[Event Log] [we're all mad here]

[adstrngndummod]

Are you asleep, or did you just wake up?

Wherever you are, it's not Adstringendum. It's 'home.' You're ill. The Animus are silent on the matter- but then, you just imagined all of that, didn't you?

You're awake. You're doing better now. Keep improving.

((As requested, please centralize your 'in the asylum/similarly-contained-box' posts here

Comments

[grandtheftbody]

Heavy chains weigh down Mukuro's wrists, wrapped around his body. It's the same as it was before - locked away in the lowest levels of that accursed prison, suspended in water, unable to move or breathe or free himself.

But it's different, because he can remember something else. It's different, because the voices of his captors are telling him that everything he remembers is a lie. It's an understandable response to long-term confinement deprived of sensory stimulation - a complete mental break. Illusionists always do tend to have a precarious grip on reality, and Mukuro in particular - well, haven't people said he was crazy for years? For his whole life, and every one before that?

It'll be all right. The doctors are here, and they'll help him find himself again, because even a condemned criminal deserves better than to sink into madness. They may confine him, they may seal his powers away, they may never again let him breathe fresh air - but they'll keep him sane.

Which is ridiculous, really. Mukuro knows it from the moment they start spilling those empty words into his ears. It's more cruelty, that's all. Just another kind of imprisonment.

Was it not real? Was there ever really such a place as Adstringendum, with strange creatures that were as powerful as gods, and people from other worlds?

That isn't the question here. Not for Mukuro - for him, reality doesn't matter. He's the best illusionist in the world, even if he can't use his powers right now. He creates his own reality, and that is the one he wants. A world where he can walk free and breathe the air, a world with no mafia and no chains wound tight around his neck.

Mukuro knows that by choosing this, he might well be choosing madness. Everything the doctors say is so logical, so true. They could be right - they probably are. He knows this.

He just doesn't care.

He will never let anyone choose his world for him.

So when he wakes in the world he's chosen, he walks free and lets his senses fill with the place. When he wakes in the prison, he argues and plays word games and, when he's tired of that, when the doctors sigh and tell him he needs to let them help, Mukuro laughs. He laughs and laughs.

The doctors are so very disappointed in him.