lostcarnival | (no subject)

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Who: The Psionic and Foster
When: Day 139
Where: Foster's Trailer
What: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Warnings: Talk of suicidal ideation, cussing, brain disease, and wieners.

It was almost cute how Foster thought he could just ignore Psi. Well, it would have been cute if it weren't so irritating. Psi was still bruised up and still pretty sore from making cobblestone with his skull. That didn't matter though. The Psionic had to address this, because he had seen Foster at the ritual and had felt what a complete and utter mess he was. He had years worth of memories showing him a Foster that wanted to live, and he also had memories of a man that felt the complete opposite. It was upsetting, and he didn't know how he could, but he wanted to help fix it.

And so that's what leads to him barging into Foster's trailer completely unannounced.

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For Foster, the past day has been a wretched, agonising experience.

Most of it was spent void of consciousness, mercifully, but he'd been woken, very briefly, by the walkie talkie, and had since woken again, twice now, each time rediscovering his loss and betrayal all over again. Each time he feels punished anew--punished with his own existence, by being alive, for which crime he was being punished again. He feels cheated. He feels hopeless. He feels violent and empty and It is this violent circle of self-hatred and grief that Psi interrupts by walking in.

And it is an extremely, extremely upset, naked man he's walking in on.

It's not even just anger--it's something like pain, and confusion, and hostility, and a fifth, indescribable emotion, one that makes his expression one of struggle, his brows peaking oddly in the middle even as the rest of his expression looks something more akin to rage.

His roommate gone, his gold confiscated, the trailer Psi has just invited himself into looks completely empty. Furnished, yes, but devoid of possessions or signs of life--it is to all appearances completely uninhabited.

Except for one bed, violently unmade. And Foster.

Who is, again, completely, unambiguously naked.

He stares at Psi in absolute fucking silence for an entire four seconds.

"Too late." He breaks the silence with two syllables of raw vitriol. "It doesn't matter any more. I'm here. Alive. Death was too good for me, right?" His voice pitches up, the broken edge of something like emotion in it before he stops, locking eyes with the troll.

"...Get out." His voice goes absolutely flat, his expression deadening. If before he was on the verge of emotional--hysterical, or distraught--now he's simply hollow. "Don't worry. I'm not a threat any more. So there's no need for you--or anyone else--to keep tabs on me any more."

Of course now that the Psionic is back at the carnival his newfound empathy powers are back full force. This means that every disgusting painful angry sad emotion Foster feels is echoed in the Psionic's own heart. The closer he gets to the trailer, the worse it gets. It's actually how he found Foster in the first place. Instead of overwhelming him, instead of making him sympathetic to Foster's plight, it just makes him mad. He only just manages not to slam the door shut behind him, but then he has to listen to that speech.

"Shut up!" he yells, taking a step forward, his tail swishing back and forth angrily behind him. The same demon tail he'd had in Portland before.

"What the hell are you even saying it's too late for. You think I put up with your bullshit because I think you're a threat? What kind of moron are you?!"

"The dangerous kind." His tone is venomous, but his voice is raw.

I'm not stupid," Foster continues coldly. It's a hypocritical claim at best, contradicting everything he claims to be on a regular basis, and which he contradicts again immediately. "Am I not a threat? The timing was obvious. You had me transferred under your control immediately afterwards. Even I'm not such an idiot that I couldn't figure that out."

The gory avulsion over his ribcage is no longer actively bleeding, but it's deep and viscerous.

"You're wasting your time."

He lets his psionic aura grow, the way he only really does when he's trying to intimidate, it helps a great deal that he's also extremely pissed off.

"How am I wasting my time doing exactly what I want? You're the one wasting my time with all of your childish bullshit! You want to believe I think you are a threat? Fine. I don't give a shit, but then shut up and sit down because I have something actually important that I want to say."

Psi's rage is practically a relief. After even a few tortuous hours alone with his thoughts, something as clear and unfiltered as someone's rage is everything he needed.

The Psiionic isn't just trying to control the scene. He's trying to control him.

"Of course I'm wasting your time. That's my point."

It sounds like emotion. It looks like emotion. It even feels like emotion, it's almost there in the burning rawness of his throat and the violent ache in his head and the look he gives Psi, even naked as he is.

But behind the volatile facade, it's empty and wrong. He isn't feeling anything. It's fake, because he's fake, he's wrong and hollow and in that moment, he wants more.

"If you want to shut me up, to make me sit down, then make me. Make me submit to your will, prove to me how much you want it!"

