+ Guilt Runs Deep

[vitaelamorte]

Who: Everyone!
Where: The Mansion
When: Feb 23-25
Rating: Please warn in top level subject lines for potential triggers/NSFW
Summary: Various residents are trapped in their own guilt, watching their guiltiest memory play on a loop.
The Story:

Welcome to the gathering post for the event. Please see the plotting post for more information + the bulletin board link. Have fun!

Comments

[entreats]

He sounds like a good kid.

[ And Ange actually likes kids - more than she seems she would with her kind of outward personality. So if Wirt's brother was actually here? Sure, she would be friendly to him. Naturally so, really.

So she does mean what she said, even though it's still not quite said in her usual tone. It's still less nonchalant than usually. ]

I'm glad for him that he isn't here though. This place must suck for kids. [ And to her Wirt is already still kind of a kid, despite the age difference between him and Ange not being that huge. Let alone his younger little brother. ]

[singloversing]

Yeah...it was really hard for him, for a lot of reasons. Obviously it was super dangerous, but on top of that no one grows up? He's six, but he was here for a while and never got any older physically.

[He feels bad, but he can't remember exactly how long. Was it two years? Less than that? He's not great at the general concept of time.]

I used to think about things like, what if he was stuck here for five years? Or ten? What if he wound up like that Alice girl, forever a little kid with all these holes in his memory? I miss him, but...he's really better off not being here.

[entreats]

[ That's definitely a sentiment Ange can understand. She really wants to see her own brother again, but if it's at the price of him being here.. She's not too sure. Battler is just too empathic and over the top emotional to be able to last in this place.

Of course with Ange being Ange though, she doesn't voice any of that. ]

How about you then? Are you okay with just always being the age you are right now as long as you're here?

[singloversing]

Kind of...? It's um. It's complicated.

[His face flushes a bit, because it feels super stupid to explain.]

I think time works kind of weird in that strange world I came from. It's actually a lot like this place in that regard? But instead of time stopping it's just...slower. Much slower. So...when I first got here I kept like, spacing on how time works anyway. I kept telling everyone I was fifteen for like, almost three years?

[It's embarrassing now though, admitting that he would just casually forget about the passage of time. He puts his face in his hands.]

I-I've been trying harder now, but. It felt weirder to skip ahead a bunch of birthdays? So a couple of years ago I just started counting everything again, as if I put new batteries in a clock but didn't adjust the time. I...I tell people I'm seventeen, but really I should be way older than that. Probably. But then again not really, since no one ages?

[entreats]

.. Oh. I had no idea.

[ And even though the whole "no ageing" thing didn't really feel that weird to her before, it feels slightly odd now. Mostly since she's been thinking of Wirt as someone clearly younger than her for a while now, even though with what he's saying he might technically be older than her. Which is.. definitely a weird thought, hence why Ange is quietly overthinking it for a moment before she speaks up again. ]

I thought you were younger than me all along. [ Which is both is and isn't now, all of a sudden. ]

[singloversing]

Really? I don't think I ever actually asked how old you are.

[He doesn't, usually. He just sort of assumed that she was around his age and left it at that. Now he's curious though.]

...Wait, why did you think I was younger?

[entreats]

[ There's a moment of a silence that is actually - for once - very, very awkward.

Ange may or may not usually just be using her deadpan to hide a severe lack of social skills. Which becomes apparent right now, where he's heavily debating whether or not to say the honest answer and be rude or not. ]

.. You kind of look like a kid. [ At least she has the decency to sound a little awkward for once as she says it.

(It's also a pretty rich statement coming from the girl who wears the same bobble hair accessoires as six year olds.) ]

[singloversing]

[It isn't the first time he's heard that before. At home he's a young-looking fifteen, about to be a young-looking sixteen.]

Yeah, well. ...Bare minimum, even with all the other age weirdness, I'm a sophomore in high school? I-I even have my driver's permit! Though I, um. Haven't actually done a lot of driving yet.

[It's not a very compelling argument, but he's definitely been mixed up with middle schoolers a few too many times.]

[entreats]

People can drive at that age? [ She seems surprised, but at least this time it has absolutely nothing to do with how she perceives Wirt's age.

Instead it has everything to do with Ange growing up in a rich people environment with drivers and all, so she has no idea of normal society standards on stuff like when people can drive. Or how much bananas cost in the grocery store. ]

I guess I could just be wrong though. I haven't exactly seen a whole lot of guys your age back home. I went to an all girls middle and high school.