⇨ CAMPING GROUNDS

[ringleaders]

Who: Everybody!
When: Day 64
Where: The Camping Grounds
What: While the Ringmaster attempts to purge the carnival of magical tracing spells and deal with the angry fire fae in her belly, everyone else is getting sent on an emergency camping trip with some unusual local fauna.
Warnings: Camping.

CRYPTIC CAMPGROUNDS↴ You're given about three hours to prepare, after the Ringmaster tells you her plans for the coming week. There is a vast selection of camping equipment at your disposal, and the means to take along enough food for the length of the stay. The wilderness of the planet you're left on is nearly idyllic, but some people just don't like the great outdoors. ► CRYPTOZOOLOGY: As it turns out, the carnival won't be alone here. There is a varied ecosystem of cryptids to be found as well, living in relative peace and mostly reacting to the newcomers with curiousity. More details can be found on the plotting post. You are free to NPC the cryptids as much as you need to, as long as you stick to the behaviours described. ► DREAMSHARING: There is a player plot going on which will allow characters to share dreams! These are specifically more dreams than nightmares, and the mushi-adept characters will be here to help. ► CHILLAX: There isn't any plot twist for this setting, so this is mostly an opportunity to decompress from the last plot and get ready for the future. The Ringmaster will show up occasionally to help with needed medical treatments and check on things, but won't stick around for long.

Comments

[hippocarnival]

"I made him promise to leave me to die, if I said so." The words feel no less vile coming out. In life, it's enough to shut him up and trap him in his thoughts. But these are his thoughts, so he keeps going.

"Gongenzaka's always protected me. He'd do it no matter what, but I don't want him to if he'll die for it!" He looks up at Lambert, distress etching itself more strongly on his face. "I don't want to lose him. And I don't want him to get hurt anymore, but... I know I'll still hurt him, making him the one who has to stay behind."

[whattaprick]

Lambert considers the words, mulling them over.

"That's a pretty shitty promise," he agrees, coming over to stand by the railing. Almost casually, he asks: "Would you hate him if he couldn't do it?"

[hippocarnival]

Yuya blinks, surprised by the question before he shakes his head.

"No. I couldn't." Maybe frustrated, at first. Grieved, if it really meant Gongenzaka was gone. But hate him, for what, for loving Yuya that much? Yuya can't really fathom it.

"I know it hurts him to try. I'm not as weak as I used to be, but I don't think I can be strong enough to guarantee the Fae won't be stronger. We could really..."

Lose it all. Yuya lets out a breath, his shoulders slumping a little though his grip is still tight. "I don't want it to hurt so much, but I don't see any way it won't."

[whattaprick]

Now the conversation is getting far too serious by far, so Lambert is going to break it by reaching out —and rapping Yuya firmly on the head.

“Stop thinking about it so much,” he says. "Living hurts. There's no getting around that, so your mistake is thinking you can avoid it.”

[hippocarnival]

Yuya flinches when Lambert knocks his head, although it'a successful in shaking him from getting buried in miserable thoughts.

".... I know that." He offers a faint, crooked smile without a lot of force behind it. "I just... didn't think I'd be the one hurting him. Was it wrong?"

[whattaprick]

“Better you than someone else, right?” At least, in Lambert’s opinion. “Would you take it back if you could? Making him promise that?”

[hippocarnival]

Yuya quiets, not entirely sure of his response at first. Nothing's actually stopping him from taking it back now. From apologizing and giving Gongenzaka the peace of mind to give the dedication he would. So why hasn't he?

"No." He says finally, quietly, looking down. He's certain, but it doesn't alleviate the guilt at his selfish stance. "I'd become something he hates to keep him safe."

Yuya would absolutely go that far. He lets that settle in him for a moment, before he glances back up at Lambert. "But... not unless I really had to. I'd rather be something that makes him smile."

[whattaprick]

“Then do everything you can not to put him in a place where he has to fulfil that promise,” Lambert says simply, like that’s the obvious solution.

“Don’t go looking for ways to let yourself die.”

[hippocarnival]

"I'm not." He grumbles, just a little offfended. He's definitely not trying to be careless. He'd die for Gongenzaka, but that would still tear them apart and what Yuya really wants is to stay together.

There's not really any other solution to it that Yuya would accept, though, so his grip loosens and he lets out a sigh.

[whattaprick]

Lambert could offer some other empty platitude to that, but he finds he doesn't have it much in him to try. Instead, for lack of anything to do with his hands, he tucks the book under one arm and starts to light up a cigarette. Even in dreams, the familiar gesture is calming, and it isn't long before he's lit up and leaning against the railing again, expression distant.

It's a nice enough view, even if it's not exactly how he remembers it. But it's still similar enough to remind himself of something...

