humiliatious | Cursed Night Market

Welcome

You’re not sure how you got here, but you don’t seem to mind. You feel a pervasive sense of calm with regard to your environment. You have entered what appears to be a night market. Perhaps the concept is familiar to you, or perhaps it isn’t. Colorful stalls, glowing with lantern light, line the path before you. You know what you need to do to return to where you came from. Investigate the various stalls - buy and sell what you have, until you’re able to purchase a path back. The merchants will take any currency that you have on hand. If you don’t have any, you will find some coins of an ambiguous nature in your pocket.

Rare Items

The first stall that you encounter boasts that you can buy and sell rare items. After trading a coin, the merchant hands you something - insists you take it. You don’t recognize the item, but the person behind you does. It is something extremely dear to them. If they check their person, they will find the item missing. If you attempt to return the item to them, you will find that you are unable to. Helpfully, the merchant offers that the person the item belongs to must tell the buyer a story about the item before it can be returned.

Fortunes

The second stall you encounter claims to buy and sell fortunes. Trading a coin, the merchant will relay to you a fortune, but, as you listen, you realize that it isn’t your fortune at all. With a cackle, the merchant explains that you must deliver the fortune with the person behind you. Neither of you can leave the booth until you have revealed to them their future.

Memories

The third stall you encounter claims to buy and sell memories. You can choose to sell the merchant a memory you would like to forget, or you can ask to buy someone else’s memory. Selling your memory will transfer it to the person behind you. In return, you will gain one of their memories. Buying a random memory will instead cause you to forget one of the people most important to you. In some instances, you might feel a great urgency to find someone, although you don't know who it is.

Dreams

The fourth stall you encounter claims to buy and sell dreams. Trading a coin at this stall will cause you and the person behind you to be transported into a shared dream. The dream may be about the highest point in your life or the lowest. It may also be about a close friend, there or gone. It may reveal your greatest desire or your greatest insecurity. Or any number of other things!

OOC notes

Suggestions on prompts: if you’re going to write one where someone will be seeing/receiving something from your character, it’s helpful to describe it in detail in the brackets in your TL. I know some of these prompts are probably a little confusing, but, I mean…it’s roleplay. Just fuck around. No one’s gonna police how you do things here.

Please feel free to top-level, tag in, and share this meme wherever you’d like - it is open to anyone. The four stalls mentioned are prompt suggestions, but you can go crazy and have any stall do basically anything you want. Please see/use subject line CWs. This musebox doesn’t have a dedicated rule list because it’s just for my personal shit, but please be kind, follow standard RP rules - just be nice! Do the right thing! If you have any questions, hit me up here.

code by Flyleaf ❖ inspired by event code by 10billionghosts ❖ background via unsplash

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ She may, eventually, be able to move on. She'll never stop thinking about him, though. Remembering him is the least she can do; it's a debt owed since they were children, since she first had to acknowledge a reality where Eren may no longer be with her. So whether or not Armin told her, she would do it all the same. ]

[ Maybe she's a simple enough person, too. ]

[ The book had been fascinating, of course, but she was never as invested -- as obsessed with it as Armin and Eren. In truth, she did not mind where she lived, what amazing sights she may or may not see, even if she would still of course be excited about them, as long as her loved ones were there. Her home is people. ]

[ There's less of it left now than ever before. ]

...I see.

[ Eren truly always had his sights set forward, didn't he? Always had that touch of destruction about him, something the rest of them were not able -- not willing -- to see until too late. And yet, he loved them, fiercely enough to burn the world down when he couldn't see another path through his rage. If only he hadn't insisted on doing it all alone. Then maybe... ]

[ At least, Armin was able to share his burden in the end, even if it could no longer change anything. At least he, perhaps, was able to give him a moment of feeling lighter, not alone, in ways Mikasa perhaps could not. ]

Thank you, Armin.

[ She moves, a little unsure, hesitant, but she will try to put her arms around him and squish him lightly in an awkward hug, probably smearing the shell's blood on the back of his shirt in the process, or maybe she manages to hold it away. ]

[ And then there were two. ]

[And then there were two...

