C'est la mort. (Open)

[lazyinlove]

Date & Time:Tonight, around 7.
Location:The viewing windows.
Characters:Anyone who knew Peace or who might stop to pay respects at a memorial even if they didn't know her.
Summary:A memorial gathering for an Exsile who ceased to exist with the most recent world change.
Warnings:Tears, cursing, bitterness? Not sure yet. People can label threads as they come up. Everyone is free to make their own and jump around. Prose and action are both fine.


It's a waste of emergency torches, but there are a few set up around anyway, lit that soft unearthly blue of emergency lighting. The flowers are paper, clumsily folded from discharge sheets, some from the prison, some from the clinic. There are no photos. All of the ones she was in before are empty spaces, or pictures of Stanley or others who'd been holding her at the time. The music is strings, playing softly from a haphazardly tossed tablet. There are no chairs. Instead, every pillow from 144 is on the ground as seating.

Stanley isn't sitting on one, though. He's standing at the window, staring down at the planet so far below. Today, he's combed his hair. It's still in his eyes because it's too long, but he's made the effort to tame it at any rate.

He's not sure how to start things off, but if someone shows up he'll greet them. That's what you do, right? So that's what he does.

"Thanks for coming."

Comments

[lazyinlove]

[What'd she tell him that for? In case he needs something? He's not sure what this mysterious need people expect him to have might be. Should he call them up and let them know when the kitchen is out of toaster pastry? Should he ask for something arbitrary to make them feel useful? Maybe he could start collecting sticky notes. He could score stacks of them right now. Leave notes on everything. Maybe label things around the bunks humorously. Maybe he can remember the Spanish words for most of them.

...But that's probably not why she mentioned it. She's probably being polite. So he nods in response, and doesn't make any cracks about toaster pastry or sticky notes. 196, got it.]

[reassures]

[She was thinking more along the lines that he might need a distraction, and if what she'd 'overheard' from him earlier was true... he didn't seem to have the best friends here, if they couldn't see what a good job he'd done with Peace. And it wasn't like he could smoke here. Not to mention living with Jesse...

He can do with the information what he likes, she supposes.]

Did she know many people here?

[lazyinlove]

A lot of them. Not all.

[reassures]

[That made sense. She was a small girl, after all - children tended to get around, didn't they? She's not that surprised.]

No one will forget her.

[It's a depressing thought, she supposes. But when you deal with time shenanigans, usually memories are the only thing left over. They're important.]

[lazyinlove]

[That's supposed to make him feel better. He can tell it is. But it doesn't. None of these people are supposed to know her. Did it do any good? Did showing them a face that they're responsible for snuffing out of the universe do anything positive here?

Or did it just make things difficult for him and everyone around him these past few months?]

[reassures]

[It's not a surprise that it didn't work, but she liked to think the effort was important. Maybe. She's not sure how important it was if it just made a sad boy more miserable, but st least in this case... it wasn't all about Stanley. If something like that were to happen to Nill, she would want to be remembered. She was sure a little girl like Peace wouldn't want to be forgotten, either.

However, it's becoming more obvious that she cant do anything else to try to cheer him up. Finally, Nill folds her tablet over, tucking it back into her pocket.]

[lazyinlove]

[He sees the tablet go away, out of the corner of his eye. Usually he'd come up with something to try to make Nill feel better, but he's tapped out. Maybe they can just stand there together silently. It would be a lot less work.]

[reassures]

[She's not really the one that needs it. She feels horribly over Peace's nonexistence, but nowhere near as badly as he does, and she knows that.

Anyway, standing in silence sounds like a good plan. Nill will probably stick around until most of the people he told about this come and go.]

[lazyinlove]

[There isn't much that gets said between fumbling attempts at greeting others and spacey attempts at conversation that generally don't end well. He's not really in the place to carry things at the moment. But it's nice to have someone familiar nearby. He thinks about brushing her feathers, and how nice it might feel, but he doesn't reach for them again. That much he learned the first day. The warmth of her presence is enough.]

[reassures]

[Nill does her best to try conversation with others - she mostly succeeds with Kate, if briefly, but she figures the attempt counts for slightly more than nothing.

And it's good that he doesn't reach for her feathers, because she probably wouldn't let him touch them more than once. The way things are is a good one, and Nill does her best to just be there, for as long as this ordeal takes. Even if she had somewhere better to be, she probably wouldn't go.]

[lazyinlove]

[He can't imagine anywhere better to be on a moo base, funeral or no. So he'd be surprised if anyone excused themselves for that. Not that Nill does. She's there, hovering uncertainty in a way he wants to validate. Not that anyone listens to him, but it's nice, is all. It's nice that she wants to help with things. Nice that she wants to lay Peace properly to rest.]

hahahaha moo base, space version of the cow house

[reassures]

[She's had too many friends who didn't get laid to rest. Too many people who just disappeared one day. It wasn't like what happened to the little girl - the others still had photos. But the end result would be the same. Eventually, no one would remember them, and they'd be just like Peace. Gone.

It was too sad, too cruel a fate for such a little girl. She deserved so much better. But this was all they could give her, and if it was all she could do, then Nill was going to do it. For both her and for Stan. Even if she can't manage much, she can at least try to make sure he doesn't get overwhelmed with this whole thing though.]

spaaaaace cows

[lazyinlove]

[People do start to drift away eventually, at which point Stanley takes a seat beside one of the pillows in the back, still just sort of staring at the wall. He's trying to comprehend all of this, but it's not easy.]

the best kind

[reassures]

[Nill waits until it gets a little bit emptier - not totally empty, because who knew how long that would take, but so that it could be close to an 'ending' to this. She's not really sure how long it takes. It's more difficult to tell the time here than it was in Exsilium anyway. But she walks over, and crouches down, a message already typed up on her tablet.]

I can help you take the pillows back to your room later.

no the best ones are cheeseburgers!

[lazyinlove]

Huh?

[He glances her way when she shows him her tablet, but it takes a few read through to get his brain to latch on to the meaning of those words. Slowly, he nods. Sure, okay. She's probably right. He should take them back up. People might complain if they're missing.]

AN EXCELLENT POINT. I retract my previous statement.

[reassures]

[She's less worried about anyone getting upset and more worried about leaving the pillows here and people snagging them. And then Stanley not having any pillows. That, and she's a little concerned that if she leaves, he'll just... stay here.

She's not really sure what the best thing to do right now is, given everything about the situation they're all in. She just wants to make sure he gets back to his bed.

It's pretty obvious he's not quite up to that though, so she offers a slight smile, and shifts to just sit where she'd been crouching instead.]

[lazyinlove]

[Nill is probably right about that, given that even when she's already offered and he's agreed, Stanley still makes no move to leave. Though he does turn his gaze toward one of the pillows he's not sitting on, as if briefly contemplating picking it up before he lapses into staring past it again.]

Where do they get the feathers from?

[reassures]

[That's not a bad question, actually. Not that she's ever thought about it before - most of the pillows she'd used were cheap, and definitely not filled with feathers. Now that she thinks about it though...

Her own wings shift, folding in closer to her back. She doubted it was from people like her, but even having one feather yanked out was unpleasant.]

Chickens?

[Which isn't to say that she knows, but... it seemed reasonable. The pillows were probably left over from before there were Exiles.]

[lazyinlove]

Oh.

[It doesn't actually matter if it's true or not. It's just something to think about that doesn't involve cleaning up after a funeral for a child. The idea of chickens, boiled and plucked and exsanguinated and who knew what else, was horrible and reassuring. All for soft pillows. Fucking brutal.]

[reassures]

[It's not a pleasant thought at all, but the way she figures.... she's eaten chicken often enough in her life to know that people kill them. It'd make sense to put all the feathers into a pile and make them into pillows. She doesn't know how accurate that is, but it seems reasonable enough in theory. People did very strange things to improve their own levels of comfort, after all.

But it seems like Stan needs a distraction - and with most of the people that had come here already gone, maybe she could provide that. If he wanted to keep thinking about things, then she would leave him alone.]

What seasons do you like?

[lazyinlove]

On chicken or the calendar?

[They're different things, so it seems best to clarify.]

[reassures]

[...She had not thought of that confusion at all, and it hows for a second in her expression and the way her wings flutter. Whoops.]

The calendar.

[lazyinlove]

Summer. And Christmas. No school. You?

[He's not sure why she's asking, but it's easy enough to answer.]

[reassures]

[Distraction, mostly. She figures he could probably use it every so often.]

Summer. I like it when it's sunny.

[lazyinlove]

Sun is alright.

[It's not exactly stimulating conversation, but the edge of panic is dissipating a little.]