A Ward Against A Fractured Mind [open, one closed for takethatnature]

[freedomsuitsme]

Who: The Great Maxwell and YOU!
What: Coping in the aftermath of the excursion, building connections
When: Start of August
Where: Various
Warnings: None specific yet, excursion-typical angst. Maybe some toxic relationship dynamics

a. "I've been listening to that song for an eternity" [Chatterbox]

He'd been planning on avoiding the carry-oaky like the plague until recently, but if he's to expand his social circles (and he's starting to think that's very necessary, if he's not to be caught alone and vulnerable), visiting the Chatterbox is an unavoidable. He's wearing his long coat for the occasion (okay, it's not so much of an occasion as the fact that he still hasn't mended his suit at this point and he is NOT about to let someone catch a glimpse of his bare arm). He's doing his best to look dignified, but he just knows that he's going to hate this.


b. "Time moves differently here" [Cosmic Bowling]
One would assume the Great Maxwell would find something like cosmic bowling beneath him.

One would be assuming incorrectly.

Despite his frailty, Maxwell is not a physically weak man, and his skills of sleight of hand translate well to the lanes. The darkness, the hints of red light, it's practically his natural environment. And bowling itself was once considered a game for the nobility.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Roll after roll after roll, he lets his frustrations out. Roll after roll after roll, the pins go crashing down, like a camp levelled by his precious Deerclops. It's not always a strike, not always a spare, but he does well, and he gleans immense satisfaction from it. It's not chess, but he likes it almost as much. He doesn't even realize how intensely he's playing, his new dress shirt sticking to him slightly as he perspires.

He's so engrossed in his game that he hardly notices his surroundings, but any observer might see that he'd make for an interesting opponent.


c. "Forgive me if I don't get up" [Bobby B's]

He's rather proud of the alterations he's done on his jacket.

The fabric wasn't a perfect match- Tommy Bahama doesn't really do pinstripes- but the roses seemed like an appropriate replacement, a nod to his distant Queen. He's not sure how he feels about the fabric texture of one sleeve being so different from the rest of his suit, but the options were frustratingly limited despite an infinite store. Oh, and he has a new pocket square made from another dress.

There's something about how he's sitting now, lounging in a leather chair with a cigar in hand, that anyone who knows him from the Constant would find to be so very Maxwell. Of course, there's only one person on board besides him from the Constant, and Wilson doesn't really partake, so that point is moot. But the fact is that this man is in his element. On the table before him, an illusory chessboard flickers and dances like smoke and shimmers like the surface of a mirror. It's set, invitingly, with real chess pieces, battered but still well cared-for. He doesn't make eye contact with passersby, or say anything to them, but the empty chair on the opposite side of the table is very clearly an open invitation.


d. "They'll show you terrible, beautiful things..." [Closed for takethatnature]

Like so many times before, Maxwell is there by Wilson's side when he revives.

He doesn't say anything at first, watching the remains with quiet intensity, and he gives Wilson a moment to catch his breath once he's actually breathing again. After that, though..

"Higgsbury, you imbecile." He digs his fingers into the arms of the sofa

"You bloody daft, self-sacrificing idiot." No one gets that tone except Wilson. The other Survivors get insulted, berated, sure, but no one else gets the tone.

"Did you not think to tell me that you were going on the inevitable death excursion? Did it not occur to your brilliant scientist brain that I might want to go with you?

"Last time I checked, we had an understanding. We fight together, we survive together, we die together." He's conveniently forgetting all the times he's done the same things, all the times he's gone off alone to dispatch a monster he didn't think was worth troubling the rest of the camp about. He never acknowledges how alike they are, two vindictive former shadow kings with a strange flavor of compassionate and an indomitable prideful streak.

e. "You found me. Now, what are you going to do?" [Wildcard]

Message me on Discord!

Comments

D is for Done with being dead

[takethatnature]

Wilson groans, rolls over, and pulls the covers over his head. Muttered sarcasm issues from beneath. "Nice to see you too."

There's a moment of resentful stillness from the blanket lump, broken by a flurry of motion; the blankets go flying in his wake as Wilson sits bolt upright, index finger pointing accusingly at Maxwell. "Wait a minute, how did you get in here?! Did you convince Victor- no, he also died, he couldn't have- Why are you here?!"

[freedomsuitsme]

"Johnny Summer and Gal Friday thought it best that I be here to greet you when you woke. Now, stop avoiding the question. Why didn't you mention the excursion to me?"

[takethatnature]

"You got Friday to agree to this?" He doesn't know Johnny Summer very well; they didn't stop to have a full conversation when the man asked him what he wanted for breakfast after the excursion.

Wilson scrunches up his face in a frown, like he has a bad taste in his mouth that has nothing to do with morning breath. "It wasn't on purpose. I signed up weeks before you even got here."

