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cancry2023-01-15 05:24 pm
cancrymods) wrote in cancry2023-01-15 05:24 pm
descent
Like flakes of snow, the days spent in the Sloth Layer slowly but surely begin piling up. Life here is quiet and easy, even with the anxiety that comes with needing to move onto the next layer. But as the days drag out, so do the mysteries at play here – with the gradual uncovering of the odd doppelgangers and the seeming lack of any way to proceed to the next layer, it leaves the Executors at a loss for what to do. Until one day, everything changes. It comes entirely without warning – the ground lurches under everyone's feet in a sickeningly familiar way as a brief but violent earthquake rattles through the town. Then all of you feel it; a snapping sensation deep from the very foundations of Purgatory followed by the most cataclysmic impact any of you have experienced in your lives – or unlives. Snow explodes up from the ground, houses creak and lurch and the whole layer seems as though it might shatter apart under your feet. It seems like it's going to last forever. Then, finally, it stops. The silence that follows is even more pronounced in comparison to the hell-rattling noise from before, but as some semblance of calm starts to return, you realize several things. First is how eerily quiet the town is. Surely after all that, you'd hear a Specter or two... but there's nothing. Secondly – a splash of something wet strikes your cheek. Then again. Until it becomes clear that the weather has taken a sudden drastic turn and in place of the gentle snowfall from before, the heavens have opened with a torrential rainfall. Why? Possibly because of the steadily growing heat you suddenly feel burning up through the foundation of the layer and radiating out through the town. Will you investigate? | |
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[ Had never even considered any other solutions as a possibility. He’d always been focused on the end goal, his entire viewpoint influenced by a lifetime as an immortal from a dead world of other immortals who longed and longed for a nothingness they envied, the same immortals he narrowly escaped being murdered by as a child in the name of “mercy”. His people - his older siblings - were all husks of their former selves, some driven mad, some intent on sleeping forever or becoming still as stone to escape the agony. Even without remembering the exact details, that had always been the reasoning behind why he felt no qualms about the plan as it had always existed. Why he failed to understand the authorities or even Mona in a meeting oh so long ago now. Eternal existence was a curse to the Astral Beasts, and if specters would turn into revenants with the cogs stuck then they had to restore things to the way they were.
But now… well things are a bit different now for Achilles the Executor aren’t they? There are wounds from Orthrus the Beast’s memories that still sting, some of which physically exist on his person now as a constant reminder that he was never as free as he thought. That he would never have a happy ending. And maybe now, finally, after all this time he might be able to understand that viewpoint from before. The viewpoint of so many other authorities who had unhappy lives, finally found something meaningful, and then held onto it fiercely with all their might in spite of “natural order.”
One of his hands subconsciously goes to his throat, fingertips brushing the scar tissue straight across. Orthrus the Beast had been hunted and killed by a vindictive sister who only saw him as property, had been robbed of a happy ending with his two partners, had failed to protect the found family that always accepted him and the child that gave him purpose again after losing the former, had run from a promise he couldn’t keep…
But maybe Achilles the Executor didn’t have to— ]
Do… you really think there could be…? And that we won’t have to then… move on?
[ Maybe he could have that happy ending with his partners and found family this time…? ]
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What are you talking about...?! You've seen what happens to the people who are stuck here for long enough! We just fought one of them!
[ She's looking between all of them now, Ardyn to Phoenix to Achilles and all the others with an increasingly panicked look. ]
And– and what about the people who do want to move on? Who need to be able to move on and put things behind them so they can start again – what will they do if we don't fix things? If we just force them to stay here without any hope?
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Especially seeing as you can't move on and put things behind you.
Consider! Consider if we all put our powers together, with our little Birdie, and reshape the very essence of Purgatory! Be rid of these floundering Cogs that chew up a soul and spits it out with none to remember. We can make something new, something that lets us stay if we so wish without devolving into mindlessness, and move onward if we so wish, including you and your double! Is that not better?
What is it that you are so afraid of?
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[ Why would you say something like that? is almost the question she asks instead. But that's just the point, isn't it? To make it sound so horrible that she has no choice but to agree.
Rei swallows hard. She's quiet for a moment... but then her lips thin out into a set, determined line. ]
... maybe I won't ever be able to move on like you say. But... the reason everyone is trapped here... it's because of me, isn't it? Because I couldn't move on. Because... I couldn't let go. Whoever was with me here before, I wanted to hold onto them and stop them from ever leaving.
[ Of course she wants them all to stay. Of course she wants them to never leave her side. But... like this? Here, in the land of the dead? As if they don't deserve something better?
She shakes her head. ]
You can stay here if you want. If it really is what will make you happy, I can't stop you. But I need to fix my mistake. If I look away from it, I won't ever atone for my sins. So I'm going.
