let me look at the sun | open

[terriblepurpose]

Who: Paul Atreides, open
What: Event catch-all
When: Month of December
Where: Archaic Archives, streets of Trench, the forest's edge, memories
Notes: Go ahead and contact me at terriblepurpose or by PM if you'd like to discuss any starters or suggest new ones! For tagging in your character's memories to Paul, feel free to start with whatever your preference is.

Content Warnings: Violence, body horror (lockjoint), death, religious extremism, extensive Dune spoilers, suicidal ideation, funerals, grief

Comments

cw: nondescriptive suicide mention

[possessum]

( He can't damage the body too much. That thought still lingers in him, despite his crazed fury. Even with Peter, they were so meticulously careful with the final shove. He fell out the right window, the one with the soft flowerbed below it. No bones even broke in the fall. The vessel's physical form was damaged, but not broken. Paimon was able to stand after, to move and walk and function.

No, physically, he must not break the body too much. It was mentally that the word broken applied to. The most important piece of it all. If any remnant of the mind remained unbroken, the possession would not hold. Like those failed hosts of the past — part of him still remembers. There was another sixteen-year-old, one who had survived the attempts, and taken his own life to escape the agony of it all. That vessel was lost forever, until so many years later when another would finally be made viable.

He will not lose this one.

But suddenly he's trapped, covered up, and the demon screams, not like the way it feels to be suppressed, contained somewhere black and tight. Wings kept painfully bound. He thrashes where he's all bundled up against the boy, rams against him as much as he possibly can. In the struggle, he lifts — and the boy with him, if he's still hanging on — right up off of the ground for a moment, then slams sideways, hitting something solid and hard — the chair. )

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul's breath is knocked out of him by the collision, the chair collapsing under their weight. Nothing punctures him, so there's that, but it will bruise, and when he tears his breath back in he realizes that a lower rib on the right side is slightly cracked.

But they're on the ground, and having a surface to pin the thing to is something. Paul twists to try to get it on its stomach, doing his earnest best to keep the thing entangled. He's been trained to stay on his feet as much as he can, but the grapple is one of the most dangerous clashes of body against body, and he's as good at is as anything else. Pain or no pain. Fear or no fear.]

I will hurt you, is that what you want?

[His voice is ratcheted with frustration and ache, breath coming in hot pants as he struggles with a thing that is too strong for its body.]

making my way through these delicious backtags, apologies for the delay!!

[possessum]

( The boy — with his unexpected resilience and firm command, with his strength that seems out of place for his willowy frame (is he even really A Boy, or Something Else?) — has captured him. The demon realises this as he's forced onto his stomach, arms trapped, all tangled up in the suffocating material. He's snapping his teeth animal-like and flailing, but it does no good.

The question is not only a question, but also a proclamation, a dual-sided concept to absorb. Is that what you want? but also I will hurt you — the demon tries to scream again, and it sounds more like Peter now, the vocal chords rubbed raw and ragged from the ancient thing that's been scraping against them. The scream breaks like a human's, emotional in its upset.

No, no, no, it isn't what he wants. What he wants is the body he was given, and while it isn't true freedom to be contained within a human form, it's at least an escape from another, worse prison. The male host will be right, correct—

There are a few bursts of flame, some catching a book or two on fire, others just manifesting in the air itself: bright, dangerous sparks. But they disappear quickly, leaving behind a singed smell; it's as if the demon is puttering out.

He resists less, and less, and then he's not struggling at all but just breathing against the floor, moaning like a wounded animal. He was wrong; it isn't time yet. The host hasn't been worn down enough, and so he can't get into him. )

Hate..... hate.... ( He breathes, and it sounds only human now, the voice of a boy around Paul's age. Though the words themselves are almost like something a child would say. ) Hate you....