Zane loses himself in moments like this. The never ending rain outside is just a gentle backdrop-- a soft pitter-patter on the glass. The ceiling isn't patterned with water damage even though they aren't on the top floor. He didn't need to check the lock three times before settling here and he can't hear the faint sound of a projector whirring somewhere a little more solid.
Nothing else matters. He isn't cold or in pain or choking down another man's emotions. There's just the warmth of Alice's body pressed against his beneath rumpled, white hotel sheets. There's just the sound of her quiet breaths; Zane can't tell if she's sleeping or not and doesn't want to break the peace to ask. He's barely awake himself, and stretches out languid as a cat to curl himself back around Alice. Like he can engulf her, keep her here always. That thought is never that far away, just below the surface of who he is alongside vintage desperation.
Alice does stir and pulls Zane out of his semi-cannibalistic thoughts for the moment. He buries his face in her, makes a small, questioning sound and waits for a response. Doesn't wait that long before sliding a hand under the hem of her t-shirt to soak in the warmth of her bare skin. The other arm is cushioning Alice's head and completely numb. That's fine; She can keep it. Just like the shirt, though Zane's not totally sure it's something she dredged out of the forgotten corners of his chaos or if it comes from Parliament Tower. It smells like Alice now, so either way, it is Alice's.
Zane is, of course, a habitual naked sleeper. Alice doesn't seem to mind all that much even if she does tease him about it from time to time. It's both for the obvious reasons and because clothes are just one more thing to get tangled in when the nightmares hit. But that's so far away right now.
A kiss to Alice's head, thumb tracing slow patterns that always turn into spirals somewhere down the line. Sleepily, Zane thinks again about swallowing Alice whole-- for more pure reasons this time. To keep her insulated from the cold and the dark and the horror, but it's no less insane than any other reason he could give. He's doing an okay job of it already just by holding her. Hell isn't bad enough for drastic measures, for now.
Have you noticed any patterns with the types of muses you tend to play?
coughs aggressively
uhhhhhhh no. no definitely not. pay no attention to me sweeping all my muses under the rug.
I have. Though Doc and the, for lack of a better word, bigger Remedy muses are at the forefront of my mind right now, I do find I gravitate towards characters that maybe show up all of seventeen seconds in media but somehow they end up making a lasting impression. I usually end up jokingly calling them my OCs because they also have next-to-no backstory or anything in their respective media so when I build it all up it's like welp mine now.
I find myself often in the fun but unfortunate position of playing muses that are so much smarter than me. Scientist types I'm also hopelessly drawn to, whether they be more rigid and structured like Bradley or they're much more out there like Doc doesn't matter. I just love them I don't know why.
I'm also very drawn to inhuman characters. There's something about the curse of immortality or something like that that really fascinates me and how characters deal with such a thing. Big, big sucker for extremely long lived miserable/jaded types (but with Ly I wanted to explore that through the lens of someone who has suffered quite a lot and is still relatively young in the grand scheme of their potential lifespan but learned how to just say fuck it and takes life as it comes because they're at the point of existence where everything's fun and permanence is fake because three generations have already come and gone so who cares?) but I also love thinking about beasts and creatures and how they'd have to interact in a human-controlled world. Characters who have two opposing sides/natures to them that are constantly at odds (like werewolves) and they have to fight themselves to keep balance. Or characters who have/feel like they have lost part of their humanity because they've either gained abilities brand new to them or they've been affected by something otherworldly. I don't know, trying to think of humanity from an inhuman lens really just gets me.
( I struggled to make Arma the way I wanted her to, because she's not this skinny or tall. Her clothes are a little more punk than this, too, but that's just the way these things are! )
The video file comes attached to a blank email. No subject line, no body text. Nothing but Alice's personal email address to identify it by. She's seated in front of a dark background, a single flickering lamp barely illuminating the background. In the center of the frame sits Alice, her eyes red and puffy as though she were crying just off screen. "Hi, Lynn." Her smile is a faltering ghost before it falls away completely. She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. "God, I don't know how to do this." Shaky hands smooth back over her hair before she can look back at the camera again. "I just wanted... I wanted to say goodbye to you. And this is the only way I can bring myself to do it."
