apocalypsehowcomm | Heart of Darkness [Open]

Entry tags:

Heart of Darkness [Open]

Who: Jonathan Sims

the_archivist and you!
When: Late April-May
Where: Various locations, including ADI HQ and around town+the train
Summary: Catch-all for the month
Warnings: Scars, monsteryness, injuries, burns, violence, horror, self harm

Recovery - Post Interrogation, around ADI accomodation and town

He hurts. It isn't a new feeling. He has been hurt before and in the same way too. Jude Perry's hand melting against his, the blast of explosives tearing him apart, the scorching heat of a building filled with flame. It makes his muscles burn, and joints ache to the point where he's walking with a cane.

But it is healing. And while the pain is real, there's something distant about it too. He knows it will heal, that he will feed and recover and he will be whole once more.

He isn't sure that's actually a good thing. It's been strange since arriving here, escaping the apocalypse, how different some things feel. He still feels fear, but it isn't the same. He supposes it's hard to have a normal reaction to fear when you've spent months being the core of them, when you know them more intimately than anyone else ever has.

He thinks his fear might be broken.

Any philosophising aside, the pain does make it harder to get around. He's slower walking, gripping onto the head of the cane, and steps are agony. He still goes into the office though, burying himself in futile research.

He does visit town as well, finds himself hungry and watching people with stories pass by, trying to hold himself back.

Well Read
A book fair is something that Jon is very interested in, both because he could do with more things to read, and potentially use as research, and also because... well, news of books being donated by a mysterious benefactor is something that rather puts him on edge.

The mention of books on his library card that he definitely didn't take out, and the name of one of them, Eye in the Sky, is enough to make him give a long-suffering sigh.

Still, it's a good book fair, and he picks up several volumes that seem like they'd be useful.

He's persuaded to sit down at one of the laptops for a quiz.

It starts normally at first. Questions about books which he flies through, and then, slowly he starts to feel that familiar pricklying against his skin, like he's being watched. He almost wants to look around to see if- if Elias is there.

Would you sacrifice a friend to save the world?

What?

Would you rather live as a monster or die as a human?

That's not-

Would you doom another world to save one person?

He digs his fingernails into his palms hard enough to draw blood, and stares at the screen, trying to fight that feeling that is far too much like reading a statement, like reading that- the ritual.

"You already have everything," he mutters.

Training Wheels Off
Jon has caught plenty of trains, but there's definitely a difference between the tube and this sort of train. Eighteen hours at home would get him a good chunk of the way across Europe, while this is just what? A state over? If it's even that.

Of course things can't stay calm so he can enjoy it.

The mutterings start; stories of being locked into shrinking cabins, of scratch maks and fingernails. Sounds too much like the coffin for his comfort. He's happy to investigate if people have encountered it, and to accompany them if necessary.

And then the darkness comes. It is... a tangible thing, feeling his sight blotted out so thoroughly. The Darkness had always been in opposition to the eye, and this is no different.

But he remembers looking into the heart of the Black Sun and making it shatter too. He grips onto that memory, forces down his fear as much as he can.

He doesn't look at the window, or try to find the source of the tapping.

"I'm here," he says quietly, "if you need a reminder. The darkness ends, eventually."

[OOC: Totally open for other things as well! You can find me on the Discord or on Plurk

zaliachimera

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Martin sighs, a little exhasperated, obviously hoping Jon would have just relented by now even though it's next to impossible that was ever going to happen. But, you know, a boy can dream.

"I know, I just-- I just want you to be okay, and to know it's okay to take a break." Oh, here they go again. "I'm not-- I wasn't going to like, keep you in the flat or something by force like some kind of fairytale monster, but you're hurting yourself and I don't want to let you do that, okay? I thought maybe you'd, I dunno, this would make you happier to get out or something but I can't keep watching you injure yourself! Okay!?"

