2019-02-04: A Failure To Drown One's Sorrows
- Log: A Failure To Drown One's Sorrows
- Cast: Xantia, Fei Fong Wong
- Where: Kislev-Aveh Front
- Date: February 04, 2019
- Summary: Fresh from the ordeal that saw her attacking her friends, temporarily losing her memories again, and finding out her 'grandpa' was responsible for her amnesia in the first place, Xantia has hit rock bottom. It's up to Fei to guide her back to the surface.
===========================<* Kislev-Aveh Front *>============================ The frontlines of the Kislev-Aveh War have shifted many times in the last few hundred years, but they have left their scars on the land. One can, of course, find fighting between their infantry and Gears here. Such places are dangerous, and most Drifters know to steer away from them. However, sometimes there is no choice; even the rail lines thought to be away from the front can get caught unawares by a patrol, and skirmishes have resulted in delays and death for those trying to get to the Badlands. The areas not currently being fought in are also dangerous. Deserters and monsters alike can wander them, and the dry, dusty land leaves little succor for those in need. To make matters worse, abandoned fortifications and trenches make an excellent hiding place for the bandits seeking to profit here. Drifters are sometimes drawn here, though, to either fight for one side or to excavate abandoned ARMs and Gears left behind in a battle. This sort of salvage work is risky, but the rewards can be great. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxynM-xwLUs
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
You have. One. New message.
Something along those lines occurs when Fei next visits a Memory Cube. It's not from Xantia though. It's from Bart.
"Fei. You better get over to the Yggdrasil. Xantia's here, and she's, uh... what happened, man? Anyway, you should talk to her, I'm not good at this stuff. Later!"
Typical.
Though the message was not exactly greatly detailed, once at the Yggdrasil, it's easy enough to find Xantia. She's where party members commonly gather: the bar. And she doesn't look great. Mainly because she's faceplanted on the countertop. An ominous closeup highlights an empty shotglass next to her. Uh-oh.
As is commonly the case, Maison is tending bar, immediately hailing Fei once he enters. "Forgive me, Master Fei, I have made a terrible error in judgment. I thought a single shotglass could do no harm, but it only took the one to--"
He is interrupted by Xantia, making a sudden SNNNNRK sound as she instantly sits up straight. She heard the word 'Fei'. She looks around, her eyes passing over him several times before she squints at him, which was apparently needed to finally identify him. A broad smile appears on her face.
"Heeeey big bro, when'd you get here? Lemme give you a bug... I mean... I mean hug. I don't have any bugs."
Giggling, she gets up from her barstool and... well whatever she was trying to do, it doesn't work. That hug attempt is going to miss by a mile, she's probably going to end up to the floor without some quick reflexes. And her own reflexes certainly aren't going to cut it right now.
Your life is just one mess after another, isn't it, Fei Fong Wong?
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei had a pretty wild day. He didn't even get to eat a taco before he and his friends were called out by a dude named Rattan and had to fight someone named Emeralda who seemed to know him and she hugged him and knocked him off a gear and Noeline teased him and the kid called Elly old and...
Needless to say Fei does not check Memory Cube often that day but when he does..
Normally he would rush off immediately but all of a sudden he has a new responsibility to consider before he goes running off...but the hesitation does not last long. Xantia is family. Emeralda he is still coming to grips with.
Fei arrives looking exhausted. Not destroyed like at the Photosphere but more like he was run ragged.
"When it rains it pours, huh Maison?" Fei smiles at him with a strange zen-like smile. He is at one with the universe because if he is not he will probably fall over.
His reflexes aren't so shot that he is going to let Xantia hit the floor but its nearer than he'd like. He catches Xantia in one arm and awkwardly guides her back to the chair.
"Hey, sis." Fei says. "I'm here. I was worried we wouldn't see you again though I would've done the same in your shoes." Fei pauses and adds with a small smile. "Guess we are pretty much alike, huh?"
He is quiet a moment. What can one say to this? To all of this?
"If you want to scream your head off, I don't mind. I will listen to all your complaints about everything, anyone, and I won't tell nobody either." Fei says. "Sometimes screaming about it helps, you know?"
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia falls into Fei's arms with a "wheeeee". As if she meant to do that. She seems to find the whole thing pretty hilarious. In fact everything Fei is saying seems to be hilarious, since she laughs in response to absolutely everything. Did she really only have one shotglass of... whatever it was?
"A fair assessment," Maison agrees, inclining his head before making his way to the back. Xantia has someone else to watch over her now - it's part of his job description to know when sensitive topics are about to be discussed that are no business of his.
Xantia at least doesn't flail around or anything, letting herself be taken back to her seat without making a fuss. She does raise a finger though, taking way too long to actually put her singular objection into words. "...You call these boots, not shoes." A valuable insight, to be sure.
She squints at Fei as he mentions screaming. She doesn't look very convinced about that one. "What'll that do? I don't... get it. Is it like this stuff?" She gestures vaguely towards the many bottles lined up behind the bar. "'cause that doesn't do anything." Well. It's clearly doing something, after way too little of it, but that's probably not what she means.
It takes a moment before she speaks again, hanging her head a little before turning back to Fei. "'s what it's supposed to do, right? You drink this... to forget. But I'm not forgetting anything." She's not so far gone that she isn't able to put her thoughts into words anymore. Which is her entire problem with it. After all this, even Xantia wishes she could forget about everything that happened recently. But, as she says herself, with a palm to her face...
"I remember. Everything. What I did. What I said to people. I don't... I just wanna go back. Back to before I hurt everybody."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Even suffering as Xantia is, Fei can't help but smile. She's kind, even now. He wouldn't have been. "Fair, fair." He says to the honestly ridiculous objection, but he isn't going to give a hard time to one-shotglass Xantia right now. When they're both seated down, Fei leans into a hug giving it a small squeeze at the end as if attempting to sponge off the bad feelings.
"Well sometimes it's just cathartic. You still remember, but it doesn't feel quite as bad. That's the idea behind it anyway." Fei explains. "Just a suggestion, but--I'm not sure alcohol works that well at helping you forget, really, it can numb you but you remember later. It can even make you feel worse. Generally. I've tried it myself but I think it's better if I stay off it now."
He stays close. She wishes to forget, but Jolen already showed the error of that method hadn't he? Even so, Fei admits, "Me too." He pauses. "You're not alone." He is not crass enough to point out there is a way to make it all go away. "Nobody blames you for what happened either. You tried to protect us, you know?"
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia kind of sways awkwardly into the hug, kind of half-collapsing on Fei's shoulder. Even if she's unsteady for a different reason, it's a pretty accurate representation of how she feels in general. Just... ready to collapse, and just lie there. Kindness may remain, but even for her, it's really difficult to stay optimistic after everything that's happened.
She scratches her head as Fei tries to explain the virtues of screaming. "I dunno. I already screamed at gran-- ...at Jolen. Didn't make me feel better at all." Her expression sours further when she learns that alcohol's not likely to work any better. "Baaaah, so I drank that horrible stuff for nothing? It tastes awful, and it burns, and it doesn't do anything, what's it good for then?" The dismissive sweep of her hand she follows that up with knocks the shotglass over the counter to land on the ground, possibly in pieces. Xantia winces a bit, she didn't mean to do that.
"...I still break everything I touch. Thought all I had to do was hold back and it'd be fine. But I guess that's just what I'm meant to do."
She's silent a moment, then rubs both hands through her hair. "Nghhhh, I don't get it! Why won't you blame me, I still... did what I did. Even if I didn't mean to, you--" She suddenly turns her head, and leans in real close to Fei, wide-eyed. She smells like whiskey.
"...I'm dangerous. You think you know, but you don't. So many ways to kill were going through my head. So many. What I did to Lily..."
