sixthiterationlogs | You have that look in your eye

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You have that look in your eye

WHO: Rose Hathaway

littledhampir
WHERE: Various places around 6i
WHEN: 15th - 25th of August (Before the end of Sirens Call)
OPEN TO: OTA - Late tag-ins are always welcome.
WARNINGS: Minor references to blood & a pack of rabid Bambis. Character Death. Others may well come bc… Rose, so. Watch this space. FYI. So much TLDR under the cut.

If you go out in the woods today...

THE WOODS + THE INN

She’d been getting a little too comfortable with the fact that the wildlife here didn’t seem to have a problem with her. Rose’s strictly human status here in the village was generally a point of contention for the Dhampir, but if she had to have picked one thing that didn’t suck - it was her recent ability to be able to pet an animal without fear of it trying to snack on her. Until today.

In her defense...Who the hell would think to be careful around something that looked like Bambi had been left in the dryer on high for too long?! Sure they lull you into a false sense of security by sending one out to try and get your attention, and the next thing you know there’s eight of the little suckers - and she does mean that word literally - all trying to sink their teeth into you while you flail around like a fish that had escaped from its bowl. (Or. ya know. The lead singer of a popular Australian 80s band.)

While it was true that Dhampir blood was considered to taste better than that of a Human, Rose had been hoping that her change in race, courtesy of this godforsaken place, might have meant that had changed it. If the last ten minutes of her life was anything to go by, she hadn’t gotten so lucky.

You would be forgiven for laughing, however, if you happen to spot Rose as she emerges from the edge of the woods. Her appearance mildly alarming due to the bite marks that adorn her arms and legs. The long dark hair that had been pulled back into a ponytail was now a tangled mess that half framed her face. The clothing she’d raided from the discarded items of the Inn, probably more useful as dishcloths than it would ever be for training now. You may even spot one of the little creatures in question as it’s brave enough to think about having another go. And if you do, you’ll also spot Rose as she turns around and sends it back towards the treeline with a kick that sails wide.

Don’t worry if you miss it, she’ll be dragging her sorry self back to the Inn, looking like the disaster that she is, in search of something she can use to clean herself up and bracing for the numerous questions she knows she’s going to regret.

People are strange when you're a stranger

BUILDINGS AROUND 6i

If her encounter with the pack of Rabid Bambis had taught Rose anything, it was that this place was in desperate need of somewhere she could use to train. Running every day might be a part of her routine, but if she weren’t so bored out of her skull from not being able to take to the mats of a gym, maybe she wouldn’t do stupid things like, oh… say… pet the cute yet utterly terrifying spawn of satan.

It’s why she’s been out scouting the various buildings around the village, something that seemed like a wise idea until she realized that half of them were occupied and Rose had no idea which half. The ones with lights on inside made for an easy avoidance, but seeing as most of the people around here didn’t actually have electricity, there was a 50/50 chance that one of the windows she peered through belonged to an inhabited residence. Surely this was going to be fine.

And can you shake it off?

HOT SPRINGS

Even before the Wendigo attack, the Hot Springs had been a regular haunt of Rose’s, dating back to the first time she’d found herself in the village with a busted ankle and a series of conspicuous bite marks that weren’t exactly easy for her to keep covered. From the very moment she’d found out about the spring water and it’s healing potential, she’d been coming here every day. In part because of the healing but also because it seemed to be one of the few places she could visit that wasn’t overrun with people like the Inn was.

Of course, coming here these days wasn’t half as relaxing as it used to be but that was a story that even Kira didn’t have enough alcohol on hand to pry it out of her. It’s usually around dusk that she can be found this way, though, when most are making use of the last hour of natural light the village is afforded.

They say life carries on

PEETA'S GRAVE

When a Dhampir - a Guardian, died in her world, their death wasn’t something that was marked in any significant way. There was no memorial for people to come together and grieve. No procession of mourners to see them onto whatever came next. They were simply buried in a grave with a headstone that read the words ‘Eternal Service’. Dhampir, who like her, had dedicated their lives to protecting others. Dhampir, who like her, had always known that they would one day die because of it.

It was a part of her culture that had never particularly sat well with Rose. The attitude that when a person died, it was acknowledged - albeit briefly - and moved on from. Peeta was by no means a Guardian and yet, he’d gone into the fight knowing he could well die protecting others and while perhaps her only real connection to him was that she’d been there with him at the end. The thought that his death could be just like the many Guardians who had fallen before him, sat uneasily with Rose.

