fridgetothefire | 044 ☣ and your heart, as it was then, will be on fire

[Video, public]

My clothes are coming up bloody again.

[She swivels the view. A scraggle of emptied dark blue laundry bag coils limply on the floor beside a heap of clothing like a popped balloon. Individual pieces are dark with bloodstains, neither old and faded nor quite fresh: the matted rust-brown of a few days' procrastination. The marks are splashed or smeared across individual pieces; the stains don't enjamb from cloth to cloth. They were bloodied while she - or someone - was wearing them, not in the bag. Back to her face.]

For everyone keeping track, that's the third sign in the last few days that also appeared right before we encountered the other barge, and at no other time, along with messages on Morgana's mirror, along with people on the network who shouldn't be without a full-scale glitch and messages in Morgana's mirrors. Am I missing any?

Arthas is right. We need to be prepared, since we have the chance for at least a few of us to manage it, and anyone who wasn't there before who wants a better picture of what to expect should find a veteran to ask.

But I'm not sure it will be the same as last time. It can't. That place was falling apart. Not all wardens - let alone inmates - were allowed to leave during ports. Their admiral wasn't answering queries or supply requests, the death toll was becoming unreliable, Ellie blew up the kitchens, and the lower levels were shutting down and turning dark, losing power.

If it exists, if someone restored it enough for people to hang on...well. I'd be trying to jump ship. We've had a thorough reminder that passengers can take over the barge's course, with the right resources. Maybe we aren't running into them this time. Maybe they're running into us.

[What would that change, what could they do. Maybe it's some other manner of encounter entirely. She doesn't know, but it's the only idea she has. If that Anya wakes up in her room - could Anya leave her a message? What message could get her to do something approaching the right thing? There is another Ben from this barge and he is real, he needs you too. Something.]

Anyone who has any idea what actually happened at the end - it might help if we had a clearer picture of it.

[It also might not.]

[Private to Ben]

Everyone you trust should get some of your supplements in addition to whatever else they're stocking. That infirmary wasn't reliable.

[Private to Dean]

...how close were you?

[To breaking. Now is not the time to rely on guesses and arrogance.]

[Private to Iris]

Is there a way to get your bus from here to be a viable resource there?

[As far as Anya has been able to pick up, the things run on pixie dust and loopholes. Maybe there's a way.]

[Private to the Admiral]

...you gave us a warning, before Silent Hill. Not what it was, exactly, but that we needed to be prepared. Some of how. You paired us up into those groups so we could take care of each other, gave us some supplies.

You aren't doing this just to be cruel, I know you're not. We go where we go. But you tried to look after us, that time. And it worked, we only lost a few, it could have been so much worse.

If you have any better idea of what's coming than we do...some tips would be nice. Just so we use the time we've got better. No matter how much they complain I think most of the people here would rather you than the guy over there.

Anyway. Thanks for listening.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm scared of hurting my people, which seems nearly inevitable at this juncture, and of losing my home, which is not.

I'm scared that this isn't as simple as it seems, that I'm getting ready for the wrong thing. I don't know enough. So. I'm scared.

[Firmly, fiercely. Saying it doesn't exorcize anything, but she feels stronger in herself.]

[It isn't how Dean himself deals with fear - far from it - but they've ever been two opposite sides of a deceptively sharp-edged, unyielding coin. He doesn't think less of her for it. It doesn't mean he has any more clue what to do with it because those are all sensible things to be afraid of.

So instead he nods and, with astounding delicacy for a man that normally styles his behavior after that of a particularly weighty wrecking ball, admits to her one of his own along with the answer to her question.]

Really, really close, princess.

[A tiny, awful part of her is proud; more hurts. She can't imagine, now, why she thought knowing the answer to that question would help, what decision fork the data might contribute to. She just needed to know. She takes a slow breath, nods in acknowledgement, doesn't break eye contact.

But she is who she is. If it's critical - she doesn't need death contingencies. But maybe she will need to be stopped. And maybe that's an achievable task.]

If someone tried to interfere being me and you I'd ruin them.

[A preliminary obstacle.]

Maybe I'll write myself a letter.

[Dean watches her, and some deeply buried, darkly hidden part of him trembles helplessly in visceral recognition of that pride; he is otherwise still, steady, watching her. He does not fear her. Not here and not now.

In the past, he has; in the future, he probably will. But now the corner of his mouth quirks humorlessly and the murky hazelgreen of his eyes gives little enough away.]

I know.

Would you listen to you? With this?

I don't know. Maybe.

She was really scared, at the end. If someone made her believe she had a way not to go down with that ship, that she could bring her people...

[If she believed.]

And it's the kind of thing I do, leaving notes for myselves.

But we don't. Or at least we don't yet.

I can lie my way into almost anywhere for at least a minute or two, but I can't fool you. Or her.

She'll love you and hate you.

[Can a person sound frank and sorry and wistful all at the same time? She's making a good run of it. She thinks and thinks about the sort of person she is there, eventually sighs.]

No, I don't think she'd trust anything I wrote. She doesn't know me like I know her.

[And in order to operate, Anya has to know - believe she knows - what people want.]

So business as usual then, huh?

[He tries for one of his copper-bright smiles, gets most of the way there and pauses to cough, shaking his head.]

Would she take it, though? Just any out? She's in tight with some pretty unhinged people - they wouldn't do well here. They wouldn't do well just about anywhere.

[She purses her lips for a moment, rolls her eyes, can't quite keep her scowl steady through all of it, in spite of the sober moment, because hating Dean as she is, as he is, in the smallest increment - it's a little too ridiculous, even for the barge, even for Dean.]

It depends. They way things were when we left? Yeah. She expected to die that night, she thought it was all coming down.

If they've stabilized it a little...who knows. She loves that place, in her own way. But she won't stay on a sinking ship if she thinks she has options.

[The problem is, they don't know enough. They can deal in ifs, whens, buts, should haves, mights all they want, but they don't have any facts.

Dean isn't thinking of giving up, but this isn't his strength, even when he doesn't feel like something scraped off the bottom of a truck tire. He sighs, rubbing his eyes.]

Okay.

Look, the one thing... you already know this. The one thing I can't ever say no to, no matter what's happened, no matter how fucked up I am, no matter what's going on, the one thing I can't say no to is... if someone else needs something.

I was close, but not out for the count yet. I was trying to get the Marquis through the door because he thought it was home on the other side. He was convinced of it, so that's what I was doing.

Ned, too.

Ned doesn't remember much.

No, he wouldn't.

He was dead at the time, too.

[A muscle in Dean's jaw jumps, and he reaches up to rub his mouth with the back of one knuckle.]

044 ☣ and your heart, as it was then, will be on fire

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