who have i become? i'm still old enough to die young [open]

[rosswood]

Who: Alex Kralie and you
Where: All over the mansion's interior
When: April 1st and April 2nd
Rating: PG-13 probs. there's some self-harm and thoughts of suicide in here, plus someone is getting murdered
Summary: Alex's inability to cope with his own emotions (or the lack thereof) causes problems
The Story:

kitchen; open; i'm static like a dead tv screen ( emotionless )

He opens the lighter with a quiet click and watches the stilling flame with complete disinterest. He shuts it again.

He has a purpose to fulfill. All's quiet in his head, at long goddamn last. No voice urging him on. No screams, no static, no tearing of stark white claws into the folds of his brain and carving them into jelly. It's quiet now.

It's his turn to burn.

He spends his flat moments gathering the requisite materials: a box of matches and a knife from the kitchen, lighter fluid from one of the closets. Whoever stands in his way will be dealt with accordingly. He has work to do.

[ooc: Evelyn has dibs on Taking Care of Alex but anyone else who wants to encounter him in his emotionless zombie state is welcome to!]

entrance hall; open; let this stranger have their death wish ( hyper-emotional )

He makes it as far as the entrance hall before panic creeps up on his chest and closes a tight fist around his throat, and he drops against the nearest wall and clenches his fists tight, jaw aching as he grits his teeth.

He killed them. He killed them. He killed them. Brian laughed, Sarah sighed, exasperated until he came up behind her with a chunk of rebar, Tim hadn't even wanted to be there, Seth was just trying to help when he left him to that thing underneath, Jay just wanted the goddamn tapes.

It doesn't matter. He did what he had to, like a hero. That's what he is. That's what he has to be, a hero, a hero, that's what he - what he -

A rage-filled sound tears its way out of his throat as he swings around and slams his fist into the wall. Then he does it again. And again. And again, until the skin of his knuckles is cracked and bleeding. Why didn't he end it right then, after? Who was he kidding, thinking he could escape when he should have slit his wrists and been done with it? Those are the rules, Kralie. You don't just get out and escape this shit forever and ever, you don't get to abscond with your sanity after getting touched with that blank-faced horror.

He deserves this.

third floor; closed to evelyn; if i pass on, then it's a mercy kill

He's compiled a list of potential threats, and cuts through the mansion with crisp, cold efficiency. The steps are cleanly outlined in his head, like something he's done a thousand times (has he? Maybe he has) - first step, kill the targets. A quick blade jabbing in and out of their neck should accomplish this nicely. Second step, burn the evidence. The jug of lighter fluid sloshes in one hand, the sharp tang of gasoline stinging his nostrils and causing his eyes to water.

But it doesn't matter. He has a list. He has a target. First, there's the kid that isn't a kid. Second, there's the one who somehow obtained knowledge of who he was and what he did (didn't they know he had to do it?), and third, there's Max. The thought should make him hesitate, but it doesn't. She knows about what hounds him, what haunts him, and there's only one solution to that. Kill her, kill the others, and then himself.

It's what's necessary.

He stops in front of one of the rooms and, without hesitation, uncaps the lighter fluid and begins to pour until it soaks through the carpet.

Comments

[nascensibility]

It was almost too easy to shut it out.

Having never had the luxury before it came as a gracious, grateful silence, a relief in the buffer put up between her rocky outcrop and the waves that kept threatening degradation. Entropy here happens slowly, death by a thousand emotional cuts and wearing the stone smooth, placid, and complacent.

She is less so in this moment, armed in Wonderland's halls with every intention of stopping further damage to this place, its people. Too many are trapped for too long, extra lives a temptation for those inclined to commit crimes. Having been the victim on at least three separate occasions Evelyn has neither list nor target, no specificity to her roaming beyond a logic-based need to protect what little there is.

"What are you doing."

It isn't a question. A dozen feet down the corridor a young man - the one she met before, that night when she walked in lucid dreams - clutches a large can and the scent of petrol fills her lungs.

[rosswood]

He doesn't look up from his task. The carpet is thick and heavy with the acrid reek of liquid waiting to be set aflame. All he has to do is finish the deed. There's the lighter buried deep in his pocket, a box of matches clasped in his palm.

"Taking care of some personal business," he says shortly. He doesn't look up to confirm whether or not he recognizes the owner of the voice. What would be the point? If she's here to stop him, all the more reason to complete his job faster. "Don't worry about it."

Of course, it's doubtful it'll be that simple, but he has his knife stowed away in case of trouble.

[nascensibility]

Eyes drawn to the slick arbiter of destruction soaking the floor Evelyn is too reminded of another resident in Wonderland who suggested arson as a means of better understanding this place, that fire was cleansing. Seeing as she has no plans to subscribe to archaic modes of thinking regarding the betterment of those bound to this world in the foreseeable future, Evelyn strides in to catch flame before it is struck.

"Alex."

That's his name, isn't it? It feels odd on her tongue, heavy like a dead weight that needs to be shed. Reason first. Reason first. At his side Evelyn reaches for the hand balled into a fist, hiding flint.

"Your personal business is about to be everyone's business. Stop." A caveat: "Or I will make you stop."

[rosswood]

He steps back, seemingly retreating until the lighter slips from his pocket with a silvered click of spark popping into flame. He holds it over the damp patch on the ground, a latent threat.

"Keep walking. This doesn't concern you." Besides, what can she do? He's the one with the lighter and the knife. He's the one who can reduce this place to wood and ash if she doesn't walk on by.

Everything's muted, grayed-out. All the easier to ignore something that doesn't involve you, right? Why can't she do the same?

It'd be so goddamn simple.

[nascensibility]

Reason attempted.

While it doesn't involved Evelyn directly, she can jump to several conclusions - all of which have a likelihood of endangering lives and engendering more violence. Easier to deal with the problem at the source, cutting the head off of the snake. Alex steps back and she watches him move, watches the glittering lighter pulled from his pocket and snapped to a flame. For a long moment she waits and he expects her to turn and she does, almost.

There is a distant part of her more capable of this than she, deep in her bones and cells, in a past she cannot fully remember or completely forget. It is that part that finds it an unfathomably simple task to dart in, sweeping his arm out of the way with practised ease before slamming a shunt into his sternum with the meat of her palm.

The lighter skitters against a wall and lands several feet away.

"Now it does."

Kitchen!

[mypartnerintime]

At some point in the day she'd started brooding, thoughts flashing back to images of Arcadia Bay - bodies lying on the road, eyes hollow and staring, wind whipping damp hair across expressionless faces.

The roaring of a storm in her ears, the clap of thunder and flashes of lightning, indistinguishable from the quiet comfort of her room in Wonderland.

She couldn't stop thinking. Nightmares played over and over in her mind. Sobs built in her chest until she started to cry. Chloe was just across the hall, but she couldn't bring herself to face her best friend, not when the image of Chloe's forehead with that single hole bored into it played in Max's mind, on an endless rewind.

Water would help. Chocolate, or something sweet and comforting. Fuck, maybe even alcohol or some of Chloe's weed. Max pulls pulls herself together long enough to walk toward the kitchen, in a daze. When she finally (somehow) finds her way there, she's wiping at her eyes, fighting down her gasping sobs. She hardly sees Alex, but when she does she pauses at the door.

"A-Alex?"

How nice to see a friend.

[rosswood]

What, she can't see he's busy? He glances at Max dispassionately. It's the work of the moment to slip the box of matches into his pocket, keep the knife low at his side and out of sight. She wouldn't suspect anything.

"Max," he says evenly.

Any other time of day, he would've felt guilt, or concern, or regret. What a refreshing change of pace it is to reach down to claw some socially-acceptable reaction out of himself and find...nothing.

Nothing except the patient realization that, as someone who knows about his past, Max has been put in a rather unique position where she has become a danger to him and everyone else.

Someone should take care of that.

[mypartnerintime]

He's doing something, rummaging through drawers, when she interrupts him. But she can't tell what- and is it really important right now? She wipes at her eyes, gasping for breath again as sobs well up and force themselves through her chest and throat.

She tries to piece it together. There had been that weird video on the network a few days ago, some lady literally losing her head. Is... is this an event? Does it fucking matter, because event or not, everyone back home is still dead!

No... no, they're alive right? They died in some other reality, some other timeline.

Still died, though.

