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

[forwantofahorse]

[Kanon's fragment of Sayo's soul fits into "Baphomet" as naturally as a puzzle piece clicks into place in a jigsaw--a piece that was always intended to fit, cut off into from the whole for the sake of eventually being put together back again.

Sayo staggers when she feels the connection flood back in, Kanon returning to his own awareness beyond the dull boredom of being locked within a cage of calcium and blood. Kanon had always been part of her, expressed through smoke and funhouse mirrors, but for the first time it felt as if he could reach through the reflection and touch her, move on his own rather than according to a director's cue.

Or punch her, in this case.

The butterfly swoops away from Sasha's outstretched hand and begins ineffectually diving at Sayo, as if attempting to ram into her with its insubstantiality. She squeaks with surprise, waving it away, and it falls back, bobs up and down as if huffing... and slaps her with the very solid bone that The Necromancer wove into his wing. Not hard enough to hurt, or even to leave a mark; really, it has the same impact as a giant paper fan, but Sayo reels nonetheless.]

Why, you WRETCHED-

Aren't little brothers supposed to RESPECT their older sisters, you pathetic coatrack!?

[Kanon flips away, turning his back slash wings to her. Despite the harshness in Sayo's words, there's a certain... levity. A fondness at finally seeing family again, even if they were face to face as people for the first time.

Sayo's half smile turns into a laugh, much unlike her regular cackle.]

Thank you, Sasha. And...

[A weighty pause, some of the old weight settling back into her expression.]

I'm sorry.

[Clutching her arm (Kanon rolls his antenna in place of eyes), Sayo locks gazes with The Necromancer.]

Down there, in the catacombs, I...

I crossed a line.

I knew all of us were grieving, with the ghosts that place set after us. It was... unbearable. That pressure, the look in their eyes, I...

They left me right before I came here, you know? No, no. That isn't right. [She shakes her head.] I was the one who pushed them away in the first place. And into the path of the reaper, whether I intended to or not.

S- Sorry. This isn't about me. [Sayo brushes a lock of hair behind her ear.] I... I was looking for a way to distract myself from all that pain. All that love. And I thought that you'd yes-and and with me, just like with Ford. Keep the bit going so I wouldn't have to confront it. [A weak laugh.] I was being selfish. I never considered that if she was following you, that... that the catacombs conjured her for the same reason they made those illusions of Battler and George for me.

So... for the third time, um... I'm sorry.

I... I know what I said must've hurt.

[necrolord]

[ He watches her great shining Omen— her other-self, a person bound up in her soul, rendered into the air in smoke and spindly insect legs— try to sock her in the face, and God's expression does something funny. Just for a moment, just for a beat. It looks a little like astonishment, and then Sayo goes fond, and it looks a little like grief.

Then it's gone, bundled in again like a covered wound. She calls him Sasha like they're around a game board, like they're laughing over inconsequential improv and Ford's shit rolls. He cracks a smile to match, but it's hollow.

A good mask, though. A good show of it. He's wrung-out, but it looks almost no different from usual, and that's telling in itself, isn't it? ]

I appreciate that.

[ He says it soft and low. The silence hangs for a long moment, a sudden weight between words. She says, into the path of the reaper. She says, all that pain; all that love. God's levity is hollow, and tired, and patient. He wears a weary little smile like I appreciate that, like an apology politely deflected.

There is something under it. She might begin to sense how vast it is, the ocean behind the smile. It had been at the surface for a moment there, for a glimpse, when he had wrapped his arms around that corpse and clung to her like a man dying. ]

To put a bad situation lightly, I have a lot of ghosts. [ This is hilarious understatement. A lot of things are hilarious only to him, and only in the worst way. ] I've lived with them a while now... some are still fresh. They can feel fresh for a long time... that's the bad news.

[ For a moment the smile seems real, because there is no humor in the slant of it. ]

Nobody reacts well grief. I don't think so, anyway, and I've been making a study of it for a hell of a long time now.

[ It's said like forgiveness. ]

[forwantofahorse]

[There's a reason why deception is an art rather than a science. Twisting your face into the right shape and shifting your voice into the right register could only get you so far. For better or worse, humans could tell when something rang hollow even if they couldn't place their fingers directly on it.

