Signal Flare

[VoltTurtle]

As Juliette's words left her lips, Marceline found herself instinctively grabbing for the necklace that served as her only connection left to Dolly, without being fully aware of what she was doing

Her eyes remained transfixed on Juliette for several moments, before her gaze eventually fell to the floor. She tried to say something in response, but found herself coming up short amid the whirlwind of thoughts swirling around in her head. Growing more uncomfortable with each passing second, the explosive collar snugly wrapped around her neck felt tighter than ever before. Its presence was something she had for the most part been ignoring all this time, but with her mounting discomfort, she was more aware of it and the weight it carried than ever.

"I..."

How was she supposed to respond to something like that, anyway? Tears began to well up in her eyes as her throat began to close up. Juliette's words were sincere, but all they were doing was reminding her that the person she had cared the more about than anyone was dead, her corpse rotting away in some random, anonymous house. Reminding her of how she had wandered away, of how Dolly had been murdered in just those scant few minutes that they were apart, and of how she hadn't even gotten one more word out of Dolly before she finally died in her arms.

She couldn't tell the story again, there was no way she could force it out through her ever tightening throat. Back when she had told Roxanne what had happened, the pain was still recent, and her confession at the time had not been tearing open old wounds, instead merely pouring salt into fresh ones. Going over it all again in detail and re-experiencing all that misery once more would do far more harm than good.

"...I'm sorry, too."

That was all that needed to be said, and all that she could say. The pain of those memories was plastered on her face for all to see, and she felt she was entitled to not having to elaborate. The lack of explanation was hardly a respite, however. No matter what she tried and what she did, she couldn't escape the grief. It had been dominating her thoughts ever since Dolly had taken her last breath and left Marceline behind. The only recourse she had was focusing on her new goal to the detriment of all else, but that simply changed the despair into rage, as she was just now coming to realize.

Had all this been a giant coping mechanism all along? She supposed that it had in effect; it had obviously begun that way. She had picked a new direction to focus on to distract herself from how meaningless everything felt in the absence of her girlfriend, all in order to avoid throwing herself off a cliff, and only to keep the promise she had made to Dolly before it all came crashing down.

Even so, as Roxanne had so eloquently pointed out, it was a very suicidal coping mechanism. Perhaps Roxanne had been right to question her motivations, perhaps all this time she really had been looking for a good way to die and fooling herself into thinking otherwise. When she had been fighting Kelly she had not once truly considered the possibility of her own death despite the promise she made, and in hindsight she couldn't really say that if she had almost been killed by the shotgun shell going off instead of Roxanne that she would have thought much of it in the aftermath.

If she really wanted to take on the killers in this place, did she really, truly stand a chance? She could fight and she could shoot, but luck clearly was not on her side. Nearly everyone she had cursed with her mere presence was dead save for Roxanne and possibly Forrest, and there had already been a scare that had nearly resulted in Roxanne joining the ever increasing list of people she had lost. If Kelly had been a portent of what was to come, the path she walked now was certainly going to kill her, and she knew it. Really, she had always known it, she had simply been downplaying the possibility.

Maybe she had been wrong to pursue all of this, she thought. But no, that was stupid, what else did she have left, besides carrying out what she had declared she would? It wasn't like there was any other meaning for her to seek out, she was merely waiting for when it was her turn to inevitably die and join Dolly and all her peers wherever they had ended up, be it an eternal dreamless sleep or some sort of afterlife. In the meantime, she might as well try to make her death useful for at least one other person, right?

She didn't know, and she wasn't sure.

She had been silently thinking for quite some time, letting the other two carry on from where she had left off. She had long since sat back down and brought her knees up in front of her, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her face in her thighs. Returning her attention to the world around her, she let out a small sniffle, and lifted her head up to glance around the commissary.

[dmboogie]

Implication, implication, everything an implication. Roxanne couldn’t judge - she’d fired the first conversational shots, after all. Juliette smiled, but was it a politician's placation, or genuine relief at finding vaguely friendly company?

