logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: january 20-29.
content: the lanterns begin to malfunction.
warnings: body horror and psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

you'll become one

January 20th arrives the same as all the days before it. There's no great pulse of warning that throbs through the air, no ominous wind that causes the bonfire to shudder. The spirits are neither agitated nor do they hide. You could almost miss the change, if the lanterns weren't always by your side. There's no explanation that comes with the way that it's changed, but it's impossible not to worry when it's happened so suddenly.

Maybe it takes a few days, or maybe it only takes a few hours, but suddenly it isn't just the lanterns that have changed. You, yourself, have become somehow different. It's possible that you won't even have the right state of mind to wonder how long it will last. At the very least, it appears you aren't alone. All across Beacon, lanterns are changing, and changing the people with them.

Out in the distance, the lighthouse's beam has turned green.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

They're just having emotional brain issues, it's fine. Change is hard, even when they didn't realize it was happening, and only just now noticed. (Yes. Figures you'd agree with that one, Asset. No. We gotta get you more vocabulary, pal. No.) Changing on purpose is one thing. Having half your rationale for living suddenly shaken is another.

They do roll their face back out enough to give Sora a one-eyed glare. "You are not that kind of friend." No putting yourself down in front of Soldat, kiddo.

Sora's statement does bring up the immediate and automatic response that no one can possibly be friends with a murder machine… except the words go unsaid, because Soldat has enough self-awareness going on right now to remember that they have been calling themselves a murder machine for months, now. And there are plenty of people who claim Soldat is their friend. (If you start thinking they're lying, I'm going to find some way to hit you. No. Yes, okay. Fine.)

Except that, too, is an overwhelming thought. Why is everything hard, today.

Hey! Sora is trying to be a comedian here, but the soldier has to be, like, kind and supportive and stuff? Sora's starting to see a pattern now, at least; he takes in a shuddery breath but does not shed tears this time. So, he gets sad when people say nice things about him and mean it. It has to be out of left field, too. That's a weird and new thing. He's not sure what to make of it.

Everything is kind of rough. Sora is 100% going to blame it on the lanterns, except for the randomly crying bit, which apparently is a problem that popped in out of nowhere and has been going on for weeks now, but he'll think about that later. Tears have never hurt him before.

"I'm not the Asset, at least?" There, a compromise. "Is it something you want to deal with, though? Does it know how to like... share? Can it learn?"

Weird things make the Soldier-- Soldat-- cry, too. They get it. Usually it's people telling them they're okay and don't have to change, which seems like a really dumb reason to find themselves weeping. But it keeps happening. There's no judgment here, kid.

"I. Don't know." They re-bury their face. Logic says that in any other situation, the Asset could absolutely learn. The Soldier did. Soldat did. Must have, if seeing the Asset at its blank worst can make them feel sick, after so many months of being told they have worth, of being allowed to express emotions and forge relationships. But the Asset now, they know, is just a piece of the whole, something taking up space in their head. Can the pieces learn? They come up with the muffled final answer: "Maybe."

They'll both be extremely weird together, then. Maybe there's a happy medium!

Sora leans back and thinks about it. "I... don't know if the Asset will go away. What I do know is that if it does end up learning how to make friends, and think for itself, and be sad and happy and stuff... If it were me, I don't think I'd want it to go. Even if it was hurting me, or taking up too much room." He tilts his head. "Anything can grow a heart. That's how it was in my - Sora's - world, anyway. It just needs to learn how to care about others. Maybe that's why I get caught up in trying to be friends with everyone? I want to know what kind of person there is in there. I want to meet them."

"But if it's hurting you..." Sora thinks about it. "I don't know. People like the sergeant and the Asset can fade in my world? If no one remembers them, and their hearts are gone, then they do disappear. They need someone else to remember who they were to continue to exist."

Can voices inside someone else's head grow their own hearts? (That sounds like it'd make things even more crowded in here.) Soldat doesn't even want to think about that. Their head feels so full.

Which is probably why they're dumping all this shit on the kid, just because it's overflowing their own brain. Poor Sora.

"Never going to forget," they say, still muffled. "Not if I can help it." They're... them, after all. Part of their past, and now part of their present. They don't want to forget anything ever again. Maybe that's one reason the past few days disturbed them so badly: each shard, each voice that got out and took over, forgot everything. None of them knew Beacon. None of them knew their friends.

Soldat suddenly uncurls and pushes to their feet, shuffling to the kitchen with the blanket wrapped around their shoulders, still.

In Sora's universe, he is an extremely odd case of someone whose voices got out, nabbed hearts, then got dragged back in kicking and screaming. They got better!

In any case, talking about this stuff is probably less of a problem than the soldier thinks it is? Sora has a tendency to want to listen to what bothers other people and not let the darkness of it all get to him for very long, even if he is kind of sensitive. He's been doing it since he was young! After all, he always does what Riku tells him, even if he fumbles on the way.

Sora thinks about what they just said - well, looks like the Asset gets to live, for now - but lifts his head when the soldier suddenly stands up and leaves. The kitchen? What are they doing? "Feeling better? Need a hand?"

