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bellelurette2025-04-07 12:11 am
lesmodsalouette) wrote in bellelurette2025-04-07 12:11 am
Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Your stopped time has restarted. Whether you were in the grassy field or fighting for your life on the castle grounds, you'll suddenly find yourself in an untouched area of the gardens. Ish is back, and so are the items, and the dead.
You return to Chateau Ambregris with the certain knowledge that come Monday, you will greet a new week, in a home of your own choosing. No longer will the chime of the clocks hunt you down, no longer will the oppressive scent of roses haunt your senses, no longer will you be forced to watch the death of those you've come to love and hate.
Parting is such a bittersweet sorrow, isn't it?
Make merry one last time, in this castle of illusions. Ironically, your memories of this stolen time that never existed are the one thing that will truly remain to you.
END NOTES
🔮 All dead are revived as tsukumogami! Congrats on your immortality(?)
🔮 Any other contracts made with Ish will be honored
🔮 Characters may choose to leave for any world they desire.
🔮 Time has not passed while you were stuck in this loop!
🔮 There will be no cross-dimensional world travel, except for on Samhain (Witches New Year October 31st/November 1st). On these dates, Ish will enable everyone to visit each other's world freely.
🔮 Universal Communication will be possible, courtesy of Manba and Ish. Everyone who wants one will be given a small fox that can communicate with other foxes through voice and video; the foxes can talk and are fairly simple creatures, enjoy them and give them fried tofu once in a while.
🔮 Powers are on for the finale, but Ish will step in and yeet anyone who gets too out of hand back to their homeworld, so play nice! (or relatively nice. )
🔮 Any other contracts made with Ish will be honored
🔮 Characters may choose to leave for any world they desire.
🔮 Time has not passed while you were stuck in this loop!
🔮 There will be no cross-dimensional world travel, except for on Samhain (Witches New Year October 31st/November 1st). On these dates, Ish will enable everyone to visit each other's world freely.
🔮 Universal Communication will be possible, courtesy of Manba and Ish. Everyone who wants one will be given a small fox that can communicate with other foxes through voice and video; the foxes can talk and are fairly simple creatures, enjoy them and give them fried tofu once in a while.
🔮 Powers are on for the finale, but Ish will step in and yeet anyone who gets too out of hand back to their homeworld, so play nice! (or relatively nice. )
[OOC: Welcome to your epilogue! The timeloop is ended, the evil has been defeated, and you have some time to catch your breath in the castle before the rest of your life begins! ]
no subject
Ish.
[ he says the name as though it means nothing. he and ish are strangers, too, for all their talks. he’d always liked the little witch more. ]
To me, this has nothing to do with Ish, except that you said we would be unchanged and then you took that and gave it only to him. [ anyone could have been in ish’s place. ] You are only his and he is only yours. That is your truth. How, then, is that being each other’s in an equal way for anyone other than you two?
[ when yoru had no say, no knowledge. hwylryn had felt that it was fine to make the choice without him, yoru’s existence a non-factor. he might as well have been ash then. ]
If there was no difference, if the term wasn’t important, then why take it away?
[ why gift it like the most precious treasure? ]
Give it back to me then. [ but yoru knows: ] You can’t.
[ the rain comes harder and yoru is quickly soaked through, washed upon the shore like driftwood. he doesn’t want to see hwylryn’s tears, but he’s forced to feel them all the same. ]
And you seem to think that I mind Ish, that I begrudge your relationship. I don’t. I want you to be happy, I want you to live. I never minded when you had Primrose, did I? I don’t think… your heart is shallow at all.
It’s so deep, deeper than anything. You will always want more than both. You will always want as much as you can fit. I’ve always understood that.
[ and you don’t stop to remember that the things you squeeze into yourself are being crushed by the sheer amount others you have in you. ]
no subject
He exhales, shakily. Coming to understand. Wishing he didn't.
Wishing he could cut, like Yoru. That he wanted to. With glass and knives and rails and ribs, he could, but with his heart, with his words;
He doesn't want to.
...
He is quiet, for a time. There is only the sound of wind and rain; not loud, but not gentle. In the air, Yoru can't hear Hwylryn come down on his knees, and sit; but when his voice comes, it comes softer, and from an elevation slightly lower: )
I'm sorry.
( For all the ways he failed to understand how much it mattered to Yoru; for all the good saying this does now. But it feels wrong not to say it. It hurts his heart, even as he does. )
... But I don't want us to become this.
( Whatever this is now. A bone near-broken, with just a milimetre left before it snaps. He's clingy, to his own detriment - he can't let go, even as this hurts him, near as much as it had when he'd stepped into the gardens and found Yoru's ash. )
I accept losing Primrose, and I accept losing my other friends here. But I can't accept losing you.
( ... But maybe it is what Yoru wants.
And if that's how it is, what else can he do?
As always. )
cw: implied!! suicidal ideation!!
he had meant to leave nothing but memories. just memories and words. ]
You won’t let me become a memory?
[ rivulets of rain run from his hair to his mouth, which twists unhappily upwards. damp lashes blink droplets that trail into each other, becoming something sideways and undeserved. they fall past him. ]
… I don’t know how to fix this.
[ instead of ‘i don’t want to fix us.’ both true and untrue. it’s better to hate and love hwylryn than to be loved and unequal.
when he’d only ever wanted to be important as yoru, as important as yoru could be.
but he had watched hwylryn from afar as an earring. he had rolled around with the intent to find him, learning to awkwardly maneuver a new body that wasn’t his -
he knows it means something. it’s better to love and hate him, but he’d never hated him at all. only hated the hurt, the sinking surprise that hwylryn was a liar like his sister. hated that hwylryn hadn’t remembered that yoru came from violence and so he had no heart to start. that what he’d made into one was from words torn from the experiences of others, glued together by hwylryn’s teeth and tears into a paper mache mimic.
no wonder it shattered so easily. a couple short weeks, that’s it. ]
Do you?
no subject
But Yoru... at least, is listening.
He's quiet, for a time. )
... I don't want to let you turn to ash in my hands. More than your eyes, or your voice, or the cut of your teeth, it's you I'd miss, most of all.
( He understands you want to go, but he can't let go, so long as there's still something to hold onto. )
So let's begin again. Let's come to know each other as Hwylryn, and Yoru. And then...
( He inhales, tears in his eyes, feeling like he's still letting go of something, even if he isn't sure what, and it hurts him. He holds his breath, and swallows, and he has himself proceed: )
... And then... I want... to find a name for us that's only for us. Not a name you give anyone else - not a name I give anyone else. ( Would that he knew dearer terms for friends. ) I want to come to know a part of you that only Hwylryn can know. And I want you to come to find a part of me that only Yoru can know. And... I want us to take our time.
( He wants Yoru to last a long, long time.
In some sense, they had something like this, but - he doesn't know. It got messy, along the way. Yoru is right; it became something he had to barter with, as his relationships became more complicated, in depth, expanding - and then, suddenly and by his own hand, contracting into nothing.
Hwylryn isn't learned at all in having more than one vibrant connection at a time, and he's still learning, even now.
But he feels he doesn't have the time to learn, either. He feels like Yoru may as well disappear into the rain if he can't find the right words. )
... Please.
no subject
yoru uncurls and rolls over onto his back to breathe in the rain and wind and let the rain dot his face so the grief is lost in the mess.
they don’t have time to relearn each other. he doesn’t have to ask to know they are not going to the same place. jin would have asked but he believes in family with the innocence of a child, a little hope and a little kindness. ]
And until then, we will be strangers who love each other?
[ and everything that happened between them here, buried under wet sand. constantly aware that it is there - it exists, it once existed with vibrancy - because it gives just so under each step, though covered now until further notice.
he hates it. to always be there, but not addressed. to exist as a secret.
but… a little hope and a little kindness might have taken root in him, too, because he finds himself considering between wet breaths: a ‘please’ that sounds like it would forgive him anything.
(so? do you see? yoru had to go or else he would have hoped. look how easily it happens. he has to go or love and hope will make him want. but hwylryn traps him.)
maybe what they’re burying now is a time capsule to discover again later, when they relearn… everything. would yoru feel loved enough to completely forgive by then? implying that he already… even though the hurt aches in his bones. ]
… You really never stopped…? Wanting me?
[ his hand opens up to the sky, a space waiting to be filled. an answer to hwylryn’s please. ]
… Don’t lie again.
no subject
He shifts from where he sits and onto his side, a little more on his legs, drifting closer - until he appears, welcome or not, in Yoru's vision. His smile is sad, still a little wet, but kind. He takes Yoru's hand in his, palm to palm, fingers curling over the back - loosely. )
Never.
( His voice is gentle - not so much to soften himself for Yoru, but because he speaks from the heart. Though their relationship had been fraught with teeth, Hwylryn's fondness for him takes this tone, this shape.
He doesn't want to be strangers. How that coexists with the idea of starting over, it seems unclear - but Hwylryn speaks as if it were doable; as if it were so. )
Wasn't it exciting to get to know me? How often can two do it a second time?
( It was exciting for him to learn Yoru - and, perhaps, selfishly, he'd made this suggestion because it brought joy to him. In the same way Hwylryn likes to give gifts, things that he likes that he wants to share with others, this, too, is that. )
Yoru; my old and new friend, and dear insomniac... I'm sorry... I wasn't careful with your heart. If you'd have me split my chest now for you to see the truth of my answer, I would. I think that's only fair to you.
cw: self-mutilation/gore
but it is hwylryn’s wild nature, his savage vivacity that had lured yoru out and kept him. it had been exciting to learn him through teeth and touch, walking where they would on a whim, running forward breathlessly into delight and danger.
hwylryn has always been distinctly inhuman, playful and - as yoru came to learn - cruelly careless; yoru is just playful cruelty trapped in a human-then-maga body. a combination of just enough the same that the friction in which they met each other was satisfying, an itch scratched.
and there’s hwylryn now, above him, soft in sorrow. a great creature condensed into this small form, just to sit by yoru in the rain. once he’s in yoru’s vision, he’s the sky. does he see himself reflected in yoru dark, tired eyes - soft in sorrow, soft with love? ]
Can you heal?
[ well, yoru supposes it doesn’t matter. there are options nows; and he’s tired of what’s allowed and what’s not when before… they felt limitless as whatever they were, though they both could not breathe underwater then. ]
I’ll show you mine.
[ it doesn’t hurt much to do what he does next; he hadn’t thought he would miss it, but he does. every injury had been thoroughly felt.
his free hand digs through fabric and flesh, sliding under the protective cage of his ribs to find his heart. his body yields as easily as a sigh, as though longing to give up the thing that still beats and loves so fiercely for no reason at all. it’s red and ugly and so soft in his hand.
he holds it up to hwylryn, bloody hand and all. ]
This is a part of me that only you can know. It’s not the one the grew to love you. It was made into existence already doing so.