LVI: The Capitol - Rose Point Estate.
Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17
It's a lot to process.
Wednesday was just talking. So much of it. So many words and so many different people all at once. Everyone had someone worth saying and a lot of it didn't really matter at all, she had realized. Maybe no one else did, but she was good at figuring out what was substantial enough and what wasn't.
The truth of the matter was, there wasn't any escaping a lethal injection. Their truths were never good ones.
And yet all day it still looked like there was enough going on to figure it out. Phone calls and paperwork, endless amount of research from all ends.
All that had happened was Wednesday ended. They went to sleep, woke up, Thursday.
Twenty-four hours. If that.
Maybe it was more than that; it was still the afternoon. They were all congregated in one single bedroom by choice for once, with no imminent threat or danger or upset. Just because. It was nice to have the company when she wasn't sure how much of it she would have tomorrow.
She drags her blanket back up her shoulders and almost nearly all the way over her head. Maybe there's no use in hiding in her last twenty-four or so hours, but oh well. She'll do what she likes.
Not everything, though.
Soran told her. He told all of them. An idea can be a lot of things but she doesn't know if it can be what all of them want, not with such short notice.
They don't have that long, either. Not really. Hour by hour people will trickle out of this place until there's almost no one left, save for the staff and the guards left outside to keep an eye on them. They found an address for the gala, some upscale hall just outside of downtown. She's seen it, but only from afar. It's bigger than any other building on the block.
They have a guest list too. Who knows how accurate it is, how old.
But the right people are on it.
Or are they the wrong ones?
It depends on how this night goes, she guesses.
Ria can't help but wonder how much Kerensa knows about all of this. She seems cruel, maybe, but not downright evil. Like a lot of people in this country she's just looking for justice - is that so wrong? It doesn't mean it's right, either, but picking a side doesn't necessarily mean anyone's bad. Besides, she chose a side, and that side involved surviving the valley. Does she have any room to judge?
There's a knock on the door and Pandora pokes her head in. She looks... nicer than usual, if that's not being too harsh. She's just looked particularly haggard lately; with the stress and the pregnancy and them it doesn't come as much of a surprise. With a little bit of make-up and a fancy dress apparently anyone can hide just exactly what they're feeling.
"Oh, you're all here," she says slowly. She looks sad. More sad than anything Ria's equipped to handle and she can't imagine why. It's not like all five of them are about to die or anything.
"I'll be leaving soon," she continues. "Crynn will be out back if you guys need anything. We'll be back before midnight, at the latest."
"Are you going because you want to, or because your mother is forcing you?" Soran asks. He rolls over on the bed to look at her after having previously hidden his terribly bruised face in the blankets for the last half hour or so. She almost forgot about it all.
"I'd be here if I could. Especially before tomorrow."
"Right."
She takes a deep breath. "Like I said, Crynn will be here. And if not, you can call me."
Tarquin nods and shoves the phone he had been fiddling with back into his pocket as if someone's about to take it away. She thinks that someone should, maybe. It's been over a day and his friend still hasn't called back; holding onto it and hoping can't be good for his mental state. But then again, what does it really matter? His mental state can be at a breaking point and it won't have an impact on what happens tomorrow.
Pandora's gone silent, but when Ria turns to the door she's still lingering there, staring. It's not just them as a collective in that moment. It becomes a game of individuals, where she looks at each and every one of them for longer than what might be considered appropriate. Ria resists the urge to crawl under the chair and hide from her gaze.
She doesn't, though. When Pandora shifts her eyes it's back to them as a group, a whole, and then she clicks the door shut quietly as she leaves.
And it felt, though Ria loathes to admit it, as if she was looking at them for the last time. Properly, anyway. This is the last time she's going to get them like this, all five together and not about to step into death. She was taking it all in because she doesn't think she's going to get the chance anymore.
Ria knows, and she hopes the others do too, that they don't deserve her.
They've lost so much. More than what anyone deserves to lose, no matter what they did before it. Things have happened since then that she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy, not even the people getting them killed now. No one deserves that level of pain. There are people here though that have done nothing shy of the most, every waking minute. People like Pandora and Evander who have been there since the beginning, people like Tycho who have just been kind even when others wouldn't have been.
At least when she dies, and she's admitted that she is now, she'll go knowing that it wasn't all bad. That there is good out there somewhere.
Maybe they didn't experience the amount they should have, the amount they deserved. But at least they got something.