He scoffs, shocked that Foster thinks the Psionic is going toplay along with his ridiculous games. He didn't need to. He rolls his head back staring at the ceiling and sighing in aggravation. He didn't have to prove anything! If he wanted to do something he could just do it! The only reason he was even here was to make sure he got the terms of the contract right when he went to speak with the Ringmaster to begin with.

"You are so fucking irritating." he says before looking towards Foster again. "Just tell me what it is you wanted. Was it that life? Or was it just the brain disease you wanted to avoid?"

Edited 2017-08-05 22:03 (UTC)

"If I'm so irritating, then leave," Foster informs him, coldly--it's as though he's suddenly disconnected, detached entirely from the reality Psi is trying to trap him in.

"You don't have time to waste on garbage like me. Something disgusting and worthless--you've seen it! I'm repulsive! Pathetic! Who cares what I want! I deserve nothing less than absolute misery. This... this is my just punishment for trying to reach above my station. And you almost helped me!"

He grows more vehement, more impassioned and scathing as he goes on.

"Don't ask me worthless questions. It doesn't matter what I want!"

But Foster has seen Psi's... well, psionics before. He's aware of Psi's power, and he's wanted to know for a while. What it would feel like. Whether it would hurt to be touched by it.

He throws his hands up, looking at the ceiling again as though to ask a higher power 'why me.'

"You know what, fine. I'll just guess if you aren't going to tell me."

He's pretty sure he knows already anyways, he just thought maybe they could have a normal fucking conversation about it first, but clearly that was asking for the impossible.

"Don't kill yourself while I'm gone or I'm going to be really pissed off."

That's a gesture Foster's seen a thousand times, a gesture that means Psi is either going to lose his patience and slam Foster against the wall

(~~please please please please~~)

or snap in a different way, give up on him and storm out

~~go away go away fuck you just LEAVE ME ALONE~~

But then Psi speaks. Then panic floods in, actual fear showing on Foster's face for a split second--even as anger filters over, a simultaneous struggle between an emotion he only recently experienced and the only one he'd ever experienced until just recently. Suddenly everything is out of control, out of his grasp, and he's desperate, a ship pitched on violent waves and he has to get it back, has to stop it--!

"You're not listening to me!"

He snarls it, saliva flecking his chin.

He wasn't scared when the angel levelled her rapier at him.

But he's definitely scared now.

Even if Foster covers his fear with anger, the Psionic can still sense it, and though he's annoyed, irritated, and frustrated as hell, he doesn't leave, at least not yet. His anger fades, and he gives Foster a tired look.

"I'm trying to." But he wasn't, not really. It wasn't this Foster he wanted to listen to in the first place. Foster here just seemed to use words to try and make everyone else feel stupid or to confuse them, nothing he said felt like the truth. It was ominously too late. He was a threat. He was garbage. He wanted to be tossed around. None of that crap meant anything!

"Look, no one should feel the way you do, like they don't deserve a life. That's... So fucked up... Maybe it makes you feel better to think you deserve it, but that's a fucking lie. You don't deserve it, and you can fight it. You just have to stop being so scared."

What was he even afraid of? He didn't have anything left to loose. His life was practically forfeit already.

"Maybe everything I just said is really offensive to you. Maybe I'm totally wrong about you and I'm stupid and I don't understand shit! But you know what, I'd rather be stupid and full of shit and actually help the person who told me they'd rather die than go back to this."

"So that's what I'm going to do, because it's what I want to do."

Edited 2017-08-07 02:20 (UTC)

Foster's suddenly caught in a whirlwind of confusion of frustration. Psi was listening to him--he was listening, but somehow drew completely wrong conclusions!

It's so completely irrational that he doesn't even know how to react.

Which means his response is a burst of totally inappropriate, totally sincere laughter.

But as he so often does, he sobers abruptly and completely.

"Offensive to me?" It's a rhetorical question. Empty of meaning.

Consider that a metaphor.

"Don't you think it's more fucked up to imagine I don't deserve it? That 'people' like me just happen for no reason?" He breaks eye contact, bitterness overtaking him. "But then, if you think about it too critically, you no longer have any control over the situation, right? You become totally powerless. How scary."

Psi can't really think he's the same person he met in that long dream. Foster can barely imagine being him--maybe because it hurts too much to do so, but that should be proof enough. If Psi wastes his time on this--on him, whichever 'him' he thinks he's trying to 'save'--then it puts Foster in a position he can't escape. An obligation to... what? Gratitude? Repayment, for what he can't repay? What he never earned, cannot have, doesn't deserve?

