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apocalypsehowcomm2023-03-12 08:21 pm
failedpromise) wrote in apocalypsehowcomm2023-03-12 08:21 pm
Entry tags:
(Log) This may be the worst month she's ever had
Who: Cortana and ...you?
When: First prompt is on the eighth, other two are on and after the eleventh.
Where: Various
Summary: Cortana has some lighthearted fun while shopping for clothes. Then several days later, everything goes to hell.
Warnings: First prompt is unlikely to have anything, second and third involve loss of bodily autonomy, extremely traumatic memories, dissociation, general distress, with potential for considerably worse to come up in threads.
A) (March 8th)
Cortana needs more clothes. She already has some simple white blouses and a few bottoms, as well as several gifted items and an assortment of socks and underwear, but it's a very basic, plain selection -- if she's going to keep going to hangouts and parties, she wants more color.
...Also, one of the graphic tees caught her eye. It was funny.
So that's what she's doing right now, looking through the graphic tee selection at the department store nearest ADI headquarters, picking through and occasionally holding one up that says something silly or interesting, like 'home is where the Wi-Fi always connects' or 'It's okay if you don't like me. Not everyone has good taste.' or has some stupid joke on it. She seems genuinely amused by the dumb puns and overused sarcastic quips: every so often, she'll even fold one and put it in her cart.
She might have a few sets of ridiculous colorful leggings in her cart too.
B) (March 11th)
Gus the bus is something that Cortana is at best only vaguely aware of. That said, when the bus that's supposed to take her home comes scuttling instead of rolling toward her she's immediately on guard.
Not that that will do anything to help her, as she doesn't realize that what she actually needs to do is run...
B1:
She wishes she could say that this is her first experience with a loss of autonomy, the betrayal of moving without choosing to, of not being able to stop no matter how much she wants to.
But as Cortana finds herself boarding the bus and taking a seat, as she sits frozen in place while the bugs crawl over her body, as she is trussed up in gossamer silk, all she can think of is High Charity and her inability to even speak her mind as the Gravemind did as he pleased.
She doesn't scream -- at least she still has that much control of herself -- but it's a struggle not to sob as she tries to will herself to do something, anything, to break free before she is cocooned in white.
B2:
She 'wakes' at the same bus stop where she started, but makes no effort to move, even as relief washes over her. It's-it's too much, and all she can do as she lays there in the soft morning light is curl up and cry.
C) (March 12-15th)
In the days after her encounter with Gus, Cortana really isn't doing well. When she isn't working or trying to put on a brave face while interacting with others it's all too easy for her to slip into an almost fugue like state, the barrier between reality and her thoughts eroding like iron tossed in the sea. She doesn't even fully notice the pull that brings her to the library: she finds herself at the door and the only reason she can drum up for wanting to go in is a yearning for something to serve as a distraction.
At the sound of his voice, she audibly gasps.
"...Chief?" The question trembles in the air.
Her pace picks up for the first time since her experience as she searches for him, unable to bring herself to accept that it's likely just a trick or turn away. She's missed him, she's sorry, she wants to see him again, even if he's not here just the sound of his voice... she doesn't want it to stop.
When she reaches the back of the library she manages not to cry, though that's likely numbness as much as it is anything else. Instead she finds a little corner to tuck herself into, sits down on the floor, closes her eyes and just ...listens.
When: First prompt is on the eighth, other two are on and after the eleventh.
Where: Various
Summary: Cortana has some lighthearted fun while shopping for clothes. Then several days later, everything goes to hell.
Warnings: First prompt is unlikely to have anything, second and third involve loss of bodily autonomy, extremely traumatic memories, dissociation, general distress, with potential for considerably worse to come up in threads.
A) (March 8th)
Cortana needs more clothes. She already has some simple white blouses and a few bottoms, as well as several gifted items and an assortment of socks and underwear, but it's a very basic, plain selection -- if she's going to keep going to hangouts and parties, she wants more color.
...Also, one of the graphic tees caught her eye. It was funny.
So that's what she's doing right now, looking through the graphic tee selection at the department store nearest ADI headquarters, picking through and occasionally holding one up that says something silly or interesting, like 'home is where the Wi-Fi always connects' or 'It's okay if you don't like me. Not everyone has good taste.' or has some stupid joke on it. She seems genuinely amused by the dumb puns and overused sarcastic quips: every so often, she'll even fold one and put it in her cart.
