faderift | open | holiday spirits

Entry tags:

open | holiday spirits

WHO: Whoever, plus some spirits.
WHAT: Everyone spends an evening regretting the past. So basically a normal night.
WHEN: Wintermarch 5-6
WHERE: A castle in the mountains north of Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post including less vague/pretentious haunting mechanic descriptions. Fantasy violence and swearing and so on are assumed, but please use content warnings in your subject lines for things like explicit gore or sex, slavery content, body horror, etc., if you go any of those routes.

THE CASTLE

Their convenient shelter from the unexpected blizzard that whips up around them in the mountain pass isn't too convenient. Anyone with a reasonable detailed map will find it marked there; reaching its clifftop location requires a slight detour. When they approach, it has no warm ethereal glow or suspiciously welcoming lit torches. The windows stay dark. The portcullis is raised just high enough to be ducked under, but the heavy doors of the keep don't swing open to welcome them.

The only immediate sign that something is amiss is the thorough, all-encompassing emptiness of the place, and it might take some investigation before that begins to feel strange. The fortress' abandonment seems recent and abrupt: ample firewood has been cut and stacked for the winter, nothing has been done to protect the furniture or strip the beds, the kitchen is fully stocked and even has some perishables that do not seem close to perishing, the stables are equipped to comfortably keep any animals along for the journey, and a chess board before the hearth in the (humble) grand hall seems to have been left mid-game. But there are no messages, no bodies, no footsteps dimpling the crunchy layer of old snow accumulated in the bailey beneath the fresh snowfall.

As they search, the castle's visitors may begin to find signs that the castle hasn't been entirely abandoned. It begins with whispers emanating from the dark ends of corridors, voices they recognize and others they don't, or faces both familiar and unfamiliar flashing in still water or window panes when firelight hits right, or forms moving on the edge of vision but vanishing before they can be looked at directly.

By the time this becomes worrisome enough to drive anyone back out of the castle, the portcullis has fallen shut and won't budge. Neither will any other doors to the outside. The windows won't break; doors won't give way even to makeshift battering rams. The only walls that can be climbed or reached by stairs face out over a deep ravine. It might be a survivable climb, if the wind and weather allowed, but it would not be a survivable fall.

THE SPIRITS

--so back inside, then.

The keep is built like the Gallows' towers, square and tall, and it won't take long for Riftwatch to notice that whatever is wrong is more wrong the higher they climb. The whispers and glimpses on the lowest floor become voices and lingering shadowy figures on the second. Someone might turn and find their hand briefly held by an unfamiliar man's, warm and real for the moment it takes him to say, "Come with me." Or behind them, a woman's shocked and seething voice says, "What are you doing?" Or maybe it's a hand they do know and a voice saying something they've heard before.

As people venture to the higher floors--whether intrepidly seeking the source or involuntarily herded onward by spirits--these moments will begin to last and linger and repeat. And those who don't dare venture higher won't be exempt, confronted by stronger spirits that emerge like ants from a kicked hive as the upper floors are disturbed.

As they approach the uppermost floor, reality will begin to slip away from them. They may find themselves lost in a maze of rooms, even though that shouldn't be possible in so few square feet, and ultimately enveloped in comforting worlds where they didn't do that thing they regret and that, like dreams, feel real until they suddenly don't--until something is too unbelievable, until someone interrupts, or until a demon is holding them under the water of the warm bath they were tempted into, shoving them off a balcony, or whispering into their ears and minds, let me in and you can keep it.

The hauntings will continue until ~~morale improves~~ the eldest, most powerful demon has been dealt with.

THE END

When it ends, it ends abruptly. Weaker spirits vanish; stronger ones retreat into the dark. The lesser demons on the upper floors linger, and some may put up a last-ditch physical fight, but without their superior, they've lost most of their mental pull and emotional sway. The castle has changed, too. Its abandonment no longer looks so recent. The food and firewood is gone, along with any sense of warmth or satiety anyone used them to acquire earlier. There is dust where none was before, mildew and rot, and a few scattered, unfortunate skeletons.

The sun is not quite up, the sky a faintly luminescent grey. But the weather is survivable, though it will be slower travel than it would have been without the fresh snow. The doors will open, and the portcullis will raise. Everyone can set off on their cold, hours-long journey back to the city. Talking about their feelings or avoiding eye contact the entire time: the choice is theirs.

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"Whatever it is, it's not..."

Real, he wants to say, but the look on her face, the panic, has him swallowing that. He glances past her towards the three figures assembled, the image stopping and starting back again on the same several-second loop like a damaged bit of videotape. Takes in their body language in the... image? Illusion? Whatever. Defensive and unsure. He recognizes the sword in his hand as the one she'd given him in Val Chevin.

They can both see it, this scene, so it might as well be real.

The hand on her shoulder does not move.

"Is this... is that man the head of the TVA?"

Not real? No, that's the problem. This is too real, the two figures in chairs twitching as if a video paused as in the background an elevator opens, the same man at the desk stepping out with that horrible smile on his face.

"This is wild. The two of you, the same person... I mean it's a little unnatural but.. wow" He says, lackadaisical and patronizing all at once. "Come on, lets talk. In my office." The doors close after he returns inside, and then fades out of existence, the people at the desk reanimating in turn.

"Loki lets go." Sylvie says quietly, her voice having an edge to it that trembles, and places a hand on his chest and to try and make him step back. "You don't need to see this."

"We aren't the same person," Loki protests at the spirit, because what is this? Clearly, this man is a jerk of the highest order; Loki has every intention of stepping forward, even drops his hand from her shoulder, but then Sylvie is pressing for him to back up, turn around, and he frowns at her.

"What happens?" The restarted scene loops again as he looks over her shoulder, and he returns his gaze towards her face. She looks...upset, to say the very least. "What is it you aren't telling me?" It comes out quiet, not at all an accusation, but he's had the feeling since she got her that she's been holding out on him.

He who remains is speaking behind them, his lackadaisical tone carrying into the hallway. 'and you, you're a flea on the back of a dragon...', their own voices echoing in turn in response. It's strange to hear Loki's deep voice behind her as well, responding to He-Who-Remains, 'I'm not sure you quite understand the situation' even as the Loki in front of her asks that loaded question and doesn't move.

Sylvie opens her mouth to explain, but then there's that voice behind them again, as if magnified. 'Lets get all this out of the way... Ok here we go, you cant kill me because I already know what's going to happen.' She flinches, the sound of papers flapping reaching her ears.

"It didn't go like I planned." She finally says, hoarsely, "I'll tell you everything-- lets just go."

He does, desperately, want to believe her. Wants to turn around and go back downstairs, or find Alexandrie and some unoccupied room and just hole up in it. Ignore the specters and the ghosts and the memories that either do or don't quite line up with history and wait the night out or at the very least, the storm.

You can't kill me because I already know what's going to happen sounds ominous at bare minimum; it does draw his attention beyond Sylvie's flinching and obvious desire to also be elsewhere.

Still. Loki takes a step forward, his hand coming up to entangle fingers in hers against his chest. "I don't think we can run from this," he admits sadly. Whatever it is, he's got to see it through.

It's supposed to be a comforting gesture, and Sylvie isn't an idiot, she knows that; but the reaction it gets instead is one of pain lancing through her chest as if it was her own heart that their hands lay over instead of his. He doesn't trust her. Not that he should.

It's instinctual, the way she tries to pull away from him, stepping backwards into the room just to get her hand free of his. Behind her He Who Remains is explaining, explaining things that sound just as false to her ears as it had that day. His voice though this time flickers, whispers of doubt behind them --Is it. Is it really?-- about the temp pad, about the things that the TVA didn't know.

"That little look by the lake." The specter says, and instead of looking at the Loki in the chair, the man looks directly at the one in the doorway, his smile lingering long and dangerous.

She steps backward, fleeing, hurt and Loki follows instinctively, hand letting hers go even though everything within him would rather grab her by the wrist and haul the both of them out of the room anyway. The words of the man in purple reach his ears a moment later, along with a noise he doesn't quite register behind him.

They're both fully in the room, now, and Loki frowns at Sylvie, at the man he presumes is the head of the TVA, at the illusions of the two of them seated there. "Tell me what happens here," he asks her, voice quiet and shaking a little. The stare of the man in purple is unnerving. "How does he know about Lamentis?"

