Stop Crying Your Heart Out

[decoy73]

((Stephanie McDonald continued from Terminal Gardener))

The day had been uneventful until the announcements. Even that had become routine. Village was closed off, Blaise and Justin were still running around. Paloma had been killed - she'd gotten the very first kill. They were down to, what, thirty now? Stephanie shook her head as she reminisced and carried the bucket of water into one of the bathrooms.

"I'm freshening up. I'll be out soon," she called out. She then stripped off the clothes that she had worn for the past few days - ever since she had left Max and Darlene and looked over herself in the mirror. That wouldn't do. When she got home, she was going to need to eat something, and bollocks to the calorie count. She simply stepped into the tub and started spreading the water over her body. At least it would make her somewhat presentable.

[Emprexx Plush]

((Blaise And Carl D'Aramitz Continued From My 66 Faces))

Remembering which house they were looking for was not so difficult when each seemed designed in a mad quest for attention at any cost. Their sins were too numerous to begin to process, the words simply did not exist to capture their stomach churning visual noise; or perhaps they did not wish to, perhaps it was more interesting to dwell in the reaction than what inspired it, to stew in their feelings to twist and turn exquisite disgust without so much as one conscious detail in the mix, because at the heart of it the details could be whatever they wanted. They could imagine houses candy striped in puce and neon yellow, stained glass caricature of arcane figures lost to public consciousness, jutting lop sided frames, graffitied slogans, crude wards of this or that effigy, the bones of traitors and false believers, pyrite idols and zirconia accents, all of it could be truth or fabrication and it would make no difference. The purpose of each home remained the same, and they served function equally well no matter how their occupants dressed them. Decoration did not impair their function or change what they were at their core. Once you had been inside one of the homes it seemed you had been inside them all. Their owners had never succeeded in creating anything unique beyond superficial trappings.

Their retort to Anna echoed in their face, and they felt something not so unlike sympathy.

Touch a nerve you wanna talk about there big papa?

But they knew they didn't, so they did not know why they asked. That was not the game they were playing for the moment. When they had crept into the house and took a seat at the kitchen table they intended for Daria to return. There were signs that someone was staying here. If not her another entertaining possibility might present itself, and as if on queue they heard a voice far more impertinent than their situation merited. It bore no similarities to Daria, but they recognized it better than they would hers. It would have been a dire abandonment of their responsibilities to the local fashion scene to have not kept tabs on Stephanie McDonald.

Stephanie irritated Blaise. Natural gifts in figure and face were not a terrible sin in their own right. Ignorance to one's advantages created a sort of enticing naivete, beauty as a priceless uncut gem an artist may turn into a dazzling centerpiece. Likewise true awareness of one's advantages can remove third party interpretation entirely for an aesthetic only capable with complete understanding of one's self. Stephanie existed at neither pole, however; she was mired in the stagnant pool between them. Stephanie, they were certain, had always been beautiful. It did not require unusual effort on her part to be seen that way, and that itself was the problem. At some point in their lives people like Stephanie internalized as part of their identity that they were attractive with misattributed pride that they had something to do with that. They did not realize that their efforts were at their best those of maintenance, and barring catastrophe the results mattered little. Stephanie was no more bold with ill-paired shades of make-up than she was conformist with her mid tier slut ensemble. Short of shaving uneven zig zags into her hair and draping herself in trash bags there was little Stephanie's limited imagination could do to significantly change the leers she received. No, why take the half measure? Even with her head looking like a brush fire in stop motion and a Hefty bag three sizes larger than would be required to dispose of her, they could still imagine the football team's assuredly long running argument about who would fuck the dyke out of her first.

Mmm. She did not deserve that, but she deserved little else. Blaise had no reflection on hand to judge but they could envision themself, ears misshapen, stolen outfit ruined, wig desperately in need of treatment, filth indescribable all over their body no matter how often they cleaned...yes. They had fought to maintain this much. How horrifying a sight must Stephanie McDonald be nearly two weeks in with nothing and no one left to fawn over her? It was not the plan. There were many unknown variables. Checking in on her now required near suicidal curiosity.

