villagelogs | 024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias + ???
WHEN: Days 024-027
WHAT: The consequences of their actions.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! The next log will be posted January 23rd.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Onryo" 怨霊

DAYS 024-025
CONSEQUENCES
“There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments —
there are consequences.”
— Robert G. Ingersoll
When the unwilling residents of Mathias Township wake on the morning of the 24th day, they will find themselves in yet another set of frustratingly unnerving circumstances. None of them are where they last remember being, and some of them have strange marks on the palms of their left hands. It's all incredibly unsettling, but truthfully they should be used to it by now. No one will remember traveling to their new location.

Residents can wake up anywhere within their new location and in any position. Curled up in a bed, sprawled on a couch, huddled beneath a coffee table, propped against a wall... Wherever they are, they will themselves to be in quite an unusual state. While they are wearing whatever clothing items they went to sleep in, plus their shoes and a coat. The newest arrivals to Mathias Township will perhaps stand out for being slightly more appropriately dressed than their new neighbors. They are all a bit damp, physically worn out, and half-frozen from their apparent walk through a blizzard.

Each of the four locations is inescapable — residents are trapped, with exterior doors and windows being shut tight and a blizzard raging outside. The locations are stocked with fresh food and water and a large pile of firewood for the fireplaces in each building. The circumstances residents will face, however, may vary wildly between locations as the forces at work in Mathias respond to the recent actions of certain individuals.

BOARDING HOUSE | GREY GULL
NEW HOUSE | MYSTERY MANSION

These residents will wake with a mark on their left hand palms, a spiraling black symbol similar to those some may have seen around town. All marks are identical and cannot be removed, but will have seemingly vanished from their skin on the morning of the 26th day.

Castiel, Daisy Johnson, Dean Winchester
Elena Gilbert, Elijah Mikaelson, Helen Magnus
Phil Coulson, Quentin Coldwater, Sherlock Holmes

DAYS 026-027
IN THE AFTERMATH
After their ordeals of the past two days, the unfortunate residents of Mathias Township will be grateful to find that they were back where they are supposed to be, a chill still clinging to their clothes in whatever place they went to sleep the night of the 23rd day. New arrivals will wake in the living room of the boarding house. None of the residents will wake with anything in their possession from the locations in which they were previously trapped, including any notes or documentation they may have made during their time there.

CONDITIONS UPDATE
— SNOW continues to fall heavily on Days 024-025, resulting in white out conditions from the wind that blows in gusts of over 35 mph; the temperature also drops drastically, making conditions extremely dangerous for residents. The blizzard clears on Day 26 and residents are left with a cold, calm world covered in white.

— THE FOG remains blocking the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper, and it also now blocks the northern section of town, beginning just before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be. Venturing into the fog is... ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. Kylo Ren and Thomas Richardson have vanished without a trace.

— NO NEW DEATHS have occurred in town, but there is a new "grave" in the small makeshift graveyard near the schoolhouse. Rey's corpse has been moved and covered with stones to wait for the ground to thaw enough for a proper burial.

— THE LANTERNS will be gone from the morning of Day 024. No trace of them remains.

OOC UPDATES
— A GIFT for everyone! As a thank you for being part of this spooky little game, every character in the game is being gifted 2 Activity Points. These may be banked over here — instead of linking to an AC post, you may put "New Year gift" in that field. Happy 2021, friends!

— NEW LAYOUTS have been installed for our communities! Huge thanks to our Eldritch Librarian Stars for putting in the time to get this place looking shiny. (You may have also noticed some new page layouts being installed — these are also our Librarian's handiwork!)

— DISCOVERIES have been collected and collated for your review. Please note that this is OOC information only, put together for the purpose of helping you as players see connections and possibilities for CR and your own character's potential avenues of exploration and investigation. (If we are missing something, please report it so we can add it to the list.)

