deercountry | 11 . clockhouse rebuilding!

Entry tags:

11 . clockhouse rebuilding!

Who: Those who have offered to help rebuild the Clockhouse, and anyone else who'd like to pitch in!
What: An open mingle log to repair after fires and floods.
When: Throughout September, precise dates not specified.
Where: In Gaze, at the forest's edge.

[ When the weather and chaos dies down, work on the Clockhouse picks up. The building was once an old Deerington mansion, luridly green and eccentric; age faded it into half a ruin, and July's fire did the rest. August's flooding came fast and hard, and now there's very little left to salvage.

The first step has been a damage assessment, with volunteers picking through the structurally unstable ruins, finding singed fiction novels, crisped houseplants, and a weird number of melted grandfather clocks. Demolition goes quickly, while Ozpin stands by and does not even try to control the situation.

Volunteers are needed to design the new structure, carry in materials, and build... and then to decorate and enchant what they've created. The few Sleepers with genuine construction experience provide direction, Ozpin sometimes among them, but things are largely chaotic. A few Sleepers provide snacks and cheerleading.

This is a mingle log. Please feel free to make a toplevel, and comment with your character's contributions below! ]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

It is strange and difficult, what exists between them. There are Truths that have been yet to be uncovered. There are pieces to the puzzle that are so frayed that they can never be put back into place, a picture never made whole. And both of them have been made.... wrong. They have been broken; Paimon can see that now. At the root of what has forced them together, perhaps he and Peter can never truly be on favourable terms.

They are both, after all, the reason each other has lost everything.

But it does give him some... hope, perhaps, though the demon would not know to use that word specifically. Talking to Duty again, reiterating the concept of Togetherness, however it may be. It is time for them to exist as more than what they have been, the demon knows that. Yes... he will do the work. He will meet his Vessel in a new way; already he is forming ideas for it.

And there is a strange hollowness to think of the opposite — to think of being pulled from the safety of an existence alongside another when it is more aligned. The demon frowns softly, the gesture strangely alien against Peter's human features. Always an imitation of them.

"I am..... sorry." He is capable of empathy, sympathy, for others. Sensitive to it; what he is must always be. "Perhaps some day... you will have them back."

Maybe we're just unlucky. Or... lucky? I don't know. Hard to say considering where we've ended up and who we've ended up with, you know? You have all of these people, so... I guess it's not a bad thing, in the end?

[ Listen to him, being all philosophical. ]

Oh no… pointing out the sweat on him was a mistake. A huge, awful ~~sexy~~ mistake. His brain completely short-circuits and he goes very still and another flare is the only indication of how he feels about it. At this rate, someone is going to notice and kick him out before he burns everything down. And he's too distracted by Keith's sweaty abs and trying to bury how he feels about it to stop him from taking his wrist.

"H-huh?" Why is he flaring? Fuck, that's a loaded question and he scrambles to deflect, "W-well, do I really need a reason? I-I mean, why are you sweating so much, huh? It's not hot out and you're a coldblood!"

If you want something badly enough, it works.

"Thank you," Duty says. He means it. That loss is enormous and threatens to swallow him whole sometimes. Sometimes it's easier to be himself, an identity formed after they were separated, even if he lived in the back of Gideon's mind, even if he felt that distance between them, than to be Pyrrha Dve, whose pain is closer to the loss. It's a small step, barely anything, but sometimes it's enough to breath.

"Doubtful," he says. After a small pause, he adds, "He deserves rest—to be at peace." It means Gideon's continued loss, for Duty. However, as much as Gideon would crawl out of the sea to be with him, as good as it would be to be together again, it would come with all the rest of this place and the people here. Gideon deserves better.

The ones that didn't know her whole deal were so much easier. She just had baggage, and who didn't in this place? She wasn't trying to kill them, so that was a bonus. She managed a little smirk as she nodded back at her.

Yeah, I know.
And I'm gradually making a bit of headway with them.
I mean, Qrow and I actually had a conversation!
A rarity.

It's never that easy, no. You can promise everything, to everyone, and still wake up alone one day. Or you can watch the person you'd promised to stay with disappear, drowned, dead, vanished into the dark while you did everything you could to reach out and catch up. But he doesn't need to tell her that. Ange knows. He can tell, just by virtue of their time in both worlds.

You'd have to be heartless not to, or so isolated you had no connection to anyone.

He's taken a step closer, and taken a knee. She's not meeting his eye, so he won't ask her to. He'll just get more to her level, instead. Because he's so proud and so happy for her it feels like if he doesn't at least reach out, he's going to explode.

"I can tell," he says, very gently. As if to keep anyone nearby from accidentally hearing the little heart-to-heart. "I understand."

He remembers I'll work on my half. A greenhouse at the end of the world. Roses in a bowl. no matter what happens, no matter what I say, don't say... or can't say. I'm not going to lose you.

He understands very, very much.

"You know, at some point, I'll have to give one of you the 'shovel talk'," he says, after a long moment, in an attempt to lighten things up. Turn the talk away from Ange having to bare her feelings even more. "I hear that's something family members do."

Oh, whoops. Yeah, they're both basically family by now, as far as he's concerned.

"Oh shit, for real?" She hadn't spoken much with Qrow since her very cool breakdown nearly a year ago, but she's glad to hear he's still around, at least.

"Man, see, there you go. I remember when I had to lie about who sent me his way 'cause he was gonna get all pissy about it." The lie had lasted maybe fifteen seconds, but that was fine. "What'd you two talk about? Remnant stuff?"

[There is literally no other way this could have ended.

Ruby squirms a bit in the net but ends up flopping over on the ground.]

At least... At least we got one.

I have been learning about mathematics and this means that we are each equal in power to half of a chicken.

[ The chicken bocks and beaks at Alice's hair. ]

Laugh it up, we'll get the lot of you! I'm worth fifty chickens!!

( There's so much about Falco's home world that's strange and horrifying and cruel. Peter's been putting together what he's glimpsed of it over time, but there are still lots of missing pieces, gaps.

And what's in those gaps.... are things like this. Awful truths, things that make it hard to breathe, for a moment. Falco's cushioned and muffled close to him, a thick layer of material separating them, but Peter reaches up, fingertips shaking only a little, to graze the side of the younger boy's head. He's trying to keep himself together. He's halfway dissociating through some of it anyway, hazy and ghostlike and still feeling like someone else is sitting here.

But the reality of it put into word-form comes in suddenly and staggers him all over again right back into himself. Falco is going to die, when he's still a young man. That is what Peter's being told.

Suddenly, his eyes are full and wet and he's blinking too rapidly. His heart breaks; he feels it happen. It's like shards up under his ribs. )

Maybe— um. Maybe because you're here, it won't— it won't happen.

( Here as in Trench, as in not Falco's home world, as in the place that's supposed to be a rebirth.... but even as he says that, his voice is shaking. Falco's sick; Peter's just seen it for himself. Symptoms. Symptoms of something still there.

He starts crying, softly. )

Paimon stares, wide and open. His vessel will not know peace, not truly. Not for long. Not while something so restless and wrong lives within him; even now, the boy's body is beginning to face the consequences of the demon being dominant and active so long. A limb twitches, and a soft, convulsive shudder ripples through dark skin. There is a clicking sound within his throat, soft and fluttering, like a trapped insect. Paimon will have to go, soon.

...But there are moments of peace, however short-lived. The boy will sleep for awhile, unconscious and unknowing of those strange ways his body moves and clicks and chirps and flutters.

"I will let my vessel rest, now." Paimon says softly, looking up to the other being, intentional. Yes, part of it is because of this conversation, because of Duty's words.

"....Will you watch over him? While he sleeps."

I can't believe... A chicken out strengths us on our own.

[This has got to be the most humiliating realization she has come to.]

But the math adds up.

{And she knows math doesn't lie.]

...Okay. We got to show them we're better than the lot of them- but we might need a new plan.

We got one of them- Maybe we can use it as bait to get the others.

.. yeah. [ She'll agree with that, at least.