She slumps back in her seat. "...and she still came to save me." She's visibly struggling with keeping her thoughts coherent. But one thought in particular keeps bubbling to the surface, and does so again now, as she raises her head to look Fei in the eyes again.
"I can't... stay here. Need to go far away. So I can't hear it anymore."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei thinks back to his own thoughts when he had learned Xantia had lost her memories again. How quickly his friends jumped to tell him how wrong he was or, at least, how hasty he was being.
But Fei doesn't do that. It's okay to say incorrect things you don't mean when you're hurting this much so long as you don't make a habit of it. Xantia asks what alcohol is good for and Fei admits, "Some folks enjoy it. Some folks try to kill themselves with it."
Xantia did scream at Jolen. She doesn't feel better. Fei approaches this from a more lateral approach.
"Do you want him out of your life?" Fei asks of Jolen. "What he did was wrong, but I think he knows it. He chose to help you even though he knew it'd hurt your relationship with him."
He turns to face Xantia. "You don't have to forgive him, Xantia. But you also... If you want to, you can."
He smiles faintly when Xantia says she doesn't know how dangerous she can be. "Xantia I...we personally destroyed a continent. So you're right, I don't know how dangerous you can be. But I'd have to be real pathetic to blame you. You never blamed me for what Id did. You stopped me. You hugged me. And he's been hurting too," He lowers his voice. "We may have punched Jolen."
"And Lily, she nearly joined us on a campaign to literally murder the planet." Fei says. "We've all found ourselves on the brink, some of us have even crossed it, so of course we can't judge you. You saved me, so---so I know it's hypocritical of me, but don't say you're meant to break things. You're not. You didn't break me now didja?"
Is Xantia controlled by Wifi? A dangerous idea, but Fei says, "We'll be going to Aquvy soon. Can you hold on until then?"
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
"Don't get it," is Xantia's succinct conclusion on the matter of alcohol. She'll think twice about drinking anything that smells bad again. Probably for the best, considering how ridiculously poorly she handles it.
Fei asks if she wants Jolen out of her life. Xantia frowns, and seems about to give a kneejerk response, but doubts herself too much to actually say it. Instead, after a moment she settles on, "I can't... hate him." Try not to be too shocked at Xantia's inability to hate somebody. "But... I don't want to see him. Not right now."
She places a hand on her forehead. "...I still don't remember exactly what happened. He... stopped me from hurting people. But it wasn't the same. Back then... I was scared. I didn't want to kill anybody..." She grimaces. She looks a bit more lucid than she did before, but it's pretty obvious before she confirms it: "My head hurts."
On the matter of Id, and having destroyed a continent, Xantia insists, "That's different!" One might expect some kind of explanation on how it is different, but that never happens. It takes a while before she speaks again, and all she does is affirm, "It's just... different."
She doesn't argue the rest of it though. She smiles, thinking back to that hug. And then looks up in surprise, when she hears Jolen got punched. "You managed to hit him? Wow. I didn't think it was possible." She may have been a handful during her time in the Colony, by the sound of things. "...I think he probably wanted to be punched," she theorizes, thinking back to that look in Jolen's eyes. "I couldn't do it, though. He did a bad thing, but... I don't think he's a bad guy."
If she's surprised to hear about Lily, she doesn't show it. She stays silent regarding the matter of whether or not she's meant to break things. But when Aquvy comes up, she looks up with interest. "That... could be nice. I hope it's far enough away." She pauses, and lowers her head.
"For now, I think... I want to stop looking for my memories."
A grave statement indeed, to hear from Xantia. Although she does nuance it a little afterwards. "Just, for now. Until I feel ready."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
'It's different', Xantia says, and Fei says, "I know," because it is different. It's always different when you do it. That's what a lot of folks don't understand, however kind they are, once you've done it it's different. He'd never wanted Xantia to be in this position but everyone's got a right to determine their own path to walk, even if that path is covered in vipers. "But not different enough."
She was scared. Sometimes Id is scared. That's what frightens Fei honestly, that people like Id, like Xantia--maybe even that other side of Xantia that nearly destroyed all his friends--can be afraid. All that power, all that capacity for destruction, and even they have something they can fear. What is it, he wonders, that they can't destroy to free themselves of that burden? Or maybe they can...and simply won't.
"Wow--!" Fei says, feigning hurt in a jokey sort of way. "I happen to be very proud of my ability to punch old men." He pauses for a moment and adds, more seriously. "But you're right. He wanted to be punched."
"That's why we punched him." He pauses. "Well, we were also pissed off." So much for WISDOM Fei! "But I think you're right. He isn't a bad guy and when you're ready to see him again...well, he'll be a wiser man." He pulls back a bit and adds, "And you know--" He smiles again. "There's nothing wrong with a vacation. The truth will come in due time. In the meantime..."
Fei's turn to look a little nervous as he glances to the side.
"Um, shortly after you left, we were attacked by a guy in a gear named 'Rattan' and--the other one I'm not sure how to explain but her name is Emeralda and she was left behind with us and I guess she didn't really mean to attack us?" He rubs his neck sheepishly. "She's ... she's a kid, but I think you and her would get along like--" He was about to say 'like apples and oranges' or 'peas in a pod' but pauses because this is Xantia he is talking to and sometimes idioms aren't her strong suit. See the boots comment earlier.
"Well, I think she'd like you. We still don't entirely know her deal but it seems like she'll be sticking around a while at least. She's cute." He looks embarrassed. "Well, it's something nicer to think about right now, yeah?"
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Not different enough, Fei says. Xantia isn't so sure she agrees. She just can't articulate how it's different. It's always been a lot easier to see the similarities. Because that's what she's always preferred to see.
She couldn't even begin to theorize what the differences or similarities are in what they're afraid of. But make no mistake - she's very much aware that Id did something for her that he wouldn't have for most others. She's not going to use that as an argument for anything, though. You don't get along with Id by rubbing in things like that to his face.
She's gotten more quiet in general, moreso listening than talking. That alcohol buzz may be wearing off. She does chuckle at Fei's pride in punching old men. Wait, this is Xantia, did she take that joke at face value? Ugh, why isn't she talking when it matters?
"A vacation..." is what finally gets her to comment out loud again. She can't help but be reminded of Lunar, when she was completely baffled by how everyone wasn't looking into getting back to Filgaia 24/7. Now... now she finally understands that sometimes you need time off even from the things that matter most to you. "...I think I might like a vacation."
She blinks several times at the sudden new information, taking a moment to process that she missed an attack which somehow resulted in a kid being left behind. It was at least a good idea to leave out talk of peas, apples and oranges, because that would've just made her hungry again. She's already made enough enemies eating more than her share of Lunata's tacos.
"Well... okay, if you say so. I kind of feel a little awkward around children, but they do seem to like me..." Even if a child version of her appeared in her mindscape, in the real world Xantia still has a lot of trouble imagining what it's like to be a child. Maybe it'll be a good experience in that regard.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Has Xantia... LEVELED UP?!
Fei... chooses to believe Xantia knew he was joking. Well, honestly, even if it wasn't it's not like there's a small number of old men in the world that need to be punched a few times, but Fei wouldn't exactly brag about it for real. Not until Chapter 3 at least! Maybe even Chapter 4!
There's probably a reason that Id seems to get along much better with Xantia than Dean the Jellybean.
"Vacations are nice." Fei says. "Honestly taking one is probably why I'm able to handle all of this today." He's probably going to need to take a small break again once this situation with Emeralda is figured out.
God Leon. What is Leon going to do to him?
"Well," Fei says after a moment. "You got me. Truth is, she's got a lot of energy and well... I do think you'll get along, but it's just a hunch." If nothing else she probably won't remind her of how she tried to murder everybody. "You want to head back to town or just take it easy here for a bit longer?"