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[leiche]

Who: Jeremy Fitzgerald, OTA
What: That care package is only confusing him further.
When: Beginning of week 2.
Where: Forest and surroundings.
Warnings: Mention of head injuries and various FNAF related grossness.



This is hardly what he expected the afterlife to be like.

He wasn't exactly religious or spiritual. He'd always figured that whatever the end of the line would be, he'd deal with it when he got there. Just because he's here a little earlier than he'd expected had nothing to do with his surprise upon finding out what awaited him after death was just more of it.

Kill or be killed is what he was told. But I'm already-- was what he wanted to answer with, but he was only shushed, told to try his best, and then he was out in the middle of it all. He'd stepped out into what could only be described as a warzone, bodies and blood scattered about and his only instrinct - once he could force himself to move - was just to run. Run, run, keep running, hope you don't pass out.

He has no idea how he made it this far, but he's just glad he's remained conscious. It hasn't really hit him yet, the seriousness of the situation he's in. As far as he's concerned ... well, he's still very, very dead. How much worse can it be to die again?

For a long time, Jeremy wasn't even aware of his surroundings. He just ran, and found someplace to hide whenever he heard a noise. It seemed to go well for the most part, and the forest he finds himself in now is certainly different than anything he'd ever known. It's near one of the quiet, shallow ponds that he decides to take a break, sitting down near the water's edge and breathing heavily from the journey. And then he takes out his findings from the odd little parachute that nearly knocked him in the head earlier in the day, keeping a water bottle by his side as he reads the note again.

"Keep moving ... sorry for-- for what ha-happened. Need help, find ... Luna, Sansa ... Firo, S-Sandy, Daryl, Kar...kat, Nick."

He reads it to himself again, before rolling his eyes, crumpling the paper in his fist and letting it fall to the side. "Fat load o'good names do m-- me now."

It doesn't help that the same hallucination has been following him around since day one, usually in the corner of his vision but sometimes - like now - right across the pond from him.

"God-- fuck off, already," Jeremy grumbles at the shadow, frustrated enough to flip his middle finger up at the damn thing as he rubs his scarred forehead with the other hand. What a headache this is. "Leave me alone."

Comments

[weaintashes]

[OOC: Sorry for the wait, DW must've gotten screwy with the notif! Since Jeremy eventually gets mercy killed by Sandy, we could handwave Daryl taking Jeremy back to his camp pretty soon and assume they end up separated at some point? (Or Jeremy intentionally leaves, that's up to you.)]


Were Daryl less experienced with these circumstances, contemplating the objective attractiveness of someone he barely met and how it might've affected business at their restaurant wouldn't have even crossed his mind. But Arenas are sort of old hat at this point and he's learned to enjoy these moments of humour when the opportunity presents itself, which isn't often. He hopes Jeremy never has cause to become similarly accustomed and desensitised to this shit.

Startled by Jeremy's reaction to the dragon, he carefully and quietly edges closer, keeping his body low against the ground to avoid casting a shadow or otherwise broadcasting his position to anything else that may be lurking overhead. With as much as he dislikes being touched himself, his first instinct has never been to reach out and offer physical comfort to others in these sorts of situations. Instead he sits as close as he's comfortable with, leaning down and speaking in a manner one would adopt when soothing a spooked animal.

"Hey, it's alright," he reassures, projecting a calmness he doesn't quite feel. "Dumb bastard didn't even know we're here. Lotta the monsters are like that — got all them nasty teeth and claws, but ain't too bright." It certainly isn't true of every muttation, considering some have seemed to possess fairly advanced intelligence and reasoning, but it's true enough in this instance. At least Jeremy's panic was of the quiet and still variety, and hadn't attracted any unwanted attention.

"Just seems unusual for a restaurant to have night guards," he says, sitting back up after a moment but reluctant to move away just yet. Besides, the perfect excuse to remain there is looking him right in the face. Small, round, whitish caps dot the grass around them, tucked so close to the ground as to be nearly invisible at first glance. "Why was it so dangerous? I mean, why were the robot critters attackin' you?" he wonders and plucks a couple of the mushrooms, eats one, and offers the other to Jeremy. Generally it's better to cook them first, but he knows this species doesn't contain toxins and a fire's too great of a risk at the moment. Maybe just before they leave the area he'll start one.

