REMAINS RPG

Who: Pete Whelan and Sam Rose
When: Oct 1
Where: Doctor common-room
What: Celebrating the loss of the boogeyman

There wasn't nothing that y'all could go picking up at the store-room that was party streamers and balloons, but Sam reckoned the gasp of held breath exhaled was plenty visible, without silvered-paper fringes stretched out across the maw of the halls and without confetti and ticker-tape. The med center had just let go clenched lungs on dirty breath and folks weren't celebrating exactly - too many people lost, and too many folks jumping from one place to the next like it was a party-game when you were too little to decide y'all didn't need to pick sides.

But Sam, she figured she could mark the occasion by making coffee in the common-room a handful more times than usual. Burned beans, the kind that had been used and re-used, the grounds dried careful by hand, scooped into a filter and squeezed until they ran through like dirty water. Sam paid more attention to coffee-grounds than she did her clothes, and that was real symbolic or something.

There wasn't a lot in her wheelhouse that could do a damned bit for folks here. She wasn't stitching up bullet-wounds or bites (a moment, for a shiver of anger to settle some on the back of her neck: maybe she was flat-out useless in a crisis, but that didn't mean not telling her a damn thing about the crisis while it happened) but she'd learned how to make something that maybe wasn't good but wasn't terrible, out of nothing. She was fiddling paper into a pot and waiting for the water in the (totally unsanctioned) kettle to boil.

Who: Sam and Karen
When: Recently, pre-Cal detention
What: Trade-off of bad days

( Something about the nature of a uniform made the eyes naturally avert, as armed men and women strode down cluttered corridors, stood sentinel at the ends of halls; an ever-present reminder of the capitol's considerable reach )

Who: Cal Davidson, Sam Rose
Where: UMC
What: Putting the tatters back together
When: Evening of Saturday August 15, into morning

( Lady lights a cigarette, puffs away, no regret Takes a look around, no regrets, no regrets Stretches out like branches of a poplar tree She says, i'm free  )