FINAL WEEK

[strangerpeople]

FINAL WEEK

[Well. What else can be said? The Little Courtesy is over. You have all survived. You are now going to your final destination-with invitations to boot. And Charlotte will be getting that private audience, as promised.

But it's not over. Everyone knows it. Confrontation is inevitable. The question is what, exactly, will happen when that confrontation happens-or if anyone will in fact be able to go with Charlotte when it happens. But you've gone this far. There's no turning back. There has to be a way.

Nothing has been certain, or simple. Whatever happens will be no different from the horrors of the Little Courtesy. Perhaps the saying might still hold. Will all be well? Will it?

It must. God help everyone if it isn't.

Seven is the Number, but there are nine strangers left in this place.]

Comments

[unwittingking]

[Hey Charlotte! King now wants to hug you, but for now will just close his book and look down to her sadly.]

Speaking from my own experiences? Try to make the best of things. Even if the world’s been turned upside down, we couldn’t just give up, could we?

[He’s had experience being wrong about things. He should be able to help with this.]

[minor backstory headcanon sirens go here]

[charmingheroine]

[Charlotte laughs softly, a mirthless sound.]

I thought that's what I was doing with everything I decided on, refusing to give up. I thought I knew better, and... well, it could have gotten either me or Mithos killed for something we didn't do, for one. I'm trying to make this place make sense in my head and I can't, it's like...

[She pauses, and tips her head back - can't see King from that angle, so she shifts around until she's looking up at him. It really does feel like being a tiny kid and looking up at her best friend's father, somehow. She's definitely asking the same kind of questions now as then, it's just the stakes are higher when "but what if somebody was going to die if you didn't kill another person, isn't that what soldiers do?" isn't a hypothetical posed by a precocious five-year-old.

Come to think of it, John had given a very clear answer then, grave and stern but not angry - "We're not soldiers. We kill monsters, we protect people." She'd been a fool to justify ignoring that. A terrible, awful fool....]

The only comparisons I can think to draw depend on literature, and I didn't think to ask you before about it. Your Earth still has Oz and Wonderland as concepts everybody who reads English knows, right?

[Given the portrayal of talking animals in both tends towards... not exactly flattering to the point of potential offense in a place where such people exist, she's probably on thin ice here, but it's better to know and avoid the topic in future than to charge on in with an extended metaphor that amounts to an insult.]

[unwittingking]

Well...no one said you had to be perfect in what you think, right?

Yeah, it would be nice if we were all perfect in what we thought, that we could all agree on the same things, and pretty much come up with the right ideas for any problem, but...it's just not possible. Not in the slightest.

[Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. Charlotte is still a kid. She has plenty room for mistakes still, as far as King's concerned.

He nods a little bit at the question.]

Yeah. My world still has Alice and Dorothy and all that.

[charmingheroine]

Good to know, when I can get my mind to stop running in circles around itself.

[She flashes a quick rueful smile, and with another little huff of humorless laughter, she leans against the chair a bit more heavily than intended.]

I probably shouldn't have downed that tea so fast, earlier, my head's killing me. We're only hu - mortal, perfection is impossible, but... that's not an excuse not to strive towards it.

But maybe that's just an excuse, too. She said she's heard it all before, more times than she could remember... I was ready to give up, because Jonathan would never forgive me for wanting to end this so completely, and then... King, this whole place is feeding on worlds and people from outside itself. I can't be perfect, fine, but I can't let this happen to anyone else. I can't.