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logsinthenight2019-07-12 01:00 pm
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Entry tags:
- !event,
- billy russo (laws),
- coraline li (jejune),
- daylight vis lornlit (melly),
- dick grayson (jin),
- hanzo hasashi (abel),
- irwin wade (lauren),
- javert (rachel),
- jo harvelle (dee),
- jon snow (rachel),
- kuai liang (sydney),
- m.k. (shira),
- melisandre (mina),
- nathan drake (alex),
- number five (z),
- peter parker (laura),
- rafe adler (sammo),
- raylan givens (bobby),
- riku (dubsey),
- rosinante donquixote (lauren),
- shadow moon (kas),
- will ingram (leu),
- zihuan cao pi (gemini)
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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[ She gasps awake, frozen like she's been truly dead herself, shivering and unable to catch her breath. The crushing, burning pain of drowning was worse than she'd ever imagined and the deadly cold of the water is still in her bones, but Arya's panic is not for herself. She scrambles to her feet in front of Jon's eeriely knowing tomb, regaining herself before the wolf and dragon statues that proclaim her brother's heritage. Her cousin. She must remember, no matter what she's just seen, and if he sees this... If what Arya suspects is true, he'll be most confused.
But will he want to know?
When she finds him she knows right away from looking at the lines of his face that something is wrong, and when she rounds the bonfire Arya flings herself against him in a fierce snare of a hug, clutching his cloaked form against her. She doesn't let go for a long minute, shocked to find a similar intensity in the way Jon is embracing her. Their tombs had been side by side, so alike and yet with a notable glaring difference. ]
What are those things? [ She finally breathes it against him, jerking back to look at his worn face she loves so dearly. She keeps hold of him by the front of his cloak, as though afraid the dark might swallow him again like the black depths of the lake. ] I knelt at yours to pray, and... [ Sorrowful grey Stark eyes meet his and she tugs him close again into another selfish, protective embrace. ] I saw. What you told me, everything, about how you... died. I saw.
⤞ TRIAL BY MOTHER - [OPEN TO BRIENNE]
[ The horror of experiencing Jon's death, as distressing as it had been, had only ignited Arya's curiosity about what the other graves could show her. So many people here were a mystery to her, so many no more than a name and a short little introduction, and if what she suspected to be true proves correct, then these graves and tombs and alters could teach her more than a hundred conversations ever could. After all, what could tell her more about a person than the manner in which they'd died?
At first, she makes a cautious, curious round of the square, looking for the names of people she's met already. Some she recognizes and she notes them for later, but it's when she finds herself looking at something that cannot be anything but Brienne's that Arya stops. Brienne of Tarth, her sister's sworn sword and now the captain of her brother's kingsguard. Arya didn't know she was here. She pauses, considering, and kneels down to try the same thing she did with Jon's tomb before. She prays to the old gods --
-- and when she lurches to herself again Arya is shrieking. Screaming, flinging herself to the ground out of her kneeling position and snatching madly at her neck, trying to free herself from a noose that is not there, looking about herself wildly for...
for...
Arya slowly returns to herself, breathes slow conscious breathes until the bonfire is only the fire of the strange square and not the haunting firelight of the underground hill. She draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. The lady... the horrible, dead lady with her rent face and gaping throat... so much like the dream that Arya had seen her in before her own death.
But... that was not at all what had become of Brienne in Arya's memory. Is her mother alive in some way, somehow? Finally, she regains her feet again and Arya casts about herself, thinking that the tall knight cannot be far, and if she is... well. Now that she knows who she's looking for, she won't be that difficult to find. ]
⤞ A HOLE IN THE DESERT - [OPEN TO JESSE]
[ With a bang of a shock Arya's eyes blink open on the unmarked grave that had drawn her like a fly to a trap, and her hand flails to the back of her head to feel where something had just punched through it faster and harder than any weapon she's ever seen before. She'd witnessed something similar in another's death, seen how the distance could be applied with such a little metal weapon, so much like delivering death with an arrow from a bow and yet so incomprehensibly different.
But the man she'd met with Gendry's close-cropped hair, Jesse he'd named himself, had been killed close-up, as a captive. As a prisoner, without power or dignity. They'd dragged him out from under some shiny metal carriage so much like the Lannister soldiers had rounded up the hiding men and boys when they killed Yoren before marching them all to Harrenhal for torture.
But more than that, she'd felt what he'd felt looking into the eyes of the dead-eyed bald man; a hatred so bleak and empty and boundless that it awoke something in Arya, something so sharply familiar and satisfying that she's still clenching her fists on and off an hour later, thinking of that man. Thinking of his sneer, his voice, wracking her brain to try and remember his name. Had they said it? Was it Walder? She didn't want to have to experience it again to get that name, but she's burning to know it.
