epitaffio: (PRAISE ME BOSS)
Vinegar Doppio ([personal profile] epitaffio) wrote2019-11-07 09:25 pm
Entry tags:

IC Inbox

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, PURPLEPIPER.

FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 541.26.365.77

*** PURPLEPIPER has joined 541.26.365.77
<PURPLEPIPER> Am I doing this right?
<PURPLEPIPER> Pretty weird to just leave a message like this is an answering machine or something
<PURPLEPIPER> ME leaving a message I mean!
<PURPLEPIPER> You can leave one if you want and I'll just get back to you whenever I can.
fateschosen: (Default)

this tag is not landing where i wanted it to but i am sending it regardless

[personal profile] fateschosen 2024-01-09 11:15 am (UTC)(link)
[Why? A thousand half-formed reasons spring to mind, and none of them would hold up under any scrutiny. Diavolo tenses and allows one reason to flow freely.]

The memory of this place weighs heavily on me. Won't you bear it for me, for just a while? This world has a way of dragging the worst to the surface, and it has been incessant. For months, I haven't been able to stop thinking about... so much. [He falters there, struggling to phrase himself, at a loss for words. With a shake of his head, he moves past it.]

I despise the past for making me so weak, and I would give anything to see a fraction of that same hatred in your eyes. But I look at you, and I see nothing there. Emptiness. It can't hurt you; it has no hold over you. It drives me out of my mind, Doppio, to be so alone.

[He speaks as though being here is horrific, but, beneath the bright blue sky, it's nothing short of tranquil here, a picturesque seaside town. The only conflict rests firmly within him.]
fateschosen: (Default)

[personal profile] fateschosen 2024-01-11 03:16 pm (UTC)(link)
[I don't want you to be alone.]

[It brings a small smile to Diavolo's face and it drowns out the world around him, if only for a moment. Then Doppio winces and his heavy breathing breaks the reverie, and Diavolo can't help but to move in closer. He closes the gap between them, presses himself against Doppio's back, and curls his arms around him. It's easier to touch like this from behind. It's easier to exist at all here, where he can lean in close and study the world from behind Doppio's shoulder. Safer, warmer — not quite right, but nothing here ever is.]


And I will never be alone — as long as you stay with me.

[Doppio is tense, ragged and worn, and it strikes Diavolo that this may be too much too fast. Impulse after impulse led to this moment with no rationale in sight. What is his plan? What did he want so badly for Doppio to see?

He doesn't have an answer.

But he knows it isn't just one thing. There is no singular memory that will save him. The pain is the result of years of built-up frustration he wants to release at once, and plunging them both into the depths of it seemed as good a way as any to rid himself of it all.]


But to stay with me, you must persevere. This will all be meaningless if I guide you every step of the way. Think, Doppio. This town. Our dreams. Do you remember any of it...?
fateschosen: (clench teeth)

[personal profile] fateschosen 2024-01-12 12:28 pm (UTC)(link)
[Diavolo's arms press closer at the whimpers. When he notices the priest, he tugs Doppio back half a step on gut instinct, feeling suddenly very small again. It's unnatural to see the man alive and well, like he'd never been reduced to a mangled heap bleeding out on a tile floor.

The priest walks slowly but purposefully, a smile wrinkling his face as though nothing in the world is wrong. How old would he be if he was alive today? Eighties, nineties? But he looks exactly the same as he does in memory. Seeing him is like seeing a ghost, and it chills Diavolo. He tenses, his fingers digging at Doppio's skin as that small part of him expects hatred and retribution, imagining the rest of his years rotting away in prison or worse.

But, of course, none of this is real, and there is nothing to fear. Diavolo is not helpless, not weak, and nothing here can hurt him. If he wanted to, he could walk out right now. But he survived their last meeting and he will do it again — more than that, he thrived afterward, more than anyone in this small town ever thought he could, at least until the day everything fell to pieces in his hands.

—He's close, now, that gentle smile brightening at the sight of ... not him. Of course not him, not the way he looks now, so very different from the way he did as a teenager. He must stand out in this small town. No, it's Doppio the priest looks at.]


fateschosen: (point!)

[personal profile] fateschosen 2024-01-15 07:15 pm (UTC)(link)
[Isn't something about this chillingly familiar? Memories are bleeding together. Nothing makes sense. This was all impulse, a half-formed idea, if even that. Wasn't it supposed to be different? Why is the priest walking towards them at all — why does he speak, why does he say that?

If it was him alone, he could handle this. But it's painfully clear that something is wrong with Doppio. His breathing is erratic, his movements anxious, his words strained, and the sum of it makes Diavolo ache. He's getting exactly the result he wanted, but it doesn't feel like the victory he expected.

Instead, it feels a little like guilt.]


Enough. Leave.

[He doesn't quite know how the room operates, he didn't pay enough attention to understand. All he can do is growl out a command to the priest and hope he obeys. It doesn't feel like enough. If he could do something more—

He doesn't feel it happen the way he should, no warm and familiar surge of energy beneath his skin, but King Crimson manifests at his subconscious call all the same, shielding them both from the memory.]
Edited (patch notes: improved by 5%) 2024-01-16 17:23 (UTC)