"So," Emmi asks, after several minutes have passed. Ria was just getting used to the silence again. "When are we leaving?"
"We said we wouldn't make it obviously quick," Icarus reminds her. "Besides, we still have to figure out something to do about this."
He gestures vaguely, she figures, to what he's wearing. She can't really see him that well, but she knows he can't look that bad. He'd never let himself. Sure, maybe showing up to a gala of all things wearing every-day civilian clothes isn't their greatest move, but it might be funny. If not a bit obvious.
"Well, I'm sorry they didn't make us closets full of formal outfits here," Emmi says. "I'm sure you'll survive. It's not like other options are exactly falling at our feet."
"But—"
"I was thinking about that, actually," Tarquin interrupts. "About the outfits."
"Oh, please," Icarus begs. "I will be forever in your debt."
Soran shuffles over to kick him and nearly knocks him off the bed. Tarquin's got the phone out again and appears to actually be doing something with it, scrolling away, but he smiles.
"The theater always posts a bulletin for the week," he says. "A schedule, really. For rehearsals and meetings and stuff."
"Okay?" Emmi says.
"And there's nothing scheduled for today."
"Okay," she says, even slower.
"So there's no one there."
"Yes," Icarus says. Soran kicks him again. Tarquin turns the phone around - she's the only one really close enough to see it, and with some squinting she can see exactly what he's mentioned. The mentioned Thursday, while surrounded by days completely filled with other dozens of other bullets, is completely empty. It almost feels too good to be true.
That they deserve though, don't they? They certainly haven't been cut any other breaks.
"So what, you want us to break into your theater?" Emmi asks.
"I mean, the back door is usually unlocked, so it wouldn't really be breaking in. Besides, aren't we already crashing a charity gala? How is that any worse?"
"I, for one, totally agree," Soran announces.
"You agreed the second someone told you we were breaking into somewhere," Icarus says. That dissolves into a scuffle that she doesn't even begin to try and make sense of. She can barely tell who's who in that. Soran eventually slides out of it and off the bed entirely onto the floor, escaping Icarus' grasp at a speed that almost seems embarrassing.
"Alright, I'm gonna go get Crynn."
"Already?"
"Well, apparently we're having a fashion show before we leave for the gala, so I think we should. What else are we going to do? Who knows how long it's going to take us to get out of here without being noticed. Even with Crynn helping it could take us a few hours."
Yeah, this whole getting out of the estate thing really hasn't been thought through. They've planned out everything beyond it. They just need to get out.
It doesn't seem like they have very good odds, but Ria believes in them.
At the most Soran's right, and it takes them a few hours to sneak away. That puts them past dinner. They head to the theater and spend a while there, so long as they have the time. The sun will be going down by them.
The night almost seems... fitting, for a plan like this.
Ria, or at least the old version, wouldn't like this one bit. The version where she thought of herself as weak and fragile would run away from it, would never agree to it. Even now her stomach is still churning at how all of this could go wrong, but it already has. How much more wrong can death get?
This is their last few hours. Their last of everything.
She never thought he was the type, but it seems fitting now.
Maybe it's time to finally go out with a bang.
Emmi Langlois, 17
Applicant #13
Crynn, she suspects, would lock all five of them up in the cabin if he had such a privilege.
It wouldn't work though. One of them, her or Soran, would crawl out a window while the other was being watched. He couldn't keep tabs on all of them, after all.
So it was a damn good thing he wasn't even going to try.
It's probably insensitive but she's not sure how a guy who literally can't talk is so good at distracting people. Maybe people feel more obligated to pay attention to him because of it? There's no one guarding the halls but the place is still littered with them regardless; they're surrounding the entire perimeter and walking about through the gardens and the front lawn all the way to the gate. All they really need is a few seconds or so but alone it seems impossible.
That's why he's here, though.
The garage and it's fleet of cars is empty enough; no one would except them to be this out there. Crynn's checking the security cameras lining the far wall, though, and there's at least three guards between the driveway outside the door and the gate that leads out to the side road connected to the property. It would still be avoiding the majority of them, but not all apparently.
Crynn holds a hand up as he takes the lead ahead of them, so Emmi stays put around the corner and out of sight as he presses a button and the garage door on the left begins to slide open. Hidden away like this she has no idea what's going on, but she can see the two of them conversing, or at least attempting to, in the reflection of the security camera. The guard is looking more and more perplexed by the second at the flurry of hand motions being presented to him.
