Welcome To The Village

[number_2]

Who: Everyone who was signed-up for the excursion
What: The Village December Excursion
When: Dec 1st - Dec 23rd
Where: The Village
Warnings: Involuntary capture and confinement including immobilization and restraints, violence, injury, maiming, possibility of death, torture, coercion, gaslighting, mind control, drugging, scientific experiments, and extremely inaccurate depictions of mental health facilities/hospitals, among other potentially triggering themes. Please mark all threads appropriately.




"Good morning, good morning, good morning!" A voice that sounds very similar to Friday's chirps over a loudspeaker outside your character's home. Yes, their home.

Overnight, all the passengers who signed up for this excursion have been transported to their very own personal cottages. They will awake in a bed that is familiar to them. While this home of theirs does not necessarily have to resemble the place they were born or raised, it will be a perfect replica of a place they truly thought of as their home, down to the most minute details.

The cottages are self-contained, the size of a large studio apartment so, in some cases, they may only resemble the bedroom and living room of a person's home with a shrunken-down kitchenette and bathroom adjoined. But the heirlooms of their past are here. A favorite doll? A treasured family portrait? Trinkets you have long forgotten about? All of them will be here, somehow. (All except for weapons, that is.) They are indistinguishable from the real item, down to the molecule.

After that wake-up call, the voice continues on to express that the weather will be warm and sunny, with no rain forecasted. A brass band concert is announced, to start at noon on the lawn next to the living chess set. And once that bit of news is wrapped up, lively marching band music will begin to play. And it will continue to play. All day. From every speaker...including the ones hidden in their home.

Welcome to Your Village

It only gets stranger from here. Characters may be dismayed to find that they are without any of their original clothes or belongings. They awake in conservative button-up pajamas. The closet in their home is full of the latest Village Fashion to choose from. Everything is The Village label brand, including the tin cans of food that stock the kitchen and any of the groceries you could get at the General Store.

Your ship phone rings. When you answer it, you will be greeted, once again, by the voice of Friday. "Your number, please? Of course, you have a number. Look at your badge." If they look down at their chest, they will discover a small round number badge has been pinned to their pajamas. Was that there before? It bears the symbol of a Penny-farthing Bicycle, with a number in the spokes. This is their number.

"No names here," the voice of Friday chides, "Only numbers. Number 2 would like a word with you at the Green Dome. He requests you come for breakfast. Thank you!" Before they can protest further, the line goes dead.


Some Notes:

No matter how many times your character tries to take off and disregard their number badge, they will always find it re-attached to their clothes again the moment they look away and look back.

Your characters still have their phones but now they can only make calls instead of sending texts. They also do not take or store photographs anymore.

If your character destroys or damages anything in their home, or in The Village it will instantly repair the way things used to on the Serena Eterna.

The noise from the speakers can be muffled by covering it with pillows or other creative items, but cannot be stopped entirely. (Sorry Phil)

Comments

i

[saltwaterlungs]

There is suddenly a presence on the side of his good eye.

"You think there's a single evil motherfucker in the universe with good taste in fashion and music?" she asks, dry and quiet. Darcy's dressed similarly, only not in a striped shirt, because if anyone makes a mime joke at her she will beat them to death with her fists and that will be a huge bummer for everyone.

[goodweather]

“The Goblin King and Dr. Frank N Furter,” he replies as they fall into lockstep. “But they’re the exception, not the rule.”

Phil kicks a rock down the road. “How’re you? Wake up okay?”

[saltwaterlungs]

"Touché."

God help them if they end up in eithers realm though. Darcy loves Bowie but not enough to not try and kick Jareth in the very prominent dick for being creepy.

"Fine. In my room from home, I'm guessing you had similar. Fucker," an annoyed huff, "you going to Shitlord's breakfast?"

[goodweather]

Mmm. He knows that room. Laid on that floor more than once when they were young kids, before she banned him from it. "I wish. It wasn't my mom's house in Cleveland, or our place in Pittsburgh or anything. It was the BnB room from Punx--from that day, too. I could tell that's what they were going for."

His head bobs oddly for a moment. "It'd probably be informational at least, right? Whatever we're dealing with here, I should probably go to the orientation session. I'm guessing you're not."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Nope," pops the p.

"You know me," better than anyone at this point, "I wouldn't be able to not pick a fight with him. So."

She looks up at him properly, for the first time since initiating the walk-and-talk.

"You want me to see if I can fuck with it at all? Or stay at mine? I have a couch."

[goodweather]

"No, it's--it was weird at first, but now that I know what's going on, it's honestly fine. It was home for more of my life than it wasn't. I've got wings, I'm half blind, I unplugged the alarm clock, all the clothes are hideous, it'll be fine."

But all the stuff that is the same, all the stuff that's meant to be the same from day to day, there's... comfort in it, he won't lie. It's the swaddle of nostalgia and familiarity. God, it even all smells the same.

"I'd offer my couch if I had one. The only thing in there is a bed that can barely even fit me."

...

"Wait, have you ever even seen the room?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Once. We-"

Darcy blinks, rephrases.

"In the dream I remember one year we went to Punx. We stayed with that- Mrs Lanchester, the old lady. I think we went up to see it."

It's still... weird, to think about that yawn of time, folding in on itself impossibly in between the day before and after it. It must be how Phil feels when he thinks about the loop.

"But anyway. I'm fine. It's just home, ehn? Kind of nice to see photos of my team again."

[goodweather]

"Lancaster," he corrects gently. Not that he faults her. He doubts that that part of the dream is especially sticky, between the filter of that imagined childhood and the dream itself.

It's strange. It was all dreams, he knows, but they slot into his head just like memories do, and memories are often all he has. Once in a while he'll wonder briefly if he should re-account for his age. Always decides against it. Wouldn't be fair, wouldn't make sense.

"Think I could visit? I know I've--sort of seen it before, and it's your room, but..."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Lancaster," Darcy affirms.

Phil didn't get to see it as it was when he went into Darcy's memory proper, and his memory of it from the dream has all sorts of things that Darcy never experienced. Did they share a room at one point? They have to had- she doesn't recall them moving anywhere bigger after their dad left, and the apartment didn't have an extra room, but it's... maybe there was a third room, and they were in one of the bigger apartments down the hall?

Oh, right, he's expecting an answer.

"Yeah. Of course. Not like I have any other plans while we're here."

[goodweather]

That's the thing about dreams and old memories both, how the details swim. Nothing really stays except for the emotional underline.

"Yeah," he nods. "I'd like to get to see it for real this time."

And he ushers them along. Darcy isn't very far from him--nearly neighbors, really.

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy takes him home.

It's not quite how he remembers it- more than just the slight shrinkage from being inside the cottage, there's shrapnel from the course of living there that he just. Simply has not left. Not in this version of events.

"There's not much here. But, ehn, there never really was."

[goodweather]

"Huh."

It's strange, isn't it. It wasn't a memory, it was a dream, and yet the difference between what he sees and what he remembers rings awkwardly in his mind. As if his notion of what he feels is true has any right to impose on what actually happened.

Phil steps in, noses his shoes off at the door, and

stands there in the middle of it all.

"So this is how it looks without me there to muck up the place," he half-laughs as he glances into the mirror by the door to see that his hair is still brown. Even with a LeJeune mother he'd kept the way he leaves his mark in every place he inhabits, the way Darcy has seen all the evidence of his being scattered to every inch of his shipside cabin. The cleanliness of this apartment isn't unfamiliar, but it being so without thirty more years on it is. Well, and a bedroom is gone.

[saltwaterlungs]

It was a constant source of disagreement between them. A whole family of control freaks, Darcy and her mother stripping any trace of themselves from the house and Phil insisting on filling the space. It's contrast, right, the way things look darkest when something deeply bright is right next to them.

"I'd offer to give you the tour, but."

No point. He already knows it all. The familiar feeling of skin peeling back. Nothing to hide, anywhere.

"You're still not allowed in my room," she jokes.

[goodweather]

It wasn't really on purpose at first, but at some point it became at least partially an act of rebellion against them both. He'd even hide crap in places they'd never find them just so he knew they were there. Stickers, mostly. Cheap plastic figures barely an inch tall. Things they wouldn't find until decades later, when furniture started having to get replaced.

He almost wishes the Village had made up his home in Cleveland.

Phil chuckles. "Aw, can I at least get a peek?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Do you remember how long it took to get the crickets out of my bed."

[goodweather]

Phil does that dry silent dad laugh. You know the one.

"Hm, remind me?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Sure. If we ever get anywhere with crickets again, they're going in your bed, and you can time it."

The Pact Is Sealed.

"C'mon. Just in here."

[goodweather]

He passes through. He never really got a good look at Darcy's room after she kicked him out, but it's more or less what he'd expected it to look like. This is a room from a life without him, and so void of his influence all the same.

Phil wanders, a slow and patient circumnavigation as he just... looks around. Picks up and puts down a few things. Takes in all the details, letting them settle and solidify in his memory.

He stops in front of the board with the pictures of her teammates. He never did see much of them in Lyon.

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy quietly wonders if she's always looked so tired. She looks it there- next to Sabine chewing on her medal like a dork, all their arms slung over each other because fighting as a unit erodes any concept you have of personal space, even when you're taking it one turn at a time. Just... tired. Those dark bags under her eyes that have never shifted. Funny to imagine that this Darcy also had the weight of the world on her shoulders. It all seems so much lighter from here- what she wouldn't give to just have to worry about ghosts and grief and sneaking back home without waking her mother.

The last time she saw any of them was in memory. And prior, at the Diner.

It would have been nice to die for them, instead of crowds of ungrateful assholes who are still, after all this time, mostly strangers. Nobody's had the time to know her as long as any of her team. Nobody except-

"That was Cologne. We took out the team division, but I ehn- got a bad seed, missed the podium. I was so fucking mad that Coach Sazerac had to take me outside, tell me to stop being an idiot. Not in as many words."

She's not looking at the sticky note, but she knows it's there.

[goodweather]

Part of him wishes he'd been there--really there. Would have liked to have seen her unfold. Would have liked to have helped. One of those dreams was similar, he'd been living in Lyon and knew Darcy for a few years before the point he came to know her now, and then he'd died, but...

... he would've liked to have been there. Would have liked to see her in their home city, liked to see her whole, attached to the life that shaped her, even though he knows he hasn't actually been decent for long enough to have been good for her. It's only been seven years since the loop. No. Eight?

... There's some missing months in there from slipping into Whitestone. Fuck. Part of him wishes he could have seen Cass too.

"Sounds like a good coach." He never really did speak to the guy. "Guess he had to be, or the four of you would've dumped him."

[saltwaterlungs]

"That is absolutely not how coaches work. You train at the club, you train with the coach, and my club was the best club in Lyon for fencing and HEMA. So."

That's just how it goes. And honestly... comparative to the rest of the adults in her life, it's not like he could've done much worse.

"Anyway. Going to see if I can smuggle some of these home."

...

"Maybe not the cut-out of Ibtihaj Muhammad."

Who is a badass, but bringing home most of what Darcy has pinned up on the corkboard would be humiliating.