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]

[It's hard to respond to that. Does it get better? He hopes so. It feels like stones stacked up on his ribcage now. Heavy, painful, constricting. What does Giovanni do to make that feeling go away? That quiet terror that comes of knowing that everything you do in this place has the potential to erase someone from existence entirely. How is anyone meant to bear a burden like that stoically?]

She didn't want to see her home destroyed and her family slaughtered either.

[Stanley pushes away the plate of sandwiches, sure now that he won't be able to eat any until later. He's trying to get a grip on the situation. Trying to understand. But all that it comes back to is that they're responsible. How can he push that aside? Maybe Peace wouldn't have held it against them, who knows. The thing is, they never will know.

He rubs at the aching spot between his eyes and stares down at his feet, too big to fit his shoes now. He's been growing. He gets the chance to do that. How can he feel anything except guilty about it?]

I want to go home.

[deadlybanker]

[The assassin's eyes darted away at the pronouncement.

She didn't want to see her home destroyed and her family slaughtered either.

No, she hadn't. They had failed her family... failed her in preventing that. There was no way to turn off that feeling of defeat and loss. He hadn't meant to say that there was if it had come across that way. ]

Unfortunately war is like that. Innocent people are often lost in meaninglessly senseless ways...

[Sad to say there was nothing that they could have done to prevent it. They had tried everything in their power. The lost of those innocents was on United Earth and whomever had meddled with history to distort the timeline.]

You may be able to, one day. I mean to work towards that. Try not to give up hope.

[lazyinlove]

[It isn't Giovanni he's angry at. It's all of them, collectively. And himself. And the UE, for starting shit. And the Initiative when they were powerful, for sticking them with the bill. Tasking them with fixing something so monumentally fucked up. He's angry at the universe too, for being so vast and cruel. So it's not Giovanni that he's objecting to, not really. It doesn't change the objection just to know that.

He kicks the table leg, frustrated, and disturbs someone sitting further down the bench just trying to enjoy their dinner in peace. Maybe they didn't get the memo about Peace being gone now. Hah.

Except it isn't really funny. Not actually. Not at all. Stanley slumps forward on the table, like he used to do in class when he really couldn't stand the lecture material.]

We can't. Someone tried once and they took the whole planet down. No one ever tells you about that until it's too late, but it happened.

[deadlybanker]

[A sympathetic smile was offered and a hand was quickly raised in a peaceful gesture meant to soften the glare of the gentleman at the other end of the table. It was a wordless form of apology but it did soothe the temper of the other man who went back to eating without yelling anything derogatory in their direction. ]

I am aware of what happened before. Some how United Earth was able to attack that world.

[And completely destroy it... Millions of people wiped out with a single action.
They did have too much power. That needed to be changed.]

I do not know how this was possible but if we can discover the way we can prevent it from happening again.

These have been terrible defeats and too many people have been made to suffer due to them, but that does not mean that we stop fighting. If you want to go home you must find the strength in yourself to stand when every instinct in you tells you it is impossible.

[Strong words, sometimes they were not always felt, but he had a creed to uphold and a family at home to protect... friends to avenge. The losses here were painful, potentially crippling, but he had to keep fighting for the good of everyone. It would do no one any good to allow the UE to maintain their ability to so easily destroy lives.]

[lazyinlove]

How?

[It's not sarcasm, honest. It's a legitimate question.

It must be frustrating for Giovanni, to be asked questions like that. But it's frustrating to ask them, too. What else can they do? They can't just pretend it isn't happening. If they do that, don't they lose by default?]

[deadlybanker]

[Some times the answers to questions come very easily, the correct choice being so blatantly obvious that one didn't even need to think about it. This was not one of those times.

How indeed.]

First we should try to discover more about our new situation. Then maybe we can discover a way.

[lazyinlove]

[There's not much to be said in response to that. It sounds hopeless, but it probably isn't supposed to. It's just so big and impossible.

Stan nods anyway, trying not to look as unconvinced as he feels.]

I guess.