002: Regrets collect like old friends, here to relive your darkest moments

[payingfordeliverance]

Who: Xerxes Break and you
What: A catchall, including event threads! Open prompts in the post, closed ones in the comments. As usual the open prompts are very "here's where to find him, make something up," so if you'd like to plot out something more specific feel free to PM me here or at blithering
When: November and December!
Where: All over the place


Content Warnings: Consuming magic mushrooms for great mental health justice in prompt one, loads of anxiety and references to verbal child abuse in prompt three. Other warnings added into threads as necessary!



Mid-November Mushroom Funtimes

Probably the least surprising habit Break acquires as he learns to cook is eating whatever he's working on at every stage from start to finish. He has no idea what half the spices he's squirreled into the house even are and can't tell the difference between a great many of these onions and things either, and makes dinner happen mostly by having some idea of what should be in this or that and tossing things in and deciding on the fly whether that was a poor decision or not. It's fine, he's only poisoned someone once and it turned out to be an annoying vileblood fluke. We won't worry about it.

Anyway, that's how he comes to be chewing idly on a weeper mushroom Black Alice found and abruptly acquires mental health.

This is not to say he turns into a sparkly pastel version of himself and goes trotting about like a horrid pretty pony or anything, a fate he will conveniently avoid in a couple weeks. No, he still misses his home and his people terribly, still worries about the ones he's met here and this "farm" thing he keeps hearing about, frets about his kids and frets about winter's swift approach. It's just that these things don't feel like such a burden anymore, and he has no trouble convincing himself to get out of bed or leave the house or speak to other people. Things don't set him off into fits as they usually do, and the challenges he knows are coming don't feel insurmountable, as though the slightest oversight on his part will bring some horrid disaster down on the lot of them.

And, most importantly, for some reason his eyesight restores itself. His morning cough vanishes and his usual aches and pains recede, and Xerxes Break honestly feels better than he has in a year or three. He feels almost young.

Given how annoying Trench is, he doesn't really question it. Magic mushrooms. Sure, why not. The next few days are a flurry of productivity, as he tracks down people to help seal the windows and various drafty places in their ramshackle old house, ousts whatever "the hissing thing" is from the root cellar and gets it all spruced up, dutifully allows White Alice to haul him all over town, badgers the other kids pretty much every time he runs across one, and perhaps even beats up a blood zealot or two. He's easy to cross paths with as he's out and about most every day, and while he sometimes pretends he is still blind just to mess with people, it's pretty obvious given the way he slows down to stare at everything from the canals to the architecture to the ocean itself during one of his walks on the beach that Break can see. With no idea how long it will last, he needs to commit as much of the place as he can to memory.



Late November Boat Loot

The eventual permanent restoration of Break's sight brings with it the likewise permanent feeling that he ought to be doing more, somehow, and his restlessness only worsens when people he knows -- Lysithea among them -- turn up with injuries. The arrival of the eery frozen boats gives him an outlet for this. The boats have supplies, and both his household and the bakery always need supplies. So, clearly, slithering around in these things with no one on hand beyond his omen to save his bum if things go sideways is a fantastic idea, and he will not run into any trouble at all.

Break has managed to swallow several lessons from the last bits of his life back home. Unfortunately it seems that asking for help rather than doing whatever the hell he wants on account of being invincible was not one of them.



December Misfortunes

Break has no idea what a Blessed Day is and therefore no idea that he has one on December 21st. From his perspective, a rabbit's foot keychain turns up in his house one day for absolutely no reason, and Break panics and stuffs it into his coat pocket before the kids see it because half of them either love or were rabbits at some point and most of them are experiencing darkblood stressbasketry and really just no one needs to be dealing with a disembodied rabbit's foot lying around in this family.

He then forgets about it in favor of various other things that have him anxious and paranoid, and goes about his business.

What follows is multiple days of bad luck following Break around everywhere he goes, ranging from minor annoyances like slipping on ice all the way up to the stove in a favorite restaurant bursting into flame the second he walks in the door. It takes him a while to catch on, given that these unlucky things are happening to the people around him, rather than Break himself. But a fun fact about Break is that in his own world, his red eyes mark him as something called a "Child of Misfortune", and while he spent the bulk of his life dismissing it as nothing but a superstition, being told repeatedly that you cause bad luck simply by existing tends to mess a kid up.

In Break, this has manifested in a habit of blaming himself for things he is only barely connected to. Already feeling weirdly guilty about not getting abducted to the Sleeper Farm where he absolutely would have saved people he likes from being tortured which obviously means their injuries are his fault for having...not been around at the time...it does eventually cross his mind that the same darkblood powers that were giving him health problems have now turned outwards instead, and he is the source of all this bad luck.

This does not help his anxiety.

After a few days he will rediscover the rabbit's foot and notice the bad luck magically clears up when he hides it somewhere else. In the meantime, regardless of where one encounters him, he can be found skittish and hypervigilant, ready to jump into other people's bouts of bad luck almost before they have even realized it's happening. After all, if these things are his fault somehow, it's his responsibility to fix things until he can get things under control again.

