lifeaftr | I get a little warm in my heart [mingle log]

I get a little warm in my heart [mingle log]

Who: anyone looking for some wintery fun!
What: admiring mysterious icy artwork, warming up by campfires, making a fool of yourself while ice skating, snowball fights?? it's a snow party!
When: Jan 14 and on
Where: Enso, in and around the temple ruins
Warnings: snow-based violence

When you've had to deal with a literal apocalypse every single year for a hundred years, a little battle for the sun isn't really gonna grind your gears that much. Sure, the elf twins are still nobly doing their part every day. Lup is keeping several small campfires going inside the temple ruins, as well as periodically blasting two large stone slabs in the main chamber with a Fireball - those babies radiate heat for hours afterwards. And Taako is graciously handing out truly delicious soup from a huge bowl to anyone who asks nicely. Island Walmart is still a thing too, the large scrawled sign declaring this month's name to be The Hot Spot. Looks like it was Lup's turn on the naming.

But they're also just kinda bored of the whole thing? Like, everyone's so focused on preparing, on gathering and planning and training. There's a place for that, and Lup is pretty psyched for the actual fighting, but this pall of doom and purpose that's fallen over the islands as heavily as the snow? Neither of them is here for that.

So anyone who makes their way up to the temple will not only find the usual warm respite from the freezing temperatures, but also - a ten foot tall ice sculpture of a majestic as fuck unicorn rearing on its hind legs. And a smaller one of a figure with long ears hiding its face in the crook of its elbow, arms pointing upwards ~~do we have a single modern day character who knows what dabbing is~~. Off to the side in a clearing, there's a twenty foot circle of clear ice that's just begging to be skated on. Just don't admire the artwork for too long, or you're gonna get noscoped with a snowball by a pair of horrible winter goblins.

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"Gabe." Mickey is slightly more stern this time around. If Gabe is going to act like a child, then he'll be treated like a child. "You need to rest up. You look like you're gunna collapse any second. Nothing is worth you getting sick and hurting yourself. Why won't you let me help you and take care of you?"

"I don't get sick," he says, plain and boastful. And somewhat undercut by the fact that he looks like he's on the verge of a terrible bout of pneumonia at any moment. "I'm what makes you sick."

Which makes sense from the mental health perspective, or it did, but not so much from the physical.

"Tell that to your blue lips, pale face, and... for goodness sake, Gabe, your hands are shaking so hard they look like they're gunna pop off." Mickey even points at them. Dude, there's only so much denial you can dive in. "Do I have to talk at you until you collapse and I carry you to bed?" Because, at this point, he may have little choice. Not like he can exactly hoist the guy over his shoulder and drag him away.

He opens his mouth to protest, but his mind hitches in his name. Spoken aloud, proof that he’s really, actually here. He saw -Mickey saw it, he knows, heard it from Mom’s mouth directly.

He just isn’t used to hearing it.

“...you’re not my mom,” he mumbles sullenly. “Just go away.”

"No, I'm not your mom." Mickey repeats, staying put. "But I'm another person who cares about you and doesn't want to see you get sick. If you care about yourself, then you should start acting like it."

Whether Mickey was aware of it or not, he unwittingly just touched on the precise wrong thing to say to Gabriel Goodman.

It doesn't quite matter how cold he might be, at the moment; he bristles, his glower scalding enough to liquefy lead. He cares about him? That's rich. That's nice of him. Mom cared about him too, until Dad shocked the memories out of her. He never wanted to remember him anyway - none of them did.

"You don't even know me!" he flares back. "You can't care about me. No one even wanted to remember that I exist!"

"But I made a promise to you, remember?" Mickey put a hand on his heart. "I promised you that I would make all kinds of memories with you, and that I'd never forget you. And that's what we're doing right now... this is something we'll both remember for a long time. Sure, it's not a good memory, or a happy one... but it's unforgettable all the same. And I'd really like the next memory I have of you to be healthy around a good camp fire."

And if there's one thing Mickey does not do, it is break promises.

“I’m never going to be healthy,” says Gabe, bright and mocking. “I’m dead. Remember?”

Memories are all he gets. And this one will stick now, he’s certain. A painful memory is even better than a good one: it stays forever, creeps up in your head when you sleep, just when you think it’s faded away. It’ll wake you, panting. It’ll stick like a limpet, and never let go.

“There’s nothing this place can do to me.” There clearly is, but Gabe is charting a course down De’Nile and having a very pleasant time.

"Well, you're not dead now." Right now, the grief slinging and pity stabbing don't affect Mickey as heavily as it did on their first meeting. Mostly because Gabe is CLEARLY freezing right in front of him, and Mickey is getting more concerned and angry with every passing second.

"Honestly, I'm startin' to think I could just poke you and you'd pass out."

“Of course not. Not with everyone here to remember me.” He beams at that one, even if it’s a winning point in an argument that makes no sense without context. And only slightly more, in it.

“If you try to deny me, I’ll never die.”

Mickey has to wonder if Gabe is even listening to what's being said or is just filtering out all the things he doesn't want to hear. He sighs a little, and holds out his hands, murmuring the enchanted words a friend had taught him. It creates a small flicker of fire in his hands that will hopefully grow.

"If we're going to keep going round and round like this... might as well try to get you warm while doing it."

He is flame. He is fire.

And there it is. Someone else who can make it in his hands, just by thinking it. That certainly seems to get his attention, like it or not, and he leans forward despite himself.

"You could melt that entire statue with that," he says at last, like a little goblin.

Mickey actually lets out a little laugh with that, as humble as ever. "Not at all! I'm still just a beginner. I can make a decent enough camp-fire, but not much else. But maybe some day, as long as I practice every day. Practice makes perfect, after all."

“All it takes is a little bit. A little fire, and you could burn this whole place down.” That’s what he likes about fire - it’s all raw, destructive potential, capable of blooming into something even more.

Destruction. Decay. Desire.

"Don't you worry, I'll make sure that never happens." Again, Mickey means it truly, sincerely, and is oblivious to Gabe's darker intentions. "I want to protect everyone above everything else."

“How’s it make you feel to know you were too late with me?” He says it with the utmost conversational innocence, offhand and unremarkable, like he’s asking after the weather.

Which is still fucking cold. In case anyone was wondering.

Mickey glances upward, blinking slowly. "... It's a sad thing, of course. But we were in different worlds. Shoot, I didn't even know other worlds - humans! - existed until I came here. So... there's not much that can be done about the past. But we can work on the present and the future."

"I don't have a future." Isn't that obvious? He's smiling again, like it doesn't matter any. "People here go home all the time, right? I'll just go right back to being dead, same as ever."

Dead, but not dead. Dead, but still alive - as alive as he can ever be.

"That's not necessarily true." And the following was something Mickey was somewhat banking on. "This is a world of impossible things... Why not find a way to stay the way you are? Maybe we could even find ways to go to other people's worlds. You were brought here for a reason... we all were. So I'm not giving up on you and your future. After all, aren't there things you want to do?"

“Of course there are,” he snaps. He wants to learn how to - how to swim, or play ball, or make canned soup in a microwave. He wants Dad to teach him how to drive and he wants Mom to beam at him for real when he takes back a perfect score on his math test. He wants to whistle way too loud at Natalie’s recitals at all the most inappropriate times, so she punches his arm and calls him a jerk and has to hide a smile when he pretends she left a bruise.

“Someone brought me here,” he adds, a mumbled undertone no one’s precisely supposed to hear. “Once they figure that out, all they’ll have to do is forget me too.”

Mickey smiles a little - he hadn't meant to Gabe angry, but he did want Gabe to remember there are reasons to go on. Perhaps if Gabe focuses on these sorts of things, he'll find his smile and can stop being so stubborn over snowball fights and such. Mickey genuinely wants Gabe's happiness, after all.

"But they might not. Right now, nothing's set in stone. That's why what we do and what we say are important. You're more powerful than you think."

“I know how powerful I am. I’m destruction, decay, and desire.” A boast that went unheard when he uttered it the first time. Now, who’s here to listen but some mouse who has no intention of forgetting him?

What if e changes his mind? What if his mind is changed for him, everything rubbed out the way Dad lured Mom away?

He won’t be forgotten. Not again.

Mickey just blinks. Take it down a notch, edgelord. "... Well, way I see it, you're smart, and capable, and see things through." Plus, he can't really imagine Gabe destroying anything.

The best of that is the fact that Gabe is, in fact, none of those things in the slightest. Destruction is his primary function. It's all he has left. If he leaves rubble in his wake, no one will ever truly forget he was there.

"I see things through, all right," says Gabe, with a grin. "No one leaves me behind."

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I get a little warm in my heart [mingle log]

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