So, you're dead. Shame, that.
But on the other hand, it's actually kind of nice.
When you "wake" in some odd version of it, you'll find yourself lying on a rather plush bed. It's cozy and warm and just soft enough to tempt anyone back into sleep. The room is equally nice, if small, and when you turn and open the curtains to look out the window, you will see... wait, is that the town?
It is, actually. The town is laid out quite simply across the window and no matter how many times you may bang or wave through the window, no one seems to notice you. If you're smart enough to give up the venture and leave the small bedroom, you will notice that, of course, you are on the train.
The train that, is actually pretty fancy.
Moving through it, past the sleeping cabins and through to the main carts, you will find a dining car with fine dishware and meals of all kinds made at a push of a button or a request given to the air. They'll appear, freshly made and ready to eat at the table of your choice with any drink you could want. There truly doesn't seem to be any limits when it comes to the luxury of the meal.
There is also a bathhouse car with private bathrooms and saunas to fit up to four. Even one rather large room containing a small pool/hot tub of sorts is available for just about anyone to take a dip. It's kind of outlandish, honestly.
Then the lounge car, with its library and plush armchairs and couches. A pool table, a darts board, even a small area dedicated to painting. There's a bar too, fully stocked and ready for anyone who needs a drink. All it would require is a request from the bartender who... looks surprisingly familiar?
The Sheriff is there, much cleaner cut than his counterpart outside of the train. He looks up mildly at any arrivals, giving them a nod of greeting before going back to organizing bottles or setting cigars out for a smoke. He doesn't seem to be surprised at all by anyone who appears. Just... ready to serve them, whatever they may wish.
It all sort of seems okay for a moment, until you realize you're just here to wait for the game to end. Awkward. |
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sheriffexe) wrote2017-01-13 11:14 am
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[She makes sure to clarify that first. The last thing she wants is for Xion to feel pressured, pushed into divulging anything that she may not want to. For the rest of the story, though, she stays silent and listens.
When it ends, though she feels a deep concern and horror over everything this girl has been through, there's a budding pride inside her as well. It's difficult to imagine how difficult it must have been, raised as a weapon, held somewhere against her will, having no option in the end but her own death. But to have her sitting here, saying she wants to live, and that she'd fight for her own life... It's incredible, she thinks. Xion is incredible.
Reaching out carefully to run her hand through Xion's hair affectionately, she smiles softly, her voice gentle.]
You're one of the strongest people I've ever met, you know? [A pause.] But... I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve anything that happened to you, here or there.
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[ With soft but stunned disbelief. Yes, sure, she's come to want to live. But she also had a major crisis over that decision feeling selfish beyond belief, that she'd choose her own life over the wellbeing, the lives, of countless untold people that Sora could save. She's still not even sure - if she can ask the Sheriff for a reward, if he can let her live while still letting Sora wake - she knows the possibility exists that she'll still have to give up.
What about any of this makes her strong? What about feeling terrified and hollowed out and unspeakably selfish makes her strong? What about her life - a life of constant failure, of mistakes she couldn't stop herself making, of forcing her own best friend to kill her because she couldn't even die properly - ... makes her strong?
Xion doesn't really seem to know what to say. When she realizes the words aren't coming she shuts her mouth, her jaw working. Even that hair ruffle gets a kind of muted reaction, Xion slightly ducking her head but not otherwise trying to stop her. ]
... maybe, [ is what she says in the end, very soft. Maybe if she'd been smarter. Maybe if she'd been better.
Natalie probably doesn't want to hear her say something like that, though. ]
... what about you, Natalie? What was your world like?
[ She thinks, probably, that it wasn't great, if Natalie has no plans at all to return. But she still wants to know, provided Natalie wants to say. ]
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It makes her sore all the same, but for now, Xion gets a nod with the same unwavering smile.]
Yeah, you. One hundred percent.
[Her world, though... In a way, it's more difficult to talk about. It was much vaster than Xion's. The problem was never the world itself, but the space she occupied within it; a place she has felt trapped, held back, for many years. If she had a word to describe her life, it would be lonely, she thinks.
There's a certain guilt in admitting this when the girl next to her has been speaking of situations so much more dire and hopeless than anything she's faced. She has to wonder, however, if that guilt is masking the ever present fear of vulnerability that she carries with her. What if it's simply an excuse to hide? Chewing on her lip, she thinks about the immense amount of belief it must have taken Xion to tell her everything, and how touched she is by the fact that she's trusted enough to know.
In a way, isn't it selfish not to reciprocate that honor?]
It wasn't as fucking awful as yours, but I don't think it was very good, either.
[It is the only way she knows how to start.]
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But, well,
she's learned to love and she's learned to want to live, so maybe that's all that matters. For Xion, everything she's gone through in this town from day one means this:
She, after a few short breaths and one long sigh, accepts that. She struggles to believe it, but if Natalie believes it of her, if she really thinks that, then ... maybe she can believe in that, if not in herself. It's why she says: ]
Okay.
[ With this incredibly tender little smile that almost might not be a smile at all it's so hard to see. But it's there, beneath her creased brow, and it's got all her love.
Trying to breathe around the swell in her chest that she can't put a name to, Xion nudges Natalie with her shoulder. ]
... I'm sure our worlds are really different. But ... [ she looks thoughtful. ] If it was hard, I still want to support you. You don't have to tell me, but ... I definitely want to know, if it's okay, because ...
[ i want to tell you that you're strong, too ]
You mean a lot to me. And best friends support each other, right?
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Focus, she tells herself, even as she feels her heart start to pound. Where to begin...? The obvious answer is to talk about her brother, her parents, how she's lived beneath a vast and shapeless shadow her entire life. She could talk about the problems she has trusting people, or she could explain how she has lived her entire life fearing that what happened to her mother will, in turn, happen to her.
Insanity.
As the word emerges in her mind, it brings back the barely restrained thoughts of the first person here who earned this story. With those thoughts come a realization that she has been trying to fight against for days. That very thing she's been fearing for years has already occurred, hasn't it?
It is nothing more than my guess and intuition, but I believe it will come from your hands. However, are you killing me because you want to survive? Or are you killing me because you find that I've betrayed your trust?
Dully, she realizes he was right to suspect her all along. There must have been some sign in her that he, as twisted and horrible as he is, was able to witness. After all, what kind of person looks down at the body of someone they once cared about, the body of someone they themselves killed, and feels, among the horror and the regret and the self loathing, a pervading and enduring sense of relief? Certainly not the kind of person who can rightfully call themselves sane.
For years, she has worried that the anger that burns through her like a fever has been a symptom of some deeper malady, but now she sees the truth, she thinks. She is the disease; she is the poison. The word that has been echoing, pounding through her head for days seems to scream louder than ever. Murderer, murderer, murderer.
All at once, she realizes that once she had him on the ground, she simply could have walked around him and aimed for his head. Instead, bullet after bullet after bullet, none of them piercing his heart. What a disgusting person she is.
Lost in her thoughts, she is quiet for a long moment before she recalls that Xion is still sitting next to her.]
Oh, um... [Say something, she tells herself.] Nothing wrong with the world itself, I guess. Just - my family.
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[ It's the silence that tells her something is amiss.
Coming to know Natalie over these few weeks, having spent time around and lived with this girl, even for a fairly brief time, was enough to tell Xion at least a little about what she's like. It usually isn't hard for Natalie to talk; she has a tendency to say what's on her mind. Even when she's upset words tend to spill out of her, though they're different words, much sadder words.
Xion has come to correlate silence from Natalie with, well, something being wrong. Sometimes it just means she's thinking, but Natalie has struck her as the kind of person to dwell specifically when there's a reason to; when there's a problem.
If she were wiser, she might realize this has a lot to do with their circumstances, and in a more "normal" situation things might have been completely different. But she doesn't think of that. Xion just thinks of the Natalie she knows, and watches her with a growing concern, and says: ]
... is -- something wrong?
[ Somewhat out of step with what Natalie has actually said. But she also doesn't want to pursue this topic if it's upsetting her friend, in some way she can't quite see. ]
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Xion is right, though, about one thing in particular in this situation: when she is upset, her thoughts typically come spilling out, just as they're about to do now.]
Do you hate me?
[It reminds her, for a moment, of that evening in the saloon. Why haven't either of you left yet? Back then, she had thought that things could not get any worse. What a foolish thing to think, she realizes now.
Still, after a moment of reflection, she realizes the unfairness of that question. Of course Xion doesn't hate her. Though she doesn't understand why anyone here seems to not be repulsed by her bloodstained hands, she does not want to do her the disgrace of doubting her caring after all this time. She breathes in, she breathes out.]
...I know you don't. Sorry.
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Perversely, she wishes Jason were here, as awful as that is to think. But he'd know what to say.
He's not, though. It's just her.
Eventually, she shakes her head. ]
... I know I never told you, but there was a time when I decided to really play this game. [ Tilts her head, her expression ... subdued. ] Eventually I decided I'd kill someone, if I had to, to win.
[ ... though it may have been implied through actions or words elsewhere, she's never actually admitted that out loud. She'd told Shinnosuke once that she wasn't sure if she could; sometime in week 5 was when she decided she would. ]
I never got the chance. [ A laugh, hollow. ] No one picked me as executioner, and I never got chosen as a Bandit. Besides, after Felix died, I realized I was just kidding myself, anyway.
[ ... ]
But this game ... it twisted all of us, didn't it? If you'd asked me at the very start if I'd kill someone, even just out of self-defense ... I would have been so horrified. [ her voice goes a touch soft. ] And look what happened. All of us, we ... we were given a game we couldn't really win, could we?
[ There's a difference, she's come to realize, between winning in the practical sense and winning in a figurative way. And when it came to all their morals, their feelings, their souls, they were all always going to lose. ]
I think ... I was always just scared for you. [ This admission she makes without looking at her friend, instead staring ahead of them. ] Scared that something would happen to you. Maybe ... scared that you'd be put in a bad position...?
[ She thinks of a night in the saloon, finding two people soaking wet, and the things she'd ended up learning. ]
Do you know how I know you're a good person, Natalie? [ Finally glances back at her out of the corner of her eye with a barely-there smile. ] Someone told you I wanted to die, and you tried to stop me. You didn't even know me, and you wanted to save me.
[ ... ]
No one had ever done something like that for me before, [ she murmurs with small wonder. ] I thought ... that you must be a really special person, if you cared so much about someone who was basically a stranger.
[ A pause, and: ]
There's no way I could ever hate such an amazing person.
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[There is logic, she knows, in what Xion says. She's seen people who she knows are better than her kill others. That doesn't prepare her for the shock of hearing Xion say she would be willing to do it as well. It's not a surprise that comes with any kind of sting; she could never blame her for that, even before she chose the same path. Any pain she feels upon hearing it is due to the fact that someone so kind, so pure had to be put in this kind of situation.
Instead, there's a warmth upon hearing it. You didn't even know me, and you wanted to save me. No one had ever done something like that for me before. She wishes, more than anything, that she had succeeded. She wanted Xion to survive this sick game.
She supposed that, though, doesn't matter any longer. In the best case scenario, none of them will survive this, she realizes once more with painful clarity. The thought cuts deep inside her, and the words continue to spill out.]
I thought - I thought if I didn't do anything, if I didn't stop him, he would hurt Jason or Percy or you or Milla. But... I guess it was useless in the end, wasn't it?
[Each and every one of them has to get on this train. Just the thought of it is nauseating. When she thinks about how she felt when Will raised the knife, the way the steel felt against her skin, and the raw, animal panic and desperation that had coursed through her... Suddenly, she can't stop the water that pools in her eyes. None of them deserve that feeling, and she'd fought so hard to prevent it.]
I don't want him to die.
[Who she means by 'him' may be obvious, but either way, the fairly simple statement is made richer by the raw emotion that floods into her voice. She remembers him holding her hand, tapping out endless messages of comfort, sitting next to each other in church pews and...
Her eyes slide closed. She can't think about this any longer.]
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[ Xion will lean against her, tilting her head and sighing at nothing, at the whole entire world. ]
Was it useless? I'm really ... not sure. I'm not sure what we could have done differently, but ... I know for sure that no matter what, I would have given everything to save everyone. I know you feel the same way, Natalie. So even if we didn't know, we still did our best, didn't we?
[ It's hard to say, because she feels her own uselessness weigh heavy on her shoulders. Everything she tried so hard to do, secrets and lies and plans she was never very good at; in the end, all her reckless abandon had done was gotten her killed. But part of her thinks that... the fact that they all struggled so hard for each other...
that has to mean something, doesn't it?
Natalie will get a slow and careful hug for that last line. Yes, she knows who she means. ]
I know. [ A whisper. It's occurred to her to think how she might feel if she'd lived if Shinnosuke had died - or vice versa. Either way, the proposition is sort of a horrifying one, one she's perversely glad she never had to try and live through. ]
He'll fight till the very end, Natalie. And then...
[ ... ]
We'll get to see him again, and tell him how much we love him. Think about that, okay?
[ She's had it said enough to her: think of the future. think of what you want. focus on that. It helped calm her down. Maybe it'll help Natalie, too. ]