[Mikasa's not normally the type to hug; Armin is. He puts his arms, free of any bloody shells, easily around her, making up for the awkardness with experience and confidence. He holds her close, protectively clutching the nape of her neck on some instinct he wasn't born with.

[A lump forms in his throat. His eyes burn. He's not prone to breaking down - not since he was just a kid. Things weren't simple back then, but they were simpler than they are now. His fingers sift through black hair. He loves her dearly.

[His voice comes out raw, half-choked. He doesn't pull away - not yet.]

Mikasa...

Could you ever...forgive me?

[ Ah. ]

[ She holds him a little tighter in turn, and she feels like she's choking, like her ribcage is squeezing her heart, threatening to burst. ]

[ You have done nothing that needs forgiving, she wants to say, but that's not entirely true, is it? What he shared just now... His acceptance of Eren's burden. He would have done it, wouldn't he? If Eren had just asked for their help instead of pushing them away... Is that what he wants forgiveness for? ]

[ He didn't. ]

[ But he would have. ]

[ She's not sure about herself, either. In some world, in some reality, perhaps it would have been all three of them against the world. ]

[ Can she forgive Eren? All that death and trampled lives? She doesn't feel it her place. In death, perhaps she already has; she once said that she only has room in her heart for a few people, and yet, she could not let him continue. Perhaps she can't, but it doesn't make her love him any less. ]

[ Perhaps Armin is talking about the book, about perhaps inadvertently setting Eren on his path of destruction. But Mikasa knows -- feels, perhaps -- better than anyone how unavoidable it was. Even if it never happened, something else would have. Those were the dreams she had, were they not? Visions? A gift from Ymir? She's not sure. ]

...Yes.

[ She mutters into his shoulder, holding him close. ]

Can you forgive me?..

[ It was her hand, after all, that took him away from them with resounding finality -- even if, she supposes, most of Eren had been gone a while before that. ]

[Mikasa doesn't argue - thank God she doesn't argue, or Armin wouldn't know what to do with himself. As for her question, he doesn't argue either. He knows exactly what she means. Every day, he lives with the guilt of having to aid in Eren's death, but he wasn't the one who had to bring the blade down through his neck, had to carry his disembodied head back to his friends. She'd looked so calm, at the time.

[He presses his nose into her hair, and without thinking, adds a small kiss. She's like a sister to him. He doesn't question it.]

Of course I do. Of course I do...

[Because it's what had to be done. Eren ensured that. Armin still blames himself, and he still blames Eren, but not Mikasa.

[No. Not Mikasa, and not anyone else either. He never would.]

[ She knows him better than that. And even if she didn't, she would know better than to try to win an argument against Armin of all people. Perhaps it's fitting; all three of them monsters, in different ways. ]

[ Even now, she's subdued in her sorrow, though she lets herself close her eyes for a moment as their embrace holds, accepting his affection if not quite sure how to return it. It's not awkward or out of place. He's the closest family she has left. ]

...I'm glad you're here. Armin.

[ She whispers an absolution, a comfort, because while Armin may feel guilt for not helping or stopping Eren himself as she suspects, if he had done that, one or both of them may not be here either. They could not be having this hug, one she realized she has needed so desperately ever since then. ]

[ If she had to face a world without Eren alone, she's not sure she could do it. ]

[ With Armin still in her world, with his forgiveness for shattering theirs, she may just find the courage for it. ]

[ They owe it to him. And they can remember. ]

[It's immediate, soft, earnest - so terribly, terribly earnest, and so terribly, terribly true, despite everything.]

I'm glad you're here too.

And I love you.

[ Of course it is. Of all things she could doubt in this world, she would never doubt her family, not like this. ]

[ She wants to say it back, but the words feel like a broken thing stuck in her throat. The words she never said, the words that could have saved the world if only she had uttered them... could it have, really? She doesn't know, but there was at least one reality where it did, though she doubts it could have been this one. ]

[ If she hadn't said it then, what right does she have to say them now?.. ]

[ Instead she just holds Armin closer, carefully squeezing him tighter for a moment in response, letting her arms express what she's unable to voice. She knows he will know. ]

Cursed Night Market

good 😌

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

FUCKING SOBBING I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this but BLESS THIS THREAD

<3 it's a wraaap