Log - OTA! - What’s the difference between a corpse and a shirt?

[bossyboiler]

Who: Everyone.
When: Wednesday evening, Jan 11th
Where: A rented out bar, downtown.
Summary: The wake for George Milton.
Warnings: N/A (will update as needed)

If anyone of the forcibly kidnapped to Gloucester deserved to be remembered, it was George Milton. In many ways, he was the best of them. He had been kind. He had always been willing to help and lend a hand. Unlike some whose first choice was violence (because what else was there), he had chosen to forgo that route and had come up with a much more clever solution. The solution saved lives.

It had not felt right to have a formal service for him. To put it simply, he was not a formal person. And so after much calling around, a bar had been found where they could rent out the entire place before business got too busy. It was just for a couple of hours. People could come and say nice things about George. It's what he deserved after all.

So come on in, have a beer or two, and sit a spell. Maybe you'll feel like sharing a story about George or maybe you're just there to pay your respects. There's a break in the weather, the clouds only filling up half of the nighttime sky. No acid snow for tonight.

Comments

[clavesregni]

[ooc: feel free to have Neal sense her negative emotions!]


Caitlyn didn't really know George. But plenty of people at ADI did know him well, and they must be absolutely devastated by his death. So she shows up less to mourn for herself and more to provide whatever support she can for those who may need it.

She's never been very good at gatherings, though. And instead of finding anybody who needs a hug and a shoulder to cry on, all she ends up with is a building sense of frustration that things aren't fixed, that people keep dying while the living seem trapped in a perpetual cycle of mourning their loved ones. She's been here just six months and already two people have died.

So she finds herself out back by herself, sitting on a bench, lower lip caught between her teeth as she frowns intently at nothing, fingers occasionally tapping idly against the glass of whiskey she's mostly forgotten she's holding.

She's startled out of her reverie by the door opening, and she looks up to see the man she remembers from the dream she had. The dream of another death.

"Neal?" she asks softly.

[conning]

Neal looks toward the sound of the voice, recognizing it without knowing immediately from where. Then he sees her face, and he remembers all too well.

"Caitlyn." Relief colors his tone. He hadn't followed up on her, hadn't tried to make sure she was all right, but that's when everything with the entity started whispering to him. His guilt over the neglect is tempered by that.

It's also tempered by the swirl of frustration around her, a thick miasma that he can practically see it's so strong. In some ways the power of the emotions is a relief. It doesn't take much out of him to sense their presence, since he can't seem to turn this ability on and off at will. He sits down next to her, determined to ignore the instinct to make things worse. Determined instead to use the awfulness he can feel for something better.

"You look like you're ready to throw that drink."

[clavesregni]

"I am, I suppose," she says ruefully. She takes a breath, squaring off her shoulders as she attempts to pull herself out of the haze she'd fallen into.

A glance down at the whiskey glass only serves to turn her stomach. She's not even sure why she got it; she hasn't any appetite for food or drink.

"Too many people have died."

[conning]

Neal looks skyward, thoughts straying to Wolf Pen and the casualties there. Permanent and impermanent.

“Yes they have.” He looks over at her. “I forgot to ask before how long you’ve been here.”

[clavesregni]

"About six months," she says softly. "I arrived last July. And in just that time Garner was killed, and now George."

Her fingers tap sharply against the glass. "We've got to do something about it. We've got to stop anybody else from dying." She hates the feeling that she's just sitting around uselessly while the Entities take more people from them.

[conning]

"And a lot of people disappeared," Neal adds, voice soft. A lot of people. "Some of whom have come back since. That happened to a friend of mine. He apparently vanished from Wolf Pen back in the summer and reappeared in ADI's offices a month ago, and for him no time passed at all. It's like he was there one moment and here again the next."

[clavesregni]

Caitlyn frowns. She doesn't understand how or why people are being brought here from different worlds, and she's not entirely certain who's responsible. And she hates not knowing. Without knowing, it will be that much harder to stop it, to get people home, to save people's lives.

"I suppose it's reassuring, in a way, to know that at least some of the vanished people are alive and may reappear." It would be an awfully lot more reassuring to know that they were going home safely, though.

[conning]

He nods, brows knit still as he mirrors her frown. "But it's a different concern, not knowing how or why that happens. If the people who vanish are all being taken to the 'future' somehow, or if they're being shuffled somewhere completely different."

He rubs his face and sighs, before giving her another look. "You were law enforcement, back home, weren't you."

It's both a question and a guess.

[clavesregni]

"Yes, I'm. I was a police officer." Before being fired. Before coming here. "We call them enforcers, but the job's more or less the same, from what I can tell."

He's right that the reassurance of knowing some of the vanished are alive doesn't outweigh the issue of now knowing why or how. She hates the not knowing. Her fingers fidget against the glass again, tapping restlessly as she contemplates all the things that could be happening to people who disappear from here.