Where Are They Now? (5 Year Edition)

[dead_black_eyes]

This meme was done before in this game, right here, and that is where I am stealing it from. But instead of giving characters the option to return home in this hypothetical scenario, the war is still going on five years from the current date in-game, and BREW still needs everyone.

The question is, what has happened in those five years? The children have become adults, the adults are just a little older without being old, and goodness knows a lot can change in that amount of time. Maybe you're thriving, in your business or your partnership. Maybe not. Either way, with no end in sight, life goes on in the city named after Death.


INSTRUCTIONS

-Post with your characters(s)
-Write a short blurb about what has happened in five years. Love, heartbreak, sickness, wealth, what was in the cards for your Weapon or Meister, and what has it shaped them into? Set a scene for the present.
-Tag others in the scene they kindly set.
-Profit$$$$$$$$

Comments

[dead_black_eyes]

The soothing sound served as that calming blanket, but a jagged, frustrated little edge dug into their resonance when Gamzee urged him to let him help.

/What... Do you think I'm trying to do? Help me... I am letting you HELP me.../

Gradually, though, his struggling subsided, and he more or less went limp and pliable in Gamzee's hands, transforming fully into his Weapon form for the first time since he'd initially forgotten how.

[thehonking]

Those who shared a strong bond, meister and weapon, were often capable of being able to see into the psyche of each other to an extent. The weaker resonation made this difficult right now, but Gamzee was trying his damndest.

Get your focus on me. Set your mind on where I'm speakin' at.

If L did this, he might be able to find both of them on an empty plain, the troll's dark figure flickering in and out of focus before him. It was a strain, doing this much, but the image didn't relay such. Gamzee thumped a fist to his chest a couple times.

You got a darkness here. That ain't a death sentence unless you make it. You got a thing you crave - a toxic motherfucker of a need you got yourself graspin' for as if it's your last gulp of air.

I've felt all this, my brother. I know what it's like, staring through that hole in your pan and thinking everything can only fall the motherfuck through from then on.

The very darkness around them flickered then, flashes of a grinning clown face. Splashes of what might as well have been various colors of paint but was recognizable to those familiar as troll blood. Severed heads on a table labeled as the jury.

Things don't gotta be the same as they were before. They can't be.

[dead_black_eyes]

The sheer effort on the part of the troll was enough, just enough, to pull L's fractured psyche into his.

He opened his eyes, a dry, arid wind moving through his tangled hair as he raised his dark gaze to meet his troll partner's. It wasn't easy; the horned, painted figure flickered in and out like a faulty hologram, as if he was an echo rather than a being of flesh.

You got a darkness here.

He took an unsteady step back, but there was in fact a darkness there, a prickling, whispering, hideously living thing at his shoulder blades when he attempted to retreat. So, he was forced to listen.

...a toxic motherfucker of a need...

A shadow puppet was at his elbow, then, a form fainter than Gamzee's on the plain. It was humanoid, but distinctly inhuman, with sharp, glistening teeth and glinting red eyes standing out against the deeper shades of its form.

And then there was a horrific flash of funhouse lights, a distorted face with exaggerated features and shrapnel-splatters of multi-colored viscous liquid. And the heads, all in a row, as cabbages in a garden...

L was on his knees, clutching his elbows as if trying to keep himself from scattering to pieces within the resonance-dream. The shade at his side suddenly had him in a headlock, pulling him back toward the cold give of the shadow-wall at his back.

They can be worse... I know because every time I say that, it comes true...

[thehonking]

They can be worse if a motherfucker makes them. If he fights too hard. If he rages too strong.

You just gotta chill, my brother. Settle with what all's in you and realize it's always gonna be there. It just wants a little attention, so trickle it in slow.

Gamzee's image almost faded out completely, but that also seemed to anger him so he focused harder, causing it to flash back more visible than before. He wasn't done with L yet.

Back in reality, the troll had carefully stashed the weapon in his pocket, still attached to one wrist. He'd planned on waiting, but if he stayed there too much longer he wouldn't have the energy later for a proper escape. He stood, making his way casually toward the door even as he held their connection.

[dead_black_eyes]

The words elicited a paralyzed fear in the detective; maybe that worked for trolls, he thought as cold dread sank into his skin where it contacted the shadow form, but to give in to his personal monster would be to be devoured.

Then again, it wasn't as if he hadn't already lost most of what mattered. Perhaps ceasing to struggle, just for a little while, wouldn't be the worst thing.

I'm empty. Hollow. Metal, but lighter than air. And it's quiet now...

His weapon form remained coiled and silent in Gamzee's pocket as L's restless soul was momentarily soothed. And, aside from one lost-looking young woman wandering the halls outside L's room, they were practically deserted.

[thehonking]

Gamzee walked right out the front door of the building, and no one was the wiser. At least not yet. He was frowning as he did so, which was nothing out of the ordinary for him when it came to his chats with L. It was for a different reason today, though.

He couldn't read the man's mind, but he could sense enough in the way he reacted to know that his words may have been misinterpreted.

I'm not saying let the darkness be you, brother. You gotta be it too. It's a motherfuckin' two-wheeled, four-peddled device what takes both sides of you to keep moving.

He steps faltered a little the further he got away from L's former prison and the closer they got to home. That was telling enough for the troll. He wouldn't be able to keep this up too much longer.

Gonna get you all back to my hivespace. I'll get you the proper help you need.

[dead_black_eyes]

The reaction was definitely more like resignation than anything else. He'd done this before, in his own world, reached the understanding that he was no longer in control of the direction of his case and, therefore, his life. He had had a harried several hours to arrange his affairs before he'd died, as he'd predicted he would but was powerless to stop.

The analogy made his mind wander, idly, to a bicycle. Was that his weapon form? A bicycle chain for a tandem model? For a moment his sense of identity was utterly compromised, anchored in place only by Gamzee's wavelength, and then the reassuring words cut in and brought him, once more, back to Earth.

/Tell me when it's safe to transform back. I want to see my cat again./

[thehonking]

The door to Gamzee's apartment was shoved open, then slammed shut behind him. He leaned back against the door, dizzy, as he took L's weapon form from his pocket and held it out in front of him.

Go on, bro. But don't go nowhere yet.

He had other things to say, things to do, and he had to make sure and do them before he passed out on the floor. The troll didn't want to make this just a more lenient prison for his partner, but it wouldn't be good for anyone if he just ran off in his current state.

[dead_black_eyes]

If L shared any of the strain of resonation, he didn't seem like it, stepping neatly down from his weapon form and transforming back, a slender human barefoot on the carpet.

"Where would I go...?"

It was a question intoned like a song, as he noted his mangy cat, still indeed clinging to life, slinking suspiciously along the walls. It crouched warily as he approached it, scooping it up and holding it too tightly. Hissing and yowling, it dug its claws into his arm, but he only held tighter, eyes wide, but more in fascination than fear or pain.

[thehonking]

Gamzee, meanwhile, slipped down so he was seated with his back against the door, head tilted back. He turned it just slightly enough to keep an eye on L. He didn't honestly care much for the cat's fate, just that L remained himself for a time.

The act of resonating was never a strain for him. It was the act of dragging his partner into his mindscape that had done it, and continuing to converse with him while simultaneously acting awake in the outside world. The troll thumped his head back against the door a couple times, horns scraping wood, in order to keep himself focused now.

"You know where, motherfuker." To him. To the one Gamzee should have killed a long time ago. "And come back to me when you done your share of purrbeast greets. I got something to fuckin' give you." It sat in his other pocket still, as he'd meant to give it back during his visiting session.

[dead_black_eyes]

For a tense several moments, L clutched the protesting, increasingly agitated cat, all but oblivious to Gamzee's clear exhaustion. It took an alarming amount of hissing, biting and scratching for the cat to finally fight its way free, but L eventually dropped it to the floor, the creature bolting into the nearest bedroom with a furious squall.

The scraping, and the not-so-veiled reference to Light (who else?) returned L's attention to his troll partner. He returned, shuffling slowly toward Gamzee and holding his cupped hands (bitten and scratched to hell, currently) towards him, palms-up.

[thehonking]

Gamzee frowned at the injuries, but he wasn't the mothering type. He wasn't going to run for band-aids any time soon.

The item he'd been fishing from his pocket was a friendship bracelet crafted from multicolored string in a repeating rainbow pattern. It had obviously been made by the troll, as it was clear that he'd started out not knowing what he was doing only to eventually get better at the pattern as it progressed. One end was a bit of a mess, but it worked out somehow.

The troll leaned forward enough to tie the item around his partner's wrist. Sewn into the thick band in black letters was the phrase I AM WHAT I AM.