"Need to write something."

They pull a pencil from one of their knife sheaths-- yes, they keep pencils on their person, just in case-- and write on a sheet of paper taped on the fridge. The paper contains Aziraphale's list of New Year's Resolutions, plus two written in Soldat's hand underneath them. Now there's a third.

Regain more good memories.
Stop shut-down.
Never forget again.

They consider the list. They don't know if they can manage the second two. But they're going to fucking try.

Sora considers leaving the soldier to it, but curiosity gets the better of him and whatever they're doing seems to be something that would have been visible anyway. He gets up too, wrapping his burrito around his shoulders, and pads into the kitchen after them, catching up and looking at the list, reading it slowly.

"'New Year's Resolutions.' So... Those are Aziraphale's and those are yours." Sora looks back to the soldier. "How do you think you're doing so far?"

Soldat shrugs listlessly. "Not great." Sora himself saw a shut-down, so that's still happening. They still haven't worked out how to get memories back without Aziraphale's help, or the shit that Beacon does doing it, for them. And already they had a two-day episode of forgetting.

What can they do if it happens again? There has to be something. Some way to keep track even if Beacon's shit takes it away again. (Write it down? … maybe. That sounds like a lot of writing. What else are you gonna do? Add a third patrol back on? Awaiting orders.) They have a point. If they're interpreting the Asset correctly, anyway.

Sora looks at the list, thinking for a second. "It's still January. It's only three things. Less than a twelfth of the year's over. That's enough time."

He looks up at the soldier, then back at the list. "'You haven't failed if you keep trying.' That's what my swim coach said. Skyler's swim coach." He shrugs. "Skyler didn't believe him. I do. I think we both agree Skyler's not the best role model here."

"Uh, no. Not the best role model." That wouldn't be quite as bad as aspiring to be like the Asset, but it wouldn't be great, either. Soldat gazes at the list a moment more, then puts the pencil away again. Time for their first stress-response fallback. They're even in the kitchen.

"When's the last time you ate."

"Uuuuh." He thinks back. "I think I ate half a sleeve of crackers I found in here? That was an hour ago." Beat. "Also, if I wasn't supposed to eat the crackers, sorry!"

He was more bored than hungry, but there really isn't much left to do if he's stuck inside so his evil reincarnation doesn't try anything funny with someone he likes.

"How about you?"

They'd gotten a few bites in at Misty's. They're pretty sure. But beyond that.... "No idea."

Looks like it's lunch time. Or dinner time. Or snack time. Whatever. They start poking around in the fridge for what they can make. "Don't worry about the crackers," they add absently. Plenty of veggies, some chicken, olive oil. They need to actively cook for it to help calm them down. So stir-fry it is.

Sora watches as they pick out ingredients... Something's going to get fried, at least. "Let's eat then." No worries. Zero percent worried about the crackers.

He's going to poke around in the cabinets, actually? Just trying to see if there's anything he can prepare too. As it turns out, Aziraphale's got a bag of rice in the pantry that Sora hadn't noticed before, but Sora hasn't seen a rice cooker in Beacon at all. Do they use a pot to make it? Sora's not sure if he can make rice without a rice cooker or a caldero, so he'll just save that info and start rooting around in their cabinet to see if they have a pot close to the latter.

"I know Misty taught you how to cook. Do you know how many recipes you've learned so far?"

"Misty. And Mrs. Maisel. And Aziraphale, a little. He's useless with most foods, but he can bake." Their cookie recipes come from him. "Biscuist", in the British. They spread things out on the counter and start neatly chopping, withdrawing a knife from one of their many hidden sheaths to do so. They pause to start at it briefly, remembering suddenly that they left the last knife they chopped with... at Misty's.... They're going to have to face her soon. Check on her hand and. Apologize.

Ugh.

(Focus on the food prep, Soldat. And the question.. Right.) They start chopping again, rapidly and efficiently. "I have twenty-eight base recipes. Several variations experimented with from the bases." There are a handful of pots, if any of them would work. Just boiling the rice would probably be good enough.

Sora doesn't want to have to resort to that - look, calderos are creatures of their own, their rice cooking habits need to be internalized - but he'll sigh and finally grab a pot that looks close enough, shuttling it over to the sink.

All good names, all names he knows. He thinks about them as he goes back to the pantry to grab the rice. Good friends surrounding the soldier with support. It's still boggling that they were going around without a heart at all. Completely unbelievable, in Sora's opinion.

(He's going to have to get Aziraphale to help him bake. Skyler was a passable cook, but the most he had to do with the oven was make sure Ari didn't burn herself on it. Sugar cookies for Christmas was about the extent of his talents on that front; the rest were box mixes. Not enough experience to make the recipes the little chef from Sora's memories had walked him through.)

Sora makes a low whistle. Somehow, he's not surprised that they both remember them and their variations, but it's still pretty impressive that they've gotten this far in just a few months. "I feel like nine out of ten times we hang out, you end up cooking. You must like it a lot."

