After(life) Party--

[soylentprotag]

[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.]

Comments

[soylentprotag]

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.]

[diesifkilled]

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.]

[soylentprotag]

... 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.]

[diesifkilled]

...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.

[soylentprotag]

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.]