villagelogs | 024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias + ???
WHEN: Days 024-027
WHAT: The consequences of their actions.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! The next log will be posted January 23rd.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Onryo" 怨霊

DAYS 024-025
CONSEQUENCES
“There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments —
there are consequences.”
— Robert G. Ingersoll
When the unwilling residents of Mathias Township wake on the morning of the 24th day, they will find themselves in yet another set of frustratingly unnerving circumstances. None of them are where they last remember being, and some of them have strange marks on the palms of their left hands. It's all incredibly unsettling, but truthfully they should be used to it by now. No one will remember traveling to their new location.

Residents can wake up anywhere within their new location and in any position. Curled up in a bed, sprawled on a couch, huddled beneath a coffee table, propped against a wall... Wherever they are, they will themselves to be in quite an unusual state. While they are wearing whatever clothing items they went to sleep in, plus their shoes and a coat. The newest arrivals to Mathias Township will perhaps stand out for being slightly more appropriately dressed than their new neighbors. They are all a bit damp, physically worn out, and half-frozen from their apparent walk through a blizzard.

Each of the four locations is inescapable — residents are trapped, with exterior doors and windows being shut tight and a blizzard raging outside. The locations are stocked with fresh food and water and a large pile of firewood for the fireplaces in each building. The circumstances residents will face, however, may vary wildly between locations as the forces at work in Mathias respond to the recent actions of certain individuals.

BOARDING HOUSE | GREY GULL
NEW HOUSE | MYSTERY MANSION

These residents will wake with a mark on their left hand palms, a spiraling black symbol similar to those some may have seen around town. All marks are identical and cannot be removed, but will have seemingly vanished from their skin on the morning of the 26th day.

Castiel, Daisy Johnson, Dean Winchester
Elena Gilbert, Elijah Mikaelson, Helen Magnus
Phil Coulson, Quentin Coldwater, Sherlock Holmes

DAYS 026-027
IN THE AFTERMATH
After their ordeals of the past two days, the unfortunate residents of Mathias Township will be grateful to find that they were back where they are supposed to be, a chill still clinging to their clothes in whatever place they went to sleep the night of the 23rd day. New arrivals will wake in the living room of the boarding house. None of the residents will wake with anything in their possession from the locations in which they were previously trapped, including any notes or documentation they may have made during their time there.

CONDITIONS UPDATE
— SNOW continues to fall heavily on Days 024-025, resulting in white out conditions from the wind that blows in gusts of over 35 mph; the temperature also drops drastically, making conditions extremely dangerous for residents. The blizzard clears on Day 26 and residents are left with a cold, calm world covered in white.

— THE FOG remains blocking the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper, and it also now blocks the northern section of town, beginning just before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be. Venturing into the fog is... ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. Kylo Ren and Thomas Richardson have vanished without a trace.

— NO NEW DEATHS have occurred in town, but there is a new "grave" in the small makeshift graveyard near the schoolhouse. Rey's corpse has been moved and covered with stones to wait for the ground to thaw enough for a proper burial.

— THE LANTERNS will be gone from the morning of Day 024. No trace of them remains.

OOC UPDATES
— A GIFT for everyone! As a thank you for being part of this spooky little game, every character in the game is being gifted 2 Activity Points. These may be banked over here — instead of linking to an AC post, you may put "New Year gift" in that field. Happy 2021, friends!

— NEW LAYOUTS have been installed for our communities! Huge thanks to our Eldritch Librarian Stars for putting in the time to get this place looking shiny. (You may have also noticed some new page layouts being installed — these are also our Librarian's handiwork!)

— DISCOVERIES have been collected and collated for your review. Please note that this is OOC information only, put together for the purpose of helping you as players see connections and possibilities for CR and your own character's potential avenues of exploration and investigation. (If we are missing something, please report it so we can add it to the list.)

— REMINDERS — Don't forget about the bulletin board. Please continue reporting your updates to locations, plots, and discoveries. The map of Mathias has been added to the locations page for ease of reference. Make sure your character's sanity level is kept updated. Prospective players are still joining the TDM, so it's recommended to track new top-levels so you don't miss them.

navigation | faq | setting | mod contact

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Doc takes his time outside the master bedroom, giving Malcolm and Raylan some time together, giving himself some space for self-composure. He checks in on Negan first since he's upstairs and then makes his way downstairs to Neal. Had the commotion awoken them he would have offered reassurances to hopefully put them more at ease even if they might struggle to go back to sleep. Neal also deserves a curt but appreciative word of thanks for giving up the master bedroom - the couch, while comfortable, is not an appropriate space for guests. And while he is no longer really a guest, having unofficially moved in, he still deserves a more permanent arrangement than this musical chairs they're playing with sleeping spaces.

When Doc returns they'll be able to hear his footsteps coming down towards the master bedroom before the door creaks open. He doesn't wish to interrupt them if they are in the middle of anything but since they've dispensed with the knocking he's not going to bother reintroducing it.

"Well we haven't scared them away, and Neal hasn't frozen on the couch overnight. Might need to work on my midnight root canal joke," Doc muses with a smile that can be heard in the dark, ducking his head as he slowly runs a hand over his hair. There is less of a need to put on a chirpy, sunny, optimistic disposition to accompany his air of confidence in this bedroom. He can let himself just be tired and not bother wearing his confidence out with the two of them.

"We might need to stay here a while, let Mister Caffrey have a few more hours downstairs." Sitting on the edge of the bed with all the confidence of a man who would be invited to bed than be told to leave the room, he smoothes his hand down the length of his thigh, regarding Malcolm and Raylan in a quiet appraisal. He's got a couple of choices - maybe another hour or two of sleep, to his left, and the pack of cigarettes that he will go downstairs to chip away at on his right - and steely blue eyes seem to be weighing up between the options. He seems to be gravitating towards the smoke if the way he brushes the side of his thumb over his lower lip is anything to go by, but the longer he sits around the less likely he is going to be willing to get up again.

[Note to the eventual reader: Thread detoured over here and Raylan's response will be double posted.]

How? He understood what? Raylan did not understand and the pinch of his brows said as much. Something had played wrong; he wasn't reading something right and he felt the urge to distance himself before more damage was done - to himself or Malcolm. "I-"

Doc coming up the stairs and into the room was a blessing in disguise and Raylan swiveled his half raised head towards the door, body drawing back a few inches. He glanced at Malcolm and shifted up on his elbow, arm draping over his own hip as he listened. Having momentarily forgotten about Neal or Negan or anyone that wasn't sitting on or in the bed currently, it was a sharp reminder of where they were. Where they weren't.

"If they can withstand that, they'll fit in fine." At the suggestion of staying here a few more hours, Raylan nodded, glancing at Malcolm again before pushing the blankets off and turning his legs out to sit up and then stand up. "I gotta piss," he said by way of explanation as he headed around the foot of the bed and towards the bathroom. He needed to just. Not be seen for a few minutes.

"Get comfortable."

Malcolm’s hand slid from Raylan’s chest as he moved away and he rolled onto his back so he could see Doc.

He swallowed, looking up at the ceiling.

“I told him,” he said, barely above a whisper in the hope that Doc would hear him and Raylan would not. “I shouldn’t have. It was too much. He thinks I idealize him.”

"We didn't need to know that," Doc grunts as Raylan parts. He doesn't need the invitation to crawl back into bed but he is appreciative of it nonetheless, reclaiming his spot that has since gone a little cold and sliding in next to Malcolm.

"Do you?" He asks Malcolm as he lies down on his side facing him, folding his arm over his stomach. Doc knows a thing or two about being idealised and idolised. He can understand how Raylan feels. They might be progressing towards a point where they are straining, fraying at the edges, close to breaking, but so far Raylan has been a rampart keeping this house intact. Like Doc he probably hasn't been giving himself frequent enough opportunities to just be okay with not having his shit together.

