patheticvillain | thirty-four ➢ voice + spam

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thirty-four ➢ voice + spam

Czeslaw's gone. His door and everything is blank.

. . . I don't really think he made many friends while he was here, but. I'm going to light a candle for him, if anybody wants to join me.

spam } chapel

[It's quiet and still in here, which is good; it matches how Cassel is feeling. Quiet and still, like a windless world. He doesn't know what to make of this reaction. He can feel himself grieving, but it's muted, as though muffled by layers and layers of cloth.]

[With aching fingers he carves Czeslaw's name into a white candle, uses his lighter to light it. After a moment of watching the flame, he carves another name - Slevin's - into another candle, and Daneca's into a third, and hopes (doesn't pray) that they wake.]

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[Iris was not Czeslaw's friend. But she was willing to be, and she might have had more contact with him than anyone but Cassel, and this loss flicks her hard on the aching raw place where Victor ought to be.

She doesn't come to the chapel, but she slides a note under his cabin door while he's away lighting candles.]

I am so sorry, love <3 <3

Edited (rephrase) 2014-04-21 23:22 (UTC)

[He doesn't know what to do with the note. In the end, he leaves it on his desk where he can look at it regularly.]

[A day later, he sends her a text.]

ok?

no, and nor are you, but we will be.

for someone who'd lived so long, he really was so very young. I hope he's gone to somewhere with a chance of being all right. I hope he comes back.

older than people thought he was but younger than he thought he was.

he's dead now.

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[She knows what it's like to mourn someone most people didn't touch. She comes down to the chapel. She comes next to him, doesn't speak, lets them work side-by-side in silence for awhile. She doesn't mark a candle for Junko. She isn't sure she really wants her back. And she's had more than her share of elegies; she doesn't get part of this one. But she does carve Magda's name on one, in cyrillic, Sylvanas's on another in awkward, rudimentary Thalassian. Neither of them lost in precisely the same way. But she fears for them, and she'd pray for them if she prayed.]

[Cassel doesn't know what faith Anya had once, or has lost. He doesn't even know if she's praying now. They're just quiet together; he bumps her shoulder with his own upon her arrival, but otherwise doesn't approach her or move away. They are quiet and still, placid, together.]

[Eventually, he lets out a quiet sigh and leans his head on her shoulder, watching the flames.]

[She tilts her own head, so that it rests on his, tucked together like brunette gear cogs.

Excuses and platitudes dither around her mind. She remembers trying to write theodicy for Alex, when Pietro left, and feels abruptly guilty for not lighting him a candle. For not thinking of him. But she believes, now, more than she did then. The barge had confirmed some of his worst fears, made him think he had to choose between Wanda and redemption. The barge had not been helping him. She thinks of the things she said about Tosh, before she left, that it was not healing to be surrounded by people who resented you. She thinks about Helena, willing to make her daughter a Death Knight for good, stuck on it like the Magneto-thing in silent hill. She thinks of how good their wardens were, all of them that had them, reaching and well-suited. But something just didn't catch.]

I'm sorry. I wish I'd gotten to know him a bit.

Edited 2014-04-22 00:58 (UTC)