[Heart Game] From the ashes we can build

[castaside]

WHO: Macaque, Red Son, Wukong, Korone, Donnie, Cole, Wash
WHAT: Soul fixin'
WHEN: March 9
WHERE: Red Son's house, Blossomcrown
WARNINGS: will be marked

Comments

Re: Lobby

[bluediligence]

[ Hey.

Hey, Macaque?

Jesus Christ Macaque put the steel chair down before you kill her holy fucking shit. ]

[ It takes a minute. She doesn't break down sobbing, not this time, but she's pretty sure the lump in her throat could be classed as a new continent, and oh, the way her eyes burn. So. Yeah. It takes a goddamn minute for her to wrestle back her composure. She sniffs. Blinks hard.

Points at her shadow like she's an Ace Attorney lawyer. ]

You. You are a menace.

[ Sniffs again. Rubs her forearm roughly across her eyes, wiping away tears that haven't quite fallen. She grabs a blank page from her sketchbook and her pencil case from inside her hammerspace bag, and get to work. It won't be a masterpiece. As good an artist as she is, there's no time for that. What it will be is evocative — a loose, colorful sketch, heavy on her blue and his inky purple, of the two of them dancing together on the ice, hand in hand, fast and flying and free.

She finishes it with a message:

"All I need is for us to be ourselves, together.
Love,
🪶子"

Both the feather and the kanji are in her signature shade of blue, and the signature, simple though it may be, took almost as long as the drawing itself. She slips it carefully underneath ice skate, lets out a shuddery breath, shakes out her hands, and moves on to touch the arcade game console. ]

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

But he likes this steel chair :<

The shadow smiles a violet smile and shrugs, like he has no idea how that got there. When she places the drawing under the skate, the shadow plucks the paper's shadow and tucks it away as if for safekeeping.

You are Macaque and you are inside the heart of one Choco Korone. You are at the arcade, snooping around in hopes of finding another key, perhaps, something useful, anything. You end up on a box wrapped with caution tape, distaste building in your chest at yet another invasion of privacy as you look at the post-it note attached to it.

"My feelings were my feelings for a reason, weren't they? They were real and they were mine. No matter how big and scary they were ...

... I hoped I'd be grow with them, through them, in time. Even if it took years and years and years, even if it was hard and messy and painful. I hoped I'd be able to make peace with my past on my own terms."

It takes extreme control not to crumple the thing in your shaky grip. Your own mind, full of holes and voids because you couldn't handle your feelings, contrasted with a brave young girl who wants nothing more than to be true to herself. It highlights your selfishness and cowardice with embarrassing intensity, and it fits on a fucking post-it.

You'll never blame Donnie for it, nor even admit that he has responsibility for what went wrong, that is unthinkable. The fault is your own, all of it. You're supposed to be the one he and Korone look up to, and look what you've done.

This is no time or place to break down, but you want to anyway. You want to scream until Korone hears you, tell her that she's braver than you'll ever be, that she deserves better for a teacher and friend. Donnie deserves better. Wukong and MK for damn sure deserved better than to be reduced to a nothingness where feelings used to be.

You give yourself ten seconds to be devastated and ashamed, and then you move on to the next.

Re: Lobby

[bluediligence]

[ She'd expected a lot of things.

... That wasn't one of them. For a moment, a long moment, she stares almost sightlessly down at the little miniature, her breath caught sharply, painfully, in her chest.



She sits down, and reaches for her shadow's hands. ]

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

The shadow reaches back, and its fingers curl around yours. You feel warm and loved and cherished, and you feel Macaque being sorry that he didn't tell you sooner, that he did this at all.

Re: Lobby

[bluediligence]

[ Being able to sense someone else's feelings like this might normally wig her the fuck out. Not this time. ]

... I want you to know something, Macchan.

[ She squeezes his hands. His, because while the shadow may be hers, it's still him. ]

And I want you to know it comes with my whole heart behind it.

[ She doesn't know how we'll he'll be able to feel her feelings, if he even can at all. Still ... Korone makes a point of lowering her walls, such as they are, and letting herself feel. ]



[ She chirps (her own, pitched lower), love

She chirps (her own, blended avian and reptilian, pitched lower), love

She chirps (his), love ]

I love you.

I love you for all the parts of yourself you've shown to me. For each and every single one of the moments we've shared so far, good and bad and everything in between. For the future.

And when we fuck up, because we're both gonna, we'll work through it. Just like we'll work through this. And I hope that one day ... one day, you'll be able to stop holding your hurts against yourself.

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

There is a chirp back: love. But not from the shadow, it's from the shadow-monkeys that have been hiding in the trees. First one chirp, then three, then a dozen. Little love chirps from all around. There's a swell in the cicada's humming and the little coqui songs from the frogs, and one can only imagine that they're saying the same.

The shadow nods, and smiles. They'll work through it.

Re: Lobby

[bluediligence]

[ SAPPY AS FUCK ]

I think ... maybe, if you want to - maybe we could talk about that one more? Later. After.

[ She smiles back at him, a tear finally spilling over. ]

... You really did work hard to make all this, didn't you? For us and for yourself. [ She looks back up at the desk. ] Like ... little moments in time that echo through the ages. Reminds me of quilting. And stars. Wayfinders.