— REMINDERS — Don't forget about the bulletin board. Please continue reporting your updates to locations, plots, and discoveries. The map of Mathias has been added to the locations page for ease of reference. Make sure your character's sanity level is kept updated. Prospective players are still joining the TDM, so it's recommended to track new top-levels so you don't miss them.

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"Ugh. Don't look me up." Doc says with a chuckle, moving to grab both their teas and bringing it in front of them. Is he actually shy about it? He perhaps doesn't care, if it was anyone else telling him what they think of him, or the kind of man he ought to be. He would take that with a grain of salt. But he cares what Raylan and Malcolm think about him.

"You don't think it's... terrible? Being some kind of... famous killer." Not that that's the only thing he is famous for, but. It doesn't boil down to much else. "I imagine you have some strong feelings about that." And not entirely pleasant ones.

Edited 2021-02-06 06:19 (UTC)

Malcolm couldn't help a laugh at that, at the phrasing that put Doc under the same category as a Martin Whitly.

"I do," he conceded. "But... what you did wasn't... murder. You killed out of necessity, to protect yourself or others. The world you did it in was a relentlessly violent place. My mentor, Gil, has killed people in the line of duty. He's a police officer. You're more like him. You're not... My father is a famous murderer. He killed people for fun, Doc. I can't picture you killing a man for kicks."

Oh he could picture himself getting great pleasure out of killing Negan, but Doc's just going to be polite about it and forgo mentioning that. From where he's standing it all sounds like semantics to him. All different ways of dressing up blood on your hands but blood is blood. It stains just the same.

"I just hope I can live up to your expectations," he muses quietly before taking a sip of tea. Malcolm is right, it doesn't really suit him, but he's content with the hot drink nonetheless.

"You're the one that set my expectations, not Wikipedia. You've set them with the way you've treated me and others here so far. So I guess it's a pretty high bar, but you've been clearing it consistently," Malcolm answers simply, taking a sip of his tea as well.

Wikipedia would have likely set a very different type of expectation. Which is not to say that Doc would have been unable to meet those either. Just that he appreciates that Malcolm isn't going by too many preconceived notions in forming an opinion of him.

"I would make a gentleman out of Raylan yet before my time is up. I do fully intend on being-... mostly a good influence."

"Well, you've kept my secret about him, so I can't complain," Malcolm told him, smiling down into his mug before taking a sip. "I think I've got that. Pretty. Under control now," he said with no confidence at all.

"Hmh." Yeah, it's not much of a secret to Doc even if he might not have said anything about it unless asked directly, but he won't point that out, opting to go gently on Malcolm.

"Has any progress been made on that front, if you don't mind my asking? It's none of my business but if I have to give 'im a nudge or punch his face," Doc offers with a shrug.

He fidgeted with the handle of his cup.

"Depends what you mean by progress. He still doesn't know, which was my goal. But. It hasn't gotten... less. My own feelings. I kind of thought they'd... peter out."

"I don't think it works that way," Doc suggests. "Usually you have to do something with them. Preferably before it is too late. But- in your own time." Hurrying these sorts of things tend to be almost as uncomfortable as not saying anything at all. At least, that has been his experience.

"He's probably not too busy today if you want to spend some time with him." There are no days in Mathias and nothing urgent requiring attention that Doc would consider as truly worth calling themselves busy over.

"...I always want to spend time with him," Malcolm admitted. "I'll... see what he's up to when he comes back."

He considered Doc for a moment.

"What if he's just not interested though? It's still a big risk for me. It's still a risk to... my place here."

"A risk to your place here?" Doc repeats back. "I'm afraid I don't quite follow." Doc is a risk to Negan's place here, in that he would not be so dishonourable as to kill him in his sleep but he isn't against strangling him over breakfast. Malcolm faces no such threat from anyone.

"He would drink a few glasses to mull over it, and think of a way to let you down gently, because you deserve to be told where he stands with you. Whether your feelings are requited is a separate matter from helping you settle down at night, which is a separate matter yet again from this house. This is your-... This is our house. He is free to leave if he pleases. But your 'place here' is solely at your discretion. And wherever he might go during the day, whatever he feels, whomever he is with, he will still come back to you every night. This is the promise we made to you."

They took it so seriously, that promise. It still felt risky to pursue more if he didn’t know he could have it.

“If he’s... with someone else, he should probably spend his nights with them,” he said with a shudder of a laugh.

He sobered.

“I really appreciate the... stability. I don’t know that I could handle things here and... and inside myself without it.”

There’s a pause and he looks at Doc like he’s chewing over whether to ask or not.

He decides to ask.

“Do you think he could... requite them?”

"No one else has come up in conversation." Doc would not go into the details of their conversations - what happens on the porch or wherever they are using instead of the porch stays on the porch - but he can assure Malcolm of at least that.

The question posed is not one with an easy or direct answer, and though it is not his poison of choice he is thankful to have chamomile tea steaming away between his hands to buy him some time.

"Have you ever been in a relationship with an angry man, Malcolm? Or woman."

"I've never been in a relationship that lasted more than five weeks," he confessed. "Many of them were angry by the time they left."

That wasn't exactly what Doc was asking and he tilted his head in concession.

"Only once," he said.

That gets a small laugh out of Doc. Sorry Malcolm. He's not laughing at you, promise.

"How was it? For you. Tell me as much or as little as you like about it."

"At first it went well. We were both profilers. We had a lot to talk about. But I... trusted her too easily. I invited her to my apartment. She found out about my medication and then she found out about my father and then she told everyone at work and effectively ended my career with the FBI," Malcolm told him evenly.

"What made you think she was angry? And why on Earth did she do that?" Doc would have lived his whole life on medication if there was any at the time. He could have worked right through his self-medicating if it wasn't for the coughing fits. He doesn't understand how it could be or why it is a problem.

Malcolm shrugged a shoulder.

"I'm a behavioural scientist. I know angry when I see it. I know she had some complaints about her ability to move up in the Bureau. I had the highest solve rate in violent crimes nationally. But... my medications are for mental health disorders. Ostensibly, she decided I was unstable and a liability. That, because my father is a predatory psychopath, I could be susceptible to latent psychopathy and narcissism. But I think that was what she sold the Bureau. It was sure what they dragged out at the disciplinary when they fired me. The thing is, I got the high profile cases because I closed them. With me out of the picture, there was room for someone else to get the prestige."

All this career talk isn't making too much sense to Doc but he tries to follow, nodding along and probably humming at the right intervals. Or at least, he hopes so. What he's gathering is that she got rid of him so she could be more prominent in her field. That sentiment he can understand, even if careers weren't as complicated during his time. Or nearly as important.

"Raylan has been told and also thinks of himself an angry man. I think he is capable of requiting your feelings. But he might be afraid to."

Interesting.

Malcolm considered that.

“I don’t know if ‘angry’ is the right word,” Malcolm mused. “It’s not his guiding star. Something went on with his father in his childhood. I’d guess some sort of abuse. Because he didn’t grow up to be an abuser, then I’d suggest he’s been abused in other interpersonal relationships. He doesn’t necessarily recognize love without a component of abuse. He’s definitely never been able to process his feelings about any of that in a healthy or productive way, which is why his emotional repression bursts out as anger when he reaches capacity. That would lead to a simplistic diagnosis of ‘angry’ but.... nobody’s born broken, Doc. Someone breaks us. The culture you both grew up in of rampant toxic masculinity makes anger the only acceptable emotion for a man to display, so most of your - and his - strong emotions break the surface as anger. You both need a safe place to surface them in their true forms to start healing.” He paused, then looked at Doc as something occurred to him. “Is that what you guys do at night?”

Doc levels Malcolm with a kind of blank stare, blinking a few times as he rambles on. There's- a lot to unpack there, to be sure. Idly he wonders if Malcolm does that with everyone or just to Raylan before thinking that yes, he probably does that with everyone. Maybe not to that level, but. Doc doesn't overanalyse people like this before establishing some kind of relationship with them. He's not sure if Malcolm should do it less or if he should do it more.