So of course they were creeping towards the sound of dripping water before they finished the thought. Not without caution, of course. When they crossed the threshold their gun was at the ready, as was the smug smirk they wanted her to see when she was exposed. How had she been hurt? Had true stress aged her prematurely? Surely they had heard about such a thing now. They imagined her now in sloppy bandages, hair gone to straw, bags under her eyes, posture weak, defeated, the state of her nails, god, they could only imagine she was

fine.

Water cascading down her body hid nothing. Stephanie scrubbed herself eyes shut without fear of brushing major injury. Her face was no more sunken than an average day without make-up. The soaked curls of her hair would not have made the cut for a commercial precisely because they were so normal. She had not been inside long but she was still by and large clean. Regular baths. Regular maintenance. If they looked closely they could still see remnants of old make-up on the bitch's face.

Their smirk melted into shock, then a scowl.

"Do not scream. Do not move."

In that breath, they could not say why they did not shoot her. There was time to fabricate a reason. The evidence did not matter. Only their reaction.

[decoy73]

It wasn't ideal - most of the time, Stephanie showered under hot water. This was too warm to drink, too cold to shower under, well, normally. Of course, desperate times and all, and this did qualify as a desperate time. At least she could get the grime off and bring back a semblance of normality back.

"Do not scream. Do not move."

The voice was familiar enough. Blaise d'Aramitz was familiar enough - he ... she ... they were constant in their fashion sense in that they weren't constant at all, presenting vastly different styles in the span of a week. Of course the style that they were presenting at that very moment was "bloody psycho." Seriously, Blaise couldn't wait for her to at least get some clothes on before (hopefully just) perving on her at gunpoint?Stephanie's hands immediately and impulsively went up to her chest in shock.

"Could you at least turn around? At least until I cover myself up better?"

[Emprexx Plush]

"No. This will suffice."

What exactly's the play here hoss?

Shut up.

Cuz it looks like you're holdin' a naked un-com-furt-able gal at gunpoint.

Shut up.

While she asks you to stop.

Shut up.

And while murder and all may be one thing

Shut up shut up shut up!

Well I just reckon that in the current political climate, or shucks, any political climate north of the 1950s, well this just ain't the sorta affair you want yourself caught up on camera in longwise, you catch me?

And they did. Not in the way they babbled at themself in their own head but in the revelation that they were being viewed, a revelation that occurred often enough but it suited new purpose. They were observed. There was record. It stood reason that blank as she was Stephanie had noticed the cameras and perhaps maintained herself for them. Some crude vanity about how best to die young and leave a pretty corpse. Yes. Of course. She had not concerned herself with survival. They would find no dirt under her nails if they pried them off one by one. The very idea of sacrifice was foreign to her beyond an empty tube of lipstick. Yes. Of course. That explained it. All the effort that Blaise had put into thriving despite treachery and queer happenstance at every turn Stephanie had put into making herself presentable for her deathbed. They did not need examine her further. Their understanding was settled.

Can ya catch me up, 'cuz I'm powerful sure some of them words don't mean what you think they mean.

But the game had moved beyond their insecurity. There was new entertainment. Blaise let their scowl soften with a roll of their eyes. "Please. Dispense with your modesty. I am not interested, and millions will have seen your tits when this is all over." They shrugged. "Mine as well. I give us all...mm, a week at most before all possible pornography is collected from our deaths." A lighter tone than their command. One might even call it playful. The gun remained. "What was your plan? After you washed up, I mean?"

[decoy73]

Blaise just rolled their eyes.

"Please. Dispense with your modesty. I am not interested, and millions will have seen your tits when this is all over. Mine as well. I give us all...mm, a week at most before all possible pornography is collected from our deaths. What was your plan? After you washed up, I mean?"

Stephanie just looked at Blaise for a second. Seriously? Was ... were they kidding now? Were they just fucking with her? Of course, they had the gun, and even Stephanie realized that Blaise was perfectly willing to use it, given how many people they had killed.

"I was just going to clean up and then, I don't know, help with some stuff." She wasn't saying anything about Daria.

