SOMETHING DEAD THAT DOESN'T KNOW IT'S DEAD.
» THE CITY — INTRODUCTORY NOTES
Now that Halloween is just around the corner, the city is starting to come alive with seasonal cheer. You start to spot decorations scattered around the city: plastic skeletons sitting on benches, jack-o-lanterns decorating front stoops, and even a few places in the park near City Hall where the trees themselves have been decorated. It's clear that the autumn season is in full swing and the city is making the most of it.
From the morning of October 19, you also start to notice flyers hung up around the city that advertise the local university's homecoming Halloween party. They're cheerfully decorated much the same as the newsletter that was delivered to residents earlier in the month, and they're hung from light poles, pinned to bulletin boards, and occasionally fluttering on front stoops of apartment buildings. There might even be one taped to your door when you open it in the morning.
The flyer announces that the Halloween party will begin on October 22 and will run through October 31. It runs every night from sunset to midnight, and residents are encouraged to attend in costume! If they have their own costume, perhaps found at the Halloween Superstore, that's perfect—if they don't have a costume, though, one will be provided to them by the party organizers. Doesn't that just sound like fun? And the flyers really are everywhere, and that makes it hard not to take notice—but once you take notice, you really can't stop noticing.
Indeed, once you read one of the flyers, you just can't help but read the flyer every time you encounter another one. And every time you read one, you find yourself feeling a little more curious about the party being advertised. Will it be anything like the Halloween I know? you may think. Or, I don't even know what Halloween is, I wonder what it'll be like. It's not quite enough to compel you to pay a visit to the address on the flyer, which is one of the dorm buildings on the university campus, but it's definitely enough to get you thinking about Halloween. Maybe you ought to go find a costume…
But Halloween parties and costumes are not all you're thinking about. It's easy enough to write off at first, as tricks of the light or a figment of your imagination: flickers of shadow at the corner of your eye, cold spots in your apartment, creaking footsteps in your empty living room. There's nothing there when you turn your head to look, nothing there when you flick on the lightswitch to see if someone's in your house—but somehow, that doesn't reassure you.
By the evening of October 21, every resident in the city has been visited by some sort of entity haunting their house, and every resident of the city has been left a gift: a dorm room key, each differently numbered. You may find the key in your pocket, or on your bedside table, or in your favorite coffee mug.
Should you decide to attend the party, it will be up to you to decide: Is this just the City getting in the spirit of the season? Or is it something more… malevolent?
The flyers will be strewn about the city in various locations beginning on October 19. Characters who read them will find themselves feeling oddly compelled to go check out the advertised Halloween party, which will run from October 22 to October 31 between sunset and midnight. For the most part this will just feel like a sense of curiosity about the party, and astute characters may be able to pick up on the fact that they're being emotionally manipulated a bit.
Characters who choose to go can wear a costume of their choosing from the Halloween Superstore, or the City will provide one if they don't have a costume of their own yet. (Read on for more information about how characters can get their hands on a costume!)
Lastly, every character will find a dorm room key somewhere on their person before the party starts on October 22. This key may or may not correspond to a room in the dorm where the party is being held—of course, characters are not obligated to use the key, but they may want to know what's hiding behind those closed doors.
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ALL THESE GHOSTS COME STREAMING DOWN.
» THE CITY — GETTING THE PARTY STARTED
On the morning of October 22, every device in the city starts to buzz.
The screen illuminates, displaying a white page not unlike the orientation survey that welcomed you into the city. Unlike the orientation survey, though, there are no questions—only a single phrase in bold, dark text. THE GOOD OF THE MANY, it says, with a single "OK" button below.
For a minute, nothing else happens. You try to turn the device off, but the screen stays lit; you try to reboot the device, but the screen stays lit. It seems that the only way to get rid of the screen is to press the button.
…Have you done this before? Or are you having déjà vu?
At sunset that same day, the Halloween party will open for the first time. The party's entrance is located on the ground level of a large three-story dorm building in the western half of the university campus. The double doors into the building are fully decorated with folded-paper bats and ghosts, cotton batting pulled apart to make spiderwebs, and a cut-out sign that says "HAUNTED HOUSE" in bright red, dripping-blood letters. The decor looks almost… corny, hokey in a way that can't possibly be threatening. Right?
But the decorated double doors aren't the only way that residents may enter the party. Of course, the organizers would prefer that you use the front doors, but if you'd prefer not to, they have other ways of getting you inside.
