Field Mission 5: Il Prigioniero, Part 3

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They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food. NAVIGATION 1. THE FATE OF WONDERLAND A. CRESCENDO; FINALE The beauty of the sentient mind is that hope is hard to kill. Even living in illusion for so long, the Bureau of Balance as a whole believed to the end that a happy ending was possible in Wonderland. That's a good thing, even if an unrealistic dream. Without that vision, that hope, there's no way to succeed. You all know that, don't you? You knew it when you went back into the tree to save absolutely anyone that you could. Strangers some of them. Strangers most of them. It didn't matter. There's a happy ending to this story; everyone believed in it as surely as they carried out the innocent, as surely as they carried out each other. You knew it when you got crafty with needle and thread, trying to reassemble the cruel joke Wonderland made with those who lost their way and fell into debt. Nine bodies are saved — including Henrik's, Henrik whose soul is reattached to his body, Henrik whose shaking arms can finally reach out to hold his son. You knew it when you spoke to a dying Yggdrasil, Maya taking in the suffering and sickness of its years, listening with an open heart until, suddenly, as the tree's consciousness began to collapse, she was taken Somewhere Else. To speak with a man in a sharp suit with places to be. Things to do. Planar systems to devour. You know how it is. A poisoned arrow to Yggdrasil's open wound brought it down for good, leaving Shuichi to hurriedly plant the new Golden Leaf for a new World Tree; leaving Sayori and Angus McDonald to pick up the pieces of their dazed comrades. You knew it when you tricked the Mirror Maze into glitching apart, giving it quite simply too much to keep track of. The fact that you found a helper along the way certainly didn't hurt, but let's face it: this was genius. The reward is Niel, crystallized, encasing the Compact. Suffering, as he has been for a very long time. You knew it when three warlocks and a very angry wizard embarked on an ultimately suicidal mission, which just goes to show that the best-laid plans of mice and men sometimes lead to a 50% vore rate. A desperate attempt to keep Adrian distracted for long enough that the Compact could be retrieved was only able to delay him in the end. Just because success is possible doesn't make it guaranteed. Sometimes a fight with the villain ends in stalemate. Sometimes a fight with the villain isn't a fight at all. Sometimes it's an outstretched hand (or two, or four), and sacrifices from each member of the party, and pain, and . . . self-awareness. Sometimes the villain just wants to let go. Sometimes there are happy endings, but this time Niel — fused into the Tree itself, his life tied up in the dying Yggdrasil, extended by the Compact — just wants it to stop. He doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore. His friends are holding his hands as they take the Compact and make it stop. This isn't a happy ending. But that isn't your fault. Hope for a happy ending has, quite literally, saved the world. The nightmare is over. Wonderland slips away. 2. ON THE EDGE OF THE HORIZON B. THE PEOPLE And as suddenly as the myriad indulgences of Wonderland went to ... well, complete shit, there's something of a metaphorical blink of light. Those who were meant to be dead are - both your fellow Reclaimers and the Rolands who could not be fixed in time - but there is still many that are saved. Injuries knot back together at the slightest curative magic. Smog and negativity vanish like they never were, taking the last shambling monsters away with it. The souls of Shadowdale that you have returned to their respective bodies have a new life to forge. Things can be fixed. If only it were that easy. Shadowdale, for all intents and purposes, is uninhabitable. For the first time since the Bureau's mission began, an entire city population has lost its home, and must move on. No matter how much blame you may place on yourself for the way things turned out, whether it's guilt or hope that drives you forward, time, and the cycle of life itself, spins onward. And the people who live march on. To New New Aspen. Matthew has promised to bring the survivors of Shadowdale to his home, to give them a new chance. You have a couple of options here, if you would like to help them. You may serve as guard, helping escort the people of Shadowdale to New New Aspen. Super convenient for you, since it's right by the Moon Base! You may help them build and settle. The people of New New Aspen, only months away from Candlenights, are hard at work carving their annual ornaments. You may help the new residents acclimate - whether it's helping them work the fields, start a business, or take part in their new home's most coveted tradition. And you'll have a new ornament to bring home with you, too. C. THE FOREST The deadened woods you traveled through to reach Shadowdale at the beginning of this mission seem somehow even more silent, cloaked in demise, than when you first stepped in it. The madness is gone, replaced with double the silence, a stillness like nothing you've ever experienced before. It's almost as if your senses, save for however you perceive the light of the sun, are gone. At least, until someone speaks to you. A wood elf - he doesn't give you his name, but he does identify himself as someone who was trapped. Someone who, through your efforts to restore the Rolands, you gave life to again. And he does have a request for you. "This place has little hope for revival," he says, sniffing slightly, taking in the silence around you both. "At least, it has little hope in your lifetime. But I do have something to ask of you. Give this place life, the way you did for the people here. Even if you, or even I, for that matter, will never likely live long enough to see it." That's sort of an existential way of asking you to do some hardcore landscaping. But you will be provided with seeds of all sorts, and you will have the opportunity to plant them as you see fit. If you would like to build a shrine, or remember those who lost their lives here in some other way, you are free to do that as well. There's something else curious, though: literally anything you plant, regardless of what it is, will eventually produce a viable bud sprouting from the gray, dry soil. What does that even mean? If you plant a book of poems, are you going to get a poetree? Are you even going to live long enough to see it in full bloom? D. THE EXHAUSTION You might not be on Lucretia levels of exhausted (she is, remember, zonked, and will remain so all the way back to the Moon Base and beyond for a while), but this has not been an easy mission for anyone who dared to test this Grand Relic's powers. Whether you return from New New Aspen, or whether you finally catch a ride back to the Moon Base from the forest, you are now free to return home. This is your welcome home wildcard, a chance for you to try to recuperate, address anything at all before the next Lunar Interlude begins. You will find that the Moon Base has an awfully somber feel to it, from the inner members of the Bureau to the people serving the Reclaimers in the town. Word is starting to trickle in on what you all went through. blurb code by photosynthesis

