[audio] un: nah (forward-dated to the 3rd)

[damnable]

So turns out the beacon can swallow you up and spit you right back out after several decades in your own world - in case everyone else is as unaware of that being a possibility as I was.

Name's Red for those of you who didn't know me before when I was teenage-shaped and brand spankin' new to life. For those who did, sorry for the awkward, weird social situation the beacon's just created for us. Now that I'm wiser-to-life, I feel it's better to be up front about some things. I can see people's souls, auras, whatever you wanna call 'em. So I know a lot about someone from the get-go, and I can't turn it on and off.

So there's some options:

A) I can tell you what I see when I meet you in full detail so you know what I know.

B) We both pretend like I don't see shit. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, it's a fun little coping mechanism.

C) My ability malfunctions - can't control this but it happens here.

D) I can make some colorful description up, and we roll with it, cause why not? Live your dreams.

If you got a preference, let me know or I'll assume B is it. I'll be at the bar, drinking about a thousand drinks, and grappling with sudden onslaught of memories and emotions and all that messy fun shit. Cheers, and Happy Train day.

( OOC: Open to network responses and/or action spam. If you want Red to see your chars' aura at some point, feel free to fill it permissions here - I assume her ability just doesn't work if there's nothing filled out so no worries regardless. :) If you already filled it out on her old journal, no need to fill it out again! )

Comments

[thedreamer]

It's been a long time, granted, but I still remember of course. I remember all of it, everything that came before.

[ In his other lives, those other faces, all the people long gone now. ]

I'll make you anything you like! A bit later. Not really banana daiquiri conversation, is it?

[ This is said with a soft smile, perhaps a bit less bright than usual. Because more important than the inventing of various cocktails, Red asked a question that deserves an answer, and he's edging closer to it. ]

He wanted war and death and destruction—no surprise to you. He wanted me to help bring the darkest days to everyone here, he saw...things, in my mind, things I've done, who I was, who I've been. He tried to make me, yes, and I resisted. Until the end.

[ He pauses again. It's not the easiest thing to speak of, the loss of agency and control, what he might have done. The memories conjured from the Time War, from the bloodiest battles the universe had ever known. ]

You don't want to hear this.

[ And yet, it needs to be said and he needs to be pushed. On some level, he trusts her to either push him on this, or give him that extra pause to allow for him coming around to telling the rest of it. ]

[damnable]

( Red offers him a soft smile back in response to the question. She might ordinarily toss in a joke about how anything can be turned into a banana daiquiri conversation or about how they need a beach and lounge chairs, but she doesn't want to interrupt very much. And the point is made. Her finger slides around the rim of her glass, the burn of the whiskey against her lips still.

That burn goes well with his next words, which sink down inside of her like stones in a lake, heavy.

War, death, destruction. No, it is not a surprise like it is not a surprise either that he might see into the Doctor's mind and see terrible destruction, the answer to those requests. She saw his aura when they met. She sees it now - like lava in its heat and destructiveness beneath the soothing blue and purple, the warmth that she knows.

And so there is no shock or surprise in her expression when he mentions those things being seen - only understanding without knowing the details of exactly what that means.

She tips the glass up to her mouth to take another sip and looks into the liquid until he speaks, and then her gaze lifts to his. She shakes her head, eyebrow raised as she continues: )

Do I seem like the type 't ask for what I don't want?

( Another pause, patient and quiet - they are both ancient, and she has never minded the quiet. She is here listening. )

[thedreamer]

Far from it.

[ There's almost the muted outline of a sigh in his words as he admits to it. The chance was slim, admittedly, but the instinct to protect himself by attempting to dodge it one more time was difficult to quell.

But no, no of course not. He knows her better than that by now.

What he has to say isn't anywhere near as terrible as it could have been. He saw that clearly in his mind's eye. But what he ultimately did isn't anything that sits easily in his hearts, either. ]

I resisted Rathakku, but I was overtaken by one of the Paladins who'd been sacrificed. It begged for help. [ What he isn't saying directly is that in this instance, he allowed for it. The Paladin was different from Rathakku and he could handle it, he'd thought. Well, he'd thought a lot of things in fact, and he was wrong. His inflated self-confidence led him to believe he could have resisted and that the entity might have been an unwelcome, but mostly harmless presence. He only agreed because he thought he'd be helping, and keeping anyone else from being possessed, anyone vulnerable and without the same defenses he has. ]

It wanted revenge and it was stronger than I'd anticipated. Ultimately, it forced me to kill a harpy and that seemed to satisfy it. Blood for blood.

[ For someone who hides and runs from the worst parts of himself, it's more than difficult to discuss, and yet they're close enough, the pair of them, that he feels she's owed the answer to her question. Even if he took the long way around. He doesn't say that so much of what the Paladin felt was so familiar to him; the loss of family, being the last, until he'd died himself. That loneliness, that want for revenge—he lost track of where his own thoughts ended and the Paladin's began. ]

[damnable]

( Red quiets as he explains. She sips at the drink in her glass, in her hand while he gets into the details that he has been avoiding, and she does acknowledge that he did not have to say a word at all. He could have continued to pretend, to dance away from answers, but for whatever reason, he gives the truth to her, and she appreciates it even as the truth is difficult to hear.

She knows what it is like to lose control - she was made to be under the control of someone else, but it's still-

It's still fucking difficult to be forced to be in the position to commit such violence, such pain. Her hand slides behind her neck. She finishes her glass, winces past the burn, intends to order more from the bartender in a moment, but first there's this.

Fuck, there's this. )

Blood for blood. ( Her voice is soft. Her hands are tight around the glass in her hands. ) It was a mistake - you know that, it doesn't help you to know it was a mistake, but it was.

Everyone makes mistakes. But that doesn't change what happened or how it feels. ( This isn't the space to reassure. It's the space to accept what happened, how it felt, all the rest. ) Some fucked up shit, huh?

I'm sorry. ( that she had no control, that he was possessed, that he was taken. )