anyway i'm going to give you a memory right back because six year olds facing trauma is unfortunately same hat. i'm too lazy to put it in an entry so:
You are sitting in the garden of your childhood home, in a little village that you've grown up in. You are six years old, and your father has been away for a year, though you're not sure why. It makes you sad, sometimes, when you think about it. Your mother is gone, and the village takes turns making sure that you aren't starving, but for the most part, you're just alone, making up stories and playing with the stray dogs in the village. It's lonely. You're very lonely.
So when your father returns after that year, and he gives you a smile that borders on manic, you don't notice how it looks. You're overjoyed - father is back, and maybe this time, he won't leave. Maybe this time your curse won't drive him away. You can be good this time. You will find a way to make sure that you don't hurt him or anybody else ever again. Maybe he's forgiven you for what happened to your mother.
He doesn't even wash up, when he returns. He comes straight to the garden and smiles widely at you, and says that you should come with him to the cave in the mountains behind the village. He has a surprise for you, to make up for the fact that he hasn't been home. You don't really hope for much, but. A toy would be nice! Maybe a kite, or something that the two of you can play with together.
Your father brings you to the cave. You make sure your long black hair is out of the way, ready for whatever the surprise is.
But he barely even pays attention to you as he strides into the cave. He goes right to the altar in the middle, constructed out of stone, and he flicks through a book, and he mutters. And you take a step forward because you're unsure. Maybe you should help? You take another step forward, and then - out of the book swirls something dark and hideous, a black and rotting creature that has no shape at first as it crawls out. It drips out of the book, and your father turns and starts to walk away.
You're confused - you're a little scared, so you say, "Father?" and he ignores you, and so you look back at the shadows that soak down out of the pages, and you see it is growing teeth. It is watching you with bright blood-red eyes, and when it meets your gaze, it licks its lips.
You stumble back, and you start to cry - you are six years old, and this is the scariest thing you've ever seen - and you turn and race after your father. This isn't what he meant, right? This can't be the surprise - but he pushes you to the ground and sneers at you.
"You are a cursed child," he spits, and you stare up at him from where you're crumpled on the ground. You reach for him. No, it - no, this time, it'll be better. This time you won't bring ruin to everybody around you, you promise, you will find a way to be good, but he just shakes his head and keeps walking. "Your life brings nothing but disaster to us all."
You stand, shakily, and run, but something grabs your leg, and you scream as the monster drags you back. Your father leaves.
"At least if you die, I can bring her back." And the light from outside vanishes as the monster pulls you towards its mouth.
But as a child - a child who hasn't grown up just yet, a child who hasn't forsaken emotion and the joys of living because you know that you aren't allowed those anymore - you don't want to die. You want to play outside, and you want to make friends with the other children in the village, and you want your mother back, and you want your father to love you, and you don't want to die you don't want to die you want to live --
The sleeping calamitous fates, violent urges, and unyielding spirit within you burst their bonds all at once. They are your unseen shield, your invisible blade, and they are all that your frail form has to protect yourself. You have a dagger that belonged to your mother. Instinct has you cut open part of the monster and it wails, and you run to hide. Your next attack is with fangs and claws; you swear to tear that wretched creature before you to shreds — to prove that you, and not it, are the cruelest evil that stalked the darkness.
For days, your life-and-death battle is one without end. Hunter and hunted switch places many times, the conflict locked in stalemate. Sometimes it rips at your skin and sometimes it just chases you when it finds you. Sometimes you beat it back just enough to find some time to rest. But you are exhausted. You can't sleep. You're hungry, and you're thirsty, and everything hurts, but you don't want to die. You refuse. You won't. But there's only so much that your tiny body can handle, and eventually, you collapse. You're afraid. You know it is coming, the monster, with its snakelike body and hungry maw. But you can't find the strength to continue.
And that's when the tide changes.
A vivid icy light pierces through the dark like skyglow, showing the path to the future. A crystalline object falls down from nowhere, into your hands. You look down at it shakily, trying to breathe. You know, instinctively, that this will allow you to wield ice. That you can use this to decide which monster will live, and which will die.
You pull yourself to your feet one more time. You wipe the tears away.
It's the last time you ever cried. It's the last time you felt anything at all.
a pause.]
Oh. [...] I didn't like this when it happened the first time, either.
she's quiet for a moment, her emotions sort of just thundery and annoyed, and then:]
Yes. Whoever that boy is also sucks. [or maybe he doesn't, but in that memory he does.] I'm sorry that you were also young when the world decided you didn't deserve anything good.
[ the emotions here are a complete mess — hatred and confusion and guilt with only the tiniest hint of something positive almost completely buried under everything else. he shakes his head. ]
...He's dead now anyway. It doesn't matter.
