[she giggles when frumpkin swipes the fluffball with a paw. good hunting, frumpkin.]
They can also be exasperating.
[she says, fondly. also anna!! memshares!! lmk if there's one you want or if there are any cws i should avoid if you dealers choice it. and give me a memory, i'm fine with anything that doesn't involve images of photorealistic clowns or fish with human teeth!!]
[Damn, the roulette of memory share. But hilariously! Some of these feelings shared are familiar! Imagine.
He blinks a few times to try to regain the composure of being himself instead of someone else, and he feels a little awkward for the hundredth time having seen something so... intimate. Also - wow, he now is like SEI IS A GIRL? Sei is a girl.]
[And he doesn't even get to finish. He's guessing it will be his turn, and, what do you know, it is his turn!
Sei has just been drugged - paralyzed stiff like a stone statue - and dragged out of a nerve-wracking, fancy party (while in disguise as someone completely different, no less) by seven of the people she never dreamed of running into at said party. Seven people she never wanted to see here. The Mighty Nein. Her new, would-be friends.
She's a traitor to her country, and they all know it, but she did not know they knew until this very moment of being abducted and stolen away. It dawns on her in horror. They know. The seven of them are here, surrounding her. All of their eyes are on her at once.
"Yes, friend, what are you doing?" Caleb follows up, tone a little icy. Disappointed.
There is a long silence between her and those seven. A strange, terrible feeling weighs heavily on her. What is this feeling? To break the trust of friends? "I'm sorry," she starts quietly. "You all... weren't part of the plan."
"Well, you know we have a limited amount of time," Caleb says, his tone still cold, "and I would... love for you... to see... the sunrise, so." It's a threat, wrapped up in considerate lenience. She has never heard such a biting thing from Caleb, the soft and quiet and curious man who wanted to learn dunamancy so badly. "If there is a reasonable explanation, we would love to hear it."
Sei draws in a slow breath, then exhales quietly. She tells them it is complicated. They tell her they have all night. She reaches out toward a crate and pulls it with magic to herself to sit down. She sighs again. She tells them she has a lot she wants to accomplish, that only one person understood and believed in that idea: herself. She's done terrible things in her life, and she knows they have as well, things they regret. Things they think they are doing for the right reasons. She can't say she regrets what she has done, but she does regret how things have changed since she made that decision. They were not part of the plan.
Jester bids her to explain the plan, that they have been guessing, they don't know if they're right, they're wrong.
"He doesn't want to say it out loud," Caduceus says, always wise. ("You want to write it down? You want to draw it? Play charades?" Jester offers in.) "No, if he says it out loud he's gonna have to hear what it is, and he's not going to like who he is when he hears it."
They tell her they know she is a good man, and she laughs, wry, bitter. They know she's a good man. She thinks of all the things she has done, and they think she's a good man. "I am but a humble, selfish creature," she tells them. "I'm sorry, sorry that you have all been pulled into this web of lies. When I first saw you arrive with the beacon, one of the two that I gave, I knew I had to be near you to protect what we had done. I had to make sure you did not get too close to the truth. If I could control the direction of your meanderings near this endeavor, perhaps it would have been safer. But what I didn't account for was... liking you all. And there is nothing worse than betraying those you come to care about before you even came to care about them. . . The pain is somewhat comforting because"--a laugh--"I am my own punishment."
"Do you still want what you started out wanting?" Jester asks.
She is quiet for a long time. "I've spent my life working towards it. I think things got a little out of hand."
"What do you want?!" Jester insists.
"I've already told you. There are so many mysteries. My entire life, I have been propped up to be perhaps worthy of one to break those boundaries, to find applications for it to change everything. And if I don't do it, the first person who does, I don't trust them."
Caleb drops down to his knees in front of Sei and reaches out to turn Sei's face toward him, close. "You listen to me," Caleb says, serious, genuine, "I know what you are talking about. I know. And the difference between you and I is thinner than a razor. I know what it means to have other people complicate your desires and wishes. And I was like you. Was. I know what a fool I have been for years, and I'm looking at him as if I am looking in a mirror. You didn't account for us. Good. That is life. Shit hits you sideways in life, and no one is prepared, no one is ready. These people changed me. These people can change you. You were not born with venom in your veins. You learned it. You learned it. You have a rare opportunity here, Thelyss. One chance to save yourself. And we are offering it. And I am"--Caleb places a hand on his shoulder--"pleading with you to find your better self. He is still there."
"There is no path to redemption for me," she says back. "If... If what has been done comes to light... If what you are seemingly looking to correct is known, then I am a dead man."
Caleb leans in and kisses her low on the forehead between the brows. It surprises Sei. She does not know how anyone could stand to be this close to her much less touch her, but Caleb has always been that way, hasn't he? Touching her: her arm, her shoulder.
"Maybe you and I are both damned," Caleb says, "but we can choose to do something and leave it better than it was before."
it's a little overwhelming. the feelings are not unfamiliar, in many ways, although the faces she sees in the memory are very much foreign to her other than being part of the files about previous games some of the visitors to the hotel had known, briefly seeing them upon reading up on the things she ought to have known as a "host". but reading about someone in a file is very different from seeing them in a memory: living, breathing, speaking.]
...oh.
[a tear rolls down her cheek, because she is a crybaby.]
I think perhaps they... left you better they found you, Essek-san. Or perhaps they did not leave you at all?
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They can also be exasperating.
[she says, fondly. also anna!! memshares!! lmk if there's one you want or if there are any cws i should avoid if you dealers choice it. and give me a memory, i'm fine with anything that doesn't involve images of photorealistic clowns or fish with human teeth!!]
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I find that feeling often with people, not cats, but I do know what you
mean.
[They can be exasperating!!!!!!]
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[and then there's a sudden wind. bam! memshare!]
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He blinks a few times to try to regain the composure of being himself instead of someone else, and he feels a little awkward for the hundredth time having seen something so... intimate. Also - wow, he now is like SEI IS A GIRL? Sei is a girl.]
I - I'm sorry... for seeing... The week is...
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anyway, she doesn't seem upset. just resigned.]
...this week is such a pain in the ass.
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[And he doesn't even get to finish. He's guessing it will be his turn, and, what do you know, it is his turn!
]
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it's a little overwhelming. the feelings are not unfamiliar, in many ways, although the faces she sees in the memory are very much foreign to her other than being part of the files about previous games some of the visitors to the hotel had known, briefly seeing them upon reading up on the things she ought to have known as a "host". but reading about someone in a file is very different from seeing them in a memory: living, breathing, speaking.]
...oh.
[a tear rolls down her cheek, because she is a crybaby.]
I think perhaps they... left you better they found you, Essek-san. Or perhaps they did not leave you at all?