+ 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

[itchtokill]

Well, this is certainly a familiar scene, isn't it? Not even all that long ago, in the scheme of things. Kol can't hate getting a chance to relive seeing the supernatural zealot unconscious and bloodied on the ground. Call him petty, but he does tend to lean toward making a mess of his enemies, and the kicks he gets from it might say more about him as a person than anything else. But still. Chloe is... a person he knows and doesn't hate in this place. They don't particularly see eye-to-eye much, but 'person I don't hate' is a step up in the Kol Mikaelson acquaintance levels, so perhaps it should be called a win. "I know proper justice is more your thing, but there's an appeal to the eye-for-an-eye philosophy, don't you think?" Apologies if he's too cavalier for your tastes just now, Chloe.

[thevulnerability]

"Yeah, there's an appeal."

She glances at Fitz's crumpled form. It was an appeal she gave into, and that's how she wound up where she is. The onslaught of Mikaelsons isn't helping. She wonders if Klaus is right, if the system really is flawed.

Of if they have just paid their penance by their very nature, in a way that isn't possible for her.

"It doesn't make it right."

[itchtokill]

"Wrong, right..." He waves one hand in a dismissive manner, "they're just opinions, when you get down to it. Answer changes, depending on who you ask, so...who's to say what is actually right or wrong?" Kol is, perhaps, almost disturbingly okay and at ease with this scene. Truthfully, it's tame compared to actual atrocities he's committed in the past. "What would you have done, should you have a real chance to go back and change things?" He's genuinely curious.

[thevulnerability]

"Do you really want to have a philosophical conversation about right and wrong here?"

Granted, what better place to do it than in Hell itself? But the fact that he's free and she isn't speaks to his own argument. The different between right and wrong isn't as clear cut as she once believed it to be.

"I don't know," she admits. "I really don't."

[itchtokill]

"Is there any good time for these things?" He perks a brow at her. "And anyway, you're feeling some sort of way about this. I'd wager you need to talk about it." Even if she doesn't want to. "Maybe that just means you wouldn't do it different."

[thevulnerability]

"Maybe it means I'm just as bad as he is."

She gestures to him, shaking her head, before moving her gaze to Kol's.

"Why would you want to talk to me? You barely know me."

Perhaps his brother and sister are two of her best friends, but that doesn't mean she expects any loyalty from Kol. If anything, knowing their screwed up family dynamic, she's half surprised he wants anything to do with her at all.

[itchtokill]

"Oh, please," he scoffs with a shake of his head. "You're nothing like him. You couldn't do half of what he's done-- a sixteenth of it." He may not know Chloe very well, but he's picked up enough about her so far to know that much. "Not sure if you've noticed, but we all rather live very firmly in each other's pockets, our lot." He shrugs. There really is no hard and fast reason, except, "You mean something to my siblings. That means something to me."

[thevulnerability]

That wasn't the answer she was expecting, and she returns it with a puzzled look. Sometimes she wonders how far the Mikealson's loyalty to her would extend--especially on Klaus' part, considering--but she has never turned her back on them. To know that Kol would reach out, just on that alone, it bizarrely comforting.

"You don't know what I'm capable of." Even as the words come out, she knows how ridiculous it sounds. She's not a kitten, but she's no murderer, either. "I'm sure there's plenty you don't know about me."

[itchtokill]

"Perhaps, but I know people, Chloe. You're not a killer. You're not a sociopath. You're not even really a user, are you?" He cants his head to one side, like he's studying her. "You're honest. And you're that... very human, stupidity-fueled kind of brave. You're a danger magnet and you can fight and hold your own, but you're not this," There's a sweep of his hand, from somewhere around his chest and out, to indicate both himself and the doctor, bloodied and broken just behind where he's standing.

[thevulnerability]

She wants to argue that, but she can't because it's all true. But none of the features Kol rattled off get to the heart of who she thinks she is. She's also stubborn to a fault, short-sighted, and narrow-minded. Chloe never would have thought as much at home, but Wonderland has helped her see the damage she did to the people she cared about. She had been betrayed, sure, but disbelieving Lucifer and not being there for him had done damage she didn't know how to repair.

Still, she tries. For her, that's never been enough, but it should be.

"Maybe," she finally concedes with a tilt of her head. "I used to think the lines between good and evil were so clear. I'm not so sure of that anymore."

[itchtokill]

"It never has been so simple, people just wish that it could be... some people never experience the right things to make them realize how muddied it is." He muses and there's a beat that passes before he adds, "I'm not sure if it's better to be on this side of the line, or the blissfully ignorant side."

[thevulnerability]

"A few years ago, I probably would have sided on blissfully ignorant, whether I knew it or not."

She glances again at Fitz, pressing her lips together.

"Now, I think I'd rather find a way to accept people for who they really are rather than see them as what I want them to be."