[OPEN] ❁ don't let it get the best of you, you'll make it out alive

[roseblooms]

WHO: Fawkes and YOU!
WHERE: All around Recolle during the nightmares/fog event!
WHEN: Various times in the month of October!
WHAT: Nightmares, fog encounters, and etc.
WARNINGS: Will be attached to the headers of various top-levels within!

Comments

[doublesmall]

[hearing words like that makes something burn in chuuya's chest, makes him want to bite back even though it isn't his place because he knows well enough that sometimes, biological ties don't mean shit--

it's very much not his place, so he stops himself for now, but it's a damn near thing. he focuses instead on fawkes, on the mirror.]

Do what? Don't tell me you're thinking about doing something stupid, now.

[casual as he makes the words sound, he's still on edge and tense, positioned where he can see both of them.]

[roseblooms]

It's not stupid.

[Vaguely, he sort of realizes that he ought to say something clever and funny there, something like I've thought this out far too carefully for it to be stupid, but somehow there's a barrier between knowing what he ought to say and being able to actually reach it, and he ends up just feebly registering his halfhearted protest, instead, without any of the follow-up he wishes he could make.

His mother is watching the two of them now, though, cold and scrutinizing. It seems as though there's supposed to be someone else here in this dream, but it's malleable for who and how.]

It's to save her life.

[To take responsibility, something seems to echo, even though no one utters that sentence at all.]

[doublesmall]

Yeah? And what's it gonna do to you, huh?

[if there weren't some kind of risk, surely he'd already have done whatever it is he's thinking of doing, and saving people tends to be a pretty big kind of risk.

it's why he doesn't really consider himself the type to do it, honestly.]

And what makes it your job to save her in the first place, anyway?

[roseblooms]

She's my mother.

[She's not, and he knows it, but the dream says that she is and so clearly she must be.]

There's no other way to do it. Nothing else will work — nothing else has worked. The doctors couldn't save her. The specialists. I'm the only one...

[He glances down, staring at his own face reflected back in the mirror's glass.]

And even I can't, except like this.

[doublesmall]

Like what?

[he gives the mirror a suspicious look, because he hasn't missed the lack of an answer for what, exactly, this thing is going to do. chuuya already doesn't like this one bit.]

If nothing else worked, what makes you so sure a hunk of glass is going to do anything for her, huh?

[roseblooms]

Because that's what this mirror does.

[He knows it's not a good answer, but Chuuya's mounting apprehension is somehow unsettlingly calming. It's as though someone here is supposed to be that agitated, that defensive and skeptical, and it opens the door for Fawkes to relax because it means things are progressing exactly as they're meant to.]

It grants a wish — no, not just a wish. A heart's wish, its fondest desire. All it asks is that you trade your life for it.

SUPER LATE SORRY feel free to ignore this

[doublesmall]

So you have to give up yours just because she's your mom?

[chuuya's not hanging back anymore. he's right in fawkes' space, pushing himself close both to ensure he has his attention and to put himself in a position to do something if he tries to go through with this.]

And you said you weren't doing anything stupid! What else do you call this, huh?

[self-sacrifice, he's fairly sure, only makes the person doing it feel any better about the situation.]

People die, Fawkes. Everybody dies. I get wanting to stop it, but-- shit, do you know how many people you'd fuck up doing that? You get to feel good about saving someone before you die but what about everyone that loses you, idiot?!