. She's been anxiously waiting for that knock to arrive, waffling back and forth over whether she was comfortable with this at all. She steps aside to let him in and then shuts the door softly. There's a tension to her, a wariness that she can't seem to hide.

"Want some tea?" She asks as she motions for him to follow her into the kitchen. The same soft cream that lined the walls of the entryway covers the walls of the kitchen. It's all very warm and inviting, "I put the kettle on and pulled out all my tea. I wasn't sure what you liked."

There's an island counter in the center of the room with multiple stools tucked in beneath the countertop overhang. On that island is a multitude of jars, each meticulously labeled in Sharon's sharp, jagged handwriting; fruit-based teas and green teas and dark teas and white teas, even some floral ones. She's amassed quite the collection over the last eight months.