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 Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 1:39 pm
She saw the lights on when she finally made her way back to the house, after crying until the tears didn’t come anymore, and then doing the hardest job of all and slowly peeling herself away from Cryolite. At first she didn’t think much of it as she shuffled up to the door, kind of hunched up and pretending it was just because her tank top and shorts weren’t really prepared for the sudden evening chill. Her mind was still pretty solidly on other stuff besides just maybe running into someone in the kitchen.
She knew the schedule of her family and their housemates pretty well though. As she slid through the front door, she realized just who it was who was going to be waiting for her.
Was she ready to have this conversation with her brother?
Not really, no.
And, like, maybe she could’ve gotten away with not talking. Maybe she could have gotten away with just, like, slipping up to her room and collapsing into her teddy bear. It had worked before. She hadn’t really talked to him about this stuff in a while.
He was her big brother, though She wanted to be able to talk to him about this stuff. She wanted to be able to hug him if a boy, like, happened to break her heart. She wanted to be honest, too.
There had been some miscommunication involved in how everything had just ended up falling apart, and she didn’t want that kind of thing to end up tearing her family apart too, down the line.
So, her voice raspy, she called out before she could stop herself, as soon as she opened the front door. “Ignacio?” The door clicked shut behind her. “I think you were right about the Chaos boys.”
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 1:40 pm
Ignacio, for his part, was sitting on the couch, scrolling through his phone idly on TikTok. Tracking social media trends was part of his job as an actor, and he was miming some of the current dance trends with one hand that he kept seeing a lot. It didn't necessarily mean he felt like doing any of them at the moment, but nevertheless–
His eyes slid upward from his phone when he first saw the notification on his phone that someone was at the door, and then next heard the door open. Oh. Livie was home. Easy enough to register and greet simply before moving on as a normal incidence if she hadn't immediately addressed him otherwise. For one, her voice was raspy. For another, she mentioned the aforementioned for five thousand times chaos boys.
There was the instinctual gut response of no s**t, but he kicked that into two bins. First bin, brother responses. Second bin, not helpful.
Clearly she was upset. Or at least, had been. And wanted to discuss it with him. Alright.
Great.
Best to start from the top, then.
Ignacio gestured for her to come closer and tapped the spot next to him on the couch. “Alright. What prompted the sudden change of heart?” Hidden in his wording was the who, of course. Who had finally tripped her from the endlessly optimistic about romancing chaotic men to deciding that maybe she shouldn't be getting so entangled with them? “And why now?”
And when should he go kick their a**? He could make them feel like they were on fire. Third degree burns were no ******** joke and he had no problem distributing them.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 1:41 pm
She braced herself for some kind of snarky comeback, or, like, some kind of anxiety response like she’d gotten the first time she’d told him about Albite, but nothing came. Maybe he could tell she was all upset if he wasn’t gonna be weird about this.
Which was good. That was what she needed.
She kicked off her shoes and went over to him, sitting cross-legged on the couch next to him. Immediately, she was tossing her arms over his shoulders and burying her tear-stained face in his side.
“It’s, like, kinda manipulative, isn’t it?” she asked. “Kissing people and trying to be all cute and happy and perfect, and trying to get them to purify for some shallow idealized version of you instead of, like, actually taking a serious look at the real things that might be holding them back?”
She was talking too fast, the way that she always did when she got stressed out, but when she stopped for air it was a shaky, raspy half-sob of a gasp.
“And then you get all heartbroken when they put you on a pedestal, or when they won’t take you seriously when you try to get serious, or, like,” She took another breath, a real one this time, “What I’m saying is that I finally saw Fulgurite and I’m worried it might be too-”
No. She wasn’t thinking like that. It wasn’t too late. She wouldn’t give up on that, she couldn’t.
“That it might be a lot harder to get through to him now. I know that Chaos can be bad but he was bad, Ig. Like, almost acting like Albite.”
And it was her fault.
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 1:44 pm
Ignacio braced himself for the kinds of conversations they usually had over macaroni and cheese in front of the fridge, so there was a part of him that was expecting the sobbing and the hugging. There was another part of him that wasn’t, and he was surprised when she went from her sad trot over to throwing her arms around her and nearly sobbing again. He didn't even have food to offer, this time. He wasn't Luke…
The worst part of it all was that he couldn't exactly say she was wrong.
It was manipulative to try and get people to purify for a few kisses and an idealized self. There was a part of him that didn't care how manipulative it was. There was another part of him that wasn't entirely convinced of purification’s meaningful success. He had seen a few recently, sure. He had even lived with one until a few months ago.
But– “I mean, that's part of what I meant with the stop attaching yourself to chaos boys, right? Everything almost has to be shallow by default. It's hard to trust someone it's hard to be serious with because you often can't be. That divide across sides makes it difficult by default, and then…”
He put his phone to the side entirely as he gestured freely at the sky. “As time goes by, and they get deeper, they can be even harder to reach. It's the way chaos keeps control. And as they get deeper, they can lose attachment to even those shallow things, and that can make them an even bigger threat to you, too,” which, when she still wasn't transcended, meant that her starseed was at a bigger threat, too.
So, Fulgurite. He was the problem now. And he was going into the burn list if she didn't get to him first.
If he was acting like Albite, he was going to get treated like Albite.
“What do you mean by acting like Albite?”
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 1:48 pm
“I mean, yeah, it’s dangerous,” said Livie, but she didn’t seem to care much about that part. “Everything’s dangerous. But like, if I do something dangerous and it doesn’t even help the situation?”
She sighed, releasing Encke to flip back against the couch instead.
“Like, I got Ransomite out by talking about, like, God. Ethics. But you can’t do something like that if you’re distracted by sucking face. Which, I got distracted and now Fulgurite’s all,” she waved her hands, “Off? Depressed? Dead inside? Mean?”
Realizing what she said, she flan quickly over to Ignacio. “Like, not mean like Albite, please don’t plasma him, I don’t think he’s hurting anyone.” Encke getting all weird at him would just make the situation even worse. Although on the other hand, if Encke could even find him to get weird at him, that would be pretty impressive.
“Cryolite finally got him to come out to talk to me,” she said. The danger of more crying seemed to be past but she was still all tensed up, staring at the wall. “After like, all the ghosting. And he still spent like half the conversation hiding behind this machine thing, and I gave him the chance to break up with me properly, just said he had to say it to my face. He didn’t, though. Then he came out and admitted he was feeling trapped and depressed and stuff, but he was still pretty much just talking to Cryolite. Cryolite said he’d purify with him if he wanted which was, like, the only thing that got a reaction out of him. I was talking to him the whole time, saying I could help and stuff, you know, with logistics and support and whatever, but he wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t take my hand.”
She swallowed.
“And when Cryolite called him out on being rude and kept like, insisting that he listen to me? He ran away.” She grabbed a throw pillow to squeeze angrily. “Teleported. Just like Albite did, when things got real.”
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 1:57 pm
As she was talking, he was realizing there were two Chaos Boys he needed to keep track of here. There was the ever present Fulgurite, the one she had been pursuing for a while. Then there was Cryolite, who was the one who dragged Fulgurite out. Who seemed to be the one Fulgurite was actually listening to. Who was talking about getting purified himself.
Interesting.
Ignacio stuck a mental pin in that to come back to, but decided to mostly focus on the problematic one for the moment. For one, even if she didn't think he was hurting anyone, he did manage to hurt her. She had said heartbroken for a reason. And maybe in the process he had also managed to hurt his fiance? Not that he really cared about the chaos side of things, but it was the point of the matter.
“Sounds like he doesn't actually want to leave,” responded Ignacio, which probably wasn't a terribly optimistic way of looking at it. But he had dealt with people who were stubborn about leaving, or didn't actually want to leave, fairly recently. He knew when people didn't actually want to leave, they weren't going to. Some people would rather take youmification over leaving, even if that just ended up being ascending to general-sovereign in the end.
Faustite.
Ignacio shook his head out of it.
“Out of curiosity. Cryolite is still super, right?” That was likely impacting things, if he was still at a lower level. Ignacio had been in this war long enough that he had a fairly good idea of how chaos tended to seep into people's minds. If he was a lower level, it probably hadn't seeped in as long. “Might have more luck getting him out, if you're still trying to get out the chaos boys.”
Even if Livie hadn't said she was, he did make the assumption that she probably had been kissing him anyway. That seemed to have been the modus operandi in general.
“But he was the one who comforted you after Albite did that, right? And then to turn around and hurt you in the same way?” Ignacio let out a deep breath. “Fulgurite here is honestly being a hypocrite. And it does mean he is still hurting people. You. Just not in the same way as Albite.”
Well. Hopefully.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 1:58 pm
“Of course I’m still trying to get out the chaos boys,” she said, looking for the first time slightly offended that he’d even had to ask. Except for, like, Albite, but he was both violent and disrespectful and he probably just needed a cauldron bath.
Fulgurite was depressed and pushing everyone away and she was worried about him.
“But he’s never wanted to leave, that’s, like, the whole problem I’ve been trying to solve from the beginning. He hates the Negaverse, but he never wanted to deal with the consequences of purification.”
And, like, maybe she could’ve done something to lower the stakes for him, but instead she’d just been trying to offer herself as an incentive, which in retrospect was, like. Yeah.
“I dunno,” she said, tired, shifting the pillow around to squish it from another angle. “Hopefully Cryolite can talk to him, or I can find him somehow and like, go back to square one. Get tips from Sadie or something.”
She was good at stuff like this, right? The extreme cases? She’d said that even Faustite would talk to her sometimes.
“Cause, yeah. I can’t romantically love him if he’s gonna treat me like that.” Yes, she was still keeping the things she’d told Cryolite about close to her heart. She loved the way he’d talked to her in poetry, the way he’d tried to protect her, how sweet he’d been. She could hold onto that as a reminder of who he truly was underneath all of this. At the same time, she had standards.
If you turned away from her like that, like they’d both done, you weren’t gonna get to kiss her again until something changed.
“But that doesn’t invalidate the promise I made to protect him, or the choice I made to fight Chaos, including the Chaos in him.”
Was she grasping at straws? Maybe, but she wouldn’t give up. She wouldn’t. She never did.
“Cryolite, though, if you wanna talk about something happier? You’d like him, I think, and he’s committed. Just a Super, yeah, and he wants out for like,” she didn’t wanna say it was for sure, didn’t wanna jinx it, so she paused and then said, “Seemed pretty committed even after everything else went down. Asked me to find him a Princess.”
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 1:58 pm
Never wanted to leave, never wanted to deal with the consequences. For their purposes, that was functionally someone who was never going to leave, period. Someone who never wanted to deal with the consequences was someone who was never going to be willing to take that jump. So far as he could tell, the only time there was ever a difference was when it felt like there was a shove behind him. What was going to be thy shove?
But there was at least a change, now. She was admitting she couldn't romantically love him.
Honestly, even if he still felt like she was getting way too close, it was a relief. At least she wouldn't be kissing him. That kept the proximity to her starseed at a minimum.
… Well. She wouldn't be kissing one of them, anyway.
“There's a decent chance he's in too deep.” His view on a lot of this had gotten considerably more pessimistic over the years. He would even own that. There was a part of him that wondered if he was being unfair by assuming that there was probably no chance in getting him out if he was just getting deeper and deeper and deeper. By the same token, if it was consistently getting worse than she had met him, and if he was getting harder to find, what could they even do? “But I do hope you have luck in fishing him out.”
Somehow.
He definitely felt like she was grasping at straws though. Hopefully they were useful straws.
Cryolite, though, sounded like an interesting chance. Perhaps he did have a chance of getting out? Better than his apparent fiancé. “Once you get a princess involved, it's a little bit harder to back out.”
Not impossible, though.
He also knew that one from experience.
Ignacio wasn't willing to count chickens before they hatched, but this sounded closer to a guarantee than the other one did, at least. And he wasn't at eternal stage, which was … also easier to pry away. Most of the recent success stories he had seen hadn't been max stage yet.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 2:01 pm
“He’s not too deep,” she said, chin jutting out. Like, maybe she knew that she was holding onto hope more than logic here, but she was good at stubborn hope and digging her heels in. She’d purified as an awful General. Fulgurite could get out as someone who didn’t even like the Negaverse. “We’ll figure something out.”
Cryolite would help her even if Encke wouldn’t.
Which, speaking of him, “I think it freaked Cryolite out, seeing how bad it had gotten with Fulgurite. Plus, like, he’d been thinking about stuff beforehand anyway. We’ve been talking.”
She glanced sideways at Encke, a hint of pink spreading across her cheeks. “And, like, yeah, me and him did end up kissing eventually, but he was more mature than me about stuff, I guess. He set those boundaries right away, that he didn’t want a relationship that was just mush and physicality?”
Maybe she’d gotten lucky that he was gay.
“But we’ve been talking a lot about stuff over the last couple months. Like, philosophy, ethics, Fulgurite, the past and the future, you know? Like, about ourselves.”
When she talked about him, she didn’t clench her jaw or squish the pillow as much. It was still a little much to ask her to smile, but thinking about him made her feel more like things might end up okay, or at least stable.
“And maybe it’s still not, like, deep deep with him being in the Negaverse, but I’ve kinda gotten to know him. I like him. A lot. And, like, I’ve been dropping hints about the purification thing,” she looked at Encke, her own tiny told you so moment, “And tonight he was saying he wanted to do it!”
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 2:02 pm
He could feel the I told you so in her own wording, and he rolled his eyes just a bit, but in this case, he would let her have this one. Not much to be optimistic about from what he was looking at. Maybe she had convinced him. Maybe Cryolite had been grasping at his own straws in an attempt to get Fulgurite to act in what they both had established as normal.
Ignacio had no idea. The whole purification process was exhausting.
“I hope he follows through, then.” because honestly, what else could he say to that? It was clear that she was determined that this one was going to actually make it through. There were only so many ways he could continue to be doubtful about the situation. As much as he was doubtful about the situation. He just didn't want her to die.
If Fulgurite had been a hypocrite, if Albite had not already added her to a list of people he was definitely going to make sure that died, who was not to say Cryolite was just trying to find some other way to hurt her?
Ignacio didn't want to keep acting like he doubted her ability to judge for herself, but he didn't really trust like that.
And it sounded like she wasn't really trusting like that either anymore, but she also just admitted she was– “For what it's worth, thought you were. Kissing him, I mean.” Ignacio shrugged. “Would've been more surprised if you weren't.” Though he supposed it showed some of what she was talking about and that they hadn't dived right into it. And that they had been talking more details.
Perhaps separately from the more shallow things.
But hadn't she done some of that with Fulgurite? When he had come to her defense? Ignacio bit his lip and tried his best to swallow his thoughts to himself.
“You do seem to like him a lot.”
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 2:03 pm
Was it that obvious who she was kissing? Livie’s face burned.
It did get her mind off of some of the drama, though, as she blurted out, “Hey! You kiss someone all the time! You can’t judge me!”
There was the argument that Richard wasn’t Chaos, but, like, whatever. Livie had at least one Chaos boy who was actually good and actually nice to her and she was gonna get him out of there before he promoted and ended up turning on her.
‘Cause, like, if that happened again, she was totally gonna lose it.
“I do like him a lot, though,” she said, quieter. “And, like, I dunno. I want you to like him, too. Like, once it works out.”
She wished she could ask him to like him now but that was probably kinda a pipe dream.
She sunk farther down into the cushions.
“I’m tired,” she muttered, voice very small.
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 2:06 pm
That bit of an outburst earned a laugh from Ignacio. “He's always been Order!” And that much was true! He didn't have to worry about if he was going to turn around tomorrow and his husband is going to decide to take his soul out or something…
Or eat him.
It was hard to be upset at Livie, though. Frustrated that she kept finding herself in situations with chaotic men, perhaps. Relieved that she was perhaps getting further away from them finally, absolutely. Upset? No. He was is certainly in a similar persuasion as her considering that he wanted to be in a situation where he did want to be able to like the people she wanted him to like.
For now, though?
He was understandably, at best, hesitant.
“Like I said,” he replied, quietly, “hope it does.”
Because he, too, wasn't sure if she could take another failure.
Not with how tired she seemed.
“Do you want to go to bed?”
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2024 2:08 pm
“You’re still kissing him, though,” said Livie, just a hint of that teasing sass peeking through.
Not too much of it, though. It was true that she was tired. Like, really tired, and not just physically. She didn’t know how much going to sleep was gonna fix her problems, but if she ended up falling asleep on the couch or something, that was going to be worse.
“Yeah, I think I’m gonna try to rest,” she told him, and peeled herself up before she could stop herself.
“Thanks for talking to me,” she said, and she meant it, even if he sometimes got a little bit too cynical about things.
“Goodnight,” she said, and with one more quick hug, she was trudging up to her room.
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