Repose

[Fam]

[She writes it, timed to post when normal people are asleep]

so good news bad news, i got into this art program out of state where they don't need like a ged to let you in or whatever and i found out the girl i was with at the place from before is dead, so. it's kind of like the universe doing its thing. i'm bailing, i guess and i don't want the super awkward stuff so you can write me [email address] but not here. i figured one last town thing was kind of the goodbye party. i love you and i'll visit maybe when i'm on a break and not super poor.

[Minis]

[Not a forum post. She sends the latest thing learned in a tin to the last address she has, and the note is on sketchpad-paper, folded in half on top of the cake, with an email address for contact.]

i hate goodbyes so it's not a goodbye? thank you for the lessons, i'm way better at not burning stuff to shit now. not-goodbye, H]

[Martins]

[They get a proper card, sent through the mail like a normal human. In it, there's a longer snippet from the course that she's going on, a program of classes and she's scrawled on it 'thank you for believing i could do it'. Inside, it's a giant, hand-illuminated 'thank you' and not a lot else, apart from email address.]

[Clary House: past and present]

so hey, thanks for being awesome people to live with. i'm kind of leaving town, which i figured i should probably say but Destiny, i paid rent through April and you shouldn't have any problem with getting someone cool to live here, it's a really nice place.

[And after all the above, forum posts bounce-back.]

[Locked to Reece E]
[During this.]

My brother's here. Don't worry. I lied to this one myself and it worked.

Who: Newt Penhaligon
What: narrative
Where: the bottom of the lake
When: morning after this
Warnings/Rating: slight self-harm

( A handful of gillyweed swallowed thickly, and the bottom of the lake was a dark, black place. )

[After this.]

[Locked to Patrick G]
[He should wait, but he doesn't.]
Hello, Patrick.

[Locked to Adrian M]
Adrian.

[Locked to Jack P]
I apologise for whatever nonsense I uttered at you, Jack.

[Locked to Cat C]
You've my apologies for my behaviour.

ETA: [Locked to Destiny S]
Destiny.

[Locked to Mary M]
Thank you, Mary, for the hospitality.

[Public]

So social gatherings in town. They look rough. Are they rough? Are they usually people who don't know each other? This isn't weird if you live here, is it?

I was going to throw something, to get to know the neighbors but I don't want to give them PTSD. There has to be some way of getting to know people here that isn't bingo, the ladies at the rec center look like they would take an eye out if you got in between them and their numbers.

[After talking to Newt]

Hello, Patrick.

[Jack hadn't actually been on a bender in a reasonably lengthy amount of time. A bender, traditionally defined by getting so bloody drunk you had enough to regret the following morning that drinking once more when you woke seemed like the only reasonable response to the situation. They ran one after the other pleasantly enough until you either ran out of cash or ran out of booze and while he wasn't sober in the meaningful sense of the word and hadn't been since before Halloween, Jack was also not passably acquainted with drunk.

The painkillers took a proportion of the edge off but it was nebulous, that edge. And it wasn't as active a proposition as going somewhere, sitting down with a pint - or really, rather, a fifth of whiskey until the edge became entirely forgettable - until he'd re-learned the forgetting of fear. It seemed like an odd thing to hold onto. Fear, the lack of it was a young man's game and Jack was more aware than most weeks that he was not a young man. Newt's troubles notwithstanding, the uneasy truce built on the back of what felt like half-truths and glass walls with Leena and whatever it was with Cat, Jack took himself to the Cat to find somewhere to the bottom of it for long enough that he felt more like himself now and less like himself several years ago.

He sat at the bar, because there was scarcely anybody in the place apart from the ever present-Cash and he ordered a beer and a whiskey because he couldn't get the idea of the taste of the latter out of his head but if he ordered the first perhaps he would, and he didn't expect either Newt, Leena or Cat through that door. Nor 'Jane'. Whoever it was Jane was.]