logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: FEAST OF LIGHTS

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: FEAST OF LIGHTS

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: december 23 - 30
content: Holiday cheer is here!
warnings: n/a. please cw tags appropriately.

a show of lights

When characters wake on the "morning" of the 23rd, they'll find all of Beacon is lit up beautifully. Spirits have carefully placed candles all around the town, lighting up the familiar buildings and streets with a warm, comforting glow. If others wish to help, they're more than welcome, but it won't take too long: they've clearly spent all night getting things ready. If asked, Rastus will explain the spirits do this every few years, and yes, those candles are lit from the bonfire, but he'll get them back before the end of the event.

Once the spirits finish their task, it's time to hand out dreidels! While the four-sided toy has the usual Hebrew letters on it, characters will soon realize that they've little correlation to the typical rules. Instead: each side offers a certain kind of prize (listed below). Characters can play against the spirits or among themselves, but either way, they'll find a personal dreidel in their possession for the duration of the event.

secret santa

Of course, the spirits aren't the only ones in a holiday mood. Thanks to the tireless (and secretive) efforts of Eleven, quite a number of people wake up to find a present nearby. The wrappings vary from elegant to, well, an effort, and the gifts range form big to small, but there's no doubt each was given with at least a little thoughtfulness in mind.

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New Rome. Bruce is aware that the people here are from different timelines and even different worlds, but every now and again he'll find himself in a conversation with a person he could picture on a sidewalk in Gotham. And they'll say something that abruptly reminds him of how huge and unfathomable the universe is. He can't picture what New Rome is supposed to look like- the nearest he can manage is a re-imagining of pillars and temples and coliseums, everything the same shape and size, but uncannily smooth and polished. Made less extraordinary for the lack of age.

The legacy of Rome, he says. Conquering? War? Bruce takes a few small steps forward- not to close the distance between them necessarily, but so that he can attempt to satisfy his curiosity. To see with his own eyes. He crouches in the snow, knees bent and hands to himself- looking now not just at the arrangement of shapes, but at their faces. The details. How long has he been working at this, to have made so many?

"What expectations are you trying to be free from?"

He doesn't turn to look at Jason when he asks and maybe it goes unnoticed. But that doesn't matter. Keeping his gaze averted allows Jason to have, at least, the veneer of privacy.

"Me personally or in regards to the holiday?" It was only recently that Jason felt like he'd found his place, found what he was meant to do. It was frustrating to just begin working on that only to have it ripped away from him by a brutal death. He had such plans for Camp Jupiter and maybe eventually Camp Half-Blood...and now he was only going to be able to rely on Apollo's promise to him as he faced his death that he would do so. A notoriously flaky god who might drop the whole matter as soon as he was restored to godhood anyway.

"Romans have always been strict, disciplined, militaristic. But you can't expect people to be like that all the time. So there are holidays and festivals where the rules of society get turned on their head. The heads of state become the servants and those in lower positions get to be in charge for a day. I've been on both sides of that and honestly I enjoyed it on either end."

"Non omnia possumus omnes." No, he supposes that people can't be expected to be like that all the time- but that too, Bruce has found, is part of human nature. To set the bar perpetually higher and strive for perfection in one breath. Then to make allowances and remind themselves of their limits with the other. He's always liked the concept in that way. To Bruce it suggests that the meaning of it all isn't in achievement or in peace, but in the journey between the two. But then, maybe he's only comforting himself.

Bruce reaches out with one finger and follows a premade line, deepening the indentation and by extension, the detail. "You personally."

Jason looks surprised at first, but then smiles. Bruce continues to have a number of tricks up his sleeves it seems.

"Maybe more like Omnia tempus habent...but you're right. It's why working together, playing your part, was so important to Rome." That was the part he liked about New Rome and its structures, even if sometimes he had felt like he didn't quite fit where he was supposed to or like others were forcing him into positions they assumed he could hold as a son of Jupiter.

He considers the question about himself.

"For a long time growing up people put me on a pedestal because of who my father is and they thought I was this all-powerful, perfect guy. It was a lot of pressure, especially as I kept earning positions of leadership among the legion. For a long time I just wanted to be free from those expectations...and I got that eventually when I was sent on a quest with some of the most powerful demigods of our generation." The last part isn't meant as a brag, it was more a statement of fact -- it was something many of the gods had at least hinted at and given what Percy, Hazel, Leo and some of the others could do it was no wonder they were in that category. "It just sucks that I didn't get to enjoy it for very long before dying."

Playing your part is an interesting concept in and of itself. He wonders if Jason has ever stopped to consider the set up- the suggestion that each person has been cast to a certain role with the expectation that they perform only this one thing. That they couldn't be more. It's something Bruce has turned over a thousand times in his own mind. Playing his part means acting not just as the head of a major corporation, but performing as the billionaire brat Gotham expects him to be. Or does it mean using the money and resources he has to try and change the world around him? To do something no one has asked him for, that the people he loves would try to keep him from?

Jason says it was a lot of pressure and Bruce can understand that for what it is. What it means to inherit a mantle that feels like he could never possibly fit. In the times he's seen Jason here, the other has always volunteered himself for service. He seems to feel a great sense of duty to the group and Bruce wonders how much of that is innate and how much of that has been cultivated. Does he stand because he wants to, or does he stand because he always has? How different are the two, really?

"One might argue that you're free from those expectations here." Bruce reaches for some snow of his own and begins to duplicate the figure in front of him, casting a watchful eye back and forth to make sure his own is consistent. That it's as close to Jason's example as possible.

"But I suspect that isn't the case for you."

Honestly? That was Jason's entire dilemma growing up, because the Romans had seemed to have his life planned for him already. It was why being thrown into the world of the Greeks, his shifting loyalties between the two camps, had nearly broken him. But, he was different now. He was forging his own path -- at least he had been prior to death -- and wanted to see what could happen if the gods, their children, and the different camps could be united.

It is an interesting question though, whether Jason serves out of habit or choice or something else. But what else was he supposed to do? He had powers no one else did, he was one of The Seven, a hero in pretty much every iteration of that word. Jason could see no other way to act.

"I guess so." It wasn't likely that he was still being watched by the gods. He has a feeling they would have stepped in otherwise. Pluto didn't take kindly to people interfering in his realm. They were far from all of that. "But I never thought about it like that. This feels too much like some kind of...next step or new challenge."

A normal life had never been in the cards for him. He pauses, setting a snowman down. That wasn't entirely true. If things had been different maybe he could have gone to college in New Rome, settled down with a family, and retired. He had that dream once, maybe even training new heroes, but maybe children of the big Three weren't allowed that luxury. Any of the myths he could think of about heroes usually ended in death -- very few had lead very long lives at all. He'd gone down just like they had, and he tried not to let that bother him or dwell on those thoughts, but it was hard sometimes. Especially when they were toeing the line of that conversation in the first place.

Jason shakes his head and scoops up another ball of snow. "So. If I make a snow-sigillaria of you, do I need to put him in the shadows or would you like to be a little closer to the rest of the group for a change?"

"You don't strike me as a person that hesitates before a new challenge."

This too is something he can understand. The first time Bruce had killed someone he'd found himself unable to do anything except circle that point. There was such a clear delineation between Before and After that all he could think of was what it would mean if he went any further. What would it make him? Or would it make him anything at all? He'd thrown himself head first into the expectations of the people around him, attempting to outrun his own nature. As if it could ever be outrun.

What then is Jason Grace hesitating before? The familiar against the unknown? Or is it the enormity of what acceptance would mean? So many people in Bruce's life have died and so few of them have appeared in Beacon. The time they have here is already borrowed- an amount that shrinks with each passing day, as the World Eaters draw nearer. His hands withdraw and the miniature snowman sits surrounded by its many brothers. It isn't perfect. Maybe his next try will be better.

He's only just reached for a fresh patch of snow when the question hits the air, and while Bruce doesn't sputter, there's a momentarily stillness that betrays his surprise. "There's no sun in Beacon." What does he want? The corner of his mouth moves, a wry smile angled at the forest around them. "The shadows are always close to the group."

"Am I hesitating?"

It's a sincere question. He had thought he'd been waiting things out, trying to see what aspects of his former life could benefit him here and which he needed to leave behind. Of course, being here meant leaving so much behind already. He'd never known any other way of life and even now he was finding ways of bringing a little bit of New Rome to Beacon.

Jason glances up at the sky and then back to their lanterns. He pulls his closer, holding it up and over the small army they are building. "It's not a sun...but it still casts light. But, you have a point, there's definitely more darkness here than sun. All the more reason to stay together."

"This feels too much like some kind of next step or new challenge." There's no mocking quality to his tone. Bruce repeats the words the same way someone else might withdraw a book and reference one particular chapter. He isn't trying to make an accusation but rather attempting to gather evidence and test the conclusions that might result. His brows come together thoughtfully. "I'd mentioned that you could be considered free of the expectations from your home. But I suppose whether it's hesitation or not depends on your perspective." He isn't, after all, particularly quick to leap to a course of action either.

When he finishes the second snowman it's in time to see light moving, out of the corner of his eye. To see Jason shifting his lantern and elongating the shadow of each shape until it becomes one huge, pattered darkness. This both is and isn't the point he'd tried to make- the hand that he'd tipped. Jason says all the more reason to stay together and what Bruce had meant was, the darkness is always there. And so am I.

He pushes slowly to his feet.

"Try not to stay out here too long. Unless demi-gods are impervious to the common cold."

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EVENT LOG: FEAST OF LIGHTS

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