It's not super easy, since admitting she's happy always feels like jinxing it, like inviting in something bad - but on the other hand, there's no way she can deny all of this. ]

Being here.. It isn't so bad. Even though this place kind of sucks at times, the people here are way nicer than pretty much anyone I've ever met back home.

[ Granted, that may have something to do with Ange's specific circumstances.

But she also just thinks the level of niceness of the people in this place is way higher than in their own world. ]

[ it feels like a fairy tale he only wishes he could believe. live normally. it's not as if he already wouldn't. if he goes then, he goes then. it is a numbing reality, even as he cries— the tears felt raw on his face and burned his eyes, but they did not roll further. peter was crying more than him, at this point.

he uses it. he furls into himself and clings to arms over the fabric of his hoodie. he didn't know if he was doing the right thing, telling, but he did know what he perhaps wanted out of it. ]

I'd . . . Want to find some way.

Well, you found someone worth getting married to. That counts for a lot, I think.

[ He grins. ]

So make your life here and I'll be right beside you, for as long as I can. Cheering you on. Or helping rebuild a house...

[ Like this one. ]

Then funnel cake you'll have at your wish.

[ Beatrice curtsies, all politeness. ]

Let it not be said that the Golden Witch is ungracious.

He's kind of the opposite situation from Penny.
He and I went through all the shit in the nightmare, but he's still here.
So he remembers that he still kind of hates me but that we're not against each other.
And he's honest enough that he'll kick my ass if I lose it.

She ... kind of appreciated the fact that she was pretty sure Qrow would kill her without hesitation if she went nuts. It was good to know there were people who wouldn't hesitate if they needed to do something.

Kind of.
More "How Remnant Sucks compared to here."
It's pretty normal for us.

"I'm- I'm fine. I just- I should go!"

And with that, he's zooming out of the construction zone, away from flammable materials. And he stops when he reaches the street. The nice, safe street made of stone… that he's melting as well, but not as badly! But being away from Shiro allows him to suddenly feel like it's not spinning out of his control. He starts doing some breathing exercises and the glow rapidly shrinks and disappears. He looks down at his hands, perplexed.

"Huh?"

Perhaps if we started to cook and eat it, the others would come to its defense.

[ Alice is full of intelligent ideas today. ]

We are not cooking one of my babies.

Babies?

[ Alice looks at Ruby with extreme skepticism. She has had a whole lecture on how you get babies. That's clearly a chicken so either Ruby is wrong or SOMEONE has been holding out about how you really get chicken!! ]

Duty nods in approval of Paimon's decision. Doing right by Peter trumps his interest in the demon. It trumps building Clockhouse. "Yes," Duty says. "He will be safe." As safe as Duty can make him, even should The Reckoning show up for some reason.

There'll be more.

[He smiled-- bright, confident, innocent.... and unaware of what the future held.]

Keeping Ruby around is almost enough for plenty of craziness. Add Uncle Qrow to the mix and you never quite know exactly what's going to happen. And, Adding Ange to the mix? She likes to act like she's quiet and innocent... but I think she can be as wild as Ruby if she lets her self let loose a little.

Dangit, Shiro. Why did you have to get down like that? It's really hard to not look at him when he does that, considering she'd otherwise have to look right over his head, and that'd just make her look like she's trying to ignore him.

And she's not! It's just-- this is kind of embarrassing, and a lot, and Ange never knows how to deal with her emotions when they suddenly turn out to be a lot, threatening to spill out in embarrassing ways.

So she sucks in a breath before trying to meet his gaze, even though she can't quite keep up her usual pokerface. There's a darkblood blush on her cheeks, and the look in her eyes is softer. More emotional.

Not even just because of the stuff Shiro is saying about the wedding, or about her and Ruby, but--

"Hold on, you can't just slip stuff in like that."

Something family members do.

No matter what Ange may already have been thinking about Shiro all this time, those words are a lot for a girl who has had such an intense relationship with the concept of family.

"Are you saying that's what you are now..?"

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 19 of 27

11 . clockhouse rebuilding!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject