Participants:
| Scene Title | Awake |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Silas finds Kendall near midnight at the edge of the group, and encourages him to share a story |
| Date | July 5th, 2021 |
Ruins of Toledo
Ohio
11:00 pm
The sun had long since set, although the campfires and other lighting are still visible in the darkness; more than a few people are finding it hard to sleep, even now. Most of the vehicles had been reunited by this point, forming a circle around where most people have congregated, sharing the company of others against the looming darkness.
In the circle, it's safe. Outside the circle, unknown terrors might lurk. It's an almost primal feeling, like the group regressed to the early days of humanity, rather than its twilight.
Or perhaps, it's come full circle. Time is not a line.
Contrary to this, however, a few members of the group have found themselves outside this circle of safety. One of them is Kendall, hunched against the night with his hands in his pockets. The heavy cloud cover obscures even the small sliver of moon that was waning the last few days, so all that can be seen of him is a vague shadow from within, and a harder silhouette against the firelight from without.
The scrape of weary footsteps on broken stone from behind Kendall indicates someone approaching; Silas isn't bothering to use his power at the moment to hide himself, the dark does that well enough. "You're still awake?" he asks, raising an eyebrow; the dancing firelight renders him an eerie shadow in chiaroscuro against the deeper darkness.
The footsteps are enough to draw Kendall's attention away from whatever dark thoughts he'd been having. He turns his head to the side, but relaxes when the spoken words reveal their owner.
"I don't think many of us will be sleeping well tonight, if at all." A hand gestures back behind him at the fire, and he shrugs over at Silas. "You're awake too." he observes, turning back to stare out into the stygian darkness.
"Probably not," Silas admits. "Been a rough day for all of us, probably gonna be a rough night, too."
He's silent for a moment, considering. "How's Nadira holdin' up?"
The question elicits a light shrug. "You know how she is. No matter how much she's hurting, she always puts on a brave face for others. But…"
Kendall falls silent as well, his figure turning away from the other man. "Neither of us could do anything. And… now we're down two people, and we're not even on the road a week."
"Yeah," Silas says heavily. "Sometimes it's like that." Whether he's referring to the senseless tragedy or putting on a brave face in response, he does not say.
"We did pretty well, all things considered; they threw the first punch, blind-sided us, but that was… about all they got in. Both people who died were hurt at the very start. Natalie just… took a little longer for it to catch up."
"Nadira and I were sitting right next to him. If they had shot at a different angle, or missed, it could have been either of us buried in the ground today." He crosses his arms, but it gives off less of a defiant air and more… defensive. "If it was Nadira that got shot we would have all been screwed. I'm going to make sure she stays safe. But… I don't know if I can hold it up like that all day. Or even if it would stop a bullet."
When Silas brings up Natalie, Kendall turns back to look at him. "So… that was you who put her next to Walker? Should have known, I didn't see you at all." Not that anyone saw Kendall bring in Walker either but that's beside the point.
"Very few people have seen me today. Haven't really… felt like dealing with people," he admits. "So I haven't."
He's silent again for a moment. "You kinda sound like Monica at the moment. When Natalie told her that she was a goner, she… took it pretty hard. She's never liked losing people. Never been one to realize that sometimes there's nothing you could've done."
“Yeah, I feel that. But… Nadira was hurting too. I wasn’t going to just…” Kendall shrugs uncomfortably, staring down at the ground and kicks at it. A rock goes rolling across the ground, not that he could see it in the darkness but he can feel it when he kicked it.
“I mean it’s not like I was close with him… we barely knew each other. He brought up embarrassing stories and told one of his own, then had me and Nadira share one too. Now, nothing left. Nothing but that stupid story that… that doesn’t even matter anymore.”
"Yeah," Silas says heavily, eyes staring off into the distance. "Yeah."
"It's the worst, isn't it? How it goes from someone bein' there… to someone havin' been there. Just like that. Time's up. No more dumb stories. No more… anything." He lets out a slow breath. "Can you make a shotglass?"
“If you’re keeping the bottle, sure.” Kendall lifts his hand up, shotglass already formed, then he looks at it contemplatively. Hmm… nah. It grows larger, looking more like a rocks glass. Ice is a little hard to come by, however. “If I can forget how it happened I’d be forever in your debt.”
