logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

characters: everyone.
location: the path from downtown beacon to the harbor; all over town.
date/time: february 16-21.
content: the forest spirits send off their friends to join the aurora. memory opals drop from the eerie green lights above.
warnings: n/a.

i had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.

For most of the day on February 16, all of the town's forest spirits can be found along the stretch of road between downtown and the harbor, clearly setting up for, uh, something. They're piling snow onto the pathway, creating a miles long sled trail that starts outside the Landmark Inn and ends at the very end of the harbor's dock. Not only that, but the forest spirits are also not super willing to explain what they're up to! They're busy, you lantern-havers.

By the time evening rolls around, the spirits have set up wooden railings alongside the snowy path, as well as a warming tent, hot chocolate booth, and announcer stand outside of the Landmark. Oh, and a starting banner for the race! It's dogsled time!

Throughout the event, Beacon's downtown and harbor areas will be completely overrun with forest spirits, all there to bear witness to this holiday celebration—this holiday is for them, though, not you weirdos with your naked faces. Point is, none of the spirits will be hostile at this time! They're more interested in interacting with each other than with Beacon's residents, though if pressed, a kind spirit might be willing to explain what's going on:

The aurora arrives in Beacon for about a week each year, and the forest spirits believe it to be "friends in the sky". The lights are old friends of theirs, it seems! And each night while the aurora shines above the town, the forest spirits send off a handful of friends to join the aurora! The spirits ready to join the aurora build sleds of their own and assemble mighty sled teams, sometimes comprised of dog spirits and sometimes... other stuff. Then, when the aurora is at its peak in the wee hours of the night, the sled teams will ride off one by one, racing down the snow-covered path all the way down to the harbor, where they'll finally rocket off the dock and out over the lake, picking up more and more speed as each team gallops wildly over the water before arcing up into the sky. Once the spirits are barely a speck, they'll hit the aurora and burst into a shower of light. Beautiful stuff!

See, since the aurora is made of light, forest spirits launched into it are killed on impact! Isn't that wonderful! The forest spirits seem to think so! What is death to a dead thing!

All of this information can be learned through handwaved/played-led interactions with the forest spirits during the event. They'll all be focused on saying goodbye to their friends and cheering them on as they stream through the sky, but they're happy to welcome lantern-havers to join in the celebrations. The hot chocolate is free and only tastes a little bit like mud, so. Enjoy!

•••
For the entire duration of the event, the aurora will dance in beautiful silence overhead, lighting up the whole town with its eerie green glow. Every so often, handfuls of opals will rain down like meteorites from the lights above, and these opals each contain the memory of someone currently in Beacon! They can be found all over town, landing on paths and atop buildings and maybe even rocketing straight through your ceiling to crash into your living room. Perhaps a forest spirit decided to hide some shiny rocks in your cereal box or under your pillow... Better hope the Postmaster General doesn't find your opals before you do, though. That spirits sure does love their rocks. Point is, who knows where the opals might turn up?

On that note, if you signed up for a random event, we'll be RNGing characters to receive these random events throughout the event! The event may happen in response to a toplevel on this event log, or we might turn up in your IC inbox... 👀 These events will be entirely random, meaning we could dole out any number of them at any time, so it'll be a fun surprise for all of us.

If you missed signups and would still like to toss your name in the ring, go right ahead! Signups will remain open throughout the event, though we can't promise everyone who signs up will get something.

And finally... Each day, we'll post a list of the forest spirits joining the aurora! What, did you want to know in advance? The forest spirits have never been a particularly organized bunch, so they're winging this—which means more surprises for you. :)

Enjoy the races and the lights and the opals, residents of Beacon, and remember: WHAT IS DEATH TO A DEAD THING!

QUICKNAV
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We could be geese?
It's dark, the hour growing closer to midnight and there's only two people on this part of the roof. Quentin, and a pretty, blond girl. Alice.

"Four, three, two..."

And Quentin, wearing only his underwear and Alice, wearing just Quentin's shirt around her shoulders, stand next to each other. Looking out over the grounds of Brakebills and counting down the seconds until they fail this test.

The test of sharing their innermost secrets. Naked.

Their hands are tied in front of them with rough ropes, and Quentin throws the empty bottle off the roof with a sigh.

Alice sits down, the white paint of her face vivid against her skin. "I never saw this coming.

