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@Kromer || audio
( Kromer's decided she quite doesn't like this place. It doesn't seem like her opinion is an unpopular one, looking at other posts that have cropped up, so that's great. Wonderful when all of humanity is on the same page.
smile.
A whistle comes through the phone first, then her voice. It's a little on the grating side. )
Testing, testing.... Looks like this works! How wonderful.
( It might also be a little familiar to certain people, too. )
What an interesting situation we've found ourselves in. ( "interesting". ) It looks like some of you are already starting to get to know each other a little and make allies, huh? Ahahaha...
( ...... )
Since everyone else is posing questions, let me do a few too. Did you get a waste-of-time text before you left the train? What did you answer? What is your "business"? What Nest are you from? And finally, of course, the most important question of them all...
( Kromer pauses deliberately, relishing in her own dramatics. )
Have we any heretics among our number? I'm looking forward to hearing your responses.
[ ooc: a reminder that her opt-out is here! i'd highly encourage at least glancing at it. ]
smile.
A whistle comes through the phone first, then her voice. It's a little on the grating side. )
Testing, testing.... Looks like this works! How wonderful.
( It might also be a little familiar to certain people, too. )
What an interesting situation we've found ourselves in. ( "interesting". ) It looks like some of you are already starting to get to know each other a little and make allies, huh? Ahahaha...
( ...... )
Since everyone else is posing questions, let me do a few too. Did you get a waste-of-time text before you left the train? What did you answer? What is your "business"? What Nest are you from? And finally, of course, the most important question of them all...
( Kromer pauses deliberately, relishing in her own dramatics. )
Have we any heretics among our number? I'm looking forward to hearing your responses.
[ ooc: a reminder that her opt-out is here! i'd highly encourage at least glancing at it. ]
/3
—until it all culminates and builds into a wave that crashes into him very, very suddenly. his stomach sinks as the memories grip him in tandem with that voice, and for a moment he isn't here. he's in a bloodied house. he's in his burning hometown. he's on a mountain of bodies and, certain as her bad haircut, he saw her...
so, it's not.
it couldn't be.
(ignoring the irony of that statement in context) ]
■■■■■!
the fear
the hatred
the anger
the guilt— ]
3/3 i hate you also text, un: vogel
even more than he had back then.
even if he isn't certain it's her, given the facts.
even if his fingers still tremble as he cobbles together a response through his racing mind.
he has to know. whatever she is... whether it be this city messing with him or not, he can't run. he can't. ]
Is... this a joke?
[ the great thing about text is that no one has to know it took him a little longer than it should have to get that out.
except he knows. right up to the answer to that question he asks, He Knows. ]
"i hate you" but you're the one encouraged me to app her? excuse me?
And then she sees the username, curls her mouth into a smile, and laughs for real. She'd seen that name recently, carved on a certain someone's halberd. She shouldn't jump to conclusions, even if the disbelief bleeding through the typed words on her phone's screen reeks of a certain someone, and her laughter gently falls to the wayside.
Well. Gently, for her.
Kromer doesn't bother to switch; she didn't for Keter, after all. She has nothing to hide—or no reason to hide, more specifically. )
Could it be...? ( The soft croon of her voice, the carefree cruelty she reserves for him settled just beneath it. ) My Sinclair is here as well?
( A pause, and: )
"She should be dead." Is that what you're thinking, Sinclair? One of your little friends let that slip.
what is hate but another side of love
she doesn't switch, but... sinclair does. he makes sure to let out the ragged breath building within him before the moment he shows he doesn't have to hide either. because— ]
You...
[ —she's dead. she died. her being here and tugging at the things within his mind, as usual, doesn't change the way that conclusion settles within him. it doesn't. ]
Kromer... [ how that name comes out as it always does. taut, threatening to snap in two. ] You should be. You are.
so true queen....
But I'm not, am I. ( She's talking to him, after all. ) Come and see for yourself, Sinclair. I'll be waiting for you... ah, we don't have a special spot just for the two of us, do we?
( Nothing traumatizing (for him) to bind them. A click of her tongue, thoughtful. Okay. The closest notable building she can see, then, as she steps down the street. )
The most important building in the city. ( City Hall. ) You can figure that much out, can't you?
( ...even if he has changed from the Sinclair she knew back in school
he hasn't changed enough to ignore her summons.
She's certain of it. )
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regardless of the nature of the circumstances. dante's absence is a palpable thing, a "try again, and again, and again" failsafe that's no longer there to cover up the scars left by his inexperience and incompetence.
but if that's all it takes to get him to step back into being too afraid again, maybe his resolutions weren't as meaningful as he thought. so, it's... this fear, amplified... it's not enough. they're barbs, not vines. he has to refuse them — her — tying him down. ]
I... Why are you always...
[ in a stable mind, this might even be funny. he can't come back now... not immediately. and she has, inexplicably.
right now, though, there's just the fact that she Is. here, somehow, with the slivers of power that he's given her. the ones he's slowly been trying to claw back, up until the point where demian— ]
I... don't understand why you're here. But, that — I've figured more than that out. How, where... It— doesn't matter, because I just... You, in two... I just have to see that again. This time, I...
[ kromer's wrong. always. he knows what the answer to the riddle is, what she means, but...
the most important building to him — which now has to be be wherever he makes it, wherever he is, thanks to her — has always been home. ]
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it won't end like that. she steps into a nearby restaurant to take a knife and exits again, wishing the reach was longer but making a home for herself on the steps of city hall. what a lovely viewpoint it is. )
It won't be "again", Sinclair. ( there wasn't a first time for her. there won't be a first time, for her. ) And remember... You don't have a coin left to your name, anymore.
( jingle, jingle. she has them, now. )
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You're dead. You're dead. You'll be dead. I won't— I don't need that anymore.
[ —no. no. right. all he needs is this feeling, this resolution, like before, and... ]
All I need is to drive a knife into your heart. Again and again and again.
[ it's a promise!
a promise he'll leave her with, as he won't respond further. not until he grabs a knife of his own to meet her at their New Place.
it takes a little bit, but it's a thrice repeated image: such clear traces of hatred in his gaze as he looks up at her from the base of a hill, just like every time before.
(and, umm. here's the icon, does he get a stagger in) ]
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the moment she gets to see him again, the third of its kind, the fury in his gaze as delightful as ever as she once more stands above him, a sneer pulling itself over her lips.
(if only icons counted for stagger damage.)
still, she raises her hands in greeting, making sure he can see her weapon. see? they match. isn't that nice? you can see a lot from those who are on the same wavelength as you, after all. )
Yo, Sinclair! It feels like it was just minutes ago I saw you... Ahhh, you were so much bloodier then. ( a little laugh. ) Well, so was I.
( not her own blood, though. even now, the pink stains on her uniform don't belong to her— they never do. she pauses briefly, watching him; then, she raises her knife as if it were a sword, blade pointed down to him. )
Shall we finish what you started, Sinclair? Looking at your face makes me want to see it contort in pain again.
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[ minutes... it almost feels like that for him, too. minutes going on years, in the wonderfully contradictory way he continues to be. his hands tremble around his knife, his heart beating in his ears from the anxiety, the adrenaline, the hatred and everything else she's given him.
and oh, they flare when she says that he started it. when he finds he still can't quite refute that properly.
he can't draw the knife closer to himself the way he can a halberd. but he looks down at it anyway, settling on his unclear image in the blade before he looks up at her again— ]
I told you. It's... been finished. You're just— a ghost. You can't hurt me anymore.
[ —again. again. again. he's right for this, so there's nothing to fear. ]
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( isn't that nice of her? it is nice of her. )
The last thing I remember, see, is this. ( she gestures between them: him, her, a steep climb, hatred, fear, obsession. ) I told you about the wonderful world I had glimpsed... And that wonderful bough had started to glow...
And then— ( she drops down a step, smile slanting. ) I woke up on a train. Your buddy told me I was a worm. You said you've seen me rent in half. Neither of those things are in my memories, so perhaps they're lies. How laughable, that you've learned to do that from your new friends—it's so unlike you, Sinclair!
( another step, but she stays on this one. )
Come, Sinclair. Put your blade through me if you can—you'll find I'm no ghost, though you sure might be soon.
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[ in another context, this would be so romantic!!
but it's not. the way his name comes out in her sick, sweet voice still makes his stomach drop. his teeth clench. that smile, that perfect, unsettling thing— he hates it. he hates that despite the steps he's taken, despite knowing her fate, he still hasn't quite let go of this anchor completely. like demian had said.
but he's better. better than before, better than the beginning, better than the mess of a coward he was when he originally met her. he takes her comment as proof that the one time she dug into him and found something he'd hidden away didn't mean she knew him completely at all.
( he didn't just learn it.
all of it was a lie. didn't he lie about being okay with the things around him? to his family? to his classmates? just like she'd lied about being his friend? just like she lied about him starting it?
or... no— )
it's fine. if she won't come to meet him, he'll come to her. as he does. on his hands and knees, even if he has to crawl, again, he'll... this time, certainly... kill all those lies properly. ]
I-I'll show you, Kromer. The truth you don't remember... A future that- will... did come true. A world where you're dead, bleeding in front of me, and I'm... I'M—!
[ freer than anyone else. ignoring echoes of that truth of the wonderful world she spoke of overlapping over him in the past, he focuses only on this fragment of a world he saw, that she did not.
his hands shake. always, they always do, as he runs at her, ascending that hill and aiming to drive the knife into whatever part of her he can reach first. ]
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and besides, he'd never done it to her.
she catches the knife in her arm, her smile breaking into a grin. this close, isn't she alive? isn't she solid, real? isn't the knife in her other hand, which she plunges equally into the whatever part of him she can reach, so painfully. terribly. real?
like in old times, she leans closer, mouth hovering at his ear. )
Good boy.
( for coming to see her? for growing a spine? for being close enough to kill? knives are harder to handle than swords--not as easy to go in or come out--she's discovering that right now trying to pull her knife free so she can stab him again and again and again and aga )
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the red that spills from him is—
he tries not to give her the satisfaction of a pathetic sound of pain, but it comes out regardless. a harsh, hateful gasp — sharp, desperate, and scared as sinclair attempts to push her to the ground with her knife in him and his knife in her.
her fucking voice... shrill, close, is a whistle that drives him mad.
die die die die di— ]
Ah... Shut up... SHUT UP—!
[ it's so real.
her, the pain, the knife, the blood
it hurts, and it's so real. ]
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she knows if she pushes back, if she lets go, sinclair will go tumbling down the stairs like in an old nursery rhyme she heard once. jack and jill went up the hill just to kill each other / jack fell down and broke his crown / and jill stood laughing after...
that isn't how it went. it isn't how it's going now, because her sinclair's grown stronger, and kromer recognizes something is off about herself. her leg slowly bends, first the left, until it hits the step, the odd angle driving stone beneath her knee. her right bends second, but she keeps her foot planted firmly. they look all the world like a couple mid-proposal, if not for the unmatched expressions on their faces.
despite her position, kromer tries anyway: she shoves her weight against him, not as steady as she could be on the stairs, not as overwhelmingly strong as she'd been before but nowhere near "weak", either. )