"There's-- I-- wwwuh- we don't do any-- We drink. At night." Doc's not sure why he is getting a little defensive but it did sound a little accusatory. If it had something to do with the night they spent in bed together, Doc doesn't want to talk about it.

"Do you do this with everyone, Malcolm? I am not saying it is irrational." It completely is, Malcolm. "And I think we both know he would not like it, but. He is more than the sum of his broken pieces and the effort he puts in to keep everything together. He doesn't want you to dig in deep and-- try to explain his 'mechanisms' or fix him. He just-- wants you to live a good life, and maybe he thinks he isn't good for that. His perceived flaws about himself matter to him, and until you can accept them without telling him he's a good man..." Doc makes a soft noise and shrugs. "I'm not sure he would believe you."

Malcolm listens to 'we drink' with slightly raised eyebrows and no comment but... it's totally what they're doing. Hunh.

"Nobody likes it," Malcolm supplies by way of an answer to Doc's question and to his assertion that Raylan wouldn't like it. "Nobody likes to be seen. But it's how I... process the world. It's about understanding people, not fixing them. But..." He scrunches up his forehead faintly. "He is a good person. I get why he would think he's not one, but... you don't think it would be helpful for him to hear that he's... good and... appreciated? That's not a denial of his flaws. I could list those too, but that isn't... productive. What ultimately matters is what you put into the world. And if you put something good into the world, you should get something good out of it, not... kicked around for the effort. What if the result of him putting something good into the world was being treated well for once?"

"I-- perhaps am not the right person to ask," Doc offers quietly, somewhat uncertain. He's not deliberately trying to be unhelpful, he just-- he's never tried connecting with Raylan on that level. He isn't sure if he has anything to offer. Sure, of everyone in town, he talks to Raylan the most, and it's likely that Raylan talks to him the most too. That doesn't mean anything considering they hardly share anything of themselves to anyone else.

"You could tell me a thousand times that I am a good man. It does not make me one." Maybe in the process of becoming Scheherazade and telling him a thousand stories about his goodness, he would eventually wear the Marshal down and win his love. It does not absolve the Marshal of his sins, or the sins of his father.

"We so rarely get what we deserve, Malcolm. And when we get something we do not deserve, all too often we simply squander it. Loving a man who does not love himself..." Doc's jaw shifts and he breathes out a shaky breath. "I don't much like- talking about the woman you know as 'Kate'. I never did raise a hand against her, but. On those unbearable days, when I drank and we fought..." The tip of his tongue runs over his teeth and he breathes out a sigh. They had been quite the spectacular fireworks. "I put her through hell and made her walk on embers and eggshells for making that mistake. He don't- he don't want that for you. Treating him well, treating him poorly - nothing will change that."

"I think in your case... believing that you're a bad man has made you a good one," Malcolm suggested. "You said you want to be one. And bad men don't want that. Being 'good' isn't something you're gifted with by only doing good things from birth. Being a good person means feeling remorse for the things you done to hurt people and trying to be better. You don't think you fall under that category?"

"I thought we were talking 'bout Raylan," Doc points out quietly, hiding his expression behind the chamomile tea mug he's picked up and holding by the rim, shifting the focus back onto the troubled Kentucky boy. Taking a small sip, he averts his gaze from Malcolm's piercing stare, sweeping across the countertop and finding a spot on the askew rug to fixate on. Setting his cup down, Doc leans to one side a little. If they wanted to lay out his own troubles, they would need something a lot stronger than chamomile tea, and somehow get Doc feeling a whole lot less reserved than he is now. And as nimble as Malcolm has proved himself to be, he only lets his walls be scaled when he knows there's a bigger one he can hide behind.

"I'm just speculating about angry men. You would know them better than I would." Forcing a smile that manages to reach his eyes, Doc finishes his tea and brings it to the sink.

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