WEEK 6

[bathymetric]

Good morning, passengers. Happy Sunday. Happy New Year.

Three more of your number gone - or four, depending on your point of view. But regardless, you're down three bodies. The boat is getting less crowded, week by week. A loneliness only exacerbated by yet another new floor, and yet another section of topdeck. There are almost too many facilities for you to use by now, aren't there? And yet the amenities keep on coming. One of them is even personalized, this time, and perhaps not in a way you're fully comfortable with.

Who knows, maybe if your number falls enough, you'll be able to just exist permanently on the different floors. Might keep you out of the trial room for more than a week.

Are you at the point where you'd settle for that yet?

And if you look to the horizon, out in the distance... there are clouds starting to gather on the horizon this week.




SUNDAY | MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY

[ ooc: Welcome to week 6, everyone! Remember to turn in AC here and coins for regains over here! If you wish to get in contact with the npcs, Davy Jones is over here, and The Captain is over here! And as requested, profiles are accessible here. ]

Comments

[jibunwo]

She did seem like one to be prepared for the worst.

[this is awful! everyone hates this!]

Should...I leave you alone?

[dokkalfheimr]

You don't have to.

[She pauses for a moment. Tips her head.]

Are you all right...? I know everything was difficult.

[jibunwo]

I'm f-...

[He stopped midway through brushing it off, realizing further attempts would just keep sounding flat and pointless. Zero sighed, pressing a hand to his covered left eye, and shook his head.]

...I don't know. I was--I thought I was, until I read that letter. Now I don't know what I'm feeling.

[dokkalfheimr]

...I'm sorry. About what happened, and that it isn't something that can be easily dealt with.

[She doesn't seem to know how better to word that.]

I don't believe that it's something you should want to push aside. It's just... Difficult to be with, when people are dying around you like this.

[jibunwo]

You don't have to apologize. I'm aware I am not the only one having suffered a loss, or even several.

[He dropped his hand away and folded his arms, leaning against the wall in some affectation of calm that he didn't entirely feel.]

This isn't my first experience with death by any means, and yet I'm frustrated, Freyja. Frustrated that no way I approach this situation seems to work, and we continue dropping like flies as if none of us were doing anything at all to prevent as much. Frustrated that everything I would usually do in the wake of such things is all worthless and would get no results. I can't just walk up and shoot Jack, not in the least because I don't even have a gun.

...And it infuriates me that even in all of this, the thing that haunts me the most is that she wrote to me by name.

[dokkalfheimr]

...You gave her your name?

[Or did she get it from some other third party?]

[jibunwo]

Only my first name--the surname on my ticket is an alias. But we were talking some weeks ago, and...she and I were too similar. I couldn't help but sympathize with her. I'd even considered offering her a place with the Black Knights, if we made it out of all this. But in the end perhaps I told her too much. Maybe if I hadn't, then...

[This wouldn't feel like a kick to the ribs?]

Maybe I've been foolish here. Back home, when a friend of mine was caught up in 'Zero's' affairs and learned who wore the mask, I had to disappear from her life for her own safety. [That was one way of putting it.] Here, it's...different, and I don't know how to adjust for that. I don't know if I should, if feeling like this is the result of it all.

[dokkalfheimr]

[Zero...]

It's all right for you to be a person, you know. I understand that you feel obligated not to be, and that feelings often cannot be afforded in difficult times. But that isn't much of a way to live, in the end.

[...]

I'm not trying to give you false hope. But I've been working toward knowing where... Where they are. The others.

[jibunwo]

Perhaps it isn't. But in a place and situation like this, I wonder if it isn't safer living as 'Zero' than anyone else.

[He shook his head, trying and only somewhat succeeding to brush the whole uncomfortable topic off.]

...Have you found anything?

[dokkalfheimr]

I've been speaking to Lord Davy; I think I have some ideas, at least. Which is an improvement over what we had.

[jibunwo]

Even a small amount of information is still information, I agree with you. Much as I'd prefer it if we could gain ground more quickly, it's clear that's not possible right now--I'm grateful to have anything at all we can work with.

...People don't come back to life, in my world. Death is death, and I don't know anything of what might lie past it. [honey just wait a season] Do you think there's a chance that might not be the case here?

[dokkalfheimr]

...I admit that I don't know. Death has always been far more Hel's domain than my own; the most I had in my own world were hopes and theories, centered around an individual that isn't here.

But I also acknowledge that this place has nothing but defied everything I know to be true. So perhaps it will be the same in this case.

[jibunwo]

I've never really been one to dwell on fixing the past. I've always preferred to move forward; seek vengeance for past wrongs rather than strive to undo what can't be undone.

...But it might not be so wrong to hold just a little hope in the impossible, just once.