xiaoxiuya: made by mdzspring (Default)
xiaoxiuya ([personal profile] xiaoxiuya) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-12-01 04:34 pm

Season of Recovery and Preparation [Open]

Who: Shen Yuan's CR group, as well as anyone else who'd like share a prompt or start a thread!
What: Recovering from the shitstorm that was December and avoiding new trouble wherever it finds him XD
When: Throughout December, see thread headers for details
Where: Outpost Haven, the Willful Machine, and elsewhere around Trench

Content Warnings: Discussion of the Sleeper Farm and related events, other content warnings TBD.
martyrofduty: (Default)

text | un: duty

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-02 04:38 am (UTC)(link)
Glad you are doing better.

December will be differently crazy.
martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-03 04:09 am (UTC)(link)
False hope can lead you astray.

Yes, and you can study up. It's cyclical.
martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-03 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
Despite the walls only being cloth, Duty knocked and waited for a response before entering. Everything looked about the same. It had for some time. It continued even after the person Yuan originally feared and sought refuge from left. Duty hasn't counted the hours spent accompanying Yuan around Trench for safety, but he hasn't in some time. It's convenient to work certainly, and Duty has no difficulties fitting in checking on him.

Honestly, Duty expected Shen Yuan to find housing more to his liking by now.

"How are you?" Duty asks seriously. After the Sleeper Farm and everything they can do, after the harm that can leave with a person even if little physically happened, the question is serious. No trite morning exchange. No social nicety. He stares intently at Yuan, expecting an answer. Expecting the truth. If less comes out, if Yuan hides anything that truly matters, Duty trusts Xiu Ya to let him know.
martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-04 05:10 am (UTC)(link)
Given Shen Yuan was abducted from performing a regular activity in his life, Duty's not surprised he has mental difficulties. He'd be warier of the situation if Shen Yuan painted a pleasant light on everything. It's not... all good.

He sits near the bed so that they can see each other. He raises one eyebrow at 'when everything's fine' but otherwise doesn't chide or rebuke the other man.

In the end, being a man of few words pays off. Duty gets away with only, "No." It's not a stupid feeling. Jin Guangyao is not from the same world but something of a similar culture. He's likely set up house the way Shen Yuan would have, were everything else fine. He's done what Yuan wishes he'd done. Of course he feels as though he's missing out. He is.
martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-05 04:32 am (UTC)(link)
Duty watches Shen Yuan, knowing that they differ greatly, that the questions whose answers by which Duty lives are not necessarily the correct questions (much less answers) for Yuan. Jin Guangyao, Lan Xichen, and Nie Huaisang's arrivals help Shen Yuan embrace cultivation, the goal he stated devotion to after their fight with the draugr. However, whoever he is must come from within or it will not last.

"What do you need to know?" Duty asks. It's an old trick for a teacher, a mentor, a spymaster, anyone really. "To answer that." Due to their close relation, he gives Shen Yuan three additional words, to be sure it's understood.

His opinions he keeps to himself. They are not the answer.
martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-06 12:00 am (UTC)(link)
Duty watches Shen Yuan closely. His face is as inexpressive as it usually is, but the silence and waiting shows that taking more time is the right answer. He doesn't mind Shen Yuan wants his approval. It's not easy to get or to keep. It means continually doing the right thing, where the right thing depends on what you truly and honestly believe. No wishy washy answers, no repeated words that come from someone else. The only way, in the end, to live up to his expectations is to live up to one's own.

"Tch," Duty objects to Shen Yuan's insults to himself. "Someone always has it worse." It's not a contest, he says. The world's amount of real problems isn't limited, and once they're handed out, everything else is fake. No. Housing is a basic need. It's something people have fought for tooth and nail, whether that's in war or work or anything else. They built this building together. Nothing stood here when they began.

Housing is something.

"Help yourself to help others," Duty says. His eyes look more intently now. What are you lacking? Why are you dissatisfied? What do you need in a home? Shen Yuan doesn't have all the answers now, but he hasn't shown the commitment ever in all the months they have worked together. Even now, they've helped those around the community, seen more houses. There's plenty of information to work with.
stayscared: (jc-cap-387)

text: un: tenskulls private

[personal profile] stayscared 2022-12-06 05:26 am (UTC)(link)
So much for staying out of trouble. Is it a three strikes and you're out kind of deal, or am I going to get kicked immediately?

[jokes make it all better, yes?]

Hey. I'm sorry I couldn't get to you in time. My head wasn't on straight, and that's a bit of a shit excuse coming from me, but it's just what it says on the tin, no bullshit.

You're okay, right? Because surviving November? That's one way to put it.


martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-06 06:03 am (UTC)(link)
All Shen Yuan says are the basics. How they manifest, how they can be handled in a way that satisfies Yuan, is where the details will come in. Someplace personal and private, some place he can have company that's his and his alone except with anyone he chooses to share the information or experience with. Something personal. Something... nice. A more vague word perhaps not in existence, but Duty is sure Shen Yuan has something in mind, even if that changes.

While Duty understand the desire for a private space, one sacred and lockable, he greatly appreciates living with other people. Silence, solace, he's had enough lifetimes of that. There's other places to go, depending on mood. Still, for those closer to home, for those used to sharing space, it often goes the other way.

