Event Log: Regret This

[hadrielmods]

Who: Everyone!
What: The Regret This event
Where: Throughout the city
When: June 25th-July 3rd
Warnings: Sorrow is resurrected, and everyone is immediately full of regrets

Hope has finally managed another god resurrection, and the people have spoken! On June 25th, he musters his powers and brings Sorrow back to Hadriel. An orchard appears across the river, in the until now ruined part of the city, and Sorrow's temple is also restored. Hooray! One more god to make things a little more livable in this place.

Of course, it's not that easy. It never is. Along with Sorrow himself comes a wave of regret and guilt that blankets the city. All those affected will be inclined to not only be sad, but to linger over past regrets and things they feel guilty about. They can distract themselves with everyday tasks or whatever else they please, but they'll find that their thoughts drift back to these regrets regardless of what they do.

And of course, the best way to purge a guilty conscience is confession, right? On top of these persistent sad thoughts, people will feel the urge to tell others about them, to air their past mistakes or misdeeds and possibly receive some kind of forgiveness. So what if your neighbor doesn't care that you cheated on your final exams all through school? You have to tell someone, and they're right there. If it doesn't make you feel better, that probably means you haven't confessed to enough people yet, or maybe you just haven't found the right person. Better try again!

On July 3rd, Sorrow has settled in and this urge to confess your sins will die down, along with the constant regret. Let's hope you didn't confess anything too personal. Remember, you're gonna have to see some of these people every day.

► This log covers June 25th-July 3rd.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you somehow manage to end up regretfully dead, please remember to hit up our death post!

Comments

lake. cw suicidal appearing behavior.

[bekommen]

[Nick's particular brand of self-destruction in times of emotional turmoil tends to take one of a few simple forms: drinking, fighting, casual sex. None of those things are helping alleviate the consuming sense of guilt-driven despair she finds following her around, and she's honestly tried, particularly with the drinking. She's already been to the bar, and while she's not so drunk that she can't walk a straight line, she's definitely drunk, and full of regrets and bad ideas.

It's not that she actually wants to end her life when she starts wading into the lake - it's more about forcing herself to feel something different. She's never screamed underwater, and in the moment she thinks of it, nothing else sounds more perfectly natural.

Besides, she probably wouldn't die anyway. Who knows, maybe the next stupid power she has yet to discover is the ability to breathe underwater. She doesn't notice Ronan sitting nearby, and even if she did, she wouldn't care.]

[greywaren]

[Ronan doesn't notice her at first- she's a bit far off and he's caught in his own thoughts at the time, arms wrapped tightly around his legs. It's been a rough few days and he's not quite sure how to handle any of it- so when he finally notices a figure moving in the corner of his eye, he disregards it at first as a casual swimmer or something.

It's only a moment later that he realizes that she's still wearing normal clothing, and that she's going in deeper, past the point of normal wading. Ronan lifts his head a little, focusing on her now, recognizing Nick's outline in the dim lighting, recognizing what it is she's doing, and scrambling to stand a moment later.]

Nick!

[He calls, moving toward the land where she first stepped into the water. Ronan toes his shoes off quickly and moves further until he's submerged an inch or two, shivering at the cold water through his socks.]

The fuck are you doing?

[bekommen]

[... Well, shit. The water's halfway up her torso before Ronan calls to her, and she's startled by his voice, jumping about as well as someone half-submerged in a lake can jump. She grits her teeth at being caught in such an idiotic and compromising situation; she should've fucking seen him there. How stupid can she be, really.

Nick hasn't seen him since the dreams, and she still feels pretty fucking weird about everything that happened that week, in her own dreams and the ones she visited. Somehow, though, it's worse knowing what Ronan saw, because that dream in particular exposed something of herself that she thought she'd buried and left behind well before she ever left Chicago - a measure of hope for the future. She sighs loudly and pushes back the bits of hair hanging in her face, not bothering to look back at him. Dully, she answers him, with a slight slur to her words:]

Goin' for a swim. What's it fucking look like.

[greywaren]

Not like you're going for a swim.

[Ronan has been pulled back from the edge enough times to see when someone else is on it, but he doesn't know how to be on the other end of the equation. He remembers white rooms and the rustling sound of curtains around the bed, the smell of antiseptic, but there isn't any of that here, just Hope's temple and whatever the hell he does to your body and soul in order to make them whole again.

He doesn't like to think about it. He doesn't want to imagine Nick going through it either, no matter how at odds the two of them often are.

Words evade him, as usual. It's difficult to come up with the right thing to say in the best of scenarios, and now his feet are freezing and his socks are soaked and he doesn't even really like Nick, but he doesn't want to watch her do this, and so he lifts an arm up and holds a hand out to her, feeling like a fool, but knowing that it'll be worse if she goes underwater.]

Get the fuck back here.

[-well. Nobody said he was good at this.]

[bekommen]

What, are you my mother now?

[It's a stupid thing to say and she knows it - to start with, her mother wouldn't give even half a shit if Nick attempted to drown herself. Which isn't what she's aiming for here, exactly, but it's a sobering thought that this kid with whom she's exchanged punches about as often as words cares more about her staying alive than the woman who raised her. Shivering, she heaves an exaggerated sigh and turns back toward Ronan and the shore.]

[greywaren]

Nah, I haven't slept with nearly enough people.

[The retort is automatic, and Ronan's lip quirks upward in something that might be the start of a smile, but he abandons the effort in another moment because at least Nick is moving toward him. It'll take her a few moments to get close, but Ronan drops his arm with a sigh, backing out of the water and falling back to plop on the shore.

He pulls his legs up and strips out of his socks, tossing them in the dirt before rolling up the hem of his jeans. Gross. Ronan is so focused on this that for a moment, it looks as if he's forgotten that Nick is there, but then he speaks, still wringing the wet out of the denim.]

...you'd just get brought back anyway.

cw implied child abuse

[bekommen]

Yeah, and she hits harder than you, too.

[Nick does laugh, though. Talking shit about her mother is never a bad thing, in her mind.

There is, unfortunately, not much to be done about Nick's soaked state, since she got much farther into the water than Ronan. She'll have to go home and change, she supposes, but taking off her shoes is probably the best thing to be done at this point. She sits down - not exactly close to Ronan, but close enough, and begins unlacing her boots.]

I know that. I wasn't tryin' to be Sylvia Plath.

[greywaren]

[Ronan isn't sure what to make of that exactly, and so he stays quiet. It's hard to tell how serious Nick is about her mother, but even the lighthearted tone reminds him of Adam's fragile body, bouncing down the wooden slats of his porch. Something deep in his chest clenches tight, but he forces it to ease while Nick settles in.]

Who?

[Forgive him for only really giving a shit about Latin. Ronan shrugs it off pretty quickly though, because he can guess the main idea of what Nick is saying.]

-anyway, whatever. I just know what it looked like.

[bekommen]

Some writer. Wrote a bunch of depressing shit and stuck her head in the oven.

[Her boots are soaked completely through. What a mess. She sighs, dumping them upside down one at a time.]

I don't even know if I can die. I got shot in the head a while back, y'know that? Just knocked me out for few days.

[greywaren]

[Ronan glances toward her at that, lifting a sharp brow. The effect it has is piercing, inquisitive, not unlike a bird of prey, and Ronan scoffs a little after a moment of quick consideration.]

Pretty sure surviving a bullet to the brain means you can't die. Or you're close enough to immortality that the specifics don't fuckin' matter.

[bekommen]

Well. Lucky me. I get to live forever.

[And she's clearly not thrilled about it, shoulders sagging under the weight of this uneasy truth. She reaches for the hem of her jeans, wringing out a handful of fabric in the silence.]

[greywaren]

[Ronan doesn't say much in response to that, but he's clearly thinking about it- about how living forever would be. In the end, he's not really sure.]

At least you can do all sorts of crazy shit. [He shrugs halfheartedly.] Chase adrenaline high after high.

[bekommen]

[Nick gives him a sideways glance.]

Do I really look like the adrenaline junkie type to you?

[Maybe not a question best asked after she'd been talked out of walking out into the middle of a lake. She shakes the water off her hands, sighing loudly.]

I'd give anything to go back to my old boring life back in Chicago.

[Ghosts and all.]

[greywaren]

[Ronan just raises an eyebrow at her as if she's answered that particular question for herself.

Still, at the wistful comment, he finds himself pausing just for a moment, remembering the dinged leather of the seats, the loud rumble of a truck.]

You liked the city that much? [He quirks an eyebrow toward her.] Or just hate it here?

[bekommen]

Both, I guess.

[She hates it here - doesn't everyone? - but Chicago meant something to her. Winchester may have been where she was born and raised, but it never felt like home, not the way Chicago did, when she'd escaped and chosen where she wanted to be. She squeezes her eyes shut, remembering the silhouette of the skyline against the light of the rising sun, and her heart feels heavy, like stone, like something that could have dragged her to the bottom of the lake if she'd gone in far enough.]

Doesn't matter. Not like I'm gonna ever see it again anyway.

[greywaren]

Don't say that.

[He says it- maybe a little too quickly for this casual conversation. Ronan isn't looking at Nick anymore, he's chewing on the leather strap wrapped around his wrists and thinking about the fractured light streaming in through an old barn.

In that moment, he feels her heaviness a little too close to his own chest and he tries not to think about it, tries not to think about how he's two worlds from home and what is happening to Matthew and Opal and all the others without him and he just misses it so much, Ronan thinks that sometimes it's a tangible thing, slowly eating its way through his heart.]

Gansey says we can get back.