"Every step you took there, I paved the road." He-Who-Remains answers, still looking at the real Loki a moment, and she winces, teeth bared at the words. "You? Just walked down it."

"He said he chose us." Sylvie finally replies, trying to school her face into something resembling calm, but there's too much tightness in her mouth and body to pass as anything but barely contained. "To take his place to lead the TVA. I still don't believe it."

Loki makes a noise of disbelief. There are easier ways to get someone to do what you want, aren't there? "He took everything from you." But his frown is going nowhere; her body language is telling him there's more to it than that.

"Why would we believe him? Or want to run the TVA when it's done so much harm, keeps people from acting on free will?"

Come on, you know you can't get to the end unless you've been changed by the journey. The words float more from no where and everywhere, the scene now jolting, the man behind the desk flicking a bit of metal from his wrist. He starts to ramble, a scientist, a discovery, multiple universe. Multiversal war. Sylvie watches him instead of Loki, eyes narrowed and lips pulled into a deep frown. It sounds as bullshit to her here as it had back then; the concept that this... this was the only way. That complete subjugation of the multiverse was better than handling the variants of Kang who threatened existence. That this man, this human man, was worse a billion times over than a billion Thanoses, or than a billion other threats that killed and took and burned anything in their path. At least now, at least now there was a chance instead of none at all. A chance for some version of everyone to find happiness, if not every version.

"And that's the gambit." Sylvie says without inflection, seconds before He-who-remains spreads his arms and says it as well, full of theatrics, and announces how if they kill him someone far worse will fill that gap. She hadn't more than glanced at Loki back then, flickers of eyes, too focused on this horrible man (In this vision the desk, He-Who-Remains, it all just towered over the chairs in front of them. An exaggeration of how it must have felt, how it still did, in that moment) who insisted he had found the only way.

Now she watches Loki's face instead, trying to see where their beliefs had gone so separate. If, standing outside it now like they were, he still felt the same way.

Watching all of this unfold as an outsider to memory is strange. He's half-listening to the man in purple, half watching Sylvie and her reaction to all of this. Something happens, something terrible he thinks, and he's of two minds when it comes to finding out what it is.

On the one hand, he hasn't known thus far, and it hasn't been terrible. On the other, he still has that sword, in the haunting/memory, and he doesn't know how Sylvie got it. Why he'd leave it with her instead of just being there. And that's the gambit Sylvie says dismissively, and Loki is still frowning. There's a lot to process. The idea of a human from the 31st century spearheading a multiversal war, for one. That he created the TVA, second.

That he knew everything about them, every decision they would make...

He doesn't like it.

Loki shakes his head, once. "He dies," he says. Because he has no doubt of it. Sylvie has lost too much, worked too hard, planned for too long to let that man live, no matter how he towers over the both of them. "He dies, and we plan for what happens next." A hand extended between them. "Right?"

"That would make sense wouldn't it." It's said with such distain that it surprises even her; and she takes another sideways step away from Loki, licking her lips and looking at the floor as she tries to just...manage the intensity of what she's feeling in this moment. The desire to implode and explode all at once. The betrayal reignited, her loss, his truth, the complete lack of any relief when the deed was finally done.

The whole scene seizes up, jumps forward again, He-who-remains' voice echoing all around them. "There are Two options! One: You kill me and destroy all this and you don't just have one devil you have an infinite amount, or you two run the thing. Return to the TVA as their benevolent rulers. Tell the workforce who they are and why they do what they do. It's not personal. It's practical."

It was personal to her, and her ghostly double says as much. The violence in how the man behind the desk shouts at her, the way her ghost tilts her chin up the same as she does in that moment- because no. They were not all villains, not like how he was. No matter how good he made it sound.

Edited (i) 2022-01-17 07:28 (UTC)

She steps away, looking down, and Loki lets his hand fall to his side after a beat. Sylvie's contemptuous response, the looking away, the refusal to let him touch her tells him that's not what happens, that he's wrong somehow, but he doesn't understand it. How could it be anything else, why would it be anything else unless...

Unless he thought they should keep the man alive. Find out more information. Plan, strategize, prepare, maybe? He frows to himself, to the image of himself in the chair across from Sylvie.

He-Who-Remains laughs, a sound that grates his nerves and sends a chill down his spine simultaneously, and Loki shakes his head. He is not engaging with this... ghost or spirit or what-have-you. He's talking to Sylvie. He's going to understand this.

"Tell me what happens," he asks her again. "Please, Sylvie."

Sylvie shakes her head at that, her mouth pressed into a trembling line. "I gave you that chance Loki. You said you wanted to see this through to the end. Then do it."

The scene continues a second even as she shoves past her variant, storming to the door --now shut, when did that happen-- to leave; and then seizes backwards a moment. Sylvie! Do you think you can trust this guy? Do you think you're even capable of trusting anyone at all? follows after her as she walks, shoulders hunched over. The door though does not budge as she yanks on the knob, and she curses loudly as she yanks on it.

He-Who-Remains jerks in his spot at the desk, lurching forward again in time, now stretched out with his temppad on the edge of the desk. "I love this. I love all this honesty. Feels like a fresh start."

Sylvie's ghost lurches forward and Loki's follows, grabbing her arm mid swing. The whole room seems to lurch along with the action, tilting off kilter as she swings around and places her blade against Loki's collarbone and backs him away. "What are you doing?" The phantom asks, and in both of their ears whispers Sylvie's voice from before in the void:

How do I know that in the final moments you wont betray me? followed by his own voice That's not who I am anymore. I wont let you down.

"Sylvie, hang on a moment. Let's just talk about it." Loki's phantom says instead, louder and clearer in this relived scene, and Sylvie doesn't move from the door, just holding on to the knob with a bruising grip as the two figures play out that awful moment behind her back. Herself insisting that they do what they came here to do, Loki pulling her back once more, insisting that he believes the man who ruined her and so many others lives. Asking if she had even been listening to what he had been saying. With each word the figures seem less stable, as if wrought by the pain that the memory brings.

Part of him wants to protest, to reach for Sylvie again, but those are his words she's tossing back at him and so he doesn't. Repercussions. He hates them, really. He does watch her approach the door, expecting it to open behind her, expecting her to close him in here with the truths he's no longer certain he wants to know about.

Do you think you're capable of trusting anyone at all twists in his gut like a knife, has him turning back to the scene playing out behind Sylvie. Gods. He wants her to trust him, even when he feels like he can't trust her in return.

Clearly, that was not in the cards.

I love this. I love all this honesty has him huffing in frustration before he sees himself try and stop Sylvie from killing him and for a moment he wonders if he was possessed in that moment. Why would he do this, what could possibly have driven him to try and stop Sylvie from the one thing she'd worked towards for centuries? It was right, it was deserved; even if the man at the head of the TVA had been telling the truth, he needed to die. Even if it wasn't likely to bring her a sense of real peace, Sylvie needed to kill him.

"Why..." He starts, and then stops, realizing.

...fear. It's fear, he recognizes it in his own face, his own body language, even as the emotional impact of the scene threatens to tear it apart from the center to the edges. He's afraid for Sylvie. Not of her killing this man, certainly, but possibly of what comes after. If he was telling the truth, then there will be countless of him. All coming for Sylvie.

He turns in place toward her, where she's still at the door, shoulders drawn in. "This is why you weren't expecting to see me in Kirkwall. Because I'd betrayed you." There isn't any other way for her to have read his attempts to stop her, getting between her and the person she'd fought so hard to bring down; no matter what his reasons, he should have recognized that at the moment. Should have let her do what she needed to and then...

There's Loki's voice behind the one who's talking to her, saying Because you can't trust, and I can't be trusted. and then then I guess we're in a pickle and Loki begging her to wait-- then the clashing of swords; but it's what the Loki that is really there is saying that really pulls her attention. The acknowledgement of betrayal. Sylvie turns, her hand still on the doorknob as she looks past him, through him at the two fighting behind his solid figure. Everything is blurred by tears that she can't keep back.

"It's not the only reason." Her voice is rough, and she pulls a face as her phantom slams his into a bookshelf with a blast of green energy. From this view she can see He-Who-Remains expressions, the wild eyed glee and intensity as he watches them fight. She hadn't noticed that back then, and it makes her sneer in the realization that this was probably the first real entertainment that man had had where he hadn't been part of deciding the outcome.

Sylvie's ghost brings her sword down at the man behind it all and Loki appears in it's way, and her real hands twitch at the remembered sensation of his flesh touching the edge of her blade, the panic that had flooded through her. The way she had pulled it to his shoulder to avoid hurting him. Tears flow now, and even though she doesn't hiccup and sob like her phanom, the pain aches through her as Loki's words I just want you to be ok lances through her as sharp as that day. She did believe him, had always believed him, but if he wouldn't stand at her side she couldn't let him stand in her way.

Their lips touch and Sylvie looks away, and then winces, eyes closing tight, when that door opens behind the pair and her ghost sends him away.

Kill me, the ghost of her says to the ghost of him, which prompts Loki to turn once more. Take your throne, and Loki pulls in a shuddering breath, watching it all unfold. Watching them come together, break apart. Watching them fight over the life of a man who did not deserve to keep it.

That's when he should have stopped, he knows, when Sylvie said that; that was the last chance he'd had. A kiss wasn't enough; it didn't explain why Loki had made these decisions in the twelfth hour, not in a way Sylvie would have understood.

The timedoor opens behind the illusion of him and he watches as the ghost is blasted in the center of his body, falling through as the door shuts almost immediately afterward, not giving him the time to recover and reenter. So this is what she meant.

He screws his eyes shut but there's no helping the tears on his face now, and so he takes a breath in before he turns away from the scene again. He doesn't need to watch to know that she's going to kill the man in purple. It's more than what he merits. There's still some distance in the room between himself and Sylvie, and he wants to close it, wants to wrap his arms around her shoulders and tell her that he was wrong, that he was scared, but he's not sure that she would hear it. That she'd even want to.

"Sylvie," Loki stars, extending a hand in her direction again. "I'm so sorry."

"You were right you know." She doesn't reach for his hand. Doesn't even acknowledge it, her eyes having only cracked open slightly to look at the ground, vision swimming with tears that fall straight to the cool marble floor unbidden. She heaves a shaky breath, holding onto the doorknob behind her as if it's the only thing keeping her grounded, vertigo pulling at her as she hears her own footsteps advance towards the end of her thousand year mission. Hears the sword fly into her hand. The desk slide across the room. The mans excited-nervous sound as he sits back in his chair. "It didn't make me feel any better. I feel just as empty as I did before."

Aren't you gonna beg for your life?

Mm. Could. Could.

She remembers how carefully she had lined up her blade, ensuring that when she plunged it in it would go right through his rotten heart. How she watched his face, wanting to see the fear that she had felt for so long in his eyes, and finding nothing but...mirth.

I'll see you soon.

She straightens, sniffing as she runs her forearm across her face, trying to clear the tears even as her ghost falls to the ground and begins to sob. "I don't regret it. Killing him. Freeing the Multiverse. You're with Mobius now so at least..."

At least he isn't alone.

"You shouldn't regret it; he needed to die. I shouldn't have..." He drops his arm just to raise it again to gesture at the scene behind them. "I shouldn't have put you in a position to... have to choose."

He hates that these are only her memories, and not his as well; he hates that he can't tell her with absolute certainty what he was thinking and why. He hates that he doesn't know what good, if any, was interspersed in the time between this memory and when his memories end.

"You did the best you could. I didn't... I can't say that I know why but I have a guess." He doesn't know if telling her now would be best, though, and yet his feet carry him closer to her anyway. "But I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I forced you to choose, and I'm sorry I tried to stop you." He takes a breath, sniffs. "I'm not angry with you, you know." He thinks it would take a lot more uneven sort of behavior from her for him to be upset with her. This is... this is different.

This is squarely on his shoulders. But he can't ask her forgiveness, not yet.

She shakes her head as he talks, eyes squinting at him as if she can't understand what he's saying. Is this it? Is it really just a matter of seeing it outside of everything? Or was it that this Loki had benefited so entirely from what she had done that he can see something other than those variants funneling down on them.

I'm not angry with you, you know.

She laughs, one short sound, because that seems so entirely impossible, for him to not be angry when she is so angry at herself. Everything that she's cared for she discarded for a goal that left her once again alone and just as hurt as before. "I told you we'd figure out after together. Back in the void. But I don't know if I can. You're better off -- here as well as there -- without me."

Sleeping with him had been a mistake, certainly, because those words hurt her more than it should. That little bit of connection just gave more room for the knife to dig in a little deeper now. In both of them, by the tears that stream down his face as well.

There's a little click as the doorknob finally releases, and the door cracks open slightly behind her.

"Sylvie..."

It comes out quick, breathless, and frightened. He's terrified, suddenly, that she's going to walk out of that door and he's never going to see her again. Perhaps that doesn't make much sense, given the givens of their being trapped in this building, in this world, but still. The fear exists, cold in his blood. "I'm not better off without you, this... I..." He swallows, looking down and frowning before he lifts his eyes again to meet hers. "I love you very much and I know that's probably not what you want to hear right now. I know it probably doesn't... help? But please, don't just..." Leave. "Don't make a decision about forever right now. This place is, it's feeding on our suffering and I don't want to lose you." A breath. "Please."

Hearing that word is supposed to do something to her. She’s spent enough time just burning hours reading as the world burns around her, to know how music should swell and her heart should flutter and how everything should just be alright in that moment. Because he loves her.

Instead she just feels hollow.

“…I don’t think I even know what love is Loki.” It’s as honest as she’s probably ever been, her shoulders slumping as she says it, hands half-heartedly flopping upwards. “All I know is that I tried and this is what happens.”

Her ghosts back to them, facing a spreading sea of light out that massive window, her shoulders shaking with her weeping. The body of He-Who-Remains sitting silent and limp over her sword. His golden blade on the ground alone.

“I couldn’t.” She heaves a breath, pressing her lips into a thin line as she says it with more emphasis. “I couldn’t put you first.”

He wants to say love isn't about putting someone else first but he doesn't know how true that is in actuality. "If you think I know what I'm doing, especially when it comes to love, you're sorely mistaken." Swallowing, but not looking away. The ghost of her is still crying behind them, he can hear her. That's love, isn't it? A shitty part of it, certainly, but.

She's not crying over the body in front of her.

"But I don't want you to cut me loose from this. From any of it." He brings a hand up to his chest and rubs at it idly. "It hurts, and it's terrible, and I don't think we get to choose if that's what love means or not. But I don't want you to disappear from my life. Okay?" The hand at his chest comes up to wipe at his eyes.

"Can I give you a hug?" He thinks, of the two of them, he might need it more than she would. She's stronger than he is. But he'd still like to give her one.

Loki speaks and presses his hand over his heart and speaks about the meaning of love and it's all more than she feels she can begin to process. The meaning of love. If he didn't understand it, how could she when he was literally the first friend she's had in a millennia? The first person she cared for wholly and wanted to see safe. The only person she's been willing to risk oblivion to reunite with -- and then still send away.

It does hurt and it is terrible and she still doesn't want to let go. Can't verbally accept his offer, and yet her feet are stuck to the ground as if glued.

"You're really not angry with me?" Her shoulders slump as she exhales at his request, and then pulls in a trembling breath. "Even though I tricked you. Even though I betrayed your trust. How?"

"I'm not, I promise, I'm... sad? That this happened. And disappointed that I didn't see it coming, that I didn't realize I'd crossed a line when it was happening, that I didn't just say. Whatever it was," he lifts his arms, drops them again, "I can't be certain. And I hate that I can't tell you."

He takes slow steps forward, hands at his sides. "Because I hurt you first, and I never wanted to do that. I've never wanted to do that."

Because he's been there; he's needed to burn a thing down without hesitation, without deviance from a plan, for pettier, much pettier reasons. He has betrayed without remorse. He has hurt people who loved him.

This is different. It feels different.

"I don't know how to explain it." He takes a few more steps towards her. "But the way I see it, I hurt you first, and you defended yourself. And I can't be angry with you for that." Now he's standing directly in front of her. At least the tears aren't flowing as strongly right now.

It's not like she did it for fun, he thinks. And even if she had... he's not sure he wouldn't still find himself right back here.

"So. I'm going to hug you now." Final warning, Sylvie, before he wraps his arms around her and tucks her head under his chin.

open | holiday spirits

braced and prepared

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