pummelgranite | [MoM][IC Contact]

[ Keeping track of days is hard when you're in a(nother) addled stupor in an attempt to dull things like trauma, and all the vulnerable, easily-exploitable emotions that sprout thereof.

But it's probably been about a week at least since the nightmare realm unraveled. Since he was on the run from the Soviets, and her. Since the bloody Darkness enveloped them in a pocket of the dream world where she could kill him again and again to her heart's content. Since John woke up - how, he's already figured out. It's the thing he's running from and trying to numb. The exact moment he was offed for good and freed of the slumber was the exact moment he vocalized that he Gave A Shit. Which was also why he took an absurd number of psychedelics and dove back in to get her out.

She'd awoken and in their usual idiom, neither of them had furthur discussed what had happened, and he gave her the space appropriate for a young woman nursing brand new mental scarring.

He's well into a bottle of something that would be more appropriate for medical sterilization when he picks up his phone, fumbling with the keyboard. What he means to write is reassurance, perhaps a reflection of what they've been through. He's overconfident, thinking he can articulate that which they've spent half a year burying. What comes out is... not what he aims for. ]

Hey

so how did you manage to eat with those piercing things in

[ Oh, there's plenty in the dream for her to fixate on. She didn't want to think about John's confession. She couldn't, without thinking about his corpse. There was a lot she didn't want to think about. Luckily, there was molly and alcohol and Inanna to keep her mind off jjjjust about anything.

Until this. ]

Seriously? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_bead_ring

Since when do you have simple explanations for things, especially involving your own style

[ Oh no. Looks like he brought his matching bad mood. Misery and company and all that bullshit. ]

I'm saying they come out, you dipshit.

Anti-climax.

They fooled you pretty well.

Should've known theatrics were involved.

Uh huh. Gotta stay on brand.

[ For sure, she was doing it all for the #aesthetic and not to try and wrench back control of hideous circumstances, or because hurting herself felt like the only outlet she had left, and absolutely not in the faint hopes that someone would understand it as the cry of pain that it had been, and show her a scrap of mercy. ]

[ It's not like the pain isn't part of her brand, in all fairness.

But it's also not like he hadn't spent most of his life stuck in the same self-destructive pattern, waiting for someone with the power and the patience to stop him.

Probably why he can't shut up even when he can hear himself. ]

Usually dreams are metaphorical. But making cries for help into stylish performance art? Sounds like your Thursday afternoon. Other than the dystopian regime, anyway.

[ There's a long time before she replies. ]

What the fuck do you want?

Edited 2017-05-04 07:54 (UTC)

[ It's sweet that she assumes he thought that far ahead.

"Depends," he nearly answers, "What the fuck was that?" ]

Taking my head off in the real world too, then?

So you just wanted to piss me off? Great. Well done.

[ His turn for a long time before a curt reply. ]

You could have been more than what they made you. Like how I've said. That a taste of what's to come in the waking world?

[ It's a long time until she replies as well. ]

Fuck you.

[ Not like it's hard to divine her location - there's enough of her odds and ends that find their way into his pockets when she's too busy, too moody, or too famous to hold her own things. One of her makeup sponges and a few incantations later and he finds the graveyard she's moping in.

He picks a tombstone a row over from her and leans against it, cigarette between his teeth as ever. ]

Penny for yer' thoughts.

What do you want, John?

[ As if he did not . . . just say exactly what he wanted . . . ]

[ It's almost eerie how quickly he cools, his jaunty sarcasm dropping off into oblivion. ]

Sometimes I wonder about you, love. Whether you enjoy doing what it is you do.

[ She pulls her knees up to her chest. ]

What do you want.

[ Maybe he wants a fight. Or to bury his stupid, exploitable capacity for caring. Or to forget what happened in the dream. Maybe he could accomplish them all at once. ]

Most of us face horror and misery. Some of us even from terrible cosmic forces. Only, we don't cope with it by leaving a trail of bloody obliteration. S'that what you want?

[ Doesn't she? She won't say it's not her fault. Clearly it is. If it's her fault, then . . . ]

I'm the Destroyer.

[ That's sure not an answer. ]

Edited 2017-05-05 08:03 (UTC)

Some inspiration that is, then.

[ He wonders what it would take to break her in the real world. To snap and bend that spirit of hers into a tool.

But she saw him afraid in that realm. And anger is easier to summon.

His voice shakes more than he means it to. ]

Whats the point of it all, then? At the end of this you go back to the beyond, and leave a dead girl behind you. Who does it bloody appease, love? The darkness? Or you?

[ She still doesn't look at him. Her back is against the base of a marble statue, and her gaze stares into the darkness of the cemetery without focusing on anything in particular.

He's right, isn't he? There is no point to her. Even less than anyone else in the Pantheon. Here's where he's wrong though, she was more than they made her. Far more violent, and cruel, and dangerous. The Soviets had just wanted an obedient soldier, so why had she become a rabid monster? Why had she rubbed her viciousness into Batman's face. Why had she forced him to bear the punishment for her atrocities? Why did she hate John so much as to break his body over and over and over and over and-

There had been a fuzziness in her thinking, a dissociated helplessness that made it all seem like she was watching herself move and hurt and kill. Thinking about it makes her throat tighten. She wants to say that she wanted to stop, that she didn't know how to stop, that she's sorry, so sorry for hurting him.

But that would be a lie, wouldn't it? If she was really sorry she wouldn't have done it. She's the one who made those choices, no one else. So he's right. If there was really any purpose or goodness to her, she would have fucking shown it by now.

She shoves down the self pity until she's sure her voice will be steady. ]

Sounds like you already know the answer.

S'fine. You probably did me what I deserve anyway.

[ What did you think was going to come of helping her, John? At worst she was baggage and at best she was a human talisman to ward off his own guilt. Do right by one person, and maybe you can forget all the death you've caused.

He knows her choices are limited, that having power and having options aren't the same thing, that even deities can be broken and manipulated. She'd gotten her big bloody life goal when she became Persephone, and by the time she realized the cost, it was already too late. By the time she realized that which she'd spent her life obsessed with was orchestrated by a lying, scheming old bat, there was no return.

John wants to tell her it's not her fault. Not her powers, nor what she became in the dreamland. Children are lied to constantly, anyone can be broken, and there are a million ugly ways to tear away someone's freedom. But those are all fancy ways of saying "it's okay", which he can never, ever insult her by saying.

Which is maybe why he finds it all too easy to talk shit and pick a fight now. He can tell himself it'll create a safe distance between them.

He can feel the silence bearing down on them and he's not sure if this is his second or third cigarette that he lights with trembling hands. ]

But you also fill places with people who don't deserve what I do. That the thanks your worshippers get? Bein' toyed with.

[ Please, child. Get mad. Shut him up. Stop him. Run. Get yourself far as you can from the curse that falls upon those he cares about. ]

[ "Did me what I deserve," the words make her sick. They make her sick the way his snapping bones make her sick, the way his last breaths wheeze through a broken throat make her sick. But they didn't make her feel sick at the time, did they?

But her fans, at least . . . ]

Don't talk about my fans like you have any fucking idea.

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action; SHITS GETTIN REAL

achtung, baby

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