(open) you're looking at me like you don't know who i am

[entreats]

Who: Ange, Ruby, Break, and anyone who knows any of them.
What: Corruption turned Ange into a true Umineko witch who decided the best way to keep the people she loves safe from this town is to drag them into a pocket dimension.
When: For a while in March.
Where: Ange and Ruby's house-turned-small-pocket-dimension.

Content Warnings: Potential violence if anyone acts particularly antagonistic. Potential talk of violence or gore. Other warnings will be added when things pop up.



Perhaps you have seen Ruby's odd network post and decided to check things out. Or maybe you're just wandering around Trench and notice that Ange and Ruby's house suddenly looks.. different.

The house has been completely overgrown by way oversized roses, big thorns growing out of all the stems, completely obscuring the structure that's supposed to be underneath it. If you get close enough to the cluster of roses, you may feel your connection to any of the three people inside suddenly pull you in. (Please note: only people who know either Ange, Ruby or Break will be able to enter the pocket dimension because of this!)

If you give in to the sensation, everything around you might go black, and when the light returns, you seem to find yourself in.. a hedge maze. A rather odd one, though. As you stumble through it, you may suddenly find yourself in random rooms, and then back out of them into the hedge maze once more. The Moss King's wild plants seem to have even invaded corners of this place, so you might want to watch out you avoid having those snap at you. Retracing your steps through the labyrinth feels impossible, like the way is changing up behind you with every step. Some rooms make perfect sense - like a neat and elaborate kitchen, or a library - and others seem to consist of nonsense with stairs leading upside down or to nowhere, or gravity not working in a specific room at all.

Flying throughout the entire maze are golden butterflies. They seem to fly with direction, and if you follow them, you might find them leading you to one of the people you were looking for..

Comments

[lludw]

[It's only devoting your life to something earns an immediate eyebrow raise, but he's currently more inclined to think through the various implications of that than to say something smart. Which gives Break time to keep speaking.

And derail Lucius's train of thought.]

Huh?

[Something for him to do? Here?]

[payingfordeliverance]

Don’t “huh” me. We both know what you’re like when you’ve nothing better to do than run amok.

[Off in the corner, there’s the tell-tale rustling of one of the plant invaders. Break reaches into his hat, and his arm disappears all the way up to the shoulder as he fishes around. Momentarily, he comes up with another fork, and dispenses with the plant much the same way he did in Ruby’s video.

The hat, of course, is not big enough to accommodate his entire arm. Except that it does. Even if he isn't finished with its exterior yet, it's a perfectly wearable hat, and thus just fine to use for storage.]

Don't think I don't realize you've gone behind my back with the gambling. I admit I'm a little proud, but if you'd at least wait until you're big enough to flip people over in a bar fight, you'd give me a great deal less by way of heartburn.

[lludw]

[Emrys, who has been amusing himself stealing small bits of shredded pillow from Baltus, flutters up onto the table. The falcon cocks his head in a way that can only be described as smug.]

I told you he'd know.

[Lucius starts to glare, then rolls his eyes instead.]

I can flip people over.

[Admittedly, it would be difficult in a bar fight, given the positioning and momentum necessary for someone his size up against adults. But it is at least firmly within the realm of the physically possible. And anyway, Break is complaining because he's Break and it's a chance to complain. Just like he's doing whatever it is with that hat because he's Break and it's an opportunity to be whimsical. (Why forks, though?)

Lucius tilts his head back and sighs, his expression growing distant.]

But why here? This is Ange's place.

[payingfordeliverance]

Fine. When you can flip me over.

[The bar is thus set from "within the realm of Lucius's precocious capabilities" to "nigh impossible". This is arguably unfair, but on the other hand, Break can keep up with the Remnant people and their bullshit powers and weapons just fine these days. When Lucius can beat him reliably -- Break does think of that as a when, not an if -- it's true, Break won't have to worry. He'll be able to wipe the floor with most of the ruffians worth messing with.

Not that it's going to matter.]

Anyway, in the end, this place will be extensive enough to accommodate the lot of us. Why wouldn't you be staying? You're part of my household.

[lludw]

[Lucius sighs at that stipulation. That is going to take a while. He can keep up with some adults, but not the ones with both proper experience and a talent for fighting. He needs more speed and power before he can get one over on Break.

He doesn't say anything in response, though, because the real issue here is the "invitation."

This is the thing about Askeladd, even Askeladd who has reclaimed his real name: he does not belong. It is not something he knows as a matter of conscious thought. It's a small but persistent flame deep inside of him, scorching parts of his heart. The feeling is hard to separate from the other things that burn (anger at the world, resentment over the way things are, the side of grief that is also fury), but that just makes it harder to extricate. And it burns more fiercely in Trench. Starting from a place different from everyone else is a part of it. But the worst is that he has memories now of a different version of himself who did belong, in the homeland he only knows from that other self.

But this Lucius is Askeladd, and Askeladd is Lucius. He will always be too much of one thing to fit in another.

The thought that arises from this instinct is that this still doesn't make sense. Maybe it's a sign of Break's own corruption, a way for him to prevent any "problems" before someone runs amok causing them. Maybe since Ange got the idea to create an...alternative household, Break is applying the same logic to anyone who lives in his house.]

Ange must be thinking of "the lot of us" pretty broadly. I barely know her.

[payingfordeliverance]

[Totally oblivious to any of this, Break reaches back into his hat, groping around to see what else he might have stuffed in and forgotten about.]

She wouldn't deny me one of my kids.

[He doesn't even bother to look at Lucius as he says it, casual as can be. Certainly his relationship with the boy isn't as intimate as what he had with the Alices, or Gilbert. But what Lucius likely doesn't know is that Break's first interactions with Gilbert in particular weren't actually all that unlike their own initial meetings in Trench, in that Break's intention was that they would be allies.

Black Alice's declarations that friends are people who use one another did not actually come from within her own head. She learned it from watching Break keeping Oz at arm's length as best he could. And here, what could be seen as kindness on Break's part in letting some strange child into his home in this weird place was really more for his comfort than Lucius's. He hasn't ever forgotten that Lucius was one of those who helped Break find his feet when he washed up on the shore, beaten and blind and shaken and dead. And even if it weren't for that faint feeling of debt, the idea of very young kids running around trying to get by on their own around here bothers him intensely.

That was over a year and a half ago. And now, just as with all of Break's other kids, things have become much more personal in ways he does not care to think about very hard. In the throes of corruption, Break becomes possessive and even more overprotective than usual. Lucius lives in his house, under his care. Therefore, the boy is his.]

don't half-draft tags on your phone and then accidentally post after unlocking it kids

[lludw]

[There is no way around that statement. No equivocation Lucius can make about how being part of a household is entirely separate from belonging to one, as his own presence in his father's household back in his world demonstrates. There are no hairs in "one of my kids" to split. And in the absence of that, he's...lost. For words, for a reaction at all.

He would bristle and draw away if he thought Break meant to claim that he's a replacement - a father Lucius doesn't want, an adult who can take the place the mother he misses and worries over. But he's seen Break around plenty of other people by now, and it would take a deliberate misunderstanding to interpret the statement that way. Break is aware of the family ties of everyone around him - he joins in addition to, not instead of.

Of course, Lucius might normally bristle and pull away from the possessiveness regardless of intent. Would normally do so. But the idea of being wanted is a powerful thing, a warm glow touching his cold blue-tinged skin. Not picked out for his "potential" as another soldier for his father and Denmark. Not even being both wanted and needed - for all that it was memories of helping his mother through her illness that led Lucius to reach out to Break on that first day, Break had quickly recovered beyond requiring help. Just being a welcomed presence, in and of himself.

That's more or less what Break is saying, isn't it? That he's more comfortable with Lucius around than when he isn't. It's hard to say it's just a matter of not wanting children to run around unsupervised when it's paired with "my kids." The statement seems too offhand to be a product of Break's corruption - he says it like something already established and moved on from, not like he's trying to ensnare the boy.

Break is the only one of his close allies left. After a year and a half of people washing up and washing away, none of them people from Lucius's world, what's left is what he started with. But maybe that's not too bad.

(He is so terribly lonely.)

This is the thing about Lucius, even if he is Askeladd: he doesn't yet hate himself so much that he can reject all hope of one day being able to belong.

But he can't simply accept the idea either. And not in a dream world that's bound to collapse.

(I'm not-)

(I can't be-)

(This is pointless.)

Emrys has come to settle on his shoulder now, leaning against his head. About as close to comforting as a falcon can get. He reaches up, idly petting the omen's back. It helps him breathe again, makes him feel more grounded and less like the ground is spinning out from under him, leaving him in an unknown place. He can feel like that later, when he's not on a fact-finding mission and when Break's eye isn't glowing.]

She's pretty tired from making this, isn't she? I hope she's careful when she expands it.

[payingfordeliverance]

[If the other tells of corruption weren't there, this would be the giveaway -- usually, usually, Break notices when one of his kids is having some sort of quiet crisis in his presence. He may not pry into it, depending on this and that and the other thing. But he does pick up on this sort of thing, and tuck it away to consider later on.

Now, entirely oblivious to the way he's just pulled the ground from beneath Lucius's feet, Break triumphantly pulls a candy tin out of his hat and pries it open. As he tosses one to the boy, his omen, deprived of his playmate, leaps up into the chair across the table and sits politely with his paws folded on the placemat. In this moment, Baltus and all his horrible teeth are the closest thing this party has to a Cheshire Cat.]

It's true, it's true. It's not exactly an easy thing to create a whole dimension! I tore a hole between two of them once back in my own world, and that took the last of what strength I had left.

[Because while we are casually dropping truth bombs directly on Lucius's head, why not also reveal out of the blue that Break was tampering with the threads of reality before he found himself in Trench with glittering blood!]

[lludw]

[Lucius neatly catches the candy, an almost automatic reaction to an object being tossed at him. But he doesn't make any move to eat it. Maybe later he'll give it to- maybe he'll have it later.

In all honesty, another revelation as to the extent of weirdness and magic in the world Break comes from is a relief. This is the fact-finding he's here for, a matter of using the opportunity to ferret out more information rather than being confronted with emotions. It gives him time to figure out how he'll lie about those emotions instead (or, perhaps, approach them, but from a safe distance).

He is bad at relationships. But he is good at finding and leveraging information. He's good at lying, and at saving things for a time when they're more relevant. ]

Really? Then did you teach Ange how to do that, so she could come and make this?