Comments

[protegge]

[Looking over Shinjiro's shoulder at nothing at all, Mista smiles.]

[Part of it's just pride. He's just — impressed, honestly, at everything Shinjiro is and everything he's done. This dumb kid who doesn't think he's worth anything is working for himself anyhow, working to make things better, to breathe easier every day. Even if he doesn't realize he's doing it, he is.]

[And then part of it—]

[Relief, isn't it? Just relief at knowing that Shinjiro is still here. After Wonderland, the fact that everyone is still here feels like a gutpunch in the best way. He's floored, he really is, that they didn't lose any Reclaimers for good. Somewhere along the way, he got to a place where he really couldn't stand to lose any of them. Especially not Shinjiro.]

[Not here, not now. Not ever.]

[When he goes to move away, feels that resistance — well, he goes right back into the hug. Rests in it, chin on Shinjiro's shoulder and eyes sliding closed, arms looped around him loose and easy.]

Not going anywhere.

[Not until Shinjiro wants him to. But even then, he won't go far.]

[petsthedog]

[It’s when Mista says that that he’ll hear Shinjiro choke, something a little like a sob still held back. All the guilt and self-loathing that’s been been absent these weeks coalesces to stab him in the chest and gut simultaneously, and his fingers loosen on reflex. The hateful chorus in his mind picks up right where it left off—you should though, you shouldn’t be here, it’s not worth it—and the only thing that keeps him from jerking back is the memory of his talk with Will. The breakdown, point-by-point, of where his fault began and ended. The fact that Will, too, had been drowning in the very same abyss, but he’d reached out a hand to a sad human kid in the hopes that at least he might find the surface someday.

Do you want to stop hating yourself or not? He’d been too selfish with his pain to notice before, but it probably hurt him when his answer was close enough to no. In Wonderland, things changed, but it’s not as simple as just changing back. It’s a lot easier to convince yourself intellectually that you deserve to be forgiven than feel it in your heart, after all.

And Mista is here, and has seen him at his lowest and darkest, and is one of the most trusted in his world—and so, he’s allowed to see this moment of naked vulnerability as the world turns back on its axis and forgets how to make sense. His shoulders tremble a little and a few drips of moisture land on Mista’s shoulders, but no more. When he feels like he can breathe again, he pulls back a little, but not all the way. It’s more like he lets his arms drop and rests his chin on Mista’s collarbone, not quite able to look him in the eye as he tries to find his voice again.]

I....

[It’s soft when he does. Confused. Lost.]

I forgot.

[He forgot so many important things. First her face and voice, then his self-hatred, his fear of himself and Castor in particular, before it became the idea of death in general. Forgot how much it hurts, just being alive.]

[protegge]

Yeah.

[Not a question, not a statement either, really. Just an acknowledgement. He knows, he does. There’s a lot he doesn’t know, like what it feels like to freefall from the high of memory loss back down into fear and loathing. But he can imagine it’s a hell of a fall. Hard to imagine it’d feel good.]

[Maybe that’s why he’s not surprised. Part of why he sought Shinjiro out, too: he knew the fall would come and that it’d be as ugly as it was necessary. If he can help cushion the fall just a little, shit. Why wouldn’t he at least try?]

[Not that he knows what to say, exactly. He knows Shinjiro must be hurting, and maybe he could say that, but it doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t feel right to tell him it’s not his fault, because right now he’s pretty sure everything in Shinjiro would fight a statement like that. In the end, he dips his chin slightly and lets out another quiet noise of acknowledgment.]

‘M glad you remember again. Even the awful shit. [Because it’s important to Shinjiro — and to who Shinjiro is. That’s why.]

[petsthedog]

I don't know if I should be glad.

[When he wasn't afraid, he killed a person. When he wasn't afraid, he saved twenty-nine people. While he was afraid, he nearly got every person in that tree with him killed, trying to save Arisato and Stylosa, before he rolled those dice. What was the difference? What was it that made Castor go out of control or stay within his grasp? God, it hurts.

Did he want to stop hating himself, or not? While he'd forgotten, he did. He made himself useful with no hesitation or regrets. Would he have been better off that way? As he is now, it feels wrong to have forgotten. And fear clenches at his heart when he pictures Mista and the others standing so close to a Persona built only for destruction, in an enclosed space from which there was no escape. Fear let him take precautions. Fear made him care about consequences past the here and now.]

...He--he almost slipped again. I couldn't stand it, we were all gonna die, I'd have been fine givin' up anything, as long as he didn't--

[His voice cracks, there. He stops, then starts again.]

I rolled the dice. And then I wasn't afraid anymore.

[protegge]

Yeah.

[Just, yeah. It's hard to weigh, isn't it? Whether it's good to lose that fear and all the meaning that comes along with it. For Shinjiro, that fear, that caution, that self-loathing is the cross he bears, but it's a memorial, too. It's complicated. Mista knows that.]

[He reaches up to squeeze Shinjiro's shoulder, for lack of proper words.]

. . . You're never gonna be like that, you know. You're never gonna . . . lose the fear completely. Doesn't work like that.

[Trauma, and regret, and guilt.]

But you might lose a little of it. So you don't stay so stuck in it all the time. I dunno.

[Would that be such a bad thing?]

cw for general suicidal themes from hereon

[petsthedog]

[He lets out something like a soft sigh, at that last part, pulling back just a little. Affection and comfort is hard enough to allow himself when he's not talking about the moment that destroyed everything, that makes him struggle not to feel disappointed when he goes to sleep and finds himself waking up in the morning. There's so much to say, so much that he hasn't said, that he doesn't know how to say. Some part of him finds that he wants Mista to understand, and that's almost as alien a feeling as the lack of fear before. It has always been so much easier to run.]

....It would've been just a couple days ago. The anniversary. I...died, on the last one.

[Mista may have had an inkling, based on the state of him, back then, the blood soaked all through his coat -- maybe from the way he talked and acted, too. But this might be the first time he's ever said it to him.]

I was never supposed to make it this far.

[He shoves his hands back into his pockets and stares up at the sky for a minute, as though searching for an answer in the stars that just isn't there. And then abruptly, just starts talking again.]

...You remember the Vista Virs caves? All that double shit? ...Mine forced him out.

[It was the first time he was forced to deal with Castor at the Bureau. The first time since he woke up without his suppressants and was told death didn't stick.]

It tried to kill me. But I wasn't alone, and I....

[He remembers lying on the ground, too weak to stand, begging for Qrow to leave, to let him die there, not to risk his life for someone who didn't even want his own. He sighs, again.]

He was the same as me. With a power that'd hurt people eventually, however careful he was. That idiot...he was determined to save me.

[It's okay to talk about it now, he thinks. Qrow is gone, fucked off to who knows where, and nobody will know who he's talking about. He wants to be mad about it sometimes, because he misses him, but the man's curse probably did something that made him unable to stand showing his face to anyone he cared about ever again. Shinjiro can't pretend not to understand.]

....I tried again with Castor, later on. The first time since that night without....a backup plan.

[He doesn't quite say it, doesn't mention the suppressants because he's only ever told one person about that, and he remembers the pain in his eyes when he heard it. He can't quite bear to see it in Mista's right now.]

--Shit, the point is. I'm. Tryin. Just....dunno how bein' less stuck works. When there's always a chance it'll all go to shit again.