Teeth catch on her bottom lip, tears obviously threatening to spill again. "I know what you're probably thinking right now. You want to dig and make sense of it. I can't tell you not to investigate -- that'll just make you want to do it all the more." A soft laugh exhaled through her nose. "Maybe you don't understand why I-- Or maybe you understand better than anyone. I won't waste time trying to justify myself. My reasons, my choices, they're my own. And I don't think it's what you'd want to hear right now anyway." She sighs, her shoulders falling, and the exhaustion on her face seems to deepen as some of the tension leaves her.
"More than anything I wanted to say that I'm sorry for putting you through this. Please don't blame yourself. You can hate me, if you want -- I'd rather you think I'm stupid and selfish than think it was in any way your fault. You couldn't have talked me out of it, Lynn. I need you to know that." Another breath, this one held longer as Alice straightens up in her seat. "Sometimes to move forward, we have to do the unthinkable. I hope, someday, you can forgive me, and even if you can't... Thank you, Lynn. For everything." She musters a weak smile before she leans forward to turn the camera off, and the recording cuts to black.
… I need you to know that.
Lynn pauses the video, her gaze fixed on how @miswaken's hands moved to her lap outside of the shot. Thin fingers. Trembling fingers. And yet, in this one, fleeting moment, there is a sureness in her frame. It fills her with a subtle determination, an acceptance of what she’s about to do - or so Lynn believes. A click of her mouse and video plays once more. The Alice in the video, just one of many fragments she left behind, straightens - an act Lynn has watched a hundred times over - and instinctively Lynn’s eyes flick to the lamp behind Alice, knowing the exact second it will flicker. By her count, it flickers four times over the course of the 22 second video.
There is no obvious pattern to it. No consistency. During her first replays of the video, Lynn thought it to be code, a signal Alice sent through for her to decipher. Unraveling the secret of the light to provide any reason as to why she did this. Morse code was immediately ruled out. And if the number of flickers was relevant, Lynn couldn’t wrap her mind around how. Four… four what? Four days until she took her life? No, the video was created nine days before Alice’s death was confirmed. The number four rolled around in her head ceaselessly for days, plaguing her as she tried to make sense of it. Reluctantly, after a string of unfounded conclusions, she eventually admitted defeat and left the light alone, adding its significance to a mental stack of dead ends.
Sometimes to move forward, we have to do the unthinkable.
Pause. The unthinkable. Earlier in the video, Alice claims Lynn may understand why, and perhaps in some ways she does - she knows the horror of losing a loved one, she knows the hell Alice has been through - but for Alice to do what she did, to take her own life, doesn’t add up. An outside perspective would simply say Lynn has yet to accept the death of her friend, that she spends her nights replaying the video left for her over and over again, analyzing each pixel, printing off relevant shots, filing and connecting the evidence she’s pulled together, as a way to cope. Perhaps there’s a sliver of truth to that, but Lynn knows there is something else here. It’s an instinct that gnaws so deep within her and it’s rare that her gut steers her astray.
Play.
I hope, someday, you can forgive me…
Pause. It was this line that kept her company while she walked through the opening of the gallery dedicated to Alice’s final project: The Dark Place. Alice’s words rang in her head, a dull, pounding ring so similar to her bouts of tinnitus, as she stood before a screen. It was set up in the corner of the gallery, a warning label fixed on a sign stationed before the setup that read “Trigger Warning: Suicide.” Lynn stood alone past the sign watching as each gray still brought her friend closer to the edge. The moment her foot reaches the edge, Lynn’s stomach lurches and her heart follows, plummeting into a deep trench she wasn’t sure it would come back from. And yet no matter how painful it was, Lynn continued to watch. Searching for answers.
The answers had not come. No matter how much she pours over the video, the police reports, the emails, the photos, the financials, the fact Alice so meticulously prepared for her end, she never finds answers. They evade her, as though she is chasing shadows in the dark.
Play.