[leiche]

[ ooc; it happens, no worries! it's always possible that something spooks Jeremy and he takes off running in a panic during another monster encounter or something, could be before or after reaching the camp, it's all good. ]


It's pitiful, really, but it does help. Large, screeching beasts swooping in from overhead wasn't something he could deal with very well. Even if it was a real, physical creature, and not one made of broken scrap metal and loud static. It was similar enough to warrant flashbacks of the day that particular bot got the better of him, and nearly bit his head clean off - the scars across his forehead and under his chin were evidence of that event, an obvious sign of trauma.

He feels pathetic, whenever something freaks him out like that. Sometimes it didn't take much at all. Even changing radio stations was difficult. But because that's all it could take, it made him feel utterly useless. He couldn't do much of anything without trying to figure out potential triggers that would set him off. And here, in the arenas, anything could happen.

But, having someone there with a word of reassurance, it helped. Even if it sometimes felt like an adult telling a child there were no monsters under the bed, easing a few of the worries off his mind was a step forward. Daryl seemed nice enough about it, not prying too much and just trying to help. Jeremy relaxes a little and nods his head quietly, and while mushrooms aren't his first dietary choice, there aren't too many options out here.

"Y-Yeah. You're tellin' me," he answers, shrugging his shoulders as he takes a small bite of the mushroom. Though he hesitates to answer the second question. It's true, people here were from all sorts of different worlds with many different experiences, but how is he supposed to explain an oddity like Freddy Fazbear's and all the mysteries and strangeness within like that? "You wouldn't ... believe me," he eventually settles on, another pause before adding: "... they w-were haunted."

It sounds ridiculous saying it out loud.

[weaintashes]

"Might be surprised by what I'd believe. Place I'm from, the dead get back up and eat the living," Daryl explains, deadpan, his expression becoming more grim by degrees. "But the real monsters are other people. They're even worse now." The sort of worse that defies description, that can make the murderers in Panem seem run-of-the-mill and arguably even humane by comparison, and isn't that a chilling thought. Attempting to put the horrors into words is beyond him at the moment, and he doubts Jeremy is really in any need of additional nightmare fuel, considering that glimpse into his own history that he'd offered.

Glancing back down, he begins picking more of the little white capped mushrooms and collecting them in a pocket of his pack. This is precisely what he'd hoped they'd find on their trip to his camp, but he gathers them in an almost absent manner, as though he's just doing it to keep his hands occupied while his mind is elsewhere.

"So who's to say ghosts can't exist. I believe you," he says with all the sincerity of someone who's also experienced weird shit that nobody believes. Like the chupacabra that he still maintains he saw, despite even people from his own world — the aforementioned world overrun with reanimated corpses, no less — thinking him a liar. To hell with 'em. He knows what he saw.

"Who do you reckon was haunting 'em?" he asks after a few moments, uncertain whether he should drop that line of conversation but concerned and a bit curious despite himself. Hashing out past trauma has seemed to help some folks he's known, and he has to wonder whether Jeremy may be like that. It'll be simple enough to shift the topic back toward safer, less personal territory if the need arises — there's still so much more to arena survival than the basics that he's shared, after all, and he's hoping to give that advantage to Jeremy.

[leiche]

... so, zombies?

Now, that was definitely one of the strangest things he'd heard in his brief time in Panem so far. But ... he figures it must be possible. If everyone here is pulled in like he was, from different worlds and times, then it was certainly possible for one of those worlds to be one infested with zombies. Of course, that also meant that someone could come from a world with giant Godzilla-like monsters, too. It sure makes haunted animatronics not seem as bad.

"Y-Yeah," Jeremy answers, a point they can definitely agree on. As frightening and vengeful as the animatronics were, they'd have no reason to be if that one real monster hadn't put them in that position in the first place. They had every right to be angry and confused. "I hear you on th-that one."