Whatever is eventually communicated works, though. She's not sure how. The guard at the door shouts for the one further down the drive, who comes into frame soon enough, approaching the house once again.
"We're never gonna know what just happened there, are we?" Icarus asks.
"Considering I understood about every sixth word, firm no," Soran responds. Considering his previous track record with learning things, Emmi thinks that's pretty good for him.
Crynn returns a few minutes later, and by the time he does both the guard outside the door and the one further down the drive have mysteriously vanished as if they were never even around in the first. Only the one at the gate is still there, a small pinprick in the distance. Whoever they are, they're not doing much of anything at all.
You know what, Emmi's not even going to question that.
Upon his return he tosses a pair of keys at her, and she quickly flings them back at Soran. Yes, she'd rather trust someone who may or may not still have a mild concussion to drive over her. Just because she could manage it out in the middle of nowhere doesn't mean she wants to risk it now when everyone might be watching.
She'll avoid that, thank you very much.
The car that responds to the keys is much more conspicuous than she would have bet on. It's a mammoth of a thing; you could probably shove several families in it and still lounge about comfortably.
"Are we seriously good?" Soran asks. "What about—"
Crynn waves forward, as if to tell them to go. Soran jams the keys in the ignition but goes no further. Emmi buckles herself into the passenger seat because she really feels like she needs to. It's a nice form of security, and she remembers all too well what happened with Soran driving out in the valley. His second time since then isn't something she trusts just yet.
She does trust it more than herself, though.
"Seriously?" Soran repeats, eyeing the guard down the road. He's not standing very close to it, though. He's standing closer to the opening mechanism off to the side. When she leans back into the seat she's nearly hidden from view, and the windows are so black she almost can't see out of them.
If he doesn't know it's them, and it doesn't look that way, he might not even bother to look.
She really doesn't want to know what Crynn did.
Crynn somehow manages to look even more sad than Pandora did earlier as he waves them off again. Worried, too. If he was unsure of what would happen at the end of the drive he wouldn't send them down there alone, that she's sure of. He wouldn't risk them that way because he knows what that's like.
Emmi feels like an awful person for leaving him there, for a reason she doesn't even know. They pull out of the garage and onto the drive, all five of them trying not to cower into their seats and the floor below them as they get closer and closer to the side gate. The guard doesn't even look up at their approach. What he does to is lean in to type some sort of code into the pad lining the fence before they even stop in front of him. Not once does he take a proper look at them.
The gate starts to split in two and slide open right before her eyes. Her chest is so tight that she has to remind herself to breathe.
"Did that seriously just work?" Tarquin murmurs, and she shushes him. It's not like the guard could hear them, but it feels like he can.
"Where am I going again?" Soran asks.
"Left out of here, and then head downtown."
"Because I know how to get there."
"I'll tell you, just hurry up and get out of here," Emmi insists. Before this dumbass decides to actually look at us.
He looks mighty preoccupied into talking to whoever's communicating with him through the little tucked away earpiece, so small she almost didn't notice it. What could be so important? He's going to find out later when his job's on the line for letting them go in the first place.
Soran pulls through the gates without issue and turns left onto the main road. The gate begins to close behind them, inch by inch.
Nothing happens.
The air in the car is already thick, stale. As if not one of them was breathing.
She doesn't think she was.
"That really worked?" Ria asks hesitantly, twisting in her seat to gaze back at the Estate and the gate, now firmly closed behind them. The garage is closed too. No one is coming streaming out onto the grass shouting up a storm after them. It really did. She would have never taken Crynn as the devious type, but apparently everyone has a side that the public isn't privy to. It came in handy eventually, so what can she really say about it?
Emmi leans back in her seat and finally allows herself to take a real breath. Everyone else does the same.
It feels like freedom, even though it really isn't. After so long trapped in the Estate with nowhere else to properly go except the courthouse, it's nice to be out with no one and nothing telling them what to do.
And someone's not missing this time, so it's even better.
It's not proper freedom though. There's no way the five of them would make it past any of the checkpoints out of the city. It was a length process nine years ago back when things were all nice and separated, and now that people from every place in the country are teeming about it's even worse. They have no identification. Their faces are plastered everywhere. Someone would know the second they even tried.
It would be nice to try, but not worth it.
While it was tempting to run that wasn't the goal they had in mind when coming up with this. It was their last shot. It felt like a last hurrah too, but what they were going to do probably shouldn't be called that.
"That way, and then left," she instructs. With every passing second they get closer to what they're about to do, and she doesn't find she's afraid at all.
She's dying soon, after all.
What could possibly scare her now?
Tarquin Vierra, 16
Applicant #4
Never in his life has he wanted to run away at the sight of something so familiar.
That's what seeing the theater does, though. He instructs them around the block and into the alley behind the building amidst the dingy puddles and heaps of trash bags. That's where the rarely used back door and it's crumbling steps are. The hopefully still-unlocked door.
They never locked it when he was here, but times have changed.
The door pushes in under his hand though it takes him a long minute to ascend the stairs at all. Everyone else hangs back a minimum of ten feet away, waiting for him to step inside. The main hallway is as dark as always when the last person leaves for the night and closes up shop. Even though he can barely see he knows where every individual room is, every nook and cranny. Every place feels like an old friend, the only ones he really has right now. The weight of the phone in his pocket is a constant reminder of that.
Ria creeps silently up to his side and peers under his arm. "All good?"
"Yeah. I just have to go get the keys."
She nods. He ducks inside and flips the lights on, leaving everyone else to file inside behind him as he makes a beeline for the back office. Everything looks the exact same, carefully disorganized. Whoever's in here though always knows where everything is, can answer a question without blinking. This type of chaos is the best one.
He opens the second drawer from the bottom and pulls the ring of keys out. The thing about organized chaos though is that if he doesn't put them back in their exact place someone is bound to notice.
Who knows what they'd think. Would they ever guess this?
The main door slams shut and he winces despite himself as the noise echoes all throughout the back of the house and out into the auditorium. If there was anyone still lurking about, they certainly know they're not alone now.
"You're telling me they lock the rooms inside the theater but not the theater itself?" Emmi asks, poking her head through the door. "Or, you know, the office."
"Then someone would be tasked with looking after an office key."
"No one responsible enough?"
"Nope."
They suggested that, once. Arden said he should look after it.
It was a firm no on his end.
He leads all four of them down the hall and through the green room, past the dressing rooms even, and into the basement. He makes sure to flick on every light as he goes even if it may seem excessive on his end. The dark isn't good anymore.
He's unlocked the costume room down here a million times over but it's still something else to see it when he flicks the lights on. The oldest stuff is packed away in boxes and the ones perhaps beyond repair tucked away even further than that, but there are still racks upon racks stretching out down the rows full of clothes. There's a rolling rack next to the door that he very gently pushes to the side; that must be the stuff they're using right now. He's not going to touch it.
"Okay, I'll see you guys in two days, apparently," Emmi says, snorting. She picks one of the rows and disappears into it.
"That's probably a good idea," he says, pointing after her. "Stick to the right. That's where the most... normal stuff will be. Normal for a gala, anyway."
"So dressing like a dead Shakespeare character isn't gala appropriate?" Ria asks. She looks up at him and smiles.
"Well, there go my plans for the night," Soran deadpans, but he's quickly dragged off down the row opposite Emmi's by Icarus, and his voice is lost in the middle of it quite quickly.
He waits until they're all lost in the sea of outfits to pick his own room. He could practically find anything in here if you gave him a description and a brief minute to track it down; he's seen everything in here over the years, seen the people who have worn each and every one. He knows what will look good and what won't, what will fit the people he has now. They don't have the hours Tarquin wishes they did to pick and choose.
He'll worry about himself last. Somewhere in here there's a whole chunk of outfits he's worn before; it'll take him all of a minute and a half to track one down that's appropriate and wiggle his way into it.
Every few feet he makes sure to pick something else up, and by the time he's made it the end of the impossibly long row he has at least one thing for everyone stuck into the crook of his arm.
On cue, Ria pokes her head through the opposite rack, looking more confused than he's ever seen her.
It's a cry for help.
He searches through the pile and pulls out a few things he found with her in mind. Her eyes light up, even if she looks just as perplexed as before.
"I can't even remember the last time I wore a dress," she says under her breath, but takes the armful offered to her regardless.
"Never?"
"Maybe."
