sinking down, down

[facultwist]

Death is a drop into a blackness that swallows you. You feel the movement of not air but shadow across your face as you plummet, and there is no bottom. No crash.

If there is another side, you do not reach it.

It is neither the light of heaven or the fires of hell that greets you when you wake. And wake you do, to the buzz and flicker of old fluorescent lights.

You are laid out beside a full-size competitive swimming pool, half-filled with stagnant water. The doors out are blocked off by locked doors covered in caution tape. The locker rooms are long since emptied, paint peeling from the humidity. The only signs of habitation are a few pieces of scattered graffiti.

Welcome to your new home. There's no sunlight, no indication of time passing. Just you and each other and your thoughts. the stagnant water bubbles a little occasionally, but there's nothing in it.

Before long you'll realize that you no longer need to eat or drink. You might notice your hand go through something if you don't focus. You're a ghost now. What's that they say about unfinished business?

Comments

[protomartyr]

[ Drily: ]

That's nice. I was dead.

[ Come on Lottie lock the fuck in ]

Was your father any different? Besides being in space, I guess.

[sweetsynergy]

[With brief consideration-]

He was calling me by a number instead of my name, does that count?

[protomartyr]

[ That actually gets an eyebrow raise out of Lottie. ]

Mm. Fucked up.

[sweetsynergy]

Probably? It didn't feel weird in the dream, at least.

[rosewitch]

Did he not already?

[This sounds like a dig, but it's a genuine curious question. Guy seemed like a real fuckhead.]

[sweetsynergy]

Wow? No.

[That's a bit of a sore spot.]

[rosewitch]

Oh. That's good.

[Look. That's a pretty standard Ohtori-style dehumanization.]

[sweetsynergy]

Just how much of a monster do you all think my dad WAS-

[These are HER issues to unpack, thank you very much]

[rosewitch]

I don't know. I assumed that if you killed him, he was fairly terrible. [. . .] And Hawke didn't seem to like him, so.

[sweetsynergy]

My father was-

[a quick pause]

not something we're getting into now.

[rosewitch]

I thought you brought him up.

[sweetsynergy]

He was in the dream and then he was not, the details of my upbringing are not important, moving on, thank you.

[rosewitch]

Clearly not.

[She'll leave it, though. She's not actually trying to be obnoxious this time.]