He can only imagine what it must be like, though, wherever Daryl's from. Just because Jeremy's seen a few movies doesn't mean that's at all how it is, and he has no idea how he'd react in a situation like that. Dead people digging themselves out of their graves? Feasting on the living? Yeah, that's a lot worse than a serial child murderer. He's almost certain he'd be one of the first people to be eaten - unpleasant a thought as it is. Yeah, definitely not in the mood for mushrooms now.

"... kids," he says the word quietly, hands at either side of his head, ready to start scratching and digging in if explaining it gets to be too much. Even though Daryl's admitted that he believes his word, Jeremy knows it still sounds crazy, and yet he relives it every time he has to explain it. Everything he saw on those monitors, everything he scrambled to write down in his notebook so he wouldn't forget. But now? Now, that's all he ever wants - forget, and move on. "They were ... j-just kids. They-- they didn't ... deserve wh-what happened to them."

[weaintashes]

The revelation that it was children haunting the animatronics has Daryl looking up in consternation, and it only grows when he notices how increasingly agitated Jeremy seems to be. It's pretty damn clear the topic's a minefield, and it's probably best to carefully retreat from it for now, for Jeremy's sake.

"Yeah," he quietly agrees, not even needing to hear the fate of the children to know they couldn't have deserved whatever happened to them — presumably not deaths from natural causes. It's almost better not knowing. "Kids never do deserve the bad shit that happens to 'em." He's silent for a long moment as he brushes off his hands and checks over his pack, securing it in preparation for moving on from the area. But not before cooking a little something for the trip.

He digs out a pit in the ground and uses one of his sponsor-given fire starting kits to quickly get a small cooking fire going. Snapping off a couple thin branches from a nearby bush, he skewers several mushrooms on each, then holds them close to the fire, letting the flames lick along each mushroom in turn but without burning them. Once he judges them to be done, the fire's extinguished and covered completely, and he pulls on his pack as he gets to his feet.

"Reckon you didn't deserve what happened to you, neither," he says as he holds out a hand to help Jeremy up — along with offering one of the mushroom-filled skewers. "C'mon. I'll take you to my camp." Without further detours. The guy looks like hell, a decent meal with drinkable water and secure place to rest will probably do him good. Besides which, Daryl's been exploring and hunting since before sunrise; he's looking forward to regrouping with Rick and Vivi, preferably around a nice campfire, and settling in before nightfall. As rough as arenas can be, they do have their fleeting moments of peace.

[leiche]

Thinking about what it must've been like for those children back then, innocent and unassuming, only to have been taken away from their families and killed without warning - and if what he believed had happened after really did happen, then that made it all so much worse. He couldn't blame those children's spirits at all for how distressed and angry they were, no matter how many times they came after him during his nights there. If he were in that position, he had no doubts he'd behave the same.

But, thinking about it now doesn't help matters much, especially when that leads to thoughts of how he couldn't help them at all in the end. He never brought his findings to the police, he never told anyone about his experiences, he never even thought to bring a video camera one night to record proof of the animatronic's murderous nighttime activity. No one would've believed him at all, and because of his own recklessness in taking that day shift after his nightmarish week he got himself killed before he could do anything anyway. It certainly doesn't make him feel too good about himself.

Jeremy decides he might as well just pay closer attention to what Daryl's doing, instead of wallowing in self pity. Not that he'll remember any of the steps involved, probably, but he never learned things like how to build fires or what mushrooms aren't poisonous. He focuses on that instead, taking in the size and colour of the mushrooms, the shape of the small branches, and each step in starting the fire with the kit. It's interesting to watch, at least, and the mutual silence between them is only broken by the soft crackling of the fire. It'd be nice, in any other situation.

Before he gets too lost in his thoughts, Daryl snaps him out of it, and Jeremy belatedly notices the fire's gone and it's time to go. The idea of an actual camp is appealing, even if all it is, is just a more comfortable spot on the ground to rest his head. He hesitates, only out of his own nervousness, before reaching to grasp Daryl's offered hand to help haul himself to his feet. And fried mushrooms do smell pretty good, on an empty stomach. He doesn't say much more beyond a quiet word of thanks, and his pace is rather slow, but he is grateful for the help and he looks forward to reaching the camp. Maybe after he rests properly for a little while, he can tell Daryl that himself.