"How could you? You're the best." Quentin says, licking his lips and his heart clenches with disappointment.

"You know what? I try so hard not to be. I'm already pretty damn unpopular. Can you imagine what they would think, if they knew how good I really am? Spinster magician, dies alone. Eaten by cats.

I always hold back, Quentin. Every single day. I have no idea what I'm even capable of. And I'm just trying so hard to be anything close to normal."

The rope falls from Alice's wrists, but Quentin is already talking.

"My friend Julia says that I--I,uh, couldn't run away hard enough. She's right. I run and I-- I run. I find secret doors. And, whether I'm alone or in a group, it doesn't matter. I mean, look. I'm in this amazing place. I have literal magic in my life, and I'm still running. I'm still this person that I fucking hate.

I'm sorry. I'm really drunk"

The rope falls from his hands, too, just as the pain sets in and suddenly there's a flock of geese rising from the grounds around Brakebills. All of them going in the same direction and one of them is hooking a little more enthusiastically than the rest.

The geese all touch down at the mirror image of Brakebills. It's covered in snow, almost to the roof and there's a large, frozen sign saying "Brakebills South".

All the geese turn back in to people, naked and freezing in the cold air inside. The whole place is pale, and blue. Like ice, only worse. Because Quentin knows that they have to stay here. Leaving means being kicked out of Brakebills and losing all memories about magic.

Everyone quickly gets a room and a pile of scratchy white, woolen uniforms and Quentin just... really misses being a goose. The freedom of flying and Alice gets it. Mayakovsky introduces them to the work they need to do to get out of there -- learn magic. Not by memorizing textbooks or parroting the lines the professors tells them to.

But to feel it, deep inside. What it's like to be a magician. What it's like to know magic. Mayakovsky is a big bear of a man, who constantly smells like vodka and wet wool and who speaks with a thick Russian accent.

"I hate you. I hate all of you. And do you know why?," he asks. Despite the snide remarks and the eyerolls from some of them. And he slams his hand in to the large, oak table. "Because you don't know anything. You are all just clever pets. Your voices are your enemies.

A great magician- and, when you gaze into your mirrors in years to come, you will remember that I was the last great magician you ever saw - a great magician is magic. In his bones, blood, heart and dick. Or ladyparts. Begin!"

Quentin can't talk, he tries but there are no sounds coming out and just thinking about trying a simple spell like Legrands Hammer is... impossible. It's mindbogglingly impossible, but.

He practices. Daily. They have no voice for spells, but they also don't have a voice for anything else, and Quentin tries. He tries so very hard. The nails on the plank taunt him, they move a little. They wiggle around and yet. Nothing.

They are all expected to do this one spell. When they make it, they get reassigned and moved away and Quentin tries. Again and again. Fingers aching and wrists sore from the strain, and still. Nothing.

Alice in the room just opposite his. He likes to keep the door open, just to watch her try, too. And fail. Or, maybe she's holding back. Just a little.

When he's not practicing, Quentin likes to stay by the fire in what counts as the common room. Getting warm since their rooms are all freezing and talking to Alice through little notes on pieces of paper.

They talk about nothing and about everything. About magic and about Brakebills. About expectations.

Weeks later, Quentin finally gets it. He gets it and the nail comes up and slides in to the plank. Alice gets it first, of course and they smile at each other from across the hall. Her hair catching the yellow light and without her glasses, Alice's eyes are very big and very blue.

Mayakovsky looks unimpressed, clapping his hands with a snide, "Congratulate yourselves. You're both such winners." And it's so fucking annoying, after all this hard work. After spending so many nights with his hands in a tub of snow, because they hurt. That Quentin screws up his face and raises both hands, the pile of nails on the plank quiver and they all rise up in to the air. Hovering.

And Quentin slashes his hands down and the nails all drive themselves in to the plank -spelling out DICK.

Mayakovsky turns on him, walking closer to look at the plank with a small, superior smile on his face. "Congratulations. That's probably your first intelligent communique. You should have been rendered mute long ago. Now, you're probably wondering what's next."

And just when Quentin starts to relax, his shoulders slumping, Mayakovsky slaps him across the face. "Bojolds nail extraction is the next. Begin!"

A new impossible test. Another few weeks of trying and failing and Quentin feels like crying. But not like giving up, because that dick doesn't get to do that. But Alice. Comes over, her hands curled up at her sides and Quentin can't look at anything but the curve of her lips and the way her hair frames her face as she steps up close. Looking at the same letters that Mayakovsky did, and then--

She leans forward, her breath hitching just half a second before she kisses him. It's over almost before Quentin really knows what the hell just happened, but. It was... kind of great, actually.

It's one impossible test after the next. Mail extraction, mind control and Alice and him fail that one, every time. The fireflies hit the magical rings and the shock is transmitted back to the both of them through the shock-collars.

Again and again, and Quentin still can't think about anything else but Alice's lips on his. The way her chest heaved and her breath hitched.

Long story short, Mayakovsky got really fucking sick of watching that, and turned them both in to foxes. And threw them out in to the snow.

The foxes play. They tumble around in the cold know and feel nothing of the cold. All Quentin has in his mind is Alice, the scent of her fur and the taste of her... well, same.

The memory breaks up, the images of foxes playing in the snow are overlaid with images of Quentin and Alice, naked and shivering, skin on skin to warm up and Alice still smells the same when Quentin grabs her by the back of the neck and kisses her.

The thing is, Vanitas' capability to feel has been so severely broken, so warped for so long without a chance to be anything else that he doesn't really know much beyond hate and pain. Even his triumph has always gone hand in hand with vengeance and jealousy. His joy cut through with violent intent.

But Quentin doesn't feel any of that when he's around this girl— and so by extension, neither does Vanitas.

There's something addictive about it, and it's the reason Vanitas keeps the stone with him for the better part of the week. He takes it out to look at it, look into it. The way Quentin had trained is familiar— it's like a watered down version of what Vanitas went through himself— but Quentin's ability to feel anything outside of those trials is what keeps bringing him back.

And that girl. The way looking at her made his heart clench, the way being around her made him feel invincible. The way her lips felt on his own, the exaltation of tumbling in the snow.

It's nothing at all like when Riku—

Eventually, under the light of the aurora, Vanitas seeks him out. He spends a good portion of the day quietly following Quentin around, watching him like he could see evidence of this memory under his skin. He hunts for it especially when Eliot is around— but Vanitas doesn't know this emotion the way he knows spite and envy. He can't decipher it from sight alone.

It's rare Vanitas approaches without an ulterior motive, but he slides quiet as a shadow into the seat next to Quentin while the other guy's attention is elsewhere, and stares into his profile until he notices Vanitas is there.

Quentin is beginning to understand how this works. The spirits are throwing themselves at the aurora in glee, celebrating it and there's a lot of happy noises coming from that direction.

But.

For some reason, the light also brings back memories.

But they're all out of order and they're popping up at random. The opals littering the ground in places, while being completely absent in others. There's no way to tell just what a memory might be or who it might belong to before touching it.

Not all of them are plesant.

Quentin wanders the town and around the cabins, he tries to not touch any more opals than he needs to, because after figuring out it's not dreams, looking in seems... a little too much like spying on something private.

Which is also why he's at the park, not enjoying an ice cream from the ice cream crab because the crab is also missing. Like the librarian, except maybe it's strapped to one of those sleighs and is about to throw itself at the light.

Quentin shudders and keeps staring at his hands, thinking.

That is

Until

He gets

a feeling

of being watched.

And he turns his head, spotting Vanitas.

"Hey? You know, just staring at people like that is kind of creepy."

There's no malice in his voice. Like Quentin is just making an observation, while he raises an eyebrow and looks back down at his hands.

Even up close Vanitas can't see it. He wonders if it doesn't have something to do with what the feeling is. Something like that, so full, it doesn't come naturally to Darkness. It's the kind of thing Ventus would have got, when they were broken apart. His eyes track Quentin's face with too much intensity.

Was that how Riku felt about Sora? The other one. The real one. It would make sense, the depth of hurt he experienced when Vanitas found him behind the museum. If he lost a feeling like that... well, it would feel like a broken heart.

Like when he was pulled from Ventus.

"Who is Alice?" It's a real question, void of the demand normally present in Vanitas' queries.

"What?"

Of all the questions that Quentin wasn't expecting, this was way up there. Alice, and just thinking about her makes his heart stutter in his chest. They'd made up, just before Quentin went and killed himself. Making her watch, because there was no time to do anything else.

Not with the lives of so many people at stake. Not with Eliot at stake and Quentin--

He turns his head a little, watching Vanitas out of the corner of his eyes. He's expecting to see his profile, the Vanitas seems to always talk while looking away and really, watching that... dream? Memory? Quentin gets it.

Not fully, but the whole thing still makes stomach acid rise in his throat and kind of makes him want to hit something. Like finding out about Martin. Impotent and helpless anger mixed with 'holy shit no'.

"She is... she was my girlfriend. Back in my world."

Vanitas is watching him closely, the way his expression seems to jump through a bunch of different hoops before cautiously settling on what looks like it could be anger. But he didn't miss the things in between— emotions Vanitas may have seen before, but had no context to hold up against.

He recognizes the fury, though; he expects Vanitas to use her as leverage. Months ago, before he'd changed, that might even be true. And the fact is that he is using information similar to this against another boy in this town.

But Quentin is different. Maybe things changed in the church, what feels like months ago now. He tilts his chin down, his eyes a little too wide, like he can read something in Quentin that only he's able to perceive. And in some ways, it's true.

"You love her?"

"Yeah."

Why not tell the truth? It's not like it's a secret, who Quentin loves and Vanitas has already seen him at his worst. Has already seen what losing love meant to Quentin and how powerless he was to actually do anything about it.

"I've loved her for years."

Had thought this is it, this is the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, except Quentin always broke things. That's what his mom used to say, and some days, Quentin still believes her. That he's always going to be that boy who breaks things-- it might not be on purpose, he might not mean to. But things break all the same.

Kind of funny, for someone who's Discipline is Mending.

"Why?"

Still with the memory of heat and Vanitas, bleeding and not breaking under the desert sun blazing in the back of his mind. Jesus, who the fuck did that? To a kid?

Vanitas watches him for a few long moments. So it really is love, that feeling. The one that made him feel full to bursting, despite having that Master beating him down, disciplining him to make his magic fuller and stronger.

His eyes narrow a little.

"Do you love Eliot?" The questions come with no tact at all, and it has as much to so with his lack of experience as the fact that Vanitas doesn't care if it hurts Quentin to revisit the idea. Vanitas wants to know and has no qualms with walking over people to get his answers.

"Why?"

Aside from answering, and that tiny tilt of his head to look at Vanitas from out of the corner of his eyes, Quentin doesn't move. He just keeps sitting on the bench. His elbows resting on his knees and his hands hanging down between them.

"It's not that I don't want to answer that, I'd just really like to know why you're interested. Why now?"

Why here, but Quentin doesn't ask. They're alone here, and maybe that's a part of it. Away from people. There's just the empty ice cream stand and the dark trees. Also, it really fucking hurts to think about. To talk about.

Vanitas narrows his eyes, obviously displeased with not being told what he wants immediately upon asking it. Maybe he should have expected this kind of push back— after all, his Master never achieved anything by doing it directly. And truth be told, Vanitas has almost always used the same methods to pry information out of people— it's only been through his slow, blossoming interactions with Bruce that any of this has changed.

Bruce has never lied to him, or tried to hide something when Vanitas asked him directly. He didn't know people could be like that, and still have Darkness in their hearts.

"Because I don't feel those things." He explains, impatient, before trying to redirect back to the topic he's interested in. "When you are with Eliot, does he make you feel how Alice made you feel?"

"What? You've never been in love?"

Which, alright. Vanitas doesn't look like someone who's had a lot of love in his life, and that memory just hammers it home. But, still. Being in love and being loved back are two very different things.

"Eliot... he--"

And Quentin, who has been pretty open about his feelings while drunk, while grieving and stumbling around all over Beacon-- falters. His breath hitches, as a punched-out joyless laugh escapes him. Just, a small sound before he covers it with a cough.

"Yeah, I love Eliot and I guess the feeling is kind of the same. Only more."

It's a stupid question, and Vanitas doesn't bother trying to answer it. Of course he's never been in love. Love isn't a thing for the Darkness, it's a thing that belongs in the Light. It sits there alongside happiness, and kindness, and compassion. Vanitas was born into pain and has known nothing but it, ever since; he has learned how to manipulate those soft feelings, and that having them only showed a weakness to be exploited.

And he doesn't understand why, sitting here, he can feel the swell of hurt rise up in Quentin in a fissure of Darkness, expelled by a laugh without any mirth. It sounds like he's choking on it. Vanitas narrows his eyes— if love felt like that, then why does it look like it's causing him pain, now?

"How is it more?"

These curt, blunt questions are... something. They're not nothing and Quentin isn't going to treat them like they are. Teddy had done something like this a few times. Asked about him and Eliot, asked about his mother. Once her memory started to fade, and because well... they were different than the other parents.

Living out in the woods, cut off from everything and never venturing away for too long.

Quentin's hands twitch.

"I love Alice, she was-- really fucking amazing. She was my first real girlfriend and she's so smart. But Eliot, he..." short bursts of speech, before Quentin falls silent again, thinking. Remembering. "I've loved him for longer, maybe. It's just more. More intense. More feeling. More love."

He tries to understand this; pulling his gaze away from Quentin to stare out across the courtyard, the way the aurora turns everything green and shining. It's the brightest it's ever been her, and it casts all manner of new, strangely shaped shadows in it's wake.

The only time he ever felt so full had been when his heart had touched Ventus'. That brief moment where everything aligned, and for just a second the hurt had almost stopped— before the fight began. Before Ventus shattered the connection all over again.

But he didn't love Ventus. He didn't look at him and feel that swell of invincibility, a huge warmth that seemed like it could explode right out of him. The tension and how it broke when they collided, when they kissed. It was hard enough for him to be able to comprehend how he felt about Alice, and yet Quentin describes it being fuller. Deeper. More.

"But it hurts you." He finally says, looking back at Quentin, watching his expression.

Just talking about this and it brings back memories. Maybe that's the whole point of this, of pieces of them all dropping down around their ears and some day soon, Quentin is going to sit down and log the ones he's seen himself.

To see if there's something that connects them, either the people he found or the memories themselves.

Not today, though, because Vanitas is still looking... strange. Or, he's not sneering or twisting his mouth in to something closer to a snarl than a smile. He's not really doing much of anything.

Except ask really weird questions about-- love. About Alice, and Quentin misses her, of course he does. They made up just before going to the Seam. Just a day before he died so yeah, that hurts.

Watching Eliot, this Eliot, go about his business like they hadn't lived a life together once. That hurt on a completely different scale. His face falls, just before he takes a deep breath.

"Not all the time."

Quentin shrugs. "The times when it doesn't hurt makes it all worth it."

Vanitas looks away again, out across the square. That full feeling... he thinks it's similar to what he would imagine it would be to not feel pain. To have the anguish crushed out by something better, something warm. He thinks of the cradle of Sora's heart, but that isn't right. He thinks of his connection with Ventus, and that's closer, but still not the same.

What he's said before was the truth, then. He couldn't feel those things. Maybe his heart was too broken for love.

But he could settle for less. A lack of wanting would be nice, to not feel the hollow for a time. He thinks, maybe, he's had something close to that here. When he sits with Bruce in his study or the exhilaration of sparring with him. The way he doesn't really notice the hurt when they eat a meal together, when Riku puts an arm around him.

And he'd felt that loss — the same kind Quentin felt — when he realized Sora, his Sora, wasn't coming back. When Maridel came up and held him through his desperate sadness. But if that was love, then maybe he's destined never to know the good parts of it.

The times when it doesn't hurt. No, maybe he'll never know what that's like. Just like every other time, that stuff is meant for the Light.

He stays quiet, evidently lost in thought.

Quentin's not stupid, he can guess why these questions are being ask now. Like the ones that crowded around inside his own head, after watching any of the memories that he touched-- accidentally or otherwise.

About the worlds and the people and the things. To learn more about distant worlds, and even the bad ones. Even the ones with pain and anguish, he's still curious.

But Vanitas stays quiet, his profile just a dark smudge against the newly brighter sky. Like a shadow, except for his pale face and his eyes, and Quentin sits, lost in his own train of thought.

About Alice, about what memory Vanitas might have seen- Quentin hopes it's one of the good ones, with Alice smiling. Or laughing, that helpless laugh she did sometimes, like she's trying to stifle it behind her hand so people won't hear, but it always made her eyes shine and Quentin always fell a little bit more in love with her when she did it.

And he thinks about love in broad terms, about the love he'd managed to find. Across timelines, through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered and how he still found it. Heart shattering in to a million pieces every time he lost it and how full and whole he felt when he found it again, over and over, and giving it all up in a second to save them.

About coming here and being lost, how something seemingly small and insignificant had helped. And he reaches out, slowly, and places one hand on Vanitas's shoulder, just above the joint. There's no weight behind it, just a small touch of warmth and a slight squeeze and he's pulling his hand back again.

"I've been lucky."

The touch draws him out of himself, maybe partly because it's so unusual. Vanitas isn't accustomed to that kind of casual contact, and it's only recently that he's come to realize that not every time it happens with Riku or even Bruce designates he's under attack.

He raises his head, looking at Quentin but not making an attempt to bat his hand away. Even after he's taken it back, Vanitas can feel the score of warmth on his shoulder, where his palm had been, in his fingerprints leaving an invisible mark.

"Lucky how?" It seems like a nonsequitor to Vanitas. What was he lucky for? He may have had those feelings, but he's lost them all. Even Eliot isn't the same one that he'd known.

"Because I got to have it at all. Even if I lost it. There's a-- there's this saying, where I'm from and too many people put it on t-shirts or in songs, but--"

Quentin licks his lips, it's not as trivial as the quote will make it seem and he doesn't want to diminish the importance and impact of love. After all, where in the hell would he be without it?

Without loving Alice, he never would have saved her from her Niffin Brother in the first place. She would have done the spell and blasted herself and her soul in to pieces trying to reach him. She was determined and strong, and she found the magically hidden Brakebills even without an invitation. That never happens. But Alice Quinn did it.

Without love, he never would have found Fillory. Never would have been a King and he never would have killed Ember to save Julia, his best friend since forever and childhood crush. Without love, he never would have had fifty years and a family with Eliot. He never would have killed himself to save them all, if it hadn't been for love.

The world would have ended, several times over, if Quentin hadn't fallen in love and lost it all over and over again.

"It goes - it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. I love Alice, and even if I never see her again? Because I'm dead. I can still feel it, in here-"

And he holds a fist to his chest, just above his heart.

"And I guess-- so I guess it makes me feel alive? In a way. To love. To be in love."

His eyes drop to the gesture, and maybe more than anything else, it resonates with Vanitas. Like a focal point to all the words, pulling them in to the a middle place and cementing it where it belongs. In his heart. What would it have been like, to have that for himself? Is this what Ventus felt, on the other side? Is this the feeling that drives Sora to such outrageous ends, throwing himself with reckless abandon after his friends? Is this what makes Riku so dedicated to his cause?

It makes me feel alive. Remembering what it felt like inside that memory, the way Alice made his heart pound...

The only things Vanitas ever felt were rage, and despair, and loneliness. A hatred that consumed him from the inside out. But if he didn't have those things, he wouldn't have felt anything at all. At the time it was better than nothing— until the pain was unending, until all Vanitas really wanted was peace. Having a good feeling to replace the bad was no longer important in the end.

Bitterness is tangy on the back of his tongue. Riku had said something similar, that it was worth it to try. But Vanitas can't shake the fear of losing the things he's gained.

"I'd rather feel nothing at all." Vanitas finally says, and pulls Quentin's opal out of his pocket, opening his palm to offer it back to him.

There it is. Alice, in some form or another, because she's the one Vanitas has been asking about and maybe, just maybe, it's not that same as the one Riku saw. Jesus Christ. Quentin is not exactly secretive by nature, and he's been pretty open about a lot of himself in this place. But knowing that other people knew these kinds of things about him? Not great.

They're all trapped here, they're all dead and his own experiences with weird things are not secret. He wears his heart on his sleeve and Quentin knows this about himself, knows it and hates it. But Vanitas helped, and Alice is...

He reaches out, fingers brushing against the palm of Vanitas' hand before he touches the opal and the memory of Brakebills South and Alice floods through him. Eyes rolling back and his hand twitches minutely before he comes back, blinking back tears.

They'd all been so fucking young and it was only a few years ago, and he forgot. Somehow, Quentin forgot just how good it felt, to be with Alice. To watch her face and her hands without betrayal and heartache between them. To be simply in love without anything else clouding the issue and she had been so beautiful. How she'd made him feel about himself, like he could do anything. The heavy pounding of his heart whenever he looked at her and the giddy feeling of just-- being happy.

