Magdalene Grace Garcia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
talesuntold) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
entranceway2018-02-07 09:26 pm
talesuntold) wrote in entranceway2018-02-07 09:26 pm
03 | Video
[Maggie looks a bit paler and much more exhausted than usual, but puts on as warm and chipper a front as she can. She's clearly sitting on the floor as she posts this.]
Hello again, Wonderland! While it's good to see all of your lovely faces, those nine flights of stairs up to my room are a considerably less welcome sight. Would someone be so kind as to help me up to my bed? A couple of someones if necessary? I've had an eventful week and I'm not at my best.
Once that's managed, I intend to stay there for a few days at barest minimum.
I'll be hosting horror movie marathons tomorrow night and the night after, in room 969, barring Wonderland-interference. Prior acquaintance not required! If horror isn't your cup of tea, feel free to stop by during the afternoons instead. Incidentally, non-metaphorical cups of tea will be available, or your hot or caffeinated beverage of choice. Hope to see you soon, darlings!
((Spam tags for movie night or afternoon visits also welcome!))
[Private to Mahir, Shaun, and Georgia]
[More seriously, dropping any pretense:]
How long was I gone? Let me find my bed, and then all of you get over here before you ask what you've missed back home.
[She doesn't want to do this more than once.]
Hello again, Wonderland! While it's good to see all of your lovely faces, those nine flights of stairs up to my room are a considerably less welcome sight. Would someone be so kind as to help me up to my bed? A couple of someones if necessary? I've had an eventful week and I'm not at my best.
Once that's managed, I intend to stay there for a few days at barest minimum.
I'll be hosting horror movie marathons tomorrow night and the night after, in room 969, barring Wonderland-interference. Prior acquaintance not required! If horror isn't your cup of tea, feel free to stop by during the afternoons instead. Incidentally, non-metaphorical cups of tea will be available, or your hot or caffeinated beverage of choice. Hope to see you soon, darlings!
((Spam tags for movie night or afternoon visits also welcome!))
[Private to Mahir, Shaun, and Georgia]
[More seriously, dropping any pretense:]
How long was I gone? Let me find my bed, and then all of you get over here before you ask what you've missed back home.
[She doesn't want to do this more than once.]
Re: action
"I didn't even make it to my own house in my time back home, though." Maggie makes a face. "No dogs, no bad movies with a house full of people, no sleeping in my own bed. I did get to see my parents briefly."
Maggie watches the seasoning eagerly, then reaches out a hand for the bowl. "Gimme," she demands cheerfully. "No one else bothers putting anything on besides butter and salt when I delegate. I love all popcorn, but variety is nice. And maybe you ought to look at one or two of my poems so you can recognize the baseline level of angst."
action
"So it's not just porn huh? I'd be curious to see what you write," he admits, taking a bit.
action
"I write a lot of genres. If you take the tablet from the table and press the dandelion icon on the screen, you'll get my personal blog from back home, which is a mix of journal and poetry. Most of my stories won't show up there, but you're welcome to read those too." That seems like the easiest shortcut to offer, since they're discussing poetry. It isn't as if Seth needs to read her entire body of work today. Skimming through a bit of Dandelion Mine is plenty for right now. There are also occasional videos between the writing if he decides to watch; every time Maggie adopts a new dog, she films her first meeting with it.
It occurs to her belatedly that reading on her device as opposed to somewhere else means he also has access to any unpublished entries, but she doesn't really mind a friend seeing those. She just doesn't want the whole world seeing them, or in a few cases couldn't afford the danger that came along with the whole world seeing them. Maggie hasn't yet synced her phone to the tablet since she got back to Wonderland, so it cuts off on June 24th and starts with that entry, going newest to oldest.
action
Which isn't true. Not really, but so much of Seth's life before he came to Wonderland is emotions and pain and confusion and just trying to get his life back from before prison and not wanting to accept that it is gone. Forever.
Even in Wonderland it is gone, but least he doesn't have to worry about growing old without his brother.
So her distraction even as that moment brings to the forefront that Richie isn't there is welcome, and he puts his bowl on the table and picks up the tablet.
He thumbs over the pad, his attention between her and the tablet. He does chuckle though. "Whose Dave?"
action
Or she thought it would be, but the question draws her up short.
"Never my boyfriend, unfortunately," she answers softly after a moment's recovery. Of course that was the first entry that showed up. It was the last thing she posted before she came to Wonderland for the first time. "We'd been circling the issue for months. We both knew how we felt, but we kept waiting for the timing to be perfect, as if there's any such thing. The fucking CDC staged an outbreak in Oakland to wipe out the After the End Times office."
"Dave was an Irwin. He loved wilderness survival expeditions. As usual, he was too brave for his own good and much more noble and self sacrificing than I will ever be in my life. He stayed behind to delay the security measures long enough to let the rest of our people out. He got a last broadcast posted telling me how he felt, then the CDC bombed the city to contain the outbreak that they started in the first goddamn place." She drops one hand to her stomach, resting very lightly over the site of her injury. "A bullet wound is the least of the scars they left on me. At least morphine does a little for this one."
action
Seth falls quiet, listening to what she went through. The shit in their world is madness, and he wonders if eventually it will be like this in his own if they can't find a way to stop the Culebra and the Seven Lords from basically taking over the world. Least he doesn't have to worry about that now.
"Well, that sucks," he says, though there's the weight of sympathy in his tones. "Both your fucked up government, and him waiting until then."
Re: action
"It wasn't all on him. I was too busy grieving to deal with the idea of moving on." She folds her hands in her lap to keep from fidgeting, because she can't very well tuck her knees up to her chest and wrap her arms around them without wincing in pain. "He gave me time and paid attention in the meanwhile. We were friends. We talked constantly. He started showing horror movies on the roof, thinking that eventually he'd lure me down to join the rest of the team."
Maggie smiles crookedly. This is the first time she's talked about Dave in detail with anyone outside their team since he died. She's never had to describe him before.
"It wasn't a bad way of catching my attention. He was also better at predicting my absurd sleep schedule than anyone I've known. He only sent messages when I was awake, which nobody else has ever managed." Even if she was listed as offline, Dave knew when Maggie would be on a normal human sleep schedule and when she'd be mostly nocturnal. He didn't usually bother checking whether she was online.
action
"Doesn't sound like it was too bad, though sorry you had other losses. I assume all related to your psychotic government then?" Because given what she's mentioned, he has to assume all the things in her life all come back to that.
"Glad he showed you how much he cared," he says, knowing it had to mean a lot to her.
Re: action
"There was just shy of a year between Dave's death and the death of the woman I loved before him. And yes, it was related to the CDC and the government. We knew, but we finally managed to get proof the day before I came back to Wonderland." Or her team did, as Maggie holed up in the Agora getting medical attention and watched the After the End Times servers like a hawk while she waited for information to roll in.
"Just before the bombs came down, one of the last things Dave said was, 'I loved you a lot. I loved my job a lot. I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones.' I didn't get the message till after he was dead, but I suppose I am grateful it exists."
action
"Also, not maybe the best thing to say but it's Wonderland. For all you know, there's a chance that he could show up here. Wonderland's done things like that before," he notes. "Not that I'm sure that's comforting or not though."
Re: action
"You may be a dick, but I agree with you," Maggie tells him.
"And don't, please. The possibility had already occurred to me. I can't dwell on it too much, or I'll never settle in here." She can't live like that, hoping constantly. How do you recover from a loss if you spend all your time thinking about the remote possibility that it might be reversed? Hearing how she just missed seeing Buffy broke her heart all over again. She got a farewell from Dave, at least. She never had that with Buffy. "I'll be grateful if it happens, but unless it does, I don't want to talk about it."
action
"I always wondered what would happen if they ever sent us back to earlier times?" He sighs. "I over think a lot here. Why I drink."