AFTER-ICE-CREAM-PARTY

[pecker]

[Boy everyone is so bloodthirsty tonight. And now a kid is dead and another is gonna execute. Do y'all need some baskin robbins, because it seems like you do!!! So before everyone can leave, Niwatori raises her voice louder than it's gone before now to draw a little attention, and then deflates immediately when she actually gets it.]

Excuse me, please! U-um... this case was really hard, and I think we could all use some time to cool our heads before we finally go back. So... ice cream? Who's with me?

[she'll lead the pack there and anyone else can go home or to visit Clarisse on the set of Orange is the new Black.

Niwa's not that good of a host though, she just gets her own ice cream and lets everyone serve themselves. Who is she to limit your freedom. (Someone who doesn't want to be partly responsible for a Millium Monstrosity, that's who.)]

Comments

[yonosoymaria]

I saw myself in you. That's why.

[It's an answer to a question she didn't ask, offered up after about half a minute of hesitant little false starts. He crosses over to sit outside the bars, then.]

Your reasons were different, of course, but I didn't know how different until - but it's selfish. I was being selfish, and I am now....

[Aaaaand another awkward pause. Is he really looking for absolution, here? Absolutely, because good life choices are for people who aren't some kind of generations-removed Belmont descendant with a death wish.]

[snideper]

[She hasn't asked it, but it's easier that she doesn't have to. She's wondered—but she's wondered, too, alone in here, if she would have been able to bring herself to ask. If he'd show up at all.

Somehow, his presence surprises her, too.

She doesn't say anything for a long couple of moments, long enough that maybe she hasn't heard him—but she closes her eyes, sighs.]

So why are you here?

[But her voice has a strain to it, still, weak and quiet and empty; she's tired, but not with him. She can't muster up enough bite for it to sound like a dismissal or an attempt to cut to the chase.]

[yonosoymaria]

Death is solitary enough... leaving you alone felt wrong.

[It isn't pity that flattens his voice. Even he doesn't really know what it is - preemptive grief? Frustration, that someone's need to matter could be twisted to this point? Rage at the faceless bastard who says he brought them here? It's some mix of all three. ]

[snideper]

...

[When she opens her eyes, they finally focus, but only on some fixed point on the ground. She doesn't turn to face him. The way Eric's words become some awful weight in her, chest dropping into her stomach, would make her angry if she wasn't so tired.]

Whatever. [But it isn't a dismissal. She can't find any of the similarities he might see but maybe they're how he's figured her out. Of course she can't bear to be alone.] Do what you want.

[But even now, she can't admit it.]

[yonosoymaria]

[He shifts around, facing the same direction she is and leaning sideways against the bars of the cell. Putting his hand through is just a matter of convenience, it'd be uncomfortable to have it trapped between a bar and the side of his thigh.

At least, that's what the arrogant boy who saw Clarisse right away would have said, if someone asked why he'd done that. That boy is of course still within him, somewhere, packed away like that long-ago-outgrown embroidered suit he wore. In rare moments he still peeks through. Now is not one of those times. Defeat is something Eric hates, something he cannot bear, and this feels like a defeat. Perhaps not one of his own, but nevertheless he can hardly speak around a knot of emotions in his throat.]

I'll stay, then. Until you get tired of an old man like me sitting here creaking.

[He understands, now, a little more of how his father must have felt about "Miss Mina", and how helpless everyone must have felt when....]

[snideper]

[Clarisse isn't sitting especially close to the bars, but she isn't too near the back wall, either. That doesn't change when Eric shifts; she certainly doesn't come any closer, but she doesn't recoil this time. She does, after a moment, turn her head to look at his hand put through the bars.

The breath she huffs out almost sounds like a heh, and maybe the noise could have been amused if she made it even a few hours ago, but now it just accompanies her eyes tracking back down to the floor. She doesn't, at least, turn away.]

Whatever. [But she says that with a sense of obligation to if anything at all, lighter than the way she mumbles,] I don't understand you at all.

[But she certainly doesn't have it in her to complain.]

[yonosoymaria]

I haven't really understood myself for a long time.

[His voice isn't sharp, isn't really anything but tired, though there's a slight lilt upwards at the end of that sentence.

He'd had John to keep him from a cell like this, he'd had John to knock him flat when he was courting disaster, and Clarisse had... no one, apparently, no one but "Lady Eremiya", who wanted her to be a weapon more than anything.]

You deserved better than this. That's trite, I know.

[snideper]

I'm getting exactly what I deserve.

[But if she sounds anything but tired, it's like she's telling Eric something he hasn't realized. A broken tool is replaced, a snapped bowstring is disposed of, a failure is left to die. How could she have ever expected any different, that a second chance would change anything at all?]