[it's fine, she doesn't care if he does, just. she gets fidgety. it's exactly the size of a sword, that wound, like she got stabbed through the heart.]
Both. [a little shrug.] I don't know. The town was struggling. So we went to look into it. Crick helped us, I saw him getting chewed on by a lamb, and the lamb told me to protect him because it was dangerous.
[ great! just what he wanted for her!!! :unamused: ]
Sounds about right. [ from the little he's gleaned from temenos's memories. he tries to remember if he knows much about crick. ] Sorry, so the lamb that was chewing on this guy told you to then protect him because the world was dangerous? I feel as though the chewing is also dangerous.
[ this is already setting a tone and he doesn't like it. ]
...it wasn't your fault. Remember it wasn't the real Crick, even though it all feels very real. [ gently. but...oh boy. ] What else happened in the forest? How far were you able to get?
Um. [she rubs at her mouth a little.] Pretty far. But a ram showed up, and it was... it was really sick. So I had to kill it, but a bunch of shadow hands came out of nowhere and then Crick sacrificed himself for us, and...
[here she stalls a little, digging her fingers into her arm.]
[ he stops what he's doing, and slowly telegraphing his movements so she can see his hand as it reaches for hers to try and get her to stop digging her fingers into her arm. ]
Sounds like it was hard to watch. [ ...hm. ] Did you get away from the hands and out of the forest...?
[she leaves little crescents in her arm, but he can get her to stop.]
No. [...] I woke up alone.
[there's a storybook panel that drifts by - a couple. nimona walking, and walking, followed by a tawny owl with blue eyes, holding a lantern close, hugging it to her chest. the darkness getting closer, and closer, suffocating, and then - nico's voice.
[ hey. don't fucking insert him into a bad narrative. he looks immediately frustrated that she was alone and he couldn't do anything, and that's not even touching her reaction to ace and what the fuck happened in there.
he's like. not focusing on cleaning her up right now and instead he is holding her hand and his eyebrows are furrowed together. ]
...did... [ gods. he can't even convince her that he'd never say anything like that. not until he understands what happened. all he can do is be supportive and try to walk her through this. ] Where did you go then?
[the thing is, she knows that none of them would say this sort of thing to her. she knows. it just was really, really hard, when she was so alone, and cold, and tired.]
A woman offered me a deal. She said some - stupid whatever about how the light is useless and I belong in the dark, but I don't. I don't belong there either. She just wanted to use me. [there is something fundamentally wrong with her - something so entrenched that she knows it's impossible, really, for anybody on any side to want her. gloreth didn't. ballister didn't.]
And I guess I resisted it, at that point. I don't know how. The light, maybe. I found the others.
[ "that’s who you are, nico di angelo. you are a demigod made up of trauma. your very soul is one of darkness."
"accept that you prefer the darkness. you prefer suffering. you know it is true! your own children prove it! stop denying your nature!"
so anyway, hearing this kind of actively pisses him off for reasons unknown, and by unknown i mean he sees the parallels and he knows nimona's not just darkness in the same way he's not. and she's not all light either. she's nimona. and so... ]
Well, you're right. It was a bunch of stupid whatever because that's not true. You...people have both and light and darkness in them. Even the people you least expect. [ ... ] I'm proud of you for resisting. Especially when it feels like it might be easy not to, sometimes. [ weird how the light can help. ]
...were the others okay when you met up with them again?
[she resisted it, and she should be proud of herself. and maybe she is a little, that she didn't turn there, but more than anything, it just made her feel lonely. she always has to save herself. nobody ever comes for her.
she doesn't answer the first part, staring down at her hands.]
They went through the same thing, I think. We had to stop the shadows from eating Ponta. [...] And then we went to the temple. But. But all three of them had someone. People from home came to help them as ghosts.
[ "and no one came to rescue you. no one came to help you, because no one has before. no one ever cared enough to try..." ]
What were you doing at the temple? [ "could other people's ghosts help you? why. why would this stupid place make you think you were alone all over again?" ] ...were there any other ghosts waiting?
I think... I had this bow. I was holding it when I woke up, and it was heavy. So we thought we should destroy it.
[silence, then:]
No. There weren't. There was a noise, so we went to go check it out, and there was - there was a creature at the end. And it was big and it was in so much pain, and I felt - I felt wrong, like I was going to be sick, but it didn't happen to the rest of them. My lantern didn't - it didn't turn blue like theirs, and I couldn't, I --
[another little flash of a panel, of a creature, wheezing in pain, clearly in misery, but it only looks like that for a second, because then it looks like ace, crumpled on the ground, bleeding and taking his last breaths.]
