dualislogs | when we die we will die with our arms unbound

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when we die we will die with our arms unbound

WHO: Crazy Jane/the Hangman's Daughter and OPEN
WHAT: An alarming painting on the side of a building
WHERE: The Gallows
WHEN: December 2
WARNINGS: Gore/executions

The Hangman's Daughter [CW: gore/death]
It started off as a landscape.

The Hangman's Daughter knows it's important, that she has to get the image out of her head and painted immediately. She rushes a rough sketch, grabs her paints and brushes, sets up the pulley system that Drifter had fashioned after Jane provided a wealth of takeout, and begins her work on the Gallows' graffiti wall.

Dualis is a beautiful city. She knows Jane hates being there, that it was as much a prison to her as the mental institution had been, but the Hangman's Daughter tries not to look beyond the surface of good things, beyond the neon lights and the stark geometrical designs of the buildings. She always tried not to, and always failed.

That was why she has to paint in the dark parts of Central Square Park. It was there right under the surface, on the very next page, and she winced as she added vibrant yellows and reds, grays, crimson, maroon, dull pink, white, pale yellow to figures that shouldn't have been there. She feels her stomach drop but doesn't stop, absorbed in the act of purging this image from her mind.

It takes hours. People might have stopped and gaped at her efforts, she doesn't know, but when she hoists herself back up via the pulley system and places her paints on the roof she's shaking. Getting down to ground level again and observing the full building-sized painting does little to comfort her.

It's technically lovely. She certainly captured the Central Square Park well, and the colors were vibrant. The red and yellow of a flaming pyre under a staked figure; grays in an impaled form hoisted high, ruby red blood dripping down the black spear; splashes of crimson across wan skin on the gladiators' bodies; muddy pink in the torn flesh of a drawn and quartered figure with a noose around its neck; the dull gray of a guillotine blade streaked with brown and vibrant red; the brilliant yellow-white of muzzle flash on the firing squad.

The Hangman's Daughter looks up at it, tears gathering in her eyes.

Crazy Jane
After taking a good look at the painting on the graffiti wall, Jane retreats into the Gallows and considers what she's just seen. It's undeniably provocative. She doesn't know what it means, how the iterations will react when they see it, but she knows something will happen. People will see it, might come in to ask what the painting meant, she might get arrested and get who-knows-what done to her. She goes for her stash of spray paint, considering how the wrong message might put a target on her and that it'd be easier for her to just cover up the whole thing, or at least the executions.

She pauses and grabs a can of gold spray paint, retreating to the graffiti wall only for a second before returning to the safety of the gallery. In the lower right-hand corner where the artist's signature often goes, she's left the message ᴄᴏɴᴛʀᴏʟ ɪs ᴀ ᴡᴇᴀᴘᴏɴ ꜰᴏʀ ꜰᴀsᴄɪsᴛs.

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"With some people a name is enough."

But he takes the route of talking about the Hive. "There couldn't possibly be any Hive around here. Their entire way of life wouldn't let 'em fit in! They follow somethin' called 'the Sword Logic'. Sorta this twised brand of Darwinian thinkin'. That being given somethin' freely with no struggle behind it causes only weakness. The only true way to live is by takin'. So if they were brought here they'd get themselves killed by iterations before they could pass on a word about how to do that kinda thing."

He steps back, rubbing his beard. "Could be humans. Or Risen- sorta... undead, superpowered formerly human folk... -but I don't wanna think about them bein' here." Long story behind all that too. He just points at the picture thought.

"There's runes in that set up meanin' 'suffering' so if it isn't a Hive ritual, then two people got real similar ways of livin'." Which is not unheard of here.

He moves back to the other big display of death then, abandoning the ritual for now, trying to get a better sense of what's going on.

Well, fine, if he's not going to answer, she'll just be a sarcastic dick. "You were talking to Voldemort?"

Jane looks at the painting, still not understanding why he's so worked up about it. "Okay, if they're not the Hive here doing their iron price shit, why does it matter? If they're Risen or whatever, you can worry about that later. We don't know when any of this shit is going down. Maybe you're clear."

We might already have been executed is what she really means, but she doesn't really want to voice that thought aloud yet.

"You were kind of right. The Hangman's Daughter paints what's going to happen. Problem is she has no idea when or how."

"What the fuck's a Voldemort? Sounds like a store where you buy coffins."

He doesn't trust the Shadows of Yor. Because if there were any Risen here doing rituals, it could be the Shadows. They're the ones most familiar with doing it. The Shadows would be damn bad news for him.

But takes another look at that display.

"Guess we'll have to try extra hard to make sure this isn't us, if this is one of those, 'We can't stop the situation' futures. Man, what would I give for some Vex tech right now. Then we could figure this out."

"Close enough." She didn't care enough to explain Harry Potter to Drifter. Not like it was important anyway.

"I guess we will." She sighs deeply, then digs out two styrofoam cups from a cupboard. Filling them both with coffee, she offers one to him. "What would Vex tech do?"

Sipping at her coffee, Jane peers into it thoughtfully. "You know, I have sixty-four personalities and sixty-four superpowers. I sort of figured --" She pauses. "Figured I could find my way home."

"Time travel of a sort. They create these uh... artificial realities. Alternate timelines so they can start changin' around how things play out. High energy, too. Take a Vex machine? And it can power a starship for a full three years or so. It's kept my hunk o' junk goin' for a while."

He is thinking, though, even as he explains and takes the coffee in his non-hotdog hand. This time he takes it to have a seat somewhere.

"Sixty-four personalities, huh? ...Well, Sister. I got a real long life. And I'm still stuck for the moment. We just gotta find the right thing, an' then we can get out." He doesn't sound overly encouraged, though, just exasperated he's in a situation that he has to try.

"Okay." That she could understand, she had seen (been through?) something similar herself, thanks to Mr. Nobody. Minus the energy part, about which she had no idea. "I'm guessing you don't have a starship here."

There are a few chairs set up, sparsely and with no regard to the order they're in. Jane considers it a win that she thought about a place to sit at all.

"Yeah? What right thing is that?" Exasperated is better than hopeless, which is how she'd sounded for a moment. "One of us can teleport, and she can't get out."

"Nah, and while I'm pretty sure I could scrap somethin' together, it'd be more effective if I could build a portal." He finishes off his third hotdog. A bottomless pit, this man appears to be. "Which I can do. Once I figure out the roadmap the Head's usin' to pull us all here."

Then he shrugs. "But of course, I couldn't get a map if I couldn't get close. And what's the likelihood of some poor little old souls like us pullin' off somethin' apparently no one else has yet."

And he smiles before his cup of coffee like he has every intention of pulling off what no one has yet. People make a damn lot of assumptions about him, underestimating him, and he's sure he can get out.

He thinks of that painting of the executions. He doesn't seem all that fazed by the other morbid portrayals in the room. More just damnably curious. He'd gathered a while back Jane had multiple personalities. He knew they all had different abilities. "How did you come by havin' a little somethin' special for each person you're bussin' around? Those abilities of yours?"

Edited 2019-12-12 10:40 (UTC)

"What roadmap? We've got all kinds of weirdos here. Aliens, alternate dimensions, I don't think most of us come from the same places." Drifter seemed fairly sure he wouldn't run into familiar people here, and Jane felt the same way. There were people from cities she recognized here, but how similar their realities were, she didn't know.

Oh. Now that was a different question and Jane raised her eyebrows, thinking. "I'd say not very high," she replies, head cocked curiously: tell her more.

Jane scoffs, disdaining the memory more than the question. It was a sore spot. "A complete piece of shit decided to experiment on innocent people to make himself live longer. I was one of them. This happened." While nowhere near his lifespan, she's had a pretty long life herself. Her fun little "superpower." Thanks, Chief.

"And somehow he picks people that can tolerate this atmosphere, is able to scan languages to make sure his translators line up. Picks people that are useful in some way. The Head is a scientist designed by scientist. Peak discovery and intent. There's nothin' that he'd do by accident. Somewhere he's storin' this info."

Somewhere like a server farm, if they should be able to find it. And he is certainly doubting it's in the temple.

That and he has to figure out how to make his Ghost scan again, and hoo boy, does that have him stumped. Hell of a catch-22 there so far, at least until he figures out what's holdin' him up.

"Nothin' like havin' somethin' use you to get by, huh? Me. Me, I got a pretty good lifespan too. Not 'cause of an expirement, just 'cause somethin' without opposable thumbs decided it needed a buddy to ride shotgun with it. Long story, but I feel ya, Sister."

"Useful how?" That was the point Jane was stuck on. "No shit it's a scientist. Anywhere they tase people to get them sharing during therapy it's a scientist studying people. They need data, that's what NAPs are for. I could've told you they're keeping track of that."

Network Adjacency Protocol: even the name clearly signalled what the meetups were. That was why Jane went out of her way not to share anything important and had vowed to get herself kicked out of NAPs as often as possible. Her fully-clothed dive into a swimming pool had seen to that last month. A server farm, wherever it was, was going to have as little on her as she could manage.

"No. Nothing like it." It was a crushing feeling, one that reverberated throughout her as she thought of the Chief even as she braced against it. "Do you know what it is?" Is it psychic or energy? Because she knows a being without opposable thumbs that rides shotgun in a man. It had been good to her overall, although it had given Larry hell. "I'm guessing it's not a friend of yours."

"Yeah, but I'm talkin' specifically the fact that it can touch other worlds. It knows what it's doin'. Times. Universes. It has that stored up somewhere, an I wanna find out more about it."

But he shrugs at what she says. "It is what it is." Nothing he can do about it, not without dying. And if he dies, he imagines it'd be by someone's hand, and he can't abide that. He can't be kind or sympathetic towards anyone who would do that to him, and therefore as much as he hates the damn thing, he needs it to outlive the opposition.

"There's a lot out there to hate."

Deep within, out in the far reaches. AI Heads. Things he wishes he didn't have to deal with. But, hell, look at what she has to deal with. Seems like she likes hers better than Drifter likes his.

"I'm from a place where suffering can be used as a weapon. If the head is gonna do what you show?" He gestures at Jane, pointing lightly, "I can use his own hell against him."

That makes sense. Jane's focus hadn't been on the idea of data storage but of course the Head was hoarding that information somewhere. “It's not so weird it could touch different universes and worlds and times. I've met a third-rate joke of a supervillain who can do that,” she says. (She'd like to ignore that she was part of the fourth-rate “superhero team” that repeatedly lost to him.) “But I don't want this fucker having any shit on me.”

Jane can't abide anyone who would wish her death either, and it's not only pure survival instinct. It's defending everyone else in her mind, including the girl all the personalities were born to protect. She's wanted nothing more than to deal out as much destruction as she can to the iterations and the Head since she got here. The only thing stopping her going on the offensive is her selves-preservation.

“Yeah. There is.”

She still didn't understand what he was dealing with, who he was talking to, just that he was in touch with someone else. Jane wouldn't judge him on that, not after what she's been through herself. “Oh, it'll happen,” she sighs. “The Hangman's Daughter never lies.” It seems like she repeats that a lot. “And if you can turn that shit back against it? Fuck the Head, I'll help.”

"I can only touch two other universes. Built a device that can do it! Helped a guy build a device that could hit other timelines. I can do this."

He says that with doubtless earnest, a seriousness that could crush steel. Those words held fearless gravity. But, right.

"You got people in your head, right? I'd have to warn you. Somethin' for you to think about for a while. It takes three people, and it takes inviting someone in to tell you how to do it. And Sister? It is a trip. Not the good kind, either. It works, though.

"But you gotta really think about it. Wouldn't want you invitin' this thing in unless everyone in there was on board with it, an' willin' to follow one important rule. Don't make any deals. Oh... it'd see 'em through. But you wouldn't want to deal with the consequences. They uh... They stick with ya."

"Two's better than none. What's stopping you putting us all in that one? Is it worse than this or do you just not have the tech?" She didn't doubt him for a second, even before that ironclad confidence, because she knows well how easy it is for people to touch different shades of reality.

"Yeah. A lot of them." That wasn't encouraging, but it also meant she might be able to seriously hurt the Head, and that made things difficult. Could she keep the rest of the personalities from agreeing to anything? Who the fuck knew? She needed more information before that.

"Did you make a deal?" She raises her eyebrows, curious. "Is that why you have someone extra in your head?"

Edited 2019-12-29 03:17 (UTC)

"Uh... yeah. That's what I did. Still waitin' to see whether it was worth it or not. Thanks to that deal, I know how to do what I'm tellin' you about, and how to get to that other universe. To me, knowin' was worth it."

Was it though? Most of the time the answer is yes. Sometimes it isn't.

"Look, I got a pretty busy head myself, usually. Just a good hunk of the occupants can't get to me here. But this one? It can. An' I didn't like that at first, but if it can reach here, it means it can offer us some solid advice."

"Well maybe this was what you're waiting for." Which might be naive, but it's the most optimistic thought she's had since seeing the painting.

"Are they all other people? Like --" She waves a hand by her temple and turns it outward, gesturing 'elsewhere.' "Exterior people?" Not borne of his own mind and the situations it reacted to, just people who had moved in. "Yeah. I want to hear what it has to say."

"People that decided I should be blessed with their presence, yeah." And god does he sound pissed about that. "One has one thing to say to me. One thing another. One can't talk no more, thank goodness. It's uh... it's with me now, too. But to survive we had to do somethin' that had the blessed side effect of making it hush."

He still condemns what the Ghosts say as lies. His ghost? No different. It's a little jarring to admit its here, all the time its here, but no one can see it.

Who can blame him? Sharing your head with other people is bad enough, sharing your head with people who just invited themselves in and refuse to leave is stupid. "So you've got squatters and you can't kick them out. Shit." She winces.

"Guess that's the first favor the Head's ever done anyone."

"Yeah. That's about the short of it." But that Ur is in there? That's probably his fault. He did, after all, invite him for a chat so he could get information.

"They're mostly outa range now, pendin' them figurin' out their own way here. The Hive Gods, though? Span universes. Span the lines that separate us from one 'maybe' to the next 'shoulda been'. And they see how people hurt in every damn one of them.

"Lightbearers as it turns out are extra crispy. Especially people with long lives. There's a lotta history of hurt there. They like that."

And that's a pretty solid warning, he thinks.

"Why is your head so busy?"

"Well, fuck." She didn't know how to respond to that. How do you even begin to express how shitty that must be?

"How many of them can't check in? Is it enough to make a difference?" He has at least one person checking in, which for Jane would be one extraneous person too many.

"What's a Lightbearer?" Because that description would sound more than a shade familiar and she would be wary. As it is, she still accepts Drifter as is, not knowing the more insidious details.

"Someone did something terrible to a little girl," she begins. After that a nonsequitur usually follows, somethng deflective that would brush away the importance of that sentence. Jane doesn't usually like to acknowledge it. But she's off kilter today and pauses, letting the sentence hang in the air. "Someone did something terrible to a little girl and... this is what happened."

"Ah..." Is what he says, but the expression on his face says something else. Yeah, someone that'd do that to a little girl is sick. But he doesn't need to say it. "Asshole."

Good enough a consolation, right? Acknowledging someone was scum.

"Lightbearers are... they don't get a choice in what they are. Somethin' chooses them to be special. They search for decades, even centuries to find the perfect person. Supposed to be a great honor, being chosen, and then brought back from the dead. Personally? Those things that do the choosin' don't discriminate as well as they should."

But he's not bitter.

"I do like that it's quieter. I can sleep easier again."

Edited 2020-01-08 04:52 (UTC)

It was something. Jane nods a little in acknowledgement: he was an asshole. He was scum. He understands it, which is better than shrugging it off unintentionally. Both things that have both happened. But none of that needed to be discussed.

"See, half of that? Sounds like something my old roommate went through. Except I don't think his something was very happy with him. It just happened, world's worst hookup." Larry got all the ill effects of being a Lightbearer with none of the good ones, it sounds like, and even the Negative Spirit wasn't happy about the arrangement.

"Are any of them yours? From your brain? Or are they all invasive?"

"Real question. Do you think all yours are just you? Or do you think your own sorta 'invasive'. Things that poor girl saw as powerful, strong, and kept 'em for herself. Guardians to keep that bad man out?

"I reckon all mine are invasive, yeah. But I'm just wonderin' how many of yours are guests that showed up and were given a home. Not that there's any shame in it? But it's got me wonderin'."

"They're not imports." There isn't shame in that, but she spits it out with the bitter reflexes of someone who's tired of explaining this. Drifter's question is fair and her anger's not aimed at him, this is the irritable weariness of explaining herself. "And they didn't move in to help out of the goodness of their hearts. People don't do that, it doesn't happen." Not for her, at least. Jane's learned that.

"No one was ever looking out for me so I had to do it myself. That's why they're here. Not because anyone stepped in to keep the bad man out." And they can't keep the bad man out, not really. What he'd done tore Kay's psyche too far apart and he'd left too many imprints to banish. All they could do was try to contain him as much as possible.

He raises his hands, surrendering the line of thought.

"Just askin'. Sometimes your brain decides to deal with stuff however it can. Me? I uh... starved to death a few times. More than a few. Never plan to die on an empty stomach again, if I can help it."

If that explains the hotdogs he just scarfed down.

"You stab me and I'll heal right up. I get sick? Or hungry? Or poisoned? It's nice and slow. It just waits it out to bring me back clean rather than tryin' to fix it."

But that's beside the point. "You look a little different between 'em, I noticed. Not that I've seen you in more than a couple."

It definitely explains the hot dogs. And she knows Drifter eats like that every day, which given his goal, shows he's about as paranoid as she is. "Has anyone killed you here? Or gotten close."

The healing part is handy. Seems more than a little unfair that it doesn't kick in until after wear's been done, though. "So it just fucks off unless someone tries to make you bleed. Why's it only doing half its job?"

She shrugs. "They don't all look like me. Most don't." In the Underground the physical differences are enormous, but a lot of those are lost when everyone's using the same body on the surface. "You'll see."

"Because we could go months and months, maybe even years without findin' food for a stretch. So they just start figurin', you know what? Reset is easier. So that's what they do."

That's ominous, though.

"You got some plannin' on payin' a visit?"

"Still doesn't sound fair." Which may make her sound very young. Jane's older than she looks, but there are types of hardships she's never experienced, true hunger being one of them.

He didn't answer her question but for now she figures it's for a good reason, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

"Probably. I don't control when they come out. Stick around long enough and you'll meet 'em all." Not that anyone ever had. Even if someone stuck with her for years some of her would never surface.

No one's tried, but he doesn't know yet if one of her personalities might take the notion. They've been friendly enough so far, but you never know.

"Well, no harm meant, but I hope we ain't stuck here long enough for all of 'em to make a visit. But so far I haven't been offended by none."

He's got a high tolerance for dicks, and she's less of a dick than the edgelord zealots he fell in with.

One of them might, but it's unlikely. He'd have to do something pretty offensive to manage that, and even then, if one tried another would probably counter it.

"Really? None of them?" Jane isn't offended, just confused. "You've met more than me, right? And I'm still a pain in the ass." Many people have told her this, it's a solid fact. She kind of tries to be a dick, because it pushes away the people who don't really care.

"Sister, I'm more likely to be offended by unwavering blinded idealism than I am from some justified bitchin'."

He shrugs, rolling his shoulders and spreading his hands. "Besides, look at me. I'm perpetually stuck in middle age, the only damn I give about my appearance is a motif, not impressin' anybody, and I'm older than most people I've met even in my world.

"Your scathin' insults ain't half as bad as what I've been beat with already, and even then you ain't even had nothin' foul to say about to me."

Huh. That's... more accepting than most people are. A small part of Jane wants to rejoice, the rest of her is torn between grateful and skeptical. She looks at him for awhile, considering this new information.

"Yeah, well, you haven't done anything to fuck me over yet." Drifter had been nothing but helpful so far, in fact. Even the paranoid and pessimistic Jane had to admit that.

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when we die we will die with our arms unbound

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