[OPEN] funeral: humankind is united today

[carnem]

CHARACTERS ▶ All
LOCATION ▶ Throughout Zion
SUMMARY ▶ In the wake of terrible news, Zion rallies around the fallen, drawing from traditions old and new, Real and otherwise.
WARNINGS ▶ PG-13 for language and indications of death and violence
NOTES ▶ Following the Return to Harbour plot (conclusion here), the city gathers to commemorate and say good-bye to the soldiers of the four ambushed ships. Political unease cannot get in the way of paying respects.

▶ Mourning in Zion

It takes three days to prepare for a funeral of this magnitude.

Of course, some may say that the Council spends those three days doing more than running the logistics behind incense and flower supplies. However, whatever other activities might have been involved, all that the people of Zion saw were to be expected: Kamadeva rallying the cooks and the florists, Xolotl reviewing the perimeter defenses despite that it had been done for Truce Week so recently, and the Morrigan calling meetings with the more powerful economic forces of the city to ensure the importance of the occasion was understood. The city will not be brought to a halt, but nor will the Council allow the grieving time to be interrupted by day-to-day bustle and commerce.

So it begins: three days.

PREPARATIONS ◀

For three days, Zionites take turns volunteering or even time away from their work.

The work tables are immense. Flower blankets, that will either fade or burn with crisp and potent sweetness, must be woven by teams of dozens. The spiritual practitioners of the Temples welcome all help in this, but it’s children especially who tend to come and join, running spools of bright thread back and forth and perched on higher stools as they fit new blooms into the growing lattice. Each of the dead will wear one.

Artists work with paints and whittles to create dozens of tiny icons: of beds and tables, luxuries to carry into the afterlife, to burn with those of the dead who are designated for cremation. Other donations are real enough: fruit reaped from the harvest, unleavened breads out in dishes, rolls of herbs, soups, kebobs, and wines. These will be eaten afterward-- the final meal to share.

In dozens of homes and throughout the bazaar, people are otherwise at work. They dip incense, draw pictures of memories drawn from sims, build candles, soak rosewater, tell stories and make songs.

A sand mandala flowers slowly by the entrance of the great cavern, expanding under the patient precision of studied hands. For this work, few are invited, but all are welcome to look at the vivid pattern. Symbols of major religions feature on contrasting fields-- not only the faiths of Earth-that-was, but even of some known only to Matrixes, an artistic decision that perhaps the Council and ZDG officially disagree with but nonetheless do nothing to prevent. Elaborate vegetation-- or is it circuitry?-- and a spiral of birds cavort through the space, and here or there, a pale young man looks through breaks in the vivid pattern. Neo.

SPEECH AND DIRGE ◀

It’s understandable, that when Councilor Brutus arrives for the final ceremony, he draws a few looks askance. He has brought four attendants with him, but the security is implied rather than looming a threat en force. After all, much of the Defense Grid is present and they are expected to behave accordingly, as if anyone living in Zion might be sick enough a soul to foul the funeral with dissent.

Most of the time, the bodies are burned at the same time. But there had been a few Muslims, Christians and other groups. Some of the flower blankets arrive empty, symbolic of a soldier who has since been buried.

It’s not difficult to recognize their families, standing at the fore of the massive gathering. Sometimes it’s a husband or a wife who cries hardest, but it is perhaps the worst to see the children who do not cry at all.

It is Councilor Aries who steps out into the stony platform. Chiron comes with her, Orion by his side. However, the men remain silent as she turns to address the crowd, this time for an event much more somber than the last. “Humankind is united today,” is the beginning of her speech. It has the ring of honesty to it, her face hard with grief, but there are murmurs as she speaks. Little doubt, some in the cavern would disagree, but few will put words to it-- at least, until after Aries has said her piece and the funeral songs fade.

The survivor known as 'Proxy' remains conspicuously absent.

Comments

BRUTUS ♞ TEMPLE; OTA.

[carnem]

The ceremonies are coming to a conclusion when there is a ripple of unease detectable in one section of the vast Temple.

