002 // text; username: grollschwert

[hauntedsavior]

cw: chronic illness, ruminations on death

Fun one for you tonight.

[this message comes in the middle of the night, when no one in their right mind should be awake. but that's never stopped anna. she can't sleep, and if flynn and ruby and everybody are right then she has to at least try not to keep this stuff inside her at all times. sorrow's silence we needn't bear, or whatever.]

You know a girl. Her body is breaking down and her meds are failing her.
She has years left. Maybe months, if it gets worse.
But something happens, and she gets access to amazing new technology. Things that prevent her body from attacking itself.
Things that stop her timer from ticking faster than everyone else's.
Great, right?
You get to know her better. You entertain her little crush on you. Maybe you like her back a little and maybe things aren't gonna be so bad.

But one day, you do something.
Something that sets off a chain of events that you couldn't have predicted. Not in a million years.
Small things collide into medium things collide into big huge massive things.
And after the butterfly version of you is done flapping its wings, she doesn't have access to that technology anymore.
She's back on the timer.

She doesn't know you did anything.
She never finds out.
You can't bring yourself to tell her, and she wouldn't believe it if you did.

She barely recognizes you anymore, by the end of it.
Her family finds your name on her phone and invites you to pay respects.

Do you still go to her funeral?

Did you kill her?

Comments

[morningstud]

Oh, I'm not human. I've never denied as much. Not much sense to.

My sins are... more recent. There are multiple stories, but I'd like to tell the one closest to your own. Forgive my own long tale, though perhaps this is one similar to one you've heard before, depending on your world. A very, very long time ago, after the destruction of His previous creation, God created a new species: humans. He started with one man, and one woman. Perfectly equal in every way.

The woman, considering the man a lout, leaves him without a second thought. God responds to this by creating a second wife for the man, from the man's own rib. This woman has her own story, quite important, but for the moment I will focus on the fate of her children. She and her husband had twins, you see. Cain and Abel.

In a rage, Cain murdered Abel, became the first murderer, and was cursed to wander the Earth for all time. For tens of thousands of years, this was his fate, until I crossed paths with him in 2017.

He asked me to find a way to kill him, free him from his immortality. Celestials are not meant to harm mortals, but I do not lie. I promised to find a way to end his mortality. He went on a warpath upon deciding he wanted to live after all, murdering someone very dear to myself and my friends because she decided to shield my brother from a bullet.

I succeeded in ending his life, but it resulted in someone I care about realizing I was telling the truth about who I am the entire time we've known each other, and fearing me as a result. I didn't want to kill him, but I had to.

[hauntedsavior]

I know who you are, Herr Morningstar.
But if you ask someone what "avenged sevenfold" means where I'm from, you'll get a very different answer.

So you saved a lot of people, but one of your relationships changed forever because of it.
And you couldn't have predicted that Cain would have a change of heart now, after having six thousand years or so to think it over.

How do you make it easier to deal with inside your own head?
And feel free to hit me with stuff that's specific to you.
If my dad's right, I have more of you than the other guy inside me anyway.

[morningstud]

To be fair, I make no effort to hide it.
They're not a band where you're from?
I didn't get to make a joke about that, come to think of it...

Honestly, I wouldn't know where to begin with Dr. Linda. She's my therapist, and a dear friend besides.

Being accused of being the root of all evil does quite a lot of terrible things to a man.

[hauntedsavior]

Ha, all right, maybe you'll get the same answer.
They're a band and they kick ass.
Hope the Rev's doing well wherever he ended up.

God, dude, I can only imagine.
But honestly, one of the reasons I gave up on the whole Catholicism thing was because it always seemed like you were getting shafted by a bunch of historical revisionists.
My shit kind of dwarfs in comparison, but anyone's would.

Your therapist is here? Or back home?

[morningstud]

My problems come from much the same place. People are quite quick to twist the meanings of things to suit their own narratives.

It's quite disgusting.

Unfortunately, she isn't here. Only one person from my world was ever in Deerington, and she returned home long before we found ourselves here.

[hauntedsavior]

Damn. Keep remembering that I wanted to get into therapy whenever it comes up.
Thought I might have a connection through history's most misunderstood client.

It really helped, though?
Therapy, I mean.

[morningstud]

Without question, it has.
Linda was the first human I was close with to know who I really am, and that my name is no metaphor.

I would not be who I am without it.

[hauntedsavior]

You're definitely bringing a lot of light right now. I know that much.

Any luck finding a replacement here?
...Hell, want me to keep an eye out for one for both of us?

[morningstud]

Thank you.
I strongly believe it is an important thing. My brother also has benefited from it greatly.

I haven't exactly been looking, but this world does seem a touch less likely to fall apart at any given moment than the last. Perhaps we should both keep an eye out.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah, I could do that.
Back in Recolle I tried finding a therapist, but finding one who actually believed all the weird shit happening to me was impossible. Just 'cause of the way the city worked for people who didn't know what was going on.
Seems way easier here.

Plus I only have the one eye, so I could use an extra one for the lookout effort.

[morningstud]

Recolle? I'm afraid that's a word I'm not familiar with. But I do understand what it's like to look for a therapist who does not believe you. Linda didn't believe me for a long time, not until I gave her proof she couldn't ignore.

Ha! That's the spirit.

[hauntedsavior]

That's just the city I came here from. Same city Lillian was from.
Well, no, she was from Boston, but we met when she moved to Recolle.
I guess it was easier to find medical treatment there.

But yeah, it's miserable not getting taken seriously by medical professionals.
A few of my friends back home had to go through so many hoops just to find doctors who believed they were what they were, you know?
Shit sucks.
At least around here we can pull the squid card on anyone who tries to say we're making it up.

[morningstud]

It's not one I'm familiar with, but then again I hadn't heard of Deerington before, either. The multiverse has its secrets, I suppose.

What were you and people you knew going through, might I ask?

[hauntedsavior]

Oh, I mean, those friends I was talking about are trans and just had to deal with a bunch of medical gatekeeping bullshit, but, like.
I guess as far as Recolle in general goes?
Resonating with souls across the omniverse. Changing our bodies and giving us new memories.
God knows I haven't been to a doctor in years because of it. Probably need to go to a mechanic instead.

[morningstud]

Cruelty knows no bounds.

That sounds unbelievably frightening. I can't imagine anything like it, to tell the truth. Normally, angels might be invulnerable, but we're not so different from humans.

Finding yourself turning into a completely different species sounds like something that should have remained in the mind of Franz Kafka.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah, no, dude, it wasn't great.
Don't think I knew anyone who turned into a bug, but I didn't have my eye on everyone so it's totally possible.
I got used to it eventually, but when my legs first turned into these robot legs, I stayed inside for a week trying to cope.
Including learning how to walk again. That was cool, fun time, 10/10.

[morningstud]

That sounds horrible.

What on earth was causing such a thing? Past lives are one thing, but what you went through sounds absolutely torturous.

[hauntedsavior]

Soul melding experimentation run by the smallest big tech company I've ever heard of.
Other people had it way worse than me, honestly.
And it's not like the girl I share souls with was a leech or anything. She helped me out of a bunch of stuff, too.
All from inside my chest.

[morningstud]

That sounds highly illegal, if not entirely unethical.

At least she was helpful, I suppose. Better than learning some past life version of you thinks you're some sort of usurper.

[hauntedsavior]

Yes and yes. But when you basically own the city you can do anything you want, I guess.
lmao, god. I guess pre-fall you would think that, huh. I've heard "you are not immune to propaganda" but this is ridiculous.

[morningstud]

It sounds complicated.

You'll have to forgive me for saying I can't begin to understand such a situation, but it certainly can't be easy to deal with.

[hauntedsavior]

Eh, it was rough at first, but humans can get used to anything, you know?
Resilience and persistence.
Guess the same is true for androids designed like humans.

[morningstud]

That's who you were in a past life?

I suppose it might be somewhat ironic coming from me, but I firmly believe resilience and persistence is the experience of being alive; something manner of creatures experience, even the ones who might struggle to explain it.

[hauntedsavior]

Or who I will be in a future one. Timelines get weird when you're talking about something that won't happen for another 10,000 years, but also definitely already happened.

Goddammit, we do keep going.
Even when things get bad like this.
Even when everyone else is gone.

[morningstud]

Ah... yes, that is a good point.

Timescales like that are almost impossible for most to comprehend. Even for someone like me, it can be incredibly difficult to explain. Time, as I know it, only ever flows in one direction. We only ever have hindsight to guide us.