Timelined just before Mayday Parker and the Infinite Sadness
<@Cecilia> Cecilia padded down the hallway to Mayday's room, twisting her hands nervously. She'd fallen asleep after another nightmare involving Cassandra and had decided a walk was in order before returning to Fabian's room and attempting to sleep again. As much as he said otherwise Cecilia was aware how fond of his sleep he was.
<@Cecilia> Now though, she'd decided a more productive use of her time would be going to see how Mayday was doing. No doubt she'd heard the news by now while she was lost in a cloud of sedation...she just hoped she'd actually be able to help her. After what she'd seen and done in the last 48 hours she wasn't even sure she could help herself any more.
<Mayday> At the knock at her door, Mayday started awake, rubbing her face and mumbling a curse at the indentations on her skin from dropping asleep at her keyboard. Wiping flaked skin from her sore red cheeks, she looked up at her monitor.
<Mayday> She'd spent her night looking through pictures of herself and Cassandra St. Commons.
<Mayday> Sick to her stomach, she closed the image folder, feeling her sadness well up in her chest again. The news was too much to bare. Even the bright sunlight burning into her shared room seemed empty and lifeless. A cruel reminder that life went on.
<Mayday> Sighing, she raised a wrist to release a web strand to her door, dumbfounded when she discovered she couldn't. Had her power stopped? She slapped her wrist, frowning at it and trying again. Nothing. "I-it's open!" she called to her visitor.
<@Cecilia> Cecilia slipped her head in. "Hey..." she said hoarsely. "...mind if I come in?"
<Mayday> "O-oh...hey." Mayday lowered her hand, stepping over to her bed and sitting on it, "S-sure, come sit..."
<@Cecilia> Cecilia nodded and sat down on the bed, a good distance away from the tarantula cage. "...I'm sorry, May..." she said, hoarsely. "I know you were friends with her."
<Mayday> Starting to sob again, Mayday nodded, covering her face with her hands, "I-I loved her, Cee!" she nodded, "I-I just....it can't be real, it can't!" she fell forward on her bed, curling up, and crying, "J-just...tell me it was someone else! It can't be like this, Cee, it can't...."
<@Cecilia> Cecilia shook her head, fighting down nausea as the image of Cassandra's empty eye sockets forced itself to the forefront of her mind. "I'm sorry, May...but it is."
<Cecilia> Cecilia swallowed hard. "Nobody deserves it, Mayday. She didn't deserve it, it was just...wrong place, wrong time...maybe a bit of poor judgement on her part."
<Cecilia> Tears began streaming down Cecilia's face. Her emotions more volatile and extreme than usual. "It was almost me..." she gasped.
<Mayday_> Mayday scrambled forward, throwing her arms around Cecilia, "I won't let you go, too! Nobody else!" she squeezed Cecilia tight, "Johnny's gone, Jamie's gone, Cassie's...." she choked up a fresh wave of tears, "Why is this happening!?"
<Cecilia> "'Cause there's a bunch of psychos out there with a taste for mutant flesh?" Cecilia laughed a bit hysterically. "I don't know if you can, May, at this point I'm not even sure we can save ourselves, but I appreciate the thought." She wrapped her arms tightly around Mayday. "It might not be too late for Jamie..."
<Mayday_> "W-we have to...we have to save him." Mayday coughed, "Somehow....w-we..." she sniffed, moving back to look at Cecilia, "W-we have to, we have to, we have to...."
<Cecilia> Cecilia nodded. "We'll try...that all we can do..." she swallowed hard "...I saw his...they've been eating his dupes...using them as a never-ending supply of food...so he was alive up until we took down the cult...but I dunno if John..."
<Cecilia> "I saw his head...one of the dupes on a pike..." she inhaled sharply "...they tried to eat two more before we attacked...I tried to stop them from killing them but they did it anyway...they stabbed one's eyes out right in front of me...they died and then one tried to eat me!" Cecilia shook her head over and over. "I've seen the same team-mate dead three times...I found Shaw's head just hours before...and then Cass..."
<Mayday_> Mayday clung tighter onto Cecilia's body, burying her face in the other girl's neck, "I hate them...." she sniffed, furious hurt in her voice, "I hate them all!"
