hadriel_logs | Event Log: Bad End

Entry tags:

Event Log: Bad End

Who: All characters participating in the event
What: The event log for the Bad End event
Where: All over the city!
When: August 23rd-September 5th
Warnings: Bad futures, awkward conversations, smashed mirrors

You wake up to find a mirror at your bedside - a pretty nice one, too, a silver hand mirror perfect for fixing your hair in. Only when you try to do that, it's not your gorgeous reflection that you see. It's something else - a terrible future, just about as bad as anything you could imagine for yourself.

Maybe you see your loved ones dead on the ground, and you know it's your fault. Maybe you see the goal you've been working so hard for pulled out of your reach forever. Maybe you see someone you've hurt in the past ruining your life. Maybe you see your hot girlfriend leaving you to shack up with your worst enemy. Whatever you see, it really sucks, and you know that it's possible. This future could happen if you make the wrong choices, give in to your worst impulses.

Break the mirror if you want, but you'll see the same vision in any reflective surface in the city. You can't break them all, but you can sure try. And what will you do when you see your best friend's vision - and it features you betraying them?

Seek reassurance, give reassurance, lash out, vow to yourself that you'll never let it turn out that way, sink into the depths of sorrow because you feel like the future you see is inevitable. Whatever you do, it won't take away those visions - not until the event is over.

► This log covers August 23rd-September 5th.
► 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 can't handle the idea of your dark future, or maybe you just accidentally slip and fall on a mirror shard, let us know here.

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[ Once it's done, Rose gives her fingers a test flex. It stings a little still but- Nothing that won't heal. She'll just add the likely scars to the numerous ones already littering her body. ]

I'll go, [ she says, feeling braver than she feels by far. ] I broke my mirror but- Let me see. [ She'll grab whatever is the closest reflective surface hoping that it works.

It does. In it is a monster that wears Rose's skin, a wolf-ish beast with blood on its maw hunched over a gored body that will change when he blinks. He might even recognize one of them as himself if he looks long enough or Sorrow or Kate or any other members of their little cave community. That was her once. That could be her again. ]

[After Harlan and Kyna, Michael's figured out that these things aren't just symbolic. They're a person's worst nightmare, but they're the plausible kind, things that could actually happen. Might actually happen. So to see something like this in Rose's reflection- it's not a small deal.

He barely hesitates before flipping his mirror over to show her. Aside from the lack of a wolfish element, the images are somewhat similar. Michael's features a bloodier version of himself, apparently fresh from a messy kill. His eyes are hollow and lit faintly with blue, and something distinctly Not Human stares out through them.

The real Michael doesn't say anything at first, because he doesn't know what to say. When he finally does speak, he kind of regrets it immediately.]

Looks like we match.

[Now is maybe not the time for joking???]

[ In Rose's case, it is something she was and something she could be again. It isn't what she wants but knows every day she continues not to starve herself, the risk grows higher that she might snap and lose it. Rey had told her to seek out Hope's assistance - that if people have special diets, he accommodates them - but it's more complicated than that. So much more.

But to see someone with a potentially bad ending that it's in a similar vein as hers is. It's a double-edged sword, both comforting and unnerving. She wouldn't wish this kind of twisted desire on anyone.

Also, Michael, do you know how hard it is for her to not say 'one of us is going to have to change.' ]

I. I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse, actually. [ A beat. ] Gonna' go with better, I think. Kind of nice to know I'm not alone. But- Sorry.

[ Another pause. Also, ] What's with your eyes? Are you not-?

[ Human. But he looks (and smells, even with her senses dulled) like one so that's. Interesting. ]

[In a different mood, it's the kind of joke he'd come up with himself. And as for Michael, he's also going to go with "better". Well. For now.]

Better's good. But, yeah. I'm sorry, too.

[He rubs at his temples for a second. Explaining this is always complicated. "Always", as if he'd ever done it before a couple of days ago.]

I'm, uh. Possessed, I guess. Inhabited might be a better word. I have control, but it's... hard.

[And speaking of which-]

About yours, that's- it's not something you do? Just that you might do? [Stop beating around the bush.] You don't kill people, right?

