[It comes out automatically, a little sharp. It's the right thing to say, Maketh is fairly certain. She turns away from Chris before she can catch the look on his face.
Her hair is down. Maketh begins knotting it up with her hands, though she doesn't have any pins and it's fairly pointless. Much like this conversation, really - she shouldn't have responded to the text at all, shouldn't have done this.
No, the idea with the cell towers - that's good. That's useful. Maketh tries to focus on that.
She lets her hair slip from her hands. It doesn't matter. She's too far out of uniform already.]
Make--make a list of supplies you'll need, please. I will--consult my notes. For the proper locations.
[Maketh flinches. Look, she's upset the civilian again. Apparently she has a talent for that.] I'm fine.
[This is supposed to be nice, Maketh thinks desperately. People like going out and drinking, don't they? Except that she's the only one who's been drinking and that - that might be a problem, actually.] I'm doing this wrong, aren't I? I'm sorry. I don't--know how to do civilian things anymore.
[He means it, tone genuine and calm, and he offers a small smile to go with it in hopes she'll believe it and relax a little.]
We all just had, you know. Kind of a bad month.
[So he's worried about her, and hadn't really agreed to this whole meeting in order to drink but rather as an excuse to try and figure out just how concerned he should be. He's still not entirely sure.
But since he'd never been planning on this whole thing being a social, fun meetup, she's definitely not doing anything wrong. She still wouldn't have been even if he had planned on that.]
[But she is, Maketh thinks, else this would be going much better. At one time she'd considered herself rather clever when it came to conversation - found it easy, if a bit tedious, to wade through moments and push people into accepting her point of view. There had been a pattern. Protocols to follow. Maketh had studied up, read all the right things, and figured she'd been getting results. That she was quite accomplished at the whole art of conversation.
She'd thought herself friendly with the Inquisitor too, right up until he'd proven otherwise. And if she missed that, if she missed everything about him, then she's probably made a mistake here too.
This was supposed to prove something to Chris. That she was competent enough to deserve his trust.
Well she's gone and ruined that, hasn't she?
Maketh pushes her hair out of her eyes and turns to face him. She's drunk and sad, and should probably do something now to save face. Now she just has to figure out what that is.] Yes. A - a bad month.
[Is it that simple? Maybe she can pretend. Maketh lifts her chin.] You're not drinking.
[It's not an accusation. She sounds curious and more than a little confused. None of this is going according to script.]
[Well, she doesn't seem like she's going to have a panic attack or anything--which he'd be a little worried was a possibility--at least for the moment, so he's willing to let her brush off the topic and turn it back toward him for the moment.
At her comment he glances toward the shot glasses, his still sitting empty on his side of the table, and then looks back at Maketh. There's two true answers to why he isn't drinking, but he's not sure which to tell.
The main one--the first one--is probably best, for a few reasons, so he gives a small shrug as he explains.]
Last time I drank more than a beer or a shot or whatever, my friend and I really overdid it and passed out. Two of my friends--his twin sisters--um...
[Had gone missing, had been involved in an accident. Or at least that's what they'd all believed until the night before arriving in Hadriel.]
They disappeared. We didn't even know until we woke up a few hours later to the rest of the group freaking out.
[There's some peace in knowing Beth and Hannah are both at rest now, but not enough to counter the memories of his friend's panicked explanations, and the look on Josh's face when he found out the twins had gone missing. Chris' gaze is fixed on the shot glasses again, though his voice is still steady.]
I mean, if we hadn't been drunk and had gone after them we'd probably just all be dead, since we know now that they were attacked by a wendigo. But I just, um... Getting drunk kind of lost it's appeal, after that.
[It comes out soft, barely a murmur. Maketh clasps her hands behind her back. Almost, but not quite standing at attention. This way her hands won't shake. She watches Chris for a long moment, trying to read him. Properly this time. Of course he'd encountered the wendigos before this - before Hadriel - but Maketh hadn't really stopped to consider what that would have been alike. Here, the strangeness was almost common place. That hadn't made the events any less painful or nightmare inducing, but it was--
Expected. In a way.
It wouldn't have been, for Chris and his friends. They probably didn't see it coming. And if they'd been too drunk to react--
Well. Of course he'd feel this way.
And yet, he'd come out to see her. To check on her, Maketh knows. Even though she's been rude to him and probably damaged him somehow - possibly in a way that can't be undone, she really shouldn't talk to civilians at all.]
I'm sorry that happened to you. It - shouldn't have.
[It's really a wonder that a group of eight teenagers had all been sober that night that they encountered the wendigos, a year after Hannah and Beth had disappeared. But it's definitely a good thing; it had been hard enough to survive without the potential hindrances that even being slightly drunk would've brought.
A moment of poor decision making or fractionally slow reflexes and there would've been far fewer survivors, Chris included.
He shrugs again, a little, at her words; not to dismiss them, but because at this point it just is what it is. It's still surreal that this is what his life has turned into, but he's trying to accept it and figure out the best way to proceed even if the trauma of it all can make that task sometimes feel impossible.
But that's part of the reason he wanted to check on her, too. He has his friends--he even has, as crazy as it is to think about, his girlfriend--here with him, when things get really difficult, and can't imagine having to deal with what happened at home, or here, alone. He doesn't want Maketh to have to deal with it alone either.]
Thanks.
There's a lot of things that shouldn't have happened. To a lot of people.
[He deals with it - well, not like an Imperial. That's clear. Perhaps it's just practicality. There's no use in mourning what's already happened - you have to survive in the moment or else there's no point at all. Civilians aren't supposed to see these things, though. They're supposed to be protected. Maketh rubs her eyes with the heel of her palm. Normally she enjoys being drunk.] You said...you said you understand. What it was like to - chose.
[This isn't something that Maketh has a script for. Not that death is foreign, even self inflicted death. It just isn't discussed. People die either in service to their Emperor or in disgrace. She thinks - maybe - that Chris understands something she doesn't. Her mentality isn't built for this place. Therefore she needs to change.
He'd already prepared, mentally and emotionally, to tell the story if she wanted to know, but that still doesn't make it easy. And it doesn't mean he'd thought about how exactly to say it.
But at this point he doubts she'll judge too harshly if it takes a few tries, or he can't find exactly the right words or if his voice isn't totally steady. The point of this is to make sure she doesn't feel alone--and maybe a little so he doesn't, either--and pretending like it didn't affect him would not only be dishonest, but possibly make her think she shouldn't be bothered by her own experience.
He's silent a few more moments, gaze on the table again, but this time he's staring through it rather than at it.]
The uh... The night before I got here was the night we first found out about the wendigos. There were eight of us and we'd all gotten kind of split up, and some of us ran into the wendigos like, right away, but the rest of us were dealing with something else that was going on.
[Explaining this might get confusing; it'd be easier with names, but several of the people involved are here and he doesn't want to tell their part in the story without them being okay with it.]
It's um... K-Kind of a long, totally messed up story, but there was this guy in a mask up on the mountain with us. We thought he killed one of our friends and was going to kill another one, so we were looking for her, and...
[He exhales slowly, quietly, gathering his nerve to continue and figure out how to get the situation across without going into too much detail. It's partially because of not wanting to identify people, partially because it's just so complicated, and partially because he doesn't want to think too much about the exact situation and the memories more than he already has to.]
The guy in the mask attacked us, and set up this whole situation where um...
[Words, Chris. He's the one who'd broached the topic in the first place, and although he doesn't want to pretend like it's nothing he also doesn't want to make her feel guilty for asking.
So he takes a steadying breath and continues.]
There was a gun, and a time limit. I-If I didn't do anything, me and my friend would both die when the time ran out. But the guy said that if I shot one of us, the person who was left could live.
[Whoever's left can live. The choice is yours.]
So I shot myself.
[He looks up, finally, offering a weak smile with nothing behind it.]
The gun was full of blanks. It was all a big joke; no one was dead, the guy was my friend that we thought he'd killed, it was just...
[Just a prank. Just revenge, for the loss of Hannah and Beth. Just a horrible, traumatizing betrayal by someone who had been his best friend for over half his life.]