After the party begins on October 22, any door in the city that you walk through has the potential to become a door into the first level of the dorm building. You may exit your apartment and find yourself standing in the darkened lobby; you may walk out of the bathroom and run right into a handful of cotton spiderwebbing. Unfortunately, there's nothing to indicate whether or not a door might lead to the party until you're through it—and once you're through it, there's no turning around. The only way out, as they say, is deeper in.
Were you wearing a costume in preparation for the party? Fantastic, you'll keep that costume on! But if you weren't wearing a costume, don't worry—the party's organizers have you covered. You look down and find that no matter what you were wearing before, you are now wearing a costume of some kind. Maybe it's one you would have chosen for yourself, or maybe it's totally not to your taste. If you truly hate it, you can try to take it off… although you may not find it easy to remove.
Once the party begins on October 22, as stated above, any door in the city has the potential to become a door that leads directly to the first level of the haunted house. Characters will not be able to tell by any means whether a door is pointed there or not; only once they're fully through the door will they realize that they're actually standing in the lobby of the decorated dorm building and not in whatever room they intended to enter. Once characters are inside, there's unfortunately no way to get out, not without making their way through the haunted house itself.
Whether a character enters the haunted house via the main double doors or through another door somewhere else in the city, they'll need to come in costume. (Their own canon clothes do not count!) If they're already wearing a costume, they can keep it on arrival; however, those who enter the haunted house costumeless will be assigned a costume at random by the city. The actual costume is up to the player's choice. It may end up being something that suits the character, or it may end up being something totally embarrassing—that's completely up to the player.
Regardless, characters will have a difficult (but not impossible) time removing the costume until they have exited the haunted house. This includes both physical difficulty (feeling as though the costume is fused to their skin, feeling physical resistance to undoing zippers/buttons, etc.) and mental difficulty (an overwhelming sense of dread or vulnerability). Characters are able to overcome both of these difficulties to remove the costume if they're dedicated enough; the clothes they were originally wearing may be still on under the costume or might be awaiting them at home when they return.
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THEY GO TO GROUND AND ROT.
» THE HAUNTED HOUSE — LEVEL 1
CONTENT WARNINGS: One image containing fake spiders, mention of spidery feelings; mention of zombies (but no images)
The ground floor of the dorm is decorated much how one might expect a haunted house at a university to be decorated. The entrance to the haunted house proper is through a tunnel of cotton spiderwebs filled with little plastic spiders, so narrow that it forces you to hunch down and squish together to get through. Although it feels claustrophobic, and you may imagine the sensation of little spider legs crawling over your body, once you make it through the tunnel it becomes clear that the spiders never actually moved. Whew!
The tunnel lets out into the first-floor dorm, a long (too long?) stretch of hallway with doors leading to rooms on either side. Some of the doors are closed and locked, but many are open, allowing you a glimpse as you pass. As you walk down the hallway, you make sure to peer into each of the rooms. Some of the doors lead to total blackness; others lead to rooms decorated like an elaborate Victorian haunted mansion, and yet others even lead to perfectly normal dorm rooms, like someone forgot to get around to decorating. And sometimes—not every time, but often enough—when you peer into one of the rooms, there's something peering back.
Most of the frights you get on the first floor come in the form of animatronics, realistic-looking ones that jump out at you as you pass and give you a fright. There's a man with a bloody knife, or a zombie with flesh hanging from its teeth, or a clown with sharp, venomous-looking fangs—they leap out of the doorways with a startling quickness, but never come close enough to touch. They just brandish their weapons, then retreat back into the room they came from as if satisfied with the scare they've given.
There are also a handful of real scare actors on the first floor as well, perhaps even some faces you recognize. They lurk in the darkened rooms and leap out with growls or shrieks, then chase you a few meters down the hall before leaving you to run away. Just like the animatronics, though, they never get close enough to touch or harm you—they just want to get your blood racing.
The rest of the scares come from paintings that abruptly change form to show a ghost's face, or candles that swoop down across your path and then move back up. And behind it all are the spooky sounds of groans and screams and tearful begging, a solemn soundtrack to your trip through the haunted house.
Oddly, you never do see a speaker. And even more oddly still, none of the rooms on the first floor match the number of the key you're holding…
The first level of the haunted house consists of fairly cheap scares, mostly relying on animatronics, voiceover tracks, and tricks of the light or optical illusions to deliver scares to the residents. Players should feel free to use their imaginations to come up with potential scares or animatronics—think something moderately more scary than Haunted Mansion but less than Halloween Horror Nights. The animatronics may feature enemies or monsters from characters' home worlds, or may be simply generic creatures you would find at a Halloween store.
