The Funeral

[cityship]

Everyone's had a chance to recover somewhat, to stop reeling or at least try. Now that people are at least somewhat closer to being on balance again, it's time to say goodbye

Comments

Speaker for the Dead

[cityship]

Someone must speak for the dead, but it's so hard to eulogize someone you don't know.

Re: Speaker for the Dead

[captain_jtk]

Kirk steps up to the makeshift podium and places his hands on either side of it, surveying the assembled crew. he's done this before, for members of his own crew. However, it's never been on this scale before. He sighs softly and shakes his head. He hopes he'll do

The Launches

[cityship]

Reading the names of all five thousand plus lost souls would take hours, so as each group launches, their names will display on screen.

The pods burn when they get close to the sun, briefly flickering brightly, like a group of fireflies blinking once and then going out for good.

Group by group, they're sent off into the warmth of a lone sun.

Re: The Launches

[mammalrobot]

Robo had been to plenty of funerals. It came with being 86 and knowing a lot of people combined with not aging. He would never get used to them.

Thousands of people had died in the pod cavern, and while Robo was not so stupid as to think that he could have saved all of them, he would never know if he could have saved more of them by doing something else. With that in mind, the least he could do was give them a moment of silence as they went on their last journey. So Robo spent the entirety of the time the funeral went on standing nearby a window and watching the caskets sail off into space, neither moving nor speaking.

[[OOC: Thought I had accidentally stuck this in the wrong place. AND icon fail, goddammit.]]

Re: The Launches

[ladyofthesands]

Thousands of people she would never know, worlds she would never learn about, faces that might have been friends, blades that might have been crossed. Some of those caskets contained zombie faces, dead before they knew anything at all about Stacy, about their Universes. Arha stood, leaning into the wall, somber as she watched launch after launch.

Death came and left its mark upon each and every one of them in different ways. For Arha, it reminded her of her own death, and water rings listing on a chain in the desert wind. She shifted as voices came and went and the crowd hummed. This was a time for memory and reflection, though she had not really met many and their water could not be reclaimed.

She stayed, propped up against the wall, solemnly watching the caskets float and burn.

Re: The Launches

[bostonbeatcop]

Robert stood quietly against one wall and wept. He wept for all of those who he had been forced to kill in order to save the ship, all of those who would never know the truth of their abduction, what had happened to them. Those who had only had a few brief moments of pain and fear before they were taken.

Most of all he wept for his lost world.

B5's Eulogy

[cityship]

It's strange to eulogize someone that was supposedly you, but Brainiac 5 finds the words come much more easily than he thought they would.

End Reflections

[cityship]

Some might need to cry, some might need a hug, some might be ruminating their own mortality, others might be reassuring themselves that they're invincible. Yet others still might just want to book it to get away from the emotionally charged atmosphere. Either way, it's difficult to watch such a thing and not react to it somehow.

[ooc: Subthread away!]

Re: End Reflections

[redheadcarrier]

Asuka is there. She feels she at least owes that much to B5. However, she's dry-eyed throughout the entire thing. She didn't know any of the five thousand who perished. She never will. And in the end she doesn't care about them - they're abstract, a number. Something she can't truly put a face on. Something she can't bring herself to feel sorrow for. She grew up in a world where half the human race was wiped out before she was born. Three billion dead. Five thousand is a drop in the bucket.

However, B5's coffin does get a tightening of her expression, a tensing of her body. It's too late for her to say or do anything and for some reason she feels guilty; she hates herself for feeling that guilt. So, she just stands and watches it all go by.

[morphitudinous]

From his position on the fringes of the crowd, Billy watches the final pod rocket into the fiery star. B5. The courageous soul he had never gotten to know as a friend---only as a coworker, and one of the best there was.

Brainy's eulogy had ripped through his fragile composure like a knife twisting through his ribcage. The other was absolutely right---B5 was a hero because he'd been more than the sum of his parts, reached beyond arbitrary limits. And maybe, somehow, they could all do that too. But not right now, not when sorrow hadn't yet released him from its grasp. The guilt had subsided, with plenty of assistance from the crew's advice, but nothing could dampen the pain of loss except release.

The more his facial muscles twist to keep the tears at bay, the more difficult it becomes to breathe. Eventually he chokes on the air, involuntarily releasing a soft sob. Then another. Soon, much to his later embarrassment, Billy is crying, holding his long-since useless glasses loosely in one hand and hiding his eyes with the other.

[bonnypiperlad]

After Jamie has finished playing, he deflates the bagpipes and tucks them under one arm - then moves near the fringes of the crowd to watch B5's pod as it takes its final journey. He didn't really get to know B5 as well as some of the others, but he had found, from their brief interaction, that he actually liked the cyborg. And he regrets that now, he will not have the chance to get to know him better.

At that soft sob, Jamie glances over, his expression sympathetic. His hand reaches out to rest on Billy's shoulder, if the other man doesn't mind the gesture. Even if that's rejected, he'll offer as much comfort as he can - but for the moment, he keeps silent to properly allow Billy his grief.