Remember Everything

[Deamon]

((Travis Lynch continued from No One Gets Left Behind))

Even though everything was if Trav was being nice, pretty suck. He felt much better just being out of the asylum. Everything about the place felt off and gave him the creeps. It had a strange apocalypse vibe to it; as if life had only just ended. It didn't sit well with him.

As far as everything else had been since they'd left, uneventful.

That was a good thing

A lack of action was only good. It meant they hadn't met anyone dangerous, or anyone at all really. They had heard things sure. The announcements, the sounds of the other life on the island, the sounds of violence in the distance.

He hadn't heard Noodle on the announcements, that was the only good news. A lot of other people were playing the game; killing each other and getting rewarded for it. The longer it went on the luckier Trav realised they had been.

Slowly to a stop he put his bag down and lay on the grass on the side of the slope. Pulling some water out of his pack Trav took a few sips, he then thought about Cass and her well-being. Not her mental well-being but Trav imagined things must have been pretty taxing for her. It wasn't like they were doing a lot besides walking but the food quality and quantity was probably having an effect combined with sleeping rough. Like camping but even worse.

"How you holding up? Like physically?"

[dmboogie]

((The rain had stopped, for now.))

Cass sat down on the still-damp grass next to Trav, Wade trailing behind somewhere behind the two of them. Cass was honestly surprised that he had stuck around for the past days - he seemed the type to be driven mad by inaction; and he had been surrounded by nothing but. Cass and Trav's idle chatter, still doggedly refusing to acknowledge their inescapable future. Irene for sure would have despised it, if she were still following them.

Ignoring reality wasn't enough to prevent them from feeling its effects, though - Sandy was dead. That had come as a shock. The first fallen friend, the first to be more of a person than an idea. They had never quite finished their last art debate, had they? Still, darkly enough, he was lucky in a sense - if Heaven was real, he had people there waiting for him.

Back on Earth, Cass was glad to be back on earth. It'd be crass to blame all their arguments and ill-will on the asylum, but it certainly hadn't made any outstanding effort to make them feel comfortable. Nature was impartial and sometimes cruel, but at least it wasn't grey. Cass admired their surroundings, feeling grateful that Trav wasn't asking about how their emotions were holding up. They'd be there all day.

"Same as you, probably. Sick of this food. Sick of these clothes." Jesus. Four days without a shower. It had kind of just stopped registering, thankfully. "Dying for a single freaking cup of tea."

[Deamon]

Trav grinned to himself at the response Cass gave.

"Sounds about right. We must smell like the inside of a gym bag."

Thinking about it they must have looked awful as well. Four days of nothing but walking, sitting and talking without anywhere close to the proper diet. It was probably all accumulating on their faces but it wasn't like they would be able to notice it. After all they were too busy trying to live through every day.

"Yeah, a coffee would be pretty great. Hell, even a Gatorade."

The one thing Trav couldn't say was that boredom was getting to him. Whenever he felt his mind start to wander there would be something else that snapped him back to attention. Being able to settle was a thing of the past. It could always have been worse.

The grass was still damp from the rain but Trav didn't care about that, lying on some for what could be the last time was an experience he was busy savoring.

"Food is not great either, and I feel really dirty. But hey, I can fix that once we get to the sea."

Trav's fixation on the sea was simple, at least in his opinion. He had never actually seen it thanks to living in Arizona and never having been to Jamaica. So he was set on fixing that life experience but getting to the sea, he was going in it too. He didn't care how cold it was. He needed to at least get in the ocean once in his life.

He regretted the fact he would never get to go to Jamaica. His dad was from there and would sometimes tell him stories about the country and it's weather. Trav also knew other things about it, things he wasn't so keen on but he felt that he needed to go and experience his heritage. That chance had been taken away from him though, he was disappointed about that; it was one of only a few regrets he actually had along with fighting in the UFC and going to a Super Bowl. All of them things he'd had taken away thanks to his insertion into the life and death game he found himself in.

There was no point dwelling on what he couldn't do though. He was supposed to be making the most of the time he had.

"It's probably going to freeze me half to death honestly."

[shotgunkid†]

((Wade Cartwright continued from No One Gets Left Behind.))

"The only way we're ever getting those is through the best kill award-reward. I don't think any of us are-are really keen on earning that distinction."

Wade simply stretched out on the grass. This particular spot was very free of ants and mud and debris. Without any of the usual psychological barriers there, he had little trouble lying down on the stuff. Germophobia still put him off simply throwing himself on the dirt, until he remembered: no one had ever catched flu or measles or ebola from clean ground, right? His sneezing fits were allergic in nature, and they could set off anywhere, anytime. No pattern to them.

Trav suggested bathing in the ocean, and at once all the information regarding that flooded (hah!) into Wade's mind.

"You can't anyway. Saltwater's useless for washing. That's why navy showers have to be a thing. This close to the land, it's probably dirty. And there's fishes and shit to worry about, too."

Distant memories flew around as he idly waited the response. He didn't flinch as all the subtle cues of weather, land, and sea brought back vague images of half-read fanfics, barely-remembered but insanely high-quality artists. Every subtle cloud, every single blade of grass, every rolling wave held hints of past stories. Nostalgia was... relaxing. What was it like, Wade wondered, to participate in the fandom during the nineties when it took minutes and hours just to connect, web design was in its cluttered, primitive GIF-ridden infancy, and forums were these plain little things on Usenet? The most you had was FurryMUCK, maybe Furcadia if you were lucky enough to drop in after '96.

All those memories and experiences would disappear when he died. As far as he was concerned, the moment he winked out of existence, the universe might as well do so too. Painful twinges of regret brought the fear back. He tried to push it all out of mind.

Yawn. Thanks to the lack of sleep, he felt somewhat lethargic even this early in the day. In his experience, though, it wore off eventually. And he could only hope that it would remain that way, that he could stay alert.

[dmboogie]

Ha. Cass thought they were a cynic, but Wade was something else entirely. Witness: the mechanical man, stark and unchanging as the collar wrapped 'round his neck. Leave no wishful thought intact, allow no falsehood a chance to even get its socks on. Even if time and proximity had made Cass feel less uncomfortable around him, they still didn't understand him. At least it went to show that they and Trav still had their thumbs on the same page of the "How to Cope With Your Own Impending Doom" guidebook.

In the end, they supposed that they needed to have someone around to grab their feet and yank them back down towards the ground, if Cass and Trav ever became hopelessly carried away by their pink clouds of fancy. At least, more so than their current perpetual state of being. "Sometimes, the idea of something's more important than the thing itself, y'know?" They said, feeling awkwardly pretentious despite how earnestly they meant every word.

"I don't wanna..." think too hard about it, Cass almost said, catching themself as they realized how annoyingly well that summed up their entire time on the island thus far. "Uh, stress too much about the details before we get there," they finished. "We've walked this far, it'd be kinda sad to just turn around without even getting our feet wet."

[Deamon]

Way to kill the fun of the sea Wade. Trav didn't want to be harsh on the guy but his ability in social interaction was poor.

"Cass is right." Trav said from where he was lying. "Using the sea to wash isn't the point."

Trav did wonder if he would have to spell it out for Wade eventually and tell him that the entire point they were going to the sea was to go into the sea just because they could. He'd probably hate it. He was a guy that always wanted a plan. Trav had no doubts that if Wade went to a theme park he would make a list of what rides he was going on, in which order and at what times. There was a place for that, and Trav did have to concede that one of those places was definitely a death island.

For now plans could take a backseat to living what life they had left and getting to the ocean.

"Yeah, I just want to go in the sea man. I don't want to bog myself down thinking about all the dirt that could be in the water."

He had more important things to consider anyway, like how Noodle was doing and if she was ok.

[shotgunkid†]

All that was fair, but Wade still felt a little bit like they were trying to substitute for a shower. It was a fair point. He hadn't been keeping any track of peoples' bodily odors, but from all his previous experience they probably smelled like shit after four days.

"You've got a point, but still-" he shuddered deliberately here-"I don't think any of us brought changes of clothes. It's either..."

He didn't like to think about it here, but they only had two practical and at least vaguely distasteful choices here:

"... skinny-dip and have someone watch over our stuff. Or get some of these precious and irreplaceable garments wet."

Butchered words again. No stuttering, but it could be sensed that he knew the game was up but had trouble saying it. A few light tugs at his sleeves helped punctuate the feelings. This entire island, this whole horrifying experience, every single second and camera angle the terrorists could get would be plastered all over the world's information networks. Nothing was private or secret. In due time, the public would know all of it and endlessly obsess and nitpick over their actions. If they bared it all here-

Wade was only kind of prudish, but that thought really made him un-want the skinny-dipping option more than anything. In any other situation, he would've lent it some thought and dismissed it, but not here, not now. Even though they'd almost certainly not live to see the infamy, the mere thought of having it was enough to send chills down his spine. Their parents wouldn't only have to deal with the pain of their absence, but the shame of their actions, too. He could start to hear the trolling, backhanded remarks, and manufactroversy even now. How would they feel about all that? Could they handle the stress on top of the grief?

And then he recalled statistics showing how families who lost children to SOTF were vastly more prone to family breakdowns and severe mental issues than the norm.

"I.. really don't feel like getting in there myself, to be honest."

[dmboogie]

Unfortunately, Wade wasn't wrong. Cass hadn't packed any spare clothes, and they doubted that anyone else had. None of them had expected the trip to the museum to last the rest of their lives, after all. At least all of history's other dead children had had the luxury of packing ahead of time for a prolonged trip. They hadn't been forced to freeze the night away in tank tops. Of course, neither had the person who had left Jane dead and exposed in the garden. Cass could never match the resourcefulness of the unscrupulous, a fact they were grateful for.

Hm. Was it more depressing to die instead of going to Disney World, or to die instead of attending a routine school field trip? Did the fires of hell sear your flesh that much deeper if you had been promised paradise beforehand? Or did the jarring ease with which their mundane afternoon had been disrupted instead conjure torturous regrets of how easy it would have been to call in sick; only missing out on an event that no one would remember three years from then if everything had gone according to plan? 'This was supposed to be the best week of my high school life' versus 'I never even wanted to go in the first place.' Cass supposed that after the initial shock wore off, both would taste just as bitter.

All this meandering thought only served to ignore the issue at hand, though. Cass wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of being irreversibly damp and soggy for who knew how many hours after they reached the ocean, especially not when it seemed likely to rain again before the day was over with. Hell, it'd be a good way to get hypothermia. How's that for an anticlimactic end?

Skinny dipping was right out. Cass shifted uncomfortably at the thought of even being seen by Trav, let alone Wade and history's legion of metallic eyes.

Still, in the end, none of that really mattered. The idea had been Trav's in the first place, and Cass was willing to cling to every shred of non-destructive purpose they could find. Once they did reach the shore proper, they would be more than content to simply wade in ankle deep, pretend that the shore didn't exist behind them, spend some time simply listening to the weight of the gray waves and imagining that they were alone with the sea.

The ocean had gifted artists with inspiration for millennia, and making a final, desperate pilgrimage to one of its shores was the least Cass could do in its honor.

"We're not gonna force you to get in, but we're not stopping either," Cass said to Wade. "Got anything you'd rather be doing?"

[Deamon]

Trav closed his eyes as Wade continued to be the party pooper. Honestly he didn't care if Wade wanted to go or not. He and Cass were going and that was the end of it. Wade could stay or he could go his own way. Trav would have felt guilty if Wade did leave purely over the decision but he also didn't want to be tied down to someone who didn't seem to want to truly embrace their life.

That was the part he and Cass understood, more than the others they had met at least. It wasn't about struggling to survive from day to day. It was about embracing and making the most of what you had. It was what they had been doing since they woke up and Trav didn't see that changing. He pushed himself up off the grass and brushed some loose blades and dirt off his clothes.

"You can wait on the shore man, but I'm going in the ocean at least once in my life." Trav said as he picked his pack up from the floor.

And there was no changing his mind.

((Travis Lynch continued elsewhere...))

[dmboogie]

((There was no changing Cass's, either.))

[shotgunkid†]

"Got anything you'd rather be doing?"

In truth, no.

As a child, he'd been to ocean-side camping trips many times before, on isolated homes in quiet neighborhoods and deserted state parks. This wasn't much different, except it'd likely be near his final resting place both in space and time. He rarely got to swim; his parents were rather strict about safety, and there were very few times his childlike mind's want coincided with an adult's.

Their tone was oddly forced. It felt like the setup for some unwilling virgin kink story or whatever. Wade's gut response to such things was more about seeking the emotional high than the horniness, working from memory.

But they seemed understanding somehow. Given the still-gloomy climate, this certainly wouldn't make for your average fanservicey beach episode.

((Wade Cartwright continued elsewhere..))