robowest | [ DEPARTURE ]

DEPARTURE

It's time to go.

Most people are on the train by now. Settled into their cabins and among friends and loved ones. There are only three new arrivals left to board and once they do, Hal pulls a conductor's hat out from underneath the bar, tugs it on, and steps around it to the middle of the train. He opens his mouth to talk, voice filling the train.

"It's time to go. Stops happen once a day until everyone's departed and I already have your stopped listed. If you'd like to be prioritized, let me know, otherwise we'll go in order of death. Settle in and enjoy the ride. If there's anything you need, don't hesitate to ask, folks."

This, of course, means that those who died earliest (Manfred, Higekiri) will depart first while those who died latest (Barnham, Damian, Percy) will depart last. There's a stop for everyone, though those who want to get off together are more than welcome to. Hal pulls a notepad and pen out of his pocket later and people will notice that he goes around the train confirming stops with everyone. Whatever feeling Hal may have had to a character back in town isn't noticeable here -- he is simply a robot assigned with a job.

After that, it's all a matter of settling in and enjoying the ride. If that's possible for you, at least.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Nisha was pretty disaffected from the latter half of that game for various reasons, and doesn't have any particularly emotional farewells to make, but she does have feelings about them all being sent home. Mixed feelings, but there are some good ones in there.

So she's sitting by herself, sipping a final glass of whiskey with one hand and absently twirling her pistol (it has a knife attached to it, is that safe??) with the other, and her lips quirk occasionally as she thinks about what she's going back to.

At least she doesn't have too long to wait. ]

[Despite being on the train for some time, Lust hasn't approached Nisha. She'd liked the woman, despite their acquaintance being a brief one, but...

There were a number of complex emotions that all tied back, in one way or another, to the sharp tongued gunslinger. She hadn't killed directly, but there was still a death within the game that sat on her shoulders. That had been the moment it all changed, everything started unraveling inside of her. She'd known guilt. It had been much like one of those children's game towers, all blocks stacked carefully. When a particular one was removed, all the rest came tumbling down.

She can trace the events, and the awakenings clearly. It all went back to that Saturday. Guilt had given way to sorrow and regret and fear and a desperate need for true kinship. Which in turn had led to her union with Eliot, and everything that followed from it. The events and her own feelings. She isn't an idiot, or so blind to her own internal mechanisms. All the way to here and now, poised on the edge of everything she'd ever dreamed of but never truly believed she'd have.

She can't simply leave this all without saying some parting words to Nisha, without knowing what will become of her after. So Lust approaches, now that it's all said and done and her fate is sealed.]

Have you settled your reward?

[ Nisha just tilts her hat up and raises an eyebrow at her as she approaches. It wouldn't be quite right to say she has no hard feelings, but her ending wasn't likely to be satisfying regardless, and there's no much to be done about it now. ]

I was settled on it from the beginning.

Oh?

[Lust's own decision had been conditional, tied to her circumstances as this all draws to a close. But she remembers when she and Nisha had talked, remembered the details of the other woman's situation. It tugs at her. Gnaws at the corners of her mind.]

I hope...that it entails a return to something more than what you told me you'd be returning to.

[ Her eyebrows raise a little more at that. ]

I'm not going to quietly let myself expire, if that's what you're asking. I'm alive here, obviously the absolute bare minimum would be heading back alive.

That's more or less what I wanted to know, yes.

[Lust nods.]

I...do regret how things played out. I'm well aware you have blood on your hands, but who among us doesn't? But...I liked you. I do like you. And it means something to me that you have a life to return to. Not in any sort of...regret assuaging way, I don't believe there's any true way to make up for mistakes. But....

[She shrugs. She barely understands her own emotional state, god help her trying to articulate it to someone she isn't close with.]

I don't know. Something about all of this...I feel things now. Other people, their circumstances...they matter to me, for some reason.

So you're looking for good news to soothe your newfound sense of empathy? Hmph.

[ Nisha drinks more of her whiskey, considering. ]

I have more blood on my hands than you can probably imagine, you know. And I'm gonna kill a lot more people when I'm back on Pandora. Do their circumstances matter to you?

Not soothe...or maybe. I don't know. I only know that I would like you to have something worth having, for what you paid here.

[Lust shrugs again. There's just some sense of importance, she doesn't grasp it all entirely.]

[Then she snorts. It's over and done, it doesn't matter now who knows what.]

I was an assassin in my previous life. In a war torn place where my master decided vast numbers needed to die. I can imagine a great deal of blood. But no, I can't bring myself to care about strangers on some other world I've never know anything about.

[ Nisha snorts in return. ]

Well, that's fine then. Still have to say that none of this was much of an afterlife, but if I managed to earn my way back to life for real I suppose I can't complain too much no matter how frustrating or unpleasant it was.

It's more of an afterlife than I thought there'd be. My kind...we don't have anything beyond our physical existence. Normally.

[She chuckles softly and nods in agreement. It's a sentiment she's expressed herself.]

In my world, we believe all things function on a scale of balance, so to speak. Everything is a trade of some sort, an exchange. To gain anything worthwhile, something worthwhile must be given. That's how I look at this experience. It was the price we paid, our frustration, our discomfort, our deaths...they're what were given. I think I'd go through it again, if I had to, for what I'm gaining.

Not saying I wouldn't do it again myself, but that sounds like a terrible way to look at things to me.

[ She pours more whiskey into her glass. ]

Life's not about fair trades, as a rule. There's plenty of pain and suffering to be had without getting anything out of it. Plenty of prizes given to people who don't deserve them. If you've got a problem with that, you've got to lay down the law yourself. You can't just expect the universe to give you a payout for what you've gone through.

[ DEPARTURE ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject