towerofanimus | (no subject)

Characters: Ronald and his tower Homies
Setting: Floor 13
Format: Starting in prose but following you!
Summary: After reawakening from his punishment and first death, a rather guilt stricken puppy goes to lick his wounds after hiding away for a few days.
Warnings: Feelers, possibly... and references back to his punishment which involves dead bodies, blood and mutilation.

The first punishments were always the hardest, maybe. He wasn't certain as he had no idea who was new and who wasn't. But that dream was too vivd, far too vivid to be just a mere dream. What if it was real? What if it was what happened before he was brought here? For all he knew, it could have been the reason he was brought here. When he closed his eyes, his mind's eye supplied the pictures which came in just as clear as the nightmare itself had.

He'd seen them with those lifeless eyes trained toward him in accusation. He'd seen the blood he never thought would ever be spilled scattered about over the ground. His fault. He could have stopped it. And yet he was alive through it all. Of course, logic said it was a dream but there was still another part of him that nagged. Nagged at his mind and told him it could be possible. It could have been the reason why he was brought here first. What if it was all true? What if he DID do it and neither one of them remembered? After all, William wasn't around. What if he was dead? What if it was all his fault?

So he'd been skulking around, trying to find a place that didn't kill him just to think. Sit and think. There were too many people in the dorms, even more in the cafeteria and still a bunch more in the lounge. But then he found the thirteenth floor where things seemed secluded enough for him to find some measure of solace. Ironically enough, it was a cathedral. The younger reaper had never been devout -- not that he remembered, at least, but there were those in their dying breaths who had prayed to some god or another. He'd heard what prayer could do for a troubled heart.

Irony indeed.
But he wasn't here to pray. He just needed to think.

He'd brought his hat with him, his favorite black fedora which he didn't find in his trunk but had appeared by his bedside after the entire ordeal in the Labyrinth. This he held to his chest as he entered, eyes scanning the entire area around him. There was something calming about the stained glass and the pews to say the least. The mumbing didn't bother him. The thought of ghosts didn't, really. He was a reaper. What was there to fear?

Wordlessly, he slipped himself onto one of the back pews and pulled his legs to his chest. His head rested on his arms which he folded over one knee with a deep sigh before burying his face against it again. That dream. Even when he closed his eyes he could still see their torn flesh and hear their accusatory voices. He couldn't face them. Either one of them. He knew he couldn't look Grell in the eye, not after this, not when the possibility loomed so close...

So it was with a groan that he pulled his legs closer against his chest and tried to curl himself into a tighter ball than was possible.

Maybe if he curled in tight enough, he could disappear.

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He admired them both for a reason: William for his professionalism and his ability to keep calm in any situation and Grell for just... being Grell. She never lost sight of her own goals and somehow always managed to knock some sense into him. Like now. Now, when he was nothing but a mess of everything and nothing thanks to that little mess up in the labyrinth.

Ronald had been listening despite the fact he showed no outward emotion, no singular reaction to anything she'd said so far. Of course the mind was a powerful thing. If cinematic records from maddened humans had anything to teach him, it was this. The mind could do whatever the hell it pleased without any regard for the rest of it. Even for one's sanity. But somehow, the entire speculation put his mind back on track and there was the barest semblance of a frown by the time she was done.

"That's a bit of a stretch then," he began, staring ahead and squinting ever so slightly in an attempt to focus on the details of the altar before them. " You think it was the dolls that did it? Overran the world and all? But Mister Spears saved us last minute. We can't be dead."

"Pulled us from the water, is what he did. As for saving us, what proof do we have? The water was raging, it could have taken us under, even if not for the dolls."

The more Grell repeated it out loud, the less it sounded like a cohesive idea, though. Sometimes, the smallest voice in the back of her head would speak up and say that she only still believed in it because she didn't know what would happen if she stopped. That was the demon's fault, curse him. Sebastian had asked her whether she really thought, as a reaper herself, she would have no recollection of her own death. And the fact was, she didn't think it at all. Whether it would be true or not, in practice, she couldn't imagine herself forgetting the act of dying.

"You know what I think?" she asked, more for herself, than for Ronald. "You don't, and I'm going to tell you. I think it doesn't matter. How we got here, if we're dead, it's all irrelevant to the matter of escaping. That's all that should concern you. How do the awful~ things you experienced bring you one step closer to getting out? "

Edited 2012-05-21 12:03 (UTC)

At first, he opened his mouth to protest. Call it either the gift or curse of eternal optimism but there it was, trying to make sense out of this entire situation. They were going to be fine, everything was gonna be alright, this was all a bad dream and they would go home soon. Wind in their sails and all that. But Grell was right. Somehow, she made sense every now and then when she wasn't raving about either Sebastian or William. Suspension or no, nothing was going to convince Ronald that Grell didn't have a decent head on her shoulders if she properly applied herself.

