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

[werewolfing]

So you've got a girl who wants to go to Paris.

[because really, stan. you comb your hair as often as peter does.]

[lazyinlove]

She's just a friend.

[He's not denying it. Goals of his own? Not so much. But he'd like to see other people get theirs.

And his breathing is slowly starting to even out, too.]

You got someone?

[werewolfing]

Okay. Is she pretty?

[at the question, he sighs. peter's only talked about letha once since coming to exsilium, like invoking her might inspire someone to bring her here. not that he wants lynda here either, but at least lynda is strong, practical and grounded. letha...isn't. and then there's the matter of the baby.]

Yeah. Guess so.

[lazyinlove]

Beautiful. Smart. Strong. Sexy. Talented...funny. She's way more than just pretty.

[He flickers once, but slowly, the translucent shape of a boy is starting to come back.]

How 'bout yours?

[werewolfing]

[he nods along with stanley's description, but when it comes time to trade, peter's quiet for a moment. it's not that he doesn't think about letha. he thinks about letha all the time. but saying a thing makes it real, puts it out in the world where it can't be taken back.]

She's got these big green eyes, the kind of eyes that believe anything as long as it's good, and her hair always smells like flowers. One day I think she just woke up and decided she was in love with me or something, I never gave her any damn reason. She's all pale and pretty and perfect, and she's a Godfrey, which is literally about as far as you can get from being a Rumancek and still live in the same place. She's pregnant--not with my kid, she got knocked up before I even met her. Says it was an angel, and hell if I know. Doesn't matter.

[lazyinlove]

Woah.

[Okay, so Peter's girl is mental. And knocked up. But she sounds hot. And the way he talks about her, it's obvious Peter feels something for her. Stan glances up at him thoughtfully.]

If she made you a mud pie would you eat it?

[werewolfing]

[accurate summary. but peter's not exactly normal either, really. he snorts at the question.]

Her family practically owns the town, she'd never make me a mud pie. But I ate dinner at her family's house once.

[which is way, way worse than eating dirt, in peter's opinion.]

[lazyinlove]

Shit.

[Maybe there are worse things than ingesting a few earthworms for the sale of love over the years. At least Michelle doesn't have rich, scary parents.]

Did it work?

[werewolfing]

Work? I was already getting laid, if that's what you mean.

[which may or may not be related to why he ended up accepting that dinner invite in the first place.]

Her mom's kinda crazy in the way that tiny dogs are crazy, but her dad turned out to be all right, I guess. Ended up helping me out with some stuff, so I guess I got rated higher than 'some gypsy shit dating my daughter'.

[lazyinlove]

No, with the parents.

[Though by the time Stan clarifies, Peter's already answered more or less, so he ends up just nodding. Do people still harass gypsy...gipsies...however you say that, where Peter lives? That's crazy. And it totally sucks. Huh.

[werewolfing]

Hadn't met them before that, don't really know. It mattered to Letha.

[it hadn't mattered to peter, that much is obvious in his tone. peter doesn't expect adult approval any more than he expects a million dollars to fall out of the sky.]

[lazyinlove]

Then it mattered.

[It's always as simple as that. On the good days, the girl notices. On the bad days, some other guy gets the credit. Or you get slapped for being around at the wrong time. But the trying always matters.]

[werewolfing]

Yeah, it mattered.

[because peter would rather have been just about anywhere but that dinner table, and he's still been at that dinner table.

women, right? what the hell even.]

[lazyinlove]

[Stanley is breathing now, and mostly visible. It's pretty safe to say between the wolf and the distractions he's managed to get a little of his grip back. If his eyes are still hollow and his face is still pale, is anyone really going to give him shit for it today?

Peter won't. Peter looks sick and sad and exhausted too.]

Why can't you ever save anyone?

