Rhett - Solo.
The good thing about this morning was that Rhett hadn't woken up buried alive. The bad thing was everything else, from the wake-up call, to the message about JD, to his failed attempts to make amends with Marco. Sure, he said he wasn't asking for forgiveness, and consciously that hadn't been why he acted, but shit, man. It would've been a nice outcome.
Once the appointed hour rolled along, he dragged himself out of his room and onto the front lawn with the others. He didn't know if he was emotionally drained, or still half-asleep, but he felt so detached and neutral about the idea of his punishment. When everyone arrived, Rhett quickly glanced over the others tiredly, only barely noting their own expressions; the twinge in his heart he felt from Pam's emotional display quickly turned into a suffocating guilt when he saw Marco, and he very Pointedly looked away from Cecilia.
It wasn't until the approaching rumbling of the helicopter did Rhett realize the overall stillness of the area--not that he'd really been paying attention to anything outside his own thoughts the past few days, but it was jarring to recognize the nuances of their so tightly controlled environment.
Fear was meant to keep you on your toes. People felt fear so they could promptly act in response to a dangerous situation, and maybe that's why he felt nothing right that moment. Why feel scared when there was nothing you could do to change the outcome?
Rhett numbly moved out of the way for the falling boxes, and just as automatically walked back towards them when they'd settled onto the lawn. He'd absentmindedly fiddled and played with his bracelet enough in his sulking that his personal string of letters and digits immediately stood out to him.
His thoughts and actions and body felt so disconnected from each other; he was moving just because he had no other choice. What if we refused to open them? The thought floated through his mind with a bitter amusement, but he didn't even give it another second. It wasn't hard to let his imagination do the work; they'd get zapped, or maybe the boxes would blow up in their faces. Anything they could dream up, it seemed as if They had the power to bring to their reality.
As soon as the box opened, all of Rhett’s thoughts halted, and the only thing he focused on was searching the insides. He barely registered the others rustling around, finding and reacting to their own rewards and punishments. That stupid, irrational fear that swelled up inside of him propelled his frenzied digging.
It wasn’t being buried alive. It wasn’t being locked up. But that only filled him with further dread. How fucking awful could it possibly be that even he couldn’t think of it?