lostcarnival | ⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

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⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 178 - B1: Day 6
Where: The Carnival and sometimes on top of the Heart of Stone.
What: Now that the Prince is dead and gone, there's a lot left to sort out. As the remaining servants are liberated and those captured by the Prince are tended to, it's time for recovery and goodbyes.
Warnings: Nothing in particular.

HOME GROUND↴

At long last, it is over. The Prince is dead, and all of his stolen Names have been restored - all that's left to do is treat the wounds and move on. For the first day or two, the Ringmaster will be arranging passage for the servants that are left, all of which have remembered their names for the first time in years. The earth elemental that had been trapped and forced to serve as the Prince's manor, the Heart of Stone, is happy to help for the moment. It appreciates the Ringmaster's mercy, and is free after untold eons of imprisonment.

Yet, there are plenty of aspects that are far from simple. There are still servants left mad and transformed into beasts, with no easy way to change them back. The Prince's spells outlive him, and those bearing his poison and his curses will have a difficult road ahead of them. Though most of the bestial servants have been rounded up, and a large number that had been reduced to unmoving statues returned, even the Ringmaster can't return them to normal so simply.

The next week is for rest and for settling remaining affairs. If you want to bid farewell to any particular NPCs, or assure care is given where it's needed, now is the time to do it.

► A CURE: The Ringmaster will tell everyone simply - there is no simple way to undo another fae's magic. The Prince's powers were essentially on par with hers, which means that those who have been transformed to stone and those that were cursed into beasts and driven insane are not something she can trivially fix. It will take the work of the carnival and a couple weeks of treatment to shed the curse of stone, and the maddened servants are an entirely separate matter. She will do what she can, but for the most part she is arranging for the Prince's servants to be cared for elsewhere. At least for now, the Ringmaster will be animating the stone portions of people's bodies with magic, though those portions will still be a bit clumsy and numb feeling.

► THE NEW HEARTSTONE: In the absence of the prince, the Heart of Stone will be taking over the remains of the Prince's realm and preventing it from collapsing into void. As it turns out, the manor had been an earth elemental all along - a form of Wyld Fae almost on par to the Prince and Ringmaster themselves. How the Heart of Stone was enslaved is a long story presumably, but the Ringmaster considers it to be a sign of the Prince's own depravity. The Heart will be allowing visitors for the first couple days of this period through the portal, but keep in mind you are essentially just walking around on its body. At least the realm has a floor, now, instead an endless abyss surrounding it.

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If there's one thing Joker has learned as a performer, it's what makes a good audience. Some people put themselves on too high a pedestal; they feel the need to criticize or "teach" everything. Joker prefers to sit where he is, and take comfort in being the person not in the spotlight for once.

This isn't quite a performance in the traditional sense. Rather, the song is just a medium for something else instead of just "being". Still, he treats it the same as his ears flick upwards to show he's listening even as his eyes start to drift shut. There's no question of him falling asleep. That's assuming he could, for one thing, and, for another, it's more important that he takes in all the words here. He stays quiet all the way through, just listening, taking it in. When Julien finally hits his final notes, Joker lets them fade through the air before he says anything.

"We all got through in the end, didn't we? Pity the song didn't do as much as I'dve liked, 'tho."

Somehow since Portland Julien's been better at remembering how songs go, and their accompaniment. 'Somehow'. He knows how, it's because something of being an angel so in love with music has stayed with him.

Once he's finished with the song Julien lays his hands over the strings to quiet them, then just starts tracing more chords, touching the strings with the pads of his fingers rather than plucking, just so he can feel them. His fingernails are now dark gray, and a pattern of cyan and dark blue travels up the back of his hand and arm. Julien's picked up a lot of changes since disappearing.

"Well, I don't know. I couldn't... there was a lot I couldn't consciously think or understand, but I could sort of get, if I wasn't thinking of it specifically. I know that singing didn't fix anything. But like, he, uh, I mean, he kind of owned me, and that wasn't something that could just be fixed." Julien's palps press against his lips, putting the lie to the halfway easy tone. He gets them to fold back up. "But still. It was kind of nice to get the sense that someone cared. I'm glad that you tried."

Edited 2017-11-21 11:30 (UTC)

"Although it did," he murmurs, "just in a way none of us could do on our own." As much as Joker would have liked the satisfaction of snuffing out the Prince's life, he logically knows that none of them, not even the most powerful in their number, could have accomplished it. That's something that he knows really only the Ringmaster was capable of.... and even then, only in the right circumstances, or else she would have done it from the start.

Still, that's in the past now. He tries to tell himself that. Wearily smiling, he looks back over to Julien. "Still, good ta know ya enjoyed it a little bit."

Julien looks at him seriously, intent. "If you don't take the good things when you see them, what's the point in anything? Even if they're tiny. Especially when they're tiny. It matters, Joker."

Whoah, a little too serious there. He closes his eyes as they start to sting, and don't open spectral ones to compensate, still for a moment except for one hand, noiselessly running his fingers back and forth across the guitar strings.

"I really am sorry. I didn't set out to break the rules, I wasn't thinking, but that doesn't matter, in the end." His voice is softer now.

