[IC Inbox -- Snowblind]

[heavensreader]

Is it worki - oh. Ahem. This is Kesara Freamon. Please leave your message here and I will call back on you as soon as I can.







Wait, is it still - argh, how do I ma-

Comments

[rattlingthestars]

I know!

[ Even Jim's not sure if it's reflexively agreeing with her, trying to sooth with her, or some kind of genuine agreement. He sucks in a breath through his teeth as he struggles for calm over the storm of you could have done better, Kesara would have done better, if someone else were here-. ]

I know.

[heavensreader]

Then why - !

[What a foolish, childish, pointless question. Where is the why? He was there and she was not. She might have done something - or she might have not - he might have tried to do something - it didn't work. It's over and done and she is wrestling with maybes and shades...]

His body, do you have his body? Did they take it?

[rattlingthestars]

We left him. When he finally died.

[ He doesn't try to answer her question, because he can't, or lie to her, because he knows he screwed up. Once he was thinking again, he realized they should've buried them, but - it had been getting late. They'd taken the key that Kunsel and Zack had died for and run for the next building. They couldn't stay, not with Zell seeing their friends' corpses as clones of Riley Sung, not with Jim falling apart. ]

Last night. They've already taken it.

[heavensreader]

[That, at least, she might have been able to rage at - there is a kick of it in her stomach when she hears his answer, and she is so very close to letting it erupt. Useless, useless, leaving them lying there, in the cold...

... dead men aren't cold. She realises that in a queer detached way that stops all her feelings in their tracks, and for the first time leaves any room for his. She wonders, dazed, if Jim thought the same thing. Don't leave them in the cold. It makes bile rise in her throat, with such force and suddenness that she is almost sick.

Say something, say something. Anything.]

They - the admin - if she's going to fix it, she'd need -

[She can't do it. It's impossible to believe that the admin could fix anything here.]

[rattlingthestars]

She'll need their - she'd need them. I know.

[ At least, he hopes that's how it works. That they may be something wholly new when they return - well, he's heard the idea, and he doesn't care for it much. ]

Still seemed... [ Jim visibly bites off his words, cheeks puffing out and sucking in. Wrong to leave them there, no funeral, no proper burial. ] ...Wish we could've stayed. But I'm not letting this be for nothing.

[heavensreader]

Don't stay.

[She says it with the sudden force that shows she is letting the words run free ahead of her, before something else can overcome them. It is wrong. No burial, no mark - an unmarked grave is the worst thing, the unfairest thing, to an explorer.

But it isn't worse than unrealised ambition, aborted discovery. And she must think of it in these terms - ambition, discovery, exploration and its demands, otherwise she will never make sense of it and it will be too much, too much.]

You have to keep moving. That's what you have to do. If you find what they wanted to find, it - [it doesn't make it better nothing makes it better] - it'll be the best monument they'll have.

[rattlingthestars]

We took the key.

[ Jim's thinking isn't that far off from her's. If this is the last thing the two of them do in Norfinbury - the last thing the two of them do at all - then he and Zell are going to make it count. ]

We're going back to the toy store to try it. Whatever they died for... someone was working hard to protect it. It's important, it wasn't for nothing.

[ They didn't freeze to death, or get caught by a random monster. They died doing something that mattered. ]

[heavensreader]

[Kesara knows these words. Weren't for nothing. She thinks they ought to comfort her rather more than they do. Now she's resolved to help Jim see that comfort, though, so she decides not to think of that. If that is the best story, then that is what she'll tell.]

That's just what Kain would've said - I know it. You know it even better than me. Even if one man dies, the Game continues, it's won as long as the work is done. You're brave and Zell is brave. You'll finish the work.

[rattlingthestars]

I know.

[ This isn't exactly how he expected this conversation to go. Jim's had more time to deal with it, he thought he'd have to find something comforting to say to her. The surprise doesn't register over the strength of his other emotions but later he'll appreciate it. ]

Thanks, Kesara.