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

[vitaelamorte]

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!

Comments

[screwedontight]

He stood there, watching her closely for the longest time. His gaze heavy, uncertain, not sure what he should do now. So many times Chloe rooted him in the places where he should be. Kind of like how Kate had done for them. She was more than them, beyond the pair of them, and it let him connect to something beyond his own selfish desires.

He held out his hand to her. "Do you want to see? See what started me and Richie in our life? I understand if you say no. I get it."

[thevulnerability]

She stares at his hand for a moment, taken aback that he wants her there. After what happened between them, she has simply assumed he would progressively push her away. Friends or not, it's how it's always happened with her; Dan betrayed her, and didn't even have the integrity to tell her so until he was forced to. Lucifer had abandoned her without a word. Chloe is used to being alone, far too used to being left behind by the people she's allowed herself to care for.

His hand waits, and her mouth drops open slightly to object, but she doesn't want him to do this alone if he doesn't have to. Instead, she reaches out to wrap her hand around his, her grip gently but firm. She already knows about the honesty that Wonderland is forcing out, and it's only a matter of time before she says something that makes all of this even more complicated.

So, for now, she wants to be there for him while he can. "Of course I'll go with you."

[screwedontight]

It's stupid. Going back in there. Inviting Chloe to see the very dark start to his abused life. It was stupid. That didn't mean he wouldn't show it to her. For his own pain. To try and make anything make sense. To himself. To her.

He glanced back at her. "Cover your mouth. The smoke is bad. Chemical." And with that he pushes open the door and steps in. Yet even then he kept himself between her and the scene before them.

A man on the couch, passed out with empty beer cans on the table next to two pistols. Seth knew those weapons well. The flames have just started lapping around the sofa, the path between them and the door clear but only just.

"There's Richie," he says with a nod of his head.

The young boy with thick glasses is calm, moving around the fire and heading for one of the back rooms.

"He's breathing? He had to be alive. He's asleep," eh said, watching him with a frown, his fingers tightening on Chloe's.

[thevulnerability]

Chloe nods curtly, taking a deep gulp of air before she pulls her shirt up over her mouth and nose to protect herself from the smoke. It will only help so much, but she has no intention of making Seth go through this alone just because it will make her uncomfortable.

The fire is hot, reminding her of the time Lucifer took her out of that burning building. She hasn't been that close to a fire since then, and at the time she was covered in a blanket, protect by Lucifer, not unlike the way Seth is trying to protect her now. She moves up behind him, stealing a look over his shoulder to watch Richie wander by them. He is disturbingly relaxed amidst the chaos, and even through the unbearable heat, Chloe shivers.

"I... I can't tell," she replies, her voice muffled through the cloth of her shirt. She tries to get a better look, clinging as tightly to Seth as he is to her.

[screwedontight]

He's done this several times already. He couldn't tell them. He couldn't tell now. This time though is different, and all because of Chloe.

His focus is no longer on the memories of that night. He isn't thinking about how the fire started - if only that he knows - but he also isn't thinking about his dad, how he died, or the near brush with death that had left him with ink all the way from wrist to throat in midnight black marks to commemorate this moment in his life. A moment when he'd lost everything, and gained himself in losing that man on the couch.

No, in that moment his focus was entirely on Chloe. On someone that had come into his life through the oddest of circumstances and who left him caring more about any other person than he had since Kate, or even Richie. Because of them he had learned to care right though, to not throw it all away as he had with them.

Which is why he turns, putting himself between her and the tableau before them.

"Come on," he says, voice softer, almost more resigned but not depressed. "There's nothing for me here," he said, trying to urge her towards the door before the younger boys would rush out the same door to leave this behind.

[thevulnerability]

Chloe's eyes are watering in the smoke, squinting through it to try to see any movement from the man on the couch, but they widen when Seth moves to block her. At first, she simply assumes that her original concerns are true; that she became a liability, that his concern for her safety is now overshadowing what he needs to do.

But Chloe recognizes something in the shift of his movements and the tone of his voice. She recognizes herself. Chloe is awash with the same shaking sensation that overcame her when she had the chance to kill her father's killer, when she held her gun to his head and was a tremor away from extinguishing the life of the person who had robbed her of someone she loved more than anything in the entire world.

It is the same feeling she had when she lowered the gun and put handcuffs on him, instead, with her two best friends by her side. When she led him away and put her trust in the system to do what was right. When she finally understood that her life didn't end the day her father was killed, nor did it suddenly begin again the day his killer was brought to justice; it was her life all along, for better or worse, and everything she loved about it was so much clearer when it wasn't clouded by her anger anymore.

She nods, making sure Seth isn't far behind her as she guides them out of the burning room. Once they reach the hallway she pulls her shirt down from her face, sucking in gulps of fresh air as she tries to clear the smoke from her lungs.

"You okay?" she finally asks him, although she thinks she already knows the answer.

[screwedontight]

Coughing hard, trying to clear his lungs and knowing that he's been in there too many times. Too many times he's taken chances with that fire, and now he's endangered Chloe as well.

Bent at the waist, coughing hard, trying to let his lungs clear before raising his gaze to Chloe.

"More worried about you," eh admitted. "I shouldn't have taken you in there. I'm sorry." They weren't words he said often, but he would say them to her. For her sake. Especially after that. "Nothing in there matters."

It wouldn't change. He's not sure he would change it if he could. Why keep an abuser alive who would only continue to hurt him? Why not let him die. At least alone, they had one less attacker and they still had one another.

"None of this matters anymore," he said, waving his hand at the door. "Come on. We should get somewhere we can rest, and get a drink while we're at it."

[thevulnerability]

Chloe narrows her eyes thoughtfully. She's tempted to push him, to ask him what changed. Then she thinks about Lucifer, and how stubbornly and obsessively he searched for his wings only to tell her they didn't matter anymore. That they were a relic from another life.

Maybe that's what this was. What all of it was. Relics; memories of lives they no longer lived. Maybe they didn't matter anymore, certainly not here.

She doesn't argue with him, following him instead with her eyes trained carefully on him. "I'm fine. Honestly, I'd rather go through that than a divorce again." It's meant as partially a joke, but the truth of it is what forces her to speak it. "We can't go into any other rooms, or Lux. This is happening to everyone."

[screwedontight]

Seth knows it matters, or he wouldn't be seeing it. It's just a matter of Chloe mattering more. Hell, his life here matters more. Yeah, he wants Richie and Kate back but he would much rather have them back here, and not going back there to where they were now. If those were his choices, he'd choose Wonderland for now. Least he knew where he stood here.

"Wait, that's what yours was? That dumbass being stupid with what he had?" Yep, nothing was changing his mind on that. "I wonder if we open a closet in the memories if they're still Wonderland closest." Meaning they could get alcohol.

[thevulnerability]

For the first time since she found him Chloe cracks a smile, but it's thin and only halfway there. Her throat still hurts and her eyes sting, but she's starting to catch her breath back. She shakes her head in response to his question.

"My memory? No, no, it wasn't about Dan." Chloe pauses, coming to stop in the hallway so they have a minute to regroup. "Remember that case I told you about, the one with cop I thought was on the take? Turns out I was right. He kidnapped my daughter, tried to kill me, and... Actually killed Lucifer. That was my memory." Chloe isn't sure why Wonderland chose that memory of all of them; there were others that she feels are more terrifying, that haunted her in different ways. When she was shot on that first case with Lucifer, when she almost died after being poisoned, even dying in Wonderland were all memories that she pushes down as hard as she can. The day a detective showed up on her doorstep to tell Chloe and her mother that her father had been murdered was the worst of them all, or so she thought.

All of those memories broke her heart and she pushes them down so deeply so she doesn't have to deal with them, and yet Wonderland bypassed them all for a memory that seems almost innocuous in comparison. Why?

"We were all fine, obviously... Lucifer came back and Trixie was okay so I don't..." She shakes her head. "We're better off going to the dining room if you want a drink."

[screwedontight]

Seth fell quiet, listening to what Chloe had been through. His was bad but, in the end, it was the past. It was nothing he was dealing with now and all that had haunted him since he was a child. For her though, it was still now and active and she had no idea what was happening to her child while they were here. Maybe she was frozen, but they didn't really know. Not any of it.

Though he frowns then, eyes narrowing. "Lucifer was killed?" She had mentioned troubles with the kid before, but that was interesting to know. He knew she had nearly been killed as well, thinking that was why Lucifer left, but he was beginning to think her world was after her. Not that he'd put that in so many words.

"Well, he's okay so that's what matters." He lightly pulls her to him to give her a hug. "I'ts over, and it's just Wonderland trying to upset you. Don't let them win," he whispers, letting her go. "Come on. Let's see what we can find."