villagelogs | 028-029 » the winds of change

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028-029 » the winds of change

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias.
WHEN: Days 028-029
WHAT: A town meeting is called.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Ikiryo"

DAY 028
SOMETHING ON THE WIND
Another day dawns in the fair town of Mathias. The sky is a blanket of light grey, tiny specks of snow lightly falling as the hours pass. It makes the town feel almost quaint, the scenery quite peaceful in its winter garb. But beneath the veneer of peace there is a pervasive dread of something approaching. Something inevitable is on the wind, something that has come before and will come again...

Throughout the day, residents will consistently experience feelings of deja vu, that sense of having done or seen or said something before that can never be fully recalled. It happens again and again, tugging at the back of their minds, the memories just frustratingly out of reach.

Residents will also notice a note pinned around town:

The note can be found on the town hall's bulletin board and the front doors of many town establishments, including the Grey Gull, the library, and the boarding house. At the bottom of the note it is specified that the meeting will take place "tomorrow, when the sun is over the town square."

NEW ARRIVALs
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake on the frozen lawn of the town hall atop a snowdrift. They had best hurry inside and get warmed up before hypothermia sets in.

DAY 029
A GATHERING OF MINDS
In the late afternoon when the sun hangs over the town square, residents will converge upon the Town Hall, where a larger meeting room has been filled with rows of chairs. After most people arrive, John Constantine stands and addresses the room... and then sits again. A grand introduction, truly.

Residents are encouraged to share their experiences and information they have gathered in the town while holding questions until the end. Rather than getting tangled in the intricacies of each person's tale, it seems better to absorb the broad strokes and try to connect the puzzle pieces to get a look at the bigger picture that is the mystery of Mathias Township.

THE INEVITABLE
As the meeting comes to an end and residents begin to converse among themselves, the feeling of something approaching and sense of deja vu begin to build, becoming almost oppressive as night falls. An hour after nightfall, residents learn the reason for these sensations that cease immediately as the earth begins to rumble. The buildings shake, furniture tumbles, and breakables crash to the floor as the earthquake sets in without warning.

The tremors last around a minute, far longer than a normal earthquake, and then the town settles again. There are no aftershocks, which many may note is quite unusual. Residents will find quite a bit of mess in their homes and other locations around town, but there is no structural damage to be found despite the intense shaking.

CONDITIONS UPDATE
— THE WEATHER is fairly typical of a northern winter. The sky is grey, the temperature hovers just below freezing during the day (colder at night), and a light snow falls during both days. Residents should bundle up when going outside and not venture too far into the dark night...

— 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 with Sherlock Holmes being the latest victim of the town's unsettling whims.

OOC NOTES
— TOWN MEETING STRUCTURE The town meeting section of the log is designed for characters to share any information they would like to with the other residents in attendance. ICly, characters should "hold questions until the end" with the intent that they can get the Big Picture first and connect any dots they see. OOCly, this means players should post their character's information sharing tag in the Meeting section, but the actual conversation about whatever they share happens after the meeting proper in the Mingle section. That way, these conversations can happen however players prefer, be that one-on-one or in small or large groups.

— HOUSING Please be sure your character's housing arrangements are up to date on our list. We're missing a few people and it really helps to know where everyone is for planning. Frequent updates for wandering characters are perfectly acceptable.

— THE BULLETIN BOARD has been updated. Players should note there is a change to the wall near the board that may be of great interest to some residents.

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He almost asks Who did you lose?

From the sound of her world, she's probably lost a lot of people, or at the very least seen a lot of people die. But this, the way she was singing, it says something else. Someone special is attached to that song, someone that, one way or another, she's not getting back.

"Do you know 'Thumbing My Way'?"

She can't manage a smile, all things considered. Fuck, she needs to learn to stop playing that song where people might hear her. It just sort of...happens, wandering back to it over and over again.

"I don't. Do you play?" she asks, turning it back around so she doesn't have to think of words for a minute.

He held out both hands for the guitar, tilting his head back and forth in a "so-so" gesture. "It's been a while, but I can give it a shot. It's another Pearl Jam song."

