![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
- ! open,
- ! player plot,
- bastien,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- derrica,
- ellie,
- fifi mariette,
- florent vascarelle,
- gela,
- james flint,
- julius,
- loxley,
- matthias,
- mobius,
- petrana de cedoux,
- redvers keen,
- stephen strange,
- tsenka abendroth,
- vanya orlov,
- viktor,
- wysteria de foncé,
- yseult,
- { peter parker },
- { tony stark }
player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2
WHO: Anyone who didn't die here.
WHAT: A sad week.
WHEN: Approx Solas 21-30
WHERE: Granitefell, the Gallows, wherever else you want.
NOTES: A second log for this plot. Additional posts/logs will cover the time travel/fix-it components—this one is for the time period where no one knows that's a possibility.
WHAT: A sad week.
WHEN: Approx Solas 21-30
WHERE: Granitefell, the Gallows, wherever else you want.
NOTES: A second log for this plot. Additional posts/logs will cover the time travel/fix-it components—this one is for the time period where no one knows that's a possibility.
Those who fly out to Granitefell arrive a few hours after dawn to find a smoldering gravesite and fewer than twenty living souls, Riftwatch's five included. The survivors have done what they can in the intervening hours, but there's still work to be done to tend to wounds, move the bodies—especially the delicate ones—and help the remaining villagers, mostly children, build pyres to see to their own dead before they're relocated somewhere safer. Somewhere with roofs that aren't collapsed or still lightly burning.
Carts to carry Riftwatch's dead won't arrive for some time afterward, and bringing them back takes just as long. It's a few days before they're returned to the Gallows, preserved from decay as best everyone could manage but nonetheless in poor shape from the battle. Pyres are an Andrastian tradition for a reason—to prevent possession—but burials and mummification aren't so unheard of that anyone will be barred from seeing to their loved ones as they see fit.
Before, during, and after any funerary rites, there are absences. Empty beds, empty offices, voices missing from the crystals, pancakes missing from Sundays. Belongings that need to be sorted and letters that need to be written. And, perhaps most pressingly, work that still needs to be done, including the work left behind by those who can no longer follow through on their own projects or tie up their own loose ends, as the world and its war keep moving steadily onward as if nothing happened at all.
Carts to carry Riftwatch's dead won't arrive for some time afterward, and bringing them back takes just as long. It's a few days before they're returned to the Gallows, preserved from decay as best everyone could manage but nonetheless in poor shape from the battle. Pyres are an Andrastian tradition for a reason—to prevent possession—but burials and mummification aren't so unheard of that anyone will be barred from seeing to their loved ones as they see fit.
Before, during, and after any funerary rites, there are absences. Empty beds, empty offices, voices missing from the crystals, pancakes missing from Sundays. Belongings that need to be sorted and letters that need to be written. And, perhaps most pressingly, work that still needs to be done, including the work left behind by those who can no longer follow through on their own projects or tie up their own loose ends, as the world and its war keep moving steadily onward as if nothing happened at all.
Finding Clarisse: Closed, Solo
Ellie knows what she'll find in the center of the village.
She finds Maimer first, laying in the charred grass. She scrapes her fingers picking it up, so fast she nearly punches the ground. There's a hole in her throat, making her airless, like she can't breathe, she can't think. There's a ringing in her head, pushing out all of the thoughts.
It isn't like with Abby. This time she's horribly aware of every single step she takes, every heartbeat in her ears as the line of Clarisse's body carves itself into her brain, closer and closer. Arm at an unnatural angle. Blood all across her back, soaking, covering the neat scars where Ellie once stitched her shut.
Still. So very fucking still.
Ellie rolls her over anyway, like that might help. Like she might still be alive despite the bloody holes through her body, the pattern of giant fangs. Despite the cold tackiness of the blood on her lips, the narrow sheen of soft brown where her eyes didn't completely close.
Ellie lays her hand across the bloody wounds, and the worst of them is wider than her palm can cover. Holds pressure on it like she can keep her from bleeding out, when she already has. Her hands shake. Her lips part but nothing comes out.
This is a nightmare, probably. She'll wake up. She'll wake and they'll be in her bed, tangled up together with Clarisse's hair tickling her nose, her soft breath in her ear. She'll wake and Clarisse will pull her close and whisper in her ear. Ellie, Ellie.
Breathe.
She can't. She can't breathe.
Ellie pulls Clarisse into her lap, and she moves wrong. Cold, stiffening. Revulsion blooms in Ellie's throat, but she can't leave. Can't leave her like this. Can't leave her here like this. Can't leave her alone.
Time stretches, breaks a little. There is a scream and a sob in Ellie's skull but it won't come out. It stays in her, roiling, rending.
I know you think fate sounds like a trap, Clarisse had said while washed in sunset, awkward and sincere. But it doesn't have to be.
Ellie pulls her closer, and Clarisse bleeds on her. Sluggish, black, cold. Ellie gasps and it catches in her throat and she holds her anyway, anyway. Because it's the last time she'll ever get to.
I feel like we were fated to meet, but you're also my choice.
Ellie tucks her close to her chest, presses her face into her hair. She can't breathe.