Know Their Names

[Namira]

((Garnet continued from We're Gonna Need A Better Boat))

Okay so maybe she'd got turned around a little.

More than a little.

It turned out that 'straight shot across the other side' of where Garnet arrived at the lake didn't, in fact, directly translate to being hot on Nona's trail. Garnet found herself in woods and some more woods, and by the time she realised that her worried pursuit was actually doing nothing for her, she'd basically hit coast. The view had been kind of sobering, honestly. The treeline sort of just ended and but for a few feet of scrub, you were basically walking straight out onto water. Not like, 'ahh I'm going to run off this cliff'; the drop wasn't that bad, Garnet just couldn't think how she'd get back up if she took that kind of fall.

That wasn't why the sight of the waters beyond had drained the frantic energy out of her. No, Garnet had just—it'd just sort of hit home how alone they were out here. There was nothing for miles out in that ocean, and sure, it was only one direction, but what kind of guarantee was there that any other direction wasn't the same? These terrorfucks weren't going to set up on an island which you could see from anywhere inhabited, they were smarter than that, as much as Garnet hated to give them the tiniest shred of credit. They were good at this murdering people bit, it was why they'd only fucked it up like twice in ten years. They weren't going to make dumbass mistakes, so anything they did needed to be smart and Garnet... Garnet just didn't know if she was that kind of smart.

She'd looped back around a little more slowly. Wearing herself out wasn't going to help Nona any, and her concerns had moved from the immediate panic of 'Nona gon'a die...a!' to 'what the actual Nona did you actually do that please tell me this is just a jump to a conclusion'. Which would be way easier to dismiss as a worry if things didn't make way, way, way too much logical sense. Damn you Dichard, your most dick move of all was actually just spitting truths.

Eventually, she started losing light and losing energy and just losing her... can. The final straw was when she saw the terrain begin to rise up ahead of her and with a sinking feeling, realised that this felt familiar. A few steps further to confirm and yeah, yeah, that was the incline that started up towards the waterfall. As soon as Garnet focused, she could hear the roar of falling water in her ears. Fuck off.

Garnet withdrew some, so the noise wouldn't keep her awake, flung two jackets over herself, then put her head on her backpack and tried to sleep in a dry spot between some rocks.

She woke up. She fell asleep. She woke up. She woke up. She fell asleep—psych she was awake again.

Eventually morning arrived and barely rested, Garnet sat up. She'd tried, that was something. She read one time that even just lying down and closing your eyes helped with rest, so she was maybe better off? She didn't feel it but she wasn't the most reliable person she knew so who knew if she could trust that feeling? Anyway, it wasn't like a good night's sleep was going to let her just shrug off everything that had went on so far—that PA system came online—which she was about to know more about.

Garnet sat there between those rocks, her letterman and the one with mightyena on it making that '>:3' face strewn across her lap. And, just as she'd thought she was climbing back on her feet, the world cut her legs from beneath her and smashed her knees with a crowbar.

Names came thick and fast.Terra, eyy FF girls represent! ...anyhow uh... later!, Phillip, hey, it's dorky but aren't we all kind of dorky? Don't make fun of someone for being passionate!, Ron, you're such a good team player, man, why you gotta be such a wang off the court?, Jeremiah, JE-RE-MI-AH *clap clap clap* JE-RE-MI-AH! Come on, make some noise! Look how good he's doing! Mercy, whuh—I am not oogling! Shut up! I can look at people! Regina, your vids make me so hungry I swear.

Those weren't the three that lodged in her brain, even if each of them brought more and more hot tears stinging to her eyes, along with the others, the ones whose faces she couldn't immediately remember or could only think of in vague terms. They were still people. She still grew up with them. The ones who'd killed, too, that was only one step off as bad, actually, worse in a couple ways. Garnet didn't want to imagine those people to be monsters any more than she wanted to imagine them dead.

Sapphire was dead. Garnet had been mad as hell at her for ditching like that and now she was gone. Just gone. Had Garnet even said anything to her? Had she given so much as a good luck, even in her head? No she'd been busy getting pissed off for the lack of support. Lorenzo killed her. Mr. green hair. The guy-your-classmate-warned-you-about. So that warning had carried weight after all. For all the good it'd done Sapphire.

Erika killed and that did hurt worse. Desiree was quiet, not a big talker, but she stuck in Garnet's head cause she reminded her of Shauna and Garnet had drawn her on the subject of games like one time while playing her DS at school. But Erika. Erika had been there on the overlook too. She'd ditched too. Should Garnet have followed her? Maybe she could have done something, maybe she could have talked her away from whatever moral precipice she'd decided to plunge from. Where'd she get a gun from? She hadn't had one, unless she'd hidden it. But she hadn't seemed like—what had Garnet missed? She knew Erika! She knew her, how'd it turn from that conversation to, to... that?

"So Song is really mad right now," Garnet was starting to buzz with that nervous energy where she knew something Big was going to happen.

"Right," there was a slight grin from across the table, and that encouraged Garnet. That wasn't a 'please don't derail the campaign' DM smile, that was 'Oh I think I figured you out' smile.

"I'm going to punch Strauss in the face," Garnet declared. Guy might have helped them, but he was a royal dick, snide, disrespectful of the other actually-nice NPC who got killed helping them last session, just like, yeah, fuck this guy.

"Damn. I wanted to do that," said Christine, making a mock sad face.

"Hell yeah, let's do this," said Erika, shifting in her chair and grinning.

The DM's smile got bigger. Uh oh. That was a 'you've activated my trap card' kind of smile.

"So, as Song takes a swing at Strauss..."

...and that was how Song nearly died three times in one fight but then cut a dude in half. What was it that Erika had said as Earynspeir, as he'd poured a healing potion down Song's throat? 'Next time you do something like that, signal me first? Perhaps a wink?', then she'd grinned, and Garnet had been there for a second, a battered and bruised warrior with a friendly wizard grinning down at her, offering her a hand up.

Erika. Her friend. She'd done all of that. And all of that was leading up to shooting Desiree in the head. Garnet just couldn't. She didn't, couldn't get how the same person could sit around the table with her for four years and then do...then kill...

But if she could play with Quinn on the same team for just as long if not longer, and she could do the same, then, well—maybe Garnet was just a fucking horrendous judge of character, huh?

The third one, though. That was the one that punched Garnet in the gut and then just kept on hitting.

Nona. No uh, Marco—which okay that was something she really couldn't simultaneously unpack right now sorry. Richard had been right. Horribly, terribly right. If Garnet had kept up, if she'd seen the warning signs, had managed to keep everything cool. If she hadn't fallen like a moron. If she'd been better, Kayla wouldn't be dead. That was on her. She knew that things weren't sitting entirely right with her companion, she knew that she needed to keep a close eye, and she'd failed, failed as hard as she possibly could.

Three people Garnet had met right from the beginning. One dead, two killers. And...and the numbers would only get worse from here.

She tried to dry her tears as she reassembled her things, putting on the letterman jacket, replacing her hat. They continued to flow at a steady pace, were flowing even as she returned back to where she'd seen the trail start to rise the previous evening. Garner stopped dead. There in the near distance, just atop a sloping path that descended seemingly into the waterfall itself, was the person she'd been looking for.

Garnet put her hand in her pocket and clenched the roll of coins, squared her shoulders, and marched towards the figure.

((Garnet continued in I Came In The Name Of The Dead, To Bring My Neck To The Blade

With thanks to Shiola and Boogie for the Erika and Christine dialogue!))