curtainsdown | now let's skip the tears and start on the whole-

[You remember dying. Maybe the memory is clear and bright and your body still aches from the cause. Maybe it was fast enough that you didn't feel it and don't remember what you went through. But no matter how you went out you're still trapped here.

When you open your eyes it might take you a minute to recognize your surroundings. For the executed, it's your dressing room. For the victims, you startle awake in the place your body was discovered. But no matter where you are nothing is where you remember it. It's like everything has been picked up and moved to the other side of the room. The entire room has been perfectly mirrored from what it used to be and, upon leaving, it seems the rest of the opera house is just the same. If you remember one room being in the east wing, it's now in the west. If it was in the west, it's now in the east.

Welcome back to the Opera House, friends. Even in death you're still in the woods.]

WEEK 1 | WEEK 2 | WEEK 3 | WEEK 4 | WEEK 5

[ooc: Welcome to deadland, darlings! It's a perfectly mirrored version of the Opera House and each week, as new people die after new floors have been revealed, the stairwell doors will unlock and allow you to reach them. For example, week 3 victims will unlock floor 2 and so on and so forth. Also, all dead characters will wake up at their actual canon point.

Have fun because we have some fun things planned for you.]

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[ Riley slowly stands, eyes filled with tears. It's kind of similar with her, huh? Trying to say anything...it would choke her. ]

Promise that you won't forgive me.
Someone has got to be mad at me.
Promise that you won't forgive me.
Live and let live, but don't let go.

[ I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please, someone please, hold her accountable. ]

I -

[Claudine’s voice cracks, and she lets her tears fall. There are weeks of tears built up, fear and anger and shock and betrayal. The tears she hadn’t let herself cry, because she needed to have it together. She needed to be perfect, and she had tried her hardest to get there.]

- can’t promise that I won’t forgive you.
I’m angry but I can’t just keep it in
I know that it’s probably crazy
But I just need to -to -

[She chokes on her own words. She feels that anger, but it’s coming out in the kind of ugly crying she hasn’t let anyone see her do.]

Edited 2020-07-27 05:17 (UTC)

[ It's terrible. The tears fall and Riley feels an automatic magnetization, this gravity drawing her in to go and comfort. Comfort the very girl she killed. She trembles but approaches, not knowing what to do. How to explain. ]

But how can you all say that it will be okay?
I know it has to.
I know it has to.
But how can this be true, with what I did to you?
I don't know how to-
I don't know how to move on-

[ The memory of herself in the mirror, that girl, that monster, that wicked beast, stabbing someone she considered a friend, it plagues her. ]

[Claudine’s sobs trail off, leaving her sniffling but at least a little calmer. The weight of all those emotions will probably come back at some point, but as it is, she’s about as calm as she’s going to be.]

That might have been your body, but you weren’t there, not really. You didn’t say anything, and even if you had...

[She takes a long, deep breath.]

...there must be someone important to you that you needed to bring back, right?

[ Riley's a few feet away from Claudine when that stops her dead in her tracks. She can't help it. The guilt, it- it's overwhelming. It's eating away at her. ]

You can't excuse me f-for that. [ It's a wonder she can speak at all. The words almost lodge in her throat, and she wraps her arms around herself, in a hug she doesn't deserve. ] I-I was just... I was trying to clean up my own mistake.

[ She can't look at her. ]

I screwed up. So, so bad. And...when I asked the Phantom for help, I- I didn't realize...I stupidly d-d-didn't realize, what that meant.

[Claudine should still be angry. That’s logical. But feelings don’t play by any kind of logical rules. And in truth, she doesn’t want to be angry. If things had been different, if the reasoning was anything besides bringing someone back, she would have a harder time understanding.

Then again, this is the same girl who finally remembers jumping onto a stage that initially wasn’t hers to save someone she could have just left there. Logic in the face of seeing someone that’s in trouble just isn’t possible for her.

So she wipes her face with one hand, stands up, and insistently pulls Riley into a hug.]

[ This can't be happening. It...shouldn't be happening. Farrah wouldn't forgive her, she knows that. Chess wouldn't forgive her...right?

(Riley remembers when Chess first got hurt. She remembers everyone whispering, the girl's knee getting bad and--and telling her- even a year of gymnastics was really helpful, learning cheer. "You could be fantastic...and it wouldn't aggravate your knee!" Riley remembers encouraging the girl onto the team. Her fault. In the end, it all comes down to her fault.)

Riley stands shock still, crying. A few words slip out, something like how or why or sorry. But she can't string anything else together. ]

...because I think we all deserve second chances.

[And third ones, and as many as they need to get it right. Just like a cheerleader becomes the spirit of the school the moment they put on the uniform, with a chance to change things. Just like a Stage Girl gets another chance every time she steps from the wings onto the stage.

And because she still believes in miracles, deep down inside.]

[ Riley thinks she could beg for them to hate her and they'd still open their arms. And yet, when she pleaded with Cairo...

(Cairo, last glimpses through the window of a police car, barely cognizant, an overheard conversation of contacting the girl's parents leaving her head faraway and her blood icy, shoving everything else away as she prays Cairo will look her way, one last time--)

She doesn't know how that's fair. Maybe this is her punishment. She grips Claudine, murmuring some kind of apology that she barely understands. ]

I don't- I d-don't-

[ Maybe, she's just going to have to get used to this.

Behind them, the candle wax runs. ]

now let's skip the tears and start on the whole-

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