In addition, the first level is also populated by characters working as scare actors. These characters may be those who attended Robby and Tsuruno's house party, or may simply be characters with a sense of humor who enjoy making other characters jump and shriek a little. Either way, these scares are harmless and non-contact. The scare actors won't harm anyone going through the haunted house, even if they do a little chasing down the hall.
Although the hallway looks oddly long and is perhaps a bit more winding than it ought to be, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly odd about the dorm building itself. Characters may, however, find that the trip through the haunted house feels shorter when they're accompanied by another.
For characters who don't wish to venture up the stairs to the second level, there is a well-hidden emergency exit tucked out of sight behind the staircase that leads upward. This is the opt-out for players who don't wish to engage with the events in the second and third levels of the dorm.
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WE WILL NOT REMAIN UNSCATHED.
» THE HAUNTED HOUSE — LEVEL 2
CONTENT WARNINGS: Generally spooky images including some ghostly ones; mention of hanging. Prompts include violence (such as mutilation) potentially leading to serious injury or death. As always, please warn appropriately!
It's once you reach the second level that you realize something has shifted.
The metal door at the end of the hallway swings shut behind you, and you immediately realize it's far too dark and far too cold. Even with your eyes wide, you can barely make out the shapes of the decorations around you; they are lit mostly by the flickering orange of electric candles and the glow of the emergency exit sign above your head. Your breath condenses into steam as you exhale, and although you rub your hands together, you can't quite seem to gain any warmth. You feel a little bit dizzy and off-kilter, and from the distance you can hear the sound of a voice murmuring in quiet, urgent tones, interrupted by brief bouts of sobbing. You try the door behind you, but it doesn't give: you are stuck here, and must make it out.
The hallway is decorated, but even the same decorations that felt corny downstairs now give this floor an air of discomfort and desperation. As you make your way down the hall, you notice that many more of the doors on this level are open, and in the sickly, dim light cast by the fake candles, you're able to catch glimpses of what's inside: shadowy figures moving in the blackness. These are creatures that seem made of the dark itself, congealed into something more or less resembling a person. There's one sitting at the desk like a good student, its too-long fingernails rasping over the surface as it scratches something into the wood. There's one sitting on the windowsill, its too-long limbs hanging out into the night. There's one hanging from the ceiling, its feet at eye level, swaying slightly in an unfelt breeze. There's one standing dead in the middle of the room and staring straight at you, its eyes two embers in its featureless head.
You lock eyes briefly and the creature starts to move: this ghost is coming after you, and this one means it. There's no animatronic rigging to stop it and pull it back into the darkness of the room, and it's no scare actor that will stop after a few meters of pursuit—no, its hands reach for you, for your hair, your throat, fingers clutching and grasping. You turn and run, but it pursues, and that voice you heard murmuring earlier is now a fever pitch of syllables behind you, half-whispered, half-screamed in a language you can't understand. The noise of it draws more ghosts out from their rooms, and they follow as you sprint down the too long, twisting length of the hallway. You can see the glow of the exit sign at the end lf the hallway, drawing closer as you madly dash for it—
And then you trip. Or maybe you're pushed, you're not sure. You hit the carpet hard and then the ghost is on you, its hands scrabbling at your throat, fingers prodding at your eyes. Of course you fight back—if you don't, you're going to die—but as you fumble blindly for something with which to beat the ghost off, you realize that this ghost has weight to it, that the fingers trying to tear out your throat aren't incorporeal and ghostly but rather the fingers of a pair of very human hands. As you blink, eyes straining in the darkness, the features of the ghost begin to resolve into those of a person.
And it is a person. It's a person you may even know, a friend of yours, a fellow resident of the City. Not a mannequin facsimile, but someone real, someone who fights you with everything in them as you struggle to break free.
Your grasping hand grips something firm, maybe a flashlight or a fire extinguisher, and you swing it as hard as you can at their head. You don't want to, this is your friend, but what choice do you have? After all—it's either them or you.
Once characters enter the second level of the haunted house, those attuned to energy flow will immediately be able to recognize this as a place full of negative ghostly energy. Characters may sneak extremely carefully and quietly through the hallways, avoiding every single ghost; they may be pursued by ghosts, but ultimately make it to the exit, beyond which the ghosts will not pursue; or they may be caught by a ghost (or "ghost") and be forced to fight for their lives.
Not all of the "ghosts" on the second level are truly ghosts. Players may opt to have their characters participate in the event as the considerably more deadly "scare actors" of the second level. Only they won't be acting: to these characters, anyone who passes by in the second-floor hallway (the "partygoer") is an absolute threat that must be dealt with immediately. Scare actor characters will be possessed by an irrepressible need to hunt down and attempt to injure or kill any partygoer or other scare actor they encounter, and can only be stopped by either death (of either the partygoer or the scare actor) or being knocked out and removed from the hallway.
These characters may also be those who attended Robby and Tsuruno's Halloween house party and ended up getting a little too in-character in a negative way (see their plotting post for more information). However, characters do not have to attend the house party in order to participate in this mechanic. Any character who enters the haunted house can become a second-floor ghost if the player so desires.
Either the scare actor or partygoer may be seriously injured or even die. If this happens to the partygoer, the haze of bloodlust will immediately lift from the scare actor and reveal to them what they've done. (If the scare actor is knocked out or dead, obviously this realization will take place after they've returned or regained consciousness.) Killing and death as a part of the October event is not subject to murder or death consequences.
If a character chooses to sneak through the second floor and avoid the ghosts, and does so by entering any of the decorated dorm rooms, they may find shorthand messages scratched into the desks, closets, or doors. These messages might just be names, familiar ones belonging to people from home, or might say things like HELP ME or ITERATION 4█ or LOOK BEHIND THE APOCALYPSES. Characters may also find small, non-magical, recognizable personal effects belonging to people from their home worlds, tucked into drawers or kicked under the bed or in some otherwise unobtrusive location, easily overlooked.
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WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY, SET SOMETHING ON FIRE.
» THE HAUNTED HOUSE — LEVEL 3 AND CONCLUSION
After the second level of the haunted house, the only way to go is up… assuming you survived, that is. Exhausted and battered, you make your way up the stairs—perhaps alone, perhaps with a friend, or perhaps dragging the unconscious body of your assailant-friend—and let yourself into the third-floor common area.
This is where the Halloween party is taking place! Congratulations, you made it! There's a bass-heavy soundtrack throbbing in the background, and the room is decorated once again in the cheesy Halloween decor of the entryway. A large casket full of ice holds beers and sodas, and a table in the middle of the room bears all sorts of spooky snacks: peeled-grape "eyeballs," candy corn "teeth," sour gummy worms in brownie dirt, and any other kind of snack one might imagine.
If you made it through the haunted house with a friend, you will find a letterman jacket in your favorite colors, with your name embroidered on the back, hanging on a peg on the far wall of the room. You can take it with you now, or when you go home, or you can leave it on the peg forever—it's your choice, but it is a symbol of having survived the haunted house, so it might be nice to have. Don't you think?
You may have to do this again, you realize. Now that the doors in the city occasionally open straight into the haunted house, there's no telling how many times you'll have to survive this before the Halloween party draws to its close. Maybe you do need a beer after all…
Oh, and you still don't know what dorm room that key goes to. Maybe you had better just hang onto it for now.
The topmost floor of the dorm building, the third floor, is where the "party" part of the Halloween party is taking place! The food and drink is abundant and, of course, free. There's just about any type of drink or Halloween-themed snack imaginable, so characters can help themselves. When they're through partying, there's an outside staircase that leads directly from the common room back down to ground level.
Characters who survive the haunted house in a group of two or more will find that that there is a custom-made letterman jacket with their name on the back, perfectly their size, hanging on a coat rack on the far side of the room. While wearing this jacket, characters will be less susceptible to the scares in the haunted house, and the ghosts of the second floor will not pursue them as intently (although it has no effect on scare actor characters). To any characters who are particularly sensitive to this sort of thing, the jackets do have a moderate protective effect against various negative status effects, so to speak; this effect does not diminish after the event is over. Characters can only get one jacket, their first time through the haunted house; subsequent trips through will not result in additional jackets.
The dorm room key is not a usable item during the October 2023 event, but will become usable in November and December, so characters are advised to not lose them.
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WILDCARD.
The city is by no means small, and there are plenty of things for you to see. There's no rush in exploring, so feel free to take your time looking around and peering into various nooks and crannies and alleyways—and don't worry, you're not very likely to find anything peering back.
If none of the above prompts appeal, feel free to check out the Locations and Maps pages and write your own freestyle prompt using one or many of the available locations.
This month's event headers come from "Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede," a poem by Richard Siken.
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citylogs2023-10-19 09:00 pm
no subject
he hears what kaveh says. thinks about midnight, fangs bared and aiming for heine's throat; thinks about alhaitham, dodging heine's attempts to knock him back. it's true that there's something unusual about it, this time around. ]
I didn't go to the house party. Lucky for everyone, I guess. I'd probably fucking—have killed someone. [ at least he'd had a choice about going to the house party, and heine had chosen to stay home and be good. judging by the way the people who did go were affected, he can only imagine what might have happened to him: the dog on the loose, tearing in a rampage through the haunted house. oh, the body count he would leave behind. ]
So, what? People weren't enthusiastic enough about going to the last few, so now we don't have a choice?
[ he tips his head back against the cushions. heine is so tired. ]
no subject
that is the reason why hope exists, however - to make room, and light.
kaveh tips back the rest of his drink. immediately, his gaze casts over to look for another. but his shoes are on the ground, and the sprawl of the couch is a little too comfortable. it's with a groan that he pulls his feet onto the couch proper, and nudges heine's legs gently to the side so that he can slip his onto the upholstery. ]
Something like that. But could you blame the experimenters? They have their proof of concept; the participation rate, if you can call it that, would have been much higher this experiment round. [ kaveh's grim as he leans his head against the back of the couch. the world seems altogether too bright, and too fast. ] ... sorry, I shouldn't use those terms. I sound almost like one of my old Herbads. Am I bringing back terrible memories for you?
no subject
kaveh's feet nudge at heine's thigh. he sits up a bit, then takes kaveh by the ankle to pull his legs out across heine's lap. they're here, they're a little drunk. may as well. he cups one hand under a heel and pushes his thumb gently into the pressure point on the sole of one foot, almost idly, like he's keeping his hands busy as he talks. ]
No. [ the bank had been terrible memories. the mall had been terrible memories. what kaveh's said is nothing in comparison. ] You're not wrong. They'd want more data, and that means more people. It isn't a good experiment if your sample size is too small to give a meaningful spread of results.
[ heine pauses, then adds, ] Do you... are there things you want to know? About me. My... history. [ there's no accusation in his tone at all, just open curiosity as he gazes over at kaveh. it isn't the first time that kaveh has said something and then immediately wondered if it made heine uncomfortable. ]
no subject
where did they make them like heine? no, it has nothing to do with the experimentation. this is heine, wholly heine.
still: ]
Well, the first thing I'd like to know from your background is how you've gotten so good at foot massages. [ kaveh tips his head forward to look at heine, properly so. ] Aside from that, there are things. I won't lie. I am a child of Sumeru. Our sin is that we let curiosity lead us. Nobody from Sumeru could claim otherwise. Part of it is scholarly curiosity - why was it that you were experimented on? What were they trying to achieve? But the other part is, well, personal. I'd like to know more about you. We are the grief and the pain that we carry, so it follows that I want to know what it is you feel.
no subject
[ so he'd practiced on himself and eventually got pretty good at finding all the places to apply pressure to relieve tension he didn't even know was there. it's a skill very few people know he has.
heine tilts his head a little as his thumbs keep working over kaveh's foot. ] It's not really that I was experimented on... we were the experiment. Lily and Arthur, Lott, Giovanni... we were grown in beakers. The cells were spliced together, half from Dr. Einstürzen and half from the most successful previous batches. [ his mouth tightens briefly, but it's not upset at recounting the memories, just the general anger of it all. ] She wanted good weapons. Strong, fast, quick to heal, obedient. Our implants, the collars would have made us slaves to our leaders when the time came. She just wanted power, that was all. Wanted to know how far she could push the limits.
[ his other thumb rubs absently over the bone of kaveh's ankle. ] Pretty far, as it turns out.
[ heine drags his gaze up to look over at kaveh again. it's not easy to talk about it, but he trusts kaveh as much as he trusts almost anyone. ]
Does that answer the why?
no subject
pretty far, as it turns out, heine says, with the quiet wryness of a man accounting for a story of his afternoon's walk and not of the atrocities that had been enacted upon him. he is still massaging kaveh's foot. kaveh takes another long draught of what's left of his glass. he leans down just enough to let it heel against the couch - and then grabs what's left of his bottle. ]
It's not an answer that pleases me, by any account, but it does. It's a motivation that I understand and condemn. [ kaveh swirls his bottle. he uncaps it. ] Do you hate her? The one who did this to you - to all of you.
no subject
That's... complicated. [ his brow furrows, considering. ] I hated and loved her when I was a kid. She was the source of all my nightmares and also the only person who loved me, other than my siblings. I thought of her as my mother.
