( CLOSED ) and an open cage

[unprays]

Who: sansa stark (unprays) & a buncha people
What: holiday ball & january plot things
When: december & january
Where: olympia, the south outpost, somewhere around wyver
Warning(s): your standard game of thrones warnings apply, just in case

( individual starters in comments!! feel free to either write up a starter for us, leave a blank comment and wait for me to write us something, or poke me @ celen for more specific plottings!

just as a heads-up, i'll be in japan from dec 21 to jan 5, so tags will be very slow going until i'm back! please bear with me in the meantime ♥ )

Comments

[punshots]

[ He gets it, the way the dancing lights lay a blanket of reverence over the world they occupy below. It's easy to forget that the source of it is the very place they all started out, in the tall hallways and cold spaces of Thesa Station. Prompto doesn't miss it. But it's where his friends are, his loved ones, and were it not for the Natha, they wouldn't be here looking up at it at all. ]

Yeah, no kiddin'. [ He slants a grin right back at her before his eyes travel back to the light. ] It's somethin' else, isn't it? This whole...world is.

[ Even if it isn't home. ]

[unprays]

... yes, [ she agrees quietly, looking around them. ]

They've given us so much, haven't they? Just to be here, watching this... [ being alive, being awake. it's all incredible enough, and yet, that's not all she means. ] ... but other things, too.

[ for her, it is her family, those she thought were forever lost now here, awake. even though Robb now sleeps, he had been here; only to sleep just as her father awoke. ]

[punshots]

...They have.

[ It's a sentiment he will echo without hesitation. For as difficult as being here has been in many ways, there is no question that they are indebted to the Natha. While his friends from home have all awoken only to fall asleep again, there's...so much else he has to be thankful for, beyond just being able to live his life. He's had the chance to make friends, to fall in love, to choose his own path, and none of those things will he take for granted. ]

D'you think they'll ever all wake up? I mean, I know, I know...I should be grateful for the people who are already here, and I am, I just...I can't help but wonder about it, sometimes.

[ He breathes out a laugh. ]

...Sorry. I didn't mean to get so real on you, all of a sudden.

[ The moment kind of just...brought it out. ]

[unprays]

Don't apologize, [ she says softly, offering him a small, understanding smile. ]

I think about it, too. About those who woke up for a brief time and now sleep again... those who haven't woken up at all, yet. [ she looks up, at the display of lights, at the station where their friends still sleep. ]

It's not ungrateful to hope. [ a sigh. ] I think I'm more ungrateful than you... for there are people I would wish to wake, and those I wish never would.

[ another small, wry smile directed at him — who's being real, now? ]

[punshots]

[ It's not ungrateful to hope. Boy, is that a lesson he needs to learn. How many times has he beat himself up for wishing for something, just because he felt unworthy of good things? And yet it is his nature to be hopeful. At least he can recognize it as something he needs to work on now, which was not the case not so long ago. ]

Nah, I...I have people like that, too. [ Except that the greatest among them is already awake. He doesn't say as much, however.

Instead, he offers: ] The Natha weren't all that picky about who they rescued, huh? They saved a lot of good people, but...some not-so-good people, too.

[unprays]

[ she wishes, too, even though she's learned time and time again just how futile hope is, just how badly it hurts — hoping has never done her any good, and yet she can't seem to stop entirely, either.

she offers him an expression of quiet sympathy; he is silent about who is awake, and so is she, for it is the same thing for her. the worst of them all already walks among them. ]

I asked about it, after waking up. About why they saved people who would have been better off lost to the Storm. Sael told me that Darma doesn't look at what they have done. That everyone is the same to her, regardless of how they've lived their lives.

[ it all sounds very noble... only she can't agree at all. why save people who could, after waking up, only put others in danger? how would that help the Natha in any way? ]

[punshots]

[ Sure, it does sound nice on paper, but what of all the people who stood to be hurt by the people they saved? Was it asking too much for an impartial judge? Apparently so, and it's not like they can change things now.

He should be...trying to turn this around, trying to cheer her up rather than dwell on this train of thought, but things like this are important to talk about, too. ]

But...some of those people are hurting other refugees. How can they just...stand by and let something like that happen?

[ He may be thinking of a specific case here, but it's true for any such situation. ]

[unprays]

[ her expression tightens — he may think of one example, but she thinks of another... and perhaps in the future, when Jon makes his post of Ramsay Bolton and everything he's done, Prompto will realize who she was thinking of. ]

Isn't it obvious? They don't care.

[ her voice is quiet, bitterness seeping through. for as much as she is grateful for... there are equally many things she hates the Natha for doing. for taking Robb away from them. for letting Ramsay wake up. for Cersei and Joffrey still sleeping in the pods. ]

It's what people everywhere do. They only care about what others can do for them. And if these people, the people who are still hurting others, if they work for them, help them — they don't care. If they did, they'd never have saved them in the first place.

[punshots]

[ His heart pangs for her as she goes on, and not for the first time, he wishes he could do something to lift her burden, but has no idea how to. He can't agree with her entirely - the Natha had still given them this chance to live, and that's the most important thing to him - but he'd still...questioned. When he'd first arrived on the planet to find Ardyn prowling about, and so many times after when he'd had run-ins with the man.

Has he been...complacent? Not to warn everyone? Is he part of the problem? ]

But...they saved us, too. The people who know. The people who can do something about it.

[ Guess it's their responsibility now. ]

[unprays]

[ it is what she will ask herself, when Ramsay has taken Stannis — is it her fault, or Jon's, not to have warned people of him? to have thought he was their problem and no one else's?

and yet. as easy as it is for her to believe no one cares, that ultimately, they are on their own... but when Prompto speaks, she wonders. maybe — ]

... so it's up to us. [ to do something about it. ] It just feels unfair, doesn't it? What if — what if we already did, back home? And now we have to do it again. Is it because we failed, before? Do they want to test us?

[punshots]

[ He looks at her pointedly then. She won't know it (yet), but she's hit on something that even still occupies his thoughts often. Eos may have been taken by the Storm, but that didn't change the fact that they had failed to save it before it did. That Noctis had disappeared, Ardyn had won, and Eos had fallen into darkness.

In the end, they hadn't protected the world, and yet here Prompto did his best to stay out of Ardyn's way, and had issued few warnings about him. Was he failing yet again by saying nothing? He should have said something public by now. He knows he should have.

But he hasn't. ]

Like it's our second chance to set things right. Hah...but it's not that easy, huh?

[ It's not that easy at all. ]

[unprays]

[ the way he seems to echo her exact thoughts, the way he looks at her, like he has heard the words in his mind from her lips, she can't help but think if it isn't just that he knows what she means, in general.

that maybe — ]

... no, it's not. It was never easy.

[ she breathes out. ] For you, too — is there someone... here? Someone like that. Someone who should have never woken up.

[punshots]

[ He visibly hesitates - but isn't this the very thing they've been discussing? That he should say something. Shrugging off her question will do neither of them any good, much as he might not want to talk about it, and he doesn't want to give her the impressions that he doesn't trust her.

So, after taking a deep breath: ]

...Yeah. Someone who did horrible...horrible things. He hurt my friends, tried to destroy our whole world...he tortures people for fun. [ Like me.

A beat. ]

His name is Ardyn. He's been playing nice here, but...that won't last forever.

[unprays]

I know someone like that, too, [ she says with the quiet kind of understanding and sympathy as only those who have known such monsters can share.

but then, when he speaks the name of the man he knows, she halts. blinks. ]

Ardyn? Dark hair, a little longer than yours? [ coldly, ] I've met him... I had no idea.