weep not for the memories

[brushoff]

WHO: Everybody!
WHERE: all cities
WHEN: March 4 - March 6
WHAT: it's a catch-all log, sucka! Tag here and thread around for the Dorian Ruins Everything Guilt Extravaganza part of the overall March plot. Please check out this ooc post for details!
WARNINGS: Traumatic memories. Possible talk of murder, death, blood, other nasty things. I'll try to update if the warnings needed but please use content warnings if it gets super nasty!

It starts off on March 4th, the early morning before the sun's even risen. You know those weird mirages that were hanging around the day before? Well now it's getting a little personal.

These mirages come and go seemingly for no reason. They might stay for a minute, they might stay for an hour. The images vary between person but the unifying factor is that the mirages consist of people the player characters have hurt, whether people in-game or from their homes. Whether they murdered them, slandered them, or even had a petty little argument, the unifying factor is the guilt each character feels towards or about this mirage. After all, you know you hurt them somehow. You know their existence somehow makes you feel guilty.

Another unifying factor? The creepy way these mirages just seem to stick to you. They'll follow you if you try to leave, staring you down with their creepy unblinking mirage eyes. And whoops: everybody can see said mirages. Hopefully you're not being stalked by someone you and somebody else both know, wouldn't that be awkward?

Have fun confronting your traumatizing past and/or wondering why your buddy's got some creepy ghost guy following him, imPorts!

( ooc: this is a catch-all log! Make starters of your characters getting haunted by their creepy mirages, have other people react to said creepy mirages, ???, profit. Hit me up on the ooc post if you have any questions! )

Comments

[fridgeflower]

Nightcrawler, if you're thinking in codenames, but... At the school, he's just Mr. Wagner. He taught theatre, which wasn't my thing, so... [ Shrug. ] I'd offer to find him in this mess, but it's mostly just my mom and my teammates popping up.

[ None of it's too important, though. Laurie's not entirely sure what the psycho-babble behind the illusions are, but she knows that whatever is influence her ghosts is more inaction than action. Even her guilt is passive. It's ignorable. It's something she can talk herself through later. This..?

She reaches forward to grasp his arm loosely, thumb brushing even though she's only hitting plating. ]

You're using the past tense. I'm sorry. He seems nice.

[khajidont]

Yeah. Yeah, he was pretty great. He went by, um, Kid Devil, but switched it to Red Devil just a few months ago.

[ The words taste bitter in his mouth, because he hears and understands every terrible little implication that that has -- the fact that Eddie was doing this long enough to be okay with being called Kid, that he was only coming of age by the time he managed to come into his own, only to have his life cut tragically short.

It's the story of a lot of heroes, these days. Laurie's one of them. He wonders, momentarily, how uncomfortable this must be for her, how eerie it must be to know that in another world, where one of Laurie's friends is here instead of her, Laurie could very well be one of these spectres.

He looks down at her hand on his arm and reaches his own hand up to rest his hand on hers for a second. ] But thanks. I'm sorry you're being followed around too. Is it bad?

[fridgeflower]

Not really.

[ Her answer is a halfway truth. It's sad, and it's bothering her. It's just another rehash of what she's been grappling with since she learned she was dead, though. She's been wading through it for nearly three years. This is doable.

She moves to tuck her hair behind her ears once she draws her hand back, looking out of the corner of her eye for a split-second, just in case. ]

It's... Things were so bad, when I left. I don't know if they'll ever get better. I worry about who I left behind, and if I could've done something better to help them or make things less horrible. [ She'd experienced an alternative in which she'd stopped the Purifiers, here. Could she really have done that? Would it have saved anybody? ] I guess it's the opposite of survivor's guilt, whatever you'd call that.

That makes us... I dunno'. Two sides of the same Expendable Super-Kid Coin?

[khajidont]

[ Jaime ducks his head. ]

Heh. It's so screwed up that it's like that in both of our worlds, isn't it? You'd think that between us, one of them would get it right.

[ It doesn't surprise him - how can you reconcile bringing kids into this without them getting hurt or killed? - but it saddens him anyway. He wishes that things were better, but he doesn't know how they'd accomplish that short of not allowing kids to do this in the first place, but that's no solution either; how many awful things have they collectively helped the world avoid? Are their lives really worth that much more than those around them?

