Please Refrain

[Namira]

((Garnet Barnes continues from I Came In The Name Of The Dead, To Bring My Neck To The Blade))

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Garnet Barnes sits with her back against her tree and her head in her hands, crying.

The announcements speak of death and more death. Garnet learns of the dead and more dead, and the killers to go with them.

She cries because she doesn't know what else to do, because she's tried anger and she's tried lashing out and that only made her feel better for a short while. It doesn't change that Cheri's dead and Rhonda's dead and Emil's dead and Erika killed and Quinn killed and Blaise killed.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

What's she supposed to do about that? She punched Marco and she can't convince herself he didn't deserve it but she can't convince herself that it was anything worthwhile and even it perhaps had been, that it couldn't have been something without her becoming a whole lot more violent than she was⁠—capable of?⁠—willing to be?

She can't prove Marco right, but she can't just sit here and let this happen.

But for now she's letting the tears flow because that's what she has to give, because her friends and her none friends deserve the grief.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

((Garnet continued in There Is No Passion, There Is Serenity)).

And she lost her fucking hat.