Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Sept 21, 2021 21:17:24 GMT -5
Orpheus gave L a small smile, hoping that the other survivor wouldn’t be too upset with his decision. It was something they should have chosen together, he knew, but… Orpheus couldn’t stand by and let other people suffer if there was something he could do about it. He couldn’t fight. He wasn’t scientifically minded enough to find a cure. The one thing that he could do was make sure there was enough supplies left for someone desperate. He and L weren’t desperate, not yet. Maybe they would be, one day. Maybe they would walk into a convenience store to find that someone had left something behind. Maybe it would just be a can of beans. Maybe that can of beans would save their life. Orpheus wasn’t sure he believed in karma, but he wasn’t sure he cared if it existed. If the world brought his good deeds back to him, then he would thank it. If it didn’t, there was no harm in making other people’s lives a little bit better just because. “You don’t have to apologize,” Orpheus replied, shaking his head. “I get the sense it’s been a long time since you’ve been with anyone else. It probably changes your perspective a little. But… yes, leaving sounds like a good plan.”
Noah couldn’t remember when the last time he had gotten a good night’s sleep was. Probably since he had been bitten, if he were honest with himself. His thoughts were in a hundred places at once, keeping him awake, his mind alight with worry about the virus burning its way through his blood. When would it reach his heart? When would it reach his brain? When would Noah Czerny cease to exist? No, that was the wrong question. Noah Czerny was already dead. He had died when he had been separated from his blood family. That was the only thing tying him to that name. Noah Czerny had died with his last view of Adele Czerny. Then there had been Czerny. The boy who hadn’t wanted to remember everything he had left behind, who had been content to follow Whelk around because Whelk seemed to know what he was doing. Because Whelk was the only taste of home that Noah had. Because Whelk, against all odds, was still trying to look for Glendower. Czerny had believed him. He had followed him as certainly as he had followed Gansey once. And then Czerny had been bitten to save Whelk’s life, and Czerny died. Which left… what? Who, exactly, was Noah now? He supposed he was just Noah. Nothing very special, just a boy who had survived when he wasn’t supposed to. A boy who was clinging onto a half-life with everything he had. Perhaps it was pathetic, but it meant he had found Ronan, hadn’t it? It was like sleepwalking, but different. Noah was aware he was moving, he just… didn’t know why. He didn’t know what he was going towards. It was as though his body had told him to walk, and he was just obeying the instinct without being able to get a conscious thought out to stop or question it. It didn’t matter. There must be somewhere important to go… Noah’s feet kept moving. It was as though he didn’t hear Ronan at all. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he thought it was a dream. He was… hungry. His body was taking him towards food, wasn’t it? It was… it was hard to think. His thoughts felt as though they had been smothered in dry ice.
If Nico had a better idea than a hunch, he might have mentioned it. He didn’t think he had ever been here before. He didn’t know how to find his way around, and he most certainly didn’t know where to begin to look for shelter. He had learned a few things from living on his own – most cities were built similarly, but that didn’t necessarily mean that it would be easy to find exactly what they needed. It was harder now to tell when a place was occupied, and even more dangerous to make your way into a place someone else had already claimed. In the old days, you could have the police called on you. Now… well, now you could be stabbed for walking into the wrong building. People were on edge. People were more inclined to save their own skin than wait to see if you were a friend. Nico couldn’t blame them. He hadn’t ever stabbed anyone in a situation like that before, but he didn’t discount it as a possibility. Nobody trusted anymore. That, like everything else, was Nico’s fault. “It can’t hurt,” Nico echoed, but he knew it was… not a lie, because Kelsier had promised he wouldn’t lie and Nico was willing to hold him to that… but at least not the full truth. “Where… did you used to live?” Nico asked after a moment, not sure if that was too personal a question. Were they near it? Nico wasn’t sure he really knew where they were, but… he was curious. Besides, maybe Kelsier’s old home would be safe.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Sept 22, 2021 18:43:56 GMT -5
L relaxed a little as he realized Orpheus wasn’t upset with him for failing to think of anyone else. He hadn’t intended to be selfish, but he did understand that surviving was now by its very nature an act of selfishness. To survive, you needed food. To take food, you had to deprive others of it. There was no longer room for everyone in this new world, and by choosing to keep surviving, he had probably harmed others who only wanted the same thing. All that had already occurred to him. What he hadn’t realized was that there could be a compromise. He could take some of the food at the same time he left some behind. Maybe…maybe that could work for other things, too. Maybe there were more small ways to make it just a little bit easier for his fellow humans, strangers though they all were. “Alright then,” he agreed, turning back towards the door. “I should walk behind you. I won’t be able to defend you otherwise, and you can’t effectively watch my back while carrying the food.” And he didn’t think he wanted to walk with a stranger near him unless he was keeping a very close eye on them. He didn’t say it, though he didn’t see any problem with making his suspicion known. He just didn’t think he needed to list every possible reason he had for what he did.
There were too many things Ronan didn’t know. It wasn’t that he couldn’t make it right, though he probably couldn’t, truth be told. It was that he didn’t know there was anything wrong to begin with. He was used to being in a war with the entire world. Kavinsky and Gansey had agreed on next to nothing, when he’d known them both at once…they had been as close to opposites as human beings were capable of being, in Ronan’s opinion. But there was one thing they’d had in common, and it was that they’d both attempted to handle Ronan Lynch, when they’d known him. That was what you did with weapons, after all, and Ronan was nothing at all if not that. Of course, even in handling Ronan Lynch, they had been opposite each other. Kavinsky had wanted a sidekick. Or maybe more accurate, he had wanted a dog. Gansey… It was impossible to pretend that he had never tried to control Ronan at all. But when he had, it had been different. He had never wanted an attack dog. He had simply tried his best to stop Ronan from becoming one of his own volition. Truthfully, Ronan was lost, now. He had followed Gansey for so long, been willing to do anything for him, go anywhere he asked, and now…now he was alone. Gansey had always been the head. When the head was gone…what was Ronan, only a fist, meant to do? What could he hope to accomplish? It wasn’t that Noah wasn’t enough. It was simply that Noah wasn’t Gansey. Ronan suspected the feeling was mutual. But now, as he moved away from Ronan, his footsteps vague and slow., lacking any purpose behind them…now, terror shot through Ronan’s veins in painful bursts, dread filling his stomach and overflowing into his lungs, making it hard to breathe. He let out a long line of muttered curses, abandoning the camp and jogging to catch up. He wasn’t walking like Noah. He wasn’t…he couldn’t be… No. No no no no no… Ronan seized the other boy’s arm as he caught up to him, his grip hard enough to leave bruises as he tried to pull him to a stop.
Kelsier knew the people who had made it this long were right to be on edge. The tension had kept them alive. Trust got you killed. Trust was how people could use you as a stepping stone to keep themselves alive a little bit longer. But it was also a way to survive. It was a way to make sure you not only breathed, but smiled, as well. Trust was always going to be a risk, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a risk worth taking. Given the chance, even knowing what hs knew now…Kelsier would still choose to love and Mare with all of him, if he could go back. He would do it all again, because he would rather have loved her and lost her than never loved her at all. “Me?” He replied, glancing at the boy beside him. Another reason to trust was that it was much easier to trust someone who also trusted you. It tended to go both ways…regarding the world with suspicion would only make it look back at him in the same way. He was willing to take the first step here. Even if Nico never reciprocated. “Oh, nowhere near here,” he replied after a second, his tone casual. If he thought the question too personal, he gave no indication of it. “But I used to visit here sometimes, when a close friend of mine came to see his family. That’s probably why I don’t quite remember it as well as I might have if I’d lived here.”
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Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Sept 24, 2021 21:34:02 GMT -5
Orpheus knew that life was selfish now. There was no way to continue surviving without making it actively harder for other people to continue surviving. The world was hard and it was cold, and all Orpheus wanted to do was make it just a little bit brighter. He was grateful that L wasn’t upset with him for leaving food behind. There was a difference between being selfish because it hadn’t occurred to you that there was another option and being selfish in spite of knowing there might be another option. Not leaving anything behind was… well, it wasn’t necessarily a selfish act, it was just… an act that would help the two of them survive at the expense of everyone else. Being upset about leaving things behind when they didn’t need everything… it wasn’t inherently selfish, but Orpheus was still grateful L hadn’t argued. The world was the sort of place where most people didn’t have room to make things easier for other people. When Orpheus had the chance to help others without actively hurting himself… he took it. It didn’t have to be human against human all the time. “That works,” Orpheus replied, flashing L a small smile. He took a few steps forward, glancing over his shoulder to make sure L was okay before he began to make his way back out of the building. They hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any zombies yet… hopefully their good luck would hold.
Noah’s thoughts were a blur. He knew he needed to stop. He knew he needed to turn back around and take watch so Ronan was okay… it was hard to control his body. It was hard to stop his feet. He didn’t know where he was going or why he was wandering, he just… his mind wanted to wander. His mind needed to wander, and his thoughts were hidden under a thick layer of fog… if he had been more aware of what was happening, he would have been terrified. It was as though he was there and absent all at the same time. It was as though his mind was his but his body was something different. Was that what turning was like? Did every zombie wander around with their human thoughts as their bodies did unconscionable things? That was hell, in Noah’s eyes. If he was going to turn, he would rather turn all the way. He didn’t want Ronan to be able to see Noah in his eyes if he tried to kill him. Perhaps that was a selfish thought. Perhaps Noah just thought it would hurt less. He let the thought linger for a few moments, trying to hold onto the discomfort that squirmed in his chest. He wasn’t going to be anyone but Noah. He wasn’t going to let this virus take him away from Ronan, not when he had just gotten him back. Ronan’s grip on his arm was sudden and tight and real. It felt more real than any of the thoughts bouncing around in Noah’s head. It was as though Ronan were a photograph and the world Noah’s head had entered was a child’s artistic rendering of it. Maybe it was the pain that brought him back. Maybe it was the look in Ronan’s eyes. Either way, Noah’s feet stopped moving and he stared blankly at his friend for a few moments as his mind wrestled for control of his disobedient body. “Ronan?” Noah managed eventually, his voice raspy and uncertain. He blinked once, then twice as his mind struggled to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t where he had been just seconds ago. He had wandered. Had… he fallen asleep? He had dreamed… he shuddered, pushing the thought away. “Ow.” Noah’s gaze drifted down to Ronan’s hand, tight around his arm. H is voice was feeble, but it got the point across.
“Right,” Nico replied, voice quiet as he looked around. This was a place where people had lived, once. It was hard to remember that sometimes. The landscape was dotted with buildings that used to be houses and were now scarcely more than ruins. The further away from New York City Nico got, the more it seemed normal. New York was like a world of its own, cut off from everywhere else… everywhere else had been normal for much longer. It was hard to believe that there were people who had lived normal lives while Nico had run, trying to protect his own. The virus had spread, as viruses tended to do. More people died. Every state that fell… when their televisions cut off and their newscasters disappeared, did they know it was Nico’s fault? Did they hear about the boy who had started the end of the world? Nico looked up, trying desperately to think of anything else. He didn’t want to spend this time drowning in self pity. “What was it like?” Nico whispered, dark eyes lifting to meet hazel. “To visit somewhere just… for fun? I guess… what was it like to travel somewhere just because you could, not because you needed to keep moving to survive? I mean… I remember going on vacation once, I guess, but… it wasn’t very fun.” He didn’t say more than that. He didn’t know how much Kelsier could figure out about Nico’s identity based on where he had visited as a child, but he didn’t want to take that risk. Right now, he didn’t want to lose the only adult supervision he’d had since this whole mess had started.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Sept 24, 2021 22:11:52 GMT -5
L gave a small nod, falling silent as he followed Orpheus out. He was still walking as silently as he could, still watching his surroundings with a practiced paranoia, but he didn’t think they were in too much danger unless a herd of zombies or a pack of survivors came by. Of course, lone members of either of those were also bad news, but L was far more confident in their ability to evade a single zombie or human than he was in their ability to actually have to fight. L himself was capable of defending himself, to a certain point, but…he glanced at Orpheus for a second before he looked away again. He had never really needed to defend anyone else. Watari was the closest, and Watari had died. He didn’t like that track record much. So he kept moving, as fast as he dared. The sooner they got back to his current home, which he had picked because it was highly defendable…the better they’d both be.
He’s gone. He’s gone. When he turns it won’t be Noah in those eyes anymore, it won’t be anybody at all, he’s gone, he’s dead, he’s gone… He’s gonna leave you behind too. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Ronan was so good at staying alive, when out of everyone, wasn’t he the one who most hated being alone? He’d have died for Gansey, Adam, Blue, Noah…he’d have died for any one of them a thousand times over, he knew that. But they weren’t supposed to go. He didn’t want to be alone. It was a selfish thought, but it was the loudest one. He wanted to believe it wasn’t true, he wanted to…what was it Adam had tried to explain to him, months, years, centuries ago? It had been a cat. Ronan couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but he did remember the cat. Dead or alive…dead or alive…it was stupid, but Ronan thought he understood what it had meant now. As long as he didn’t turn around, Noah was neither one. Ronan didn’t think he wanted to open the box. And then Noah opened it for him. He caught his breath, keeping an iron grip on the other boy’s shoulder as he turned and very nearly closing his eyes to stop himself from breaking for even a moment longer. Because he wasn’t new to this, this flavor of life, this hell, this… Grief. And then he was looking into Noah’s eyes. An electric shock seemed to pulse through him, his heart giving a violent, painful shudder. Alive. The cat was alive. Ronan acted on pure instinct, released Noah’s arm, and punched him in the face with everything he had, right on the cheek opposite his perpetual smudge. “What the hell is wrong with you, you [oops]ing asshole!” He yelled, fury swallowing everything else in a sudden flood he had no hope of controlling, even if he’d wanted to. “I thought…I thought you were…” He was shaking.
Kelsier considered the question for a moment, keeping his eyes moving. It wouldn’t do to get distracted…they may not have been half bad at staying alive, but Kelsier would rather not push their luck if he could help it. Having someone to protect was a lot different than having only himself to think about, after all. He needed to consider how bad it would be for Nico to get stuck in another fight with his injury and no rest. “Well,” he began, thinking it over. “It’s like…it’s a lot like most things used to be. I guess you must know this already, but not everything used to be life or death. Some decisions were just…preference. ‘Would you like to go this year, or the next? Why not next year? It’s not going anywhere’.” He gave a small smile. “Traveling for fun used to just be a different sort of adventure. It was more playing at one than anything else, of course. Real adventures always have tragedy in them.” He shook his head. “Ah, sorry. I’m not trying to be grim. It was good, Nico. It was really good.”
