WEEK 3: April 15th - April 19th

[cartesio]

Third Week

The peaceful times are over. Moloch von Zinzer was murdered, and Nine was sentenced as his murderer. Everyone in Cartesio knows that.

Although life goes on, it seems the town of Cartesio isn't going to forget the tourists' transgressions. Not only they commited larceny in the cinema, they also murdered and executed in their town! It's no surprise their hospitality towards the visitors has cooled down considerably.

Not only they're maintaining a tense cordiality with them, they also have started talking behind the visitors' backs. All kinds of rumors are starting to sprout, yet nobody seems to be willing to say it to the tourists' faces. Talking directly to most passerby makes them distrustful, and nobody seems to want to be in close quarters alone with them.

It's only matter of time before the relationship between tourists and Cartesio starts degrading even further.

In the lobby of the motel there's a few more brochures, and the maps have been updated once again.

Links

IC Rules
Guestbook
Room Assignments
Events
Locations
NPCs
Activity Check

Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday

[Welcome to the third week! If you want to contact the Sergeant, please post here!. Also please remember to submit your activity check!]

Comments

[integratedsoul]

It's more complicated than that. And I don't think you want to hear that story.

[ A big plastic smile accompanies these words, as is Cian's habit. ]

[marmoron]

Do you want to tell the story?

[integratedsoul]

I haven't told it for 13 years but since coming here I've been saying bits and pieces a lot, so I don't really mind. Floodgates have been opened, I suppose?

It's just a sad story and not particularly useful to anyone.

[marmoron]

[He's thrown for a moment b/c he genuinely expected her answer to be "no" and he had commentary laid out in his head in anticipation of that answer.]

Then I only want to hear it over food.

[While he's doing something legitimately productive. You know how that goes.]

[integratedsoul]

I'm going to need your reassurance that you'll take it as a story from my life and not an over-all moral statement and thus... not yell at me about it.

[ She's still smiling, but she already knows Keith will judge everything she is about to say harshly, so.... better to make this clear. ]

1/2

[marmoron]

[Quick and punchy, but not snapped:]

You don't have to tell me about it if the thought alone is making you upset, Cian.

[SHEESH he's not actually all that curious.]

[marmoron]

[But then there's a beat and Keith sighs, looking more contemplative.]

I'm not going to yell. That was... [Trailing off, glancing down.] I was in a bad place that day.

[integratedsoul]

That's all I wanted to hear.

[ She seems immediately more light-hearted again. ]

And getting something to eat is not a bad idea, regardless of what we talk about.

[marmoron]

[Meanwhile Keith just seems to have gone from annoyed to gloomy and got stuck there.]

...Yeah.

[Such excitement!!!!!]

Let's go.

suicide cw intensifies you've all been warned for this thread

[integratedsoul]

[ Well, Keith is the one who made this meal suggestion and now he gets to live with the consequences. Cian accepts his gloomy mood, but it doesn't stop her from meaningless chit-chat on the way to the diner. It feels a little like she's back at the airport with Tuan. That was only three weeks ago but it feels like it's been an eternity.

It doesn't take too long until they're settled at a table with meals in front of them. Cian's still opting primarily to live off salads that don't upset her stomach too much. ]

Alright. Uhm, there's no good way to say this, so I'll just sum it up flat-out: I promised Miach to die with her and that is the promise I broke when I was 15. We had a suicide pact.

[marmoron]

[Keith meanwhile is opting for some chicken and fries -- nothing particularly special. He's said on multiple occasions that he's terrible at small talk, but frankly after she got him thinking about them again, he could use the distraction.

Suicide pacts sound... frankly, silly to him. Even during that time between his dad's death and Shiro's presence in his life, he'd never really wanted to die. He'd wanted to prove everyone who judged him wrong. Can't stick it to the man if you're dead. He glances up and across the table.]

Just because?

[integratedsoul]

It was meant to be an attack... Now, I don't know if that makes sense. I don't know if it was good or bad. But back then, we hated our world.

