i know that the sun is here with me | december catch-all

[terriblepurpose]

Who: Paul Atreides, Ortus Nigenad, and you
What: December catch-all, open and closed prompts
When: December
Where: Various
Content warnings: Grief over loss of a parent, eugenics, psychological horror, child abuse, child death

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

Johnny's the cobra in the room, so to speak. The shadow of a man Paul is doing his best to talk around, because when he tells people it's not his place to interfere, it's exactly what Robby says last. It's what you do next. It's making yourself better, and for Paul, that means that he should stop plunging his hands up to the elbows into other people's problems they don't need him to solve.

All the problem he can try to solve here is a simple, if not straightforward, one: building a rapport, piecing together a pidgin tongue between them they can communicate through. This is progress. Paul nods, maybe a little too readily - but he'd already resolved to put his cards on the table, hadn't he?

"That's the only way it makes sense to me," he agrees, barely blinking at the transition from one Robby to the next (it's only natural, in a memory blurred with a dream), "You don't get to choose the world you're in, or the circumstances you're given, or what the people around you do. Only your own actions are yours, and how you choose to live with them."

No wanting in the world will make someone change from the outside if they choose not to. Sometimes Paul is embarrassed by how hard it was for him to learn that, and how easily he stumbles back into the false-logic of fervent desire.

"Good guys might not always be able to make rent." He smiles slightly, like they're in on something together. "But I still think it's worth it."

[strongroots]

But it's worth it, huh. His heart is undecided, less for the moral good, and how well it works out. How well all of his choices have worked out, but he's also working on that, too.

He chose to be the good guy - or the guy who didn't risk getting caught doing bad. Robby looks at Paul on that end, not with confidence, but with acceptances as he concedes (with the argument in himself), "--The LaRusso's had a nice house."

A fact, brushing over the difficulties of that nice house, the doors he doesn't want to touch, much less open. At least he doesn't need to linger on it, as instead, he's focused on Paul; his eyes assessing him under a soft scrutiny than anything sharper, thinking, evaluating. This is the first time they've spoken to each other since their phone call, is what he's able to recognise now. Or more important: this is the first time he's had to confront Paul's existence since the accidental apologies put online.

That is, the real him. Not the him that's a name and somewhere to direct his feelings towards, without ever thinking about the individual himself. Paul the person has never mattered; just Paul the favourite, who was Miguel before him.

--it would've been different, had they met sooner. Even now in his chest something stirs, signalled in the way that Robby's gaze drops, his jaw tightening before a breath. But he can dismiss it here, now, doing as he did with a slightly younger frame as he tilts his head back, sees a ceiling that doesn't look quite right. Faded.

Everything is faded, scent and presence. This memory was a long time gone.

"Could be worse," Robby speaks out loud. "Could be getting chased by a monster, thrown naked in the woods, getting tortured."

It could've chosen a better spot, Robby thinks. Which leads to another thought, Robby tilting his head with a knitted brow.

"--Think we can leave here and head to the skate park?"

Very, very important question and realisation. Shit--what if they could?

[terriblepurpose]

Like most estimations of a moral philosophy, there's as much (or more) aspiration than truth to what Paul says. It's what he wants to be true, the pivot on which he's hanging the new calibrations of his moral compass, but there's nothing objective to measure it by except - The LaRusso's had a nice house.

Maybe he's reading too far into it. Paul still finds he usually is. But he lightens at that like sunlight behind a cloud, the diffuse relief of hearing anything that almost sounds like what you feel when you haven't found the words for it yourself. It's nice to imagine he might not be the only one who isn't being completely selfless about their self-improvement.

He rubs his thumb across his knuckles as Robby speculates that at least it's not worse, which is the kind of comforting thought Paul has gotten used to getting behind in lieu of anything more robust. The absence of nudity is particularly appreciable, once it's been brought up. So, it could be worse, and there's that, which is something.

And apparently it could be better. Paul has only the sketchiest understanding of what a skate park is, but those combination of words seems promising.

"We can go anywhere you can remember." Paul keeps his eagerness largely in check, but this is a service he's been itching for a chance to provide; let it never be said he missed an opportunity to experiment with blood magic. "Do you want to? I have time."

[strongroots]

Is time still moving? is not a thought Robby expected to have right about now, but neither did he expect to be stuck inside his own--memories? Or whatever; and especially not with Paul. But here they are, and his concern for time is easily brushed aside with Paul's assurance of his own being available.

"What do I have to do? Think about it?" He asks it with humour, and if it's as easy and that, he can think about it without difficulty. A place more familiar to him than any dojo, a second home, the place he went to all the time - young and older - to get away for fun or to blow off steam. It's extensive bowl, pipes and ramps; the rails and the noise of wheels amongst chatter under the California sun.

Should he close his eyes? He's kind of already waiting to do that, like it's the obvious next thing he should be doing here. Come on, he's watched movies. Or maybe he has to take this bundling thoughts and walk out the door with them. That also sounds very magic-typical.

Lead the way, in whatever fashion you will, Paul.

cw: minor self-injury (magical ritual)

[terriblepurpose]

Paul has yet to determine what the relation of time in memories is to time outside of them in the heart of winter. Sometimes, it's one to one. Other times, it contracts or elongates, and there are too many variables to control for to do anything but make an observational study of the data for later. There will always be next year, and the year after that, and as many years as Paul can wring out of this place.

In the present moment, however long it is, Paul rolls out of the chair and to his feet like he's been waiting for a tether to be cut. He hasn't - he's the one who ties the tether, the one who anchors himself - but it's good to move after being so still in a conversation like that one. He smiles with a new cocky tilt to it as he stretches his arms overhead and nods, first to Robby and then to the door.

"That's right. Think about the skate park, and I'll paint." Robby's intuitions are correct. Doorways are the most straightforward route, and most readily available. He walks over to the one Robby's mother disappeared through and nicks his thumb with a quiet hum against the sting, then sketches out a rapid, confidently applied sigil in blood that starts to glow silver as the shape comes together.

"There." Paul steps back and to the side, and in a fit of uncommon whimsy, half-bows to gesture to the doorway in invitation for Robby, as formal as the finest of butlers. "Lead the way."

[strongroots]

Robby watches Paul in his move from the chair to the door, not privy to the bite he takes due to the angle, but he still sees its results in the ritual. It's one of those aspects of Trench one becomes familiar with, but Robby isn't yet used to every aspect of it; so it's a curiosity as much as an oddity, one of those things he can't connect himself with. Every blood type is different, but being a warmblood will feel even more disconnected.

Well, he gets to reap the benefits of others' works the same as anyone else. Paul's bow earns him a raise of Robby's brows, then a twitch of his lips as it settles into humour; moving on into acceptance as he too approaches the door waiting for him, his own, in a way that gives him one last pang of something bittersweet for what used to be, and the nerves of anticipation.

Thoughts on the skatepark, he reminds himself wordlessly, and opens up the way.

And they're there, in all magical glory. A handle no longer in Robby's hand, and neither is it extended out in front of him. His clothing is casual, covered, black jeans and a long-sleeved band shirt, his fringe free than pulled back. It is as he knows it: the day sunny but with a bit of a wind, the sound of clacking boards, talking that usually means shouting between one another over the noise of other activity. The distance sound of cars, and then: the environment itself.

All of it may be unusual to Paul, to say the least, and then there's the park itself: grey stone slab covering a wide area just for this single purpose, with most of the space flat and left empty. There's a set of stairs to one side with a railing in its centre, the ground otherwise a gentle slope that doesn't require those stairs in the first place. Wooden structures are littered with their own slopes, and there's a wall covered in murals where many of the pipes lead up to, can bring a rider to its top.

If there's other people or not depends on how well the reality of a memory can be bent. Robby knows faces, but he knows bodies more, the general energy of the skatepark on most days. Anything would be impressive to the guy, no matter any oddities to its delivery, and he would be taking it in, brushing his hair back uselessly after a breeze does it first.

He'll drop the board in his hand eventually, test it under his foot, and then seem to remember Paul to look for him, and ask: "You got one?"

[terriblepurpose]

This wasn't at all what Paul was half-expecting. The first thing he notices is the sunshine, which has a magical quality that he knows he didn't give it, more luminous and golden than any sun he's ever seen. He blinks against its brilliance with a strange sense of primeval deja vu, some deeply human thing in him wanting to stretch out and bask in it.

The rest of the scene is arresting in a different way. The mixture of blunt concrete and the imprint of youthful innovation over it capture his interest at once, and his eyes rove over the scene with unfiltered interest. The bodies Robby remembers better than the faces roll through the scene with a soft clatter of noise, the indistinctness of their features somehow not threatening despite their blurriness. It's more of the quality of a dream that subsumes the memory.

He should be more discreet in his observation. This still isn't his memory to gawk at. But - Robby did invite him to it, didn't he? And there's nothing here Paul can see that he thinks he shouldn't. The undertone he senses within it is a good one. So it's all right.

When Robby addresses him with the question, Paul wrinkles his brow and holds out his still slightly bloody hand. A board appears in it with no special burst of glitter or slow materialization. Like the scene around them, it comes into being all at once, like it was always there. He doesn't drop his (generic, nearly featureless, not quite perfect) board, but bends to set it on the ground.

"I do now," he says, with a significant degree less confidence than he had in making the portal, and he puts his foot gingerly on it in mimicry. "Like this?"

[strongroots]

Bullshit, is what Robby thinks, nearly speaks with the board that appears; the kind of his memories always worn, well-used, make do with what you get. It's a sort of fond and conceding reaction, however, Robby sucking in his cheek--like yeah, of course you can just magic up a board, lucky asshole. There's certainly a smirk on Robby's face, and he rolls himself just so he's closer to Paul, but giving the both of them space.

"You wanna find which foot feels better sticking on the board, and the other moving you. Your board foot goes here," he shows, close to the board's staples, "--and the foot you move off sits around the back."

Robby moves onto the board with two feet, a slight adjustment made for his weight when they go on the board, and then one moves off again.

"Try it with one foot, and we'll ride up there." He points, the direction flat-paved. "Brush your foot against the ground soft, doesn't matter if you stop. Get a feel for it. You're beginning."

And apparently, Robby doesn't mind spending his time showing a guy how to use a skateboard in some faux-memory park. He's been doing it in Trench, except now it's too snowy for skateboarding--so why not make the most of it? Robby continues to show Paul what he wants, using a foot to kick his board into motion, his body weight in line with the board instead of hovering off.

He rides along before he gives it another kick, doing this once before he finds himself at a decent distance before bringing the board to a skip with his ground foot, the board turning in the motion so he can look at Paul.

Your turn, buddy.