hadriel_logs | it's not regret

Entry tags:

it's not regret

Who: Emily, Wolfie, and y o u ! (Will match format.)
What: A girl and her wolf hang out after losing some friends to the Door. (Yes. Her wolf. Fight her. ...okay, the sad children's wolf. F i g h t h e r.)
Where: The sewing shop, the park, the lakeside, and the wildcard option
When: January 6
Warnings: Sadness. Emily. ~~A lack of self-love on my part, yolo.~~ Will update as needed.

sewing shop

Wolfie lies at her feet while she works, warming her toes as he looks, quiet and forlorn, at the shop door. Emily can't blame him. Now and then, she looks up too, half expecting Chris or Sam to walk in. Or even Ash, all excited about a new dye. (Ash has been gone for months, never got to meet Wolfie. She bets they would've liked each other.)

He's surprisingly gentle. Maybe he's got some dog in him, enough to know she's as upset as he is over losing friends, packmates.

When someone walks in, Wolfie will lift his head in their direction, attentive to any indication they might be a threat to him or the human girl he's spending so much time with.

"He only bites if you're an asshole," Em will add. What? Don't look at her like that. It's true.

park

She doesn't want to know what that bone he finds used fo belong to. As long as he's happy and not killing things right in front of her, she's fine. (He could've bitten Mike a little for her, geez, but no. That asshole had to go all wolf whisperer. Whatever.

Emily sits on one of the benches, and Wolfie curls up on the ground next to her, munching on his treat. She scratches him between the ears now and then, when she's not busy taking sips of Irish coffee that smells entirely too much of booze.

lakeside

Once, she and Chris had a heart to heart here. It was pretty brutal. One of them almost cried.

Now she sits at the edge of the lake and listens to the water while Wolfie alternates between pacing behind her and coming up to her to gently headbutt her in the arm. It's like he's reminding her there's still a life worth living, people worth living for. There's still Matt and Hannah and Beth. She shouldn't take them for granted, but right now she just... needs this. Time alone. Time to think.

A thick, nice-size branch floats over to her. Emily snatches it out of the water, glances at Wolfie, and throws the stick without another thought. Maybe Jack (it's pretty cool they know his name now) taught Wolfie how to fetch.

Or she just hit you with a stick. Win-win.

wildcard

(Come to me, all ye adults who deal healthily with your shit amirite.)

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[She misses the way the light changes in him, her eyes downcast as she listens and the booze warms her up. Chris might have gone back to a world where they all live, except Josh and the twins. But Sam?]

Yeah. And like... do they remember being here, when they go home? Is that better or worse?

[So much for using the booze to forget about this shit.]

Depends on what they'd be remembering.

[Would they remember the people they met? The things they saw? The deaths they had to live through? That's the thing about death, see; it's about a dozen times easier when you don't have to remember every inch of it in excruciating detail.]

Or if they'd be the only ones to remember at all.

[Projecting? Him? Nah.
Maybe you can't understand how this feels.
Heh. All right. Maybe a little bit.

I would figure it's all or nothing.

[But what does she know? Her world is boring, with only wendigos for supernatural entities. (Well, she hopes it's only wendigos.) Except the mythologies she knows about, this kind of thing is all new to her.]

I don't know. [Said on a sigh.] I guess it doesn't matter as long as we're here.

[No way to know for sure now, is there? Can't just go up and ask 'em.]

It might matter if any of 'em come back. Y'know they always could.

[He ain't much for optimism, but that ain't his job.]

Gotta wonder if the Door has it out for specific worlds.

Yeah. Sometimes they remember, sometimes they don't. [It's happened with her friends. Mike. Sam.]

It brings in chaos, right? Bad things? [A short, bitter laugh.] My world's got plenty of that.

[Hell, Blackwood alone is enough for anyone to take notice.]

[Might be why everybody he knows - well, almost everybody, with Papyrus as the thankful exception - came in from a series of endings that can only be described as..."not ideal."]

You gotta point. Maybe it's just statistical probability.

[He laughs, but there's not much humor to it.

Yeah. Probability.]

Maybe it's just shit luck.

[Or maybe they just deserve it.

It's so hard not to fall back on that thought. It's so easy to forget the conversations she's had with Hannah and Beth, with Josh before he left, with Ashley. With Chris and Sam. With Matt. All I'm sorrys and I forgive yous in the world can't take away what happened, can't change the past. Can't erase her failure, their failure to think things through from start to finish, to consider every possibility.

