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goneawayworld2020-12-01 08:29 pm
piper90npcs) wrote in goneawayworld2020-12-01 08:29 pm
HERE, HAVE SOME SPIRIT
Who: Three Ghosts and the little New Hires
What: Sharing the Christmas Spirit
Where: Good question
When: Post-Rose Tattoo
Warnings/Notes: Possible violence, angst, likely visions of death.
Are you sleeping?
Maybe. Maybe not. It's hard to tell. This could be another ARE, after all. What you can tell is that the halls are filled with mist, the smell of pine, and the sound of jingling bells off in the distance.
And then comes the wailing.
Tearing past you, screaming like a damned soul, skeletal figures flood through the halls. Some of them wear business suits, weighed down by chains crafted from ledgers and money boxes. Some of them are soldiers, bound by their own twisted weapons. Police, politicians, no one seems spared. Someone whispers, warning you, begging you to pay heed. For you will be visited by three ghosts who are on an errand of great import.
And then something charges with a howl and all goes white. Slowly, the light dims, and the mass of spectral entities is gone. Instead there stands a figure, or maybe two or three of them. For each person, it's different, as they'll have different messages and purposes for each.
One is neither male nor female, the only certain features being a well-muscled, well proportioned body, wearing a white tunic and a beautiful belt of pearl. Its hair is long, white, as if ancient, but no matter how its face changes, there's no sign of age upon it. There seems to be an aura of white flame around its head and, in a voice that belies nothing but charitable warmth, introduces itself as the Ghost of Christmas Past. It will show scenes of someone's past, offering enlightening details with little judgment.
The middle one is a large man on a veritable throne of food, tantalizing and delicious, wearing a fur-lined red robe and a crown of holly upon his head. The Ghost of Christmas Present is a big man, with brown hair, and a booming, jovial voice that can turn blisteringly harsh and back in a single sentence. He'll show what the character was doing immediately prior to their arrival upon the rig. Perhaps what they're doing right now. But he'll also be content to walk either the character's home world or this Gone Away World, viewing the sights and people enjoying Christmas with the character.
And the final one, a phantom in a dark, green robe, green smoke billowing around it. Its skin is pale, pulled gauntly around whatever body part it exposes. The gaze underneath the hood is as cold as the grave, and it would be wise not to try to match that for too long. It remains utterly silent, simply guiding its guest through the Christmases Yet To Come with a pointed finger. It will show how a character dies and how they'll be remembered by others after. It acts cold and merciless, but this very visit is a mission of mercy, one it silently prays will succeed.
The surprise, though, is that they aren't showing the character that history. Instead, they'll be guiding their guest through someone else's life. Maybe just a fraction of it, maybe a full span. But when it's all over, it's as if no time has passed. In fact, no. The characters are returned to an hour before the ghosts visited them.
[[Remember, this isn't your typical memshare. The ghosts are NPCs, but they'll be controlled by the players. They will not show characters their own histories, presents, or futures, only those of different people. They can show the same scenes to different people or different scenes to different people. One person might not even see all three of the Ghosts.]]
What: Sharing the Christmas Spirit
Where: Good question
When: Post-Rose Tattoo
Warnings/Notes: Possible violence, angst, likely visions of death.
Are you sleeping?
Maybe. Maybe not. It's hard to tell. This could be another ARE, after all. What you can tell is that the halls are filled with mist, the smell of pine, and the sound of jingling bells off in the distance.
And then comes the wailing.
Tearing past you, screaming like a damned soul, skeletal figures flood through the halls. Some of them wear business suits, weighed down by chains crafted from ledgers and money boxes. Some of them are soldiers, bound by their own twisted weapons. Police, politicians, no one seems spared. Someone whispers, warning you, begging you to pay heed. For you will be visited by three ghosts who are on an errand of great import.
And then something charges with a howl and all goes white. Slowly, the light dims, and the mass of spectral entities is gone. Instead there stands a figure, or maybe two or three of them. For each person, it's different, as they'll have different messages and purposes for each.
One is neither male nor female, the only certain features being a well-muscled, well proportioned body, wearing a white tunic and a beautiful belt of pearl. Its hair is long, white, as if ancient, but no matter how its face changes, there's no sign of age upon it. There seems to be an aura of white flame around its head and, in a voice that belies nothing but charitable warmth, introduces itself as the Ghost of Christmas Past. It will show scenes of someone's past, offering enlightening details with little judgment.
The middle one is a large man on a veritable throne of food, tantalizing and delicious, wearing a fur-lined red robe and a crown of holly upon his head. The Ghost of Christmas Present is a big man, with brown hair, and a booming, jovial voice that can turn blisteringly harsh and back in a single sentence. He'll show what the character was doing immediately prior to their arrival upon the rig. Perhaps what they're doing right now. But he'll also be content to walk either the character's home world or this Gone Away World, viewing the sights and people enjoying Christmas with the character.
And the final one, a phantom in a dark, green robe, green smoke billowing around it. Its skin is pale, pulled gauntly around whatever body part it exposes. The gaze underneath the hood is as cold as the grave, and it would be wise not to try to match that for too long. It remains utterly silent, simply guiding its guest through the Christmases Yet To Come with a pointed finger. It will show how a character dies and how they'll be remembered by others after. It acts cold and merciless, but this very visit is a mission of mercy, one it silently prays will succeed.
The surprise, though, is that they aren't showing the character that history. Instead, they'll be guiding their guest through someone else's life. Maybe just a fraction of it, maybe a full span. But when it's all over, it's as if no time has passed. In fact, no. The characters are returned to an hour before the ghosts visited them.
[[Remember, this isn't your typical memshare. The ghosts are NPCs, but they'll be controlled by the players. They will not show characters their own histories, presents, or futures, only those of different people. They can show the same scenes to different people or different scenes to different people. One person might not even see all three of the Ghosts.]]
cw: brain gore
The sight before her is that of a very high tech hospital room. The gray haired man in the bed there looks peaceful, and is surrounded by a gaggle of elderly people. The group is smaller than it once was, but all of the surviving ones are there.
The man in the bed looks peaceful.
That Wash anyway.
There is another Wash standing before her at the door, one that flashes with uncertainty like the light passing through the tracks as a train chugs over them overhead.
He tries to voice something to her but his neck is heavily bandaged - a symbol. This Wash is one that accepted his neck injury and the brain damage it caused. This Wash is at peace with it, just like the other Wash is at peace with death in his hospital bed.
But something is terribly wrong. Blood pours down the face of the Wash right in front of her. A section of his head is cut open, a chunk of skull is gone, cut away with surgical precision. Tissue is drawn back. There are diodes and instruments sticking out of that section of his visible brain.
Even if Stacia can't lip read, the words "help me" are pretty obvious. He gestures wildly to the scene behind him, as if to say this vision of death is the right one, the real one, the most likely one.
And then the flickering goes even faster and suddenly the gruesome vision is gone. The serene hospital room and the elderly Wash remains.
no subject
The science-horror ghost-Wash is barely necessary; the locked door and the two wildly different futures give her plenty of information that something is up, that something is very much not right. She makes note of the edges of his head wound anyway, the man's going to be unconscious around her at some point and he doesn't have Garou healing to fade out his scars. She'll have to talk to his buddy from home, maybe he can give her more pieces to assemble into a fuller picture.
And, of course, she'll have to be very, very careful who she brings this to.
For now, though, maybe she can sit back and watch an old man pass away peacefully in the company of his loved ones. She doesn't expect to be privileged enough to see a lot of that in her life.
no subject
He's on oxygen.
"I think it's almost time," he breathes out, catching her gaze.
"Are you sure, Wash?" asks an older man wearing mostly pink. "You could still try that genetic therapy again, they said it's not too late."
"It's time," Wash repeats firmly. "The treatments don't last long enough. And I still feel like death warmed over when they're done. I hate it."
Donut sits back, his expression sad.
"If you're ready," Carolina sniffles and has trouble getting the rest of the words out, "then you're ready."
"It's okay?" Wash asks, as if it's not entirely his choice, because it's hard to let go of feeling like he needs to be there for them. It's like he needs permission.
"It's not our call," says Carolina. "It's your choice, old man."
She says "old man" like she doesn't look almost as ancient.
She goes on, "But if you need someone to say it...it's okay, David. We'll be okay. You don't have to keep fighting forever. No one can. No one should have to."
