Heart of Darkness [Open]

[the_archivist]

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

Comments

[the_archivist]

Jon sighs softly. He recognises the emotions, the instincts so well. They're painfully familiar. He'd thought if he could just understand them, just a bit more knowledge, then he would find a solution. If he just dragged out one more secret...

"You need enough to go on. And then you need a little more because you're so close to an answer, and because that little bit doesn't quite help as much anymore. And then it's more because don't they realise you're trying to help save the world?"

He meets her eyes squarely. He wishes he had better information from her. That he could whip up some ritual that would make things right. That he could reel off a way to contain the Entities.

But he's no Leitner. No Robert Smirke. Fools believing themselves so grand and uniquely gifted to be able to do that.

"What do you want me to tell you? That oh, of course there's this one bit of information that everyone else has missed that will make things right? That you, of course, you are uniquely able to use this power without being corrupted? It doesn't work like that."

[lesbeau]

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."

[the_archivist]

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."

[lesbeau]

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?"

[the_archivist]

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."

[lesbeau]

"Yeah, dude, not planning on that one." Of course she's suspucious about getting tricked into this, but-- well, it's pretty unlikely that it would happen. Still, it's a terrible option she's trying to remember to be aware of. Regardless, she eyes him just a moment with some pause, but lets it go-- not now. She can't question him too much, or he won't answer hers.

"They have to have rules. We've figured out ways to handle them and they have to enter with some rules, too. So there has to be a way to do it. Right?"

[the_archivist]

He sighs heavily and reaches up to rub at his eyes. "They work on nightmare logic, not... logic-logic. Not rules. When you have a nightmare, and something makes so much sense, even though when you wake it's patently nonsensical... that's what we're dealing with. Not exactly predictable."

He leans back in his chair and stares at the table top. "Why is the swimming pool suddenly full of sharks? Because it feels right in the nightmare. Why is your best friend suddenly someone you've never met? Because it's scary. And in the nightmare, you know that's true."

[lesbeau]

"So shouldn't we be able to use that too? These things have to-- know fear, to experience something. If we own our minds, we can mess with them right back." Of course, she knows it's not that simple, and there's no reason to think it would ever work that easily. But sometimes, it does, and those sorts of solutions can never be quite ruled out.

"Even if it doesn't completely work, they've obviously got limits, ways they can't survive in our world as-is. So... I dunno, there's options. There has to be." She's looking at him now like she's waiting for his affirmation, something to say he isn't thinking everything she's doing is folly. It's not that she needs his approval, but... he does seem to know what he's doing, and something that sounds good to him is probably a good direction to head.

[the_archivist]

"You really can't," Jon says. "You're still thinking that they're gods, that they are creatures that think like us. They don't. Can you comprehend the way an ant thinks? If an ant decided to mess with you, would you notice it? Because we're the ants."

Even he had never been able to really understand them, and he was the closest a human had ever come. Maybe Annabelle knew more, but he suspected that she was making things up just as much as everyone else. She was just better at hiding it.

[lesbeau]

"I'd notice if it bit me." Which seems very minor, and she knows he's going to say something to that effect, so she doesn't leave him time before she speaks again. "And yeah, one of those won't matter. But if you get bit by a whole fuckin' anthill, then it makes a difference. Hell, you get bit in the right places it makes a big one even if it's only a couple. That's what we need to find. We need to figure out how to bite them in the dick, because that's gonna matter way more than biting them on the arm."

That... sure was a metaphor, Beau. You did it. But it isn't... wrong, exactly, so here she is.

[the_archivist]

"Yes, well, ants do actually exist on the same plane of reality as we do," Jon points out. That is rather a large snag in the plan. Even at the end, when Jon had been themost powerful creature in the world, he hadn't been able to hurt them.

"They don't-" He sighs and shakes his head. "You can strike at the monsters they create, the avatars. You can stop rituals. But none of that hurts them. Not really. And there is no way to strike at them directly."

[lesbeau]

"That's why we go there. We know that travel is possible because we got here. We figure it out, they won't even notice a few ants slipping in until it's too late." Jeez, he's pessimistic about this, and it's once again grating on her.

"Can you just-- stop acting like there's nothing to even try? If we don't do anything we might as well just die now. Even you have to be trying for something."

[the_archivist]

Jon narrowly resist dragging his hands down his face. "You can't. Wherever they exist would be... well, antiethical to life as we know it. And they would be infinitely more powerful there than here. We don't even know if it is a reality as we know it, or just... a space outside reality."

He isn't sure if the entities themselves know. He just knows that the world has to be reshaped to allow them to exist fully inside it.

He sighs. "I am trying to make sure that the world doesn't end," he says tiredly. "I think the most you could hope for would be sending the entities to another reality. And then you just doom everyone there too."

There's something heavy in his voice, deeply hurt.

[lesbeau]

There's something there, and so much of her wants to dig in and find out what. The old her absolutely would have, the one that held Caleb essentially hostage until he spilled his secrets. But she's supposed to be better than that, now. She's supposed to not be the worst person possible.

Maybe it'll become necessary, eventually. But not now, and she forces herself to exhale and pass the desire out of her.

"Look. You've got some... fuckin' baggage with this, obviously. But you have to try. If not for you, than for the rest of us who are trying our asses off to solve this. And just because you don't know the answer doesn't mean it doesn't exist." She huffs, and stands to make her exit before she starts fighting this sad man. "Can you at least go for that? The concept of attempting to not fuckin' die?"

[the_archivist]

Jon gives her a look, deeply unimpressed. "This is me attempting not to die," he says, low and angry. "And trying to stop anyone else from dying unnecessarily. I am working to solve things, but some things do not have a neat solution like you want. Some things... the best you can hope for is that the world continues the same way it has so far."

[lesbeau]

She still looks unhappy, but that doesn't make him wrong about it. "Just because it can't be fixed doesn't mean it can't get better. So if I'm gonna take you seriously, you need to take me seriously, too."

She turns to go towards the door, and then looks over her shoulder at Jon. "Now I'm gonna go before I start yelling at you, and I want you to know that, because I could." It... doesn't even sound like a threat. It sounds like she's trying very hard. But alas.

[the_archivist]

"I am taking you seriously. That's why I gave you the serious and truthful answer," Jon replies. "If I didn't take you seriously I would have lied." And told her that of course there was some way to fix things if you just believe hard enough.

Or at least pretended that he didn't know.

He raises an eyebrow. "Being yelled at is hardly the worst thing I've endured in my line of work."

probably wrapped LMAO

[lesbeau]

"Then appreciate that I'm being nice to you!" She throws her hands in the air and stomps out, rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath. "Fucking guy."