It's a mess, either way. ]

You being there would've made things better, no doubt about that, [ he says, after a moment. Not because of her powers, but because Laurie's his friend, and she was others' friends too. Things are better because she's around, not because of anything she can do. ] But either way, that's not on you. You didn't exactly ask for this.

[fridgeflower]

No, I know. I just-- [ All of this is out of her hands. Somebody else pulled the trigger. It's the paradox of being alive and well in another universe that makes it feel more complex than it actually is. Josh had been with her. Josh had said something cruel to her, and her world was suddenly swallowed up and replaced by this. She hadn't even known it'd happened, and Josh...

She's seen him in all of this mess, too. She knows the apparition will appear again soon enough. Before that, though... Her eyes dart around for a quick moment before landing on Red Devil again. ] It's--

Were you with him when he died?

[khajidont]

[ Laurie doesn't seem to know what to say to that, but Jaime's not sure what he'd say either. Guilt isn't a logical thing. It's an odd, ephemeral thing, something that can't be pinned down by reason. He can't imagine how it makes Laurie feel, nor can he imagine the complexity of that emotion. ]

I, uh... I should've been.

[ And that's one thing he's never going to forgive himself for. This wasn't how it had to be. Eddie shouldn't have been on-duty in the first place, and if someone had stepped forward and taken leadership, if he had, with all the powers at his disposal, things could have gone differently. They spent so much time arguing like children that they never noticed him slip away and deal with the real problem at hand, did they?

It should have been him in that plane. He would've made it out just fine. ]

Me and my team, we were all out together when the whole area got attacked. One guy had explosive powers, and he couldn't keep 'em in -- he was going to blow, and take the whole boardwalk with him. So Red shoved him in a plane, flew him up to where he couldn't hurt anyone but them.

[ Jaime inhales deeply through his nose, hoping to keep his composure. He hasn't had to explain this one to anyone else yet. He'd mentioned Eddie's death, sure, but the other heroes just said that they were sorry, never even bothered to ask how it happened.

Assholes. ] He went out a hero.

[ Just like every other hero, but at a certain point, even if that was Eddie's highest aspiration, it's not enough. ]

[fridgeflower]

[ Laurie hums, just a small acknowledgement that the story's registered. She's not immediately sure of what else to say. What can be said? It's good that Red Devil was able to take control of his own destiny, in a sense. Many like them don't get that opportunity, but... How much of an upside is that, really? Dead is dead. ]

It probably feels good, to get to choose. At least, I assume it does if you're the kind of person ballsy enough to choose what he did.

[ As sour as she is about being sniped down in a split-second, in a cowardly way, as good a prospect as getting to decide your fate seems... She's not sure she could ever do something like that, even now. So much of her life now has been dedicated to overcoming the idea of her death, could she let go and accept the inevitability in a similar situation? ]

I only asked because-- Well. You must feel guilty about it, right? Is that the running theme? I don't-- I hope I'm not somebody else's ghost. That's all. I wondered how being left behind feels, I guess.

You're happy, right, Jaime? Even with everything?

[khajidont]

I mean - of course I feel guilty about it. It didn't have to happen that way. I'm pretty sure the running theme is just dead people, but... let's just say my grandma's ghost hasn't popped up yet.

[ Maybe Laurie's right. Maybe it is about guilt. Between Eddie, the Negotiator and Nadia popping up, he's starting to realize that the things and people he feels guilty about keep adding up, and so do his fears for the future. It's not a comfortable feeling, but one that he doesn't think is too foreign for anyone in the hero biz.

It's easier being the one to leave than it is to be the one left behind, but only if you don't come back to life to realize exactly what you've lost. Then, everything sucks, for everyone. Jaime knows that in the moments he had accepted his own death - plugged into a self-destructing spaceship, hurtling down from space with nothing to protect him from dying on impact - he had felt nothing but an odd, distilled sense of peace and purpose, like this is the way it was supposed to work, in the end. He felt remorse over those he'd left behind, at least, but being on the precipice of death?

He doesn't want to die, not at all, but it hadn't been so bad. ]

I won't say it's not hard, Laurie. But...

[ Back home, he's not happy. He saw himself from the future, the Titans are flagging underneath the weight of their own responsibility, he was attacked at home and whisked away to a battle bigger than he thinks that any of them can cope with, but that - that's external stuff, right? Here, he can still be happy, right? ]

I think in the end, we can be happy, and move on. That's what you want, isn't it?