With that, she leans over to press a kiss to his forehead, and then one to the knuckles of one hand. The worry lines on his face stop creasing so sharply.
"I know you - I know it's hard to stay, but - but I don't want you to go, Agent Washington," says another man with an almost childlike voice, with deep sadness. "Because you're going to go, aren't you. Like most of Red Team. And Church."
It's still "agent" after all these years, because that's what he was when they met. And it's hard sometimes for Caboose to remember things. Especially now that he's older. Memory fades with age, and his was...never that great to begin.
"Think about it this way, Caboose," says Wash, "Where I'm going, most of Red Team is already there, setting up their base. And you know Church didn't get much done in all these years, so Blue Team's already playing catch-up. I have to help Church."
This is one of many timelines. In most of of them Sarge did go first - he was the oldest. But not all of them had Simmons and Grif pass on before the rest of them. In other timelines Grif didn't die after his fourth heart attack, and a heartbroken Simmons didn't die only several months after.
But even in this one they had lived a long time, at least. They all had lived a shockingly long time given the lives they once led. And someone or another was always destined to pass on before someone else.
"Church does get distracted, because he's always yelling a lot," says Caboose.
"Exactly. We've got to have both bases, right?"
"Right," Caboose agrees. "I guess that makes sense. Because then we can have the bases, and we can run back and forth, and we can yell a lot - I liked all the yelling - and we can play with flags. Just like old times."
"Just like old times," Wash agrees, reaching out a hand to briefly hold onto Caboose's. He finally seems reassured.
"I just wish this didn't have to happen here, in a hospital room that smells like disinfectant and arthritis cream," says Wash bitterly.
"This is bullshit," says an older man that can only be Tucker. There's something about the punchy tone of voice, even elderly. And some of young Tucker can still be seen in his features. "There's no reason you should have to stay here."
"They just want to drag it out," says the woman, Carolina. "Sometimes they lose sight of the fact keeping someone alive as long as possible shouldn't be the goal. There are ways around it but we'll have to fight them a little on it, maybe arrange for at-home hospice. We should've taken care of this sooner -"
"I tanked a little fast for that, Carolina. I should've - I should've planned... I just hoped after that last course of treatment..." He breaks off into a sigh. "By the time we get everything, I'm not sure I'll..."
The group all eyeballs each other over his bed, getting the exact same idea, at the exact same time, a shared braincell of pure chaos.
"Do you still have that portable ox-generator at home?" asks Tucker.
"Yeah, why?" asks Wash.
Donut is already on his feet and hobbling down the hall to make a jaunt towards the teleportation hub. He's one of the most spry after all these years.
"Wait, what's going on, what are you doing?" asks Wash.
"We're springing you from the joint," says Carolina, and Wash smiles.
It takes some doing and is somewhat hilarious to see, a bunch of elderly folks working in heavy cooperation to actually pull off the heist of a person. Despite the fact half of them need canes and Wash is in a hover-wheelchair on a portable oxygen generator, they somehow pull it off, all of them laughing slightly as they hear a nurse enter his room to check on the pulled lead from his vitals monitor, and say, "Hey, wait a minute!"
But they're in the elevator before then.
After getting him secured in their ship, Carolina asks, "Where to?"
"You know where. It should be evening time near...uh, the spot we used to go," says Wash softly.
The where is the hill-side on Iris, the same one he had dying visions of in the Bad End. They bundle him up, so the cool air doesn't bother him, and shove the hover wheelchair where it needs to be, helping him down to lay on blankets and pillows in the grass, having to arrange the same for themselves. It's not an easy effort, when they're all getting a little feeble, when some of them don't have the same mobility that they used to. But they pull it off.
Carolina helps arrange it so Wash is half lying in her lap, bundled, cushioned and comfortable. But Tucker is close too, winding a hand in Wash's, un-self-consciously.
"Love this moon. Best years of my life. But there were some nice ones in a few canyons, though," breathes out Wash weakly, with a warm smile. He draws in a long, quiet breath. "Don't know what else to say. There's so much I - I..."
His eyes water. Carolina's eyes water, too.
"We already know it, Wash. All of it. You said it all, everything we could've ever wanted or needed to hear. Even before Sarge was gone, before Grif and Simmons... We all got to hear it."