Thank y-
Pause. The last remaining seconds of the video have played on Lynn’s computer in real life, slowed down, sped up, broken up, twisted and pieced back together so many times she’s lost count. But the ache of those words - thank you, Lynn, for everything - carve a hole deep into Lynn’s chest. The vacancy welcomes her guilt, a feeling so potent she is physically sick with it. She should’ve pushed harder to find out why Alice had been so withdrawn. She should’ve been there for her. She should’ve helped. She should’ve done more. She should’ve known. She should’ve. Should’ve. Should-
The incessant analysis of it all falls apart and so does Lynn. At first, it’s a sharp sound in the back of her throat, a whining that spills into a choked sob. Her laptop is shoved back, nearly falling off the table as she scrambles to a stand, the chair squeaking on her kitchen floor. The sobs rack through her now. So powerful she loses her breath and is forced to grip the table. Hot tears roll down her cheeks and she can do nothing but cry and sob and shudder and gasp. She wants to knock the table over - even tear down her entire apartment if she could. It’s an instinct that falls away as she sinks to the floor, her sobs evolving to broken wails. She’s trapped in this moment, the agony of it all pinning her like a taxidermied butterfly, its wings fixed in flight it would never know again.
“I’m- … sorry. I’m so sorry.” Lynn manages to sputter. “I’m sorry.”
Somewhere above her the video has begun again, a result of her shove, and Alice’s voice echoes in the empty space.
Please don’t blame yourself.
“I’m sorry…”
The video plays again. Caught in a loop as Lynn sinks deeper and deeper into the swirling guilt that threatens to swallow her whole.
Just like that, all the frustration deflated into exhaustion, right before her eyes, as Alice’s demeanor changed. It’s too familiar. One of the core foundations of her world had been shattered and Jesse can’t blame her for being tired. She hopes that Alice gets the answers she needs at the end of this road. One, that hopefully, lets her reunite with her other half.
“We might’ve—I might’ve—come across some news, recently. I meant to contact you sooner, but we had a pretty intense clean-up situation here.”
How she came about the information was a different discussion. The Hiss. The Dark Presence. Did one set off the other? The Hiss brought her here to Dylan for her answers--her closure. But she remembers holding the typewritten page. Its ink faded on wrinkled paper. The chanting hymn from the chorus of elevated men and women held a fixed around the Oldest House. The aged ink held those same words. It all could be a coincidence. It happens. But, from her experiences, nothing is just a coincidence anymore.
Polaris chimes.
One step at a time, Faden.
“We've had a team monitoring Bright Falls. I'm not too sure if those guys before told you or not.” Jesse momentarily pauses. This would be good news for Alice, but there is guilt at being the one to say it. There was only a faint web that held them to, well, wherever he currently was. They hadn't found Wake. They don't have him for her. Jesse wishes she did. “Some activity has started happening there—at Cauldron Lake.”
Bright Falls had spiraled. From what she understood, the place was always under an influence. There had been a long silence up until the Wakes. Their arrival pushed something over the edge, somehow. It was as if it had been waiting for them all along. It knew.
“Before that, we had something happen here. It sort of played a part in the whole mess we had."
“I think whatever happened here, at the bureau, was some kind of trigger. While we dealt with the outbreak, I felt something. It for sure didn't feel like... whatever that is.” Jesse gestures to the photograph of the looming figure on the desk. "I completely understand that this isn't my place, but, I don't think Alan is dead. I think he needs help."
This apartment is familiar in a way that Zane can't place. In all the times he's directed Alan this way, he's never set foot inside of it himself. Not even the building. But he still finds his way around before Alice can guide him, but pretends he is lost in the strange layout-- for her sake or for his own, he isn't sure.
He clashes against his surroundings— dated and bohemian against modern furniture. Stark white walls, and him raven black where he leans against the doorway and watches Alice at work. They are matching at least-- Alice and Zane. Two leather clad omens of death... or the rhyme says two is joy, isn't it? He's certainly felt a little more... light since Alice found her way into the hotel. Ruminates on that as he paces restlessly through the hallways and past Alice's CRTs. He doesn't say it out loud.
