FAMILIAR SINS — open, relapse

[madster]

malphas was scarred. both physically and mentally. his body was riddled with scars, but the most obvious was hidden under the long socks he put on his back legs. on his left back leg, there were terrifying deep teeth marks, but the didn't come from an animal. they were from the bear trap he had stepped in that fateful day. in his mind, though- there were so many more. every time he tried to sleep, he revisited them. the hyenas torturing hati. nayru going missing. the building collapsing on iota. being a medic was difficult. he was responsible for this clan. beck was the judge, morgan was the jury, and he was the executioner. he hadn't killed anyone yet, but he was terrified of messing up.

there was so much pressure, and no relief. iota and mira weren't around much, putting much of the work on him, and it crushed him like that debris crushed iota. he had so many enemies and so little friends. when he thought the nightmares were easing up, and he was dedicated to getting better, he threw all his alcohol into the swamp. now, he found himself diving down, surrounded by nothing but murky darkness, reaching to grab something he couldn't see. he couldn't see his future or a way out. he was drowning, unable to breathe. he finally grabbed a bottle with his teeth and swam upwards, paddling to land. he got out, unscrewed the top with his teeth, and drank half of it. he was soaking wet, and cold in the night, and he began to sob.

it was all too much. there was too pressure. he couldn't even stay clean for a fucking week.

[aya]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 55%; font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify;"]Aya... was not familiar with big emotions or trauma. Her only experiences in mental illness had been in books, and it never seemed like the ill had happy endings. Still, when she heard crying, the tortoiseshell was just that little bit too empathetic to ignore it.

Slipping out of the shadows and into Malphas' view, the cat's unsheathed claws clicked against the ground, offering an audio announcement of her entrance. "Ah, Mouthy. You." She paused. Aya hadn't thought this far ahead. "Something, uh... Bothering you, sport?" Immediately she tensed up. Sport? What was she, a middle-aged white dad? Well, it was too late to take it back now. "Just a little, uh, dad joke for you." Okay, well, she'd made it a hundred times worse. Just stop talking.

[ANIMA B.]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-size:8pt;font-family:verdana"][b]"That can't be of good quality if it was sitting at the bottom of there." It is perhaps the most insensitive thing that Anima could say, but it's still the first thing that she says. Anima knows about alcoholism, oh she knows about it well. She had never really kicked the habit per se, at least, certainly not intentionally. Death and fighting and everything that came with her past forced the habit to stop as she pulled along fate's strings by the Goddess like a puppet. Etro wasn't there to pull her strings anymore, so perhaps she was free now.

Never free, never will be free.

[b]"You want something better? And you can have a good cry, and if you want, you can talk about it." Offering alcohol to someone relapsing? A great way to deal with that, really. The panther looks almost sympathetic, but she doesn't try to help, she tries to... Damage control. Control the damage without treating the cause.

[madster]

tears were rolling down malphas' trembling face, and he was a pathetic mess. he was supposed to be this total asshole who cared about nothing and nobody, but here he was, crying from the stress. he shook, looking up at aya. how could she be nice to him in a time like this? he deserved this. he deserved to rot his liver alone, he deserved to die all by himself. "yeah, i'm a little sad, dad," he spoke back, managing a sad smile, showing some playfulness left in him.

then anima came, and back came the sobs. "n-no, this is fine," he said, looking back to his bottle of vodka. "i don't want to... burden.. anyone else."

then he began to talk about it. "i'm a medic. nobody thinks i should really be a medic, and i'm here anyways. i'm only a medic because my friend inspired me, and now she's probably dead. i'm an asshole because i don't want anyone to get too close, or else i'll lose them. i don't want to lose anyone. i just want to be emotionless, i don't want to care... but i do. i see so much pain, and hurt... and there's only so much i can do. the only comfort i have is my fuckin' addiction. i only swear so much because i-i want to be cool, and-" he was a little drunk, now rambling about his life. "i want to be a good medic. i want to be a good person. but all the good people die. i don't want to die."

[aya]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 55%; font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify;"]Well, hey, Malphas' sense of humour was still there. He wasn't hopeless, then. The tortoiseshell sat down, glancing at Anima in acknowledgement before listening to the medic's woes.

"Being a medic is a hard job, no doubt about it." She thought back to her friend the birdeating spider, and how he seemed to go about his job with ice-cold precision, but not everyone could detach themselves like that. "I think you're a great medic. But sometimes bad things happen anyway, and that's not anyone's fault."

The big answers of life, however, were not things Aya had answers to. Would that she could answer Malphas truly, but she got by a day at a time, and tried not to think so heavily on those topics. Her pale eyes cast upwards, to the stars. "You know, sport, there are uncountable amounts of suns and planets up there." She'd read books about space and the possibility of life on other planets, and it had absolutely captivated her imagination then. "Nobody can say how many other lives there are up there, but you know what I can guarantee? Everyone in the universe has or will felt loss, and suffering, and hopelessness, the way you do, and we're all going to get through it." Her ears twitched as she watched the sky. "It's part of life. So don't cut yourself off, because then you won't feel the happiness or the wonder of life either." Gosh, that was quite profound. Were those actually Aya's words?

[ANIMA B.]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-size:8pt;font-family:verdana"]Oh... It was one of those moments. [b]"Nah, it's not. It's radioactive, probably, like everything in this Goddess be damned swamp - let me at least get you something that won't turn your inside a lovely glowing green, kay?" She has to admit, Aya handles this a lot better, but Anima is an in-eloquent huntress that was bad with words and feelings, so she simply just drank them away.

She leaves him Aya's rather astute words, it was poetic in a way really. Everyone would suffer - good and bad. She knows that, but sometimes it's easier to see the good people suffer because that's who we want to be happy, who deserve to be happy. God knows that monsters, people like her don't deserve happiness. So she returns with a non-radioactive bottle of what would of been a decently expensive vodka, triple filtered with the label still intact but barely legible.

[b]"Here - if you're going to drink, always drink something good." She says, pouring Malphas a shot glass full and one for herself, for old time's sake and then another for Aya, whether she wants it or not. [b]"Look, mate, I can tell you this now, it sucks losing your friends and those you love. But being a cold emotionless asshole isn't the best solution. I think your friend would be happier if you weren't trying to drink yourself into an early grave - yeah?"

[madster]

malphas stopped crying, listen to aya. "you really think i-i'm good?" he asked, almost scoffing at the fact.
i'm a runaway. from my parents, from my problems. he blinked, wiping away a stray tear as she continued to talk. he liked being called sport - it was a strange feeling, and he was reminded he had no real parental figures. he was just a kid, still. he couldn't even remember their faces, and he couldn't even remember why he had run away. malphas listened to aya, as she described celestial bodies and how loss was a part of life. what stuck was him that he had to deal with the pain to get to the good parts. life had plenty good parts. being with stocking, getting promoted, hearing that he was indeed a good medic... it made him feel good inside.

"you're right." he said to aya, then turned to anima. "ha. alright, fine, you've convinced me," he said, doing the shot quickly and setting it down. "maybe.. i'll make an attempt to be nicer. just to see how it goes. and if it fuckin' sucks, i'll go back to being an ass. good plan." while malphas was tipsy, he spoke with truth- from now on, he'd try to at least be a little bit nicer.

if these two ladies could be nice to him, after all he's done, then he could be nice to other people too.