<Cecilia> "I know...I know..." Cecilia said, rubbing Mayday's back. "If...if it helps, May. We hurt them. We hurt them really bad, they didn't escape, I sealed the exits...and we just beat the hell outta them. Most were caught...it's just Kraven, Rott and that fuckface Quent left."
<Mayday> "I swear, I'll kill them myself." Mayday managed, shuddering gently, "I-I will...I-I'll do it...I hate them..."
<Cecilia> "...No, you won't," Cecilia said, shaking her head. "You're not like that. You're just angry, May...we can't do it anyways. We need information from them. We have to question them, try to identify their victims...study them..."
<Cecilia> "Killing them won't bring Cass back. I know I said I'd kill them...but I don't...I don't think I can. I had the opportunity to in the cult chamber...but I didn't...I maimed them, but didn't actually kill anyone...we were right...it's wrong."
<Mayday> Reluctantly, Mayday found herself nodding, "...I-I know..." she whispered, "I just..." she gulped, sniffling again, "I miss her so much! I-I should have been there with her, I-I should have just....i-if I just spoke to her more, if I just..."
<Cecilia> "If you had gone with her you'd have been killed too," Cecilia said quickly. "Just like if I'd gone searching for John and Jamie I'd be dead as well... you couldn't have stopped her, Mayday. She didn't want to be held back...she wanted to look for Shaw..." Cecilia covered her mouth as she remembered that terrible afternoon "...if only she'd waited a little longer, he'd have found her..."
<Mayday> Sniffing, Mayday laughed a little, "T-that's...just like her, huh?" she sniffed, "I...always loved that about her. S-stupid or what?"
<Cecilia> Cecilia shook her head. "No...the person I love does pretty much what he wants no matter what...barring things that actively put him in danger...but still."
<Cecilia> Cecilia sat back, wrapping her arms around her knees. "I can't believe she's dead...she was so...alive."
<Mayday> "I...y-yeah. She....yeah." Mayday agreed, crossing her legs, "Heh...y-you know one time, she told me that I was cute. She said it in this way...l-like, she was younger, but it made me feel like..." she shrugged, "...l-like...I don't know. She cared. She just loved life so much...and I envied that."
<Cecilia> Cecilia laughed weakly. "I think you have a thing for friends like that...just look at two of your closest friends and try not tell me that's not true."
<Mayday> Mayday grinned a little, sniffling again, "Y-yeah....something like that." she nodded, sighing, "I-I guess I'll never get to sleep with her now, huh?" she tried to joke, hugging herself tightly as her smile wavered, "...s-she meant so much to me..."
<Cecilia> Cecilia looked away. "She didn't...we weren't friends...not exactly. Maybe we might've been...but I dunno. I just wasn't thrilled with her after what happened with you...it's unfair, I know. I tried to teach her self-defence once...I rushed her and scared the shit outta her."
<Cecilia> "...I guess nothing I taught her stuck," Cecilia said bitterly. "...Why the fuck did they all go off on their own? When I tried to at least I wasn't in my right mind, but them? Bunch of fucking idiots..." she scrubbed at her eyes.
<Mayday> "They say you can never tame a crow." Mayday smiled a little, shuffling forward and clasping Cecilia's hands, "They can be fed, bred, loved, but they always live free...and she was like that. She reminded me a lot of Eddie, in a way...so sure of herself, like she had to be this...confident hero."
<Mayday> The redhead looked down, "....like she had something to prove, but she was always so happy...so positive. She had no capacity to hate."
<Cecilia> "No...she didn't." Cecilia said, frowning. Her hands were cold. "...I dream about them..." she said quietly, eyes fixed on the bedspread.
<Mayday> Mayday leaned her forehead gently against Cecilia's, "It's not real." she affirmed - when Cee-Cee said 'dreams', she meant 'horrific nightmares'. Mayday was savy to as much, "It's not real, Cee."
<Cecilia> Cecilia huffed. "But it is...they're all dead...they all looked the way they did in the dreams...they say things they used to say and talk about things that really happened...it's just the part where they start talking to me where reality ends and insanity begins."
<Cecilia> Cecilia grit her teeth. "I'm scared I'm losing my mind...sometimes it feel like there's this looming...I dunno what...it just feels like any minute something's gonna break and then I'll just be gone. It's already happened once with Shaw and it happened when my dad died I just...lost time."