[It takes Maketh a moment to work through everything that Chris is saying. Even sober, there would be a great deal to unpack - so many things left unsaid, or said only in part. Maketh thinks she can understand - just a little - about what it would be like to face something like a wendigo. The shuddering panic that came when your sanctuary was completely and thoroughly violated. But the rest - losing someone that close to you, the betrayal of friends - is foreign. Too far out of touch for her to ever understand. Maketh wonders how long it's been since she had friends instead of just allies.
That didn't make the betrayal sting any less. But the Inquisitor and Agent Kallus - well. They had never been her friends. She'd liked them, maybe. It hadn't helped. She'd projected. Saw things that were never there. She doesn't know a damn thing about friendship, therefore. Not like Chris would.
She does understand about choices, though. Weighing the value of one life over the next. It's no longer a metaphor for either of them.
For anyone else, Maketh would pour a drink. Say nothing, just push the glass forward. Think: forget. Drink and let the memory blur. Get sick and purge it from your body. Do it again and again until it no longer matters.
It doesn't really work like that. She understands that now.
Maketh nods just once.] Their life was...more important. Than yours.
[That's how she'd felt, at least. She'd failed Lothal and betrayed the Empire. Maketh hadn't been willing to fail Hadriel as well. These people were going to survive. Their lives mattered far more than hers ever could.]
[It's one of the only choices that night that he doesn't regret, and wouldn't have even it had lead to his death and he'd still somehow been able to reflect on it. But just because it had been the right choice doesn't mean it was easy; gathering the courage to pull the trigger while the person he loves was sobbing and trying to convince him not to do it had been the most difficult thing he'd ever done.]
But it still... I-It still sucks. No matter how much I knew it was the right thing to do.
[Maketh is quiet for a moment. She folds her arms across her chest. Hugging herself, really.] That was when it - hurt.
[It was the logical choice. But not the only one, if she's being honest. Maketh knows she could have asked Henry to drag her to Hope's temple. Maybe it wouldn't have worked, but it would have been - an alternative. A burden less painful to put on his shoulders. Instead she'd given him the kerosene and ordered him to do as she said. It should have ended then.
But here they stand. Both of them, still alive. Maketh tips her head back. She's not crying yet, but she feels like she might. They're both alive and they have to deal with the aftermath.]
[He's quiet, leaning a little against the table without thinking about it gaze dropping again. Even though the gun had been full of blanks and Josh meant for him to survive, he really shouldn't have; at such close range even a blank should've still killed him.
But fortunately all that had happened was that he'd been knocked out briefly, and when he'd awoken he hadn't even had time to be surprised--or feel anything at all--about being alive. They'd had to immediately deal with the shock of Josh being alive, of what to do with him, of Mike saying Jessica was dead and then Emily running back to the lodge screaming about monsters...
Even now, looking back, he can't remember even a moment in which he really thought about the fact that he was alive. Maybe it had just been too mixed in with the immediate fear that had led him to empty the rest of the clip of blanks into who he thought was a murderer, or the shock of realizing it was his best friend who had done this to them. Maybe the events of the rest of the night that followed--the wendigos and the death of the stranger and truly losing Josh--just drowned it all out; it had all been fake, after all, so it shouldn't really even matter right?
So the pain that she's talking about--he assumes she means the mental and emotional pain, at least--has come on somewhat delayed for him, fading in and out of the other traumas of the night and everything that's happened since then, and there's just too much to try to sort out. So he's stopped trying, except in moments like this when it serves a purpose.]
I wish I could like... Tell you something that'd help.
[Trying to make her feel less alone is pretty much the limit of what he's capable of, and he hopes it helps even the slightest bit.]
F-First person to figure out something that does has to share it with the other one, o-okay?
[It's a weak joke, but at the same time he means it.]
[Maketh laughs at that, unexpectedly. She covers her mouth in surprise. What a strange person Chris is. Very different from anyone she's met before. Kind and clever, but strangely naive in a way that makes Maketh want to shelter him and shatter his perceptions in the same breath. She settles for smiling, hands clasped in front of her chest. It can't hurt to smile, can it?] I, uh...agreed.
[He smiles a little uncertainly at her laugh, but looks a little more confident when she smiles too.]
Cool. It's a deal.
[Kind of a sad deal, but still. But the mood is thankfully a little less somber now, at least.]
I think the drinking some water thing's still a good idea, though. And food.
[He's pretty drained just from the conversation and he only had one shot, so he's pretty sure Maketh could really do with something more nutritious than alcohol.]
[Now that things seem a little calmer he moves to return to his seat, his knee a little sore at this point, and also decides to give the servings of food he brought with him some consideration. He's not actually hungry, especially not for vegetarian food--though anything with meat in it sounds similarly unappetizing for entirely different reasons--but he's also not interested in feeling any worse than he has to either.
So food it is, and he'll see if he can convince Maketh to have some as well when she comes back.]
[Despite what she'd like people to think, Maketh isn't much of a host - not when it comes to informal things, anyway. She likes events that have scripts and templates to follow, clear guidelines for every interaction. Possibly a rule-book written about the subject. Exactly none of those things apply here.
She goes to get the water, for lack of a better idea. Bottled water, instead of from the tap. She doesn't trust anything that the gods provide, but she's leery of drinking straight from the tap. There could be parasites, or something even worse.
Well, maybe. Hopefully not.
The glasses are clean, at least.
She sets them down on the table, next to the whiskey. They're probably done drinking now. Part of her thinks that's a shame. She takes a seat before that thought can spiral.] Here.
[Chris is utterly unbothered by any lackluster hosting she might be doing; it's difficult to be a worse host than Josh had been, anyway. He gives her a small smile when she returns, taking one of the bottles and a glass.]
Thanks.
[In turn, he nudges one of the containers of food toward her.]
Might help with, you know. The doubtlessly impending hangover.
[Maketh grimaces. Oh yes. The hangover. She has a feeling it's going to be nasty. Though probably not the worst she's ever had - she's not blackout drunk yet, and still has all her clothes on.] Thank you.
[She gives the food a curious look, not recognizing it.] What, uh, is it?
[Honestly she'll eat nearly anything, but she likes to know. Just in case. There was the whole cannibalism thing.]
[Maketh drinks some water, to start. It's not the same as the whiskey, doesn't give that warm sort of comfort, but she's beyond the age where she can really enjoy passing out drunk. Especially in the current company. That would be awkward.] Oh. That's...fortunate.
[Theoretically, Maketh can cook. She just hasn't in a few years. Thus far she's been happy surviving on canned goods and whatever Amos feels like sharing. This looks - good, she supposes. Probably not stuffed with human remains.]
Yeah. I'm pretty sure if she were still here, now that the uh... Wendigo problem's over, she would be saying 'I told you so' nonstop on the whole vegan thing.
[Sam's actually too nice to do that sort of thing, at least outloud, but the smugness would definitely be there quietly under everything else.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 01:00 am (UTC)You okay?
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 01:17 am (UTC)[It comes out automatically, a little sharp. It's the right thing to say, Maketh is fairly certain. She turns away from Chris before she can catch the look on his face.
Her hair is down. Maketh begins knotting it up with her hands, though she doesn't have any pins and it's fairly pointless. Much like this conversation, really - she shouldn't have responded to the text at all, shouldn't have done this.
No, the idea with the cell towers - that's good. That's useful. Maketh tries to focus on that.
She lets her hair slip from her hands. It doesn't matter. She's too far out of uniform already.]
Make--make a list of supplies you'll need, please. I will--consult my notes. For the proper locations.
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 01:25 am (UTC)Maybe you should sit down?
[He can't tell if she agitated from the alcohol or for emotional reasons, or maybe both. But either way, sitting back down is probably a good idea.]
I can get you some water or something.
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 01:31 am (UTC)[This is supposed to be nice, Maketh thinks desperately. People like going out and drinking, don't they? Except that she's the only one who's been drinking and that - that might be a problem, actually.] I'm doing this wrong, aren't I? I'm sorry. I don't--know how to do civilian things anymore.
