🎵whistle while you work🎶(closed)

[load_aim_shoot]

Who: A. Rama Raju, Lanfear, William Gibson, Renny Oldoak
What: wilderness chore bonding time!
When: I'm thinking some time after the ghostly housefire, but it's loose
Where: the forest around Milton

Content Warnings: talk about food/eating/not eating, possible talk of fire stuff. will add as stuff comes up

Comments

[notarat]

There's a slight nod on his end.

"It's.. difficult, isn't it?" It's like he had to decide on the word for a moment there. "While we are here, it feels impossible to determine the exact nature of this place. But even if we don't know for sure, it has never felt like an afterlife to me."

Partially because Billy has been iffy on ever fully believing in that idea, despite it being the norm where he comes from. Religion suddenly doesn't seem so attractive anymore when it's condemning you for what you are. For something you can't change. But the last thing he wants to do is get into a potential religious discussion with someone who seems pleasant enough so far, so he shoves it under the rug for now.

"So I told him that he seemed more like a man to me than a demon from hell, despite him wearing that mask. Me then implying it was strange for a person to wear that sort of mask was what got him to threaten me."

[load_aim_shoot]

It's never felt like one to Raju, either. But then there's the creeping doubt— how would he know? It certainly doesn't look the way that he'd been told time after death would but somewhere in him, unconsciously, he'd always assumed most of it was mostly metaphors anyway. He hadn't really thought about that until he'd been faced with— with the idea of the reality of it. And he really doesn't feel dead.

And aside from feeling, he can't be. He still has too much to do. He's the only one who can do it, and he isn't finished yet.

This has to be something else.

It doesn't matter. William doesn't need convincing of it anyway, and has asked for Raju's help with other things. "It is strange though, isn't it? Even the mask itself is strange, with those... things that move. I wanted to ask him how it worked; maybe it's a good thing I was distracted. What did he threaten you with?"

[notarat]

Thank god that Raju agrees with him on this one. Billy does like to think that Rorschach's mask is pretty objectively strange, but that man had acted like it had somehow been a normal thing. Despite the mask itself being odd enough - both in the design and in the way Rorschach always seems to wear it around town, to a point where Billy is pretty sure no one here must ever have seen his actual face - and then the way it seems to shift while you look at it being even weirder.

At least there's still some people here who have a good head on their shoulders, apparently.

"Nothing specific," he replies to the question. Though he also knows it didn't have to be specific. Not when Rorschach is so intimidating to Billy in general. "Only general harm."

And it probably doesn't take a genius to take a look at Billy and tell that he isn't exactly a fighter. Not when he's shaped like a stickbug, and when his pale skin and the sickly dark colouration around his eyes make him look like a stiff breeze could knock him over. If Rorschach wanted to hurt him, he easily could.

"But it is enough to make me hesitate on going near him." Alone, at least. It's why Billy is still walking in the direction of the library, despite what he's saying. Because he's got Raju with him here, and given everything the other has said so far, Billy likes to think he'll be able to rely on him.

[load_aim_shoot]

"Mm," he says, thoughtful. It would have been more helpful of Rorschach to be specific, so Raju could tell whether he was dealing with someone who knows how to fight. Swiss name, odd manner, American accent— it isn't much to know about a person. That's alright. Raju's confident in his own ability to improvise. Most people would rather threaten to fight than actually do it, and if Rorschach collected enough books into one place to call it a library, maybe he'll hesitate to get too physical somewhere that might damage them.

"Have you talked to him since?"