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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Continued from here!

Edited 2022-02-12 16:21 (UTC)

this episode will be very dramatic

The wise thing to do here would be to run like hell from the scary lady, who now, on top of everything else, can apparently make wind happen. Kevin is not wise -- or, to put it more kindly, in his experience running only means you get chased, and things don't end until you end them yourself. To that end, he shifts into a defensive stance that makes him look older than he is, and his hand goes to the hilt of his sword.

Even as he does so, Baltus lets out a single sharp bark.

Enough, the omen snaps as he does so, talking directly to Alice and leaving Kevin out of it, on the grounds that the last thing the boy needs this second is a voice in his head. The Abyss connects all different timelines. You know that perfectly well.

Baltus knows it because Break does. The Kevin here now is from the timeline he's familiar with, or something like it, given Trench's nonsense. This version of Alice must simply be from a different one, that's all, and she's the only one here that will mean something to.

Even as she invites him to continue, the moment has passed. Kevin's rants depend on inertia. Having interrupted himself, he subsides back to grumbling, eyes downcast.

"It's less of a problem now that I can beat everyone up," he says flatly. After a moment's pause, he adds, "...at once."

An explanation of just how Xerxes Break got to be so vicious in a group fight, huh.

"Even so...these things linger. And, some people hate you even more if they can't push you around."

[A placeholder for later because then it is neat and tidy which I like]

If Break were an edgier edgelord than he is, he might make some comment about how this was a terrible decision, really, or otherwise counsel her to be wary of him all the same. After all, he's dangerous, there's a great deal of nastiness in his past that hasn't come to light yet, and who knows what sort of wicked things this place may yet lead him to do? He doesn't bother. Those things are true in some degree or other for literally everyone here, and Ange is certainly clever enough to understand that. More importantly, the person Break chooses to be when left to his own devices is trustworthy, these days. He's never going to be a completely honest man, but there's no longer any need for him to prioritize anything else over the welfare of the kids he's decided are his own.

It is going to really throw him for a loop when he realizes he's going to have to prioritize himself for once, here in Trench. For real this time, not in all his stupid and petty little cake-thieving ways. Probably it will take a few tries before he starts to figure this out.

"Coming from Miss Ange, something like that is a high compliment, right?" His being reliable, or trustworthy -- either of them could apply with this girl, from what Break has been able to gather so far. "Then, I shall endeavor to remain worthy of such praise."

Ange has seen more of him now than he has of her, but he knows just enough to guess that she isn't the sort of person who opens her heart to someone easily.

It is just one thing after another in this stupid, stupid place. Just days after things seem resolved at last with Qrow -- and it took one of them melting, apparently Break's problem at the time is that he was melting, and the other one being on fire to make that happen -- a nice, lazy reading session on the couch in the parlor is interrupted by a surge of pain in his chest, strong enough to set him coughing. It's not unlike the heart palpitations he used to have at home, and for a moment the old panic rises up on instinct alone. But the fluttering resolves in another string, barely visible except for the way it reflects the light, emerging somehow from his chest and making its way out of the room.

Ah. So that's why he's felt the need to kick all the blankets off, and is still feeling decidedly feverish.

If it's this nonsense again and he's still feeling more or less sturdy, it must mean the person on the other side of the string is the one melting, and Break had such a terrible time with that himself that he's on his feet and moving as soon as he realizes it. He has no idea who he's tied to this time and doesn't bother to think about it very hard. In this place, it is what it is. But the idea of leaving anyone in that state too long, weak and scared and struggling to breathe, is genuinely upsetting. It isn't something he'd force his worst enemy to tolerate. Just killing them would be much tidier.

His alarm only increases when the string leads him through the twisting hallways of the house and straight to the pale Alice's bedroom door. He calls out to her before he reaches it, knocking the knock they picked up from a movie they liked. Baltus, trotting along after him as always, takes the liberty of turning himself to shadow and wafting in beneath the door. When his omen barks sharply, Break doesn't bother to wait for her to answer, and barges on in.

By the time the month is halfway over Break has melted once, caught on fire twice, and adjusted his schedule to accommodate periodic check-ins at Qrow's house on account of one of their number has been threatened with murder by a raving red madman who has, in fact, already done that in the past. These are the stresses he blames his slowly increasing restlessness and random pains on, neither of which are abnormal for him and thus definitely aren't the result of some sort of Trenchian hex settling in on him. That he's wandering the docks a little more than normal during his "grocery shopping" excursions in the hopes of getting to pick a fight with some petty thieves is also not strange for him when he's in this state, honestly. Break's not into torture, but he does always feel better when he gets to beat up assholes who deserve it, and sparring with people you like and don't actually want to leave battered and unhappy just isn't the same.

Unfortunately, most of the shady characters who hang out around here have long since learned that Xerxes Break is someone who isn't worth the effort of pickpocketing. Dang.

He takes a few streets he doesn't usually bother with, in the hopes of maybe stumbling onto territory he hasn't established himself in yet. Baltus only lets him get away with this a couple of times before he starts snorting at his person to get home and have done with it; at this rate he'll run out of time to leave cinnamon rolls rising overnight. Break huffs and aims himself in an out-of-the-docks direction, meanders out onto the beach so he can cross the sands to the lamp at the Boardwalk without having to deal with crowds and maybe have a run if no one is looking, or maybe even if someone is --

-- he does spot someone, actually.

"Miss Shannon?" She is wearing her hair differently, but having seen her in passing once or twice around the house, he's certain it's her. There is a pause, in which Break and his omen tilt their heads in confused unison, which is very cute. "Are you lost...?"

Break is just suspicious enough of this girl to think that perhaps she is not, and is indeed out on the beach all alone on purpose. But she seems to want to be seen as something mild and giggly, and there's no reason as of yet not to play along with that and see what happens.

Edited 2022-02-12 23:07 (UTC)

The image is even more incongruous with how Shannon presented herself at the party upon closer inspection: she's wearing baggy clothes—a red hoodie over a black turtleneck, cargo pants, and boots—she lacks her usual makeup, and her tied-back hair is sopping wet thanks to her "kick training." (Her legs were the one area of her body where her muscles were comparable to somebody who wasn't riddled with a number of physiological deficiencies, so she figured she might as well work on her "strengths" rather than fail to flail her way around her weaknesses.)

And, most ridiculously, she was in the middle of practicing her strikes for Cobra Kai.

She stands there, totally frozen, for a few moments.

"Ah, Break-san!"

Shannon breaks out into a wide smile, turning around to pick up her canvas bag (and to desperately insert her pads where he can't see before he realizes what's wrong with the silhouette she was cutting). "I was here to pick up some groceries, but the weather was so nice I thought I might take a stroll on the beach." She laughs, sounding awkward. "...and then I tripped and fell right into the surface. I'm really lucky that I wasn't hurt more badly. At least someone was kind enough to lend me these clothes..."

Well.

This is a terribly admirable display of making stuff up on the fly. Break is impressed, honestly. If he were not, himself, a dubious son of a bitch who gets up to many dubious things, he'd likely even buy it. After all, it's not Shannon's fault that Break also comes to this area of the beach explicitly because there's very rarely anyone in it, or knows a fighting stance when he sees one even if he doesn't know the style and catches it for only a few seconds, or has the context to know that this girl has some sort of mask that slips.

...alright, the last one is arguably her fault. Regardless, Break's expression grows inordinately pleased as she yammers, like a cat whose attention has been caught by an amusing new toy and it isn't sure whether it wants to chase or swat or just observe. This is not as great as picking fights with jerks, but for the moment it will do.

"Oh dear, that must have been terribly startling for you," he observes in the very specific cheerful clown voice that automatically made everyone at his old workplace at home want to punch him in the face. "How fortunate that someone so helpful came along! At this time of year and with the wind so nasty, why, you could have frozen into a hypothermic lump right on the sand, and no one would have been the wiser."

Baltus punctuates all this by getting distracted by a weird-looking lump of seaweed a ways over and trotting over to stick his nose into it and maybe chew on it a little, a magnificent manifestation of Break's inner everything as usual.

Edited 2022-02-13 11:54 (UTC)

It was strange and alarming, but something felt so incredibly distant as well. What was it? Something- it had drawn her away from bed, from the window, but within a few steps Alice had fallen to the floor with Dinah the size of a housecat immediately moving to her side, growing larger only when she hadn't gotten up.

Colors were bleeding out over white clothing, over pale skin. That Darkblood of hers glittering, but there ere also blues, pinks, and purples dripping along her skin from places it had cracked.

Oh. That wasn't right.

Dinah was the one to respond to the sharp bark, making way for when the door opened and didn't get in Break's way even as her size grew in response to distress more felt that openly showing.

Alice sitting in the middle of what looked like a pool of fabric and bleeding colors, slowly growing.

If Sayo had anything less than perfect control over her facial expressions (most of the time), her eye would be twitching at how clearly Break is messing with her. She's enough of an expert in metaphor to recognize Baltus messing with the seaweed for what it is, if nothing else. But there is no way in Hell that she's admitting defeat, especially when Break is in such... close contact... with Qrow.

While the Lawrence-sensei on her shoulder is urging her to punch Break in the smug mouth for his ridiculous clown face and ridiculous clown voice—thankfully, she's learned when to heed his advice and when to ignore it and tell him to go home, sensei, you're drunk—Sayo giggles and scratches her cheek, evidently embarrassed.

"I know, it was really silly of me to come all the way out here without anyone with me... I just didn't want to bother anyone in Clockhouse for such a small errand, hehe." Pants on fire, etc. "Come to think of it, Break-san, do you think you could help me here? I'm afraid I'm quite clumsy, and I don't want to rely on the kindness of a stranger again if I have another accident..."

Your move, Break.

What an emotional flow, Ange thinks. It's like watching the tides. One moments it's suddenly there in all its intensity, and then it all recedes like this, leaving only a shadow of its former self.

"What annoying and cruel people, to assume all of these things about you, without even bothering to get to know the real you." But they have discussed this. They know that it's just in people's nature, that it's something that can't be stopped.

Some people just suck.

So Ange shakes her head. "After all, to me, you seem like.."

It's there where her voice trails off, realising that this is a moment that Break might just remember later, once he is himself once more. It makes her a little more cautious, trying to balance being nice to a seemingly unfortunate 'kid' like Kevin with not seeming totally embarrassing later.

".. like a fine person to know. I don't dislike our meeting, even though it happened totally by chance."

"It is."

Usually she might have hid this answer a little more. Either she would have been more indirect about it, or hesitated saying it in some other way. But under the current circumstances Ange has absolutely no reason to lie, nor to be less direct about it than she is being right now.

She can just plainly say it, because it is a very plain truth in her mind.

"I wouldn't necessarily say that it's the same in this place," because Ange has met some good adults, even aside from Break, and even aside from Qrow, "but back home I was very much used to adults not taking me seriously at all. Dismissing me, looking down on me-- I guess it was natural, since most of them would have rather seen me six feet under."

Ange says it with an ease as if she's talking about the weather though, shaking her head and continuing like it's nothing.

"It feels kind of nice to talk to one who does take talking with me seriously." After all, Break let her ask her questions. Ange got pretty much most of what she wanted to know about that memory she witnessed, and he didn't even really push back on any of it.

It sure beats talking to Featherine and having to endure her constantly giggling about how Ange doesn't understand stuff because she's a virgin. Ugh.

Break narrows his eye ever so slightly as Ange drops another detail for his mental list of Ange Facts -- if the people who should have been taking care of her as a child wanted her dead at worst or at best simply didn't care if she weren't alive, it absolutely explains a few things -- but otherwise doesn't react. It's not as though it's a new atrocity for him. There are plenty of examples from his own world of kids being mistreated and used as pawns and whatever else, and he's under no illusion that other people's worlds are any better. Hell, he isn't really any better. After what happened to Sinclair there are certain things he'll never do again, but sometimes it is simply prudent to scoop up a grieving fourteen year old who has just lost his most precious person and plant him in the sketchiest noble house around to serve as your personal spy, and so on.

He's still playing politics as he settles into his new social circles. But it has crossed his mind that he can fight to protect the kids from reality now, instead of the other way around. Break relishes that, and grows increasingly confident as he has successes here and there. To that end, there's something smugly dark and glittering behind the smile he gives her in turn.

"You'll think me a sentimental old fool, I imagine," he drawls. "However, for all that I really hate this place...it does let me watch all the kids make decisions for their own selves for once, and have a chance to grow up more on their own terms. To grow up at all, in some cases. To be around for that, and to have the freedom to pay attention this time, suits me very well."

Of course Break takes Ange seriously. So many of his own brood didn't start to become who they really were until the very end, when it was too late for him to get to know them as they could be. Or worse, they did it when he wasn't looking and he missed it. The waste in it all annoys him intensely.

All the kids, he says. And Ange immediately thinks of the ones she saw over where Break lives. That boy who was smiling entirely too much. The wild girl who seemed to enjoy screeching at young children. The white-haired girl, and her decorated skulls. Ange knows that they are the kids Break is trying to protect - the kids he's watching grow in this place.

But somewhere in the back of her mind is the nagging sensation that the word kids does do some stretching here, especially with how close Qrow and Break seem to be in their own way. Those probably aren't the only kids Break is watching over.

A part of Ange, easily flustered and longing to look cool and independent at all times, screams in agony at the thought. Another part of Ange, the lost little girl inside of her, longs for it to be true.

"You are the worst kind of a sentimental old fool." That is definitely a contribution of that first part of her, like a gentle kitty paw sinking its claws into an outstretched hand, even if it's said with a slightly-too-sweet smile on the girl's face. ".. But I think that suits you."

A little more merciful, this time.

Not that she doesn't think the Break she saw in the memory is also very much part of him. That he would jump to protect those kids in his house at the first chance he'd get. But even though that's also him, this is the sort of thing that suits him, Ange thinks. Just being a sentimental old fool, caring way too much for a bunch of kids, and wanting to give them the world they deserve.

"Maybe you've just finally tumbled into the spot you belong."

"Oh, but of course," comes the easy and immediate answer. "I'm an expert in getting all the groceries home in one trip, you know. Stronger than I look."

Break is an elegant twig man with a waistline made of little more than dreams, and he is aware of this. It doesn't stop him from murdering people twice his size from time to time.

"Anyway, what sort of gentleman would I be, if I left a young lady all alone in such a rude world? You never know! A few months ago a bunch of awful parasites got into the local fish and they all came scuttling up out of the water to bite people."

There are reasons other than sneaky roving swordsman to be wary of where you set yourself up all alone, is what he's getting at. Regardless of what this girl may or may not be up to at any given time, Break has no great desire to hear through the grapevine later that she was devoured by something gross.

Break shuts down so quickly that Baltus lets out an abrupt snarl, showing off entirely too many teeth for a brief moment, before he sneezes violently and paws at his own nose.

Break's expression doesn't change.

"...I cannot emphasize enough that I had already done just that fifteen years ago, and the notion that I'm supposed to see being ripped away from that life and forced to start over again as a gift is a sick joke," he drawls, voice full of ice. "I've found people I can love in this place. Since that's the case, I'm content enough, and I make the best of it. But what I've lost was entirely too precious to be cast aside with talk of 'finally belonging'."

He isn't cross with Ange. He isn't cross with anybody, really, and indeed keeps this to himself the bulk of the time so as not to ruin anyone else's happy afterlife with his own grief. Deep down, Break even spends a great many of his long, long nights hoping that he is here for a reason, that he's needed here, that it matters. Ange herself has comforted him in that regard simply by having her golden butterflies. But he's also someone who carries the past with him when he moves on rather than letting it go, and even if he becomes truly happy here, this life will never replace Rainsworth. They will both exist in him simultaneously, just as he's never let go of Sinclair.

"My, what a gentleman! Your household is lucky to have you around." Shannon outright titters. Sayo, on the other hand, wishes that she hadn't already picked up her bag so that she could fill it with rocks before handing it off to Break just to watch him squirm.

(She knows she's being overly spiteful, but between Break catching her in a moment of vulnerability at the Snake Den and him finding her practicing "American karate," Sayo is feeling rather sour about his propensity for stumbling his way close to the truth while he's so close to the rest of Clockhouse.)

"That's... disconcerting..." Look at what a proper young lady Shannon is! Raising her hand to her mouth and everything. "I'll make sure not to linger next time I'm here." Her cargo pants may be of a temperature significantly higher than average. "Well, then. Shall we get moving? I don't want to stay here too long if such frightful things are hiding beneath the waves..."

Edited 2022-02-18 00:59 (UTC)

"-- Alice!"

He crosses the distance to her quickly, just as he ran to Sharon without a second thought when Vincent Nightray had her poisoned to get to him -- just as he would have run to Reim, had he been able to see, had he understood right away just why he smelled so much blood back then. When this insistent connection happened between himself and Qrow just a few days previous, they kept a certain space between them, in deference to the gulf that had opened in their relationship over Break's impulsive whim. Now, just as impulsive, he doesn't hesitate to gently gather Alice up the instant he hits his knees beside her.

Break would have liked to be held, back then. Baltus helped, propping him up as best he could, giving him tangible support to lean on. But there's nothing quite like arms around you when your body is threatening to fall apart. He remembers Sharon and Reim's arms around him at the very end sometimes, phantoms through his mind that he was too far gone to appreciate, but which his heart has locked away.

Never mind that his skin is reddening, as he himself begins to radiate heat.

"I should say so, I'm the one who's learned to cook."

And he hasn't poisoned anyone yet, save for that one time Oz learned the hard way that vilebloods couldn't digest real food that month, which doesn't count because Trench is extremely stupid.

"It's not terribly far to the Boardwalk lantern," he adds as he reaches out for her bag, though he'll politely wait for her to give it over rather than grabbing it outright. Break has been skittish enough of hands snatching things away from his person without warning, due to missing eyeball reasons, that when he's on his guard with someone he grants them that respect subconsciously. "We use it all the time. Baltus favors the beaches for running."

It took a few seconds longer for her to respond, to even notice the touch simply because of the overwhelming mixed with an odd numbing that didn't make it any more comfortable. No, it just made her feel that much more distant, as if she were floating away and having absolutely no ability to fight against it; a wonder nothing else was acting, but perhaps that was the doing of this entire process—

"What's happened?" Her voice was clearly distressed, far more quiet than it should be. Strained as those colors even bled like tears- of perhaps in place of tears once Alice finally could look up. Dinah's rumbling purring filled the room, another obvious sign of distress and that attempt that could be just as self-soothing as anything else.

She still leaned in to Break as she spoke, taking that support and the growing feeling of warmth he brought. "What is this?"

Xerxes Break, a man who had held on to her wish as a lifeline for so long. In a way her own lifeline for it to have even had any chance of becoming more than that.

"This world's latest idiotic nonsense," Break grumbles. "There's some sort of string connecting us. This happened to Mister Qrow and me the other day...we had a good talk, and it eased things."

He sounds distracted as he says it. That's because half his attention is directed at the searing pain he's starting to feel in his limbs. He'd been in pain last time, too, but it was different from this. Is he doing it to himself? He's frightened, so he could be, Break supposes. He and Qrow had had a certain very obvious problem to work out. What could he need to talk through with Alice? As far as he knows everything is fine, and she's happy enough...

"A string is causing this?"

It sounded ridiculous and like something from a story all at once, tying things together and- bringing pain? She felt like all of her strength was draining from her, to say nothing of the heat. Alice wasn't sure if she minded the heat at all, or wanted to pull away-

The hand resting against Break's cheek, even if it took some effort for her to lift it, didn't bring her an answer in either direction. "It doesn't make it any less frightening, does it." Color still streaked down over her cheeks, a mix of glittering darkblood and various shades of purple. A bit of white. Some strange mimicry of tears she doesn't even know if she was shedding or not.

"Magic string," comes the clarifying Kevinny grunt.

But for all that he's here and holding her, as Alice reaches for his face, Break can't help but flinch away a little at first. It's something he doesn't often do with others that he trusts, provided he can see the touch coming, and -- ah. Perhaps that's it, perhaps that's what Trench itself is getting at here. Despite how close they've become in this place, Break at least still possesses an underlying suspicion of this Alice in particular, a certainty that a mental snap on her part is a matter of when rather than if.

He hasn't seen it as a bad thing, and doesn't really hold it against her. Not when he's seen such a clear difference in her now that she's free of the Abyss's influence, and in the several months since their arrival, not a one of her whimsical impulses has been violent. Still, knowing what she's still capable of, it's only practical to be prepared for such an eventuality, right?

...right?

"This place won't allow you to keep your problems to yourself. Mister Qrow told me as much early on, and -- in everything that's happened so far, I have found that to be true. So, then, Alice, for the two of us to be tied together in such a way, then..."

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Page 1 of 8

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

January Event Overflow

The Break-and-Qrow Show

For Black Alice

For Ange

For Qrow

For Ange Again

For White Alice: Early February Heartstrings. CW: burning and melting body horror

For Sayo: Mid-February

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