70ftandcounting | [audio] -> open commentlog

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@holloways_keep,
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[This is something that has been bothering Rapunzel. She doesn't even give a preamble to this post, she just bursts out with it.]

What...what is wrong with all of you?!

[Yes, ALL OF YOU B|]

All...all you want to do is fight and hurt each other!

[She doesn't understand this. She's seen more violence and fighting and injury in the past week than she has in the past few months. NEW PEOPLE STOP HURTING EACH OTHER K]

Why?! I...I don't understand...

[She slams the book shut, and leaves her room and heads towards the Bower. It's the only place where she feels like...things are normal. Feel free to run into her there.]

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[As ferocious as a sand-walker! He wouldn't want to get in your way, that's for certain.

At her decision, Asuka's face lights up in a smile.]

Great! [And just like that, he's turning on his heel, headed back inside with just one look over his shoulder to wave her in as well. He leads them straight into the tea room, where he makes a beeline for a pot, peering into it.]

Why don't you pick out what type you'd like while I get this heated?

[Heeee's just going to be a little waste of magic now. While she's looking he uses some of his water-magic to rinse the pot out--just in case--and fill it up.]

[Yeah! Exactly!

...Whatever a sand-walker is...

At his smile, the pan lowers completely, and she trails in after him, eyes still just a little suspicious.]

...Okay.

[Pick tea. She can do that - that's easy enough, right? She heads over to take a look, browsing through until she finds something that she knows she likes.]

[The tea-making goes quickly. Asuka's being careful to try and involve Rapunzel in the process, while still allowing her the chance to watch and come to a (hopefully positive!) decision regarding him.

But sooner or later, the tea will be done, and Asuka will be claiming a table for the two of them to share. He gestures to the other chair, busying himself with pouring two cups of tea.]

All right. You said your name was Rapunzel, right?

So what's got you looking so down, huh?

[For the most part, Rapunzel does come to a positive decision about him. Throughout her time at the Keep, she's learned that people as a whole generally...aren't as bad as Mother made them out to be. It's...a relief that humanity isn't as warped and terrible as she'd previously thought but it...confuses her as to why her mother would let her believe otherwise when that clearly isn't the case.

She's more than happy to help, and with her frying pan tucked safely under her arm, she trails after him and takes a seat, nodding.]

Yes, Rapunzel.

[Her face drops a little.]

...There's...I just don't understand why so many people want to hurt each other here.

[-Ohhhh-. He'd heard that post over the journals earlier. Asuka nods, considering his response for a moment.]

...you know, a few years ago, my mother passed away.

[He looks into his cup, remembering it, but not bitter anymore.]

After it happened, my brother and I started fighting a lot. There were a couple of times we really managed to hurt each other.

There wasn't really any good reason for it, it was just because we were both hurting ourselves. It was a lot easier to just get angry than it was to deal with the fact that she was gone.

I think that's how it is for a lot of people here. They're feeling lost or scared because they've lost their worlds, or maybe they just feel like they're not good enough compared to someone else. [That's an important point!] Sometimes people try to prove they're better than other people by fighting, too.

From what I've seen, it's pretty common for people to deal with things just by getting angry like that.

[It's days like this that Rapunzel fervently wishes that she wasn't so sheltered or even that her mother had at some point decided to have another baby, so that Rapunzel would at least have had someone to talk to and play with. She knows very little about social interactions and physical ones to boot, and...fighting physically with someone else is such a foreign concept to her she can't wrap her head around it.

Verbally, she's argued with her mother. But it's never, ever come to blows. Rapunzel has always, always bowed to her mother's will, because her mother was always right.

Or so she'd thought.]

O-oh...I'm sorry...

[She also knows next to nothing about death, besides that of maybe an insect, and at Kevas's gathering, she hadn't known how to act or what she was supposed to do there, either. Experiences - important life experiences that everyone else has had - rites of passage; eighteenth birthdays, the death of a puppy, falling down and getting hurt...?

She's never had that, and she wants, for once in her life...almost to feel some kind of physical pain just to know what it's like to feel, to really be alive instead of porcelain, like one of her dolls back in the tower.

Then she feels foolish, and banishes the thought. Her mother would be so disappointed if she even knew the thought had crossed Rapunzel's mind.]

But...

[She hesitated.]

Why...do they have to physically hit each other? Try to kill each other?

Sometimes, when an emotion is really strong, you have to let it out somehow. Kind of like how when you get really sad, you might cry.

[He has to think about it, remember one of those particularly bad fights.]

Say... you might get angry, be angry at everything around you. Maybe because your dad's not there, hasn't been there for several days--and you know if your mom was still there he would've been home every night that week. And your brother comes in just as angry, who knows why. He shuts the door a little too hard, you snap at him, he snaps back, and suddenly it's an argument.

You're already angry, and this is just adding fuel to the fire. Suddenly, words aren't enough to express how mad you are--it's still building up inside you, and it's making you unable to think straight. Then before you know it your hands are moving, and you're shoving him, and he's fighting back, and a couple minutes later your forearms are burnt and your brother's missing his eyebrows because you singed them both off.

[He starts solemnly, but at the end of his story he's got a bit of a grin on his face, remembering.]

Not that I'd advise trying to singe somebody's eyebrows off, of course, but once we both calmed down, we realized how stupid we were being and laughed it off.

[Did that. Even answer the question?]

[She understands the tears - crying, she gets. She felt horrible when she'd left her tower. Incredibly guilty for betraying her mother and lying to her, Rapunzel had cycled through elation and extreme sadness before steeling herself for her journey with Flynn, though she had been immediately brought here before she could even make it out of the glade.

But when he dissolves into the story about fathers and mothers being upset about it and brothers and fires...

She deflates, just a little and looks down at her teacup and wishes again that she wasn't so naive and clueless as to the outside world.

But she looks back up and resolves to find out more, find out what having a 'Dad' is really all about (she likens it maybe to having Kevas around) and what it's like to have someone you argue with because you care about them. She wants these life experiences he's talking about and she sits up a little in her seat, determined to have them somehow.]

So, when people get really angry...sometimes they just...hit each other? [She hesitates.]

It...doesn't seem very nice.

It isn't very nice. But sometimes people don't know any other way to let that anger out.

Sometimes it just kind of... happens.

[And then there are the people who are just flat-out psychotic, but. Baby steps. First he wants to make it clear that people aren't always -choosing- to hurt each other.]

I think...I understand. [Maybe a little, very tiny bit. But...]

The...punishments here fir fighting are...really bad. [She toys with her cup.]

They're really bad, actually. [She'd missed most of the ones that had been dealt so far. She...had had to leave.]

Then maybe those punishments will make people think twice before they start swinging fists, hmm?

[He's not going to ask about the punishments. He heard about Kevas's, although he thinks a couple of days in the dungeon is light punishment for what it might have been in Desuya.]

For some people, it may not be enough, though.

[She doesn't really answer at first. It doesn't really seem to deter people...]

Maybe.

[She sniffs.]

[Is she going to cry? Asuka really hopes she's not going to cry. Because if she cries, he's going to want to give her a hug, and he doesn't think he's allowed to yet.]

Hey, chin up, all right? There are some good reasons to fight, too.

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