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

[bolstafir]

[Qrow listens, and gently shoves under a mental rug the fact that he can relate entirely too well to Break's decision, or the fact that if he could be of use in an unique way like that, regardless of whether it was hurting him, he'd probably go for it. The mile-wide self-destructive streak will go unexamined another day.

As for the matter at hand, though -- he starts to think through the possibilities. His first thought is that the mushroom is something like a painkiller. Something that blocks a physical sensation without repairing the underlying issue. But the only way that would make sense is if his eye wasn't physically damaged at all and the blindness was a secondary result of something else.

But then Break explains the mushrooms were for clearing corruption, and suddenly Qrow remembers something from back in October.]

...I might have an idea, actually. Kind of a longshot, but...remember when I was sick during that festival and you had to help me home? It turns out I wasn't actually sick. Trench was doing something with my blood, so I'd feel like shit if I wasn't around Vileblood. If the mushrooms are supposed to...help with corruption, and that's tied to all the blood magic in the air, maybe it's your blood that's making it worse?

[payingfordeliverance]

[Unbeknownst to either of them -- it's subconscious, on Break's part -- Qrow moves up even a little more in Break's esteem for not getting on his case about the Mad Hatter. He'd been prepared to brush if off if he did comment; it's not like Break has the Hatter here and it'd be useless if he did, so the point is moot. Still, that he isn't getting even so much as a concerned noise for the fact that things went that way at all is a relief, and a confirmation that Qrow is someone he can trust with his shiftier problems if anything to that effect strikes him here.

Which, to be frank, they might.

For the moment, though he'd offered to make lunch, Break pauses to lean against the counter with one hand still clutching his blanket and the other dragging slowly down his face. It's a line of thought he's been doing his best to stay away from, but with Qrow bringing it straight to the table like this after being given the overall situation to sort through, well.]

Miss Lysithea did wonder, once, if...the forms we take here are really just a matter of expectation, particularly for darkbloods. And I am getting the impression that Miss Alice -- the pale one -- is still floating about and carrying on simply because it hasn't crossed her mind that she shouldn't be able to anymore. If that's the case, I suppose I could be ill simply because I'm supposed to be. But that's...

[Just past his hand, Break's mouth twists into a ragged, bitter half grin.]

Ugh. If so, I don't know how to change it, then. Darkblood powers are the last thing I want to mess with. My capacity for making enormous messes is simply too great.

[bolstafir]

[As Break explains, Qrow feels more and more certain that they have stumbled onto something, here. But when the other man admits that he is reluctant to attempt to do anything about it for fear of what he might be capable of, Qrow does understand. Having a power you hate that isn't fully under your control has been a fixture of his entire life, as much as he's hid it from Break until now.]

I get it.

[By now, they have been through enough together that he expects Break will simply believe this, rather than ask for details.]

...But I mean, if those powers are already leaking out to affect your body, Trench could ramp it up any time so it starts affecting others. It's probably safer to test out how to manage it now, rather than let the town decide when it's going to become everyone's problem, right?

[payingfordeliverance]

[Break makes a face as though he has just bitten into a surprise black jelly bean.

Qrow has a solid point, obviously. Wasn't he just telling him that his own powers appeared as a surprise? In a time of intense stress, no less. To think that Break's powers, whatever they are, were active all along is a comfort in a way because he might miss an abrupt manifestation down the road. On the other hand, if he's somehow making himself sick, that means they're dangerous right out of the gate, too, and even less trustworthy than he was already thinking.

He doesn't ask why Qrow would understand this problem in particular. On top of his general respect for secrecy, he's currently very busy being horrified at the notion of residual Hatter powers he can't control turning his kids to dust in a nasty accident.]

...I wouldn't know where to start. If it's -- at all like what I could do at home, and I think it is, then...I didn't come to understand that I was anything weird until the very end. The one time I used it on purpose, it was on instinct alone.

[bolstafir]

[There's a pause here, because Qrow genuinely does not mean to patronize or condescend to him, but it seems to Qrow there might be a simple solution.]

Well...isn't it like you said? The kid doesn't stop floating around the house 'cause she doesn't think she shouldn't be able to anymore. And you weren't sick the last few days. Maybe you just need to focus on what that felt like, and pushing that image outward onto yourself. You remember what this place looks like, don't you? Try to picture it.

[Admittedly, he doesn't know if this advice is as useful for magic that comes from the blood, rather than the core of one's soul, but it's the only way he knows to think of activating powers -- to reach deep within oneself for the source of power, and then to push it outward into reality.]

[payingfordeliverance]

[He does feel decidedly childish in this moment, but it's not because he feels as though Qrow's looking down on him or anything. Rather, Qrow is being gentle with him. He came all the way over here just to check up on things and now he is being so patient with this whole conversation. Break had no problem venting to him about the matter, true, and was ready to welcome his thoughts on it when he did. But he'd figured they'd just have a chat and he'd feel a little better like always when Trench does something dumb at him, and then he'd resume having his usual problems and that would be that.

Instead he's getting specific suggestions and encouragement. So few people have treated him this way in the past, and it's almost always marked some sort of turning point. He remembers the one uncle of his own who'd bothered to take him aside and teach him to fight smarter rather than harder when he was a sour little child, and Shelly's serene refusal to be frustrated with him whenever he'd startled and lashed out unintentionally. Now if he doesn't figure this out, he'll be disappointing someone who's bothered to help him out over and over again, and he really will feel like an ass.

Baltus slithers out from beneath the table and slinks over to tilt his head upwards, resting it against Break's stomach. Absently, letting the blanket fall, he rubs his omen's ears.]

Is that how you change into a bird? You just...know what it is to be a bird, so there you are.

[Could it really be so simple as remembering what it felt like to be at his best, and deciding to be that instead of what he is?]

[bolstafir]

[He'd once described it to Oscar, who wanted to learn how to do what he did, as searching for the spark that felt foreign in his soul, bright like a star against the night sky. But Break's question has him realize that the man thinks he has always been able to turn into a bird. At this point, he only has one last secret to keep, and so this doesn't feel uncomfortable to fill him in on, especially under the circumstances.]

Oh, I wasn't always able to. That magic was kind of a gift, around the time I was about eighteen or nineteen. I had to learn how to use it just like I learned how to use my Aura. You should've seen me trying to fly the first few times, it was a disaster.

[He lets out a little huff of amusement, shaking his head, although it can't be seen.]

...But that's more or less it, yeah. I just...reach for that bit of magic in me, remembering how it feels, and then I've got wings and talons and a beak instead of arms and legs. And when I want to go back, I just reverse that. Kind of like opening a drawer and then closing it again when you're done with it, if that makes sense.

[payingfordeliverance]

[He is aware that "magic" is something separate, vaguely. Naturally it was Oscar who told him as much. But at that time, Oscar also cautioned him not to talk about it too openly, on the grounds that it was something rare and precious. He assumes it's the sort of thing they wouldn't want enemies to know too much about if they were to show up here, mostly because that's the way he feels about having tricks up his sleeve.

That sort of secret is easy enough to keep, regardless of the reason. So he doesn't correct Qrow here, leaving it at a wan little smile at the mental image of a little black bird flapping around all useless and silly.]

When I was at my worst, I felt as though...my whole body was cracking apart around me, and I was drowning. However, there were still battles that only I was able to fight, and so -- I couldn't let myself fall. I was always thinking, "this body can still move, and so long as I can move, I can fight."

[His omen whines faintly. Break gives him some proper scritches to soothe him.]

Perhaps, for me, it'd be something akin to that. Pulling myself together, right? To become, again...a person who's more a part of the world he's in.

[bolstafir]

[Qrow privately takes a moment to glad whatever expression he is making can't be seen, at least for now, because that description is...horrifying, honestly. He's been injured many times, even with his Aura, but he can't imagine that, not really. The closest he can come is the time he was poisoned by Tyrian's tail, and how it had felt like being burned from the inside out. But that had only been an acute thing, the consequence of a battle. He had been thoroughly useless thereafter, unable to move and lowkey hallucinating by the next morning.

The thought of continuing to fight in that state, for an extended period of time...it's a little incredible. Every time Break tells him something about the state in which he was fighting, Qrow grows more impressed yet. He says none of this, though. That would be patronizing of him, he thinks.]

Yeah. Just...try to remember, I think.

1/2

[payingfordeliverance]

[It sounds so terribly easy, in the same way that moving a mountain would be easy if all you had to do was pick it up and go. But, Break has been in the sort of mindset before where he whole-heartedly believed it wasn't actually any more complicated than that. And then he got away with it, more than once. Honestly, what seems more difficult is reaching that part of himself now, on a day that just won't start. The idea of it just makes him even more tired.

But he also can't exactly save it for later with Qrow standing right here, waiting expectantly.]

...then, shall we believe in some impossible things today, Baltus? [He can't see it, but his omen's tail wags slightly, the wispy brush of it sweeping across the floor. He, too, is pleased that Break will try.] Mm. Once, I fell through time. I met a little girl, and she was going to stay my little girl forever and ever. I killed those who were never meant to die, fought a man who had died before I was even born, and...the last time I used a power like this one, I ripped a hole open between two dimensions.

[Another nice little detail for the pile of reasons why Xerxes Break is horrifying all around. It's no wonder he's terrified of what he can do with his darkblood, if that's the sort of thing he got up to when this power had restraints. But he brings it up now because that's the last time he did anything like this instinctively. Despite not understanding how it was supposed to work, operating only on the certainty that he could, he'd gathered up a strength that had been undefined before that moment and reached. Hopefully, the memory of that, blurred as it is by pain, will lead him to something now.]

I felt my heart stop, only to find that it was still beating. A pair of magical creatures came right to my rescue before I even knew I'd crossed dimensions again, although I am the worst princess in all the land. I am a squid now, and...this eye can still see.

2/2

[payingfordeliverance]

[The magic catches, not because Break has found it, but because, as before, he's been using it without realizing it all this time. Just as he went straight to the Core of the Abyss when he ought to have died on the fringes, body mangled into a new Chain; just as he'd never been able to bring Oz fully into focus at home, because his body had existed outside of time and Break could see the anomaly; just as he'd been able to sense that anomaly on the other side of existence and plunge his hand right on through and grab onto Oz's as easily as though he was reaching through water -- it's simply a part of what he is, something he never noticed ought to be weird, because it's been active in him all along.

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.]

[bolstafir]

[It perhaps says something for all that Qrow has been through by now that none of these impossible things Break describes sound that impossible anymore. Timelines and existential nonsense with death and immortality and rifts between dimensions, and they're all squids now, somehow. He listens and waits and hopes for him, and then ... it happens.

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.]

[payingfordeliverance]

[It's not a total restoration, not yet. The kitchen itself is still shaky, filling its shadows in piece by piece as Break adjusts to the notion that he knows what is where because he can see it and not just because of his mental map of the room. Qrow remains a blur -- pretty solidly Qrow-shaped, yes, because Break has been in close contact with him and has an idea of the length of his legs and the slope of his shoulders, but his mind just doesn't know what to do with the rest of him yet. Nor does the cloak register as red or even as fabric when it suddenly lands right on Baltus's face and brings the omen up short.

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.]

[bolstafir]

[Ah.

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.]

[payingfordeliverance]

Then, you -- really have been...watching over me, this whole time.

[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!