[ it feels like maybe it kind of does, but ignore that. ]
[well - it's relatable. this is a little bit how she feels emotions, these days. before, the first time emotionshare was a thing, she'd felt things so distantly, in a little box pushed away from everything else.
but now, after weeks of being dead and not caring to keep herself restrained for the sake of others, she feels almost... violently, bright and colorful. she gets that hatred and confusion and guilt, and there's a touch of sympathy in return. or maybe empathy. she knows. this sort of thing is complicated.]
My father is dead. [she doesn't seem to have any particular emotion attached to him, funnily enough.] I'm told he felt regret for what he did, and I think that it wasn't enough to be regretful.
[a pause, and she gently reaches out and tucks simon's hair behind his ear before pulling back. all of these effects at once are such a cocktail of bwuh.]
[ he nods at what she says about her father. probably good he's dead, definitely good that she kept him cut out of her life. ]
No, it isn't.
[ that's how he's always felt about it; if you ruin someone's life, you can feel as bad about it as you want, but your remorse isn't going to do a damn thing for that person and they have no obligation to ever forgive you. horace had felt guilty about what happened that day for the rest of his life and apologized dozens of times. none of it undid anything.
...
it's still that same complicated mix of feelings, but her question kind of pulls him out of it, and he looks back at her. ]
What, back home, you mean?
[ a beat, then another laugh. ]
No. Not until very recently. The short version is I ended up at a shitty orphanage run by a rotten crook, saw something I wasn't supposed to see, then spent the next twelve years in hiding from the people who were behind the whole thing who wanted to shut me up.
It was just in the last month before I ended up here that I finally got to put a plan in motion to start taking out all the people who'd made my life such a living hell.
Good. [she says, after a moment.] I hope that they suffer the consequences of what they did to you.
[that's all she had wanted, growing up. a way to get back at the thing that hurt her the most. she's not cunning enough to do something like a plan - for shenhe, revenge is straightforward. a spear through the chest, a blast of ice through the brain. but she'd had nothing to get revenge on. her father died a few days after she destroyed the monster in the cave. hung himself, out of guilt.
so to hear someone gets the chance to do this, to take back what was stolen from him in some way - well. her morals aren't really good enough to be a bigger person.]
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no subject
anyway i'm going to give you a memory right back because six year olds facing trauma is unfortunately same hat. i'm too lazy to put it in an entry so:
a pause.]
Oh. [...] I didn't like this when it happened the first time, either.
[gazes.]
no subject
he is also like "what the fuck" and it takes him a moment to process all the shared themes here.
... ]
Your dad sucks.
[ another similarity, though he didn't realize it about his own for a very long time. ]
no subject
she's quiet for a moment, her emotions sort of just thundery and annoyed, and then:]
Yes. Whoever that boy is also sucks. [or maybe he doesn't, but in that memory he does.] I'm sorry that you were also young when the world decided you didn't deserve anything good.
no subject
He's...
[ the emotions here are a complete mess — hatred and confusion and guilt with only the tiniest hint of something positive almost completely buried under everything else. he shakes his head. ]
...He's dead now anyway. It doesn't matter.
[ it feels like maybe it kind of does, but ignore that. ]
But yeah. Sorry you got that too.
no subject
but now, after weeks of being dead and not caring to keep herself restrained for the sake of others, she feels almost... violently, bright and colorful. she gets that hatred and confusion and guilt, and there's a touch of sympathy in return. or maybe empathy. she knows. this sort of thing is complicated.]
My father is dead. [she doesn't seem to have any particular emotion attached to him, funnily enough.] I'm told he felt regret for what he did, and I think that it wasn't enough to be regretful.
[a pause, and she gently reaches out and tucks simon's hair behind his ear before pulling back. all of these effects at once are such a cocktail of bwuh.]
Have things gone better for you at all?
no subject
No, it isn't.
[ that's how he's always felt about it; if you ruin someone's life, you can feel as bad about it as you want, but your remorse isn't going to do a damn thing for that person and they have no obligation to ever forgive you. horace had felt guilty about what happened that day for the rest of his life and apologized dozens of times. none of it undid anything.
...
it's still that same complicated mix of feelings, but her question kind of pulls him out of it, and he looks back at her. ]
What, back home, you mean?
[ a beat, then another laugh. ]
No. Not until very recently. The short version is I ended up at a shitty orphanage run by a rotten crook, saw something I wasn't supposed to see, then spent the next twelve years in hiding from the people who were behind the whole thing who wanted to shut me up.
It was just in the last month before I ended up here that I finally got to put a plan in motion to start taking out all the people who'd made my life such a living hell.
no subject
Good. [she says, after a moment.] I hope that they suffer the consequences of what they did to you.
[that's all she had wanted, growing up. a way to get back at the thing that hurt her the most. she's not cunning enough to do something like a plan - for shenhe, revenge is straightforward. a spear through the chest, a blast of ice through the brain. but she'd had nothing to get revenge on. her father died a few days after she destroyed the monster in the cave. hung himself, out of guilt.
so to hear someone gets the chance to do this, to take back what was stolen from him in some way - well. her morals aren't really good enough to be a bigger person.]