* Despite everything, it's still you. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
determinedest) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
entrancelogs2017-02-04 12:06 pm
determinedest) wrote in entrancelogs2017-02-04 12:06 pm
i've made up my mind over and over; keep pressing rewind [open]
Who: Frisk and YOU
Where: All over the mansion
When: 2/04 - 2/08
Rating: PG-13 for Bad Thoughts and implied suicide attempt
Summary: * If you DO end up erasing everything...you have to erase my memories, too. I’m sorry.
The Story:
[* There is one last thing.]
[* One last threat.]
[* One being with the power to erase EVERYTHING…]
[* Everything everyone’s worked so hard for.]
[* That’s right.]
[* Despite everything...]
[* It's still YOU.]
Where: All over the mansion
When: 2/04 - 2/08
Rating: PG-13 for Bad Thoughts and implied suicide attempt
Summary: * If you DO end up erasing everything...you have to erase my memories, too. I’m sorry.
The Story:
[* There is one last thing.]
[* One last threat.]
[* One being with the power to erase EVERYTHING…]
[* Everything everyone’s worked so hard for.]
[* You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?]
[* Despite everything...]
[* It's still YOU.]
THIRD DAY; 080;44 MINUTES; CLOSED TO RIP
It won't take long. It'll take a few minutes, and then their body will start to scream for air. They'll start to kick, agonizingly, their back arching, their lungs aching, and their vision will blot over with dark colors, vibrant patches of rainbow. They know because they remember it - they remember it almost happening, some several...loops ago. They'd been too cowardly to let the water do its work.
They won't make that mistake now.
All they have to do is hold themself there, and not go searching for a door. The longer they wait, the less strength their body will have.
It will be enough.
They're the catalyst. If this works, then it'll be over. They can set things right again.
It will be enough.
It will have to be enough.]
no subject
Yet their purpose hasn't died with them--nor has their philosophy. Rip Hunter may have come to despise the choices the Time Masters made, but he remains one of them regardless. The calling to protect history at any cost has been ingrained within him, and so too does the philosophy that calls upon him to make difficult choices; impossible ones.
To leave a town to burn, its people to die, because to save them would rewrite time. To abandon refugees, children, leave them to their doom because saving them could alter history in the worst way. To sacrifice a member of his own team for the sake of preventing the evils of the world to learn of his powers, and gain them for their own nefarious purposes.
To have the means to be a hero, to feel that calling, and turn his back on it: this is the choice Rip Hunter has made again, and again, and again.
He's returning from the kitchen, satchel heavy at his side with the supplies he's gathered to distribute among those in his circle, and of course himself. Between his own efforts and Mr. Snart's they might indeed have enough to last. He's tired after too many trips, his plan to return to an unoccupied room, hold off sleep long enough to set every alarm his phone has available, and then nap until he has the strength to start again.
It's all quite simple, really. He's got it worked out nicely in his mind.
And then he sees the body of a child, suspended in the middle of the hall. It's no surprise that people would die under these circumstances. They've been left lacking everything they need, food and water and air itself. It stands to reason that this poor youth has simply succumbed.
He should pass them by; logic dictates as much. Rip can only hold his breath for so long, and he has precious supplies at that. If the child is dead, it can't be helped.
No matter how young they are. How innocent.
He should simply swim by.
Daddy, can you teach me to swim before you leave again?
He doesn't.]
no subject
It feels like sleep, when it comes. It tides over easily with the snap of a SOUL and the fragmenting of the essence of your being into pieces, the dissolution of self into nothingness and the closing over of darkness. The rumbling intonation belonging to a memory that was never theirs, and the call that they stay determined. It is so very simple, and all they had to do - all they would ever have to do, after a time, is simply stand still.
They stand still. They remain where they are, adrift, eyes shuttering closed as the substernal ache begins to settle in along the contours of their lungs, invisible fingers closing around their esophagus and forcing bubbles of oxygen from their parted lips in a silvery stream.
They open their eyes, briefly. A mistake, or possibly worse - there's something there. Something in the same of a man.
And then, so soon off the wake of their first error, they make another; they lurch in alarm, and another eruption of bubbles escapes in a startled burst. Alive. Alive still, and now something in the shape of a man will see them.
There are so many good people in Wonderland. There are so many people who would hear a child crying for help and come to their aid accordingly.
Their head throbs, the pounding unbearable.
They have to get away, quickly, before anyone can register that they're alive.
...
There are so many good people in Wonderland.]
no subject
No one else would hesitate, he suspects. Not when they catch the first stream of bubbles leaking from parted lips, nor the way the body thrashes, just that once, shattering the stillness of the water around them. No one else would see that and pause, their hand resting on the bag still at their hip, holding the food needed to ensure others could live, could move from room to room.
Time continues to move; Rip's own lungs are starting to burn, because it's been too long for him too.
How many people suffer if he saves this one life, this one child?
How long will this image be burned into his mind, should he continue on regardless?
This is hardly the first time he's faced such choices throughout the years he's spent traveling aboard the Waverider. Once upon a time, it might have been a matter of course to weigh the impact in numbers and results, to consider that the child would no doubt revive as per Wonderland's rules and leave them to their unfortunate fate.
So much has changed since then. Rip would like to think he might have, too.
