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

[neverleave]

We thought that this reality is dying and we had to do something. Or did you really think you can wait around until the power of love convinces the captain to let us go?

We took a gamble and lost. But don't pretend we weren't gonna be obliterated anyway.

[littlefairytale]

If all we'd been doing was waiting around, we never would've even made it as far as we did without either being devoured by the ship or turning on each other just as badly as every other cruise before us!

I get it. You think anyone who didn't choose your path was naive and thinks the power of friendship will save the day and everything will suddenly be sunshine and rainbows! But that's not it! We were trying the one thing no one had ever tried before. And without that? I-I don't think your plan would even have worked! You'd never have been able to get close enough to the Captain to use that string if he was still so on guard he never even talked to anyone!

[inhairently]

( steve wasn't going to say anything else but he can't keep his mouth shut. he's back at the front of the cell, face against the bars so he can see ruby. )

Eddie Munson. Chrissy Cunningham. Vance Hopper. ( he counts off the names on his fingers. they're not the only ones. he knows other people died before the ship, but they're the ones who come to mind. ) You know what they have in common? They're dead. They died. I'm not talking easy deaths, either. Eddie was eaten alive. Bet you didn't know that about him, huh? Or that Chrissy thought she was going crazy in her last days because she had a goddamn monster in her head?

( he shakes his own head, almost as if to clear it of those images. )

But it didn't end there for them, that's the thing. That asshole brought them here and put them through hell on a monthly basis after they'd already been through hell back home. They didn't deserve it.

( nobody did, but least of all a bunch of murdered teenagers who never even had a chance back home. )

So yeah, no, sorry if I don't buy into the whole idea that we should be nice to the creep and hope it works. He's a piece of shit.

[neverleave]

[He scowls as Ruby keeps talking, and when she hits You'd never have been able to get close enough to the Captain something snaps. This is what they do, what they've always been doing, act like everything is a great opportunity and every horror is justified because they get to grow for it. And when you point out it's a shitty deal they call you ungrateful, impatient, a stupid child.

So when Steve interjects, Natsuno is ready to ride that anger. This is the end, so what's the point in holding back now?]

Did you know he made me forget my parents' faces? I was tortured and watched my friends die over and over in reenactments of all the shitty movies he watched, but when one death wasn't up to his standards, he took my memories as tax. For making him put in the effort of bringing me back.

He is a piece of shit, and a coward. You tried the "one thing" no one tried, and where did it get us? Running on fumes and still tortured on a monthly basis, pretending it was fine because this time we volunteer. And when someone decided she couldn't take it anymore, your friends beat her up like savages, because the captain is the only one worthy of your empathy.

[He slams a fist against the bars, angrily.]

Condemn us all you want. But your path wasn't leading anywhere except a nicer coat of paint on our death.

[littlefairytale]

[ Ruby stands there, and she listens, and she grips the bars so tight her knuckles pale. With every word her shoulders pull tauter, and her grip gets tighter, and her teeth grit hard enough that her jaw aches.

And then Natsuno's done, and for all that Ruby tries to be warm, and compassionate, and better than this, what follows is a strange, bitter little laugh. ]

I'm— I'm sorry, is— is that it? What, do you think you're the only ones who are so worried about your friends? Who've lost something you'll never get back? You think we were just oh so happy to be tortured over and over to buy ourselves more time to try and come up with a solution that doesn't end in us dead, or enslaved, or the— the trinkets of some madwoman?! You think we just love the Captain, that we're not still angry, that we don't still realise he's piece of shit?!

I lost my eye because I died fighting against flowers that were trying to take away my memories of home! My friends, my girlfriend, the woman who was like a mother to me, have been swallowed up by the ship and I know I'll never see them again! Sparkles trapped me in an illusion of a world where I didn't watch some of my best friends die because I was a few seconds too late to save them, where my world isn't on the brink of destruction, and then I had to get back up and keep going!

This place has nearly broken me more times than I can count but here I am! [ she throws her arms out ] And I don't regret my choice. If there's one thing that my world taught me by setting me up as a martyr in the making it's that if you don't learn from the mistakes of the people before you, if you don't try the plan that everyone else thought was unthinkably insane, you will lose! Over and over again, you will lose!

[ She makes a frustrated noise and breaks off from the bars to pace in a circle, dragging her hands over her face and gripping at the roots of her hair. Calm down. Calm down. ]

All you've done is trade one kind of imprisonment for another. And when Malin starts trading us all off like collectible dolls, you won't see your friends again. None of us will. So, congratulations. At least you'll have their faces to remember them by, I guess.

[inhairently]

Yeah, Stockholm's a bitch, huh? ( steve says flatly. ) Look, I'm not trying to make this about me or my friends. I'm trying to make a point. It doesn't matter how nice you were to the Captain. He would've kept bringing new people here and hurting them.

And, yeah, maybe he'd be nicer to Ava or Skulduggery or whoever, but what about everyone else? I mean, some people don't find it all that easy to suck up to their kidnapper. ( a difficult concept to understand around here, for whatever reason. ) The point is somebody had to stop the cycle.

( and clarke had tried, and anyone who thinks this is the outcome she was aiming for is an idiot. )

It's bigger than me or you or anyone else. It's about ending this before he can find more victims.