It's not that he entirely forgot the excursion was coming after he put his name down, but it hadn't occupied a prominent position in his thoughts. Especially not after his nemesis and former tormentor, the most insufferable man in the world, showed up on the boat after Wilson thought he'd never see him again.

"You've seen me die lots of times! There's nothing you could have done about it, there wasn't anything you could have fought, and apparently the Captain gets in a snit if anyone else does even a little bit of revivification no matter how much effort it would save him, so you can't complain about me wasting amulets here." Every time he ran afoul of every horrible creature within a mile radius in the ruins down to the bunnymen who were offended by his provisions, or a huge pack of hounds found him when he was alone in the middle of nowhere, or he got caught in a spring downpour and couldn't quite dodge the shadows drawn to his cold clammy misery for long enough to ward off hypothermia at a campfire, it was all what happened to your armor and contrary to popular belief the eyebrella is not WX-78's exclusive property and I'm sure we would all appreciate it if you didn't consume our entire supply of red gems, but here the revival process is out of their hands.

"What exactly are you so bothered about missing out on?!"

Despite the icon, his beard's vanished the way it usually does when he dies. It'll grow back.

[freedomsuitsme]

"Oh, where do I begin, pal? How about the fact that, as we don't have a way of reviving ourselves here, it adds a layer of helplessness to those of us who can do nothing about the situation? How about the fact that I had to watch you splatter into a raw meaty stew in the depths of the Tommy Bahama, and while I tried to enjoy it like old times, it really doesn't do as much for me when everyone around me is going on about noble sacrifice and the dealings of the ship and the price of its magic? Not to mention, I'm not as keen on seeing you be splattered or squished or disemboweled like when I was King. It's actually somewhat unpleasant."

"Perhaps if you told me you were going, I could have gone along, and then I wouldn't have had to watch. Sure, we would be dying horribly, but since we'd know we'll come back, we could have made a bit of a game of it, just like back home. Gone out in a blaze of glory, back to back, spear in hand. We could have dreamed up some sort of outlandish scenario and made a show out of it for the other passengers. Or we could have gone in the other direction, drawn things out to give the ship more fuel, and maybe spare the rest of the 'guests' here some suffering."

"Fate and the powers that be seem intent on sticking us together, and it's almost starting to feel wrong when we're apart. I'm just... frustrated with you."

[takethatnature]

Wilson looks taken aback to have received an honest answer at all, rather than some caustic deflection. He certainly wasn't expecting that extensive rundown on the shipside half of the equation.

"I signed up because the Captain was being entirely too dramatic about the price of the ship dealings. 'If you go on the excursion you'll die' is probably a lot scarier if you've only died maybe twice tops. The only thing I was worried about was losing my stuff in some inaccessible netherworld, and Friday told me that wouldn't be a problem."

Where is his stuff, anyway? He must have also died on the main ship and not just the excursion one, since he woke up fresh with an empty inventory instead of snapping back to his previous state. Never mind, that's not the most important thing right now. "You had to watch?"

[freedomsuitsme]

"A continuous feed of misery, overlaid by a gods-awful soundtrack played poorly on some woodwind instrument. Apparently it had some connection to a moving picture about a famous sunken ship, but that was after my time and no one was really in the mood to discuss it."

"Speaking of your things."

He starts emptying his pockets of Wilson's things.

"You and your belongings were strewn across the floor outside the Tommy Bahama. There was a wretched sound sometime earlier, not entirely unlike a catcoon spitting up a hairball. I can only assume the Bahamanal... retrieved you."

[takethatnature]

"He does like linking the excursions to popular culture from his time," Wilson says, drawing upon his hazy recollection of the months-departed black binder and its mention of a death game based on a novel. "Apparently he's going to be running a lot of them from now on."

Everything seems to be here except the backpack itself, even the items he was keeping inside the backpack. Although his Tam O'Shanter has a big bite mark in it. Strangely, his lantern hasn't lost much fuel, compared to almost every other time he's died and dropped it on the floor; Maxwell must have found the body pretty fast. He starts weaving a replacement as he talks, since his belongings barely fit inside his main inventory. To free up a hand, he situates the bitten hat on his head.

"That's fascinating! I must have given it indigestion, or the ambulant laundry heap equivalent. Convenient too, since I fell for at least twenty minutes, which makes..." He squints vaguely at the exterior wall, doing calculations in his head. "Fifty miles or so? It'd be a very long walk to retrieve them if it hadn't. I wonder what it uses to digest its prey."

[freedomsuitsme]

He snorts, Wilson winning a smile from him despite the fact that he's still a churning vat of frustration deep down.

