merry merry christmas, and I want you to know

[mansionstaff]

Who: YOU
What: KISSLETOES
When: December 14th - January 1st
Where: Everywhere
Warnings: Sloppy makeouts.

SUDDENLY, AND WITHOUT WARNING...



The entire school has become covered in mistletoe overnight. It grows out of the walls! The ceilings! Everywhere you least expect it? HOW CAN THIS BE??

It's probably best not to think about it. Attempts to uproot the plants or burn them away only makes the plants grow back faster. For the time being, it seems the school must live with it.

[OOC INSTRUCTIONS:
+ Post dudes, get kisses!
+ Some (NOT ALL) plants are cursed. If you manage to step under a cursed plant, you will exchange a memory when or if you exchange a kiss. The memories will be first-person and very vivid, and characters will feel like they are experiencing the memory in real time, though in reality the transfer is instantaneous. Memories can be as short, long, happy, sad, or traumatic as you like.
+ If you'd like to participate, we highly suggest making a list of a few memories (with accompanying links/descriptions) that are up for grabs, and linking or posting the list in your top-level comment. Memory exchange is COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. When in doubt, OOC communication!
+ PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TAG YOUR CHARACTERS
+ That's it, we love you.]

Comments

[cruelcurse]

He hadn't noticed, but ever since he returned from the experience of that memory, Henry's jaw had slackened. And only now was he becoming aware of it, trying to straighten out his posture and put up his guard. That memory was a lot to swallow.

"I think I just saw a memory of yours somehow, is what I said," he clarified, a soft, forced smile decorating his face. "A girl named Sarah is who I saw. She died."

He would've been more decorative about a person's gruesome death at any other time, but he couldn't. Henry understood the gravity of the situation, saw only a sliver of how hard it was for Joel. Only a sliver of how he felt, he was sure. The Plegian couldn't maintain his smile very faithfully, and it melted into more of a neutral, unreadable face.

[golonghorns]

So. It hadn't been one way. He hadn't just seen something from Henry's past - a memory and not a dream - but Henry had seen something from his own. A memory he'd worked so hard to keep buried. Forced down and shut away and locked up so tight there was no danger of it getting out except when he slept. He still often dreamt of Sarah and her death. Sometimes it was hard to remember her face and those dreams hurt him the most.

He'd never intended to share that memory with anyone. He never even discussed it with Ellie. He barely ever mentioned Sarah to her except to say that they probably would have been friends. And the only reason he'd done that was because Maria had spilled the beans on it - given Ellie second hand information from Tommy. He remembered how angry he'd been when Ellie had first tried to talk to him about it. Was he angry now...? It was hard to tell. He was shocked, certainly. And still processing what he'd seen from Henry's end, too.

"....I saw somethin' of yours too. You joined up with some Ylissean folks facing hordes of risen. The day after you'd killed a whole lookout of Plegians. You can talk t'crows..."

He slapped hard at his face, running his hands up and down it, feeling a small buildup of sweat on his forehead and the familiar roughness of his beard against his palms. He needed to clear his head and figure out what to do. At least Henry wasn't grinning at him - he didn't figure he could bear that right now. Knowing someone else had seen... that day. It made it feel raw and fresh all over again, in a way.

[cruelcurse]

Despite being strange and creepy, the dark mage could be surprisingly perceptive when it came to reading people. Joel wouldn't want to share with Henry what that memory of his was all about, he guessed. His body language was enough to express that. For some reason, Henry felt like he had to know what it was that Joel went through. What it meant for him to start his life over again after something like that.

Maybe it was that he wanted to see for himself, to watch how a broken person pieces themselves together to move on, and what it meant for them to find happiness. For selfish reasons, he mused, and he'd settle with that. But it felt deeper than that. He just couldn't put a finger on it, nor did he want to acknowledge that his reasons could be meaningful.

If he opened up first, perhaps Joel might follow suit. It was worth a try. "That? Yeah, that was a pretty boring time. The war was at a stalemate and had been for nearly two years~ I knew Ylisse would see lots of fun battles, so I joined with them~."

Who was he kidding? That was a shitty attempt at opening up from the get-go. That was telling the same, flat lie he told everybody. And judging by the memory he experienced from Joel, he probably felt at least a bit of how he felt. He brought his fingers to rub idly at the vein in his neck with a half-smile that was more reminiscent to the grin of a nervous dog. "I didn't have many options since I betrayed Plegia, so... I approached their leader and told him he could kill me there, or I could fight for Ylisse~ I'm pret-ty sure that's how it went. It's not that interesting, haha~ Sorry."

[golonghorns]

Joel's hand was still buried in his hair. He couldn't meet Henry's eye.

"....you did what needed t'be done." he said quietly. "Ain't any shame in switching sides if it keeps you breathin' one more day. Risen, Infected... different sides of the same coin. They don't give two shits about what side you're on. They just want to kill. They're easy. People are the ones you really got to watch out for."

He could tell that much was constant between his world and Henry's, whatever other differences might be there.

He forced his eyes up. Forced himself to look at Henry's face. The nervousness there. Henry was anxious and Joel didn't blame him. But he couldn't even bring himself to be mad. If anything, he was just as anxious as the other man, but less able to show it.

"Look, Henry... What you saw. It don't go no further'n this room. I don't need... No-one else needs to know about it. I don't want any sympathy and I sure as hell don't want to talk about it with anyone else. You understand me? It stays right here. You and me and that's it, you got it?"

[cruelcurse]

So he decided that he still didn't want to share with him what that memory was about after all. Henry glanced at the floor dejectedly. Reasonably, it was fair enough. Even the people he'd gotten close to, like Naoya, wouldn't treat him with the indulgence of every aspect of their history the way he wanted them to. People weren't like him, an open book written in jumbled text with pages torn from the binding.

He wanted to know genuinely. Selfishly, he continued to tell himself. But it was something more, like a connection he wanted to foster so he could be there for people when they suffered.

Henry didn't know why it was that he wanted to get close to Joel, but the fact that the other man asked about his chance to start anew at the academy made him think during his free time. And he wanted to know this person. Disappointment overcame him, partnered with the feeling of being unwanted. But he wanted to keep trying, and maybe he was a person best learned about little bits at a time. And patience was something Henry had for sure. Enough patience to keep smiling through years of neglect and torture.

"Got it," he finally replied. He didn't sound disappointed any longer: the time he took before replying gave him reason not to be so down. "Nobody will hear about it from me: not the living, dead, or undead."

[golonghorns]

"....I appreciate it." Joel said.

He noticed how dejected the younger man had looked for a moment and surprised himself by feeling bad. Which was ridiculous of course, right? Because it was none of Henry's damned business and he barely knew the guy. He hadn't even talked about it to Ellie, who he loved like a daughter. He didn't even want to discuss it with Tommy, his Brother. And Tommy was there.

Then again, if Henry had experienced the memory of Sarah dying the way Joel had experienced the memory of joining the Ylisseans...? It had been like BEING there. Had Henry felt his heart breaking?

"I... uh..."

He wanted to leave. Just walk away without saying anything else. Henry seemed OK now so there was no reason to stay. But he felt like he owed something of an explanation. Something more than his trademark surliness and silence. He eyed Henry for a moment longer before speaking again.

"....that was the day the infection started killin' my world. September 27, 2013. Sarah was my daughter. The other guy there was Tommy. My Brother. I don't really think about it much... if I can avoid it. I'm, uh. I'm sorry that's what this damned stupid mistletoe decided to show you."

[cruelcurse]

Henry shook his head with a hum. "You don't need to apologize. Not on your behalf or the mistletoe's," he said, and his smile wasn't that gaudy thing he usually wore. In fact, his expression was a lot different from normal: softer, not one where he looked like he was pleased or anything of the sort. He was still combing through the echoes of Joel's memory and feeling the hurt, but he could tell that it was a wound that wasn't healing for him. He could sympathize with that feeling. Henry felt like if he hadn't gotten that rare opportunity, he might have never gotten it.

And despite not being so close to Joel, he knew he couldn't drop it. Not from his mind, at least.

Deciding not to press on the more tender parts of the issue- he received plenty of information on how Joel felt about it from the experience itself, the one he hadn't quite recovered from- Henry decided to talk about something else from his explanation. "Infection, right? Is that what you call what happened with those zombies?" he guessed. He wasn't certain about it, but there were some parts to the memory that lead him to that conclusion.

[golonghorns]

"Yeah. The folks who got infected act that way. They'll run after you, bite you, try'n eat you. They ain't zombies because they ain't really dead - you can choke 'em to death if you grab 'em quick enough. They'll bleed out if you cut the jugular..."

There' that was better. Familiar territory. Dispatching infected. He could talk about that.

"Head shot'll do it too."

[cruelcurse]

"Oooh," Henry crooned, taking on a shade of intrigue. "Not-quite-zombies that bleed and everything, huh? Guess Infected is a more suitable name for them after all~." Surprisingly, his interest was genuine: anything like the Risen caught his eye. It was a product of s life spent with them that just normalized their presence, and you could either live in fear or, as Henry did, find a fascination in them.

"Say, Infected... Does their name have anything to do with it? Are they just regular old humans with some kind of disease? Sickness? Say it's spread by bites, kisses, through the water, rancid meat, toe fungus... Is there a cure?"

[golonghorns]

"It ain't a toe fungus..." Joel replied, doing his best not to be annoyed at the seeming flippancy of the list Henry provided. "But it is a fungus. It's called the cordyceps. It infects the brain, like a parasite, taking over all motor functions. They get violent and hungry and that's about as much as I know about how it works."

Which wasn't ENTIRELY true. He knew a little more than that, but it was technical stuff he'd picked up and probably not that interesting.

"...and no. There ain't a cure."

And that was on him.