logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: GRAVES

EVENT LOG: GRAVES

EVENT LOG:
GRAVES

characters: everyone.
location: Bonfire Square.
date/time: July 12-19.
content: mysterious shrines appear and bring visions of death.
warnings: likely violence and potentially gore.

time to pay your respects.

It happens when no one is looking, when most of the town is asleep and the rest are inside. A makeshift cemetery has come to Beacon, taking up residence in the middle of Bonfire Square. Each monument, shrine, and altar is dedicated to someone who now resides here, a memorial of their previous life.

Some may be drawn by curiosity, others by fear, and some may simply have to pass through this strange graveyard to get to the Bonfire itself. Whenever a person gets near, the altars beckon with a mysterious urge— an urge to approach, and an urge to leave something behind. They will feel compelled to make offerings at the various shrines, but doing so has a curious effect; it causes one to experience the death of the person whose grave they've honored.

Whether you resist the compulsion or give in willingly (or something in between), you'll also have to wrestle with the fact that a grave exists for you. Will you let your death be known, or try your best to keep it secret? Destroying it sure won't work, as it will return— with a duplicate somewhere else in town.

However you choose to deal with this, one thing is hard to ignore— this a tangible reminder of your death, and the fact that it's probably permanent.

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grave; believe me darling the stars were made for falling;

[It's a terribly simple memorial. Almost insultingly so, frankly: a small headstone with one name and two dates carved on it: R Lutece, 1871 - 1909. Two candles are set atop it, one all but burnt down, the other standing tall and strong. Occasionally the former's flame will stutter, but it refuses to go out, no matter what breeze picks up through the air.

Maybe you leave it at that. But if not . . .

You're in a building. A home. A place that's loved, filled to the brim with books and paintings, worn couches and wooden floors-- and then, further back, even footsteps as you head to your laboratory, with him at your side. He's so neatly dressed, his red hair perfectly set in place, his blue eyes amused as he listens to you argue. You're picking a fight with him over something stupid and pointless, one of those yes-I-did no-you-didn't things that don't matter, that you love because no one else ever, ever keeps up the way he does.

You keep it up as you reach the machine. An enormous thing, so big it goes from one floor into another, crashing through the ceiling in a contained sort of haphazardness. Tap the buttons and pull the lever, your fingers flying over the familiar controls, your attention still caught by him (always, always, you love him so much, you adore him, you'd do anything for him, you'd give him the world, you can't imagine a life without him). The machine roars to life, and that's your first hint. It shouldn't make that noise. It shouldn't-- you tear your gaze away, and it sounds wrong, it sounds labored, gears grinding awfully and wires surging with voltage they were never meant to handle, crackling to life, except it's wrong wrong wrong, it's lightning sparking everywhere, bathing you both in blue light, glass beakers shattering all around you, your teeth buzzing and the hair on your arms standing as it surges in power, and you look over at him, and--

--you know, in that moment, that there's nothing you can do. There's no point to running. You have seconds, if that, and you hate it. You never once thought you would die, not really, not the way others do, you're too smart for that, you're too brilliant, blazing bright burning, utterly immortal, and yet somehow, impossibly, here you are. You take his hand, and it feels so good in yours. Warm and large, his fingers wrapping tight around yours.

It's not fair. You tore him from another world and you've gotten so little time with him, it's not fair, you saved him, it's not fair, you've only spent a handful of years together (and it's despair but it's fury, it's rage, it's not fair and nor is life but you've spent all your years making things fair, and he can't be torn from your side, not yet, not when there's still so much left--)

"Do you have any regrets?" he asks, and there's something terrible about the forced cheer in his tone. His mouth is turned upright, and there's such love in his gaze as he looks down at you.

"Don't be silly," you say, and turn in towards him, into him, even as the machine roars and screams. "Of course I do."

And then there's a noise louder than anything, and an agony that's so bright, so embittering, so awful and terrifying and no--]

bonfire; now that existence is on the wake let's see what we can make;

[It's awful, working without light. Someone ought to fix that. Someone ought to fix a lot of things here, actually, starting from the lack of light and ending in the lack of anything scientific. It means she's forced to socialize if she wants to get any work done, sitting at the bonfire instead of locked away in her room. She's bent over something, but though you'd be forgiven for thinking it formulas, it's not.

It's a drawing.

A portrait, more specifically. It's of a young man, neatly combed hair and a faint smile. It's in pencil, so it's impossible to see eye and hair color, but he does bear a passing resemblance to her. She's really very good, it seems; not, perhaps, whimsical or particularly artistic, but on a technical level, she gets the job done.

But she's more than a little protective of it. She stiffens if someone sits too close, moving to flip to another page.]

wildcard;

[You know what to do.]

[ He wasn't trying to be invasive, when he left a little drawing of a set of chemistry beakers rolled up on a scrap of paper torn from his sketchbook.

Madam Rosalind Lutece's headstone was the first one Nate did this for, the first one that struck him square in the chest with electricity that crackled over his skin and pressed into his body. The forlorn sort of regret at knowing another person who was close, closer than anything and anyone and the loss of that person as it eats away at you, festers. When Sam let go of Nate's hand fifteen years ago, too weak to be pulled up the side of the wall and Nate watched him fall through scaffolding and corrugated metal, he remembers the agony of having part of his own heart torn out.

When you had no one else to start with, it cuts all the deeper. ]

That's pretty good.

[ He says before he can help himself, catching the drawing before the page turns and he knows the motion well - he's done it himself, wanting to avoid having people know his private thoughts even as he commits them to paper. Nate lifts his lantern as he seats himself next to her. ]

Need some more light?

[She scoffs softly, unsure whether that's for his compliment or his offer. Both, maybe, or neither, or maybe she's just tired of all this already. The hallucinations and the repeated experience of dying have taken their toll, and she's so exhausted.]

Always, here.

[She sits up. Sits back, her gaze drifting over him. It's odd, having seen what she's seen. She wonders if her other self knew, and then wonders what she might have thought of it, had she. Or if they were far too distant for such things.]

And what have you witnessed tonight, Mr. Drake?

[ Politely, he rests his lantern on his knee to provide the light he offered and tries not to squirm under the scrutiny. The look she gives him makes him think she was doing the rounds as well, hence the exhaustion. He feels wrung out, like a damp towel on a line. Nate has always handled trauma well - or rather, compartmentalized it well - but it's something else to swallow the stories of strangers firsthand.

At the question he rolls his shoulders in an easy shrug, making eye contact. ]

Enough.

That isn't an answer.

[She keeps her gaze sharp. He looks strong in many ways, but there's no one that can match her when it comes to sheer force of personality. And, occasionally, some pretty passive-aggressive expressions.]

A number, Mr. Drake.

[ He's been accused of being a pushover before, and while it's certainly an accurate statement to say that Nathan Drake can be easily persuaded depending upon circumstance, he doesn't always cave with immediacy. He knows pointed force when he hears it. ]

Tell you what.

[ He raises an eyebrow right back. ]

I'll give you a real answer if you promise to stop calling me Mr. Drake.

[Her nose wrinkles, her distaste clear on her expression.]

Nathan, then.

[ It's almost worse. Nathan is what his brother calls - called - him, what the nuns used in the Saint Francis Boys Home, a name with more familiarity and weight than he would care to offer in these times. He wrinkles his nose in return but nods in her direction, a concession for the effort. ]

We'll work up to "Nate."

[ He's at least confident of that. Nate chews the silence for a long moment, glancing over the blank paper in front of her. ]

I kinda lost track of the number, but...I looked at more than a half-dozen.

[ After a while trauma starts to bleed together. ]

[It's a much more satisfying answer, in no small part because it means she isn't alone in doing such a thing. She wonders, sometimes. She knows she's . . . odd, really, strange in a multitude of ways. It helps to know what others do (or don't do).]

And was mine one of them?

[ There is little point to prevarication in light of what she already knows, so when Nate looks at her askance he raises his eyebrows. ]

Yeah. You see mine?

Yes.

[It's simple. Yes, she'd seen it. She'd hated it, frankly; it was one of the worst deaths she'd seen. Not for the level of brutality, not the phantom physical sensations, but the sense of betrayal, and all that it brought up in her. All that it still brings up, frankly, nagging at the back of her mind.]

I'd tell you I'm sorry, but that wouldn't help, would it.

I'd return the favor, but the sentiment's kinda hollow in retrospect.

[ Which is about as self-aware as he's capable of getting, under the circumstances. Nate's attention is again drawn to the book in her lap, clasped tightly, protective. He places his lantern between them instead, leaning back on his hands and watching the fire. ]

Thought he died, once. [ Sam. ] Thought he was dead for fifteen years.

[Her eyes flick over him, as if he's somehow hiding something with those words. Or no, not the words: the quietness with which he says them, the way you could almost be fooled is casual, if not for the stillness in his expression.]

What happened?

I dunno, Madam Lutece.

[ Teasing, a little. The smile he flashes in her direction is thin, but warm. ]

Would hate to scandalize you with my prolific criminal career.

[She scoffs, but at least it isn't unfriendly. Amused, almost, in the same thin way he is.]

A bargain: I'll do my best not to shriek or faint in horror so long as you don't spare the details, hm?

...all right.

[ Nate tips his head in acquiescence. His tone is conversational, pat, as though he were discussing the weather. ]

I was a treasure hunter. A good one. It's not the kind of profession that falls under anything remotely resembling the legal, but when we weren't doing our own projects, we'd pick up acquisitions requests from clients. Burglaries, basically. Tomb robbing.

[ No need to mince words with someone who seems to do a lot of verbal mincing. ]

Sam was the planner. The negotiator, the organizer. Anything needs climbing, or brute-forcing, puzzle-solving...I was the point man.

[She nods. Yes, that's plain enough, and not a shock, not after she'd seen him roaming around the rooftops. She'd like to know a lot more, if only because that's not a topic she knows nearly enough about, but one thing at a time.]

So how did it end up that you thought he'd died, if you were the one out in the wilderness?

⟪ For her, Melisandre has a wreath of herbs. It doesn't seem to do anything but smell very nice. ⟫

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EVENT LOG: GRAVES

Rosalind Lutece; OTA

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(( offering only ))