[ Back to him again. ]

D'you want us to bring them along?

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

Maybe he likes Sappy As Fuck when it comes to his daughter.

The shadow hesitates, but nods. Not his favorite thing, talking about the ways he fucked up, but for her, he'll try it.

He gives a thumbs up to her question about taking the things, then a wobblehand. Take them, but also something else.

Re: Lobby

[bluediligence]

Thank you. [ She knows it's hard. It's hard for her. ] Honestly, it's kind of a selfish request on my part. I don't... I don't mind - that is, I'm not upset with you for seeing what you saw in my heart? But maybe talking would help us understand ourselves and each other a little better.

[ She slowly pulls away, standing back up. ]

Something else? More items, something you want us to do with them, or both? [ She gives him a chance to react and respond, her hand hovering over but not yet touching the model of her pendant. ]

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

The shadow holds up two fingers; the second one, that there's something you need to do with them.

The shadow then holds out a hand, above which hovers the five items on Korone's desk in miniature. And then a foot away, another pigeon symbol, this one over a strange wobbling grey that's not quite a shadow.

The shadow plucks one of the five items from his hand seemingly at random and puts it in the strange non-shadow grey hole, and the hole closes up. The shadow gives a thumbs up sign. That's what you're supposed to do, apparently.

Those labeled weirdnesses over by the elevators aren't portals, they're holes that need to be filled with memories. It's up to you to choose which one.

Re: Lobby

[bluediligence]

[ ... OH ... ]

One each, and it's a choice that matters. Right?

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

A firm nod from the shadow.

Re: Lobby

[bluediligence]

[ Excuse her while she has fifty thousand feelings about this.

It's heavy.

It's responsibility.

It's trust, and it's love.

Korone bites her lip, slowly curling and uncurling her hands. ]

… You're trusting us with this. [ She speaks half to herself. ] You chose these memories for a reason, and you're trusting us. [ To make this choice. To help him as best they possibly can. She can't help but think of the memory he showed her of her heart. Of her own complicated mess of feelings.

Of Church's heart, and Donnie's. ] ... I —

If we're doing this with your blessing —

I'll do my best for you, Macchan.

MK CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL

[noodleboi]

"We gotta choose? I...oh. OH. Uh...should we all talk about it? We gotta pick one, right? What does the choice do? Like, does it mean we go somewhere in his soul or we plugging holes? Like, that's a lot of freedom. Like a lot a lot of freedom!"

Excuse MK as he just stared at Korone and her shadow. He'd watched the little demonstration. They got to choose the buttons. Great. Time to go into overthinking big brain mode here.

"What does Macchan mean?" A good and easy distraction? Yes please.

[bluediligence]

… Both, I think. Plugging these holes lets us go deeper — and I'm guessing he's going to have less control over our options the deeper we go.

[ So. Like. No pressure! ]

He has faith in us for a reason. He — [ Slow breath in, slow breath out. ] He knows exactly what he's asking, and what it means for him and for us. [ It's one HELL of a trust fall. ] We all know him in our own ways. He's a part of our hearts, and we're part of his. If we let that guide us …

We can do this. [ Screaming internally the whole time. ]

Talking through our choices couldn't hurt. Wash-nii and I helped a friend in … kind of a similar way, once, sort of, except we were mostly using our words and our feelings rather than memories. Leaning on and helping each other helped us help him.

[ Oh, but that question though. OH. Heck. She reddens, embarrassed. ]

It's, it's a nickname. -chan is an informal honorific. [ Extremely informal, in this case. ]

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

It's heavy, and it's trust, and it's love, and it's sort of crazy. But what is opening your soul to the people you love if not all those things?

The shadow crosses his arms and grabs his opposite shoulders like he's miming giving her a hug. He trusts her, all of them, to put him back together properly.

Re: Lobby

[bluediligence]

I'm gonna hug you until you squeak when we get out of here.

[ She is going to hug him with EVERYTHING SHE HAS.

But for now, she tocuhes the model pendant. ]

Re: Lobby

[forgingfires]

[Oh]

[Oh shit.]

Are...we supposed to keep these items with us? Use them with...with different holes?

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

The shadow mimes putting things in your bag, and also picking more things up. Seems you keep these and also find other ones.

Re: Lobby

[forgingfires]

[He nods and he'll go pick up the items.]

[He...doesn't see the memories again, right, or does he need to cry again?]

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

Nope, the memory is involuntary just the once (per person per item for those that can be touched by multiple people, which the ones found on your desk cannot). Although if you need a reminder of what memory an item holds you can get a brief one by thinking about it.

Re: Lobby

[schrodingerscockroach]

Oooooooh, so that's the deal. I thought there was a theme going on.

So this would be like...how you approach us?

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

A shrug from the shadow. It's a lot of things that are too complicated to act out via charades when he doesn't have full access to his powers here.

Re: Lobby

[schrodingerscockroach]

You severely underestimate my skills at charades.

But still, this seems the first step.

[There is a pause.]

You do not know the amount of temptation there is in doing the post it note.

Re: Lobby

[castaside]

A chuckle, and then he mimes putting a post-it over his heart. If you want him to love bad jokes with a burning passion, be his guest.