He sighs in contentment at that, at not needing to give a last speech on how amazing they are, how much he believes in them, how proud he still is, how much he loves them. At knowing he made it clear enough to the ones they already lost.
"Some...sunset...huh?" he breathes out instead.
"It's beautiful. Always was," says Carolina.
After a little bit of time, Tucker suddenly chuckles, remembering something.
"Wash, you remember that time that Caboose looked straight at it for too long and you had to take him to Dr. Gray to fix his retinas after?" asks Tucker. There is no insult in it, they all did ridiculous things that Wash sometimes had to play clean up over.
"My eyes were filled with ants and sadness!" Caboose offers helpfully.
But Wash doesn't answer.
"...Wash?" says Tucker, and they all look away from the setting sun.
His eyes are closed. His face is peaceful. His mouth is almost curved into the shadow of a smile. His last breaths weren't even ragged gasps or death wheezing, they were a sigh that went unnoticed because it sounded so much like contentment.
Carolina smooths a few stray tufts of gray hair off his forehead as tears stream down her face. She's not the only one crying. The setting sun glitters off those tears like the first stars that start flickering into being in the parts of the sky taken over by deep blue.
They hold him this time, not ready to let him go at first. They sit for a while that way.
The sun sets on Iris.
no subject
This is a much better death than the first one she saw. Old age, surrounded by the type of friends who'd bust you out of a hospital so you could die somewhere pretty? They should all be so lucky.
(She almost certainly won't be. She tries not to be jealous.)
Stacia starts giggling during the heist and doesn't stop until it's all over, though it gets damp there at the end. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and looks around for her escort.
"So, I'm guessing what I'm supposed to get out of this is that something's wrong with Wash and it's fixable?"
no subject
The image shifts again and both Stacia and the spirit are standing on the roof of a building, looking down on a street that leads to what may be the capitol building of a country or planet. There are an abundance of flags waving in front of the capitol building.
The spirit points down.
A funeral procession is passing through. Its moving slowly. Carolina and the others are acting as pallbearers, each of them with a hand on the hovering platform carrying the casket, the work of lifting it taken care of for them. The procession is going at the speed they can actually move.
Thousands of people are filling the streets. The outside walls of the building have had countless flowers and wreathes heaped against them, so much they might have to be bull-dozed later. His casket is draped with three flags, one red, one blue, and one that matches the flag on the capitol building, the official flag of Chorus.
When they reach what is very obviously some kind of capitol building, the flags are taken off the casket by an honor guard and folded with great ceremony, taken away to be preserved. His friends will receive the red and blue flags. The other will be stored in the Capitol building and someday be kept in Chorus' history museum.
The casket is lifted to a place of great honor on a dais covered with yet more flowers. A holographic projection of Wash's face the size of a billboard plays over her head, shifting through pictures. Some are goofy, some are candid, caught during times he was laughing with his friends. In others, he's wearing his armor, pondering over maps with a woman in grey and blue-striped armor.
The older woman that steps up to the podium to speak is wearing sharp, dark clothes that look like you'd expect a politician to wear.
A man introduces her, "First to speak will be former president, Ms. Kimball."
She is handed the mic. She takes a deep breath, steadies herself. Clearly this is hard for her, actually personal, like she knew him.
"We are gathered here today to honor the passing of a great man," Kimball says. "He had another name, but on Chorus, we all knew him as Washington, and he...never asked for anything else over the years. A long time ago, as the general of the New Republic, I wouldn't have been caught dead without my armor, due to fear of snipers. On Chorus, during the Civil War everyone wore armor, because those who didn't quickly found themselves killed."
"Today, I stand before you armorless as your ex-president instead of only an ex-general. Today, the people of Chorus go armorless too. Today, this funeral procession passed through a city and a world that has rebuilt itself, instead of one that destroyed itself."
"We were able to survive the Civil War we had been tricked into by selfish and greedy individuals trying to drive us to destruction for their own personal gain thanks to the heroes that helped us save our world: the Reds and Blues."
"While they were all heroes to the core, Wash always stood out as a leader. After the Reds and Blues helped us realize we had been duped, I was officially in charge of our combined armies with the late General Doyle. But to pretend we weren't in over our heads would be wholly dishonest."