[Emprexx Plush]

The notion of Stephanie possessing the capability to help with anything was enough to make them snort, and that was discounting her likelihood to find the will. "Ah. Help. With what, exactly?" Disgust was no longer quite right. The reaction had simmered to something more even. Disdain, that best described their gaze trailing over her. "Help yourself to a manicure? Or the tangle from your curls?" Their eyes went from her to the room around them. Unless the only thing Stephanie could define as tragedy struck her, her bag would be nearby. Blaise was uninterested in the contents their captors provided. They wanted Stephanie's additions. All the trappings of vapid domestication quite literally clinging to her face as they spoke. It took but a moment to find her bag off to the left wall.

"Plenty of time for a makeover. You do want to look your best, don't you?"

Mm. There it was, that is why they did not shoot her. They knew they would find it eventually. There was an object lesson to be had, so much more satisfying than any catharsis they could derive from watching her bleed out in the tub. The bag slid forward to her against their foot.

"Before the end."

[decoy73]

"Plenty of time for a makeover ... before the end."

Oh, bugger. Stephanie looked at the bag, then Blaise, then the gun, then the bag. If it hadn't been for the gun, she'd have grabbed the bag and run off starkers. If she'd had the bat or the shield, she'd have hit them across the head, then grabbed her bag and run off starkers. Of course, Blaise did have a gun, and her weapons were in another room. So, she simply nodded before putting her clothes back on (no need to give them any more satisfaction) and taking her makeup out of her bag. She wiped off the old coats before going through her routine.

Step 1: Moisturize with beauty balm cream. Wait ten minutes to allow the skin to properly absorb. Skip the face wash - the cunt was pointing a bleeding gun at her.

Step 2: Foundation. 10NN. Apply using a stippling motion. Hurry up, that gun could kill her.

Step 3: Pluck and shape the eyebrows. She only had to do a slight touch up this time. Lucky her

Step 4: Eye shadow to properly contour the face. Extragalactic.

Step 5: Eyeliner. Roxy. Tight lining to the eyes. Fucking wanker was just staring at her, boring into her.

Step 6: Mascara to enhance the eyelashes. Perversion.

Step 7: Lipstick, Breathing Fire, carefully applied so as not to completely cake the lips, but just enough to enhance them.

Step 8: Nails. Remove the old coat with nail polish remover, properly file. Push back cuticles properly, apply base coat, and let dry. Then apply two coats of Big Spender and let dry. Blow on them. They weren't getting any more patient.

Step 9: Brush her hair. Make it as good as she could under the circumstances. Mainly just getting the kinks out so the bint would let her go.

[Emprexx Plush]

It was not a short routine. Setting aside the time it took to apply her products, which at least had the occupation of motion, more than once they found each other sitting in dead silence. Minutes passed while this dried or that dissolved or what other details faded into motion static. They could have paid attention. There was nothing Stephanie attempted they had not performed thousands of time, but it was all so painfully mundane. Her strokes were artless; their first instinct was to describe her more painting a wall than a canvas but that was too much credit. Stephanie still attempted a portrait but it was one by numbers, surely ripped from beauty blogs and practices until she could name off the steps by heart. There was no risk. No flair. In the face of death Stephanie had stayed faithful to her brand, pulling her final facade entirely out of someone else's box.

Well. It was her funeral. Blaise offered no critique throughout the process. They barely even moved.

Stephanie set the brush down with an expectant look but did not say anything. More dead air passed as Blaise appraised her head to toe in disinterested cycles. It was some time before they looked her in the eye.

"Are you satisfied with..." They gestured with their wounded hand. "This? Is it your best?"

[decoy73]

"Are you satisfied with... This? Is it your best?"

Now Stephanie just felt insulted. Blaise looked at her as if she'd simply stuck her face in a paint can and called it a day. Looking herself over, she would have felt pretty good normally - the damper on this was the clear and present danger of Blaise making her do this at gunpoint.

"I could have done a little better, yes. Mainly because there was a little stress in doing so." Stephanie glared as she emphasized the word "stress." "Maybe if you weren't holding me hostage, I might have been able to make myself up better. But yes, I quite like how I look right now."

[Emprexx Plush]

Blaise looked her over once more.

