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.
no subject
"Well, if something real isn't any good for those reasons let's use something that's way obviously fake and see if that works. He might be able to outsmart you but hardly anybody in this whole town can think on my level."
They're in the same general area where the Alices do their artsing and crafting, this being a craft, so of course there's the remains of a creature in here. White hasn't got around to painting the it yet so it's a plain canvas as far as we're concerned. This Alice zooms around the room and clatters down an armful of skull and spine on the table next to the net.
no subject
"...thhheeeeeeeennnnnnnn do you mean to suggest to me...that if our trap has your handiwork all over it, Oz will be so charmed by it that he comes home on his own?" This is probably not what Alice meant to suggest at all. However: "Good gravy, it just might work."
no subject
She sets about painting the crap out of this skeleton. It's gonna look fantastic. While she does like reds, this is a psychological game so she's going right for the blues and greens. Maybe a little orange to make it really stand out in the snow!
"So the more he can't work out what this thing is for, the closer he'll have to come to check it out!"
She daubs the paint down the vertibr. Verta. You know, the bits that turn into a spine when you stick them together. Lots of baffling little spots and swirls. Daubing with sinister intent and a wide smile lifted right off the Grinch himself. Alice's introduction to Christmas media ended up being the Grinch stealing it and frankly everything else since has paled.
"And that's when we'll get him."
no subject
"We should have a really obvious net over it, too, right? And then a hidden net that he can notice because he'll surely be looking for one, and perhaps a second one after that, and then the real one."
Hm. Probably they are going to need more snacks. This is troublesome because it will mean transversing the other Alice's winter mourning minefield, but Break has gotten pretty good at clearing paths to the kitchen, at least. It is a matter of survival.
no subject
"That's four nets."
This seems like a completely unfair amount of net to be making, but Break doesn't go around telling Alice how to kick people in the head so she's not going to tell him how to go about overthinking his opponents. There are, however, a few rare points at which their values align.
"We need more snacks for this."
no subject
Break elects not to let on that he was thinking the same thing, because probably having that acknowledged will just gross them both out. Teaming up to look after Oz is a very different matter. When it's a person you both care about it doesn't count.
"Then, do you want to brave your sister's winter mournings to visit the kitchen, or shall I?"
no subject
"I'm not afraid of my sister, I'll do it!"
Xerxes Break's ability to manipulate her via cunning word choice might be more of a problem, if she were to stop and think about it. Fortunately for the clown, both stopping and thinking are two of Alice's least favorite activities.
no subject
But it's wise to be afraid of her, Break thinks, in much the same way it's wise to remember that Oz once had a habit of sliding into murder mode himself, ranting about destroying anything that dared to hurt an Alice. This place twists people's minds sometimes, and Break figures regressions and violence are a matter of when, not if. And when the time comes that the former Will of the Abyss falls to corruption or blood effects or whatever else it is that gets her, well. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, as they say.
"Off you go, then," Break says, instead of verbalizing any of this. "There's another loaf of that herb bread from yesterday in the breadbox."
For now, there are many truces in this household. One is that there is no need for either of them to be territorial about the snacks when Break prefers the sweet and Alice prefers the savory, which works out well for them. He keeps up this truce by bothering to tell her where her own favored treat will be, instead of making her rummage for it amidst the inevitable piles of cookie tins that occupy the kitchen. A gesture of his good will, you might say.
no subject
Also like a snake, it's somewhat worrying when you don't know where an Alice is or what she may be up to. In theory, she might have simply wandered off to pursue a distraction, but she has been trying to be a responsible elder sister these days; abandoning a snack mission is unlike her.
Walking smack into one of the Winter Mournings despite ample warning, however, is entirely in keeping.
no subject
And the first bit of this one that hits him is the familiar feeling of Abyss, something he'd never realized he'd sensed so keenly until they'd arrived here completely detached from it once and for all. He freezes where he is, struck by the sensation. His first instinct is to turn toward it, the way he always had when the presence of a Chain had tripped his radar out in the field for Pandora. He can't, because it's all around him and everywhere.
He's in it.
cw reenactment of magic suicide
It's a bittersweet memory for every last person involved. Alice simply does not feel the need for hesitation once she's decided on her course. Much like her uncle, much like her mother, and much like the damn fool blond who between them kicked off this tangle in the first place. This is an important enough finale and farewell that it deserves every ounce of resolve and confidence!
She is not particularly thinking about how this act will lead to her own final death at this precise moment, but, you know. It's in the subconscious. It's like not overtly considering that if you take off your shirt, you also have to take off your jacket. She's in tune with the way their powers and selves are linked and tangled up by now, and she's overdue for it anyway.
no subject
Even as he understands what's happening, it's easy to forget at first that what he's watching is Alice's death. But once he remembers -- once she notes that she'll be together with her precious pet in her next life, apparently entirely confident that she will have one -- Break's heart leaps to his throat.
Oz and the other Alice followed her in short order, after all.