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 01:51 am (UTC)[He means it, tone genuine and calm, and he offers a small smile to go with it in hopes she'll believe it and relax a little.]
We all just had, you know. Kind of a bad month.
[So he's worried about her, and hadn't really agreed to this whole meeting in order to drink but rather as an excuse to try and figure out just how concerned he should be. He's still not entirely sure.
But since he'd never been planning on this whole thing being a social, fun meetup, she's definitely not doing anything wrong. She still wouldn't have been even if he had planned on that.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 02:03 am (UTC)She'd thought herself friendly with the Inquisitor too, right up until he'd proven otherwise. And if she missed that, if she missed everything about him, then she's probably made a mistake here too.
This was supposed to prove something to Chris. That she was competent enough to deserve his trust.
Well she's gone and ruined that, hasn't she?
Maketh pushes her hair out of her eyes and turns to face him. She's drunk and sad, and should probably do something now to save face. Now she just has to figure out what that is.] Yes. A - a bad month.
[Is it that simple? Maybe she can pretend. Maketh lifts her chin.] You're not drinking.
[It's not an accusation. She sounds curious and more than a little confused. None of this is going according to script.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 02:31 am (UTC)At her comment he glances toward the shot glasses, his still sitting empty on his side of the table, and then looks back at Maketh. There's two true answers to why he isn't drinking, but he's not sure which to tell.
The main one--the first one--is probably best, for a few reasons, so he gives a small shrug as he explains.]
Last time I drank more than a beer or a shot or whatever, my friend and I really overdid it and passed out. Two of my friends--his twin sisters--um...
[Had gone missing, had been involved in an accident. Or at least that's what they'd all believed until the night before arriving in Hadriel.]
They disappeared. We didn't even know until we woke up a few hours later to the rest of the group freaking out.
[There's some peace in knowing Beth and Hannah are both at rest now, but not enough to counter the memories of his friend's panicked explanations, and the look on Josh's face when he found out the twins had gone missing. Chris' gaze is fixed on the shot glasses again, though his voice is still steady.]
I mean, if we hadn't been drunk and had gone after them we'd probably just all be dead, since we know now that they were attacked by a wendigo. But I just, um... Getting drunk kind of lost it's appeal, after that.
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 02:44 am (UTC)[It comes out soft, barely a murmur. Maketh clasps her hands behind her back. Almost, but not quite standing at attention. This way her hands won't shake. She watches Chris for a long moment, trying to read him. Properly this time. Of course he'd encountered the wendigos before this - before Hadriel - but Maketh hadn't really stopped to consider what that would have been alike. Here, the strangeness was almost common place. That hadn't made the events any less painful or nightmare inducing, but it was--
Expected. In a way.
It wouldn't have been, for Chris and his friends. They probably didn't see it coming. And if they'd been too drunk to react--
Well. Of course he'd feel this way.
And yet, he'd come out to see her. To check on her, Maketh knows. Even though she's been rude to him and probably damaged him somehow - possibly in a way that can't be undone, she really shouldn't talk to civilians at all.]
I'm sorry that happened to you. It - shouldn't have.
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 02:59 am (UTC)A moment of poor decision making or fractionally slow reflexes and there would've been far fewer survivors, Chris included.
He shrugs again, a little, at her words; not to dismiss them, but because at this point it just is what it is. It's still surreal that this is what his life has turned into, but he's trying to accept it and figure out the best way to proceed even if the trauma of it all can make that task sometimes feel impossible.
But that's part of the reason he wanted to check on her, too. He has his friends--he even has, as crazy as it is to think about, his girlfriend--here with him, when things get really difficult, and can't imagine having to deal with what happened at home, or here, alone. He doesn't want Maketh to have to deal with it alone either.]
Thanks.
There's a lot of things that shouldn't have happened. To a lot of people.
[Here and at home.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 03:09 am (UTC)[This isn't something that Maketh has a script for. Not that death is foreign, even self inflicted death. It just isn't discussed. People die either in service to their Emperor or in disgrace. She thinks - maybe - that Chris understands something she doesn't. Her mentality isn't built for this place. Therefore she needs to change.
This is a start, Maketh thinks.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 03:43 am (UTC)He'd already prepared, mentally and emotionally, to tell the story if she wanted to know, but that still doesn't make it easy. And it doesn't mean he'd thought about how exactly to say it.
But at this point he doubts she'll judge too harshly if it takes a few tries, or he can't find exactly the right words or if his voice isn't totally steady. The point of this is to make sure she doesn't feel alone--and maybe a little so he doesn't, either--and pretending like it didn't affect him would not only be dishonest, but possibly make her think she shouldn't be bothered by her own experience.
He's silent a few more moments, gaze on the table again, but this time he's staring through it rather than at it.]
The uh... The night before I got here was the night we first found out about the wendigos. There were eight of us and we'd all gotten kind of split up, and some of us ran into the wendigos like, right away, but the rest of us were dealing with something else that was going on.
[Explaining this might get confusing; it'd be easier with names, but several of the people involved are here and he doesn't want to tell their part in the story without them being okay with it.]
It's um... K-Kind of a long, totally messed up story, but there was this guy in a mask up on the mountain with us. We thought he killed one of our friends and was going to kill another one, so we were looking for her, and...
[He exhales slowly, quietly, gathering his nerve to continue and figure out how to get the situation across without going into too much detail. It's partially because of not wanting to identify people, partially because it's just so complicated, and partially because he doesn't want to think too much about the exact situation and the memories more than he already has to.]
The guy in the mask attacked us, and set up this whole situation where um...
[Words, Chris. He's the one who'd broached the topic in the first place, and although he doesn't want to pretend like it's nothing he also doesn't want to make her feel guilty for asking.
So he takes a steadying breath and continues.]
There was a gun, and a time limit. I-If I didn't do anything, me and my friend would both die when the time ran out. But the guy said that if I shot one of us, the person who was left could live.
[Whoever's left can live. The choice is yours.]
So I shot myself.
[He looks up, finally, offering a weak smile with nothing behind it.]
The gun was full of blanks. It was all a big joke; no one was dead, the guy was my friend that we thought he'd killed, it was just...
[Just a prank. Just revenge, for the loss of Hannah and Beth. Just a horrible, traumatizing betrayal by someone who had been his best friend for over half his life.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 03:58 am (UTC)That didn't make the betrayal sting any less. But the Inquisitor and Agent Kallus - well. They had never been her friends. She'd liked them, maybe. It hadn't helped. She'd projected. Saw things that were never there. She doesn't know a damn thing about friendship, therefore. Not like Chris would.
She does understand about choices, though. Weighing the value of one life over the next. It's no longer a metaphor for either of them.
For anyone else, Maketh would pour a drink. Say nothing, just push the glass forward. Think: forget. Drink and let the memory blur. Get sick and purge it from your body. Do it again and again until it no longer matters.
It doesn't really work like that. She understands that now.
Maketh nods just once.] Their life was...more important. Than yours.
[That's how she'd felt, at least. She'd failed Lothal and betrayed the Empire. Maketh hadn't been willing to fail Hadriel as well. These people were going to survive. Their lives mattered far more than hers ever could.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 04:08 am (UTC)[Her life was more important. Is more important.]
I don't um... I don't regret making that choice.
[It's one of the only choices that night that he doesn't regret, and wouldn't have even it had lead to his death and he'd still somehow been able to reflect on it. But just because it had been the right choice doesn't mean it was easy; gathering the courage to pull the trigger while the person he loves was sobbing and trying to convince him not to do it had been the most difficult thing he'd ever done.]
But it still... I-It still sucks. No matter how much I knew it was the right thing to do.
[And he knows it's probably the same for her.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 04:14 am (UTC)[Maketh is quiet for a moment. She folds her arms across her chest. Hugging herself, really.] That was when it - hurt.
[It was the logical choice. But not the only one, if she's being honest. Maketh knows she could have asked Henry to drag her to Hope's temple. Maybe it wouldn't have worked, but it would have been - an alternative. A burden less painful to put on his shoulders. Instead she'd given him the kerosene and ordered him to do as she said. It should have ended then.
But here they stand. Both of them, still alive. Maketh tips her head back. She's not crying yet, but she feels like she might. They're both alive and they have to deal with the aftermath.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 04:33 am (UTC)But fortunately all that had happened was that he'd been knocked out briefly, and when he'd awoken he hadn't even had time to be surprised--or feel anything at all--about being alive. They'd had to immediately deal with the shock of Josh being alive, of what to do with him, of Mike saying Jessica was dead and then Emily running back to the lodge screaming about monsters...
Even now, looking back, he can't remember even a moment in which he really thought about the fact that he was alive. Maybe it had just been too mixed in with the immediate fear that had led him to empty the rest of the clip of blanks into who he thought was a murderer, or the shock of realizing it was his best friend who had done this to them. Maybe the events of the rest of the night that followed--the wendigos and the death of the stranger and truly losing Josh--just drowned it all out; it had all been fake, after all, so it shouldn't really even matter right?
So the pain that she's talking about--he assumes she means the mental and emotional pain, at least--has come on somewhat delayed for him, fading in and out of the other traumas of the night and everything that's happened since then, and there's just too much to try to sort out. So he's stopped trying, except in moments like this when it serves a purpose.]
I wish I could like... Tell you something that'd help.
[Trying to make her feel less alone is pretty much the limit of what he's capable of, and he hopes it helps even the slightest bit.]
F-First person to figure out something that does has to share it with the other one, o-okay?
[It's a weak joke, but at the same time he means it.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-06 04:11 pm (UTC)[Action]
Date: 2016-03-07 02:47 am (UTC)Cool. It's a deal.
[Kind of a sad deal, but still. But the mood is thankfully a little less somber now, at least.]
I think the drinking some water thing's still a good idea, though. And food.
[He's pretty drained just from the conversation and he only had one shot, so he's pretty sure Maketh could really do with something more nutritious than alcohol.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-07 02:54 am (UTC)[She's going to have a bitch of a hangover later. Maketh runs a hand through her hair, tipping her head back.] Do you...want some, too? I have--cups.
[Other than the shot glasses, she means.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-07 03:04 am (UTC)[Now that things seem a little calmer he moves to return to his seat, his knee a little sore at this point, and also decides to give the servings of food he brought with him some consideration. He's not actually hungry, especially not for vegetarian food--though anything with meat in it sounds similarly unappetizing for entirely different reasons--but he's also not interested in feeling any worse than he has to either.
So food it is, and he'll see if he can convince Maketh to have some as well when she comes back.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-07 03:11 am (UTC)She goes to get the water, for lack of a better idea. Bottled water, instead of from the tap. She doesn't trust anything that the gods provide, but she's leery of drinking straight from the tap. There could be parasites, or something even worse.
Well, maybe. Hopefully not.
The glasses are clean, at least.
She sets them down on the table, next to the whiskey. They're probably done drinking now. Part of her thinks that's a shame. She takes a seat before that thought can spiral.] Here.
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-07 03:22 am (UTC)Thanks.
[In turn, he nudges one of the containers of food toward her.]
Might help with, you know. The doubtlessly impending hangover.
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-07 03:25 am (UTC)[She gives the food a curious look, not recognizing it.] What, uh, is it?
[Honestly she'll eat nearly anything, but she likes to know. Just in case. There was the whole cannibalism thing.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-07 03:29 am (UTC)[He pours some water but doesn't yet drink it, distracted by peeling the lid off his own container.]
I dunno exactly, but my friend made it.
[Before she disappeared, but that's a different issue.]
She didn't eat meat even before all this stuff, so...
[It's definitely safe, and if anyone's capable of making vegan food that actually tastes at all good it's Sam.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-07 03:37 am (UTC)[Theoretically, Maketh can cook. She just hasn't in a few years. Thus far she's been happy surviving on canned goods and whatever Amos feels like sharing. This looks - good, she supposes. Probably not stuffed with human remains.]
[Action]
Date: 2016-03-10 02:55 am (UTC)[Sam's actually too nice to do that sort of thing, at least outloud, but the smugness would definitely be there quietly under everything else.]
[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From:[Action]
From: