camppetoskey | After(life) Party--

After(life) Party--

[Lenka isn't talking much, though he spends most of the time after the execution either expressionless or frowning, moving among the ones still left at the campfire to check on people and try to make sure none of them are trying to either follow Boa or possibly throw literal or metaphorical stones at each other. Probably everyone's too exhausted for any of that at this point.

At some point he disappears for a little bit and comes back with an entire table and supplies -- not from the kitchen, but from the stash he'd accumulated in Cabin 2. It's not much, but it feels better than eating anything from the kitchen right now. Nobody wants that.

There's just some crackers and fruit snacks and some cheese with them. A few baggies to take them to go since most people aren't hungry right this moment. Once that's set out, he'll idle at one end of the table, staring out into the lake.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Five weeks.

[He repeats it with something like wonder. It's been so long already, and yet it's passed by so fast. It's a strange contrast to the Holy Grail War, a conflict that lasted only a couple of weeks that felt like an eternity.

Then Lenka asks him about Red, and Shirou actually turns around to look at him. Because oh boy, is that a question and a half.]

Well, it's a little awkward knowing that my future self is in a relationship with her.

[It is indeed a loaded question, and Lenka had asked it before he'd thought it completely through, but well -- it's out there now, and they're going to have to deal with this part of the deeply awkward and unwanted Shirou-as-Archer jigsaw as well. The reason he'd brought it up is a little more neutral, though.

He scratches his head after a moment and reorients.]

... It would be. Sorry. I just mean... If Archer cares about Red, then how we relate to Red might be important. [in other words, maybe they can get to Archer through Red if they really need to? Shirou would know better about that, maybe] After this week, I don't know... how the camp will deal with her.

[There's a lot that most of them will probably have trouble forgiving Red for. If they can at all. And Lenka can't blame them for that. His own opinion of Red is a jagged mess, patched over with help from others and his own pragmatic willingness to do just about anything to get them out of here in one piece. Close to one piece.]

[Shirou scratches his head as well, unaware of the slightly comedic effect of mirroring Lenka.]

Being on better terms with Red definitely can't hurt, I think. No matter what people might believe after these last few days, she's really trying to help us. I actually really like her.

[He pauses then, suddenly aware that he's stanning for Red right in the context of his weird time paradox relationship with her.]

N-not that I'm... I mean, I like her, but. Not like that? [He kind of does like her like that.] What I'm saying is, she's a good person! But it doesn't even matter what I think, since she won't talk to me anymore.

[At least neither of them is a zombie, and so this has no underlying fridge horror effects. That wasn't a kitchen pun until I realized it was one.]

Uh...

[It seems like he's stepped on more landmines than even he expected to find here??

Lenka starts to try to say something, but Shirou's still rambling, so he sort of just... lets him keep going, even though it might have been better to stop him somewhere in there. It's at least good that Shirou has, er, good intentions when it comes to Red. Despite everything. He just did not need to know the other ways in which he and his somewhat douchey counterpart were alike.

Even to Lenka, that's pretty obvious. He does think it over for a moment.]

Well, if you think you want to work with her, then it's all right. [that is half the battle, or maybe one-third of it, because...] ... Red won't talk to you? What happened?

[Even when he himself had been somewhat hostile and grilling her in the early weeks, she'd been... pretty cool-headed about the situation. So this is new.]

[Talking about women with Shirou always leads to landmines of stammering and rambling and weirdness. It's about time you learned this, Lenka.]

Uh.

[He does realise he's said too much, though, so he quickly takes the chance to move on from the more dangerous subjects related to Red.]

I pissed her off last Tuesday. She threw me in gay baby jail and hasn't had a proper conversation with me since. She'll still talk if I go up to her in the mess hall or whatever, but anything beyond that...

[He sighs in confused resignation.]

I tried to apologise, but apparently I wasn't sorry for the right thing or something like that? She's been really weird about it.

[It really is about time he learned it, even though now he knows canoodling details about both versions of Shirou that he'd rather not know, especially in the wake of Usagi and Boa and that whole... mess... So it's just as well that they're both ready to move on immediately.]

Hmm. And she won't tell you what she's mad about.

[Shirou himself doesn't seem to be interested in mentioning it, though Lenka is obliquely prodding a little to see if he'll get more details. Shirou and Red has always been a bit yelly and contentious. All the same, though -- if it's something that's riled Red up this much, to the point where she's actually kicking him out of her room or something... then it's something different.

He gives it some thought, looking around the kitchen at the bubbling soup and whatever else is currently on the stove or counters.]

... Does Red like your cooking as much as the rest of us?

Of course she won't. That's what she's always like.

[As much as he's grown fond of Red, Shirou still rolls his eyes at her cryptic behaviour. Everything is a puzzle with her, and it gets really annoying. Especially if you're a dumbass like Shirou.]

It's probably something to do with me wanting to save people, but I really don't know why she'd take that much offense over that, so...

[SHRUG. It is a mystery!]

She likes extra spicy curry. I've made it for her a few times, but I doubt it would be enough to get her forgiveness.