'We' is Miach, Tuan and me. Us three. [ She smiles softly, simply remembering the time when it was the three of them. A time she can never go back to. The most precious time of all. ]

In a world that taught us we are everyone's belonging, that we're so important... in that world, we felt suffocated. Everyone was full of love and compassion and caring and we... we couldn't keep up. I don't know how exactly Tuan or Miach felt, but for me it was...

[ She pauses, takes a breath and starts that over. ]

They were placing the weight of the world on my shoulders, telling me to love it. I couldn't love it. I couldn't love the world. I wanted out, I wanted to run away.

We wanted to exist as just us, nothing more. Just us. Unimportant little girls, selfish and alone. The world wouldn't allow it and we... we just couldn't bear it.

Miach hated the world most of all. She had all these impressive words for what it is doing to mankind, for how wrong it is, how fragile, how cruel... and Miach decided the best way to hurt this system would be to take from it what it deems most important: us.

Our bodies, the resource. Prove our worthlessness once and for all. Prove that we belong only to us.

We were going to die as all three of us. Starving ourselves to death in plain sight.

Just... I couldn't do it.

[marmoron]

[None of this is relatable to Keith in the slightest and he's able to listen with a detached kind of "fancy that" at just how backwards their respective experiences have been. Wanting to prove your own worthlessness? How could he even really begin to wrap his mind around a concept that absurd, that inapplicable to his life? Perhaps if he hadn't had words like "hopeless" "disciplinary case" "waste of time" thrown in his face so much after he had to start living alone, it'd all have been different.

He mulls that one over in silence, but inevitably there's a point in which thought experiments come to a screeching halt.

Starving to death.

The concept has Keith tense up visibly and all too suddenly. He'd been reaching for his glass, but just stops in the middle to stare at Cian. There's no way she could've known -- in fact, the very concept of starving yourself intentionally is the antithesis of what had been going on with him and the paladins, but the thought of it, the constant gnawing pain in their stomachs, the lightheadedness from weakness and oppressive nothingness around them as they all started turning on each other -- his fault, his fault -- has Keith gritting his teeth.]

That's a shit way to go.

[integratedsoul]

[ That reaction is... unexpected. Cian pauses in all her movements entirely, looking at Keith with worry. ]

... you've experienced it as well?

[ She's going out on a leg here, but the reaction is so subdued yet severe that it simply seems likely. ]

[marmoron]

[It's not something Keith really wants to talk about -- not really. He's mulled this one over in jail over and over, and the only conclusion he's reached is that he has to believe that they're a stronger team without him. That without him they were able to connect with their lions and make things right again. Just like Shiro said -- true paladins that could work together would be able to connect with their lions in ways they never thought possible.

They'll be fine. They have to be fine. The answer to Lance's dumb 6 paladins, 5 lions problem was never that Lance had to go; it's him. The lone wolf of the group. The most expendable paladin.]

...You know how I was asking about hallucinations the first day? Right before I woke up here, I was... lost in space. No food, no supplies, nothing. My friends and I -- we were dying.

[integratedsoul]

[ .... oh.

There's silence for a bit as Cian lets the meaning of those words sink in. Cian knows what it feels like to starve and more than that, she knows what it's like to have your friend starve to death without being able to help her. Being too late to help her.

Imagining all of this but with the voluntary aspect completely removed is sickeningly sad. ]

... I'm sorry. [ What a weak first thing to say to this. ]

The Sergeant was threatening these friends last week though, wasn't he? So maybe... he saved them as well? As leverage if nothing else.

[marmoron]

[The idea that the Sergeant would save anyone, even if to just to hold them hostage, seems both absurd and not-absurd simultaneously. Keith doesn't know what to do with the idea other than to laugh a little dryly -- too flat to be sardonic or anything other than humorless.]

They'd have been fine without me.

[He says the words ironically now more confidently than he'd been able to tell himself his first day or so here.]

It was -- [It was my fault we weren't coming together as a team.] -- the lions will save them. They always come through.

[Always. Except for right now. Keith breathes out, brow furrowing.]

So if the Sergeant's using them as leverage, all I'm doing is causing them trouble. [A beat.] ... Guess that's not unusual either.

[integratedsoul]

[ 'What lion' would be a really obvious question to ask here, but Cian bites down on it for the time being. ]

Why do you think that?

[ Keith has been... a bit of a mess around here, that's true, so it's not hard to imagine him being similar at home, but part of Cian finds his dedication to action pretty admirable. ]

[marmoron]

[It's hard not to think that he's the one causing trouble or the source of team discord considering the last few choice words he had for his team in his capacity as leader, but that encroaches on territory that goes beyond simple embarrassment and into the realm of existentially shameful.]

It's not important. It's just -- I'm not good with people. That's all.

[integratedsoul]

[ Denying this would be to lie and that is glaringly obvious. And yet... ]

Being good with people isn't really all that's needed in a group though, is it? You're always finding ways to do something and learn something new even at cost of your well-being... That's something not everyone has the strength to do. It's valuable to others.

1/2

[marmoron]

[Somehow he wasn't really expecting to hear any kind of encouragement. A topic change would have been just fine by him, and maybe it's his own fault for not being quick enough to have thought of one on the fly.

And for a moment, he's grateful to hear it. Soothed -- of all things, and it's like they've come full circle right back to the topic Cian started this whole conversation on. Keith looks across the table, smiling.]

2/2

[marmoron]

[But the truth of the matter is that Cian's not the person he wanted to hear this from. There's a lot she doesn't know, a lot she couldn't know without further context, and in the end Keith feels weary. In the moment, he understands Nine perfectly. Wanting to rip a hole through space-time just to get one message out to the paladins he was supposed to lead.

One apology.

It's strange how the things that go unsaid can be just as burdensome as the things he's snapped in anger.

Keith looks down at the table.]

I wasn't just in the group though. I was their leader. That makes things a little different.

[integratedsoul]

[ Funny how this diner meeting started out as Cian telling her tragic backstory to Keith. That isn't even finished but it also doesn't seem to matter much anymore. Cian is older, her wounds are older, and she is very used to dealing with them all alone. Keith is just... ]

What kind of team is it, by the way...? I gather there is space travel and lions, but do you mind telling me more about them and what you do?

[ Keith just seems like he really should be talking about things and Cian is happy to let him. ]

[marmoron]

[This is already probably the most talking about his feelings Keith's done in years, and he's frankly still massively allergic to it. In small doses, it's tolerable, in larger amounts he starts clamming up and light headed. It's fun. Not really.

Technical details though? That's almost a little better -- or rather, it would be if the sheer weight of what he should be doing right now instead of being stuck in Garfle Warfle Snick 2.0 with the Sarge wasn't so suffocating. Keith picks up his fork, absentmindedly stabbing it into a piece of chicken.]

There's an intergalactic war back home. My team and I are the paladins of the lions needed to fight against the Galran empire.

[He looks up.

It's a long story. You were in the middle of yours.

[integratedsoul]

[ She was, but now she wants to hear about the intergalactic war?? Though if Kieth isn't ready to share this with zero preparation time, then that's understandable. It already sounds... complicated.

Cian takes a bite of food and prepares herself to go back to her own story again instead. ]

There's not much more.

I grew weaker the longer we did it and I got scared. I stopped taking the pills that were making all of it happen, never telling anyone. The actions of a coward. By the time I realized that I really had to alert the adults, it was too late to save Miach. Tuan and I drifted apart as a result of this.

I... never knew how to feel about Miach's death. Of course, she would have hated to be saved, but at the same time I could never stop feeling that I let her die. Stupid, huh?

Especially since it seems Miach isn't dead at all... I still have no idea what to think about that.