you keep asking why your work is not enough [open]

[goodweather]

Who: Phil & friends
What: Village aftermath. Oh Brother
When: dec 24th through the rest
Where: infirmary, john's, bobby b's, others
Warnings: for the first header, village-typical horror; namely forced amputation and medical abuse, drugging, blood, discussion of patricide



i. because it is enough to exist in the world [infirmary, closed to darcy] (cw: blood, probably discussion of patricide, drugging, forced amputation, medical abuses)

Phil heaves awake in a cot in a medical room. The pain is gone; a frantic grabbing reveals that his wings are back, heavy and solid, and he is in a medical room sitting in a cot, and there is still a badge on him, and he is in a medical room sitting in a cot with his wings still intact, and it doesn't matter that blood coats his neck and all the back of his head because all he can think is oh God not again, please not again, not again, not again, not again, not again.

When Darcy finds him, he's staring down at his lap, breath coming deep and fast and about two inches from outright dry heaving, gripping the sheets.

ii. and marvel at it [texts]

Texts go out to those he knows. Ava, Tayrey, Cass, Erin, Dimitri too; anyone close enough to him he can think of, on or off the excursion.

Alright?

iii. you don't need to justify that [atrium] (closed to venom)

He needs to find it. Needs to be with his friend again, needs to feel its comfort and its strength around him again, so bodily and intrinsic as it was, and he needs to feel a comfort deeper than kind words and a firm hug. He needs to know that he's safe. He isn't safe on his own.

As soon as there's time, he rushes into the atrium, the most open crossroads-point on the ship, and tries to listen for it.

iv. or earn it [john's]

For all that talk about the orchestra in the Village, he hasn't actually seen or touched a piano in a month. He's got to be so rusty by now.

He tries to slip back into it, but something in his head is all wrong; the notes are just fine, sure, if a little rough, but the colors, the musicality, it's gone. That's fine, he tells himself. Nothing a bit of practicing and relistening to his betters won't fix. Practice always fixes things. If you work at it long enough, mind the right techniques, it will happen. Has to happen.

He practices. Practices for hours. It's not pretty, but it's work, good work. He missed good work.

v. you are allowed to just live [around] (cw: compulsivity)

Phil and Darcy cannot be found without the other for all of Christmas Eve and into Christmas proper.

After that, though, he wanders, attempts to fall back into his routine. He reads, in the library or in a seat beneath the signposts; takes his coffee from Sand Dollars; eats decent food from the buffet like he hasn't had a full stomach in months; attempts to draw, sometimes. And preens.

... Preens a lot, actually. Too much. It borders on compulsive, how much and how aggressively he goes at it sometimes, leaving his feathers ragged and torn. Complete opposite of what he's supposed to be doing but he can't seem to stop. He can't stop touching his wings, always digging his fingers through the quills, feeling that they're there at all and there's no pain that wasn't his fault. Over and over. Real, there, real. Staying. Every mark he leaves, every barb he breaks, every quill he accidentally pulls out or snaps--his actions have consequences and they stay. Good. Good.

vi. that is all most animals do [bobby b's]

More than once, Phil drags himself into the cigar and whiskey bar. Heaves over to the counter to order a drink, slogs into a chair to cut a cigar, and just.

Sits. Stares at the same spot on the wall for the next hour until he's done.

vii. wildcard

(( got other ideas? lmk! ))

Comments

[prince_of_beasts]

'Dimes,' fuck --

There's a distinct crack of thunder. Dimitri chokes; stumbles, one hand shooting out for balance and for surety -- this would be a kinder vision than usual, but they aren't always cruel, right up until the moment when they are.

[goodweather]

Phil rushes out to meet him, a hand darting to grasp his; the movement is accompanied by a rushing wind of the cold and damp breeze of earliest spring, swirling around them both. Another hand finds Dimitri’s other elbow.

“Hey—hey, hey, hey.” His words are soft. “You with me? You okay?”

[prince_of_beasts]

"Is anyone?" bursts out surprisingly clear. The cold wind sweeps away the thunder, leaving only the dull roar and trickling shadows of a summer downpour. Something solid, something real kept him from falling, still supports the weight Dimitri can't take himself. He drops his forehead against Phil's chest; there's weight there, warmth, the drum of a living heart.

It isn't fair. Dimitri's the one who stayed behind in safety and peace. He has no right to seek comfort when they all suffered what Dimitri knows too well --

"I'm sorry," he says between heaving breaths. "I'm sorry. I know -- I know. I'm so sorry."

[goodweather]

Phil gathers Dimitri up in his arms, wings coming round to cloak over his back. It's nice to feel something against them like this.

"I'm not there anymore," he murmurs. "We're out. Back here, but at least not there. They can't touch us again."

But he can't quite bring himself to say, it's over. It won't be until he dies. That's the way these things work. Kill them one day, or don't--you still remember forever what they did to you. The past lies like a nightmare on the present.

(It's difficult to see here, but if Dimitri has the eye for it, he'll notice something: the orange lighting that usually sweeps over Phil has turned green-tinged white.)

[prince_of_beasts]

It makes Dimitri's skin crawl, being held-enclosed-restrained -- Phil might feel his shoulders bunch -- but he'll bear it for the sake of something he knows his mind can't fabricate. Three weeks of spiralling terror and grief have pared him down to muscle and sinew; he burns like lightning trapped in glass, but when he balls his fists in the back of Phil's coat he is determinedly, undeniably solid.

A whiff of formaldehyde and rot twists through the wind -- only briefly. A violet flash sears through sub-basement shadows and hospital lighting alike, with a crackle that floods the air with ozone and petrichor and a bone-rattling roar. Spring hopes; Spring renews; Spring looks to the future; Summer is here, Summer sinks its teeth in, and Summer hates.

And Summer has no answers. Dimitri's rage has no outlet, except to tighten his grip and scream.

cw mention of medical abuse and restraints

[goodweather]

The sound is both impossible to listen to and dislodges something stuck in his craw. He’s sung that fury dozens of times himself, shredding his throat if it meant cowing the nurses and surgeons that would hold him down and tie him to the table (it didn’t, he lost the fight every time), sung it alone and angry and desperate, wondering if there would be a change, a response. It never worked. At some point he’d stopped.

But Dimitri

screams—

and it finds him there.

Cold air meets burgeoning thunder and the clouds crack open, or maybe he breaks the surface. Phil’s hold loosens and his ribs shake as he holds back tears.

[prince_of_beasts]

It goes on until it deteriorates into a cracking wheeze, until Dimitri's run out of strength to crush another wisp of breath from his ribs. The winds howl on, ruffling Phil's feathers and Dimitri's hair, laced with flickers of lightning and the spray of rain so thick the drops blend into a solid drenching torrent.

Never again, he swore, but that promise can only be made once. What happens twice may happen thrice; what can he say now? What good is an oath that can't be upheld? How many times can a world break before there's nothing left but seams?

"Phil," he says, cracking, hoarse. "Phil. Phil. Phil."

cw reference to needles and macguffin-esque hallucinogens

[goodweather]

“Dimitri.” Call and response. “Mitri, Dimes, Dimitri. I—I exist. I’m real.” Needles on needles on needles. How much can they put under his skin. You could probably make a playground rhyme with that, he thinks idly, to ignore the faint possibility that he isn’t, that 2’s merely found a new juvenile way to horrify.

He turns his head up towards the wind and rain. He doesn’t think he could tell the kid what happened. Not entirely. …

But he does deserve honesty, and truth, just—not to be unduly horrified more than he already has. Hasn’t he already told Phil about Arcadia, about his eyes, his skin, his scars? But Phil could take it. Like this, Dimitri might just shake himself apart with rage.

The storm continues. Phil breathes.

[prince_of_beasts]

Eventually, it has to ebb. Even Dimitri can only hold so much fury at once. It's good, though. It feels good. Grief is familiar, well-trodden, like the den an animal slinks back to when it's dying. Dimitri grieved his father, his stepmother, his godbrother, everyone who travelled with them and everyone murdered in their names; grieved Dedue's family with him when no one else would; grieved everyone starved or frozen by his uncle's mismanagement; a hundred thousand funerals walking, buried alive under six feet of mourning.

Hope wasn't much in the face of all that grief, not with a whole nation in lockstep against him. Hatred gave Dimitri the will to claw himself free, and hate has kept him on his feet ever since. When he steps back (not much, not far, keeping his grip on Phil's shirt), he's breathing calmer, clearer. He scrubs his eyes on his wrist.

"How bad?" he croaks.

[goodweather]

Funny thing about grief, its hold is so bright and determined like a flame, like something almost worth living for.

"The trip overall? Bad." He shakes his head. "But some got it easier than others, I think... n--not everybody got the same level of... I mean, I think for at least a couple people it might not have been worse than what we usually get. But it was worse for a lot. Very bad for Darcy. And for me."

How bad, though, he doesn't know how to truly answer--when he reaches for it, all he finds is a disaster, like opening a door to an utterly ruined storage basement. Terrible memories like to do that. Like to fracture. It's not that he's lost the continuity of events, but the rage tangles, the fear, each minute leaning on and informing every other one. The basement isn't just full of torn boxes of things. The things leak, ruin, tear, spill, scatter over other things until it's one collective catastrophe. Phil has no idea how he can communicate the whole of "how bad" except to walk Dimitri through the beats of it. And he doesn't want to do that. He doesn't know how much he can take.

Phil's gaze drifts. He's silent for too long.

"If--if," he starts, stops, "if you--however much you want to know. I'll tell you. But you might not want to. I'll just say right now that it was very, very bad, and... there was a final battle where a lot of us went to kill the guy who kept us there, but please, please be kind to anyone who tried to defend him. They weren't--"

Stops.

"We weren't in our heads."

[prince_of_beasts]

One long nightmare, one horror lurching into the next, a roiling storm of horror and fury and animal panic in which every moment fragments into a dozen others. Dimitri knows.

"I -- " For a moment, he's almost wounded. He shouldn't be. He doesn't exactly give anyone reason to think of him as forgiving, but he doesn't like being reminded that people see him as unkind. " -- I will be. I hardly have room to cast judgment."

He can't imagine ever defending the Master of the House, but he killed at its behest, and that's bad enough. If it had had him any longer ... he tries not to think about it.

"You don't have to ... Don't. Tell me anything that it would hurt you further to tell. But ... " He knows enough to imagine. Not worse -- nothing could be worse -- but options. " ... what did they do to you?"

[goodweather]

"To me?"

Breathes in.

"A... a lot. I don't remember all of it. But they, um..." keep the shake out of your voice, Phil, stop using fillers, you're a professional, "... hypnotized me to work for 2. Like they did some of the others. They locked me in a padded room to listen to Darcy scream--turns out they were fine at that time, it was fake, it's... and. I flew to break into 2's house. When he caught me, I was taken to the hospital."

A beat as he thinks. "They cut off my wings. And looped me. So they could do it a hundred more times. B-because it was a--a privilege." He spits the last word.

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri breathes in, slowly, through his nose. Breathes out, slowly, through his mouth.

"Your Goddess-forsaken LIMBS -- "

The rage disappears as quickly as it arrived. Dimitri's expression goes blank.

"He's dead," he says quietly, carefully. "This Number Two. He's dead."

[goodweather]

My limbs, he mouths silently, echoing Dimitri's sentiment. Yes. His. His limbs. Not just wings, not just things that were stapled to him by magic and that he shouldn't mind being taken away anyway. His limbs. His limbs. Him. They cut off part of him.

"He's dead," Phil affirms. "He's gone. There was a lot of us to make sure of that. He's gone and he can't come back."

[prince_of_beasts]

"That's for the best," he says, though he sounds faintly disappointed. His voice is distant, mild. "It would be difficult if you were compelled to try to stop me."

[goodweather]

On his better days, he'd have no trouble picking up what Dimitri is insinuating here. But he's just come off of several months of being tortured, see, and he's still a little focused on that.

"Stop you from what?" he asks blankly.

[prince_of_beasts]

Dreamily, Dimitri says, "It's a shame I never learned any healing magic. He'd die so quickly once I started taking ribs."

[goodweather]

"Oh."

Somewhat weakly, more in amazement and surprise than fear: "You'd... you'd do that on my--for me?"

[prince_of_beasts]

"It's the only remedy for men like him." Dimitri smiles, softly, at something in the middle distance, and cracks his knuckles. "They think they're strong, and that the strong are entitled to prey upon the weak. Force them to obey their own rules, and they soon reconsider."

[goodweather]

Ah, so this is how he truly knows he isn't still brainwashed right now. Phil feels no reticence at Dimitri's threatening of 2, and perhaps... perhaps it isn't all a dream if there's no one from the Village come rounding down the hall and challenging Phil to rebuke him.

"I agree," he says, if only to feel the thrill of free dissent. "Some people just can't change their minds. Some people, we just can't spend the time finding the magic words to make them reconsider."

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri wishes someone would come down the hall, so he could get his hands on something besides impotent rage.

"There are no words to convince a person who takes pleasure in denying others mercy. A creature like that learns only through demonstration." Dimitri's shoulders sink. His beatific smile sobers. "I've known enough of his like. I never got the chance to lay hands on them, either."

[goodweather]

Revenge isn’t necessarily something he believes in, but sometimes people do things that have a reasonable followup. Same as making water cold turns it into ice, or dropping eggs makes them crack into a mess on the floor, some people just have it coming.

Phil looks about to say something, then stops short.

I killed people, he nearly admits, but Dimitri is… cloaked in violence and rage as he is, he’s still young, and he doesn’t need more of Phil’s shit on him. Someone else can hear this. He’ll scatter his weights, and that way he can be held without anybody buckling under the strain.

"As much as I wanna wring 2’s neck, I can’t say I’m not grateful someone else did it before I got to him. I still don’t know if I would’ve had the stomach to follow through on what he had coming to him." An inhale. "Besides. Ava deserved it more than anybody."