[ heine still remembers the promises angelika had made, before their death matches: i'll love whichever of you does well. heine had often done well, so he had often been loved. he recognizes now how fucked up that is, for a mother's love to be predicated on the kind of killing machine her child can be. (insofar as angelika was ever a mother and heine was ever her child; he knows, now, that he was never her child the way most people are someone's child. he was not born of her, except in the basest, most scientific way.) ]
When I killed her—did I tell you that? I killed her when I escaped the lab. When I killed her I felt almost sorry about it, but I had no choice. And then for the next... eight, ten years I thought she was dead, so there was no reason for me to hate or love her.
[ kaveh is, of course, savvy enough to notice that heine said he thought she was dead, not that she was in fact dead. ]
no subject
[ kaveh says this. it's kaveh saying this. but kaveh's voice feels so entirely far away. in this very moment, this is where kaveh is: a house built for three, light cascading from the high-arched moorish windows sifting through blond hair like a ravishing waterfall. a man laughing, a woman's quiet smile. kaveh pouring over blueprints, hands sifting through pages that never seemed to end as he imagined what buildings would be made from these. the light extinguished one day. it had gone away. it would come back in little, flickering wisps, but never again with the fullness of its intensity or the comfort of its warmth.
they say in the beginning, the love you receive is the love that sets. when love is unreliable and you are a child, you assume that it is the nature of love – its quality – to be unreliable. children do not find fault with their parents until later. kaveh has never found fault in his parents. he has only ever found fault with himself. but what must it be like to have a love that you fear? a nightmare in one hand outstretched and a love in the other so deep that even the torment must have seemed like affection. heine had killed her, that mother of his. heine had killed her, and there had still been room in his heart for grief.
what kind of love set for heine that day? kaveh closes his eyes. the back of his eyelids burn. he opens them again. ]
If you had thought she was dead, then something must have come along to challenge that thought. Was she alive? Did she come for you?
cw very vague mention of suicide attempt
She sent my brother for me. Giovanni. [ there's a curious quality to the way heine says his name, both bitter and affectionate. affection for the boys they were together all those years ago; bitterness for the man he became, under einstürzen's thumb. ] Lily and I both left someone alive that day, apparently. She left Giovanni, and I left Einstürzen.
[ it had taken giovanni the better part of a decade to darken heine's doorstep after he flung himself from that underground hellhole and out into the light. ten years that heine had been searching for a way back in so he could lay his ghosts to rest. imagine his surprise when they turned out not to be ghosts at all. ]
Giovanni came to tell me that our mother was still alive and that she was still at work in the underground. That she would achieve her goals one way or another. —That's about where I was when I woke up on the train here. Trying to figure out how to get back in and put it right.
[ heine looks over at kaveh, meeting his gaze steadily. ]
And that's the grief, I guess. The pain that shaped me. Sometimes I hoped the weight of it would kill me, but I knew it wouldn't, because that was the first thing I tried when I got out. [ denied even the release of death, heine had understood that he didn't deserve to die until he had righted the wrongs that bore him. ]
no subject
and the first thing that heine did upon releasing himself from the bowels of that hell was to attempt to kill himself.
the sound of a heart breaking can be a little like this: the clink of a bottle, the seething draw of a bow-arched breath, kaveh's fury like hearthfire as he nurses it. he is leaning forward. ]
Did you think that it's your fault that you left her alive? [ to make things right, heine had said. for whom? kaveh wants to ask - for what? and will it make it right for heine? ]
no subject
[ heine pauses, thinking. there's a part of his logical brain that understands that he was just a child being forced to make very adult decisions, but there's also a larger, noisier part of him that feels like it's all his fault. ]
I asked for the upgrade that killed Lily. I wanted it, because I was stupid and cocky and thought I could play the game better than all the scientists could. [ there had been no suspicion in him when einstürzen agreed so easily. heine had just thought his own performance convincing, hadn't considered that she might have been playing him too. ] And because the upgrade worked, she didn't need the others anymore. So they died because of me, and Lily died because of me.