It's a terrible impossibility, and he's afraid of what consequences it'll bring.

Not that it matters. He knows it won't.

"You're right, I did want to die... I don't think that's unreasonable." He's smiling, making eye contact again, but it's... weak. "But I guess the universe had different ideas." The smile vanishes.

"Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's too late."

His tone flattens to a cold cruelty.

"I'm already here."

"It's not too late!" he shouts, nearly stomping his foot in his frustration. "That's what I'm trying to say! Maybe it was before, but it's not here, don't you get it?"

"I know you're afraid, okay? I get it! The fear of failure, letting yourself hope for a solution only to get denied everything again. Do you think those are feelings only you can understand?"

His voice starts to waver. Feelings he never wanted to admit to, things he was still afraid to face. It's too much, and he has to wonder if he's even really talking to Foster anymore. Maybe instead he's simply yelling at himself. He wants to push Foster down, to make him understand, to make himself understand.

"Of course it's fucked up. Life is fucked up." He's speaking normally, but after all his shouting it just seems quieter. He wants their to be a right and a wrong. He wants the world to be fair. He wants to think that if only he were smarter, stronger, better, that he'd be able to change things. He's not that better person, and there were some things that could not be fixed and there were disasters that could never be prevented and sometimes people who didn't deserve it suffered.

"You have to accept that."

"I'm not afraid of failure," he spits--if Psi wants something true? This is as close to it as anything about Foster can ever be. Everything he does ends in failure. Psi was there when he stole the mushi weed, and failed. He was there when he tried to stop the ritual and failed, tried to escape his reality and failed. Failure is all he knows.

No, he dreams of failure. Dreams of an apocalypse, dreams of a failure of the world, of an extinction level event.

He dreams, ultimately, about the ultimate failure: a failure so absolute that he, the source of failure itself, will at last fail and die.

He is not afraid to fail.

But in saying as much, in denying what he does not fear, he realises two things.

One, he's made a very large mistake. By rejecting Psi's false notion, he has also affirmed its opposite. He has, effectively, announced to Psi exactly what does scare him--and that, alone causes him a spike of minute terror.

Two--

"....you are." He is granted a distraction--an epiphany, a misdirection, a truth. Both for himself and, more importantly, for Psi by the epiphany, and he takes a step forward, all callousness and callow confidence.

"You're trying to fix me because you can't fix yourself." Psi isn't the first person who's tried to 'help' him. People like him--they can't stand it, the idea that there is a problem that cannot be solved. That there can be punishment without reprieve, that there can be disease without cure. That there can be fate without compromise. He gets it. He gets it! He's a problem! He's the problem in their reality, the problem in his own reality--he is the problem in reality, and it will not end until he at last is ended, but even that is too much to ask! Even that mercy, that absolution is too good for him, too incomplete to satisfy the wrong he's committed by even existing!

But then what?

What does Psi want him to do?

He's not allowed to be happy. He can't accept an offer like that, knowing where it comes from, knowing how it will end.

And all of this is way too much to ever put into words, because even when he tries, he is denied again and again, as though he is speaking a different language, futilely shouting his words from across the threshold of a different world.

His eyes widen in surprised, both at vehemence with which Foster responds and at what he's saying. He knows it's true. He knows he's afraid. That's been the entire problem this whole time! That's why he's still here, why he can't make himself go back yet. The way Foster says it though, like he's realized just how small and insignificant the Psionic really is, it's terrifying. He feels nauseous and it only gets worse as Foster accuses him.

You're trying to fix me because you can't fix yourself. As soon as he perceives the words purple blooms across his face in a blush. He feels ashamed, and embarrassed. Was it true? Did he help others only to avoid his own problems? He doesn't know if it's true, but the fact that he questions it, that he questions himself, is enough. He takes a step back, putting more space between them. He has to do something, he has to say something.

"I just- I just want to help you! Why is that so hard for you to understand!?"

"Help yourself," comes Foster's reply.

In a way, the Psionic is right; Foster has released exactly how he feels, why he feels that way, and now that he knows, it lands the Troll in a place of contempt. His life is not a vehicle to make others feel better. Not like that, anyway. Psi takes a step back, and Foster takes two forward.

But the only other thing he says is... quieter.

Bitterer.

Defeated.

"Leave me alone."

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THANKS LORD ENGLISH

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