Smiled.

"As long as you are satisfied."

Their wrist flicked the pistol back in the air. One moment aloft, the next their hand wrapped around the barrel, the third slamming the grip against Stephanie's temple.

Likely she would have crumpled back into the tub by shock alone, but they did not wait. Blaise jumped after her, slamming her head into the basin's edge before cocking back again to strike her across the face. Hands weak with confusion tugged at their dress. Between one swing and the next their wig tore off to the side. Blood ran between their teeth and in a less focused state they would have realized that Stephanie was too far below them for it to be hers, that one of her flailing limbs had busted open their lip, but it would not matter. Stephanie had done her makeover. Now Blaise outlined the steps for their own:

Step 1: Break her nose.

Step 2: Shatter her teeth.

Step 3: Blacken her eyes.

Step 4: Smear her work with blood and spit and snot and tears.

Step 5: Hoist her broken visage for the world to see.

Step 6: Ask her, if she was somehow still conscious, if she still looked her best. Her answer or lack thereof would not matter.

Step 7: Put a bullet through her chest.

If they were honest it was not so inspired a look. Certainly one worn by many that had come before her, but then Stephanie had already chosen that path for herself. They were simply carrying it to its logical end.

So what angle would be best to fracture that perfect button nose?

[decoy73]

PAIN.

That's what Stephanie felt as the gun collided with her head. She didn't think it would end there, mainly because Blaise didn't give any delay before slamming her into the bathtub, and then they started hitting her. Over and over

and over

and over.

Stephanie, as soon as she got some semblance of her wits back, fought back. Actually, flailed with her hands and fists was a better term. Fighting actually assumed some sort of defined tactics. This, this was simply desperation. She barely felt her fist collide with Blaise's face, or her other hand tear at their dress and rip off their wig. All she could do, other than desperately struggle, was scream. Scream for Daria, for Jessica, for anyone to some and save her as she bit and scratched and punched in an effort to get them off her.

[Grim Wolf]

(Daria Bhatia continued from Terminal Gardener)

"I'm freshening up," Steph said, as Daria looked at everything in her pack. "I'll be out soon."

Daria smiled over her shoulder, and waved her on as she pulled her stuff together. When she was packed, she stepped outside, taking a grand circle of the little cluster of houses where she had spent the last few days, cleaning up the worst signs of death and violence. The sky was grey, the ground still wet, and the cool wind pleasant against her skin. It felt like taking a walk around her neighborhood back home. Everything felt so absurdly normal.

Nothing had worked out as she'd planned it: not her daily rants against the Announcements, nor her idea of making a place of solace where the injured and the exhausted could take a break from violence. But for days, she'd simply been able to rest, physically and mentally. To do what she felt needed doing, to say she needed to say to someone who was not a threat to her, who shared freely with her so that the old gnawing hunger was a distant memory. And the night before had been simple tranquility, as they talked, and laughed, and made their house look better still.

When she fell asleep that night, she was nervous. But not nervous as the past few days had been: not nervous in the wide-eyed, wild, fearful way an animal is nervous in the face of a predator. She was nervous like she'd always been the night before the first day of school, or before the opening of a show, or even like a Sunday night before the school week began. Nervous like she was on the edge of anticipation. Nervous like she was excited.

If Daria and Stephanie could find such peace, everyone could. Especially if Daria could lead them here.

She awoke with the Announcements, sat up in bed listening to Danya's voice. Slowly, she shook her head. "Nah," she said. "I'll get to you when I have time."

Steph was more important. Even now, on the cusp of soldiering out into the world, of facing her death again. She intended to keep excorciating Danya and the others, but she wouldn't let them set the timetable anymore than they did already. She...

She stopped. The skin crawled on the back of her neck. She turned her head slowly, as though she was trying to move beneath the water.

When the second scream came, there was no denying it. Still Daria stared, as the cool wind blew across the grey day. Who was screaming?

