Making all his nowhere plans for nobody // DIMITRI AUGUST CDC

[Dimitri]

10. love + what's a situation that would cause y/c to betray those closest to them?

Love was life to Donovan. Love was several things to him. He imagined love as both forms- he’d read this once, as both agape and eros. Unconditional love and sexual love. To him, unconditional love was a grandpa or a parent holding you and telling them that the loved you. It was hot rolls and a lick on the top of the head. Sexual love was a fine, lovely woman who smiled at you and gave you more intimate, close kisses. The neck, the chest, ran her paws or hands over your body and- that was sexual love to him. Closeness, not sex.
Dimitri… would never see unconditional love in the same way he did. Dimitri understood the love of a parent to be harsh and uncaring, he only understood the kind of kindness Dakota had shown him growing up. Dimitri knew what that kind of love felt like, but he didn’t understand it.
He was familiar with different kinds of love. Familial love. Romantic love. Platonic love. Sexual love. He knew his purpose was love and didn’t know how that ultimately made him feel. Did he have any other meaning? Was that part of why he had yet to develop a backstory for himself? When Dimitri had a wife and finally settled down, what would happen to him? Donovan feared the worst. He worried if Dimitri wouldn’t need him anymore, and then what? What would their mind decide to do with him? Get rid of him?
The others had different perspectives on love, but there was one that stuck out to him the most.
Dagon thought love was a fucking joke.

[Dimitri]

11. what does y/c want most in the world?
Dimitri had only, one true, honest desire. He had a simple goal in life but the way to get there was complex and tiresome. He wasn't sure how to do it though.
Dimitri just wanted to be normal.
Maybe it finally clicked somewhere in his childhood when he realized having multiple personalities wasn’t normal.... and he was isolated. It didn’t help that, after his escape, he was in an environment where he was directly competing with other cats for food.
He wanted to have friends. He wanted to be one of the guys. He didn’t quite know how to express that, or how to tell someone that. He didn’t want people to think he was hindered by his multiple personalities and didn’t want them to classify him as that. He didn’t want to be defined by “the crazy cat with alternate personalities” he just wanted to be Dimitri. He felt that his disorder isolated him from other people. It kept him from being friends with people easily and it made him nervous to associate with other people. He figured that was why he made Divertimento. The fun, hyperactive alter was made to help him deal with social situations like  parties and tradings, gatherings and other events of the like. He… didn’t know how his alters felt about this sentiment. That wasn’t to say he had never shown proper thanks to his alters. He would have died long ago one way or another without them.
He wasn’t sure how to thank them, besides verbally.
The idea of being normal, one of the guys, someone without problems… that would be nice.
He had yet to express such an ideal to anyone, and wondered if he should tell someone. Maybe Atbash would understand where he was coming from?


"speech"

[Dimitri]

12. Strength
Dimitri didn’t consider himself to be strong. He thought of strength in the physical manner, someone who was tough and scrappy. Someone who was brave and didn’t mind taking on a dog or fighting over food. Dimitri had once thought his father to be strong in that sense. His father had dominated him and took control of him, and he was too weak to fight back.
Dimitri thought of Delta and Darby as being strong. Delta had no problems with turning into a tiger and roughing someone up. Darby jumped off things and loved the rush of adrenaline and the hunt! He went to them when he wanted help on his confidence and what to do in some situations. Or just. Ya know. Let them handle the problem.
Was that a healthy way to handle that? Had his brain ever had a healthy way to handle anything?
Dimitri thought of his mother as being weak. She hadn’t ever touched him, but she had hurt him emotionally. She never stood up for him, never defended him. She was too selfish and too worried about herself to ever give him any love or attention. She took her dad’s beatings with a cigarette in her mouth. Maybe she never cared.
His alters, once, trying to cheer him up, told Dimitri that he was strong and that he was gonna make it. They were there to support him. They told him he was strong for enduring so much, but Dimitri found that to be a farce because he was not strong, not for endurance, because he had never fought back.

"speech"

[Dimitri]

13. how does y/c react to mistakes they've made?
He dealt with his problems evasively. In a flight or fight situation, he chose flight. This was not the same reaction as his alters. Delta, Dagon, and Darby were all fighters. He didn’t want to deal with his problems. He made his alters do that. A part of him felt that was inherently selfish and rude to the others, but that was just how he dealt with it. He didn’t know what else to do.
Dimitri wasn’t aware of his mistakes. He wasn’t aware of when he did something wrong all the time, but he was aware of when his alters did something he perceived to be wrong.
He held a close eye on Donovan. He didn’t like the idea of him running around in his body, getting into trouble.
...Maybe Dimitri wasn’t aware of his mistakes because he let his alters deal with them.
Dagon dealt with them in a very simple way- he drank. He liked whiskey for its burn. Maybe he drank to punish himself, but he found it more as a method of escape. Maybe his Mistake was ever being Dimitri’s trauma holder.
Daisy used apologies. That’s all she really knew how to do. She knew she got in trouble sometimes for just… being herself. Until Dimitri had revealed himself, she was in trouble for acting out of line and didn’t know what else to do but apologize. 
Most of the others did the same when they did something unapproving with eachother. Most of them, at least. Delta rarely found herself at fault because everything she did was suppose to be for the good of the system and the best for them, and she thought she was doing a pretty okay job.

"speech"

[Dimitri]

14. what was y/c's childhood like?
Dimitri’s childhood was, in a word, abuse. He did whatever it took to avoid talking about it, and no one in the clan had asked about where he had came from. A kitten that ran away from an abusive household and then fought for his life on the city streets, eating human scraps and leftovers. Licking coffee and froth remains from plastic cups, biting on plastic straws and playing with cups to bide his time. Being taught to read by… somebody. He honestly didn’t remember who. He figured that Dakota had come out for those lessons. He remembered sticking to that cat for a while until he just… vanished one day. Dimitri hadn’t seen them since.
Dimitri had lived in various spots as a street rat, but he made an effort to stay away from the humans. When he had taken refuge one night in a cardboard box between two trash cans, he was being picked up the next morning. Darby took over, jumped out of the box, off the human face, and then ran away as fast as their little legs would go.
Dimitri remembered hanging on the cusp of a trash can, scratching the sides and pulling himself up to the trash can. Sniffing around, rummaging through garbage, he found the skin and leftover meat of a rotisserie chicken. He remembered sniffing the grease, tentatively licking it, biting on lemon pepper skin and licking bones. He remembered biting and pulling off meat scrapes, and having a full belly that night.
Because outside of the abuse, most of Dimitri’s childhood was about starving.


"speech"

[Dimitri]

15. dream
He has both dreams and nightmares. His dreams are odd- he remembered a dream where he dared someone to bite his paw because he got in a fight with them and they. Did it. The weird part was that he had actually registered pain from that. He had another dream where he grew wings and left the city to go tell someone he appreciated them. He… really didn’t get that one. Dimitri tried to sleep plenty- he liked dreaming, his headspace tended to interpret him as “being asleep” in his bedroom in the house. He felt that was fun and the best move for him. Dimitri worried about his nightmares though. He worried about his nightmares coming true. Whether they were literal nightmares or things he just dreaded happening.
Dimitri rarely suffered from hallucinations- and he feared his nightmares forming into hallucinations. Now that had yet to happen (knock on wood) but he still feared the idea. He feared his dreaded nightmare. He was afraid of his father finding him, cornering him in his cabin, Dagon not coming out to help him. His father tackling him- claws being sunk into his shoulders, being bitten on the back of his scruff, the tom hovering over him and holding him down.
Dimitri screamed, shaking himself out of his own imagination.
He panted heavily, rocking forward then pacing back and forth in his cabin, trying to calm down. “Dagon?” He called out to his trauma-holder, moving to Daisy’s corner and taking her teddy bear in his claws. He brought it under his belly and started cuddling with it, trying to calm down.

"speech"

[Dimitri]

16. how does y/c feel about their appearance?


// This prompt more dips into gender and appearance dysphoria. Bear with me as this is something i do not experience

Daisy was an odd one out. She was the front at the moment, but she could feel Delta’s presence with her as she stood in front of Dimitri’s mirror. Delta might as well be over her shoulder. She stared at Dimitri’s face in the mirror, sitting back on his hind and touching Dimitri’s face with his paws. She touched his stomach and bit on his paws with his teeth.
Yep. That hurt.
“You can do it.” Delta’s paw felt like it was on her shoulder and she put his paws together.
“I don’t know…” She mused, shutting his eyes and breathing heavily.
“I’m here. I believe in you.”
She made a struggling noise as Dimitri’s body shrunk and bones reshaped, becoming a small kitten.
“Good job!.”
She stuck out her own tongue, being greeted by a white cat with black spots. The fur waved and recolored, an orange and black tortoiseshell greeting her, then a grey tabbie, a brindle cat, a snowshoe, a siamese. She couldn’t stay in control, she couldn’t pick and none of these were her- she started crying, clutching herself and folding inward. She never felt at peace with her body and was never sure. Was she too young to make a decision? She was pretty confident she was female, but she even wondered about that sometimes. What if she wasn’t Daisy? Was Daisy really her name? Didn’t the others pick that name out for her and what if they were wrong? What if she was more like… a Duncan?
“Daisy, honey.” She felt the sensation of Delta wrapping her tail around her and trying to comfort her, trying to lick away her salty tears.
“What if I never figure it out Delta?”

[Dimitri]

17. blood + how does y/c cope with fear?
Tw for blood and sexual abuse
The crying, at that age, was either Dimitri’s or Dagon’s. As time went on, it was more of Dagon’s. The tom’s body wasn’t made to handle what the monster did to him. Blood seeping from Dimitri’s shoulders and their anus. It left him bleeding and in pain, too sore to move and too sore to run away. It happened to where it hurt to walk and it hurt to talk. Dagon had made an executive decision after about the fifteenth time they bled. That Dagon knew of, anyway. Maybe Dimitri had buried more experiences then he was letting on. Dagon only got used to the pain around the fifth time, the blood still bothered him. The fondling, the claws, being held down and the talking. Dagon being exasperated and crying.
That was enough to make them decide to run away. Maybe it was the blood that sent Dagon over the edge.
They were a month and three quarters old. They were barely weaned from their mother’s milk.
Then the fighting in the city streets. Delta, baring tiny teeth and unsheathing tiner claws and fighting bigger foes for the chance at food scraps. Delta didn’t always win, but she would always go for the belly. The soft under area. Blood would stain Dimitri’s white paws and there would be scratched that she licked away. It was surprising they never got an infection. Well, they did one time and it wasn’t pretty. Delta didn’t mind fighting for food and Darby didn’t mind scavenging.
Dimitri however, was bothered by someone else putting blood on a pacifist’s paws.

[Dimitri]

18. discovery + how does y/c feel about love?
It took Dimitri a long time to properly understand the different forms of love. His parents didn’t love him and the concept that had been presented him was being held down being bitten as- stop. Dimitri. Calm down. He understood the feeling of romantic love to be what he had felt for Atbash. He understood it as treating her right and holding her in his arms. He understood it as being comfortable around her and tell her about himself.
Dimitri had considered telling her about his parents if it ever came up. He understood there was platonic love, familial love, romantic love.
Daisy understood familial love the most. Delta, as a protector, was practically her mom. They were typically together in the headspace, and Delta rarely left the kitten’s side and tried her best to help her through her appearance and dysphoria.
Darby felt love as a doting practice. If he was the romantic alter, he would do love as grand gestures. To him, love took a lot of guts to admit to and took more bravery to commit to. It was so easy to be flaky about love and be dishonest. Darby felt dishonesty was… shitty. There was probably a rhyme for that but he wasn’t smart enough for that.
Dagon thought of love as joke. He was never shown proper love. As a kitten, the idea of someone cuddling him and holding him close, not hurting him and loving on him… What the fuck was that?

[Dimitri]

19. burning + what is y/c most passionate about? Why?
Desdemona dug through their things. They were all asleep right now, so she could do what she pleased without consequences. It wasn’t like they’d remember now. She didn’t really like the rest of them- Dagon was trying to tell her that’d she would adjust eventually. She… felt different than the others. She didn’t care about Dimitri and especially didn’t care about his wellbeing like the others. She was not sure why she felt that way, she just knew she felt unbridled hate for the others- really had yet to find the purpose, either.
She stepped onto Daisy’s desk, looking down at her different paintings of nature and the group of them. She found an ugly painting of Dimitri with green grass and a few flowers. [b]“This will go first...” She smiled lightly, putting it down by the door. [b]“This next,” She said, taking one of Donovan’s bottles of Chocolate Roses and throwing it with the artwork. [b]“One object from everyone.” She took one of Dakotas books, one of Delta’s battle plans, a harness from Darby, a whiskey bottle of Dagon’s, one of Dimitri’s blankets, a board game from Divertimento… and she was pretty sure that was everyone.
She put everything in Dimitri’s blanket and dragged it outside, down the porch, and to the area outside the cabin. She started ripping pages out of the book, crumbling them and littering them in the pile, then dumping the whiskey and perfume. She scavenged about the camp, digging around for an igniters. Finally finding a box of matches, shapeshifting an arm to light them, and throw it into the pile, the fire erupting as she watched their things burn.