The Spirit World

[Namira]

Shauna was liking the part where neither of them were talking to her. It gave her an opportunity to think. Attempt to. Honestly, every time she tried to slow down for a second the thoughts just skittered away from her, carried away on a tide of fresh anxiety. It got difficult to look at things objectively when the whole conversation going on was about exactly how the people lying dead on the ground had died. That Faith was probably right didn't really make Shauna feel better. Great, it matched up with her own morbid thoughts on what'd gone on before Shauna showed up to pick the bones. The still-warm flesh, the—her breath caught as she tried to breathe out some of the tension, and her eyes blurred for a second. Her contacts felt scratchy. She should be changing them out more but she only had a couple pairs and no glasses to—ugh, ugh. Stop it. Stop it.

She exhaled again, more slowly this time. Calm down. Calm. Down.

"I'm not shooting anyone, nobody's getting shot, I'm not even—" Shauna stopped. She was going to gesture with the shotgun but that was probably counterproductive. It stayed with its muzzle firmly towards the ground. She read about gun safety once, where Bucky lectured his naive understudy about not pointing a weapon at anything you didn't intend to kill. That was important. Still, as she sputtered it out, Matt wound up speaking some more. She tried not to look skeptical.

First Matt yelled at her and accused her of being a killer, and now he wanted her to come with them? She wanted to say no but... what if assuming she was onside was the only thing stopping him from blowing up all over again? She hesitated.

"I... guess that's true. Um, maybe."

[Frozen Smoke]

Faith nodded solemnly at Matthew's revelation of her name, and the relationship, looking away from both him and the bodies for a few moments. She felt like it was a familiar name, in an odd way, like she'd heard it before somewhere. In church, maybe, back when she'd gone. That gnawed at the back of her mind for a moment, as she flicked her attention between the two of them, making sure neither was about to lunge for the other's throat. Especially as Matthew gave the girl a chance to speak, and his own clumsy offer at reconciliation, it was almost like a mental check. The final few wobbles of the Poké Ball.

We good? We good.

It felt like a weight off of her shoulders as things returned to normal. The new normal. The tense normal where everyone was scared and potentially armed, with murderers on the loose and cheered on every morning, but with no actual direct threat to her life in front of her. Faith could feel the tepid nature in that response though, and it wasn't something she could blame her for, given the foot things had gotten off on.

She kind of wanted to press and get her to hand over a bag, even an empty one, if she could. Having to grip onto her sparse possessions hurt, she'd never tried to clasp a steel box in one hand for this long, and it turned out it sucked. But it wasn't like she had any way to demand it, or any right over it in the first place. With Regina, she'd felt like she'd been taking advantage of her, with this girl - Shit, it was nearly robbery.

Part of her wanted to throw the fact that Regina was her friend, and would probably have wanted them to have it in the girl's face, but that felt so ungodly cruel. She didn't need to be thinking about that. It would have been an affront to everything Regina stood for too, using her name as a cudgel like that to just get what she wanted, was the kind of thing that repulsed her the more she thought about it. It was a thought she couldn't shake as she tried to compose a response. Something to add to the conversation.

"You don't have to, either." Faith amended to Matthew's original offer, offering her an out if she wanted to take it, but quickly continuing. "Still - Probably best we don't stay here, I guess." She struggled for a moment to figure out why she felt that. To explain what made it bad to hang around the bodies, having a place in their immediate surroundings where she was trying really hard not to look.

"Whatever did happen made an awful lot of noise, and it's still raining. Probably best we just get out of here and to some place with a roof, right?" Faith squinted as she looked up through the trees, at the sky painted uniform dark grey above them, her expression souring to match them. "Doesn't look like it's gonna let up any time soon."

[Super Weegee]

"Yeah," Matthew agreed with Faith, "we should. We'll figure out where to go when we get our stuff."

Whether Shauna wanted to go with them or not, the plan's the same. Try to find any of their friends and avoid anybody who wants their blood. Considering some of the people who killed already, that might be easier said than done.

Before he decided to go back, though, there was something that he had to do first. He vaguely remembered what the bodies looked like before he touched them. Moving towards Regina and Caroline's corpses, he couldn't help but look at Regina again for a few seconds as numerous thoughts came to his head.

I should've been quicker.
I shouldn't have left you alone.
We should've went somewhere else.
Nobody had to die.

Crouching down, he moved Regina's body so that she was on her back. Double checking that Caroline was the same way, he moved Caroline's hand so that it was beneath Regina's hand. Like they were holding hands to be together in death, facing whatever afterlife awaited them. What awaited all of them, really.

Gently holding their hands in his, Matthew couldn't help but speak quietly to himself.

"I'm sorry."

With that, he slowly let go and stood up. Now they had to focus on getting their bags and moving on. Looking at the bodies, he circled around them until he was a few feet forward from where he initially found their corpses.

Looking at Faith and Shauna, he pulled his hood over his head and spoke.

"Our site should mostly be a straight shot from here." He pointed behind him. "We'll walk back whenever you're ready."

[Namira]

Mercifully, Faith also offered her a route out.

Shauna almost ditched so fast she made a cartoon 'PYOOM' and left behind a dust trail. Almost.

She hesitated again. This gun was really heavy. It'd killed Regina—no, Caroline had killed Regina with the gun. The emphasis did matter, but regardless, even with 'people kill people' in her head, without the gun, Regina wouldn't be dead. People kill people, but a gun makes it a heck of a lot easier. And now that power was in her hands and she definitely did not know that she actually wanted it.

Except...except the next time a Quinn came along, did she want to be helpless? Did she want to watch another Danny die?

Did she want to flip the script and pull the trigger on someone else?

The idea sent a shiver of revulsion through her. Killing anyone, anyone at all—having the means didn't mean it was right, able didn't mean should.

Just...was anyone else going to extend that morality the opposite way? There were all kinds of killers here. If they saw Shauna, they'd see victim. They weren't just gonna leave her alone. She barely knew why Quinn hadn't blown her brains out. She'd just barely started believing that her teammate wasn't creeping up behind her still.

Shauna slid a step towards Caroline and Regina. Studiously avoided looking at either Faith or Matt. She didn't know if she could do this if she saw accusation in their eyes.

"I'm just gonna, you know, um..." the shotgun's barrel trailed along the ground. "...um... ammo...and things. So I'll just..." she glanced at one of the pack. "A bag."

[Frozen Smoke]

This time, Matthew cradling Regina's corpse didn't seem farcical, although it still seemed so unreal to Faith as it happened. Something unknowable swam around in her stomach as she watched him say goodbye, apologise. She knew they were dead, but for some reason it just all felt so unintelligible as that thought bounced off of her skull, without the shock of the announcements or the fear of Tyrell running closer to her. She just hadn't been there, and another two people had been transformed into corpses, and that thought made her eyes trail over to the other girl. Faith remembered her name now, Shauna. She was in one of the sports teams as a sub, basketball, if she had to guess. It didn't matter too much, given that they seemed to be splitting apart here, but she was at least happy to be able to put a name to the face.

Faith wondered if she'd ever see her alive again, or if she'd just hear that name on the announcements.

Faith couldn't help but wince as she watched Shauna drag the barrel of her gun through the dirt, but at least that covered up the look of disgust she wanted to give her at her explanation of what she was doing, after watching Matt try and make sure it all looked as dignified as a murder scene could. Shauna didn't need to tell them that, she could have just waited for them to get out of sight, then do it. But, shit. This was probably the last chance Faith was going to get to say anything to her, judging by past experience, so she tried to keep the frustration out of her voice as she spoke.

"Alright. Take care out there Shauna." she offered, politely, walking away from her and towards where Matthew stood pointing out the direction of their little rest stop. She placed a hand on his back, just below his shoulder, and began to move forwards. If all that had rankled her, it sure as hell had a chance of setting him off.

"Let's get moving, man."

((Faith Clementine Marshal-Mackenzie continued elsewhere))

[Super Weegee]

“Yeah.” Matthew said as he took one last good look at Regina and Caroline’s bodies.

Looking away from them for likely the last time, he began to walk back towards their camp.

Whether or not Shauna did end up following them, he didn’t care too much.

He just wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.

((Matthew Hunt continued in Sun Giant))

[Namira]

Shauna's spirits lifted and then took a nosedive into an icebath of anxiety as Faith and Matt elected to make their move. They weren't going to stick around and judge her for being horrible and awful and not respecting the dead for even like an hour. They weren't going to crowd onto her and push her around, making more and more accusations about what she'd done here. They were also leaving, and that meant Shauna would be alone again. Alone out here in the trees, with the killers and the...other killers.

It shouldn't be hard. Go with those two or don't, some companions were better than none. But here she was, paralysed by indecision. Shauna just barely knew Faith, didn't know Matt at all. Maybe the anger he'd shown towards her was still there, bubbling beneath the surface until he turned on her and stabbed her to pieces (yes shutup that could happen maybe he had a really big knife, okay).

They were walking away. She should run after them. Her feet were rooted to the spot.

They were getting further away. She should run after them. She couldn't get herself to move.

They were vanishing into the trees. She should run after them. She was terrified of running after them.

Faith and Matt had been gone for time that stretched into minutes by the time Shauna finally looked down towards where the bags lay.

"I am so sorry," she mumbled, still averting her eyes from Regina and Caroline. "I just..."

Need to steal your things. Am alive and you're dead. Got miserably lucky and that's not enough for me I have to be a looter, too.

Shauna scrunched her eyes shut, snagging one pack by the straps and then pivoting around with it. Inside was a cluster of boxes mixed in with other supplies, food, water. Her eyes welled up and she sniffed, turning her head away. It wasn't right to take this, it wasn't fair or good and none of those things were actually going to stop her. Caroline and Regina weren't, they weren't using it anymore.

She wanted to hope they'd understand, but she knew that was just her own sorry attempt to make herself feel better.

((Shauna continued elsewhere))