<Mayday> "No." Mayday shook her head, "Cee, this is just how you deal with it - w-we're all wired different. I just....have to cry it out I guess?" she frowned, not knowing what to say, "...God, Cecilia....I just...don't know what to..."
<Cecilia> Cecilia shrugged, sudden tears coming back. "I don't know either...sometimes I think I've got it under control, that I'm doing fine but then something'll happen or someone'll say something and then I just..." she motioned crazily with one hand "...I just lose it at the slightest provocation. One minute I'm fine and the next I'm crying or losing my temper...I can't stay asleep, I dream about it all the time and I have this...weird disconnect this...weird disconnect thing happen sometimes..."
<Cecilia> "...Like I'm watching my body operate on automatic..." terror crossed her features. "...What if I just...'check out'? What if I go into one of those episodes and never come out of it? I could end up like Jason."
<Mayday> Mayday shook her head, "D-don't...don't say that, ok?" she begged, "Cee, I-I know this is hard but I can't watch you....just fade away." she gulped - wasn't that what she was doing? Their world was coming apart, and so were they, "...C-Cee..." she whispered, "....w-why are we...even here..."
<Cecilia> "I'll try May...I'll try...I don't want to go...I don't want to leave you or Fab or anyone else I'm just...I'm really fucking scared..." she said, her breath hitching. "...If I didn't have you guys I'd have lost it long ago, I need...something to hold onto...you guys are it...if anything happens to one of my friends...I can't...I just can't..."
<Cecilia> Cecilia laughed hysterically. "I've asked myself that so many times...but I don't know why. I'm sorry...I don't think I ever will...if there's some greater meaning to our lives, May, it's a mystery to me."
<Mayday> Releasing Cecilia's hands, Mayday say back, "....I just..." she shook her head, "I just....don't even know...."
<Cecilia> "I was catholic once..." Cecilia remarked, looking away. "I refused to be confirmed though and quit going to church altogether when I was a teenager...I just...I don't not believe. But the way I saw it... I didn't believe in a merciful God anymore. I stopped thinking he cared...in my opinion, if there is a God I think he made the world...but I don't think he cares about our lives...not really."
<Cecilia> Cecilia sighed. "Sorta like a grand architect...involved in the design of the place...but not the use of it."
<Mayday> Mayday nodded, understanding more than she possibly may have wanted to, "...check us out, being all 'Philosophy Major'." she managed another weak smile.
<Cecilia> Cecilia shrugged. "I go back and forth on it...sometimes I attribute more responsibility to him than that...it really depends on how cheated I'm feeling...I'm not a very good Catholic."
<Mayday> "Heh...well, I'm the same with Star Wars." Mayday offered, not sure how the joke would go down, "I'm not a great Jedi either..."
<Cecilia> Cecilia's expression soured. "...I really hope you're not trying to make fun of me..." she said, warningly, her temper suddenly rising.
<Mayday> Blinking, Mayday shook her head, "N-no, I....I just...was trying to make light...." she frowned, "...Cee, I...I would never...."
<Cecilia> Cecilia snapped her jaws shut and reminded herself- several times- that she was likely overreacting. "I'll let it go this once..." Cecilia said, mouth set in a hard line "...but that's one of those things I just don't joke about. I still hold some things fucking sacred..." she sighed. "I'm sorry, I'm on edge...and the whole Kraven religious nutcase thing makes this a bit hard to take."
<Mayday> "...I-I think...you should rest. Or...something." Mayday responded, deciding that this version of Cecilia was not one for casual conversation. To think all this had changed in twenty four hours...
<Cecilia> "I had a sedative awhile ago..." Cecilia sighed, there was daylight outside...up at the crack of dawn then - again. "I'm sorry...I just...I think I'm losing what little humour I had in the first place..."
<Cecilia> "You're...you're gonna be alright...right?"
<Mayday> Mayday shrugged, "....maybe." she answered, "I just....wanna rest more..."
<Cecilia> Cecilia nodded, drawing in a ragged breath and running her hands through her hair. "...I'll check in on you later?"
<Mayday> Nodding, Mayday lay back, "Y-yeah....sure."
<Cecilia> Cecilia sighed and gave Mayday a quick hug. "It's not your fault...just...remember that, alright?"
<Mayday> "You too." Mayday replied seriously, hugging Cecilia back, "Ok? You, too."