"Hey, hey." Without the usual energy in it, even Joker's light tone can't help but seem a little morose even with the way he smiles. "I said I'm glad ya enjoyed it, that has ta count for somethin'." Maybe not much, but something.

Either way, Joker pauses at the apology. "I mean, it was stupid," he says, because that's true. "But it was the kinda stupid that comes when yer tryin' ta be kind, so there are worse types, I figure. Still.... Next time, come ta one of us if ya can, alright?"

Joker isn't entirely sure what they could have done in that case, but it's in the past now anyway. There's no point wondering over it.

"Heh, sorry. I keep ending up with my mind fucked with and my views on life skewed around, I guess I just want to reassert that when I'm not an angel or some kind of fae slave I'm basically into existentialism. Or absurdism, I can't remember the difference." He kind of still had been, as an angel, as a 'servant'. The philosophies themselves are probably too high-minded for how he really feels, but they're nice labels.

He exhales slowly. "If that extremely specific set of circumstances comes again... sorry, no, I get what you mean. Ask more. Assume less. Maybe keep my mouth shut more often." Things would have gone better if he hadn't decided to tell someone what was happening. He'd known at the time, too, that it wasn't like anyone could have helped.

"Especially when all the supervisors are yellin' at folks," he confirms. Fortunately, that.... doesn't tend to happen too often. Even with the pain that they've experienced in this particular run of things, they've had three bad encounters instead of constant bad encounters. Which is good, he.... supposes. They wouldn't be able to keep anyone on board if the carnival was constantly like this. Hell, he doesn't know if he would be able to last that long himself.

It's... too much. Even for him.

Still, he has to continue. "Anyway, the skill of knowin' when ta keep yer mouth shut is a tricky one ta master. Don't fret too much about that. Besides, can't ask more if yer mouth is shut." His own curls up dryly.

He nods, running his thumb over the strings in little ovals. Even after a few months of having a human body again it's still kind of amazing how sensitive it is, compared to being a bird, how good it feels to play with a stringed instrument and touch the tensions and textures and shapes.

After Portland, in the Summerlands, he'd gone and asked Joker if this was how things went, big disturbing stops spaced out by mild ones. Apparently it is.

"Well, I mean, I shouldn't have told anyone when we got caught. Hah. If I'd thought about it for more than a second I would've not... done that. But all I could think was, 'if I use a language most people don't know, there won't be a panic'." Julien half-smiles at nothing in particular.

"I mean," Joker says slowly, managing his thoughts as carefully as he can through the haze of poison, "there would've been a worse panic if ya hadn't. That would've been two people vanished out of nowhere, and we wouldn't have had even a slight idea about what happened. Especially you." Giant bird and his human avatar, you know. "So it worked out."

Ugh, he doesn't like saying this.... There's still way too much unresolved that he hasn't been able to say anything about while poisoned. But it feels like it needs to be said. "It wasn't yer fault that Sans ran off out of nowhere as he did, without tellin' anyone."

Julien shrugs, feeling vaguely bad for making Joker feel like he has to defend him.

"I said don't escalate it, and then I saw him, and I said 'go', but it didn't... well." He shifts on the bench, cradles the instrument closer. "He got caught. He got hurt, a lot worse than I was." Julien had been bitten and mauled about some, but he has the ability to heal himself.

"The blame is mostly on the Prince. I don't like... I hate thinking of people as like a missing stair or a wild animal, where they don't have responsibility for anything they do, it's all on you. But I kinda feel like saying that... it looks like trying to dodge responsibility, too."

"Everythin' ya could do, ya did," Joker answers bluntly, poison dulling his ability to be perhaps a little more smooth in this response. "Ya told people what was happenin' in a language not most folks will know except the important ones, which is more than what we got from anyone else. Which doesn't make it any less stupid that ya and yer friend tried somethin' and got caught, but still."

His hand passes over his face. Perhaps he should rethink this plan of his to go find people and talk to them. This is more exhausting than he thought. "Everyone did somethin'. Ya aren't dodgin' responsibility if ya say the Prince was a right wanker for everythin', and ya aren't if ya say Sans made a mistake. S'just what happened."

Leaning back, he lets his head fall in the same motion and only grimaces a little bit when his antlers hit something. "....If that makes any sense."

Julien winces a little and listens. The Stage Manager's voice has a bit of strain to it, it must be important.

"No, it makes sense." He crosses his legs at the ankles and looks at them. "It's all complicated and even if some of it was on me and dumb shit I pulled, I'm not... I'm just one piece of a whole lot of mess. We're all here now, so it'll be okay, in the end." Right?

He exhales through his nose. He wants to ask, does Joker remember dying. He doesn't want to ask it, too. Julien tries not to hunch his shoulders.

"Thanks, Joker. You've gone to a lot of effort, huh?" Julien opens his pedipalps up out of the way so he can give a smaller, less flashy smile and have it actually be seen. "Has anyone thanked you for it yet?"

