[ Sharon swings the door open soon after and steps aside in silent invitation. The house is dark, the only light coming from a dim lantern in the living room, and all the curtains are drawn as if to block out the outside world.
Sharon herself looks worn. Her usually messy hair flat and lifeless and there are deep violet crescents beneath her eyes. It’s obvious she hasn’t been taking care of herself, still dressed in crumpled pajamas from days earlier. Exhaustion and grief clings to her like a second skin. ]
[D steps inside and closes the door behind himself. The lack of light doesn't bother him in the slightest and he also shows no sign of judgment for Sharon's appearance.]
If staying here is difficult you can come back with me. There are extra rooms, but no kitchen.
[ the offer seems to throw Sharon through a loop. truthfully, everything in the house reminds her of Rose. she’d chosen this place; she’d picked out the decor and the furniture and had set it up in ways that only her mother could. hell, the place still smelled of her: clean and floral and a little sweet. ]
I don’t know if I could ever really leave this place, it’s got so much of her that… [ she trails off. this house was her mother’s and Sharon would treasure it like she’d treasured the little things she’d managed to keep from childhood after losing her. ] But maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to stay somewhere else for a while.
No kitchen, though? [ she says as she shuffled to the living room.
there’s a pile of blankets on the couch where she’s spent a chunk of time and an empty bottle of whiskey on the coffee table, along with a variety of long emptied tea cups scattered here and there. there’s no sign of any plate ware or evidence she’s bothered to eat in here. And hung on the wall in front of the couch like it was the centerpiece of the room is a painting with Sharon’s signature scrawled in the corner. ]
Even if you don't completely leave, some space might help.
[D follows along, carefully cataloging the things he sees and the state of the place. The pile of blankets and the empty bottle, tea cups everywhere and a painting across from the couch.]
I don't eat, and it's an extradimensional tower inside a coffin. It was made for someone who also doesn't eat. There's a place for a kitchen in the building I'm keeping it in but I don't have anything in it.
[D barely spends any time in the coffin and uses it more for storage and a place to put people when they need a safe space than anything else. He's not comfortable sleeping in there or spending unnecessary time inside it.]
[ she nods her head in slow agreement. it would be wise for her to spend a little time away from here. every corner of this house was a reminder she was alone here now. she’s never been on her own before and it’s so much scarier than she thought it could be. she never realized how much she relied on her parents for comfort and safety and she felt like a child.
and though she logically knew she wasn’t completely alone in Trench, she felt a loneliness and an ache even with people she could turn to. ]
A coffin in an abandoned house. [ she snorts softly under her breath like the whole thing was a little absurd. ] Sometimes I think you like the world to see you as spooky.
[ for all the grief and ache in her chest, she still had a little something left to tease him with, though her tone is heavier than it would be usually. ]
I’d want to bring a few things with me just for… comforts sake. [ she kind of assumes his extra dimensional tower coffin may be lacking in the comforts she’s used to. ] If that’s okay?
If it was a dimensionally expanded wardrobe it would be just as useful but vampires like to be dramatic. And everyone with a bit of sense knows better than to approach a vampire's coffin. They're always heavily guarded with traps.
[D gives a short nod.]
Yes. The bedrooms were already furnished when I found it but you can bring whatever you want. Just no animals.
[Not because D doesn't like animals, but because between himself and Nico any ordinary animal might die of terror if it was in the coffin for too long. The furniture is actually a bit excessive and luxurious all things considered with a distinct 'goth summer villa' feel to the decor. At least the paintings are nice.]
[ all right. she makes a mental note to not approach strange coffins as vampires trap the things. it makes sense when she thinks about it but she never considered it before. ]
I don’t do pets so… [ she trails off with a shrug. pets were a lot of work and she often forgets to care for herself after all. a pet, as much as she kind of wanted something cute to cuddle, would just be a new stress.
she leans down next to the couch and scoops up a small brown teddy bear. she smiles down at its little face and rubs it’s left ear between her index and thumb. ]
My parents got this for me when my nightmares got worse and I started to sleep walk. It used to be really bad —— dangerous, actually.
I was being called to. The other part of my soul was reaching out to me and I’d try to get to it. [ she shakes her head as if she knows how that all sounds without a real explanation but she continues ] I don’t get the call anymore because we’re one again but… whenever I deal with a lot of stress, the nightmares get worse.