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Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Sept 25, 2021 2:02:26 GMT -5
Orpheus knew that they were only halfway out of danger. They had to get out of here and get back before they could be considered safe. He found he doubted they were completely safe where L had decided to stay, but… at least there were locking doors there. And at least they were certain that there were no zombies hiding around any corner. You could never be certain that you were completely safe, but… having a place to stay was safer than most other places were. Orpheus trusted L to have his back as they went back. If anything came out of the shadows, L would warn him and they would either fight it or run. As they made it outside of the store, Orpheus was fairly certain that running would be the better option. They had a pretty straight shot right back to L’s place. “Thank you,” Orpheus managed after a moment, glancing back at L and giving him a small smile. “For having my back. And keeping watch while I grabbed food. I forgot how much easier it is when you don’t have to do that kind of thing alone.”
Noah hadn’t meant to scare Ronan. He hadn’t really… meant to do anything. He had just been sitting there and then his thoughts had gotten fuzzy and he hadn’t been aware of anything until Ronan had grabbed his hand and he’d been paces away… he opened his mouth to say something, to offer an explanation, or maybe ask what had happened, but Ronan’s reflexes moved faster. Noah’s hands moved up in a belated attempt to protect his face as he went down. He let out a quiet gasp as his body moved backwards without his permission, the momentum of the punch pushed him back, gravity taking hold of him. It felt like it took an eternity, though it was over in seconds. Noah lay on the ground, his hands still up to protect his face from an enemy that wasn’t coming. It was as though his mind had transported him somewhere else. Day, instead of night. A different boy. A shove, not a punch. And then… nothing. Noah had fought back, he had punched and kicked and gotten away with only the one bite. The one bite that had yet to claim him. Slowly, Noah peeled his eyes open, eyes widening as he realized there was nothing coming. There was just Ronan. Ronan, still there, not sprinting as far away from him as he could. “Sorry,” Noah mumbled, fingers moving up to touch the skin where Ronan’s fist had made contact. It was already tender, but that wasn’t what he was concerned about. Well… he was slightly concerned he might be bleeding. Could a punch do that? He couldn’t feel blood, but his whole face felt funny. It was wet, too. Was that blood, or… Noah frowned, pulling his fingers back to examine them. Not blood, just tears. Tears? He hadn’t realized he’d started crying. “I think I… must’ve been sleepwalking… or something.” He glanced up at Ronan for a moment before he shifted, pulling his knees closer to his chest. He didn’t want Ronan to leave him. He hadn’t meant to scare him. He hadn’t meant… it wasn’t a prank. Noah didn’t know what it was. Or, if he did, he didn’t want to admit it to himself.
Did Nico deserve to be angry he had never gotten the chance to make a decision out of preference? It was his own fault he had never been able to. He had been too young to make those kinds of decisions. He could only choose what clothes he wanted to wear on any particular day or what game he wanted to play with Bianca. He had never gotten to plan for a future or choose where to go on vacation. He would likely never get that choice. Eventually, Hades would find him. He didn’t know what would happen when he did, but… Nico didn’t think the boy he was trying to be would survive. Whether his body would survive was another question entirely. He was trying to survive, now. He was trying to do what he could to fix the mess he had created, but there was next to nothing he could do other than survive long enough to be able to try to fix it. “I don’t think I like adventures very much,” Nico admitted quietly, giving a shake of his head. “I’d rather have… a normal life, I guess.”
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Sept 25, 2021 2:31:52 GMT -5
There was no such thing as completely safe. L knew that, as he’d always known it, long before the world had changed. He didn’t need a guarantee, he just needed chances high enough to make him feel safe enough to sleep now and then. It was…inconvenient…to have the sleep schedule he naturally seemed to. Admittedly, it was never safe to sleep, but passing out for entire days at once was far riskier than frequent short naps were. Unfortunately, staying awake as long as he did meant he needed to catch up all at once. It was a problem he hadn’t yet learned out to solve…the apocalypse didn’t seem made for him. Food, sleep, and even shoes were necessary at times, especially in the winter. He glanced up, blinking a little. “Oh,” he said, surprised by the thanks. “I…suppose it made sense. It was easier for me, as well. So it wasn’t a very selfless choice, was it?”
Ronan hadn’t meant to punch Noah, either. He had never punched him before, except perhaps lightly on the arm. Not like this. He had never, ever attacked Noah before, and watching him fall back, covering his face like he expected the attack to continue…his stomach twisted. He felt sick, and hot, and cold, and like his brain couldn’t decide what emotion he was meant to be feeling, so it just kept firing them all at random. Most of them tended to escape him by pretending they were anger, though. He didn’t know what had just happened. All he knew was that he was shaking, and he didn’t want to be shaking, and Noah was on the ground, and he didn’t want that, either. He stood still, jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. He didn’t know what to do. Noah had looked… Hel’d looked so, so very dead. Worse than dead. It didn’t even occur to him that he’s almost certainly have been bitten now if he really had been a zombie. All he could think about was the awful feeling of watching Noah stumbling away from him. “Since when do you sleepwalk?” He retorted fiercely, still standing where he’d stopped. “Sh(oops), Czerny, you looked just like…” He swallowed angrily, then stumbled forward and collapsed to his knees in front of Noah, grabbing him roughly and pulling him into a hug. He knew that would make it hard to pretend he wasn’t still shaking, but maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he just wanted to wipe that awful image out of his head.
Kelsier didn’t know who had technically caused the apocalypse. It mattered, of course, because they were probably the same people who had some idea of how to put it right again, but he doubted they were very interested in coming forwards. Whoever they happened to be…Kelsier just hoped they were trying to fix this, too. Even if they never told anyone what had happened. He didn’t suspect the truth. How could he have? Nico had been a child. Well…a smaller child. It wasn’t his fault, even if he’d been the cause, in very technical terms. “I never was much for normal,” Kelsier admitted. “It never suited me very well. But this isn’t the sort of adventure I ever planned on having. I’ll be glad when it’s over with.” As though that were certain to happen in his lifetime. Or at all.
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Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Sept 25, 2021 18:00:25 GMT -5
“It doesn’t have to be selfless to be a kind choice nonetheless,” Orpheus replied after a moment, giving a small smile. “I think… dividing things into selfless and selfish doesn’t really… work now. I mean… everyone has to be selfish to survive, but sometimes the things that are best for other people are the things that are best for us, too. I can still thank you for doing this with me, even if it helped you, too.” He kept his voice low, not sure how loudly they could speak without drawing attention. He didn’t think speaking loudly was the best idea – they weren’t out of the fire yet, and zombies had surprisingly good hearing. The last thing they needed was to end up trapped because Orpheus was a little bit too enthusiastic about thanking L. “It’s… been a long time since I’ve gathered supplies with anyone,” he admitted after a moment, his cheeks turning just a little red. “It’s a lot nicer to do it when there’s someone else there and you don’t have to just… look out for yourself.” Other people thought it was safer to stay on their own. It meant they couldn’t lose anyone. On one hand, Orpheus understood that. On the other… he was relieved to be with someone now, if only for a short period of time.
“I don’t know,” Noah mumbled, eyes wide as he looked up at Ronan. He didn’t think the attack had been intentionally, but… he had to be careful. He hadn’t ever thought that Whelk would attack him intentionally either. But Ronan wasn’t leaving. He wasn’t disappearing off into the distance, which meant… which meant that things might still be okay. Noah tried to keep his breath even, but it caught as sobs worked their way through his throat. Why was he crying? It didn’t hurt that much, and… and it was Ronan. And it was like Noah had been dead, it was like… he knew why Ronan couldn’t say it. He should have told him. He should have warned him instead of… instead of causing this. If this was how Ronan reacted when he was still alive, what sort of pain would he be when the person who turned around wasn’t Noah, not really? How cruel was Noah to stay here and not say a word How cruel was it to let Ronan pretend this could last. And then Noah felt himself pressed against Ronan, his eyes wide with surprise, his body shaking almost as much as Ronan’s. It was hard to tell if he was the one trembling or if it was Ronan. If Noah were honest… it was probably him. Ronan was the strongest of all of them. Ronan didn’t tremble. Ronan held steady, steadier than anyone Noah had ever met before. “Sorry,” Noah murmured again, finally pulling his own arms around Ronan. He didn’t just want to be held. He wanted to hold to. How long had it been since anyone held either of them? How long since there was someone to tell them that it was going to be okay, no matter what happened?
Over with. Was that ever going to happen? As far as Nico was concerned, he had destroyed the world permanently. There was no coming back from what he had done. Which was… well, admittedly a dramatic way of thinking about it, but wasn’t it also accurate? Hadn’t the world been just fine before Nico had done something that had torn it apart? He wanted to have a hand in helping to put it back together, but he wasn’t idealistic enough to believe it could ever truly be fixed. There was no way this was going to be anywhere close to what ‘normal’ had been before. “Maybe… maybe what used to be normal is the adventure, now,” Nico whispered, not sure if he wanted Kelsier to hear him or not. “I think… it would be pretty adventure-like to go to work and suddenly stop at a café you’ve walked past but never been in. Or… or maybe to order something off the menu that you’ve never tried. That sounds like the kind of adventure I’d like to have. This… this isn’t an adventure. This is hell.”
Newt was done. Maybe it was the coward’s way out. Maybe he should have stuck around a little bit longer, maybe he should have tried harder to find his sister, but… he was alone now. And there was nothing he could do to change that. The people he had started out with… they were long gone. They were his friends, his family… they hadn’t left him. He had left them, because he knew what the future would look like. He didn’t want his friends to watch him lose himself if he ever got infected. He didn’t want to lose himself, either. So there was really only one way out. You either die, or you become a zombie. Sometimes, you do both. Newt was fairly certain a quick death would be kinder than feeling his brain turning on itself. He was intelligent. That was about all he had going for him, now. Standing at the top of the building, though… Newt’s stomach turned itself upside down in flips. He was doing this. He was really doing this. He gave a brief glance around to make sure there was nobody around, and then he stepped forward. He plummeted towards the ground.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Sept 25, 2021 20:27:38 GMT -5
L considered that, then gave a small, surprised nod. “I suppose that makes sense,” he agreed, his own voice just as low. That was just how he normally talked, now. It wasn’t like he needed to call anyone, and there was always a chance of the dead hearing him if he wasn’t careful. “It’s been…a while for me, too. Doing this with anyone, I mean,” he replied after a moment. He wasn’t sure how comfortable he was with sharing his past, but…well. It wasn’t as though he had anyone but himself left to protect. In some strange sense, he was the safest he had ever been, since no one cared who L Lawliet, Eraldo Coil, or Deneuve was anymore, so no one had any reason to kill him specifically. Even if he knew Orpheus probably wasn’t going to stay…it was nice to not be completely alone for a little while. “We should ration this,” he added thoughtfully. “So we can make it last.”
Ronan didn’t know how to react. Holding Noah now meant it was over, and Noah was safe, but it still felt a lot like a nightmare, and he had enough of those in his mind already. He didn’t need them invading the real world too. He didn’t know what had happened, or why Noah had looked that way. Sleepwalking…could it really have just been sleepwalking? What if Ronan hadn’t caught him? What if he’d just wandered away, and Ronan had never even known why? Would he have been able to find his way back? It hadn’t happened, but Ronan knew he would have a new nightmare the next time he closed his eyes. He still couldn’t get the image of Noah stumbling away like someone possessed out of his head. He could tell Noah was crying. He wasn’t…he didn’t tend to cry much in general. It took a lot to get him to that point, and this, though terrifying, wasn’t the right sort of thing. He didn’t move away, though. He didn’t want to let go, even if his shouts could have put them in danger, technically speaking. He didn’t say anything else. He just held on and tried to pretend it was for Noah’s sake.
Kelsier glanced up, watching Nico thoughtfully as the boy spoke. Well…was he wrong? The thought of having a normal life did sound like an adventure, now. Maybe he had never exactly been a normal person in his life, but…as usual, it was the fantastic and unattainable that they all craved. He wondered if people would write stories about normal everyday life, if this continued for long enough. He wasn’t giving up hope, but…people could learn to live with a lot. Maybe even if the dead walked, there could be a new normal, someday. “What would you do, if you could do any of those things? Anything that was possible before?” He asked, still watching the kid. He didn’t know if he expected him to answer. He didn’t have to. If he wanted to end the conversation there, that was alright, too.
Sweets hadn’t had anyone to talk to in what felt like far too long, now. He had never really thought of himself as…okay, maybe he was sort of an extrovert. But it wasn’t like he could never be alone, it was just that…he never really wanted to be alone. He was alone now, though. He didn’t know which of his friends…family, really…he was more afraid for. Besides the kids. The kids…yeah. He didn’t like thinking about them. He didn’t really know where he was. Which would only have mattered if he’d had somewhere he was trying to go, which he no longer did. The jeffersonian should have been a stronghold against the dead, with all its security precautions already in place, its supplies, which included plenty of weapons, and the fact that there were countless places someone could hide in it, if they needed to. How much flesh did a zombie need to come back, anyway? So maybe it had been cowardice that had landed Sweets where he was now. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried other ways of finding his friends, wherever they were…they weren’t here. He started, torn from his thoughts by a loud thump nearby, and backed away instinctively. Zombies weren’t intelligent enough to be able to avoid stumbling off of things…more often than not, a thump meant one had fallen. He knew he should walk away. It would be safer to just walk away. He was tired of walking away. Hesitantly, he approached the sound, trying to see what it was. He thought he could see a dull shape on the ground, but he couldn’t quite make out what it could be.
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strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Sept 26, 2021 0:29:42 GMT -5
Orpheus hadn’t entirely gotten used to the idea of being quiet. He wasn’t a very loud person to begin with, though, so he hadn’t really needed to adjust his volume too much when the apocalypse had struck. He was more cautious when he was out in the open, though. He had been responsible for zombie attacks in the past. That… well, that was how he had gotten kicked out of the first group he had been part of. He hadn’t meant to play quite so loud, and it was before he had altered his guitar to keep zombies away… he had been a liability. It had been so long ago, but Orpheus still heard their voices crystal clear in his head sometimes when he tried to fall asleep. He was the reason one of them had been turned. It was his fault the zombies had attacked. He didn’t even have any useful skills, so why would they bother letting him stay? “I agree,” he murmured, looking up again. They were nearing L’s little shelter, though Orpheus wouldn’t have realized it if it weren’t the path they had taken to leave. L really had chosen somewhere that was more hidden away. More defensible than most other places were. “I’m not hungry yet, in any case.”
