week 6

[airlockedmods]

[Even with three deaths two weeks in a row, life in the Fantasy Sweet returns to some semblance of normalcy come Sunday morning. The messes are cleaned up, the bodies are safe in the morgue (or in Kip's case, still in a liquor bottle in the garden) and with this new week comes a fresh crop of returning memories.

There is no new floor this week.

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday



[ooc: Don't forget to to turn in your activity for week 5, submit your memory regains and put in your threads for the Benefactors!]

Comments

[scourgingstars]

I doubt she and I are on the most amicable terms right now as well. [Ardyn shrugged, picking up the pen again and twirling it between his fingers.]

I'm sure you came reasonably close. Regardless, now you have it done accurately.

[motherfucking_ghost]

[He's not going to dig his hole deeper by explaining how close he may or may not have gotten.]

You too, huh? Yeah like...sometimes I think I get it, but then she insists that I don't, and then she has to go and slap me? Not a big fan of that. I mean maybe if I'm in bed with someone we can talk slapping, but in general?

Just thought maybe she was gonna be the last person I'd have a shouting match with is all. Or Arianna.

[scourgingstars]

...You, too? I'd almost be proud of her having a spine if it hadn't come with proving she clearly doesn't.

[ardyn, please.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

Oh man, she slapped you? Listen, that alone is ballsy. ...Though, I mean, I guess you're really getting it from the ladies now. [Ardyn and Queenie were not exactly in a private area, all right.]

She's got an assload of trauma that's shaped her, and it's like she doesn't think anyone sees that when we try to help her change her way of thinking about it. It's dumb. She's dumb. We're all fucking dumb and traumatized and fucked up even if we don't know it yet, or even if we weren't, we're in this fucking place, so we are now.

[Throws up his fuzzy cozy arms! Fuck this place.] Anyway I don't think she buys she's the like...anti-you.

[scourgingstars]

... [Ardyn's free hand briefly came up to his face where he'd been slapped twice now. More than he'd expected, less than he probably deserved.]

It irritates me to no end. She's so convinced that her only value is in what she can do for others, as though her life has no meaning past being used to her last breath and discarded. And she won't listen when I tell her what that is going to end in.

[The pen abruptly stopped twirling, Ardyn's hand curling around it like the hilt of a dagger.]

...I look at her, and I see exactly the same qualities you do. Sacrificing all that she has for a world that treats her like she's worthless, refusing to simply be even the faintest bit selfish. 'As long as I'm the one suffering instead of someone else, it's fine.' 'If I was able to help even one person, it doesn't matter what happens to me.'

[The pen was laid on the table a little too harshly underneath Ardyn's left hand; it was that or stab it right into the surface.]

It's sickening.

[motherfucking_ghost]

[He's gonna watch that with a little bit of a raised brow. Those are some increasingly intense feels there, Ardy. He can't possibly imagine why.]

Is it...is it weird that she seems selfish in her selflessness? Whatever you say to her, in one ear out the other, and it always ends up being about her, somehow? Every time. Like every conversation seems pretty well focused on her for her not giving a shit about herself. She's got a complex we guys in the military like to call survivor's guilt and post-traumatic stress, and she doesn't want any help for that. [church everyone calls them that that's what they are] She just wants to hate herself and listen to everyone else's crap and feel even worse about herself until she kills herself or dies.

...I might still be kind of angry with her. And fucking perplexed.

Anyway. Yeah. It's sickening. Especially to you. [Just...gonna...reach his hand out to place over Ardyn's.] Not every story that's similar is going to end the same way.

[scourgingstars]

[Ardyn let out a slow breath, making some sort of effort to keep his temper in check.]

I'm furious with her--she's a worse lost cause than I ever was, and refuses to even try to be anything else.

If it does end like that, it'll be her own fault for not listening to someone who actually knows better.

[motherfucking_ghost]

You're both brick walls.

She said she needed more time. And...fuck it, who am I to tell her how she does or doesn't deal with her shit. At least she got to know before experiencing it. She had a damn autobiography. Her life's literally an open book; she actually let people read it.

Experiencing it first hand is different, but I just...don't know how to get her to let for for two seconds and have a good time. I don't think even I could make her laugh. Smile, yeah, but not laugh. I even suggested she make a blanket fort, Ardy. Who doesn't love a blanket fort? Even you'd think it was a quaint waste of time, key word being quaint.

So I'm not what she needs. [Nobody needs me!] You might be, but she has to let it, and she's just not ready for that, I guess.

[scourgingstars]

...I'm not someone who can help her, either. I'm barely holding myself together as it is, and I can't stand even looking at that sort of savior complex. Arianna or one of the others would be better off dealing with her however they can. If they can.

