guiltrip | Ritual of Destruction

Ritual of Destruction

[ So, Kallamar was going to just burn the conques Lobelia left behind in the Seagull cabana, but apparently that's a bad idea.

So instead, he just brought them all in a drawstring backpack and invited people to do as they wished with them. Happy destroying! ]

(OOC Note: The shells will release whatever sound was stored in them upon destruction. Have fun with that. )

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[After Billy's cleaned off and had his fill of destroying personal property, he takes to a more isolated part of the island, and hears singing. Ah...Lacus. She'd had a lot of interesting things to say back there, but she'd mostly just seemed upset. Can't say he understands, but he can't help commenting.]

...pretty song.

[ Ah, Billy... Lacus feels a little awkward standing before him now. Not because of what he did or said, which was crude but all justified, but because... There is something misplaced about her grief that she'd like to keep from disturbing the others further. ]

Thank you.

[ And still, she can't help asking: ] Are you satisfied?

[He genuinely considers the question in a moment of silence.]

...I don't know. [He should be. He sort of is, since Lobelia's dead. That doesn't change that Vergilius is dead, though, or...]

Just makes you sick wonderin' why, don't it? Did he take him up on that duel thinkin' he could take him? Why bother...indulging him in that?

[He'd hoped Verg wouldn't have gotten too tired to stop fighting against the rottens worlds they lived in. Or maybe he had without Billy noticing.

~~How many times has he been ignorant to how much fight someone would have and lost them as a result?~~]

[ Yes, it can easily make you sick. Lacus nods, solemnly. She thinks she understands Lobelia quite well, but Vergilius is another matter entirely. She never knew anything about him at all. ]

And if he thought he could win against Lobelia...? The trial would have started up all the same. Do you think he would have sent one of us to our death in his place?

[ Or was he expecting to die all along, regardless of who won the duel - just like Lobelia was. ]

[Billy genuinely can't say for sure if Vergilius would have. They'd both considered the majority of people here exasperating and probably not worth dying for.]

Either way he was riskin' himself. Don't know how many people here he'd care to save, but... [It wasn't like Verg sounded eager to get back home with the hellhole that place was. Maybe this was a better alternative to him.

...he gets why his friends were mad at him for trying to die fighting now.]

Took him for someone who'd think twice about the whole thing was all.

... he appeared to be looking down at us for trying to seek something beyond mere acceptance of our cruel reality.

[ Their conversation in the bath, however irritating it had been at the time, rings a little different now. ]

Maybe he had already thought on it, and was already defending his conclusions - unseen by us all.

[ A pause. ]

I can't claim to know. I apologize, this was too much speculation on a man I barely knew.

I'll admit, y'start thinkin' connecting to anyone is a mistake when y'lose enough. I don't get it why you do it either when you know you're gonna get stomped on next time someone kicks it.

[And yet, here he is so deeply frustrated and saddened by losing someone here. Neither Vergilius or Billy followed the rules they so cynically claimed to.]

...they never really tell ya they're thinkin' like that until it's too late to do anything, anyway.

[ Lacus is silent for a moment. She's lost people, but not like this - not to the feeling of hopelessness itself. Billy seems far more used to it, and it makes her understand his jadedness a lot better. ]

I'm definitely going to get hurt again. But if I stop connecting, then I'll be lonely from the start. To me, that seems like the greater loss.

[Billy would be a hypocrite to call connecting futile--it isn't and he knows it. He had no intentions of doing so in this place (obviously that's failed given he's grieving Vergilius the way he is), but before, in his own world?

So he can't disagree. He's a rotten man with those people gone, but he'd be a worse one without meeting them at all.]

It ain't ever gonna go away, you know. No matter how long it's been or how old you get, you always miss 'em.

[Billy states it as a simple fact. He won't stop her, but it'd be cruel not to warn her.]

[ For a moment, Lacus has to think of her late parents, and of the comrades and friends lost in the war. She's still young and in a lot of ways these wounds are still fresh, but even so... ]

I don't think I would want it to disappear.

[ Maybe it's a foolish thing to say. Maybe she'll shatter under the weight of it eventually. ]

I want to take the path of least regrets, but... I don't want to regret loving somebody. I don't want to stop carrying them with me.

[Billy remains silent for a while, as something in that statement seems to resonate for him.

~~Right. There's nothing to regret in loving someone. Who was Billy Butcher before her, anyway? Who is he if he doesn't do what he promised her?~~

He nods.]

You ain't gotta try too hard to carry 'em. I ain't someone who believes in ghosts, but hauntings are realer than anythin'.

You ever hear of Spice Girls?

[ Lacus agrees with that. It's easy to grieve when you've loved somebody. It's easy to see them in your minds' eye when you're not trying to think of anything. It's much harder to quiet down the voice that asks 'what if? what if you'd done something different?' but Lacus thinks she's becoming something of an expert in it.

Those are very melancholy thoughts to have, but then he totally catches her off guard. Huh? ]

Spice... Girls? I can't say I have.

They're kinda like you and Haru--pop stars from back in the 90s, couple of their songs are on the karaoke box.

[He gives a light nostalgic laugh.]

My wife was a big fan--I'd hear her hummin' along to Spice Up Your Life in the other room and then it'd be stuck in me head for a whole fuckin' week. It's the kind of girly pop that could drive you mad, but I started likin' it just 'cause it made me think about Becca typin' away on her computer for work and singin' along when I heard it.

That's the kind of stuff you miss more than anythin'.

[ Ah... It makes Lacus smile softly, imagining a simpler time when Billy had someone he could love like that, easily. ]

Whenever my father had a day off, he used to take forever at breakfast. I'd go out to take a morning walk and come back to the smell of his third cup of coffee and the tap of his fingers as he advanced through the paper. I live in our house again now, and every Saturday when I come back in from the garden, it feels as though he's sitting there.

[ But he's not, because he's ended his life with a dozen bullets in his body and it was Lacus' fault. ]

But there's also moments like... When I'm with Kira and my skirt spins a certain way, or my laugh reaches a certain pitch, and for a moment he looks at me and it's as if she's with him instead and I can never tell if that's a happy feeling or not...

[ Lacus wishes she had gotten to know her better, but life wasn't so kind. ]

Mourning is such a simple feeling, but it manifests in so many ways.

Edited 2023-06-07 11:50 (UTC)

[Oh, so that's what Lacus has dealt with. Billy can't relate to missing a father, but he knows that it's the sort of thing that weighs on people who have good relationships with their father from the way M.M. would talk about his family.]

He must see somethin' important in ya if that's the case. Hughie will get this weedy look in his eye sometimes when he's tellin' me to keep a job clean, and...he kinda looks like someone he ain't for a tick.

[Someone he'd failed like he had Becca, like he might have failed Vergilius.]

Reminders are all we get, eh?

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Ritual of Destruction

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cw implied suicide ideation

cont. cw implied suicide ideation

cont cw implied suicide ideation

cont cw implied suicide ideation

cont cw suicide ideation / implied suicide

cont cw suicide ideation / implied suicide

cont cw suicide ideation / implied suicide

cont cw suicide ideation / implied suicide

cont cw suicide ideation / implied suicide

cont cw suicide ideation / implied suicide I THINK??

cont cw suicide ideation / death

cont cw death, murder and mourning, wooo

cont cw death, murder and mourning, we are so normal