Week Six

[stagemanagers]

[Last week, in It's Curtains, the weather changed, and with it your fortune in Dads. Discord took Salieri out - or perhaps Salieri took Discord out - and left the survivors with that much less impulse control. Nonetheless, a visit from a new friend might have provided a little bit of much-needed hope?

On Sunday morning, you'll find that the other side of the second floor has opened up - as well as the actual intended path to reach the roof garden. You can finally stop climbing up that rope every time you want to have a picnic or secret lover's rendezvous!

Outside, the weather seems to have calmed down. It's sunny again, with rather a lot of clouds. Though it's warm, the atmosphere seems very...still.]


Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

(( Be sure to submit your memory regain and your AC for this week! As always, Hester's office hours and the merch booth remain available. ))

Comments

[mayavericks]

You were a man that was wounded and left to rot, Benjamin. Any wounded creature, left cornered, will lash out until it can feel safe again.

[She reaches up, fingers coaxing through his hair, careful as can be.]

I want to ask you something. Will you answer me? [She doesn't wait, won't keep him in suspense.]

If the cards were laid out on the table once more, if you had the opportunity to begin anew, would you make the same decision?

[barberic]

...Start over from here?

[How could he possibly? The thought that he could have a life after this place, well, it's been the furthest thing from his mind for going on three weeks, now.]

Or go back, with the Judge still alive and in possession of my daughter, and my beautiful wife, wandering the streets like a ghost.

It feels like the actions of another man, still. I want to believe that I would choose differently, that I wouldn't let revenge drive me completely mad.

But to save Johanna from her mother's fate, or worse... I would still go after the Judge. What father wouldn't? When a man older than he is confesses his desires for his sixteen-year-old daughter?

[And who may it be said is your intended, sir?
"My ward... Oh, and pretty as a rosebud!"
As pretty as her mother?]

I would do the same for you or Farrah. Or any other girl here. If a man old enough to be your father wanted to have you like that.

[mayavericks]

I do not condemn you for what you did to that man. Anyone who would dare desire a child in such a way --

[It's clear by the lines of her face, the way her brows tighten and how her mouth pulls into a deep line, that she means it. Just as the SQUIP had gotten what it deserved for its crime, so to would this Judge. She feels no remorse for believing in that.]

I only intend to ask if you would shed the rest of the blood you did along the way.

[barberic]

[Even though he isn't looking at her, he can hear it clear in her voice. After all, he's felt the same.

He's silent for a long moment. The Beadle? Complicit, if not an outright accomplice. Part and parcel with the Judge, certainly.]

...I want to say that I wouldn't. I wish I could be sure of that, but... I did, once, I can't... I can't shake that. I can't undo it.

I wish I could. I wish...

[His words break off in a soft, almost inaudible whimper.]

[mayavericks]

[Maya only nods. She allows her body to drape over his, while her arms encircle his neck. She sighs against his shoulder delicately, while a thumb begins to circle at whatever bit of muscle or skin she can get at.]

That is all I need to hear.

I trust you.

[barberic]

[He doesn't expect it to be enough. Who would accept 'hopefully not' as an answer to 'would you kill again?' In an academy that deals in death weekly, with a harsher and harsher toll?

He doesn't expect her acceptance, and therefore he's blindsided completely when she wraps her arms around his neck, her body draped over his back. He tenses, holding his breath, until she speaks.

And then his body shudders, and he softly begins to sob.]

[mayavericks]

[It's a strange thing, trying to comfort an adult. Every stroke of her hand down his back, every caress leveled to his hair, feels entirely wrong. Juvenile, comparatively. But she's certain Benjamin would offer a similar gesture to her, and so she wants to repay it back in full.]

I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.