epidemiology | (no subject)

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(no subject)

CHARACTERS: Riza and friends! ("""friends""")
DATE: Post-Ghost town log
WARNINGS: Talk of death?? Probably some throwing up too, we’ll see.
SUMMARY: Riza died and that was fun but now she has to talk about it and that’s less fun. A bunch of starters in the comments, give me a holler if you'd like something.

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We do some good, that's true.

( some, not complete. he's not naive enough to believe that every action ALASTAIR put them to was of complete altruism. in fact he disagreed more often than he agreed, it seemed, yet he could not dispute the good things the team had managed to do for the worlds they'd crashlanded in, either.

she doesn't know if she should be able to return? he knows the sentiment, though he doesn't suspect his problems are what ails her. after all, he's been dead before he even arrived, there's no going back to a world that he can't exist in unless he wants to die all over again. )

Why can't you go back? As long as you want to, surely... ( as doubtful as he tends to be of ALASTAIR, he can't protest that at least occasionally, members of the team did seem to make their way back to their own world. )

[As long as she wants to......if only things were so simple. Of course she wants to go back, of course she wants to breathe in the clouded Central City air and lay eyes on the crowded streets that encircle military headquarters. But whether or not she'll make it back is another story, one she's not so sure of.

She gives a little laugh at the question, not out of malice. Rather, it's a little helpless, a little sad.]

The worlds we go to aren't exactly the safest of places. I might get hurt badly. [A pause.] I might die.

[Technically she already had but...]

( while she's not exactly wrong, he finds the mention a little unnerving. might simply be for the fact he already knows exactly how easy it is. in fact, even if they weren't faced with danger more regularly than not, it's astonishing how little it tended to matter. there was no stopping death, only subverting it for a little while. that would be true, no matter where she chose to spend the rest of her days. )

What happened, Riza?

( there's something he's not seeing, not understanding. might be from the absence of his heart, or it could be something more. something she's not saying, and something grim at that. he doesn't know all her secrets, far from it, yet even he can detect something amiss in her demeanor, the tilted and dark tone of the conversation. it's not like her, and there's got to be a reason that she's thinking this way. )

[A simple question, with a simple answer, but the repercussions of that answer spread far and deep, a series of unraveled threads she hasn't managed to tie back up no matter how hard she tries.

Her gaze drops back down to her hands, resting neatly in her lap. They're cold from the winter chill but still faintly pink, given movement and life by the blood that still runs through her veins and the nerves that still crisscross through her body.

What happened? ]

I died.

[Two words, the meaning of which ought to be obvious to anyone over the age of three. It's an answer to his question, and yet she doubts it'll even begin to cover all his questions. (Though, for a man without a heart, perhaps he won't be as surprised by this news as some others.)]

( he knows what that means. better than most, frankly. he's been there, he's felt the nothingness, the pain that signaled his heart finally falling prey to Regina's threats and turning to dust in his grasp. he's died, he felt the life fading from him and he's woken up to tell the tale, though even now he barely understands how, or why.

it's only what he's missing that makes him reach for her wrist, a thumb pressing at the inner angle trying to find a heartbeat. )

I don't find most dead so talkative. ( clearly some dead people can be chatty though. case in point. but if she'd died, something had clearly brought her back, and he had to wonder who. ALASTAIR? they'd brought him back, or as far as he can understand it, they did. still it doesn't seem to be something they choose to do often, so what other answer might be out there? )

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