Drabble+: Victim

[strangetomato]

Prompt: Victim
Characters: Pascal Curious and Nervous Subject
Wordcount: 247
Imagecount: 14
Warnings: violence and death

Here's something nice and light to read before you go to bed. Or maybe not.

"Pascal?"




He had been heading towards the door, going home for the night. He paused, and turned back to face Nervous Subject. "Yes? What is it?"




"Do you think..." He hesitated, then continued. "Would it be okay if I didn't wear the helmet, sometimes?"

"Well, it keeps you from having nightmares."




"Yes, but..." Nervous sighed in exasperation. "It's just that... well, I don't dream at all when I wear it. I'm sick of it. Everyone dreams. I don't even feel like a sim at all. Just... empty."




Pascal nodded. He shouldn't have questioned him. It was Nervous's life and his own choice. He'd been too long a victim, having someone make his decisions for him, and he should be allowed to choose these things for himself. "I suppose it would be okay," he said.




"It's up to you, Nervous. I can only make suggestions. You do what feels right for yourself, okay?"

Nervous nodded his head in agreement, but said nothing more. He seemed to have exhausted all of his words for the day in that one outburst. Pascal said goodbye and made his exit once more.




Nervous headed to bed, without the helmet this time.




He closed his eyes.




Slowly, images formed.




Terrible images.




He witnessed awful scenes of carnage and death.




Something about a wedding.




There were bodies everywhere.




He dreamt of nothing but death.

Those were his choices: horror or emptiness.




Nervous Subject twitched incessantly, grinding his teeth, but he slept through the night.








 

Comments

[leskuh.livejournal.com]

I am awful at recognizing Sims, so I could be very wrong, but this definitely is giving me a Romeo and Juliet vibe.

And I like that Nervous is getting to start making his own choices, even if they aren't always the best decisions at least he's the one that gets some say in the matter. :3

[simsinthecity.livejournal.com]

That's what I was thinking :3 I'm pretty sure that it's the Monty Ranch we're seeing in the last shot of the dream.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

It does resemble it. ;)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

It doesn't help that I gave them makeovers, also. But, yeah... there's a bit of an "everyone dies" vibe to this, right? ;) It's something of a... *dun, dun, dun* tragedy.

I think he's finally arriving at some sort of confidence in himself, and yeah, his choices probably won't ever be that great, especially when he has to choose between bad and worse, but at least he's free to make his own decisions now.

Now if he were ever able to actually make some functional use of his so-called powers...

[leskuh.livejournal.com]

God, I'd love if Nervous could harness his ability and use it for good. I mean, technically he's seeing visions of people dying in the future so (theoretically depending on how you set up the laws of this universe) he has the possibility of preventing deaths? Intervening? Changing the future.

Of course, that depends on if you plan it so that the future is not set in stone versus events being fated and unavoidable.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

In an older version of this story, Nervous does just that to attempt to prevent someone's death (okay, I'll tell you... it was Ripp), and in telling him, he still dies in exactly the same way, so I was going with the more unavoidable future in that version.

That plot got canned, along with a lot of others (as you know, some of them were pretty "o_O"), and Ripp may or may not have been granted a pardon. I did say that one or more major characters are still "on the chopping block", but I don't plan on revealing who that actually is.

I do believe that this ability of Nervous's might still be used in a similar way, though I'm not sure if it will succeed or fail this time. I do know that he will eventually realize that he can project it onto other people, making them see what he sees, and this WILL have a major impact at some point.

He can also contact Death at any time, and not just when someone dies, but he doesn't realize that yet.

(Okay, enough spoilers...)