"We had, as a people, spent years at each other's throats. We had just learned that the mercenaries we thought were aiding a lost cause had been the ones to cause us to fight in the first place. Doyle and I were the only leadership that was left, after all our superiors were killed, one by one by a war that was meant to tear us apart."
"Washington stepped in, and helped us plan our battles. He adapted in the field, helping us survive when everything went wrong. He trained our troops, never ceasing in his efforts to help us join together as a cohesive whole. But it wasn't just tactics that he helped us with, or team-building. When the Reds and Blues came, they gave us hope, but it was Washington that gave us inspiration. He made the people of Chorus - and his friends - believe in ourselves, at a time we needed it the most."
"It meant something when he believed in you because he was effortlessly selfless, thoughtlessly brave -" A slight shadow of a smile, like they're all in on the same joke - like they all knew that all of them were a handful. "- and infinitely patient, with friends who were learning to be heroes, and two factions of people who were learning to stop being enemies."
A pause.
"Okay, that's not entirely true. He was patient up until you messed up a drill for the sixth or seventh time because you were too busy slap-fighting with the soldier next to you because they used to be in the opposing faction. And I say this as someone who used to slap-fight General Doyle."
There is a light murmur of amusement from the crowd.
"Then Wash could be a tyrant, only because you deserved it, because you needed it. But when we weren't driving him crazy, he was encouraging and kind. He was relentless when trying to protect others, something that allowed himself and Agent Carolina to prevent a genocide by keeping the temple of the Purge from being activated."
"He refused to turn his back on a world that the rest of humanity had forgotten. There were many heroes during the battle against Malcom Hargrove's forces, but without Wash, it all would've fallen apart, and we would not be standing here today. Chorus would've just been rust and dust, its people long forgotten."
"So let us take three minutes of silence to say goodbye to a great hero, a respected leader, and a good friend. One minute for each group he inspired during the war: a minute for the Federal Army, a minute for the New Republic, and a minute for his friends, the Reds and Blues."
The silence makes room for the crying, from a people that have let themselves feel things again, thanks to the battering machine of war having been stopped. The older people seem most affected.
After the silence, others step up to the podium but the vision flashes to evening, a setting sun. Only after the long day is through has his funeral run out of speakers apparently. The casket is borne by the Reds and Blues into the capitol building and set on another dais there, to temporarily rest in state. Kimball keeps talking to her people.
"For those who want to show their gratitude, flowers have been brought in from the farms in the countryside." Though she remained composed for the speech, a few tears finally drip down President Kimball's face. "Let this be our last token of gratitude to Wash. We were a people that were facing doom and near starvation - and now we've become a people that grows flowers again."
Massive trucks filled with them are near the dais. His friends are given time at the casket first, Carolina linger first and the longest, her head pressed for a long time against the closed casket.
After his friends, the former president places her flower down next, with quiet words meant for Wash alone. Then other mourners stream by in neat lines curling around the dais, paying their respects. Many of the first to do it are survivors of the war, like some of the lieutenants.
Young children are lifted up to place their flowers. Families fell apart during the civil war. Children and teens lived long enough to either become adults with guns in their hands or didn't survive at all. No children came after them until the war was over. Just like the flowers, Chorus is a world that got to have children again, too.
Even after the trucks run out of flowers, the line doesn't stop. It stretches off down the streets, around a corner and out of sight.
The spirit gives Stacia a long and significant look. If it has eyebrows it might be raising one under there.
This is all she needs now, to know for sure. The man on the rig is not kind, not encouraging, and certainly not inspirational. He is not the kind of person who would have a state funeral. He is the kind of man that might get killed for being a traitor because he did something shady. And it is important that someone can see that things really have gone terribly wrong.
no subject
"Don't you give me a judgemental look, you're the one who brought me here and refuses to communicate beyond pointing and significant hood movements," Stacia says, mostly without heat. "I've literally talked to chattier rocks."
She watches the funeral in a contemplative silence, every passing minute making it more and more clear how different this Wash is from the one she knows from the Rig. This may be a possible future, sure, but it's clearly not the possible future of the version she knows. Something's wrong, something's been twisted, something needs to be put right. When the Ghost gives her a significant look, she rolls her eyes.
"Oh come on. You have to know that I was already planning treating his head like a puzzle toy. Metaphorically, not literally, literally would be gross."