[Ami] Day 11: Tending Open Wounds (tag Mara,open)

[fikgirl.livejournal.com]

OOC: Bumping from [Lucy] Day 11: Making Her Escape due to maximum comment/replies reached.

Edited 16 May 06 to add: Maximum Posting Limit of 75 has been suspended for this thread.

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Ami ducked into Mara's shelter as Tommy and Jon made their way to the cookfire area. As they departed, her stomach grumbled a bit, reminding her that she hadn't eaten yet this morning. Tommy and Jon were too far away without shouting for them, and shouting might disturb Mara and she wasn't willing to leave the young woman alone. She figured she'd suffer through for a while longer; it wasn't like she would die of starvation in a few hours time.

Kneeling by Mara's bed, she hesitantly reached out and placed her hand lightly on the woman's forehead. Dropping her shields just a bit, she focused solely on Mara, wincing again at the rents and tears in the woman's shields. Beneath that, she was disturbed, and mentally and psychically exhausted. Ami wasn't connected to Mara the way she was to Megabyte, Mara not being a Tomorrow Person, but she thought she would try to reinforce the woman's shielding a bit anyway. The worse that would happen was nothing and the best was that Mara might sleep a bit easier, even if Ami couldn't take away the horrors she'd already experienced.

It took a few minutes of concentration, and Ami felt a wee bit more tired herself when it was done, but she'd managed to connect with Mara on the very surface and reinforce her shielding – filling in some of the gaps. It wouldn't hold for long, a day at the most, but hopefully it would give the other woman some comfort.

Done with what she could do, Ami leaned against Mara's bed and waited for Tommy and Jon to return.

Comments

[George] The buck stopped here (tag Carlos)

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

George hugged Carlos back but didn't reply immediately. She couldn't argue with his observations. Daisy could be remarkably callous sometimes. It was an occupational hazard that George had fallen prey to herself on occasion. Daisy had many decades more experience at letting the horror and confusion and turmoil roll off her back, interacting mostly with other reapers, where war stories and one-upsmanship and that sort of dispassionate, clinical detachment was commonplace.

"Yeah," George said at last. "She could have handled it better. I'll talk to her," George added, though she doubted it would do much good.

George turned her head to look around without releasing Carlos from her bear hug. "I think...Clarice is working on the poles. Isn't that her wrestling with the bamboo over there? Maybe we should help her," George said. Clarice was still awfully fragile and some friendly assistance--or at least offers of assistance, since she might refuse--might make her feel better.

[Carlos] The buck stopped here (tag George)

[undead-shot.livejournal.com]

"Considering that everyone has walked away from her in horror except for her lover, I think that if she is going to get the message that she handled this badly, she's gotten it by now." Carlos sighed and shook his head.

He looked over to where Clarice had finally downed her first bamboo tree. Daniel was over there now. She said something that from his reaction sounded rather sharp. They talked quietly for a minute--and then she dropped her knife and started weeping.

"Uh," said Carlos. "Maybe we should wait on that."

[George] A Reaper's Work is Never Done (tag Carlos, open)

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

"Yeah," George said. The last thing she wanted to do was get caught up the angst-fest that was Clarice's life. George felt a sudden strong empathy for Rube having to put with her own whinging and sarcasm and general muleheaded refusal to accept her lot in life...death.

"In that case, maybe we should talk to Faith. As soon as we're done dealing with Lucy, there's still those others who died when her plane crashed to take care of. Now that transmitter crew are back, we can head out as soon as we're ready."

"In fact, since I don't need to worry about Lucy, if I hadn't already said I'd help retrieve her body, I'd start on that now."

[Carlos] A Reaper's Work is Never Done (tag George, open)

[undead-shot.livejournal.com]

Carlos looked over at the little scene and shook his head. "I don't know what her story is, but she seemed to be doing a little better until yesterday." He didn't want to mention it, but Clarice had been one of the first names that had popped into his head when he had seen that pile of clothing. She was isolated, seemed emotionally broken, and just generally didn't seem to be coping well or have adequate support. "But I really don't think she took the way Daisy acted particularly well either."

He put a hand on George's shoulder. "No point in worrying about it right now anyway."

He looked around and saw Faith sitting vigil outside one of the new tents with Tommy. "There she is over there. Looks a little busy herself, but if you want, I'm game."

He hesitated when she talked about moving on immediately from the whole Lucy situation. Her resilience and piorities made perfect sense in context--save trapped souls versus tend to an empty corpse. But he was sensitive to the way others were reacting Lucy's death, and didn't want to end up having another misunderstanding step on people's feelings.

"I'd love to get off this damned beach. But I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of sidelines everyone for a few hours."