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036 » aftermath: the dead

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Mathias Township...?
WHEN: Day 036
WHAT: What happens after death?
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! And a log for the living.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Kijo 鬼女"

DAY 036
RED SKY AT MORNING
But for the dead, morning does not come. They awake to a frozen world covered in darkness, the night sky above so clear that they make out the stars that are both familiar and strangely not. The moon is full, casting light that reflects upon the snow, but both are covered in a haze of red.

Everything is covered in red. The snow, the ocean, the night sky. It's as if they are seeing through colored glasses, but that filtered hue cannot be removed.

Those who were victims of the Hunt awake where they fell, surrounded by their own blood but curiously unharmed. In fact, their physical state is that of before the Hunt, and the only sign of their injuries are the wild splatters of blood all around them.

There is no sign of anyone in Mathias except for the dead, no matter how much they search. And there is quite a lot now to search — the fog has vanished from the town completely and all paths are clear to be wandered. Time is of the essence, though, for the dead will not remain so for long.

They have only six hours in this place that is Mathias but not.

SAILORS TAKE WARNING
At the fourth hour into their stay, a storm arrives. Perhaps difficult to see at first, before long the clouds can be noticed moving across the sky, at first blocking out only patches of those strange stars but then blotting them out entirely. The moon struggles in vain to shine through their darkness, eventually failing and leaving only artificial light to guide the dead in their journeys.

The storm begins with the fifth hour. The rumbling is like that of a thunderstorm but infinitely more ominous, signaling something approaching that is not meant for the world of man. Within a few minutes, they learn why as lightning arcs across the sky, the cracks of powerful energy echoing through the air. Those branching spikes at first remain in the sky, but then suddenly they crash down to meet the earth, striking the Town Hall. The sound of splintering wood fills the air, followed moments later by the roaring crackle of a fire raging into existence. Those cracks and crashes continue, but no others reach the ground.

The fire spreads with purpose, moving outward from the town's center but never touching the forest. It leaps from building to building, consuming everything in its path. It is a living, breathing thing driven by a need to devour. There is no stopping or controlling it.

As ash begins to fall from the sky like snow and the final hour begins, the earth rumbles like the sky. Like so many of them recently experienced, the ground shakes, sending burning buildings collapsing inward and residents tumbling to the ground. For a full minute, it seems as if the world is truly ending—

And then it stops. The world is silent. No rumbling of the sky, no crackles of fire. For a few moments, there is nothing.

The sound returns with a cacophonous rush, jarring and overwhelming. At first, it seems as if everything is normal, at least as normal as this nightmare world ever is. But residents will quickly begin to notice that the fire is receding, following the same path it took before. Back and back it goes, retreating through the street toward Town Hall. And if residents pay close attention, they will catch glimpses out of the corner of their eye of burned buildings suddenly repaired and standing as they had before the storm — just a glimpse, gone in a flash when faced fully, but enough to have anyone questioning what sanity they still have remaining.

When the sixth hour ends, so too do the dead. They will blink and in one moment be in this empty red hellscape of Mathias and in the next, awakening on Day 037, with only their memories to show for their harrowing experiences.

ABOUT THE FIRE
The fire that spreads through Mathias can be treated as an almost sentient entity. It does not necessarily behave as fire normally does — it can skip buildings, burn when there's nothing to fuel it, and may actively pursue residents. How it behaves in your character's encounter with it is up to you and does not need to match how others perceive it.

Characters may be injured and even killed by the fire. Both will incur sanity loss and may cause your character to gain a Madness (in addition to others they may gain from normal sanity loss).
— All who are injured by the fire lose one sanity point and will wake on day 037 with their burns.

— All who are killed by the fire lose two sanity points and gain the Madness pyrophobia for seven days. The degree of their pyrophobia is up to the individual player.

CONDITIONS UPDATE
— THE WEATHER starts off clear, with temperatures well below freezing. The storm begins to move inwards around three hours in, and takes full form an hour after that.

