Afterneath

[Grand Moff Hissa]

((Darlene Silva continued from all i ever asked is keep it 8 more than 92 with me))

It took a while, but when Darlene finally got around to checking she had three bullets loaded in the gun still. This seemed like a good sign; she'd displayed some discretion while firing randomly into the wilderness, and also she hadn't accidentally discharged her weapon again after, which meant she was improving. The reloading process was similarly smoother than ever. It felt nice. She had to take that where she could.

She had no idea what she was still doing here.

It was true in both a grand metaphysical sense—why was Darlene still alive and, if not unharmed, at least not actively bleeding to death when so many cooler stronger better people were dead?—and also in a more literal, small-scale way—why was she still here, camped near the lake, with the other two when she had no particular connection to them aside from having been ditched by one over a week ago and having seen the other getting frisky with a guy who ran off and then partially blown up?

The boy Darlene had vouched for was named Abe, short for Abraham, like Abraham Lincoln, which was how she'd told herself she'd remember his name all that time ago. It hadn't worked then, but maybe... third-through-fifth time was the charm? He'd had a lot of opportunities to run off again and hadn't, and Darlene wouldn't really feel right abandoning him given that. Whatever had gone down at the start, it had been a long time ago, and he was giving her another chance and hadn't brought up the unfortunate and terrible accident that had befallen Beryl, so Darlene wasn't going to bring up the bags. That was fair, right? She wasn't going to ask where he'd been or what he'd been doing, because she didn't remember the announcements so very well but she knew the names that came up, like, a lot, and his wasn't one of those, and if it was just once or twice that fell within the range of mistakes Darlene had no grounds to judge for.

Sakurako did not immediately die, either, but it turned out aside from all the metal from the explosion her leg was pretty messed up too due to a prior injury, which Darlene might've noticed sooner had she not been trying to avoid glancing at the girl as much as possible in the before-clothes era of their relationship. Sakurako had apparently stepped in a bear trap, and that was the source of a tense moment when Darlene went to go help gather their things to move them a little further inland, to a slightly more sheltered spot so that they wouldn't get grenaded again by the next unpleasant entity to come by, and Darlene had been just reaching for the bag when she was informed that, whoops, that's where the bear trap was, all ready to chomp her arm. It was funny in hindsight. Really! But for a little after that Darlene had been pretty cautious about touching anything without asking first.

Ace never came back. Sakurako inherited his hat, but Darlene kept his shoes. She wasn't even sure why. Maybe it was because she wasn't sure if he had left on purpose for bad reasons, or if he'd had some really good reason to run and to not come back, like maybe he'd gotten lost or perhaps he was dead. Granted, in the latter case he was unlikely to return for the somewhat stained and ragged white sneakers, but Darlene had them just in case, tied to her duffel bag by the laces. Maybe she just felt obligated to take care of his things because she'd done it once before and he'd thanked her for it, and there was no shoe rack to stow them at and if they just stayed on the shore of the lake they'd probably get carried away by animals or something.

But she'd left behind his stinky socks!

While Darlene had been fairly useless when it came to anything besides following basic instructions in terms of treating Sakurako, and had spent a whole lot of time hanging out by the water trying to wash every little bit of blood off of her hands after, she felt like she'd proven herself a little bit more valuable later. They'd been told that big destructive fires were not allowed under pain of death, but little campfires were a different story, and while Darlene hadn't ever made a campfire on her own in real life, she'd read a whole bunch of stories where they did that and also had once gotten way involved in a string of articles on WIkipedia that touched on the subject. She knew that you made a little pit and a circle of rocks, so that it couldn't get out of control, and then you made an inverted cone of sticks (okay, it was called a tepee in most every source Darlene had ever seen, but she was pretty sure that was not politically correct anymore!), and then you assembled dry twigs and leaves and pine needles for kindling at the base.

Slight complications arose in that one thing Darlene did not know at all was how to work a cigarette lighter. She knew the big long ones that looked like giant matches, for a candle or a barbecue or fixing the pilot light on the stove, but an actual cigarette lighter was beyond her area of experience. Fortunately, Abe had no problems of the sort, and before long they had merry little camp set up, and could feed the flames bigger logs. It wasn't really about warmth, and it definitely wasn't about cooking because there was nothing to cook, and when Darlene tried to boil some lake water in one of her bottles the plastic started to melt and give off foul fumes and she ran down to the shore and hurled it in, still in the grip of the forked stick she'd been using to hold it, but having a fire was good for morale nonetheless and gave them light and a cozier atmosphere. It was probably the closest thing left to Christmas they'd find, and it was okay that they didn't have any chestnuts to roast because Darlene didn't much care for nuts anyways.

When it came to watches, Darlene offered to take them all, and while that didn't quite happen she had less trouble staying up than she had in past nights. Whenever she got bored she would find pieces of grass or bark and put them in the fire and watch how they shriveled and withered and glowed red and then turned grey and crumbled away. She didn't give up her gun or ever let it get far from her hand, but that wasn't a point of contention because everyone else had bigger badder guns than her anyways.

It felt wrong for anything to approximate a homey feeling, especially when their little band consisted of a guy who knew some of Darlene's worst secrets and had run away before and a girl who couldn't run away if she wanted to. It felt wrong for there to be no Jonah or Max, or even Arizona. It made Darlene feel bad that Amelia wasn't here, because the girl had been broken and crazy but maybe these people now could've understood and fixed it in a way that Darlene was incapable of. It made her feel bad she'd left Stephanie, who hadn't really done anything, and the dog, who was on an important and brave mission but would've loved their little congregation.

But once again, things could've been worse, so she'd take it.

In the early morning, when everyone was awake again, Darlene sat on and old log and looked into the fire and thought, maybe things wouldn't be right ever again, but maybe today could be just one more good day.

((Darlene Silva continued in Let's All Make Believe))