![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(semi closed) and if you should call
Who: Helena Adams and etc.
What: Catch all log!
When: November
Where: All over.
Warnings: Will edit if needed.
What: Catch all log!
When: November
Where: All over.
Warnings: Will edit if needed.
[for anything Helena related over November or backdated. if you want something specific, PM me or find me atmoonjelly!]
no subject
[Right, yeah... he'd had to explain what a computer was to her, he'd forgotten for a hot sec.]
With libraries and things, right?
[He's... going to quit while he's ahead on digging himself deeper with this one, and continue reading after another shuffle into position. The writer says faces pale nearly twice in a row, is that allowed? He's also got a growing suspicion that he finally voices after the word poppy actually appears.]
Wait... Is this about opium?
[They had a lot of it back then right, in... actually he doesn't know when this was written, flicking back through the book it says 1832? Actually did Helena ever have opium? He's thinking about this now.]
no subject
[she says it with all the exasperation that a nineteen year old can have when you're talking about metaphor and very far from the point she wants to make to him.]
I wouldn't show you a poem about opium to make my argument about truth.
[sigh. Sou! think critically. in any case, it's her turn to read some now, and she goes over the lines with care, and cannot stop herself when she gets to certain ones, how her voice lingers a little more, when let us alone echoes for the third time, and she manages to finish the phrase-
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
it's the same words that had sparked this whole discussion and idea.]
no subject
...
Truth, huh.
['It'll all become clear once you have the words before you', she'd said. He's never liked this feeling. Lines of code, typed out one by one, very, very slowly. Somehow it's different than when they're just studying.
Code is at least more straightforward. It's an art, but it can't be twisted into shapes as liked like thin metal.]
...
[He's starting to get it, at the very least that the sea must be painful truth and the lotus comforting lies, but in the way where the barn door has already been left open on the emotions before it. He's quiet and listens, in the half-way of someone siphoning off the liquid of their heart in the background, to get it into shape sufficient for speaking.]
Ahaha, you said it was a choice before... so which one would you make?
[What are Helena's words, not Lord Tennyson's?]
no subject
[there's more to it. more to the state the sailors are in. more to the state of the world. she needs to keep going, to tell him more of it, more pages of the chorus. and as if it's unconscious, she makes the recitation even sweeter, even more tender as it grows more towards what is lost, but why someone would do it. pain and loss and confusion, and to struggle seems endless, not worth it.
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars/And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
but how beautiful this dreamy paradise is. how enticing. how one could lay down, and simply be here forever. and then she stops, right before the last section.]
Your turn.
no subject
Aha, thorough...
[But it's for her in the first place, so he'll pick up where she leaves off. Maybe the problem here is he knows this too well, a harsh world, a desire for rest and relief, and so must assume what she wants him to see is something he's not seeing, rather than what is coming off the page, like someone assuming they haven't found the right level of focus on the microscope and turning the dial more and more only to unknowingly get further and further away.
He reads though, and there becomes that added layer to it; the desire for rest and relief and it requiring power and indifference, and suffering thereby. That's something he also knows well. The strong using the weak. There's connecting lines here.]
There really isn't a good answer here, huh.
[Suffer, or cause suffering. Well he knows which choices he made there.]
no subject
[closing the book, she shifts to be more bundled in the blankets.]
But it's a choice to be made and to live with, even if the cost is unthinkable. Whether you take the road of peace, even if it's lies, even if you will lose yourself - or if you stay on your course, and retain yourself and the truth, but face down so much pain. Neither answer is good or bad - it just is.
[and that is why she'd wanted to show him this, in their talk about honesty. that it was painful, but to turn from it was not necessarily a moral failing.]
You can't blame them for wanting to escape. You can't say the escape was the right thing.
no subject
[She's the sort of person to face forward into pain, seek out the truth despite cost, like Sara. He's envious of people who can just do that without fear... but maybe it's it's own kind of trap.
Something's not quite aligning, parts of him that agree and disagree. The path of lies isn't exactly free of pain itself, and some don't get the choice about the truth at all... it's something he'll have to chew on.]
Truth, huh...
[It's almost funny, her wording. Retain yourself, abandon yourself. There's that little bit at the back of her brain wondering if she knows, despite the fact that he erased the board as easily as himself.]
Hang on a second.
[He wriggles out from the blanket pile and makes his way over to the room's closet, sounds of shuffling and rummaging as he grabs equally red construction paper and paint from the haphazard pile of art supplies.
