PLAYER PLOT: fear is the mind-killer

[fullmoon]

CHARACTERS: You and all your least favorite things.
LOCATION: Shipwide.
WARNINGS: Violence, gore, monsters, psych trauma. (Please warn for any potential triggers—e.g. medical horror, eye stuff, recollection of past sexual trauma—in your subject lines.)
SUMMARY: Boggarts. See the plot post for a full timeline if you want to forward-date; otherwise, watch this space for updates.
NOTES: Whatever happens, however this ends, remember that it's Draco Malfoy's fault.

JAN 22

If you've been paying attention, you should already be on edge. Ward and Resnik have returned without many answers. There's the dead pirate again. The Tranquility is being pursued. People are talking about violent confrontation like it's inevitable, any cycle now. Any day. And now Morgoth is back, somewhere in the corridors.

If you keep an eye out, you won't find him. But you might find something else.

JAN 23

Never mind about Morgoth.

JAN 24

Despite very well-intended claims to the contrary (see above), the mounting evidence suggests that boggarts can be killed. Also, there's probably more than one. Sorry about that.

Comments

[compressioncoil]

She frowns deeply, stroking the girl's frizzy hair. Something's up. "The ship brought you your daughter an' she can't see you. Isn't it bad 'nough she's here, too?" That was what we call a rhetorical question. don't answer it.

"Sweetheart?" She looks at Emma. "Can you tell me why you can't see your daddy?"

[dino_zarf]

"Maybe it's not really her..." That was the good explanation. That was definitely the good explanation. "That happens here sometimes." Not that he could explain it. But at least then he wasn't invisible to his little girl.

"Never seen him."

Wash's face falls. At the sound of those simple words. He knew that was how it was going to be. But hearing it felt like being stabbed through the heart.

And he certainly doesn't want Kaylee to hear it.

[compressioncoil]

"Whaddya mean? You know your daddy! He pilots Serenity and I know you know her. He's the best pilot in the verse an'-" It would have been enough, if the girl's words and Wash's face didn't match up so perfectly. If she hadn't caught it as she was making excuses for all of them.

No. Something was wrong. She knew it now.

Stoic, emotion gone from her face, Kaylee looked up at Wash, her eyes unblinking. "Wash. What ain't ya tellin' me?" She was smart. She hated when people treated her like she wasn't.

[dino_zarf]

It's not that he doesn't know how clever she is. Not that at all. She's just such a wonderful treasure, he never wants to cause her any pain. Who could? "You know how Simon's from ahead of the rest of us? Things get a bit..." How does he even tell her? How can he tell her that he's going to die, when he's barely managed to process it myself.

The child... the apparition sniffles. "My daddy's dead."

Or that could happen.

[compressioncoil]

Did someone open the airlock, because there is no air in the room and Kaylee feels as if she's being pulled into a vacuum, her blood pounding in her ears. My daddy's dead.

Dead. Gone. Not coming back.

Eyes wide, Kaylee looks from the child to Wash, back to the child again, and then Wash, her bottom lip quavering. "Dead." She says at long last, the word sounding foreign and clunky. How do- what? That's not-

She blinks, but not before bestowing a quick kiss on the forehead of the child. "I've- I'm gonna- I have t'go." She shouldn't leave the child, and she knows it. That's bad and wrong, but Wash is here. Even if he's dead, he's here. But she can't summon the strength to help anymore. She can't even recognize what's going on. There's black at the edge of her vision, and it won't go away until she's far, far gone from here.