"Yeah," he mumbles, even if he's not entirely sure himself. "We'll be fine." Or, at least, if some of them believe it hard enough, it won't be quite a lie. As one of the supervisors, he figures it's his job to spread some encouragement. None of them can survive on pessimism. Well, optimism isn't on the plate either, but at least it makes them want to keep eating.

Being told he's made a lot of effort makes him want to laugh, for all the wrong reasons. Instead, he only smiles a little. "Not been much of a reason ta thank me, I figure." So that's a no.

Julien sounds a little more certain. "Well, the chances are better than if we didn't come back, you gotta admit. It's kind of amazing that we did at all." He hasn't seen the medical Supervisor since the ball but no one seems worried, so maybe it's okay.

"Heh. I want to, though." He nudges lightly at Joker with his elbow. "Thanks for caring, and for trying as long as you did. I'm sorry you got drawn into the bad shit at the end - and that's not 'I'm responsible', sorry, that's 'I regret that it happened' sorry."

He definitely wouldn't want a position of authority here. Pretty much anywhere, really, but especially here. It seems nervewracking.

If he's nudged any harder, Joker is fairly certain that he's going to go tumbling off of the bench. Still, that is just enough for him to stay right where he is, and Joker huffs out a sound that barely misses being a laugh.

"We were all gonna get dragged inta it one way or the other." That much he knew from the second he'd come to himself and realized all the horrible little parallels to Celebration. "Better ta mess up on my own, eh?"

He snorts. "I feel that. Sometimes the bad thing will happen no matter what you do so you might as well go spring it first."

"You were the tree deer, huh?" Julien knows he was the tree deer, the one that had smelled like deer and crow at the same time. His bird self has a rather more acute sense of smell than his human self, though it's not a patch on a daspletosaurus nose. "I was a smaller version of our menagerie's dinosaur. That's way more normal than being that one angel, and yet. It was just so close to being a bird, so somehow it feels weirder."

"Tree deer?" That sounds like a reference to something awfully specific, if only Joker could remember what. Sure, there's his general state of being, with the wings, and the antlers, but he can't really think of anything off the top of his head that would fit that bill. Well, there's the time he got drunk and stuck in a tree, but he's pretty sure that Julien doesn't know about that. Probably.

Which means.... This has to be a reference to something else. That period of blankness from being stuck in a wall to laying in a medical tent bed. Something, he imagines, must have something to do with the blurry and indistinct visions and dreams he sometimes has when his mind spaces out enough.

Julien pauses, his palps slacking and a couple of spectral eyes opening in surprise and dismay. His normal, human expression just looks mildly concerned. "Oh. You don't remember any of it, do you?"

There's such a sense of isolation to that realization. Julien hasn't spoken to any of the others about the hunt. Maybe he's the only one who remembers. It's better that way, anyway.

He draws his palps back up by the sides of his face and closes the extra eyes, and gives Joker a smile. It's too late to claim he doesn't remember anything either, so he downplays. It's not important. "Lucky! It's just as well."

The problem with trying to lie is that, in the face of someone observant enough, even the slightest slip up can put everything into doubt and reveal a lot more than is necessarily wanted. Joker knows this very well. While he might be poisoned to all hell, he doesn't miss that pause, although the realization is a bit slow in coming.

When it does hit, he huffs out a long sigh. "'Remember' is a bit of a strong word," he admits plainly, trying not to show too much himself. Good thing he's so tired that he can't be bothered for the effort of emotions. "Frankly, I figured I was just hallucinatin'."

He is poisoned, and relieving traumas of his own, after all.

Julien shrugs. If Joker doesn't remember being some kind of deer in a tree then he doesn't remember much of it at all. "It's for the best, really. It's better as some kind of dream. It's not that much more than a dream for me." A vivid one.

Well, anyway, Joker would have at least casually known anyone who came after him - Julien has no idea who killed whom, aside from who came after Julien himself, but it's a logical assumption. Maybe more than casually. He's been here a long time, there are people who care about him, they might have taken it upon themselves.

Not that Julien will admit it but he doesn't know if it's more upsetting that he was hunted down by someone he knows and at least gets along with, or by people he'd never met or spoken to. It's more intense when people you really care about are involved, he could see that.

Very, very slowly, Joker starts to raise up one foot... only to abruptly snap it out and kick Julien in the side of his leg. With the state he's in, it's honestly not that big of a deal. He's tired, and poisoned, and preoccupied with hiding his own mental wounds. That doesn't leave a lot of effort for kicking.

"Don't try ta lie when yer poisoned," he mutters. "Never comes out the way ya want it."

Joker catches him in the middle of putting his guitar away. He snorts. "Lie about what? I have weird, involved dreams sometimes. Sometimes they even feel real."

In its way it feels less real than his memories of being Iuliael - the older memories, not the ones of that last month in Portland - but those memories do feel real, if fragmentary and odd. Being a dinosaur, not being able to think clearly but with a little part of him aware that he couldn't really think, being beaten to death. That's worse.

"It's better not remembering. Really."

There's another kick, this one possibly even less effective than the first. "If it's weird involved dreams, then I doubt yer alone there." Okay, no, this is getting ridiculous, and he lets his foot go back to the ground again.

"Since I sure remember somethin' by that explanation."

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⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

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