She hesitates for just a second. This guitar isn't really sentimental, but she doesn't like sharing her instruments, okay? It's a thing.

But she gives it to him anyway.

Just what she needs, some dude singing Pearl Jam at her. But it's not the whole band that she associates with Joel, just the songs she knows, and Future Days in particular.

"I promise not to judge too hard. Probably," she says.

He snorts. "I can appreciate the honesty at least."

Neal strums the guitar experimentally, picking away at the strings. It feels a little clumsy at first. He practices the opening chords of the melody a few times before he starts to sing along. His voice makes up for the occasional slip as he plays.

Edited 2021-01-30 04:44 (UTC)

She's nowhere near perfect at playing, so it's not like she's actually going to judge. Neal isn't as good a guitarist as Joel either, but maybe that's a good thing. She and Neal can stumble through shit, it's fine.

She listens, for once mostly still. She tends to be fidgety; it's a trauma response thing as much as a nervous energy thing. But music is more calming.

"You're a good singer," she says. High praise from someone as reserved with compliments as Ellie.

Neal is a peacock. He shows off constantly. Fishes for compliments like it's a tournament, but they never mean anything. He's not good at taking genuine compliments on the things he actually cares about. He smiles at the floor.

"Thanks. So are you."

Neal strums the guitar. "I don't do it much. My landlady is pretty much the only one who can get me to when I'm not alone."

"It's a good way to stop thinking," she says with a shrug. She doesn't know if she's a good singer, but she doesn't care all that much. It's an outlet.

She writes lyrics too, but she never sings original songs for anyone. That's too personal.

"I haven't had a lot of time for playing lately but I do it when I get a chance," she says, which is true enough. It's not like she brought a guitar on the trip from Jackson to Seattle. She was lucky enough to find one in the theatre that was in good shape. God, that feels like a hundred years ago now.

She hopes again that Jesse took Dina home. She hopes they're safe.

"I draw, or paint, when I want to get out of my head. Harder to do here."

He hasn't found any painting supplies yet, at least. Neal contemplates whether or not his next question is a good one to ask.

"Who taught you?"

"You did that drawing of Rey, right? It was good," she says. "I draw too, but I'm not as good as you." That's not really true; she's pretty good, she just doesn't feel like her art is that great. Most of her art these days is sketched in her journal and tends to be morbid. But all her sketches of people she's met here are good likenesses.

"Who taught me?" she repeats, stalling. "Oh, just a friend." There's not much convincing in that lie, but she struggles to talk about Joel at the best of times.

"Who taught you?"

"I did, yeah. I've also been drawing for a long time." He wrinkles his nose. "Oh god, I just called myself old."

He strums the guitar again, slowly starting to pick out the melody of Beyond the Sea. He glances at her sketchbook. "I'd like to see your work some time, if you want to share."

Just a friend. Neal smiles at the floor, the expression sad. He could call her out, but he gets the feeling she would shut down.

"Mostly I taught myself." He tilts his head, acknowledging that the answer isn't entirely true. He doesn't want to be honest, but if he's going to expect it of her, well. "...My mom was an artist. She gave it up, but she always encouraged me."

She does laugh at that. "You can't be that old," she says. She's not a good judge, and she herself looks younger than she is. But Neal's definitely younger than some of the other men, she thinks. Still, she'll file it away and make a point to needle him about being an Old Man later on.

The song he plays is one she might have heard at some point on a record or something, though not her style. Not Joel's either, really. But she likes music so she's not about to complain.

"Oh. Sure. Um." She thumbs through the notes section of the book and holds it out to his page. "Here's you."

She catches that smile on his face, but at least he doesn't press her about it. Joel is a hard subject for a thousand reasons. Just holding a guitar reminds her of him, but that's not a reminder she doesn't want. The other stuff, well.

"Why'd she give it up?" she asks.

"I'm not. I'm very not." He grins at her laugh, though. He's glad to have gotten that out of her. He laughs when he sees her notes. "Okay, you guess? I'm flattered."

He plays a litter further into Beyond the Sea, thinking over how to answer her question. God, his mom has come up a lot since he's been here. Yeah, he did it himself this time, but the point stands. "Honestly, I'm not sure."