Noah had seen Ronan cry exactly once in his life. If Ronan were crying now… well, he would have been even more concerned. For his own part, he wasn’t sure why he was crying. The punch had left part of his face numb, but that wasn’t what had brought on the tears. Maybe it was the way it had felt all too similar to the way Whelk had pushed him down and left him to die. Maybe it was because Ronan was still here, holding him instead of running the other direction. Maybe it was because he didn’t believe it really was sleepwalking. He had his suspicions about the way he had lost time, though he didn’t want to share them with Ronan. He had been bitten. He would turn sooner or later, he just… wanted desperately to believe that it would be later. He refused to turn now. Noah tightened his grip on Ronan, holding him as close as he dared. He didn’t think Ronan would attack again, but it paid to be suspicious with the world the way it was. Even of his friends. “At least my face’ll look more symmetrical now,” Noah sniffled, letting a tentative hint of humor seep into his voice. “I’ll have a black eye to go along with the bruise on the other side.”
“Anything?” Nico asked, uncertain if this was really a question he should be answering. He was trying not to get attached to Kelsier. He was trying to make sure he was able to leave when he needed to. Having these kinds of conversations wasn’t going to help. He was just… so tired of running. He was so tired of being alone, and he was tired of keeping up the self-control it took to stay alone. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment, his tone thoughtful. He didn’t have an answer off the top of his head, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to answer. He took a few more moments to think about it. The silence between them was distinctly comfortable. It should have turned the warning bells on in Nico’s head. Maybe it did. He just… pushed them aside. He wanted to let himself have this, if only for a little bit. He wanted to pretend he was the kind of boy who could form alliances. Who didn’t have to go it alone. “I think… I’d like to go get ice cream.”
Newt had fully expected that to work. He hadn’t expected the heart-rending crack that seemed to reverberate through the entire ground as his body hit the ground, his leg taking most of the impact. He hadn’t expected the burning as he went down on top of his it, breath coming in quick, shallow gasps. He had imagined himself high enough that the fall itself would kill him. He hadn’t thought he’d be alive at the bottom, leg splayed out awkwardly next to him. So much for a quick, easy death. He was going to be stranded out here for zombies to come make a meal out of if he didn’t figure out how to pick himself up. He would have to learn how to set his leg… he had never paid very good attention when the teachers were trying to explain first aid, but he didn’t think any of them had ever mentioned what happened if you had to set your own broken leg. They usually were talking about… well, minor scrapes and burns, mostly. He thought, at least. It was hard to remember with every signal in his brain screaming that he was in pain. He was very, very aware of that. The sound of something else alive in the area brought Newt back to himself. Wide eyed, he grabbed for the closest thing he could find to a weapon. It was an old panel from the side of the building, half rusted into a sharp point. “Stay back!” he yelled, eyes wide as he tried to hide his injured leg. If he could prove that he was going to put up a fight, then hopefully whoever (or whatever) it was would leave him alone. Hopefully, they would decide he wasn’t worth the trouble. Maybe that was the shock speaking.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Sept 26, 2021 18:29:59 GMT -5
L had never been a part of any other groups. He probably could have been, but he had never felt safe enough to let them see him, and besides…he had had Watari for a good portion of that time. After that, he had been much safer alone. Until now. Until he had allowed the music to make him reveal himself…why had he done that? It had probably been foolish. He would probably regret it. But…he didn’t regret it yet. “No, me neither,” he agreed, though whether it was true or not wasn’t something he paid any attention to. He often didn’t really know if he was hungry or not. It saved resources if he could forget to eat for days at a time. Not being alone was going to make that a bit more complicated, but L had never been in the habit of letting his mannerisms change just to accommodate others. If Orpheus wanted to eat while L was still pretending he didn’t need to, that wouldn’t be a problem. Right?
Noah was still shaking. Ronan didn’t know if it was the fear of wandering without meaning to or because of the punch, but…it probably didn’t matter. He was shaking and crying and Ronan didn’t know how to put it right, because he’d never been much for comfort even at the best of times. So he just sat there and tried to pretend everything was fine, because it was. Because Noah was alive. Because he was going to stay that way if Ronan had anything to say about it. “Shut up,” he told him, but there was no conviction behind the words. He didn’t really mean it…maybe Noah would be able to tell, and maybe he wouldn’t, but for Ronan’s part, he didn’t mean it. “If you ever do that again, I’ll…” he added in the most threatening voice he could manage, though it was slightly ruined by the fact that he didn’t have an actual threat.
“Anything,” Kelsier confirmed, letting the kid have a moment to think. There were probably a lot of options…especially from a kid’s perspective. Things he wanted to do, or had wanted to do before. He wasn’t trying to make things harder. He didn’t know Nico was already planning to leave. He wouldn’t have been surprised, and if he was honest, he would like to make staying as appealing as he could, but…he didn’t know. He was mostly just being himself. “Ice cream…” he mused, smiling at the thought. “Yeah, that’s a good one. I think that’s what I would do, too.” He was tempted to ask what flavor Nico had liked, but he wasn’t sure how far he wanted to pursue it. He didn’t want to start acting like they were close just because he was probably about the safest place to be for Nico.
Sweets froze in place, startled as the desperate words hit him. Zombies didn’t speak. Zombies couldn’t speak. Which meant… Oh, god. How high up had it been? He looked up, searching for the most likely place the kid had fallen from for a moment before he found it. It was high. High enough that it could probably have killed him if he hadn’t been fortunate enough to land on his leg like that…the leg must have softened the fall. Which meant it was probably broken now, if not crushed. “Hold…hold on!” He called back, ignoring the warning and quickening his pace. “Don’t try to move! Are…are you okay?” Stupid question. How could he be okay? Still…he wasn’t dead. Whether he was going to be remained to be seen. He should have been watching for zombies, but the kid could be bleeding out if he’d landed on something broken…or he could be bleeding internally… For the first time, he felt like Dr. Brennan might have been right all along. What good was a psychologist here? Newt needed a doctor, not a therapist.
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strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Sept 27, 2021 2:21:11 GMT -5
Orpheus had drifted from group to group for the past several months. Years? It was hard to tell. He had never been the best at keeping track of time, and now there wasn’t even a consistent calendar to follow. How was he supposed to know how long it had been? He didn’t know what month it was. He didn’t even know what year it was. He was just aware that it was still warm out. Winter hadn’t hit yet. Winter was the hardest season to survive, especially alone. He didn’t want to assume he would be allowed to stay with L through the winter, but… he hoped he would find someone who wouldn’t mind letting him hunker down with them until the cold passed. Gathering supplies was always harder in winter. It had just gotten progressively harder as shops ran out of things more and more often. There would eventually be nowhere left to go for the kinds of items that weren’t perishable. “Is… there anything you’d like to do now? I know you were interesting in studying the music. I can… play a little for you, if you’d like. When we get back inside, I mean.”
“Okay,” Noah mumbled, though he had no intention of shutting up. He was still here. Ronan was still here. And so was Noah. Somehow, that felt like a miracle. It felt like something to celebrate, even more than it had when they had just found each other again. Noah might have turned. He might have wandered off and never come back. He may not have been himself when Ronan grabbed his arm. If he hadn’t… would he have bitten Ronan? How long would it have taken the other boy to back off and try to save himself? Ronan… Ronan didn’t really save himself. If Ronan hadn’t been quite as self-sacrificial, he would have run the other direction the moment it seemed like Noah might not be himself. He would have knocked Noah down and run as far as he could so Noah couldn’t follow. He shuddered, tightening his grip on Ronan for another second before he relaxed just a little bit. “You’re not scary,” he added after a moment, his voice nearly inaudible.
“You probably got ice cream a lot when the world was normal,” Nico said after a moment, looking at Kelsier. “I mean… I got ice cream a few times, but… it was a big, exciting thing for me. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a kid. But… you’ve experienced so much that ice cream probably wasn’t as exciting to you when the world ended as it was when you were younger.” He didn’t mean to try to read into Kelsier, but he found it surprising that Kelsier would get ice cream too if he could do anything in the world. Wasn’t getting ice cream a little too mundane? If Nico had known enough of the world to have regrets about the things he had never gotten to do, wouldn’t he have chosen to do one of those things instead of something he had already done? It was hard to tell. “I remember it was sweet,” he added after a moment, his voice soft. “It’s been a while since I’ve had anything sweet.”
That… was most certainly not the reaction Newt had ben expecting. People weren’t exactly friendly anymore. Usually. Although… maybe that was because Newt had seemed like a troublesome teenage boy who was more interested in causing problems than he was in helping other people survive. Maybe now that he was hurt, he was someone to be pitied. He didn’t like being useless like this. He didn’t like knowing that he couldn’t just walk away from the situation. Had this man seen what had happened? If he had… surely he would understand why Newt had tried. Maybe he would finish off the job. Although… sitting where he was, Newt wasn’t entirely certain that death was the only way out. Maybe it was just the adrenalin still running through him. The human body never wanted to die, no matter how ready the mind was. “Fine,” he replied, trying to keep the pain out of his voice. He failed miserably. “I… don’t suppose you can help me find somewhere protected to stay the night?” Newt managed. It was a tough call. If he let himself be vulnerable in front of the wrong person, they would take advantage of him some way or another. But if he let this man just pass him by, he would die here. The coyotes would be used to his presence and the smell of something about to die, even if the zombies didn’t somehow find him.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Oct 6, 2021 10:26:49 GMT -5
The seasons were the only reliable way to track time anymore. The days didn’t work - they were two short and blended together - but it was hard to miss the seasons changing. Winter hadn’t come, but it would. He had made it through winter before, though. He doubted Orpheus would be around by then. The most he could hope for was a month. He glanced up, hesitating at the question. Actually interacting with people was…harder than it used to be. And it had never really come easily to him. He was both out of practice and unsure if he’d ever learned how in the first place. “I’d like to study the music more, if that’s alright,” he said after a moment, hands in his pockets as he picked his way over the ground. “It could be useful.” And also…there wasn’t much else to do.
Ronan didn’t move. Someone would need to, eventually, and that meant one of them would have to be the first to pull away and bring this moment to an end. They could probably have stayed there forever, in theory. In practice, if Ronan didn’t pull away, Noah would. The opposite was also true, but it was less relevant. Someone a long time ago had made a theory and an artistic looking pyramid about human minds. It stated more or less that you couldn’t deal with the top of the pyramid unless all the layers below it had been dealt with, and so you had to find where you might be at any given moment to decide what needed done first. Adam had talked about it once, so it was Adam’s voice he heard it in when he remembered it. He had known the whole thing was bull from the start. Adam had given it a great deal of thought, the way someone might study an ancient burial ground, though he’d done it in a quiet, furtive way that made it clear to Ronan that it was less about documenting ancient finger bones and more about checking to see if you’d lost a finger at some point without realizing. He could have saved a lot of effort if he’d been listening to Ronan, but he couldn’t be blamed for deciding against it. Ronan Lynch had his own fingers to count. Ronan Lynch was not known for his deep philosophical input. Ronan Lynch did, however, know that there was more than one way to starve. He didn’t want to pull away. He pulled away, his mouth set in a thin line as he took Noah in once again, blue eyes skimming the fresh bruise already forming on his face without landing on it. “Liar,” he replied automatically, though it lacked heat. “C’mon. It’s my turn to watch anyway.”
Kelsier couldn’t say Nico was entirely wrong. He had probably gotten ice cream many more times in his life than Nico had. Being an adult meant he could have it whenever he wanted it. Being an adult also meant it was less exciting when he did. “Probably not,” he admitted, continuing on at the same, even pace. “But it’s been a long time. You’d be surprised how much you can miss something you never thought you cared about much. Like showers, for instance. Or staying up all night just for the hell of it.” He wasn’t prone to getting lost in thought thinking about the world as it had been. He was usually more focused on the present. But…he couldn’t deny that he missed more things than he’d ever have thought he would. “Ever had a Twinkie?” He asked after a moment, inclining his head to give Nico a sideways glance.
Sweets sped up, jogging to close the distance faster. Yelling back and forth to communicate was probably the worst thing they could do, especially if the kid couldn’t run. Zombies weren’t usually silent, but they were now and then, and if there was a herd nearby… He made it to him and slowed, eyes wide as he took the boy in. The leg was broken on at least a couple places. He didn’t need to be a medical doctor to tell that much. He was surprised Newt was still conscious…though, that was probably the adrenaline. He was still in danger of going into shock, though, and as much as Sweets wanted to help, he had no idea what he’d do if that happened. “Yeah, no, totally…” he answered as soon as held processed that Newt had said anything. “I, uh…I have a place. It’s kind of a mess, though…” Like the kid with a broken leg cared about how put together his apocalypse hideout was. He knelt, trying to pull his thoughts together. “I’m Dr. Lance Sweets, by the way. It’s really nice to meet a human being. I mean, you. I mean…I haven’t seen anyone else in a while. I was beginning to think…”
It was sort of ironic that Sal Fisher blended into the world only after it had effectively ended. Scars were more common now, for one thing. It was a lot harder to avoid physical signs of what you’d been through, because what you’d been through was now more likely to be physical. Most people still had faces, though, so that wasn’t the main reason. Zombies were generally less likely to have faces. He didn’t really mean to blend in as much as he did. He hadn’t been around that many people recently. The people he’d been around before had known him already, so they hadn’t noticed the resemblance. The blue pigtails might have made him seem more human if zombies didn’t share whatever styles the people they’d been had liked. As it was, it didn’t do much, besides make him feel a little bit better about things. It wasn’t a solution so much as it was a quiet rebellion. He should have stopped being able to style his hair. He hadn’t. He was standing in a yard at the moment. Or…what he asssumed had been a yard at some point. He wasn’t doing much of anything besides thinking and looking at an old mailbox, trying to decide whether he was brave enough to open it.
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strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Oct 7, 2021 1:16:27 GMT -5
Orpheus didn’t know how long he would be welcome. Given his track record, he figured it wouldn’t be for very long. The two of them would not watch the seasons change together. They would not be looking out for each other through the winter. Orpheus had allowed himself to hope once before that he would be able to join a group he liked. He had never made that mistake again. He knew that the fears they had were true. He was too scatterbrained to be of much help at all. He had already lost Eurydice to his own negligence. He had been trying to heal the world, but what did that matter when it had taken Eurydice away from him? When he hadn’t even noticed until she was gone? “That’s alright,” Orpheus replied, perhaps a little bit too eagerly. “I… I think I’d like to have something to do. Something that might mean something, I guess.” Even if it only meant it to the two of them.
Noah didn’t want to be the one to pull away. He wanted to hold on forever to the one solid thing left in his life. The one thing that hadn’t been taken away from him by either the plague or Whelk. Or… maybe everything Whelk had taken was caused by the plague, too. He wouldn’t have sacrificed Noah like that if it weren’t for the zombies. Noah wanted to believe that Whelk had once been a nice person. He wanted to believe that he hadn’t been wrong about Whelk when he had first decided to join him. If Whelk hadn’t been kind, why had he extended the invitation in the first place? Noah didn’t want to think about that. He wanted to think about the friend he had in front of him. The friend who had never used him or taken advantage of him. The friend who believed he was worth something, the friend who had been so worried about him he had risked being turned just to get Noah to snap out of it. They were both lonely and desperate, and what Noah wanted least of all was to leave Ronan behind. He couldn’t turn until they found the others. He wouldn’t. He refused to. “I don’t want to go to sleep,” Noah admitted as he felt Ronan pull away. He wasn’t lying. He was scared of a lot of things. Noah Czerny was, at heart, a coward. But one thing he wasn’t scared of was Ronan Lynch. Maybe he should have been. Maybe Ronan was a weapon made to cleave the world in two. Maybe he would turn on Noah one day. Somehow, Noah didn’t believe that. Maybe that blind faith was what had gotten him sacrificed, but… the past didn’t matter so much as the present. At present, Noah was alive. He was breathing, and so was Ronan, and every moment they had together was one they had fought and bled for. And it was pure, dumb luck they had ended up in the same place at the same time. “Can I sit up with you?”
Nico could see the sense in that. There were things he missed that he never would have thought twice about when he was younger. He missed pasta. Home cooked pasta with fresh parmesan and warm sauce? He could have eaten that for weeks on end. Now, they were lucky to find an expired can of pasta sauce. It was a very different world. They had lived in a luxury of abundance. Now all they had was the scraps they had scoffed at, once. “A… Twinkie?” Nico asked, uncertainty filling his tone. He had never heard of a Twinkie before. Whatever it was, if it tasted good it was probably among the first things to run out at gas stations and grocery stores. Whatever a Twinkie had been, Nico had every reason to believe that there weren’t any left. “What… what is a Twinkie?” he asked anyway, ignoring the cynical tone in his head. He wanted to know.
Newt fully expected to be left to die. He knew there were good people out there. He wasn’t under the false impression that every human being was fundamentally evil. He just knew that they were all… desperate. Desperate people didn’t bring kids into their homes who might not even make it through the night. What were the chances of the bones setting properly? What were the chances of him making a full recovery? Of ever being fast enough to outrun zombies? He was a liability. It wouldn’t’ be cruelty to leave him out here. It would just be a healthy dose of self-preservation instinct. Still… Newt wasn’t going to say no to someone offering to try to pick him back up. He didn’t know how much he cared about his life being saved, but if he was going to have to have a life, he might as well have one that didn’t end in being eaten alive by zombies or wasting away here with no resources. Until Newt could decide what to do next… he might as well go with Sweets. “Doctor?” he repeated, trying to keep the hope out of his voice. “Aren’t you a little young to have been in med school when this whole thing started?”
Zuko didn’t know where to start. He was tired of searching through place after place for evidence of a boy who had probably died a long time ago. There were other people looking, of course. People who had been sent by Hades to ensure that Nico didn’t spill any of his secrets. How much longer would it take them to find and capture Nico than it would him? The difference was that none of them had their home and their honor resting on finding Nico. None of them had anything other than their job to worry about. This was a lot bigger than just a job. He supposed most jobs now were bigger than jobs had been when there were actually people to work for, but… the point was, the people who worked for Hades did it because Hades kept them safe. Zuko was after Nico because it was the only way he knew to get back into the only place that could theoretically change this all if they had the right information. He didn’t know of his father’s plan for eventual world domination. Well… he did, but he wasn’t willing to admit to himself that he would be playing a part in that. That it was something his father could possibly want. He was lost in his thoughts as he wandered through the neighborhood, looking for signs of people. Living people. There. A flash of blue through the overgrown bushes. Was that… Zuko crept closer, eyes wide. He was about to say something when the figure turned, revealing his (its?) face. Zuko stumbled back, swords out in less than a moment. Hopefully it hadn’t noticed him. Hopefully, this wasn’t a fight he would have to win.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Oct 14, 2021 21:37:12 GMT -5
L nodded, his expression distant as he checked their surroundings again. He had always been an odd mix of hyper aware of his surroundings and unbelievably lost in his own thoughts. He noticed changes instantly. A footprint that hadn’t been there before, a new smell, missing dust that meant someone had touched the surface. But time could escape him as easily as the wind around him blew, and he forgot to eat and to sleep and whatever else a being with a vessel was meant to do. He felt like he was mostly his brain, and his body was more of an afterthought. “Is there anything more you know about the music?” He asked after a moment. “Anything at all, even if it wouldn’t be important?”
Ronan didn’t think he believed in much anymore. The world was an unsure thing, the ground agonized and prone to bucking under his feet. He had never quite felt at home in the universe, even when it had been whole. Now, in this fractured version of it, he thought, at least now it’s more honest about what it is. There were no more of Gansey’s dinner parties to pretend everything was as bright and sparkly as the champagne they never ran out of. He looked at Noah, at the familiar worry behind his tone, the familiar expression behind his eyes, the sort of look he might have given Ronan when he was trying to convince him to do something, or not to do something. Ronan hated everything, but he had never hated Noah, and now, he couldn’t think what had made him wonder if it was the same boy he’d always known. If something had changed, it was harder to tell under the moonlight. Ronan sighed heavily. Then he pushed himself to his feet and offered Noah a hand, his leather bands sliding to his wrist. Instead of replying to the request, he said, “How does the song start? I’ve had the middle stuck in my head for ages and I can’t remember how it f(oops)ing starts.”
“A Twinkie,” Kelsier said, walking with the all the purpose of a missionary or an assassin. “Is probably the best snack ever invented. And I say that with the highest of respect for potato chips. A Twinkie is also apparently quite immortal. As long as they don’t get discontinued, they’ll probably outlive the rest of us. Whenever birds or dogs or octopi replace us, Twinkies are what they’ll put in their museums.” He didn’t stop, but he did smile at Nico, the expression careless on his features. “They’re sweet. And bad for you. But somehow, I don’t think anyone’s too bothered with that anymore. I think a herd came through here.” He looked away as he said the last part, eyes flicking downward, where the dirt was trampled by wandering footprints. “There aren’t enough people left to make all these, and they’re not straight enough, anyway. It’d have to be a group of at least a hundred, and they’d have to all be very drunk.”
It didn’t occur to Sweets to leave him out there. Was it kindness? He’d always felt that kindness had connotations sometimes that he didn’t feel applied here. It wasn’t a sense of duty that pushed Sweets forward, that made him crouch to see if he could get a better look at the leg. It wasn’t the worry that he’d regret it if he didn’t that made him glance at Newt’s face, trying to assess the pain he was in from his eyes. It was what made him talk to people on trains even if he’d never see them again. It was what made him want to stop and carry people’s groceries for them. It was just that he couldn’t help seeing people as people, and he was a person too, and he was fascinated with the brains around him and wanted to help. Although, in those cases, he had had options about who he interacted with. He didn’t like being alone. He liked being surrounded by bodies even less. So maybe this was more selfish than it would have been, once. Newt’s words drew him out of his thoughts. He automatically shot him a brief glare, lips pressed together, though there was no heat to it. “I’m a psychologist,” he told him, with dignity. “And I’m 28. Can you walk?”
Sal wasn’t sure whether to keep walking. He felt like he should somehow, but he didn’t know where he was going, and here felt as good as anywhere else. Besides, he was tired, and falling asleep sounded like the best thing he could imagine just then. So long as he could keep the nightmares back, anyway. That wasn’t much of a guarantee. He had already been prone to them, and then the world had ended. It was probably because there was a lot more content for his brain to play with, but it did make feeling rested a far away fantasy. At least he was harder to catch off guard. A flash of silver at the edge of his vision caught his gaze and he turned towards it, nearly losing his balance as the soft ground shifted under him. He stopped as he saw the boy with the swords, the boy with the scar watching him like he expected him to charge, or pull a weapon. Maybe he did. People were less friendly than they’d once been. Desperation did that. He wanted to speak. But he just eyed Zuko, trying to tell if he was going to attack. Trying to tell whether it was safe to move. He wasn’t quite panicking, but he felt like he was. He hadn’t seen living anyone since…he didn’t know anymore.
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Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Oct 19, 2021 22:26:26 GMT -5
Orpheus considered, wondering what might be relevant to mention. He was aware that L had asked for details that weren’t important, as well, but Orpheus knew he could talk about music for hours if he wasn’t stopped. It was unlikely he’d touch on everything important in that time. It was unlikely he’d touch on anything important at all, actually, if he wasn’t thinking the way L expected him to. Which meant he had to decide what he said here carefully. “I… know that music affects people in different ways,” he said after a moment, looking over at L. “I believe there’s a biological aspect. Fast music will make your heartbeat faster, and that can correlate to an emotion. Minor keys tend to make people sad or nervous, while major keys induce happiness and similar emotions. I don’t know if the zombies can feel anything like that, but they do seem to respond to the notes that are too low for us to hear. They don’t like the sound of it.”
Noah had changed. Ronan had changed. That was what it came down to. They weren’t the same boys they had been when they had met. They were never going to be those boys again. The question was, did they need to be? Could the core of a person change so much that he couldn’t find a home with the person who had meant everything to him, before? That seemed impossible. The two of them were tied together by more than just convenience. Noah wasn’t sure he believed in fate (if he were to believe in it, it would mean that Whelk had only ever been the sort of person who was out only for himself, and Noah didn’t want to believe that), but he was fairly certain that his future was tied up in Ronan’s. By choice, perhaps, but it didn’t change the fact that their lives were inextricable. “Song?” Noah asked, tilting his head a little and resisting the urge to rub at his cheek. He knew that Ronan continuing to talk was the only invitation he would get to stay up with him. He might regret it in the morning when he’d taken on a much longer watch than he’d meant to, but it didn’t matter. He doubted he would be able to sleep anyway. Sleep came less and less easily to him, now.
Nico frowned a little at that. “Haven’t they basically discontinued everything?” he asked doubtfully, eyebrow cocking as he looked up at Kelsier. “I mean… it’s not like there are people out there making things in factories anymore. And people aren’t really buying things from stores. So what if all of the Twinkies are gone now? What if people have already eaten them all?” Nico hadn’t eaten many pre-packaged snacks. He usually tried to go for things that were high in protein, that would keep him awake and alert. Twinkies and other dessert snacks hadn’t been high on that list, no matter how many times he had tried to convince himself that grabbing just one wouldn’t hurt. It didn’t matter. If he got a taste for them, then he’d actually start feeling bad when he had to leave them behind in favor of food that would actually help him survive. Although he did have to admit that he missed sweet things. “Maybe they’re just really bad at walking in a straight line,” Nico said after a moment, though he knew Kelsier was probably right. The tracks may have looked human, but they weren’t. Not anymore. “Do… you think they’re still around here?”
“Oh,” Newt replied, trying to hide some of his disappointment. It wasn’t that he was disappointed that Sweets was a psychologist (although he knew that opened up a can of worms he hadn’t really wanted opened), it was that he had originally assumed Sweets meant medical doctor. As in the kind of doctor who could help with a broken leg, not the kind who would ask you about the trauma you felt when you broke your leg. Although… he had heard someone say once that it wasn’t very useful to only treat the symptom instead of the cause. The broken leg was just a symptom of a deeper problem. The kind Sweets had probably trained to fix. The kind Newt absolutely was not going to go into with someone who had spent their life learning how to dissect other people’s brains. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment, trying to push himself up to his feet. He was able to stand, so long as he had a little bit of support. He was lucky he had landed next to the building he had jumped from. It meant he could lean his weight against that instead of putting his foot down and risking bearing weight on the leg that was still bent awkwardly. “Sorry,” he added after a moment, lips pursing. “About the age comment. I don’t know… I don’t actually know when this whole thing started. I guess I just assumed it’s been going on since I was little.”
It was difficult to tell the difference between the living and the dead. Once, Zuko wouldn’t have even considered that could be an option. Once, he would have said that the dead were obviously dead, and the living didn’t look anything like them. He knew that he could easily be mistaken for a zombie if anyone only saw the side of his face that was burned. The more time that people spent surviving, the more scars they got. The more they ended up looking like zombies. Zuko hesitated, uncertain whether the boy in front of him was a zombie or not. It was hard to believe that he would have survived those injuries, if he was alive, but they looked far more healed than a zombie ever did. Zuko shook the thought away, eyes narrowing as he started to edge around the boy. He just wanted to get where he was going. He didn’t want to face a zombie, and he had obviously been noticed. If he could just get around, maybe it wouldn’t be a problem. If the boy was alive… well, you could never be too careful. And Zuko had never seen injuries like that on someone living. He kept his steps small, doing his best not to draw any more attention to himself. No more bloodshed. He wasn’t in the mood for a fight. Which was… rare, for him.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Oct 22, 2021 22:59:06 GMT -5
L would have been alright with hearing him ramble. People sometime said things that were incredibly important without meaning to, and they weren’t really on any time limit. So…the more Orpheus said, the more likely he was to give L something to work with. But he didn’t push. He still didn’t know what would upset Orpheus and what wouldn’t. It was best to discover those boundaries slowly, with care. “That makes sense,” he mused, hands in his pockets, hunched forwards and just slightly away from Orpheus. “Although…does the music cause the emotion? It’s a chain reaction, I suppose. I just don’t know what order it’s in.” It probably wasn’t important, but it was a good idea to follow all thoughts in case they led somewhere interesting. “It would be good to know if they don’t like it, or they’re just programmed to avoid it. Is it like a cat hissing, or more of a firewall?” He hummed in the back of his throat, thinking that over. “What reactions do those notes cause in humans?”
Ronan didn’t know if he believed in fate, either. It seemed possible that some things happened because they were meant to, but…it felt less about a path being laid out in front of them, and more about making the path that fit them. A backwards sort of fate. You had to cut the dough into shapes before the shapes could exist, or something like that. He wasn’t going to admit that he wanted Noah to stay up with him. The night was darker than it was supposed to be, the blackness somehow solid and imposing. It was easier to fight off the monsters with Noah there, even if the heaviness - anger, only it wasn’t anger, it was some emotion scientists hadn’t gotten around to inventing yet, but anger was closest - never quite left him. “Yeah, man. Come on, it hasn’t been that long,” he replied, heading back towards their makeshift camp. “Does it start with the murder or the squash?”
“They could be gone,” Kelsier admitted, shrugging a little. “But I don’t think they are. Some things, when there was a lot of them before, they’re hard to get rid of completely. It’s like when you had to deal with sand, before. You could sweep as many times as you wanted, and you’d still find it, hidden in corners, or even in plain sight, somehow. Some things are hard to eradicate. But no promises there.” He eyed the tracks. Anyone stumbling that badly would have to be drunk, wounded, or dead. That many people at once…that ruled out all but dead, as far as he was concerned. Still. It tracks themselves were harmless. “No, not close anyway. With that many, we’d hear them,” he replied, straightening up a little. “Which is good. With how loud they are, there isn’t usually more than one herd in the same area. They’d just attract each other and merge, that’s why we get herds in the first place. So, these tracks are actually good for us. Shall we continue?”
“Oh,” Sweets said, his tone just a little bit taken aback. He got it a moment later. “Oh,” he repeated, in an entirely different, much lower tone. He couldn’t say Newt was wrong…he hadn’t even thought about it, but maybe he should have specified what kind of doctor he was beforehand. Since it was the other kind that Newt seemed to need. “But I work with the Jeffersonian,” he added, trying to make himself seem a little bit more useful. “Worked, I mean. They’re…not that kind of doctor, either. But Dr. Brennan works with bones, and yours is…broken…so…” He coughed a little, sitting back. “No no, it’s totally okay, I just got that a lot when I was with the Jeffersonian. Being…young. But it probably feels like it’s been going on a lot longer for you than it does me, since it’s taken up more of your life.” He glanced at the leg. “But, first thing is getting you out of here, right? I can help with that. If you want me to.”
The boy was trying to get around him. Sal hesitated, unsure how to react. He was so clearly human…so clearly alive, and it hurt, but he didn’t want him to go. How many were left? Sal had begun to wonder if he was the only one. He didn’t want to do anything stupid, and risking a fight was stupid. This boy had swords. Sal was all but defenseless. He had his guitar, and he’d use it if he had to, but…well. It wasn’t like it was much good without a cord anyway. He envied people with other instruments. Even if he knew no one could make that much noise safely anymore. He should let the other survivor go. He shouldn’t risk calling attention to himself. But the loneliness cut so much deeper when there was another option, however slim. “Wait,” he breathed out, almost flinching at his own rough voice. Had he forgotten what he sounded like, or had his voice changed from going so long without use? “I’m…I’m Sal. Sal Fisher,” he added, trying to sound relaxed and brave, though he didn’t think he was pulling it off very well.
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Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Oct 25, 2021 1:58:28 GMT -5
“Mm,” Orpheus replied, pondering the question for a few moments. It was a good question to ask. Did the music cause the emotion, or did the emotion leak into the music? It was possible that whatever emotion was felt was projected into the music, after all. It was impossible to go through life without tainting your surroundings and the things you experienced with the feelings you kept harbored in your heart. “I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment, thinking it over. The zombies avoided it. Whether it was because they were programmed to or because it was a defense mechanism, he didn’t know. Did they have the choice to stay and listen to it, or did their bodies react of their own accord? It was the kind of scientific question that Orpheus hadn’t thought to pursue while modifying his guitar. He had learned that the music kept the zombies at bay, and he hadn’t done any additional research into how or why. It just… was. “People don’t tend to like those notes either,” Orpheus admitted, shrugging a little bit. “They used to use them in horror movies. Sounds that were too low for human ears to pick up on, but our bodies react to them anyway. They put us on edge and make us a little bit more wary. It’s the feeling that something bad is going to happen, though we don’t know why. The first time I heard the notes, I got a chill.”
“The squash!” Noah replied, a bit of excitement forcing its way into his tone. It was a lot easier to think about the stupid song they had liked to annoy their friends with than it was to think about what had just happened, or the possibility that they both wouldn’t survive very long. Noah had to hope that Ronan would be able to survive on his own. He had to hope that he would find their friends, and they would be able to survive together. Noah wasn’t going to be with them when they did. He didn’t know how long he had left, but if tonight was any indication… he rubbed the spot on his cheek and tried to divert his attention back to the song. “Squash one!” he intoned, jumping up an down as though hearing the oppressive beat of the music. He peered over at Ronan, trying to see if his friend was going to join in or not. He was right. It hadn’t been that long, but so much had changed… hopefully, the song was still enough to distract them from the things that mattered too much to talk about.
“I hope you’re right,” Nico said after a moment, looking up at Kelsier and trying to almost hide the earnestness in his expression. “On both accounts.” He wasn’t used to being vulnerable. He wasn’t used to letting himself have hope, let alone express it. It was such a small thing – the existence of twinkies, the possibility that the herd of zombies was far enough away that they woudn’t have to worry about it at the moment – but it felt a lot bigger than it was. It felt like something that could fall and crush them both if they weren’t careful. Hope was a fragile thing. It was so easily shattered that Nico hadn’t let himself have any of it at all. It was a lot easier to deal with a loss when you never had something in the first place. When you didn’t let yourself know what it tasted like. “Yeah,” he added, looking up at Kelsier. “We should probably find somewhere to stay the night. It’ll be easier to find somewhere while it’s still daylight. That way we can check to makes ure there aren’t any holes or trap doors that a zombie could get through. And we can make sure that there aren’t any people that are planning on coming back by the end of the day.” They might end up desperate if they waited for nightfall, and the only thing worse than being vulnerable was being desperate.
“I have a feeling your Dr. Brennan works with bones that are outside of the body,” Newt said after a moment, tone laced with pain as he tried to put a little bit of pressure on his broken leg. He didn’t want to deal with it, but he had to get moving. If he stayed where he was, he was going to die. As much as he didn’t want to admit that he needed help, he wasn’t going to make it for much longer without Sweets’ help, even if he wasn’t a medical doctor. He was the kind of person who wanted to help, and those were rare enough that Newt wanted to take advantage while he could. “It’s okay,” he added after a moment, trying to push aside his intial disappointment. “We’ve all sort of had to become medical doctors over the past few years, right?” Newt hadn’t met a single person who hadn’t had to treat their own wounds. He hadn’t met that many people, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if it held true for most of the population. He shifted, nearly letting out a sharp cry of pain as his leg threatened to buckle and give out on him. “I might need to use you as a crutch. If that’s… okay, I mean.” He didn’t want to mention that he didn’t know how long the apocalypse had been going on. He didn’t want to admit that it was because he didn’t remember anything before it, not because he had been so young when it had happened.
Zuko started, eyes widening almost imperceptibly as he realized that the zombie… the boy had just spoken. Zombies didn’t speak. Zuko had thought they might be able to, at first. He had tried to make conversation with a few of them, tried to get them to talk to him and see him, tried to make them feel a little bit less alone. He thought he might be able to befriend them and make them stop attacking people. He had been young and naïve, at that point. He had learned his lesson. Zombies didn’t speak. They just attacked, or they stood around like idiots. The fact that Sal had spoken – and given a name – was proof enough that he was still human, despite the scars on his face. Not that Zuko was one to judge by scars. “Oh,” he said after a moment, letting his blades drop just a little bit. He wasn’t pointing them directly at Sal anymore, but he didn’t dare put them away. Humans could be just as hostile as zombies, and in a way they were even more dangerous. Zuko stopped walking, intrigued by the fact that the boy had decided to talk to him. When was the last time he had exchanged words with anyone? The thought sent a pang of loneliness through his chest, but he did his best to ignore it. He wasn’t going to be lonely when he completed his mission. When he brought the di Angelo boy home to his father and they figured out how to heal people. “I’m… Zuko,” Zuko replied, his own voice just as hoarse with disuse. It was a lonely world, now. The kind where you could go days or even weeks without seeing anyone, and longer without speaking.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Oct 25, 2021 19:36:46 GMT -5
L considered that answer. Orpheus probably didn’t know the technical aspects of it…he seemed to think in terms of how things felt. It was the exact opposite of how “ thought, but not so different…it was just backwards. L’s thought process started where Orpheus’ finished, and vice versa. It was also a little bit comforting. It meant he could say what he was thinking, and Orpheus would see it differently than he did. A safety net for his own blind spots. He turned, focusing on Orpheus, his eyes intense as he studied him. “That’s interesting,” he said finally, his tone thoughtful. “And probably important. That explains why they still seem able to react to it, even when they’ve rotted too much to be using their bodies the same way a living person would. Our bodies react…bodies are all they are. The notes make us wary…in a horror movie, the dread is often said to be worse than the actual fear. They aren’t afraid. It’s self preservation. They perceive the notes as bad for them. Which means, it’s either left over from when they were alive, or they are capable of some version of thought. Either way, it’s a reaction, which supports the idea that there’s something left to cure.” His thoughts were moving quickly. He wasn't good at keeping up with them out loud, but he didn’t want to abandon Orpheus when he was the one giving him something to think about.
The big things were not going away. The world was at once nothing like the one they’d known before and completely the same. He’d been lost before, he was lost now. Belonging had been a memory before, and now, it was just behind other memories. He wondered if Monmouth was still standing. Then he wondered if the Barns were. Then he pushed both thoughts away, because either one would make him angry if he thought about it for too long. “Squash two!” He joined in on the second line and leapt after Noah, the motion wild because he didn’t care where he landed, his voice shaped like the beat of it, the impression it had left behind instead of the real thing. The world was burning, but that was nothing new. He had been forged in fire. It was possible Noah was humoring him. It was possible he was also humoring Noah. But this, too, was a big thing, an important thing, one that deserved their attention. A broken world and a good day weren’t always mutually exclusive, no matter how hard it was to believe sometimes.
Kelsier knew what it was like, to be afraid of hope. So long as you never got up, you would never feel the terror and the helplessness of falling. It was a sort of control, a refusal to give the world a weapon, because the world seemed to get a special sort of joy out of turning it on you. But that was what it wanted. To knock you down enough times that you didn’t try to get up. It was giving up. Not just staying down…sometimes, staying down was how you survived…but surviving. Surviving was the target he aimed for. Surviving, because it wasn’t the same as living, but it was a necessary precursor to it. Of course, he thought, glancing at Nico, you could occasionally discover you’d started living too at some point along the way. “Agreed,” he said, looking back at the street. His instincts were helpful for telling which way to go, but they said nothing about where shelter might be. “Alright…if you had to pick which way to go, which way would it be?”
Sweets couldn’t deny that. Dr. Brennan also worked with ancient bones, sometimes, though less often than she had once. But still. He thought she’d have had a better chance at setting Newt’s leg than he did. She at least knew how holding a bone was supposed to feel. He had always been more concerned with what happened inside the brain. “Yeah, I guess so,” he agreed, watching Newt carefully. Of course he was going to try to walk. No one was used to having much choice anymore. He hesitated, leaning forward a little so most of his weight was on his toes, unable to decide if Newt wanted him to help or not. With a break that bad, he would probably have to, but he knew offering help when it wasn’t wanted just made it harder to offer it later. The person got used to saying no. It was much harder to admit there was a problem when you also had to admit to denying the problem. “Oh, yeah, of course,” he answered instantly as Newt spoke, relief flitting across his face as he moved close enough for Newt to lean on. “I could carry you, if that would be easier. I’m stronger than I look.”
Sal half expected Zuko to attack. Not because he assumed everyone was violent, now…just because the rules of self defense had changed along with everyone else. Attacking first had always been necessary some of the time, when you knew someone was a threat. Now, everyone was a threat. It made sense that the need to make sure everyone else stayed on the defensive was stronger. Loneliness was even stronger for Sal. He may have been an introvert, but he was still human. Solitary confinement was considered torture for a reason. He didn’t want Zuko to go. It felt like a need, almost, though he hadn’t known about it until he’d seen him. Being alone was only bearable when he forgot how it felt to hear someone else’s words, starving was only bearable if you couldn’t smell food cooking, pain was only bearable if that was all there was. He didn’t want to scare the other boy off. “Hi,” he tried to sound casual, but the tremor betrayed him. “It’s…nice to meet you, Zuko.” He saw the scar, of course. It was a very different kind from any of his own…they all matched, they all came from the same thing, which wasn’t fire. At least, that looked like a burn scar. But he was all too aware of the way it looked when someone’s eyes flicked to the marks on your face, as though they explained you better than your eyes could. He wasn’t tempted to do it himself. He searched Zuko’s gaze, barely daring to hope for a response.
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strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Oct 26, 2021 2:38:28 GMT -5
Orpheus had never been drawn to the scientific aspects of life. He knew they tied into the artistic parts of the world, but not in ways he understood particularly well. He could appreciate them from afar, but he doubted he’d ever be able to understand them entirely. L, on the other hand, seemed to function entirely in the science of it. Or maybe not exactly science, but the technical aspects. The things that could lead directly to a cure, not to making peoples days a little bit brighter. Orpheus could remind people that there were still things to live for. He could help make the living want to keep living. If L succeeded… well, he might be able to bring the dead back to life. That was what everyone wanted, wasn’t it? A way to get their loved ones back. A way to reverse all of this. Orpheus had sworn that he would defeat death itself. He would find who had caused this and convince them to give him the cure, and he would save Eurydice. If L succeeded… then he could bypass an entire step. He could save Eurydice just by finding her again. “There is something left to cure,” Orpheus replied after a moment, his voice leaving no room for questions. “I’ve played for zombies before. Not for very long, and always using the notes they don’t like, but they seem to be able to feel things. Not like humans would, but… they feel, L. You can see it in their eyes. There’s enough left of them to be saved.” Was he only saying that because he needed it to be true? He wasn’t sure, but he also wasn’t sure it mattered. It was what he believed. If he had been more scientifically minded, he would have said all of the evidence pointed towards it.
“Squash three!” Noah shouted, grinning as Ronan joined in. For just a moment, it didn’t matter how loud they were or how much space they took up in the world. For just a moment, they were teenagers living like the rest of the world didn’t matter, like they didn’t care if someone yelled at them for making a ruckus. For just a moment, it was like the world was back to normal and they were just normal kids screaming their favorite song out loud like the rest of the world didn’t matter. He jumped up and down to the imaginary beat, not caring that he was slightly off from Ronan. It was discordant and unharmonious and perfect. It was the same feeling Noah used to get when his skateboard was at the maximum of its parabola, when he floated for just a moment before he began falling. This was a moment separate from the rest of the world. This was a moment that they stole for themselves. If it was something they made up to make the other feel better? Well, the origin of the moment didn’t matter so long as the moment itself was allowed to exist. And neither of them seemed interested in making a move to break it.
Nico had a hard time imagining that living was possible. Surviving was hard enough on its own. The chance to live had been stolen at the same moment the chance to die was. What happened after death was cruelty. It was becoming something that wasn’t quite alive, but not being allowed to rest. Nico hadn’t been old enough to form a belief about what came after. He hadn’t been old enough to consider whether there really was an afterlife or not. Whatever had once existed after death, it had to be kinder than what existed now. At least before you would be certain that you wouldn’t accidentally sentence your loved ones to a fate worse than death when you finally passed on. Death was meant to be a peaceful thing for the one who left. It wasn’t anymore. Nico had that burden to bear as well. He had ruined the world not only for the living, but for the dead as well. “Uh…” Nico considered, jolted out of his thoughts by Kelsier’s voice. He didn’t want to be responsible for leading them directly into danger, but he figured one way was likely as safe as the other was. Nowhere was safe now. There were no safe bets. “Maybe… that way?” Nico asked, pointing in the direction that seemed a little more spread out. It wouldn’t do to get caught in an alley or any other kind of bottleneck. Zombies were smart enough to use that to their advantage.
Newt’s brow raised as he looked at Sweets, though he didn’t mean to look as doubtful as the expression probably came across. He was willing to accept help only because he was certain he wouldn’t survive without it. If he accepted Sweets’ help in any capacity, he wouldn’t be doing either of them any favors by letting pride get in the way. By not forcing Sweets to leave, Newt had already accepted his help. The truth was, despite what he had believed when he had climbed to the top of the building, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to die. He didn’t know if there was anything worth living for anymore, but didn’t he owe it to the world and his former friends to at least try? He shook the thought away. He still might not survive this. He had made himself a liability. If they were attacked by zombies now, Newt expected Sweets to leave him behind and run. “If you carry me, then you don’t have an arm free on the off chance we see a zombie. If you have an arm free, at least you can grab a weapon. And it will be easier to let me go, if you need to. Not to mention we’ll probably be faster if I’m walking beside you. I can still hop pretty quick.”
Zuko stared at Sal, caught between the knowledge that he couldn’t afford to get caught up in someone else’s business and the aching loneliness that threatened to take hold of him. He hadn’t wanted to leave Uncle Iroh behind, but he had been forced to by circumstance. Iroh had promised he would be fine, and Zuko had been forced to believe him. He had scarcely spoken to anyone since they had been forced to part ways. In fact… he wasn’t sure he had spoken to anyone since. There was no guarantee that Sal would be a friend. There was no guarantee that they would get along. There was every possibility that this was a trap. Zuko could think of a million and one reasons to ignore the boy and keep walking. To pretend that he hadn’t said anything, and move forward as though Sal Fisher really were just a zombie he had stumbled across. That wasn’t the truth, though. The truth was that humans were social creatures. The truth was that Zuko was tired of surviving on his own. The truth was that hearing another human voice was nearly enough to bring Zuko to tears, though he would never admit it to anyone other than himself. The truth was, there was nothing Zuko wanted more than to stay here and talk to Sal, if only for a moment. Nico couldn’t get too far ahead in a minute or two, could he? His trail was already long dead. There was no more Zuko could do at the moment, though he couldn’t afford to think like that. “Hi,” Zuko replied, hating the catch in his own voice. “Are you… from around here?”
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Nov 14, 2021 2:18:05 GMT -5
L glanced over, Orpheus’ tone surprising him into giving the other survivor his full attention. His eyes were wide, intense, and unblinking, but they usually were. It was just harder to miss, now. He meant it, though. There was no doubt in L’s mind that this was something Orpheus believed with everything he had. Whether it was true or not…that wasn’t something L was willing to accept just yet. He didn’t challenge Orpheus, though. There wasn’t any point arguing about something neither of them could prove. “If there is something to cure, then it’s possible your music will be crucial to accomplishing it,” he mused, turning his attention back to his surroundings. “Anything that has any effect on them could be important. They don’t seem to care about anything but eating us, normally. I wish I knew if they responded to things that would have been relevant to them when they were alive, but…” But the only zombie he’d ever recognized hadn’t been there at a time when he was able to think of that. Somehow, running experiments had been very far from L’s thoughts when Watari had turned.
The lyrics burst from Ronan as he yelled them back, losing himself in the moment. His voice rose, high and uncontrolled as a laugh, and he leapt at Noah, his grin fierce and real as he landed just a little bit closer, arms outstretched. Nothing that had happened or would happen mattered. They were off key, and the beat was imaginary, but it didn’t stop Ronan from stomping to it. Noah’s excitement fueled his own, and he let it, because…because they were going back, and Noah had survived, and maybe, maybe the others had too. They were going to go home. And right now, nothing else in the entire world mattered. It was the feeling of street racing, he knew, the feeling not that he couldn’t make a mistake, but that he wouldn’t. Not that he wasn’t mortal and fragile and made of blood and dreams in equal quantities, not that he was invincible, but that he was free. To fly or to fall, depending on which turn he took next.
Kelsier didn’t know if there was an afterlife. What did it matter? As far as he knew, zombies were as dead as any other corpse. As far as he knew, it didn’t make a difference for the person who was gone. Just the people left behind. He didn’t believe they could be fixed. How could you undo rot? How could you undo death itself? No…to fix the world, someone would have to figure out not to stop them zombies from coming into existence in the first place. And then… And then, people like Kelsier would have to kill the rest of them. He didn’t know what would happen after that. He couldn’t picture himself without blood on his hands anymore. But maybe he could fix things for everyone else. The way Nico had indicated was as good as any other. He gave a small nod, and headed towards it, pulling his mind back to the present. It wouldn’t do to be ambushed because he’d gotten lost in his own thoughts. “We should find shelter first, I think,” he noted. “We can always get supplies afterwards, but being caught without shelter never ends well.”
Sweets wasn’t sure how to help, though he was sure he wanted to try. It didn’t make sense to have thought that Dr. Lance Sweets, video game badass and professional giver of advice no one ever took, would be the last survivor, so he hadn’t really believed he was alone, but…knowing that, probably, there was someone else still breathing was very different from seeing a kid sitting right in front of him, breathing and speaking and clearly trying to avoid showing how much pain he had to be in from that leg. Unless he was in shock…but he wasn’t acting like he was. “Oh right, yeah…that makes sense,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just don’t want to make your leg worse…but I don’t have anything to use as a splint. Or a bandage…” He didn’t want to think that there might not be much he could do for Newt. He didn’t have supplies, not really. He didn’t have much. But he was desperate for this to work, for Newt and for himself. He had to be able to help someone, still, didn’t?
Sal couldn’t bear the hope. The longing, the desperate need for Zuko to answer, because if he left… Sal had been alone a long time now. He had expected to keep being alone. But it felt impossible, now, it felt like the loneliness itself could kill him, it felt like the last chance he’d ever have, though realistically he knew there were probably others. They couldn’t be the last humans alive. They just couldn’t be. And then Zuko answered, and the relief was as overpowering as the hope had been. It wasn’t much…it wasn’t anything, really. It didn’t mean Sal wouldn’t have to go right back to being alone in five minutes, at most. But it meant someone else in the universe still knew how to speak. Still understood how. It felt like everything. “Me? Oh. No. No, I’m…I haven’t even been here that long,” he managed to reply, trying to stop himself from saying too much. He had never had that problem before, but now, he was half afraid to stop, in case Zuko took it as a reason to leave. “I’m not…even totally sure where here is. I…” His voice broke, and he took a moment, trying to collect his thoughts. “I thought, maybe…maybe I was the only one left.”
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Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Nov 14, 2021 4:23:42 GMT -5
Orpheus couldn’t prove what he believed. He had no way to prove that there was anything left in zombies to be saved. He couldn’t prove that they felt things, or that there were humans inside them struggling to get out, to taste the world again the way it was meant to be experienced. He couldn’t prove anything other than the fact that zombies really didn’t like certain notes. He had no explanation for that, he just knew it to be true. Maybe L would find an explanation. Maybe L would be able to put it all together. Maybe L would find a cure. It was a long shot, but Orpheus wasn’t done with hope. He couldn’t stop believing in a world where the dead could be cured. “We don’t know how to test that, do we,” Orpheus replied after a moment, his tone sad. He glanced at L, hesitating for a long moment before deciding to voice his idea. “I… don’t really like this idea,” he admitted, knowing full well that he probably should have just left it at that, but the idea felt important enough to at least try to introduce. “But we could capture a zombie. Maybe. And… we could see if the music actually impacts them. If they have actual, human responses to it. That might… give us a starting point, right? Or at least… support the idea that there’s still someone in there who might be able to be saved? And then we could either try to cure them, or we could let them go.” He hated the idea of testing on people, but… there wasn’t much worse than being a zombie. If he were in their place… then he wouldn’t minid being an experiment as long as it led to others being saved.
It didn’t matter how much the world had changed. It didn’t matter how many people were gone or what the future might look like. For one moment, it was just Noah, Ronan, and a song that was objectively horrible but that the two of them loved anyway. It felt like coming home in a raucous, unforgettable way. Every moment he had spent with Ronan so far felt like coming home, even if he was living a lie to do it. Part of him didn’t care about the lie. Part of him didn’t are that this couldn’t last forever. This moment… the two of them singing along to an imaginary beat… how many times had they done this before? It was like they were immediately transported back to a time when there was nothing to worry about other than whether Ronan was actually going to go to class tomorrow, or if he was going to successfully convince Noah to skip with him. Noah grinned, coming close enough to grab Ronan’s shoulders and propel himself up, trusting Ronan to catch his legs. It didn’t matter that he was taller, Ronan had always been stronger.
“Shelter it is, then,” Nico agreed, taking a cursory look around to make sure there was nothing alive (or sort of alive) in their general vicinity. He had spent most of his life afraid not only of zombies, but of other survivors. Any of them could be after him. Any of them could be looking to profit off of his existence, off the fact that he was the one who had started all of this. Anyone could figure out who he was if they tried hard enough, and he had no doubt there was some sort of reward for anyone who found him and turned him in to his father. Even without the internet to spread messages like that, his father’s network was vast. No matter where Nico went, there was probably a survivor somewhere who knew what he looked like and who would be more than willing to drag him back to Hades, dead or alive. Nico pushed the thought away. That was, perhaps, one reason he was grateful for Kelsier’s presence. People would be looking for a kid travelling alone. Until Hades realized that Nico had found someone to travel with, he would be kept safe by Kelsier’s very existence. It would be a fine line between that and when Kelsier himself became a target. “We should try to find somewhere with easy access to food,” Nico commented, trying to stop his mind from dissecting his thoughts even more thoroughly. “We don’t want to get trapped somewhere that’s far away from anywhere we could scavenge.”
“There are trees,” Newt pointed out, looking around to try to find one that might have a good enough branch to use as a splint. He didn’t know enough about medicine to know if that would actually help, but Sweets raised a good point. If they didn’t take care of the broken leg now, then it would just continue to get worse. There was no way to get proper medical care, but some medical care was better than none at all. It wasn’t like they had automatically gone back to the days of bloodletting or anything. Most people had enough medical sense to at least start to keep themselves alive. The trees surrounding them were all either overgrown or dead. It was interesting what a lack of human involvement would do to the world. Some plants thrived while suffocating others. It was painfully analogous to what human life was like with the world as it was. Survivor turned against survivor. Only the strong survived. Darwinism in motion, or something. At least… that was what Newt had gathered from the only people he’d spent time with who actually knew what was going on in the world. They had been more cynical than most. “You… worked with doctors, right? I don’t suppose you know anything about setting a broken bone?”
“I don’t know where ‘here’ is either,” Zuko admitted, looking around. He wasn’t exactly following a specific track, he was just wandering wherever he thought that Nico might have gone. He had the benefit of knowing the boy when they were both young, but it wasn’t as though either of them had discussed where they would go if the world was ending. Even if they had, Zuko knew his own answer had changed. Mostly because he wasn’t allowed too close to his father now, and he would have said he’d be right at his father’s side if he had been asked as a kid. Nobody had predicted this. Even Nico, Zuko had to admit. It may have been the other boy’s fault that this had happened, but Zuko didn’t think he had meant it to. It didn’t change the fact that it had happened. It didn’t change the fact that Zuko needed to find the boy and bring him to his father. He shook the thought away. There was no need to be thinking of his impossible task for the future when there was an actual person in front of him. An actual person who seemed just as lonely and lost as Zuko felt. “There are plenty of survivors,” he said after a moment. “I mean… maybe not plenty, it’s not like I see many on a daily basis, but… we’re still here. Humanity hasn’t died out yet.” Hesitantly, Zuko took a small step towards the stranger. “I’m… Zuko… by the way. Hi.”
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Jan 22, 2022 21:03:06 GMT -5
L glanced at his new companion, curiosity in his gaze. He didn’t know him well enough to know what sort of ideas he would like or dislike, but that didn’t matter. Any idea was worth mentioning, in his opinion, especially in a situation like this. Even if the idea itself wasn’t a good one, there was a chance it would spark a better one in someone else’s mind. He had to admit that the one Orpheus offered was…unexpected. Not because it was a bad one. Not even because he thought it was a good one. Mostly because it sounded like one he would think of, and then have someone get angry with him for. He gave Orpheus a quick, evaluating look, but he decided not to mention it. “I think that could be helpful. Especially if I can bring a cure into early testing stages, too,” he told him instead, scanning the area for any of the dead. “I would rather not have to test it at all, but…well, there’s no real way to know what will work and what won’t, otherwise. Knowing how the music works could help me make a cure, too. So, yes, that’s a good idea. We can work to make a safe way to capture one.”
No other moments mattered. This moment was infinite, because it was now. Ronan grinned as Noah came closer, catching him as he leapt and spinning just enough to unbalance them both, very nearly tipping over in the process, a harsh, gleeful laugh escaping into the air and disappearing into the darkness. It was like no time had passed at all. Like nothing had changed, and they were in the main room at Monmouth or outside in the crisp fall air, homework sitting forlorn and forgotten in dark corners, useful only as a refuge for small spiders. Maybe things would be okay after all. Maybe the time between the end of the world and now didn’t have to last forever, maybe there really was a light at the end of the tunnel, against all odds and predictions. Maybe could wait its turn. Maybe could be tomorrow. Today, there was the beat of a song and the beat of two hearts, and all three of them were alive, whether they were supposed to be or not.
Kelsier was keeping a close eye on his surroundings, too - no one alive was stupid enough not to, or so he assumed - but somehow, the way Nico watched seemed even more furtive than the way Kelsier did, or the way other people he had met along the way had. He’d traveled in groups before, never for long before he’d moved on again, and it wasn’t too difficult to guess at the difference. Most people kept an eye out for threats. Nico seemed to do the same, but with the knowledge that there might be something looking back when he did. He could be wrong. He didn’t have to be afraid of other survivors, not usually. He was strong enough to protect his own supplies, and groups wanted to use him more often than they wanted to kill him. It made sense that Nico wouldn’t have that same luxury. Maybe that was the difference. “You’re right,” he replied, shaking the thought off and giving a bright smile instead. “In fact, we can keep an eye out as we go, too. If there’s anywhere around here worth checking out, better to do it now than to loop back again later, when someone else could have already come through.” He didn’t really like taking food someone else might need more, but he refused to starve for a hypothetical stranger. He would much rather starve for a non-hypothetical stranger. Did Nico still count as a stranger?
Sweets glanced up, taking in the trees, which he’d noticed before, but only unconsciously. He’d been more focused on getting to Newt than on his surroundings. Which was probably not the best survival instinct, in hindsight. Still, he didn’t think there were any of the dead around for now. As long as they got out before any wandered by, they’d be fine. He straightened up, heading over to investigate the trees and tossing his reply over his shoulder as he moved. “The thing is…I worked with a forensic anthropologist and a special agent FBI guy mostly. And a coroner, and a self-professed bug and slime guy. And an artist. And sometimes a lawyer, but she was only like…maybe three quarters on my side? The point is…” He prodded a branch with his toe, then picked it up and moved back to see if it was long enough. “…it wasn’t really much of a broken-bone-healing-area. I’m a profiler, I mostly just talked with suspects and tried to get a read on them. Or get a read on the people I worked with, when they needed it. I got to hold a skull once, though.”
Sal didn’t know much about what had caused this, or what was happening now as a result. He didn’t really know anything about that…he had been alone for as long as this had been happening, really. The downside of having been around all the people he’d been close to when this all began was that he knew exactly what had happened to them, and he didn’t have anyone to look for, as he imagined a lot of people probably did. They got to hope and convince themselves that those people were alright out there, somewhere. Sal got to know where they were buried. He would have traded certainty for uncertainty in a second. But maybe the people who didn’t know would have traded, too. He would probably never know. He watched Zuko, aware that his hands were trembling, just a little bit. He didn’t think it was fear, but it had been a while since acknowledging fear had been helpful, so it could have been. Or maybe he was just painfully aware that the last thing he wanted was to be alone, and this boy had no reason to stay. He almost flinched. He felt the urge flicker through him, but he stayed where he was. “I’m…I’m Sal Fisher. Or…Sal, I guess,” he replied, realizing too late that last names probably didn’t mean much anymore. “I…knew I probably wasn’t really the only one left, but…I’d sort of…convinced myself I was. I don’t even…remember the last time I saw anyone else who wasn’t…y’know.”
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Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Jan 23, 2022 3:33:37 GMT -5
Orpheus wished he could think of Zombies just as the humans they had been. He wished he didn’t have to think about capturing one. He wished things were simpler. He wished that he could grant whatever zombie they captured the humanity they deserved. There wasn’t very much humanity left in the world, though, and for them to protect what little there was left… they wouldn’t hurt. Orpheus would have to make sure that they didn’t torture the person, because he had no way of knowing whether there was anything human left that might be able to feel it. “A safe way,” he echoed, frowning just a little as the idea ate through him. If humanity weren’t desperate, he never would have suggested it. But there was so little of them left, and if they didn’t try to find a cure, then someone would kill the zombie or it would kill others. Or both. Perhaps capturing it was a sort of mercy. “We… we can’t do anything that would hurt it,” he said after a moment, hazel eyes wide as he looked up at L. “It’s still a person, deep down. And seeing how it reacts to music or… or a cure… that’s one thing, but we shouldn’t do anything cruel to it. Anything a normal human being would find traumatizing. Anything that would damage it permanently if we manage to cure whoever it used to be.”
Noah laughed, the gasping of his breath breaking up the song, but it didn’t even matter. They weren’t singing it to be perfect, they were singing because it felt good to get their voices out into the open again. Like nobody could hurt them as long as they were louder than the rest of the world. Noah knew that was wrong. Noah knew that if they were too loud, they might catch the attention of any nearby zombies, and that could only end poorly. He knew that being this loud was dangerous, but he wasn’t entirely certain that he cared. It was just him and Ronan in this moment, and Ronan’s arms were around him even if it was just to spin him around, and they were too boys who were allowed to feel as invincible as teenage boys had felt before the world had caved in on them. It felt like being home again. It felt like maybe the world wasn’t as dark and bleak as it seemed to be. He was laughing hard enough that he thought he felt tears streaming down his cheeks, but the happy kind. When was the last time he had happy cried? Not since he had last seen Ronan at the very least. Noah wanted the song to last forever. For just a moment, it felt like maybe it could.
Nico was more than used to being on guard. It wasn’t just zombies he had learned to watch out for. It was anybody who might work for his father. That is to say… anybody. Anywhere could have cameras as well, though the farther he got from New York, the less likely he thought it was that his father would be able to track him down using a camera. He didn’t know for sure how his father got access to the camera feeds, but he had a feeling that there weren’t too many cameras working that his father hadn’t sent someone to fix first. He couldn’t rely on that, though, so he had learned to be careful of anywhere that might have security cameras. Even a flash of movement could be enough to alert his father’s attention, and if he could be identified through a camera… instinctively, he drew a little bit closer to Kelsier so he might seem like a kid walking with his dad to anyone looking their direction. He didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anybody else there. “Right,” Nico said after a moment, eyes widening a little bit. “Yeah, that… actually, no, that really doesn’t make all that much sense. It doesn’t really matter how long it takes for us to loop back. Most of the good stuff is probably already taken. I really don’t see what difference a few minutes will make.” The fact that he was willing to voice that surprised him. If he had considered Kelsier a true danger, he wouldn’t have risked questioning his logic. It was quite possible he was already in too deep.
“Wow, so you were bloody important before, weren’t you?” Newt asked, one brow raising. It was odd to think he was talking to someone who had been colleagues with important people. FBI people. Which meant that Sweets had probably been FBI in some capacity, too. He didn’t actually know what the Jeffersonian was, but he got the picture now that Sweets had described who he had worked with before. “It’s… y’know, it’s odd, thinking about how hierarchies sort of just… dissolved when all this happened. I mean…” his face turned a little bit red as he realized he’d been about to admit just how clueless he really was. He may have been relying on Sweets to get him out of the situation he’d landed himself in, but that didn’t mean he had to trust Sweets with everything about him just yet. “Yeah. You would’ve been really important before. And I would’ve been just… some kid probably studying for my A-levels. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with me unless I was murdered or… or a suspect or something.” It was a dark thought, but it was true. It was strange how the world turning upside down brought people together by circumstance. People that never would have given each other the time of day in the before times – at least Newt assumed, from what he’d heard of how things were before.
Zuko hadn’t been close enough to anyone to have to deal with either certainty or uncertainty. The only people he had ever been vaguely friends with were his sister and her friends. Azula was safely back at home, and so were Mai and Ty Lee. He would get to see them all again when he brought Nico back. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to see Azula again, but he pushed the thought away before it could manifest something horrible into existence, She was his sister, and he was supposed to be grateful for her. He was supposed to love her, because they were family. Family seemed so simple to everyone else. They cried when their family was gone, and they did anything and everything they could to get them back. That was what Zuko was doing, but it wasn’t because he knew his family loved him. It was because he wanted to prove that he was worth loving. That he was every bit as worthy as Azula was. He wouldn’t mind seeing Mai again, though. The thing was, loneliness had always been such a part of Zuko’s life that he barely even processed it now. Except for the fact that he wanted to stay and talk to this boy instead of just… crossing paths like two ships in the night. At least in the past he’d always had Ursa or Iroh. Now he had neither. For Iroh… well, he wished he had some sort of certainty. So he could stop looking for his uncle everywhere. “Nice to meet you,” Zuko said, his voice just a little tense and uncertain. “Fisher, huh? Been a while since I’ve heard anyone’s last name.”
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Mar 13, 2022 14:43:30 GMT -5
L didn’t wish for much, really. He had, at first…he had missed the world he’d lost, and the world he had watched slowly die. It had been a slow death - much like a real death, in that way, actually - and it had taken a while for him to fully accept it. He had tried for weeks afterwards to get his computer to work again, to bring the internet back up, even for a second. He hadn’t known how much of his life was spent outside of his own body until the door he’d always used to leave it had been locked. The dead had disturbed him. For someone who knew very little about the day to day life of most humans, he had been surprisingly aware of its loss. He hadn’t felt it quite the same way he guessed others had, because he hadn’t left his own room that much to begin with, but without society, there could be no crime. His cases were a thing of three past. The people he’d been used to had disappeared, and he’d had no way to see whether they were alive or dead. He understood now that he’d been terrified. At the time, he’d assumed he was merely annoyed. And now, here he was. Alone, and speaking to someone he had no way to research, and he thought he might be terrified all over again He met Orpheus’ anxious gaze, his own lightly guarded. “I…would rather not,” he said finally, searching their expression. “I dislike causing pain, even to things that may not feel it. But…I can’t promise to be completely gentle. I only know what I’ve gathered from a distance, but from what I’ve seen…they may already be in pain.”
Ronan grinned, the expression sharp and terrible and true, as he caught the laugh. Noah’s laugh was such a genuine thing, and he’d never expected to hear it again, when they’d all been separated. He leapt forward, aiming to catch Noah’s arm and use the momentum they both had to spin them, a wild imitation of an extinct dance. He’d forgotten what it felt like to belong, really belong, and this… Noah felt like home. Painful and filled with uncertainty, but home. He followed the beat of the song as it wound back to the chorus, his heart thumping along to the rhythm. It didn’t feel like the world had ended, now, even though they were alone and headed in a direction they weren’t sure would lead them back. Even though Henrietta seemed like it might be imaginary, and Gansey and Adam and Blue might not be there anymore, even if it was real. It felt like, if he believed it enough, he could dream it all back to life again.
Kelsier lifted an eyebrow as Nico contradicted him, surprised and more than a little bit pleased at the same time. Nico was cautious, yes, but he wasn’t really skittish…he was careful, and he had every right to be. Kelsier was relieved the kid felt secure enough to question him, though. It was a good sign that the trust he was sensing wasn’t all wishful thinking. “You’re probably right,” he told him, a smile tugging at his lips. “But then again, it only takes a couple seconds for someone to take something. It probably wouldn’t happen, but I haven’t survived this long by relying on ‘probably’.” Not that he hadn’t used it before. Relying on something and using it to your advantage were very different things. “But, you do have a point. Most of the things left now are the things that weren’t anyone’s first choice.” Plus, finding shelter seemed like a good priority. They’d been trapped, but the walls between them and the monsters had still saved their lives, and if anything happened, he didn’t want them to have different destinations to run for. That was a very good way to get separated, maybe permanently.
“I was pretty important, yeah,” Sweets replied, a hesitant grin appearing on his face. “Well….maybe not that important. But I helped some people, and I got pretty good at helping catch the perpetrators.” He shrugged, pulling his mind back to the conversation, instead of the past it still seemed desperate to cling to. He was enough of a psychologist to know why he liked thinking about the way things were before as much as he did, but still…doctors really did make the worst patients after all, it seemed. He didn’t want to stop. “But, you know…that doesn’t make you unimportant,” he added, focusing on Newt again. “Of course, even just as a human being you matter as much as I do, but even in the sense you mean, which is contributing to general society as a whole, I…I guess what I’m trying to say is that that’s how most people start out. As a kid trying to figure stuff out.”
Sal nodded a little, trying his best to look friendly and approachable and not as nervous as he felt. He had never really been shy before…he’d been a little quiet, according to some people, but he’d always just thought he wasn’t loud, which wasn’t quite the same thing. He was fine with talking to people he didn’t know. He just didn’t do it noisily. Of course, now he didn’t do it at all. He didn’t dare get his hopes up. As far as survival skills went, he didn’t have that much to offer, and Zuko looked like he was doing just fine on his own. There was no reason for him to want to split his resources when he wouldn’t get anything in return. This was just…unexpected kindness, he guessed. Or maybe Zuko was just a little bit lonely, too. “I…yeah. I guess that makes sense,” he replied, trying not to sound uncertain, though he could hear it slipping in anyway. “There’s no real use for them, anymore. But…well, it’s still my name, isn’t it? Might as well keep the whole thing.” He didn’t add that he felt he needed to hold onto every shred of identity he could. Or that he thought he might disappear completely if he ever let it go. After he’d lost his prosthetic, that feeling had only gotten stronger. At least he’d finally started to get used to catching glimpses of his own reflection in things.
