Post-Event Blues

[lucetimods]

Who: Everybody, everybody!
What: The battle is won. Now what?
When: The eleventh, twelfth, and onward
Where: Luceti
Summary: With Zompano dead and the cultists routed, Luceti is restored. Kind of.
Rating: F for Feels

On the eleventh, things were slowly breaking down. Memories of their true lives were breaking through. The village, scarred by the battle with the cultists, began to rebuild itself. Community buildings that had vanished were returned to their rightful places. The battle dome was uncovered from the earth that had covered it. Hundreds and hundreds of fake homes slowly faded away. Paved roads gave way to trees and grass. It was an incredible sight for anyone who was willing to sit aroun and watch it happen.

Things wouldn't be easy for the villagers, though. The memories perpetuated by the last ten days would not be easily removed. The feelings and hatreds it had created would take time to conquer and remove. Perhaps, in a way, that was Zompano's nastiest trick of all. The village itself may heal from his invasion, but it would take far more than a few Shifts to fix the people left behind.

Towards the end of the day, their wings returned. Much like some of the buildings, they seemed to just reappear, as if they had never been gone. Their barcodes became visible again as a singular reminder that they were, ultimately, just the property of another entity who as a whole were not much better than Count Zompano.

By the twelfth, the village looked as though nothing had ever happened. Sure, the contents of buildings might have been messed up or destroyed during the battles, but things were otherwise as they were supposed to be. The night before, people would have had to find their old beds to go sleep in, as they no longer possessed the old ones granted to them in another life.

The village was peaceful.

Modly Note: That wraps up the event. As noted in the prose above, you have the option to play up the after effects of the event more than in other ones. While it won't have the same impact universally, the Shift was constructed in such a way that people may have difficulty shaking off the emotions they developed during the event. In effect, it was a cruel send off to Luceti so they would have to deal with the loathing and hatred that came with the less desirable parts of it. Of course, that means the feelings of familial bonds will also persist for awhile as well. It's up to you, as players, to decide how much or little to play with it!

Comments

[handing]

"Which you?"

Was it cruel to ask that? No more than it had been for him to force her into that choice, she thought. Oh, Pepper recognized that much, certainly. How Loki continued to read until she spoke, then stood to make his exit. It wasn't right--no, it wasn't fair to put this on her shoulders like that, especially not along with everything else already there.

She was not the only one who had the burden of breaking apart what had been fed into their minds. Pepper absolutely refused to be.

[complicatedliar]

"Hah." Loki looked down at his hands, brushing his fingers together. "Things are perhaps not so mixed-up for me as they are for you. I know I am not a mortal. That line is clear." It was easy at least to pick out what memories had been of him as a human, because he had been so weak, because everything had been so pale and dull to see and touch and smell.

Yet apparently the invaders hadn't been able to make his heart feel like that of a human; it was the emotions that were hard to shake. And because of that, some things were far easier to say, even though by preference he would have kept them secret. "I loved Tony as a brother, once. Before this." He smiled, because that was what he always did when something hurt that much. He had tried in his own way, and had known it would never be good enough. It never was.

Because he was so pathetically alone. He hadn't felt alone until coming here and having his carefully built layers of anger and hate stripped slowly away by time and idleness.

"I will do things on my own terms."

[handing]

Pepper thought it might be less clear for Loki than he tried to portray; he was there, after all, offering comfort in a fashion. She stared down at her lover, still and unresponsive, wondering how much awareness he had of the conversation happening around him, about him.

"When we'd all forgotten everything." Another time when they'd been robbed of the memories that defined them, although in retrospect Pepper had to think this was worse. At least then they had been left to fill in their own blanks, and Pepper recalled Tony telling her about how he and Loki had become friends--and what Loki asked him to do.

"You aren't the only one trying to figure things out, Loki." She looked at him at last, for the first time since she'd discovered Tony awake. Whatever compelled her to speak on, be it that fictional life or her own current needs, Pepper didn't have the will to resist, although perhaps it would have been better if she had. "It hurts, you know. Looking at you, and knowing--everything."

What had been. What had never been. What would be, after all those memories were reconciled.

[complicatedliar]

"It doesn't really matter what I figure out though, does it?" he asked quietly. "I tried, Pepper. In my own way, I tried. And I was a fool for having done so." He looked away for a moment. "It was easier to be so alone when I could imagine nothing different."

[handing]

He wasn't wrong. No matter what any of them reasoned, they had lived through too many things; Tony and Loki had fought on opposite sides of a war, one with consequences that touched every part of her life. In a way Loki had opened the door for Killian, and what she had become. But she closed her eyes it wasn't the fire she saw, or the sense of falling that overwhelmed her.

It was the memory of finding realizing she'd missed his phone call.

"Do you know how your army was defeated?" There was no accusation in her voice. Perhaps she was too tired for it, or too sympathetic. But this was important, and maybe, maybe in this moment when they were both so raw, he'd finally understand.

Or maybe it was an apology for what would inevitably come.

"Tony took a missile into the wormhole to save the entire world. And he thought he was going to die, so he tried to call me. He was going to say goodbye."

One moment out of so many horrible ones that had happened that day, and over the months since. One moment, and now that Pepper knew just what it meant to lose everything, to have no hope of living the life she should in her own world--how could she forgive him, even if that false persona wanted to?

[complicatedliar]

"It didn't matter to me how the battle was decided," Loki said. "And for the most part, it still does not."

Slowly, he turned back to face her. For a long moment he was silent; then he spoke slowly, as if stacking the words together. "Because I now know you, I am sorry to have caused you such pain. And I can be sorry to have caused Tony such pain as well."

It was easier to say these things plainly because he was still so off kilter, because things were no longer quite so clear. He would no doubt regret having said all of this later. "I don't feel regret like you do. And in that time, that place, I have nothing at all to lose."

And everything to gain, only if he took it.

[handing]

In that he was at least honest, though it was a poor consolation as Loki admitted the same thing he had so many times before. But the silence hung heavy as he turned, and Pepper held back her reply, a final request for him to go because she thought this time, there might be more.

And so there was. Surprise flared in her eyes as he apologized for Pepper’s suffering, and almost for Tony’s as well. Of course she couldn’t be certain how much of this came from Loki of Asgard, who had no father, and Loki Odinson, Attorney and friend. But the doubt was eased by a simple desire to believe what he said was true, to take it as it was without breaking down the particulars. She didn’t want to have to pick apart anything more than she already would.

“Thank you for that.” Not for regretting, which she had long thought he should feel—but for admitting it to her. Pepper knew it couldn’t have been easy, and her gaze lowered to Tony once more as she considered it. He wouldn’t be absolved by that admission. What had to happen still would. But it helped ease something within her that had ached for a very long time.

[complicatedliar]

Loki wondered if she truly understood what he had meant: that the only reason he cared in the slightest was that Pepper and Tony were now people with whom he was well acquainted. But there was no benefit at all to pointing that out. Just like there was no point at all to noting yet again that mortals were very strange in the way they viewed combat. They took it so personally.

He could regret his previous actions because they now stood in the way of something he'd wanted. If he'd had any idea this waited in his future, he would have chosen a different course, perhaps. But this was not something he could have ever conceived of.

"Both of you cared whether I lived or died," he said after another long moment. "It was nice while it lasted."

[handing]

She did understand, at least in part. Pepper hadn't taken his words to mean he now regretted all of it, or that he was ready to apology to humanity at large. She thought it meant he had seen their personal pain, and in coming to care for them, he in turn felt guilt over his role in causing it. That was enough for her, because it was so much more than the easy lack of remorse he'd shown until now.

But even so, it only took them so far. Pepper also understood that guilt was limited; even if it hadn't been, those actions weren't easily forgiven. So while part of her could agree that it had been nice, the part that had only known someone caring if still flawed, the reality of what had actually happened, what he'd actually done still stood untoppled in her mind.

"Yeah." She opened her mouth as if to say more, then closed it again when she realized that there was nothing more she had to say.

[complicatedliar]

That seemed clear enough.

Rogue always spoke of things in terms of doors, open or closed. This one felt as if it had been rather firmly shut, but what else had he expected? That was how it always was.

Family. He'd once written down, "Such things are not for Loki." And he had been right.

He turned to go again. "When you've finished with the book, it can go back to the library."

[handing]

"Alright. I'll make sure it does." She glanced toward the book again, thankful to have it. Though she couldn't say she would read it with the same talent Loki had shown, it might not hurt to do so; to give Tony something to listen to while he still came back to her.

He had his back to her, and Pepper almost said goodbye--but in the end, she let him leave in silence. Even without speaking the actual words, that was what this whole conversation had truly been: a farewell to the false life that had brought them together.

Except unlike the poetic saying, Pepper wouldn't define the sorrow as sweet.