let it all burn down, burn it to the ground | October Catch-All

[aelwyn_aberration]

Who: Aelwyn Abernant and you, perhaps.
When: October, early November.
Where: In dreams, ADI, around Gloucester.
Summary: Local girl turned 20, completely forgot about it. Also created an imaginary hellscape within her unconscious mind and participated in the murder of a girl even younger than her. Event prompts + some slice of life prompts.
Warnings: Emotional abuse and neglect, severe sleep deprivation, torture, burning, destruction of whole cities, depression, underaged drinking, hypersexuality.

Comments

[conning]

Neal smiles at the mention of Malcolm's name, almost reflexively. He can't help himself. It's brief, though. He can manage that.

"The kelpies were right before my time," Neal admits. "I got here in September, for the first round of lullabies."

But he recalls Meredith's dream about those kelpies. The nightmare of the seal skins. "Malcolm was here then, though. How well do the two of you know each other?"

[aelwyn_aberration]

Not particularly well, I would say. But we've had mutual acquaintances.

[If she were less distant and emotionally fragile, she might even say mutual friends. Meredith, Jeff, Tim...

Well. All gone now. Probably all dead.]

September... I suppose that's a little better than arriving in October. God, I hate Halloween.

Did you kill her in your dream? The little girl behind it all? I did.

[conning]

[He winces, first at the mutual acquaintances, then at the frank admission of murder. Dream murder, but still.]

No. I didn't find her. [He doesn't know if he'd have been able to attack her if he had found her. Maybe it's just as well.]

I used to like it. Halloween. But between this one and the last one, not so much.

[After a moment, he holds a hand out toward the bottle.] Mind sharing?

[aelwyn_aberration]

[She offers him the bottle wordlessly. The alcohol helps her feel less like she has to sanitize her personality, so he's getting the frank admissions of murder unfortunately.]

We never had it in my world. There was Harvest's Eve... but that was a human holiday that my parents sneered at.

Killing her felt horrible. It always feels horrible.

[conning]

[He cleans the mouth of the bottle with a handkerchief, as though that will do anything for germs, before taking a swig. At least he's polite enough to then also wipe his own germs off just as ineffectually before offering it back.]

You've killed before. [Not really a question, but an invitation to talk about it if she needs to. She's the one who brought it up.]

[aelwyn_aberration]

Is that surprising? [She can't imagine it is. Although, people in other worlds are... weird about killing.] I sunk a ship. With a lot of people on board. Because I was scared.

[She takes a swig of the vodka directly, letting her mouth and throat burn.]

Have you?

[conning]

[He shakes his head.] No. I've hurt people, but I've never killed anyone directly. Indirectly, yes. I have something of a body count there.

[He can say it with a mostly-neutral tone, though internally it makes him sick.]

People do a lot of things because they're scared. [It's not an offer of forgiveness or understanding, really. He's not arrogant enough any more to think either one of those things would be welcome.] People do a lot of awful things for worse reasons.

[aelwyn_aberration]

[She scoffs. It's not forgiveness but it's not something she can accept either. Worse reasons? She had no reason. That's what makes her so horrific.]

Reasons don't matter. I could come up with some ideological cause if I tried, my partner did. But I never really gave a shit, I guess. I just wanted... something.

[She smiles thinly. She's aware that she was just a kid, scared and lonely and desperate, but she still can't bring herself to forgive that kid either.]

Doesn't matter now though. We're a long way from home.

[conning]

It matters. [The why of things matter. Maybe not to anyone else, in the end, but as a part of himself--his whys have always mattered to him.

A pause, then:]

Hungry?