She frowns, trying to hold in another snapping comment while she gets her head together for an answer. He seems so arrogant, but he wouldn't be talking like this unless he knew this to be true. And if he does, he has to have lived it, he has to know somehow. But that's not a now question, as much as she's burning to ask it, not when she needs to know what she's into before she can pull anyone else out of it.

"No, I don't-- I don't give a shit if it's me or whatever, I'm not looking to be some big fuckin' hero." Beau throws her hands in the air before dropping them again, once more trying to have this talk like a person and not like a fight. "I don't care who it is, but someone has to, right? Someone needs to find-- something, the right thing, that makes it work. I came to you because I figured you knew stuff that no one else did and-- I dunno, maybe you're the guy or something, it's--" A sigh, a deep inhale, trying to get her voice modulated.

"Somebody has to get it right eventually, right? It doesn't have to be me. But if it's not I need to find who it is before we all get-- eaten, or whatever."

He gives a thin smile at that. More than he knows. "Perhaps. The broad strokes may be the same, but the specifics vary wildly. Even from country to country, folklore can be very different."

God, he wishes he could just study folklore. Black dogs and ghosts seem so much less intimidating.

He gives a grateful nod when the door is opened and steps inside. "Thank you."

"Of course you can," Jon replies. "My point is that fear is nebulous. All the entities we've been told about, in their neat little categories, don't really seem to add up entirely. People just treat them as solid divisions."

"Not entirely, although a lot is more familiar than I'd like." Honestly, the entities and horror are the more familiar things in a lot of ways. Why does he have to pay more at the till in the shop than it says on the price tag?

"I've definitely seen my share of terrible horror movies as well. That seems to be consistent across realities at least."

"It isn't though, is it?" Jon asks, his shoulders slumping. "It's not okay to take a break. Not when the world is full of monsters and evil, and I'm the one who caused it."

He doesn't deserve a break. How can he rest when he knows, better than anyone, what the consequences are of failure?

"I should probably be working more."

He rubs his temples tiredly. He should have been more low key, obviously. But he's never been good at hiding his knowledge, drawing it around himself like a shield.

"There is no 'right answer'," Jon says. "They aren't things that can be... banished with a salt circle and some magic words. The best that happens is the individual avatars and evil books and entities keep getting destroyed or imprisoned. Stopped. Before they can do anything more drastic. It's just constant triage."

"Yeah, I reckon that's true. Some a' the fellas what was from back east had different stories than us locals on the road. It was always interesting hearing somethin' new." Largely because there was no danger of those new things being real. It takes on a very different tone here.

Once they're both inside, he defaults to following his lead. Jon knows what he's after. George doesn't.

"Why?"

She frowns at that, becoming a little more interested in it than she really wanted to.

"If we know fear better than that?"

Jon shrugs. "It's what people do. Especially for huge subjects. Categorising things is how we rationalise and make the attempt to understand things, even if they're fundamentally impossible to understand. We split the concept of colour into thousands of shades, even though in the end, it's all light waves and our brains lying to us."

She's glad he takes her hand when she offers, and she pulls him along with her until they're at least out of the library.

"So, how long have you been here?" she asks as they walk, glancing over at him. "I'm Ainsley, by the way."

"Oh absolutely not!" He circles around in front of Jon, reaching forward to grasp his shoulders. "You would work yourself to death if that little eyeball didn't love you so much, don't-- don't do that! Isn't it better if you stop, you know, digging at it? It's got plenty of other people to harass, I'm sure."

"Probably. But it still wants me. And... I'm the person who knows the most about all of this. I know more than... than anyone ever has, Martin. I can't just settle down and live a normal life after that."

He can't just do nothing, even if he's still trying to be low-key because he wants to protect Martin.

"People are idiots."

Which is true even if she agrees that yeah, people do that. Because when you're afraid you're not exactly thinking rationally about your fear. It just sucks.

"And you can't understand fear, but you can beat it."

This sucks. Some part of her wonders if he's telling the truth- if there's anything else she could get, but the man already looks like he has the constitution of a wet paper towel. Sure, she could beat him in a fistfight, but at what cost? A sad one, probably. So abandoning that idea, she's working with what she has.

"Okay, I'll... here. I'll focus on the rituals and how they work. Not like, talking to people." That's a start, at least, and she meets Jon's eyes, trying to level with him as much as she can. "Look, maybe no one has ever done it where you're from, but I've moved planes before. 'Ss not easy, but... maybe we can reverse engineer it. Give us a door to them versus the other way around or whatever. I don't like a battle we can't win, and I might sound stupid as hell to you right now, but I've fistfought 2 gods and won both times so if these aren't as good as gods I think the odds are in my corner. Okay?"

"America is a very large country, with a lot of native history and folklore, as well as all of the folklore brought across from other parts of the world. It's a very interesting area in that regard!"

God, maybe he should have just gone to do a PhD instead of getting a job. He'd be broke, but he would most likely still be human.

"It's a survival instinct," Jon responds. "You can beat some fear. But I have only once met a person who had no fear at all. Or the ability to feel fear entirely."

"In the library? An hour or two. I wanted to get some books. In this... town. A little over a year."

How has it been that long? It doesn't seem that way. And sometimes it seems like a lifetime.

"Jon. I'm Jon."

He supposes that's better than nothing, although it isn't as much as he would like. What he'd like would be for no-one else to ever get involved. Ah, but that's never going to happen is it?

Part of him itches to tell her, to explain how he had remade the world into something monstrous, and see the fear in her eyes. "God at least have rules to obey. These things don't work on logic as we understand it. And they don't exist in any kind of reality we can exist in. Not really. You'd have to bring them here, and I very much doubt that would be a good thing for anyone."

"It is. On one hand, I've looked at the map and seen the distance between Massachusetts and California. On the other I can't hold it in my head. All I ever knowed was how long it took to walk from one place to the next, or take a bus." It has been eye opening in some ways.

"And then all the things the Injun's talk about. Or the Japs. Or jes' a whole lotta people. I've heard some things. What you after today? Which way we going?"

"Generally, that's why people are in the library," she drops her voice to a whisper, leans in all conspiratorially like it's a secret, but there's an amused edge to her voice, a playful glint in her eyes.

Something about the time and the name click just so. Why does that seem significant? She's pretty certain she's not met him before now. "Oh, are you Martin's boyfriend?" The anxious mess of a man had helped her not long after she'd gotten here, during some of the mess that Dunn had made.

"Well, not as much these days. Libraries also have computers and clubs and often act as social hubs especially in smaller communities."

...she hadn't really been asking had she?

He gives her a startled look when she mentions Martin. "Does everyone know Martin? And yes. I'm his boyfriend."

He shouldn't be surprised. Martin is a generally nice person. People like him. It's something that Jon has never managed himself.

"It is a lot of distance. Difficult to comprehend, especially coming from a country where you're never more than about seventy miles from the sea and can get to numerous other countries in a few hours." The lengths of bus rides had been eye-opening when he'd visited.

"Yes, I visited Chine a couple of years ago. There's a lot of interesting folklore and mythology there too. And I was hoping to grab some painkillers, and something for dinner is probably a good idea."

"That's hard for me to imagine, too. A whole country like that." His world in NorCal was like that, smallish, but there was always such a sense of scale and place in California he hasn't seen here.

"What was that like? More general like." He nods and turns toward the pharmacy section first, figuring those will be the easiest things to find. "I never thought I'd get to travel much. Most a' the Chinamen I met was kids or grandkids a' railroad folk."

"I'm not saying you can, o-or-- or you should, just-- you getting beat up about all this isn't saving someone else from it, you know!" Frankly, Martin's grateful this even counts as 'low-key', because it's probably the only thing stopping Jon from running off like a lunatic at any given moment. "You're not... helping anyone by hurting yourself. It won't just stop paying attention to other people because you're here, so stop acting like it will."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 4 of 6

Heart of Darkness [Open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

CW: Period terminology for ethnic groups

no subject

no subject

Re: CW: Period terminology for ethnic groups

no subject

no subject