Eventually, Zane ends up back where he started-- back with Alice, who is laying out something that he can only vaguely recognize the shape of. The thoughts feed back into each other when he sees her, connecting together like the path she is laying out for Alan with her photos.
He lays it all out while he leans against the wall, rambling about sets and visual shorthand and ways places can be familiar to the audience without being familiar. All of it is to answer a question that still hasn't left his head.
As he talks, he searches for something for his hands to do and settles on a stack of photos that didn't make the cut. He was there when some of these were taken. He was there when some of them were developed. Alice's smiling shadow. Zane had only seen a few of them-- the ones that fit the vision, already filtered by Alice's hand. It's a little bit of a thrill to be flipping through this pile.
The dark streets leading on forever. The neons glowing in the gloom. The elegant and foreboding facade of the hotel. Alice captures the Oceanview in a way that makes a distant part of Zane ache. It's home, it's a prison, it's all smoke and mirrors. And it's a dream, never fully realized.
Abandoned. Repurposed. Haunted. Full of quietly rotting potential as the roof leaks.
The ache is too much and Zane moves on.
He remembers the next one. It's his back, the glow of the televisions bleeding out around him, like a halo. His hands are blurred from motion. He had been talking when he heard the shutter. And then...
Yes. The next one is posed. Zane is smiling brightly past the camera to the woman behind it. His eyes are bright. His hair has fallen in front of his face, dark curls casting him in shadow.
His hair is cut short. Shorter than it has ever been since he was a child. (Was he ever a child?) He looks forlorn. Haunted. There's a dullness to his expression. Something missing.
He is wearing his blazer. He is wearing a wetsuit.
He is in a diver's suit, haloed by light. Drifting endlessly through the dark. Alone.
Who is that? Why is he there?
He is alone on the shore, staring into that dark as the light grows dimmer and dimmer. The waves crash against the rocks, more wild than they should be. There's a body on the shore and the water is *so loud.* It fills his skull so he almost doesn't hear the voice behind him. He already knows the words.
"Thomas? Are you alright?"
Zane comes up and whips his head back like he's breaking through the surface. For a moment the vacancy is replaced by crushing terror before everything slides back into place. Edits this moment out.
His heart is beating fast, but his pulse is always a little elevated.
He gives Alice an easy smile but still reaches out without thinking, like he's trying to anchor himself on the only steady body in sight.
send 🎲 to generate a kiss! - Zane and Alan (make our dollies kiss AGAIN)
kiss roulette!
@emilesmuseassembly rolled a 32!
@miswaken ;)
Sometimes, Zane feels like someone's failed attempt to domesticate a jungle cat and keep it in a small apartment in Queens. The prey drive at least was mostly left behind in the lake, but he feels the itch every now and then. Hard to quit cold turkey. It makes him antsy.
He spends as much time as he can out now that he has the freedom to be out. And now that there's sunshine and people and things to do other than get soaked in rain and find new ways to die. Everything is louder and brighter and just more than it was fifty odd years ago, but Zane thrives in it while he adapts. While they all adapt.
They're talking about finding a new place with more room, and Zane rolls that around in his head a lot after it's brought up the first time and he nods along over morning coffee. The feeling of "we" and "us" is such a long ago thing that it feels almost foreign. House hunting and the placement of furniture. Planning a future...
It's what he thinks about while he wanders, always coming back to it no matter where he starts. He pokes at it like a loose tooth until he gets the call from Alice to come back home-- someone needs to keep Alan company. The weather's too nice and he's to restless to return for anything less and has half a mind to drag Alan right back out into the sunshine, but the author's in a mood himself and Alice makes Zane promise to behave before she leaves. It's half joking and half a serious concern with him. Inside is less danger even if Zane feels like he'll start climbing the walls.
He wants to be there. It makes sense to be there, with the Wakes, navigating together what it's like to be legally dead and finding a way to wiggle himself inside of their marriage. Nestled between them, where he thinks he can belong. Pacing the floors of their one bedroom apartment.
He's dug one of Alan's old books out of a half unpacked box when the pacing doesn't cut it, mostly just to watch the man squirm from the other side of the room. It's older than the Casey books that he only knows from the man who used to come and break his nose every now and again. A collection of short stories that Zane flits through without really being able to settle.
Three bedrooms in the next one, if they can swing it. Two at the absolute minimum. Location doesn't matter much to Zane because everything is more alive than what he came from, but he insists on a bathtub; It's a need. Surprisingly, Alan agrees. Not as surprisingly, Alice does too.
There's something about needing to be in water that clings after the lake dries away that Zane can never bring himself to ask the other two about, but he has a feeling. It's what drives him off to the couch to sleep violently for a couple hours until he wedges himself into bed with the Wakes in the early morning to get a few hours more. Back to back with Alan, or wrapped in his arms. Curled around Alice with an arm draped over her, or with his head atop her chest.
He reads the same sentence maybe a dozen times without it sticking, but it does seem to have gotten to Alan that Zane has stuck his fingers in his old work. He glances away when Zane looks up in a way that makes that prey drive flare up. So he thinks instead about sticking his fingers somewhere else to have something to do with all of the energy cooped up inside of him. Vent it out and work it off.
The chirp of Alan's phone seals the deal-- Alice. Zane's doubly sure when he sees Alan actually respond, tuck the phone tack in his pocket. Zane abandons the poor book on the arm of the chair to be a prop the next time he tries to get a rise out of Alan or when he's able to actually read it. Alan hardly looks up when Zane stalks closer, but groans in annoyance when Zane folds himself onto his lap.
"Alice almost home?" Zane asks, grinning in a way that he knows Alan finds annoying. His fingers find the hem of Alan's T-shirt before he even gets a response and slide up to the warm skin of his rib cage.
"So I'm not enough for you. That's what your problem was."
Zane laughs at the comment, leaning in to press his lips to Alan's neck. The author sounds annoyed, but in a vague kind of way and he doesn't do anything to push Zane away. He stretches out instead and presses into Zane's touch.
"I just don't want her to be left out," Zane says. He's still wearing that fucking grin because it's half true and easier than admitting to Alan what's really going on. Alan's hands settle on his thighs and Zane reciprocates by lightly biting down. The following groan is a lot less annoyed.
"No, you want to put on a show. Because you're a whore," Alan replies. His voice pitches up a little when Zane's fingers travel higher. Still no real complaints, but Zane pulls back and cups Alan's cheek with his free hand.
"You know the pet names really get me going."
Sometime about Zane's expression must be what finally pushes Alan into taking the bait, because he fists one hand in Zane's hair and drags him down for a kiss. Likely to wipe that smirk off of him, as he's been told before. Zane wins out in the end either way, because he hears the door open before Alan does, and he hears Alice's footsteps approaching before Alan can shove him away out of embarrassment. He's able to keep his place when Alice enters the room, break the kiss at his own pace to witness Alan turning an awful shade of red at being caught like this. Cute.
"Alice! Hey. Welcome home, we're just... putting on a show," Zane says, grinning back at Alice. He gives Alan's cheek a pat that he's sure he'd get kicked for if he wasn't straddling the man's lap. Zane gives Alice that same sharp toothed grin that Alan's been suffering through.
"Wanna join?"
favorite color: I really enjoy blues! Lately I've also been starting to enjoy vibrant colors a lot more since I've started doing more with art again. Yellow always makes me feel really happy as well!
last song: Wake Up by Cheese People is one of my alarm tunes and it pisses me off, but the last song I voluntarily listened to was Doombop! by The Toxhards.
currently reading: Nimona by N. Stevenson, though I've almost finished it. It's a delightful read and I really recommend it to anyone who enjoys visual novels.
currently watching: John Wolfe plays Darkwood! I absolutely love that game and its very fun to watch a YouTuber I like play it again.
currently playing: Mostly online games like Dead by Daylight and Infinity Nikki lately, though I've also been pretty hooked on the newest Tomodachi game!
