Dorm Log: Scorching Summer Edition

[butterbelieveamanspromise]

Who: Who else.
What: Dorm log!
Where: Student and Teacher dorms, and quite possibly beyond campus. Frankly? I don't care where. Go have fun, kids.
When: The span of June 14 - June 28th. Pick a date.
Warnings: Yeah, it got pretty naughty in here.

Ripped off the last one and all its friends: Basically, here's how this works. We all know our characters experience downtime after classes and their busy schedules, and this is a good venue for those kinds of miscellaneous dorm-shenanigans to take place. Not only does it give your characters the easy chance to meet new people in a laid-back environment, but it's a good mechanism for strengthening CR. It's easy!

Feel free to begin in any way you please! Plan with (a) fellow player(s) if you'd like! Or, set up a thread and wait for characters to bite! Whatever you want. It can all be yours if you make a thread. Stay up all night watching reruns of Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirtles? Break out the ice cream and industrial fans to beat the heat? Get a bad suntan while you're asleep with the help of your friends? Whatever you get your bad self up to. Your good self is welcome, too. Now put your copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf down for one second and tag this thing!


DIRECTORY
Alter Ego | Baconator | Banjo | Byakuya | Blake | Blaze | Byrne | Caim | Cammy | Carter | Chell | Chiyo | Connor | Cress | Cyrus | Daisy | Douggie | Eggman | Eirika | Ellistree | Garry | General Guy | Goombella | Gordon | Henry | Jin | Jon | Kazooie | Kiyotaka | Knuckles | Kyogre | Lucca | Mac | Mary | Milimili | Nabooru | Phoenix | Proton | Pulseman | R.O.B. | Red | Rhys | Ron | Sable | Samus | Schezo | Seth | Shadow | Sonny Moe | Ulki | Watt | Wheatley | Zelda | Ziio

Comments

[mohawk_tomahawk]

He was knocked out of deep thought when she addressed her again. His head went up and looked his way.

...Jeez, you can hide nothing from this woman. Her words struck his insides.

And he suddenly felt the urge to...talk.

What. A. Momma's Boy.

"It is nothing," Connor said. "Nothing of importance. More of what I heard of you rather than me really knowing of you. Achilles told me of you as well. How you were a friend to him."

And how I was like you.

[nottheproblem]

"Nothing of importance."

That urge to scold him came up again, and again she refrained. If he didn't wish to tell her, he didn't have to. She had to accept it. She had to respect it. Even though she felt conflicted over not being able to treat him as she would have if he was the son she was accustomed to.

He is not a child. I cannot treat him as if he is one, she sternly reminded herself as she listened to Connor continue.

She nodded to him, "Achilles was a capable man when we met. If it hadn't been for him or the Brotherhood, I could not be who I am. I had only the drive, but not the resources. Achilles provided that to me. I considered him as much a friend to me as I must have been to him."

[mohawk_tomahawk]

"...He said I was like you."

Connor made a small smirk. Remembering all the times he had shared with the Old Man, all the fights they had. How they seemed like at one moment they couldn't stand each other and then they appreciated each other the next.

He wondered if he was proud of him. If he looked beyond their world and saw this moment.

Achilles was probably...the closest thing he had to a real father. And his real real father was HERE.

"I feel as if you must know. He had passed. But of recent. He died an old man though, peacefully in the comfort in his home."

[nottheproblem]

At first she almost confirmed for him. But when he continued, there did grow a slight softness about his mother.

Naturally. No one lives forever. I wish we could have spoken at least one more time, Achilles.

Casting her gaze down as she finished, she hung the meat she freed, something she meant to cook with later. Then sitting back a little, she focused on better cleaning the fur.

"I see." As if she was still trying to put herself back together. "He isn't wrong. There is very much of me in you. Yet there are some more direct differences. You are still my son." She nodded slowly, "A reminder of when I was younger."

Which hadn't been too far off for her.

[mohawk_tomahawk]

...

Connor put down his game once more.

"Mother, I must be honest...if I may," he then stated. Suddenly very serious. He had been having this particular thought run into his head for quite some time. Now that they were talking and the emotions were running a little deeper...just screw it, he can't hold it in anymore.

"I am...frustrated. It frustrates me that I never got to know you as I have grown, that I missed you so much...All which were in the past and may you argue that it was not within my control...it is now. Having you here, I feel as if everything has to," Connor trailed a moment.

"Start over. Between us. Whatever this is a blessing brought up by those who are in this land, or a brutal reminder of what was lost, I do not know. But I only know of you from what was told and I only remember so little from my childhood..."

Trailing...again.

[nottheproblem]

There was a deliberate pause when she heard him. Enough to the point where she fully stopped working on anything, because she knew it was a distraction for herself. An intentional distraction, for she'd had a feeling at some point in time, they'd have a conversation akin to the present one. Putting aside what she was working on, she gave him her undivided attention.

And thought very hard about what he said.

Everything had to start over. She didn't understand what that meant. She could take an educated guess or two, but she didn't... know for certain. And Ziio, to be frank, wasn't sure she wanted to know, because the words themselves sounded painful. Or she interpreted them painfully. There was a lot of emotional hurt where Connor was concerned.

"What would you have me do?" she asked him gently and patiently, thinking there irony in using words on him that Haytham had once used on her.

[mohawk_tomahawk]

Ironically, the words Connor used time and time again.

Of course, implying if there was indeed something that could be done. Was there? Was there anything Ziio could do? How old was he again? A mother's guidance? A mother period? What did he want? He could be the most selfish person in the world and ask for Ziio to never leave him again and they could start being a family once more.

But that wasn't him. He could never ask that of her off the bat. Or ANYONE, for that matter. It seriously felt like they just met. No one could promise never leaving either.

"I do not know," he said, honestly. "There is much I want, but I cannot ask for it. It would not be fair to anyone. I know this; and I only resent it because I do not want there to be tension between us more than anything."

He had enough of that with Haytham.

[nottheproblem]

"You feel tension with me."

She said it very simply and briefly, Ziio looked a little... sad. If there was a word for it. But how could she expect anything else? Of course there was tension. She eyed him with a mother's gaze for a few moments longer before she finally looked away.

"Of course you do," she said, as if reassuring herself more than him. "We're much more alike than I would have thought."

I, too, have things I want to ask for. Things to ask of you. Things to ask of Haytham. And yet I cannot ask for any of them. For all of the same reasons you say.

"I can't be the mother you missed as a child and I can't treat you as the child I left in Kanatahséton. Sitting here with you now..." She thought for a moment before she pressed on, "I don't know how to be the mother you need me to be, or if you need me at all."

[mohawk_tomahawk]

I need you.

That was what he wanted to just simply say. But he couldn't. He just. Couldn't. He wanted her to be his mother, really bad. He now felt like he was pushing her. He didn't want that even more than reverting his own age.

There always had to be a way. Another way. To be himself, and ask for her to be with him.

He can't just keep pushing the issue away. It wasn't going anywhere. And it shouldn't be an issue to begin with.

"No...there is much to be done. Much to tell. But...I want be a son to you. Your son. I do want that."

[nottheproblem]

She wished she knew what to say. She wished she knew what she was feeling. A sense of disdain for not being able to go home. A lot of disappointment in herself. A lot of bitterness staining her heart when she thought of Haytham, who served as a grand reminder of how just vulnerable she could still be.

Ziio nodded.

"With time," she found herself saying, as if she was reassuring him. Always reassuring him. When would she reassure herself? Did she believe anything she was saying? What did she really think? And she couldn't answer that. "It'd seem I will be here for... a while." In talking with Shadow, it seemed like forever.

"We have time."