Outside Leisure Rooms | Marigold + Open
A sea of young faces obscured by cups and bottles, desperate to drown their sorrows, blurring out the harsh, sharp reality of their circumstances with bright lights, noise and movement. This was more like the Limbo she remembered. A place designed to make them forget what lurked beneath the surface; trap them in something that was a far enough step up from despair to make them grateful. You were meant to keep looking forward, upward, and hope. At least it isn't Texas. If you made it to Limbo you were being rehabilitated. At least it isn't Florida. You had been a good little soldier who had repented for their genes.SEA would pass any day now.
Two children were dead and one was terrified, but here, have a drink.
Marigold had spent the afternoon after training busying herself in the kitchenette, having put a small dent in the grocery section of the shopette. Advantage of her last assignment: A good amount of store credit to blow through. Eventually she made an appearance at the party to make her laughing apologies to the agents she knew when she insisted she was too old to linger amongst the activities. She'd simply slipped in to take advantage of the extremely thoughtful and liberal variety of spirits. At least she was being honest. She left with several beers and a bottle of something she hadn't bothered to check the label of tucked in her back pocket-- it tested the stretch of her denim as it fought for real estate with the paperback she'd neglected to remove before leaving her room. The bottle she deposited at the door of the agent who's last name had matched one of the deceased, in case it had been a familial affair for them, along with a tupperware container. She made similar trips for those she had gleaned had been members of one of the deceased's pre-Regiment circle; a morbid comfort food fairy. She was sure the handlers and psych teams were seeing to them, and there was no indication that the cafeteria would fall to disaster anytime soon, but little stacks of off-brand rubbermaid appeared in the freezers on those levels housing the grieving all the same. It was just what you did.
There was one beer left at the end of it all. Marigold pried the top off with a glass bottle opener and flung it down the table she was sitting on. It clattered satisfactorily along. She could hear the faint pounding of the music from the makeshift club down in the recreation hall. She pulled the book out of her pocket and settled in, sipping every few paragraphs. She heard the music's volume rise and quiet again as the doors opened.