InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I like slugs and snails."

percιval oғ voх мacнιna (pepperbox) wrote in jurassiccitynet,
@ 2016-08-23 02:56:00

Entry tags:

cisco ramon / vibe, harrison wells, jemma simmons, nyssa al ghul, percy de rolo, vex'ahlia

~~right then how do i~~ ~~There we go~~ As charming as this undoubtably is, I am afraid this comes at an inconvenient time. How does one go about returning to the place they came from?

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	fatherfirst 2016-08-23 11:07 pm UTC (link)
	Intensely. Though, sometimes you can hold on a little too tight and in the wrong ways. But I'm old. I'm sure I've made far more mistakes in that realm than you have. And it is impressive for those that pay attention to things like that. It's probably just confusing for everyone else. Percy it is, then. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	pepperbox 2016-08-23 11:11 pm UTC (link)
	I would not be so sure. I have made a great many mistakes. That is very true. Thank you. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Harry. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	fatherfirst 2016-08-23 11:17 pm UTC (link)
	Attempting to befriend, manipulate, and then sacrifice someone in order to get your only remaining family member back from a psychopath is something, I would hope, not many people have tried to do. Exactly where are you from? We've found this place isn't really discriminating when it comes to realities. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	pepperbox 2016-08-23 11:32 pm UTC (link)
	I killed a number of people and inadvertently made a deal with a demon, nearly killing all of my friends, in order to seek retribution on those who killed my family and took my home. Among other things. Whitestone. Though I spent some time in Emon. And also traveled a fair bit these last few years. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	fatherfirst 2016-08-23 11:48 pm UTC (link)
	Huh. I have a feeling that isn't a metaphor like it is where I'm from... So entirely different reality, then. Or planet.... or realm. It's so hard to keep track. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	pepperbox 2016-08-26 08:07 pm UTC (link)
	No. It is not. I made some very grave mistakes in my quest for vengeance. I would say realm. I have been to a few realms now and they are very different from one another. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	fatherfirst 2016-08-26 08:11 pm UTC (link)
	Vengeance tends to lead a person down a path littered with mistakes. At least you seem to have realized it. Most people never get the chance to be that perceptive before it destroys them. What's the name of your realm? The main one. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	pepperbox 2016-08-27 09:07 pm UTC (link)
	I nearly realized it too late. I do wonder if perhaps I have lost any chance to be a good person as a result of my actions. Exandria is the name of our world. It exists on the material plane. Vex'ahlia and I hail from Tal'Dorei. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	fatherfirst 2016-08-27 09:16 pm UTC (link)
	You're not dead. It's never too late to improve yourself until you're dead. There are few people who are completely lost. And even then, it's often because they give up on themselves. I see. I can't say that's anywhere that I've heard of. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	pepperbox 2016-08-27 09:20 pm UTC (link)
	Every time I try to do the right thing, it feels as though I hurt people. And it is hard, being the one who has to speak the difficult truths no one else wants to acknowledge. And what of you? What realm do you come from? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

fatherfirst
2016-08-27 09:26 pm UTC (link)

Intentionally or accidentally? Because even the best actions can have unforeseen consequences. And being the realist is never an easy task especially when the plans of the optimists almost certainly mean sudden death because their expectations aren't reasonable or put more stock and faith in the reliable.

Earth. Or Earth-2. Or Earth several other numbers since there seem to be the products of multiple Earths here.

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	pepperbox 2016-08-28 01:22 am UTC (link)
	Does intention truly matter when you have harmed someone you care for? Whether it was intentional or not, the harm still occurred and it is not so easily forgiven. It is hardly a matter of optimism. We are rarely an optimistic group. It is more a matter of the moral compromises one is willing to make. I have never heard of such a place. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

fatherfirst
2016-08-28 01:33 am UTC (link)

It makes the difference in how things play out in the aftermath. The injury may not change, but if the harm wasn't intentional, the wounds it creates aren't impossible to heal. No matter what they may feel like... or what you may feel like. I've tried to make people hate me before, when I thought they should. The good ones rarely accept your own self-loathing as enough of a reason to condemn you.

Morality doesn't benefit a dead man.

It's not especially different from where we are. Just more heavily populated... and with less large threatening creatures.

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pepperbox
2016-08-28 04:30 am UTC (link)

Perhaps for some. But there are things I have done that cannot and should not be forgiven. Whether they were intentional or not is ultimately irrelevant. No matter what I do from here on out, and trust me when I say I try my best to do the right thing, it will not ever change or make up for my failings.

Perhaps not, but it is a comfort to them. They are good people. And they have me to be less good.

Yes. I had noticed the large number of strange dragons.

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fatherfirst
2016-08-28 04:40 am UTC (link)

I think you may be being too hard on yourself. Granted, I don't really know the full circumstances, but that sounds far more like guilt than rational fault.

In some circumstances, the less good are neceessary to keep the selfless alive.

Dragons? Well. That at least clarifies the type of reality you come from. Those are dinosaurs. Dragons aren't real. At least from our standpoint.

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pepperbox
2016-09-06 01:21 am UTC (link)

I was a coward. I abandoned my sister in escaping Whitestone after the rest of our family was killed. After she risked herself to help me escape. She was trapped with those monsters for years and it is my fault she suffered. I should not have left her, even if it meant dying. Everything that happened to her is because I left her. I let a demon into my mind, even if it was unknowingly, and if things had gone differently, I could have killed everyone I care about. I unleashed these weapons on the world. They didn't exist before I made them and a horrible person learned from my work and is going to do awful things and I do not know how to stop it. I got Vex'ahlia killed and it does not matter that she was brought back. I am still responsible for what happened to her. I got our friend Grog killed because I thought I knew best. And it was fixed too, but it does not change anything. Things being fixed does not change that they happened. And I know I will continue to do things that hurt people because I am broken and I have always been broken. So I do not think I am being too hard on myself at all.

In some circumstances, the less good get them killed.

Dragons are very real from our standpoint. There are several we are currently trying to defeat.

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fatherfirst
2016-09-06 01:34 am UTC (link)

Everyone's broken, and we all make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes get people hurt... That doesn't narrate the aort of person we are. I used to think it did, too. But I had a lot of people around who told me that just because I did one thing wrong doesn't make me a person not worth putting their trust in. Sometimes you have to let others decide you're worth the effort and accept it.

As for weapons. They all get developed in time. What you made isn't likely any worse than what someone else would come up with.

That's life, though.

Huh. By what measure? I can't say I know much about what they're like.

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pepperbox
2016-09-06 05:16 am UTC (link)

I must respectfully disagree on a number of your points.

percy | harry.

My life is a string of horrible errors which have hurt people and made the world worse. It is not right that ~~I'm the one who~~ ~~that someone else didn't~~ things took the path they did. That someone better didn't make it out of Whitestone. I often feel the wrong person survived the massacre of my family. Any of the others could have handled it better. There is nothing in the world I regret more than that I lived and they did not. Cassandra should have left me in that dungeon to die and escaped.

I have made guns and explosives and horrible weapons and a woman who is unquestionably evil, who enjoys hurting people, figured out how to replicate at least some of my designs. Any further harm she does is my fault.

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percy | harry

fatherfirst
2016-09-06 05:35 am UTC (link)

That's how people often feel when they come through a massacre when so many don't. It's normal to feel that way, to feel burden by your own presumed inadequacies to relation to those who didn't survive. But there's nothing that can be done to change the past. Well, I say nothing when I know that's not entirely true, but it's still a serious risk to try. We all have to learn how to live with our regrets... find a way to improve the things we damage.

Such is the responsibility of those who try further scientific progress. I created a serial killer trying to power a city. I killed dozens on top of that, changed the lives of dozens of others, not necessarily for the better. And that, all of that, is something I'm going to have to live with, that every person he hurts, they hurt, is my fault.

If you need someone to talk to about it, you're welcome at the lab. We've got plenty of room.

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percy | harry.

pepperbox
2016-09-06 06:17 am UTC (link)

I only ever talked about it once. Because my companions learned a bit and wanted to know the rest. So I told them. Not all of it. I can't tell anyone all of it. There's a lot I don't remember about those years. I don't know why it's easier to tell a stranger.

The Briarwoods came to Whitestone...I don't remember why. I don't remember much about that night, but they had allies. People we trusted who turned on us. I learned later it was all in the service of a dark god. Vecna, a god of whispers and secrets. There was a temple of Ioun far beneath the castle that they wanted to use for their purposes. To serve Vecna. I don't remember my family being killed. Not really. Bits of it. They never tried to kill me. They wanted to know things, so they took me to the dungeon and Anna, Dr. Ripley, tortured me and asked me things I didn't know. I think she chose me because, even then, before the guns, she was interested in my inventions and my tinkering. My potential. Otherwise, she might have let me die and chosen someone different. I was tortured and there were bodies left there. Family members. I don't remember how they died but I remember their bodies. Cassandra got me out. She helped me escape, and we ran. There were arrows. I saw her get hit. There was blood and she fell. I thought she was dead. Or I think I did. I'm not sure. I made it to the river before I fell. I remember drowning, but not much else. I don't know. There's a lot I don't know. Or don't remember. I ended up on a boat. I don't know how. I was there for two years, I think, before the dreams started and I started to remember how to be a person. And then I made my guns. It wasn't long after that I tried to kill Ripley and ended up in another dungeon, which is where my companions found me. It's been five years since the massacre, and even though the Briarwoods and most of the people involved are dead now, I don't know that I'll ever be able to let go of the things that happened when I was eighteen.

Would it be possible to work in this lab?

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percy | harry.

fatherfirst
2016-09-06 06:27 am UTC (link)

Less fear of judgment, I imagine. My opinion means nothing to you.

Something like that... It doesn't just go away. It's a part of you. It's learning how to deal with that part and everything it brings with it that's the tricky bit.

And I don't know the level of medical care available to your world, but have you talked to anyone about your psychogenic dissociative amnesia? It's a troubling symptom to have persist for five years after the fact especially if you were only to regain some semblance of self after this... demon deal you mentioned.

Of course. I'd be happy to give you a tour, show you some of the things we've been working on. There's not the same sort of resources I'm used to, but there's enough to make due.

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percy | harry.

pepperbox
2016-09-06 06:46 am UTC (link)

I do not know that I will ever learn to deal with it. I have Cassandra, but we both lost so much and there is a lot of pain there. It is hard, sometimes, to face her.

I am afraid I am unfamiliar with that. Not amnesia, I have seen that. Experienced it, of a magical variety. But I do not know that it is what happened to me. There was no magic, and my injuries were not the sort that would cause someone to forget. I always thought it was normal, to not remember everything when it was such a chaotic situation.

Thank you. I like to keep busy. And I want to learn about the technology of this place.

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percy | harry.

fatherfirst
2016-09-06 06:59 am UTC (link)

Have you talked to her about that?

We've learned, in my world, after years of study, that severe emotional trauma is sometimes enough to make a person forget things that they've been through. Not in a complete and total way, but in a manner that just makes it difficult to access memories that exist. Sometimes they can pick out flashes, details without context, specific events, but larger overarching understanding of the circumstances that they've gone through is often shadowed from them.

It is normal to have a degree of confusion when it comes to a chaotic situation, but for it to persist that long and for memory gaps that large, there's something more going on.

That we're more than equipped to help you with. I have to admit. I wouldn't mind taking a look at what you've developed. I'm curious. It took centuries and a half a dozen countries in our world for anything functional to be developed in the realm of firearms after the discovery of gunpowder.

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percy | harry. -

pepperbox, 2016-09-07 01:56 am UTC

percy | harry. -

fatherfirst, 2016-09-07 02:16 am UTC

	pepperbox 2016-09-06 01:26 am UTC (link)
	Please disregard all of that. It was entirely unnecessary. I should not have imposed on you in that manner. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	fatherfirst 2016-09-06 01:35 am UTC (link)
	It's fine. It seems like you haven't really been able to express that to anyone else before. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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