[ we really do just turn ace into whatever the fuck we want for our trauma.
anyway he again hates it. he is going to really feel this way the entire time she tells him this, because he sees the panel and he doesn't flinch but his expression flickers to something unsettled for a moment. ]
...breathe for a second. [ quiet advice, because he can only imagine the actual panic that came from the situation. especially because, uh, they all know ace died? nico himself actually saw the memory and he doesn't know if nimona did, too, but it makes his fingers twitch a little like he could rip the panel of memories apart. ] It wasn't real. Whatever you had to do, it didn't happen to our Ace.
...did the others...? [ what's the polite way of saying "who put ace out of his misery"? ]
anyway. she didn't see the memory, but it doesn't matter, because he told her. and it was all she could think about, imagining worse and worse and worse. she drags in a breath, but it doesn't really help.]
No. I didn't - you don't understand. [she says, with a little laugh that's just on the edge of hysterical.] I saw that and he asked me to kill him and my light went out.
[it was the last thing she could take. alone, watching everybody else walk through that dark space with the people who loved them. getting to the end, and seeing this creature, seeing ace coughing up blood and asking her, desperately, to end it for him, she couldn't do it. the light - the voice that kept her going, went out.]
his expression doesn't change, but that's mostly from years of practice. he doesn't let her go and he doesn't really move, shifting his head just slightly to look at her again. ]
...and so you did. [ he's a little lost on lights going out and lanterns, but he can sort of get the gist of it. ]
No, I didn't. I couldn't. [her voice breaks a little.] My lantern went out and I lost control of my shape. And I turned on the other three.
[she was so, so lonely. she watched one more person that she loves leave, and it turns out the worst version of it isn't when they think you're a monster, it's when they love you back, and they don't want to leave you.]
[just him being here is the only reason she hasn't thrown herself off a building, so - it helps. it helps a little to talk through it, to get it out where it won't rot.]
The fox guy stabbed me. I asked him to. [she's so noisy about being horrible, about being evil and monstrous, but - she doesn't want to hurt people. not the people who don't deserve it.]
[ really hate that nico is the only one of my characters who understands how therapy works. so he's brushing back her hair and he's holding her and he's frowning into space suddenly realizing why nimona didn't care very much about kogi. ]
Possibly. It's hard to tell what happens in those spaces. What's real and what isn't, and what does and doesn't count as death. [ ... ] I didn't...really tell you about this. When Will, Reigen and I were gone. A lot of the damage Will and I took came from each other. We...lost our shape, too. Turned into other things, and all we wanted to do was hurt each other to try and stop our own hurt.
[ why is he telling her this... ]
...just because it happened in there doesn't mean it's all that would happen here. Or that that's the only ending you can have. I want you to know that.
[yeah sometimes a guy stabs you and you don't really want to see him again even if he did do what you asked him to
she's quiet for a second, as she hears that. familiar. it's familiar, and she guesses that makes sense, considering it was a twisted version of her history.
she just... leans forward, and puts her forehead against his shoulder.]
[ he does his job of petting over her hair carefully and once again trying to hold her up and clean her off and be supportive while he nods to that. he doesn't make her sit up either. ]
It's hard. I know it is. But I'm not about to let you forget it.
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The world Temenos came from. [she says, after a minute.] There was a village, and a forest. And we had to investigate the dark.
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...the dark, or in the dark? [ he says, as if they are two different things and knowing that they actually are. ] What were you investigating for?
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Both. [a little shrug.] I don't know. The town was struggling. So we went to look into it. Crick helped us, I saw him getting chewed on by a lamb, and the lamb told me to protect him because it was dangerous.
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Sounds about right. [ from the little he's gleaned from temenos's memories. he tries to remember if he knows much about crick. ] Sorry, so the lamb that was chewing on this guy told you to then protect him because the world was dangerous? I feel as though the chewing is also dangerous.
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Yeah. Kinda. It was a tough lamb. [...] It's okay. Crick - he's important to Temenos, so I wanted to make sure he...
[hm.]
It didn't matter. We got into the forest and he died anyway.
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...it wasn't your fault. Remember it wasn't the real Crick, even though it all feels very real. [ gently. but...oh boy. ] What else happened in the forest? How far were you able to get?
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Um. [she rubs at her mouth a little.] Pretty far. But a ram showed up, and it was... it was really sick. So I had to kill it, but a bunch of shadow hands came out of nowhere and then Crick sacrificed himself for us, and...
[here she stalls a little, digging her fingers into her arm.]
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Sounds like it was hard to watch. [ ...hm. ] Did you get away from the hands and out of the forest...?
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No. [...] I woke up alone.
[there's a storybook panel that drifts by - a couple. nimona walking, and walking, followed by a tawny owl with blue eyes, holding a lantern close, hugging it to her chest. the darkness getting closer, and closer, suffocating, and then - nico's voice.
"There's no way to rewrite her ending."
she flinches.]
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he's like. not focusing on cleaning her up right now and instead he is holding her hand and his eyebrows are furrowed together. ]
...did... [ gods. he can't even convince her that he'd never say anything like that. not until he understands what happened. all he can do is be supportive and try to walk her through this. ] Where did you go then?
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A woman offered me a deal. She said some - stupid whatever about how the light is useless and I belong in the dark, but I don't. I don't belong there either. She just wanted to use me. [there is something fundamentally wrong with her - something so entrenched that she knows it's impossible, really, for anybody on any side to want her. gloreth didn't. ballister didn't.]
And I guess I resisted it, at that point. I don't know how. The light, maybe. I found the others.
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"accept that you prefer the darkness. you prefer suffering. you know it is true! your own children prove it! stop denying your nature!"
so anyway, hearing this kind of actively pisses him off for reasons unknown, and by unknown i mean he sees the parallels and he knows nimona's not just darkness in the same way he's not. and she's not all light either. she's nimona. and so... ]
Well, you're right. It was a bunch of stupid whatever because that's not true. You...people have both and light and darkness in them. Even the people you least expect. [ ... ] I'm proud of you for resisting. Especially when it feels like it might be easy not to, sometimes. [ weird how the light can help. ]
...were the others okay when you met up with them again?
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she doesn't answer the first part, staring down at her hands.]
They went through the same thing, I think. We had to stop the shadows from eating Ponta. [...] And then we went to the temple. But. But all three of them had someone. People from home came to help them as ghosts.
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What were you doing at the temple? [ "could other people's ghosts help you? why. why would this stupid place make you think you were alone all over again?" ] ...were there any other ghosts waiting?
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[silence, then:]
No. There weren't. There was a noise, so we went to go check it out, and there was - there was a creature at the end. And it was big and it was in so much pain, and I felt - I felt wrong, like I was going to be sick, but it didn't happen to the rest of them. My lantern didn't - it didn't turn blue like theirs, and I couldn't, I --
[another little flash of a panel, of a creature, wheezing in pain, clearly in misery, but it only looks like that for a second, because then it looks like ace, crumpled on the ground, bleeding and taking his last breaths.]
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anyway he again hates it. he is going to really feel this way the entire time she tells him this, because he sees the panel and he doesn't flinch but his expression flickers to something unsettled for a moment. ]
...breathe for a second. [ quiet advice, because he can only imagine the actual panic that came from the situation. especially because, uh, they all know ace died? nico himself actually saw the memory and he doesn't know if nimona did, too, but it makes his fingers twitch a little like he could rip the panel of memories apart. ] It wasn't real. Whatever you had to do, it didn't happen to our Ace.
...did the others...? [ what's the polite way of saying "who put ace out of his misery"? ]
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anyway. she didn't see the memory, but it doesn't matter, because he told her. and it was all she could think about, imagining worse and worse and worse. she drags in a breath, but it doesn't really help.]
No. I didn't - you don't understand. [she says, with a little laugh that's just on the edge of hysterical.] I saw that and he asked me to kill him and my light went out.
[it was the last thing she could take. alone, watching everybody else walk through that dark space with the people who loved them. getting to the end, and seeing this creature, seeing ace coughing up blood and asking her, desperately, to end it for him, she couldn't do it. the light - the voice that kept her going, went out.]
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his expression doesn't change, but that's mostly from years of practice. he doesn't let her go and he doesn't really move, shifting his head just slightly to look at her again. ]
...and so you did. [ he's a little lost on lights going out and lanterns, but he can sort of get the gist of it. ]
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[she shakes her head.]
No, I didn't. I couldn't. [her voice breaks a little.] My lantern went out and I lost control of my shape. And I turned on the other three.
[she was so, so lonely. she watched one more person that she loves leave, and it turns out the worst version of it isn't when they think you're a monster, it's when they love you back, and they don't want to leave you.]
Most of their injuries came from me.
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... [ he doesn't actually know what to say right now, because he isn't sure what will help, isn't sure if what he has to say will help or hurt. ]
Were you able to regain control? Were the other three able to help...? [ how did this end, and he hates that he has to ask. ]
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The fox guy stabbed me. I asked him to. [she's so noisy about being horrible, about being evil and monstrous, but - she doesn't want to hurt people. not the people who don't deserve it.]
I think I died. I'm not sure.
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Possibly. It's hard to tell what happens in those spaces. What's real and what isn't, and what does and doesn't count as death. [ ... ] I didn't...really tell you about this. When Will, Reigen and I were gone. A lot of the damage Will and I took came from each other. We...lost our shape, too. Turned into other things, and all we wanted to do was hurt each other to try and stop our own hurt.
[ why is he telling her this... ]
...just because it happened in there doesn't mean it's all that would happen here. Or that that's the only ending you can have. I want you to know that.
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she's quiet for a second, as she hears that. familiar. it's familiar, and she guesses that makes sense, considering it was a twisted version of her history.
she just... leans forward, and puts her forehead against his shoulder.]
I'm trying. [to remember that.]
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It's hard. I know it is. But I'm not about to let you forget it.