— THE FOG has vanished. The dead may wander the whole of Mathias at their leisure, though there is still a chasm in the earth between Hill Lane and Stine Road. The chasm spans from one side of town to the other, each end disappearing into the forest, and effectively blocks passage to the "northern" (actually western) part of town.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue. Eliot Waugh has now vanished as well. Though none of them will notice until tomorrow...

— THE GREY GULL now has a working bar! The selection is not quite what it once was.

OOC NOTES
— FOOD will be restocked in some fashion in the next log, don't worry. We aren't going full survival mode yet.

— REWARD REDEPEMPTION is on hold for this log. Sorry, friends! It'll be back next round.

— HOUSEKEEPING Please be sure to have a look at this post in regards to sanity loss from the Hunt and what is being done with the corpses of the Hunt's victims.

— MOD STATUS What will become a regular reminder that it's mostly just Amy steering this ship for now, so things will probably be pretty slow for a while. Apologies in advance, and please don't feel shy about pinging me if you're stuck waiting for something.

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He'd pulled himself from the snow, after a while. When it had started melting around him, when he'd stopped feeling the cold of it on his skin and started to feel numb instead.

His coat was half-soaked by the time he got up, which he registered was bad, on some level. It was freezing out here. Worse than freezing. He would need to change or get inside--

1306. He whipped around, toward the house, expecting to see the front door smashed in, expecting chaos, carnage--

But no, everything was intact. It was intact, and it was quiet, and Doc and Malcolm weren't crashing through the front door to come and get them. Panic hit him, and he started to run for the house, but the sound of Raylan screaming his name and Negan's made him stop. Change direction. Almost with relief. He didn't want to face whatever was in that building alone.

The panic in Raylan's voice made him sprint. Was that thing still after him? It killed you, his shocked mind said. It killed him already, too.

He ignored it.

"Raylan! Raylan!"

Raylan started moving back towards 1306, ducking only long enough to pick up his hat out of habit, legs restlessly tingling until he burst into a run. He had to get back to the house, he had to get away from here, he had-

"Raylan!" Neal.

The slow of his legs that came with the call back broke into a harder run, the Marshal suddenly feeling like he could take a race on with a steam train, heart clawing its way up his throat. He was smart enough to save his breath, not bothering to yell back. The kick up of snow and the sound of him charging should be enough. Within a few seconds of Neal coming into view, the same thing that caused him to fall happens again - boots sliding across the snow and sending the Marshal face first into the ground, hat rolling off to the side.

"Goddamnit," he swore out of gritted teeth into the unforgiving snow. No ABC's to be found here today, it seemed. But it wasn't going to stop him and after only a second he was pushing himself back up and looking at where he'd seen Neal, half expecting him to be gone. Breathing out a heavy sigh at the sight of the New Yorker coming towards him, he snapped up his hat and jogged at a more reasonable pace.

"Neal," he greeted breathlessly, shamelessly grabbing and pulling him closer to look him over. It was two seconds away from a hug, to be perfectly honest, but Raylan was too worried about the state of Neal than validating his lack of mirage-ness. "Jesus Christ, are you okay? I'm sorry, I thought you guys were right behind me and then y'all were screamin' and I couldn't-" Stop the thing or turn around or even pretend like he'd helped them and not run like a chicken shit. He swallowed the rest of his seemingly pathetic explanation down and waited to be mocked for it all.

Neal finishes the hug, practically throws himself into it, clinging to Raylan. He presses his face against the taller man's shoulder, and does what he's been on the edge of doing for days. He starts to sob.

He's shivering. He's not sure if it's from lying in the snow waiting for something to happen, or if it's from what already happened, or if it's from the air that chisels into his soaked coat and clothes like a handful of blunted knives.

He tries to speak, tries to explain himself, tries to tell Raylan what happened, the way he felt himself come apart. The screaming he lived long enough to hear. The pants-shitting terror of coming face to void with what chased them. It comes out as a wail, and he doesn't have the presence of mind just yet to feel ashamed.

A rough breath was forced out of him at the force of Neal colliding into him, but there was no hesitation in him dropping his hat so he could wrap both his arms tightly around Neal like the smaller man was some saving rock in the storm he felt in the middle of. The sudden wracked sobs are both a surprise and not; a surprise because he didn't expect it so immediately and not a surprise at all because he was on the edge of it himself.