Silas snorts. "Got a lot of miles left to go and not a lot of booze, so a shot's what you get. And as someone who spent a lot of years trying to drink to forget…"
He trails off. "It doesn't work. Not really. You just end up making yourself another kind of miserable trying to avoid being miserable." Des has got Spades looking after her, at least, so hopefully she won't end up with too much of a hangover. Carefully, he pours a small bit from his flask into Kendall's glass.
"This is okolehao. From Hawai'i. Sip. Make it last. And while you do… I want you to tell me that dumb story Walker told you. Kicking yourself doesn't change the past, it only makes the future worse. And Walker wouldn't want that, any more than Natalie would've." He assumes Walker wouldn't, anyway; admittedly he'd not known the man that well. "So here's what I wish someone would've told me, a long while sooner: drink, and remember the good. Because that's how he would've wanted to be remembered."
Kendall looks disappointed when he’s being rationed; so much for that. “Yeah. I guess.” the glass shrinks back down after Silas finishes pouring, because the amount the man gave him looked depressingly small in that larger glass. “Hawaii? It’s weird to think of islands still existing in this.” then again, didn’t he have a similar comment about Japan previously? Islands are ocean mountains, Kendall.
“You want me to repeat it? Uh. I guess I could try.” Kendall sips at the shot glass, raising his eyebrows at the taste. Yeah, ok. Pretty good stuff.
“Um. It was something like, he was a kid, I don’t remember how old he said, but he was being dressed by his mom, but one year he insisted on dressing himself and got this really stupid outfit and wore it to school, thinking it made him look like the coolest ever. I, uh.. I didn’t really get the reference, but apparently it got him the nickname Hammer.” Kendall isn’t old enough to know that particular artist, but Silas might.
Silas surprises himself by snorting out a laugh. "Hammer? Oh god, he must've worn parachute pants to school. Jesus." He shakes his head, chuckling. "Hammer was a big artist back in the… 90s?" He shakes his head. "Not my cup of tea, though he had some catchy songs. And parachute pants were these… like… hugely baggy pants that he wore. So that's probably where he got that nickname. A schoolkid wearing these huge doofy pants that he saw a musician wear."
Sorry, Silas, Kendall has no idea who you’re talking about. Furrowing his brow, Kendall sips the drink again. “Maybe. I dunno.” he shrugs and looks down at the drink. “But yeah, that’s all there was to it. We spent most of the first day just… sitting there. Not talking at all. I thought Nadira was going to lecture me again, but she was quiet too.”
Silas nods silently for a moment. "It's a big trip. A lot to think about, in the future," he says, falling into pensive silence.
"I'm not sure that was it." Kendall mutters, finishing the last of his drink, the glass vanishing as it upends so he's able to get even the last bit usually left behind. "I wasn't really feeling great that morning." He doesn't elaborate, hands going to his pockets again. "But yeah. It is. I just hope we don't run into any more complications. I don't want to have to bury anyone else."
"Me neither," Silas says. "But personally, I don't think we're gonna be that lucky to make it all the rest of the way without complications. Life's the dealer, and she's a bitch sometimes. All you can do is try to deal with the cards you get as best you can, hope that maybe complications don't mean burials. But sometimes you aren't that lucky; sometimes the cards you get are bad ones, and sometimes people die," he says, eyes closing with the weight of past sorrows. "But for all that… the only two of ours who died today were at the very start. It could've been a hell of a lot worse; cold comfort, maybe, but it's what we got."
Silas sighs. "Speaking of dealing with cards as best we can, though… I think I'm gonna turn in. Gotta be ready for whatever we get tomorrow. Might want to do the same yourself, unless you're planning on taking the night watch," he says, mustering a tired smile.
"Yeah." Kendall is quiet after that response, the single word seeming inadequate to encompass all of Silas' words, and yet a simple affirmation is all it needs.
As Silas continues on, Kendall nods, though a hand comes up to rub the back of his head awkwardly. "Hey, uh, thanks for coming out. I appreciate it. Yeah, I think I should too. Thanks again."
He turns away from the darkness, squinting at the firelight. "Sleep well and wake, Silas Mackenzie."
Silas laughs at that — tired, but genuine. "Same to you, Kendall," he says, tossing a wave over his shoulder as he turns and strides into the darkness…
…and is gone.