[motherfucking_ghost]

It'll sure as fuck mean less slapping in your future. Unless you're into that.

[This is the walking shitpost who sometimes does feelings and sometimes takes a sharp right straight off a cliff in order to avoid feelings.]

[scourgingstars]

You know you aren't very good at changing the subject, Church.

[motherfucking_ghost]

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot more about not being good help to Clarith that needs talked about. And how maybe we should avoid her until she chills out a little.

[scourgingstars]

Not quite what I meant.

I can't help but notice you've an astounding ability to put others--particularly me--before yourself as well. And I'm far from the only one that's noticed.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Is this gonna turn into a 'you're a filthy hypocrite' speech or a 'fucking knock it off' speech or both?

[scourgingstars]

Try 'neither'.

I'm-... [Ardyn hesitated awkwardly, glancing around like he was briefly entertaining the idea of finding the best escape route.] ...I'm trying to say that...if one of us is going to break, it shouldn't be you and it won't be because of me.

I told you once that I knew I asked too much of you. And what I am making some effort to express is that if you don't talk to me, then at least consider Junpei or someone moderately more human in sentiment than I am.

[motherfucking_ghost]

...Are-- [don't ruin it don't ruin it don't ruin it] Are you seriously giving me the 'please talk to someone I don't care who as long as you talk' speech instead?

That's not one I expected from you. Queenie, maybe, and Junpei, but you?

I don't-- [He wants to try and make this something funny, except that that's...really oddly and stupidly sweet of Ardyn in a way he's not entirely sure he knows how to process. (Join the club.) Ardyn has been in some wild swing of a mood since learning he's dead and might be alive forever and ever here. That's understandable, just...kinda expected it to be a downswing instead of like...this sideswing? And kind of an upswing?

It's the effort to care, and the effort to let it be known that he cares. For as much as he can. Church flashes a quick and uncertain smile, like he really is about to tell a joke, but whatever he thought he came up with never actually comes out. The smile vanishes, and he's left rubbing his neck and looking pretty awkward himself.]

I--talk to you. I talk to you a lot. And Junpei, I talk to him, too. I told him I'd keep him in the loop, more or less, about you and me both. It's not everything; it's never everything--

And sometimes I talk way too much and nobody can get me to shut the fuck up. [There we go, there's at least a modicum of a joke! Salvaged this right at the end.]

[scourgingstars]

Don't give me that. I just-

[...Queenie had, admittedly, had a point. Ardyn was struggling to figure out who he was and what to do with that, but being as abrasive as came naturally to him wasn't helping.]

[If he was going to be anything else with even one person, then it would be this one.]

...It doesn't need to be everything. But I wouldn't ask my Shield to carry more than he could handle alone.

[motherfucking_ghost]

You've seen me when I stop being able to handle shit. [On at least two occasions now. He's not proud. Because he's a stupid dude.]

And I don't wanna have to...burden you. More than you already are. You've got more than enough shit to deal with in your own life, I just...feel kind of...guilty, sometimes, a little, when I bitch and moan about anything I remember or some of the shit I say. I mean, we're a team, the three of us, we're a team, and we can rely on each other, and we tell each other shit, that's how it works, I know, trust me, I know how a team works.

I just, uhhh...I-I mean, sometimes you just gotta have shitty thoughts because this is a shitty situation in a shitty place. I'm not the happy fun ball all the time.

[scourgingstars]

...I know. I doubt any of the three of us can handle ourselves on our own at this point, so we've no choice but to rely on each other.

[motherfucking_ghost]

[At long last, Church rises to his feet, fuzzy arms spread wide. Not for a hug. Wait--] Besides. I can carry you pretty well.

[softly: church don't Is Ardyn ready for Church wrapping his arms around him and trying to heft him up off his feet for just a second, just to show he can? Cuz...cuz that's happening.]

[scourgingstars]

What--put me down, what are you doing?!

[motherfucking_ghost]

[It's just a little (or a big) heft and a lean back just to get you off your feet, Ardy! And right back down again. With a little wheeze.]

Jesus, how much more weight do the clothes add on? I'm just taking a metaphor and making it entertainingly literal in an attempt to distract from the emotional matter at hand, what's it look like I'm doing?

[Let it never be said that Church is not painfully self-aware. At times.]

[scourgingstars]

[a lot because ardyn is kind of a stringbean]

Being entirely unnecessary, as you're quite well known for.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Also that. [Look at this utterly charming smile!]

[scourgingstars]

Just don't make a habit of that. I've a reputation to uphold.