The odds of Hannah and Beth dying or worse that night had been low, and yet look what'd happened. This is why Emily never gambles, only takes bets she knows she can win. It's just not worth the risk.]

But whatever, right? What happened, happened.

[Well, that's the nice thing about the universe, ain't it? It's wholly indifferent to you and your suffering. And that's upsetting to think about in its own right, sure, until you realize - it's 'cause the world ain't dishing you what you deserve.

So take heart in the indifference of the universe. It means all the horrible things you live through aren't just cosmic retribution.]

Heh. Yeah. Can't change it now. Just gotta learn to live with it.

[But that also means the universe isn't looking out for you, that you really are alone out there. That's bleak, even though it's also the most likely thing.]

Yeah. [She takes another drink of coffee, then reaches down to rub Wolfie's head. It's nice, having a pet. Even if he is in fact a wolf.] I just miss them. I hope they're okay.

[Can't really say how the time passes back home while you're here. Except - there's a million different possibilities, millions of different timelines branching and fractalling off into the ether. Can't really draw any concrete conclusions from a thing like that.]

Yeah. I know the feeling.

[Wondering, idly, if a lady with integrity is still alive behind a door. Wondering if the king ever has someone stop by to visit, just to ask him if he's...doing all right. Wondering if Undyne ever tells Alphys what she clearly, plainly, obviously wants to confess to her, or if Mettaton's resort is doing all right.

Wondering what the hell is up with that flower.

No way of really knowing for sure. All those pieces of the world are gone where he comes from.]

Maybe they ended up sometime nice.

Sam and Chris survived the night, so...

[The best Emily can hope for is that they're at peace, despite the trauma of the night.]

Who knows, right?

[As if answering the question, Wolfie gives a quiet bark that makes him seem all dog. Emily smiles a little, giving him some more scratches.]

["Survived" the night. Those are sure some worrisome words, some concerning phraseology. But, uh, given what he knows about the world they come from, it makes a lotta sense.]

Well, hey. Theories of infinite worlds, right?

Somewhere out there, there's a world where everyone comes away happy.

Glacius said that too. [And the memory bolsters her smile a little as she straightens in her seat.] It's like hoping dead people go to heaven. You can't know for sure that's true, and it's probably not, but it's better to pretend than to be realistic.

[Might be that one's a fantasy, but he can do her one better.]

Statistically speaking? There's a world out there where everyone's alive, and livin' the high life.

[She likes the way you think, Sans.]

I'll take it. [A brief pause, then,] Thanks.

[It's better, in some ways. It lets ya have your cake and eat it too. A reassuring thought experiment at best, but...sometimes that's all you got. There's a world where Sans sees the sun, where he's good pals with the kid - with all of 'em, maybe, who can say? - and a world where it all just stays like that.

Wouldn't that be nice, huh.]

No problem.

[He tosses Wolfie a salute, just 'cause he can.]

Someday I might bring Brot around, see if the two of 'em like playing.

[Yeah. Sometimes it's just what you need to keep on going.]

Who's Brot?

[A dog, she presumes, but... maybe it's a skeledog.]

Mandelbrot. One of those fox-thingies that dropped in when the city was full of demons.

[Alphys named her nug "Mandelbub" to go along with the theme. Because they are both huge fucking nerds.]

Oh. [Emily knew the naked rabbit things -- nugs, she learned they're called -- had stasyed after that mess, but not the foxes.] Yeah, they might get along.

I mean, they both count as dogs, right?

[Sans any fool could tell you that foxes are more cats than dogs what are you thinking]

Sort of.

[A little bit? It's been a few too many years since the subject of foxes came up in class, sorry.]

Wolfie could use more animal friends, I guess.

[...so she's a fucking Disney princess now, amazing.]

There, y'see?

[Totally justified. Plus it gives him an excuse to, uh...he hesitates to use the words "check up" on her. Maybe make sure she's not downing too much Irish coffee.]

I'll take him 'round your shop sometime. See how the two of 'em get along.

Sounds good.

[Seeing Wolfie happy will actually be pretty good for her, she thinks. If she has to shoulder all this loss, the least she can do is see that Wolfie is able to enjoy himself.]

I'll be here. [Like always.]

Heh. Okay. I'll see ya.

[It'll give her somethin' to look forward to, maybe. Something aside from the abject misery that is watching the people you care about disappear through the Door, with no guarantee as to their survival.

Ha ha, what]

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it's not regret

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