She braces herself against the doorjamb, desperately trying to regain control and get her memories in order. What the fuck is wrong with her?

"I... I don't feel good, Alex..."

[rosswood]

...huh. Now this is interesting. Looks like she's pretty much falling apart at the seams. Alex's grip on his improvised weapon tightens by increments. She's vulnerable, and she's talking to him like she can trust him.

That's cute.

"Gosh, I'm sorry," he says, barely managing to inflect the words with a modicum of something resembling pity. "Maybe you oughtta lie down for a bit."

If he can catch her off guard, it means she'll struggle less. He takes a step closer. One, and another. He tries to arrange his features into something vaguely sympathetic, trustworthy.

[mypartnerintime]

Through tears and sobs she sees him approaching, like he's going in for a... hug?

Alex Kralie does not hug.

But maybe he's starting to come around. Like maybe he's actually going to learn how to be a sympathetic and emotionally stable friend one day, and this is a step in the right direction. She doesn't back away, too caught up in her own dumb thoughts. Rooted in place, unmoving like a picture. Fighting down even stronger sobs.

Even Alex died because of her. She saw it happen on the network - what do you even say to something like that. "I'm so... s-sorry," she mumbles out, words catching on her incessant hiccups and sobs.

Kitchen

[punful]

It's hard to control. It's like a switch in your mind, but sometimes the switch just flips, like there's some little asshole in there flicking the lights on and off. Sans is used to being very aware of his emotions, very aware of his own state of mind. He's more in tune with that sort of thing than most. He knows how volatile he's going to be with his emotions out of whack, and how dangerous he will be with no emotions at all.

So he's been in hiding. Mostly in the woods, sometimes just in his room. The problem is that even skeletons need to eat. It's a simple enough thing to teleport to the kitchen once or twice a day, grab some grub and then duck back out into the woods. The one good thing about all this emotion stuff is that it's exhausting. Sans tires himself out easily on a good day, and on these bad days, it's even easier. When he's not hiding, he's sleeping. He's made it work so far. At least for the past few hours.

He's somewhere in the middle, coming down off a long bout of intense emotions, ready to try turning them off again for a little while. He's already in the kitchen when Alex walks in and he flinches a little at the sudden arrival. He can't really deal with people right now, but he also understands (in that stupid, overly emotional way) that just avoiding everyone for days on end is selfish. He needs to at least make sure that people aren't killing each other back here in the mansion.

It's a very real problem, after all.

"alex. hey." He gives him a vague grin, wondering what emotional state Alex is currently in. "what's up?"

[rosswood]

Oh. It's the skeleton guy. What's-his-bones. Alex pauses on his way to the drawer with all the knives. That freak kid liked their knives too. Better not let Sans form a correlation there. He's just a normal human, getting normal food like a normal person.

"Everything's fine how are you," he marches out the phrase mechanically without any typical sort of circumflection or deviation from his flat monotone. He's going to have to do better than that. He has to make sure people don't get suspicious. They wouldn't understand what it is he has to do right now. Why would they? It'd be useless trying to persuade them.

[punful]

Welp.

Seems Alex is in an "off" stage right now. Sans wonders how many people are doing that. Probably a lot of them. It's awfully convenient; Sans just wishes that both ends of the spectrum weren't so goddamn intense.

"yeah. you sure seem fine."

Sure, if "fine" is code for "everything but," which it almost always is.

"just...getting some food. then hiding again. heh. kinda. kinda wish i could just sleep this one off. like a bad hangover."

[rosswood]

Yes. Absolutely. Getting some food. Look at Alex, too, getting food, like a person, because that is what people do. They get food and they eat the food and chew it and swallow it and they do not burn down people's rooms.

He pauses for a moment, weighing the costs and benefits of informing Sans of his intentions. No, the cons far outweigh the pros on this one. No surprises there. But Sans is objectively fairly harmless from his perspective, and an innocent whom Alex can't think he has any reason to hurt. Yet.

"Hiding," he repeats flatly. He moves to one of the cupboards. Where the food is. The silverware drawer will have to be a secondary target. "You're scared?"

[punful]

Sans wonders if this is what Chara is like all the time. At least back home, at least when they're the anomaly and when they have enough LOVE that they can actually achieve this kind of distance. Chara hasn't managed it here, not quite.

Sans wonders if this is what he'll eventually become.

He heads to the fridge.

"no." Lying isn't an emotion. He can still lie all he wants, thank god. "not in that sense."

Scared of losing people, existentially scared, scared of what he's capable of, scared of dying...which is stupid, because he's done all those things probably thousands of times.

Entrance hall

[abelmedic]

Maxine doesn't need feelings to know that what's unfolding in front of her is wrong. She definitely doesn't need feelings to flat-out recognize it. Whatever triggered the breakdown-in-progress that greets her when she steps into the entrance hall, she's seen more than enough of this kind of thing being one of the few surviving doctors at the end of the world. So it doesn't frighten or disorient her - it's just a problem that needs to stop. Now.

"Hey, hey." She grabs his shoulder, but it's at arm's-length, ready to dance back if that fist swings toward her next. Really not her first rodeo, and she's really not interested in getting smacked with a bloody fist any time soon. "Settle down, okay? You're going to break your hand."

[rosswood]

Alex rounds her on her almost at once. There's something wet and hopeless prickling at the backs of his lids. Shit. No. No no no no no he's not going to cry in front of some fucking stranger.

"So what?" he spits, violently. "Doesn't matter here. It'll all just get fucking fixed if I die again."

He knows he has the strength to do it once, after everyone else is gone. But to do it again and again, four times, five times, until he can never come back? He doesn't have the will to do that.

[abelmedic]

"Your hand. That's all that'll be fixed."

She's pretty new here, but she's gathered that much about the basic rules. The insight about how not quite being able to die might mess you up a little . . . that's all from home.

"Come on. This isn't a road you want to go down." She'd backed up a pace when he wheeled on her, but she steps back in, offering her hand palm-up in a wordless request for his. "Let's sit down and you can tell me what has you trying to beat up a marble wall."

[rosswood]

Marble. Is it marble. Marble, like hornets, and a strange, unhinged tickle of noise creeps out of his throat, almost like a laugh if it weren't so broken and near-hysterical.

"You - you don't get it," he manages, but that ugly laugh is boiling up in his throat and he can't hold it in so he makes no attempt to. "How could you - you don't want to. You don't know what it's done."

He can't tell her. He can't, he can't, because that's not rational but since when has he been rational? He's goddamn losing it. Everything's spilling out after he put so much effort into holding everything in, and now he's unleashing all those bottled-up feelings like one hell of a Molotov.

[abelmedic]

"I want to know what's making you hurt yourself." She's already good at staying calm in charged situations, but with her mind settled as it is, steadiness is effortless. Everything is sorted into its base components. This stranger isn't well. She wants to help him. And the first step is figuring out what's making him try to bust up his own hand.

"You might be surprised what I can understand. Why don't you try me."

Entrance Hall

[mourning_ghost]

He's returning from the forest when he finds Alex. The fire hadn't worked. It hadn't even burned down the forest before it died. The disappoint curls around him as he plods back inside, barely aware of his surroundings. Nageki wouldn't have noticed the human if he wasn't making such frightening sounds.

Before he can even think, he reaches out a wing and grabs the human's arm. He isn't particularly strong even for a bird, but determination tightens his grip. Whether that makes a difference remains to be seen. "Stop."

[rosswood]

He doesn't appreciate being forcibly grabbed by any means, and he rounds on the culprit to chew them out appropriately and sweet baby jesus that is a bird.

"What the fuck," he stammers inelegantly, attempting to wrench himself from the fucking bird's grip. "What're you - fucking - "

Soon he'll get a handle on his verbal processes again, but for now he simply flounders.

[mourning_ghost]

He lets go of the arm and backs away. "Stop hitting the wall."

He's worried that the human will hurt himself. Nageki waits to see what this person will do now.

[rosswood]

"Why, you gonna make me?" he snaps. Just his goddamn luck. Apparently Wonderland likes its fucking birds because this is the second one he's met. "What's it matter to you?"

If he wants to bludgeon the wall he will damn well bludgeon the wall.

[mourning_ghost]

This one is likely bigger than the previous bird Alex met. He certainly isn't a normal bird size.

"You'll hurt yourself." Nageki can't explain why he wants Alex to stop. He just knows that he does. He can't just walk by.