Those who have visited Peeta’s grave might have noticed the appearance of the forget-me-nots that somebody had been leaving there regularly. A single, lavender flower that seemed to be replaced with a new one every day. She never stays long, only long enough to retrieve the wilting flower and replace it with a new one. For Rose, it wasn’t so much about mourning as it was about remembering. About making sure, that at least as long as she was here, the boy who had sacrificed everything to help keep the people here safe, wouldn’t be just another headstone in a row of forgotten heroes.

Wildcard

Pick your poison. Rose lives at the Inn so when she’s not outdoors, she does spend an awful lot of time there.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Major's been steadily catching up with everything that's happened since his last stint in the village. His memories have fully recovered, which has been both a blessing and a curse. He, Ravi, and Liv are still sorting out what to do about the living situation since Liv took his old room, and Major's not the type of guy to come in, figurative guns ablazin', demanding his old things back. He offered to sleep on the couch, or, if they agreed upon it, to move into a larger house and hope the electricity gods saw fit to bestow their gifts upon them again - allowing all three of them to live together with a reliable means of storing brains.

He's been trying to contribute to their personal and uh, "unconventional" food stores by going out and seeing what creatures might be caught in traps, trying to remember all that Wanda had taught him the last time about hunting. He still can't quite get over the moral aspect of it (ironic, given his history), but he's gotten better in terms of accuracy and aim. He's caught a couple of squirrels whose brains he'll happily harvest when he decides to take the long way around back to the shared cabin.

In doing so, he stumbles upon Rose, removing and replacing a flower at what appears to be .. a grave? He thinks to simply scurry off without being seen or heard, not wanting to interrupt whatever moment she's obviously having. But something makes him stay. He doesn't want to be a total creep, so he makes some kind of noise - a jostling, rustling sort of sound - to announce his presence and avoid startling her. Though he wouldn't be surprised if she'd somehow already figured out he was there.

"Hey," he offers quietly, solemnly as he approaches by a few steps. He looks to the grave once close enough. He's been fortunate enough to not have had to bury anyone while here, but it's not as though he's a stranger to death. "I never knew him well enough. I wish I had, though." He places the squirrels far enough away from the grave so as not to make things weird and walks closer to the grave. "I heard about what happened. I'm .. I'm sorry, Rose."

Before she can even turn to see who was making the noise, the lavender flower she’d already replaced was hastily concealed by the closing of her hand. Its wilting petals becoming crushed in her grip as she sought to keep it from view. She could do this, come here, pay her respects in some small way but for some ridiculous reason she still didn’t like the idea of people knowing she did.

“Hey-” Straightening and likely looking every bit as guilty as she felt, like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. It’s not exactly easy to look casual or unaffected when you were standing by a grave, her hands tingling as they remembered her digging it, far better than she actually did.

Rose follows his gaze to the grave as he sets the squirrels down, her weight shifting uncomfortably as her escape has now been cut off. It would be, frankly weird for her to scamper off after having been caught here and while there are not many people she’d fight the urge to do that for in the village, Major had earned more than that from her.

“So do I.” She answered honestly, still clutching the flower in her closed hand. “We weren’t friends - “ Rose almost too quick to point that out, not wanting his sympathy for a loss that wasn’t truly hers to feel. Maybe she and Peeta could have been friends, if things had been different but they weren’t and Rose had never gotten very far in life by looking to the past.

“He was just, somebody I met really.” Rose glossing over practically everything about what had happened, unsure how much Major actually knew. While she was sure he’d heard about the Wendigo, she saw no reason why her name would have come up in relation to it all. She hardly thought of herself as making enough of an impact on people for them to be bothered talking about her.

“It’s on the way back to the Inn.” The half-lie tasting bitter on her tongue as her weight shifted once again.

"You don't have to be friends with someone to be saddened by their passing, to feel their loss." Major can remember at least one person in both high school and college who died by either sudden or tragic circumstances. One person he'd only seen a couple lockers down from his own, and in homeroom in the mornings. They never really shared more than a smile and the occasional hello, but during their Senior year, he found out that he'd OD'ed on heroin. Even though he didn't know the kid as well as a lot of others, the loss still hit him.

He's not comparing that to what Rose is experiencing, but he knows that sometimes sadness strikes without warning, and people often try to justify it or stupefy it.

Very much in the way Rose seems to be doing now.

"You don't need to come up with excuses," he continues, voice soft and soothing. "Not with me." He takes another step forward, eyes drifting from her face to the grave. "I'm glad you do something to remember him by. I think it's the least anyone could hope for - here or back where we come from."

She wants to open her mouth to argue with him but even as she does, the wind goes out of her sails, her weight shifting once again as she tries to find the words that are needed. She didn’t know how to explain what she really felt without there being a thousand questions but she also didn’t know if they were the kind of answers that were worth holding in either. She was never going to be normal, not even by her own worlds standards but if she were? She wouldn’t have made it this far in her still short life.

“I’m not sad.” It’s not defensive, not an excuse. There’s enough truth in her words for them to ring honestly as she speaks them and she allows herself to look at him then. Giving up the hiding of the flower, she uncurls her fingers, staring at the crushed petals that lay in the palm in her hand. Rarely did Rose ever wish she had even an ounce of the abilities that Liss had, but right now she wished she could have brought that flower back to life. That was Lissa’s gift though, the light to her dark. She would always bring life while Rose’s gift was death.

“I’m not… That’s half the problem.” Rose absently stroking the petals of the dying flower with her thumb. “I should be, or I should at least feel something but I just… don’t.” Or at least, not what she thought she should feel. She felt guilt, even anger but not at the people who deserved it. She was mad at Peeta of all people for throwing himself into danger when he should have known he was at a disadvantage. Guilty because she’d seen that he was and hadn’t tried to stop him, hadn’t done enough to keep him out of the path of the beast.

“I don’t know when I reached a point when somebody could die in front of me and I’d just feel… nothing.” But after Siberia, after Spokane, after everything that had happened in between the two, she felt like she’d reached this points where the things that should affect her, can barely touch her at all. She wasn’t grieving the loss of a boy that she barely knew. In many ways she was grieving the loss of the person she used to be, she just didn’t know that yet.

“I come here because… when somebody dies the way he did, people should remember.” And perhaps, more than that, she came here because there were people she wanted to remember, but there would never be any grave for her to visit them, not here and not back home. “That’s not really how it works where I’m from.”

Major's not rushing anyone, least of all Rose. Whatever she might have or want to say, she can - but he isn't going to put expectations on her like that. He won't force her to talk, or explain, or do anything for his sake. If she so much gives him a look to indicate she'd rather be alone, he'll be out of her hair without a word and without a bad feeling towards her. People deal with grief in different ways, and no one way is more correct than the other. He's never been that much of a judgmental person, but he always remembers his more recent past and how that puts him at the very bottom of the "Can Be Judgey" list.

Her voice draws his gaze towards her face, though - just for a brief moment, to acknowledge her. It drifts down towards the crushed up flower in her palm, the tiny purple petals now darkened and withered. He only knows obvious flowers like tulips and roses, so he's got no idea what the plant is that she's got in her hand, but he figures there's some kind of significance. She'd have chosen it for a reason, whatever it might be.

He continues to listen to her, allowing her to say as much or as little as she pleases. He understands more, now, with her explanation.

"Sometimes, shock and grief sort of make a cocoon around us, to protect us from too many emotions at once. The brain will always try to protect itself. Sometimes, we go into that shock and feel absolutely nothing because there's no other way we can get through whatever's going on. We compartmentalize, dissociate. And then we often feel a sudden outburst of emotion later on down the line, sometimes unexpectedly." He clasps his hands in front of him as he stands, now looking at the grave again. "I used to work at a homeless shelter for youths. Most were young teenagers. I saw that sort of thing a lot there." He shifts a little bit closer to her, gently tapping her with his elbow. "I was told once that feelings aren't right or wrong; they exist outside of the realm of morality. They just are. So if you aren't feeling as sad as you think you should be, it doesn't mean that what you're feeling is wrong. It's ... just what you feel." He turns towards her now, not reaching out for her (though he's the sort of person who's generally inclined to do that), but unclasping his hands to show they're there should she want to hold them. "You coming here, putting flowers on his grave even when no one else knows about it, because you want him to be remembered, because you want to not forget, regardless of how sad you feel or how ... not-sad you feel .. that speaks more than feeling sad for the sake of feeling sad. Feelings are simply feelings, but we've got control over what we do with them, how they affect our behaviors."

He reaches up, places a gentle hand on her shoulder for a brief moment before letting his hand fall again.

"It seems to me like you're feeling plenty, but being constructive with it."

Peeta's Grave

/smacks her tbh

LOL it's okay /pets

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Peeta's Grave

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House 40

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The Woods

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hot springs;

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BUILDINGS AROUND 6i

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