END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

[sailmods]

[the prisoners wake up on cold, hard floors.

the lights are bright, glaring, a sterile cell with sterile bars facing a sterile hall. the prisoners with you, across from you, and no one else. no rocking of a ship in waves, nothing. just the prisoner and their prison.

time passes, one assumes. the rhythmic click of Friday’s heels down the hall. it’s almost like the ticking of a clock.]

Comments

[glassaxolotl]

Dedue glances over in Edgar’s direction. “None of us are alright,” he says flatly. “I am unharmed, however,” he adds, figuring that’s about as good as one can be given the circumstances.

He looks around and shakes his head. “I cannot see any of the people you have named.”

Then, because Edgar seems to be talking with someone about him, he asks, “Who is asking about me?”

He flinches slightly at the mention of Dimitri.

[hate_gettin_older]

"It's, uh --" He racks his brain briefly for the Front-looking man's name, comes up empty. "You, what's your name? Dedue's asking."

[ossie_oswald]

"Ossie," he doesn't bother with the full pleasantries, "you have my apologies that we weren't better acquainted before now."

He sits up a little straighter in the cell.

"I'll skip asking after his health, but please give him my sympathies. And you ought to have them too- bally miserable situation, the lot of it."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Thanks," he says, "same goes. I'm Edgar."

And to Dedue: "It's Ossie, he says to give you his sympathies."

[glassaxolotl]

“...Ah,” Dedue says.

It isn’t Dedue that needs sympathy right now, he thinks to himself. Dedue has been through worse; he’ll get through this.

It’s Dimitri that he’s worried about. Dedue can’t see him right now, but he can imagine. Albeit the image in his head looks much more like the dungeons of Fhirdiad than the cells they’ve all currently found themselves in.

“Give Ossie my thanks,” Dedue says. “I assume Giles is also not with him?”

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar takes another quick look to confirm, and reports back "Nah, looks like he's on his own."

To Ossie, belatedly: "He says thanks."

[ossie_oswald]

Well, at least he's located Dedue. The others... hm.

"Can you see any others? Could we pass on a message, just to see if we can find Dimitri and Giles and Sharky?"

Those three at least would set his soul at ease.

"And do you have any magic to speak of?"

[hate_gettin_older]

"Just you, Dedue, and whatsisname, Crichton. And someone else in with Crichton, I dunno him."

He frowns at the last question, concentrates for a moment, shakes his head. "Not anymore, looks like. Could start fires, but it's not happening now."

[ossie_oswald]

"That would be Arthur, I expect- I believe he and Crichton were roommates. Dour but handsome looking fellow?"

Not that it helps.

"That is what I'd figured. Can't test it myself, you see, all of my abilities do rather require contact with other people."

A sigh.

"I really ought to have asked Friday to move Giles into my cabin, even just for administrative purposes."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Might not have helped. They din't put me and my roommate together. Dunno what the fuckin point of that was."

He looks up and down the corridor, and his jaw works briefly.

"Think they'll bring anything to eat sometime?"

[ossie_oswald]

...

"I apologise in advance for the unpleasantness of what I'm about to say, but... well. There are no doors. Which, to my mind, indicates one of two possibilities; our trip to the exhibits will be short enough that we won't need to be fed, or... that we don't need to be fed, here."

Ossie laces his fingers on his chest.

"We're material goods, Edgar, I hardly think she expects us to starve to death, we'd lose our value. So. One of the two, I expect."

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar takes a moment to process that. And yeah, it holds together; if the Front could have magicked up a way to make the Tail-sectioners not need food, they'd probably have done it. On the other hand ...

"Could always magic the food in here same way she magicked us in," he offers, without much force. "But. Y'could be right."

[ossie_oswald]

"Mm."

Ossie does not argue against it directly. Because who is he to take away someone's hope, even if it is entirely more work to magic individual meal portions into a collection of jail cells than it is to just not feed them.

"I've had prettier prisons than this," he muses instead.

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar makes a noise somewhere between a scoff and a sigh. "Yeah, din't we all just leave one?"

Seems like all he's ever been in is prisons. Except Milliways; he misses it suddenly, achingly.

[ossie_oswald]

"My apologies, usually I am delighted by poetic vagueness, but do you mean the Village or the ship more broadly?"

[hate_gettin_older]

"The ship," he says, "I wasn't at the Village. Sounded like it was worse. Not as much worse as this."

[ossie_oswald]

"Eventually it becomes pointless to rank them. The Village had eccentricities of its own, but captivity is captivity, no matter how pleasant. Although it wouldn't have killed her to give us a bloody bed, now, would it. That awful man, may his name be struck from every record, gave us that much. Even if he was watching us sleep."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Not even junk to make a bed. Not even fuckin shelves ..."

He paces down the length of the bars as he speaks, and back again.

"Hope you were right on the first guess and it's cause we're not gonna be here that long."

[ossie_oswald]

Ossie waits for some cynical motion of despair to cross him, but finds that one simply doesn't arise. Even if he is correct in his assertion, which he likely will be, even without the familiar mantle on his shoulders, even without every advantage that his first time in captivity gave him. Maybe he finally is a decent Spring after all.

"May it be because of our escape and not our transfer. As Bluebeard's wife from his clutches, as Jack from the giants, as Donkeyskin from her father."

[not here]

[prince_of_beasts]

Maybe he finally is a decent Spring after all.

Several cells down, Dimitri feels suddenly vindicated, and doesn't know why.

[hate_gettin_older]

"Yeah," he says, "all of that."

A beat.

"Don't know those other ones but Jack killed the giants, din't he?"

[ossie_oswald]

"Technically yes, but he did flee the castle first. I don't think that the Wyrd will complain overmuch about the specifics."

... well he can't offer Edgar some tea, but he can do this.

"Would you like to hear the others?"

[hate_gettin_older]

A longer pause.

Then, lower than before: "Yeah, all right."

[ossie_oswald]

"Alright."

Ossie clears his throat. They used to do this back at his Freehold- big eisteddfods for storytelling and poetry and song, which he always attended but never participated in. How could he? Between the Scheherazades and the Johnnies outfiddling the devil, his mundane abilities would have been laughable. But here? Well, there's hardly anyone else, is there.

"There was a nobleman once- went by the name of Bluebeard- and he was a charming sort, but the small problem was that he'd married no less than six times. Each time, his wife disappeared, leaving not a single trace behind. Now it happened that one day Bluebeard was visiting a small tavern, run by a kindly man and his two daughters and five sons, and there Bluebeard fell so fastly for one of the daughters that he insisted on taking her for his wife. When they returned to the castle, Bluebeard gave her a ring of keys, and a very firm instruction. The keys unlocked every room in his fine castle, including his vaults of treasure, his room full of hunting trophies, the kitchens stocked with every ingredient imaginable, every fine bedroom with beds stuffed with swan-down. But one key unlocked a room in the basement, and she must never, ever, ever open it."

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar leans his forehead against the bars and listens.

Bluebeard insisting on taking the girl for his wife gets a small cynical scoffing noise.
Because of course he did, isn't that how it always goes when the people with the power think they own everyone else --

"Wait, he gave her the key and told her which fuckin room it opened, and then told her she wasn't allowed to?"