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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They tilt their head to one side, but nothing else betrays their confusion. "Do you have problems remembering?"

Some people here do. Or some people are like Mabel, and want to press memories between the pages of books and hope that will be enough to keep them there, sparking and in perpetuity, until the moment where you need the reminder to stay determined.

She can't help but chuckle just a bit when Frisk asks, following quickly with her response. "I think I may be the only one without them, among the people I hold dear. But my life's work is as a chronicler. I make sure history is recorded, even what may seem unimportant."

Lucretia gives a bit of a smile as she looks up from the page to them. "I've found attention to detail is an ever-important feature."

"I'm not really..." I'm not really that important.

But they are. And they know that they are. And it swells out from them like a bubble of light, like a heated glow of iron in their chest, tearing out from their throat with more force than they intend.

"I guess I am important. I'm an anomaly. I've altered a timeline more times than anyone can count."

Their eyes screw shut with a soft huff of dismay through their nose.

"Everyone is, in a way." She sees the effort it takes them, to admit that they matter against their own mind. She knows the feeling, the thought that she was never that necessary, but... well, look what she had done with that. Shaped a world to her will, used the tools at her disposal to entirely change a history. "And I know what you mean."

She'd like to stop there, but unfortunately, this event is wrecking a lot of her controlled persona. "Even if you don't seem to change worlds, I have seen the effect the loss of one person has on a world. On people. You always have a bigger impact than you realize."

"I don't want to have an impact. I don't want to be remembered."

That might be the kindest possible way to say it, but it's still not something an adult necessarily wants to hear from a child. They can't keep their stupid mouth shut right now, it seems. Ms. Lucretia is nice and polite and even when she's losing control, she just sounds sort of morosely annoyed, like it's all okay if she can rope it back into something in the boundaries of her own control. Like she could.

Adults don't like hearing kids say that. The urge to run briefly seizes them, twitches their limbs, but there's nowhere to run to.

Honestly, the only reason Lucretia doesn't look a mess at this point are that her standards for a catastrophe are much higher than almost any conversation, especially one with a stranger. She wishes she could offer more kindness than her response, but she can't.

"Unfortunately, it's impossible." It just... is. There's plenty she's changed, but never that. "You will always have actions upon this world. And I know that is not what you want to hear, but as a person, you are remembered. As a being, you shape your world, and others shape yours. Even gods have a presence, unseeing and distant as they are. Your bonds to others are the strongest thing in the universe. Some, impossible to break. There are strings of fate in it all."

It is possible, though. Even if they’re not supposed to think about it anymore, they know it is. Grinding the thought from their brain has been impossible since - since Tartarus, they want to think, but they can’t even allow that lie to themself. Since before then. Since they found out. Tartarus merely revived an old thought.

But it was just a thought.

“It is possible,” Frisk says softly. “I just promised not to.”

"I highly doubt it." She wishes she could be kinder, hold her tongue, but she's stubborn. She's right, and she knows it. She's seen it, lived it, done it.

"Even if people forget, there are strings that tether them together. Feelings that cannot be explained, emotional connections that will not be broken. Even when you disappear, someone is looking for you. Even if they do not remember. Even if all they know is loss."

She'd like to stop, cut off her own admission, but Wonderland decides she's danced in circles around her words too well, and forces it from her. "I have done it. Forced others to forget me and go off on their own so I would not be found. They always remember. They find ways that I did not expect, could not anticipate, and came for me."

“A world where everything is exactly the same...except you don’t exist.”

Ha ha.

The thought used to terrify them. Now it’s just something they know they can’t let themself dwell on. Something they’re not supposed to think about, even as it hums a familiar call.

They should be able to deliver on insight and sympathy. And not...not what they end up saying next.

“Was it better like that?”

"I don't know." She wishes she had conviction, saying it was the best for everyone, the thing she forced herself to believe when she put her plan in motion. But it's been so long since then, and even she's not sure she believes it now.

"I would like to say yes. They were hurting. There was so much to do and they were paralyzed. Nothing would have changed if I did not act." Lucretia pauses, taking in a breath. "But... I have been alone a long time. And I could not protect them when they were far from me."

She lost track of them so quickly. So soon did the ideal life she made for them all fall apart, until she had nothing once more.

"I always wanted to bring them home. But it took... far longer than I wanted to complete my goal. And even then, I needed their help."

They don't have the full story. They could ask. They could force her to say it. That level of control is harder to own when it's a double-edged sword, and she could do the same for them.

Maybe there is no such thing as a clean break. Even him, the one person they know who succeeded, who...they don't remember his name. They don't remember anything about him, except that he...he was lost. Can you miss something you can't really remember? Some people can.

Is it worth the pain of their loss?

"It can work. In some worlds." The strength of conviction, of belief - it's what allows them to say it so. "Just...maybe not completely. Maybe it is selfish. But aren't people supposed to be selfish?"

She doesn't think she has it in her to feel that self-important; to assume her worth was more than that of her friends. But the mission was. To save a world, there were lengths she had to accomplish. There were places she needed to go.

It didn't make her feel better, really, in those quiet nights alone. She wished it did.

"I suppose. I'm not sure people are supposed to be anything. But having lived it, even only somewhat, I can say it is not a future I would want for myself. Perhaps it is my own selfishness, then, to be with those I love, despite pain I have caused in making them forget. I would think there is value in that, as well."

It feels odd, for someone she barely knows to know so much. Arguably, this is more than she's told anyone in the last 10 years. But in a sense, it's freeing to simply discuss it with someone that doesn't have so much baggage about the situation.

"How do you stop thinking about it?"

Is there a way to stop thinking about it? That future where no one sees you, remembers you, where the fabric of your existence has been unraveled and the strands have decayed into nothing at all? Is it selfish to want that, more than anything? Is it selfish to want nothing more than to disappear, and never have anyone worry about you again?

Or is calling it selfish merely an excuse to keep longing for it?

"Truthfully, I... have not had to live with the consequences very long. I don't know."

She wishes she could stop there, but she's been edging this event for too long, and she continues. "Before I arrived here, everyone had just begun to remember me. I don't know if we will even succeed. It's possible I will not have accomplished anything."

But perhaps, they were asking about before, about the temptation to just-- what is it, exactly? Pick up, disappear, take the ship and just-- go somewhere, anywhere? She has enough power that she could go where she was not found. She could. But she didn't.

"I had... a duty. To see through what I put in motion. To keep my friends safe. I could not abandon them when they had already lost so much because of me."

"Then you're better than most people are," says Frisk. "You accept consequences."

She's better than they were, at first. She's better than a lot of monsters were. She's better than most humans, if she's willing to see everything through, despite everything. She looks human, but it's not certain whether she truly is. It's...debatable, really, given how many people here look human but aren't.

Either way, maybe that means she's one of the good ones.

"There is no choice but to. They were immediate, and I could not have cast them off for me to have saved them." And it's true. She could have abandoned everyone, not spent all her careful time finding them homes and lives in their isolation, where they would be so, so loved.

Even if it all fell apart. Even if her best laid plans...

"I do wish they did not exist. But if I did not handle them, someone else would have to. And I could not allow that."

You do what no one else can. Not because you can - but because you can't. And because you can't, you have to.

It's a feeling they're learning more and more. The ability to do something allowing you to do it, compared to the inability to do something - meaning you must try all the harder to make it come to pass.

"A lot of people would run away from something like that. I would have." Once, they would have.

Maybe...they hope no longer.

She smiles at them, gentle.

"Well... you should. You're young. I often wish I still had the option to run away." She hasn't been taken care of in a long time- it's just a fact, at this point. Lucretia isn't one for meaningful touch, even if she imagines her friends might reach down to ruffle their hair, or try to give them some physical comfort. As it stands, she doesn't... especially know how. So she doesn't, even if it feels strange just standing there. "You should take it when you can."

“I’m not as young as I look.” That’s... not something they would ordinarily say, to be certain. It is not something they think they entirely believe, at times, when they feel slow and stupid compared to the adults. Is being older really no different than feeling tired all the time? That’s the only thing they can say has defined the separation between who they were and who they are.

They’re just...tired.

Who knows how many days and months and years they’ve lived, between Wonderland and their ability to generate temporal anomalies wherever they go?

Frisk shakes their head. Their mouth has quirked up at one corner into a sad little smile.

“It’s okay. I already picked my consequences. Running won’t change that.”

Lucretia feels her mouth tug into a slightly deeper smile. "Neither am I. But such is the nature of these kind of experiences."

At this point, it feels... cruel, to keep asking. To keep doing this. To keep dragging this out as they go, and because she can't hide those thoughts, she speaks. "I'm sorry for this to have been our first encounter. I've asked you quite a bit of personal information already. I don't want to force you to say more. I can go, if you like- I did end up finding the books I was looking for."

It's okay.

But it's not, really, okay. They don't have a lot to hide, per se, but most of what's been coming out of their mouth has been far from the sort of thing you should tell someone you've only just met. They can't pretend there isn't a temptation in that. Wonderland won't let them.

There's a struggle, a brief pulling at the edges of their chest, the creases of their pinched eyes, but eventually the words fight their way out. No protests, and no second chances. Just the same quiet acceptance they've gotten so good at maintaining.

"...okay."

She wants to reach out. To do-- something, some sort of reassurance, but she's fighting herself and the Mansion and it probably just looks like she's struggling with her own hand. It's not polite to just-- touch people, right, that's not familiar, but she has to, because it's honest, and--

Lucretia just kind of grabs at her own wrist, and offers them a bit of a smile.

"Well! Uhm. Hopefully we'll get to speak soon under less... strange circumstances. It was still very interesting conversation. I'll see you around."

And she grabs at the books she had set down when they started speaking, and makes quickly for literally any direction but here to avoid embarrassing herself any further.

It’s okay. It’s okay. She needs to get away from all of it. She needs to be...somewhere away from people who ask prying questions about how it feels to not really exist. It’s okay. They understand that. They understand that they’re not always easy to talk to. They just can’t help the way their shoulders drop and their chin dips and it’s...

It’s over, anyway.

It’s over.

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

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