EVENT #7: THE SIGHT

[abraxasmods]

Event #7 - The Sight

go to the OOC event info and plotting post

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The night before APRIL 18, your dreams are disrupted by a vivid image of the same eclipse that occurred last month. The black sun seems to be an endless void in the sky, growing ever darker - until it suddenly opens into an eye that stares straight at you.

When you wake up, much of your night seems a blur except for the vivid dream of that eye. Whether you find it unsettling or try to ignore it, the image is something you cannot get out of your mind. If you ask, you will discover that none of the locals of your faction saw another eclipse. Speak with your fellow Summoned, however, and you may learn that while there was no eclipse that formed over the world, you were not the only one who had this dream.

Of course, dreams don't need to mean anything. You can't feel or see any immediate effects, and nearly everyone around you is going about their day as usual. Maybe you should do the same.

The Awakening

It might happen that very morning or a day or two later. You could be discussing the dream with a fellow Summoned or perhaps you simply brush shoulders with them as you walk by. Whatever it is, as soon as you make brief physical contact, one of you is struck with a sharp pain in your temple that grows into a terrible headache. It's disorienting and painful as the world around you shifts to someplace you may or may not recognize. Like an old film reel, you watch the events of the past play out before you: the past of the other Summmoned. It might be something they would rather hide, a moment of failure or despair, or something they are immensely proud of and brings them great joy - or even a jumble of several images over the course of a person's life. But you see it as if it were real and right in front of you all the same. When you come to, you'll likely find yourself on the ground or bent over, possibly with one or more people around you to see if you're okay. It'll take you a bit to gather your bearings, and the subsequent pounding in your head could last from minutes to hours.

Or, maybe you aren't the one who receives the vision. Instead, as you watch, another Summoned might grasp their head and crumble in front of you. They may go silent or groan in pain. They'll be impossible to shake out of their stupor until it's over. If you ask what happened, they may be inclined to tell you the truth - that you, you were what happened to them.

Or, if your Arcana signs happen to line up in a specific way, you'll see each other in the shared memory itself. You may also find that for certain Summoned, you can help soothe the effects, calm their emotions, or help draw them out of the memory before it consumes them for too long. It's not entirely clear what determines which effect, but one thing is for certain - within each memory, every Summoned as they appear in the past seems to wear the mark of their Arcana somewhere on their person.

For some, they might experience this only once. For others, they might experience it multiple times: with the same person, with several other Summoned, or with a different memory each time. Over the next 7 days, you'll find the Summoned around you are all receiving a glimpse into each other's past, as if the Singularity has awoken an eye within each of you.

Flee for the safety of the Horizon if you want, but you'll find that in there, it's much the same. In fact, inside the Horizon, the other Summoned don't even need to be anywhere near you - just existing in the Horizon space itself together will be enough to possibly set off a headache-inducing vision.

The Factions

What has occurred between the Summoned will not go unnoticed within the factions. While it's difficult to say how faction officials have picked up what's happening, it'll be obvious they do know.

In THORNE, characters will be asked to remain in the castle walls until further notice. Characters will not be allowed to leave the castle grounds, not even to go into the surrounding city, and anyone who is already outside will be requested to not leave again as soon as they return. If asked, they will be told it's for their own safety, given the Singularity is behaving unpredictably and the Summoned have a unique connection to it. Soothing potions and healers are on hand to offer assistance, if anyone is particularly suffering from ill effects.

In the FREE CITIES, characters will find the army by the outposts show more activity than usual. A higher number of guards will patrol the streets throughout the event, particularly in areas frequented by the Summoned. Anyone who publicly and visibly experiences the effects of the memory share (pain, doubling over, etc.) will be offered assistance by the guards. They are generally there to help, but they are also there to maintain order and ensure anyone behaving erratically due to this incident is properly contained. This might include confinement for a day or two if anyone is especially posing a risk, but no one will be punished except in the most extreme cases, as the locals are aware this is not within the control of the Summoned.

