entrancelogs | It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you!

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It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you! | OPEN MINGLE

Who: EVERYONE!
Where: EVERYWHERE!
When: Friday October 27th - Tuesday October 31st
Rating: PG-13, warn if you're gonna go higher!
Summary: A catch all for the Horrible Memory Truth Event!
The Story:

For the duration of this event, everyone's entire room will be replaced with a memory playing on loop. They will likely recognize the moment as soon as they see it – it is a moment they remember as the worst moment of their entire lives. It could be a memory from home or something that happened in Wonderland. Lengths of the memories will vary, but they will find that these are not memories they can merely watch – they can step into these memories and attempt to make changes to them, and the memories will be long enough that they have time to make changes (though no more than 24 hours). However, anyone who tries will find that it is futile. No matter what you do or how hard you try, the outcome is always exactly the same somehow. No changes you make will prevent that horrible outcome. It just happens over and over and over again no matter what you do.

On top of that, perhaps complicating any attempts to make changes, everyone will be forced to be honest for the duration of the event. No lies or half-truths are allowed, and filters will be gone for the entire five days. If something bothers someone then they will blurt it out, regardless of whether or not it hurts someone's feelings, and no one will be able to simply keep quiet when they have something to say. They must be truthful and honest with every word they say.

This is a catch-all log for all of your Worst Memory needs! Please mark your threads clearly in the subject line with your character's name and Room Number + Floor for character rooms, or just location if you're making a top level for a public place in the mansion (like the tea rooms or the kitchen) so people can see if there's already a thread available. And here's the plot post if you need it!

Have fun!

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After Elena finds out, he's hollowed out.

He'd been holding on to it so tightly for so long (panicking when he found her deep asleep unable to wake her, losing it when Wonderland sent her back, rushing to Regis as an absolute mess).

He sinks to the floor outside of their room.

The door's slightly open, and he can hear the noise of the memory happen over and over again. He's desperate to see her. He takes Tyler out on the way. His hallucination tells him what he heard on an endless loop that year (what you really are is dark and evil and terrible and a monster, and the hellstone has remade you so you could embrace who you really are). Damon learned better after that. He put himself in a coffin, and it didn't fix anything. Damon had to choose that himself, but it doesn't mean he can't remember what it was like in the moments following setting her on fire, how much it felt like everyone's beliefs (including and especially his own were confirmed).

He tried to stop the hallucination by setting it on fire- Henry on fire. Henry was a real person once a long time ago on one of the worst days of Damon's life (which he relived over and over again in the Hellstone. This Event sounds familiar. Hopefully it doesn't come with its own hallucinations).

But he doesn't- he can't move from this spot.

It's a familiar sight, in that she did the same thing earlier. Chloe had given her an excuse to leave the hallway outside her room, to leave behind the sounds of her own screams. This hallway has no noise, just Damon sitting on the floor, looking lost and sick.

She's pretty sure that's worse.

Caroline sinks down onto the floor across the hall from him, expression cautious. She'll never not be at least a little unsure when Damon's in a bad mood. No matter how much he's changed, there will always be a part of her that is waiting for him to snap.

"You too, huh?"

Some horrible memory is inside that room. She wonders if it's the experiments again.

Damon looks up when Caroline speaks. His intake of breath is sharp, sudden.

"Why aren't you with Elena?"

Of course, as soon as he says the words, he realizes- She doesn't know. Elena is with one of her other friends from Wonderland (a place that's killed her twice but still manages to not fuck her over as much as their own world does). Maybe she needs time alone. What the hell does anyone do after they find out something like that? He doesn't know. Back home, she had to be strong for everyone else. She wasn't even allowed to grieve for everyone else, but she smiled at them, gave them advice, wished them goodbye, because she's full of compassion and love, and she refused to do anything else.

His eyes burn. He can't swallow through it.

He can't breathe through it.

"There's so much that happens that neither of you know." There's one terrible thing that happened that he would have never let out of the cage of his chest himself. "She found out the worst of it."

"Because I figured she'd be with you."

Caroline didn't realize she had to track her down. Elena had been through a host of terrible things, her room could have been anything, but she figured it would have been like hers, something she'd already at least sort of processed.

She didn't imagine that Damon's might be the one to completely screw everyone up.

"Damon, what happened? What did she see?"

"Saw me thinking I'd set her on fire in her sleep in a fucking coffin."

There is no explaining that easily at all. He's so far ahead of the rest of them. There's so goddamn much ahead for them. He presses his hand to his face with a hiss of a breath, closing his eyes there. The truth Event is in its effect. The words leave abrupt, harsh. His hand becomes a fist all over again in his anger at it- at the- at all of it.

"Kai Parker. He put her under a sleeping spell, tying her life to Bonnie's. As long as Bonnie is alive, Elena has to stay asleep."

Kai Parker. The guy she'd practically had to beg to save her mother's life when she'd screwed up.

Damon isn't alone in his anger, at least. Her lips press together painfully as her face pinches together. He doesn't need to explain any of the beginning; she's been through all the crap where people made them see things, even if Silas is long gone. He thought he'd done it; he'd be more than angry right now if it had been real.

"Did you kill him?"

The words are tight as they force themselves out of her throat.

"Beheaded him with my hand."

Damon actually smirks at that, because it was satisfying as hell to take that psychopath's head off. He swallows down the bile that comes next because it didn't change anything.

Elena remains in a coffin. He closes his eyes as he rests his head back against the wall.

"He's very dead, but Elena is still very much still asleep for years."

"Good."

The word feels thick in her throat, and she means it with an intensity that almost frightens her. She's not surprised that undoing the magic he'd done wouldn't be as simple as ending his life, and it frustrates her that he was probably the only one who could fix it, but some people just couldn't be reasoned with.

She sighs.

"Let me guess. Elena found out and she's not...taking it very well."

"How can you take anything like that... well?"

Even if one ignores the moral implications, if she could somehow get past never seeing Bonnie or Jeremy again, there's still him.

He still set her on fire even if he didn't want to.

There's no choice.

There's never fucking anything.

"No, there's no changing it."

Elena deserves to react how ever she does even if that's= even if it's hating him.

"You don't. You just take it and hope it doesn't screw you up too much."

How much more of this crap did they have to go through before they finally got to just live? Apparently, they weren't destined for that.

"There's no changing any of it. We can't fix all the messed up stuff that's happened to us. We just have to figure out a way to keep going anyway."

Some days were harder than others. Some days were bordered on unbearable.

"She still needs you."

"Everyone has to have a limit."

Elena's the strongest person that he's ever met. She's beautiful, brave. She cares and loves intensely. She's stubborn and angry and grieving- She shouldn't have to go through anything else. Hell, none of them should. What the hell is their lives that it's an endless parade of tragedy?

His jaw locks near the back. He shakes his head, but it doesn't- it doesn't escape him. She thinks Elena needs him. She's encouraging him.

"After what she saw in there, I'm the last person she'd want to see." He still hates she saw that- that particular view point. It was the worst thing to happen to him, thinking he'd killed her, but the whole- the whole of it was the worst from the moment he couldn't wake her (from saying goodbye to her on the street, from being terrified his mother would kill her in her own coffin). "I'm here for her, Caroline. I lived it. If she wants to see me again, I'll be waiting like I'm waiting back home, trying to do right by her, trying to stay alive, trying to make sure no one else dies too soon and no one gets their hands on Elena's coffin and fighting the latest big bad of the week with the whole Scooby gang."

It's exhausting.

"Okay sure, maybe right this second."

There are plenty of people Caroline wouldn't want to be around under certain circumstances, but that didn't mean she wanted to cut them out forever. It took a lot for her to want to do that, and she's pretty sure it takes even more for Elena to do it.

