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ᴠɪ ([personal profile] doublefists) wrote2025-05-30 06:36 pm

★ ROSAMUND

pretty pretty princess
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-12 01:47 am (UTC)(link)
I'm a little jealous. I'd probably look like I was a kid playing dress up if I tried something like that.

[But Vi embodies the attitude needed. Even when vulnerable, even when low. Inexorably charming. Cool.

It would be nice if they could stick to niceties, wouldn't it? Rosamund grimaces, then gestures to one of the seats.]


If you'd like to talk, maybe it would be easier to take a seat rather than stand across the room from each other? [A pause, spark of dread.] Though — if I start sounding strange, just leave. Walk away and come for me later. I think...the thing that took hold of me over there...some trace of it's lingering.

[Her jaw sets tight.]

I don't want her anywhere near you.
Edited 2025-07-12 01:48 (UTC)
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-12 02:33 am (UTC)(link)
[makes a face, a little flutter of bitterness.]

You and me both.

[But it doesn't work that way, does it? Three times now. At what point does it stop being tragic and start being funny? She'd drag herself into a grave, if the only graves around here weren't five storey airports.

The movement doesn't escape her. She's no expert on people — puts her foot in it oh-so-often, especially in these places — but this is all animal instinct. Fear-based behaviour. Distrust. Things you do around a resting predator.

She can't pretend her heart doesn't sink. Not when Vi can feel it. But she can compose herself. Rosamund touches a hand to her face, checking that she's cleared her eyes and under her cheeks, sniffs a little. Curb the worst of it. She moves to sit too, but takes up a safe diagonal, two seats down from the one across Vi. Far out of arms reach. A headstart, if Vi needs it.

She puts her hands in her lap, sitting primly, as if her face weren't still pink from the threatened fit. Crisis averted, for now.]


Well. I think it's only fair that if you want to, you should go first? It's been a couple of weeks and there's only so much to be said in letters. Texts, sorry. So...I'll listen.
Edited 2025-07-12 02:34 (UTC)
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-12 02:55 pm (UTC)(link)
No, that's not — I don't expect a speech or anything. Really.

[And for things like this, sorry doesn't cut it. Or there wouldn't be all this crackling tension between their seats.

It snaps when Vi deals her next uppercut. Rosamund inhales sharp through her nose. The punch comes through as if it were physical, straight to her gut. The sharpness of her shame has a potent reek to it. Soured by the nightmare she'd just crawled out of.]


I didn't think you wanted that. [Said quickly, breathlessly.] I didn't — and it wasn't just about bringing you back. It was trying to find a way to fix what happened to you all.

Strohl told me. How you tried to go home with them, and weren't able to. If I could...find a way, to give that chance back to you? I wanted to try. But I couldn't open the case. Not to save the team from elimination, or to grab something that might help you.

It was a stupid idea. And it wasn't fair to any of you. I just...in the moment, when I realized I might have something to offer, I thought I should...

[She trails off, swallowing hard.]
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CW: suicide mention

[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-13 04:38 pm (UTC)(link)
...

[She does stop. Doesn't feel comfortable continuing to speak. And sure, maybe she looks something like a kicked puppy by now, but it does strike against something hard and bitter at the center of her.]

I'd been...angry. That people were so gracious with me. I think I still was. Because sure, we both were wronged, but there was nowhere to focus it and there was no action or ritual or anything to make it feel like I could put it behind me. I didn't get voted for last time either, but I took things into my own hands. [She is sounding progressively more hollowed. Perhaps exhaustion is taking its toll. Maybe echoes of Vi's own headache are coming to her. Or maybe, it's just remembering the wretched walk to the Eudora's simulation room and what happened after saps her spirit every time she revisits it.] There wasn't hope of recovering, then. So I got to face Diluc right away, and we could reconcile.

This time I just...kept going. And letters and kind words didn't help with anything. I told someone that I wouldn't ask you if there was anything I could do to atone, because that would be putting the responsibility of clearing my conscience on you. It wouldn't have been fair.

But then, after...talking to Strohl, and him turning me down, I'd asked Susato if there was any other way to guarantee we could get you the power to go wherever you like, when this is over. I told her about my other plan, and she was very frank with me. She said that maybe my feelings of guilt are my own, and have little to do with you at all. And that proposing we try for a prize in that case was a disservice to you in the first place.

...Moreover, she told me that if I couldn't forgive myself, then the empathy I've been offering everyone else rings hollow. [Her fingers crook into her legs then. Her gaze is fixed to the floor.] As mortifying as it was to consider, I think she's right about that too. I don't want people like Rin or Boothill to doubt themselves, either.

So, I still have an apology to give you. And that's for putting the weight of my feelings on you, even when I'd said I wouldn't. When I believed I wasn't. I'm sorry that I proposed such an awful thing and pretended like it was all for your own good, when really? I think I was trying to find a way to prove I could...make up for what I'd done to you.

I've been trying very hard to be noble and do the right thing, and it's led me down the wrong path. [Strangely, now she smiles. Laughs a little.] What's that saying again? The road to hell is paved with good intentions?
Edited 2025-07-13 16:43 (UTC)
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-13 06:15 pm (UTC)(link)
It wasn't just that.

[And here, there's a wistful squeeze to her chest. Sorrow of a less self-flagellating nature.]

I meant what I said in my letter to you. Text. [Rosamund purses her lips.] I think what hurt the worst of all was...out of anyone here, the person I found that night was the one who'd made me the happiest so far.

I may not have had the chance to know you as well as everyone else. And maybe I never will, even now. But it gutted me that it had to be you.
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-13 06:27 pm (UTC)(link)
[Help.

Okay well she goes squirrelly for slightly less depressing reasons now.]


I'm sorry? I'm just being honest.
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-13 06:31 pm (UTC)(link)
[DOUBLE HELP.]

Vi? [Blinks twice. Then turns a little more her way, looking a bit hapless and desperate.] Then tell me! I can't know what I don't know!
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-13 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
[She's. More than a little stunned. Colour flushes her cheeks for the first time since she's come back from the dead. Embarrassment comes to the fore now, turned inward, and a little click of something else.]

...I'm. Well. I try not to assume those kinds of things anymore? [Especially not with women, which is probably something she should have questioned a little earlier. She covers her mouth with dainty fingers, head ducking a little, curls coming to shelter the sides of her face.] I've had really, really rotten luck and everything's a mess, but I wouldn't say that it was, like. You know. Entirely platonic for me, either.

...Shotguns do put a damper on things though. Yes. [She takes another shaking breath and covers her eyes now as she winces in full.] Things just...keep happening. To the people I try to love. I barely know what it really is, frankly. So yeah, oblivious. A bit.
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-13 07:40 pm (UTC)(link)
[squawks]

Friends can make you happy too!

[HAVEN'T YOU HEARD OF OHANA!!!!!!

The shift in tone is so cataclysmically relieving, she's laughing a little herself. Glad to be the butt of the joke if it helps cut this strangling tension. Rosamund pushes her hair back out of the way and regards Vi with her bottom lip between her teeth. Still nervous, even now. Still fighting that wretched, looming dread beneath it all, unable to shake the last 24hrs and handful of years she's been made to endure.

But she's feeling a bit better now. Even a bit hopeful herself. It sounds like they had to go through parallel journeys with it, separating their feelings]


...I'd really like that, actually. I'd like that very much. No expectations either, all right?

[She hesitates.]

Just. Give me a day or two. I need to make sure She's gone.
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-13 08:36 pm (UTC)(link)
[we watch the original lilo and stitch in our next thread.

also girl mood. perhaps...it is best they were kept separate for a thousand years. my god it would have been deliciously dramatic but also horrible in every way.

She nods, even if she privately hopes it's not too much time. Granted, they still don't know what waits for them at the end of this. She hopes it's a better ending than the one Vi got before. Even now, she wants to do anything she can to ensure it.

That low-lying dread rises again. Rosamund's still smiling, but she wets her lips and looks away.]


I've faced a lot of really terrible things. And I've died many times, even before these games. I just don't want to take any risks right now.

I'll be all right. I do promise you that. It'll just need a little time, that's all.
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[personal profile] rosebleed 2025-07-14 10:31 pm (UTC)(link)
[okay we watch the fox and the hound and we can cry equally

Once again, a swill of something a bit complicated. Something something burdening the person you hurt the most here, yadda yadda yadda. But Rosamund pushes it down, actively. It's not a feeling that will vanish right away, but one she can work on. When she's not desperately trying to keep it together. So much has happened in such a short amount of time, and she wants to have some space to work it out without damaging a newly repaired bridge.]


Last? Please. Ryo is here.

[Scara at least has become something a little funny to her. Ryo is an anomaly she just somehow winds up at the movies with.]

But right back at you. And I do mean it, Vi.

Thank you.

[As much as the melancholy and the fear are retaking her, the gratitude is utterly sincere.]