In SOLVUNN, the locals will be watching what's happening with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity. Host families and neighbors will be on hand to help with charms meant to offer protection, as well as general care and assistance (soup, blankets, and so on) if your character seems to be especially under the weather or afflicted by the event. Towards the end of the event, more elders and mages will be out and about to check up on the Summoned to make sure they're doing okay. If asked, the mages will say they aren't sure what's going on, but that they are currently divining with the gods and hope to have a definitive answer soon in the upcoming days.

None of the factions appear to be doing much more than keep a watchful eye on the situation - but as the week comes to a close, officials will start making a decision as to what they want to do and how to handle the Summoned who have demonstrated this unforeseen connection to the Singularity.

Comments

[carmesi]

[no matter how doctor strange is trying to sort his actions, filter the reason why it was all necessary, wanda can't help but feel like it's a cold logic. she's too caught up in the moment—in the emotion that burns still at the memory of losing vision not once, but twice. it's a compounding of everything, and the man standing before her trying to offer an apology by explaining things to her—as if she doesn't get it—is a bigger injury than anything else.

wanda is more than willing to live in the painful reality that vision is gone. though she was the one to kill him at first, it was his choice to make, and, beyond everything else, wanda respects it.

for doctor strange to stand here and offer anything but an apology?]

Out.

[wanda is not one for physicality, not when she's fending off against others. but, today? in this moment? she breaches the space between her and doctor strange, uses her hands to press against his chest and shove him, to step back and off her porch.]

Get out!

[isn't this just a way to make himself feel better? she's hurt, by his words and his actions—and not a single word out of him right now sounds to her like he's apologizing for her sake. she steps forward and pushes him away one more time; she doesn't care if he'll trip on the steps.]

I don't want to see you. I don't want to hear you. You don't get it — you never will, and you've come here for yourself!

[sorser]

[He doesn’t have time to reply. And he wonders, before anything else transpires, if she’s right — if he’s fully deserving of her anger, because it’s simply the price he must pay for making his own decisions. Apologies feel weak and hollow; he offers a reasonable explanation instead. Reasonable explanation feels cold; he cannot find a grounding point of connection between them to clarify, not when that foundation had already been shattered. Stephen stands there, frustrated at his own silence, at his own uselessness to fix this, and doesn’t resist when Wanda pushes him the first time.

He feels it then, creeping at the edges of his consciousness. Ghost-like images trying to wheedle into the crevices of his mind. No, not now. Distracted, Wanda shoves him again, and he takes a backward step as the memory collides into him without hesitation, without mercy.

Stephen watches through her eyes Vision’s death, twice over. It’s not fair, he says. It shouldn’t be you, but it is. And perhaps that’s emblematic of everything else that happens — her emotions are not his, but they are so stark that they might as well be physical, they might as well rend him in two. Vision is gone, the stone destroyed by her own magic, and he can only watch, knowing the worst is to come. Knowing that Thanos will turn all of this pain and sacrifice into nothing,

And he does.

Vision’s second death sickens him, watching the power he once had guardianship over used in this way. Years later, and the sight of the Mad Titan still incites dread in the pit of his stomach, like a poison that still hasn’t dissipated. He feels it now. The reaction to him stealing away the Mind Stone, wrenching it from a newly-revived Vision, is not his own trauma — but he understands it. Witnesses it. It may as well be.

When the memory ends, Stephen finds himself on the ground, his head splitting, his stomach rolling. The stairs of Wanda’s porch sits beside him, having fallen off after she had shoved him a second time, caught by his cloak to ease the fall but too assaulted by memory to notice. He grasps for the ground with weak hands, trying to push himself up, trying to sort through what he’s seen, trying to—]

I couldn’t—

[He thinks of Vision’s corpse, lifeless, drained, discarded.]

—save everyone.

