[log] Event: Metamorphosis, Part Three

[snowblindmods]

Characters: everyone
Location: all around town; note location in subject line
Date: Night 415 onward; note time in subject line
Summary: They break out and they wake up.
Warnings: extreme body horror, unreality, eldritch horror, absolutely definitely 100% include warnings in subject lines/before your comment if the subject line isn't long enough

Comments

[phaseshifter]

[ She's quiet for a second, thoughtful as she absent-mindedly wipes at the blood streaming from her nose and smears it across her face. Nice. ]

I can understand that more than most, I think.

[ She's in danger of slipping back into memories again - echoes of a time when she wished she could throw everything aside and escape the bunker. Of when her only comfort was believing that if she died, Jack would follow soon after. It had been exhausting, like -

Well. Like a living death. And here's Beckett, who's been through too much already. If she trusted her legs to carry her, she'd be trying to hug him despite the consequences. ]

You know I'll stay here with you, if you need me. It's not everything you wanted, but it's something? And there's also - there's the other. The other Angel.

[ Who he must already know about, surely? God, even thinking about her in the vaguest sense is disturbing. ]

[bookofnope]

[He knows she means that promise, and his first reaction is to nod. Yes, this is what he wants. This is how it should be. Perhaps this way he can stop hating her.

But at the same time, that would be destroying her - the potential in her that he knows he's helped build. Any good work he's ever done, come to nothing again.

There's no answer. There's no way out.]

You've - met her? [He's briefly distracted from that new pit of despair when she mentions her other self. Other than bickering with Flynn, he'd paid very little attention to the other anomalies. They had nothing to take any kind of bitter revenge on.]

She's like me. Not real. None of us are real, you and us, I mean, but we're - we're the furthest logical progression of that.

[Yeah. Anomalogic.]

[phaseshifter]

We're all real, Beckett. Whether one set of us are copies or both. It isn't even like copies are anything new!! There's another Rhys and two Fionas in the morgue, Jack's an AI...

[ She doesn't sound cross, exactly, but there's definitely an element of scolding in there. Is anyone actually surprised that Angel would lecture death incarnate, though? Really? ]

Anyway, that wasn't - she's. Lonely, I think. Well. Presumably less so now that she kind of abducted Squalo, but, um. I doubt that's helping very much at all, really, and since she doesn't seem to be able to die I think it's worth bearing that in mind. Even if anything happens to me, and if everyone else gets out, I'll still be here with you! Just not. Me-me. Still me, though. I-- you know what I mean.

[bookofnope]

No! [The way he snaps it, for a second there he's almost just the monster again. He snaps his teeth shut much, much too close to her face for comfort. She can be kind and loving and absolutely destructive to his original hateful intent as much as she wants, but there are things he won't take even from her.]

We're all lies! Everything was a lie! All our dreams, all our memories - everything - grgh! [He had to give into it, and it's lucky that he doesn't take it out on her. Instead he swings at the nearest wall and rakes his fingers down it as though he still had claws. He doesn't. All he manages to do is leave gummy black trails from broken fingertips.

He looks back at her, panting and sputtering.] We'll stay here. The cast-offs. Those shells. Where we belong. And you'll all go off - I hope he knows it isn't going to matter. Of course he knows. Doesn't matter which of us came first. It's all lies. A joke. A waste.

[phaseshifter]

Oh --

[ She doesn't flinch this time, but she can't help slumping further onto the sink as her nosebleed gets worse. Her head is spinning and the memories she's being bombarded with are dreamlike and garbled, but she can't black out now. She can't. ]

How - how freaking dare you tell me what I am? It's possible that I'm not the Angel who was on Pandora, but I've made friends and done things and - and I've lived more than she ever did! That's real enough for m-me. And loving you is real, too, cheesy as that sounds. Some things might be lies, but nobody's gonna take - that's mine. Ours.

[bookofnope]

[He knows where this is going. He knows what he is, after all. If he keeps pushing she'll die. If he comes too close she'll die. If he stays near, sooner or later, she'll die.

Maybe that'll teach her to want it. Maybe...]

It's just a dream. [His ruined voice is soft again. He looks her in the eye, holds her gaze while he still can. Or while he can. Tracking every change, every expression.] Just a fantasy we both had. That things could be better. This is what is real. Your death. My - this. My damnation.

[Would he do it? Damn her, too?]

[phaseshifter]

If it wasn't real, then tell me you don't love me. And mean it.

[ She tries - and fails - to straighten back up, and ends up just peering up at him through her bangs. It'll do. Dignity doesn't matter too much as long as she can make eye contact. ]

Bec-because if you think everything we've gone through was just a dream, that's what it boils down to. Doesn't it?

[ It's very faint, but she can hear Jack screaming.

Angel, you can STOP this! I'll still forgive you, baby! Please. Okay. Are you hearing me? Please don’t kill my little girl.

She blinks it away, teeth clenched. ]

So tell me.