Open | November

[wwrench]

WHO: wwrench + OPEN TO ANYONE
WHEN: November
WHERE: Solvunn + Horizon + Nocwich
WHAT: Fortifying for winter and doing some shady (?) shit, setting up his Horizon and offering some ASL lessons, and general exploration
WARNINGS: TBD - will be marked and added as they appear

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COMMUNICATION FAQ
If you'd like to plot a closed starter with Wrench, catch me at stickyholograms

Comments

[wwrench]

It is a job, Wrench signs back immediately. There's a defensive spark in those words. He manages to keep the emotion off his face, but it's there in his mind like a shield. Like he might be able to needle Wanda into agreement if he bickers with her just enough. Tell a handyman that he doesn't have a real job and see where that gets you.

Is that what he wants to consider himself? A handyman? Maybe here in Solvunn where work is plentiful and easy. Wrench is just as happy to mend a fence or lay a foundation for a home as he is to skin animals and process their pelts. True that he's mostly done all of what surrounds them for his own benefit so far, but that's good, right? It means he's not taking from anyone else.

He's glad when Wanda shifts the focus back around, though the words she conjures leave plenty for him to wonder after. He wants to push at her a little bit in return. Her brother steals, but never her? It edges the corner of his lips into a faint smile to think about her staying innocent in all of it.

But the smile fades away quickly when she shares more telepathically.

Maybe I'll make snow in my Horizon. We can introduce some of the summoned to sledding.

How did you get out? Did you leave your country in the end?

[carmesi]

In some regard, Wanda feels like she knows what that smile is about, but she's got no real anchor to prove that she knows. Letting it slide, with a shrug and a wave, leaning back enough on her fashioned seat to stretch out her legs, she focuses on her ongoing conversation.

You're going to be unfairly good at sledding, is what you're saying.

There it goes, the ebb and flow of the conversation, traipsing over instances of her past that she knows she can't exactly avoid. Not when she's trying this whole give-and-take approach.

I got out, but my brother didn't.

He was shot and killed.

The draw of air as she exhales it, loudly (in the motion of her shoulders), shows two things: that this happened a long time ago, so while her pain is still visible, she can steel herself well; the second being that this might be a slightly 'clean' version of what happened.

Her hands wrap onto each other, over her lap.

The capital was under attack. We worked to save others and get them out before it crashed onto the rest of the country. The American government took me in, but I wanted to bury Pietro with our parents.

[wwrench]

Their psychic connection doesn't need to go any further than words alone; Wrench can still feel that agony. If loss gets easier with time, he's never found enough distance from his own to feel the promised comfort. In Wrench's experience, grief simply transforms. It changes shape within a person. The edges might smooth out as it finds a comfortable place to take root, but then it's just a part of its host forever. There's no sense in even trying to extricate it.

Maybe Wanda can feel that Wrench relates to this story in his own way. It's very different -- she and her brother were acting as heroes, where that's the opposite of what anyone might every consider him -- but the particulars feel so similar. The sudden loss, the guilt at being the one to survive where someone else didn't... He gets that all too well.

Were you able to do that? Bury him like you hoped to?

[carmesi]

Wanda signs a yes to the question. It is the very least she could have done for Pietro—just another victim of the war that took many lives in Sokovia, the country now undone and left to become fragmented parts of the countries around it. The place she can call home, officially—if she ever were to return there—is the memorial for those lost that sits in the middle of where Novi Grad once was.

There is an inkling, though, as she told him her story that Wanda felt resonated with her words. A feeling, a sentiment, but it wasn't sympathy born out of just imagining her pain.

And you?

She leaves it as an open question. To learn more about him? Perhaps. He is free to share whatever he wants, without feeling like she's pressing him to do so.

[wwrench]

Even before the thought has fully formed in his mind, Wrench is shaking his head. He’s not sure what Wanda is asking — or if she’s even certain of the particulars herself - but he has an answer for her. It comes so quickly that he regrets it almost instantly, and for a moment something in him tenses up. It’s as if he’s trying to push against the boundaries of their connection. Like he might want to shove her out of his mind completely, though something tells him he’s not strong enough for that.

I never got to bury anyone I lost.

It’s not like him to express much resentment. Wrench might argue or disagree, but he doesn’t sulk or self-pity. This feels different, though. The emotions feel very old, and yet still very raw. It’s like he’s tried to hide them, rather than addressing them, and he doesn’t know what to do with them now.

Maybe there’s no real closure. You just keep moving.

[carmesi]

Closure is something made up to make us feel like everything means something in the end.

For although her losses has been such that she could bury them and say goodbye, they never healed the wound left behind. It'd only heal if someone new was there to nurture her, but— it seems she isn't allowed to keep that happiness, fleeting in nature.

Wanda feels him trying to hedge away from their telepathic bond, so she just raises her hands, an I'm letting up gesture, and Wrench will feel a new wave of utter silence take over his mind. She's not there, and will not be there, until he reaches out again.

Instead, she attempts to sign to the best of her ability: Do you feel okay here? ('Comfortable' is the word she is looking for.) You can rest?

It really feels like she's translating directly from another language. Hopefully the sentiment is understood, that hopefully despite every unknown in this world, Wrench can find enough space to stop from 'just keep moving'.