[The admittance is guttural, grave. Desperate.]

I couldn’t fix everything, I wanted to, but I—

[He couldn’t. He lived through millions of realities filled with death, pain, failure, to seek out one single thread of hope. And even the one he found was still tainted with loss. Its own pockets of pain.]

[carmesi]

[wanda watches him fall, sees the signs that he's going through the bizarre flux of memories that's drowning their thoughts at any random time. she breathes shakily, watching him coil in pain, and in the quiet of her domain she steps down the steps to the ground. there's dread, wondering what he sees—if her own memory, or someone else's—and is starkly reminded of what she had seen hours before.

doctor strange in a car, looking so different from now, allowing his arrogance to send him spiraling down a steep cliff, his hubris destroying the one thing he ever prided himself on: his immaculate hands. wanda watches them as they curl into fists, sitting on her haunches by him, silent. she had wondered about the scars, and now she knows.

about the countless surgeries to fix them to no avail; of bridges he burnt; of solace in the magic of kamar-taj and his rookie attempts to use it with little success at first. it's strange to see that such a well-versed sorcerer struggled not too long ago.

he speaks, pulling out of whatever memory he's envisioned, and his words—they draw tears from her eyes. she's so tired of this pain—of working so hard, of sacrificing so much, only to end up with nothing.

wanda swallows thickly, and—despite herself—despite her anger, her resentment, she finds one of his hands, wraps her hands around it. his broken hands are big, her own unbroken ones warm around it. she saw loss in his memories, of a man who is used to control having to deal with not having it. wanda wonders what it's like—to ever have control of your own life, but figures she can't hate him for how different their lives were. to have that guilt pulsing through him the way his words indicate, she can't imagine.

in the same way he could never imagine what it's like for her, to have the chaos be offered a sense of control, only to be whisked away.

wanda's words are thick, wet, barely proper sounds outside of muttered grief.]

I know what sacrifice is. I killed him for the sake of half the universe. I knew the stakes, I was willing to make them. I took responsibility. But you, the stone you kept, it erased all that. It took my pain for granted. It took Vis's choice away.

[there's a shaky breath, but her expression shifts, softens. she takes a hold of his other hand, gently, and helps him sit up.]

I'm tired. I'm tired of being misunderstood. You're... I wish I could trust you.

[she says these things, but her actions are the opposite of them. she keeps his hands in hers.]

Won't you listen to me. [a whisper:] Really listen, Stephen?

[not the act of listening, but understanding—meaningfully so.]

[sorser]

[He knows she's right. He had known it before this moment, before she even says the words, before she offers her hand on his own to help him up. He does not fight the gesture; he feels as though there's hardly enough spark in him to resist even if he wanted to, but he doesn't.]

I know. I took more than just your choice away, or his. When half of the universe is at stake, then- [His voice is airy, shaky, but finally he can lift his head to look at her evenly, frowning. Imploring, despite deep lines wrinkling across his brow.] -then I've effectively made the choice for all of that half, too.

[And still, he would not have made another choice. He knew then it was necessary, and he knows it now, too. But there is a point he can accede, something that he perhaps should have said long before now, instead of hoping against hope for the right time, right place to tell her the truth about the Time Stone.]

And I'm... I'm sorry that all it did was cause more pain for the both of you. I wish everything could have turned out differently, Wanda. I'm not trying to...

[He trails off. He's not trying to not listen. But arguing the point feels ironically tone-deaf, too. It is up to her whether or not she decides to trust him. Whether or not this chasm can be crossed.]

[carmesi]

It's not fair.

[he trails off, but wanda doesn't bother to listen to what else he may be trying to put into neat, logical sentences. she interjects, knowing that even when she speaks quietly, stephen will listen, because she asked him to.

and for all that wanda may disagree with all these men who make decisions for her, who assume they know best, she knows their heart is in the right place.]

It's not fair that Thanos wanted the Mind Stone. It's not fair that you had to make that choice.

[wanda gets that—that horrible feeling of responsibility, like the pressure of the world is on your shoulders. she's felt it in a smaller scale, how gut wrenching it is, when sokovia was destroyed because of the fear she planted in tony stark's mind.

she swallows thickly, tears rolling down her cheeks. she lets go of his hands now, letting her own drop to her lap.]

I couldn't stand this pain. [her eyes blink the tears away, a tired sigh spilling in her words.] It's why Westview happened, and it's not — [another pause, now revealing that she's seen his memories, too.] You had teachers. Friends. A home, when you lost your hands. I only had Vis.

[her hands curl into fists, pulling at the fabric of her clothes.]

I only had him.

[sorser]

[She releases his hands, and he feels strangely unmoored. Stephen clasps them together, running a thumb over the line of a long-healed scar. He shakes his head.]

I’m sorry. [—he repeats, lifting his head to catch her gaze. Seeing the tears there, for once seeming to really realize the depths of her loneliness beyond what her actions implied.

What would he have been, if he had no one? So deep in desperation, with nothing to turn to — he would have done anything to regain some semblance of control, a sense of comfort. He would have been angry at anyone who tried to tear it away from him.

He cannot blame her for feeling this way. Trying to rationalize everyone’s emotions into logical sense, to reason it into agreement, is his own way of dealing with what they’ve all been through. The bridge of communication they can never cross with each other, because there is always a big gaping hole in the middle, indicative of their wildly different coping mechanisms.

Maybe that gap has lessened, just a little, now.]

I can’t change what’s already happened. But I don’t want you to think… that it was easy for me, either. Not everything is numbers and probabilities for me, the ends justifying the means.

[He has a heart in there, too.]

[carmesi]

[stephen apologizes again and wanda listens to how he explains, how he tries to make it easy for her to understand that he isn't as cold logic as he comes off as. in the end, things just sound like a justification for her when all she's asked is for him to see her side.

perhaps, in that sense, they will never see eye to eye.

but perhaps that isn't something they need to aim for. wanda is her own person with her own grievances, pushed about by the flow of things that were and are; stephen, on the other hand, is a man with stipulated responsibilities, reacting to his duties.

she picks herself up, dusting off any dirt on her legs, before offering a hand for the sorcerer to take. wanda will help him up, because regardless of how different they may be, are they not on the same team?]

All that is in the past now.

[and once stephen is on his feet again—]

I only care for a way to get my children back.

just going with the fact that stephen heard of her kids!!! dont at me mcu

[sorser]

[He takes her hand, his grip weak but unflagging. Once standing, Stephen somehow manages to stay on his feet despite the slight sway. He doesn't care enough to run a hand over his sorcerer's garb to flatten out the wrinkles, nor dust off the soil that's stuck to his front.

Wanda's comment in far too distracting for that.]

—your children?

[He doesn't know the details of what happened at Westview, but the overall gist never escaped him. In that strange utopia of her own making, she had fashioned a perfect life for herself, which did include two young boys. But they had been just that — a product of her coping mechanism, a self-delusions that she herself banished.]

I don't understand. I thought you had created them with your magic.

[carmesi]

And yet they exist somewhere.

[she had heard their calling for her, begging her to help. as a mother, how could she possibly ignore them just because they no longer existed in her reality.

wanda takes a step back, her hands kept together by her waistline, studying stephen's face. this is it — this is the one thing wanda had been so tight-lipped about around him, this desire of her to bring her children into this world, one way or another, given that she can't quite leave it yet.]

If I could just bring them here— with the Summoning spell. I...

[this is why she had been so curious about it before, asking him about it.]

I would bring them here to be with me. [her lips move, trying to ascertain her words and not let spill the myriad of emotions she feels.] I'd stay here, and I wouldn't ... bother anyone ever again. There is nothing left for me, not after Thanos. Not after Westview.