EVENT LOG: GRAVES

[inthenightmods]

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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Comments

cw: blood, gore, overdosing

[sulfa]

2. A LITTLE MORE MORPHINE : wade's death [ i'm borrowing some details/dialogue from the book's version of events here and there, but besides little additions it's the same as this scene - wade has just been hit accompanying the squad while they charge uphill to try and take out a german machine gun nest. ] "Oh, Wade. Oh, Jesus Christ." The Captain's voice rises to a yell that carries down the hill. "Upham! Grab the gear and get up here! We need water and extra dressing now! Get the morphine out of the extra medical kit!" You can barely discern what's happening through the smoke and yelling - but you know you're hit. Several times. You knew from the moment you collapsed into the grass like a shot dove plummeting from the sky. "Son of a bitch." "Sulfa. Get some sulfa on there." They rip open your shirt like it's made of paper and you struggle to lift your head to get a look at what's going on, at where the searing pain is coming from. You've been hit more than once. Several times. You're losing an unbelievable amount of blood. "Get my legs up! Get my legs up!" It's leaving your brain fast. Your demands go unnoticed. "How's-how's it look? How's it look?" "Wade, you're gonna be fine. You're going on a hospital ship." Mellish's voice is gentle, like he's speaking to a child. Upham just watches in open-mouthed horror. Nobody's gotten your legs. Breathing is almost impossible. Their hands are glistening and red as they pour more sulfa powder over you. "Put my legs up. Put my legs up. Put my legs up." You desperately try to convey urgency. This time they notice. "I got 'em, I got 'em, I got 'em, I got 'em." The sergeant props your calves up on his thigh from where he's crouched beside you. "Upham, give me your canteen!" You stare up at Jackson's throat as he cradles your head and the others scramble between applying pressure and shaking more sulfa out of its packets and dumping icy water on your bare skin. "How's it look?" "Give him some morphine." "How's it look?" you repeat, this time with more urgency. They're not listening to you. They're not listening. You're not going to be conscious for much longer. You have to tell them what to do while you're still awake, before it's too late. "How's it look?" "It's gonna be alright. You're gonna be okay." "Here comes the morphine, here comes the morphine." "Am I shot in th-the spine?" You can't move your legs. There's no sensation in your boots. The warmth of the morphine starts to crawl through you, but the pain's still there. "You're okay, Wade." "Am I shot in the spine?" Talking is now an almost unbearable effort. "Lift him up. Put some pressure on it." And a chant of easy, easy, easy over and over as they roll you onto your side as gently as someone can move a person who's been torn to pieces. "It's okay, Doc," Jackson whispers, thumb on your cheek. "It's all right." "Wade, you got an exit wound, it's in the small of your back." No. No. No. "How big- How big's the hole in th-" You can't breathe enough to finish. Your own blood crackles in the back of your nose, crawls up into your mouth. Every breath comes like a diver's first gasp after surfacing. "It's about the size of an acorn." They turn you onto your back again. You gag when the blood in your mouth falls toward your windpipe. "You're fine, you're fine," Mellish says at the same time as a small scarlet river spills out of your mouth and trails down your chin. He's lying. They add more pressure, too many hands for you to count pressing down on the unending springs of blood coming from your body. "Pressure on it!" "Put some more pressure on it." You have to struggle to draw in a breath around the blood rattling in your throat to voice your worst fear. Have to stay calm. They don't know what to do. "Is there anything... bleeding... worse than the others?" "Yeah, right here, do you know what it is?" "No." "Right here, I'm gonna put your hand on it." Mellish's hand is so warm on your wrist - you know his body temperature is normal. You're sinking into hypovolemic shock. "We got some pressure on 'er," Jackson tries to reassure you. "Right there, okay?" Mellish is almost whispering, with the same tone of voice a man would calm a badly wounded animal with during its last moments. "That's the one." You probe until your finger hits the firm, rubbery flesh buried deep in your abdomen. "Oh my God, my liver! Oh my god, it's my liver!" I'm going to die! I'm going to die. Tears spill over your cheeks at last. There's no point in holding yourself together any more, fighting to keep your composure so that you can tell them what to do. There's nothing that can be done. You can cry now. You're going to die. There's no hope. Upham leans forward, helpless. "Tell us what to do. Tell us how to fix you." "What can we do?" The captain whispers in your ear. "Tell us what to do." Nothing. There's nothing they can do, there's nothing anyone can do. With effort, you turn your head to look at him. Jackson wipes more of the unending flow of blood from the corner of your mouth, smearing it across your chin. The only thing they can do is hasten your departure. Make it more comfortable. You've already had one dose of morphine. It'll only take one or two more to kill you. Miller watches you, waits for your answer. You make up your mind and present the final plea as a suggestion. "I could use... I could use a little more morphine." You meet the captain's eyes, brows creasing. Please. Please. "Okay. Okay." He looks at you with pity. You brace one hand on his forearm out of a need for something to hold on to, to ground yourself in the temporal world. The sergeant jams another syrette into your thigh. The events have been set into motion. "I don't want to die." "Here you go. Wade. Here it comes. Shhh." Mellish grasps the hand that you've curled into a fist against your chest. You can't keep it together any more - you're scared and everything is about to end and give way to nothingness and you're not ready for your entire existence to end. Someone holds your other hand as you turn your head away from the scene in front of you with a whimpering sob. The morphine surges through you, warm, merciful. You still hurt, horribly so, but the pain doesn't reach you. It can't do anything for the terror. Give him another one, someone says. You want your mother. Not them. You don't want to die with them, you want to die with her, you want to see her one last time and to hear her say it's going to be alright but you can't because she's in San Diego, California, not France. "I wanna go home, I wanna go home-- Mama! Mama, mama, mama-" You call for her because it's all you can think to do. She'll make this better. She'll make it okay. Your thoughts float, abstracted from your body, the horror around you. It's an effort to keep your eyes open. "Mama...mama....mama..." Your eyelids drift shut.

[spitefullight]

He's offered the clear jar, drawing and unlit candles like at many others and again the visions come. It's hard to disassociate his feelings with the ones in this grave site. It's like ice coursing through him rapidly, his stomach seizing into a ball as he's hit with one feeling after another. He's witnessing a death amongst fire and blood, held by companions and people he knows but he doesn't quite know. The experience is so jarring as he begins to feel all the pain this, Wade went through.

Screams of pain and agony, desperately clawing to what little life Wade had left, it makes his stomach turn. These men did all they could to save him and Wade just wanted to go home. He didn't die in his homeland...he just died so far away from the one person he wanted to be with. Wade was dying and all they could do was just let him go peacefully and it makes him want to wretch. He wants to scream at Wade, to himself to hold on, to not drift off. Claw your way back into life and don't let go so you can say goodbye to your mother, to be with her. But he knows it's unrealistic.

These men could only do so much and from the looks of what they had, only practical ways of healing. No divine sources, no magic...just bloodied hands trying desperately to close a fatal wound. Then the sleep comes and he feels himself drift away, the thought of the mother running through his mind. He wonders if Wade's mother was all right and how she was doing now that he was dead? He wonders himself how his own mother was doing. He hadn't thought of her when he died...but this grave was enough to remind him of the fact, his mother lost another son....and this one wasn't coming back.

Finally, the visions end and Elden steps back in a daze, his teeth clenched, body weak. He takes a moment to collect himself, before turning back to the grave and bending down to it. Every person that came to this town had a grave...had they all died this violently? This sadly? He places a hand against the stone, a sad look of contemplation on his face. "Maybe if I was there...you could've seen your mom again, Wade," he murmurs to himself.

[callada]

It's the same sort of gray desperation and chaos that Rosinante discovered at Gene's grave site. But that young man had gone quickly, hadn't even realized it was coming. This is pure horror, and he's left gasping for breath and sweating from his brow when he snaps out of the vision.

The fear and the violence he knows from past battles, though nothing so severe firsthand. He hates how so many worlds have deemed this kind of disaster necessary to protect the lives of others. How many people have to become disposable?

He doesn't want to bother Wade with this. The man has suffered enough. He comes and goes without a sound, leaving behind a cup of whiskey as he tries to shrug off the little bit of jealousy that at least Wade hadn't been alone.

[evulsed]

Vanitas doesn't need to know their world to understand that they died in war, and what their roles were. That they were the good guys, and they were fighting the bad ones. Those are easy concepts for him to understand, they're uncomplicated, black and white, the way he views the world. Each death he's seen so far has only vindicated his idea that his perception of things is true. People are either Light or Darkness, there is no in between. That, more than anything, is why he nosily keeps going from grave to grave, hunting out all that negative emotion that comes with death like an addict.

Leaving an offering of a singular stone at the other doctor's memorial, it's too tempting not to do the same for this one immediately next to it.

It's a rush, all that negative emotion. Vanitas thrives off horror and fear and unfiltered hurt. It's all he knows, and in it he finds the strength his Master had forged him with. Even knowing Wade died in the arms of his comrades does nothing to soften the blow, because that isn't what he wanted in the end. The residual that lingers when the vision ends makes Vanitas shake, the high of morphine translating into the high of that surge of negative emotion. Something about it makes him feel invincible, and he grasps that violent arrogance with a manic laugh.

When he leaves, it's with a purpose in mind, and in his wake he leaves an Archraven that perches on the cross and lingers until the middle of the week— when it abruptly vanishes.