He cannot have a place on her list without a name.
She runs into Jesse not far from his unmarked grave and stops short, the new knowledge she has of him giving her a pang of emotion for the man. She isn't sure why. She's seen worse deaths, has delivered worse deaths, but something about those words... I watched Jane die. They ring in her head. She can hear them now, just looking at him.
She wants to know who Jane was almost as much as Walder Something, but standing before him now she's not quite sure what to say. It's clear by now what's been going on so at least she doesn't have to waste time with subtleties, and only one question is pressing against her tongue heavily enough for her to ask it. ]
The bald man. Who betrayed you. [ She spits out the word like there's poison in it. ] What is his name?
no subject
No one. [ Jesse forces his eyes open back onto her, and he fixes Arya with look of deflated bitterness. ] I'm sorry you had to see that.
no subject
I didn't know it was yours.
[ She's not sure why she wants to assure of him that, why she blurts it out so suddenly. Maybe she would have looked anyway if she'd known it was his, maybe she might have resisted snooping on someone with a soldier's pain behind his eyes. She shrugs as if to offset the apology a little. She doesn't want to concede too much. ]
I don't like that weapon. You can't... you can't see it to fight it. [ She doesn't know how else to phrase it. She has a frustrated, scrunched little look on her face. Experiencing Jesse's death had left her feeling helpless again, and she hates that. She had once lived as a mouse, but he'd died like a dog. ] And he isn't no one. I can tell you that much.
[ She scowls again, seating herself beside Jesse without being invited. He can't know what she means, but that bald man is nothing like Jaqen H'ghar was to her. He might have ordered her death when she failed her final test, but it was all part of the rules. And when she'd left, he'd let her go. ]
What is his name? [ Asked a little more quietly this time. Solemnly. ]
no subject
'What is his name?' Just a hollow stare at Arya for a moment, then Jesse looks away. He says nothing for a few beats, and it seems he might be ignoring her. But then, his voice low and empty: ]
It doesn't matter what his name is. He got what he wanted. I got what I deserved. And now I'm here. Simple as that.
no subject
And if he ends up here?
[ Because where else would he go? Arya has some names she's hoping to run into herself, but now a new face is lurking in her mind. When Jesse doesn't look at her right away she plucks something at random out of the bundle in his arms, frowning at him and what he's doing and seeming to notice his hoard for the first time. ]
If you think this place is what you deserve, then what does he deserve?
[ The worst people always get what they want, for a time. But that time ends. She's seen it. ]
no subject
"If you believe there's a hell, we're already pretty much going there." Mr. White had spat that in Jesse's face after Drew had been killed, after Jesse had told Mr. White that he was out. He was quitting the business because he couldn't handle any more death. Not after Drew Sharp. A bitter, humourless little smile to himself tugs on the corners of Jesse's mouth. It gives his pale, weary face an icy sinister edge. ]
If he ends up here... you're better off not knowing who he is. Trust me. You'd be safer that way.
no subject
One of us would be safer.
[ She wonders whether the edge in that bald man's voice, the deadened pleasure in his face at seeing Jesse dragged to meet his fate, would have reached under her skin like this if she hadn't already come to know Jesse a little bit here. She takes a breath and closes her eyes for a moment, reaching to touch the feeling she'd had in that vision, seeing if she can access it again. It's only a shadow of the experience, but his face is burned in Arya's mind. A face and no name.
It simply won't due. ]
And I don't think it would be you. [ She looks away though, sitting back, and tugs off her leather gloves one after the other to begin shredding the leafy plant she'd plucked out of Jesse's arms. ] I mean, not that you care. [ She says it dismissively, with a shrug, as if to say that if Jesse doesn't care about himself, why should she? ]
But if he does show up here. He isn't getting away from me. [ The coolness of her tone, the proven surety in it, is likely disturbing. ]
no subject
Arya. No. You don't understand. This guy, he's smart. Like, crazy smart. He is always two steps ahead of everybody. Just when you think you've beaten him, he finds a way to outsmart you and fuck you over, a hundred times worse. He's like a snake. If he showed up here, it's me that'll deal with him. 'Cause I know how he works, and I'm the only person he trusts. [ Well... ] Well... trusted.
this was the random icon and i'm keeping it
Jesse doesn't know how smart she is, though. Or what she's truly capable of. Arya chews on her secrets, considering all that Jesse doesn't know about her. All that she still wants to keep to herself. He does know one thing about her. She drops her voice into Jesse's own rough tones that she's used on him before, keeps it quiet so any others around them don't hear. ]
Would he be two steps ahead of this? Or... something like this?
[ The look she shoots him is pointed. She can do more. But she won't show him. ]
Let me help, then. If he ever does. [ She scatters the shreds of the flowers Jesse was left on the ground, torn apart by her idle hands. ] You didn't exactly do so great the last time.
lmaooo
Yeah, and if something happened to you 'cause I let you help me, I'd never forgive myself.
no subject
You don't have to worry about me. And you can't stop me from watching out for him, either.
[ She wouldn't feel safe with someone like that here anyway, but it feels like she's arguing with Jon all over again about how much danger she's allowed to be in. If only either of them knew.
But... perhaps she should drop it if he doesn't want to hear it. He really can't stop her, after all. ]
I don't want to think about what someone like that would do in a place like this. Not when they say we've all got to work together.
no subject
Hey— [ With Arya stubbornly turning away from him, Jesse reaches out a hand to grab hold of her forearm, to get her attention. He gives it an insistent squeeze, wanting her to look at him. ] Arya. I'm serious. You saw him for, like, a second. Me, on the other hand? I've known him since high school. [ Even though he didn't really know Mr. White in high school, but the point remains. ] If he shows up here, you gotta promise you won't do anything. Not without discussing shit with me first. Because I know him. I know how he operates. You don't.
no subject
For a flash of a moment, the look on her face is deadly. It fades almost instantly to simple irritation. ]
... Fine. [ She doesn't know what high school is, but she doesn't know a lot of words that Jesse uses. The scowl on her face looks like it might be permanent. ] I'll discuss shit with you first.
[ A long pause where she studies him, not hiding the fact that she's trying to read his fear of this man and his concern for her. It's surprisingly hard for her to decipher what his death was all about. ]
What will you do? If he shows up here?
no subject
Arya was against him in an instant, arms instinctively holding her tightly. At least here there was warmth and feeling, something that gave him a sense of life in the abyss of the darkness. The presence of others hadn't taken away the void, they only widened it, it seemed.
He looked down at her face, seeing her fear and emotions. His cold visage shattered as he met her eyes with concern. Gently, his hand cupped her cheek, understanding what it was she found and what she saw. His tomb was somewhere nearby then. He would have to see it, but not yet, not when she was like this.]
I don't know. I think we're being shown our graves.
[To remind them that they were truly dead? Somehow he didn't think so.]
You saw it? [He felt overwhelmed by that, but strangely no longer alone.] I made a mistake. I shouldn't have charged into the dead...
no subject
It was so like you. To protect them... [ She wants to hug him again because of it, but she makes herself resist. He's right; their reckless behaviour had gotten the both of them killed. It was not something to ignore or take lightly. ] They got away because of you.
[ Although in the time she knew he had survived his brush with death at the lake, his sacrifice then had given Daenerys what she needed to return and protect Winterfell and the north from the dead. Arya would think more on seeing Queen Daenerys fight to protect her brother, but for now all she can think about is Jon. ]
Have you... have you seen yours yet? [ She asks it hesitantly, having seen the wolf and the dragon flanking Jon's tomb. That will not be something that goes unnoticed by him, whether he knows his true parentage or not. ] I can take you to it.
no subject
[He knew he had to see his grave, but part of him dreaded seeing it. Somehow, it would make everything more real. He knew he was dead, but given where they were and what they were doing, it gave the illusion of life.
His tomb was real, it meant he truly was gone.]
No, I haven't. [But she was clearly willing to be there with him during this. Maybe it was better to do it now while Arya was with him?] You want me to see it?
[He could always read her.]
no subject
There's something you need to know.
[ She can't make it any gentler than that, and Arya takes his gloved hand and leads him across the square to where their stone tombs sit nestled side-by-side. Their statues are similar, their wolves at their sides, and yet... She turns to watch Jon take it in: the stone dragon on his other side, something that would never appear in the Winterfell crypts, and yet which had somehow manifested here. Arya couldn't imagine why, other than that it must be important for him to know. ]
Father loved you, Jon. He loved you as much as any of us, you know that. [ She squeezes the hand that is still in hers, prepared to drop it if that is what he wants. She is not sure how he will take the news. ] But he... he wasn't your true father.
no subject
He looked between Arya to the statue. The dragon curled around his legs, looking up at him, it didn't look like one of Daenerys'. This one was his own, next to him as though it belonged to him completely.
