week four | mingle

[marriagebroker]

Final week at the estate! Final week with your friends. Final week with your beaus. Time to make the most of it, everyone!

In fact, to celebrate this fact, today there is a cake. It's nothing special, just a nice little cake to enjoy with your morning coffee or throughout the day. Yay, cake!

And when Wei Wuxian arrives that morning, he is going to call out once again for everyone to join him, near the cake.

"Everyone, I have another announcement!"

Hell yeah, announcements.

Boom Boom Room | Dates | Property Damage
Truth Booth Voting | Match Ceremony Voting

Comments

[anathemaw]

[ this is an awfully anticlimactic way for it to come out; he'd been debating on how best to tell Odile or Serpilia (or both), but it seems like production has taken care of it for him. Messmer looks neither remorseful nor proud. He just looks the same as he always does: tired, aloof. ]

Let fly thy barbs, thy hatred. I have too long suffered thy unwitting courtesy.

[ he also doesn't bother pointing out which one is him. It should be pretty obvious, given what he's shared with most of the others already. ]

[researcherstory]

[ Given his dedication to the mother that continued to turn her back on him-- ]

... Was she satisfied?

[ It is with a little bit of wariness, since he seems ready to snap, but

without the barbs and hatred he expects. ]

[anathemaw]

[ at that, he actually does look a little troubled, his lips pressing into a thin line. ]

... Centuries hath passed since her last missive. I know not.

[ she probably was. Satisfied that he'd done what she needed, and was safely out of the way, to boot. His heart aches still. ]

[researcherstory]

[ Odile eases a little more, voice calm. ]

Let's say she wasn't. Would you do it again?

[anathemaw]

[ he sighs through his nose. ]

Were she this very moment to step down from the heavens and bid me continue?

[ or if she'd asked him before her prolonged silence began...? ]

[researcherstory]

Yes.

[ This moment is all that matters to her personally -- particularly because of the prolonged silence. ]

[anathemaw]

[ speaking of prolonged silence, Messmer's answer takes a solid few seconds to come out - the word escaping like a curse under his breath. ]

No.

[ he was betrayed. He was lied to. He was abandoned... He'd known for so long, but saw no recourse but to continue on as he had been. ]

[nrangel]

[ She picked up on a lot of it already during their first date, having lived in a pretty similar situation even if she wasn't the one doing the killing herself there.

Though maybe not to the same extent, considering the Sarkaz are alive, even if debatably well. ]

So... guessing that means none of the Hornsent are still alive then?

[ Her expression is somber. There's a limit to even Serpilia's ability to be jovial and jokey. ]

[anathemaw]

... Some yet live. The last of them are in their holy tower barricaded, where none may reach, and lingering shades roam still the ruins of their lands.

[ if he were searching for mercy, maybe he'd mention that he was the one who sealed the tower, or that he'd left their most ancient sites untouched. But he could just as easily tell her that he'd killed their sacred animals to display on pikes and stuffed entire villages into effigies to burn. There is no moral high ground for him to stand on. He's had centuries to come to terms with it all. ]

[nrangel]

[ It may not. Good deeds don't undo bad ones, and the loss of a life or many, many... many lives can't be reversed just because you change your wicked ways.

Still, she has to wonder... ]

Do you regret any of it? Reducing them to just that?

[ There's nothing self-righteous or angry in her tone. She's not saying it like she expects or demands he repent of his action. It's softly spoken, somber still, but genuinely curious. ]

[anathemaw]

Would it matter?

[ his feelings won't undo anything he's done. His actions - and their consequences - remain. He's sure the Hornsent would spit on his remorse. ]

[nrangel]

[ She pauses to consider. ]

To the people you killed? No.

[ However... ]

To the few that are still around? It could still. You're not going to be able to change anything you did, but you're still here making decisions right now, aren't you? So the way you feel about what you did still matters.

[ They might not forgive him, and she wouldn't argue that they should, but the choice to continue to chase even those few survivors down and do them in verses stilling his hand knowing what he's done.

It makes a difference for sure. ]

[anathemaw]

They would fain spit my head upon a pike ere I breathed even a word. And such is their right. Violence spent doth violence earn.

[ He's considered these things so many times in the past thousand years of his life. There is no right answer. For he, too, can't quite forgive the Hornsent for the things they've done - the horrors he bore witness to. But he's tired of fighting. ]

... I have spent years beyond thine imagining steeped in thoughts of this war. Thy suggestions are stale. [ a beat. ] The time for regret is long past. All that remains is to lament my foolishness, and my wretched fate.

[gamboler]

[ ...

He can piece it together, from context that he gleans from the others, and what he knows of Messmer himself. He doesn't say anything, but —

There's nothing but utter contempt in his eyes. ]

[anathemaw]

[ and Messmer feels nothing. This is what he has come to expect. ]

... Love would accomplish nothing.

[ just as he'd said before. His actual meaning now is clearer: it won't save him from anything that he's done. ]

[gamboler]

[ No, it won't. Not for someone like him. Coldly, with an eerie calm: ]

Did it even mean anything, to you? To take away everything, from people who already had nothing?

[ (He may be projecting, just a little bit, here.) ]

[anathemaw]

[ he is projecting - the Hornsent were clever, rich in culture and resources alike, and they used that wealth as any nation would - but there's no point in correcting him. That look in his eyes is familiar; he may as well be a Hornsent, himself. ]

It meant something to her. For her love I would have burned the stars to the ground and lain upon the embers.

[ something complicated answers his voice - resentment, but not towards Aventurine. ]

[gamboler]

I'm afraid that's not a good enough answer.

[ Fruitless, perhaps, because there's no answer that would be good enough for him. He's not so blinded by his resentment as to think the circumstances are the same, but whatever reason Messmer did this for isn't any better than the excuses the IPC gave them. They promised. They promised —

No matter how young he was when it happened, he still understood that broken promise is why when the Katicans came, flooding their camps on the Avgins' holy day of rebirth, they had no shields. They had no weapons.

He only had his two legs to carry him as far away as possible, just like Big Sis told him to. ]

Would you do it again? If she asked you to? Would you remain indifferent to the screams of children as they burned just because mommy said so?

[anathemaw]

[ he knows very well that there is no good enough answer - he's spent the better part of the past several hundred years trying to find one, himself, when the divine veneer of his crusade began to wear thin and the promise of his mother's love drifted further and further into the past. If it exists, he hasn't found it, either.

He's already heard those screams, too. After all, he was the one who set the fires. ]

Aventurine, [ Messmer rumbles. ] Thy sorrows will find no relief in any words of mine.

[fireball]

[ She doesn't know shit, but by process of elimination and just assuming the worst of him through her own biases, Poppy's pretty sure she's got the right one for him, and it's just so ]

Why the fuck are you even here?!

[ so monstrous. Fuck this guy, what the hell. ]

[anathemaw]

My goal is the wish. From the start I have so stated.

[ he answers in his usual flat tone. ]

... To meet me was thy misfortune. So then wert thou told.

[fireball]

Oh, shut the fuck up with the self-pity bullshit. If you aren't going to use the wish for anything other than to undo the genocide you apparently did you should get out of here.

[anathemaw]

[ unfazed: ]

Rage as thou wishest. Nothing will change. I will here in this place remain as surely as thee until the game doth end.

[fireball]

[ absolutely agape at this guy's unending chill ]

Nothing will— You have the power to make it change, you stupid asshole. With the wish. You absolute moron.

[anathemaw]

Will thy wish be used in kind?

[ why don't YOU wish for world peace poppy!! ]