finalbows | HEARTGAME DRESS REHEARSAL

thank u rah u hero

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[ ..somewhere in the pasture, Angel Devil falls down.
His clothes have twisted away into bone-white rags, leaving a body covered over with only thick swathes of red fur, and downy feathers. His long tail is curled into a tense arc, banded fur standing on end.

The air wavers like he’s a heat mirage, not a man. He’s boiling away with absolutely stupid amounts of arcane power… and, most frighteningly, he does not seem in control of the fact that it is there and being brought to bear. It’s impossible to get any closer to him.

When he speaks, it’s quite timid. ]

Ah,
I thought… I had a little more time.

[ (and in a blinding flash of light, there is the sound of something breaking.) ]

~KRRSHHK~

[any observers will see, strangely see-through and superimposed on the scene, some kind of vast tree, illusionary roots twisting over and around to frame a door. the door itself is wrought of opaque stained glass in blacks and whites and greys; a stylized rendition of Angie in that strangely ragged, feathered form, curled in on himself, eyes closed. Angie himself is nowhere to be seen. ]

instead, a shadow . . . steps into view from behind the door. for a moment it looks like nothing so much as a second genome – then it turns, gaining features and definition with the movement. The monkey tail separates into three plumes; a ponytail unfurls into wings that lift up from the sides of the head.

Teleute(?) is here, dressed in her customary black, but there is colour in her skin, and her hair and eyes are blue. she’s frowning.]

. . . well. This is the least I can do before I go, in exchange for the safe harbor.

[she lifts her head, nodding to any observers, and gestures at the door.]

You’ll want to head in there now if you don’t wish to lose your flockmate, I think. Even the false-death of this place won’t be much help to him, if his soul is left to finish pulling itself apart.

My sisters and I can maintain the way into and out of it for you, but we were not made to knit such wounds by ourselves. Have a care.

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From:

wants_the_phd

Bro.

You were so sad to leave the world behind that you tried to take it all with you.

I imagine it takes some substantial amount of grief to attempt to destroy the multiverse about it. That is at least slightly above and beyond.

From:

finalbows

[ tries to roll over away from her but ow
lays back where he was. ]

"Fine.
Yes. I was profoundly sad. What else is there to say about it. I even used that fact as a blunt force bludgeon to your face."

From:

wants_the_phd

[she looks at him warmly, without condemnation or hostility.]

For all Garland spent your formative years breaking your bones,
and you spent your remaining years devastating an entire planet,
for all your guilt, and heartache, and remorse, and yearning,

...you still haven't learned how to suffer.

There is an art to it. I will teach you.

It will not hurt. Rather, it will help you hurt less, if you practice.

From:

finalbows

[ angie has said many many words to her today, to this point, verbal or otherwise.
he is takes a moment to not say words at this time and wait to listen, down in the quiet hollows of this tree. ]

From:

wants_the_phd

First, I want you to think about these hurts you've experienced in life that still cause you pain. Wake those painful memories up.

Garland brought you into this world by accident. He tortured you. You could never please him, no matter how hard you tried. You felt like an outsider due to what you are. He forced you to destroy the thing you loved most. For the sake of that goal, you had to do things that you hated, for years. And when you finally thought you were free, you discovered he'd already killed you. You hurt so much in that moment that you lashed out at the world. You destroyed that dragon's children. You ended countless innocent lives for no real reason. You died without getting to see more of the world you loved. You were caught by Chaos to fight and kill and suffer and die for a cause you didn't believe in. When you tried to leave, someone tampered with your thoughts and memories to force you to continue.

Bring those memories up. Feel the emotions that they evoke.

From:

wants_the_phd

Next, listen to the thoughts you have when you think of these hurts. You don't have to tell me what they are. But you may have thoughts like,

"This isn't fair."
"I wish I hadn't."
"What have I done."
"I did terrible things."
"I deserve to feel this way."
"I never should have done that."
"If only I hadn't been born like this."
"What could I have done differently."
"I wish I knew then what I know now."
"If only there had been been another way."
"There was another way, but I didn't see it."

"If only I were different."
"If only they were different."
"If only the situation had been different."

Take a moment to notice what thoughts you're having.

Edited Date: 2024-04-18 03:18 pm (UTC)

From:

finalbows

[ "wake these painful memories up."

nothing visibly happens, at first. angie stays stock still, save for the hard-won rise-fall of his chest.

besides their little mossy platform, the hole in the deeps of the tree begins to fizzle out into vapor, revealing rolling, golden clouds. stone arches. a coliseum of despair, riddled with the leering eyes of dead Terra. ]

From:

finalbows

[ though moving hurts, the feeling of sheer exposure hurts more. he pushes up to an inelegant sit.

a pair of giant iron rings have started spinning, slowly, laboriously, around their sole sliver of green. ]

From:

finalbows

[ the wails of the dead are so loud. ]

From:

finalbows

[ two pairs of bizarre parodies of wings appear to encircle the two of them. the larger, made of chitin or stone, unmoving. unyielding. the parts grind against one another with an ugly noise.

the other, insidious, dark, undulating. ever reaching. a hungry void.]

From:

finalbows

[ if those wings closed down around the two of them, they would surely become their coffin.

and, of course, they start to. ]

From:

finalbows

[

when there's only slivers of gold shining down on them, like the rays coming down into that wondrous canyon, the mask of hope glows the same color as Azdaja's Life spell.

And the forward march of their doom stops.

Angel Devil hadn't uttered one single sound. ]

Edited Date: 2024-04-18 03:42 pm (UTC)

From:

wants_the_phd

[How could it be that doing mental exercises inside the metaphorical representation of angie's mind could have Repercussions]

From:

wants_the_phd

[She is TRYING VERY HARD TO DISREGARD WHATEVER THE FUCK THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE. she doesn't even understand what is going on here, except it's probably manifestations of pain feelings or something. In which case, this is what is supposed to be happening. She'll take it as a good sign.]

Those thoughts you're having -- the regrets, the "if only"s, the "woulda, coulda, shoulda"s -- are your mind's way of trying to reject the pain of those events. It's bargaining with the past to try to find the way to present that's different than the one you're in now. It's trying to find a way for those hurts to not reach you.

Edited Date: 2024-04-18 06:37 pm (UTC)

From:

finalbows

[ how could you call him out on his "If something catches me out that was just ME slipping and obviously will not happen more if i just act even squirrelier than ever" mindset like this ]

From:

wants_the_phd

But the rejection of pain is what causes it to metastasize into suffering. It is by clinging to those thoughts that the pain gets worse.

Imagine you've acquired an infection, and it hurts terribly. By telling yourself things like "if only I hadn't hurt myself," or "I deserve this" or "why did this have to happen," you are not treating it. You are just letting the infection fester and get worse. It is only when we acknowledge it exists that we can clean it out and start to heal.

From:

wants_the_phd

So.

Take that grief you have. Gather up that lifetime of hurt, and hold it in your arms.

And acknowledge: yes. Those things happened. They cannot be undone. You can't change the past.

Acknowledge: there was a reason why things went the way they did. There was a sequence of events that led to those decisions and those events.

Acknowledge: it hurts. It is okay that it hurts. Pain is an inevitable part of life. Notice how it feels in your body. Maybe it's a tightness in your throat. Maybe it's a burning in your eyes. Maybe it's an ache in your heart. This is what grief feels like. It's natural, normal, and okay to feel it when grief hits you.

So feel it. Let it in. It's only once you let it in that it can pass through you and start to heal.

From:

finalbows

[ ... ]

[ he thinks of a cat,

dying for the sons of the wound, the very literal magic pain-fang he'd carefully held for literal millenia in his heart, who had died bitterly wishing he'd still lived some more. ]

Edited Date: 2024-04-18 07:05 pm (UTC)

From:

finalbows

"..."

"It really hurts."

"..."

"When does it stop doing that."

From:

wants_the_phd

When you have fully processed it. It's something you will need to practice and work on to see results.

[She casts Cure on him.]

Like many wounds, it may continue aching even after it heals. But this is how you keep your injuries from crippling you.

Edited Date: 2024-04-19 12:45 am (UTC)

From:

wants_the_phd

[She lifts her voice to address Keith David]

Excuse me, Narrator: a Mask of Tenderness, if you please.

[Holds out hands for a mask to materialize in]

From:

finalbows

[ ... ]

MASK OF TENDERNESS
"A wound can only be treated and dressed when exposed; when you take your hand away from it."

Edited Date: 2024-04-18 07:48 pm (UTC)

From:

wants_the_phd

[She holds it gently in her hands, looking it over.]

[She removes her own Mask of The End she's still wearing.]

[She presses the two masks together, one inside the other, and they begin to change into something else.]

MASK OF RADICAL ACCEPTANCE
"It's only by acknowledging the present that we can heal from our past and welcome the future."

From:

wants_the_phd

[She smooths her fingers over the mask's cheek, looking at it like an old friend. As if this is something that's been an important part of her own heart for a very long time.]

[She's not going to force this onto
his face like she did with Rebellion.]

[Instead, she offers it to him as a gift, for him to take if he feels ready to heal.]

Edited Date: 2024-04-18 08:05 pm (UTC)

From:

finalbows

[ he
takes it.

the blue blends perfectly with that of the mask already on his face.

as the wings begin to shudder, to lower, the environment around them changes again. Azdaja finds herself on the weird, fibrous floor.

Angel Devil just kinda has a whole vibe like (' _ ' ) because

why
is he covered with rainbow duct tape and yarn-- ]

Edited Date: 2024-04-18 08:14 pm (UTC)

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