TRIAL IV

[lesmodsalouette]

Trial

Another Saturday, but this Saturday is your last Saturday. If everything holds, if everything works out. After all you've been through, are you capable of being an optimist? The carnival calls regardless, furniture arranged around as they always are with banquet table and pit in the middle.

This week's new offerings are: a fluffy loaf of a certain type of rye bread, a hearty beef stew and an assortment of fresh pies with candied fruit and cream.

For the last time, find out who killed two of your own: G'raha Tia and Sariel.

(( OOC: Welcome to your first trial! You'll have 7 hours (until 8 PM EDT/5 PM PDT) to vote one (1) person guilty of murder. As this is scapegoat style, a correct vote is not necessary. Please remember to vote unless otherwise discussed with the mods, as that is our AC for this game ))

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[cleansheets]

[ And with clarity, Angelo realizes: This isn't what he wanted. Even if Hwylryn had loved him as more than a tangential afterthought, even if the full weight of that affection had come crashing down on him like it had fallen onto Sariel and G'raha... That isn't what he wanted.

It's not enough for it to be inhuman, it's not enough for it to be violent.

The brilliant red in front of him isn't returning. Full Frontal's tired back, his distant gaze, his calming voice... It's all burned out.

Angelo's gaze falls, the fire of his anger extinguishing as well.

There's nothing here. He's empty now. ]

My miracle has already come and gone.

[ A once in a lifetime acceptance, an exhilaration so potent that it made every atom of his body sing. ]

I'm not like you. I won't find another.

[ But he's here and he's alive. And he won't die now. Not to Hwylryn's schemes and twisted sympathy, not to anybody. They're not worth it. It's the first and most important thing Full Frontal had given him: worth.

He's dirty now, the clean sheets of his childhood torn to nothing but shreds, but he's not going to let that last ember of worth go out pointlessly. ]

But this isn't the death I seek. I'm not giving it to any of you.

[coldseep]

( Angelo's refutation does not trouble him, nor does the way Angelo seem to twist into himself - Hwylryn does not consider this necessarily an air of rejection, but simply: there is no space for him there. And while Hwylryn cannot know that sort of revelation Angelo came upon, he still accepts it.

Hwylryn will need to make peace with the fact that he looks to a future without Gwawlyn, without Balthazar, without a shadow of each of them. Why try a third time? he'd asked Angelo. Why fail again, why carry this grief?

It is Hwylryn's choice that feels more perverse than Angelo's. )

That's what I like about you.

( The answer is crisp as clear water through a stream - perhaps too clear. Perhaps he was so transparent that it was not clear how deep these feelings ran, and for those stumbling into him too carelessly...

he would have them drown. )

You don't let anyone compromise your pride. You bite your teeth into what you still have. And I wish, for you, that you'd never had to come here - but, before that, I wish you had the future you sought with him.

( But wishes don't mean much. There is no wish that turns back time, the way the both of them needed.

As Ish had said, time is always going somewhere.

...

Wind blows through his hair. There is no room for him in Angelo's future, and that's okay. Hwylryn had turned toward his death, despite every offer. For him, there was no room for Akira, or Mithra, in his future.

But... Just as he'd felt in the rose garden, he feels discontent. He felt like - commiseration was not enough. He wished that...

... )

... Angelo. I don't ask this to make you stay with me. But... Allow me the privilege of asking: won't you return with me, if we all leave this place?

( And if Angelo rejects it, he will accept that. The air about Hwylryn says as much.

But he doesn't want to part in sympathy, like in the rose garden.

He had refused Akira and Mithra. But he thinks ... he preferred to die knowing that someone had offered him their hand. )

[cleansheets]

[ An insane offer, from an insane creature beyond the comprehension of mere mortals like Angelo. Unlike Frontal, whom he understood perfectly (he did, didn't he? he wants to think so), Hwylryn is an alien being to him. ]

... Sariel offered the same thing to me and you killed him.

[ Said dryly. He wouldn't have taken Sariel up on it either, because he felt like that would make him the same as one of his ants, just a pet to be watched over. (He knows that's uncharitable. He knows Sariel is better than that. But that's what stings.) ]

I don't know where I'm going after all is said and done, but I can't become your pet either. You have no place for me, beyond your sympathy.

[coldseep]

( Well, that's about what he expected.

really awkward about sariel though tehe pero )

The world is a big place. Though, I guess you've never been on one before, right? ( Referring to his profile trivia. ) I don't think it's right for me to make a place for you - you aren't mine. All I can do is offer a doorway for you to step through.

( He is fond of Angelo, but Angelo isn't one of his, the way he would refer to Junior, even. Angelo is very much his own person - even if, in Hwylryn's eyes, he is a child. )

I think you should be exactly as you are. And I think you can carve out a place for yourself, as you are. If I've learned anything from watching you here, you're strong enough and clever enough to do it.

( He's done quite a few things Hwylryn wouldn't have expected from him - and he has yet to be disappointed. It just seems like a waste to let him dissolve into space. )