video; un: eriks

[underbluesky]

[The man who appears on the screen almost looks reluctant to be doing so, allowing the shaggy blond hair and glasses to obscure much of his face.]

...Something strange happened at the place I'm told is called the "Sleeper Farm", recently. A...friend and I had been cornered by one of our captors, and I'd tried without much luck at first to reason with them. But the moment they tried to grab me again, something changed.

Suddenly, they became calmer and stopped attacking, telling us to hurry and run, because they wouldn't have long until their corruption returned.

[It's here that his expression wavers, slightly; he is still uncertain about this, about allowing himself to return among people. And yet -- there's a subtle press under his skin, a restlessness. He has to do this.]

I'm still not sure I entirely understand what that means, or what exactly I did, but I've heard people talk about it. It...happens to us, doesn't it? Over time here. If easing that is something I can do, even for a little while...I want to offer it to anyone who needs it.

[There is a slightly awkward silence that hangs after he's finished speaking, and then, after a few moments, the feed simply shuts off.]

Comments

[spiritwalks]

To the extent that most Sleepers struggle with managing their emotional shit, and this world is drenched in blood pollution? Yeah, pretty much.

[He's not exactly flippant. But he speaks with a calm, easy tone — like somebody who's learned to live near an avalanche-prone mountain, or on top of a volatile fracture in the earth.

Warmer, he adds:]

It's not all doom and gloom, though. Our choices still matter. We can't control what happens to us, but we can control the way it changes us: How we see ourselves. How we relate to others.

That's true anywhere we go.

[underbluesky]

[Ordinarily, he would agree with this. Despite the potential for monstrosity in his skin, he has always tried to be something different. He has spent a century and a half trying to protect the humans that Rem died to save. And yet...]

Sometimes it changes our behavior against our will though, right? I heard something about a lot of bloodshed influenced by the ocean, from shortly before I arrived. And there was the Black Parade...

[And the masks twisting people into acting accordingly. Even if these happenings are ephemeral, transient...their consequences still exist. Vash only needs to lose control over himself for a moment to countless people killed.]

[spiritwalks]

Sure. We're all influenced by this world's environment. Sometimes it makes people shift and behave in ways they wouldn't otherwise.

[Vyng doesn't seem to believe there's any contradiction there — he still recalls how horribly his own body morphed into an amalgamation of terrified spirits clumped into a singular entity, back in the Dream. And yet the conclusions he took away from that experience were entirely his own.]

[underbluesky]

[Meanwhile, what Vash took from the realization that he may not always have control over his own will was that he is far too dangerous for such an instability to be acceptable, and that it's better for him to keep himself away from people at large.

Except, he may have no control over even that much, so...he might as well offer what he can.]

...I'm sorry, but where are you going with this?

[spiritwalks]

I'm saying corruption isn't a disease to be cured. It's a condition we've all got to manage. Because we're part of this world now, and we've all got our demons.

You want to help others with it? Great. [He means it.] But if you're doing this because you're thinking "I'll do anything to make someone's life more bearable for a few days. I don't care what happens to me, I can handle this on my own", then...

[He studies the other Sleeper's countenance for a moment. Gently, he finishes:]

I think you've got some major demons of your own, pal.