So the protests died down, as did his drive to push it onward. After all, she made perfect sense. So what if he managed to die, imaginary or no? The fact remained that he was here, she was too, alive and well and all that. They both were. "S'pose you're right." he finally sighed, letting a leg dangle from the pew. "Can't help but wonder though... and don't get me wrong, I get what you're saying but..."

And at this, he can't help but frown. If he said it, it would be almost admitting it to himself. "If we're dead then... what's the point of trying to go back?"

"What a stupid question," Grell replied, with a scoffing sound and a puff of breath as she blew her hair from her face, again. Her fringe was in want of trimming. What were the chances that any of her room mates, for as little as she had deigned to speak to them, might have a pair of scissors?

"I swear," she went on, "The very moment I think you're getting smarter, you go ask a thing like that." Not that she actually sounded more than superficially irritated with him. "If we don't get back, I suppose there's no harm in that, but who wants to stay here? This place is awful. We can't do what we like, I just know they're watching where we go," she ticked off her list of complaints on her fingers, as she went. "People are getting themselves maimed every blessed second, I haven't got even half of my clothes, and you wouldn't care to repeat what happened back in that maze, now, would you?"

But really, even if they were dead, Grell did want to go home. She loved London. After too long, she would miss the sight off it, miss the bad weather, miss perching on the rooftops, watching people come and go. Maybe she could take up haunting some nice house, or somewhere else equally amusing. It didn't really matter what they were going to do, when they got back. It only mattered that they returned, at all.

What did souls do after they died? Did they hang around in places like this waiting for their rebirth? Did they just disappear into the ether after being filed away into the Library's records? He was never really one to figure it out. Maybe it was brought up in class but he must have been absent that day. At any rate, he always thought it would never concern him what with his duties ending after collection and all that.

Funny how the world worked.

But he stretched out, arms over his head before settling them back down over the back of the pew. That little quip would earn her the smallest pout, his brows furrowing at the very thought that she considered him less than intelligent. “Well ‘scuse me,” he began, barely glancing back in her direction. However, she did make the most sense And it was this that caused that pout to disappear in favor of a look of resignation. “’Suppose you’re right though. We’d prolly be better off there than we are here. Can’t even get a moment’s rest. But hold on. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the mess on the fifth floor then?”

Grell shrugged. "What's the use? They have the technology to show us anything they like, but I don't need to indulge them. It's what they want, isn't it? For us to look, and get all maudlin about it."

Her dislike for authority and expected behaviours extended even here. Those viewing stations could serve only one purpose that she could see: an attempt at manipulating the emotions of the people trapped in the Tower. An attempt at deadening their hopes of escape. How many people, like Ronald, would question the point in escaping, if they were dead, or their worlds gone? More than enough, Grell thought. If she did bother to look at what was supposedly left of their world, she wouldn't be anything but angry, and less at the destruction, than at what she was sure was a cheap trick.

"Playing into their games~ has no purpose," she said. "Did you wonder why I didn't sponsor you, in the labyrinth? That's why." She had to laugh at the people who had sponsored their loved ones. What did it amount to? Absolutely nothing at all. The people inside still suffered and died, and the people who tried to help were punished almost as badly.

If anything, those viewing stations didn't do much to tug at his sentiment nor did it upset him at the least. (alright, perhaps for the shortest moment when it was still him and his lonesome.) They did, however, make him think. That and coupled with the fact that they weren't given a single word as to when and how the world was ending... it was all just too suspicious for him to get worked up over.

But he continued to listen in silence, tilting his head in a manner reminiscent of a very thoughtful golden retriever. He was lucky enough to have gotten one sponsorship at least and the food did last long enough to begin with. "Everyone ended up dying after all... and I don't suppose you got a glance at what happened to the winner, did you?" Ronald asked, pulling a leg to his chest as he turned his attention to the other reaper. "But... I can't say I knew about what happened to those who tried to help. What went on while I was in that labyrinth?"

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[sorry, fixin typos]

No problemo! If you'll pardon my tagging speed. ;;;

pardon my speed as well >__<

o9 No worries!

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