exsiliumlogs | C'est la mort. (Open)

Entry tags:

C'est la mort. (Open)

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."

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I don't know.

[Things are blurry. Maybe it's just his eyes. It's difficult to tell. He's had this feeling since it happened, where every movement is like trying to swim through thickening tar. How do people keep their head above the water at all?]

I don't know what to do.

[he lets out a breath, the kind that almost sounds amused but really isn't. an audible grimace. he shakes stanley's shoulder a little.]

Welcome to life. You're gonna do the thing that you need to do, and that'll be enough.

I wanna puke. But that's...

[Not going to help. This vigil is good. Somehow it's good to put it out there that there's a price to pay. It's good that most of these people have met Peace. Other people here know that she existed, too. Stanley shakes his head. His hands are shaking too, he notices, and stuffs them into his pockets quickly.]

I've never been in charge of one of these.

[peter shrugs.]

Sometimes you gotta puke. Not on me, though, please.

[maybe it's easier to be philosophical about that kind of thing when you tear out of your own body and eat it on a regular basis. or he just doesn't want stanley to think there's something he's obligated to do, since he seems so paralyzed by the concept of having to do anything at all.]

Me either. The way we usually do it in my family doesn't really fit here.

What do you do?

[He swallows, and focuses on this new topic. It's true, sometimes you can't help it. But he's not going to up chuck on someone's memory, forget about Peter's shoes. He'll just have to hold it together a little longer.]

Kinda big deal. Don't wash for three days, sit around and drink and remember. With the body, if they die at home. Afterwards, we burn their belongings.

[he'll just leave out the beheading part. that's probably a bit much, especially for a dude who wants to puke already.]

Oh...are you like, Jewish?

[Tea's family are only half Jewish, so it's a guess. Though actually, Abbud's family does something kind of like that, too. He's just pretty sure that Peter isn't Muslim. Unless the dude is adopted or something, but Stanley's never seen him praying to the sun before. And Abbud is big on the prayers.]

Nah, Roma. Gypsy.

[lest stanley think he meant he's from rome or something.]

[The clarification is helpful, actually. He's never met anyone from that background before, so it's news to him. But it's only of fleeting interest, really. More interesting is the idea of proper traditions about death. A middle class white atheist from Baltimore doesn't grow up with the chance to indulge in many traditions. Technically his family is Swiss, but they've been American citizens for three generations.]

That sounds nice. The uh...the thing.

[it takes a second for peter to get past the knee-jerk reaction that no, it's a funeral, funerals aren't nice, to what stanley actually means. ritual. and considering that peter just minutes ago invoked as much of that ritual as he could, he can hardly blame stanley for thinking so.]

Yeah. That's what I was doing, at the window. Sending her off, I guess.

[he takes a breath, lets it out.]

Could do it again in English, if you want.

Okay.

Okay.

Thing is, you need to believe it for it to really work. That's how all magic is.

[and ritual, religion...that's just more magic, really.]

[Believing in things isn't something Stanley has practice with. In his experience, there's always a trick. If you fall for it and believe in something, people will use it as an excuse to laugh at you.

But who cares if they laugh? He doesn't. So he nods.]

What do I do?

First you're just gonna listen. Then you can say it after me, okay? And believe it.

[and slightly before that, peter's going to take a second to figure out how to say it in the first place. he's never really made a habit of translating between the two, since nobody he generally speaks romani to or around requires or gets any sort of translation.]

I open her way in the new life again, and release her from the weight of my sorrow.

Okay?

[The problem is that something gets caught in his throat again, and he can't give some ritual saying around it. It just won't work. He shakes his head, then changes his mind and nods.

Yeah. Releasing her from sorrow. That's a good idea. Something about a new path...we'll, that's crap. But just in case it isn't, that sounds good, too. Sort of like "better luck next life, don't let people's shit trip you up on the way out."

It's probably time to skip to drinking for 3 days. He could talk at Mike. Mike won't listen anyway, so no harm done there. It's not like the dude will get depressed over it. Sometimes it's kind of reassuring to know so many robot people.]

[peter looks at stanley, who is looking at him with an expression that's numb beyond stoned, beyond wasted. peter's always known people who were very vocal in their grief, who sank into it only to push it out, to find catharsis in talking or wailing or getting piss drunk and laughing till they cried and then crying till they laughed again. or people who were very quiet in their grief, getting up to it in the privacy of their own corners and showing a normal face to the world. he's never known anyone who didn't seem to understand grief, who didn't seem to have a passing relationship with loss to know it when it came passing through.

for the first time, peter wonders if stanley asks him what's real not just because he's tripping but because he really doesn't know how to believe in things.]

Just say it just in your head if you want. It's the meaning it that matters.

[he turns back to the window, turning stanley as well, takes a breath.]

I open her way in the new life again...

[Stanley is easy to turn. He's pliable, like a puppet waiting for so done to pull the strings. That's not what Peter does, but he does point Stanley in a relevant direction. It's a relief. Someone else is in control of the grief now. It's too big and painful for him to harness alone. Like a balloon trying to inflate in his lungs, but going too fast and too far. His guts will be splattered across the wall if no one harnesses it. So he hitches along with Peter's steady and certain gait.]

I open the ...way...to her new life?

Believe it, Stanley. It's not a question.

[peter's voice is soft and closeish to stanley's ear, more gentle than might be expected. he's standing partially behind him now like he's not entirely positive that stan's not going to fall over or something.]

I open her way in the new life again...

[Stanley fades out of visible range, but his voice is there. Wavering, but trying.]

I open her way.

[he squeezes stanley's shoulder, an obvious you're doing good]

In the new life again.

[It's difficult. Whatever inner strength he's ever called on, there's never been a connection to the ether . There's no hope or god or possibility. There's only gritty reality, of which he's always had a slightly loose grasp on. He digs deep anyway, and repeats uncertainly after Peter.]

In the new life again.

[peter's faith is only halfway faith, really. god is much less important to him than the magic he's seen and lived and made himself, things that he knows are true because they're part of him. he doesn't pray to god, anyway. if he's gonna pray, it's always to nicolae, who actually loved him.]

And release her.

[He can't tell what Peter is thinking of. It wouldn't matter to him anyway. There's a certainty in what Peter says. That's good enough for Stanley.]

No.

[Except when they get to that part. And suddenly all he can think of is a lost toddler somewhere on the astral plane or wherever spirits go in Peter's opinion. It sucks his breath away. He wheezes, a strange discord in the stale, empty harmony he's been trying to reach.

He can't. Even in words alone, it's not right.]

...no?

[it brings him up short, confused. but then, peter remembers the rest of the sentence, because it's one he's said more times than he'd bother to recount.]

Why would you want to hold her back with your grief?

[he sounds honestly bewildered by the concept. why would you want to tie anyone anywhere with sadness?]

What? I don't... I-

[Can't seem to get any oxygen, suddenly. That's uncomfortable. He bends forward, almost touching his toes, and tries again. But his lungs aren't expanding. Or maybe the air just feels thin. There's just no air in this damned moon base.]

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