Having stayed for the speech, Brutus is on his way out. He is a tall man, prone to wearing military cuts of clothing rather than the traditional, floatier robes of the typical politician, prone also to staring straight ahead to cut his path, even through the milling crowds. Two aides that double as security trail after him, and two more ahead, and they are looking around. And they are noticing the harder stares being given Brutus from the public as they go.

It would be good to walk faster.

Suddenly, a break of motion. The woman that emerges to interrupt his path is going grey at her temples, and there is a greyer quality to her face, sick with grief. She lunges, her hands open, to land her palms on his chest in a sudden shove.

Immediately, one of the aides springs in to grab her by the arm, hauling her backwards, pushing her back into the crowd, but she's made her mark -- her dark hands are covered in vibrant red, a powdered dye, and it is stamped bright and vivid on the green-grey of Brutus' jacket and shirt.

"What did you do!" is shrill from the woman, calling more attention. "Tell me! Tell us! How dare you--"

One of his aides goes to usher Brutus faster along the path set to leave, but it doesn't have any effect. Shoved into the crowd and the crowd surges back, they seem to collectively agree to block his path in a sudden walling of people, and Brutus himself stops as steady as a Temple stalagmite, his countenance grave and unyielding after a glance down at the smearing red.

[sfoils]

Wedge, for all of his distaste of formal occasions and the formality of dress that comes with them, bothered to dress less like a mechanic and more like a captain: no oil stains, brand new coveralls, topped with a mask of military solemnity.

He knows better than to start polemics in the middle of a funeral. For those who know him, this bout of gravity seems at odds with the man who has no problems cracking jokes and poking fun at the council. But for those who truly know him, it's no surprise. In his Matrix, he's attended enough funerals of his crew to be adamantly against nonsense during what's meant to be a respectful ceremony.

Which is why this little attempt at stonewalling Brutus annoys Wedge. The wailing woman, gaunt with grief, gets a pass because her grief is genuine. But Wedge doubts the rest of them have such an alibi. There's politics all over the place, it seems.

"Move," Wedge demands, jumping into the path out of nowhere. The advantages of being built like a pilot, compact, and easily weaving through the crowd. "I know no more than you all do, and I was there."

[carnem]

It's not improbable that the crowds might give slack to a pilot of the ZDG, especially someone who led a team into bringing back the bodies of the dead -- perhaps the bodies of their loved ones -- and at best, the line does not press in, uncertainty writ on the faces of those in front. But accusing stares fly by Wedge, over his head and past his shoulders, Brutus like a gravitational force of attention now that he's been marked.

The wailing woman is that stereotype -- mad with grief, emotional, perhaps even hysterical, but she is still sane, and she shakes off the hands of a younger man trying to still her by the shoulders.

"He knows," she declares, flinging a red hand wild in the Councillor's direction, addressing Wedge, dressing the aide trying to block her with an arm, address everyone staring at her. "He sent them!"

"You have something to say?" the young man at her arm says, directed at Wedge.

But now that things have lapsed for the conversation, some of the tension is easing. Gradually. Not so much that anyone can waltz through and leave, not enough that it won't suddenly spark up again if Brutus tries, but a temporary stale mate settles.

Metzger - OTA

[hellbrokeloose]

[Tavern]

Just leave me out there.

[ Metzger is drinking. ]

In a thousand years an archaeologist can find my skeleton squatting over an oil drum and have something to talk about.

[ He has one boot kicked up into the chair to his right, slouched back, reserving the space for leg room. It’s not very respectful, but he has more pressing concerns. Namely, getting the smell of human barbecue out of his nose and slipping the council, among other interested parties.

The absence of any red in his wardrobe is (no doubt) a strategic decision. ]


[After the Ceremony]

[ Visible near the fore throughout most of the funeral proceedings, Metzger has since vanished into a recessed cavern on the fringes of its disassembly like a little bat. He’s decked out in what passes for military dress in Zion, burgundy and black, with his hand cupped over the cherry of a lit cigarette to mask the glow.

A sharp eye might’ve caught him headed that direction, cutting against the flow of traffic after closing remarks from the council.

