+ Somewhere a Grandiose Carnival Was Going on in the Sky +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: Everyone!
Where: The grounds of the Mansion
When: March 9-16
Rating: PG-13 (warn if you go higher)
Summary: The Red Queen has thrown a carnival for everyone!
The Story:


From Friday, March 9, through Friday, March 16, the gardens and grounds of the Mansion will be a sprawling a carnival. The masked, unspeaking vendors will be selling trinkets and running free game booths. Carnival rides, exhibits, and foods represent all of the various cultures of those currently residing in the Mansion.


Of particular note, and perhaps incongruously, everything is decorated with red hearts.

Use this log for any and all of your carnival needs!

Comments

[keptnerve]

"What do you choose to do with it?"

Clementine lifts her gaze to him, narrowing her eyes as if she can read him more clearly if she looks closer at him. She's thirteen, but her body language is almost aggressive as she does so.

She doesn't say anything to the rest. She went through shit, and she made poor choices- she chose to fuck people over because of it- because she wanted to survive more than she wanted to help other people survive. She made her choices, and maybe that is why she ends up as a mirror on the other side instead of as a real- instead of as something more.

She doesn't know, but she knows she is tired of this shit.

[postictal]

It's a challenge - a thrown gauntlet. Like she expects the answer to be something self-serving, or maybe for him not to have an answer at all.

Tim jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tips his head to one side, considering how best to phrase it.

"I...look. I dealt with this - alone. For most of my life. Didn't really have anyone else who got it." And when eventually the people who did get it happened along, they were either in complete denial over that fact, or they didn't care that there was a wealth of similarity there, and simply wanted to excise it like a tumor. "And it sucked, okay? It sucked, not having anyone around who could tell me what the hell was happening. So even if I can't do - I dunno, much, at least I can do...this.

"Make sure that no one else was as alone as I was when it happened."

[keptnerve]

Clementine listens even as her gaze moves away from him, and her arms fold tighter across the front of her chest. Her hands are fists there as if she's always expecting a fight, and isn't she? Didn't she watch everyone she cared about die because- because-

Because she cared more about herself living than anything else.

She listens in the quiet.

"Yeah." Her voice is soft, quiet, torn almost. It's still so hard to trust but everything is hard to trust. She wipes at her face, breathes in, and then turns to him. "That's a- a goodhearted reason to want to help. I'm sorry you were alone with that shit for so long. The world's a fucking asshole."

[postictal]

"I'm sorry you were, too." He can't get it, he knows. Not completely. Not totally. He's never lived in a zombie apocalypse, and he's guessing she's never grown up in a hospital, in complete isolation. "But it's...like I said. Mirror, Real - I don't care. You shouldn't be alone in this."

She deserves, like so many others, to have someone in her corner. Especially seeing as she's not had many people who would, considering her paranoia, her distrust that someone would do so without there being some kind of gambit at work behind the scenes.