Neal plucks out a random chord, studying the guitar before he says, very quietly, "Have you ever met someone and known that the person you loved was the aftermath of a life you'd never understand?"

Edited 2021-02-18 01:17 (UTC)

"Definitely not reaching for denial there either," she says back, needling him because she can. People tend to think she's younger than she is, which apparently was some kind of great thing in the world before. Mostly it just annoys her. The idea that you hit Adult(tm) at an arbitrary age seems really stupid in a world where you can die at any age from the same things. That was obviously true before, too, but the landscape changed with the Infection.

She puts the journal down and shrugs. "Yeah, well, that was when I'd just met you."

She's quiet for a moment when he asks that question, fingers lingering over the journal. In the earlier pages, there are still pictures of Joel's face, words she wrote to and for a dead man.

She nods. "Yeah," she says. She figures there's more than one person she knows that was like that. Tommy was probably different before, too. But Joel...no one was quite like Joel with all the good and the bad. Maybe some of who he was in Jackson was similar to who he'd been before the world ended for him. But not quite. You can't come back from something like that. She hadn't understood that at fourteen. She'd barely understood it at all. But now she can't seem to come back from the aftermath either, can she? It's not just Joel, though that's the thing she's taken the hardest, that changed her so immediately. It's Riley and Sam and Henry and Marlene and the corpses in the hospital in Utah and her lack of agency.

He gives a little shrug, a sad smile. The implication is clear: that was his mom. Somehow he can't make himself say it aloud, even though it's obvious. He barely talks about her, barely ever has.

It strikes him then how many people here seem to be that way. Daisy, definitely. Doc. Probably Negan. Dean. Malcolm, though his before happened a long time ago. Neal isn't sure Raylan ever had a before to lose.

Neal plucks idly at the guitar strings, watching Ellie's face, trying to gauge how far to go, how much to push. "Whoever taught you to play knew music from before the infection," he notes quietly.

She gets it; she made the connection. She never knew her parents, so she can't exactly relate. But the stark divide between those who were alive (and old enough to remember it) before the Infection and people like her, born long after it happened, has always been obvious.

She nods in answer but doesn't look back up at Neal's face.

"Yeah. He didn't play for a long time, I think." She knows; he'd said he was rusty when he'd brought her the guitar. He'd spent a lot of time being violent and angry and doing pretty shitty things. She recognises it in herself now, that anger, that violence. She wishes she could be more like him, live with it easier. She can't. But she still has music. Abby could take Joel from her but she couldn't take everything.

"How'd you meet him?"

He offers her the guitar again, wondering if having it in her hands might make this easier. Even odds, he figures, but it's worth a shot.

How'd you meet him? Neal asks her, and it's an innocent enough question. He has no way of knowing that she only ever knew Joel because Marlene hired him as a smuggler. Not to carry weapons, but to carry her, humanity's last fucking hope or some other pithy bullshit. He hadn't failed. He'd done the job, though he'd nearly died falling on that spike in Colorado. But when they got to Utah, he hadn't been able to let Ellie go.

Neal doesn't know her life is meaningless, thanks to him, and meaningless without him, too. Damned if you do, Ellie.

She takes the guitar back and lays it on her lap but doesn't go back to playing it.

"We left Boston together," she says. "The quarantine zone. It was a fucking mess."

Also fuck Boston anyway.

"The military killed his kid," she says.

His daughter, she doesn't say.

"Back when it started, I mean. I don't know what he was like. But it wasn't the Infection that made him the way he was. It was that." Other people. What is that hell is other people quote? God, it's the fucking truth. Other people are fucking terrible, Joel included. Ellie included.

The weight of that settles in into the hollow of Neal's chest like chains wrapped around a man about to walk the plank.

But there's something else about it, too, that confirms what he first thought when he came into the Gull. She talks about him, whoever he was, in the past tense. Neal braces his elbows against his knees.

"You're living in the aftermath of losing him," he says, gently. It's not really a question, that much is obvious. "Was it one of the infected?"

She keeps staring at her hand, spread out across the wood of the guitar. She's fidgety by nature, generally, but she's been still for a lot of this conversation because it's hard. It twists inside her, that empty hole that she's tried to fill with death and revenge. Even knowing nothing will actually fill it doesn't change it. She has to finish her crusade. She can't die in this shitty nightmare town. She can't die while Abby lives.

It's not like it's too hard to guess, after all, that Joel is gone and it's fucked her up. He heard the beginning of that song, after all. But even without it, it's probably not hard.

She shakes her head, finally. "No," she answers. "He was murdered. Infected are nothing compared with other fucking people."

Murdered. Queasiness clenches at him. He doesn't get how people would still kill each other needlessly after the end of the world. Rather, he doesn't want to get it. He doesn't want to believe that people could see their own kind decimated and not learn the value of life from that. But he isn't stupid. And contrary to what Peter might think, he's not entirely naive.

"Someone from Jackson?"

"What? No. No, Jackson's...it's not like that."

She picks at some imagined snag on a nail for a moment, avoiding this entire conversation without avoiding it. She could get up, leave, tell him to can it, to go away, whatever. She doesn't do any of those things, though.

"Someone came and...took us all by surprise. She was gunning for him."

And what he did to get there doesn't matter, isn't important. She knows. She knows why Abby killed Joel and she knows it's because of her. If she'd have died in that hospital like she was supposed to then things would be different.

Joel would be alive. And that's a selfish, unfair thing, to think her death would have been something he'd have wanted to survive. She is so much like him in the end, isn't she? She's never sure what to do with those realisations.

She finally looks up, back at Neal, steady.

"So now I'm gunning for her," she says and doesn't falter.

His stomach drops a little at that look on her face. He believes, without a doubt, that Ellie will kill the person who killed her... friend doesn't seem like a strong enough word, for whatever he was to her. Neal remembers being face-to-face with Fowler, that gun pressed against his palm, the chance for revenge five feet in front of him. He remembers the tremor of his finger on the trigger, and the weight of it when he let his arm drop.

He's still not sure sometimes if that moment made him a good man or a coward.

For a moment all he can do is meet Ellie's eyes, the uncertainty clear in his own. It's so hard to imagine a world as cold as hers must be. He can't judge her for wanting to kill the person who took her most important person from her. He's been there, after all, even if he didn't follow through.

He asks her what he hadn't asked himself, then. "What happens after?"

No don't do it, no that's wrong, no platitudes or pleas. He just wants to know if she's planned for an after, or if the blood is all that matters to her right now.

She tilts her head to the side a bit, considering that question. There's never an after in her head, is there? After means going back to Jackson and Dina has a baby and maybe the gaping wound inside her will become less. Maybe it won't. She has no idea. She's aware on some level that killing Abby can't make up for Joel never being there again, but that's never been enough to stop her.

She's not sure what Neal thinks, not of her and her bloody revenge or any of it. There's that uncertainty. Neal doesn't strike her as a killer (though you never quite know, do you?). But he doesn't immediately condemn her, at least not out loud. Malcolm hadn't either.

So she shrugs.

"I don't know. I don’t know if there is an after." She has no idea if she lives through this encounter. She doesn't plan to die, of course. She has to keep Dina safe and all. But there's a very real possibility she won't. She's never dared bring that up with Dina.

"I don't care, though. I can't let her live, not after that. Coming to our home." She knows why Abby killed Joel and it doesn't fucking matter. How many people have to die because Ellie herself lived? It's too much. But those WLF assholes are just getting what's coming to them. "She should have killed me too. Her mistake, I guess."

She doesn't – she can't – tell Neal she was there, that she saw it, that she couldn't save him and she can't get over that. The words just stick inside her with the things she can't stop seeing. Well, good enough. She told him what he wanted to know, right?

Something in him yawns open into darkness when she says she should have killed me too.

She doesn't need to tell Neal she was there. That she couldn't stop it from happening. It's in what she does and doesn't say. It's in the rage over this other person coming into their home, in the way she says not after that. He aches for her, in a way he can't articulate and probably wouldn't be welcome if he could.

"You have a chance to think about the after, here," he says softly. "This place is awful, yeah, but it does give us plenty of time to think."

A crooked smile. "Sometimes too much."

028-029 » the winds of change

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oof neal what a question

(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞

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