"It's calming. Following steps. And you get food at the end." Soldat moves on from the vegetables to the chicken, which requires a little more work to strip the meat off the bones before chopping it. The metal hand doesn't get to do much there, lest they get meat juices in between the plates. "Makes me feel better to feed people." And themselves, of course, but that's a given.

Plus, there's the bonus of learning from people being a social activity that they know how to do without fucking up too badly. Taking instruction, trying a new thing, and getting (gentle!) correction or praise for a job well done. It's a thing to do with people they care about. That's harder to articulate, though, so they don't try.

Sora feels like they've been down this conversational road before, but it takes him a second to place it. Probably on his first day here, now that he thinks about it? Something about having directions, clear rules, a guaranteed product at the end of the process. Looking back, he still thinks that they were vibing pretty hard back then, but in the present, he's starting to think that enjoying that kind of certainty in a place like Beacon probably isn't that uncommon.

"I like cooking too. Like, me and Skyler, we both did, for his little sister, when they were young." The pronoun confusion is a little strange, but it feels more natural than any struggling he's been doing in the past three weeks. "It's nice, knowing you're able to help someone else. It made me happy."

"I'm gonna need a hand with this," Sora says, dumping about three cups of rice into the cup (he knows it's too much, but he has plans, damn it!). "I don't think I've ever made rice in a normal pot. How much water? Do you need oil for normal pots too?"

Ask similar questions, get similar answers. The Soldier-- Soldat-- is not exactly one-note, but they do like to stick with the words that work. "One and a half parts water to one part rice. Or two parts water, if you like it softer." They will let Sora do whatever it is he wants, but rice will take a while to cook, so they have to consider their options for the stir-fry. Maybe wait to finish that, and mix up some cookies or something.

Maybe the smell will lure Crowley down, or Aziraphale out from wherever he's been hiding the past couple of days.

(No.)

They ignore the Asset, rinse off their knife, tuck it away, and get out flour, sugar, and eggs.

Sora honestly appreciates the consistency - it's familiar. He will fill the pot with one and a half parts water, since again, He Has A Plan, but he is definitely asking Rastus for a caldero! Surely he can provide one, they're not too valuable.

Sora looks back at the soldier as he starts washing the rice (as he does - look, he doesn't know why he does it, but his mom does and his tiyas do, so he does it too), watching as they get the ingredients out. "Ooh, baking? Or frying?"

"Baking. While you cook the rice. Takes longer than stir-fry." And they don't want to sit around and wait idly. That way lies too much thinking and emotion and shit they're too tired to deal with. So instead, they measure out ingredients and mix in Aziraphale's big "biscuit-mixing" bowl. By hand, because honestly, why use a mixer when your arm is literally a machine? "And we can eat the healthy food while the they're in the oven."

... So there's unhealthy food coming. Good. Sora drains the rice and refills it with fresh water, bringing it to the stove. This is extremely efficient. Something Ari would do, or his mom.

"I have a bunch of cookbooks from the Librarian, but I always kinda felt weird standing around doing my own thing while Mrs. Maisel kept everything running. You think Aziraphale would mind if I came here just to use the kitchen?"

There's a pause. The Soldier. Soldat. Doesn't actually know the answer to that. It isn't their kitchen-- it's Aziraphale and Crowley's. And Aziraphale is in his kitchen a lot, and when he's not, Soldat is. And when Soldat isn't, sometimes Crowley is, making candy or something for Aziraphale. (When he's not asleep. Maybe stop reminding yourself about that. It's hard not to.)

"I don't now," Soldat finally says, sort of honestly. Aziraphale would probably say yes, because Aziraphale rarely says no to anything, but it's not their place to say that for him. "You'll have to ask him. Mrs. Maisel isn't in the Invincible kitchen all the time, though. There's also the hotel. There's a kitchen there." So in the (unlikely) scenario where Aziraphale does say no, or the (slightly more likely) scenario where Sora doesn't bother to ask, he has options.

Sora will absorb the answer solemnly, then nod, resolving to ask Aziraphale himself. "I was trying to make cabbage rolls like a week ago in the Invincible's kitchen, but it took way longer than I thought it would, so I ended up standing around in there for hours while people wandered in and out. They were all nice, but." And Sora will pause. Huh. Okay, that's why cooking here seems much less daunting than at the Invincible. He tests his guess against the idea of cooking at the restaurant at the Landmark, and it comes up looking positive too.

"I guess... I wanna be around people?" Oh, the pot lid. Sora goes back to nab it from the pot cabinet. Okay, Sora. The soldier has told you again and again and again and again that you can tell them anything. Just have it out. It'll be fine. "I'm... also trying to stay away from someone."

Edited (pro!nouns!!!!) 2020-01-26 19:10 (UTC)

Stirring in the butter now, Soldat doesn't look up from their work, but it does seem like their attention focuses a bit more in Sora's direction. Intently. "Who are you trying to stay away from?"

Did someone try to hurt Sora? Did someone frighten him? Is there someone the Soldier needs to have words with? (Orders? Down, boy. No.)

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