[werewolfing]

[it takes a second for peter to realize that this question is rhetorical, that it's not aimed at him. because really, in his whole life peter has saved one person besides himself, and that was here, with borrowed powers. he didn't save that fox, twisting in that trap, he didn't save his own damn cat. he didn't defeat the vargulf, he didn't save anyone in the church that day. not even himself. they haven't saved anyone on the not-dead-anymore planet below them.]

You're asking the wrong guy. I think heroism is pretty much bullshit. It's all just people trying. If they succeed, they're heroes, if they fail, they're fuckups. It's all in the storytelling afterwards.

[lazyinlove]

["There's no such thing as heroes" isn't the answer he was looking for there. It doesn't sit we'll. even worse...it feels true. Stanley scrubs a palm over his face.]

I knew them.

[werewolfing]

[sorry, stanley. the idea of no heroes is disappointing, maybe, it's difficult. but the idea that people seem to have that they're saving the world here is dangerous, to his mind. it lets them think that nobody is really getting hurt as long as the end product is pretty enough, as long as the dead are invisible.]

I remember.

[lazyinlove]

[The dead aren't invisible to Stanley. They're in the will he drafted up once after the first bombing. They're in the spirits and the building blocks shoved out of sight under the mattress. They're in the greenhouse. They're fucking everywhere. He stated down a jar of peanut butter in the pantry earlier, and he lost.

What's worse is the fact that so many people never seem to see them at all. That much the boys definitely agree on.]

When people here wanted to hurt me, those guys had my back. They cared about anyone young cause they thought we were...we have them hope. Not transports. Just. Life. Existing, going forward. And now....

[werewolfing]

Yeah.

[now they don't exist. peter wonders how many people would want to save the world if they knew that the world they saved wouldn't be for them, or their children, or their children's children. that it would be for entirely different people, perhaps at best different versions of the people who sacrificed for that world to be saved. but peter doesn't really believe in altruism. there's always some payment in the deal.

peter's anger and grief is mostly impersonal, comes out of the understanding of a people who others have tried to erase over and over. stanley's comes from people he knows being wiped from the world.]

It's all shit lousy.

yeah it's probably bedtime...

[lazyinlove]

How do they expect us to just keep going?

[Alright, so he'd never lent a hand to begin with. But watching that lead to so much tragedy wasn't exactly inspiration to pick up the banner and run with it.]

well it certainly is for me...

[werewolfing]

Because life goes on. Trite as fuck, but also true. The ride doesn't stop when you want to get off.

And they believe in heroes. Obviously. Or we wouldn't be here.

[lazyinlove]

They didn't bring us here on purpose.

[If they had their pick, they'd have chosen bigger guys than Stan. And better soldiers than Peter. There aren't any illusions about that to go around.

And if you can't get off the ride you might as well give people a heads up when you're going to puke in the wind. Stan curls around his knees again and goes back to staring at the wall.]

Anyway, it doesn't. It just keeps getting bombed and nuked and plagued and-

[Ripped right out of the fabric of existence.]

We didn't save anyone.

[werewolfing]

Not us us. But all of us. You don't grab-bag random people from other worlds to fix your problem if you don't believe that most of them are going to follow the program.

[he sighs.]

I know that, Stanley. I'm no goddamn hero. I've always thought that what they're doing--what they're making us do--is wrong.

[lazyinlove]

It is. And....I think they know it is. They always seem kinda apologetic. But...

[He shrugs, sighs.]

I just want to get drunk and watch the latest Final Destination in 3D with my friends. Abbud gets scared and throws popcorn all over me, Daisy gets scared and tries to climb in my lap, 'Chelle gets nauseous from the movie so we go out for a smoke break with Tea and sneak in to something else instead until Tony gets bored and p-

Never mind. I'm just not the higher calling guy. I want to go home. I know it's douchey to say that but at least it's the truth.

[werewolfing]

Yeah, the whole world operates on the sin now and ask for forgiveness later model.

If it's douchey, that makes two of us. I wanna go home.