Simon in April

[i_can_read]

Who: Simon and YOU.
What: Catch-all and specific top levels,
Where: Around,
When: All of April
Warnings: Horror genre references, body horror specifically, cult/religious trauma, dissociation and emotional issues, so much swearing, etc. Just Simon Things (TM)



A. Yeah my heart it spoke, and the stars replied -> OTA

Simon is easy to find on clear nights. He drops his shields for as long as possible--as long as he dares, because how long? is a question that dogs him, haunts him, taunts him, fills him with fear and forces the stones around him to close up once more--and floats or lies in the grass or rests in the fork of a tree, bathing the nearby area in a red glow.

What's he doing?

Looking at the sky. Specifically, he's looking at the stars--all the many hundreds of thousands of them, spread across the abyssal vault of heaven. Large ones, small ones. Shimmering curtains and waves, clustered scores of speckles barely distinct from one another. And bold, shining monuments to light, standing apart from any neighbouring gleam. He stares up into them with his own swirling pools of light--the pools of light that are his eyes--their radius so large and wide-armed that they almost evoke the galaxies above.

Small, pale, imitations of the miracle that dwarfs him. A tiny, feeble imitation in the lush world below. A world vibrant and verdant with life.

It almost--

It almost.... makes him feel like he was meant to. Like God is real. Like--like maybe this is what God is. This is God, or God's doing. But then, what is he doing here? What is he, Simon, doing? Here? What is he? What's it for? Why? Why--why is he, Simon, here, why him? And for what?

So it's not always a peaceful moment.

Sometimes it is, sometimes the wonder of it all eclipses the grief, the fear and confusion.

But sometimes... sometimes there are sounds. Quiet, muffled sounds. Like he might be... crying?

Don't worry, though--he'll stop the very instant he hears anyone coming. And his voice--sharp with paranoia and danger, or coarse with emotion and suspicion.

"Who's there?"

B. Plant Your Hope With Good Seeds -> Closed to Henry and Parvati

Despite a not-very edifying (or perhaps too edifying?) conversation with Umemiya, Simon is nonetheless undeterred. He's interested in the garden, and he wants...

He wants to do that. He wants to garden. Just a little. He doesn't know how, what with the utter lack of hands... or legs... or any way to carry or dig or bury or plant. He wants it so badly. It's like an ache--or a burn. A compulsion, an impulse, something nudging at the back of his mind.

He's been thinking about it, sitting there in the grass and under the canopy of nearby trees. Sealed up inside his shields, where he can see only darkness and hear the world only dimly. Protected. Encased and isolated, sheltered and solitary. Safe.

Ha. Safe isn't real. But it feels safer.

Bwcause if he stays in there, encapsulated by the darkness and the security of his rock shield, it feels like.... well, like the submarine. And when it feels like the submarine, it becomes easy to defy gravity.

The downside, of course, is that he can no longer even feel vibrations through the ground. And this leaves him completely unaware of anyone walking by.

But that's fine, right? It's not like he's going to drop his shields and scare the bejeezus out of anyone all of a sudden--

Or so he (doesn't) think, dropping his shields suddenly right as someone walks by.

C. Training wheels fell off -> OTA

[Simon still spends most days rolling around, opening his shields to look around and then closing them to follow his planned path.

Or else he's in the air--flying with his shields up like the world's most dangerous aircraft. Because he still navigates the exact same way he did back in the submarine, with the camera. He recognises the irony, but it's... kind of comforting, weirdly. It gives him something to do. And every time he opens his shields, he has a new vantage, a new vista to take in.

It's an experience that never gets old. High or low, terrestrial or aerial.

He just.... he doesn't have the best control while flying, so..... um. Possibly he falls. With luck, it's merely nearby. But sometimes he falls directly onto someone. Or onto a building, or onto someone's current project.

It's a work in progress, okay?]

D. Wildcard!

[Drop me a line at railerat or just throw something at me here and I'll figure it out!]

Comments

[i_can_read]

This whole time, Simon's face hasn't changed much.

There's not a lot of face to change, first of all. He's a pair of swirling lights, a couple stray gleams that pass for deeply troubled eyebrows, and a small, off-centre mouth that gives away less than it should. There are no muscles. No skin. No nose. No real eye shape or even eyelids.

And at first, he follows along silently. He understands what she's saying. This might be paradise to him, but it's still a world full of death, of struggle, of risk and suffering and danger. It's almost... not reassuring, far from it. But it feels like something more familiar, even when he can simply look up a see a thousand, thousand glittering reminders of everything that the world that killed him isn't, just like he rests in the boughs of another such reminder, just as they are surrounded by another thousand, and--

And then she says that, and the pools of energy that pass for his eyes stop their spin, just for a moment. Then they start up again, faster this time, the 'brows' of his face coming together tightly before disappearing entirely.

It makes him look haunted.

"I don't." It's blunt. Calm. Measured and certain.

[pyrodulia]

She understands that sentiment more than she wants to let on.

"Then figure out what it will take for you to become someone who does, because you're here regardless."

It's the only answer she's found, even after tipping her hand to a rare few. She doesn't deserve this world, either. If this is her afterlife, in any sense, she will have to figure out how to fit within it. And so will he.

[i_can_read]

"What if I already did? What if I already did that, what if--what if that's the problem? 'cause--"

His cohesion, his certainty falls apart again. In its place is the confused, staggered speech, the stammering and the disorganisation. His thoughts were clear inside of his head, despite his fraying concentration, the ideas themselves are clear still. But the urgency behind them clashes with the multilayered challenges of tone, of word selection, of forming sentences and communicating like a human being.

"I-I-I might have. I think--I think I might have, I might have--done that. I might have earned it." His voice goes flat. Dead in the style of a man staring directly into his own Abyss. And then he looks away from it--tears his eyes from that proverbial Abyss--and starts skirting the edge of agitation. He starts getting emphatic, intense. Like whatever he saw, he's afraid of it. Fear without flight. Fear that makes him draw closer, bare his teeth and clench his fists.

You know, if he had teeth to bare, or fists to clench.

"But--but if.... it's earned, then it's not fucking chance. It's not--something that just happened."

[pyrodulia]

"None of us know for certain why we're here. All of this is speculation. If holding onto the idea that you've earned it is useful, that's great. But if not? That's not a certainty we have."

She doesn't know what's going on in his head precisely, but she knows fear better than most. In another life, she'd be able to drink it in, bask in it. But here? It's a null signal to her.

"What's your name, little rock star?"

[i_can_read]

It's too late, though. Simon has looked into his Abyss. The eye on the other side of it stared back. He feels its gaze on him, its awful power of sight burning and warping him. He is imprisoned by it, by having been seen.

It looks at him, and he looked back.

It looked at him. Perceiving. Understanding. And--

I see you.

Rooted in place, staring up endlessly into the Abyss of an unblinking pupil, peering back at him through a pinhole and unmaking him, remaking him in its vision--

It's not fucking useful, it's... it's wrong, it's all wrong. He doesn't know how to articulate this; he knows only the certainty and uncertainty of people around him, and that's not new but it's worse now, it's terrifying and terrible and it's real. That's the true horror, really--this isn't a crisis of abstracts. This is a crisis of everything Simon has ever known and ever experienced. A crisis of real and and tangible consequences, a crisis that he cannot ignore or it will come back and fuck him--and maybe not even just him.

He doesn't have the clarity of mind to explore it. He doesn't have the context to understand it. He definitely doesn't have the words to explain it.

But she asks his name, and the answer is almost pulled from its tether in him.
Almost. He feels it in him, that automatic obedience--but then his brain pulls back on a different impulse, almost a compulsion. No.

Because there is one thing he does have.

Choice.

It started at Filament Station. That's when he stopped. That's when he tried to stop it. It wasn't enough. He couldn't stop anything.

But ever since then, he's gotten more argumentative, more defiant--even demanding. Like resistance is a muscle. One that he keeps flexing, strengthening.

"You didn't tell me who you are."

[pyrodulia]

Agnes isn't aware of everything that's happening in Simon's mind, but the stubborn statement wrings a laugh out of her. He's right, she didn't. The question now is how thoroughly to answer.

"Agnes Montague. I've been here, what, half a year now? Something like that. I'm a Ninetales, a Fire-type Pokemon."

[i_can_read]

He wasn't expecting a laugh, and while he once would have stared blankly at her, or maybe flinched a bit, it's hard to do that when light is all that he is. When he's a single glowing shape in the night--no reflexes or muscles or body language to fall back on. Or to give him away.

The rotation of his eye lights accelerates a bit.

Nine tails.

He can't help himself. As soon as she says it and he puts it together with her appearance--which takes an entire second of extra time--his gaze falls on her tails. He spends the next couple of seconds visibly distracted, mouthing silently to himself as he counts each one. He's really concentrating on that.

Nine.

....

Nine tails.

He doesn't know what he expected.

That, probably.

Nine tails, with nine tails. Fire Type. Is that... stupposed to mean something to him?

There are a lot of rules to this 'type' thing that he doesn't understand yet. But he holds that in his head, dedicates a firm moment to these facts in a desperate bid to make sure he'll remember it. In case it matters. No, that's a lie. He knows it 'matters,' he just doesn't understand it. He doesn't feel like he understands much of anything. Which makes it easy to lose, in the murkier parts of him.

And speaking of things he doesn't understand: what the fuck up with her name?

Agnes Montague. She says it like it's two names. He doesn't know or care enough about naming conventions to infer anything from that. But it's still another 'thing.' Is it all one name? Does it matter? He doesn't fucking know. This is why he's so tired, so overwhelmed all the time. He's sure it's that. It has to be.

(Nevermind how difficult it all is, or was, always has been--just to think, and to exist, just to be alive has always been exhausting and hard.)

But she did answer him. And there's no point in holding it back any more. He's told too many people, and at this point, Simon is under no illusion that this is anything but real.

Real enough, anyway.

"Simon. Just. Uh, just Simon."

Not Convict, not The Butcher. Simon.

He's awkwardly silent after that. He's thinking.

Not about her tails, either.

Half a year is a long time.

Not as long a time as Simon thinks it is--a half year by Eden's calendar is almost twice what it would be on Earth, or by any other station's metric for that matter. In his mind, she's just told him she's been here the equivalent of almost twelve Earthen months.

"If you've been here that, that l-long... uh, has anyone... has anyone ever said anything about. About Eden. Or The Father, or--" He stops. He looks up at the sky, silent for two seconds. No, three. He turns to look up at the branches of the tree whose boughs he rests in--a beautiful green canopy of life. Healthy. Vibrant.

He grimaces, the swirling light pools of his eyes flattening out in an unattractive way.

If he mentions the Tree, he's going to sound like the dumbest asshole who's ever lived. He realises that. It's a realisation that comes a second too late.

He can't avoid it, though. Not if he wants answers. He opens his mouth, pauses for precision--and for once, doesn't mumble or stammer.

"The Tree." He is very careful to enunciate that. Not 'the trees.' Not 'a tree.' The Tree.

[pyrodulia]

She hears the capital letters; it would be impossible for an Avatar of an Entity not to. She hears them and understands the question behind the question.

"None of them. If those are the Powers of your world, they aren't important here. Might not exist at all here. For whatever it means to you, you're now free of Eden and The Father and The Tree."

Just as she's free of the Desolation or Asag or the Lightless Flame, here. Oh, she is still a daughter of flame, a malicious curse upon the world, but. She is free, insomuch as she ever can be.

[i_can_read]

Simon is silent.

Then, low and quiet... he laughs. It's small, and hollow, and more breath than voice.

"Free." A trace of bitterness can be heard in his voice. "I'm free now." It sounds so fucking--absurd, so false. It's all still here, with him. But as he speaks, the tone of that resentment. His voice gets stronger; conviction enters in its place. A kind of aggressiveness, the sound of a man who has fought bitterly and won.

Even if he didn't get exactly what he wanted.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm free. I'm fucking free!"

Sure, he could quibble with the technicalities--the Tree is already dead, Eden hated him anyway, she never said anything about God from another world. But he understands what she's really saying--that this is, in so many ways, the freedom he quietly, rebelliously dreamed of. That he hungered and ached for instinctively--even as he fell into obedience again and again, even as he stopped remembering and chased beliefs others held for him, choices that didn't exist. On some deep, intuitive, human level--Simon craved this. Freedom. Autonomy. Choice. A world, open before him. Even just a little bit.

But he doesn't feel free. He feels... broken. No, not broken. What did that one ghost call him? Helpless. He doesn't feel helpless either, exactly, but he's definitely lost something. His place. He doesn't have a place here.

Except that doesn't matter, right? He's alive. That's what he wanted. He wanted to live. Even if it hurt. Even if he was still... still himself. He doesn't know what he expected. He didn't ask to be anyone else. He doesn't want to be anyone else. He wants to be him. He wants to be Simon.

He wants... he wants....

Fuck.

Maybe he doesn't fucking know what he wants. He looks at her again.

"So... this is free?"