⇨ A SONG IN THE SILENCE

[ringleaders]

Who: The Harbingers
When: Just after midnight, Day 13
Where: ????
What: The new Harbingers have an out of body experience.
Warnings: Ego death. Some generally upsetting content, most likely.

ONE WAY OUT↴ You don't fall unconscious so much as you find yourself completely slipping out of this reality, the meaning of everything you left behind becoming increasingly abstract and hard to hold on to. You're lost in a void, surrounded by whispers that fall just out of range of hearing, in the presence of something so vast that you feel crushed by its presence. On, in this case, lack of presence. Like they say: the abyss stares back. It isn't someone, it is an emptiness, and everything about you feels like it bleeds away in the face of it. A hole that has no bottom. Every attempt to pull yourself together makes this vertigo feel worse, until existence itself feels terrifying or reprehensible. How precisely this existential crisis manifests will depends on the individual, tailored to your own unfulfilled desires, disappointments, frustrations. You find yourself faced with all of the things about reality that fill you with despair and disgust, and while you can attempt to fight it with thoughts of the things you hold dear, it feels unrelenting. Eventually you will break under the weight of it. It's only then, when you find yourself desperate for any kind of escape, that you are finally given the opportunity. The void speaks to you without words, but instead with a simple understanding. It can give you what you need to take control of this despair, of this heartbreaking necessity. Of every lost soul in this world, you are the one that has been given the chance to be the one to end it, to take control in the universe's final days. You will be creation's judge and executioner - and having witnessed this evidence, you know what you must do. This can't go on. This can't be fixed. The only hope left is for the end, but it will be an end at your hand. For once, the power is yours. Only when you are willing to accept this gift will you awaken. You find yourself in your body again, your senses painfully acute, as if you've been reborn. Is this the first time you've truly lived? Every pain, every worry you had prior to this moment seems so small in comparison. The path ahead is clear and unburdened by complication. You are in a dark space, surrounding by the specters of creatures you can't quite make out, like things just barely forgotten. You find that you aren't alone, as others have awoken in the same space. In front of you, floating above your chest, you will find a black light, like a small inverted sun. You know it's a part of you, but that it wasn't like this before. Though fear and a distant sense of disquiet may linger, you can't bring yourself to distrust your new location, or the change in your Spark. You have reassurance, now. It will all be over soon.

Comments

Taako | OTA | tw: death, and HUGE TAZ Balance spoilers

[tacosgay]

Taako's emotions aren't hard to reach. He's done his best to hide them, of course, to cover any pain or doubt before it can be detected, even by himself, but it's only a very thin veil that covers them, and the Void tears through it all at once and digs its tendrils down into some very fresh wounds. It hasn't been long at all, after all, since Taako lost his sister all over again, and even though she's since returned, he had lost her and he had lost himself for over a decade-- and, not only that, but he's effectively lost another member of his family, as well.

Lucretia betrayed him. She betrayed all of them, she took years of their shared lives, she took... she took his sister from him. She took everything. And, in that moment following that realization, the rage and pain that he'd felt-- not only at the loss of his sister, but at her betrayal, at the abuse of their trust, her thoughtless destruction of years they'd shared-- nearly crushed him. They're here again now, rising up into his chest and his head, choking the air from his lungs until the dull ache within his core is the only thing he can feel anymore. There's no one here to wake him up from it this time. There is no Lup here to reassure him, or to stop him from acting.

Taako's trust is given very sparingly; love is even rarer. He has never allowed someone to hurt him so deeply before, but that pain is tearing him open from the inside now, as though something is crushing his lungs from within, and it's misery, and he's never been more acutely aware that while Lup is alive, Lucretia is effectively dead now, and even her memory is ruined. And it isn't just her. After her, there was Sazed-- a friend, a trusted companion whose selfish actions likewise nearly ruined Taako's life. Is he doomed to feel this again and again? Who will he lose next? How much more can he stand? For all that he has Lup, he's still alone-- she's undead, untouchable, forever out of his reach and set to outlive him and leave him alone in a death she'll never share. Kravitz is just like her, in this sense. Magnus is a human, as is Angus, and both will die long before Taako's own life is over. Everyone that he's dared to feel for, to care for despite his best efforts not to, will leave him alone, sooner or later. He will always end up alone.

All at once, he collapses within, folding beneath the crushing weight of his fear and pain and loss and rage, the horrible, terrifying sensation of love-- love lost, love betrayed, love that has doomed him-- and then... rage is all that emerges. Pain and anger bubble to the top, icy, and his entire body lights up with it, and he sucks a breath into his aching lungs, and he reaches out to the Void and he accepts it.

He doesn't have to feel this way. He doesn't have to feel anything at all.

When he comes to, it's slow; he gazes at the spark before him, his hands going to curl around it, and he feels... better. He feels calm. There's no more pain, or confusion; he doesn't have to feel anything that he doesn't want to anymore. Only love for those who care for him, and nothing for anyone or anything else. Love. He can remove their pain, he can prevent his own, and he knows exactly how. He can ensure that he and Lup, Kravitz, and Barry all share the same eternity, forever.

He exhales slowly, and he smiles.

"I shouldn't have worried."