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abandonhumanity) wrote2023-09-26 12:38 pm
[There’s a fleeting tension when Eren takes a breath, as if he might snap again—but no. Just an observation. And then he moves, closer again, and Aubrey instinctively stiffens as if he might grab her—and he doesn’t do that, etiher. And it’s still cold, but maybe a little less? or is it Eren, always Eren. And she just…]
[God. What is she doing....]
[Even in the darkness, Aubrey looks away, but she draws hesitantly near nonetheless. There’s a non-small part of her that just wants to let him take her; maybe it’s the memory. She’s not hurting, physically, like earlier, when her mind was too scrambled to complain or protest, but there’s an ache all the same—and, just like then… she wants to surrender to it. Just this once.]
[She reaches for him again, intending a light touch on the arm to make sure he, his emotions, won’t barrage her again; another shudder runs through her instead, for one reason or another, and so Aubrey wraps that arm around him, and tugs in.
[Nothing strikes her, this time. He’s so warm....]
You’re my detriment. [It’s a tired mumble. She doesn’t realize she said that out loud.]
[Aubrey is feeling either really good or really terrible about herself right now. Both? She meant every goddamn word, and it’s a hollow victory, but fuck if it’s not a victory and she’s gonna savor it while it lasts—]
[Laughter?]
[In the split seconds it takes for Aubrey to glance over her shoulder it seems the whole damn elevator poofs into existence. It takes her a good moment longer to recognize any of it, though, because Eren’s pathetic ass is on the floor mocking her.]
[She knows she should not give him an inch of ground; her face betrays her anyway, twisting into an incredibly pissed-off revulsion.]
[Well. Fuck it.] Ha ha. You think you’re sooo funny, don’t you. [If she wasn’t so unsure about the whole core strength thing she’d have half a mind to kick his ugly mug—but if he keeps that noise up, well…] You think you’re the most powerful little bitch in the whoooole universe.
[She punctuates this, her glare not leaving Eren for a second, by slamming her hand into the buttons—and dragging it aaalllllll the way down, forcing a stop at every. single. floor. Not that that matters here, surely, but—reap it, asshole.]
[Here one second. Gone the next. And then…?]
[He’s breathing. Heavy.]
[It’s dark. Here, again. Blood, again—so much more. Eren, slumped—]
[Aubrey wants to throw up. She stumbles towards him, drops to her knees; there’s not a hand to reach for, this side; he’s grasping, for what, why—]
[She’s not a medic. She doesn’t want to touch him. She wants to hold him, all of him, and carry him home.]
Eren. Eren— [She forces herself to keep breathing, not to drown. He’s still here. Aubrey grabs his hand, clasping, praying.] Stay…
[With me.]
[Alive.]
headhooligan
- 2023-11-21 05:14 (UTC) - Expandinvalidvalue
2023-10-09 01:22 am (UTC)(link)
(ooc: bouncing off ye olde trustye trolley problem)
Oh, I know this one! You tell friends you’d save them, and tell everyone else, if you’re not a bleeding heart, you’d save the thousand.
The game’s rigged from the start, of course. Personally, I’d be incapable of killing the thousand.
[This is all said very flippantly, like a discussion about a B-list movie—riveting, but only inasmuch as it was disastrous.] How about yourself, dear philosophical stranger?
(ooc: in which Eren is whisked from the limbo walmart)
[He doesn’t remember leaving his room.]
[Basil blinks open his eyes, squinting in the moonlight. He’s slumped beneath a tree—
[He yelps, startled, scrambling to his feet. His knees feel weak and his gut churns. But… ah, it’s just any old tree. A seemingly… endless… field of them....
[Where… is this…?]
[It’s too empty to be heaven; it’s too quiet to be hell. There are no shears in his hands, nor a flower in his hair; he considers checking for a scar, but then he might really be sick, so he doesn’t. And much as he’d like to sit here, curled in on himself and waiting for oblivion… he doesn’t.]
[He can’t. He’s compelled to walk, even as he shakes like an autumn leaf. And when he spots a figure ahead, a shadow in the trees, he speaks without trying.]
H-hello? Sorry t-to… trouble you.... [Why is he talking?! He gulps, audibly, but is urged to press on.] Do you… know where we are…?
abandonhumanity
2023-10-11 04:12 am (UTC)(link)
[On one hand, surprisingly tricky survey and Aubrey’s mildly embarrassed just thinking about some of it. On the other, promise of seeing Eren—and not even beat up. Of course she’s gonna take it.
[And of course Eren would start like that, too. She can’t be mad, really. Feels like it’s been too long.]
Ten. [Aubrey kept the pen, and points it at him teasingly. (There’s a smiley face on it, as a side note. Weird.)]
headhooligan
- 2023-10-11 23:34 (UTC) - Expand[It would figure that now the universe gives her time alone.]
[Aubrey, in no uncertain terms, wants to die. Drown. Stab herself. Jump off a roof. Doesn’t matter. Eren Jaeger has become her life and there’s no escaping him. She wants him more than anything; she can’t stand him, never could stand him, turned herself inside out to play pretend oh so very hard.
[But he wasn’t patient; he was angry. She pushed him away. That kills her more than anything, even as his warnings echo on repeat, like a blood-curdling scream.]
[Where did it go wrong? What flipped the spiral?]
[The world does not allow Aubrey the reprieve of anything close to lethal. Instead, when she’s too physically exhausted to do anything but kneel, head bowed, praying to nothing… she notices, faintly, that the scene shifted.
[It is very, very dark. Waves lap at a pier, but they’re not waves and it’s not quite a pier; the water is still, reflecting nothing, stretching into the abyss. And the “pier” is a hallway, endless in either direction, stairs down drowned by the deep. Aubrey is humbled before them.
[She doesn’t need to look up to know this place. Echoes of broken cries (not hers) split the night, but there’s no one around to utter them. There is a door, behind her and a short ways down the hall, from which the stench of death and blood permeates. Nothing to be done about it.
[This is where it all began.]
[Aubrey might stay there forever, letting the tide wash in and carry her to oblivion. Her hand still stings. She moves it, a hollow gesture intending a clench—and a chain, tight, rattles. It’s shackled.
[There’s someone standing next to her. He’s trapped, too.]
[Her voice is ragged, hardly a whisper. It’s the only sound in the room.]
You again.
[Mari can’t tell if she’s awake.
[She does know she’s somewhere very dark. A shadow slips by wherever the light pours in; that might catch Eren’s attention first. And then Mari lands(? from where?) on cold, unforgiving stone, barefoot (but why?). All Eren will see is the silhouette of a long-haired young woman; taller than Aubrey, if he can discern height here. She takes a tentative step forward, but stops there, a good foot or two away.]
[The steam is very strange. Stranger still, Mari thinks, is the lower half of a person stuck within it, surrounded by rotting flesh. It’s an ugly sight.
[But Mari has never quite been one to shy from the grotesque. There are bars, after all; she keeps a wary distance. Her voice is hesitant, but not quite fearful:] Hmm… what happened here…?
[Musing aloud. But not not expecting an answer.]
[It’s the prison. It’s the cage.]
[The last, clearest thing that Aubrey remembers is pouring her heart out to Mari and Armin, Eren’s gut-wrenching scream, and then—nothing. Nothing. Attempts to go back, to the restaurant to the store to the dark prison, to him—all futile. She would have rather been unconscious.
[What’s the goddamn point of a promise if the world won’t let her keep it?
[Why let her hear him if she can’t reach him?]
[When he kissed her again and again, impassioned and loveless and burning, Aubrey was certain, is still certain, that things might never get better than that. Maybe her silly little vow was just another attempt to delay the inevitable. Grief never cares if you’re ready for it; she should know this by now.
[It’s mourning, she thinks, that brings her back to the barracks. Aubrey senses she’s there even with her eyes closed; it was the last time she laid on anything so soft. Crueler still, it feels as though she’s not wrapped in blankets but Eren’s arms; that it’s really him breathing, steady, sleeping and shivering around her. His scent, his skin, his warmth.]
[…Can illusions be warm? Dare she get her hopes up? God, it doesn’t matter. Aubrey curls herself into she shape of Eren Jaeger, and as long as this world will indulge her, she won’t resist it.]
[Aubrey’s outfit shows a fair amount of skin; it’s never felt more incriminating than this.
[On her face: Eren, soft and loose, written across her right cheek—where his left hand, then-unmarked, brushed her tears away in the moonlight. And it’d be one thing, if that was the only name; so, naturally, it’s not.