I start to see them when I’m awake, D. Sometimes it’s just split seconds of the other world, like it’s waiting for me to open it up again, but other times it can last until someone snaps me out of it. [ it’s obvious she’s been meaning to bring this up to him but it seems especially important if she’s going to be staying in his weird extra dimensional coffin. ]
[D can understand the concept of the other part of a soul reaching out. While not exactly the same, the connection created between Nobles and their bite victims can cause a similar tether that draws one to the other.
He's quiet for several long moments before he speaks again.]
I have some questions if you feel up to answering. If not, we can go and you can get some rest.
[That's not an easy thing to do without killing someone. Becoming one again couldn't have been easy or pleasant either.]
I figured as much. [ she wouldn’t have brought any of this up if she wasn’t prepared for questions. she presses the stuffed animal against her chest, still idly rubbing at it with her fingers. ] Shoot, and I’ll answer the best I can.
[ she plops down onto the couch and looks up at him expectantly. ]
[ Sharon chews at the skin on her inner cheek for a long, thoughtful moment as she tries to find the right words to explain. It’s hard. she’s told very few people here in Trench and she thought it would get easier but each time felt like the first time, words catching in her throat and reopening wounds she knew would never fully heal. ]
That memory you saw, of the burning? When Christabella called me the whelp of the demon, she wasn’t completely wrong. [ it stung to admit. it felt a lot like saying it was all her fault (and she knew it was). ] They’d burned my other self alive when she was nine all for the great sin of being born. Her burning was meant to be some cleansing [ there’s a great bitterness in her words and her face twists up with a flash of pure hatred ] a ritualistic sacrifice to stop a great evil but the reality was they’d burned a child alive for their own amusement and she lashed out.
She tapped into all the hurt and rage and trapped them all in the other world, a world full of monsters just like them so they could feel even an ounce of the pain and fear they’d put me through. [ here, she slips from third person to first but doesn’t seem to notice and reverts directly after. truthfully, the third person explanation is more for his benefit than her own. she is that little girl and always has been. ] But she was as trapped as they were. Unable to move. Or speak. Suffering endlessly, body never healing, pain never ending, rage always building.
It took its toll. She thought some part of her deserved to be free from the endlessness of Silent Hill, from the endlessness of The Order and her vengeance, and so she split her soul apart. She took out all she thought was good and put it out into the world in the form of a newborn.
Me. [ that was longer than she’d meant it to be so she gives it a moment for him to process all the new information. ]
[That is so very different from anything D would have guessed. Ghosts who die in terrible and unjust circumstances are stronger and more vengeful, but the ability to split themselves and have that part be reborn isn't something he's heard of before.]
She was wrong about you. I've seen true demons, they're not uncommon where I'm from. Whatever you are or aren't, you aren't a demon.
[Still, this is very different from anything he expected it will take him some time to think about it.]
And you're together again, so all of you made it out of there.
[ she’s not sure whether she agrees with him or not — you get called something so often you eventually begin to believe it — but it does seem to provide her some hint of comfort. she pulls her legs up onto the couch as if to make herself smaller. ]
She never wanted us to merge. It’s what the Order had wanted since they’d learned that I existed. I was meant to live a life free of the suffering she took on for me and she would stay there torturing the Order and keep them trapped there. [ the Order did a good job torturing one another, though. they’d grown so rabid in their faith they turned on one another for the slightest sign of corruption or sin. ]
But they’d found ways to get out for little bits of time using strange blood rituals I still don’t understand. They’d hunted for my dad and I since after Rose had rescued me from that burning in the church. We were on the run for nine years before they caught us and they took my dad, not me.
I had to go back willingly. [ more because they’d grown to fear even her as Sharon. ] And I’d do anything for my dad. So I did. And when Alessa found out, she was so angry and afraid that she was willing to kill me to keep us from them but she couldn’t.
I forced us to merge, giving the Order exactly what they’d wanted: the vessel for their god. Incubator is the term Claudia used. [ the word is flinched out like it’s some still fresh wound. not mother not vessel, she was meant to be an incubator. ]
Luckily, she underestimated me, I saved my dad and Vincent and then I wound up here. [ it’s all much more complicated than how she explained it but she was trying to keep a very long story as brief as she could while relaying the important pieces. ]
[D isn't one to show affection, but comfort is something he can do. With Sharon curling herself up to appear smaller and talking about something so difficult, he's not going to withhold what little bit of comfort he has to offer. When she's done speaking again, D lays his sword and its sheath across his lap and reaches over with his left arm to put it around her shoulders.
He knew she had been through a lot but he hadn't known the extent of it. That's the kind of thing that would be rare or strange to hear even in his dimension where monsters and supernatural rituals are common.]
You must have a very strong will to have accomplished all that.
I just have one more question. When did your guardian begin to exist.
[ the touch comes unexpected and she tenses instinctively but that tightness fades in a single breath and she leans lightly back into it. she knows D well enough to know he’s a man of distance and she appreciates the touch because, despite her tendency to force distance herself, she is big on touch and affection. given all she’s experienced in life, it’s no surprise she likes to feel that someone cares.
she looks to him with a thoughtfulness in her shadowed blue eyes, lower lip tucked between her teeth as she thinks. ] I’m not sure. [ her gaze turns distant as she wracks her memories for an answer ] My memories from back then, they’re hazy; indistinct. Most of them are… are just feelings.
It’s possible he was created the moment I forced the world to change. I mean, a lot of that plane is just a reflection of me and my suffering and I’d needed someone, anyone, to help me.
And I wanted them all to hurt so badly. I didn’t want my pain to stop, I just wanted them to suffer too. [ there’s shame there but it’s minute. she’ll never regret her actions, not completely. they deserved what happened to them. ]
If you can't remember it you might have blocked it out to protect yourself.
[D has had people cry on him before and he doesn't mind. He wouldn't mind if Sharon leaned on him for that but doesn't think she will. So he's offering the touch he wouldn't normally volunteer.]
You might still have a connection to that place instead of merely remembering it. It was the place where you suffered, and so when you suffer your mind is drawn there or to those memories.
[Sharon's guardian makes D think she's still connected, but he's not quite ready to voice those theories.]
Maybe. [ it’s something she’s considered before. there are gaps in her memory. she’s always chalked it up to how much was happening. between the relentless physical pain her body was going through post-burning to the mental anguish, it made sense to her that some things got lost. but it’s possible that some of her actions back then had scarred her more than she could handle. ]
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. [ she whispers like it’s some fearful thing or a dangerous secret the rest of the world shouldn’t be privy to ] I sometimes wonder if it’s with me, that wherever I exist it exists. That maybe one day something will happen here and push me over some imaginary ledge and I’ll drag the people here into that hell.
[ that frightens her as much as it comforts her and the comfort she feels disturbs her. ]
I can't say that's impossible, but it's not as dire as it sounds.
The odds that no one here has an ability that could get us out are very low.
[D could probably do it, but Sharon's connection to this place make his options risky to her in this hypothetical situation.]
We can work on exploring your connection to your guardian and the other world if that's something you want, but that's a path that might leave you unable to return to how you are now.
But they’ll see, D. [ her words are still a whisper and her eyes are wet and wide, the fear in them plain. ] They’ll see what I am there.
[ her fear is less that people will be trapped there and more the possible judgement that would come after. the looks. the whispers. even the faintest possibility that she’ll be seen like Alessa had been, a demon and a monster and the living embodiment of sin, makes her heart start to race and palms sweat. ]
I don’t want to be seen as a monster again and I’m afraid that’s what I am. If I open that place up, that’s what I’ll be again.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-08-06 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-06 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-06 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-06 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-06 10:51 pm (UTC)text -> action [that evening]
Date: 2022-08-07 10:13 pm (UTC)[D rides up on Jarem, the large hooves on the ground the only sound that signals his approach before he's knocking on the door of Sharon's house.]
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Date: 2022-08-08 01:38 am (UTC)Sharon herself looks worn. Her usually messy hair flat and lifeless and there are deep violet crescents beneath her eyes. It’s obvious she hasn’t been taking care of herself, still dressed in crumpled pajamas from days earlier. Exhaustion and grief clings to her like a second skin. ]
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Date: 2022-08-08 02:54 am (UTC)If staying here is difficult you can come back with me. There are extra rooms, but no kitchen.
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Date: 2022-08-09 02:54 am (UTC)I don’t know if I could ever really leave this place, it’s got so much of her that… [ she trails off. this house was her mother’s and Sharon would treasure it like she’d treasured the little things she’d managed to keep from childhood after losing her. ] But maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to stay somewhere else for a while.
No kitchen, though? [ she says as she shuffled to the living room.
there’s a pile of blankets on the couch where she’s spent a chunk of time and an empty bottle of whiskey on the coffee table, along with a variety of long emptied tea cups scattered here and there. there’s no sign of any plate ware or evidence she’s bothered to eat in here. And hung on the wall in front of the couch like it was the centerpiece of the room is a painting with Sharon’s signature scrawled in the corner. ]
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Date: 2022-08-09 06:30 pm (UTC)[D follows along, carefully cataloging the things he sees and the state of the place. The pile of blankets and the empty bottle, tea cups everywhere and a painting across from the couch.]
I don't eat, and it's an extradimensional tower inside a coffin. It was made for someone who also doesn't eat. There's a place for a kitchen in the building I'm keeping it in but I don't have anything in it.
[D barely spends any time in the coffin and uses it more for storage and a place to put people when they need a safe space than anything else. He's not comfortable sleeping in there or spending unnecessary time inside it.]
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Date: 2022-08-09 08:59 pm (UTC)and though she logically knew she wasn’t completely alone in Trench, she felt a loneliness and an ache even with people she could turn to. ]
A coffin in an abandoned house. [ she snorts softly under her breath like the whole thing was a little absurd. ] Sometimes I think you like the world to see you as spooky.
[ for all the grief and ache in her chest, she still had a little something left to tease him with, though her tone is heavier than it would be usually. ]
I’d want to bring a few things with me just for… comforts sake. [ she kind of assumes his extra dimensional tower coffin may be lacking in the comforts she’s used to. ] If that’s okay?
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Date: 2022-08-10 06:24 pm (UTC)[D gives a short nod.]
Yes. The bedrooms were already furnished when I found it but you can bring whatever you want. Just no animals.
[Not because D doesn't like animals, but because between himself and Nico any ordinary animal might die of terror if it was in the coffin for too long. The furniture is actually a bit excessive and luxurious all things considered with a distinct 'goth summer villa' feel to the decor. At least the paintings are nice.]
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Date: 2022-08-11 11:52 pm (UTC)I don’t do pets so… [ she trails off with a shrug. pets were a lot of work and she often forgets to care for herself after all. a pet, as much as she kind of wanted something cute to cuddle, would just be a new stress.
she leans down next to the couch and scoops up a small brown teddy bear. she smiles down at its little face and rubs it’s left ear between her index and thumb. ]
My parents got this for me when my nightmares got worse and I started to sleep walk. It used to be really bad —— dangerous, actually.
I was being called to. The other part of my soul was reaching out to me and I’d try to get to it. [ she shakes her head as if she knows how that all sounds without a real explanation but she continues ] I don’t get the call anymore because we’re one again but… whenever I deal with a lot of stress, the nightmares get worse.
I start to see them when I’m awake, D. Sometimes it’s just split seconds of the other world, like it’s waiting for me to open it up again, but other times it can last until someone snaps me out of it. [ it’s obvious she’s been meaning to bring this up to him but it seems especially important if she’s going to be staying in his weird extra dimensional coffin. ]
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Date: 2022-08-12 04:00 am (UTC)He's quiet for several long moments before he speaks again.]
I have some questions if you feel up to answering. If not, we can go and you can get some rest.
[That's not an easy thing to do without killing someone. Becoming one again couldn't have been easy or pleasant either.]
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Date: 2022-08-12 09:48 pm (UTC)[ she plops down onto the couch and looks up at him expectantly. ]
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Date: 2022-08-13 09:23 am (UTC)How did you get split, and how did you reunite with yourself.
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Date: 2022-08-13 02:16 pm (UTC)That memory you saw, of the burning? When Christabella called me the whelp of the demon, she wasn’t completely wrong. [ it stung to admit. it felt a lot like saying it was all her fault (and she knew it was). ] They’d burned my other self alive when she was nine all for the great sin of being born. Her burning was meant to be some cleansing [ there’s a great bitterness in her words and her face twists up with a flash of pure hatred ] a ritualistic sacrifice to stop a great evil but the reality was they’d burned a child alive for their own amusement and she lashed out.
She tapped into all the hurt and rage and trapped them all in the other world, a world full of monsters just like them so they could feel even an ounce of the pain and fear they’d put me through. [ here, she slips from third person to first but doesn’t seem to notice and reverts directly after. truthfully, the third person explanation is more for his benefit than her own. she is that little girl and always has been. ] But she was as trapped as they were. Unable to move. Or speak. Suffering endlessly, body never healing, pain never ending, rage always building.
It took its toll. She thought some part of her deserved to be free from the endlessness of Silent Hill, from the endlessness of The Order and her vengeance, and so she split her soul apart. She took out all she thought was good and put it out into the world in the form of a newborn.
Me. [ that was longer than she’d meant it to be so she gives it a moment for him to process all the new information. ]
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Date: 2022-08-14 05:35 am (UTC)She was wrong about you. I've seen true demons, they're not uncommon where I'm from. Whatever you are or aren't, you aren't a demon.
[Still, this is very different from anything he expected it will take him some time to think about it.]
And you're together again, so all of you made it out of there.
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Date: 2022-08-14 12:30 pm (UTC)She never wanted us to merge. It’s what the Order had wanted since they’d learned that I existed. I was meant to live a life free of the suffering she took on for me and she would stay there torturing the Order and keep them trapped there. [ the Order did a good job torturing one another, though. they’d grown so rabid in their faith they turned on one another for the slightest sign of corruption or sin. ]
But they’d found ways to get out for little bits of time using strange blood rituals I still don’t understand. They’d hunted for my dad and I since after Rose had rescued me from that burning in the church. We were on the run for nine years before they caught us and they took my dad, not me.
I had to go back willingly. [ more because they’d grown to fear even her as Sharon. ] And I’d do anything for my dad. So I did. And when Alessa found out, she was so angry and afraid that she was willing to kill me to keep us from them but she couldn’t.
I forced us to merge, giving the Order exactly what they’d wanted: the vessel for their god. Incubator is the term Claudia used. [ the word is flinched out like it’s some still fresh wound. not mother not vessel, she was meant to be an incubator. ]
Luckily, she underestimated me, I saved my dad and Vincent and then I wound up here. [ it’s all much more complicated than how she explained it but she was trying to keep a very long story as brief as she could while relaying the important pieces. ]
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Date: 2022-08-15 02:45 am (UTC)He knew she had been through a lot but he hadn't known the extent of it. That's the kind of thing that would be rare or strange to hear even in his dimension where monsters and supernatural rituals are common.]
You must have a very strong will to have accomplished all that.
I just have one more question. When did your guardian begin to exist.
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Date: 2022-08-15 07:58 pm (UTC)she looks to him with a thoughtfulness in her shadowed blue eyes, lower lip tucked between her teeth as she thinks. ] I’m not sure. [ her gaze turns distant as she wracks her memories for an answer ] My memories from back then, they’re hazy; indistinct. Most of them are… are just feelings.
It’s possible he was created the moment I forced the world to change. I mean, a lot of that plane is just a reflection of me and my suffering and I’d needed someone, anyone, to help me.
And I wanted them all to hurt so badly. I didn’t want my pain to stop, I just wanted them to suffer too. [ there’s shame there but it’s minute. she’ll never regret her actions, not completely. they deserved what happened to them. ]
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Date: 2022-08-17 06:48 pm (UTC)[D has had people cry on him before and he doesn't mind. He wouldn't mind if Sharon leaned on him for that but doesn't think she will. So he's offering the touch he wouldn't normally volunteer.]
You might still have a connection to that place instead of merely remembering it. It was the place where you suffered, and so when you suffer your mind is drawn there or to those memories.
[Sharon's guardian makes D think she's still connected, but he's not quite ready to voice those theories.]
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Date: 2022-08-19 02:39 am (UTC)I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. [ she whispers like it’s some fearful thing or a dangerous secret the rest of the world shouldn’t be privy to ] I sometimes wonder if it’s with me, that wherever I exist it exists. That maybe one day something will happen here and push me over some imaginary ledge and I’ll drag the people here into that hell.
[ that frightens her as much as it comforts her and the comfort she feels disturbs her. ]
no subject
Date: 2022-08-22 06:58 pm (UTC)The odds that no one here has an ability that could get us out are very low.
[D could probably do it, but Sharon's connection to this place make his options risky to her in this hypothetical situation.]
We can work on exploring your connection to your guardian and the other world if that's something you want, but that's a path that might leave you unable to return to how you are now.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-24 12:40 am (UTC)[ her fear is less that people will be trapped there and more the possible judgement that would come after. the looks. the whispers. even the faintest possibility that she’ll be seen like Alessa had been, a demon and a monster and the living embodiment of sin, makes her heart start to race and palms sweat. ]
I don’t want to be seen as a monster again and I’m afraid that’s what I am. If I open that place up, that’s what I’ll be again.
I don’t want to lose myself to that darkness.
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