sixth investigation

[airlockedmods]

[It's Friday again but as of today it has been a full two weeks since someone has lost their life. The mansion is quiet, almost peaceful.

But we all know peace can only last so long in the Fantasy Sweet.]

Comments

[motherfucking_ghost]

...Queenie.

[It was bad enough the first time. He puts a hand in her damp hair, and it's harder the second time around.]

[goteachother]

[At least she's coherent this time and not already panicked? But you're worrying her now, Leonard.]

Cap'n? Honey... why am I scared right now? I feel like... there's something.... but everything's just... empty.

What aren't you telling me?

Again.

[motherfucking_ghost]

I don't know what happened, to you or to him. [Him.]

There was an announcement.

Nish-- [It's going to kill her, sure as anything, and it's harder now that she's coherent, and now that it's had time to really settle in.] I'm sorry, Q.

[goteachother]

[There was an announcement Which means she can just look down at her PIP, she doesn't need to but somehow she does. She needs to see for herself, see what it says, that it's really truly-]

Tani... [A whisper, and her hands go up to cover her mouth. It's not immediate, it takes a long moment for her mind to catch up with the words. She looks desperately over to Leonard, shaking her head, eyes filling with tears.]

He can't be-

He was... supposed to be here, Leonard.

Here with me. Why..? Ho- [And her voice breaks, her breath catching in her chest as she crumples forward, half screaming out a wrecked sob.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

[He can't answer any of it. All they know is he left, he was supposed to come back, she was...what, knocked out? Doped up? Maybe? And now here they are. That's what they'll find out in the trial, what happened.

He wraps his arms tight and protective around her, rocking her.

For as many people that died in the war, he'd never considered the people that send the letters, that go to the doors of loved ones, the people with the tired, compassionate faces that the second you open the door, you know what's going to come out of their mouths. How many bodies got sent home, how many didn't. How does someone get a job like that and not break every single time? He can't imagine doing it again and again and again, going through a script of I'm sorry for your loss or whatever the fuck they say, not when the outcome is this.

Damn near every week, at least one loved one of someone gone. They're going to break. They're going to break, and there's nothing he can do to keep all the pieces together, no matter how many smiles he brings, no matter what stupid and senseless plan he's concocted this time, no matter how deeply the sharp shattered edges dig in his hands when he just does what he can to keep them together.

(What would he have done if it had been Queenie? Or Junpei? Or Ardyn? He can't think that he'd do anything but make some molotovs and let the whole thing burn to the ground.

Maybe, just maybe, this place needs to burn anyway.)]