He carefully rips a strip off the side of the paper to act as a makeshift brush, folding it and moving it in strokes before going back over them with more paint to emboss them. It's not long before he feels silly doing this... art project... but he's committed now, and besides, she likes poetry and that sort of thing, right? Below he puts two sets of dashes and dots, and then walks back over with it, shaking it like a polaroid and dangling it way too close to the heater to get it dry before he rests it on the back of her hand for her to take.
Practice drawing lines and circles for Clamor has been paying off; even with the crude brush it's a very neat, single kanji. Below, in Braille, the letters shi and n. To Helena's fingers the meaning is plain under the fuzzy focus Yogen's translation requires, like something that's both a duck and a rabbit at the same time; truth, reality, genuineness... the kind that ripens and bears fruit.]
Here. You can't take it outside this room... but it's yours.
[A little piece of his death.]
no subject
with a very light touch, she can make it out. shin. one kanji, one word. something important, though the meaning is layered - the exact sort of truth she was speaking about - though decidedly more hopeful. Helena smiles, committing it to memory.]
"Shin." So that's how you'd write it...
[it's surprising in a lovely way that he's paid enough attention to her writing to be able to give it to her in Braille as well - watch long enough, and patterns will come up for letters, over and over. decode the letter e, and more follow.]
What does this mean to you?
[Helena asks with all the sincerity of a friend, someone who can manage the literal meaning but also wants to hear how he defines it, what associations she can connect and keep in her memory, before she has to give it up.]
no subject
You could say it's my poem.
[He's being just a little bit cheeky here, but the metaphor stands; it's something that would mean less if he just straight told her, despite his own attempt at cutting the knot earlier. It's something he's giving her tacit permission to figure out... as infuriating as he knows that is...]
...That's a little vague, isn't it. Well, you could also say it's my death. Dark death, or dreamful ease, right?
[Shin that's equally vague.]
You don't have to worry about it for now... just keep it in mind.
no subject
[it's the only assumption she can make right now, as if he's handed her an object in glass and asked her to describe what's inside. her fingers run over the kanji again, considering. but then why did he want her to know how to say it, when he could have just handed her the paper without it?
showing off that he knows a little braille could come in any form. so, the word itself is important...]
no subject
But also it is absolutely showing off just a little.]
Mm. Yeah.
[Since she's worked out that much already, he can give her that much.]
Happened not long after I revealed it...
[Well, after it was basically dragged out of him bit by bit. There was a whole minigame and everything.]
no subject
[the sympathy in her voice is real - that whatever this truth was, that it killed him, it means it's a heavy thing to bear. something he needs to hold close. that he's giving her this much is a sign of trust, and while she mulls over the confirmation she has, she lets something else loose.]
I don't remember mine as clearly as one might think...I try to piece it together, but it slips away.
[so she can't dwell on it greatly.]
...this word that you've given me...it's not just a word, is it? It's a name, of something or someone important.
no subject
[In multiple senses! That sympathy... he's never quite sure what to do with it.
They're kind of back there again aren't they, the question that to Shin started this whole thing; whether it's better if Helena were to remember her death or not. Despite knowing her proclivity towards the truth, he can't help but be relieved that it seems to be fuzzy for her.]
...would knowing help you?
[He can't see that it might, so far away and already dead, but... he could say the same of what he learnt in that elevator. Maybe just that she's trying to piece it together is in and of itself the answer... maybe not.]
You're getting warm. Yeah, it's a name. Or half of it...
[There's his family name after all... this room being Moon 1 is convenient but not very clear, he can admit.]
no subject
[she's trying, she really is. it's a cipher before her, needing to be decrypted, and so she doesn't want to let go. codes, managing small things that register to her, it's where she's happiest, what she can do, and so she feels again like she's clicking keys, feeling the subtle signs that tell her she's on the right track.]
But for knowing...I think I'm always going to be the person who wants to know. To at least have some sort of an idea of what really happened, so I can say "this is it." Even if it will pain me, because I've had enough of people thinking they know what's best for me.
no subject
[Given the first name last name flip. He wasn't expecting her to bite on it that quickly (although maybe he should have) but he's having fun. She seems to be too, he hopes... there's something to it, the feeling of working something out.]
...
['This is it', huh. He's thinking. He'd already done this with Nene so...]
So if there was something that could restore memory, you'd use it?
[That last bit... his immediate point of comparison is his parents, affectionate but a little smothering. He'd wanted to be able to stand on his own two feet, despite everything. No, he can somewhat see it, and it doesn't take a genius to work out why she's had that.
...He's been doing the same thing, hasn't he.]
That's it's own kind of prison, huh.
[Affection, warped.]
no subject
[to be marveled at, because how could a poor little girl like her be so capable? to be monitored and minded and coddled. but she shakes her head, and thinks more at the hint he's given her...depending on how you see it, right...
so it had to be one name on its own, or he would have answered definitively. but Japanese names, she's used to their structure by now. her name was American. so that narrowed it to...]
Is it someone's given name?
no subject
[This metaphor's set up shop in his brain now Helena, you may regret this.
...he also won't lie and say it didn't factor into his calculus way back when, at least to himself. But it feels so vague now, in comparison to what he actually knows about her.]
Spot on, you've hit the mark.
[Or a mark. One more of a line of them. He's sitting up a little in the blankets because she's getting closer. Maybe close enough to guess just from there, even. He's a little nervous, despite that this was his idea in the first place, but well it was his idea, and he hasn't changed his mind on wanting her to know.]
no subject
[closer, she knows she's circling it, but the pieces aren't quite fitting together in the right way. hints and illusions around this - someone's name. the sister he mentioned he lost? could it be a girl's name? or a brother? or a best friend?]
no subject
Well, you could say they don't mean anything to me at all.
[He threw Shin Tsukimi away, after all, even if he keeps coming back like a nine-lived cat, more so the longer he spends here.]
But... they're also someone I've killed to keep alive.
[Nice dual meaning, there.]
no subject
[because there was a but that separates the sentences, that sets them as a contrast. someone who was nothing, but everything. someone he'd kill for, but discard. she thinks about what she knows about him, and this cipher - because it is one, at this point. and she decides they're comfortable enough, safe enough, that she can try one more thing.]
...Please give me your hand.
[her hand extends out from her nesting place, letting him make the choice of taking it or not. he can probably sense why, knowing how much she relies on her sense of touch, and the idea of someone having tells.]
no subject
[He'll hold it out to her, palm up, fingers slightly curled like he's giving it to her for his pulse. His knuckles brush on the palm of her hand. It's a little cold, his circulation really bad even with the heater and blankets, and soft, clean, nails bit off short for typing and there's just the beginnings of calluses from gardening club work.
His body language even through the arm is deliberately steady, observant, and the pulse itself is deceptively slow, ticking towards something more conventional. He knows Helena by now, that this is the equivalent of her, well, taking a much closer look.]
Anything interesting? Ahaha. People often tell me they're the hands of somebody who never works...
no subject
"Shin"...do you hate them? Do you love them? Or is neither of those correct?
[what she's feeling for is not his calluses, or the softness, but tremors, tension - if her words are going to start anything unique in him, subtle body language she can't read otherwise.]
They are your poem, and your death. They are nothing, but you must keep them alive. Dark death, or dreamful ease - they are your choice.
...How close am I to "Shin"?
no subject
The first "Shin" gets a bigger one, a shift of his crossed-legged seating position and pull as he turns away to think, because that's one doozy of a question. Hate, or love... just thinking about it feel like it splinters cracks just a little further, honestly. Love what? Hate who?]
Hate... no kidding. They can't do anything, even help themselves. Kind of a pathetic weakling, really, following around anyone who'll give them the time of day. Stupid. No wonder they're doomed to die...
[They must be so easy to hate, right? The second gets something smaller, subtler but also really more than that, a twitch, hitched breath and the rustle of cloth as his other hand comes up to his face, because without that question to chew on... he hasn't actually heard that name, his name, for what feels like an impossible stretch of time after the heightened compression of the death game. No, before that even. And even to Komaeda he's 'Tsukimi-kun' and there he'd like to keep it. It's painful, to that part of him, in a way he didn't expect, like warmth after frostbite.]
...
Ahaha, you tell me.
[One half of that question he really can't answer, looking through one way glass and seeing only himself. The other half, is 'very'.]
no subject
[there is a wild, wild thought she has, a stray that drifts in and refuses to go, a sort of strange feeling that lingers. the movement in his hand, the way the word itself resonates with him...
one more question. one more will give her what she might need, to test the strangest of theories that linger with her.]
Is "Shin" alive or dead?
no subject
A strangled laugh, the kind that comes through a hand gripping his face.]
Haha, he has to be, doesn't he? Dead... he's here, after all.
[His slip there, un-noticed. His voice lowers down into an unhappy mutter.]
Idiot got himself killed in the end.
[Almost got someone else killed too. It's a swirling morass of colour here, a shattered kaleidoscope, push and pull and press, constriction.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)