Comments

Closed to Qrow: November Unblinding

[payingfordeliverance]

[The thing with Break and his sight, or lack of it, is that this whole thing where he has to find ways to accommodate himself doesn't actually bother him much. The practical aspects of being blind are minor inconveniences at worst, just new techniques he might need to be clever about in the same way he might struggle a little to master a new sword maneuver. There has not been a single week since he arrived that someone in his immediate vicinity hasn't forgotten he's blind at all, which is more amusing than it isn't, because he likes it when they remember and get all flustered. He hates when people try to baby him, yes, but he's not afraid to be vicious at anyone who tries if it comes to that, and all in all he's found he's actually more comfortable with people knowing than he was when he was so insistent on hiding it, even if he'd had his reasons.

No, what's awful is that he remembers what the world looks like -- the smiles of his beloved people, light tumbling in through the windows in the morning and sprawling in patterns across the carpet, the designs painted across beloved tea sets used so often they practically become friends -- and having all of that taken away and replaced with darkness is breathtakingly lonely.

Because of that, when his eyesight fades out once more and the old familiar aches settle back into him, the accompanying nerves and gloom are that much worse. Awful things are happening and he knows he needs to check on people, and keep going just as he always has. Instead he winds up tearing all the pillows and cushions off the couch and building himself a blanket nest in front of the fire in the parlor, frozen by the sheer number of people he's realized he already gives a damn about, unable to rid himself of the notion that he may well have passed some of them on the street in the past few days and had no idea. Baltus has noodled up close and laid his head on Break's chest, as he always does when he's too lost in his own head to anchor himself in his actual life, and the tangibility of the contact helps. Still, the lunch hour is drawing nearer and time drags on, and he really just can't seem to convince himself to get up and make tea and start the day.]

lmk if this works c:

[bolstafir]

[There are various ways in which Qrow often shares things with his namesake; he has a petty streak a mile wide, and can hold a sincere grudge long enough to put an elephant to shame, and almost certainly has eaten food literally out of the trash before. There was a time in which he was much more feral than he is now, after all. He's practically domesticated, at this point.

But another feature of his affinity to birds, of course, is that he can sometimes be a bit flighty. Which is to say, he isn't exactly always the best at maintaining social contact with people when his attention is caught up in other things, like the whole Farm Fiasco that just keeps on happening most of the month. He has discovered, in that time, that he has prophetic visions of other people being in danger, which is so deeply ironic he can't decide whether he ought to laugh or throw an entire tantrum. He does not love the feeling of being toyed with.

Slowly, though, things settle back down to normal, Oz recovering from his stint in the farm and Qrow escaping his own kidnapping somehow unscathed, which he won't dare to consider lucky lest the dimension immediately punish him for his hubris, but--as things settle back down, he realizes he hasn't actually checked in on Break and his kids recently. He'd want to believe that the flip side of these new visions is that people who do not feature in them have been safe, but he knows better than to have such high expectations out of his lot in life. So one afternoon he makes the flight over to the man's house as a bird, rapping on the kitchen window with his beak, ignorant of the crisis Break is going through within.

Tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap. Hewwo. He is here now, let him in!!!]

[payingfordeliverance]

[The tapping does not alert Break. It does alert his omen, who has -- fortunately -- trotted into the kitchen just at this moment to see if he can fetch some inspiring snacks to encourage Break out of his present angst puddle. Qrow will be greeted by Baltus's head suddenly popping up on the other side of the window, ears erect in horse mode, staring at him thoughtfully.

Oh.

Oh, yes, this is much better than snacks.

Baltus does not possess opposable thumbs but he does possess teeth and cunning, and in half a minute he's managed to chew the lock on the window open and shove the thing up in a complicated series of brutish manipulations not worth describing which will no doubt be a factor in the house deciding it needs to install a birdie door. This accomplished, assuming Qrow will let him get away with it, Baltus just picks the whole bird up ever so gently and lopes back off to the parlor with him.

There are a lot of teeth in here. But, Baltus is very careful, and since he is made of smoke and shadow, there isn't any slobber. It's fine. Qrow shall be dropped smack on Break's face in just a few short moments.]

[bolstafir]

[hey

hey

what,, the fuck/?

whAT tHe fUCk?!

hey. hey???

Qrow might be technically capable of human-tier sentience when he is a bird; otherwise, there would be no purpose to having been given the ability in order to aid in spy work. That does not mean some birdlike instincts are not retained, and though he realizes at any point he could transform back into a human and escape this situation, the bird part of his mind is just kind of emphatically screaming at being inside a giant dog's entire tooth-filled mouth and he oscillates between staying still and silent and fluttering his wings aggressively enough to make Baltus open his mouth to cough or something. Everything happens SO much and he regrets hIS ENTIRE LIFE AND ALL OF HIS CHOICES SCREAAAAHFKLSJKDJF--

--ah. now he is on Break's face. Qrow just...slowly...slides off him and flops directly on the floor on his back, seeming every bit the human equivalent of a beached whale as he lies there for a minute.]

Brothers, that was fucking terrifying. I never want to do that ever again.

December Misfortunes

[notimeforfailure]

[It has been an unpleasant month.

Nothing in comparison to November, of course. There was nothing to complain about if 'tower filled with flayed and drained corpses' served as the benchmark. Still, even with the opening of the bakery and the return to a life vaguely resembling normalcy, Lysithea cannot help but feel ill at ease. The memories were nothing new - similar incidents had cropped up multiple times in Deerington, and even if these specific images had not been called to mind in many years, she was resilient enough to withstand them.

After all, she had lived through them already.

No, something else was going on. Something that made her hostile and unpleasant to some of her customers, something that made her cast a dour eye on people she normally considered her friends...

Something that brings her to set up magical glyphs all over the Willful Machine.
...Accompanied by one equally paranoid and grouchy swordsman.]

This one is for Dark Spikes.

[She explains, as they stand by the entrance to an alleyway.]

This brings people back to the exit of the district before they can reach the shop, you see. We'll just cover it up with some spikes.

[This is clearly sane and rational talk.]

[payingfordeliverance]

[Paranoid and grouchy indeed, and also suffering somewhat from Dorothea's influence. Fortunately -- and this may be the one "fortunately" he gets over the next couple of days -- in Break, the impulse to hunt has manifested only in a return to a certain old habit.

He really just needs to chase his kids around everywhere, because he does not trust them not to succumb to the various follies of their own shenanigans.]

Will the spikes be about all the time, or is this one of the ones that pops up at you? If they stumble in all bloody and stabbed, I imagine they'd be a touch disinclined to buy anything.

[How sane and rational the shenanigan is matters to Break a lot less than his need to be present for it. Also honestly he kind of wants some of these to secure the house perimeter, so this is a research expedition, mmkay. Baltus is facing the other direction, standing guard against the possibility of people who have sense.]

[notimeforfailure]

Oh, it's going to be a bit delayed. There will be all sorts of ominous sparking and grumbling and if they don't notice and move out of the way in time, it's hardly anyone else's fault.

[Continuing on the theme of 'sane and rational,' Lysithea completes the finishing touches to the glyph inscribed on the wall.]

Like this --

[And she waves a hand expectantly, waiting patiently as it comes to life with a rumble and --

immediately shoots out a wave of vicious spikes, comedically leaving them embedded in the opposite wall absent the shape of Lysithea. The girl herself is staring at a dozen spikes suspended in mid-air with horror, inches away from skewering her.]

T-That wasn't supposed to happen! Goddess, there's something - my magic is swelling out of control. I need to... stabilize it - expend more. My sincere apologies, Xerxes.

[She says, wholly unconscious that this is probably Break's fault.]

Mushroom Funtimes; Shopping Edition

[wishforaneye]

At least for the moment with fingers curled in to one of Break's sleeves Alice is walking on her own two feet, dressed warmly for the chill in the air even if she has yet to really feel it. Time had been spent collecting clothing, and most were meant to cover more skin because of the blood hazards carried on, and she was more than happy to when finding things to her taste-

But they were on a mission! A very important one, or so Alice was inclined to feel during this particular outing, Break indulging in her interest in a hobby that didn't involve bones and skulls. Yet. One they were sharing at that.

"Do you think we'll be able to keep this as a surprise?" For warmth, yes. Yarn was still a good reason to go out, and she had brought a few choice pieces to aid in trades should something need a little more. "I hope they have some nice and soft ones."

White Alice was going to very much White Alice.

[payingfordeliverance]

Probably it says a lot about Break's life that it is decidedly weirder to have this girl trotting along attached to his elbow as is proper than it is to have her floating around with his hand as a tether. He is just glad she has decided on her own that she likes shoes. Break was not looking forward to trying to outwit the legitimate logic of not caring about stepping in blood if one does not step in the first place.

...honestly, he likes things this weird.

"I don't see why not. If we need to hide from the others, it seems the house has plenty of good spots for such. I hadn't known it had so many extra little passages and things."

To be fair, when they first moved in, it very likely didn't. Poor house is in its third month of whimsical darkblood exposure now.

[wishforaneye]

"I know that it's let me shift it's appearance a little within some rooms, too- the house is rather friendly and kind that way," Said so matter of factly that it simply didn't occur to her that a house shouldn't give the sense of something sentient. There'd been many kindnesses about the house- "There was even a patch of blue roses growing along one of the windows," inside, of course.

So many little hiding places for the bat cats to entertain themselves in whenever they darted about. It was cute, honestly. Scrabbles even got in to the games whenever the hand left the kitchen area.

"No issues in keeping things hidden if we ask nicely, surely."

Closed to Ange: Winter Mourning

[payingfordeliverance]

[Another day in December, another day wherein Xerxes Break nearly loses his mind six times. Given more time, he will probably realize that Trench itself is messing with him again -- it did the same in October when it dug into his grief and cranked it up to eleven, and there are known darkbloods in his life who don't usually have stress levels on par with his suffering alongside him. But he is not quite there yet, and thus he still believes he's simply having more nerves than usual lately, which is a noted phenomenon Sharon has dragged him for in the past.

So it is that he goes to bed at 8pm claiming he needs to rest his decrepit old squid bones, because after dinner he was trying to cut snowflakes out of fancy paper and they look too dumb to put in the windows like he wanted and now they're out of fancy paper, and the thought of adding a trip to the craft store to tomorrow's to-do list makes him want to crawl into a hole for the remainder of the winter.

Break is, for all his self-denials, at least aware that this is an overreaction. He is also aware that there is a way to solve this for the night. The antler Break turned into a "magic wand" last time White Alice recruited him for crafty times is on his bedside table. He knows that if he touches it, someone will get pulled into whatever annoying flashback he has, which he hates. But he also knows he'll feel better after, and manage to get some actual sleep instead of lying awake with his fretful thoughts twisting and turning horribly through his mind all night.

Honestly, it's probably worth it. And, save for Elliot, everyone in the house knows the worst of his past already. Since that's the case, it's fine, right? And the alternative is to remain so keyed up that he's right on the verge of his most beloved pair of fuzzy socks making his skin crawl. Making a disgusted noise, Break reaches for the antler.]

[entreats]

[ At least Ange was expecting the memory.

But maybe she, too, was expecting to instead end up in a memory together with someone a little physically closer to her. She knows how certain events have left Ruby absolutely strained, and sometimes the only way to get the other to properly sleep seems to be to go through one of these Winter Mourning memories together.

And it has worked. She's appeared in a memory together with Ruby every single time while using it with the other next to her in their room..

.. except right now, apparently. Because right after touching it, Ange finds herself in a place that's entirely unfamiliar to her. Not her memory.

Nor is it Ruby's-- or at least, that's Ange's immediate realisation as she quickly starts to look around, trying to gauge what sort of situation she did suddenly find herself in. ]

[payingfordeliverance]

[The memory, at first, is fuzzy, which can't be helping her. Wherever they are, the room is huge and grand enough to fit whole assemblies, with great stone columns and pointed windows reaching up to a soaring gothic ceiling. But as the blur of the scenery begins to solidify just enough to make out details, it becomes clear that some huge battle has recently taken place in this room, leaving the window shattered and warped and the stones of the place riddled with scorchmarks.

The figures within the room are dark at first, shifting restlessly. The largest of them seems to have something draped over his shoulder, which he drops unceremoniously to the ground -- it's another person. A nasty wet cough is wrenched out of that figure, and a young woman calls out a name: "Break! Break! Please hold on, Break!"]

...ah.

[Once the man himself realizes what the memory is, everything snaps abruptly into clarity. It makes sense that things would be hazy in the beginning of this one. After all, Break was barely conscious as he was brought here. Now, it becomes obvious that there are two separate factions in the room -- a group in red cloaks that look decidedly like a cult, and a much smaller group of uniformed soldiers clustered anxiously around an old woman in her nightgown. The latter are clearly prisoners, and in a dire spot indeed.

The Xerxes Break of the memory is barely alive where he was thrown to the floor, hands bound behind his back, deathly pale. It's a little difficult to see, but a notable amount of blood darkens the violet of his shirt on his left side, right at his waist. Given that he was completely blind when this happened, it is decidedly weird for the visuals of this memory to show up like this, but Break isn't thinking about it very hard. He isn't even bothering to look around and see who is sharing this with him.

This is the first time in months that he's been able to see Sharon Rainsworth clearly for any reason, and he keeps his gaze trained on her as she hovers over his body, even as the fear on her face breaks his heart.]

Mid-November (cw: mention of ritualistic sacrifice things, cultists, & demons, always... & a snake)

[possessum]

Peter never, for a moment, assumed this place was safe. Not with all of its newness and uncertainties, its strange rules (the first month he was here, something within compelled him to cut his own palm to feed blood to the soil, and sometimes when he walks down the street the townspeople look at him as though he's Something Else Entirely).

Its various horrors. November has brought more of those horrors to light, in ways that are both fresh and.... familiar, a paradoxical blend of the two. Peter's afraid to be outside of the house right now, afraid of what could be lurking in the streets, waiting to snare him. He's brought right back to those people who stalked him from the shadows before all of this, before Trench and Deerington, back in Utah. Those strangers watched him from the corners of his own home: infiltrating, invading. Smiling wide smiles — affectionate towards him, hungry. Now he knows what he hadn't known back then: they were cultists dedicated to the demon, and they'd waited Peter's entire lifetime for the rebirth of their king.

....He doesn't like to leave the house, but unfortunately, things like food don't just magically appear on the dinner table. Even more unfortunate is the fact that Peter doesn't have the ability to turn invisible anymore. So he's bartering for food and picking up a few extra things for the household with the additional discomfort of being perceived.

Still.... it is nice out here, despite Peter's perpetual anxieties. The crisp chill in the air, the trees almost barren of leaves by this point... the damp wet of the ground. The walk back home from Willful Machine is admittedly a pleasant one on that surface level — assuming no cultist.....zealot things try to kidnap him again. Peter does have company this time, at least, in the form of his Omen. The snake is wrapped around Peter's waist, most of his slender, lengthy body hidden underneath the boy's jacket, with only his neck and head peeking out of the front.

With a few bags in his hands, Peter's walking slowly when he spots a familiar figure facing the canals. The man certainly stands out with his shock of light hair that covers half of his face, and the teen freezes, staring over at him. He..... distinctly looks like he's watching the canals, gazing down below at them, but that can't be right, can it? This is the man who had helped an invisible Peter finagle his way through vendors for some foodstuffs, and he'd most certainly been blind.

The teen slowly approaches, hesitant. Break may recognise the voice that speaks up — at nineteen it's more man than boy, but somehow still so soft that it sounds like he might break if someone's too loud in his presence. Despite that, it's concern that leaks through his tone, and he keeps a bit of a distance, like he doesn't want to risk scaring the guy by suddenly popping up too close. ....He's accidentally scared plenty of people who do have their sight, and it's never a good feeling to be reminded that he's become the type of spooky thing that sometimes glides more than walks, that blends into the edges of shadow too well.

"Excuse me. Sorry to bother you, but are you uh... are you okay?"

And the image to go along with the previously invisible boy will reveal... six foot tall and thin, hair a mess of tangled curls, eyes dark and rimmed in circles like he hasn't slept in too long. ....Scuffed Converse sneakers; Peter hasn't exactly assimilated to Trench fashion yet.

Poking out from his torso, Susurrus flicks his tongue curiously at the man.

This is the wildest subject line I have ever received, thank you for this

[payingfordeliverance]

"Hmm?"

There's a certain nagging familiarity about this voice, but having only met the boy once and hearing just the one sentence now, it isn't quite clicking yet. Break even tilts his head a little at him, as though he can guide the marble that is his thoughts into the proper hole in his brain for clearing up this mystery, but no. Nope, he will need a few more minutes.

"I'm quite fine," he says amiably, leaning over the wall of the canal. "Hey, hey, look here. Do you suppose this thing is a turtle or a crocodile? We can't figure it out."

He points down at the lump in the canal which has caught both his and his omen's attention -- Baltus is likewise staring at it, standing on his hind legs with his front ones draped over the wall at Break's side. The creature in question is about the size of a cat, enjoying what little sun it can get on a nice flat rock at the water's edge. It seems to have a shell, like a turtle. But it also seems to have a crocodile snoot, and rather too many horns all over regardless. Some sort of nasty corrupted beastie thing, perhaps, but if it started out as something else before it became what it is, what was it, exactly?

This is a very refreshing problem to be having in Trench.

fkgslld the fact it's now eternalised in my subject autofill.... this is my legacy

[possessum]

Peter, of all people, knows that there are times that one simply..... isn't one's self. Trench, like Deerington, clearly has the capacity to cause changes in people. And even if the setting itself can't be blamed in every instance, there are a lot of other reasons a person might suddenly be made very different.

Magical altering items... curses.... some sort of possession. There's a variety pack of options, here, and it's not like Peter knows enough about the man he'd met one single time to be able to properly gauge anything other than the one fact he has to go on. Which is that he was blind then and is able to see again now, something that becomes more evident as the other continues to speak, and gestures downwards.

Peter blinks stupidly again (it's very helpful, really) and with an almost comical obedience, adjusts the bags in his arms and slowly leans forwards to peer down at what the man's referring to. Immediately he gasps, a soft but audible sound, spooked.

"What the— Is that some kind of demon?!"

...Not everything weird is a demon, Peter. He can't help having them almost constantly on the mind, however, and flinches back from the wall. Mouth tipped open, looking both parts confused and hesitant, he asks:

"Wait— so you really can see that thing? I uh... I thought you couldn't... see."

Peter Graham winces, looking pained. In the process of trying not to make it awkward, he's made it extremely awkward.

For Black Alice: December Nonsense

[payingfordeliverance]

Poor Oz sure keeps getting the short end of the stick, being the single token vileblood in a house full of darkbloods. This month's nonsense pits them against him outright, rendering Oz skittish to the point of fleeing the house entirely, and who can blame him? Even if the tension between them never grows bad enough to completely override how much they care for one another, at the end of the day the boy's a rabbit, and it can't be easy to tolerate that much suspicion.

On Break's end, for example, he spent the vast majority of their time together at home thinking that if Oz's powers went out of control Break would have to personally murder him. Break is not currently thinking he might have to murder Oz. But once it becomes clear that the boy has fled for the hills, Break does start thinking it might be a good idea to lock him up for his own safety, and so it is that the traps start happening.

He decides to get Black Alice to help with this endeavor; she is pretty much always all for preventing Oz from doing suspicious things and she is also not suffering from lockjoint as Break is. All he has to do is pout a little and show her that his stiff, discolored hands aren't working quite right and she's good to go, pleased that the Clown has proven himself pathetic once again and she, Alice, can accomplish what he cannot. So it is that currently he is showing her how to weave nets, which he has picked up from local fishermen for convenient Break reasons, and which Alice will surely not use for deeply inconvenient purposes later.

"They also make these sort of -- boxes with nets in? Something like that might help, planting those about the grounds," he says as they work. "In the sea, they're meant for catching lobsters and things. After all, we don't want to stab him."

[velvet_teen]

"And we don't want to hurt the wrong people, either. Obviously, Oz is the first wrong person to hurt, but what if we got Lice. Lysthith. You know, that older girl everyone thinks is related to you."

It may not be flattering to assume that Lysithea would walk into a box trap if you put a cake in it but Alice is not ruling it out.

"Boxes, ropes, and bait, that's all we need! Once we've slowed him down a little and we know where he is we can all jump on him... I should've tied a bell on him when I had the chance!"

Alice isn't great at doing two things at once, if they are cerebral pursuits like weaving and talking. Until her body picks it up, this net thing is quite mentally taxing and she keeps putting down her end of the cord while she talks and waves her hands around and punches her palm to illustrate the act of lovingly beating up their silly rabbit friend for his own damn good.

[payingfordeliverance]

"Lysithea. Do they really? Ugh. I am not related to everyone who has white hair in this stupid place."

The problem of course is that Break has been forming alliances down at the docks on behalf of the bakery mafia and what he himself interprets as good and proper diplomacy, most of the rough-and-tough sailors have translated as a kooky dad talking up his daughter's pet project. That they both have that air of faint aristocracy about them does not help. Once someone finally admits this to his face he will claim his boss as his niece as well and then not tell her, because it's one thing when it's the other Alice but this is just too weird.

"He'd slip right out of a bell and you know it," he adds, continuing his own slow work on the net. He was not actually kidding about the lockjoint. Hot baths have thus far kept him away from the blood ministers, but this is legitimately worse than the aches the Hatter gave him, and if it keeps up he may yet have to surrender. "It'll have to be really good bait for him to fall for it, too. You know Oz. He's much too cunning."

Closed to Qrow: Children of Misfortune

[payingfordeliverance]

[It probably says a lot about how quickly Break has grown accustomed to the general nonsense of Trench -- how well suited he himself is for the nonsense? -- that as December draws to a close, he finds that it doesn't feel as terrible as November did. When he sits and examines the situation, this does not make a lick of sense. In November, Break had the grand luck to avoid getting hauled off to a horrific organ-harvesting farm, and instead went on a happy and productive mushroom bender. In December, more than one person in his solidifying social circle was directly involved in a mercy kill over advanced corruption, he wound up in other people's memories and had others in his own more than once, Oz fled for the hills, he wound up carrying a bad luck charm around with him unknowingly and messing up who knows what for days, a case of lockjoint he still can't shake hit him and his bouts of nerves and paranoia have been worse than he can remember for literal years.

No sense at all. Except that he can see again, and doesn't feel quite so set apart from the world itself. And there are people he cares enough about to check in on outside of his own immediate household now. Nerves, sure, but nothing that ever actually has him trapped in a blanketfort. Is that really all he needs...?

Qrow Branwen in particular has become an even more frequent presence, one that Break is increasingly grateful for. What began as an alliance of sorts between two people with similar experience and priorities is deepening at a rapid rate, at least on Break's end, as he discovers in Qrow the sort of stability that compliments his own personality best. For all that the other man likes to pass himself off as careless and curmudgeonly, whenever Break needs him he somehow turns up, and whatever problems Break winds up dumping on him are met with an attentive thoughtfulness that so far hasn't failed to bring him back around from whatever fit of emotion he's having. The more Break learns about him, the more he finds reason to respect him, and on top of that he even enjoys Qrow's company. Only four months, and this "alliance" is already starting to slither dangerously close to becoming the f-word.

This, of course, is gross. But it only emphasizes the fact that Qrow is clearly too valuable a person to neglect, and so despite the month's various lunacies -- because of them, maybe -- Break makes it a point to perform the social equivalent of staying on top of filling the birdfeeder. Last month, he failed to keep up with Qrow, and was mortified when Qrow turned up to check on him first and immediately proceeded to help him sort out his damned eyesight, of all things. This month, invitations to lunches and assorted excursions are frequent, and a welcome reprieve from December's nerve-wracking nonsense. The last one for the year is sedate and cozy, as Break invites Qrow directly to the house instead of out to a restaurant; he's perfected scalloped potatoes to his satisfaction and wants to show off, and also, it's cold and nasty outside and staying in with comfort food and, perhaps later, a movie sounds like just the thing after the whirlwind of December. He's made sure the stupid bad luck charm is locked in the basement where it can't bother anybody and has carefully cleared all of Alice's winter mournings that he can find out of the relevant places, and everything is genial and pleasant until a drinking glass falls off the counter and shatters into shards that go skittering across the floor. Break jumps visibly at the noise, which is the last thing you want to be doing when there is glass everywhere and you have forgone shoes in favor of your favorite cozy socks.]