"Humans got this thing, motherfuckin' strange-ass tendency where they go and all tie some bright colored knots all up on their prongs. Like lookin' all at that shit will jar back into them whatever they done mother fucking forgot. But I figure I done you one better with that. Figure that makes up for fifty little string rings."

[dead_black_eyes]

Stroking the bracelet with his glass-fingered touch, L studied it, wide eyes drinking in the pattern and the words. He raised his bone-thin wrist to get a better look at the colors, the technique that had started shaky and grown to expertise.

Without warning, he reached forward with both arms, pulling Gamzee into a tense, odd embrace.

Then he was striding briskly across the room, stopping by the kitchen for two permanent markers, red and black, dropping their caps to the floor and defacing the white wall with wide, sweeping strokes. A cross materialized, and in each quadrant, surprisingly accurate depictions of everything L had ever been told of troll relationships.

Heart, diamond, spade, clubs.

"So? What do you want to be?"

[thehonking]

While Gamzee had always been amused by the way L so easily incorporated troll relationships into daily life, the fact remained that the man himself wasn't a troll. Therefore, there was still something a little off-putting about how easily he related to their quadrants. But then, this was Gamzee. He was rarely put off by anything he should be.

Yet he'd never really considered himself to be romantically involved with L. They were partners. That was something that fell outside the usually spectrum, and he was perfectly happy with it.

But perhaps there was one thing he'd been all along without realizing it. Of the four quadrants, it was the one others were the least appreciative to find that they had, but one that could be necessary all the same. He wouldn't claim to be pale for L. Things just weren't like that between them. But on the opposite end...

"Ashen, bro." Clubs. Something he'd been for a while. The job of an auspictice wasn't always just to keep people from having more than one black romance, but to stop those that clearly weren't in the best interest of those involved.

And that had been the case with L and his from the start.

[dead_black_eyes]

Even at his sharpest, most astute mental best, L hadn't been able to relate to humans particularly well. Unless, of course, they were the broken, brilliant variety that drew his laser-precise focus. Where Mello and Near got alomg well with Sollux, L preferred a more volatile, unpredictable and strange combination, which was why he tended to gravitate toward the royal-blooded Alternians. Gamzee had always been his favorite. That was just as true now as it had ever been, even if the detective was just clinging to the edge of sanity, and not nearly as adaptively as Gamzee historically had.

On hearing Gamzee's answer, L began to color the other quadrants black, eliminating them from consoderation, leaving only the clubs in the lower right-hand corner of the cross.

"So, it isn't different. Not really. And until someone comes to bring me back... you won't let me see him."

[thehonking]

"Don't be a mother fucking wriggler." He'd expected to get this sort of reaction the moment he gave his answer. Auspictices were rarely appreciated, but here he'd gone and stuck himself in that position.

Gamzee remained sitting a bit longer, wanting to regain his strength. Of course, sleeping in front of the door was also an option, as it would likely keep L from exiting through it at least for the night. The troll rarely looked as serious as he did then, but the weariness did help attribute to that.

"It's different because I actually fuckin' give two shits. It's different because I ain't lockin' you all the motherfuck up and walkin' away." He shook his head. "Ain't like we can stay here all so long anyway, as this'll be the first place they'll send motherfuckers to find you at. And if you go back to HIM, he'll just send you back there too.

"I'll let you stalk a brother all you motherfuckin' like, once you can prove to me you can tell him from yourself."

[dead_black_eyes]

L knew that "wrigglers" were to trolls what very young children were to humans, and he'd heard it many times daily even before his break with reality: don't be a child. You're too old, too clever, too powerful for this to be acceptable. "Too sane" was no longer a viable reason, so people had stopped with that, out of respect that only came coupled with pity.

"You're not locking me up?" He inquired, returning to Gamzee's side and nudging the sitting troll's knee with his bare toe. "I disagree. But I will say that you are not leaving... even though it would be tempting, for some. And how can I prove it?" he asked quietly, crouching so that he and Gamzee were at eye-level. "I want to see him. And I know he must want to see me. It's how we are, we're..."

[thehonking]

"If the motherfucker wanted to see you, he wouldn't have shut you the motherfuck away!" Gamzee didn't care how closely tied L thought he was to Light. The latter was toxic, as far as he was concerned. End of story. But no, he didn't want to lock his partner away for good. He wouldn't be any better than the others in that case.

He just needed to see if he could knock some sense into him.

"You ain't a toy to be stuffed all up in a closet until he feels like taking you out again. You got your obsession all over a brother what don't all deserve you."