bad luck, old sport

[goingtobeunwell]

Who: Francis Crozier and OTA
What: Uh oh, more bad luck for Milton's other resident old man!
When: Throughout February
Where: Crozier's igloo, the town and the outskirts, the basin

Content Warnings: The Terror AMC™'s specific flavor of horror -- possible mentions of cannibalism, starvation, illness, murder, gore, addiction, Victorians

Comments

[goingtobeunwell]

He's the same, in a way. He's used to crowded quarters but always finally a way to be alone.

"Yes," he answers. "It's quiet. I like the peace."

[solitarysoul]

"...me too. I haven't been anywhere peaceful for a long time." His time at the orphanage wasn't always chaotic, but the war and Termina were as far from peaceful as one could get.

[goingtobeunwell]

A long time for a child means a lifetime, as far as Crozier's concerned. "Is it peaceful enough in the Community Center? Despite all the other people living there, of course."

[solitarysoul]

"Usually. I can keep to myself if I want to. But I do patrols a lot so I'm not there much of the time."

[goingtobeunwell]

He frowns and reaches into a leather bag at his waist, taking out some caribou jerky and offering a piece to Levi. "Keeping yourself busy?"

[solitarysoul]

He shrugs. "I guess. I don't do much more than patrol and hunt." He reads, sometimes, but doesn't think that's really worth mentioning.

"Are you? Does the ice house need a lot of maintenance?"

[goingtobeunwell]

"Not as long as it keeps cold," he says with the barest of laughs. "Ice is easy to keep up, it's the construction that's the devil."

[solitarysoul]

"I guess that makes sense. Its not going to melt here." He raises an eyebrow. "That bad, huh?"

[goingtobeunwell]

"Maybe not if you have two hands. It was a couple days of construction instead of just one."

He offers a smile to the young man.

"If you'd ever like to learn, I could teach you."

[solitarysoul]

"Oh." Right, this guy was missing a hand. It was pretty obvious, Levi just hadn't thought about it. At least it was just the hand, though he's not so sure an arm without a hand is that useful.

"I could help you make one if you ever want a new one for some reason."

[goingtobeunwell]

"I might want a second room one day." He waits a beat before smiling.

[solitarysoul]

"Heh. Maybe a guest room or two if you want visitors."

[goingtobeunwell]

"As though anyone would be as mad as I am to spend a night in an ice house." Even if it's terribly warm and efficient.

[solitarysoul]

"I dunno, there's got to be a reason you stay there. It could be the best house in town but we all just think its weird."

[goingtobeunwell]

"Peace," he reminds him. "Peace, and the dome of the hut traps the heat. It's warm, sturdy. The ice keeps away the noise."

[solitarysoul]

"That makes sense. It'd be weird for me, though. I've spent almost all of my life in big group settings. The army, and the orphanage before that."

[goingtobeunwell]

The army?!

"Jesus," he says softly. "You're just a boy. At what age were you in the army?"

cw: kids being sent to war

[solitarysoul]

Oh, right. He hadn't gone over this with this guy.

"...I was conscripted at 13. I'm 18."

[goingtobeunwell]

That's the age he went to sea. That's the age he left his family and his home, and went off to work on a ship.

But that's not war.

"My god," he says softly. "My god, that's horrifying."

[solitarysoul]

"...yeah." What else does he say to that? It was horrifying, but he got used to it. Levi got used to extremes pretty easily.

"The war's over, though. So hopefully there won't be more kids like me anytime soon. I know a lot of places have rules against it. That's good."

[goingtobeunwell]

Not all places though, Crozier is well-aware of this. They'd put boys on ships and let them get blown to smithereens with the adults in the war with the French.

"No war here," he remarks. "One less thing to worry about." Though there's the cold, the wild animals, the potential for starvation.

[solitarysoul]

"Yeah, that's good. Sometimes I wonder if a war was what led to this place being empty. I don't know of any weapon that could do something on such a large scale, but there are a lot of things I don't know."

[goingtobeunwell]

"It seems desolate enough, but not destroyed," he mutters. "Too much left behind, as though everyone seemingly abandoned this place all at once."

[solitarysoul]

"They tried to, at least....oh, uh. I think they're all gone now, but on the early Aurora nights there were ghosts. Not, like, real ghosts but like a film strip playing in the air or something. No sound, but we could see the last moments of everyone in town. It...it wasn't pretty. But they were mostly trying to get out any way they could."

[goingtobeunwell]

He grimaces, hating that his guess was right. "Escaping."