"My relationships with the people who took care of me as I got progressively ill had changed from when I was still their gunslinging hero. You may not think of him as a caretaker but he may think of himself as needing to be caretaking. He thinks you have not seen him at his lowest, you do not know what it entails, that you are not of his world and would not understand, and that you are undeserving of that kind of ugliness. It is a difficult thing, when a man cannot articulate that he wants something precious. Only that he wants not to hurt or ruin it even more. Unfortunately, on this side of the line, you only feel the rejection all the same." But hopefully Doc can reassure him that it is not rejection. A 'thank you but no thank you' is different from a 'thank you but I just need some time'. The South is on its own schedule, ten times slower than a city that claims not to sleep. All Doc has is time. He can be wont to drag things out too.

And don't say Doc never talks. He talks plenty, see?

Raylan was sure one of them did.

Once behind the bathroom door, Raylan leaned against it for a long moment, eyes closed with a few deep breaths before he pushed up to turn the faucet on, covering any sounds he might make by his very real call of nature. Once he was done, he returned to the sink and washed his face, trying to push the clamor of questions and ideas out from his mind, a mix of hope and knowing despair and a deep desire for... The sentence couldn't be finished, not even in his head.

No, all he needed was a few minutes to get his walls back up, double mortared in place, set to age over the next two days. He could avoid answering any questions til then. Until it'd settled.

“I see him,” Malcolm told Doc. “That’s what I do. I watch people and I see the ways they’ve learned to protect themselves and when they waver and when they reinforce their defences and I see them. He’s a good person who thinks he’s a bad person, but I would bet real money that the bad things he’s supposed to have done were done to protect other people. That’s who he is. I don’t know what made him that way. It probably has something to do with his father’s failures; he uses his first name. I don’t call my father ‘dad’ either. That’s how he stays strong, worrying about other people. Checking on the town. Boarding up houses nobody is even using because somebody might. You do it too. I know you won’t let me self-destruct. I know it’s safe here because you two make it that way. But I don’t think you’re... perfect. Just.... fundamentally good at the core. Underneath... alcoholism and baggage. But I think. Maybe that’s the part he’s not ready to hear. I don’t know. I always have too many feelings; this isn’t the first time it’s been a problem. It won’t be the last.”

He took a breath and sat up. “I think... I’m going to go to my room. Do some yoga. Read. I won’t disturb the others. You two should get some more sleep in peace.”

He started scootching towards the foot of the bed. It seemed like his exit. Rolling over Raylan’s spot on the bed felt like trespassing.

"Malcolm, wait." In the blink of an eye, Doc has propped himself up just high enough on one elbow to reach over to grab Malcolm by his slender arm. There's a lot to unpack between what Doc said and what Malcolm said. Things to do with relationships where there is some level of dependencies involved, around the cowboys' self-medicating ways, and where they tragically believe they're all falling short of each other when they are so much more than the mere, paltry sum of all their glaring flaws.

Doc might not have known exactly what was said or where they stand, but he wants to salvage this regardless. Something good has to come of this town. And a life lived in fear, of hurting others or of not being accepted full of flaws and all, is not a life that was worth living at all.

"None of us have seen each other at our worst. We have not yet said something we cannot take back in the heat of the moment. We cannot know how anyone else would react. You need space to let a door open or you'll get smacked in the face. Just- give him that time, and space." Doc slowly lets go, folding an arm under his head as he lies back down.

"You are always free to come and go as you please. But if you leave now without at least reassuring him that no harm was done and that you would be around when he is ready, that door will never open." Doc would help them as best they can, but this is a door he cannot open for them.

“I wasn’t going to actually leave before he comes back,” Malcolm said softly. He needed to know they were still friends too. He knew it was the truth that Raylan left the room to pee, but he also didn’t think it was all he needed to leave the room for. “But... he doesn’t want that door, Doc. Not with me. I misunderstood what he.... what he did want. Somewhere to turn for comfort without judgement. And that’s okay. I... I’m okay with that. He basically told me and I didn’t get it and I spilled my feelings and messed it all up. There’s no door - I told you he wouldn’t...” He took a breath. “But I can be here for him like he’s been there for me. I’m okay with that,” he whispered urgently, keeping an eye on the door.