[ with all those deaths on his hands—along with badou's brother, who heine doesn't mention but is thinking of—it's hard not to feel like he has some fault in this, some responsibility. ]
If I'd killed her... it wouldn't have brought my siblings back, but at least she wouldn't have been able to hurt anyone anymore.
no subject
[ kaveh's expression is striken. he says heine's name like a knell. ] No. You were made to make that decision because a woman who called herself your mother had a nightmare in one hand and love in the other. No, that was no experimentation; that was manipulation, a game that was played with your lives. Your life, Heine.
[ because a plant charged to grow in a pot will grow into the shape of its pot. because a child grown in a world where safety is but an illusion is a child who grows up believing that all decisions will lead to culpability. the other children did not die because of heine. they died because the pursuit of science was placed above the sanctity of life.
kaveh hadn't even known his nails have dug into the palm of his hand until he feels the raw rub of them there, the lingering pain. ]
What would it have cost you to kill her again, Heine?
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of course, kaveh also has a way of getting right to the heart of the matter. when it comes to anything except his own feelings, his insight is incisve, leaving everything bared to the light. heine is no different, and he feels flayed open by the question, but he has never lied to kaveh and he doesn't intend to start now.
he grips kaveh's ankle in one hand and says, ] I've never imagined a version of that where I survive.
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heine grips kaveh's ankle. kaveh is moored by it. his hand is warm. has anyone told heine that, kaveh wonders - has anyone told heine that he is made of the warmth, and all that is good? has anyone told heine the magnitude of what would be lost if he were to be lost? ]
I am furious, [ kaveh says, his breath catching. he is crying, he realises. it trails down his cheek like wayward stars, ] Heine. Truly. She could die a hundred deaths, and it would not amount to what would be lost if you were lost. I am furious that you have not known this.
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maybe only this: kaveh is leaning forward anyway, so heine lets go of his ankle and reaches to hold him instead. ]
I'm beginning to learn. [ he rests his cheek against the top of kaveh's head, because this embrace is as much for heine as it is for kaveh. he has spent most of his adult life refusing this sort of physical reassurance as a small kindness he doesn't deserve, but little by little heine has started to realize that he doesn't need to deny himself everything that makes life worth living.
so he allows himself this much, his arms around kaveh's shoulders, his cheek on kaveh's hair. ] I think—I think I'm starting to believe that.
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[ the words are half-bitten, half-truncated. they are all fury.
because this is heine, who in his darkest moments only ever sought to hurt himself. who hasn't ever raised a fist without having his claws turned back on himself in turn. kaveh knows this about him. this is why it's so difficult to swallow. kaveh refuses to swallow it.
he presses the crown of his head into heine's cheek. he holds him there. ]
Is it so difficult for you to imagine that I would be similarly moved by imagining you like so? I'll say this until you do believe it, Heine: you cannot be lost, not even for a moment. I won't bear it.
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[ he holds kaveh close, for once letting himself relish the simplicty. to hold someone and to be held—it's the kind of thing that heine two years ago would have scoffed at, would never have wanted. on the good days that heine, the one whose ascetic lifestyle of self-deprivation left him starved of human contact, is someone to whom this heine feels no connection. (there are bad days, still, and often. but the good days are more.)
he makes a noise that's half amusement, half just raw emotion. ] But I'm not going anywhere. I promised, and I'm one hard-to-kill bastard.
[ he promised twice: once in the half-drunk darkness with his and badou's hands clasped together between them, once in the bitter light of evening after a screaming fight. heine had meant it both times, but it was the second time that now feels like a tattoo on the inside of his ribs, indelible, something he can never erase.
what heine wants to say is that it's okay, or that he's okay. but it isn't, and he's not, but he's trying, and he hopes that kaveh can feel that. ]
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[ kaveh says - good. there isn't another word for it. an entire darshan can spend day and night mulling over the intricacies of the written and spoken word, and there wouldn't be another word like it. good, in all of its forms - that it's okay, that heine's okay. that it isn't okay, that heine is not okay - that heine knows that he is not okay, that he is trying, that kaveh can feel it. in heine's resolve, in the grip of heine's hands, in the way his throat is raw for it. kaveh can tell, that heine has come far. so very far. further than whatever experimentations were meant to make him be - heine has, in fact, remade himself.
kaveh closes his eyes. the tracks of tears remain. the back of his eyelids burn. einstürzen. kaveh will remember that name.
still: ] Then, as you are adjusting to your new reality, let me. Let me care. Just until you wholly can allow yourself to be cared for. If you cannot let yourself, then let me.
