Number FIVE ☂ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
somebadnews) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
westwhere2021-09-08 05:26 pm
somebadnews) wrote in westwhere2021-09-08 05:26 pm
time doesn't love you anymore
WHO: Five and OPEN (with one closed starter)
WHEN: Early-to-mid September
WHERE: All Around Taravast
WHAT: September Catch-All: Obsessions, Curses and Family Meetings
WARNINGS: Language and... whatever Five-related things come up
i. Southern (Artist ) Areas (open)
It's been a while since Five took a walk to get some fresh air. Tensions have been escalating again, and despite his best efforts to claim otherwise, his thoughts have been too erratic to feel like he has anything under control any more. It's an incredibly inconvenient time to be staving off the effects of a curse that he's stubbornly against prioritizing, and refuses to think about now. He's well accustomed to dealing with anguish; acknowledging it just makes it more insufferable and he has too many other things to worry about.
He needs a clear head if he's going to avoid another gaffe like they had at the masquerade. Hence the outing. He gives himself an errand or two — find a more secluded meeting location, procure more coffee — if only to get away from all of them before he snaps and murders someone else just because he's frustrated and running on fumes. As he makes his way through the streets, he thinks bitterly that his thirteen-year-old body could probably use the exercise.
When they first arrived in Taravast, he had been vaguely insulted by the identity he'd been assigned. That was before he'd learned it could be much worse. He's largely left alone, and when he's approached by anyone who seemed to have gotten his description from who-knows-where, he can make them disappear in relatively few words. Just drop a comment about their staggering irrelevance and they walk away shocked and offended. Temperamental artists are apparently common enough to play on assumptions. He barely cares.
All this time he hasn't actually bothered to look at any of the actual art in the city, because why would he? It's all useless decoration that doesn't serve any purpose, and mostly makes him think of the Academy and those terrible portraits his father had done of them as kids. That was his closest point of reference; nothing really survived in the apocalypse and he certainly didn't spend any time looking at it during his years at the Commission. — So it's strange that in the middle of his hike through the citadel, he finds himself facing an unfamiliar statue in the middle of an alcove. It's only half-finished, the form just starting to emerge from the stone, and he stares for full ten minutes before he realizes where he is. They have plenty of paintings on display and jewelry stands stretched along the alleyway, but not a single one of them sells coffee.
Fuck, he's tired. He nearly blinks away instead of walking back to where he made a wrong turn, but it's quiet here and all he really wanted was somewhere to think. So he wedges himself into the small space between the stone and the wall while he tries to do the math to get him to where he meant to go.
Moments later he's fast asleep where the statue's feet would be.
ii. Necromancer District (open)
Five went back to that same location where they'd picked up a cure for the poison a few days later. So far they hadn't heard any grief about what they did to obtain the blood; no one so much as questioned any recent murders, but he does think enough to stay away from certain incriminating areas to avoid the hassle. He wanted to see if he could find this particular house again by memory, and he feels some satisfaction that he manages to, even if it had been an entirely different time of day.
It seemed strange to him back then, and he said as much, that the necromancers had a cure for the poison almost before they asked. Not until later did he find out that Lady Vannozza has ties here. There's an almost too-obvious link between her and the attempt on their lives, and looking into it actually feels useful in a way he hasn't been lately. It's straightforward enough to investigate, and something productive he can share with his family later if he gets any leads.
A shorter route would have been to ask Allison to rumor Vannozza to tell them exactly what her involvement was, but he knows his sister will want more than his paranoia to go on. The other solution involves having them conjure the man responsible for delivering the poison, but Lan Wangji was acting strange about it after he was the one who suggested it. Five still doesn't understand his great moral objection, but he rarely does, and spends far too much time trying to. Several of the necromancers here could do it, if he really wants to pursue the idea.
That doesn't mean he won't also try and get more information about how the necromancers work while he's poking around. He pays careful attention whenever he spots their customers coming and going, and if his timing is good enough, he might teleport in to see what their healing rituals entail. For curiosity's sake.
Today it seems noticeably less crowded in the district, which is... not ideal and throws off his plan slightly. If he stands out too much they might start to recognize him as a kid who keeps hanging around here, and he'll have to put more effort into hiding in the shadows. It also might mean he's missing something again, which just makes him feel more out of sorts. He doesn't abandon the methods, but he keeps an extra eye out for anyone he recognizes that might fill him in.
iii. Academies (open)
Five comes around eventually. He really hadn't needed any magic curse to break his fragile grip on sanity. But when he keeps confusing the anguish he's stubbornly holding onto with memories of the apocalypse, he knows that pretty soon people will start noticing what's wrong with him. At some point he's going to need to make it stop. The unfortunate truth is that there's no way in hell he can trust that the easiest solutions available to get rid of it, and his other idea isn't any guarantee.
Under normal circumstances, he would have learned enough about magic to handle his own problems, but there's just so many different types and languages that he doesn't know where to begin. The research he left to Fox came to a halt after the masquerade, because of course they try to murder the one person he had chosen to tell about his problem, which left him largely on his own. (While Fox presumably recovers. He's sure he would have heard from Mingyu otherwise.)
The academies are easy enough to break into for someone like him, but without a guide, he's less sure of which books to disappear with that might have something worthwhile in them. He ends up with one that looks questionably promising, and others he grabbed simply because they were near it on the shelf. While he's waiting for his personal translator, he flips through the pages and tries to make sense of them.
Almost immediately he starts to write notes in the margins, which quickly devolve into something more familiar to him. Soon he's sitting in the courtyard working the equations he hasn't touched in weeks, trying to work backward to the earliest he could alter the timeline without jeopardizing his family, what events he could change by eliminating various people, and ways to predict where and when they might find his remaining siblings. The mask they insist that he carry around is beside him and he seems intensely focused and oblivious to anyone who might have noticed that he isn't a student.
In hindsight, he should have brought a different notebook with him, but it helps him for a time to slip into the world of time travel and probability equations to remember that he's actually smart about some things. Eventually he'll return to the palace and try to track Fox down to explain what he was originally trying to do. When he does finally hand off these books to him, he's sure he might even have the math worked out and not need him any more.
iv. Undisclosed Location (closed to Hargreeves)
The meeting is, frankly, long overdue. Playing political games for the sake of the group at large has only left them out of touch and ill prepared. They weren't ready for the attempted murder at the masquerade, and he was blindsided by Allison's trip to see the necromancers, purely because he hadn't kept a close enough eye on his family. They need a better system.
Fortunately, securing a suitably discrete location wasn't all that difficult once he started looking, and his ability makes it easy to get around any onlookers who might catch on that he's in cahoots with his family. Before arriving, Five had made at least some effort to splash water on his face and put on a less rumpled set of clothes to disguise the exhaustion that makes him feel every bit of his actual age. He does a passable job. He won't admit that the nap he had earlier might have done some good.
They haven't been together in the same space since the masquerade, and he takes time to assess all of them as he paces around the room. The wolves are still hanging around, apparently. Five takes a moment to look at each one of them before narrowing his eyes at Diego. He's already made it clear what he thinks about his new coping mechanism, but that doesn't mean he won't bring it up again. The only one of them to stay out of trouble is Vanya, and thank god for that.
"Alright. To start with, great job all around at not getting stabbed or poisoned." Really, it's a low bar, but they've managed to cross it. As far as he knows, he's the only one who screwed up anything major, and he's fine with delaying that news until the end. "We don't have a lot of time, but I thought we should get on the same page."
v.
Wildcard for whatever else. Additional starters available on request.
Action spam or prose idc/will match format/I swear I will use less words one day (I will forget I said this).
WHEN: Early-to-mid September
WHERE: All Around Taravast
WHAT: September Catch-All: Obsessions, Curses and Family Meetings
WARNINGS: Language and... whatever Five-related things come up
i. Southern (Artist ) Areas (open)
It's been a while since Five took a walk to get some fresh air. Tensions have been escalating again, and despite his best efforts to claim otherwise, his thoughts have been too erratic to feel like he has anything under control any more. It's an incredibly inconvenient time to be staving off the effects of a curse that he's stubbornly against prioritizing, and refuses to think about now. He's well accustomed to dealing with anguish; acknowledging it just makes it more insufferable and he has too many other things to worry about.
He needs a clear head if he's going to avoid another gaffe like they had at the masquerade. Hence the outing. He gives himself an errand or two — find a more secluded meeting location, procure more coffee — if only to get away from all of them before he snaps and murders someone else just because he's frustrated and running on fumes. As he makes his way through the streets, he thinks bitterly that his thirteen-year-old body could probably use the exercise.
When they first arrived in Taravast, he had been vaguely insulted by the identity he'd been assigned. That was before he'd learned it could be much worse. He's largely left alone, and when he's approached by anyone who seemed to have gotten his description from who-knows-where, he can make them disappear in relatively few words. Just drop a comment about their staggering irrelevance and they walk away shocked and offended. Temperamental artists are apparently common enough to play on assumptions. He barely cares.
All this time he hasn't actually bothered to look at any of the actual art in the city, because why would he? It's all useless decoration that doesn't serve any purpose, and mostly makes him think of the Academy and those terrible portraits his father had done of them as kids. That was his closest point of reference; nothing really survived in the apocalypse and he certainly didn't spend any time looking at it during his years at the Commission. — So it's strange that in the middle of his hike through the citadel, he finds himself facing an unfamiliar statue in the middle of an alcove. It's only half-finished, the form just starting to emerge from the stone, and he stares for full ten minutes before he realizes where he is. They have plenty of paintings on display and jewelry stands stretched along the alleyway, but not a single one of them sells coffee.
Fuck, he's tired. He nearly blinks away instead of walking back to where he made a wrong turn, but it's quiet here and all he really wanted was somewhere to think. So he wedges himself into the small space between the stone and the wall while he tries to do the math to get him to where he meant to go.
Moments later he's fast asleep where the statue's feet would be.
ii. Necromancer District (open)
Five went back to that same location where they'd picked up a cure for the poison a few days later. So far they hadn't heard any grief about what they did to obtain the blood; no one so much as questioned any recent murders, but he does think enough to stay away from certain incriminating areas to avoid the hassle. He wanted to see if he could find this particular house again by memory, and he feels some satisfaction that he manages to, even if it had been an entirely different time of day.
It seemed strange to him back then, and he said as much, that the necromancers had a cure for the poison almost before they asked. Not until later did he find out that Lady Vannozza has ties here. There's an almost too-obvious link between her and the attempt on their lives, and looking into it actually feels useful in a way he hasn't been lately. It's straightforward enough to investigate, and something productive he can share with his family later if he gets any leads.
A shorter route would have been to ask Allison to rumor Vannozza to tell them exactly what her involvement was, but he knows his sister will want more than his paranoia to go on. The other solution involves having them conjure the man responsible for delivering the poison, but Lan Wangji was acting strange about it after he was the one who suggested it. Five still doesn't understand his great moral objection, but he rarely does, and spends far too much time trying to. Several of the necromancers here could do it, if he really wants to pursue the idea.
That doesn't mean he won't also try and get more information about how the necromancers work while he's poking around. He pays careful attention whenever he spots their customers coming and going, and if his timing is good enough, he might teleport in to see what their healing rituals entail. For curiosity's sake.
Today it seems noticeably less crowded in the district, which is... not ideal and throws off his plan slightly. If he stands out too much they might start to recognize him as a kid who keeps hanging around here, and he'll have to put more effort into hiding in the shadows. It also might mean he's missing something again, which just makes him feel more out of sorts. He doesn't abandon the methods, but he keeps an extra eye out for anyone he recognizes that might fill him in.
iii. Academies (open)
Five comes around eventually. He really hadn't needed any magic curse to break his fragile grip on sanity. But when he keeps confusing the anguish he's stubbornly holding onto with memories of the apocalypse, he knows that pretty soon people will start noticing what's wrong with him. At some point he's going to need to make it stop. The unfortunate truth is that there's no way in hell he can trust that the easiest solutions available to get rid of it, and his other idea isn't any guarantee.
Under normal circumstances, he would have learned enough about magic to handle his own problems, but there's just so many different types and languages that he doesn't know where to begin. The research he left to Fox came to a halt after the masquerade, because of course they try to murder the one person he had chosen to tell about his problem, which left him largely on his own. (While Fox presumably recovers. He's sure he would have heard from Mingyu otherwise.)
The academies are easy enough to break into for someone like him, but without a guide, he's less sure of which books to disappear with that might have something worthwhile in them. He ends up with one that looks questionably promising, and others he grabbed simply because they were near it on the shelf. While he's waiting for his personal translator, he flips through the pages and tries to make sense of them.
Almost immediately he starts to write notes in the margins, which quickly devolve into something more familiar to him. Soon he's sitting in the courtyard working the equations he hasn't touched in weeks, trying to work backward to the earliest he could alter the timeline without jeopardizing his family, what events he could change by eliminating various people, and ways to predict where and when they might find his remaining siblings. The mask they insist that he carry around is beside him and he seems intensely focused and oblivious to anyone who might have noticed that he isn't a student.
In hindsight, he should have brought a different notebook with him, but it helps him for a time to slip into the world of time travel and probability equations to remember that he's actually smart about some things. Eventually he'll return to the palace and try to track Fox down to explain what he was originally trying to do. When he does finally hand off these books to him, he's sure he might even have the math worked out and not need him any more.
iv. Undisclosed Location (closed to Hargreeves)
The meeting is, frankly, long overdue. Playing political games for the sake of the group at large has only left them out of touch and ill prepared. They weren't ready for the attempted murder at the masquerade, and he was blindsided by Allison's trip to see the necromancers, purely because he hadn't kept a close enough eye on his family. They need a better system.
Fortunately, securing a suitably discrete location wasn't all that difficult once he started looking, and his ability makes it easy to get around any onlookers who might catch on that he's in cahoots with his family. Before arriving, Five had made at least some effort to splash water on his face and put on a less rumpled set of clothes to disguise the exhaustion that makes him feel every bit of his actual age. He does a passable job. He won't admit that the nap he had earlier might have done some good.
They haven't been together in the same space since the masquerade, and he takes time to assess all of them as he paces around the room. The wolves are still hanging around, apparently. Five takes a moment to look at each one of them before narrowing his eyes at Diego. He's already made it clear what he thinks about his new coping mechanism, but that doesn't mean he won't bring it up again. The only one of them to stay out of trouble is Vanya, and thank god for that.
"Alright. To start with, great job all around at not getting stabbed or poisoned." Really, it's a low bar, but they've managed to cross it. As far as he knows, he's the only one who screwed up anything major, and he's fine with delaying that news until the end. "We don't have a lot of time, but I thought we should get on the same page."
v.
Wildcard for whatever else. Additional starters available on request.
Action spam or prose idc/will match format/
iv.
She sinks into a chair, hands clasped on her stomach, and watches them all too, her eyes following Five's pacing in concern before she looks to Allison and Diego. Five has always been a bit...
'Unhinged' seems too cruel and not wholly fitting the description she needs. She looks back at him and then claps her hands lightly in applause. "It's a good track record that I think we should keep going. Diego, can I pet your dogs?" They're not actually dogs but like, that's fine, she still wants to pet them. Giant dogs!
no subject
She settles next to Vanya with a soft sigh, leaning back in her chair. "In some ways, this hasn't gotten used that the usual brand of Hargreeves crazy." Vanya hasn't even accidentally ended the world yet.
no subject
Diego feels the weight of Five's stare and only knows it would be worse if Five knew the sketchy deal he got himself caught up in. It had seemed like a good idea at the time -- not that Diego did a lot of thinking ahead.
He so rarely does.
But he hears Vanya's words and smiles, his words pointed:
"Of course you can, Vanya. They won't hurt you. They'll know you're part of the pack."
no subject
"Anyway." He keeps pacing, but most of his focus is now on Vanya and the wolf nearest her. "We've been lucky. The good news is they aren't after us, specifically. They only seem to care about political affiliations."
The other good news is that the world isn't currently ending. But since they still don't know what's waiting for them in 2019, and since he's fairly sure that outside of Taravast the undead outnumber the living, he doesn't bring it up.
"The bad news is everything else. We don't have a convenient glimpse of the future to know what's ahead of us, and we've gotten too involved as it is. We need to be smarter about this." If Allison wants to assume he's talking about their impromptu field trip to the necromancer district, well. There's a reason he turns towards her and feels the need to bring this up. "This isn't the time to trust anyone just because they seem like they're on our side."
no subject
Wolf distraction aside, she looks around at her siblings and listens; there's an idle thought that probably they could learn something about the wolves and their willingness to work together to bring down bigger prey, but she's not going to be the one to suggest the comparison right now.
"Is it... Really that bad if we don't know the future? I mean... We've been able to change it before, in some ways, but it usually just... happens anyhow." Vanya always blows something up, their powers seem to keep evolving... It doesn't feel so bad to take things one day at a time right now.
"And everyone's been... I mean, pretty nice. For the most part. We have to trust the group to some extent to help us. There's no reason to do this all entirely by ourselves, especially when we're not all here." She hesitates, looking from Five to Diego to Allison. "...Right?"
no subject
In all fairness to Five, Allison is making friends with a guy who might be the Devil. But it's not the worse friend she could have made, in her opinion.
"But I don't think Vanya's wrong. We're all in this together."
no subject
"I know I just got here, so I don't exactly know as much shit as you all do, but honestly? Kinda nice to not know what's happening for once."
It's exhausting, sometimes, trying to fix the future all the time. As for the people here...well the other people brought here don't seem so bad but as far as the people in charge...he glances at Allison for a moment, and then to Vanya who is getting nuzzled by one of the wolves, and then finally to Five.
Fuck, he needs to tell them. He's never going to hear the end of it.
"And if we're in this together, we all need to be on the same page."
no subject
They're all unbelievable. Of course it's better to know what's coming, and it doesn't always... happen anyway. It won't. But the fact that he doesn't know if there's an apocalypse waiting for them back in 2019 doesn't help his argument.
He frowns when he meets his brother's gaze, scrutinizing him for half a second before he responds.
"I just said that." To get on the same page. Doesn't anyone listen? And yes he needs to be pissed off even when he's agreeing with him on that point. There's obviously something on his mind, and Five doesn't look away from him for a long moment, until he finally says to Allison. "For the record, of course I don't approve. I don't like being taken off guard, and the necromancers aren't my favorite people to deal with. Did you even know who you were helping?"
no subject
Deciding to try and step in before people start yelling and Diego doesn't get the chance to say whatever it seems he's gearing himself up to say, she speaks up with a, "Do you have something, Diego?"
no subject
Really, she's just gonna leave that in Diego's court, sorry bro.
no subject
He wasn't expecting you to take this blow for him, Allison. But Five and Vanya deserve to know....as much as he's not looking forward to being yelled at. He's not. But being afraid isn't going to keep their sister safe so he'll put on his big boy pants.
He doesn't like secrets anyways.
"I might have made a deal with Vannozza, to try to get on her good side -- except it sort of backfired on me because she ended up threatening Allison's safety...I was dumb enough to name someone I cared about, I thought Allison is on her team too -- and much more credible than me, but...clearly not my brightest call, considering."
no subject
Whatever he was expecting to come out of his brother's mouth, it wasn't that. He was already tense, but that sudden admission floors him for a moment and he's perfectly silent as he takes it in. His gaze flicks to Allison, checking for her reaction, then to Vanya and back. Did they know? How long ago did this happen?
"Clearly." He scoffs and pushes past a wolf to stand in front of him. "What did you agree to do?" He's not yelling, but he seems to be on the verge. If this is something he needs to take care of, he needs to know now.
no subject
"What? Diego! And-- Are you--" She looked to Allison then, clearly concerned. "Are you going to be okay?"
no subject
Because she's prepared. She's not underestimating Vannozza and Diego isn't either. And while the news had rocked her too when she first heard it, she knows that Diego is going to do his best to keep her safe. She's not in this alone.
"It's nothing Diego can't handle. And it's definitely not something you can do for him."
Yes, she saw the wheels in your head spinning Five.
no subject
"I mean, if Five wants to take on the role of a suitor, he's free to try."
It's a flippant, defensive sort of response. He's glad he told Allison before this -- and it's good everyone is on the same page. But he knows he fucked up royally
as usualand having everyone know that never feels great.But he's going to do whatever it takes to keep Allison safe. He's not going to let her get harmed for his mistakes.
no subject
"A suitor." Elaborate. He needs more details if he's going to decide how angry he is. After he just gave a speech about not trusting people. — But it's not like Five hasn't made some bad choices. As much of a headache as he's getting thinking about this one, it's done now, and he's at least willing to hear him explain. "And where has that gotten you? Vannozza must have suspected something if she's making threats to keep you in line."