06 . the sleepy town expedition.

[necrolord]

Who: necrolord, Gideon, Harrow, Paul, Kaworu, "Shannon," Mako, Ford, Shiro, Ruby, Luna, Faith, Willow, Ezra, Zhongli, Perell.
What: An intentional family-and-friends roadtrip to a forbidden holy ruin. A less-intentional catacombs adventure.
When: 3/14.
Where: Sleepy Town and the Catacombs.

Content Warnings: Sleepy Town-typical themes of grief, loss, and surreal landscapes. Catacombs-typical horror per the March event. Also, note all the usual warnings of this character.

[ See this doc for info! ]

Comments

[peripheries]

Could people really not change their perceptions of you? I thought memories were supposed to keep people alive. Not kill them if they don't come back how you want them to. Memories show that someone mattered.

[Right?

He'd never thought of what Shannon... no Sayo, had said before and there's a part of him that agrees with it and... he hates that. What does that mean for him and his final desperate attempt to be preserved into Shinji Ikari's memories? What does it mean for the old man? What does it mean for anyone who's here?

He steps back a little, his white sneakers turning pink where the blood pools around them.]

cw: eye horror, hallucinations (ongoing in thread)

[terriblepurpose]

[The way Sayo attempts to provoke people scans as reflexive defense more than purposeful attack, so Paul lets 'major' pass with a slight nod of acknowledgment. It's an improvement on 'captain', which is what matters, and she's still drawing, still present.

It's the effect her words are having on Kaworu that brings Paul to his feet, crossing the short distance between him and the other boy to put a steadying hand on his shoulder. (Red threads bloom and spill from his eyes, streak down his cheeks, but Paul is used to that, by now.)]

She's being metaphorical. [He soothes, pressing his thumb down lightly.] She was pretending to be someone else, and she stopped. Shannon only existed as a fiction. Isn't that right, Sayo?

[There's a light pointedness in the question to match the glance he shoots her way. He can imagine what (who) Kaworu is thinking of. (And if he's honest, which he would prefer not to be, her words are unnerving, as is her behavior. Something animal in him has raised hackles.)]

[forwantofahorse]

< Bingo >, Atreides. [Once upon a time, Shannon was the "real" Sayo; Beatrice and Kanon existed so that Sayo could comfortably live in dreamlike bliss as her "real" self, without dark urges and darker thoughts tormenting her. But the stain of bloody truth decayed even that facade, leaving a woman so hollow that no happiness could reach her (or that she couldn't reach happiness?) no matter how hard she tried, puppeteering her own life from backstage.] Although...

[Something harrowing and genuine passes across Sayo's face, and she turns to Kaworu, expression flat and weary.] Memories are liars to a fault, Kaworu.

The most important day in your life, the most impactful thing anyone has ever said to you... it could be an easily-forgotten joke to him, just one more breezy summer day of his youth and you a side character in his story.

Don't repeat my mistakes.

[peripheries]

[Her words cut to him like a knife. Perhaps that's what she intended. He inhales through his nose to keep steady, to steel himself against her. He doesn't know her. She doesn't know them. Why are they saying anything to each other? It's just a waste. Just obligation.]

Maybe, you just weren't easily remembered and the problem is with you.

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul understands the underlying dynamics of this exchange the way Sayo seems able to visualize the mechanism inside the walls, or Kaworu to perceive the seams along which space folds. Both of them are suffering, and in their suffering, they wound each other. It has the weary weight of an inevitability. Perhaps that why Paul doesn't intercede in time to avert it - he's had such poor luck undoing fate, lately.

He's already at Kaworu's side. It's where he stays, subtly grounding his feet on the floor where blood is starting to lap at the soles of his boots. The air is filling up with the smell of metallic brine. It sticks at the back of his throat.]

Stop it. Both of you.

[They're not going to listen. He lifts his chin slightly, swallowing salt-sour.]

I know this is difficult. We're all not at our best. [Paul embeds an appeasing tonal note in his words, an invitation to face-saving disarmament.] Let's not take that out on each other.

[forwantofahorse]

[Sayo stares at Kaworu, frozen with shock, as the blood slowly fills the chamber to the brim. Paul's words fade into the background, overtaken by the roaring tide of crimson pooling around her shoes.

Then she starts laughing. Laughing, and laughing, and laughing, because someone, some stranger whose mistakes sent her plunging into Hell (literally this time), has seen her heart. She sways to her feet, pacing around the chamber like a predator circling its prey, coming ever closer to Kaworu.]

< Bravo >, Kaworu! < Yessssssssss, you got it! > After all, who would ever remember some shabby, inhuman thing only PLAYING at being a person, huuuuuuuuuuh? A mask is more forgettable than my real face, but who'd ever want to look my monstrous self in the eye in the first place, hihihihihyyyyyahahahahahaaaaa!

After all, you never took notice of Shannon's words, Shannon's advice, SHANNON TELLING YOU THAT YOU WERE GOING TO HURT EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT, but you both obviously hate me so much and would rather have her back anyways!

Well, TOOOOOO BAD! I can't oblige, since ugly, abominable Yasu is the only one who can get you two idiots out of here! So get used to dealing with this tarnished pyrite witch, since that sweet, forgettable side character Shannon you're both so attached to IS NEVER COMING BACK!

[It's at this point that Paul and Kaworu will notice that she's been shuffling the tiles with her feet as she's been circling the two of them, all going through their optimal routes to their proper places. Although despite Sayo's expert planning, the blood is accelerating anyways. Like she'd said at the start, this truly was a Scylla and Charybdis scenario.]

[peripheries]

Shut up! I didn't... It wasn't... It was already too late! Maybe she should have said something sooner if she really wanted to stop it! You're so smart but you didn't figure that out either, did you?

[Or maybe, he should have stopped sooner. Maybe he knew something was wrong but didn't tell anyone because he didn't know what else he could do. And if he couldn't help then no one would have wanted him there at all.

But if no one had wanted him then the Old Man would still be here. Paul wouldn't have gotten distracted...

Kaworu lets her circle until she gets close and then he moves quickly towards her, closing the gap. His eyes and eyes, now black and hollow, like pits on his pale face, glare into hers as the corruption takes hold. Skeletal wings of light flicker on his back casting odd shadows across the room, and in the blood.]

We're not human, we're monsters. We're just like that thing in the sea. No one cares what happens to us. No one cares what happens to you so just... shut up! You didn't do enough, you didn't say enough back then! So just shut your mouth!

[And he lunges forward, trying to grab at her throat with desperate, furious hands.]

[terriblepurpose]

[When Sayo begins her predatory circling and vicious rant (an orifice vomiting venom and writhing tendrils of clinging black hate--), Paul shifts. It's a much more subtle alteration of stance and focus than Sayo or Kaworu's explosive pain. His spine straightens, his pupils dilate, his expression flattens. He turns as she walks only so much as is required to stay acutely attuned to her, a magnetic arc of attentiveness with her as its fixed point.

A rising tide of blood, the stink of it coating his nose and his mouth, worming into his own humming veins. A mouth echoing maddened loathing, inward and outward. (You're hurting him--)

There is surely some kind of meaning to be divined from Sayo's tumult of words. There is some sad, lonely story there, the kind that would have made Paul's heart ache, once.]

Don't talk to him like that.

[As cool and edged as one of the knives still in their sheaths at his side, and then Paul half-steps aside to let Kaworu lunge for her.

He heard the shift in Kaworu's positioning, the ragged affront in his voice - it didn't take a Paleblood to see what was coming next. Catharsis, Paul thinks, and can't quite remember why. He'll intervene if it escalates too far, but this, clearly, is what Sayo wants. Who is he to deny her that self-abnegation?

How many times has he wished for the same?]

[forwantofahorse]

[It's only when Sayo sees that achingly familiar glare of loathing (and self-loathing) on Kaworu's face does she realize that while all the stakes of burning accusation that she slung toward Kaworu's heart may have hurt, it's those that she drove into her own that truly hit their mark.

For a precious second, she freezes, a look of suitably self-abashed horror on her face as she sees Kaworu's body distort in the same way she felt her soul slowly warp over the course of years on Rokkenjima.

But then his own words dig thorns into the battered organ weakly pumping black bile through Sayo's veins, and her face twists in turn as she takes up a stance to meet Kaworu's charge.]

OhhhHHHHHH, of course! Why didn't I THINK about that before! Timing, timing, time, it's always TIMING, always a meeting far far far TOO LATE FOR IT TO MATTER! SO BLAME ME FOR A QUIRK OF DESTINY! After all, monsters like us, by body or by nature, ARE ALWAYS DESTINED FOR TRAGEDY!

BUT AT LEAST MY WEAK WILL WASN'T WHAT SENT THE OLD MAN INTO HIS PERSONAL HELL! THAT WAS ALL YOU, KAWORUUUU NAAAAAAAGISSAAAAAAAAAAAA!

[Sayo's leg snaps up into an impressive roundhouse kick, one that would probably be enough to knock Kaworu's reckless charge off course... if he wasn't supernaturally protected by his AT field. Clicking her tongue, Sayo slides back through the slowly pooling blood, not caring that she's brushed against a few more tiles as she takes up a Cobra Kai stance and starts bouncing on the balls of her feet.]

[peripheries]

It's not-!

[He throws another hand at her, trying to grab her but it's all fury and no form. Just a mindless attack, like an animal in a trap, lashing out at anything that tries to come near. And every word twists out a violent lash towards her and each one digs the teeth of the trap further in and the pain keeps blinding his eyes and deafening his ears.

Then suddenly it stops. The last syllable of his name echoes in the air and he stills as the final reverberation fades from the room.]

What did you say? How... do you know that?

[His voice is calm, soft even, but almost too calm. Like the stillness of the shore as a tsunami pulls in the tide before the destructive wave comes crashing onto the land.]

[forwantofahorse]

[She remembers Alisaie's lessons—balance in all things. White and black. Front and back foot. Offense and defense. While she's fairly certain that Johnny would mutter unkind things about her magic mentor's teaching style, here, it had merits. She parries Kaworu's wild grab with her arm, sliding out of the way and delivering a knee that would lodge itself in his ribs if he wasn't protected by his AT field. (Some part of her finds no small irony in being foiled by some vaguely defined magical barrier; Shannon betraying her even from beyond the grave.) There's a visceral satisfaction as she sees the kick almost land, a thrill that races through her. Maybe Lawrence-sensei was onto something after all.

And then the brief flare of something resembling a good mood is soured when Kaworu asks his question. Sayo skips back once more, then throws back her head and cackles. She remembers the look on Forneus's face as he cast her out while she was scrambling to fix the ritual, to save him too, find a way to take the person who was actually worth something with her rather than just the fragmented soul of a worthless furntiure being returned to a different abyss escaping.]

Oh, only because your little screwup stranded my soul and Forneus's whole self in his own personal hell! We had PLLLLLLLLLENTY of time to discuss how, exactly, we ended up in such a dismal situation between dodging gunfire and grenades!

cw: broken bones, light emeto, death seeking

[peripheries]

[The next blow lands as her words wash over Kaworu, seeping into every fold of his mind, every beat of his abormal heart, and obscuring the light of his soul.

It catches him in the ribs and there's a sickening crack as they break as easily as twigs and stumbles sideways, colliding heavily into the wall. He gags, heaving up a little bile and water into the blood, reacting more to her words than the pain. He's used to physical pain as baseline for existence. There's no reaction when there's a few more small little cracking noise, starting soft and then growing louder as his ribs realign and heal.]

I know.

[The words are like blood in his mouth, metallic and thick, and as though they just fall from his mouth.]

I know it's my fault. I just... [His shoulders shake a little and he throws himself against the wall again, hard enough that it makes a noise that echoes in the room.] I just don't understand how if it's my fault... how he could... still say that he cares for me. That he loves me.

[The words end with a ragged, pained, tone. A hiss that's holding in a howl underneath. Then Kaworu approaches Shannon... Sayo, once more, slowly like he's not poised to attack but instead like he can barely stand and might collapse at her feet.]

Tell me how you got out. Tell me more about where he is. Tell me anything. And you can do what you want. You can kill me.

I don't care.

[The last sentence is so soft that it betrays itself. Of course he cares. He's terrified that if he ends up deep in that ocean again, he'll never return. Never see the Old Man saved, never train with Gideon again, never get to have Midoriya sleepover, never learn from Teacher again, never watch another film with Harrow again, never get to make Paul smile again.

...But he needs this. More than anything.]

[terriblepurpose]

[In some hour long after this, Paul will return to the moments he stood in stilled observation as if confronting the actions of a stranger. It could not have been him who stood by, as Sayo vented her reeking bile. It could not have been him who let the exchange spiral out with his head slightly tilted, expression remote and thoughtful, as Kaworu drew out a poisonous fountain of information with his artless vulnerability.

Then Kaworu hits the wall, and emptiness fractures into cold fury to the sound of his fragile ribs snapping out of and back into place. The blue of his eyes ignites and spreads, virulently bright, and he steps between the two of them as Kaworu finishes speaking.]

Enough.

[The snap of a thrown knife, a broken hyoid bone, a command like a lashing chain. It echoes more than it should in this room.]

She's lying. [Flat and soft, a perverse, vicious gentleness.] Because you think it's your fault, don't you, Sayo? Your fault that Kaworu didn't listen to you. Your fault you left Merlinus behind.

Was it? [He cocks his head, curiously.] Where did you leave him, pyrite witch?

[forwantofahorse]

[Even if Paul's words hadn't made every nerve in Sayo's body lock up, she would've stopped when she saw that look in Kaworu's face. The pleading, the need in his voice-

It reminds her of that night where she plead with her reflection, shattered across the floor, for Battler to come back.

The brutal, sadistic glee that had burst forth from her wellspring of pain washes out to sea when the tide of blood recedes, and it leaves behind only the dull ache it had been trying to bury. Sayo's unhinged grin falls from her face and she staggers as if she had been the one struck in the chest as her frenzied strength leaves her, and she clutches her arm (as if reaching for someone who isn't there, the one person who could understand the depths of her pain because he was her), looking away from Kaworu.]

I...

[Her throat closes up. What can she say? Paul's right. It's her fault that Forneus was still in the twisted realm of all his worst fears made manifest. Her fault that the ritual had failed. Her fault for being the one who was too late this time.]

He's in his worst nightmare, Kaworu. I'm sorry. Every possible thing he feared that his home would become came true in that abyss, and...

It was my soul- no, part of my soul that was stuck there. Only the parts that could fit the mold of the Golden Witch. So... why not play to part? Enact the ritual. Gather the power. Let the twisted gameboard self-destruct when midnight rang out, letting us go free.

It didn't work. Of course it didn't work. Shabby Sayo Yasuda is pyrite at best, never true gold. And besides that, we didn't have the power to see it through.

Except... He used the magic of Beatrice against me. Forneus usurped what little we had cultivated in my failure of a ritual to send me back to the realm above. It's easier to send a fractured soul across the barrier between realms than a whole person, after all. He- he saved me, and I...

[Tears fall from Sayo's eyes, mixing with the blood.]

And I hate him for it. We could've found some miracle, a way to keep going or try again, or, or-

But that stupid, stupid bird left himself behind to rot and gave a villain like me the light so that I could ruin the lives of my best friend and the victim of my own mistakes. And no matter how hard I think, I can't... I can't do anything to save him.

I know he wanted me to look after you, and yet, [Sayo chokes on her own laughter,] here I am, kneeing in your ribs. What a horrid, spiteful creature.

[She's silent for a few moments more. Then, still refusing to look Kaworu in the eyes, she says,] ...and don't...

Don't say that.

Don't say you don't care.

I convinced myself of the same thing, when I lost everything. But that wasn't- it wasn't true. There's always something to care about, no matter how much you wish it otherwise.

And there's... always someone to care about you. Despite everything.

[peripheries]

[When she breaks, there's a moment where savagery takes over. He knows where Sayo hurts and he can can aim a perfect shot right at her weak spot. Paul identified the target and now he can swoop in for a killing blow.

This is her fault. This stupid witch's fault and she tried to make it seem like it was his fault to spare herself the pain. It's such a pathetic thing that humans do. They do whatever they can to avoid pain. Stupid girl. Stupid witch.

Kaworu steps closer, boxing her in between himself, Paul and the wall. She couldn't run if she wanted to. It would be so easy to activate his AT Field and crush her. There would be the satisfying sensation and sound of her bones being crushed and gurgling gasps as her lungs flattened out and then he'd never have to hear her shrill voice ever again.

And he can't do it. He looks into her face and realizes that his face must have looked the same just a few moments ago. There's nothing but pain and guilt etched into every line of her face, clouding her eyes, twisting her mouth. It's hard to look at, it makes him sick, it makes a sensation in his stomach twist like it's full of snakes. It takes him a bit to realize that it's pity.

"And there's... always someone to care about you. Despite everything." Kaworu wants to argue that but all he can think about is the words written on the page by a bird so thinly tethered to reality that she was almost more of a specter than anything else: "welcomed, and well-loved". He still does not understand how the Old Man came to love him, or why, but it's the only time he'd ever heard those words and he'd do anything to hear them again.

So as much as he wants the satisfaction and catharsis from causing Sayo pain, instead he finds his heart opening against his will. It will probably hurt. It will probably make him suffer through the guilt he's been trying to keep under control like a rabid animal trapped within him. It probably won't make him feel better. But... it might be the only change he has to hear those words again.

Wading through the blood, he approaches her. For a second, he only gazes at her, coldly, before he reaches out a hand to her. A small, pale peace offering.]

Just tell me everything you know. I don't care if it's your fault and I don't care if you're here. He'd save you over himself even if you begged him not to. That's his nature. I just... I have to save him. I have to. I don't care if you tell me it's impossible, just tell me everything you know.

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul observes Sayo's attempt at amends from a remove of only one step, his fierce expression softening to one of reserved patience as she unfolds this new version of her story. He nods, here and there, a slight incline of acknowledgment for this fact and that explanation. The only reaction not of a piece with his composure is the twitch at the corner of his mouth when she calls herself a horrid, spiteful creature, a gleam of something not wholly kind in his eyes when he tilts his head.

Then Kaworu steps forward, and Paul expects nothing in particular, so there's no surprise to ripple through him at his offer of grace to the volatile girl in front of them.]

Kaworu is right.

[The undercurrent of precisely calibrated coldness in the gentle tones of his sympathy is gone as if it wasn't there to begin with, leaving only the brush of compassion. Paul softens with the words, sadness-tinged warmth thawing his gaze as he sets a hand on Kaworu's shoulder and, in the same moment, offers his other alongside the angel's to Sayo.]

It wasn't your fault. [He looks to Kaworu.] It wasn't yours, either. Don't hate him for thinking you were worth saving. That you are worth saving.

And I care what happens to you. [A flicker of something deeper, blood-soaked, before he returns to Sayo, composed once more.] We can bring him back, together. I know that we can.

[forwantofahorse]

[It was only yesterday when Sayo took several hundred megatons of military-grade explosives to her relationships with Jessica, Ange, and everyone who made the mistake of caring about her at the Clockhouse. The wound is still open, seeping black bile into every crevice of her being.

"Don't hate him for thinking you were worth saving."

Sea salt pours into the gaping hole at those words, and Sayo physically recoils from them, at the agony of being seen and accepted despite it all. She didn't deserve it. She was a monster, she was furniture, she was-

She was thinking those exact thoughts when she made the decision to kill sixteen people unless a miracle occurred.

(Salt rubbed in a wound may sting, but it also purifies.)

If Sayo kept on spiraling this path of self-hatred, of solipsistic loathing, would it all happen again? Would she come to loathe everything that Trench had given her with its twisted generosity, the new life she'd lived?

Beatrice rails against her, insisting she doesn't deserve forgiveness. And she's right, she doesn't. What Sayo has done, the future that she condemned Ange to, the past she irrevocably tainted for Jessica, cannot be undone. But she's reminded of the essence of Kainé's words, their tearstained conversations with one another as they saw too much of themselves reflected in the other:

You don't need to deserve forgiveness to receive it anyways.

She needs to try and make herself believe that, in the coming days. Sayo wipes her tears, sniffling.]

...in that world, I was Beatrice. The Golden and Endless Witch. It was the only part of my "self" that remained after how badly I had fractured my soul to suit my own purposes.

And Beatrice "existed" there too. She is the Endless Witch, one who governs the return and passing between life and death. In Forneus's abyss, no one could truly die. It was an eternal war, where after dying you would return to life after a short time.

So Beatrice "existed" in the rules of that world. It was still malleable, based on dreams and nightmares and the stories Forneus told himself. Which meant I could impose Beatrice's story onto it.

[Hopefully Paul and Kaworu are able to follow all this low-concept metanarrative bullshit. It may be Sayo's expertise, but it might be a little more difficult for anyone who wasn't crazy in the same way as her to parse.]

Here's how it goes. Over the course of a single day, a ritual sacrifice is conducted to resurrect Beatrice. At the end, when Beatrice is returned, she has the power to end the world and create a paradise in its place. The story ends there. The gameboard is packed up, the players are set free. For another game, hypothetically, but in this case a reckoning can be postponed indefinitely, and Forneus can return to Trench.

[She snorts.]

Of course, it's not as simple as that. The thirteen sacrifices can't be anybody. They have to be "named characters within the story." Important people with the power to influence the narrative.

As you can imagine, knocking off thirteen of them in a single day was a tall order for a weakened and half-Corrupt bird and a barely-present witch.