player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2

[cozen]

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.

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.

Comments

[heartstumbles]

"Okay," Peter says with a nod. He watches as Mobius goes and retrieves the book; waits. When he returns, Peter nods again.

"It's okay," he says. He considers a moment before leading them out of the chapel. "This might not be a great place for yelling, but you're right. Someone should answer. What happened...it was not right."

That being said, Peter turns and leads them out of the chapel. He feels a little bit better himself once he's out in the fresh air and more distanced from the distinctly church-like smell of the chapel.

When they're out of the chapel proper, Peter turns back to Mobius.

"Who did you lose?"

He's assuming, of course. But from the way Mobius reacted, he thinks it's a fair assumption to make.

[favoriteanalyst]

It feels almost too big outside. Too much. In the chapel, at least, it feels smaller, closer, more personal even if there wasn't anything specifically personal about it given it being a public space. Here, he feels like he can lose himself. Lose focus. Voice getting lost in the shuffle.

The question feels cutting from someone who was there, who witnessed all the loss first-hand. Though he doesn't imagine Peter's had quite enough time to get especially close to anyone. Who knows. Maybe he did. Sometimes it doesn't take long at all.

"Jude. Big man, good listener, makes pancakes on Sundays? Abby, with the strong arms and the--Maker, the dog. I don't think the dog goes on missions; I'm sure someone's...taking care of him. And Barrow, bear of a man, easygoing as can be. Friends of mine." He shrugs a shoulder, absent-mindedly stroking a hand over the book cover. "Friends of a lot of people, here."

[heartstumbles]

Peter winces, hearing Jude's name, and then he especially winces, hearing Abby's name. Guilt over her death weighs on him like too many layers of clothes, stifling and unyielding. But he doesn't deserve relief from that guilt, he knows. She died saving him, and he's never going to forget that.

"I'm sorry for your losses," he says. "Jude is - was a good man. He was so nice to me when I first got here. Abby..." Peter runs his hand over his mouth, trying to figure out the right words to say. Nothing his mind comes up with feels adequate. "Abby was also kind to me. I'm...I'm sorry."

It's not enough, he knows, but he is sorry. He's sorry Mobius' friends died and he's sorry that he survived when they didn't.

"It's never easy," he says, looking up after a few moments of silence. "Losing people you care about. It sucks every time."

[favoriteanalyst]

"It never feels like enough. It feels stupid to say it, but you never know what else to say. Like there has to be something more or better that nobody's stumbled on yet. There has to be something better to express than 'sorry you had to watch a lotta people you worked with die', you know?"

Just for example.

But there's really not a whole lot to be said otherwise. What more is there? He's been on both ends before, not the first or last time. But to hear the kid might have been on the losing side before--that hurts. He's too young for that. (Abby was too young to deal with the whole mushroom zombie situation, too. These things don't have an age limit.)

"Sounds like you've got some experience in that department," Mobius ventures carefully. "You wanna talk about it?"

[heartstumbles]

"Yeah!" Peter nods. Mobius is entirely right about that; 'sorry' feels too inadequate a word for conveying empathy for loss, especially when said loss occurs during a tragedy of such proportions as they just experienced. "It feels like the only right word because everything else just seems too much but not enough at the same time, you know?"

When he asks about Peter's own experience in losing people, Peter hesitates a moment but decides, ultimately, to share his grief.

"I do," he says with a nod. "Just before I got here, I lost my aunt. She was my only family, and it's my fault she got killed. I'm still...I miss her everyday." He lets out a long, slow breath. "But thinking about her and how she always insisted we help people has helped me out a lot here, so far."

[favoriteanalyst]

"It's that kinda thing we have to hold on to to keep moving. We'll all get there, it's just...needing the time to grieve, first. Or," with a duck of his head, "to be angry at all the gods in the sky about it first."

It always helps when it's all understood. Everyone understands that 'sorry' isn't enough, but it's still the expected response. Everyone's fucked up with being in shock and being saddened and being angry, and eventually everyone will get on with their lives.

It also always sucks. Every single time. "Sorry about your family," with a wry smirk, given the state of sorries. "Losing people at all is never easy. Worse when it's loved ones." Peter saying it's his fault, that part is the kicker. Because it could just be the grief talking, or he could mean it, and he doesn't know the kid well enough to tell. So. "Memory tends to be a big deal when it comes to the departed. They never feel too far away when we're able to remember them fondly. Tell me about her? If you want."

[heartstumbles]

Peter nods. "Yeah, and I get the whole...angry at the gods thing. I've done my share of yelling." Usually either internally or up on rooftops where no one can hear him, and typically not to any one god in particular.

He gets where Mobius is coming from, being angry at the Maker. It's good to find a way to let that anger out, he knows; the way it festers when you try and keep it in, that's when anger turns sharp and dangerous. But it's maybe less helpful to let out that anger in a quiet place of worship where people are trying to pray, so he's glad Mobius has followed him outside.

He manages a small, wry smile back at the 'sorry,' but he does appreciate the sympathy all the same. He's also grateful when Mobius asks about May, and asks Peter to share memories of her. That, he can do. Easily.

"She was the best," he says, stating this like it should be obvious to anyone. And he does believe that; anyone who would meet May would know she's the best, he thinks. "She always listened to me when I needed to talk, and she always responded like I was an adult, even when I was just a kid."

He smiles a little more genuinely as he speaks. He misses May every day but talking about her helps keep her with him. "She was a terrible cook, and she always tried to roast or bake something, but usually set off the smoke alarms. She helped teach me how to tie a tie, and she always pushed me to do better. To be better."

"I try to keep her memory alive by living up to that," he admits. "By trying to do better."

[favoriteanalyst]

This, at least, is soothing to the aches in his soul. If temporarily. Learning things about Rifters will always be his favorite pastime, yes, but just listening to people talk, and talk excitedly, fondly...especially about what they love. Who they love.

"It was just the two of you against the world, huh?" He won't ask what happened to the rest of Peter's family. It can't be anything heartwarming. "Sounds like she made sure to raise you right. You may have come here by happenstance and not by choice, but she'd be proud of what you're doing. For people you don't even know, a cause that isn't yours."

Just because Rifters are brought here for their own safety doesn't mean they're obligated to entrench themselves in Riftwatch, to put themselves in harm's way.

"And hey, you're keeping an old fool from making an even bigger fool of himself. That's not nothing."

[heartstumbles]

"Yeah, exactly! And she would say that too," Peter says, nodding emphatically. "And that we help people, that it's what we're meant to do." He smiles, sorrow and pride both shining through the quirk of his mouth as he talks about May. "She did raise me right. She was the best family I could have ever asked for." She was his only family, and he lost her. He will never stop missing her, or mourning the fact that she died because of his mistakes.

He glances at Mobius when he tells him that May would be proud of him. He smiles, a little bit brighter and wider this time. It means a lot to hear that, especially from someone more experienced with Riftwatch.

"Hey, I'm supposed to be the one making you feel better, remember?" He teases. But he is grateful, all the same.

He shrugs when Mobius mentions Peter helping keeping him from making a fool of himself. "Yeah, well," he says, "I've acted foolishly plenty of times myself. If I can help people from making my mistakes, I'd like to try."

[favoriteanalyst]

"Nobody's ever too old to make dumb mistakes. It just means we keep learning and growing all throughout life. We're never done doing any of that."

What kind of lesson 'lose several of your good friends and a not insignificant chunk of your forces' teaches, but that's something to do inside yelling about. And not in the middle of a chapel yelling.

"A lot of my raising was done by the Chantry." Which maybe speaks volumes right there. "I don't remember much about my family, but the brothers and sister I ended up with, that was family. Lotta things have changed, and I've had to start over a couple times. But here...this is a real messy, complicated family. But it's the one I've got now, for better or worse."

[heartstumbles]

Peter nods. There's something comforting in the idea of never being too old to make dumb mistakes, he thinks. In all honesty, he assumes he's got a whole lot of dumb mistakes ahead of him, both here and back home. If he ever makes it back home, that is.

Mobius tells him that he was raised by the Chantry and Peter empathizes with him, hearing that. From what he can tell, the Chantry here shares a lot of similarities with the Catholic church back home, and he imagines that being raised by the Chantry is as harsh as being raised in a Catholic orphanage, maybe even more so, given that a lot of the people raised by the Chantry here seem to become soldiers for the Chantry.

"I can't imagine it was easy, being raised by the Chantry," he offers. "But I'm glad you were able to find family there. And here, now. I think all families are complicated and messy, no matter what people tell themselves. It's holding people close and people getting on your nerves but you still love them anyway."

He pauses, shakes his head. "And when you lose them it always hurts like someone's taken a dagger to your chest and started carving."