[ the way kaveh's hand rakes through heine's hair is full of fierce, unsaid affection. finally, kaveh pulls away. he pulls heine with him. both his hands cup heine's cheeks, scarred fingers holding the contours of heine's jaw, feeling for the warmth there, the weight of his existence. ]
Really. Heine, you have come far. [ kaveh says, earnest. ] I wouldn't have heard you say this when we had first met. Heine, I am proud.
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[ kaveh's hands are warm against his jaw, and heine's arms are still close around kaveh's waist. it's a shockingly intimate position to be in, and yet heine feels at ease. that's how much he trusts kaveh, heine realizes, although not for the first time; that's the extent to which kaveh has already made himself a fixture in heine's life.
he leans back against the couch cushions and just. brings kaveh with him, sitting in heine's lap like it's nothing. it's comfortable. they're drunk. whatever. heine is tired of second-guessing everything he does. ]
I wouldn't hae said it when we first met. [ he huffs a sound that's almost dry amusement. ] When we first met I could barely call Nails my friend and he's been closest to me for seven years.
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in the interim, kaveh's skirts gather along his knees. he sits in heine's lap and leans back into the couch at an angle. it's not a particularly comfortable couch. the springs need work, the upholstery is mediocre, and there isn't enough give in the cushions. kaveh has not been this comfortable all day. one of his hands rest against heine's cheek. the other finally pulls his bottle back to him so that he can uncork it with his teeth. the sound is a resounding, hollow pop. ]
Seven years is a long time to walk the same path as someone. Well, a long time, and remarkably short, too, when compared to the span of a lifetime. [ says kaveh, and tips his head back as he drinks. he considers this. ] I've never asked, have I. How you and Badou met.
cw vague mention of suicide attempt
Me and Badou? [ no, he guesses kaveh hasn't, although that's not surprising in itself. ] The Bishop introduced us.
[ no, no, back up. kaveh wouldn't know who the bishop is, either. ]
After I... jumped, [ he says, very delicately tiptoeing around the reality of what he was actually trying to do at the top of that tower, ] the Bishop found me. He runs a church nearby and he took me there and kept me in the back to recover. [ he's also, technically speaking, heine's older brother, but that's probably a story for another time; they've already dwelt for too long in the underground tonight. ] He and Badou met sometime after Badou's brother died, I think.
[ heine thinks about it, tilts his head. ] He knew we were both alone, so he got us working together.
[ a part of heine thinks, although he's never validated this, that the bishop—ernst rammsteiner—knew that dave died investigating the place that had spit him and heine out into the world, and brought them together for that reason. ]
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kaveh's head tips towards heine. he brings their bottles together again. it's a terribly sloppy gesture, but he is smiling as he does so. ]
To the two of you meeting. [ kaveh says, because it feels like the right thing to say. he feels so warm right now. he wants to say all kinds of things. ] I'm glad, that the two of you were brought together, are together. If two people are alone together, they're no longer lonely, I think.
Say, what did you think of Badou when you first met him? What was your first impression?
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[ it's hard to figure out the right words for how heine was: suicidally depressed, withdrawn, quiet and cutting, wearing his pain like broken glass armor so that no one would come too close. ]
I would— [ starve himself. deny himself sleep, water, comfort, pleasure. self-denial, because he didn't think he had earned the good things; self-harm, because it wasn't like it lasted. ] I had a hard time letting anyone in, I didn't think I deserved friendship or kindness. So we kinda grated at each other at first.
I'm sure he figured out we were friends way before I did, but for me it took years.
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this is love in motion, a pull-and-push of a tugboat between two young men just finding themselves in bodies still too large and too small for the world. heine had been traumatised. and badou had been there. that meant something. it always did. ]
Perhaps it took you years, but they were still years where you were a friend to him, even if you didn't know it at the time. That must've meant the world to him. [ says kaveh, ] Because we've always been more than what we think of ourselves.
Still, I'm glad you let him in. Your life's been better for it, hasn't it?
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I guess he didn't mind it. Still doesn't, probably, since he hasn't kicked me out yet.
[ heine doesn't know if he can rightly say that badou is better for knowing heine, but heine is absolutely better for knowing badou. ]
It's... almost frightening to think about the person I'd be if I hadn't met him.
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