slides in here three weeks late with starbucks

[bolstafir]

[Break has locked away the bad luck charm from Dorothea in the basement, but failed to account for the other one -- sitting directly across from him munching on potatoes. How unfortunate, indeed. For the first time, Break gets to watch Qrow's expression crumble in parallel to that glass, and it would be almost comical how quickly his entire posture goes from relaxed and open to wound tight with tension, shoulders hiked in agitation, if it weren't honestly kind of sad.

After a moment of silence thick enough to cut with a knife, Qrow finally sighs, getting up to search for a broom to sweep up the shards with the look of a man off to his own gallows. Except he's either forgotten where said broom was kept, or the sentient house has decided to play hide-and-seek with him, maybe as a sign that he really should just relax ... but Qrow is entirely too sensitive about this kind of thing to take it with good humor.

His expression is all but forlorn as he kicks a few away from Break's immediate fluffy-socked path, feeling that familiar shame crawl up his spine again as he drags the trash can over and kneels down to just pick them up by hand. It's not like he needs to anymore, now that Break can see the pieces for himself, but that doesn't seem to have occurred to him; he's too lost in his own thoughts, and the guilt that seeps in to accompany the typical shame. He hasn't told Break yet, which perhaps isn't a surprise given the seventeen years he hid it from his own nieces, but they've been spending time together frequently enough recently that he really ought to admit to it so the man can at least be prepared for the things that go wrong around him.

But as usual, he can't bring himself to do it. It's not even like anyone had been unkind to him about it in the dream; Vyng and Gerry and Ford had reacted with varying levels of unconcern or even excitement, in Ford's case. Even so, the scars linger; he's too afraid of the potential for it to change how Break looks at him. It's been so long since he's had a connection with someone who simply didn't know, with whom he could forget that he was cursed, even if just for a little while.

The words die in his throat, and he returns to miserably picking up the shards in silence. At length:]

...Sorry for the mess.

cw: somehow talk of somebody getting beheaded has gotten in here now, you know how it is

[payingfordeliverance]

[Meanwhile, Break is not exactly a damsel in distress, here. He's rooted to the spot for safety reasons, certainly, but a huff and his omen's name is all it takes to send Baltus scurrying out of the room on an important errand. His irritation at being trapped anywhere even for a moment is thoroughly disrupted by Qrow moving to help, however, and he fixes the other man with a long, unpleasantly thoughtful look as he starts to clean up.

Perhaps unbeknownst to Qrow, Break is also an observant person, and there is a certain puzzle he has been quietly putting together in the background lately. Now, in apologizing, Qrow may as well have knelt down and presented him with the piece that brings the picture into clarity at last on a silver platter. After all, Qrow was definitely close enough to that glass to have knocked it over manually, and Break was preoccupied with his own potatoes when it fell. But he is Xerxes Break and he should have noticed Qrow moving, even when relaxed and off his guard, even if only subconsciously. Instead it was like that awful moment in the party at home when he didn't realize someone had been beheaded nearby until he heard their head hit the stairs in front of him, because the sound of the actual strike had not been clear.

Break heard the glass shatter across the floor. He did not hear Qrow hit the glass, and Qrow wears rings.

It's not the last puzzle piece, certainly. But it's enough.

No matter how he thinks of it, he can't get past his suspicion. Break isn't about to call him on it when Qrow is handling broken glass bare-handed, though. And anyway Baltus runs back in just as Break is considering how to handle the matter, carrying Break's favorite slippers in his mouth -- they are purple nonsense with nice embroidery on them, but they have proper soles, and they'll let him move around the kitchen safely. Break elects to use Qrow's shoulder for balance as he puts them on instead of the countertop he's standing right next to, a touch intended to be reassuring, and then fetches a small broom and dustpan so he can help with all the smaller bits.

He doesn't offer them to Qrow, on a hunch that he'd probably rather that Break not be handling glass bare-handed. Anyway, he doesn't have to. Baltus trots around to nose Qrow's hands away so that he can pick up the bigger pieces himself. Being made of smoke and shadow, Baltus can't be cut or bleed.]

Don't worry about it. It's only a glass.

[This is a calculated comment. Break is curious to know whether Qrow will notice that Break is not calling it an innocent accident as he might have before, or if he's too caught up in his own head to notice.]

For Break - Winter Mournings: The Apathy

[bolstafir]

[The blizzard all around you is unrelenting. An endless expanse of white, only broken up by the figures you're traveling with -- five children and an old woman -- and the outline of buildings in the distance. The latter should be a relief, a sign of shelter on the horizon, but when you arrive, it's abandoned. Not a light on anywhere in sight, and it's not like abandoned towns you've seen before. There's no signs of the usual reasons for it, no evidence of bandit raids nor Grimm attacks. This town wasn't destroyed or abandoned in the middle of construction.

