"Worse? Hm... I wouldn't bet on it. All we have to see of this place is well after it fell to ruin, however unpleasant the end might have been." The people they knew were showing little reserve in starting to fall already. Friends, enemies and strangers alike, all would soon start to be cu...

At what turned out to be the end of his walk, dead branches and leaves crunching under his boots as he went, he saw a body of water ahead. The exact opposite of the place from which he'd come, and just what he could do with right about now. His legs were at a point somewhere between ache from exerti...

The blonde bastard in question came back alright, two large bundles of red cloth in hand. They'd needed to be scraped clean a little on the way, but the curtains were more than adequate for their new purpose. "Just as a word of advice, Mikki," he said, setting about covering Abel up to ens...

It's important to have order come from somewhere. If it can't be provided by something else, then it will fall to you to enforce it upon yourself. It wasn't something that he had made mention of to anyone else, but Julien had actually come up with a list of things he would set out to see done on th...

" If nothing else? Oh no, that'd simply be a start. " Seeing Blaise go like that was hardly something Julien was happy with. But the sway as he watched them leave did soften that, if only a little. Ever the tease, doing their level best to dance just out of reach lest someone draw too clos...

The thing with hate and contempt was that they could be positive forces, in their way. Any care that someone had for you, even if it was simple ambivalence, could be paid off to try and push them further along their own path, or set their minds on a different track, even if it were but for a moment....

"Well, Forrest, someone should afford you the care you're owed," he said, watching the puff of smoke she let out float idly into nothing. "It shouldn't have had to be me but, well, here I am." Julien wasn't going to come out and just say he considered it a failing of Mikki and th...

" Well, the only thing in the way of that would be finding a good time and place, " Julien said, deciding to take the barrette out of his hair and run a hand through to loosen it out some, " and even if it weren't, that sounds much too tempting to refuse. " It'd be somewhere with...

"I have to second what he's saying. The only thing around here to dig with would be our hands. That would take all four of us all day, and none of us would be in the shape to use them for much of anything for days after." Julien looked around, and noted that he was standing next to Jackson...

That was... Not better, because nothing about this waking nightmare could ever be. But it was something. Mikki at least had a task to focus herself on right now, even if he knew the grief would crush her harder after this was done. Jackson was readily helping. And Bree... Bree had set aside whatever...

He wasn't happy about throwing it in her face like that. But sometimes people needed to hear such things. What they did about it, of course, was still up to them in the end. "My peace doesn't come from the same place as yours," Julien said, looking at the suddenly empty bottle, "but c...

There it was. "Yes. Started when you walked out from the party that nobody gave you enough credit for, all fake smiles and so fucking smashed that you almost made out with the floor. I'm sorry I didn't really see you then." Hindsight was perfect, but what nobody ever tacked on to that litt...

"I came up here to get some air. Look out at the city from a little higher up too, and enjoy the view. You know." Julien would have liked to do that as he said it, but his eyes drew him to the girl next to him whose grin seemed to fade a touch too quickly, and who responded to the question...

Julien Leblanc

- Right sleeve of T-shirt (short sleeves) torn off
- Black Converse swapped out for hiking boots of same colour
- Blue jeans stained with mud from the knees down

Will return and add more as it happens.

"You smeared mud all over his face. I... I couldn't tell." Mikki was not Ivy. This was grief, not hate, so he would let it just wash right on over him. There were more important things right now anyway, like fighting the emotion he could feel welling up in his throat. It burned like acid. ...