deercountry | 11 . clockhouse rebuilding!

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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! ]

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"Yeah. Sticking with something familiar is probably a good idea for certain things, too." Keith could understand that. Learning new skills could be tough sometimes, and falling back on the ones you already knew when it came down to it was often a better option. It was better to work on the newer ones in a more controlled environment, where mistakes wouldn't be as disastrous.

But, for now, their disposal fire with the wind smoke deterrent seemed to be working, and Keith was good with that.

No disaster!

"I have to get better with it anyway, since I don't have anyone else to teach it to me."

To be fair, it wasn't a method anyone else knew how to use on the Isles anyway, so Luz had to research and combine things to make the right combination work. That was how Luz was able to use the whirlwind to begin with. She was still working on an actual shielding spell, and was pretty sure she'd get there soon enough!

"What do you want to work on next?"

Keith nodded. Practicing was always a good thing to do. He was into that. He definitely was the type to train and keep up his skills, too. He often did.

"Just here, or...? Like, back home, too?" The way she said that kind of indicated that this was a bit of a one-off power to have.

"Um... next? Well..." He glanced back at the construction site. "I guess we could go find some materials and start helping with the building."

In Luz's case, practicing was actually something that needed some spotting. The last time she did a combination she wound up conjuring a hand that tried to grab her and drag her down to somewhere unknown!

"Oh, here. I don't know the next time I'll ever be back home. If I ever go back there though, I'm sure I'd be trying new combinations there too."

Luz grinned. "Cool. I'm actually less experienced making buildings. Any advice you could give here would help!"

"It's not a bad thing to keep your skills sharp." He nodded, still huddled up in his heavy coat and all that, and turned to start heading back to where the plans where to see what they could do.

"Well, I did help out a bit with Lance and rebuilding his house after some ghost figure thing trashed the place and burned the whole top floor. I'm no professional housebuilder, but we were able to fix it pretty good." Once at the table where the plans were, he looked it over, and glanced over at the site a few times to compare what was being done to what needed to be done and what could be done in the building's current state.

"We could get started on the flooring over here," he pointed at a spot on the paperwork. "That should be relatively easy for non-pros."

"Nope, not at all! I've actually gotten better because I've practiced an experimented! Now glyphs come naturally, and I've had to write down some of the new discoveries I've made!"

Luz listened quietly, nodding. "Oh, that's good. I haven't talked to Lance in a bit. I miss him. Is he doing well?"

She looked over at where he indicated, nodding. "All right. I can get started on that now!"

Keith nodded. "That's really cool," he said.

"He's getting by, I guess," he continued. "I mean, this place is what it is, right? So, it can be hard on anyone really. But, we're all coping as best we can, so that's kind of where he is with things." Keith sighed a little. "I've definitely noticed a difference here compared to how I know him back home. It can be a little jarring, and I feel like I have to get to know him all over again sometimes. But there are definitely bits of him where he's just... Lance. And that's good." Granted, after everything Lance had been through, between what Keith had been learning about Deerington and all that, and the things that he was sure Lance hadn't shared with him, yet, that might have also had an impact, he really wasn't surprised. Anyone could change under a lot of stress. He would have been more surprised if Lance was still exactly the same.

He went over that way with her, and then started to grab some of the supplies they were going to need to put together the floor.

"As long as I don't set myself on fire too many times? Yes! Very cool!"

Luz took a long breath. "This place is pretty crazy, but Lance has seen worse than here. Deerington has some instances where, well, you were tested, whole body and mind. I know it sounds silly, me saying that, but I've seen some people's memories of that place, and went through some things myself. I haven't talked to Lance in some time, but I was really hoping he wasn't in another bad place."

Which was why Luz was very happy Keith and Shiro were still here. She knew how much worse you could feel when you didn't have people from your world helping you deal with things.

Luz mimicked Keith here, though obviously struggling a little more with the lifting.

Keith chuckled a bit at first. "Well, only do that if you're a coldblood. I wouldn't recommend it any other way."

And then he nodded. "Yeah. I've seen some, too... his included. And Shiro's. It's... it's a lot to think about... that they went through all that. That I..." He took a breath and looked away for a moment. "I don't know if it's just that I don't remember, or if I wasn't there and another version of me was. I feel... almost... guilty. You know? That I should remember. Why was I reset and not them? Why do they still have to live with those memories?" He shook his head. "But, he still here. I think he's just... I don't know. A lot happened, definitely. I definitely get that. I've seen it in him and Shiro. I've seen how it's affected them. I worry sometimes."

Keith had worked with others like Luz... Pidge, notably, so he made sure to keep his pace steady, but something she could keep up with. He knew she was going to push to be as much help as she could, so he didn't argue.

"Guess that means I'll have to stick with the glyphs!" Luz said, shrugging. "Besides, my magic is a little more...squirrely, I guess? I'm not exactly used to how it works yet."

For obvious reasons.

"Yeah. I wasn't even there as long as they were, but what went down were still not things that should happen to kids. Some of them have been here for years, dealing with memories of that place. And Lance, whoa. I couldn't believe some of the stuff that happened to him. We all have to get our strength somewhere though, or you'll just go crazy."

She shook her head. "Don't feel guilty. You can try and figure that out, but if it's what happened, it's just the way it is. The fact is that you're here now, and you can support them as best as you can and share with their happy times and when things aren't so great."

Luz certainly wished there were still some people who were still around, but the sad fact was it wouldn't bring them back. She imagined Lance and Shiro were just happy to see Keith again.

She absolutely was! Luz was carrying things herself two years ago would have struggled with. Luz is doing much better with carting things along, even if it takes her a little longer.

Edited 2023-01-23 20:12 (UTC)

"That's what practice is for, right?"

But Keith managed a small smile and nodded at the comment about Lance and Shiro. "It's hard to tell, but I guess they're happy I'm here. Sometimes, I wonder if it's just a burden to them... like they're trying to protect me all the time. But... I'm trying. It's all I can do, I guess. Just... try to help."

He put down the last of what he had carried over for what they needed, and then crouched to look things over for a moment before starting to work. If they were going to get this right, they had to make sure to measure and cut accurately.

"You got that right! Especially in the open, where you're least likely to set something on fire or explode a thing!"

That happened more than Luz would have liked to admit, and she had to admit, missed that Varian was just as likely to cause those situations.

"I don't think it's like that. This place and the one before it has probably just worked their nerves badly, and they want to keep the bad stuff from happening to you. I had people who did for me too, but well. It didn't work."

Bad things were going to happen. That was just the way of things.

Luz followed Keith's lead on this. Construction was not her strongest suit, but she was sure she could wing it.

Keith nodded. He couldn't disagree with the open space thing, definitely.

"Yeah... I don't know. Maybe." Keith sighed. Because Lance had said something exactly like that after they came back from being squids in Sasuke's pond. The courtyard conversation that day had been rough, and Lance had blamed himself for not being able to protect Keith from all the bad things happening 'again'. Clearly, Lance had decided he was going to try to keep Keith 'safe' and prevent anything from happening to him, and is not blaming himself for letting Keith get killed by Reckoning.

That bothered Keith.

"Either way, the bad stuff here... it's gonna happen. I don't want them blaming themselves like they're responsible for me all the time." He shook his head slightly and started measuring some of the space. He asked Luz to try sketching out the area and to write down the measurements.

Luz may or may not have set a few things on fire at home to learn that lesson.

"Just make sure that they remember you've got your own ways of surviving. I'd want to keep my friends safe too, but that doesn't mean I get to overlook their own survival skills. I've made that mistake, and I don't want anyone else to do it by accident."

Even if they did mean well.

"It is, yeah. That's the part they probably find hard to swalow. They want to spare you the stuff they went through. Remind them that you're your own person and will make mistakes without their help! The last thing I'm sure they want to do is be a burden on you without taking into account how you feel."

