10 for Elijah

Have you ever ruined something good? Like a friendship, a good day, a possession, something sacred?

“But of course,” Elijah did not hesitate in this confession, for the simple fact, “Haven’t we all?” He could not think of a single man or woman whom he had ever spoken to, who did not hold in their heart the weight of guilt and regret for some crime left unpunished against their soul. Perhaps, in the worst cases, those sorrows were exacerbated by the fact that they had been punished, but not in any way that could alleviate the shackles set upon the spirit by the act – or, conversely, the punishment had been too cruel to fit the crime.

He was no more innocent than any other soul – and since taking commission with the Navy his regrets had certainly collected over the passage of time. To claim otherwise indicated either dishonesty with one’s self – or worse, a callousness which Elijah had no desire to ever reach. Now, as to specifics on this front – well, there were many to choose from, were there not?

He had ruined his relationship with his father in seeking this life – first by pushing the man to concede in affording him the right to chase it, and then by facing against his father’s ambitions and finding them – ugly. He resisted, and in so doing cleaved a strain between them that grew evermore into a chasm – and there had once been a time, when he had believed nothing in this world could ever come between him and his loyalty and love for the man.

He had severed ties with his own brothers in an effort to escape their shadows and live a life that would never plague them. He would not reach for their help, and in turn he would not be colored by their actions anymore than they by his.

He had broken his mother’s heart – and if ever there was something sacred to be held, it was surely the gentle spirit of a woman who meant well.

Smiling softly, he chose a crueller crime than any of the above to confess, for of them all it was the only one that could be found on paper. “I imagine I have ruined the lives of many good and noble men over the course of my career – and ended yet more permanently. The wives and children, the mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers I have robbed are doubtless numerous – and while I will not decry my country, I do at times wonder what it was all for.”

intolerablexsacrifice replied to your post:
DON’T TOUCH THE SNAKE HOLMES

by comfortable habitat tank you mean the deep ocean right

I most certainly do not.

1, 5, 11 for Theodore

{ Tragic Honesty }

Name someone you’ve hurt. Do you regret what you’ve done?

”Doubtless, I have harmed many people over the course of my career – I am, after all, an officer in arguably the greatest Navy upon the seven seas. As is the nature of such matters, incidents do occur – anything from infractions against the Articles to death upon my sword. Could I name each of these individuals, or even remember their faces? Certainly not – but would I regret my actions? I cannot truly say that I would,” He confessed, looking up, “I do not live my life collecting such things – I do what must be done and I move forward. Now – as to other hurts – such as emotional inflictions,”

Here, Theodore hesitated, before folding his hands before him and stating frankly, “It is never my intention to cause harm but where I have, if I am aware of what I have done, I would like to believe I have found means of making amends by now so as to avoid the formation of a future regret. I do not believe in ignoring my mistakes with others – it is simply my experience that few will acknowledge I have hurt them, unless it is to excuse what they have already meted out of me in recompense. So I suppose – I cannot name any regrets in particular, no.”

Name someone you want to be friends with even though you know it wouldn’t work out.

”Davy Jones.” There wasn’t even a hint of hesitation on that score. “While I highly doubt he would welcome the attempts, heavens know I will make the effort all the same. His seems an incredibly lonely lot, wouldn’t you say? Surely even magical beings such as he are deserving of friendly companionship?”

Have you ever been abandoned? Why do you think you were left behind?

“Ah – never intentionally, I don’t think. And most times I’ve been ‘left behind’ as it were have been my own doing. I do have a rather remarkable habit of attracting adventures, but I cannot say I regret it. In truth I find it very invigorating, and I am quite blessed in my friends, who do always tend to notice me missing eventually and come get me once they do.”

{ Tragic Honesty }

Name a time you failed something and disappointed many people and/or embarrassed yourself. – Hume from @harriedwritings

It was not hard to reach – the familiar sensation of shame crushing against his chest and making it difficult to breathe as the weight of judgemental stares bore down upon him, the admiralty’s displeasure with his offering of a damned woman as opposed to the notorious pirate he had been sent to retrieve.

Oh, he had been able to spin his excuses under trial – Hennessey refused to back him in any way shape or form as he stood upon the stand, but that did nothing to change the years of training and shaping and moulding beneath that man’s hand to make him anything less than a compelling force in his own defense. Yet for all he sold them, the initial displeasure hung palpable through the air, and he knew that he had slipped from his grace as the darling to many of those esteemed men. He would have to prove himself to them once again, and he felt the iron weight in the pit of his stomach sink lower at the prospect.

