reverie overflow.

[vecna]

i still haven't put something less stupid here

Comments

[velluminous]

What question is this? Yes! Of course!

[ but she wasn't friends with them. ]

[vecna]

[Well, then they just pinpoint that threshold.]

Friends?

[That yellow skein of thread he isn't privileged with, apparently.]

[velluminous]

Of course!

[ he can't disprove it. and more importantly, she can't disprove it. ]

[vecna]

Even if that's true, you can't compare home to here. Forced to play the Warden's games, forced to watch people come and go. It isn't the same. Of course you'd be more affected by it.

[velluminous]

[ what you've just described is trauma bonding, Henry. you did it! you've broken Reverie down to its bare essentials! ]



It was so much simpler at beginning.

[vecna]

[You could always be sociopathic like him and just not care what happens to most people. That’s always a solution! (But even he has colored strings, now.)]

When everyone was a stranger? Of course.

The day when we all go home — which would be more of a comfort? That these strings will fade and corrode over time? Or that they’d persist?

[velluminous]

I can't think that far ahead. It's too painful. You know I don't want that.

[ to lose everything she's gained ]

[vecna]

[To Henry, it just sounds like she doesn’t know what she wants.]

I think these— [Plucks at his black strings; strong, dark, reflecting light.] —are proof that stronger connections will persist, whether they’re good or bad.

So if you don’t want to lose them, really lose them, then you need to foster them while you’re here. And just accept you’ll lose the weaker ones, someday.

[velluminous]

[ he'd be right. she takes a sudden, sharp breath and brushes her fingers beneath each eye. just a tiny sniffle, you know.

wry, ] No book ever made me feel so dumb.

[vecna]

[Long, string-laden fingers dip into his pocket. Henry still manages to pull out a rather familiar handkerchief, clean and folded, and offers it to her.]

People are more complicated than books.

[velluminous]

[ but people wrote the books.

her face falls as she accepts the handkerchief back. always ending up having to be the bigger person, him. yeah, this is familiar. ]

That's why I surrounded myself in lore, not ...

[ love ]

[vecna]

[Don't give him too much credit. He is half of the argumentative equation, one hundred percent of the time.]

...Love? Affection?

[Strange words to roll off of his tongue. But he's filling in the blanks.]

If it makes you feel better, I've never been very versed in them, either.

[velluminous]

[ tucks the kerchief into her palm, and just holds it like that ]

It looks as though that is changing.

[vecna]

[That is an odd thing to hear, so much that Henry does have to stare at the handkerchief just sitting in her palm for a moment as if to parse her meaning. But then it seems to register, and he glances away, not out of embarrassment, or agitation, or shame, but a strange, strange realization that maybe something’s shifted somewhere inside, so slight that he could not even perceive it happening.

Time truly is the enemy here.]

You think so?

[velluminous]

[ she's no mind-reader. she doesn't know what that expression means. ]

Don't you?

[vecna]

[Guides his look back to her, purposefully chasing away the wrinkle in his browline, yet it remains.]

I don't know. [Twists his fingers to pull on his black strings without even really thinking about it. These must remain solid, or else too much has shifted, and it's ridiculous to think that they might up and disappear, but at least they haven't.] I think I understand a little better something you've said.

[velluminous]

Oh no? Which part?

[vecna]

That it was easier in the beginning. [But he hasn’t been here as long as her, so he clarifies:] That this place wheedles in and changes things.

[velluminous]

[ that's so—

a frown pinches her brows; her eyes flick subtly down to look at the colours of his threads again. surely he must have a thread that bothers him, if he's saying that. red, or... purple...

but... ]

Because... you have acquaintances.

[vecna]

[Hers is the purple one. There are a few green strings that are straining to turn yellow, as though they were trying to mimic dying vines. He definitely does not have a red one.]

You say it like acquaintances are so easily afforded to anyone and everyone.

[velluminous]

So why don't you sound happy about this?

[vecna]

[Because if his misanthropy is undermined, what was the point?]

Because people have always been disappointing to me, and except for you, I don’t want to be proven wrong.

[velluminous]

[ do you even understand how unnerving that is to hear, Henry? the kind of artificial pressure that creates? the sense of being the one thing keeping another person on an even keel? how you can't disappoint even once, and you don't know literally any of the parameters of that to begin with? ]

Why? Why don't you want to be proven wrong?

[vecna]

[It’s either that, or he lies. Can’t have both — which is better?]

Because I’ve made decisions based on the idea that humans, and the lives they’ve made for themselves, are broken.

[velluminous]

What kind of decisions? It cannot be too late to alter your perspective.

[ lol ]