It is what she's like. But...

[Lenka is used to dealing with Red's cryptic everything by now; back home was like that too, layers upon layers of classified information until his head was spinning. Of course sometimes it's irritating, which is why sometimes he stops himself from speaking to her -- he knows himself and his own temper and shortcomings, and this week has been a bad time of it. He'll need to see her soon, because there's a lot he needs to ask her. But still...

He's thinking this over, thinking over his own experiences with her.]

I think self-sacrifice is a touchy subject with her.

[And he knows why that is, in some aspects, and of course he knows Shirou; but he doesn't have a lot of good suggestions for appeasing her. Other than...]

Even if just the curry isn't enough, if you try it a few times, it can't hurt. It might make it easier to talk to her.

[... show up at her door or anywhere else like a sad kicked puppy with spicy curry offerings. She might take pity on him eventually.]

[...Oh. She had said something about throwing his life away, hadn't she? He hadn't really considered that to be related in any way, since. Everybody always complains to him about that. And why should she care, anyhow? It's not like him dying would hurt her in any way, right?]

If self-sacrifice is the problem... I don't know if I can fix that.

[It's not like he doesn't know he's messed up. He knows the way he thinks is stupid and useless and wrong, that he should just get over it. But he can't. Because... if he can't give his life to save someone else, what's the point in him being alive at all? If he can't become a hero like Kiritsugu, why did he survive the fire? Why did he make it when those kids in the basement didn't?

This foolish, pointless ideal is all he has. It's already been battered by every day at this camp, maybe broken for good after today, but he still has to cling to it. If he doesn't, he won't be able to keep going.]

I'll... I'll try the curry.

Then don't fix it.

[You don't offer to die for someone else if you aren't a little broken in some way.

Much less multiple times, over a period of weeks on end, and enough of them are broken in similar ways that you'd have to wonder about it without an understanding of it -- and Lenka does understand, because while none of them have ever faced anything quite like this camp...

Sometimes you survive, because other people don't. You survive in their place, and take them up as your reason to keep going, and the load gets heavier and heavier and heavier and harder to justify.]

Use it in a different way. I think there are things here that just sacrificing yourself won't solve. [and he thinks Shirou knows that but... all the same] She asked me to promise, you know. Red. I promised her I wouldn't make her kill me.

[It's one of the reasons -- sometimes the only reason -- he hasn't offered again, even when he wanted to each week, every time, last week-- Because she'd asked him to. Given him an excuse to be here, because that's what it is, of course.

He's still searching for the real reason.]

She asked you...

[It's like a switch flips in his head, hard enough that it's almost a physical sensation, and for a moment he stupidly wonders if Lenka just made him activate his magic circuit with words alone.

But it's not mana that's churning in his brain now, it's a sudden realisation.]

I... never really thought about her feelings at all, did I? I thought I did, but...

[It's not like he's never realised that his death would hurt other people. It's why he had to hold back last week, to protect Usagi's feelings. But suddenly, for some reason the way he's hearing it now makes him actually believe it.]

I... I think I get it now. At least a little. [It's just a tiny flicker of a reason to keep going, but it's more than he's had for a while.]

... Yeah. I didn't get it back then, either.

[Back when he still knew relatively little about Red, but it was somehow easier to tell she cared, before all that's happened -- the executions and the endless blood, Stan and the coral stoning and seeing the dead each time he closes his eyes, Red always there with them and burned into each scene in his memory. But all the same, he's going to do what he can to keep this promise.

It might be one of the few things he can do at the moment, in a place like this.

Lenka's expression relaxes a little in response to the probably poleaxed expression on Shirou's face -- it's pretty impressive, actually, but it puts him at ease a little now. Hopefully it'll help with Red herself, too; Shirou can be difficult, but he's not malicious, just trying too hard to protect what he can.]

She's just following orders, I know. [like the God Eaters back home, the ones who deal with the infected; like he might be expected to, one day; like she didn't do, with Lance, and somehow that comes through more vividly now that they're here on the other side of Saturday] I don't know what else to do to help. But I want to change what happens here. So she doesn't have to do this again, next year. So nobody has to.

[It's said very quietly, but he does say it -- something he's rarely put into words until now, but it's still important to him. It's always been there, beneath everything else.]

...Yeah. She deserves better than this. Everyone here does.

[No one should have to come to this camp and be sacrificed in such a ridiculous ritual, but... no one should have to oversee it either.]

I just hope we can change it.

Yes.

[He remembers, suddenly, Red telling him We're not real people to them and that includes Red, and Stan and even Archer. It's something he's known, but perhaps something he hasn't felt as viscerally as he has lately. Those working at this camp are trapped here with them just as surely as the dead are trapped within themselves.

All of this is a trap, slowly, slowly closing like a giant set of jaws over all of their lives. All they can do for the moment is try to hold it open. The cost in lives and blood.]

We have to change it. For everyone. And -- and the dead.

[They don't have many other options. He can't see anything else now.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After(life) Party--

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject