(closed) it's a baby fight

[selfloving]

WHO: The Geteilt Sisters
WHERE: Deep, deep in the corn maze, closest to the orphanage in location
WHEN: ~ the 20th
WHAT: One of Rose's new powers is tested in the worst possible way.
WARNINGS: This will probably get gory.

Everybody just lets things go. Who cares what happened a few years ago, right? Who cares what happened a few months ago? This family is obsessed with forgive-and-forget.

Except her. And even she--even she had started the month opening her arms wide to Rose, coddling Clover, as if they never did anything wrong, as if things should have just gone on like normal, always.

Maybe if Jasmine was thinking logically, she'd realize that her brain has dipped into territory that doesn't make sense at all. If anything, their greatest weakness as a family is that they never do let go of much, just pick at scabs and dig deeper holes.

The "ghost" has seized her fiercely, in body and mind. Her skin is paper-bright and translucent, plantlike veins pulsing their bloody good beneath. She is even less herself then she was when Eren found her in the forest, when she guiltily forced her infection on him. But, really, this is where they all belong; really, their time there set in motion everything that ever occurred throughout their lives. Jasmine knows she sounded wrong when she called Rose and Clover on the phone, and she knows that the wrongness is more likely to have them running. Dry corn stalks scraping her skin, she waits in the maze, gaze occasionally drifting back towards the side of town where they should have stayed. Yes, a place can be haunted, but so can a family. So can they.

Comments

[servileness]

Clover is only getting worse as the month goes on, becoming more monstrous day by day. She should work on finding people who've collected items to counteract her infections, but what's the point? Why should she? She feels freer this way.

If it weren't so late in the month, Clover would fight against that thinking. She may be a monster, but she doesn't want to be one. Now... Now, she embraces it. If she's a monster, everyone else should be one. They can all be monsters.

They are all monsters.

If they weren't, would their family be this way? So even if there is concern for how Jasmine sounded, it's not as much as it would be under normal circumstances. Not nearly as much. She makes her way to the orphanage soon enough, corn stalks be damned.

Even more of a shadow of her usual self, Clover asks upon seeing Jasmine, "Why do you want to meet here of all places?"

[blacksong]

It's a dark, dark day when Jasmine of all people sounds so wrong. If that wasn't enough to make the pit of her stomach drop, finding Clover here too doesn't help. Well, "finding." As it is, she can barely make out the outline of her sister through all the corn stalk. Not that Jasmine's looking any better. If not for her veins sticking out like bright red beacons, Rose would think she was looking at an actual monster ghost.

Her cure items have been left to better hands already, people who can actually make tools out of them, but seeing her sisters like this, she wonders if she should be there helping make the tools instead. Not because she's afraid of them—although there's plenty of fear for them—but because that would be the way to really help them, wouldn't it?

Probably. Rose heads closer to them anyways.

"Hey. What's going on?"

[selfloving]

"This is where it all started, isn't it?"

Sure, there are plenty of paths they can trace their misery back to. While they're all determined not to live the same wretched lives as the Intoners they remember, they've always tried to be happier than they really are.

Jasmine lifts her chin, talking half to the sky above the rustling corn stalks instead of to her sisters' faces.

"Come to think of it, this could have ended earlier. We were broken from the start."

[servileness]

"Stop it! We're a broken family because of you," Clover spits. Her shadow dances around the corn stalks, as wild as her emotions. "If you weren't so stubborn, if you both weren't so stubborn, would our family be the way it is now?"

It's a grudge Clover has always kept under wraps. Clover hates that fight between Rose and Jasmine that has lasted until even now, that elephant in the family room they all know and acknowledge but hardly talk about anymore. What kind of family doesn't forgive? They were all dealt a losing hand. Why did they have to make things worse for themselves?

What is pride if they're all falling apart?

[breakingvoice]

"Awfully bold of you to talk about stubbornness."

Lina is drawn by the positively mellifluous sounds of discord, chaos, and negativity that only her dear, beloved sisters can create. She's still dressed in a sharp pinstripe suit as she steps into view from behind a wall of corn stalks, but her skin has gone red; her eyes, yellow with long, vertical pupils. The only thing about her that's even remotely similar to Lina is the blue head of hair framing her short black horns, but of course, that's not hers either, is it?

She cackles, shrill and sharp, like shards of glass stabbing into the heart she no longer has. "I think we're all at fault here. None of us have ever been perfect." Her tail curls around to the front of her body as she takes a moment to preen, splaying out her hand in front of her to check her nails as smugly as possible. "Well, most of us haven't."

[blacksong]

Christ, this is a literal fucking nightmare. Indeed, the only thing familiar in Lina is Two's hair. Rose can hardly recognize any of her sisters. The Intoners would be more familiar than this. Her sisters might not be one united front against her, but she remembers standing against them like this all the same. It's all too easy to see how this happened before.

Again, literal fucking nightmare.

"We've been broken from the start, from before the start even, all of us. But that's why we all decided that we'd change this, right? Together."

Despite her words, her hands are balled tight enough for her nails to draw blood. She's never been good at being a voice of reason. They wouldn't be like this if she was, would they? Clover's not wrong.

[selfloving]

"Oh, so I suppose now we're both finally going to start taking sides? Wonderful; it's only years too late!"

It's the surprise of the evening, perhaps, that Jasmine rounds on her sisters now instead of Rose, drifting almost fluidly closer to Clover first. But it makes perfect sense to her. Rose knew what she did and still did it every time; that much is her crime, but when had the others ever made an attempt to understand Jasmine's pain? Never. Never, never.

"I guess it just wasn't convenient until there was nowhere left to hide!" Between her ghostliness and Clover's deteriorating Shadow and Lina's complete lack of remaining humanity. It would be kinder to end things like this before they lingered in this state for too long.

[servileness]

When had Jasmine ever let anyone try to understand her pain? Clover snaps.

"Shut the fuck up, Lina! You don't even know who you are or aren't anymore. Learn how to draw a fucking line!"

Clover's entire body is cloaked in darkness, in the shadows that make up her inner turmoil. Her bandages are lost underneath all her shade, casting out to cover the ground around her.

"Fuck all of you! All of you! All I wanted was a family. All I have ever wanted is a family, and what the fuck are we? Monsters. We're monsters. You say we were broken from the start?" Clover laughs, hysterical and breathy. She'd be damned if she cries here, but her voice wavers, betraying her anyway. "Is this what you call change? What's convenient about any of this? What sides are there to take when all you try to do is build up walls, Jasmine?"

She lashes out, shoving Jasmine away from her.

"What part of this is together, Rose? We're all here, but we'd tear each other throats' out right now." Her shadows shiver and tremble, turning inkier and wispier. Her temper flares. "I'd tear each and every one of your throats out."

[breakingvoice]

Haha. Ha. Okay. So this is the game they want to play? Lina's pupils grow as thin as her lips for a moment, then flicker back as thin wisps of smoke start coming off the dry cornstalks that are too close to her body. It's difficult to let things get to her when she's become completely heartless and devoid of morals, but it happens. Sometimes accidents happen. It would be a shame if one happened here.

"You'd just fuck it up and tear out your own first," she shoots right back, and dismisses everything else with a wave of her hand because Clover isn't worth it. As she paces back and forth in her own little area, separate from the others (as she always has been), she's thinking. It's hard to say who's most deserving of this no-strings-attached ridicule, because the others aren't guiltless, either.

"And you have no room to talk about hiding." Yes, she'll start with Jasmine. "This is the first time anyone's seen you outside in... months, isn't it, sister dear? I'm shocked you still remember our names. You're abandoning us as much as she did."

And it might not be a narrative Lina's ever believed, but right now it's the narrative she's pushing as her tail points towards Rose with her body to follow. "Do you know how many times you and your dragon kill me?" Not that it bothers her. She's treating all of this like a game, like she's trying to mark up points on a scoreboard that only she can see. "Do you even care? Or do you want to be like our precious little Clover and finish the job?"

[blacksong]

"Knock it the fuck off, all of you!"

She moves in between Jasmine and Clover, hands out to push them away from each other as far as she can. At least Lina doesn't look like she's here to get physical, but her exacerbating this whole thing isn't helping any either. It's not their fault that they're acting like this, she tells herself, it's not their fault, it's whatever this monster disease is, they wouldn't say these things if they were in their right minds.

Or maybe this has turned into an outlet for all the things they've kept pent up. Maybe it's stuff that's needed to be said for years. Honestly, she can't even really tell anymore. Even the Intoners seemed more united than this.

"Look, if you wanna talk about how much of a monster Zero was, be my guest, I'll join right in," she says to Lina, then turns her attention back to her other sisters, "but we are not having a brawl by the orphanage in a fucking haystack, you hear me?"