missmaladroite | [Week 9]

[Week 9]

[Marinette is Exhausted but there's no rest for superheroes!! Especially ones who have somehow adopted half the ship!! The whole secrets business leaves a bad taste in her mouth, especially with several of the people here apparently being dead.]

[And one of those people is Luke.]

[She's worried, to say the least. So even if he may not want company right now, she's knocking hesitantly at his door]

Luke? It's Marinette.

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[If anyone told Luke that he'd come back to life and become a potential babysitter for a bunch of teenagers, he wouldn't have believed it. As it stands, he's been here for nine weeks and still sometimes can't believe the circumstances.

It's a weird sort of family unit, and it's one that earns Marinette some favor toward him. She's right. He doesn't want company right now, but he doesn't actually mind her too much. He figures he can make niceties, assure her things are fine and send her on her way. It's simple. So he opens the door a short time after and he looks…normal. Dressed the same as ever, mostly put together and save for the bright pink Clover-scrunchie that he's continually (subconsciously) snapping against his wrist he looks the same.]

Hey. Everything okay? [If Dorian's making things difficult for the furries, swear to the gods…]

[Honestly, all of these secrets are pretty overwhelming for Marinette. Not only does all of Paris (supposedly) know she's a furry, but Jason and Luke are dead, how many people are murderers or serial killers, or abused, and--- it's really getting to be so much.]

I was going to ask you that. [She goes for a smile, but it's strained and she's obviously exhausted both mentally and physically, but she's trying!!] I mean... not that you're okay, how can anyone really be, but you know what I mean...

[There's the awkward Marinette no one loves!!]

Right?

[He's just. Going to stand here and let her talk herself in a circle while he calmly waits...

...but he's still frowning in vague concern. Alice exposing everyone's secrets means two things. One, it screws things up for the people those secrets before to, and two, it makes everybody else freak out about everybody else. It's not something he likes and he's leaning against the doorframe while sizing her up.]

Marinette. Are you here because you saw what Alice posted on the datapad about me? [He knows that's why, but he's mostly curious to see what she's going to say. He might also just be formulating a response in his head already because he's already an expert at disappointing teenage girls, why remind himself of that?]

[To be fair, it's great entertainment, and that's absolutely what she's doing]

No! [What a great liar, that Marinette]

I mean... yes... but I would have come anyway. It hasn't been a great week for anyone. Let alone you. [Or her. But considering he nearly got axed for Adam's dads' murders.]

[And look at that, he absolutely believes her at first! Except for the part where he doesn't. The problem is that she's not wrong and for a moment she can probably tell she's absolutely hit a weak spot. This week sure has sucked a lot. He considers her for a moment longer, tilting his head before he steps aside to not be blocking the door. She's already been in here once. What could it hurt?]

If you really want to talk about this, I'm not doing it in the hall. Doesn't matter if Alice announced it to the whole ship. [Despite his death now being public knowledge, he'd like to have some semblance of privacy left. Not to mention he's lazy and he's genuinely interested in what Marinette thinks of everything that's going on right now.]

[Does she really want to talk about it? It doesn't seem like he wants to. But as soon as he's offering, she's taking the opportunity to come in without hesitation, before he can change his mind and kick her out]

I'm coming in then!

[yeah, he knows, Marinette]

[He chuckles under his breath because yes, he knows, Marinette, but all the same he's allowing her into his room and up the ladder as he closes the door. By the time she gets up to his room she'll notice it's pretty much the same as it was during the room searches, though it's a little cleaner and more organized. The items on the floor are grouped together in a neat pile to avoid being stepped on, his desk papers are tidied up, clothes are thrown in the hamper, etc. It's less of a disaster and he gestures to his desk chair for her to sit.]

I gotta ask. Just how much did you actually watch?

[She nearly trips over the piles on the floor, anyway, because she's that clumsy, but manages to make it to the chair without killing herself.]

[But she avoids his eyes, a little guiltily]

Most of it. ....I'm sorry.

[at least she looks guilty??]

[When she settles in the chair, he sits on the bottom bunk. He rests his elbows on his knees, giving her another perplexed look when she apologizes.]

What're you apologizing for? It's not like your'e the one who put everything on our datapads.

It's not really my business. [SHE SAYS THAT, but she watched anyway]

[Because she can't afford not to know these things, anymore, after the kind of people who keep turning up as murderers]

But, are you really...?

[she says, right after saying it's not her business]

[He waits for a moment before he raises an eyebrow.]

Am I really what, Marinette? There's a lot of things in there that I could or couldn't be. [He's not owning up to anything until she asks.]

[Why does he have to make this difficult!!! She bites her lip]

Okay, I can buy the... son of Hermes. Even.... Kronos... [That sounds more like a question that a statement. He had been possessed. Like Liz. Like the akumatized victims. That much she got] A lot of strange things have happened. But... you can't... really have died.....

Right?

[He nods along to each point. Yes, he's the son of Hermes. Yes he was possessed by Kronos. Yes a lot of strange things happened...but he sighs quietly.]

Everything you saw happened right before I came here. That was the end of it and this is a new beginning. [Which is terrible, honestly.] I know it's hard to believe, but I have proof if you need it.

[Why are demi-gods going to camp??]

But, how is that possible...? People can't just come back from the dead!

[Maybe he should break out that proof]

[To be protected by a pinetree tbh]

What do you think I've been trying to figure out for two months? [But he's silent for another moment and...this is weird, she's a teenage girl but you know what, proof is proof. So he's moving to grab the bottom hem of his shirt and he's tugging it up to turn his left side toward her. Namely, he's showing off the fact there's healed blistered-like skin that would match all of the marks from an explosion and what-have-you, and he's even lifting his arm to show her the scar from the stab wound of his Achilles heel.]

But people also don't just have these things if all of that wasn't real.

[She starts to reach out to the scars to touch them and verify with her own hands, but thankfully realizes it's inappropriate and super weird and stops]

[and hides them behind her back]

[nailed it]

You've got to be kidding me! [It wasn't just him, but Jason too, and argh]

Alice--- or whoever's behind this, can bring people back from the dead?

[There had been akuma trying to revive Nefertiti with a ritual, but, uh, this is a whole new level of nonsense]

So it seems. [He knows about Jason, too. That's also weird.] I just haven't figured out why she would do that and how she bypassed the laws of the Underworld. Souls aren't supposed to really leave, so…either I never made it there or our AI's more clever than we think.

[…there's a light laugh, though more incredulous than humorous.] You can see why I never told anybody here.

It's not something you can really explain....

[But if this story is true - and she has a hard time believing it isn't, that opens up a whole new perspective. If Alice can just bring people back, does that mean everyone who died can live again? What will happen to Luke and Jason once the 'game' is over? Will they go back to being dead.]

Do you think... it's part of the experiment? If she can just stop someone's death.... Maybe she traveled back in time to the moment of your death and saved you? Like in a movie?

[It's not theoretically impossible, but]

Exactly. [But he listens to her because it's something he's vaguely considered. Marinette seems to put his thoughts into words though and he finds it easier to talk about it than if he'd brought it up himself.]

It's possible. She can apparently pick us up from all of our worlds, so maybe. But that raises the question of why. I can see wanting to stop someone's death and why that would be interesting to test, but…["Why me????"] What's so special about these deaths that she was interested in?

You ever think about the kind of people that're on the ship? I haven't found a real pattern yet. [Apparently he finds that Marinette's smart enough and trustworthy enough to have this conversation.]

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[Week 9]

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