"You've spent less than five minutes venting your frustrations to me, and now you're back to science already."

Were Max inclined to think of Wilson more poetically, he might say "He's like an autumn storm. Potentially fierce but not nearly as relentless in his fury as the spring.". But this is Higgsbury, nasty gentleman gremlin extraordinaire, so instead Max just thinks "I'm both impressed and disappointed he got over that as quickly as he did, better stir him up again." But he can't help but engage in the scientist's theorizing.

"Considering the absence of your backpack, it was likely the explosive decompression of your inventory that upset its stomach. Why, you might have dealt the mightiest blow to it that anyone has managed yet. You should be proud, pal; you are uniquely unappetizing."

[takethatnature]

Wilson narrows his eyes at Maxwell. "That wasn't even the third worst thing you've said to me the instant after I woke up. You shouldn't be surprised that I'm used to dealing with your crabbiness first thing in the morning, six months of peace and quiet notwithstanding."

Peace and quiet except for Demyx playing the sitar and Victor eating breakfast in the cabin, which don't count for the purposes of this argument.

"Did you specify what you were going to do in here when you asked Friday to let you in?" he asks, sharply. Maxwell may actually be on to something about the effect he and his departed backpack had on the Bahamanal, but now if he continued that line of speculation he'd be proving him right, which he can't abide.

[freedomsuitsme]

"I... told her I wanted to be by your side when you woke up." He's still not sure why. Well, alright, there are those accusations Johnny was throwing around, but he's quite certain he doesn't have the gay. No, this is just a matter of keeping to the status quo. Clearly.

[takethatnature]

"So you could tell me I'm an idiot?" He sounds a little dubious and a lot annoyed, but honestly it makes perfect sense. Maxwell's ego wouldn't be able to tolerate having to wait in line behind anyone else to criticise Wilson.

[freedomsuitsme]

"Be honest, Higgsbury... would you have gotten out of bed and greeted the day nearly as quickly if I hadn't been here to tell you that you're an idiot?"

[takethatnature]

Wilson takes a moment to consider the question.

"No, I'd probably have gone back to bed."

[freedomsuitsme]

"And then your precious science would be left to languish, waiting for your eager return. So when you really think about it, perhaps my presence here has done scientific progress a favor. Then again, maybe encouraging you to take up the distiller and electrodes actually sets the field back, in which case, that would make me the villain as usual."

[businessorlibation]

Two knocks on the door. "Eggs and bacon for Mister Higgsbury. Should I leave it outside?"

[freedomsuitsme]

"I'll get it. You stay there," he says to Wilson. Whether Wilson decides to go along with Maxwell's request is... well, up to Wilson.

[takethatnature]

"What was that about getting me out of bed early enough for science?" Wilson protests, kicking the covers off and standing up, fully dressed with shoes and all as is usual after a resurrection. If Maxwell doesn't physically stop him as he squeezes past the sofa he's going to answer the door himself.

[freedomsuitsme]

Maxwell is caught off-guard, and Wilson is able to get past him pretty easily.

[businessorlibation]

At the door: one Johnny Summer. Platter on hand (stolen from the formal dining room) with a plate of eggs and bacon and a glass of orange juice. He's dressed up in his nicest suit--white dinner jacket far too formal for the time of day or the task at hand.

"Sir. Your breakfast."

1/2

[takethatnature]

Well, now he feels underdressed, in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat with Maxwell behind him in a three-piece suit and Johnny Summer in front of him in evening dress. Was this revival supposed to be a formal occasion and no one told him? Wilson accepts the platter nonetheless, though it's mostly a rote response. "Uh. Thank-you."

He puts the platter behind his back, where it disappears from view.

Hey, wait a minute.

2/2

[takethatnature]

Wilson squints accusingly at Johnny, frowning. "What gave you the idea that my breakfast wasn't complete without him bothering me?"

[freedomsuitsme]

"Oh, the plan was originally for me to bring you breakfast. I was going to be here one way or another."

[takethatnature]

"Somehow you always are," Wilson says before Johnny can get a word in.

[businessorlibation]

"My apologies for thinking the man who wrapped your corpse up in a blanket, who was loath to be separated from you even in your death, might be someone who you would like around."

He stands straighter, as if trying to spin the extra hairbreadth of height into a teaspoon more of dignity.

"He clearly cares deeply for you, and seeing you meet your doom was incredibly distressing to him. But it's none of my business, sirs. Your breakfast."

[takethatnature]

"He did what?" The mental image is bizarre. Wilson can barely picture Maxwell doing that for his ten-year-old niece, although that's partially because his natural impulse is to imagine the counterfactual taking place in the Constant, where the skeleton would be impossible to move without it falling to pieces. He turns to stare at Maxwell. "You actually- it got to you that much?"