That's why you have to paint your emotions onto the canvas of your lie. The barest hint, a single stroke... enough to fool the other person into thinking that you're telling the truth when you say that you're not fine but you'll get better. A sad twist of the mouth, a shrug and a nod, all signposts of being shaken, but recovering.

And all the perfect lie to cover up the truth of the endless, empty ache inside.

Sayo is particularly practiced at this brand of deception, so when Sasha has that sad twist to his smile, makes that small shrug, she feels suddenly as if she's teetering on the edge of a vast abyss.

She doesn't know him that well. He was just her coplayer and Gideon's weird... uncle? older brother? figure. It's not as if they were close. Part of her says she should leave well enough alone.

The other part of her remembers all those small moments with George and Jessica when she made that exact same expression and plead to the heavens that they'd notice and was never, ever answered.]

The thing about ghosts... [she clutches her shoulder, looking away.] Once they've shown up, they're, er, still there even if it looks like they've disappeared.

Just because the poltergeist's stopped rattling its chains, um, doesn't mean it's not haunting the house anymore, or that it wasn't there before. It's just that the memory's fresher, especially if you convinced yourself that you already exorcised it before it started staring you in the face again.

And if you tell someone else the ghost story... it makes you less crazy, I think. Because it's real to another person now, and they can see it too, and they can go, "wow, living in a place with a ghost really sucks," and that means someone else gets it a little bit even though they're not the one haunted by it.

[A pause.] It might, um, turn out that they're haunted by something similar too.

[A longer pause.] ...shit, that was all hackneyed even by my awful standards, huh? [Sayo laughs nervously.]

[necrolord]

[ Here is the difference between them: she falters, and flusters, and tries with a raw and painful sincerity to say something to him that matters. She peels herself open for the chance that he will catch his reflection in her exposed heart. That it might help him, if he did.

But John knows what he is. That's the sad, old trick of it. No one knows what he is better than he does, bar one person, and she's not even really a person. She's a monster in a box.

He has never needed the mirror; anyone who offers it doesn't really see him, not in his full scope. I have a lot of ghosts is funny because it is blasphemy, full and profound. Against him, against her, against a whole dead and forgotten world. Sometimes he cannot bear Trench for the ways it rubs all three in his face.

He cannot tell her I am every one of my ghosts; I am their sum total; there may be no man left beneath the haunting. She would think he means it like a man and not like a god. She wouldn't comprehend the scale of it. ]

I think it was kind of poignant, actually. [ His smile is a small, sad twist without humor. He has retreated to the other side of that vast chasm between them; on his face, it looks horribly like pity. ] I think you're on to something. There's a power in ghost stories, you know? It matters how we tell it.

Still. [ He is closing off, with the smile and the pity and something cold and faraway behind it all. ] It was a good bit. Rough timing, maybe... but don't beat yourself up on my account.

[forwantofahorse]

[It's only too late that Sayo realizes that she made the exact same mistake that Jessica had, one that chased her to the other side of the abyss that Sasha was fleeing to now.

What rank myopia. Had the Golden Witch, whose core was bitterness, really fallen so far? Into such perverted sentimentality to reflect herself onto everyone else?

But that was always her problem, wasn't it.

Sayo's face falls as The Necromancer tries to keep up the momentum of the bit, not bothering to keep rolling with it.]

...I probably should've learned to stop being so egotistical by now, huh? After everything.

[She can't reach him now, yet she can still apologize for her mistake. He'll know what she means.]

I'm sorry. [There's a difference in quality between that apology and the previous ones that she'd stuttered out in a chain. Those were genuine, but their nature was an intellectual understanding of how she had trespassed, having not known the sacred ground she'd trod upon.

This was wholehearted regret of an error she comprehended all too well.

Sayo considers reaching out one last time... but no, no. That would only go to show one final misunderstanding, one that she could ill afford to make.]

...c'mon. The other team will be back soon.

We need to get the place ready. I'll help.

[An act of service, freely given instead of self-compelled.]