[Actually, shit. He shouldn't have asked that. He kind of doesn't want to know. Doesn't want the Visitor to know. Too late???]

It's something I did, [ she says, solemnly. It's not an easy thing to say but it's a part of herself she doesn't see the point in hiding right now. It's a shameful, horrible part of her but she's trying to own it. Acknowledge it, at the very least, and use it to remind her what she never wants to be again. ]

I haven't, for a year now. Not since I arrived here. I just haven't eaten in general, honestly, but- It's fine.

[ Casually mentioning she's starved herself for a year. Yeah, that's. That's totally fine. ]

[Mmmmm this is a tough one. A battle wages briefly through Michael's head. The Visitor hates murderers, but more than that, it hates threats. Those who have killed and will kill again. The unremorseful, the continually dangerous. It likes serial killers best, not people who do what they have to and then resist. (After all, it's never tried to kill him.)

Rose is a weird case. She's a cannibal, apparently- or, no. She's not human, it doesn't count that way, and she hasn't done it in a long time. Plus, there's a bigger problem in Hadriel, there's an active throat-slasher. They should definitely focus on that instead.

It takes some serious doing, but he manages to wrestle the monster's attention away from her. For now. It's given him a headache, possibly as a form of punishment, but he'll take that over murdering a new friend in his apartment.

... Aaaand it probably looked like he just closed his eyes and zoned out for a few minutes. Whoops.]

Sorry, you- you haven't eaten anything for a year? [It takes him a couple seconds to organize his thoughts again. How is she alive?] So what, do you have to eat people? How long can you last?

[ Honestly, she expected the lapse into silence. It was... a lot of information to take in for both of them. For her own part, she certainly has quite a few questions in mind to ask him. But she battled with herself on not wanting to pry, on him only wanting to tell her what he's comfortable with.

And also, she isn't sure if she really wants to know the details of all that he is and what that means. ]

I didn't. Not always. The place I was in before, Haven, there was a guy there that liked to experiment on us. He got me and some magic lady together and like... extracted her magic? Just like drawing blood, it was crazy. And then he injected it into me.

[ It was surreal. Sometimes Rose still has nightmares about the feeling of foreign magic humming in her veins, flooding the synapses in her brain and overwhelming her. ]

It made me go crazy. And I- I ate her because I was just so hopped up and high and instinct-driven. But then when I woke up after, nothing tasted right anymore. It's all like eating ash now except for flesh.

[ Her hunger initially had driven her to do unspeakable things too. But, ] I can last... maybe a couple centuries at the rate I'm going. A few centuries, if I'm lucky, but stress and stuff makes it worse. It's not fun though.

[What happened to Rose sounds fucking awful, a literal nightmare. But it also, perversely, is a bit of a relief. She really does have to eat people out of necessity. She didn't murder someone because she wanted to, but because she wasn't herself. And she can survive without doing it for a long time. Which makes it easier to keep the monster's attention off of her. Which he realizes is kind of a shitty priority.]

Christ, I'm sorry. That's fucked up.

[He knows that's not exactly helpful, but he's not sure what else to say, so... solidarity?]

I, uh, I get what it's like to need something you're not supposed to take. That you don't even really want.

[But unlike in his case, there might be a workaround for hers.]

Do you think the gods could give you some kind of substitute?

[ What's more fucked up, honestly, is that there's some small part of her that think she deserves every moment of this Hell.
But that's not something she'll ever admit to anyone; she's barely admitted it to herself. ]

I don't know, [ she admits. ] I mean. Probably? I think Hope supplies people with shit they need, but- I don't want it to be something I need. I don't want to want it at all.

[Michael would relate very hard to that, if she were to share it. But honestly, his is more than just a part. The difference is that, while he knows he deserves every bad thing that happens to him, he doesn't necessarily want to sit down and accept the punishment.]

Yeah, I know. But some things, just- there's no fixing it. We are what we are. And better this than you starving yourself.

[That's not very optimistic, but then, neither is Michael.]

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Event Log: Bad End

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