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Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Mar 18, 2022 19:17:31 GMT -5
“Oh,” Orpheus whispered, eyes widening as he realized the validity to L’s statement. There was no way of knowing that zombies weren’t in pain. There was no way of knowing that his music didn’t cause them more pain. Orpheus had never wanted to be a conduit of sufferings. He had always wanted to be someone who could bring comfort. Someone who could tell stories and change minds and make the world just a little bit more peaceful. It wasn’t that kind of world anymore. He was a relic from a world that might have existed once, if the idealists could be believed. “I appreciate that,” he added after a moment, a ghost of a smile touching his features. “I know… even before all this… there were people who were okay with people suffering in the name of science. Who didn’t really care if they hurt people, so long as they figured out what they needed to figure out. And… while I understand the greater good, I’m not sure there’s ever a reason to hurt someone innocent in order to benefit humanity when there are other ways to do it. And… even when there aren’t yet ways to do it.” “Sorry,” Orpheus added, blushing just a little bit as he realized he was probably rambling. “I just… I suppose my morals have no place in a world like this where people’s lives are very much at risk. But… I appreciate that you share some of them, at least in part. It’s… important to me. Because they’re still human. Deep down, I think they are. And if they are…” he held his breath, meeting L’s gaze. “I fully believe that they can be cured. I don’t know the science, but if there’s even a sliver of humanity left, all that needs to be done is to bring it back out. Help it fight back.”
Noah had never been much for singing, especially not without music to back it up. He hadn’t thought it could be as wild and freeing as it was now - the music he had like when the world was still normal was all full of drum beats and bass, reverberating through his bones and deep into his heart. He hadn’t thought you could have music without it being a full body experience. This… well, it was still full body. He still felt every note, felt the rhythm rock through him as Ronan took his arm and spun him, as his heart soared through his chest. There were no drums. There was no bass or guitar or even piano. There was just the two of them, screaming a song that had never really meant anything other than a joke. It wasn’t a joke anymore. This… was life. He hadn’t been sure he would ever feel it again. He hadn’t been sure he even deserved to feel it again. What was he? Noah Czerny, just a dead thing waiting for death to fully take him? An echo of a human? Here, in this moment, he felt like more than that. He felt wild and free and human and so, so alive. His breath caught in his throat as he pulled to a stop, his hands pressed to his knees as he tried to catch his breath. He was wheezing the lyrics, laughter pouring out as much as the words, his pale face flushed and eyes alive with the spark of the moment.
Nico didn’t actually think much about contradicting Kelsier. He knew he owed him for saving his life, and he knew that wasn’t a debt he could easily repay, but it wasn’t like he thought he needed to blindly follow every idea Kelsier had. He had to admit now, though, that Kelsier had good ideas - they wouldn’t have survived the zombies if it weren’t for Kelsier’s instructions. That didn’t mean, however, that he was going to be okay with just plunging into a store without somewhere safe to retreat to first. The first thing eh had done everywhere he had over was to find somewhere he could call home base. He had secured it and set small ‘traps’ to tell if others had been there in his absence. Now that he was outside of the little range he had started to call home it was different, but he still thought finding shelter was more important than gathering supplies. They would be able to live just fine for a few days without food or clean water. If they were caught out in the open, though, all it would take was one minute for a zombie to find them and decide they were dinner. “What do you think we’ll do when there’s nothing left anymore?” Nico asked, frowning a little. He meant ‘we’ as in humanity, not him and Kelsier, but he found the implication that it could be the latter wasn’t as uncomfortable as he expected it to be. “I mean… when there’s nothing left on the shelves at all, not even people’s last choices? I’m… getting pretty sick of eating canned beets, but they’re better than nothing.”
“I think I kind of missed my chance,” Newt replied ruefully, trying to force a smile as he looked back at Sweets. “I mean… there’s not really much of a society to contribute to anymore, right? I barely thought there were other human beings left. But yeah. Maybe if the world had kept going… I would have ended up someone important. I don’t know.” He shrugged, trying to push away the hard feeling in the pit of his stomach. It didn’t matter what he had or hadn’t contributed to society. None of it mattered anymore. The difference between Newt and everyone else was that he didn’t remember anyone enough to mourn them. He didn’t know if he had friends or a family. He didn’t know how to even begin looking for them. Was it possible he had walked right past his family and he hadn’t recognized them? He shook the thought away - he’d pondered this all plenty of times before. No point going back over it now. “So… what’s your place in this new world? Other than saving dumb teenagers.”
“Right,” Zuko replied, eyes narrowing just a little as he looked at the stranger. Not out of any distrust, just… curiosity. Most people didn’t act like Sal did. Not that Zuko really had much of a concept of how most people acted nowadays, but he doubted they were friendly. And even though there were no databases with which you could look up last names, they didn’t usually trust you with all of them. “I never… really felt much of a connection to my last name,” he admitted, shrugging a little as he looked at Sal. “Maybe my mother’s maiden name, but… there’s really no use picking that up when it’s not like anyone’s ever going to hear it.” He tried not to sound grim as he said it, but it was the truth. When was the last time anyone had called the boy in front of him Sal, let alone Sal Fisher? Maybe Zuko could be a sort of compromise then. “I’ll call you Fisher, then,” he said, crossing his arms as he took a tentative step closer. “Provided you don’t mind, of course.” What did he want out of this? He had to answer that before he let himself start feeling any sort of connection to the other boy. Realistically, they couldn’t stay together for more than a few days, and he had no indication that the boy even wanted to leave here with him. Realistically, one of them would be dead before nightfall. But it had been so long since Zuko had heard the sound of anyone else’s voice…
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Mar 19, 2022 16:11:17 GMT -5
“On the contrary,” L replied, his gaze intense as he looked at Orpheus again. “I think your morals are needed now more than ever. People like me, who focus on the goal, the priority, the number of lives saved in the long run instead of the number saved today…well. We shouldn’t be trusted with too much power, on our own. I don’t think causing harm is ever going to be completely avoidable, when we’re trying to improve, but…I don’t think it should ever become easily, either. Every life should feel as though it’s the king…as though losing it is the end of the game, and there’s nothing you should try to avoid more. So, I suppose…I see it as trying to save as many games as I can, instead of winning a single one.” He was rambling. It surprised him…when was the last time he’d been able to ramble? He searched Orpheus’ expression, listening to the soft rise and fall of his voice as he spoke. He cared, that much was obvious. He cared, and it was as though it was contagious. The former detective could feel it, tugging at him, just a little bit. He wasn’t ready to risk acknowledging it any more than that. But he knew that it was there. “I don’t know if they can be cured,” he admitted quietly. “But…it’s much harder to prove something impossible than it is to prove it can be done. There’s nothing else left for me, anyway. I may as well keep trying as long as I can.”
Ronan did know how to sing, but it had been a long time since he’d tried it. It was a thing of the past, even further back than the rest…the world he’d lost, before the world he missed now had even existed. But it hadn’t been like this. The song had been a very different one, obviously, but he had never felt it so deeply either, as though the lyrics came from somewhere deep inside him, a space he only knew how to walk in his dreams. And there was Noah, doubled over and still wheezing out the lyrics like his life depended on it. Ronan let himself ease to a stop, watching the life that seemed to course through Noah’s body, the spark in his eyes that had been so absent when they’d found each other again. He’d been afraid, even if he hadn’t realized it. He’d been afraid that the world had taken something important from his best friend. Something that couldn’t be replaced. But here he was. Noah Czerny had a pulse. Noah Czerny was real, real, real. Ronan smiled a little, allowing a small, satisfied sigh to escape him before he approached again, punching Noah’s shoulder lightly. “Wimp,” he told him. “I didn’t even break a sweat, and you’re wheezing like you just ran a 10k. You gotta get out of the house more, man.”
It was a fair question, and definitely not the first time Kelsier had wondered about it. There had been a lot of food stocked up when the world had ended, but there had been a lot of people, too. Once the process of making it had been stopped, and people had been forced to try to make it last as long as they could… It would run out, eventually. It would take a while. But it would. He couldn’t tell if Nico meant the two of them or the rest of the world, but either way, the answer was the same. “I think we’ll all have to get very good at identifying plants,” he replied, smiling a little. “But it might not be all bad. Humans are built to survive, and if they have to start making their own food sources to do it, then they will. It might even be how civilization starts to rebuild itself.” He did have to admit that Nico had a point about the shelter, though. He glanced around, checking for anything that looked promising. “You know, if we’re searching after we find shelter, we could even make a couple trips. The less we carry at once, the less anything can steal from us, after all.”
Sweets knew there was more truth to Newt’s words than he’d have liked to admit. There wasn’t much of a society left anymore, and as much as he wanted to put some kind of positive spin on it…he didn’t know how. He didn’t know Newt. But maybe, if he got to know him…if he actually got to help someone again… It was a selfish reason to help someone, he knew. But any purpose was better than nothing. “My place?” He asked, hesitating a little at the question. “Well…to be honest, I’ve been…not doing much, actually. Not a lot of space for psychology anymore. But I’ve been, you know, getting by. Just trying to keep busy, you know?”
Sal wasn’t sure he knew how he was coming across. He guessed it wasn’t normal, but then, what was normal anymore? The dead walked. Society was, as far as he could tell, a thing of the past. He didn’t have much experience with people in this version of reality, but he had a feeling he was still as much of an outsider as ever. It was a little bit ironic, though. His prosthetic would probably have fit into this world much better than the one before it. “I…don’t mind,” he replied, surprising himself a little as he said it. He didn’t actually mind, even though no one had ever really called him that. The closest would have been an occasional “Mr. Fisher” from particularly ambitious teachers, but even that wasn’t really the same thing. “Yeah. I don’t mind,” he repeated, his voice a little more certain. “Then I, uh…is just Zuko okay, for you?” There probably wasn’t much point in the question, when it wasn’t like Zuko had any reason to want to travel with him. For a couple days, at the most, maybe…to fend off the loneliness. But longer than that? He wanted to pretend like it was possible. Even just for this conversation.
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Transgender
strider
No mourners, no funerals
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Post by strider on Mar 29, 2022 0:14:29 GMT -5
“No, I suppose not,” Orpheus murmured, shaking his head a little bit. It was hard to think about the fact that there was no way to completely avoid hurting people. There may have been, in the world that had existed before, but in this one? One’s very survival meant hurting other people. Taking enough food for yourself meant that there wouldn’t be enough for someone else. The way the world had been before, there had been overproduction of food. There had been too much for everyone, and that food had been thrown away in amounts that were sickening to think about. It had angered Orpheus then, but it somehow angered him more now. He pushed the thought aside. There was no point in thinking about how the world had been. There was only the way it was, and the way it could be in the future. “I never played chess,” he admitted, cheeks reddening just a little bit. “Although… I do understand the metaphor. I’ve never tried to think about it like that. Every life is so important…” he trailed off, letting his gaze lift up to meet L’s. He liked hearing the way he thought, liked listening to him think things through out loud. Orpheus couldn’t tell if it was a habit L had in general, or something he was doing for Orpheus’ sake. “I won’t believe that they’re incurable.” Orpheus’ adams apple bobbed as he swallowed, the conviction in his voice almost tangible. “I refuse to believe that there’s no way out of this. I mean… I don’t know if you can find it, and I know the chances of me doing so are… next to none, but there has to be a way. The odds can’t mean we stop trying.”
“Hey!” Noah protested, still laughing even as he staggered back dramatically, a grin touching his features at Ronan’s punch. He watched his friend, smile wide, then slung his arm around his shoulders. When had he last been able to show casual physical affection? When had he last allowed himself to exist around another human being without worrying about them throwing him to the wolves? When had he last felt this safe? He let out a breath, expression sobering for just a moment. He didn’t want Ronan to see the way his expression grew serious, but he couldn’t help it for the moment. He didn’t want to acknowledge that he had changed since they had last seen each other, but he had. He didn’t want Ronan to think that there had been something broken. For the first time, Noah Czerny had to wonder if there was something broken after all. If, by some miracle, just spending time with Ronan was the first step to piecing himself back together. For the first time, Noah Czerny wondered if he could be fixed. “It’s not like I’ve been able to ride a motorcycle around all day every day!” That wasn’t exactly exercise, but it was close to it. Noah had just been… walking. “Besides, it just means I found it funnier than you,” he added, puffing out his chest.
Nico nodded at Kelsier’s response. He didn’t want to be rude, but it had been more thoughtful and realistic than he had been expecting. He could tell already that Kelsier was a sort of idealist, but it seemed he did understand the state of the world, no matter how optimistic he was about the state of humanity. Nico glanced around, noting the overgrowth of plants over the semi-familiar landscape. He hadn’t been this direction before, but it didn’t look that different from some of the places he had been. He could remember what suburbs like this looked like before they had been absolutely covered in weeds… only, were they really weeds at this point? They were just plants that had managed to thrive in spite of the way the world was. Nico couldn’t help the tiny smile that touched his lips for half a second. “Do you think there are books about that still in existence?” he asked, speeding up his steps to catch up with Kelsier. He hadn’t meant to stop walking, but his thoughts had taken over the movement of his feet. He glanced back at the landscape before he gave a firm nod. “We… probably shouldn’t pick somewhere too close to this, though,” he suggested warily. “We want something more out of the way. Less likely to be found.”
“Right, yeah,” Newt replied, trying to shake off the small bit of disappointment that filled him at the answer. He knew that was similar to what he was doing, but part of him had hoped that someone older, someone who remembered the world before, might have a better idea of how to function in this new world. They may have found something to do that made it all… worth it. Newt was tired of waiting to die. Waiting to see which new challenge took him down, because the survival rate on this planet was… not ideal. He shook off the thought, trying to make something positive out of Sweets’ words. He was struggling. “Have you… found anything to keep busy doing?” Newt asked after another long moment.
“Fisher,” Zuko said after a moment, once again testing out the name for the other boy. It wasn’t like it mattered in the long run, right? They were going to spend a few hours together maximum, and then they’d be going their separate ways. It wasn’t like calling the other boy Fisher was going to impact anything for more than a few hours. Zuko tried to push away the thought. He didn’t want to be alone again, but he wasn’t going to be presumptuous enough to assume that the other boy wanted to travel with him. Maybe… they could take it an hour at a time. Maybe they could see if they clicked enough to become short term traveling buddies until something turned their attention in another direction. It would be irresponsible of Zuko to drag someone else into his mission, no matter how lonely he was. He pushed the thought away, trying to focus on the present for once. “Yeah, Zuko’s fine,” Zuko said after a moment. He didn’t know why he didn’t give a family name. Part of him wanted to separate himself from his family as much as possible, even if the instinct didn’t make sense. He owed his family a lot. He was doing everything he could to get back. Maybe… maybe it was that he didn’t feel like he deserved to claim their name. Maybe.
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