The fox sex, though. Jesus.

"If you... thank you. For giving it back."

Vanitas' own opal, with a dark and painful memory inside of it, sits heavily in Quentin's pocket.

"You could have just kept it, but--" and he wants to say it gets better except for how it might not. They're all dead here, they just haven't stopped walking around yet and he doesn't want to lie. Not now and not about this.

I'd rather feel nothing at all

And there had been times where Quentin would have agreed with that, that feeling nothing is better than feeling all these overwhelming things. All the crap and the guilt and the crushing bleak outlook on life. When it felt like every choice had been made for him, and there was no way out that wasn't just more pain.

"I know. But I hope you know that you can chose something different for yourself. It's not easy and it's not... nice. It's really fucking hard some days, but. You can."

He could have kept it. He even considered it, weighed his options of coveting that stolen feeling for himself. It wasn't like Quentin had forgotten it, after all. None of these memories raining from the sky were stolen ones— they were just playback, like those moving pictures Peter talked about. Quentin wouldn't have even missed it, if Vanitas hadn't said anything at all.

Giving it back isn't some altruistic attempt at doing something good. It's only because Vanitas doesn't want the pain that follows after he watches it, the bitter resentment of thinking he'll never be able to feel so full as that on his own. Why he didn't just throw it into the lake or discard it otherwise... well, maybe in some way, he didn't want to share what he'd discovered.

It's kind of like a secret, that way. There's something alluring about that. Friends kept secrets. Even if he and Quentin aren't that.

Vanitas looks at him, his yellow eyes luminescent under the dancing green light up above. People have said that before. That he has a choice, that he can choose something different. He doesn't know how to explain that he can't choose anything different from the Darkness. But he is learning that Darkness isn't as one dimensional as he thought it was.

He stands up wordlessly, then, with Quentin's words rattling around in his head, percolating into the shattered remnants of his heart, and walks back out into the commotion of the celebration.

Well, shit.

Quentin is silent through most of this, just watching Vanitas' face, the way he doesn't move and they way his eyes glow in the strange light in the sky. The green clashing with the yellow, making them seem even more otherworldly than ever before and when Vanitas gets up, when he leaves without a word, Quentin wants to kick himself.

"Vanitas, wait."

How many times had he had to sit through a lecture on just about the same thing? About have you tried not being depressed as if that was even remotely helpful, when the world felt too big and too hostile to live in. When it felt like everything was just pressing down on him, pushing him flat to the proverbial ground. When even breathing seemed like too much of en effort, and it would always be there, hovering in the background of the people talking at him - why don't you try not to be this sad sack of shit, Quentin?

Him mom usually just said it outright, but there were ways to phrase it that came off as less aggressive and Quentin had just used the exact some words to Vanitas.

To this boy who had admitted to feeling nothing but darkness, nothing but pain and the memory of him in the desert, beaten down and bleeding is too real and too vivid in the back of Quentin's mind.

"Wait? Please?"

Vanitas does stop, a small distance away. He isn't angry at Quentin, which maybe has a great deal to do with why he pauses at all. When Vanitas sets his mind to something it can be difficult, if not impossible, to try and change it. Had Quentin's words pressed the right number of buttons, he would have continued marching his way across the square, resolutely ignoring the other guy.

Instead, he pauses and turns halfway to look across the short distance.

"If you're going to tell me I have a choice again, you can save your breath," He says in a careless drawl. There's a heavy set to his eyes, something in his expression that isn't so much resigned as a sort of acceptance. Sora and Ventus tried to tell him he had a choice, too. He didn't have the time or the willpower to try and explain why they were wrong.

"No, I--"

And Quentin takes a deep breath, standing up with his hands held out a little helplessly because what can you even say to that? Vanitas is right, Quentin had told him to just ovary up and deal, like it was that simple. Like that was even the issue.

"That's not what I wanted to say. I'm sorry. I was wrong and I don't even know why I said it."

Conditioning, and the fact that being depressed doesn't mean he isn't just as susceptible to societal pressure as everyone else is. Quentin shakes his head, letting his arms drop.

"I'm sorry, and I was wrong. I get the feeling of... not really having a choice. And also, I'm a little weirded out about you having seen this memory."

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

For Vanitas

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cw - mentions self-harm and suicide

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