She might have a few sets of ridiculous colorful leggings in her cart too.
B) (March 11th)
Gus the bus is something that Cortana is at best only vaguely aware of. That said, when the bus that's supposed to take her home comes scuttling instead of rolling toward her she's immediately on guard.
Not that that will do anything to help her, as she doesn't realize that what she actually needs to do is run...
B1:
She wishes she could say that this is her first experience with a loss of autonomy, the betrayal of moving without choosing to, of not being able to stop no matter how much she wants to.
But as Cortana finds herself boarding the bus and taking a seat, as she sits frozen in place while the bugs crawl over her body, as she is trussed up in gossamer silk, all she can think of is High Charity and her inability to even speak her mind as the Gravemind did as he pleased.
She doesn't scream -- at least she still has that much control of herself -- but it's a struggle not to sob as she tries to will herself to do something, anything, to break free before she is cocooned in white.
B2:
She 'wakes' at the same bus stop where she started, but makes no effort to move, even as relief washes over her. It's-it's too much, and all she can do as she lays there in the soft morning light is curl up and cry.
C) (March 12-15th)
In the days after her encounter with Gus, Cortana really isn't doing well. When she isn't working or trying to put on a brave face while interacting with others it's all too easy for her to slip into an almost fugue like state, the barrier between reality and her thoughts eroding like iron tossed in the sea. She doesn't even fully notice the pull that brings her to the library: she finds herself at the door and the only reason she can drum up for wanting to go in is a yearning for something to serve as a distraction.
At the sound of his voice, she audibly gasps.
"...Chief?" The question trembles in the air.
Her pace picks up for the first time since her experience as she searches for him, unable to bring herself to accept that it's likely just a trick or turn away. She's missed him, she's sorry, she wants to see him again, even if he's not here just the sound of his voice... she doesn't want it to stop.
When she reaches the back of the library she manages not to cry, though that's likely numbness as much as it is anything else. Instead she finds a little corner to tuck herself into, sits down on the floor, closes her eyes and just ...listens.
no subject
And therein lies the problem. No matter how close he grows to care for someone, he will always outlive them. See them age and die long before he is ready for them to, and though he'd mostly gotten used to the idea, that hasn't meant his has been a long and often lonely life.
no subject
"Hadn't really thought much about that possibility." Prior to rampancy, the idea that she could outlive her friends seemed unlikely, even with a war going on. Now... well hopefully it won't come to that.
...It won't, will it?
no subject
He certainly hadn't, before the calamity that had torn his world asunder. Nor had he even much considered the idea of someone dying prior to have at least most of their affairs in order, before he had been quite literally forced to. But that is not something he means to mention out of the blue. Not when the topic of conversation is gloomy enough as it is already.
"Still, the long centuries I have lived have left me with no shortage of ghosts. Many of whom I yet long to see one last time."
And he knows, with a decent amount of certainty, that these are not they. And yet... it is undeniably more than he likely would have had were he not here, listening to the voices of the dead.
no subject
Is that going to happen to her? She wants to live, but the more she thinks about it, the more she finds herself thinking it would have been better to let herself die.
All of her fighting... was any of it even worth it?
no subject
No matter how much he might have wished it so, and even he cannot deny that there are times where even he had wished to simply let things end. To find a way to step outside of the immortality he had found and leave aside the loss and grief he had been mired in.
There's a moment of silence, then, before he speaks again. Uplifting speeches are something he has only comparatively recently come to - and that in a decidedly militaristic sense rather than anything else - but he is not blind to the overall weight of the topic at hand. And knows all too well the perils of grief and despair, much less in a place that is already half-ruled by fear.
"And yet... for each we have lost, there will ever be more, will there not? New people we may come to know, or to care for. Friends that may never replace those who have gone before but are yet worthy of carrying on for. Or those for whom the knowledge of the past may come to prove a boon."
no subject
She sighs, and starts to get up. "I think for now it's time for me to stop dwelling on the past."
no subject
True, it's a desperate thing, sometimes. One o born of loneliness and sorrow and necessity. But it's there; a desperate light in the darkness that might otherwise prove smothering over centuries.
Still, he nods as she starts to get up.
"There are yet matters that require us, here. No matter how much the past may call to us."