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

[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."

cw: suicide

[solitarysoul]

Levi nods solemnly. He won't come out and say that some of them chose to end their lives, but he can hint at it. "Anyway they could."

cw: suicide

[goingtobeunwell]

In any way, in any fashion they could. He understand that all-too-well. Men will beg for someone to put a bullet in their brains to end the misery; he's seen it firsthand.

"It won't get to that again," he says softly.

[solitarysoul]

"I hope not." Normally he'd believe that, but after La'an died of fright and he was terrified out of his mind he's not so sure how things will go.

[goingtobeunwell]

He's not optimistic, but this young man doesn't need to know that. He doesn't need to fear monsters and a potential bad way out.

He grunts softly in agreement.

[solitarysoul]

If Levi was ever optimistic, its since withered into less than nothing. He's seen his own monsters, but he won't mention them. Others didn't need to deal with his problems or traumas.

"I guess...we just do what we can." Like they had been.

[goingtobeunwell]

"That's what we've been doing, isn't it?" And yet someone had still died.

[solitarysoul]

"...yeah. Its all we can do."

[goingtobeunwell]

Oh, he hates to leave the conversation as grim as this. His melancholy needn't infect the youth.

"Let me walk you back to the Community Center."

[solitarysoul]

He shakes his head but stands up. "Thank you, but you don't need to. I wouldn't want to take you from your duty." Even if it was hopefully an uneeded watch.