Xerxes Break (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
payingfordeliverance) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2021-12-05 09:55 pm
payingfordeliverance) wrote in deercountry2021-12-05 09:55 pm
Entry tags:
002: Regrets collect like old friends, here to relive your darkest moments
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![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
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.
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
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.
2/2
It really is no different than anything he ever did at home, and so it doesn't register as anything "magical" at all. He's missed it not because it wasn't there, but because he had no idea that for him, the magic is decidedly ordinary.
The world doesn't snap into focus, or explode into light. Instead, initially, the darkness in front of him solidifies into fur and a face and a very long snoot, and the first indication Break has that he is looking down at Baltus is the fact that he can see his own hands. Watching this, Qrow will realize Break has met the eyes of his own omen for the very first time when Baltus's ears suddenly shoot up, and his tail lifts up into a high, rapid swish.]
-- good gravy, you really are a weird horse noodle.
[His omen's bum begins to wiggle along with his tail, unable to control how pleased he is. Popping up onto his hind feet, he lunges to stick his whole snoot right in Break's face, something he does from time to time to goad him into playing -- and Break sees it coming, and leans back to avoid getting whacked right between the eyes by a dog nose. It's working.]
no subject
It's a quiet, undramatic thing, when the darkness fades into dawn, apparently. Qrow lingers quietly some feet away, not wanting to intrude on the moment. Ah, the best laid plans...that window Qrow had come in through is still open, after all, and perhaps it is fate or a sentient house's sense of humor or even simply luck, but it turns out Qrow's cape isn't properly fastened today, and goes fluttering off in the breeze to land directly on said noodle's head.]
...Whoops. Lemme get that.
[How interesting that Qrow Branwen is a bird and wears a cape, huh.]
no subject
Being closer to it, Break gets a hold of the cape before Qrow does. The texture of it in his hands is familiar in a deep, distant way, something his fingers remember from a memory as blurred for him as the world itself. He squints a little as he picks it up properly. Holds it up to himself, without quite understanding why. Takes in the size of it.]
...this is --
[Baltus's rear end continues wriggling as he watches Break's gears turn, slowly starting to make connections at last.]
no subject
The jig is up then, isn't it. He could pretend like he doesn't know what Break is talking about, but what would be the point now? It only made sense to hide it when it was obvious the other man didn't know there was anything to hide in the first place. He rubs at his neck, a little unsure of what to do at being caught out. It is a little weird, to admit that the first time you met wasn't really the first time you met, and that you've kept quiet about it for the entire stretch of your friendship.]
....Yeah. It'd seemed like a bad time to be person-shaped, back then.
[Nobody really wants another human to witness their sobbing naked breakdown on a rock, after all.]
no subject
[That's the conclusion Break comes to. Not that he should be mortified that this man saw him in such a state, or that Qrow has been hiding things from him for shifty reasons. Rather, Break knows himself as someone who was rescued back then, and from his perspective Qrow has just admitted to plucking someone who'd obviously just had his entire world crumble around him out of unforgiving ocean waves and then not bothering to seek credit for it. At any given time, if he'd wanted any thanks or recognition, he could have had it. Instead, in holding it close to his chest, he's essentially been giving Break privacy, and respectfully steering away from an obvious weakness. Right?
The context of their entire relationship has just deepened abruptly. Their "first" meeting...so, not once but twice in a row, Qrow saw him and thought he needed help and swooped on in to give it. How many others has he assisted so casually? That -- it's just the sort of thing Qrow does, then, isn't it? He helps. He's sturdy for people he's barely met when the world throws corpses at them and he's here bothering to talk someone with unfamiliar magic into getting his eyesight back.
There's a warmth that comes with understanding this. Given how Break was already feeling, it's overwhelming.]
...you saved my life that day.
[His voice is small, and he glances over, and -- still can't see Qrow, not really, can't make out the details beyond his general shape. Suddenly it bothers Break intensely that he can't see the other man's face. To realize that Qrow was standing at his side before Break even realized he was there and then have a visual of him only half filled in like this, it makes him feel like some sort of unreachable ghost. Break wants him solid and with him in every way, here in the present moment.]
Ah. Sorry, I still can't quite -- begging your pardon, give me a moment --
[Touch will help. In an echo of their other "first" meeting, when Break had gone patting around in a pile of rubble to find Qrow after he was hurled away, he reaches out to Qrow's shoulder and finds it unerringly. But then, rather than save the moment by reaching up to pat him on the head, his hand moves to Qrow's face. A gentle swipe of his thumb and the angles of Qrow's features start to fill in; there's the feel of scruff beneath his palm and the beard paints itself across his chin. He avoids going anywhere near Qrow's eyes with his fingers, for reasons which are probably obvious now. But he needs to see those too, and for the first time in the past few days, a flicker of his usual stubborn determination breaks through the fog that's kept him shrouded.
Qrow will spot this moment, too, as Break's expression shifts from annoyed searching to open surprise as Qrow abruptly solidifies, and color floods back into the world.]
Oh! [He still has his hand on Qrow's face.] Your eyes are red, too!