"We've worked across Trench," Duty says, "Which neighborhood?" The answer can change, but they all have their purposes and their styles. Their vibes. Even within a neighborhood, options vary. However, what Yuan wants to be close to, who, and what kind of dwelling. Well. It won't be Waver's basement apartment in Cellar Door with a tiny kitchen.

He crouches, looking seriously at Shen Yuan. "We carry the dead with us," he says. Even when they are gone, whether that be others or themselves. Here he is after all, a bridge between two people while only, in the end, being one of them. Gideon carried Pyrrha. Duty carries Gideon, even as he's let his husband be. It's in his mannerisms, his choice of words. It's his very being. Shen Yuan isn't the kid who died anymore. He isn't young man who took over another life in a world set by a system. He's someone else, the way they only can be when coming somewhere else entirely.
martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-06 05:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Duty raises his eyebrows slightly, just enough to show that he's done so. He lives in Gaze. The archives are in Gaze, but there are other sources of books for entertainment. To be near the archives is to focus on Trench. Perhaps, Duty hopes, to cultivate his abilities and planning, so they avoid another draugr situation. It's Yuan's choice, and Duty certainly is aware of much of the unoccupied buildings in the neighborhood, as a safety precaution.

Duty looks around the room, the setting, the titular lack of privacy. He reaches out to the curtains and freezes them. Ice bridges the small gaps between walls and curtains. An ice ceiling stretches across Shen Yuan's space, below the level of the curtain, until they are muffled from most others. Some, like D, could likely listen in if they tried. For all the ability it takes, it's not that showy. The curtains are stiff, and the ice clear. No one else can see the new ceiling from a regular position.

He sits on Shen Yuan's bed because nothing undermines the fact that using elemental powers to great degrees drains one's energy. "Ignoring your blinders about Jin Guangyao..." Duty pauses intently. He's not getting into that can of worms. It's enough Yuan knows he disagrees. The man's smart enough to figure out why.

He closes his eyes for a moment. "This isn't my original body," Duty says. "It was my husband's. I lived a myriad in his mind, a myriad as him, a myriad together like that and alone—"

The pause is heavy. It never stops hurting, no matter how many times Duty lets him go, no matter how many times Duty talks about it.

"Until I watched him die." There's no Duty without his husband, without that experience. The few words. The silences. So many of his mannerisms, so much of what Shen Yuan has grown used to, are the parts of him that come from his husband, the pieces so tightly braided in his identity that they cannot be separated, that would fray him entirely.
martyrofduty: (g1deon!face profile)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-07 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Duty inclines his head to confirm the definition of a myriad. Rounding is... simpler. At those time periods, a little less accuracy doesn't undermine the point. That is the point, to a degree.

"I don't recommend it," Duty says. After a pause, he adds, "I don't regret it." It's possible for it to be both. It hurt far more than most anyone, at best, can understand. He understands the appeal and the power of it, but the cost that cannot be undone... it's not a decision readily made. It wasn't even the decision he made originally, before he was Duty. His existence is a consequence of his husband's love for him and his love, in return, for his husband. To choose to live like this over and over and over for his sake and for the sake of helping others.

"It's not a dick measuring contest," Duty says, something of the Cohort coming through, "Different means, different reasons. Point is... I get it." Yuan isn't who he was when he died and became Shen Qingqiu. He isn't Shen Qingqiu either. He's something not readily or easily explained to most people, something harder to grasp if you haven't been through something similar.

He doesn't press further on Shen Yuan's identity. He doesn't immediately offer or shut down more information about himself. There's no 'System' guiding Shen Yuan's decision. What happens next is truly up to him.
stayscared: (jc-cap-68)

[personal profile] stayscared 2022-12-08 03:43 am (UTC)(link)
[aw, shit. it's a trap. he'd opened his mouth (fingers) and typed right into it. how is he going to argue this? the part about the tea gets a laugh, and the part about the sad look gets another. tea wouldn't be a punishment, but he's not sure he could go more than one round with that level ten spell: look of concern.]

It's easy to say 'don't worry', but a lot harder in practice. Especially when I've seen the insides of that place now. You were better off 'out', maybe.

I wouldn't say okay, but I'm better than I was. I don't know if I owe that to my friends, my Omen, or a little bit of sweet revenge, so I'll go with all three.

I know we don't know each other well, but I don't know how serious they take things around here when it comes to work, and I want to make a good impression. Show them I mean business, and that I'm the man for the job. Do you think you could write a couple sentences as a sort of character reference? It's fine if you can't, it's probably stupid.

What's Level Two?
martyrofduty: (g1deon!face casual shirtless)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-12-08 04:57 am (UTC)(link)
"You're welcome," Duty spares the words because proper manners matter to Yuan, where D would be satisfied with the slightest head tilt.

"In adulthood, you make yourself do what you must," Duty says. "How you manage it"—he shrugs—"makes no difference to me."

Some people never want others to hear them complain or admit how much effort something takes or how hard it is. Shen Yuan, in the end, isn't one of them. Not most of the time. That's fine too.

"I encourage you to do what you need," Duty declares. It refuses any argument and accepts Shen Yuan as 'unspeakably annoying' as much as an overstatement as that may be.
stayscared: (jc-cap-29)

text: un: tenskulls

[personal profile] stayscared 2022-12-08 05:46 am (UTC)(link)
I believe I have lost the challenge, but as compensation (and dues) to the club, I offer Nie Huaisang three cardinals.

[just pretend there is a small rat photobombing the second picture.]



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