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

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?

[payingfordeliverance]

Yes.

[He sounds a little distant; he's still processing all of it. Break has encountered a winter mourning before, of course, but so far the memories he's seen played out in front of him, landscapes he could walk around in as he chose. To have actually lived this one, in a way, has left him trying to sort out just what was him and what was not. The activities were very different and so were the trials, but those feelings were...

As so often happens for Break, it's the presence of someone he gives a damn about in distress that stirs him out of his own daze. His hand wanders out to rest lightly on Qrow's arm, as it often did when he was blind and sorting out just who was where, and as it still does when he wants to be sure he has someone's attention.]

Are you alright?

[bolstafir]

[There's just a slight flinch at the hand on his arm, the memory of being dragged from that farmhouse entirely too fresh, but he doesn't jerk away. It takes him a minute to respond nonetheless. He looks exhausted in a way Break has never really seen him.]

Yeah. That was just...a bad time for me.

[Understatement of the year.]

[payingfordeliverance]

[Baltus, having removed the offending artwork to his satisfaction, slinks back over and sprawls doggishly on the carpet. A front paw drapes over Break's thigh, but the bulk of him is leaning up against Qrow, enough of a link between them that Break withdraws in favor of absently rubbing his omen's ears. He considers things a few more moments, sifting through this and that. The desperate urge to escape, to be numb -- the alcohol is different; Break has never managed to get drunk enough for anything to matter. Hands on his arms, hauling him out of himself. For Qrow, that is. For Break, it was Shelly, kneeling in front of him with her hands unrepentantly wrapped around his, accusing him of wanting someone to save him.

He remembers when Qrow came to see him in November, and hadn't questioned it even a little bit when Break had told him the day just wouldn't start.]

...mm. I've been there.

[bolstafir]

[It's not a surprise, honestly. He and Break have shared so much in common up until this point that the idea that Break has had low points like this wouldn't have caught him off-guard even if he hadn't been told that story about Shelly in October. Qrow isn't sure if he should try to explain or simply wait for questions, but actually, there is one important thing he needs to say before they get into any of that.]

--By the way, if you ever see those things in Trench, don't even think about trying to fight them. Just run.

[payingfordeliverance]

[This rouses Break a little more from his stupor in that his immediate inclination is to be offended at being underestimated. It is but a brief ruffling of feathers, though, a kneejerk reaction from his much younger days when he was the local runt. Like Hunstmen, Pandora agents tend to have a high turnover rate, and for all that he's reckless at times and was carrying around a weapon of mass Chain destruction in his soul Break did not live as long as he did by being that big an idiot.

It just makes sense, when he settles down. There are Chains he wouldn't want Qrow fighting, either. Chains that can turn you into puppets and turn you against your loved ones, and Chains that specialize in knocking your head clean off from a distance. Just as Qrow isn't trained to battle those monsters, Break isn't trained against Grimm.]

Those were the creatures the Huntsmen exist for, right?

[bolstafir]

[There are very few Grimm he would apply this particular level of caution to, honestly. Having seen Break's skill in combat, he has no doubt the man could easily handle something like a Beowulf or a Griffon. He's not sure he would wish the death that comes from these on his worst enemy.]

Yeah. Creatures of Grimm. These ones, though ... they're some of the deadliest ones in Remnant. The Apathy...they drain your will to live. That's what happened to all the corpses in those houses.

[payingfordeliverance]

[Break hums softly. Baltus lays his head down, content to stay where he is, and Break spoils him with slow strokes all the way from his nose past his ears. They both know Baltus isn't that kind of creature and Baltus isn't fussed by the conversation, but Break feels a need to acknowledge him all the same.]

And so, for someone who is already struggling with such a thing...it's like having a dozen half-healed wounds all torn back open at once.

[The echoes of some of those wounds hover in his mind, almost his own memories now. A war that can't be won. A sense that -- everything was for nothing. That's familiar, too. That one in particular had crashed into him with wicked force after he discovered what happened to the Sinclairs in the future he'd thrown away everything to snatch for them, but it had been one blow, and though he still carries the pieces he's made nicer memories since. Twenty years...]

[bolstafir]

[Ah, and there it is. He hadn't quite expected it to be called out directly, but at the same time, it makes sense that Break would pick up on it. Reliving his own memory is different, after all; he remembers how he thought and felt back then, but he hasn't quite caught on that Break experienced it all as though he lived it himself. Still...he remembers the "fairytale" Break had told him, months ago. About the man's desperate search for a way to feel right again. His own story might be structured a little differently, in terms of the order of events, but he has spent the last twenty years searching for that feeling. It's why he kept drowning it all in alcohol. The wrongness in his heart was always too sharp, too painful. He could barely stand to live in his own skin, aware of himself.]

...Mm, pretty much.

[He lets out a tired breath.]

Remember when I told you about having apocalypse bullshit? Right before we took shelter in that place, we'd just found out the person trying to end the world couldn't be killed. That the power struggle between her and the other immortal I told you about, the one who got pulled outta his afterlife to save humanity? Had been going on thousands of years, and would keep going thousands more after we were all dead and buried. We weren't saving the world, we were stalling the inevitable.

[The weight of it all is something he's tried to bury. He told Winter it would eat her alive if she weren't able to do the same, but times like this, it comes back for him. Even after scraping himself out of that hole, everything in Atlas had gone to shit so aggressively that by the time the dream crumbled, there was truly nothing left for him in Remnant. Just thinking about having to face those losses threatens to swallow him in despair even now, even building this new life in this new world with Ruby and Oscar and Ozpin at his side.]

[payingfordeliverance]

...then, somebody's going to have to do something impossible, and only fools and young people can believe in that.

[Even hearing Qrow sound so dejected, Break can't quite believe there's no ending to that story at all. But, that's because he himself is one such fool and always has been, and he knows himself as such perfectly well. And who knows? Even if there is a way to fix things, it may well be after Qrow and the others are all dead and buried; there's no getting around that. It's not like Break lived to see the happy ending either, such as it was.

No, he'll keep the full extent of that sentiment to himself. You don't say that sort of nonsense to a man as deep into it as Qrow is, or has been. When you're that low, it doesn't help. It just hurts.]

I see, then, why...you lot prefer this world over that one. For all its faults, it does at least move.

[bolstafir]

Heh...well, I sure did have a lot of young people with me, back then.

[Raven would probably say they all fit in the former category too, including him. In his darkest, most bitter moments, he'd wondered if she had been right. Even now, he dares not risk letting himself sink too deeply into it, lest it poison this chance at a new life. Let yourself be something new, Cynthia Sodder had said to the Sleepers, as the dream crumbled, and by the Gods he hates is he trying.]

With Ruby and Yang being some of 'em, though, I couldn't keep...wallowing in it. They were going to keep fighting no matter what I thought about it, you know? It was either watch their backs or let them throw themselves into danger by themselves. Realized it didn't even matter if I still thought we could win--I just had to help keep the world going a bit longer while they were in it.

[He shrugs a shoulder, idly picking up one of the scattered books on the ground and putting it back onto the nearest pile.]

So I definitely couldn't let any of that shit happen again.

[payingfordeliverance]

[Break smiles. It's a soft little thing, and tired, but it's one of the most genuine he's had in this place.]

...do you remember the night we first met? Properly, anyway. Anything if it's for the kids. We agreed on that right away.

[This conversation they're having now feels like a sequel to that, in a way. Back then, neither of them had been especially open. They'd been awkward and halting, Qrow uncertain of him and Break without his eyesight, but it had taken them all of two seconds for them to find that common ground and set up camp there. To think, if Qrow hadn't been hurt enough to ask to come home with him, everything that has followed would never have come to pass. They might have simply bid one another goodnight and moved along, and never bothered to find out just how close they could become.

