All you can do is try to know who your friends are

[lists_to_port]

Who: Open to noprevaricating CR and anyone involved in the House 7 Player Plot (and their CR? I dunno. I like to involve people.)
When: June 8 (the day after this gruesome discovery.) Any time.
Where: Various places around the village
Summary: erythrophilia decided to take out her fury at lists_to_port on one of his friends--an act of misplaced anger that she later seemed to regret. folkloristic is

Comments

[slaying]

Sometime after this reached its end, Buffy Summers hurried back to House Seven. She knew she should not have left it so impulsively and yet -- Grell had spent the past little while with her, right? Practically an act of protection all on its own. This is how she decided to spin it to herself as she unlocked the front door and...empty. Everyone was missing. Of course they were missing. Bones had been called to help and a quick check back over the journals suggested to her that Jilly had gone along. Good. She needn't worry over that, then.

Dawn. She had to check on Dawn. But she had told the girl to stay put and goddammit she trusted her. She shouldn't have trusted her. But the younger Summers would've realized that this was a chips-are-down situation, right? Buffy tossed aside her jacket. The sun was coming up.

To know the future of his soul. God damn, Jack! Buffy shoved a side-table hard and rough and it flew across the room, crashing against the opposite wall. Leaving kindling on the floor below. But -- these were roads she had

treehouse---evening of June 8

[lists_to_port]

It had finally come down to this. The treehouse was meant to be there for them in the wake of excruciating experiments and confusion and peril. Right now, Jack was doing a pretty good job of scoring a series of marks into a floorboard with the tip of his dagger. He hated feeling guilt, and right now it was hitting him from several directions at once.

Jilly, unprotected. Buffy? As good as betrayed, considering what he and Dawn had done together. Kennedy lying all dead-like in the clinic. Hornblower gutted. The former Watcher being civil.

He dug the blade deeper, finally giving up and driving it deep into the wood, point first. The hilt swayed slightly and was still.

[slaying]

The treehouse. She had avoided it all day in favour of looking for other places to run into the pirate. But after the sun had set and she had assured herself that the loose ends were at least temporarily tied up, Buffy set out for the place where things were supposed to get better. But it hardly felt like that could be possible.

She climbed slowly. Taking her time, thinking to herself. Preparing to be disappointed when she pulled herself over the threshold and found no one waiting for her.

[lists_to_port]

"Hallo, Annie." He leaned back so that his spine was flush against the wall, drawing his knees up to his chest. "Kennedy any better?"

Clinic (basically the entirety of June 8)

[consultmybooks]

It had taken Giles a few tries to find the place where Kennedy was staying - he had searched the regular clinic first before remembering that the Battle Dome had places for that. He'd only been there the once, for Xander, when the boy had botched the controls and gotten himself bitten.

Once he finds the place, he stays there, with the resoluteness of a gargoyle keeping watch. He's lost one friend, and now another is bleeding and hurt. This is not acceptable. This is wrong, and unfair, and all the other words that he's not allowed to apply to situations like this but are still so very applicable all the same

[seventeensir]

Another man winds up at the clinic, camped out beside Archie's bed except when all but forced out by the doctor. Even then, he stood outside the room until he was allowed back in.

He sits in the chair, rid of his bloody jacket. He'll worry about the stains and the damage to his uniform later. He's since washed his hands, rubbed them red and raw in an attempt to wash the blood from them... even long after it was gone. He cycles between two phases: a restless energy, where his fingers tap against his chair arm or thigh and he paces the length of the room again and again, and an unsettling calm, where he sits in the chair completely still and focuses either on the man in the bed or straight ahead at the wall.

[consultmybooks]

It's a while - a very long while - before Giles can bring himself to even properly register Horatio's presence in the room. For a couple of hours, at least, he behaves as though they're two men moving in entirely separate worlds for entirely separate purposes even as they both refused to be budged beyond a certain distance from Archie's bedside.

It was only on the third instance where they were shunted out of the room, one after another, that Giles actually addresses him.

"...this may be a forward and, when all is said and done, idiotic question to ask, but...would you happen to be Horatio?"

[seventeensir]

Horatio had certainly been in his own world, barely concious of anything more than shadows moving about. That they were people... he had known, of course, but he had not cared. They were somehow outside of all this, even though they hovered about the same man he did. But then words were said to him, and he looked over, like a man waking... the terror of a nightmare still written in his eyes even if he otherwise gave no indication of it.

Automatically, he offered a bit of a bow. His body knew proper manners before his mind could catch up. "Captain Hornblower, yes, sir."

[hippocraticly]

McCoy is exhausted. Hours of open surgery on Archie and the only thing that counted for it was the sad, solemn atmosphere in the battle dome clinic and the sound of the medical ventilator monotonously breathing for the slain lieutenant.

After everything they had gone through on the draft, Sutcliffe had struck now? Oh, no one had told him that death goddess was the one responsible for attacking Archie, but McCoy suspected it. He thought he would feel angrier than this... but the next twenty-four hours were going to be critical and the doctor was going to be there to monitor his condition every step of the way.

Clinic---late morning of June 8th, probably after running into Giles

[lists_to_port]

"McCoy?" The name came out in more of a whisper than Jack had intended as he peered in the doorway.

[hippocraticly]

"In or out, Jack. I don't have time or the patience to listen to you pussyfooting around out there." The doctor doesn't even spare him the time to look around and acknowledge the pirate.

[lists_to_port]

So the pirate chose "in," even though he wanted "out."

"What can I do? Is everyone at Seven safe? Sayo?"

Clinic - Late June 7 into early June 8

[tehoniongirl]

Adrenaline and fear had carried her to the clinic, trailing in the wake of McCoy and Horatio as they'd borne their fallen friend through the village. There had been enough presence of mind to stay back once they'd reached their destination, out of McCoy's way while he worked, but she'd stayed long enough to see the shirt pulled away from Archie's too pale body. Long enough for the brighter lights of the battle clinic to illuminate the red that soaked Horatio's uniform and shirt, that was covering McCoy's hands, and that glistened sickly at Archie's shoulder. Long enough, and too long

[slaying]

Buffy had been on her way back from meeting with Grell -- frustration making hard lines in her posture. She slowed on the approach to the dome...she didn't want to go in. She had no place in there. And she hated hospitals, anyway. But there was a figure on the path ahead and she...

"...Jilly?" Buffy walked a little faster.

[tehoniongirl]

She should have been embarrassed, maybe. It was an idle thought in the back of her head. But she was just...dazed. Straightening where she sat, the artist looked up as Buffy's steps quickened.

"Buffy." The word was a little cracked, like it didn't want to escape her throat, but she didn't try again.

[slaying]

"Oh my God," her stiffened composure broke in the face of the other woman's state. Gently, Buffy reached down for Jilly's shoulder. Crouching. What Jilly might have thought she should be embarrassed about barely registered on the radar of someone who had shared space with much messier horrors.

"Come here," she urged. Tugging her into a hug. It was pure instinct -- something beyond the boundaries of their awkward, fledgling friendship.

Clinic - early June 8th (and any time after)

[seventeensir]

Once Horatio Hornblower had been allowed back into the room where Archie was in the clinic, he'd settled into a chair beside the bed and barely moved. Every so often, he could be seen to stir, shift where he sat, lick his lips as he realized his thirst but put off getting to his feet.

This demanded retaliation. However this ended-- dear God, he could not lose Archie again, damn it!-- there would need to be retaliation.

He would put aside every principle he stood for. Every reluctance to kill in cold blood. If he could only put the barrel of a gun to the man who'd done this-- who'd been so cowardly as to attack Archie from behind. If he could only have the man in front of him, he'd pull that trigger.

Even as he thought about it, his long fingers flexed and contracted, his eyes boring into the wall across from him.

Clinic---June 9th, morning?

[lists_to_port]

It was not such a long walk down to the Battle Dome from House 7, but it was just enough of a walk to give Jack Sparrow some time to ponder their choices. To tell Hornblower and the rest to avoid the people Grell named? Or to take their chances with Fate and assume that the people involved would not come into contact anyway?

Luceti was a small, enclosed world. The second option seemed so much more dangerous because of its uncertainty. At least with the first, feelings of vengeance and anger could be addressed straight away.

On the off chance that the lieutenant was awake, Jack had brought with him a peace offering: a muffin. Blueberry. Fresh from the bakery. Not stolen, this time.

His step was soft as he swung the door open to Archie's room. Jack was not startled to see Horatio there already; he'd be surprised, in fact, if the other captain had not spent the night by Kennedy's bedside.

[seventeensir]

It was the movement that drew Hornblower's attention, not the sound.

He'd been leaned forward, aware of the slight ache in his back from his long vigil. Before long, just to relieve his stiff muscles, he'd shower in the bathroom attached to the room and spend an hour pacing the hospital room. It was about the length of a small quarterdeck.

His head bowed politely as he saw the man.

"Sir."

[lists_to_port]

"Hornblower." Jack set the muffin down by Archie's bedside. "Any change?"