jester lavorre 🍠critical role. (trickeries) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-10-07 20:39:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, â‚´ inactive: jester lavorre |
WHO: Jester Lavorre and brief mentions of others
WHEN: Monday, October 5
WHERE: The Overlook Hotel
SUMMARY: Jester faces her greatest fear. :(
WARNINGS: Mentions of captivity, but nothing else, I don’t think?
The last thing Jester had intended to do was go inside the new hotel. Despite the fact that she’d been instantly intrigued by the public service announcement to avoid it, Murderbot had said please and that had been so endearing to Jester that she hadn’t even considered betraying his temporary trust in helping him with his mission. She’d gone to the garden to do exactly what she’d said she’d do--check for signs of violence or sentient life in the topiaries with Vax in tow. But then she’d heard that voice. That mischievous, lyrical voice saying her name for the first time in what felt like years. When she’d still hesitated, a nagging voice in the back of her mind telling her to wait, another voice had joined the first. It was those whispers of little sapphire that had seen Jester throwing all caution to the wind to see her mama, to see the Traveler, to finally have them both here with her where she’d been convincing herself she’d never see them again. And that was how she’d found herself in the hotel, expecting and hoping for a dream but running headfirst into a nightmare. It had started with a door opening into a familiar room in the Lavish Chateau, instead of the warm and doting welcome she’d grown accustomed to from her mama, there was sudden coldness. You’re not welcome here. You make a mockery of my clients, you ruin my reputation, and you waste through more money than you deserve. I should have shipped you off to your father years ago, Genevieve. Why do you think I kept you hidden? Each sentence as much a knife to the heart as they were impossible to believe. It had been enough to drive her into a corner, arms wrapped around her knees as she’d cried for her mama to stop. Next had been the Traveler but he hadn’t cut through her with his words the way the vision of her mother had. He hadn’t spoken to her at all, not while he was too busy fawning over Celia who somehow had gotten rid of the golden dick in her hand. Oh, how the pair had laughed. All the things he’d once told Jester, he now showered over his new favorite, his best friend. She didn’t understand the point of this when she knew this wasn’t real because there was no universe in which her mother hated her and the Traveler had replaced her. ...Was there? And if that universe was impossible, why did her heart feel like an open wound and why did it feel like she was so small and insignificant? So invisible? If none of this was real, why did it feel real? She forced herself to leave the room, not wanting to see more, not wanting to let the hole inside her chest grow wider. The room faded behind her as she pushed her way out into the hallway and the hotel’s interior returned. She yelled out for Vax, and thought about sending a message to her friends but, for the briefest of moments as her hand twisted around another doorknob, she thought maybe no one would come to help her. Maybe the curse of this hotel was brutal honesty and Jester was…. Jester was alone. The knob turned and Jester fell through the threshold into another room. The door shut behind her and, as her eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness surrounding her, she realized that this room, too, was familiar. This was her prison, the cell she’d sat in the middle of so many months ago when Molly had still been alive and she’d felt abandoned by the Traveler for the very first time in her life. She’d sang and told jokes and stories in this cell because, for as hopeless as she had felt, she hadn’t wanted her new friends to feel it, too. That was who she was, the girl who pretended to be so full of hope even when she didn’t feel it because she had no one who was strong enough to see her broken. She was alone in this cell in this room now. No Fjord, no Yasha. No other prisoners. Had she remembered all of it wrong? Had everyone come for them and left her behind? Was this the honest truth of it? She wanted nothing more in that moment than to fold into herself and keep folding inward until she was as invisible and insignificant and gone as she was terrified she really might be. And she almost let herself do just just that. But then she remembered the smell of copper and of seawater as it broke against the bow of a ship. She remembered the sound of fire crackling, and buttons clacking, and thunder crashing. She remembered the feeling of a wild and powerful punch and warm, maternal embraces. She remembered the taste of tea and apology cake and… And then she saw a way out. With every ounce of strength she possessed, she broke free from her manacles and forced the locked door of her cell open. She pushed her way out of the room and into the hallway and she started running--not away from the things she still feared, but toward the only thing she knew would always overshadow that fear. Family. And for as much of it as she constantly missed, she had so much of it here. She found the door she’d come in through, and the menacing topiaries that were definitely a problem but not one she could spot or even cared to spend another minute on. And then she was running straight toward two people who she may not have known for long but who had come for her, anyway, and her family who was waiting for her at home. She was not okay and she was never stepping foot near that hotel again, but she was sure for the moment that she would be. Because--for all of her fears and the insecurities she struggled to talk about--Jester was never really alone. |