Elsewhere, there’s a ripple of tension in the ranks of the mourning, and he looks on from afar, just interested enough to stay exactly where he is: out of sight and out of mind. ]

ᴛᴀᴠᴇʀɴ

[ironwork]

( golden-eyed and lazy, nearby metzger and with somehow less leg room despite more leg, seoraj takes up this suggestion by positioning his drink to mime over it as if it were a skull. metzger's, presumably, in this scenario, being painstakingly dusted by some futuristic archaeologist-- )

'Why do I always get the shit jobs', ( he mourns, in character.

irreverent now, maybe, but no one could have faulted his behaviour at the funeral. )

[hellbrokeloose]

For gods’ sake, Allaway. [ Simon grouses into his cup, muffled, disapproving of the pun. Not the sentiment.

He hasn’t had so much that he needs watching over, but he does look irresponsibly comfortable under the circumstances, at ease amidst low lights and stuffy old seats. ]

If this keeps up, I’m going to have to hire on more muscle for moving bodies.

[onyourfeet]

[ Hey, Cage laughed. Into his beer, mainly. There should not be a lot of laughing happening, right now.

He's lounging too, an ankle kicked up onto knee, a more observant presence than a very vocal one. He watches who enters and who leaves the tavern, and when, both course of habit as well as honest curiousity. It won't be the first time in his relatively short career that he's seen an entire hovercraft crew go down, but never to this scale.

He doesn't know anyone who has. ]

Don't worry, Simon, I'll personally see your carcass dragged home, dressed, flowered, the whole shebang, or else someone'll get suspicious.

[ He sets his cup down. ]

Honestly, my money's on Gwisin's gonna apply as much red tape on every mission out of here for the next five years to preventing anything like this keeping up.

NATASHA ROMANOFF / OTA

[ex_spins462]

Grief is an ugly, important thing. Natasha values it in the same way she values memory: she understands its purpose, it's transience, and the fact that her experience with it is different to most people. Patriotism, on the other hand, is more dangerous (she loves Steve dearly but she will always call the other side of that coin.) Natasha watches for it with a canny eye, still trying to understand why these men and women died.

When she's not making careful conversation with people from all over Zion — mechanics, children, political aides — she joins in the preparations. Most of the tasks are new to her, but she's patient and curious, a good listener and a fast learner, and soon she knows how to knead bread quietly as others talk around her, and which way to place the flowers into the intricate and colorful net. She works like a bird, with bright eyes and quick movement, her hair a guttered flame crested on her head, her woolen sweater too loose at the neck and too long at the wrists, plugs visible in a line at the top of her spine. She wears a black band at her wrist, and introduces herself as Widow.

Later, she attends the funeral as a stranger. Her clothes have a military cut and crispness, and the scarce visible skin is nearly entirely inked in henna patterns. straight black hair falls to her cheekbones, and her cheekbones are heavily bronzed, her eyes lined and smudged in smoky browns. Even the way she holds herself and moves is different, older and far more indelicate. But still, those who know her will still look into her face and see Natasha looking back coolly.

((feel free to get in touch if you want to orchestrate a specific incident or meeting, and i can write a starter with more specificity.))

[echopraxia]

Grief is--

Different. She feels it differently, now, and carefully does not use the word lowered even in the privacy of her own mind, where it might fester like a wound and become something of which she cannot be proud. She feels the impermanence of life with her own hands and so she buries them up to the elbows in work, weaving flowers into place alongside Natasha, birdlike in another way-- movement and manner that declare her newness while hair that falls not far above her shoulders tells another story, gives it a different meaning.

She works, though, as one accustomed to it; permits something like gratitude for the opportunity to be absorbed in it to show in her. Not so grateful that later she will attend the funeral - she will not. But when an introduction is offered, she looks up and refocuses, for a moment.

"Anya," after a pause that's slightly awkward in a way she appears both conscious of and indifferent to.

[ex_spins462]

She introduces herself because the woman interests her; there is kinship in another unplugged here, too.

"Russian?" Natasha asks, because she knew an Anya once (twice, actually; she has not forgotten the small girl who pinched her when the instructor wasn't looking and cried for her grandmother in the night, rattling the handcuffs, but she has blurred into a long list of similar girls and is not the thickset scientist that the name calls to her mind.) After a moment, she shakes her head, apparently sheepish. "Or not. I understand not everywhere even has a Soviet."