“Beneficial though the capture of Eleanor Guthrie proved to be for my career, the price of her arrest was not particularly welcome or sustainable when weighed against whom I was meant to be paying for. I disappointed my superiours greatly in bringing her, not to mention in pardoning men to do so – it was a great embarrassment indeed to reconcile my error before the admiralty and argue the woman’s worth, but I would argue – at great personal risk to myself – that the greatest injustice of it all lay in how much the failure to capture Flint cost to my men. I cannot forgive myself for laying them low, and I will not rest until I have regained the grace necessary to serve them properly once again.”

{ Tragic Honesty }

Have you ever shown a bad side of yourself to someone you love? -Gates from @harriedwritings

“I don’t think you can really say you’ve loved someone if you never seen any of their ugly, nor shared any of your own. Love is stronger than some butterflies in the stomach, or some bullshit blood-based obligations set upon us by social expectations. Love is seeing the fucking worst in someone and knowing damn well that even if you hate the shit they pull sometimes, there’s not a damn thing you wouldn’t do for em. So yeah. The people I love have seen my ugly – and you can bet your ass I’ve held them through and beyond their own in turn for it.”

{ Tragic Honesty }

Do you ever do things to hurt yourself? Talk about a time you have. – Eleanor from @harriedwritings

“Do you mean deliberately?” There was a slightly indignant hint to her tone – the insinuation that she might be so distraught as to fix her canon against herself was absolutely beyond the pale. “Of course not, what the fuck would that accomplish?”

While Eleanor would not deny the fact that she had made mistakes that had resulted in her suffering all manner of inconveniences and personal pains, she had certainly never gone out with the intention of causing them, or of punishing herself for something else through present actions.

Such thoughts and behaviours weren’t profitable by any means she could discern, though she supposed there was – some sort of merit in realizing that if she could profit through self inflicted pain, she might be willing to consider bleeding herself if the payout was high enough.

{ Tragic Honesty }

Name one of the traits you hate most about yourself, why do you hate it? = Charles from @harriedwritings

Charles actually answered this in an offsite roleplay, in two particular methods. What I am going to do is transcribe both of them over and then unpack them – this isn’t something he would answer honestly without being pressed into very specific corners, so this is going to be more along the lines of mun analysis than character response – but as the pieces involved are his exact words it will still have ‘the vibe’ I hope. So, without further ado:

Part One:

“I don’t need a saviour.” He would not live in that kind of debt to any man. Ever. “My submission and obedience was fucking tactical, no matter what it fucking cost me to give it. You don’t get to pity me for doing what was necessary for your gambit to play out, and you don’t get to judge me either. And you sure as fuck do not get to consider me weak because the weakness England bred into me served you until it was too much for your morals to take. I did what needed to be done – you took the shot, you made the choice and I offered you a means to keep playing your game if you’d wanted it. But don’t think you saved me or that you can punish me for pushing your hand when I was doing exactly what needed to be done!”

This one is actually pretty easy to unpack because Charles spells it all out in how he emphasizes matters and at what point. One thing Charles hates about himself is “the weakness bred into him by England” – in other words, the fear of being a slave, the terror of being back in chains and forced into a position of subjugation and subservience. This is covered more in part two – but in short, Charles hates that he is still afraid.

On top of this, Charles hates that this fear, and his ability to submit, to genuinely bow his head, can be perceived as weakness or something worth pity. Being looked down upon or seen as lesser on account of what he has survived is one of the biggest insults Charles can come up against, and it infuriates him that those with no experience being stripped of their autonomy and freedom think they can pass judgement on those who have when they make particular choices or show certain vulnerabilities.

The harder point to unpack is the fact that Charles himself is vulnerable to certain kinds of fear, and does need to be comforted and cared for like any other human being, but feels obligated to conceal that need in order to appear strong and better avoid being degraded in any way. He does want someone to rely on – he does want to feel safe and at times, when the trauma is at the surface, he does want to feel like he has someone who can and will protect him. He hates that there is a part of him that desperately, horribly needs to be able to rely on and trust others – because it’s actually terrifying to reveal being vulnerable even when your reputation doesn’t revolve around being the scariest fuck in town.

He wants to rely on people, but he is too aware of how that can be manipulated and abused. He hates that he fears being punished as much as he fears being seen as weak, and he combats it preemptively in order to better protect himself from pain.

Part Two:

“I hate that there’s a part of me that’s still afraid.” He let that hang a moment, then, “I hated every fucking minute that man was on this ship, and I hated telling myself that — that the fear and the submission, that the bowing was just — temporary. Because it’s not. That shit’s always going to be a part of me, and that’s why I can’t fucking stand it."

As previously mentioned – Charles deepest point of self loathing is the fact that he is still afraid – but also, with that, the awareness that it will always be a part of who he is, a point that motivates him, a vulnerability that can be exploited and soothed in turns – but never wholly eradicated from what makes Charles Vane, Charles Vane.

I was gonna say more but honestly lads that about sums it up!

{ Tragic Honesty }

Talk about one of your worst memories involving someone you love. – Abigail from @harriedwritings

Despite herself, Abigail finds her mind drawing forth the echoes of conversations never meant for her ears – the terrible, deafening realization that her father had built his legacy on a foundation of deception and unimaginable cruelty toward those he had called his friends.

The moment that the veil between monsters in pamphlets and the demons of the real world, forever imprinted on her mind with the echo of a gunshot and the vivid recollection of unseeing eyes as a dark pool formed a wicked halo around the face of a woman who had dared voice her righteous anger.

“When you form a world where heroes and monsters exist,” Her soft voice seemed tempered more than ever now, breathy with care over each affected syllable for no other reason than to ascertain she did not fall to pieces over her answer, “You create for yourself a pedestal. The day my father’s turned over, it was worse than rotten on the inside – it was coagulated with corpses and lies, and the true depths of him will haunt me so long as I live. All I can do, is hold on to the value of truth – a value instilled by him as surely as it was disregarded in his own dealings – and make of myself a better person than he ever was, for it.”

{ Tragic Honesty }

Name someone you want to be friends with even though you know it wouldn’t work out – Silver from @harriedwritings

After some quiet consideration, the answer is succinct as it is poignant. “Joji.”

{ Tragic Honesty }
Have you ever been abandoned? Why do you think you were left behind? – Thomas from @harriedwritings

Fingers drum against the smooth surface of the desk before him, a steady cadence in an otherwise unsteady environment. The clock that turns against the wall is the only counter to the beat, even the breathing of the two people occupying the room seeming to be frozen between the soft disturbances against an intense sort of silence.

A long intake of breath seems to echo in surroundings not built for such cavernous acoustics, and the answer, when it comes, feels almost inconsistent with the tension built by the ceaseless drumming. “I believe we have all experienced abandonment in our lives, through one form or another.” A tone as unreadable as the note was neutral, the drumming came to a notable stop. In the lingering silence the clock seemed to thunder, the minute hand locking into place just above the three –

“For me, I would say my experiences were born of convenience.” A pause as the time turns itself back, thoughts lingering in the distant past. The minute hand dips another notch. “Some things are easier buried than they are borne – this is a fact of our society, cobbled together as it is by the laws of convention.” Spoken with conviction, yes, but lacking something fundamental for words offered with such collected dismissal. There’s another dip, the slightest of clicks as hands fold to obscure lips, but do nothing to dim the storm behind blue eyes.

“Some things – are easier to fight for when they are ideas as opposed to realities that come with consequences. Yes,” At last, a hint of emotion, hissed through clenched teeth unseen behind the clasping fingers, “I have been abandoned – and I submit to the fact that it was convenience that made it so. All who stood for me – they did so in ways that served their needs best – and for that, I cannot fault them.”

The three was cut cleanly in half as the final portion fell into place. Understanding did not, by extension, encourage forgiveness. It was, simply, an awareness of the situation and an acceptance of bitter truths – but it was not, in and of itself, a slate wiped clean through acknowledgement of impossible circumstances.

The hands fell, the clock ticked, the final truth revealed in it’s coldest simplicity. “I made of myself a target – and in so doing I made my own existence untenable in the eyes of friend and foe alike. I made it impossible for my convictions to be ignored – and that recklessness in turn secured the end for me. All men are disposable – and I made it easy to bury my voice, in the end. My abandonment, then, is crafted by no surer hands than my own.”