Juliette said she avoided looking for trouble, but she’d still thought it worthwhile to investigate the building, call out for Marceline. There hadn’t been any guarantees of how long Marcy’s shirt had been hung there, who could have invaded the commissary in the meantime - why was she worth the risk? Was there something deeper between the two of them that Marcy hadn’t mentioned?

She was definitely understating the severity of her ‘close calls’, though. Luck could only get you so far without weapons or allies, and luck alone wouldn’t leave you pristine on the ninth day. Juliette was trying to seem humble, harmless, but for what purpose? So they’d relax their guard, let her get close without realizing the danger? It’d be suicidal to do anything too obvious with Roxanne’s shotgun around, but maybe she was biding her time, trying to ingratiate herself with them, hang around long enough to ‘volunteer’ to take night watch, as long as they let her hold the gun, of course.

Or maybe she was just being paranoid. Caution was one thing, but Roxanne really wanted to part on good terms with at least one person.

Juliette was definitely winner material. Maybe the best hope Roxanne had of being remembered by someone other than her family. No sense in throwing that away so easily.

Their approximately peaceful atmosphere didn’t last for much longer, sadly. Marcy had come a long way since Roxanne saw her crumple into a teary wreck of a person for the first time, in the lighthouse, but all that strength consistently faded the instant anything reminded her of Dolores. By the time Juliette gave her fatal condolences, the damage was done, and she saw Marcy almost immediately begin to withdraw into herself.

Might as well give her friend some space. Roxanne shot Marcy a sympathetic look before returning her attention to Juliette. It’d be just the two of them for a bit.

“We were planning on heading out, soon, but you can stay for a while if you want. Or come with.” No mention of what they’d be doing together, but that wasn’t her place to say. Roxanne had tried out being faithful to Marcy’s cause, but their first explosive encounter had been enough to convince her that she could never truly believe in it.

It didn’t really matter, either way, as the announcement began a few seconds later.

Not anyone Roxanne would miss. Blaise killed again, and just hearing their name would probably be enough to set Marcy off on another crusade, especially given her currently renewed state of mourning.

She didn’t know Juliette well enough to guess how well she’d take the new list of names, or even give a token attempt at comforting her. She quietly waited to see her companions’ reactions.

[MurderWeasel]

"I'll see," Juliette replied. She was trying to both give Marceline sympathetic looks, conveying that she was there, and also implicitly offer the girl space, conveying that she was only as there as desired. "I'm not really sure what—"

Then the announcements rolled, and Juliette let her speech trail off. It was important information, and surely the others would recognize that and not begrudge her choice to clear the air and try to take it in. Or, if they did have problems with it, then that was information too, a valuable little hint that this would not be the company to keep for all that long. Another win-win scenario, though of course it was also vital to pay attention to things besides the announcements, to track the sounds of nature and the building in case someone chose to use the distraction to spring an ambush, to keep an eye on Roxanne and Marceline in case one or the other or both took poorly to something that came up and lashed out, to mentally ready herself in case it ended with their location becoming forbidden so she had her wits about her for a quick and safe exit.

A few of the names that rolled past got greater emphasis on Juliette's mental tally, mostly the repeat killers. Erika was still a conundrum, the quiet, more or less peaceful night they'd passed together not gelling with far and away the largest body count in play. Juliette hadn't been revolted by Quinn, but it would be a lie to say she was in any way confused by the girl's violence after their conversation. But that wasn't how Erika worked, or if it was she was an incredible actress to keep it buried so thoroughly even in the early days here. And of course, she could've had a good shot at killing Juliette and Connor. She was already armed, and they weren't. It was just...

But a name washed all those musings away.

Julien was gone.

Juliette's breath caught for a heartbeat before she forced it to continue its flow. She didn't want to tip her hand here. She didn't want to wear her heart on her sleeve. She wasn't even sure what it is she was feeling, why this was hitting her so hard. Julien wasn't her friend, not really. He hadn't liked her very much when first they'd traveled together, and while in their second encounter it had seemed like there might be a path to something a little more harmonious, he'd taken his leave abruptly and that had been that. She was only so positively disposed towards him because the alternative was Val's sneering, simplistic hypocrisy anyways. That was just basic logic, right?

Juliette let her eyes drift closed for a three-count a few seconds later, as she completely missed the next two names. Sloppy. A pointless slip. She tuned back in in time to draw an extra mental line beneath Michael's name, forcing herself to ask questions again. Had he and Erika actually met that morning? What might have passed between them?

It was easy to find distractions, really. They were everywhere, from the uninspired rhetoric and base emotional plays to the conspicuously questionable mechanical facets. The bay was off limits, but that left well over half the island for well under half the class. This was precisely the lack of pressure that had allowed Juliette to bide her time far from civilization, days whiled away alone in the wilderness calculating and planning and letting herself be distant from the screaming, agonized demises of all these people she'd spent the last four years of her life trying to empathize with and help and care for even as they threw it back in her face time and again.

This was what they deserved, right? This was the truth, the sort of people they were. They all had choices, Julien too. If he'd, if Val had... Juliette had offered. She was going to take him with her, and then let him go if he wanted, but she was hoping maybe he wouldn't want. His candor was refreshing.

"I can't believe they just gave Camilla hors d'oeuvres and a big thing of Coke," Juliette said, and her voice was cheerful and light. "They could at least spare a proper meal. If I'm going to murder someone for a prize, I want something you can't buy at Walmart."

She shook her head, ran her hand over her face, across her eyes, making her exasperation clear with a quick wipe.

"Where were you planning on heading?" she added. "I've spent almost the whole time in the woods. I know some good out of the way spots."

[VoltTurtle]

The announcements coming on shortly after she returned to reality forced Marceline to focus on something other than her inner thoughts.

She fished her list and broken pencil out of her daypack automatically, not registering consciously that she was doing so, her mind and ears focused entirely on the noises assaulting her ears with news of more deaths and their associated murderers. New names joined old, familiar names, being jotted down between the various tally marks being added. Erika, Justin, and Michael were keeping busy, adding more murders to their already considerable totals. The most harrowing name to hear yet again was Blaise. They still hadn't been stopped, Marceline still hadn't made them pay for what they did to Dolly, and now yet another person—Julien, a name she wouldn't let herself forget—had died because of it.

At this rate, with her current track record, would she ever make them pay? Would she make any of the aforementioned threats to her peers pay? Or next time would she simply get summarily gunned down without a second thought, just the same as all of their other victims? As she had been beating into her head every moment since the fight, she hadn't even managed to take defenseless Kelly down, and almost got killed right then and there, not doing so just out of pure luck. She could fight, she knew she could, she completely dominated Kelly until the tables were so abruptly turned, but would that really translate to any kind of success with her current, suicidal heroics? The current evidence, limited as it was, pointed to no.

So what then? What could she do to change that?

She wanted to find like-minded others and sway them to their side, but they had spent two whole days in a highly visible building, advertising their presence, with nothing to show for it save for some facial wounds and Juliette, someone who was hard to read at the best of times. How likely was anyone useful to join her cause? Judging by the other people she encountered, potential candidates were in all likelihood going to be infrequent, at best. Of those that could be swayed, only some of them would likely either possess a useful weapon or have demonstrated some effectiveness. This island was big, and nearly everyone she had found before were dead. How practical would it be for her to continue searching instead of acting?

Was there even anyone left at this point that would be sympathetic to her cause? So many had died already, and she knew that there couldn't have been that many of her classmates that had gone on the trip. More than half of them had to be dead at this point, or maybe even two-thirds of them, if she had to take an educated guess from the sheer volume of tallies that dotted the margins of the page clutched tightly in her hand. That many people gone, and what did she have to show for it? Absolutely nothing.

Even the two that she had noted had actually achieved something where she had failed, Arizona and Henry, only had one killer taken down to their name, each. They hadn't repeated that same kind of success today, and successes at taking out the most dangerous killers were in general fairly lacking. That wasn't exactly a vote of confidence for her ability to gather allies, and even among those who had succeeded, how likely were they to actually have the same goal that she had? Perhaps they had simply been unlucky enough to encounter Quinn and Volker respectively, yet lucky enough to walk away afterwards, having killed only in self-defense, rather than for any sense of righteousness.

