Afterparty the Third

[canreallymove]

[Yuta's gone. He can't do the after party. So now it's up to Sonic. Yes, Hunter was going to do it, or...at least yell at the sheep to do it, but Sonic pointed out they were going to need more than just apple slices. People were starving and the sheep couldn't cook. In his opinion, of course. How does one even bruise an apple like that!?

Hunter wasn't happy with him, and what's her face Jeanie probably hated his guts now, but honestly, who was happy with anything at this point?

So, the first thing he does is go to the kitchen and start to do the one thing he knows will at least help: cook. The food is back, and so he's going to make a hearty mean and veggie stew in the oven, courtesy of an old recipe that nanny Rosie would make when they were kids. Back before the takeover. After they got food in Knothole.

While the stew is stewing in the oven for a good hour or so, Sonic himself is just...stewing. And also making something with rice in the microwave to tie people over in the meantime. It's actually congee, but he thinks its hot rice pudding, so whatever, it's good to go for people.

And yes. He also has apple slices and graham crackers, Hunter insisted on it. And yes, he's made extra and enough for everyone and Nanami to have seconds if they'd like. They need to eat, albeit slowly so they don't get sick, and he makes notes at the cafeteria table stating that. Then he gets to work with a cookbook to try and make some kind of drink that can help with getting people back on their feet. Dylan does cover with chamomile tea, at least, so it's not as much of an urgent issue.

He's mostly staying in the kitchen if people want to bug him. When he does finally come out, he sits in silence, staring at his bowl of stew, picking at the carrots. He's tired. It's pretty obvious on his face.]

Comments

[holyironmade]

[Jeanne pokes her head into the cafeteria and sees that Sonic's stew is going to take an entire God-loving hour. She slowly closes the door completely, so even the latch clicks, which is probably the Jeanne version of slamming the door.

If she's going to have to continue to suffer (which nobody asked her to do), she might as well do it somewhere else. So here she is on the playground with her bible under the light of the moon.]

I will not deny that I am contemplating church.

cafeteria

[Now Jeanne is eating the soup. She's patient and meticulous about it and exhaled air on the spoon but tears of involuntary gratitude are streaming down her face.]

I must be careful not to burn myself... It is not as if that pain has ever stopped me, after all.

Cafeteria

[canreallymove]

Burned tongue still sucks, though.

[...]

Um. Do you have a sec?

[holyironmade]

As I said, I am trying to avoid that outcome. While it does not bother me, I know it is unnecessarily damaging.

[She puts down her spoon.]

What will happen if I say no?

[canreallymove]

Well, I just...leave and don't apologize, I guess.

[holyironmade]

And will you paint me as an unreasonable monster who should have turned the other cheek and deserves any violence I henceforth receive?

[canreallymove]

...Huh? What the-why would I-??

[In other words, no, that thought had not even once crossed his mind.]

[holyironmade]

Because that is how you treat Valmont. Treat him even in death. More evil than any of the killers we had promised to forgive, when he reaches for his own possession in his peer's arms, when he carries a knife that never broke another's skin. I have reclaimed Shamash for myself from the very same boy who objected so harshly, brought a nail bat to the playground shed in the event something happens, and does it mean I am evil? Does it mean I am a fool?

[canreallymove]

...

[Oh, ok, this...hm.]

Look, I'll be way past honest. I barely knew him. I only talked to him maybe a few times at best. He didn't seem that uncool. He seemed ok to me.

I mean, I won't lie and say I wouldn't be upset if he'd been the one to kill someone this time, if he did kill Dylan. But...

[He waves his hand kind of generally.]

Hatin' him for it? With what was hangin' over our heads? That's just dumb. Not here, man. I don't think anyone here's evil.






Well, ok, Father is totally evil, but that's kinda obvious and the sheep dudes also don't count.

[holyironmade]

Valmont was not incapable of doing wrong. Far from it. Objections would be merited. I merely...

To be honest, you were not the very worst of them. You limited yourself most strictly to interpretations of the evidence. It was simply too painful to hear all at once. I must be more humble in future. More patient.

[canreallymove]

Well, I did try. I was just usin' what Yasu taught me. Gotta pick up the slack and all with...with people dyin'.

...and. Yeah, speaking of. That was what I wanted to apologize for-puttin' you on the spot like that. But it just seemed like the likeliest idea at the time. I wasn't trying to embarrass you or anything like that.

But yeah. Either way this wasn't a cool trial at all.

[holyironmade]

Not a cool trial... I might agree.

[Implying there is such a thing as a cool trial... She gathers up some more chunks of stew in her spoon.]

Still, likely it seemed. I was in the demographic group that contained the true culprit. Who scolded the victim while I was his friend, but that is a distraction.

Playground

[panglici]

[So this is why Carrie wasn't panicking over Yasu's sudden case of Gothic Novel Protagonist Syncope with everyone else: she saw Jeanne peer in and then leave. She'd almost been finished peeling that apple from earlier, having sliced off the bruises left by throwing it at the screen their captor used to show his presence, then.

It was easier to focus on finishing that than it was to admit she was afraid to go looking for Jeanne, afraid because she'd been quiet when she shouldn't have been. But it was a task soon finished, and so was slicing the apple, and there's only one option for escaping-without-escaping, here. The playground makes sense as a place one might retreat to if the cafeteria is loud and the kitchen populated by someone who accused you of murder repeatedly.]

I think there's still a point, if that's part of what you're contemplating.

[A pause the length of one heartbeat, and then she holds the plate of skinned and sliced apple out towards Jeanne.]

And, um. I know it's not much, but I didn't want to eat it alone.

[Yes, she's completely oblivious to any symbolism here. The narrator, meanwhile, is screaming.]

[holyironmade]

Our attendance is dwindling rapidly, unless they really have finished constructing their false version of me that hates him in their heads and now hang onto my every word as I do theirs.

[She had a surprisingly specific spiel ready. Now she turns around to look at the plate of apples. Utter contempt has been plain to see on her face much of the day, and it's bubbling up for some reason at the sight of the apple slices. She looks almost like boiling water bubbling over at the desperate attempt to school the muscles of the lower half of her face into a smile; it's all she can do to keep her brow from creasing too deeply. Enough time passes for her to say out loud to herself in her head, "Carrie is being nice. We are nice to our friends when they are nice to us." In the end, the momentum took her around to lean forward with her hands clapsed in her lap and she is at least soft and intensely curious about the question posed looking up at Carrie.]

Why were you going to eat this in particular? Has it become a twisted Good Friday Eucharist?

[panglici]

[There's a whole lot to unpack in that first statement, but any attempt at putting it all in neat order is very soon lost. The way Jeanne reacts upon turning around could've made a weaker girl drop the plate and run. Carrie is aware she's done something to make everything worse, but has no idea what, exactly, is so damned offensive.]

Nothing like that, no. The sheep scolded me for "wasting food at a time like this" when I tried to break the moving picture screen with it, so I had it and I didn't want to hang around in the kitchen.

[Her voice is very carefully neutral. It's the tone she'd use when talking to an adult wondering why a ten, eleven, twelve-year-old girl was traveling alone.]

[holyironmade]

The sheep told you it must not be wasted? So it is like a law here?

[This news is just unbearable, worse than being stabbed, derails her enough that her own words don't cut anymore. She extends her hand to Carrie, begging to be taken, to be spared.]

Come. We are near the fence. Let us feed the monsters. You will think less of me, but I have been offered apple slices and crackers four times during this depraved ritual. It is very nearly a step in its own right by now. I cannot abide a fifth.

[panglici]

I - God, you're right. It's like it's part of this now.

[She stares down at the apple - fragmented, beginning to brown - and despite what she told the sheep, she still can't see it as something to eat, not now. It is still something to throw.

She takes Jeanne's hand with her own, balancing the plate on the other. It'll be like the world's most miserable folk dance, walking over to the fence like this.]

These aren't as air - aren't as aero - they won't fly as well as a ring or a dagger, but we shouldn't have any trouble tossing them out and over. Even if the monster tries to starve us again, I don't even know if I like apples anymore myself.

[holyironmade]

If that matters to you, [aerodynamicity - the fact that Carrie stumbled over it makes her think that she might not be right in the correction she assumes] I will make up for it with a target.

[Shamash flies into view over her shoulder as she straightens back up to take Carrie with her. For all that he's her partner, you don't actually see very much of him in this month-long situation where Jeanne is sad and lonely and has no one to turn to. Jeanne interlaces her fingers with Carrie's, does the hard part of walking backwards. In the moonlight, outside the shadow of the shed, her long hair glitters.]

It is very common for a shaman to close her eyes, starve herself for an entire week, and trick her body into thinking it has died. Learning that we could slip away at any moment brings our hearts closer to those who already had.

[They're close enough now that Jeanne can be heard even in a whisper, which is what's easier after her fast. She's so happy that Carrie feels her feelings, something stronger than whatever sweetness lingers in the apple.]

A shaman with a spirit does not need wings to fly.

Playground

[temmapathy]

So NOW can I say that he was a jerk?

[holyironmade]

[For a beat she looks at Emma completely stunned.]

Why?

[She can at least settle down after a single emphasized word.]

No. No, it is not my nature to chase and beat someone if I find their words needless. I despise idleness, but the time to demand concentration has passed.

1/2

[temmapathy]

[She lets out a quiet huff.] No one said anything about him deserving it more until you brought it up, you know. The only "but" I would have said would be "He was a jerk, but he was getting better."

2/2

[temmapathy]

And now he'll never get the chance.

[holyironmade]

[There's a tension in Jeanne's face at this idea that she somehow made the situation worse, but this gives way to a more serious squint as she follows the signed words to keep them ordered in her mind. Jeanne had felt she clearly insinuated "he was a jerk, BUT he was a human being who didn't deserve to die" was still frustrating and irrelevant enough that she didn't want to hear it, so it's interesting to see Emma's interpretation is different. Well, she supposes, clearly insinuated is a bit of an oxymoron.]

...an important... distinction...

[The breathiness of her lips (as much less force is put into her words by her throat too) suggests that she has been holding herself back. Maybe, if she just accepts Emma's heart, it will finally be enough. She rallies a bit.]

It is a tragedy. And it is hard to imagine what greater horrors await us. Frogs? Hail? Locusts?

[temmapathy]

It really sucks. I don't want to give him more ideas...

[Although, well, now that Jeanne's bringing it up.]

Frogs aren't so bad, I think, and for hail we'd just need to stay indoors and away from the windows.

[She pauses at that last one, though.]

Okay, I guess I can't see anything good about locusts. Wait, maybe Adorabat could eat them?

[holyironmade]

Still... I think that he has not gotten bored of us yet. So it is prediction, not provocation. I expected the hostage motive, and that helped me bear it.

[From talking with... Yuta...] Then let us prepare for the frogs. [The mention of Adorabat stuns her into laughter.]

She could! There is always hope.

[temmapathy]

[Emma nods.] I haven't really thought of what other motives he might use. But it seems like he's already used a bunch of the most serious ones.

[Jeanne's laughter gets a small smile from her as well, in response.]