"DARIA!" came the scream, and there was no denying it, no denying Steph's voice, and adrenaline flooded through her and overwhelmed any thoughts but the need to move, and Daria sprinted for all she was worth, hurling down the back on her shoulders because it felt like it was in her way, her body burning with exertion as she tore back across the neighborhood, into the house, into the thick of the screaming, and there was Steph's baseball bat (could you use this you asked you asked) and it was in Daria's hands and the screams were more frantic more wordless more and Daria hurtled towards them, kicked open the door to the bathroom-

Blood and Blaise.

I've been lucky. Haven't really had to. Sure my luck's gonna run out one of these days.

I don't intend to. Defend myself, I mean. I'm not...I'm not playing their game. Even if it kills me.

Daria swung the bat.

[Emprexx Plush]

Daria.

If it did not require all of their limited stamina to pummel Stephanie's face in they would have laughed. Daria? Daria? That was her savior? Supposing she was Stephanie's only option she may still have been better off crying out for God, or her mother, some dead compatriot, anything to make her final moments appear less foolish. What was Daria going to do for her? Launch into tepid psychoanalysis of their power dynamic? Assemble a lecture on the morality of coerced violence while Stephanie bled to death before her? Some middle school level insults perhaps? Or was the best Stephanie could hope for that her death knells would prove a sort of alarm, and that by the time Blaise was finished with her Daria would have run far, far from this house with no intent to ever face the mistakes she left behind inside? After all, they could not have been together more than a day or so, no? The Daria that hid behind these walls when they met was a coward who screamed at faceless entities behind cameras but could not stomach the conflict to condemn them when they promised to commit murder in her name. She would not save her. She was incapable of saving anyone. Of this they were absolutely certain.

So certain that when the nails scrapped across their back, they felt no pain. The upending of their perspective hardly registered as they toppled over the side of the tub into the corner. Instinct set them curling into themself tight around the gun before they could fully register that they should be afraid. Unfiltered bafflement that anyone had come for her overrode everything else.

Of course the pain came next. Sharp and radiating in lines down their back and where their head and collided with the wall. Worse than anything they had felt before the island, but in their blurred vision they could see the tool in Daria's hands. Full contact in a less unbalanced position, a better called shot to their head perhaps, and they would not be getting up. If she came at them again, they would not be getting up. If Daria was the savior Stephanie believed, they would not be getting up. If she wasn't the helpless actress Blaise had left alive in this home, they would not be getting up. Every outcome preventable by their own actions, every one fueled by their own mistakes.

They felt no more pain.

They did not get up.

[decoy73]

It stopped. Oh, god, it stopped. Blaise was still keeping her down, although now, it was because they were crumpled over Stephanie. Stephanie was just in so much pain and it hurt so much. Daria had to help her get up, and she just sniffled out a thanks. And then she looked in the mirror. Blaise had ... they had practically mutilated her. Her eye was blackened and swollen, and she was bleeding from her nose and mouth. Her tongue felt an empty space where two of her molars should have been - it also explained why there was so much pain. Her nose, it was crooked. The whore had broken her nose. She wanted to cry, just ... crumple over and die and what they'd done to her face, or ...

"I'm ... goin to ..." She coughed. More blood came out, and it went on her clothes. They'd bloodied her clothes. "... bloody kill that fucking whore." She looked at Daria. She lowered her voice. "Give me th' bat. Blease."

[Grim Wolf]

Daria swung the bat. Blaise fell.

Daria swung the bat. Blaise fell.

Daria swung the bat. Blaise fell.

Over and over in front of her eyes, over and over as Daria helped Steph, bruised and bloody, to her feet (Daria swung the bat, Blaise fell).

"Thanks," sniffled Steph.

"It's no-" Daria began, her own voice shaking, and then felt the full-body flinch in Steph as her friend locked eyes with her own reflection. Daria followed her gaze (Daria swung, Blaise fell) and tried to look as neutral as possible, tried not to trace the swollen bruises and dripping blood (swung, fell).

"I'm ... goin to ..." Steph coughed, flecking blood down her front. "... bloody kill that fucking whore." She looked at Daria. She lowered her voice. "Give me th' bat. Blease."

Swung, fell; swung, fell; swung, fell.

The hand felt numb: her arm felt numb: her heart fell numb

(swung, fell)

Daria, still holding Steph upright, handed the bat to her