He couldn't help the hot fresh tears rolling down his cheek and into Neal's hair, head shaking in a silent protest against the working jaw against his shoulder, one hand coming up to cup Neal's neck. What the hell could he say to help this? To comfort what they'd just been through? He wasn't John Henry. He wasn't Malcolm. He didn't have those tools.

"I know," he managed to say, knowing it to be a lie and not caring, the words themselves half drowned in his own tears and accent thick. "But we're.." Alive? Whole? Barely on the latter count. His body shuddered with the uneven half sob that pulled from his chest.

No, conversation wasn't gonna happen for a good few long seconds.

He held on tighter, for himself and for Raylan, trying to get the words together to apologize for going down first. For his death not making any difference in the outcome for the others. He doesn't know why he thought it would.

"I'm glad you kept running," is what he finally says. He's still crying, still shivering, still has his face pressed hard against Raylan's coat, and he doesn't think he could let go of the other man yet if he wanted to. His voice sounds like splintered glass in someone else's throat. "Don't be sorry you kept running."

Raylan's breath hitched almost painfully with his sharp inhale, head shaking a little, a short violent physical protest reaction, hands tightening on Neal like he could hold onto the sentiment even while rejecting it.

"I shouldn'a left you. Either of you, I shoulda put y'all in front of me, it-" It should have been him first. That's the way it had always felt - if one of the good guys was going down, in every other situation, he had a better chance of getting out of it. That wouldn't have helped this time but it didn't stop the guilt from coiling in his gut anyway.

"Don't matter. Won't happen again, promise." Second by second, Raylan was fighting and pushing things back down his throat as best he could. They had things they needed to do - they needed to find Negan, they needed to breathe and they needed to keep moving so they didn't dissolve and let Mathis win the day anymore than it already had.

Again. Won't happen again. No, next time he'll stop, next time he'll let it--

"Don't you dare," Neal says, the words breaking a little. "Doc needs you. Malcolm needs you. You've got a life to go back to, a daughter waiting, you have scores to settle, you have..."

God, he can't breathe. He can't catch his breath. "If that thing comes back you run and you don't fucking stop."

He tries to inhale deeply and can't. Can't. It's like there's not enough oxygen in the space around them. He has the bizarre and all but insurmountable feeling they're being crushed flat onto some kind of Géricault canvas, Anatomical Pieces revisited, and he has to pull away from Raylan or give up on breathing all together. He turns away, digging his hands into his hair, screwing his eyes closed and trying to get himself under control.

That's what he'd tried to do last time. Look where it had gotten him.

"Neal-," he started at the next break of the smaller man's voice against his shoulder but it was swept under and silenced by Neal's continuation. Doc and Malcolm might need him, sure, but they could survive without him if they had to. He wasn't necessary for that to continue and at home - the baby was barely a bean and Winona.. He wanted to be there for them, no matter what he had to suffer for it, but waiting...

Winona had proven again she didn't want him. And if asked, he'd go running back like a kicked dog, hat in hand.

He couldn't say any of that and he didn't stop Neal from pulling away. He didn't follow. Whatever Neal needed, it wasn't against his chest.

"It won't help. It still got me. We're still damned," he replied quietly, with a soft note of defeat before he started stepping forwards. "I ain't leavin' you to it again, Neal. I'm not. You and Doc and Malcolm give more of a shit about me than anyone else back home. I'm not leavin' you to it."

"It might," Neal said, a fractured desperation in his voice. "It might help. You don't know it won't."

He turned and looked at Raylan again, chest fluttering in shallow, uneven little gasps. He slowly dragged his hands out of his hair, leaving it tousled in a half-mad way he never let it be outside his apartment. He was still crying, still holding on to a wail a half-breath from breaking loose. Neal had no idea how wide his eyes were and how cracked it made him look.

He had no idea how he would leave these people behind when the time came. If the time came. Raylan was right. Malcolm, Doc, Raylan, and Daisy--they somehow cared as much about him, meant as much to him, as Mozzie or anyone in the White Collar unit. Neal hunted for something, anything, an argument, just something to say, but all he managed was, "I can't breathe."

It occurred to him how true that statement was. He leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees, shutting his eyes again as he tried to remaster what was supposed to be the most automatic function of this skin-wrapped meat sack he was a passenger in. "This is crazy," he panted. "This is crazy, we're all crazy, we're just crazy, this can't actually be happening, none of this can actually be happening--"

Edited 2021-02-28 02:27 (UTC)

He knew it wouldn't. Mathis had proved herself a bitch of mode of operation. If anyone could have survived anything, it was John fucking Constantine and the fog. And even John had failed. What hope did normies like them have?

Raylan hated how Neal was feeling, but it was reasonable. He should have probably been worried that he wasn't falling down the same hole but Neal looked at things directly. Raylan had twenty five years practice of not looking at anything that could hurt him. Destroy him and throw everything into question. Neal and his everything gave Raylan something else to focus on; he was grateful.

A heavy hand dropped on Neal's back as Raylan came to a stop next to him and started rubbing back and forth. "You gotta stop.. Just focus on your breathin'. Deep breath in, hold two three four, let it out and take another. C'mon, deep breath in..." He waited for Neal to inhale and follow the suit laid out.

It took a few tries. His chest felt squeezed. It was hard to get a full, deep breath. He locked his focus on the snow, on the feel of Raylan's hand on his back, and just breathed. Breathed. The part of himself that danced along the edge of a breakdown whispered that he was breathing in the red in the air, that it would coat his lungs, that he'd never get this place out of himself, even if they made it back to the version of Mathias they'd been wrenched from.

Deep breath in, hold two three four.

Slowly, his breathing evened out. He wasn't sure he would call himself calmer. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to call himself that. But he could breathe again. He straightened, slowly, then turned and pulled Raylan back into a hug. He hid his face against Raylan's shoulder again.

"We have to get back to the others."

There had to be a way.

Finally, one thing he could do right. Breathing therapy. He was glad to feel Neal pull back from that edge, stop himself from suffocating on his own panic that threatened to pull Raylan in if he wasn't careful. No one could afford that. He had a duty to keeping his shit mostly together.

The sudden solid mass of Neal against him in another hug was just as surprising as the first but without the wash of high, raw emotions, it might as well have been the first. Raylan's hands hesitated like Neal would change his mind if they settled and after a long few seconds he risked it, shifting a little further across Neal's impressively broad shoulders with a tight hold. He wanted to make Neal feel safe here. Even if it was a lie, temporarily agreed upon. He wanted to feel safe here, if only for a passing moment.

"We will," he managed to say roughly, voice tight with a new wash of emotion that he feared wouldn't stop rolling in systematically like the tides that must control this place. "I don't know how yet. But we will. Let's start with Negan, huh? We know he's on this side. Let's start with him."

The only way to cross the desert was one step at a time.

"Yeah," Neal whispers. Negan. He swallows, but it doesn't clear the knot from his throat. "He... I know where he died."

He clamps down on a heave, his muscles jerking into the motion without Neal making a sound. He keeps his jaw stubbornly closed. "The... thing... left me alive enough to see it kill him."

Raylan's arms tightened around Neal at the rough jerk and was shaking his head before Neal finished his last statement, pulling back a little in case Neal really did need to empty his stomach. "You don't have to. Just... point me in the right direction. I'll find him."

So long as he had a goal post, he knew he could keep going. He could face whatever was out there and not meltdown completely. He could go and save Neal from a fraction of something. Of any of the horror that they'd all just shared.

He wanted to let Raylan do it. He wanted so much to let Raylan do it, and he was desperately ashamed of that fact.

"No," Neal whispered finally. "I want to... I need to see if. He's okay, too. I can't--he would look for me."

"Okay," he replied, thumb rubbing back and forth in a calming gesture. There was nothing calm about him or this or anything but he could pretend for a few seconds now. Now that he'd gotten some of the weight of it off his chest with the tears torn from him.

"Then let's go find him." Pulling away, Raylan looked around with a deep and uneven breath. "Which way do we start?"

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036 » aftermath: the dead

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