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I will see this through with you, from start to end, Lady Rei.
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[There was no outright judgment in Phoenix's voice--just a question and gentle observation, as though working through the very same quandary in his head. Yes, his decision was made, but that didn't mean it was beyond examining.]
I failed in that regard once--no, the person I once was did. To hold on to Noctis would have meant seeking the impossible to save the world or damn it in the process of trying. If my atonement for that is to witness the same unfold, then I will not turn away from the one I promised to stand beside again.
[He dropped a scarred hand to Ardyn's, squeezing it tightly.]
If this course of action is what you truly desire, I will do nothing to hinder that. But you need to be certain, Rei.
You need to know beyond any doubt in your heart that you wish to try to undo what you did to stay beside that person.
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But hearing her now speaking of taking responsibility, of fixing her mistakes, and then hearing Phoenix's words, how he would not turn away from the one he promised to stand beside...
It was hard not to think of Odysseus again. The woman he had loved so dearly, enough for him to finally consider marriage for the first time in 2000 years. Those happy days with her and Orpheus that were ultimately cut so tragically short. She had lost so much and despite knowing it would damn the world, she had done everything she could to keep herself from losing anyone else... except him, a man who had failed her and hurt her by helping to keep a secret that wasn't his to share. And he had run from her - not just because she had hurt him with a cruelty he never knew her capable of when he dared criticize her, but because he couldn't bring himself to stop her.
"Please Orthrus... if I go too far, if I succumb to these dark feelings you have to promise you'll stop me. Even if that means killing me."
"I... I can't do that, my moon. But... I promise you, I won't let such a thing happen in the first place. I said I'd be the sun to always illuminate you, didn't I?"
"...I wish I could believe you. I wish you could understand."
In the end he couldn't keep it - he couldn't save her from herself, and he couldn't be the executioner she wanted him to be. But more than that he couldn't protect the world that had embraced him so thoroughly. Couldn't bring himself to do anything to help it, only sleep and then let his child go on a journey to do what he couldn't.
...But that was then and this is now. And there is a promise he can keep this time, isn't there?
He adores his lovers - loves them as much as he did Odysseus all that time ago (and even still does). He would do practically anything for them. But there was one other person he loved more than anything, just as much as he loved the child that saved him from his fate of cold eternal slumber and taught him to live again. The one who found him when he first awoke in this place and had been just as, if not even more, pivotal in his growth as the person he was now.
After a moment of quiet contemplating he closed the gap between himself, Phoenix and Ardyn. For a split second it seems like he might be about to take both of their free hands, finally take up Ardyn on the one that was offered to him before.
But instead he just puts a hand on Phoenix's shoulder, squeezing gently. Tender. ]
Phoenix.
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I think she knows. This is... the most certain I've ever heard her before.
[ And then he just
Lets go
And turns around to walk over to Rei.
After all... what kind of father would he be if he turned his back on his daughter now?
Once he gets to her he kneels down in front of her, making sure they're eye level, as he has so many times before. He takes one of her hands are gently as he can. ]
...You’ve grown a lot Rei.
Forgive me for wavering. Though my heart still feels uncertain, still longs for what it could never have, I know one thing for certain…
No matter what... I’m with you till the end.
[ He looks back at the two he's spent so much time with, but his words are directed mostly at Ardyn. ]
I'm sorry my dears, I love you both so much but... I'm also going forward. To the cogs.
[ And then with an apologetic smile aimed at Ardyn in particular: ]
I suppose I really should be better about making promises I can't keep.
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[Part of him felt sick. Part of him didn't care. He wasn't really sure which was winning out today, but the look on Phoenix's face was as calm and collected as ever. This felt...familiar, yet painfully twisted in a way that was hard to pin down. His head was starting to hurt in a way he wished wasn't practically nostalgic.]
And Rei...you'll truly believe your actions a mistake needing atonement when you remember so little about the person you did all of this for? What should happen if you were to realize they were worth more than the world itself in the first place?
I--no, Ignis Scientia made a poor judgment call and sacrificed what should have mattered for the sake of the world because it seemed the only option. I would not want the people 'Phoenix' cares about now seek to echo it.
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[ His heart was already breaking a little after having to make this decision but now it stings even more. ]
I understand where you’re coming from. And I know your circumstances. You’re right that I’m not certain of everything. None of us are.
But what I have always been certain of is my feelings and duties as a father.
I’m staying with my daughter. I trust her - and we’ll figure it out together.
…I’m sorry.
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I just...can't do it again. I'm staying with Ardyn, whatever that might mean for either of us.
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Well he regrets not kissing him one (likely) last time. ]
…Thank you. I wish the best for both of you. I…
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He’s made his choice and now he has to show some conviction in it and not get too emotional. But he’s still sad okay!! ]
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At least, that's what she's aiming for. She ends up closer to "inexplicable wild flailing."]
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cw: abuse backstory
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[ Her gaze drifts from Phoenix to Achilles – to Ardyn, to Medic, Arianna all the rest of their family gathered around, wounded and bruised but with their spirits bright and intact. Even this far down. Even far beyond the point any of them should be able to muster any strength.
But this journey has never been about strength, has it?
Her fingers curl around Achilles' and squeeze. ]
Even if it's just for me, I have to know. I have to see it. Even if it can't be put together exactly as it was before, I at least have to try. And... maybe that will mean changing things, if we have the power to do it. Maybe it won't. But unless I go all the way down and I face my sins myself, I'll never know.
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Ah--all those people...waiting on a world that no longer recognizes them...
Pray, they can't move forward should they become a Revenant, can they? Would would happen were they to try and touch these precious Cogs?
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I... really don't know. I've never heard of a Revenant coming down this far. But then again... the only reason there's been so many Revenants is because nobody has been able to pass on. Maybe they've never been given a chance.
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But if we don't go down there and face them, how are we ever going to find out?
[Maybe she never did quite overcome her sin- that greed for knowledge, that need to know the answer no matter the costs.]
[But if purgatory wants to take it from her, it's going to need to fix its' shit first.]
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Personally, I'm sick of looking back on what I do remember and thinking about how wrong it all feels now that I'm away from it.
[He and Medic were the only ones who heard it, after all. But... well, it's not like anyone else's dirty laundry is going unsaid.]
And how are we to know your slow and steady change over the past year and a bit wasn't the same thing that happened to me, whatever it is? Something you can't even see, pushing you to hate until it's all that will satisfy you? I certainly wouldn't trust that.
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[The smarm and drama drop. Ardyn he may be, and yet inside, the memories of Chiron also play. For a moment: conflict. For a moment: he seems like Chiron again.]
There was a plague upon my world that drove men to monsters, daemons, full of agony and rage. Two thousand years ago, a sage was blessed with the power to cure them. [He pulls his hand from Phoenix's, and his appearance changes again--back to the familiar white robes and longer hair that his Executor form used to have.] And he thought he was put on that star to cure all the ills that befell his people. He took on that plague, from every infected he touched, transferring that hateful corruption into himself.
Little did he know that the gods intended to curse him instead. To become the plague personified so that a beloved chosen king would sacrifice all to be rid of it, and him, once and for all.
I rotted with this plague inside of me, entombed in a prison where I could not die, could not live, by those who I thought loved me. My fate, my name, my existence were erased by a brother I had come to understand was meant to be king. Betrayed by family, hated by friends, abandoned by gods, I hung there in the darkness with naught but a fearful curse to my being. And when by happenstance I was rescued, by a wretched little man with plans and ambitions greater than he could ever achieve? Do you know what I did then? Do you know what I felt?
Nothing.
Two thousand years of this hateful plague manifesting in me, keeping me alive for ever single agonizing moment, and I did not hate the country that formed in my wake, the family that abandoned me, even the memory of my brother. It was bitter, but I was willing to simply exist. Until I learned the truth. The gods and their petty little schemes. Choosing me as a rightful king and then rejecting me for the very gift that had been given to me. My pitiful brother's jealousy and hatred of the monster more than man that he saw. A nation founded on lies, lies, lies.
It became very easy to hate after that.
And at first. Oh, at first it was simply that I wanted to tear down all that my brother had created. That would have been enough. And I nearly did. Until the great got Bahamut himself stayed my hand, because that was not my fate, and he would not allow it. He gave me a fiction of a choice. To accept that I was to be naught but a sacrificial lamb to ultimately save mankind and eliminate the scourge of our star, or to keep struggling on, fighting the entire way, with the end being the same.
I had no love for kings, and then I had no love for gods, and what use did I have for love for man?
Do you think this unseen force alone drove me to hatred? Do you think I have no right to hate?
[His skin is deathly pale, the scourge, pneuma-like in its ichor, oozing from him.]
Do you think a world like that did not deserve my wrath?
...And do you think, now, in a place like this...I do not deserve to be remembered? Do you think, now, in a place like this, I do not deserve to rest?
I promised Noctis that I would meet him in the beyond. He promised me to rest forevermore. And here I am.
Here I still am.
[The scourge and robes vanish, leaving Ardyn with a hand upon his breast.]
To fix the Cogs and dust our hands to be done with it...everything that I was in my too-long life, and everything that I was here--a friend, a family member, a lover? All of it, erased, forgotten, unremembered. As though it had never happened. As though it never mattered. And then I, whatever is left of me beyond the Cogs, will be set forth anew into another world of fate and gods, a plaything of the whims of those on high.
Why would I want that?
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[There's no trace of horror in her face, of accusation or fear. Medic just looks sincerely, quietly sad.]
[She speaks more slowly and carefully than normal, like she's trying very hard to think about what she's saying and put it together piece by piece, instead of her normal high-volume enthusiasm where half of what she says tries to come out all at once in her sheer excitement to say it. This is important, she knows it's important.]
[She's trying to do it right.]
I don't... understand gods, not yet. I've never caught one and studied it. But I understand diseases, and what you said happened is wrong- you were sick, they shouldn't have done that to you. They shouldn't have done that to anyone.
You don't fix a pandemic by making a carrier- that's just creating a reservoir population, really. You aren't solving anything at all. Until everyone is well again, it isn't over.
[Calmly, plainly:] If the gods do that to you, then the gods are wrong.
I think... we should get the chance to do it right. [She looks over at Wolfsbane, her expression softening for a moment. She's trying so much, even someone as socially dense as Medic can see her grow, and it makes her so happy to see her getting better.] All of us, because it won't be right otherwise.
Whether what we need is to move on or to stay here... I want us to have the choice. A real choice, not just "because we have to" or "because they won't let us have anything else".
No one should be trapped and fester. No one should be made to go back until they're ready, either.
[She lifts her chin, finally seeming to resolve what she wants to say, what she means, when so often it's so, so hard for her to make the words come out right at all.]
If gods didn't make it the right way, then I want to take the world apart and put it back together better, so everyone can be happy.
I want to make the gears into a door. It will never be locked, and you can always walk through it- but no one can make you, until you want to go.
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They always said it's no use if you aren't born under the right star. That if you're not loved by the gods and chosen for what you want, you shouldn't try. I thought the same, all this time.
[Does she still? Hard to say. But what she's felt, how she thinks looking back on it, everything falling apart when her dream was a lie and then (Wolfsbane) throwing herself at it anyway... The world was unfair even to her. Maybe, she wonders, even especially.
"A tragedy. Isn't that all death is...?"
She still feels the same revulsion at Mona's words, her rejection of the fate Wolfsbane thought they were born and died for. But it brings her to everyone turning on her in the meeting, not the first time by far, because all they had wanted to do was live.
Had she ever wanted to just live? When was the last time she'd wanted anything but to make Ernesta suffer? And if they'd all let her dream of being a mage, not claimed it was misfortune because she must not be talented... where would any of this have gone?]
Now what I want matters, does it? ...Though I suppose I can't say that to either of you, at least.
[She can't say why, but she rests a hand on Medic's shoulder.]
A system where Purgatory does what it's supposed to, rather than warp people into worse versions of themselves and then into Revenants, then. And you don't even have to work through your sin -- just like you said before. Isn't that right?
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And to think there are those who might want to throw that away.
The emotions are tumultuous. But wrath he still is, deep inside, boiling, always, always. She says until everyone is well again and feel the horrible bitterness rising in an instant, and were she not a distance away, he could think of raising a hand and smacking the pigtails right off of her--
But Medic is not Lunafreya. She doesn't want to erase him, a thing that made him him. She wants to take it apart. Put it back better.
He turns sharply, ascends a few more stairs. This he could turn into a kingdom rightfully his. But would it not be a stolen wreckage again? His shoulders heave.]
I did not have the power to remake a world anew. All that I could do was rip it apart. To shroud it in darkness, blot out the light, outlast the miserable insects that still clung to hope.
And in the end. The fated king slew me. Made a sacrifice of us both to bring about a world of light, where no godly scourge remained.
Long ago. Long, long ago, there was a man who only ever wanted to help. Look where it got him.
[He looks at the girls over his shoulder.] It would be nice, wouldn't it? To make it so we do not have to appease something on high, a god or fate or a higher purpose. Wolfsbane, you have suggested on several occasions, that perhaps this is fate. That we were brought here, specifically, so that we could--how did you phrase it? Repair the reincarnation cycle to what it's supposed to be. [He turns to them.] What if changing it is what it's supposed to be?
Or, further still, what if you didn't have to be so hung up on what is supposed to be at all? Who says what Purgatory is supposed to do? Who made this decree, and by whose will must it continue?
Yes. Now what you want matters. What all of us want matters. It has always mattered. Let us all, together, make it better. A place where we can stay, or go, or grow or stagnate or be whatever we wish. Ignore fate. Ignore the gods and every star in the sky. We choose. We choose change.
[And, to them all:] Can we not all choose change together? If you are bound by some inscrutable will to simply fix without questioning why things must be as they are, then would that make you any better than the gods that have never cared for a single one of our wretched souls?
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Then Achilles speaks and, all at once, she realizes what her choice is.]
I will accompany you, Dame Rei. Whatever that may entail.
[Maybe it's the cowardly option, putting the burden on Rei's shoulders, but following Rei is what brought her here. She won't simply walk away from her at the very end.]