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

#2 | cw vomit

[sulfa]

[ It's a lot, looking at his own grave. Irwin has for the most part become desensitized to the image of the two helmets and the sea of headstones around them as the week's worn on - he's no stranger to death, after all - but for some reason, his shoulders feel heavier this evening. Maybe it's the fact that he's nearly out of cigarettes and has pretty dramatically failed at the whole cutting back thing ever since the graveyard first appeared near the bonfire. Maybe it's cumulative damage. He doesn't know. He just knows that he's dead, honest to God dead. Never coming back to the living world, never seeing his parents again unless by some miracle they end up being some of the select few that end up here. Quite possibly never going to see sunlight again.

Wade heaves a sigh and makes his way back to the Invincible after he grinds out the end of his last cigarette for the time being, acutely aware of the nausea and racing heart he'd inflicted upon himself by adding one final link to the chain with every step he takes. Last he checked, Rosinante and Mary are out somewhere, which is preferable - he'd like some time alone to process this; surely enough, there's nobody in the room to hear him cough and subsequently clear his throat.

It's the force of that cough that brings on a wave of nausea a lot more imminent than the vague sensation he was feeling on his way up the the grungy stairs. He has enough time to step into the bathroom without closing the door behind himself and kneel in front of the toilet, resting his forearm on the edge of the seat and his head on his forehead. Wade's not sure how long he spends like that, eyes closed, heart beating sickeningly fast behind his sternum and head throbbing. His thoughts inevitably move to earlier events of the day - seeing Jesse sitting beside strewn offerings and a broken grave marker, staring down at a candle on his own.

Oh, God, they're really dead. Wade retches. The apartment's front door opens. ]

[callada]

[And Rosinante walks in. Or, well, stumbles in, as he stubs his foot against the doorframe and sort of careens inward with a thud onto the floor. If the door opened outward he'd drag one of these mattresses right up to it, but it doesn't, so screw him, basically.

This has been the week from hell and he's wondering if it will ever stop. The graves appeared out of thin air and haven't gone anywhere and he's seriously considering just moving to the woods and becoming some kind of hermit so he doesn't have to deal with them ever again. If the town is going to be a graveyard, he doesn't want to live in it.

It takes him a second to register that he's not alone - the lantern light and the sound and stench tip him off once they make it to his senses through the haze brought on by alcohol and lack of cigarettes. Not his finest combination. He leaves his lantern in the middle of the room and pushes himself upright, then staggers over to investigate.

Shit, man.]

Wade. You okay? What's going on?

[sulfa]

[ Irwin coughs a few times, spits the sourness from his mouth, sniffs. He spends a few seconds of silence staring at the toilet bowl before he dares to slowly lift his head and look over his shoulder at the source of the familiar voice; he's gotten rid of everything he had for dinner, and lunch, and breakfast, but he has no interest in seeing if he can trigger an episode of dry heaving by moving too suddenly. He gives Rosinante a hollow smile that looks about as awful as he feels, although he's not sure if his roommate will catch the insincerity of it through his obvious intoxication. Not that Wade can blame him for drinking. ]

I've been better. Smoked too much at once considering I've barely had anything over the past few days. [ He doesn't mention the emotional aspect of it, that he's alone and dead and very much not okay. Rosinante can probably infer that much. ]

[callada]

Done that before.

[It's all right if it's not the full truth. Everyone's in a bad state right now. They're all struggling with this - except for a rare few, whose apparent apathy is as much a warning sign as anything else could be.

Never the best with stable footing, nevertheless he manages to make his way over to the kitchenette in the corner with a hand against the wall to guide him, and gets a glass of water to bring over to Wade.]

Here. This'll help.

[He's in no state to try and do anything more involved, like making soup or tea or whatever else you're supposed to do for someone with a stomach in a bad way, but at the very least it'll help get the taste out of his mouth.]

You should probably come lie down, too. Want a hand?

[sulfa]

[ It goes without saying that Irwin's unused to being fussed over - as company medic, his main role after fixing their guys up was appearing invincible himself, hiding pain and sickness in the same way that a parent would in front of a child. He wishes he could will himself to do the same here, seeing as Rosinante may at some point become his patient a second time, but he's already been seen vomiting, and he's in no real state to try and stagger to bed himself.