He doesn't realize they are attempting to swim away from him; he instead thinks they are simply trying to swim. Rip follows, his strides longer by nature of his size, and his turn his arms stronger.
He knows where the next room with air is. It's simply a matter of taking hold of the child, guiding them where they need to go to live.
He reaches out once he thinks he's close enough to do just that.]
no subject
The shape of a man draws closer. They've not been convincing enough, or perhaps he's simply the sort of person they can recognize best; the sort that holds sacrifice as the sole action one can take with the hope of meaning, and of success.
The only kind of love that isn't LOVE is sacrifice, and however well-meaning, there will always be someone who will take issue with it.
Like now.
Now, a larger hand brushes at them, and they react immediately, explosively, adrenaline-fueled and desperate, attempting to press away from him even as he reaches to steer them to safety.
"Safety" is relative, and creatures like them do not deserve it.]
no subject
He'd hesitated, to be sure, but in the end? If he'd forced that stubborn man away, all three of them would've ended up dead. What would've been the point in that case?
He cannot save everyone. This lesson Rip knows. But now, perhaps, he can save someone.
He draws near enough to almost reach, but the child moves away before his fingers find purchase. There are so many reasons why that might be: Wonderland is full of dangers, and the water dark, cold. There's every chance this child has no idea someone is attempting a rescue rather than something far more cruel and nefarious.
(Is does not occur to Rip that the child wants to die. No child should want to die.)
He tries again, ignoring the screams of his lungs, the tinges of color edging their way into his vision. He's running out of time, and so is this child. If he is to do anything it must be now.
I never got to teach him how to swim. There just never seemed to be--the time.
He is not gentle when he reaches out again, grasps an arm or a leg, wherever he can find purchase. He does not yield even when the child begins to struggle, instead pulling them firmly against his body.]
cw for allusions to child abuse
He can SAVE someone who does not deserve it.
He is not gentle when he reaches out again; adults are never gentle. A hand to their arm, and then to their leg, and the panic had been distant up until this point, rifting and tepid, a dulled-away acceptance of death as it would come to them, because it always does. They've never drowned before. Some fragment of their mind is morbidly curious as to how it would feel. Impalement, burning, stabbing, crushing - they've lived the spectrum of all of them, and yet the closest they've come to drowning is the cascade of their body as it tumbled into the inky dark of the garbage dump, landing with a dull thump upon a mat of golden flowers.
Memory may as well be rooted into those flowers as completely and intricately as pollen. The flooded mansion halls are nothing like the smell of sea grass and the soft squish of mud underfoot as they tread through Waterfall.
Adults are never gentle.
They're pulled to him, and the grip of someone else's hands, ironclad over their wrists, is what prefaces the bruises in the shape of fingerprints on their neck and on the small of their back and on their shoulders. Hold still hold still if you won't hold still I will have to make you hold still - and yet they thrash, persistently, their struggles nauseatingly weak despite the adrenaline bubbling in their bloodstream, because a darkness has already begun to wreathe their vision.
Sans was right, you see.
They never did learn how to QUIT.
So give them, please -
Give them what they deserve.
The chance to repent. To set things right. If the timeline withers with them, then they'll know, they'll know for certain, that it's their fault. They'll fix it. Please, just let them fix it. They'll be good. They'll be good.
Show some MERCY, human.]
cw for dying
He has a seconds; a minute at most (this is being generous).
The child is too weak, and Rip, stronger than most might expect given his slender frame. He kicks his legs, heads back towards the room only a few doors away (only a few, he tells himself; only a few, so keep going, keep--)
It's so much harder to see; the water grows darker, and Rip knows better, but he tells himself that anyway.
The child doesn't struggle nearly so much now. It's fortunate and not; the room is close, the door closed, and he has to open it, pull it, and God how much effort does it take for that much? He's already aware of the strength required to pull himself from the heavy flood into the air. Safety is right there, yet beyond him.
He can't resist the urge, the desperate need of his body. It doesn't matter that he's surrounded by fluid rather than air; he sucks it in anyway, and pushes the child forward, past that final barrier with a prayer that please, please whatever powers that be, let the child take in a breath.
Let them breathe.
Let no one find them, as he had once. Let no one feel the pain of cradling their dead child as he had his son.
Angels--
Ministers of grace--
Have mercy, indeed.]
no subject
He's doing this for them. He's doing this to watch over them, and protect them.
That opens to their SOUL a new bridging, sickening scream of panic, a formless, wordless burst of sound that tears from their throat, that would have been a quiet cry of dismay, because if anyone should have gone this way it should be them, it should be them, they're the one that did this they're the one that deserves it.
The last pocket of air is Ripped from their lungs as they're thrust at the door and go spilling through the portal with a sputtering cough, water sticking to the inside of their throat.
A glance over their shoulder, and the door swings shut.
Palms and forehead press to the door as they sag against it for support, the cut edge of their teeth and the slump of their shoulders marking defeat in every line. Their hair clings wetly to their forehead, the nape of their neck as they crouch there - trembling with exhaustion and goosebumps shivering down their flesh, wholly drenched but alive.
Alive.
They did this.
Once again. They did this.
Twisted MERCY into something sick and horrifying, and someone else paid the price for it. Someone always does. It should have been them. It should have been.
Look at what you've done.]