Jon took a step back, as though he were physically pushed. He didn't want to hear this, he didn't want to know it. He had always wanted to know his mother, but not like this and not at this price. The cost was his identity, who he had come to believe he was.
It was gone, dissipated like candle smoke.
Now where was he?]
Who is?
no subject
Your mother was Lyanna. The wild one, they said. [ She should know - she had been told so many times that she looked like her - that she was like her. ] So you are part Stark, Jon. You know that matters.
[ She doesn't know why she is delaying in telling him. She realizes there are tears threatening in her eyes and stubbornly blinks them away. ]
Rhaegar didn't steal her away, Jon. Bran says he loved her. And she loved him. And... [ Why hide the rest when this was already so much? ] And he married her, Jon. He married her.
[ And that's all he should need to be told to see the story true for himself. ]
no subject
Even in knowing that though, he can't stop his stomach from turning over. In giving one wish, his entire self was ripped away from him, torn from his back like flesh. He felt the pain, though it seemed a distant echo. More than anything, it was sickness that overwhelmed him, all other emotions keeping at a distance. How long before sorrow hit him? Or more possibly, anger?
He takes another step back, wanting distance between the dragon and himself. He didn't know how Bran had this information, apparently it was reliable enough that his brother didn't question it. That didn't make it easier for him to swallow.]
Everything is a lie...
[His life, Robert's Rebellion...it was all too much to carry on his shoulders, but somehow the weight of history was there. He was the reason so many died, the reason for the divide in Lord Stark's marriage. He couldn't process it, not without feeling like he would break against it all.]
no subject
[ She can see how fragile he has become with the news, how much he believes her no matter how outlandish what she is telling him is. She's grateful for that, but it doesn't make the truth any easier to accept. There is a deep sorrow in her eyes that was also there that day in the godswood when Bran had told her and Sansa when Jon could not say it himself. Now it seems, he cannot hear it. ]
Not us. [ She steps close to him again, not reaching for his hand but not allowing him more space than he needs. She's staunchly by his side, no matter what happens, and she needs him to know that. ] It doesn't change your true family. No matter... no matter what happened.
[ But it's far too much to speak of now, especially with Jon's world already coming down around him. ]
Father loved you. He protected you, just like you always knew. That hasn't changed.
no subject
All of those years that he was tormented by others for being a bastard, ignored and discarded by Lady Catelyn, taunted and knocked down for what he was, Lord Stark knew and never said a word. He had seen Jon as a child, alone and neglected by the only real mother figure in his life. He had witnessed Jon looking longingly at Lady Catelyn and wishing for her embrace as she freely gave it to her children. Lord Stark stood by and said nothing.
His life was saved and he was grateful for that, he knew he owed Lord Stark his life, but it didn't silence the child he had been, angry and hurt that he had been deprived of some sense of his mother.]
My true family? Who is that Arya? [The fire in him had a name now, not quite madness but not the passive honor that Lord Stark had tried to instill in him. Did it come from his father or his father's family? He was Targaryen...the Mad King...Viserys, they were close relatives of his as well. There was no barrier between his Stark blood and his Targaryen, they had mixed and left him as...what he couldn't say, but he'd be a fool to deny the influence of one and not the other.] You mean my grandfather, the Mad King? Or do you mean the men he killed, my other grandfather and uncle.
Aye, he protected him, but he never told me of her! He- [He broke off, ready to strike at the dragon on his grave. He never protected him from Lady Catelyn either.] He knew and he agreed I should go to the Night's Watch. I didn't think a bastard had a place in the world and he never told me.
no subject
In the end, however, she simply had to let go. If that grave was to stand there for the foreseeable future then she would just have to learn how to live with it. She is hardly someone likely to inspire all that many to want to leave something by her grave.
Thus, when Arya finds her she is using a stick as a crude sword, going through forms by the bonfire even though the weight is completely off and not very satisfying. ]
hiiiii! back from vacation, are you good to backtag since this meeting could be anytime?
only to stop and regard her from less of a distance. It is Ser Brienne, only... younger, it seems. Are her eyes lying to her? Then again, meeting Jon and Melisandre here had been strange, and neither of them were the exact Jon and Melisandre that Arya had known in her Westeros. She recognizes the woman's form though beyond a doubt, and eventually Arya approaches her slowly, hands clasped behind her back, calm as still water. ]
You look different. [ But Arya draws her slender sword nonetheless, burning with questions but cautious now, that wariness showing in her eyes. ] Why were you not with my sister when you died?
[ But she holds up her blade in a way that suggests nothing but the invitation to train. To try her, like the knight once had before she was a knight. Before Arya was a hero. ]