deercountry | 003: Seems to me quite clear, now — now that you are here

Entry tags:

003: Seems to me quite clear, now — now that you are here — how easily I could begin again

Who: Break + various
What: Catchall log; closed starters, event overflows, etc. No open prompts.
When: January through February, perhaps into March
Where: Various

Content Warnings: Use of the heartstrings prompt from the January TDM (injury, body horror, burning, melting), and one bond pact (blood ceremony, bodily ceremony, telepathic/empathetic connections). One Mother's Mercy thread (intense guilt and shame, talk of grieving your own death, forced confession), and one using the really evil magic chocolate where you cough up an organ. Threads will be marked accordingly and further warnings added here as they come up.

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There's a relief in the fact that he lets her hold his hand - and a hope, too, because Ange wants to fiercely believe that it's got to at least be doing something for him here. After all, what would have happened if he had been dragged down here into these catacombs all by himself, when it seems to remind him so violently of something awful that happened to him?

.. Ange doesn't even want to consider it. Even though it's not exactly easy for her either to sudden be thrown right out of what has been her safe comfort zone to mourn in for weeks, she has always found herself relatively flourishing in situations like these. If she has to take care of someone else, it's easier to shove her own problems and hurt on the back burner so she can be there for them. And she wants to be here right now for Break, just like he was there for her when Sayo had driven the equivalent of a dagger straight into her heart.

"Don't worry. This will absolutely stay between us." She doubts she had to tell him that. Break would know as much under regular circumstances, considering how much the two of them have - not always voluntarily - shared with each other over time already. But with Break still slowly recovering, these little reminders might help somehow. "Still.. You must have remembered something truly awful."

After all, she has never seen the man like this before. It feels so.. extreme. It's enough to make even Ange pause for a moment after she says those words and considers this.

"I think I might have to start considering beating up your world for letting you go through so much awful stuff." It's an attempt at both sympathy and a joke. A weak one, considering both the mood and the fact that Ange isn't fully herself either, but an attempt all the same. "And then this world after, for reminding you of it."

Weak though it may be, it does at least get a snort out of him, which morphs halfway through into a helpless chuckle. He squeezes her hand in appreciation, though when he lifts his head out of Baltus's fur enough to look at her, his half-hidden smile is bitter.

"That one was my own fault," he says flatly, aiming for his usual snide drawl and failing. "I was a very stupid young man."

With this pronouncement, he drops his face into his omen again, though he still doesn't let go of Ange's hand. Being given the opportunity to insult himself does seem to have made him even more coherent, though, and he attempts a horrid joke of his own, muffled in dog fur.

"To be protected by my kids...it makes me feel so warm I can't stand it. Such a gross feeling."

Baltus rolls his eyes, which is a marvel for an animal which does not actually possess pupils.

"Yes, yes," Ange slowly says. It has the tone of an overworked daycare worker dealing with an especially surly kid who's throwing a fit over nothing. The hand holding and the way Break is hiding himself against his omen probably only enhance the effect. "I'm sure it must be very difficult to have this entire group of kids who want to look after you and make sure you're happy."

Granted, the reason why it feels a little bit easier to joke like that now is that Break has entered the stage of self-derision. And with how much experience Ange has in this department, she knows that's exactly the sort of thing you do when a situation starts to feel a little bit more bearable. When you've dragged enough of your mind back together again.

Besides, she knows that any of the others would have done the same she has in this situation. It's why she's so confident in her joke. She knows that Break's own kids from his world would surely have harassed him and fussed over him - depending on the specific kid, really - if they found him like this. And Ange is even more sure of the fact that Ruby and Oscar wouldn't have left him alone either. If anything, they would have been increasingly more sappy about it than Ange herself, probably. Those two are just way too much of a bunch of goody-two-shoes. (It's why she likes them.)

"What else did you expect when you started being all nice to us? Now it's our official duty to make sure that you're not left by yourself during a dumb Pthumerian-induced experience." There, she's found a loophole. As long as she claims things like we or us, it feels so much easier to say these things than if she would have said I or me, even though that claim by itself would have been just as true. It's easier to hide her heart behind a Ruby-shaped shield.

Still bowed beneath the weight of his ordeal, Break doesn't have a clever answer for her, no further poetry he can make out of his urge to grumble. Baltus, stalwart and helpful as always, chooses this moment to provide further assistance.

Ruby told him last month she would protect him from loneliness and he shriveled up like a dead bug, the omen announces, confirming Ange's thoughts on the matter. His tail thumps happily against the stone floor.

Break sits up enough to give Baltus a look that is probably meant to be a stink-eye, and is instead simply an expression of pathetic betrayal.

-- and then, finally he rallies, a sputter turning into a proper laugh as the absurdity of all this hits him. Poor Ange is sitting here so patiently, talking to a grown man twice her age with her hand gentle on his own because he was so frightened by an old memory he couldn't think straight. The representation of his own soul is a lanky noodle dog whose existence looks even more hilarious against the backdrop of golden butterflies. Butterflies that Ange has summoned to comfort him the same way he pulled a lollipop out of his sleeve before in an attempt to comfort her, and Ange's magic trick makes his own look so silly and amateurish. This whole conversation is like a much kinder mirror of one of his last talks with Sharon, wherein she berated him for being awful and immature, and for all that he feels intensely pathetic he wasn't actually lying a moment ago. It really does feel warm, to have kids coming for him like this no matter where he ends up.

He squeezes her hand again before he lets go, leaning back so he can scrub at his face.

"It can't be helped. This is just what I am now," he gripes, his voice a little stronger even as it's muffled behind his hands. "Well, really, it's all Qrow's fault in the end."

Gilbert remains inconveniently absent, but in this moment pinning the blame unfairly on his new neurotic blackbird will do.

Nothing about this situation surprises her. Not Baltus' sudden yet inevitable betrayal. Not what the omen is saying either - it's exactly the sort of thing Ruby would do, and it's exactly why Ange adores that girl to infinite lengths. Of course she'd be relentlessly harassing Break like that. At least Ange holds back a little bit sometimes to not make things too overwhelming to someone who seems to deal as badly with an excess sappy positive moments as Ange herself does, but she knows that Ruby is just a bulldozer that keeps on going when it comes to that.

Even the way Break starts to whine as he holds his face isn't too much of a surprise.

But even though none of it is surprising, Ange feels a different feeling bloom inside of her as she witnesses all of this. This situation is amusing, for one, but even beyond that.. something about it does feel warm, even to her. At least Deerington and Trench have given her one thing, and that's the experience of caring for other people and being cared for in return. And even though this particular emotion was born out of something awful like Break reliving an awful memory by having something not too great happen to him.. it's still something he can laugh about, and then whine like a toddler.

And it makes Ange laugh too. Softly, at first, but then the laugh rises in volume. It's so giddy and genuine that she has to hold her now freed hand a small distance in front of her mouth so she doesn't feel totally ridiculous as the laugh escapes her. It feels weird, since it's the first time she's laughed since Sayo's confession, but not in a bad way.

"It's okay," Ange says, as she finally seems to find some words mid-laugh over here. "I like it too."

Yes, that's a too. She knows how you really feel despite the griping, Break!!

And it's not like any word of that is a lie. It feels nice, having Break as a new extension of their little family. It feels weirdly natural.

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003: Seems to me quite clear, now — now that you are here — how easily I could begin again

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1/2

2/3 I lied

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