Text, event day 2, also a little action

[ssmisery]

[For the record, by this general point in time, Lapis actually would be willing to make video posts, but yeah, not right now. Maybe she should've done this sooner, too -- do people still need to be told what's going on? -- but it's already been a seriously long weekend.]

this one is mine
people are in the items
please let them out

[Straightforward!]

Comments

[angewiesen]

[So it happened to her. Jean decided not to ask about the details.]

Even if some people don't get out, the event will end eventually. They won't be trapped forever.

[The span of 3-4 days the people here would have was a grain of sand in the desert of Lapis' millennia of imprisonment in the mirror.]

[ssmisery]

[That's true, and it's both comforting and oddly sobering. Nobody here is really getting the enormity of her experience -- it's not even just the timeframe, but so many specifics of what happened to her, so much context that made it worse. For all that it was dumb luck beyond her control, so much of it was her; she is not removable from it. In the end this is only Wonderland playing around with bare elements of her past like building blocks.

No one here will be hurt by it the way Lapis was, and it's not like she'd ever want otherwise, but... it's just a lot. Anyway.]

are you trying to cheer me up?

[Honestly she does appreciate the gesture, though.]

[angewiesen]

Just making sure you aren't so lost you can't see the truth of things.

[ssmisery]

[There's a pause. Well, that is the truth of things.]

yeah
wonderland can't REALLY recreate it
not completely
and definitely not with humans
all it does is mess with us

[angewiesen]

Nope. I might worry to death about it, but even if Titans or Shifters suddenly appeared on our shores, they'd be gone in a couple of days and everyone that died would still come back.

Not saying that makes it any less scary or frustrating though.

[ssmisery]

[A slightly longer pause this time.]

an event from you
might be the worst thing that's ever happened to someone here
and it'd still be so much better than what you've actually had to deal with

[angewiesen]

I'm not here to have a pissing contest about who's world would be worst. Everyone has their own shit to deal with.

[ssmisery]

i know
nobody wins
everyone loses
and wonderland sucks

[angewiesen]

Someone needs to write that on a sign and put it out front.

[ssmisery]

you like making things, right?

[She's not sure if that's true or even based on anything and doesn't really care.]

[angewiesen]

I'm not a carpenter. But I bet I could convince someone else to do it. The sentiment is pretty widely shared.

[ssmisery]

[Somewhere out there, Lapis sighs. The merits of distraction have been established previously, but her heart's not in it; the things she doesn't like to think about are way too immediate to get her mind far off of.]

i should've used one of your words
it feels like i missed the prime opportunity at the start of this
but i'm not surprised anymore

[angewiesen]

It's "fuck." Start with that one next time.

[ssmisery]

yeah let's at least wait till this one ends to think about next times
at least it can't be this again

[angewiesen]

A silver lining, I guess.
You gonna be okay?

[ssmisery]

i've already been scared of this happening the entire time i've been here
and frankly my imagination is worse
so i guess i will

[She can't ever be glad that it's finally happening, but at least it's out there and over with. It's a watered-down fraction of what she actually went through, and heck, it didn't even affect her, but it really didn't need to; it's just going to take a while to sort all this out into perspective.]

anyway you can ask about it if you want
it's not like it matters at this point

[angewiesen]

I'm guessing it happened to you, then.

[ssmisery]

[Well, she gave him permission to ask. But really that was tantamount to volunteering to talk about it, wasn't it, merely leaving an out. Lapis doesn't talk about these things less out of secrecy than because she doesn't want to think about them; but right now she is not going to be not thinking about this anytime soon. As established, she'll survive that. So maybe she does want to talk, too. Maybe.

It seems that at some point, Jean has become someone she thinks might understand what she's about to say. Possibly this is related to that trust thing.]

there was a rebellion
i wasn't involved
someone assumed i was
they had a way to try to get information from me
so that i couldn't argue
i didn't have anything for them
eventually they forgot i was ever there
and left me behind

[These are the details the event couldn't get. It's not the same at all, really.]

[angewiesen]

[Sorry Lapis. You earned that trust a long time ago, and Jean was unflinchingly loyal. It's something that comes with the ride-or-die mentality of the Corps.]

So, torture. Then imprisonment. And since Gems don't need sustenance... You were in that prison for a long time.

[ssmisery]

millennia.
now you know.

[You know, the Big Thing About Lapis. Maybe this was a bit of a bad idea after all. She's very tired.]

[angewiesen]

[There's a fairly long pause.]

Fuck.

[A millennia is an amount of time Jean can't comprehend. The history of the Walls only goes back 100 years.]

[ssmisery]

that sums it up yes

[angewiesen]

Well. It explains nearly everything I've wondered about you.

[...]

Don't worry. It stays between us.

[ssmisery]

[...Was that a worry? Something is a worry, some subtle new kind of fear that Lapis isn't familiar with. Maybe it's that. Maybe.

She's never really had to tell anyone before that something bad happened to her. That is, she's told the story before, and she's danced around addressing the impact, but everyone on Earth who was familiar with her already knew that she was scared and hurt. And so she was used to that. It honestly hadn't occurred to her how different it is to be in Wonderland, surrounded by people who know nothing about her, until basically right now. So Jean says he's not going to tell anyone, but Lapis finds that he is not exempt from whatever that worry is, himself. It's too late to take that back, though, and anyway it's not like she didn't make an announcement to the entire populace. He would have been speculating anyway, wouldn't he? He basically just said so.]

like i said it's not like it matters anymore
it's not a secret
and i probably don't want to know what it explains
i should
maybe i shouldve done this differently

[angewiesen]

Uh, it kind of does matter. A lot.

Not to me, exactly. You're still just Lapis as far as I'm concerned. But you can't just blow off a thousand years trapped in a... Whatever it was you were trapped in. I'd think you were crazy if you could.