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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 balls up tighter when he feels someone touching him, not recognizing Daisy's voice in the moment, screaming in surprise and sudden terror. Hands to gripping his hair, knees drawn to his chest.

Not again, not again--

Okay. Okay, not dead. Traumatized but not dead.

She pulls her hands back, tears stinging her eyes as her expression crumples from seeing him like this. Things like this weren't supposed to happen to people like him. People like her can take this, it's just one more tragedy and scar piled onto a mountain of others. But Neal is a kind, innocent soul and she should have been able to protect him from this.

With guilt and grief and so much empathetic pain, Daisy moves around him and lowers herself onto the red snow behind him, out of his line of sight. If he isn't recognizing her voice, she can't assume he'll recognize her face either, not right away. Trauma can do so many things to the human mind... Reaching out once more, she sets her hand very lightly on his back and pulls up her power, sending the slightest ripple of vibration through her touch and into his body. Like the sensation of water moving over skin, she's used it before to help calm others in tense moments; she can only hope it helps now.

It's jarring, almost, the sensation that washes through him. He's knotted and tense and the last thing he expects is to be wrapped up in what feels like the physical equivalent of a cat's purr. He curls up tighter for a moment, waiting for the comfort to turn to pain, but it doesn't. It doesn't.

Slowly, Neal starts to unwind, tears coming as tension breaks again. He's weeping without meaning to, almost silent. It's not the full-throated sobbing that it was when he found Raylan, but it hurts just as much.

She might not have noticed his crying if it hadn't been for how attuned she is to him through her power. Those minute vibrations travel back to her and she lasts only a few seconds before she, too, is crying. Inching closer, she wraps her arm around him, pressing her back to his, and everywhere they touch that gently soothing vibration continues. It's her own frequency now, amplified the tiniest bit to reach him.

Words refuse to come. All she can do is hold on and cry with him, something in her breaking more with every second that passes. He doesn't deserve this.

Warmth. Warmth, and that gentle humming, and the very soft sound of someone else's tears. He slowly goes quiet, sinking into the comfort of it. He's not sure how long it takes, but eventually the reality of who must be with him kicks in.

"Daisy?" It's a croak. He clears his throat, though that doesn't do much for the roughness there. He wants to roll over, to confirm that it's her and make sure she's all right, but he's so tired. So tired, and so afraid of what he'll see.

The cold is beginning to seep into her bones but she can't bring herself to move until he's ready. The minutes tick by like hours and she keeps waiting, hoping he'll come around soon, and it's such a relief when she hears that wonderful voice in something other than a scream.

"I'm here," she confirms in her own rough voice, wrapping herself a little more tightly around him. "I'm okay."

"Thank god," he whispers, then laughs like broken glass. God. He would be bitterly surprised if any 'just' god had a hand in creating a place like this. Neal shifts, moves to get up, then hisses and goes down on one knee as his calf cramps.

Too long balled up in the cold.

Laughter shouldn't sound like that, not from Neal. Not from that sweet, gentle soul. Her heart splinters a little more as her arms slip away to allow him to move, following his lead and getting up as well—

"Hang on," she says quietly he goes back down, kneeling in the snow beside him. "Let me help. What hurts?"

"Calf," he mumbles, screwing his eyes closed. He doesn't have the energy to pretend to be okay. He doesn't have the spirit for it. He needs to, though, he has to try. For Daisy at least, he has to try.

Neal opens his eyes, studying her face with haunted blue eyes. "Did you... did those things..."

Her hands go to his calf, feeling for the tense muscle and adding gentle pressure with her fingertips while sending a vibration to it like she'd done before. Hopefully, it'll loosen up enough for him to stand.

She glances up only briefly at his question before looking back down at her hands. Did she die? Did those things tear her apart? "Yeah."

She doesn't have to ask if those things killed him too. It's all over his face, in those beautiful blue eyes that should never look like that. So because she can't fix what's happened, she does her best to approach it like she would any mission — maybe it will help him too. "I'm thinking that's why we're both here, and why so many others aren't."

"You think so?" There's a soft note of hope in his voice. If Doc and Malcolm aren't here, then maybe that means they're okay. Or as okay as either of them will be in the wake of whatever just happened.

He gets his feet under him again, easing himself upright slowly, almost experimentally. Nothing else knots up, though he still feels bruised all over. Once she's on her feet, he pulls her into a hug, the embrace just as much for his sake as for hers.

Her arms wrap around him, clinging to him tightly and savoring the feeling of him alive in her arms. Her fingers are numb from the cold but they still manage to wrap around whatever fabric they find, keeping hold of him so nothing can take him from her again.

"I'm sorry you went through that... but I'm so glad you're here," she tells him without really thinking, the adrenaline of the last little while finally beginning to dissipate and leaving her feeling off-balance. Everything around them is some shade of horrifying red. The world is dark and cold and she's scared — but she isn't alone. He's here too and she feels so guilty for being glad of that. The thought of losing him like she's lost so many people she cares about...

"I love you." It slips out and she's too tired to stop it, too desperate for him to know this one secret, even if it terrifies her more than those creatures ever could. Hiding her face against his neck, she quietly explains, "I know it's crazy, we've only known each other like a week or something, but I needed you to know that."

In case she doesn't get another chance. She'd waited to tell Lincoln; she can't make that mistake with Neal.

Edited 2021-02-25 21:57 (UTC)

He's disoriented, trying to anchor himself in her arms. I'm so glad you're here, she says, and he presses his face against her shoulder, shivering, not sure he can stop. He doesn't want to be wherever they are. He wants to be as far from this place as either one of them can get.

I love you, she says, and it takes a moment for that to register. He draws back enough to look at her in bewilderment, trying to take in what she's saying in spite of their surroundings. This isn't the way you tell people you love them. This isn't the kind of place, the kind of situation where that's supposed to happen.

I needed you to know that.

A twist of poetry comes to mind and he says it automatically, voice soft with confusion and hurt still.

"I believe in love at first sight, but I will always believe that the people we love, we have loved before. Many, many, many times before, and when we stumble through grace and circumstance and that brilliant illusion of choice to finally meet them again, we feel it faster each time through."

He's crying again. Neal closes his eyes and shakes his head. "I'm sorry, I."

He presses his forehead to hers, hands tangling in her hair. "I want to say it too," he mumbles. "I want to say it too. I can't say it... here."

Daisy doesn't know the way you tell people you love them. She's only said those words once before and it was when she was saying goodbye to the man she'd come to think of as a father. How do you tell someone that they mean so much to you that sometimes it's hard to breathe? Where do you tell them that your life would be full of so much less light without them in it? When do you inform them that you would move mountains to keep them safe and happy? All she knows is that if this was the only chance she'd get, she couldn't not take it.

Hearing Neal talk about love with those emotions in his voice... It's heartbreaking and terrifying. He should never sound like that when speaking on any subject, he deserves so much better than the pain in his voice right now. But what if that pain is still there because he doesn't—

No. She did not say those words with the expectation that he'd return them. She is not that kind of person and she won't let herself think like one.

I'm sorry still nearly kills her, though. His tears bring on her own again, though she tries her best to hold them back, and the sting of what she knows is rejection approaching makes her want to recoil.

I want to say it too breaks her heart in a new way she's never felt before. Expecting to be tossed aside like so many other times in her life, he's loving her without the words — and that's okay because she doesn't need them.

"It's okay," she assures him, her quiet voice cracking with emotion. Her hands frame his face and he's so cold she can hardly feel the difference between his skin and her own. "It's okay, Neal, you don't have to say it."

Her hands move to his forearms, gently tugging to pull his hands from her hair. He took care of her during those horrible days at the Gull — it's her turn now to take care of him. "Come on, we need to get you inside, we've been out here too long."

"Not 1306. I don't want to go in there." The words break as he says them. "Doc and Malcolm--we can't find them. We..."

He shivers, and keeps shivering, but he'll let Daisy lead him wherever she wants him to go.

Just not there.

"Me, Raylan, Negan, it got all three of us." He slips a little in the snow as they walk, trying to stay close to her, sounding confused to his own ears. He swallows down bile. "Me first. I thought--I thought if I could--"

He laughs, and it's incredulous, and for a moment Neal just wants to slap himself for being so mystified. He wants to shake himself, he wants to punch himself, he wants to put his own head through a window. Bitterness snakes its insidious feelers into his words. "I thought I could help them. I thought..."

But it was there, waiting. Just waiting for him to turn around and realize it was already too late.

Neal pushes away from Daisy, dropping to his knees in the snow and throwing up.

She doesn't even consider arguing, just steering them to the next house over instead. 1308 is empty, as far as she knows, and even if it's not, it's likely to be now. There's so little sound, so few signs of life, it makes 'normal' Mathias seem like a bustling city.

Slipping an arm around his back after that slip, she tries to keep him steady, recognizing the signs of shock and grief all too well. That laugh breaks her heart, and she knows those shivers likely aren't all from the cold. He probably won't remember even half of this conversation later after he's finally processed all this.

There's a moment of surprise when he pushes away from her but then she's kneeling behind him, giving him as much privacy as she can while he finishes. And when he does, she sets a hand on his back, rubbing small circles for a moment before moving closer and winding her arms around him to get him on his feet again.

"We're almost there, just a little farther," she assures him, not thinking further ahead than getting him inside and warm. This is what he needs from her, to be the strong and steady one — it's a role she's used to playing.

Neal isn’t sure what he expects when they walk through the door. For the light to change, maybe. The building seems strangely foreign, even though it’s just a house, a picked-over and untidy house that used to have people living in it.

The question of what happened to them almost makes him throw up again. He doubles over, hands clutched against his stomach, and forces it down. He hates throwing up. He hates it.

The warmth comes to him slowly, like he’s at the heart of an icicle in a world only starting to thaw. Neal straightens, easing himself upright. He stares at his hands, then down at his feet. Turns his hands over, then back again.

“It tore me in half,” he notes, the same uncertainty still in his voice. He feels like he’s talking from the bottom of a well. “I tried crawling away and I was so light.”

His breathing turns shallow as the reality of what he just said hits all over again. Neal claps his hand over his mouth, retching without puking. “Oh god.”

Worried about him tipping over and ending up on the floor, Daisy keeps her hands on him when he doubles over and rights himself again, ready to keep him at the first sign of a sway. They don't need him ending up back on the ground again, even if this time it wouldn't be in a bloody pile of snow.

How waterproof is his coat, she wonders idly, giving him a concerned once-over. Are his clothes damp? Will it take him longer to get warm because of that? Would he even be willing to change if she found him something else to wear? All these thoughts race through her mind and then are silenced when he speaks again, breaking her heart a little more with every word

"It's okay, Neal," she assures him quietly, gently steering him toward the couch just a few feet from the door. "Just breathe for me, okay? Nice and slow."

She's a little forceful as she tries to get him to sit, not sure if he'll stay there for very long. "I'll be right back," she murmurs before quickly disappearing to the kitchen. A popcorn bowl from a cabinet, a bottle of water from the fridge, and then she's back at his side.

He stays where he's put, staring at his right hand where it rests palm-up on his knee. It's shaking, muscles in his fingers and wrist twitching loosely. Absently, he remembers what Malcolm said about his own tremor, about how it went away but then came back and stuck around. He clenches his hand into a fist and pretends he can't feel the muscles still twitching.

When Daisy sits down again, it's like he's realizing she's there for the first time. His unclench hand goes to her cheek. She looks so ashen in the redness of the world around them. "You--" His stomach turns over. "Oh, no. No, no."

He struggles to breathe deeply, to follow that instruction. "You shouldn't have to be here."

Daisy has no concept of what she looks like, not giving even a second of thought to herself or her own well-being. It's just not even on her radar, her whole focus on Neal and helping him not having a complete panic attack.

Absently setting the bowl and bottle on the couch beside her, she turns to face Neal completely, one hand pressing against his over her cheek while the other reaches up to the side of his neck.

"It's okay, Neal," she repeats softly but firmly, leaning in close and doing her best to catch his gaze. He feels so cold... "We're gonna get through this. I will get you through this. Just give me a few deep breaths, okay?"

A few deep breaths. He can do that. A few deep breaths. He closes his eyes, focuses on that, focuses on the fact that he can feel her close by and that somehow they can think and walk and breathe, deep breaths, deep breaths.

Neal leans forward slowly until his head rests against her collarbone. He wants to sleep. He wants to just sleep until all of this goes away. Check out of this reality, hop a plane back to New York.

"I'm cold," he finally says, realizing it for the first time. He straightens slowly, starting to feel... something. More alert. More like he stood inside his own skin instead of watching someone else pilot it. He wasn't sure that made him feel better. He touches his torso with one hand, then with both, yanking his shirt up to look at unmarked, unbroken skin. "Did that really happen? Did that actually happen?"

His breathing is better, thank goodness. Years of training have taught her the importance of breathing exercises when trying to control stress levels — she would have leveled the SHIELD base more than once if she hadn't learned proper stress control.

She combs her fingers through his hair until he straightens again, taking in the way he seems to be coming back to himself slowly. If only he'd chosen a different line of thought to follow.

"I don't know," she answers honestly, reaching back for the bottle of water. Twisting the cap, she holds the bottle out to him. "It seems like it did but I don't know, Neal. Here, you should drink this."

He takes it, drinking slowly, in small sips. Even though when the water hits his tongue all he wants to do is chug the whole thing down. He's violently thirsty. But that has to be a good thing, right? It means he's alive, it means... it means something.

Neal reaches for her hand, grabbing on, holding tight. Guilt hits in a wave. "...I didn't look for you," he says, voice a whisper. "I just--Raylan, I found Raylan, and we found Negan, and then Malcolm and Doc weren't in the house and Raylan split off to hunt for them and Negan went and I... I just..."

He closes his eyes. He saw the blood on the show, the spot where he died, and shut down. "I'm sorry."

It's good that he goes slow with the water — Daisy would have taken it back if he'd tried to drink it all in one go. His stomach has been through enough without him subjecting it to that too.

She's so confused when he grabs her hand, her other one wrapping around his instinctively, but then she lifts it to cup the back of his neck as she leans in close.

"It's okay, Neal," she assures him quietly, not the least bit hurt or offended by the fact that he hadn't thought to look for her. Why would he? "I can take care of myself, remember? I'm used to bad things happening. It's good you looked for your friends."

"I should have... checked for other people, at least."

He closes his eyes. He hadn't thought of the others at all, even though it stood to reason that he and Negan and Raylan couldn't be the only ones trapped in this strange nightmare place. That would be too merciful for Mathias.

Neal makes a broken little laugh of a sound. "I just went back to where it killed me, I just."

He shakes his head.

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036 » aftermath: the dead

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