"This is where we met," he volunteers, without preamble. In the way of dreams, the landscape subtly alters, coming closer to the look of the riverside path in one of Portland's parks. "In another life, anyway."

[hippocarnival]

Yuya glances up and around the scenery as it shifts, smiling just a little at the familiarity. Most of his memories of that life are gone, and yet somehow he still feels something close to it.

"How much do you remember about living there? Besides the month that everything got weird." Okay, the whole thing was weird, but Yuya hopes his intention is clear. Everyone remembers when they were starting to recover their memories.

[whattaprick]

“More than I want to, and not enough,” Lambert admits. It’s strangely not that hard to say.

“The Ringmaster says ... that was real. All of it. Even if I don’t remember all of it, it really happened.”

For a little while, in another life, he was happy. Lambert took a while to accept that ... and now, part of him aches thinking about what he’s already lost, mourning a life that wasn’t really his own.

[hippocarnival]

"That's what I said the first time, wasn't it?" Well, not exactly that, but when they crashed that air balloon and were left to their thoughts until help arrived--what they felt there was real. How much of it was manipulated memories versus manipulated reality, Yuya can't tell. But he knows exactly what he was, what he did, what he felt was true.

But he can tell there's something else to the way Lambert looks at it, now, and Yuya regards him curiously. "Do you want to go back?"

[whattaprick]

Lambert shakes his head, an annoyed expression flickering across his face as he barks with laughter.

"You don't get it," he says, and its his turn to grip the railing and turn away. "Everything was real there. Everything. Growing up with Peridot and Miko, going to school, working at that stupid cafe..." Portland's Lambert had had a life. It wasn't much of one, and it was a small and ignorant existence in a way that Lambert hates thinking about now. But it's not an answer to Yuya's question, and he shakes his head again, more slowly this time.

"I don't want to go back." What he has now, he wouldn't give up for anything. But... "I want a life I can keep."

[hippocarnival]

Yuya's face scrunches up a little at Lambert's response, pursing his lips in a slight frown. But he doesn't bother to argue as Lambert goes on to answer his question.

He leans back a little on the rail, absently swinging a foot. "So... keep this one. You've already decided not to go back and keep being a Witcher, right?"

He knows that sounds way too simple as he says it, so he quickly holds up a finger before Lambert can mock that too. "I know it's not that easy, but you're still going forward for the life you want to keep, right? Like going to England. So keep going, and I think you'll definitely be able to make it happen."

Lambert's strong, he's brave, and he's stubborn. Yuya has no doubt he has what it takes to make and keep the life that makes him happy, no matter what. "I'm glad, actually. It sounded like you didn't like being a Witcher much."

[whattaprick]

“...Thanks.” It’s clear Lambert doesn’t know what to say to that, really. Strange had mocked his plans (even if that was before he’d known what was driving them at the time, it still stung) and even Childermass had expressed his doubts (though he apparently had no intention of intervening) but it’s warming, at least, to think that someone believes in him. Even Lambert has his doubts — will this situation witlh Ignatius only cause more pain, not less? — but as childish and naive as it may be, it feels ... nice, at least.

Though in the strange way dreams have, something twists in the fabric of reality, and Lambert flushes. “Just stubborn,” he mutters, turning away, as he responds to Yuya like he’d spoken his thoughts out loud. It isn’t really brave if he’s doing things without thinking too far ahead, and he’s not strong enough. The fight with Ignatius proved both those points.

[hippocarnival]

Yuya laughs, as if he really did say that aloud. It's hard to tell in dreams, anyway, even dreams that are technically merged with someone else's. He feels that rebuttal, and it brings back something else that Lambert had mentioned not long ago.

"I don't think bravery has to do with being smart." Otherwise Yuya would be out of luck. "And if we compare ourselves to the Fae... we're always going to need to be stronger. That doesn't mean you're not strong and brave now. Creation picked you to be a Guardian, didn't it?"

It didn't pick just anybody, although that doesn't really get to the root of why Lambert seems to think so poorly of himself. Is it about what happened with Ignatius? "Why do you think you're a monster?"

[whattaprick]

"I think Creation is drunk," Lambert says, matter of factly. It made Jasper a Guardian, after all. Lambert can't pretend to know what standards the force apparently powering a good chunk of the multiverse holds, but even Yuya has to admit that seems a bit suspect.

Yuya's second question, though, draws a more pensive expression out of him. It's something he thought he'd more or less accepted a long time ago, but lately...

"Because it's what I was made to be," he says, simply. Literally made, and it wasn't easy. "You think anyone normal chases down monsters for a living? It's the only thing I knew. It's why Strange thought he could count on me to kill him." Lambert can't imagine Strange attempting to extract the same promise out of someone like Rita or Yuya, for one. Maybe he should have. Trying to be something other than a killer, for once, certainly hasn't won him any friends.

[hippocarnival]

Yuya doesn't know Jasper very well, he doesn't see any reason to doubt her above everyone else.

That isn't the part he's focused on, though. He raises an eyebrow slightly as Lambert determines it in his history, but he isn't quite following the logic.

"But that's just your job. It doesn't make you a monster just because you have to fight them." He pauses, considering what Lambert had told him about it before. "It's like pest control, right? And, anyway..."

Normally, Yuya doesn't spread what his friends tell them between each other. But Lambert confides in him, and he's feeling especially loose tongued right now. "Mr. Strange told me he asked you because you're one of his closest friends and he trusts you with hard things. He was really scared, you know, of hurting people because he got brainwashed again."

Not because Lambert was just a killer--because Strange was afraid, and sometimes (a lot of the time) Strange makes terrible decisions when he's volatile. They both know how deep the wounds Nightshade inflicted go.

[whattaprick]

"It's how people see us, back home. Mutants, freaks. They believed it enough they killed most of us, actually. I'm part of a dying breed." There'll be no more witchers after him, not like him. The mob made sure of that.

The comment on Strange doesn't feel out of the ordinary, either. When he wakes up, he's going to regret being so open -- worse than being half-insensible while drugged to the gills.

"I know. But he wasn't scared enough." Lambert's gaze turns distant, looking across the shifting scenery in front of them. "I think he thought dying would be easy."

[hippocarnival]

"Or just easier than killing someone he cares about." Can Yuya blame him for that? "It probably wasn't the best way, but... I don't think he asked you because he sees you like that. I think he just didn't think about how hard it is to be on the other side of that, either."

Strange is insensitive, news at eleven. Yuya didn't get the impression he regretted asking Lambert, not the way Yuya regrets the way he's asked Gongenzaka. To him, it was probably like being backed into a corner.

Yuya leans forward, resting his hands on his knees as he follows his gaze outward. It's not easy to shake off an impression like that, and the way it colors everything else--everyone else. "It's hard to forget the way other people see you, right? You start to believe it, like they see something you don't, but... I'm pretty sure they're the ones who are wrong this time."

There's more he wants to ask and know, but he doesn't believe any of it will change that opinion of Lambert. He cares too much to be a monster at heart.

[whattaprick]

Strange is insensitive and it's probably a tragedy that all his friends have mostly resigned themselves to accepting it instead of ever anticipating he'll change. Unless he sees a reason to do so, Strange will never listen to anyone else but himself.

Maybe that's part of why Lambert envies him and Childermass both, sometimes, for being capable of truly ignoring other people's opinions. He's not meant to care about what other people say about him -- and for the most part, he still doesn't -- but strip away the anger and cynicism he shields himself with, and he's more vulnerable than he'd like to admit. It's why Childermass's words had hurt so much, in Wismuth. Hearing every insecurity he had in the voice of someone he--

"Stop making him think so hard." The gravel-rough, dryly amused voice should be familiar to Yuya, even if the vision it's attached to -- Childermass as he was in Portland, with a very un-Childermass like smirk on his face -- strides up to them out of the shadows, casually resting a hand at the small of Lambert's back as he comes up beside him. The contact has the witcher startle, then flush, glancing at Yuya. Childermass would never be this open, not with someone else around, even if Lambert instinctively leans into it with the familiarity of a well-practiced gesture... and that's when he realizes.

"This is a dream, isn't it?"

[hippocarnival]

Yuya lifts his head, offering Childermass a wave as he approaches. And then what Lambert says makes him stop, "Eh, a dream?"

Yuya blinks slowly, bewildered, before slowly turning to look around the mishmash of his home and Portland. Neither of which are places he should actually be right now.

"Oh, we're dreaming!" He says it like it's a revelation, suddenly looking down at himself like realizing what isn't real is going to make it all stop existing. "Ginko said this could happen..."

He looks up at Lambert, raising an eyebrow. "You're really Lambert, right?" This isn't all Yuya's imagination?

[whattaprick]

“What do you think?” Childermass answers for Lambert, contentedly keeping his arm right where it is.

Lambert’s scowl, in the meantime, only deepens, and he steps away from Childermass. The changeling watches him go with no small amusement, eyes half-lidded.

“Does it matter? How do we wake up?”

[hippocarnival]

Probably real. He raises a brow as Lambert pulls away. He knows, so it isn't like there's anything Lambert has to hide with him.

He shrugs. "I don't know, this doesn't usually happen when I dream. And mushi always make things weird."

He turns his attention to Childermass. "Are you real?"