Raylan took another deep breath and looked himself in the mirror before turning the water off and drying his face, not completely oblivious to the conversation that was likely happening on the other side of the door. He still didn't know what Malcolm 'understood' and there was a little trepidation at being trapped in for another several hours with his own feelings and it being to early to drink.

But he also couldn't hide in the bathroom.

Combing back his hair with his fingers, Raylan put his metaphorical face back on and headed back into the bedroom.

Okay. Good. At least Malcolm was going to stay for a little while longer. But from what Doc has gathered over all their late night drinking talks, he's not sure that Raylan is the type to be seeking 'comfort without judgement'. Raylan did not strike him as the type who would just go halfway with someone. If he's in, he's in with both feet and arms in the ride, strapped in and fully committed to stick it out through the end, for better or worse. Doc on the other hand, is enough of a comfort-seeker himself to know that Raylan is not one. He has had much more fluid and nebulous, ill-defined relationships over the decades. They both have women troubles, but for very different reasons.

Before he can say anything, he turns his head ever so slightly at the sound of the doorknob turning. They have run out of time. Doc gives Malcolm a brief, firm squeeze of his hand, a silent promise that they will talk about this later, and Raylan would find Malcolm sitting and Doc lying down as though they're posing for a photograph, casual but deliberately framed as such.

"I was just saying I might- try and get a couple more hours shut-eye myself, if that's alright with you."

Watchful blue eyes track Raylan as he moves back into the room, trying to get a gauge on how he is, but Malcolm can see he's stuffed it all back into his metaphorical hat. Still, Malcolm's gaze is warm where it falls on him.

"I was... going to go do some yoga. But." He inched a little more towards the foot of the bed. "I was thinking that... if you guys want... my room is smaller, but my bed's the same size. If you don't want to kick Neal out next time, we'd fit in there. And it's safer. I'll be restrained." He was still deeply concerned about cold cocking one of them with an errant fist to their sleeping face. He glanced at Doc and then Raylan. "If you want."

Raylan settled himself at the head of the bed, sat up to lean against the headboard, one foot tucked up under his other knee, with no hint of anything much on his face. Stuffed away under his metaphorical hat indeed. There weren't going to be any more chances taken this morning - they'd all been spent up.

"Yeah," he replied, face breaking with a soft little smile that hopefully eased the edges of everything. Following his ABCs. Unlike Malcolm, his heart was worn deep down in the gut of his stomach and he knew how to pretend, and get by. "Or we bring you in here and let Neal have that bed. I wasn't upset when I got this room to begin with for a reason." Of course, he didn't think Neal really realized that he'd displaced Raylan and he wasn't bothered by that at all. Neal having a safe place to feel comfortable was more important than if Raylan had an en suite bathroom and ample seating.

"Somethin' to think over, anyway."

"Just as long as you're comfortable." Doc is a simple man - simple-ish - but while he doesn't perceive the dangers the same way as Malcolm and possibly also Raylan does, he is definitely agreeable to any arrangement. They were going to bring a mattress up to throw on the floor next to Malcolm's bed, do away with the need for Two Cowboys One Couch, but honestly he would sleep on the garage floor if he had to. He'd be out under a tarp in the snow fending for himself just fine without complaint if he wasn't in here, and while he would never say as much because he wouldn't want them to worry, they know that his lone, stray dog tendencies run deep.

"What you want matters too." Doc is looking in Malcolm's direction when he says it but it is a line intended for the both of them, and not necessarily just referring to the logistics of their sleeping arrangements.

Malcolm held his gaze for a moment, then glanced at Raylan then down at the bedspread as he made his way, half crawling, down the bed.

"I'd like to do it again," he told them. He reached the end of the bed and found his footing. "That was the warmest I've ever slept."

Heading for the door, he paused and looked at them. "I'm not sorry for interrupting," he told them sincerely, then slipped out the door to go to his room.

No matter how conflicted Raylan was, it did warm him to hear that Malcolm had slept well, as well as one suffering night terrors could sleep, anyway. Well, maybe he hadn't fucked everything up if Malcolm was leaving without a regret for that, a desire to do it again, though what he was going to do with himself remained to be seen.

Once the door shut again, the easy facade cracked and fell from his face and Raylan shifted down and turned, pulling his boots out from under the bed and tugging out his socks so he could slip them onto his feet.

"Good job managing the nightmare," he said with a faint turn of his head over his shoulder towards Doc. "Get your few more hours. I'm not gonna be able to go back down."

Interrupting... what, exactly? There are too many blanks that need to be filled and it is too early to be attempting such an exercise.

"I'm not sure which nightmare you are referring to," Doc says wryly. He reaches over to smack the side of Raylan's thigh with the back of his hand, because placing his hand on top of it is too intimate of a gesture even if it might have gotten Raylan's attention more.

"Would you at least consider sitting with me and talking?" Talking is not what they do. He would never acquiesce if he was in Raylan's shoes. So, Doc baits and guilts him shamelessly. A few underhanded tricks never go wrong at the poker table.

"I laid alone in the dark all those years just listening to the sound of water dripping and my own breathing. If you could just- talk about anything." Anything will end up being Malcolm. Doc can steer him that way the same way he got Neal downstairs in under five minutes. "It. Would be doing me a kindness."

Oh he knew, Raylan was sure. He'd get around to asking about the way Doc fled like he was running from the scene of a crime, but some other time. The smack got a scoff of half a laugh but it did its job, stilling Raylan's hands and drawing his eye back over his shoulder at his too knowing companion.

No, talking isn't what they did but asking to talk also wasn't something they did and would have earned consideration enough on its own. But after the way the night and morning had gone- Any excuse that Raylan was getting ready to prepare was promptly washed away by the shameless baiting and he really was foolish enough to think that they could get away with not talking about Malcolm.

After a long second, Raylan nodded and set his boots back where they were. "Don't have to lay it on that thick, ya know," he starts as he shifts to lay back down on the bed, where he'd started his night. "The askin' would have been enough, no kindness needed. We're gonna havta go mattress huntin' tomorrow, I suppose. Should find one with a box spring though, make things more comfortable. I still think we should set up in here if we're gonna do this whole.. dorm livin' thing. I like the chairs."

Works every time, he thinks, rather smugly, suppressing a laugh as he stretches out like a cat and folds both arms behind his head, peering up at the ceiling for a few seconds before letting his eyes flutter closed.

"Wouldn't want you feelin' like I was takin' advantage," he slurs sleepily, even though that is exactly what Doc is doing, guilting him into making him talk. They probably do need the chairs, more so than Neal does anyway. If he does any late night reading, he can do so in bed. It's not good to be drinking in bed, however. And Neal doesn't seem like the late night drinking type.

"Would be a little strange, both of us... clingin' to each other on the floor and... Malcolm strapped to the bed," Doc points out, taking his time with his words, keeping his eyes closed as he talks. Unless of course, that is not the configuration Raylan meant. In which case he can say his suggestion aloud.

Judging by the onset of sleep into Henry's voice, maybe Raylan could get away without talking about what he didn't want to talk about.. Even if Henry opened up that part of the discussion. Raylan folded his hands over his stomach and took a deep breath.

"Assumin' both of us even make it down to the bed? Not particularly, I don't think. Not if you don't mind gettin' bumped into at night." Or wrapped around, or curled into, or all those soft sleep vulnerable things that Raylan had been doing with his chair as often as he could.

"The scramble up to wake Malcolm up will probably be the worst of it. What part of that is the question about? Him being strapped down or us on a bed together?"

"Just seems to me like... mmmhlike he got more sleep last night than he had done, all these nights prior on his own," Doc observes. He turns his head towards Raylan then, breathing in deep and slow, cracking one tired eye open and then the other.

"All I'm sayin' is. I enjoy your company plenty. I would take you to bed anytime. But I'm sure he wouldn't mind some either. With or without..." Doc raises one limp arm and kinda waves it to signify the complications between them. "All that. Mmhn."

You know. Mmhn.

"Now you're talkin' about us sleepin' up in bed with him," Raylan argued softly, eye kept lazily up on the ceiling and the faint shadows of light that casted around on them. It wasn't until that next statement that Raylan looked over himself.

They were talking about sleeping, Raylan had to remind himself, and he didn't have the energy to go down the other offered path right now. There were no other offered paths, at least not tonight. He was too tired to go path hopping anyway, emotionally and mentally.

"Sure, cause we fell into this one so easy." Raylan let out a breath and the tension that had come with his words and shook his head, looking back to the ceiling. "Don't know what all that you're talkin' about. Wasn't privy to this last conversation you had with him. But somehow I doubt that it had anythin' to do with kickin' either of us out."

There was a quip about whether Raylan might have overheard anything from the bathroom, but Doc does not make it. He simply breathes out through his nose and reaches over to tug the blanket up a little higher.

"He thinks you're looking for a bedwarmer." Doc clears his throat and wiggles in bed a little, making himself comfortable. "I didn't have the time to tell him you wouldn't know what to do with one if they stuck one hand down your pants and held the other one out asking for twenty dollars."

He'd kept the water running specifically to avoid that. To not hear and not be heard.

Raylan was silent for a long moment. Almost long enough that Doc might think he'd fallen asleep or just wasn't going to answer. A million different ways of answering, of batting it back ran through his head in that short time until he realized he had to say something.

"You know I've been in a whore house, right? Even if I'm never there for the.. services, you don't make it past 25 lookin' like I do without that happening a few times. Hard for him to say either way when I haven't. I told him that I wasn't as great as he thought and.." Raylan gestured to nothingness in the dark. "He suddenly understood somethin' that I didn't. I don't know. But I know what he wants. He wants a relationship." Raylan looked over.

"Doesn't seem much like its gettin' across that I don't know what the hell I'm doing or how to go about doin' it. So we're not gonna." He let a beat pass like he was almost considering saying more and then rolled over onto his side, back turned towards Doc.

"Go to sleep Henry. Daylight'll be here soon enough. I'll stay here for a bit but you'll probably wake up to coffee."

"Oh we are never there for the services," Doc quips. No, if Raylan was telling the truth, he would believe it. Doc on the other hand, definitely doesn't mind paying for services rendered. At least there is honesty and transparency in a transaction. At least he isn't attaching strings to something he knows is not destined to last.

"I don't know what makes you think anyone knows what the hell they're doing, or how to go about doing it. But I respect that it's not what you want." Right now, at least. He knows this isn't the end of something that hasn't even started. But he won't tell Raylan that. If Malcolm could just be quiet and still for a moment, have a little faith, Raylan would come back to him and open up a little more, find a way to fill that quietness and stillness with things he thought he never wanted to share. He has done the same with Doc, after all. All their drinking does is set a time and place for it, and speed up the process.

"G'night," he says quietly, brushing the backs of his fingers against Raylan's back. He knows a touch-starved man has cravings. Had felt the way Raylan reacted before. But on this particular early morning, he will just remind Raylan that he's there, and proceed to leave him be, pulling his arm back to occupy that space between them.

Having it figured out to know what they wanted. What it was like. How to navigate it with any measure of grace or some kind of dignity. The latter of which he normally wasn't worried about but they weren't talking work. Even if they picked this conversation back up, Raylan wasn't planning on throwing Wyatt into the mix, but the cagey way Doc had been talking about it, he could guess well enough why.

But for right now, that didn't matter. He'd closed the door on the conversation and for tonight, this morning whatever it was, that's the way it would stay.

Even if the brush of fingers on his back both wrapped him in a passing comfort and stabbed him with a need for more. A few minutes later, Doc would even get a small almost inaudible "G'night" to echo his own.

True to his word, Raylan would stay until well after he hears Doc's breath even out to the shallow ones he'd fallen asleep to on his neck a few hours before, but after near an hour of listening to Doc sleep and chewing his own liver in the dark, Raylan slips out of bed, grabs his boots and pads silently towards the door.

Doc deserved a bit of quiet to rest in before the rest of the start of their day, but Raylan was far too wired by emotion. He was up for the day.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

I dunno if it's my turn I'm going anyways sorry :D

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject