snowblindrpg | [log] Event: Breaking Down [open]

Like there was ever a shot. [House aims for blase, as well, but it's harder to do when he's honestly still terrified of... it feels like everything, really.]

The trick is to assume it's never god's will.

[Because god doesn't exist. Except House is very afraid right now what it means that he does and all of the prophecies are true.]

This conversation would be easier if you weren't half-inside my head.

Cry me a river.

[It's like some of House's irritability rubs off along with his fears, or then perhaps it's just Beckett being Beckett. Irritable and a hypocrite.]

Why is that the trick? Because you are afraid that if there is some greater power watching over us, then you are nothing but a toy to it - a guinea pig? Because you have such a bad experience already with father figures?

[And perhaps determined to fight the fears that aren't his, that he knows aren't his, by shoving them back down their proper owner's throat.]

[He glares at the other man. So blase isn't going to work, then. Asshole.]

My dad's got nothing to do with how I feel about people's imaginary friends. I'll tell any asshole who believes in some holy mother goddess or a pantheon the same thing.

[Purposefully missing the point here.]

You're deflecting! [He sounds almost triumphant. Gotcha.]

Is it doubt that truly moves you, or is it fear? Do you deny a higher power because of reason, or because you are afraid of having to account for who and what you are? Because perhaps there was some better way or greater meaning, and you missed it?

[Is projecting worse than deflecting? Don't ask this vampire.]

I save lives on the regular. I don't have an ego problem about the value of what I do.

[You're getting such a Look, Beckett.]

I deny it because it's what makes sense to me. [He pulls a face.] Any because life has no meaning if there's some great cosmic afterlife. Either what you do here matters or it doesn't. Getting some mystical realm after the fact just makes it all pointless.

[That stops his momentum. Touche. Probably the vampire shouldn't be lecturing the doctor, even if the doctor's altruism is five shades of questionable. And there's the fear again. The hell I've earned, in a most particular way.

He shivers slightly.] No. The opposite. Life has no meaning if that's all there is. I've seen enough of life, trust me, nothing in it is its own reward.

You've seen too much life. That's the problem with living forever.

[Beckett smiles glumly.] As satisfying as I find the implication that I've won the cynicism contest, what you're effectively saying is that life is only bearable as long as you can fool yourself about its true nature.

Life is bearable when it is what it should be. Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Spoken like a suicidal, all right. [And he doesn't sound impressed, but almost too weary to contest the statement with any force beyond this mockery.]

I've had that already. Your poor, nasty, short life. This - [he stares down at his grayish-pale hands] - this was a gift. I won't deny that. I refuse. Even if it's damnation, it isn't - it's better than that. [He tries to grit his teeth against the shivering, and fails.] I don't want to go back to being what you are. This miserable slog through a world you don't understand - !

I understand the world enough to know what it isn't. [House can feel the cold creeping into his own bones in the shadows. He wants the light, but because of this asshole, he can't actually bring himself to go to it now.] And you can keep whining about me being suicidal, asshole, but at least in the real world where death counts, I never would.

And as far as I can see, Beckett, I'm not the one who decided he's too scared of oblivion to face it and needs to keep going on and on and on. You're all about searching for answers, and in the end you were wrong, you missed everything important. So, you're not exactly a shining beacon of hope and wisdom here.

Edited 2017-04-18 15:54 (UTC)

This really would be easier if you weren’t half inside my head.

[From the strangled tone, gritting through a suddenly constricted throat, House should either be very pleased to have landed such a precise and devastating shot – or grateful that Beckett cannot, just now, channel his terror into fury. You’ve missed everything important. How are either of them skeptics, contrarians, fuelled by their defiance, to fight those imposed fears if the fears are true?

Then you tell me, wise and heroic doctor, what does keep you going where it matters? If life is short and brutish, if you’ve burned all your hopes except your petty revenge-by-time on your father, if this is all you’ve got – living day to day as yourself – then what oblivion are you afraid of?

[A wry smirk quirks up the doctor's lips at the ironic echo. When did he stop completely despising this guy? Probably around the same time he realized their minds were as much alike as they were different. Those kinds of people are rare. It's one of the things that still draws House toward the Joker, even while the clown terrifies him.]

I'm not heroic. [Let's get that out of the way.] Boredom. Chasing the high. What drives an addict? I'm looking for the next hit. Having nothing to do, losing my mind... that's the oblivion I'm running from. Forever? You'd run out of things eventually. The universe and knowledge are finite.

Edited 2017-04-21 22:01 (UTC)

Excuses. [It's a snap through gritted teeth. Beckett is still smarting from the shot about his misguided search, and House's smirk goads him, challenges him to give a good as he gets - give some kind of justification that would endure a scrutiny as merciless as his own.

Or at least, to prove that whatever House has, it isn't answer enough.]

You're the one who's worried about running out of things. I'll be satisfied with finite knowledge once I have it. If there is an end then there is an answer, there is some purpose. And you're just as afraid as I am that it wouldn't be what you spent your short, miserable life convincing yourself it is.

So what were you planning to do? Once you knew everything? Once you'd written it all down or stored it all in your head? An answer isn't always a purpose. Seeking the answer? That's a purpose. The meaning of life might really just be 42. And that would suck balls to actually learn. Because what the hell do you even do with that? I'd still want the answer, but it's a crap answer.

Edited 2017-04-21 22:43 (UTC)

Then I’ll know. That’s all I need. To understand why.

[And that’s where they diverge, he thinks, because he can’t explain this in words that would make sense to House. It goes so deep within the core of him that he can’t unwind it into reason. Like faith, in a way. Perhaps in every way.

His defiance fails him. Deep in there, and coursing to the surface, is the deepest fear: the terror of the meaningless half-life that had been Thomas Fletcher's, before death and the blood gave Beckett the faith that his existence, at least, had reason behind it.]

It's not what the answer is that ultimately matters. It's that it's there. A reason. If there is no reason, then everything there is is just like this town, a hideous accident. And if it is, then you may as well stay here. This is your forever.

Everything has a reason. Even this place has a reason. We just haven't found it, yet. [That thought is firmly fixed in his head. There's no fear about that. Maybe the reason is to keep them in an endless loop of experimentation. But it's a reason.] An accident is a reason. It's the start of a reason, anyway. You can backtrack it to the ultimate cause by asking 'what caused the accident?'

[The argument--debate, this isn't even an actual argument, it's some bullshit philosophical debate--is helping him extract Beckett's fears from his own to some extent.]

There's an answer that's there. I just don't think anyone's gonna like it. And once half of them know the answer, they'll give up because they run on hope. You've seen how this place runs, anyway. It's all theatrics leading to the big reveal. We're clones! We're in an artificial reality! We're inside cthulu's GI tract! Whatever the answer is, we won't have it until we've run through the maze, and solved all the puzzles.

Maybe it's not just being bored. [He shrugs.] The answer being that all of this is just a test. That'd be a bitch.

You sound awfully convinced all of a sudden. [Beckett's voice is bone dry; he tilts his head at House in a square look of expectant doubt, as though to say, he knows that the man is trying to follow the thread of reason out of the labyrinth of his own mind. And he is waiting for it to snap, just as he does for House's certainty about the supernatural. Then he shakes his head, a violently dismissive gesture.]

But that isn't the point. You're conflating reason and cause. Of course there is a cause - linear logic dictates it, if we accept that it applies - but a a reason implies something else. A logic to things. A purpose. An intention -

[A directing intelligence. He stops before he says it outright, though he's fairly sure that House would complete the thought on his own.]

A test still seems a better option than an accident. One can pass a test.

You're assigning artificial value to something that doesn't necessarily have one. Reason doesn't imply intent. It's an explanation, a cause.

And if you find a test more comforting on an existential level than an accident, go ahead and believe whatever you want. We don't have an answer, yet.

No. You are misunderstanding what this is about.

[This bouncing off of fears, where half the time he isn't sure if they're trying to untangle their minds from each other, or driving each other on.]

You don't believe in a greater meaning - fine. What will you do when you have your answer? How will you go back to your world and keep trusting it is what it is, after everything you've seen?

I'm not expecting to get out of here and back to my world.

[And while that's depressing, it's the repetition of this all over again that's more frightening to him.]

[The repetition, yes - just this, forever. The idea of being afraid of eternity is what makes Beckett reel more than anything else. It's so alien it's sickening, like a foreign object in the throat.]

You can't tell me with one breath that you would never kill yourself where it counts, and in another tell me that your goal is to truly die here.

[It's almost a snap, definite terror behind it.]

[House feels Beckett's own fears clawing at his head again, sinking in. He pulls a face and finally pushes himself up.]

I said in the real world, Beckett. This place isn't like home. I don't want to die here, but between that repeating? Yeah. I'll take oblivion.

I'm leaving. You wanna hang out here and get eaten by one of the anomaly-people running around, be my guest.

[log] Event: Breaking Down [open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: reference to suicidal ideations

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject