[log] Event: Breaking Down [open]

[snowblindmods]

Characters: anyone pulled into the Escherverse
Location: Escherverse
Date: Morning 220 - Night 221
Summary: All alone/Even when I was a child/I've always known/There was something to be frightened of
Warnings: general horror, violence warnings; make sure to put more specific warnings in the subject lines!

Comments

[rubikscomplex]

[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.

[bookofnope]

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.

[rubikscomplex]

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.

[bookofnope]

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.

[rubikscomplex]

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.

[bookofnope]

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.

[rubikscomplex]

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.

[bookofnope]

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?

[rubikscomplex]

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.]

[bookofnope]

[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.]

[rubikscomplex]

[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.