So she was unlikely to find others to join her cause, she was even less likely to find useful people to join her cause, and even among the demonstrably useful people who were good potential candidates, her likelihood of finding and recruiting them was minimal, at best.

So there was nothing she could really do to change her current course. And if there was nothing she could do, nothing to escape the growing hopelessness that was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, then what was the point of continuing? What was the point of her list of names, what was the point of being here searching, what was the point of trying her damnedest to fight against the internal riptide seeking to throw her out into the blackened ocean of complete and utter despair?

There was no point, plain and simple. Nothing she had done up to this moment mattered. Nothing she would do after this moment would matter, either.

Marceline stared blankly at the wall beside her, half-listening to Juliette's question. If there were any good answers to where they were going, she certainly didn't know them. She both had nowhere she wanted to go, and nowhere she wanted to be. If anything, she just wanted to be gone, but she had made a promise that she had no intention to break.

A promise she had to try to keep, because it was all she had left.

"The garden," she responded abruptly to Juliette's question. "The one with all the graves and memorials."

Not the place where she had woken up, but the place where her journey had truly started. Where she had found Dolly, and where she had first met up with Roxy.

"I need... I need a place to think," she said, quietly. "And I think that... would be a good place for it."

[dmboogie]

If anything was wrong, Juliette didn’t let it show. Perhaps if Roxanne had placed her under a microscope she could have seen some subtle sign of distress, but if she was actively trying to hide any distress, that was reason enough to respect the distance between them. She had no reason to invade her privacy beyond morbid curiosity.

More likely than not, Juliette really was authentically numb, like her.

“It’d be a little disappointing but I don’t think I’d complain,“ Roxanne said, adding on to Juliette’s pointedly lighthearted comment. “I think I’ve forgotten what flavor tastes like.”

The goat meat had been more filling than the ration bars, of course, but it still didn’t compare to genuine food. Just one more pleasure denied to her for the rest of her life. She’d lost track of all the simple joys and freedoms she’d mourned in passing. Just a moment for each - it was too overwhelming to think about.

What would you call the opposite of a bucket list? All the things you’d never do before you died?

Juliette asked where they were heading, and that was the question, wasn’t it? Did they have any reasons to go anywhere specific? Marcy recovered from her stupor to answer, and Roxanne had no reason to object. She had no reason to agree, either. She was having a hard time thinking of the reasons why she’d done anything, over the past few days.

((“That sounds good. Let’s go,” she said, very reasonably.))

[MurderWeasel]

"Alright," Juliette said. "Sounds good to me."

And just like that, she was part of a group.

It was very, very strange. She hadn't really been in this sort of situation in her entire time here, she realized after only a moment's thought. The closest to it had been that night spent with both Connor and Erika, and for all that they'd found a measure of comfort and camaraderie facing the elements together, there had been that edge of menace, that piece of common sense that prevented her from letting her guard down because Erika had killed two people in rather questionable ways, and because Connor was Connor and thus prone to pulling exactly the sort of move that he had the night after.

Not to imply that she would let her guard down here, of course. But this was a different caliber of companion. Marceline had been reliably chaotic back at school, but she'd never evinced Teresa's obsession with inflicting petty hurt for the sake of inflicting pain. She wanted reactions, and maybe connection, and those were needs that could be fueled in less destructive fashion. Roxanne was more of an unknown factor, but here they were over a week into the game and the girl had a gun and an injury but her name had not passed their host's lips. The two girls were camped out together, had flown a flag to attract attention, and yet they were not sitting on piles of looted bags. This meant that if they were playing at something it was a very long game indeed, and Juliette had confidence in her ability to suss that out before it reached critical mass.

And besides, Marceline seemed too crushed, and Roxanne too weirdly detached, to be running a particularly subtle con. This wasn't even going to be like Juliette's one-on-one interactions. There would most likely be no digging for intent and trying to parse the balance between possible abrupt violence and heart-on-sleeve sincerity there'd been with, say, Julien.

Sometimes, Juliette chewed the inside of her cheek. It was a horrible habit, and one she'd spent a good amount of time trying to consciously stamp out. She often went days or weeks without doing it, but then something would bother her and she'd realize that there was more to it than just the issue at hand—she'd notice this faint undertone of pain as her molars pressed and ground at the soft flesh between them. As unconscious habits and tells went, it could have been much worse; it was, at least, invisible to the outside world. She didn't press hard enough to draw blood. It just hurt, and when she loosened her jaw she could feel the little dents left by her teeth, could run her tongue over them for a minute or two before everything returned to its proper state of smoothness.

She was biting her cheek hard right now, the pain pushing away other sorts of unhappiness, but that wasn't what she needed. She took some more long, calming breaths, and she let her lips retain their upward bent, and she rolled her shoulders and got ready to keep moving.

It didn't matter that she hadn't really searched the town. She'd found something better than a few moldy scraps of bread. This was something she could work with, a situation that had real potential for so many reasons, in a way she hadn't felt since those first few minutes on the boat.

Come to think of it, Marceline and Kelly had one major thing in common.

So Juliette went along with the others like she belonged, like she'd always been there, and walked kind of in the middle of the group, just like she usually did.

((Juliette Sargent continued in Play With Fire))

[VoltTurtle]

Just like that, and the other two had already begun to move along, at Marceline's suggestion.

It seemed as though Juliette had accidentally joined her cause, all without requiring Marceline to make a pitch. Perhaps if Juliette had been someone else, Marceline might have been grateful for the opportunity to set herself right and refocus on her new cause. However, it was a hollow victory, because Juliette was not actually going along with her mission, she seemed to merely be joining them due to some kind of obfuscated ulterior motive. From what Marceline knew about her, it wasn't out of character for Juliette to be looking out for her own interests, so it only made sense for that to be the case here, with her oddly distant behavior.

Still, try as Marceline might, she couldn't imagine Juliette's motivations being anything sinister. She liked Juliette after all, and they had talked enough back at George Hunter High for her to know that Juliette simply wasn't like that. Perhaps her motives were something as mundane as seeing Roxanne as a convenient bodyguard, or merely wanting extra eyes to watch her surroundings, or maybe she just appreciated the company. Marceline didn't know what Juliette wanted, but she did know that Juliette was not going to be willing to give her life to advance Marceline's suicidal and unattainable goal of snuffing out all of the killers.

Not that Marceline could blame her.

Because in the end, neither was she.

Not anymore.

She began to muster the strength to join her companions new and old, letting out a groan as each new movement broke her settled state of stillness and made her muscles ache. Even with the rest and the goat meat, all the hiking and malnutrition had really taken its toll. Marceline's body wanted real rest to heal it, real food to sustain it, but she could offer it neither. Instead, she just had to persist in spite of it all, moving forward even as her health deteriorated physically and mentally with each passing day.

What did she really want, going where they were going now? What did she hope to find at the gardens? Was it peace? No, there couldn't be any peace, not here. Was it acceptance? As if she would ever allow herself to accept this place, and everything it represented. Was it her death? No, she would not find death by looking for it, and she knew that. Death would find her instead, just as it found everyone else, in the end.

In truth, she didn't know what she wanted now, because everything she had wanted before had been stolen away from her. She had wanted to protect her girlfriend, and yet her girlfriend was dead. She had wanted to die to end her misery, and yet she still lived. She had wanted to kill to avenge those she had loved and lost, and yet she hadn't managed to do it even under the best of circumstances. Her time spent here had been nothing but a constant contradiction between what she wanted and what actually happened.

So was that what she hoped to find? An end to the contradiction?

She didn't know, and she wasn't sure.

((Plucking her shirt off of the flag pole on her way out, Marceline slipped it back into her bag as she followed her friends, her path obscured and wholly uncertain.))