lostcarnival | HELL OF A HANGOVER PT. 1

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HELL OF A HANGOVER PT. 1

Who: The people who escaped!
When: Very early Day 66 to Day 67
Where: The Carnival
What: The Ringmaster brings everyone she can back to the carnival after getting kicked out the Celebration, a bit worse for wear. Those that have resolved their threads at the Masquerade can start trickling over here as they sort things out.
Warnings: Angst, mostly likely, as well as potentially graphic injuries.

RETURNING HOME↴

About 45 minutes after the conflict with the vampires begins, the Ringmaster will finally show her face at the Masquerade - and immediately be mortified by what she sees. Though initially mostly confused by the fact that there's been problems over the week, and characteristically obtuse about what's going on, as soon as she realizes the severity of the threat she will launch into action. If the Host managed to miss the combat already going on, they won't be able to miss the Ringmaster tearing up the joint and looking for her people. She's quick to scoop up those that have managed to gather in the dining hall - but unfortunately her arrival seems to be the vampire's cue to retreat.

Her attempt to challenge the Host about this will result in the being finally losing their patience and banishing all the vampires and all of the carnival workers from the premises, forcing them back to the portals they arrived from and launching their remaining belongings out with them. The Ringmaster will be pretty fucking pissed off when they return (once again) and will tell everyone to take the time they need to recover, but to stick together and stay safe for the time being. She has a plan to chase down the carnival members that have been stolen, but it will take time.

► BEER PONG: Apparently the Ringmaster spent the entire week playing a nonstop game of beer pong, against several dozen of the Host's bodies. She hadn't quite won yet when the Masquerade began, so she was late. Whether or not she was caught up in the same spell as everyone else is up to interpretation, but the answer "definitely probably." She won, for the record.

► MISSING: Upon doing headcounts, it will turn out that all the supervisors are missing, as well as several regular workers - a few of which will have been spotted as freshly turned vampires during the fighting. Whether that was the point of the attack or not is unclear, but it's pretty clear that the Ringmaster is a little bit devastated about it - particularly about the supervisors. However, she will refuse to talk to anyone long enough to get into too many details.

► THE PLAN: The Ringmaster will announce that she intends to get everyone back - it's just a matter of figuring out their way back to the dimension they've been stolen off to. She guarantees that she will find it, but that it may take some time. In the end, the workers will have a total of two days to recover and plan - during the evening of Day 67, she will be leading a rescue mission to get them all back. You don't have to come, but lives do depend on its success.

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He nods. Lars had been super helpful, even though he'd been pretty mixed up too. Steven feels bad that he hadn't managed to protect him at the party too, but at least him and Greg were both still around.

"One of the vampires almost drank all his blood," he says in a quiet, tight voice. Greg probably would have seen Lars resting in the medical tent but maybe it wasn't clear what happened. "I healed him, but..."

He swallows.

"Peridot never came back did she?"

He looks down at his hands, then out the window. Maybe he should go see Lars sooner rather than later.

Greg takes in a deep breath, and shakes his head. "No. It sounds like a lot of people never came back to the fair." The radios were positively buzzing with people trying to put together what had gone down. "But I think everyone's..."

He falters, struggling to find the right word. Definitely not "okay," or "safe." Not even "alive," technically.

"...everyone's... determined to find them again."

Steven bites his lip, and then nods uncertainly. The idea of going after them is scary, but he knows it's what he has to do.

"I'm... I'm gunna go with them. When they go to get them back." He looks at Greg, almost like he's scared his dad will say no. "I have to!"

"I know." He finally looks up at Steven, meeting his eye. There's a glimmer of reluctance there... but also pride. "It's what you do. Looking after people, fighting the bad guys."

There's a part of Greg that wants to go, too. Seeing Jamie like that... it kills him that he couldn't do anything to get through that control. As is, though? He'd be pretty dead weight on a rescue mission.

Greg rests a hand on Steven's shoulder. "Just make sure you come back safe again. Okay?"

Steven looks stunned for a moment, but then tentatively smiles. He's still scared about it, and he knows that Greg will be too - but is it really any different than the other times he's thrown himself into danger, knowing he has to? He hopes not.

His tail flicks, curling up and around his knees. Can he really promise that? He wants to.

"I will," he says. "I... I trust the people here to look out for me."

It's true. He genuinely does.

Greg's hold tenses on Steven's shoulder in a little squeeze. That's right. Steven's not alone--gems or fae, there's people watching his back. No matter what happens, they'll make sure he comes home.

Greg realizes he's shaking. He's always been worried, but after the last week, he's frightened in new and unfamiliar ways.

He pulls back, rushing back towards the kitchenette. "Ah--jeez, left the waffles going. I'll take these ones, ha, don't mind them a little overcooked. You should eat up, Shtooball, you'll want that fuel tank full before you go."

Well, that's... settled? Sort of. There isn't much more to be done about it, but Steven can't help but feel worried about it. Worried about what's going to happen, and worried about the idea of letting his dad down.

He's actually hungry, though, so that helps his decision to move onto the waffles as suggested. His metabolism is apparently catching up with him. He can't help but thing, as he starts into the waffles, that he hopes that they don't have to go right away. He's not sure that he's ready, despite how much he wants to be.

"Thanks for making these," he says. He struggling for something to say, so being polite comfortably fills in the blanks. He sounds like he wants to say something else, but there really aren't any words.

Greg takes a little longer than necessary to finish up and come back. He carefully puts the browned waffles on his plate, taps at them to make sure they're not too hot, hems and haws over to make some more, contemplates the leftover batter, drums his fingers on the waffle iron a few extra seconds before turning the heat off.

Once he finally returns to sit by the bed, one foot bounces anxiously as he pours the syrup. And for a long few seconds, Greg simple stares at the breakfast perched on his lap, untouched. He swallows around the lump in his throat, and his hair contracts into anxious, greenish curls.

"Steven, I... I want to talk about what happened. Back in Celebration, before the vampires and everything."

He's both surprised and not surprised by that - maybe he thought it should happen but didn't think it would? He's mid bite when it comes up, so he quickly swallows his waffle and puts down his fork.

"Um... Which part do you mean?" he asks, carefully. It could be a lot of things.

"After we got separated." He chews at a lip, fork idly dragging through the syrup. "When we both got... distracted."

He looks up. "You--you heard, right? The, uh, enchantment, or whatever, that they've got there." That is what happened to Steven too, right? That and elven substances he definitely wasn't old enough for.

"Oh," he starts, having to think for a second. "Um... sort of. I guess it was kind of obvious in retrospect." He's not sure that anyone told him about it in specific, but after the way everyone was acting, and the way he'd felt at the time... yeah, he doesn't doubt the official explanation for a second.

"I didn't even think about going back to the room, or calling you, or anything... I don't know why I'd do something like that."

Yep, that's about right. Greg nods, slowly. "That's right. I got so caught up in having a nice time, I never once thought about coming back, or calling, or... you." The last word is bitter in his mouth. Even knowing full well that it was an enchantment and beyond his control, the idea of it is so shameful to say out loud.

"Steven, I... I can get used to horns and tusks and whatever else this place throws at me. And, and the danger... it's not something I like, but it's not the worst we've faced. But..." He squeezes his eyes shut, and forces out more of those words he hates to hear out loud.

"But if there's magic here that can do that... that can make us... forget each other, or stop..." He swallows. "I can't bear the thought of that."

He can tell his dad is really upset about this, which means that he's straining to listen, to hear everything he can to find some kind of solution. None of it is very pleasant to hear, though, and he gapes with quiet distress as Greg explains.

"No!" he says, abruptly. Like he can't hold it in any longer. "It wasn't like that!"

Steven finds himself tearing up, just a little, mostly because of the emotional feedback he's getting from his father. He feels so sad, and guilty, and Steven can't bear that either.

"You did remember! And so did I! We tried to find each other, and we did! Just in time, like you said!"

Edited 2017-03-11 22:58 (UTC)

"We did. You're right." His voice is soft, tired. He wishes that the conversation could just end there, that he could be happy that everything worked out for the best and they're all fine now. That should be enough, shouldn't it?

Yet he can't shake that twisted and ill feeling, that moment where someone else had to remind him of his son.

Greg opens his eyes again, watching Steven balefully. "You're not worried? About that sort of thing happening again, I mean...?"

"Well..."

He stops to consider it seriously, because it's something that deserves to be handled seriously. He tries to remember what Garnet told him, like he has to remind himself so many times when he's feeling terrible - these feelings will never go away until you confront them. He has to let Greg do that instead of just pretending it doesn't matter.

"I don't... I don't want it to happen again. I don't like that it happened. But..." He swallows, and then looks up at his dad earnestly. "But I think we'll be okay. Even if things are bad for a while... you can be okay again, and..." He's searching for the right words, and it's making his words somewhat halting. "Just because something gets hidden from you doesn't mean it isn't still there. Right?"

For a moment Greg is silent, turning over Steven's words in his mind.

He spent a lot of time in the last few days feeling sick and scared, beating himself up and imagining the worst. That fear had enough time to sink in and get him to accept it as the truth. Now that he's been proven wrong, it takes a little extra time to recall that's not the truth, that's not the reality they're in, and the bad end isn't about to come hunting them down to ruin their moment of happiness.

Dozens of "but"s and "what if"s are whirling through Greg's head, ready to brush aside Steven's assurances. Instead, he takes a deep breath.

"It's so easy to come up with things that can go wrong." He blinks back tears--of sadness, exhaustion, release. "You're right, though. I wanna trust us more than I fear the rest."

"Yeah," Steven agrees, softly. He knows what Greg means, even if he tries really hard not to think that way. He's quiet for a while longer, until something worthwhile to say comes to mind.

"I got really scared about that one time, because, well..." He pauses, and then looks up at Greg for a second. "You know how Garnet can see the future? The first time she told me about that, I got all excited about it and started asking her all this stuff... and I never realized how many bad things could happen, before. I guess I just never thought about it, but Garnet sees that stuff all the time, and when she told me about it I got so scared, I totally freaked out!"

He pointedly neglects to tell Greg about how he got up on the roof in a thunder storm, because that was extremely silly and he still feels kind of embarrassed about it from time to time.

"But she told me that... even though lots of bad things could happen, I had to remember that I still had control over my own destiny, and to focus on the stuff I could control instead of the stuff I can't." He falls silent, briefly. "I don't know if it works the same way here, but... I think it probably does."

Edited (words) 2017-03-15 20:17 (UTC)

Greg purses his lips, then smiles faintly. "Well, if that's the lesson you got from her, I better take it from the experts."

Taking in a deep breath, Greg sits up straighter in his chair and scratches at his mossy hair. "Sorry to make you go back to basics on this stuff. Sometimes I forget just how much you already know about this kind of thing."

He feels a little bit lousy for bringing down the mood further on an already tense morning... but he already feels a little better for admitting his fears.

Steven butts his head against his dad's shoulder affectionately, smiling more brightly despite the fact that things are still rough.

"I learned a lot of important stuff from you, too."

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HELL OF A HANGOVER PT. 1

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