hadriel_logs | Event Log: Dead Ringers

Who: Everyone participating in the event!
What: The event log for the Dead Ringers event!
Where: All around the city
When: January 16th-January 25th
Warnings: Evil doubles, so we can assume manipulation, violence, murder, and maybe some nasty words

Everything seems normal on the morning of the 16th - actually, everything seems normal about the city for the entirety of this event. Nothing is strange, nothing is obviously wrong. Well, except that the population has mysteriously doubled, and the new residents each look exactly like one of the old residents. So weird! Definitely not ominous at all.

At least until your new double gets down to business. After all, their only goal is to ruin your life, and that can take any form. Smashing your favorite coffee cup? Telling your worst enemy they're right? Kissing someone else in front of your girlfriend? Brutally murdering you and then hiding your body in a closet so they can more effectively destroy your life? The possibilities are truly endless, and the only way to protect yourself is to kill your double first. They're not really open to negotiation, after all - but they sure might pretend to be in order to trick you.

So watch your back, and try to make sure that really is your best friend and not an evil clone masquerading as them. Boy, that would be awkward. If you can stick it out until January 25th, good for you! But if you didn't manage to and your double survives until the end - well, just as a final 'fuck you', there's a chance you'll come back to life and remember every awful thing your double did. Hey, at least that'll make it easier to fix, right?

► This log covers January 16th-January 25th.
► 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 your evil clone happens to take you out, please let us know here, and remember that you will not revive until the event is over.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Sneaking up on people is the best part of what he is. It's what makes it so easy to slip in behind someone and cut their throat. Fortunately - for the moment - he can do more harm with his tongue than a blade. His expression softens into pity, understanding, and he lets his gaze lift back toward the temple. ]

They did a lot of harm. You were right to stop them before they could do any more.

[ He scuffs his foot against the ground, an action of guilt. And now to qualify that guilt.]

I'm sorry that we couldn't help. Dean and I had our own demons to face, and my double was... He could have destroyed the entire city with a thought. You understand, don't you?

( There sure is a lot of guilt to go around in a place like this. So much of it about not doing enough. Glacius' guilt at not being able to help her against the dragons. Hers at not being able to help him against Emily's possession, or Faith's death. Not having enough time, or enough of oneself to split around the cave to protect everyone you care about. )

What? Aye. ( She does. Of course she does. Cas' power does more than Kate's sure she even knows about - she wonders, for a brief moment, what she'd see if she asked him to let her try and find his wavelength, to find a way to analyse his powers - and, like Faith's double, couldn't just be left to run around unchecked.

(She should have looked for Faith's double sooner, did something other than pretend life was normal for the last few days-

Well. Normal. It's never been normal here, has it? Why else does she spend so much time driving herself to distraction, loading up with busywork, if not for the fact that this place is entirely not normal and every trip "outside", into the cave instead of a building, proves that.) )

Was my responsibility anyway.

( She dragged Faith out of a normal life, after all. Faith might have just continued on, with the life Kate spent so much time wishing she had, and might never have turned up here.

(Of course, Kate wouldn't know her then. Wouldn't have a best friend to mourn if Faith wasn't there. The Agency, likely, wouldn't be overturned, disorganised but without a tyrant at the helm. But then, also, the UK wouldn't be such a goddamn mess.

If she'd only.) )

Still. We... We're supposed to be there for each other, aren't we? I feel like we let you down, not being there to help.

[ He came over closer, carefully, his eyes on Kate throughout, and he carefully sat down not far away from her, bringing his knees right up toward his chest and wrapping his arms around them. It was a fragile look, but Castiel was playing the part of his broken self, of an angel that he had much contempt for. He wanted to tear that angel apart, and he would in time.

And Kate? Kate was a friend, to both himself and Dean. Sam had meant a great deal to her. And if he could pull conversation toward the topic of Sam, there were some terrible things he could share.

But for now he had to act comforting on the topic of Kate's friend, when he didn't really actually care. ]

At least...at least you stopped them. At least it's over.

( Honestly, there's so many ways he could just slip it in. Mention that this must be how Sam and Faith felt, trekking back and forth to this temple after she died, or that Faith's the third person she's lost in some fashion over these last few months.

Alright, so Faith will - should, might - come back, but what if-

What if something goes wrong, because their doubles destroyed the temple and she doesn't get revived? What if she comes back not-quite-right, because of whatever these doubles are?

Grief's still enough to cloud her judgement, or maybe Cas is just good enough at playing the angel that she doesn't blink, because Kate's attention is more on the crumbling piece of wreckage just beyond them, watching pieces break and splinter off. )

Can't be everywhere.

( She's trying to remember that herself, right now. Can't be everywhere, protect everyone. )

Or stop everythin'.

( There's a lot she would have stopped if she could have. )

Are you blaming yourself for all of this?

[ He tips his head ever so slightly, but it's a ruse. He's still playing the game, pretending to be the angel, slipping toward his goal. He'll find a way to cut her deeply, sooner or later. The right approach will come to him.

He does reach over eventually. The touch is only the slightest contact, and yet it's firm and deliberate, as though to prompt more inward thinking. ]

I've often thought that trouble is drawn to some of us more than others. That it's really our own... Not our fault, no, but that we are responsible for the continued trend in not doing more to end it.

Take Sam and Dean, for example. If Dean hadn't sold his soul in trade for his brother's life, they could have been together in Heaven, at peace, and our apocalypse would never have even begun.

( The touch gets a look, because she's never much been one for contact, even if she's - by all accounts - used enough to people who are that it's nothing more than a brief glance and a shrug of her shoulder, a quiet that's more than enough. Just like the fact that her eyes don't meet his, but look somewhere below, away from his face, says more about how close to home he's hit than any words she could manage to give. )

Let his brother die when he had another option?

( If she thought more, if she had the capacity to, she'd question why Cas of all people is saying this, considering how much love he seems to have for both the brothers, but it's reasonable, even if most of her hisses in response to it, won't hear it because-

Well, fuck. )

Can't say he was wrong. Would have done that too.

( For Marc. And for Sam, if she could have. )

Not because Sam was unhappy, but to assuage his own suffering. Dean didn't bring Sam back because of anything but his own selfishness, his own inability to live without him, and he has dealt with the consequences of that decision ever since.

[ Though the words are incredibly harsh, Cas speaks them with a level ease, a sensible ease as though there's no question that he's right.

His hand has since returned to his lap, and settled there firmly, unthreateningly. That's the goal, here. ]

Sam had passed away. There is a reason why we are urged to let the dead rest in peace. Bringing life back into the world tolls a price upon the living, and in Dean's case, he was tortured in Hell for thirty years before he stepped off the rack and took the blade for himself.

There is a cost to life, to all our lives, and in Dean's case it almost cost the entire world.

What has your existence cost the world, Kate?

( That question is one she lives with every day, only assuaged by the knowledge that - eventually - the Agency fell, and she had a part in it. Like Faith said, Kate put her there.

But is that really true? If Kate and Marc hadn't been there, it'd have been someone else. The same events would have likely unfolded, right?

How many things occurred in The Agency specifically because of her? How many people were tortured that didn't need to be? Or Creatures killed that might not have been? She doesn't know the answer to that. Doesn't want to think about it, but her mind always wanders. )

Couldn't say.

( How many people did she place in danger here, of all places, back with the fog?

Her tongue clicks against the roof of her mouth after a pause that seems too long and she eventually adds; )

... More than enough. Plenty of people who wouldn't have died if-

( If she'd done more. Like Faith. Sharon. Maketh. Chris. Marc. The list could go on and on. )

Event Log: Dead Ringers

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