First time for everything. He points her back to the front of the room and the makeshift dressing room tucked into the corner and then continues on his merry way down the next aisle. No one else is even close, so he begins to pitch things across the room at each of them individually. A pair of shoes there, a shirt there, a dress with an oddly purple-pink hue that he hasn't seen in almost two years that he tosses to Emmi without a moment's hesitation. It's the little things like that.
Finally he finds what has to be the most normal outfit he's probably ever worn in this place. It's still not just a typical black suit, but it's close enough.
It'll fit for what they're about to do.
He's halfway through the buttons on his new shirt when the phone starts to ring.
His brain short-circuits, first. His first thought is that someone's found them out and knows this is the only point of contact.
And then something clicks.
He rummages in his pocket for the phone, drops it, and then scrambles after it across the floor, scooping it up. He drops the bundle of clothing he had been collecting in the process. Calix's number is flashing across the screen and that's all that matters; nothing else ever could.
He presses answer and holds the phone up to his ear, but hears nothing at all.
He isn't saying anything either. Nothing is coming to mind. His breath is caught in his throat and he's not sure anything would come out anyway.
Everyone else has gone silent too. Ria practically trips out of the dressing room in her haste to get out, blue dress and all. He'd tell her she looks nice if he could talk at all.
"Tarquin?" Calix asks, and he forces back that familiar feeling of tears rapidly approaching. He can't cry now. He has no time to.
"Yeah," he answers, voice hardly above a whisper. At least something came out at all.
"Oh my God, dude, I thought someone was fucking with me, okay, and I didn't even check my voicemails because it was an unknown number, you know, and you also know I never answer those, but you still—"
"I just wanted to hear one of your voices," he explains.
"No one else is here with me."
"That's fine. You're good enough."
"Gee, thanks," Calix says, but his voice is filled with a laugh. "Are you... are you okay, dude? What's up?"
"Not the usual."
"Didn't think so. When they called me and told me they couldn't find you I sorta freaked out, you know. But they found you."
"Thanks to you."
"Anyone could've looked at your damn house," Calix says. "Are you okay, though? Like really?"
"I'm not," he says thickly. "I'm not, but I've been trying. I don't have much longer to do that, though, and I don't have long before I have to go either—"
"Go? Go where?"
"I'm at the theater," he answers, slightly hysterical with it all. He's usually here with Calix of all people, or Arden or Velia, or a gaggle of other people that are all aiming for the same exact thing. He's usually getting repeatedly smacked with a foam sword or getting lost in a sea of lines that he's trying to learn along with everyone else.
"What? Why? I can come there right now."
"You can't. If you come here I won't leave, and we have to go. We're about to do something really, really stupid, I think."
"We? Are the others there with you?"
"Yeah."
"Are they... good? You know what I mean."
"Yeah," he repeats.
"But not replacing us, right?"
He laughs. "No, never. You know no one could."
"Just checking."
He's not crying. That's a good thing too, right? For once even though he could be he's managed to hold the feeling at bay in order to feel happy about something for once, in order to properly enjoy the sound of his friend's voice and the familiarity of it without sobbing. It would be hard to absorb it this way if he could barely even hear it, and he's been sobbing pretty loud as of late.
"Calix," he says. "After tomorrow you're probably going to hear a lot of things, about us and about me. I just want you to promise me—"
"I don't believe any of it."
"But it's true," he says. "What I did, that's all true."
"But what's not true is what they're calling you," Calix responds. "You're not heartless, or a monster, or cruel. You're not any of those things and nothing's going to make that true. I don't care how long they try - I'm not going to believe that. Nothing's changed."
He takes a deep breath. "A lot's changed," he says quietly.
"I still love you, though. You know that."
He does know that. He always has.
If only that changed anything.
"Don't forget any of this," he insists. "I know people will. That's what they do when awful things happen. Just remember all of it - me, and everything that happened. Please."
"I will. I promise."
A promise is worth even more than he thought coming from someone he knows will keep it. There aren't many people these days like that anymore.
There are some people that will forget. There are some people, like Calix, who probably couldn't even if they tried. Those are the people he's going to cling to in his last moments - the good ones. Maybe they truly are few and far between but they're good, and he's found them. It's not impossible. He can say he had them, and no one can take that way.
They can take everything else, but not that.
Eriska Maclain, 60
Member of the New Haven Federation
It's all just a bit of bad timing.
Nothing revolving around her, thankfully enough. Things do often enough but she hasn't been subjected to something truly terrible in say, fourteen years or so. Maybe even thirteen. The year immediately following the bombs wasn't the most pleasant one.
Reintegrating proved to be the most difficult thing of all. It wasn't the technicalities behind it; a new name and a place to live and a job to do were the easiest parts, in fact. It was remembering how to be proper person. Most Sentinels were monsters, she knew, but once upon a time they had been human. When one spent thirty-odd years living in a shell of that it was difficult to get back.
She could still remember the look on Nanami and Keir's faces when they were outside for the first time in months. It was childlike.
It had burned out, of course. Things like stars always did.
They could have been good, the two of them. Really, properly good had they had a few years to be trained and run through the motions like she had. By the time she had whipped them into shape after the fact they hadn't even wanted to change their names. They weren't strong enough. Of course that was what made them cling to her all the more. That, and their dead families.
It was difficult, as she said, to go back. It was even harder when you had nothing to go back to.
She wouldn't pry because she couldn't afford to, but there was no telling what had actually happened to Andere. She most likely was never going to find out, either. There was no stopping him once he got something stuck in his mind, no matter how much she advised him against it.
He had gone with intent, she knows, and he had never came back. Now one of those five was covered in bruises all over again.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, is all.
At least for his sake she hopes it was quick.
Not that he deserved quick.
An entire gaggle of people pass her on the ballroom floor on their way to the bar behind her, chattering up a storm. She steps aside to let them pass, further letting the crowd swallow her up. It's best to do that in moments like this.
At the tail end of the group is Pandora, otherwise silent and uninvolved. Last time Eriska saw her she was on the second floor wrap-around with her mother, talking as if they were still getting along. She was making a secret of it; Evander wasn't. They were curiously funny little people, them and their attempts at lying.
She waits a few moments until Pandora gets to the bar and finishes up her brief communication with the bartender before following her over.
People are difficult things to figure out, but she thinks she's got this one.
"It's all just a bit of bad timing, isn't it?" she says aloud. Pandora turns around drink in hand and a smile on her face, though it's strained. She can't blame her on that front.
"It always is with my mother. That's sort of her thing, as you know."
"So I do. You don't believe it's out of malicious intent, though. Do you?"
Pandora shrugs. "It's been planned for months now. There's just such a thing as postponing, you know? At least for a week or so."
"You think this will have blown over by then?"
Her smile turns grim. "Do you think it ever will?"
The Capitol forgot twenty-three names and faces almost every year. It's different when it's their own flesh and blood, though. When it's twenty-four instead of twenty-three. They always had a victor to use, to make people forget the trauma of losing the others. They won't have such a luxury after tomorrow.
"I think if my mother could she'd have loaded up the needles already," Pandora says. "It would certainly have made tonight less awkward."
Why would anyone willingly talk to Pandora Quinn when she's about to lose the five children she fought so hard to protect. Evander might as well be hiding away for how much she's seen him tonight.
"You tried," she responds. "That's all you could've done."
"It wasn't good enough, though."
"It rarely is."
She's learn that herself and taught it, year after year. You have to pick and choose what you fight for, because not all battles are winnable. Not all of them are worth winning
Eriska leans around her and into the bar, beckoning the bartender over. He gets to work on her next glass, and in the meantime Pandora disappears from her side and off into the crowd before Eriska can tell her not to, nothing more than a glass of water in her hand. The Capitol she got what was always coming to them, for doing what they did. For ruining so many lives. Pandora's a good person, though. Eriska hasn't dealt with many of those types before.
She was one of the few that didn't deserve it.
She always wanted kids, way back when. When she thought there was still a chance. She would have hoped that a daughter of hers would have ended up like Pandora did. Good to the core.
By the time she ends up with another drink the crowd is rippling, a murmur going up over the people closest to her all the way from the main door. She's not tall enough to see so she waits, patiently, until the stream of people begin to navigate back and forth, some away.
She catches sight of the first of them only a few seconds later, flitting in and out at the edge of the crowd. One, and then two. Two rapidly turns into all five.
And someone, it would appear, has greatly messed up.
Halfway through the crowd Eleine turns to look at her, a single eyebrow raised. She shakes her head. There's no use, even less of a is already in motion after all; there's nothing left she has to do.
It wasn't according to the original plan, but this was the one she got.
And she can live with that.
I was going to write the whole almost done sappy note thing now, but I'm already late as is so instead you get this pointless one.
Until next time.