Will Stutely (sly_stutely) wrote in nevermore_logs, @ 2020-08-23 18:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | maid marian, will stutely |
WHO Will Stutely and Maid Marian
WHERE The Sly Fox
WHEN Saturday afternoon
WHAT Stoots is worried
WARNINGS TBD
Stutely had been thinking lately about Chekhov's gun. It was an old dramatic principle, something to do with not including unnecessary details, but it was the metaphor that had always stuck with him: if you've got a loaded rifle hanging on the wall in the first act, it is going to be fired by the end of the play. The cell in the Sly Fox felt like a loaded gun. It was supposed to be a contingency. That's what he'd told himself all along. It was a last resort, an evil they'd turn to only once they'd exhausted every other plan. They'd never use it at all, if he could help it, and he'd keep working on alternatives right up to the crunch... but when it came to that point, if they still had nothing, it was only common pragmatism to have something ready in reserve. Because the Sheriff had a room of his own waiting for Marian, so he'd said, and a basement cell for Tuck, and who knew what in store for the rest of them, so they needed to be prepared, no matter what. But seeing it for the first time yesterday, completed, an ugly reinforced box where the men's room used to be, it felt all of a sudden like the act of constructing it had turned it into a horrifying certainty. Build a torture cell in the first act... Stutely still wasn't giving up. There were other possibilities taking shape, and though many of them were nebulous and uncertain, some held genuine potential. This computer god Clio knew, for one. He was worried about Marian, though. She'd been quiet since the Sheriff had fired his first shot across the bow on Thursday. She'd barely spoken at all after it had happened other than to say, meaningfully, that they were running out of options. While the rest of them had thrown ideas back and forth into the evening, Marian had drifted off outside and kept her own counsel. But truthfully, she'd been distant even before that. Stutely had clocked it, but with everything else that had been going down... well, he was beginning to think he'd underestimated how heavily this weight was sitting on her. It was easier for him to put the cell out of mind, consider it a contingency rather than an inevitability. He hadn't laid the bricks. He didn't have to live with it in his home. She'd slipped away on Thursday before he could catch her again. He'd hoped to find her here yesterday, but she'd been out when he'd called by, and he'd found the Friar in her place. He was beginning to wonder whether she was avoiding them deliberately. So Saturday saw him back at the Sly Fox again, letting himself in the back entrance and calling out as he strode through to the bar. "Marian? You about?" |