"But it sure sounds like you didn't want to freaking set her on fire or whatever, and you also didn't really do it, so she's going to forgive you. This is Elena freaking Gilbert we're talking about here. You killed her brother and she fell in love with you."

Seriously, stop being so dramatic.

"It's not about you. It's about her. Sitting here feeling sorry for yourself isn't doing right by her and you know it. Give her time. It's not like we don't have plenty of it right now."

"I know that."

Damon's words are sharp. They're a hiss out of his teeth. Anger rises up in him abruptly.

"I've lived with this for years, back home and here. Do you think I go full pity party around her? No. I say stupid shit, but I'm aware of who all of this is about." Elena has never allowed herself to feel it- never allowed herself to let it be about her. Maybe she can't. Maybe it's too goddamn much, but it was about her from the start for him. "She's always caring about everyone else and their reactions. When she said goodbye to everyone, do you think she let any of it be about her-"

His voice cuts off. She told him to live, to be happy. He didn't deny it because he knew she needed to see it.

"I know who it's about, Caroline. The only reason I'm so fucking- so fucking messed up is because she has to live with it here now, and I never wanted her to have to."

Caroline's teeth sink into her bottom lip as guilt washes over her. She hates everything about this, the fact that Elena has to see or go through any of this, that it's going to happen at all, that Damon seems to know about all these horrible things that will eventually come to pass.

She hates that he has to live with that knowledge. How much more of it was there?

And she hates that she feels bad for making him angry when he clearly had her best friend's interests in mind the entire time and he's just venting because he doesn't have a choice.

"This kind of thing was so much easier when I hated you, you know that?"

At some point in this new, sprawling mess, Klaus picks up a bottle of bourbon and takes to roaming the halls. Why not, considering there's little anyone can do, and plenty of insights to divulge? Perhaps he just needs to stretch his legs, take his ambling thoughts elsewhere but a stationary barstool. After all, the snatches of memories he hears all start to blend together into a chorus of suffering eventually.

That is until he hears Tyler's voice. Damon's voice. His spots the latter at the jam of his door a moment later. (They have to stop meeting this way.) Klaus slows to a stop and pauses as a portion of the memory plays out.

"The phoenix stone, talks of your true nature... Seems like a typical day for you." He extends the bottle in offering.

Damon stares at the bottle like he doesn't know if he should take it or not. Beggars can't be choosers, right? He picks up the bottle from Klaus, downing some of it. He swallows it down like it's fire or acid, like it's water and he's thirsty. There's an empty bottle beside him that he got from Lucifer so he's already not so sober.

"Up until the point where I think I set Elena on fire in her sleep."

It'd be nice if he could even say the words without his voice choking especially in front of Klaus. He doesn't even question why he's here, why he cares to point anything out, why any of it. There's a carved out place inside of him that was supposed to give a shit about all that, and it just doesn't.

"That's less typical."

Klaus is about a bottle and some change through already. Perhaps that is why he stops to offer Damon some liquid comfort. Perhaps that is why he decides to care enough — to bother enough — to do so. Or perhaps he sees no reason to stumble, deny, or question what has become a foundational, reliable, and inescapable truth: Damon Salvatore may not be a friend, but Klaus has ceased to see him first as an enemy. He has ceased to see him as a liability.

What he is, is an asset.

His perspective has shifted, and just as it has shifted regarding the vampire in front of him, so has it with the woman whose name slips past Damon's lips. Klaus stills, for despite his better sense and prior instincts, what he feels in that moment is a stricken horror. It creeps in and floods him, leaving him cold enough to barely register that waver in Damon's voice.

He cannot help the emotion naked on his face and it takes him a moment to consider the particular words Damon uses. Thinks. He thinks he set Elena on fire. It's enough for Klaus to temper his panic and dread, to abandon the beginning trickle of anger he decides not to consider too deeply.