Wade rinses his mouth of the remaining acid, spits, then takes a few careful sips and swallows them before he sets the glass down on the tile floor. ]

Thanks. [ And he means it. Seeing as the nausea's mostly ebbed, he nods gently in response to his roommate's offer. ] That would be good. If you don't mind.

[callada]

[Meanwhile, having just spent months acting as parent for a sick child, he's all too used to this kind of thing. Even drunk, his priority is caring for someone who clearly needs the help. He grips the frame of the bathroom doorway to stabilize the room around him, and reaches out a hand to pull Wade up off the floor and hopefully onto his feet. Hopefully without spilling that glass of water.]

C'mon, it's, uh. Right over here.

[Yep, that's the mattresses alright. Can't really call it a bed, any of this, they sleep on what they've got. But between the mattresses, the pillows, and the accumulated pile of blankets, at least it's soft. Rosinante does his best to guide Wade over, then ends up dumping himself right onto the floor on his butt in a swerve to avoid his lantern. But hey. That's fine. That works. He'll just... sit here, and comb fingers through his hair, regretting his own lack of cigarettes.]

[sulfa]

Hey, hey, you alright? [ Wade says this from where he sits on the edge of the mattress - it's become readily apparent over the past few weeks that Rosinante has all the balance of a newborn foal, but he can't imagine crashing down onto coarse, low-pile carpeted floor to be comfortable whether it's happening for the first time or the hundredth.

He watches the commander rake long fingers rake through his thick flaxen hair after he straightens himself up with a frown: he hasn't seen this particular mannerism before, but then again, he's also never seen the man this drunk. Rosinante doesn't seem to be doing any better than he himself is, maybe worse. ]

[callada]

Yeah. Just... had too much. Trying to clear my head.

[Which is a broader answer than "yes I'm all right, I just hit the floor kind of hard" but more fitting, he thinks. He and the floor are well-acquainted. Hardly friends, but he's had less-forgiving enemies.]

We're both kind of a mess right now, huh. Too much death, not enough smokes.

[Or something like that. He's been more eloquent than he feels right now. With a sigh, he rolls his shoulders and tries to shake off some of the brain fog. No sense acting as pathetic as he feels. At least Mary isn't around right now to see them both in such a state as this.]

[sulfa]

Yeah. [ Wade casts his roommate a rueful smile. There's no point in trying to maintain the usual illusion of infallibility, seeing as Rosinante has now seen him indisposed and just gave a pretty good read of his present emotional state. ] You know, I always thought— [ What? That he wouldn't die? That it would happen to someone else? Not exactly; Wade had enlisted knowing fully well that there was a good likelihood he'd die, medic or not. And yet... it doesn't feel real. He's been dead for almost a full month and it still feels a bit like a vivid dream. ]

Hard to believe I'm actually dead.

[callada]

Mhmm.

[And will it ever get easy to believe? Maybe not, given this place likes to preserve an illusion of life. He doesn't feel dead. Knows he is, though. And Wade, well. Given how the guy went, there's no doubting that either.]

I had... goals, you know. A career.

[But he chose this and he doesn't regret it. He just hadn't thought he'd have to come to terms with the things he failed to do afterward.]

[sulfa]

[ Wade swallows dryly while staring down at his hands and wets his lips with the tip of his tongue. ] Me too. I was going t— I was halfway through my internship when I joined the army. That's a shadowing period our doctors have to go through before they can practice on their own.

[ But enough about him. Irwin lifts his head to study his roommate. ]

What about you? Were you always in the navy?

[callada]

[He nods slowly. It's true enough, since nothing of his life before that matters now. Certainly none of it should ever matter again, here.]

Marines, yeah. The World Government military.

[Explained with a half-shrug. It's a navy but the distinction matters to him. It's a matter of duty.]

It's all I really wanted, so I knew this was always a risk. I just... wanted to be there for people who needed a helping hand and it was the best way I knew how to do that. Piracy's a big problem in my world. A lot of island villages would get wiped out if we weren't there to protect them.

[He waves a hand as he explains as if gesturing to something that isn't there. Intoxication has loosened him up, made him a little more animated it seems.]