[There are three others: Across one knee, Kel, small but insistent, like a bruise from a misaimed ball. He’s tripped her up more than once. His brother, Hero, stamps the back of her right hand; a clean prescription for a stray scratch. Embarrassing, both if them. But Aubrey would sooner show those off than the lace around her neck, singsong cursive across her throat: Mari. A childhood remnant.]
[Most disconcerting, however, is what’s become of Aubrey’s left side. It wraps around her arm like a bandage, ugly and jagged, more of a scrawl than anything legible—but the gaps in the pitch line up. Eren Jaeger, Eren Jaeger, Eren Jaeger, again and again, overlapping and chaotic and raw. It snakes up under her sleeve, coiling; and though her neckline is enough to hide the vow’s trail to her heart, the names take a different path, dragging across the collarbone and curving down like an artery.]
[Aubrey really hopes these marks are temporary.]
(ooc: ignore the lack of links, device difficulties etc. may edit later but also You Know The Thing)
[So, they’re at this “party” again. Same cups. Similar marks, too; not everything, but her arm still looks like it got struck by black lightning. Her jacket’s back but it’s not hiding the trail this time. Huh....]
[However: on to more pressing matters.]
[…After a considerable sip. The hell is this drink, anyway....] Eren Jaeger.
My detriment. [Raising that ring finger, for no one in particular. Speaks for itself.] Don’t know what to do with him, don’t know what I’d do without him… but I do love him.
He’s… [How did Armin phrase it? Hard to get used to, something to that effect? …Eh. She’s not Armin.] Well, you might not like him. That’s fine. Terrible goals and all that. He can hate you like nothing else in the world… and love you, too. If you get to know him, you might learn exactly why it’s impossible not to love him. And…
You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think he’s human.
[Okay. Quick sip, and a glance up to Jaeger himself. Your turn.]
headhooligan
- 2023-10-31 06:54 (UTC) - Expand[She’s been looking for him.]
[It’s been a long time.]
[This world is not conductive to finding people, not on purpose. It’s an old game by now. You search; you plead; you fall to your knees and it’s still not done with you. Who knows what the lesson is. Even Liberio, the faintest memory of a memory, is a ghost town. The candles in the barracks have long dimmed; but last Aubrey left them, they still burned. She would not let them die.]
[Then she wakes at the foot of the hill.]
[One glance, and it’s over.]
[Eren Jaeger has never looked more peaceful. It’s funny, what they do with the dead; it’s as though they’re truly resting. It’s funny, light and shaking fingers on his neck, tracing the hill of his throat, searching; the flowers told her before the headstone. It’s funny, that this is what he’s always known was coming, wasn’t it?
[…Haven’t they all?]
[Aubrey Jaeger lies down next to her Detriment, laces her fingers through his, and holds him. He’s so cold.]
[Whose laugh is that…?]
[It feels sacrilegious to intervene. Eren’s joy is musical. So, for a while, Aubrey settles at the foot of the hill; not to eavesdrop, exactly, but she can’t place that second voice, not with a tone like this…
[Not Armin. Definitely not Mikasa, or Bertholdt. Maybe someone new? But that leaves—]
Reiner?
[Curiosity wills her to stand. And sure enough, resting and laughing below the tree…]
[It’s the beach again—or so, half of it. Same endless sands, same inexplicable basket…
[The “water,” however, is not right.]
[The sight freezes Aubrey where she stands. She’s barely aware of who else might be here, on land or at sea… if that swath of deep, impenetrable sanguine can be called a “sea.” The liquid is eerily still. And where the shoreline should be, there is no ebbing tide—only a ridge, as if something huge displaced the sand in a zig-zagged line.
[From a birds’-eye view, it’d look like a footprint.]
[There she is.]
[It’s another sacred moment, this: Mikasa, bowed beneath the tree at the headstone of Eren Jaeger; her family, her love, the man who, one way or another, made her kill him. It brought him peace. Does she know that?]
[Not for the first time, Aubrey feels like an intruder. That Eren isn’t here makes it worse. She hardly knows Mikasa; she knows just enough not to want to break her heart.
[And yet, here they are.]
Mikasa....
[It’s hushed, and (Aubrey hopes) more understanding than hesitant. Just… establishing her presence, really, before getting too close.]
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