Foster Van Denend (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
control_freak) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lostcarnival2017-05-04 07:25 pm
control_freak) wrote in lostcarnival2017-05-04 07:25 pm
Entry tags:
A single-worded poem comprised of four letters [CLOSED]
Who: Foster and Ginko. Then Tanyuu. Then Sophie, then Sans and Lambert.
What: The thief returns. A motive appears??? Oh, wait, nevermind. It's a really shitty one.
When: Night 90
Where: The Barn
Warnings: Body horror, bad logic, minor violence, unnecessary drama.
It is deep in the dead of a cloud-covered night that Foster emerges from hiding, his kinked blond hair plastered cold and damp to his scalp and the sides of his face. Like some outlandish lake monster, perhaps... he is taking on a hefty amount of risk, returning to the carnival grounds at all. But if he doesn't, then there is no point.
Eventually he finds him.
Ginko.
In the barn, leaning heavily over a pitchfork, a single lantern hanging nearby. The multiheaded rat beast is awake, pushing a few of its many noses through the gate to snuffle in the man's white hair.
Foster approaches, one hand covering his left eye, fingers spread--but clutched, clawlike, over his face. His right eye has disappeared, grown over entirely by a thick shelf of deep purple mushrooms. His left eye is still visible--though ringed precariously by growths of its own, with dried ichor smears and cracked and broken brackets.
What: The thief returns. A motive appears??? Oh, wait, nevermind. It's a really shitty one.
When: Night 90
Where: The Barn
Warnings: Body horror, bad logic, minor violence, unnecessary drama.
It is deep in the dead of a cloud-covered night that Foster emerges from hiding, his kinked blond hair plastered cold and damp to his scalp and the sides of his face. Like some outlandish lake monster, perhaps... he is taking on a hefty amount of risk, returning to the carnival grounds at all. But if he doesn't, then there is no point.
Eventually he finds him.
Ginko.
In the barn, leaning heavily over a pitchfork, a single lantern hanging nearby. The multiheaded rat beast is awake, pushing a few of its many noses through the gate to snuffle in the man's white hair.
Foster approaches, one hand covering his left eye, fingers spread--but clutched, clawlike, over his face. His right eye has disappeared, grown over entirely by a thick shelf of deep purple mushrooms. His left eye is still visible--though ringed precariously by growths of its own, with dried ichor smears and cracked and broken brackets.
no subject
He's exhausted enough already, with the mushi drawing energy from his blood, but it doesn't help anything that the current circumstances have kept him from getting the chance to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time for the past few days. Miu has pushed herself up against his legs, shoving worriedly at him every so often.
When he hears someone come in, he shakes himself and looks up-- then starts when he sees Foster. The condition of his eyes is alarming, to say the least, but then-- he remembers Sans's radio message.
And Foster's response.
"--Foster! You--" He hardly even knows where to start. "Where have you been?"
no subject
"How does it feel?" he asks as he reaches the barn door--he doesn't come any further, turning his face away from the lantern's glare. It's agony, the light--even with only one exposed eye, even light enough to see by is debilitating.
It's been Foster's nature to walk into pain, to seek it, to immerse himself in it--to live, vicariously, through the tortured feeling of his body.
But it still hurts. As though a sharpened poker, hot from a forge, were being pressed, steadily, deeper into his eyesocket, deep into his brain, agony radiating heat over his bare skin and through the bones of his face.
He's breathing heavily--his mouth wet, shoulders stiffly hunched.
no subject
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Ginko takes a step back, looking down at himself - at the plants sprouting stubbornly from his skin, the only thing he can think of that Foster would be referring to. Does that have to do with why he'd take the repellent? He did get kind of weird about pain.
"It's... not great, Foster." He shoves his fingers into his bangs, pressing the heel of his palm against his eye. Trying to wake himself up.
Now that he's gotten over the shock of seeing Foster at all, a hint of disapproval is making its way into his voice. "It doesn't look like you've gone unscathed, either. I don't... why would you do this?"
no subject
'Not great.' What an... underwhelming answer.
This is bad. He doesn't have time--doesn't have time to wait for Ginko to make the leap himself any more, doesn't have time to wait for Ginko see what was in front of him--right in front of him, now, so close that he could cup it in his hands, could reach out and catch--
"I wanted to wait for you to see it on your own, for you to understand on your own--" his breathlessness turns agitated, angry and frustrated, and he supports himself on the barn door's frame, reaching up with one hand to grip the weathered wood with something like desperation.
"It's for your own good... when you explained what that plant did, I understood what you were really using it for. What truth you were hiding from!"
And suddenly, incongruously... he laughs. Real (if bitter) laughter, not just compulsive cackling.
no subject
Ginko is exhausted, and frustrated - none of this needed to happen, he doesn't know why it did. And Foster's 'explanation' isn't really clearing much of anything up.
"What the hell do you mean, hiding? Foster, that repellent was important - for my safety, and for the whole carnival's. I wasn't hiding from anything, I was trying to protect myself and everyone here!"
no subject
"The only thing you were protecting was your illusion of safety." He pushes off the doorframe, stepping forward--into the crucible of light, the fault of his own intense, agonising infection. Even he can't stop himself from closing his eyes, from tears of pain--which are probably not helping Ginko understand what is going on.
"An illusion that let you pretend your reality didn't exist! A reality in which you could be 'safe' by suppressing yourself with false 'cure.' It's nothing but denial...!"
no subject
What the hell does Foster think he's saying? As if keeping the mushi at bay meant Ginko wasn't acutely aware of the threat his condition posed. As if having some semblance of security meant he was hiding.
"Are you kidding me? Trying to keep myself alive isn't hiding, it's not denial-- what kind of 'potential' were you expecting me to discover here? This isn't going to prove anything that I didn't already know!"
no subject
"For another day, turning a blind eye to your fate? That's what you're doing... you use your repellent as a crutch, hoping that if you ignore the approach of death, it won't catch up to you. But if there's nowhere to hide, no false promise, then you have no choice but to face the truth! You have the power to do more than just live."
He spits the word out, like something disgusting and spoiled. What good is life? What impact, what value--fleeting, empty, wasted.
"You're here clinging to false dreams, playing at the fantasy of a 'normal life,' empty and easy. And for what? Temporary distraction from the pain of awareness. Sacrificing the chance at meaning for the chance to pretend at 'life.'"
no subject
As if he wasn't still aware of it, every day - constantly, acutely. He steps forward, tail lashing. "I know I'm going to die eventually, one way or another, but until then I have a right to want to survive - to live just for the sake of living if I want to. I don't have to justify that to you!"
Ginko's grip on the pitchfork's handle tightens, and Miu bumps up against his leg again, fluffing herself up. His arms are shaking, only partly out of anger. He doesn't really have the energy for this; frustration and adrenaline are really all that's driving him at this point.
"Does this seriously seem too 'normal' for you? The only way I've found to even be able to stay around the same people is by living in this carnival - you've been here long enough to see how things are here, it's not a normal life! Putting everyone here in danger isn't going to make me any more aware of anything!"
no subject
Ginko isn't understanding, but now Foster can see where the confusion is coming from. His eyes lid to half mast, his expression uncommonly penetrating and focused. "You're still trapped by your assumption, your fear... doesn't it seem telling that the only facade of stability you have is so artificial? So fragile?" His tone is just shy of contemptuous. It's almost condescending.
"You're fighting so hard, but I think you know it's true. Listen to your deeper instinct! The power you possess is greater than your disease... you are the locus, the eye, the catalyst!" He gestures broader, wider--!
"You have it all wrong! Yours is not the power to change any one, but the mechanism by which world itself may be turned on the machine of fate!"
no subject
"I don't care if I change the world, and I don't want to change it like this! I just want to live my life, you've got no right to make this kind of decision for me!"
Dropping the pitchfork might have been a mistake, actually. But he's keeping himself upright so far, even if his legs are shaking slightly under his own weight.
1/2
"You can choose between distracting yourself and making your existence mean something!" He stumbles, catching himself--blindly--on a wooden beam, prehistoric teeth still bared.
2/2
How... how? How could... could anyone? He couldn't... he can't understand. He can't. He can't understand. Choosing--
Choosing not to matter...?
Just to die--?
Ginko's words are so viciously antithetical that it surpasses being a feeling. It's an obscenity. An execution. A violation. He can't feel anything--and he feels it so violently that it's like being set on fire. He would set himself on fire. He's drowning in it. It's like a death itself. If that's how he feels--if that's how he feels, then he should just die.
He should die.
Not Ginko.
Foster.
No--
Foster.
Ginko. Both of them. One of them. One of them has to die. He can't stand this. He can't. The only thing that matters--the only thing that matters--
He can't
No
no subject
The raised voices make her pause, then hurry forward in a rush of panicked energy. That was definitely Foster's voice, she's sure of it--!
"What is going on?!"
Tanyuu stops in the entrance of the barn, bracing herself against the doorway and glaring with all six eerily glowing eyes. Haruki buzzes at her shoulder, distressed by the angry and upset auras all three humans are putting off.
no subject
Tanyuu's arrival comes as more than a little bit of a relief. Ginko's head jerks up and he focuses on her, ears flickering. "--Tanyuu!"
no subject
But with that knowledge comes a new sense of direction--a dose of reality in the form of reminder. That even if not everything can be changed, it can still be proven.
He straightens--incredibly, perhaps, given his condition, but it's only pain he has to persevere through, only pain to lend him a reminder of where his strength should really be spent...!
"If you're that committed to this... then prove it to me. Show me how much you want to waste your life."
no subject
"No one is wasting anything!" Tanyuu forces herself forward in a relatively quick movement, placing herself and the majority of her bulk between Foster and Ginko. "Foster, this is ridiculous! What are you even intending to gain out of this entire mess?!"
no subject
"Foster, she's right, you-- you don't have anything to gain here. I don't know what kind of 'proof' you're expecting from me, anyway."