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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Oh, but I haven't tried. Not always.

[He has let children die in terrible ways. Not murdered them himself—though that instance with Per Degaton had been terribly close, hadn't it? But he has set history on its proper course time and again, abandoned those in need to the cruelties and evils the world can so often inflict.

Played the hero once, then abandoned that call the day before an entire town of people were slaughtered, locked in a church and burned to death—because it was his duty as a Time Master.

For the greater good, indeed.]

Here we are removed from time—and so many of the obligations that exist in our worlds.

You tried with me.

[It's not much of a consolation at all, they know. It isn't really, because it's so much more complicated than that. Even with the power to SAVE everyone, you can still mess up. And messing up means everyone else must suffer for it; for your sins. For you.]

[Awareness, in some ways, makes you responsible.]

You weren't obligated to try and save me.

--No, I suppose I wasn't.

[This young child, so full of determination. Even if those scraps of goodness do exist inside of Rip, how often does he forget they're there? Yet here Frisk is, reminding him, quietly arguing that however small or few, they are there.

It's far more successful than those who have tried to convince Rip's guilty conscious that he isn't to blame for this event. Even logically knowing that truth doesn't grant him that absolution.]

Thank you for that reminder. [He offers a faint smile; little more than the brief lifting of the corners of his mouth. Still. It's something remarkable, given Rip's personality.] I would ask how you've been, but even that seems an unfair question given the full circumstances of the event at play. [And all of the losses and hardships that have happened over the months since their last chat. All of the people that have vanished.]

[He didn't exactly ask the question, but it doesn't seem to matter, here. Something bubbles in their throat regardless, the live coal of words unspoken, that have been unspoken for so long.]

I died. Not long after you saved me. I don't think it counted. I didn't...I mean, I wasn't gone for very long, so I don't think it mattered. But I didn't want to tell you, because you gave everything up for me even if you didn't know me, and I felt like I wasted it.

[...ha.]

[Eloquent. No?]

You told me that you drowned yourself after, yes.

[Before, when Rip first spoke to Frisk after the event in question, and Rip in turn had been so angry at that sacrifice. But time has a way of revealing greater truths, allowing people to better understand actions when they have a chance to think them through.]

You were doing what you thought was right for the sake of everyone. Many would call that heroic, even if it seemingly negated my sacrifice. Sometimes, however, the actions that seem right in the moment aren't truly what should be done in the greater scheme.

[He rolls his head back against the wall briefly, takes a breath before looking down at Frisk.]

For a time I lived in a town called Calvert. While I was there, I did anything I could to help the townspeople. I loved being able to be a hero for them; being able to make a difference. Making their lives better.

[Seeing on that smaller, more immediate scale, just how he could improve things and do good.]

But the man I fought against there decided to take revenge on the town. He decided to kill them all, and I knew it was going to happen because I was a Time Master from the future. I understood those people were going to die--but if I stopped it, I would be breaking the oath I had sworn to protect time, to let events happen as they should, even if they were horrible.

So I left Calvert. Those people died--but in the years after, I ensured all of history continued on as it was meant to.

[Suffering and death and all.]

And I will never forgive myself for it, even if it was the right thing to do.

So I do understand why you did what you did, Frisk. Even if I wish things could have been different.

[He understands what it means, then.]

[To be in charge of that sort of thing. To be responsible for the lives of others, and feel like if you were just - gone from the narrative, so much would be better. Their attempt to stifle the breath in their lungs, to wipe away the possibility that it might be them, that it might be their RESET spinning time back and back and back - was it really all for nothing?]

[Sometimes sacrifices are for nothing. Sometimes they only mean something to the one making them.]

[And what's the point in that, when they aren't around to know that?]

Anomaly.

[A hand reaches up to touch at the center of their own chest, the place where they know their SOUL resides, warm and red.]

That's...what I've been called, sometimes. Someone with a special power. So, I had to think...if I had a special power, isn't it my responsibility to do the right thing?

[Is it everyone's responsibility? If they have some special power?]

...

I don't know anymore. I don't know if that's true.

[Anomaly. It's a word Rip has heard countless times before, when being handed down mission briefings, instructions on where he was to head next, what problem within the timeline he was meant to fix. The term would apply to Frisk in the context of Rip's universe too. What they can do, what they can cause. They would be just as watched by the Time Council as the speedsters had been.

Perhaps taken advantage of, for their naivety. Especially if they were alone.]

The ones who trained me—they made us all believe in the sanctity of what we were doing. [From childhood on, when orphans plucked from time were given homes and food and warmth.] That it was the highest calling any person could answer. That protecting time was so important, even life itself was secondary.

I don't think I've ever been able to believe that fully, even if my actions speak otherwise. [Those Rip has left to die, turned his back on when he could save them—it never felt fully right, even if he rationalized it so.] What responsibility you have—that, I cannot tell you, I'm afraid. It may be true, or it may not be.

And in the end, it may not matter. [He shifts, sits up a bit straighter. Seems appropriate, given the weight of their conversation.] Because you have this ability, you have to choose what to do with it. Whether out of responsibility or love or a desire to save someone—you have to make the choice you can carry the weight of, and there are never easy answers. Saving one person may cause the death of another. Saving a town may lead to the destruction of a world.

The horrible truth is that there is almost never a purely right choice to make.

[He sounds like someone who makes those precise choices all the time - and he is. They know that now. He’s had to make choices and there is never truly an option that ends up harming no one st all. And as soon as they’ve thought it, it digs into their chest like a splinter, levering away the patina that’s always been smoothed over it. Even in the nicest and kindest of their many timelines, even in a world where monsters go free...]

[Eight children still died. Just for the story to start. One child had to die over and over. Was that, too, justified? Was it right because of their nature?]

[There is never a purely right choice. Not really.]

I think I understand. I don’t think I always did, but...

Even when it looks like no one got hurt, you can’t really know for sure. Can you?

Sometimes it's better not to know. [He turns his gaze to look at Frisk, wondering once more what divine purpose or mathematical reason deemed fit to inflict such a weight on a child—or if perhaps it's a product of sheer chaos and chance, if destiny is indeed the sum of choice and there is no grander plan. Rip has had years to learn to compartmentalize what he must do and what he has done, and years of training before that.

Frisk---Frisk looks no older than Jonas does in the room across from them, where he's subjected to Savage's wrath over and over.]

You can lose yourself in such recriminations. Wondering if you did the right thing, how many people were hurt, how many you might have saved. What would have happened if you only did one thing differently.

All any of us can do is try and make wise choices when we can. To see the sum whole of the situation, and do what is best, somehow.

[They’re in anomaly in those respects, too. An age they initially had to guess at without any frames of reference, extrapolated over timeline after timeline until they lost count entirely, before they were flash-frozen in place by Wonderland’s unique magic, as they have for well over a year now.]

[For simplicity, they simply say that they’re twelve.]

It’s hard not to look back when you’ve only ever done that.

Oh, I am very aware. [Hasn't he already confessed his own failing in a way? He would never forgive himself for Calvert, he would carry those regrets always—and even if he knows in his head that what he'd done was necessary and right, the heart will always wonder.]

What I'm telling you now are the lessons I was taught, when I was trained to be a Time Master. [Some for good, some decidedly not. Yet Rip cannot deny that in the end, that schooling has made him so much of the man he is.] Experience is the only thing that can show you whether it's possible to take them to heart or not—if you choose to try.

[He’s still older, still probably wiser in a sense. In multiple senses, even if they’re not exactly conventional in their own experience. How can someone walk away with any manner of certainty, no matter how long they’ve learned? That sort of confidence in choice is as foreign a concept as growing up feels to be most days - the only times they’ve ever had earnest confidence in their choices were selective and in the periods of time when they were at their lowest, most usually.]

Does it ever get easier?

[They ask him because they know he can’t lie. They ask because he can’t be the typical sort of adult in god moment, who can bundle it all away in some sweeping, patently false platitude and hope that will suffice.]

[Does it ever get easier]]

[He must tell the truth, yes—but as with all things, truth itself often isn't so simple as they might wish it to be. Hence Rip's answer isn't immediate; the sad fact is that if he could lie, it might be so. The promise of hope could come easier, and although he is the sort of man who does lie often, he also does so with reason.

Dishonesty serves no benefit. Not with Frisk's ability, what they can shape and change even within Wonderland's walls. As he always must, he considers the scope beyond one single person—

Beyond a single child.]

If you can maintain your belief that what you are doing is right, then you can carry on. [Despite the impossible choices and the cruelties that go hand and hand with a duty to time.] But what makes that burden difficult, so often, is the humanity within us. The morality that reminds us that lives, and people, and love all matter.

That they are good.

So I suppose the truth is, I don't know. [He turns to look at Frisk, offers them a smile that's more like an apology.] I've no intention of stepping away from protecting history, however. Even after all I've done, I know that someone must, and I am capable of it.

[As Time Master or not, as Captain or not—this is Rip's truth.]

[It’s a complicated answer, but the question had been simple only in structure - in conception, the scope of it is disconcertingly wide and nigh inconsolable in the depth to its implications. It’s okay if he doesn’t quite know. It’s ikay, because it means that if someone like him, who has been doing this for years and lived in that brewing doubt, doesn’t know if it ever does...]

[Maybe It’s okay that Frisk doesn’t know either. That maybe they won’t ever know. ]

Because you have to...you can.

[They're smiling too, and it’s less of an apology.]

[It’s too relieved to be an apology.]

Something like that, yes.

[There may be no right answer, but on seeing Frisk's smile Rip understands that what he's offered up is somehow enough all the same. Whatever comfort or relief they have been seeking, perhaps they have managed to find a spark of—and in doing so, they share some of that easing with Rip as well.

There's always an allure in knowing, for certain, that he might actually have managed to help someone.]

I think I understand.

[They can only say they think they do, because...because it's complicated, and they're still for all intents and purposes a child with a limited conceptualization of the world in which they walk. But the fact that he took the time to help them, to explain things patiently without treating them like some inane kid, is - it's important.]

[It's important.]

...

You should probably take a break from sitting here for a while, though. I don't think it gets easier, hearing it over and over again.

[He nods then, at Frisk's professed belief; the child need not be certain. Just certain enough, because any claim to get the matter completely would actually prove that they likely don't.

Even Rip can't claim a perfect understanding at all times.

But the advice signals a shift in topic, one that earns Frisk a small and weary smile.]

It doesn't. [But Rip isn't looking to make things easier on himself, even if logically he likely should.] But even knowing that it is a memory that cannot be changed, I still feel a duty to them. All I can do is to guard this door, to keep any overly curious person from entering.

So that is what I'll do.

[...]

[He's right. They locked their own door, but they stopped standing guard. People can still get inside if they're really driven on doing that. If people, say, can clip through walls and place themself in that space regardless of what might barricade them out, because they detest privacy.]

I can stand guard. For a little bit. I don't mind, and I don't think I want to see what's on the other side.

[Even if they can still hear it.]

No, you don't.

[Frisk has already seen enough horrors; of this Rip is sure, if only because of the nature of their power, and the responsibility they have spoken of more than once. They have died for others, who knows how many times given just how willing they'd been to throw themselves into the water--

Let them not layer Rip's worst memories onto their own.]

I do appreciate the offer. [A pause then, funny how certain he must be of what he says next, in order to be able to say it at all.] I also believe you'd do your very best to protect what's behind that door. But even if I did go elsewhere, my thoughts would still be here. I can't--separate myself from this. Not fully, and likely not ever.

[No. Even after the event ends, he will carry this. Always.]

[They could press further against that denial, but - they're not sure they really feel inclined to. They can understand a lack of a willingness to part from this sort of thing, the inconsolable sadness that isn't really anyone else's to bear.]

[That's a boundary they can recognize, and maybe once they would have pushed against it. But now?]

[Now, they nod.]

Okay.

[They can't get him to leave, but that doesn't mean they have to leave him like this.]

Have you eaten anything?

[They are nothing if not determined, it seems. Rip closes his eyes briefly, huffing out a breath, something close to a laugh if one listens in just the right way. So often he can sink into his guilt, lose himself in the misery merited by his actions, his failures.

But even Rip Hunter is not always so self-absorbed as that.]

Not nearly as much as I should've. [A bit of a tart, a roll left behind by another person worried for Rip's well-being. A touch of tea to go with it.] I won't say no if you decide you'd like to fetch something from the kitchens for me.

[He should eat. Rip knows this. And better, Frisk has the chance to do something.

Such moments are precious in trying times.]

I can do that.

[There's even a faint wobble of something like relief in their tone as they say it. They can do that. This, at last, is something they can do for someone else, straightforwardly and unselfishly, and they don't even have to question the wisdom of doing it, because it means they're helping someone else.]

[Helping him, instead of weighing him down with questions he doesn't have answers to, asking for some sort of revelation or salvation from a man who hasn't figured it out, really.]

Do you like coffee?

[Well. Seeing the look on Frisk's face when they give such easy agreement, Rip almost wonders if he shouldn't shoot a few people a note. Something quick and simple, look, see, I'm going to eat something because this child needs me to, so really, they shouldn't worry so much.

He's not entirely drowned in the muck.]

Not nearly so much as tea, if you're up for it. [And unlike some, Frisk won't hear a word of complaint if it's too bitter because they don't think about adding any sugar. Funny how circumstances can change things. Even with the horror going on not twenty feet away, Rip finds himself almost looking forward to whatever Frisk might stir up in the kitchen.

More, he's eager to see the notes of satisfaction and pride on the child's face.]

Tea is good.

[They like tea, and they like making it. There's something therapeutic about the process of it, steaming the leaves and steeping it and letting the water heat slowly until the kettle whistles. Asgore had the right idea, when turning to something like that, the ritual of making tea as opposed to simply heating a bag in a microwave and acting like that will be enough.]

[They'll get something with caffeine, though. He looks like he needs it.]

I'll be back.

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

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