The doors of some of the houses are locked, even. It's weird. You kick open one such door, because regardless of what's going on, you need shelter for the night or you will die in this storm. Stay on your guard, you tell the others as you look around for threats indoors, yet the house is silent and still. There are photographs on the wall identifying this place as Brunswick Farms. One of the kids offers to get a fire going; another goes in search of blankets. It's not long before there's a sudden scream from upstairs, and you all rush there, expecting a battle. A Grimm, at the least.

All you find is a pair of corpses, fully clothed, tucked into bed as though they had simply fallen asleep and never woken up. When you investigate the other buildings in town, every single house is the same. Corpses in their beds, peaceful and otherwise untouched. There's something terrifying about it; you've seen so much death all through your life, but nothing like this. No bodies that look as though they simply ceased to live one day, for no reason.

"Then we're not...staying here, are we?" says the girl who'd discovered the first corpse.

"We don't have a choice. Storm outside's only getting worse. We'd freeze to death before we got anywhere."

The old woman suggests they might as well get comfortable. The young blond girl behind her scoffs at the notion, while a third girl, a brunette with a red cloak, suggests splitting the difference -- if the house wasn't abandoned, it might still contain useful supplies they could use. Like a car to escape the storm in, the young man by her side agrees.

You offer to do another sweep of the grounds. "No one else goes anywhere alone," you warn the others.

---

The storm is clearing up, but you can't bring yourself to feel relieved. Something is terribly, terribly wrong here, though you can't place it. Your niece is worried about you, but you brush her off. There's no good in dumping your bullshit on her shoulders. There's enough on them already.

"Tell everyone to get some sleep. I'll wake you guys up before sunrise."

It happens so slowly, so subtly, you barely even notice it. The way your bones feel leaden and you're so t i r e d

every minute that passes starts to feel like a day, a week, a year

and you just

want to sleep.

Haven't you been through enough? Done enough? You've wasted more than twenty years of your life. You've nearly died, over and over

and over

and over

What's the point? Why bother? You're so

so

tired.

---

You overslept. But it's fine, because you're leaving. You'll make up for lost time on the way to Atlas.

(Or maybe not. The stupid trailer has a stupid flat tire.)

But why are you going, anyway? What's the point? It's not like you're going to win the war. It's important though, or something. The lamp fell down the well, too. Ruby's not leaving without it.

Whatever.

- - -

You wake up slumped across a table by the estate's wine cellar, your niece and her friend dragging you back by the arms. It pisses you off at first, until the Grimm catch your eye, set ablaze and yet still shambling toward you.

You were supposed to protect them. You nearly got them killed.]

[payingfordeliverance]

[Break, in turn, wakes up sitting on the floor of his own library, one hand latched onto a shelf above him as though he'd caught it while falling. That's right -- he was standing before, wasn't he? A couple of books are on the floor next to him, covers open with pages bent beneath them, a contrast to the tidy towers the other books they're moving have been sorted into. While he notices the difference, Break can't actually place what it means. The sense of wanting nothing more than to just stop is so intimately familiar to him that it almost feels like the memory must have been his own, and only the sliver of horror at the realization of failing the kids...his kids...? A couple of them are his kids, he thinks, and the near miss of losing them for good is all that really has him awake at all.

His omen, helpful as ever, sticks his snoot right in Break's face. Once he's satisfied with the liveliness of Break's sputtered protests about it, Baltus turns and trots across the library. Break watches him as he gives Qrow the same treatment before carefully picking up the winter mourning the other man had accidentally gotten a hold of and taking it away, standing on his hind legs to place it on one of the empty shelves, right at eye level.

Baltus is a grim, but he isn't one of those It's warm in the library. No corpses. Qrow keeps getting rid of them for him. Right?]

...Qrow?

[bolstafir]

[For his own part, Qrow awakens with a sharp gasp, as though breaking through the surface of deep water and getting his first mouthful of air into burning lungs. It is not as though he does not regularly have nightmares about it; the Farms are never all too far from his mind. But it has been a long time since he was last in that state of mind, drowning in hopelessness and wanting to simply give up on everything. It's not even the most recent time he's felt despair--experiencing Clover's death is still relatively recent at this point. But the memory of that kind of bleakness hits him hard, and for a moment he's lost in it -- the hopelessness of what he left behind, the enormity of what "he" still stands to lose back in Remnant...

...and then there is a snoot in his face and slowly but surely the world comes back into focus. That's right, he is in Trench now. He is building a new life here. He shudders a little, trying to regain his bearings as he scrubs at his face.]

Fuck.

[He looks over at the man next to him, and he's honestly a little too disoriented for embarrassment still, but something in his gaze sharpens; this is significant, he's aware. He needs to ask about it. It takes a minute for his mouth to work its way around the words all the same.]

Did you just...see all that?