How wretched, to think of not having Qrow about.]

To be able to make that sort of decision for yourself...that's a good and strong thing.

[bolstafir]

[There's a brief moment where he wants to argue about the compliment, ingrained discomfort with being genuinely praised coming up against the fact that Break has a point. Meeting Anna had helped put some things in perspective for him about how far he's come since Argus, and watching her put herself down for struggling caused such an unexpectedly harsh reaction in him that he's since had to evaluate his own hypocrisy on that score.

Instead of rejecting the compliment outright, then, he lets out a sigh. He doesn't quite smile back, but his expression is soft.]

For the longest time, I didn't think so. Seemed obnoxious to pat myself on the back for pulling myself up to the level most people were at, right?

[He still feels like that, a little, because that's how he feels about his Semblance, too. Just because he has to work harder than others to be at a baseline doesn't make him any less responsible for that baseline.]

...But then it got easier. And it's weird to think that just a couple years ago I couldn't imagine being here. I didn't even want to be.

[There was a time when the alcohol felt like the only thing holding him together. There is a certain sense of grim pride in knowing he can do it on his own, even when he feels like he's drowning.]

So I guess that is something.

[payingfordeliverance]

[The look on Break's face is thoughtful as Qrow speaks. The thing with Break and compliments is that outside of playful flirting or the shallowness inherent in having good manners, he does not give them at all unless he believes they are well-deserved -- and then he delivers them with the same intense, focused ruthlessness with which he lands a sword when he decides somebody ought to be dead.

He's thinking of Gilbert, honestly. How he'd worried about that boy, for so many years. So many warnings of "you have to remember your priorities" and "you can't ever get back what you've lost" and other more cryptic admonishments that he couldn't explain properly without risking everything...but once Gil had that breakthrough at last and decided once and for all who he'd be, oh, how incredible he'd become. Break isn't going to bring him up. Not right now. The way Qrow is speaking about this, it's still much too tender an issue, and so this moment needs to be a small and precious one just for the two of them. But seeing the echo of his other black bird in Qrow is like a promise, and Qrow rises even further in his esteem for the similarity.]

...I think, perhaps, you see all this through the shadow of a demon you don't think you ought to have had in the first place. Setting aside just what form that demon took for you...what I see is a man who came to understand his priorities and found his reason to stand up again, and did it. Regardless of what exactly knocked you over in the first place, that's what's at the core, and it's no small thing.

[Break's smile is genuine, and also, completely unrepentant.]

Sorry, but that's something I really respect you for, so I'm afraid you'll just have to tolerate it.

[bolstafir]

[Qrow is really feeling the mortifying ordeal of being known right now, ngl. He doesn't quite fluster, but there is a certain kind of subtle cringe every person with self-loathing issues probably is well-acquainted with, the kind where someone nails a positive quality of yours like a fly's wings to the wall, and you are trapped there with no recourse but to take it and feel good about it even if it simultaneously feels weird to 1) have someone care about you enough to say it 2) actually hear it.

He ducks his head, just faintly, to hide the hint of a smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth until it reforms itself into a properly casual, irreverent grin.]

I'll survive somehow, I guess.

shall we wrap here?

[payingfordeliverance]

[It's a sweet and soft moment, and Baltus deserves some credit here. Even if they had gotten around to watching The Lion King yet, which they have not, Baltus would not be singing "I can see what's happening, and they don't have a clue" in their heads to taunt them.

The omen is definitely thinking it, though. And as the other two get back to sorting out the books and the discussion winds its way back to their favorite subject -- their next meal -- Baltus keeps his head on Break's leg and smiles very carefully, in a way that does not show all of his many teeth. From time to time, his tail thumps leisurely against the floor, a calm and steady heartbeat of sorts running underneath much more pleasant conversation.

Yes. Good.]