Instead, he swallows thickly. (Elena is fine, he tells himself. Of course she is.) "Did you?" he asks, a level prompt for more. Klaus moves to fold himself next to Damon and reaches for his turn with the bottle.

Edited 2017-11-03 00:54 (UTC)

"No. The Phoenix Stone has a funny way of fucking with your head even when you get out."

Damon doesn't forget that Stefan also tried to set him on fire when he escaped from the Phoenix Stone first. He thought it would make it stop, but he was stopped before he could do so, and Stefan knew it was him when he went in there with gasoline.

Why is it always fire?

Distantly, he hears the emotion in Klaus' face. This world has changed them. It's shifted the playing field, but he never forgets where the playing field started with all of them. It's clear Klaus cared that Elena could have actually been dead- set on fire by him. Maybe he would have done worse to him than Stefan if it'd been true (not that he would even- he wouldn't have been able to live with himself. He would have welcomed- welcomed every ounce of torturous pain and welcomed someone removing him from the face of every planet if he'd actually- actually killed her).

The question still pushes itself out of his chest where it's trapped.

"Why do you care?"

He hadn't a clue it was possible to escape that stone, let alone the repercussions of doing so. Klaus files away that bit of information; it does so resemble the Hunter's curse. The bourbon burns with warmth on the way down; it burns and he lets that burn stifle the truth bursting to break free when Damon asks — he asks plainly, and Klaus knows he will find the words to answer, whether he wants to or not. Quietly, he begins. "I don't want to. But despite Wonderland's manipulations, it has been helpful."

It has brought them here, exchanging civil words and drink. It's meant they are not at war, not one that has to be waged on two fronts. It means he has allies, resources, hope. It has meant —

The words stick in his throat. He thinks of Elena as a girl in silver and green, how earnest and sure she was, how she told him what it meant to love like it's a secret between two people. He thinks of how she loved him. How he loved her. He knows, even though he doesn't want to know, that it isn't the answer. "It's not because she was like a sister, it's because I understand her now." He does. He does as much as she understands him.

The truth is, "I like being able to rely on both of you." His eyes look over to Damon then. It's what he's always wanted: loyalty. Friendship. Whatever approximation their terrible and precarious group has been. Klaus offers the bottle back. "Insofar as we will trust each other." He has not forgotten where they started either. "And for Caroline too."

Edited 2017-11-20 00:21 (UTC)

"That's the pain in the ass, isn't it?" He smirks his understanding (they're too fucking alike sometimes, and Damon hates himself so much the time). "Not wanting to care doesn't stop you from caring. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, it's still there until eventually you can't run anymore and you give in. You get better. Not good. Just better."

Than before. Damon's better than before. He's grown. Damon's only vaguely aware there's a truth aspect to this Event. The truth came out due to what was behind his door, and the rest of the world has been an emotional haze ever since. Down is up, up is down. Nothing quite makes sense.

He reaches for the bottle, taking it in his hand, staring into it deeply. He's not sure if he can drink enough of it to make it feel less. Damon understands- He understands what Klaus means. He remembers the Event at Hogwarts. "Who knew all it would take to bring you two to a new level of understanding is Harry fucking Potter?"

Only in Wonderland.

He hates that Damon is right. He can claim not to care until he is blue in the face, avoid it like the plague that is, but nothing can change what is true. Not even he. Lately, he's not sure he wants to. He does change for better. Not good. Never good, for someone like him — like them — does not have that capability, that privilege.

No matter what he was once or what he could have been, he will never be good again.

Klaus is quiets, stewing deep in these thoughts, but Damon's commentary is enough to beckon his attention. Klaus reaches over to take the bottle back, if Damon's just going to look at it. "Who know all it would take was a different dimension and some booze?" His own little joke, considering. He takes a long gulp and slides it back.

"We'll never be good," he says after. "And quite frankly I like to believe I've made my peace with that. Better to be good enough than not at all. Better to have the means and will to protect my family than sit idly by."

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It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you! | OPEN MINGLE

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