Keith nodded as he worked.

"Yeah. I mean, I know why they're doing it, which... honestly, that's why I haven't really pushed back about it too much," he said. "But like... it can be frustrating sometimes. I know stuff is hard to talk about, but I can't understand or learn what to expect if they don't tell me.

"And, even if it's something that happened to me, or previous me, or I forgot... or whatever it was that happened... getting reset or something... I feel like I deserve to know. I just mainly give them the benefit of a doubt because they're still my friends, my family. So, I want to believe that the main reason they're not telling me something is because it's hard to talk about... not because they're trying to like, protect me from something bad that happened that I don't even remember anymore, or maybe didn't experience because it happened to a different me."

It was taking Luz a little more effort, what with not being used to this kind of work, but she was slowly starting to get the hang of it.

"Some of it they can probably tell you," Luz said, "and some of it might be things that they still might not understand, or even know how to easily talk about it. If, say, my mom were to come here tomorrow, I would be happy to see her, but I wouldn't even begin to help her understand a lot of the things that happened to me."

And that was Luz who hadn't been in Deerington as long as Lance or Shiro.

"See, that's probably what makes it so difficult. Some of it is that it's just hard, and some of it is them maybe not knowing how to even approach talking about something that you may never know yourself. It could honestly be a LOT of things."

Keith nodded.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Hard to explain, or understand... or even just hard to think about because it might have been really traumatic, so maybe talking about it is really upsetting."

He was starting to see that last one a lot. The more that his friend run out of the less difficult topics to help him learn about things that had happened, the more often they were running into these walls of 'nope not thinking about that again'.

Keith wasn't sure what hurt more... the fact that something was so traumatizing that they couldn't talk about it, or the fact that there was something keeping them from feeling comfortable enough around him to let themselves open up about it to him.

He was trying, but patience wasn't a strong point for him.

"A lot of people have stories like that. I should know: I have a few of my own, and sometimes we actually wound up seeing other people's. I don't think you ever really know to get prepared for those kinds of things."

It made sense for Keith to feel that way though. Luz would have felt some of that herself if it were happening to her.

"But I'm sure they'll come around. Whatever might be holding them back, I know there'd another part of them that's really happy to see you there with them."

Keith looked like he was considering that for a moment, which he was. She wasn't wrong. Granted, he wasn't exactly sure if they were happy or upset about him being there. They certainly seemed to want to keep him from harm around this place. Not that he didn't want to do the same for them. It was just part and parcel for their respective relationships. They all cared about each other. And while it was nice to have a familiar face and someone there for support, it still sucked to know they were in such a terrible place.

So, maybe... maybe they were happy to see him, but he had a feeling they weren't exactly happy he was stuck in Trench, specifically.

But he got it. He understood what Luz was trying to say.

Keith nodded a little.

"Yeah... I guess so."

That was something even Luz had to deal with when she first met up with Eda and then with all of the friends she made. Sometimes they DID want to protect her, and despite wanting to be strong enough to take things on her own, there were time she absolutely did rely on them a little bit.

They were always going to care, and in turn, she would care right back what happened to them.

"I'm pretty sure of it. Just make sure they understand that if you have to be in some other world, that there's no place you'd rather be as long as you're all there together."

Keith nodded a little.

"Yeah. I guess we're all feeling a little the same way about each other being stuck here. I'll keep it in mind."

He didn't want to be angry at them. He knew they were just worried. He gave Luz a small smile of thanks.

"Let's see how much of this floor we can get finished before dinner break, yeah?"

"Hey, you have people from your world here with you. Some don't have that. I'd say you started off pretty lucky!"

And Luz had too, a long time ago, when Eda was here.

"They'll get there eventually."

She nodded. "You got it! I'll work tirelessly through the day!"

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11 . clockhouse rebuilding!

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Seem like a good spot to end?

I'd say so!