[lostsoldier]

Grief is not for him. He's seen his share of it, of course; there are enough red-lined eyes and gaping, down-turned mouths amid enough final wails echoing in his dreams, and when an old woman's face crumples like wet newspaper over the twist of a flower stem, that part at least feels familiar. But his hand pulls tense in his sleeve, the shine to his eyes going cool and still in answer. It's not for him to feel.

The preparations are no more a place for him. He moves with the ebb and flow of the crowd, but he isn't a part of it, doesn't engage with it the way she does. Death means something else for him, the completion of one task, the start of another; dispose of the body, destroy the evidence, erase the target and then yourself. The goal has always been to nullify a life, not celebrate it, and the mourners remind him instead of the hushed crowd flowing across smooth museum floors, of a history he's still struggling to make his own.

Speeches, however, he understands. Political machinations. Her too, in bits and pieces. He'd read her SHIELD file, back before all this, but more than that the things she'd said after his extraction, the understated empathy in their interactions has fostered enough tentative trust that he seeks her out in the crowd, in her sharp clothes and her new hair and someone else's skin. It's been a week or two since he'd gotten strong enough to disappear from the Shangrila, but he steps into place next to her like no time has passed at all.

"You could almost be one of them," he says from beneath his hood, like he hadn't just crossed a deck full of people without anyone sparing him a second glance, but what she's doing is different. Being someone, instead of no one. He sounds almost impressed. (Envious, maybe.)

[ex_spins462]

It's good to see him, in the sense that she'd lost track of him for a little while there. That makes her nervous, mostly out of habit. She doesn't evince any surprise or relief, though, since keeping certain emotions wrapped in public is also a habit.

"Almost isn't good enough," she murmurs, not looking at him after that first initial glance. She wants to be invisible in her persona; Natalie Rushman was as much a complete person as Natasha Romanoff, maybe moreso. And she needs a name and voice that doesn't use the network, or ask too many questions about Counsellors Jade and Brutus, or know Tony Stark.

If it were anyone other than Bucky she might go so far as to pretend not to recognize them, but he's incognito — and fragile, she is careful with him not out of fear but because even experiencing a tenth of what he has gives her empathy. Everybody in the crowd is listening to the measured rhythm of a speech, but Natasha eschews being prosthelytized at and turns her body towards Bucky's like she's closing ranks.

Natasha peers at his expression in the shadow of the hood. "I didn't expect to see you here," she says, voice pitched low, husky. She doesn't say it like a bad thing: she likes being kept on her toes.

[lostsoldier]

His gaze flicks back toward the stage at that, inscrutable in the way that his body language tends, to extremes of transparency or opacity without much in between. If she'd been herself, she might not have. If she'd been with Steve, he wouldn't have come this close at all.

"They wake you up for a reason," he explains with a tilt of his temple toward the speakers. There are always reasons. Causes. Wars to fight. Steve Rogers' dogged determination might have been a motivating factor in his own extraction, but he doubts it was the only one.

Maybe he's seen enough reasons to want a better handle on theirs.

fenris; ota

[halatinous]

during preparations;

These are not his people, and this is not his grief. Fenris lingers around the work tables, observes the bright flowers being threaded by so many small, eager hands. He surveys the things gathered for the ritual meal; occasionally someone asks him to carry a cask of wine or bring over a sack of beads, and he does, without question.

The atmosphere is somber, muted, and although he knows few names in Zion, he will not behave as though nothing has happened. For the past several weeks, he's melded well enough into the anonymous bustle of the city. But the tone, the pace -- it's different now. It's focused. Fenris can't relate to the particulars, but loss is universal. He will acknowledge it.

He could pitch in more directly, perhaps, but that doesn't feel right, either. He's a stranger here, and sitting down at the tables would seem an intrusion.

Instead, he stands awkwardly, daily, by the sand mandala. He watches it grow, and he says nothing. Silence is the only offering he has.

speech/dirge;

Fenris doesn't have much in the way of proper attire. He wears simple, dark clothing: a black shirt, black pants, and a thick red sash around his waist. He keeps to the back of the crowds, and does his best not to make eye contact with anyone. The speech flows through him, incomprehensible, meaningless. Fenris doesn't think of himself as human, though his body says differently. He doesn't feel any especial sense of unity, either, and he can tell that he isn't alone.

Fenris is sensitive to the subtleties of his environment. He manages to keep himself in place, to look forward, to maintain the position of his feet. But he notices a thread of unrest among some of the gathered, something that goes outside of mourning and into anger. Fenris doesn't know why. He hasn't been here long enough to fully understand the politics of the city. He wonders about it, but now isn't the place or time.

When the speech ends, Fenris starts to file out with the rest, but then slips away and hangs back. Listens. Watches. Misses his old body. He had such good ears.

[forcemageure]

Hawke understands unified, communal loss same way he understands religion, or philosophy, or any other undeniably relevant but alien abstract. The distance he feels might manifest as a symptom of how new he is to life in Zion, but doesn't: he'd feel the same way if he'd lived here for decades. He's not awkward or out of place because he has purpose here, but in temporary absence of said purpose does move mostly on the periphery.

He is, as observed above, far from the only one, but he's made enough acquaintances in the time he's been unplugged to exchange a nod here, the subdued version of greeting there. Their loss is not his loss, but it doesn't cost him anything to acknowledge it.

While Fenris's new ears might not be as sharp, maybe all that exposure to a Ferelden accent amidst a sea of Free Marchers was distinctive enough to have left an impression.

[halatinous]

Observant and careful as he is, Fenris would be hard-pressed to miss the familiar cadence of Hawke's voice. He takes an unconscious step forward in surprise--he can place the accent, but there's something more, too. The phrasing, the inflection. It strikes a chord, as though this is a person Fenris should know. But when he matches a face to the voice, he comes up short. He hasn't met this man--has he?

The more he listens, the more Fenris feels sure that he's met a man like this--except, she wasn't a man.

Fenris clears his throat.

"Pardon," he says, stepping a little too close. He wants to say more, ask questions, but he allows that he could be completely misconstruing the situation. Perhaps he's imagining things out of loneliness, or hope.

[forcemageure]

Hawke, having ended his conversation, turns a little over his shoulder to slide out of the way, intending to shrug off whatever imagined slight, and--stops, expression and posture echoing the spirit of Fenris', if not the letter. The voice is familiar, even in two small syllables, the set of shoulders in a sort of sideways sense even the face.

"No bother." Mostly just to have something to say, to give him another few seconds to scrutinize, but the easiness in his face and loose shrug are genuine regardless.

Oh, well. If he's wrong it will only be awkward for a second; it's not as if neither of them can plead running off with valid things today. Everyone has something, today. "Fenris?"

SPEECH/DIRGE

[knowdeathknowglory]

Jay notices, out of the corner of his eye, the man hanging back from the crowd. His curiosity aroused, he hangs back, too. After a moment's hesitation, he approaches Fenris, opting to take a circuitous route that stays out of Fenris's line of sight, just in case.

Why is he waiting there? Is something going to happen after the service? Does this stranger know something he doesn't? Jay narrows his eyes in suspicion. Maybe he's catching a troublemaker in the act. A service such as this is a perfect time to make some sort of explosive statement, Jay reasons. That and the man's watchfulness is unsettling him a little.

Not wanting to attack without proof of ill intent, Jay clears his throat to alert Fenris to his presence.

"Waiting for someone, darling?" he asks, softly. "Or just, ah. Loitering?"

[halatinous]

Fenris raises an eyebrow. This one's looking at him like he's got a bomb in his pocket, and that's just offensive. He's not sold on the darling, either.

"Loitering," he says, without much warmth. "Is there a problem?"

closed to dorian who poops gold;

[servomotor]

[The speech is going to start soon. Tony is kind of weird about being serious in public, especially when people have tragically died (and abandoned children, his uncontrollable rage-monster problems, what if he cost Rhodey his job or something someday, etc.), so he wasn't planning on being here really. But after the last drop-off he made to the Temple was of a couple of cute girls carrying bread, he thought. well.

Might as well see what all the fuss is about.

It's not like Coulson, exactly, but the minute he thinks the thought he realizes how much it is, and it makes him uncomfortable. He stands underneath a hundred stalactites, watches as they start to carry in the flowers. So many flowers, represented by every imaginable color. Whole blankets made of flowers.] The world ended, [he says aloud, not hearing the other man come up in the crowd of people bearing wine.] The world ended and we have a hundred different shades of tulip.

Hell.

mila, callsign miracle, open

[milagros]

( milagros had contributed to the preparations in her own time, and in the practical way she preferred; she is not an artist, to handmake icons, and there are memories tied up in the weaving of flowers that she doesn't choose this time to break open. not because they are unwelcome, or because she would deny them - but because this loss stands as it is. the dead and those rumoured to be responsible for their deaths are not so unknown to her, after three years here and the bulk of that time given over to the zdg; she doesn't need to be reminded of past pains to feel this one acutely.

so she had left the flowers and her memories to the side, and brought out soups, bread, and sliced fruit desserts to contribute, and will linger afterwards to share that meal, and speak quietly with others that do. there's no shortage of conversational topics, although some of them might not be entirely fitting.

she is militarily dressed when she attends the funeral, her hair pulled severely from her face and falling down her back in one tight, high braid; she clasps her hands behind herself and remains neutrally impassive through the speech. less so when brutus is intercepted, but she observes only for a moment, committing to memory some of the faces involved, moves with more purpose in another direction before her own lingering can become marked.

old habits die hard. )

[scission]

[She's a familiar face. Passing, in various areas, not one Deucalion's spoken to before. He isn't truly intending to speak to her now - not intending to speak to anyone, still socialised in the respectful silence of mourning of Western European Earth. But he ends up in pace with her in the filing out of the crowd, post-speech, catches the flicker of attention regarding the noise around Brutus. It's understandable, anyone pausing to watch that. But it still sparks his curiosity, enough to turn to her quietly as the crowd hits a bottleneck, pace slowing.]

Did you know any of them?

[milagros]

( mila's glance to the side is querying, surprised; she recognizes him in the same way he knows her, and is hardly expecting this to be the moment that they engage. the moment she decides not to object is equally visible, allowing her pace to match his, letting her gaze taper off somewhere over his head and then ahead of her, thoughtful, as she considers her answer.

as interesting as it might be to interpret his query as any of those people in front of the councilor, she does not. )

Not intimately, ( although the answer she gives of the dead might equally apply. ) Our paths had crossed. I'd have had to think to give you names.

( previously, she means. before today. afterwards--

well, she will remember their names. )

CLOSED TO HAWKE

[knowdeathknowglory]

Jay is watching the sand mandala as it's being built, standing a little too close to the edge. His eyes dart around, as though he's looking for something in the patterns, some particular symbol, but his expression is drawn and tired and a little hopeless. A few times, he stops one of the people working on the mandala to ask them whispered questions in a pleading tone that's rather unlike his usual manner of speaking.

He's exhausted. He hasn't slept well and the final dream of the night still lingers in his memory - the gas lamps of Svet-Dmitring, the smog above the city, the whisper of a soot-spirit in a blind alleyway - and it makes him restless and fraught and homesick. Eventually, he stops his questioning and turns away from the mandala, face hidden in his hands.

"Bugger all this for a lark," he says, loudly enough to not be private, but not aimed at anyone in particular.

[forcemageure]

Hawke, who is currently useless in this endeavor for anything more than like, transporting things, would recognize a colloquialism that sounds like it could be Thedosian from miles off. He stops mid-assessment and swans into Jay's general orbit, mindful enough of the buried face to realize he may not get a response at all, but 90% of what he says is meant for his own entertainment anyway.

"Not much for sentimentality?"

Thank ...whoever he's currently allowed to thank for someone who seems as bloody out of place as he does. Though it may not show; he tends to brazen his way through any such situation, but public grief is as foreign to him as say, a giraffe might be.