event } holiday, far away, let's go today

[seeingyou]

WHO: All of the passengers. All of them.
WHAT: A nice chill visit to a nice beach resort with your new brainmates.
WHERE: All over the Cor Leonis resort - and on Navi, if you want.
WHEN: The next three weeks (Aug. 7-28).
WARNINGS: Add these to your comment subject lines as needed! And if you absolutely cannot resist drowning to death, please report it on the death page.



[Hey passengers! Hope you’re not sleeping - Navi has a very important announcement for y’all:]

Attention, passengers.
We'll be landing soon on the planet Adhara, near the beach resort settlement of Cor Leonis.
We'll be docked for three weeks, local time, and all of your expenses during this time will be paid for.
Please note that no violence of any kind is allowed on the premises, nor are weapons, and the staff of Cor Leonis are quite serious about enforcing these rules, so please do your best not to break them.
Please stand by for atmospheric entry.

[Have fun! All passengers will be required to sign a waiver before being admitted to the resort stating that they understand their stay in Cor Leonis is dependent on following the no-violence rule, and they agree to abide by it. Each passenger will have a tab where all charges can be placed while in the resort, and all charges will be paid by Navi, so go wild!

And hey, remember to wear sunscreen.]

Comments

[bilocates]

Ella is a good person, no matter how much she insists she isn't. Nothing in life is black and white, there are no easy answers and sometimes justice isn't clean. Sometimes it's dark, sometimes it's bloody, and other times it's impossible. The best one can do is damage control. Simon knows what he is, he's not good nor is he just, but he can help balance the scales. It's better than what he'd be doing otherwise.

"If there is a Hell." He doesn't know for certain, there's no real evidence of angels but maybe they're just really good at keeping to themselves. "They had to be stopped." He insists, she must understand that he's not just a murderous lunatic. Sure he is murderous and a little bit of a lunatic, but those two things are separate. Simon isn't a danger to anyone who doesn't deserve it. Not even Richard Strand, as tempting as getting him out of his hair has been.

[anormie]

"There's a hell. At least in my world, anyway." It's not something that Ella would have denied the existence of even if she didn't have first hand knowledge of it from her friend who had been running it since the beginning of time. She believes in The Big Guy, she believes in Hell and she believes that the guilty are punished in the afterlife even if they get away with whatever terrible things that they did in life. It's a principle that Ella had believed in her whole life, well before she'd gotten here. At some point however, she and Lucifer are going to need to have a talk about guilt and how it drives someone into hell to live through their loops over and over because of it.

Ella Lopez may be a good soul who's light shines all the way into heaven, but she's also someone who thinks far too much about the darkness inside of her. Guilt is tied with that darkness, and it's only gotten worse since Pete claimed it was what had drawn him to her, and what they had in common. The concern about that darkness is always there on the background in her head, and that's not going to help anyone in the long run when it came to her, hell and being a good or bad person.

But for all of her concern about the darkness inside of Ella's own soul, she doesn't argue that people who hurt kids needed to be stopped. While the forensic analyst would rather be on the side of justice, she knows that there are times when the system fails people, especially kids. If Simon felt like he didn't have another choice to save someone, then she believes him. So, Ella just nods a bit. "Okay." She means it. She means it and Ella doesn't blame him for any of it. She accepts it at face value, because she's got a feeling about bad people, and Simon doesn't ping on her radar for it. More than that, he's not lying about it. If he had been, then Ella would have been less inclined to trust him. But he's honest, and he was doing it to help kids. It's not right, but it's okay and Ella gets it.

[bilocates]

"In your world," Simon emphasizes. Yes, in her world there's obviously one since they have angels and demons. In Simon's he's seen no evidence of the divine. The demons come from an entirely different dark source. If there's any kind of cosmic justice he can't claim to have seen it. It's just a handful of people trying to hold back the tide.

As far as Ella's darkness went it wasn't that Simon was beseeching by confessing to her what he was and what he'd done, but to her light. He saw in her someone who might understand that while what he did might not be right in the most black and white terms, it was necessary. He had to try to save himself, and he had to save others. Which he had done! He'd stopped some, pulled a few others out of the dark. In his own twisted way he was doing good work. The world at large may never agree, but a few people will. That's all that matters.

Anyway... "Thought you should know," Before she went and got too involved with a murderer. He didn't like to be dishonest about the whole thing. "There's something else bothering you. You don't have to talk about it but... I just thought you should know." So the whole spooky guy act?

Not so much an act.

[anormie]

“In my world.” Yes, Ella agrees with that. It’s hard not to agree with it considering everything that’s been going on with stuff. You know that whole part where her best friends the devil and her other best friend is a miracle and her other other best friend is the Angel of death. Ella’s surrounded by angels (and a demon) just as much as Simon is surrounded by angels.

It’s clear she understands why he did what he did. Ella is good at that and his world isn’t hers. If there’s no one there to handle shit on an Angel basis than it makes sense to her why Simon needs to do it on her end. She’d talk to Strand about it but something tells her that he’s not going to be honest as Simon has been.

For a moment she considers the boy who’s spooky and the tells the truth. “Right before I came here I found out that the supposedly nice guy I was dating was a serial killer we were working on catching. He wanted to get close to the investigation and then we started dating. I was his victim profile. I am I mean. When I discovered what he did he almost killed me. So definitely not you.”

[bilocates]

The main difference there being that Simon found the proximity of angels painful. So much so that he typically just chose to avoid them entirely. Lucifer wasn't as bad, which may or may not make sense, but the other... He'd rather just not take his chances.

Richard Strand's opinion would probably boil back down to 'Simon's a sick kid' with little to no additional help. The man was eternally stubborn about his skeptic stance and Simon wasn't expecting that to change any time soon. Guy did have the audacity to look an angel in the eyes and insist he was an alien and nothing more. Still, Simon wouldn't stop her, she's welcome to seek answers in a dead end all she wants.

"How were you his profile?" Of course he'd be curious, it's dark and twisted but it isn't the kind of twisted perverse curiosity... just a genuine one. What did that sick bastard think was a valid reason to kill people for? "I'm glad you got away," A beat. "How did you manage it?"

[anormie]

Ella doesn't mind the curiosity. Honestly, it's refreshing because those are the sort of things that she thinks about sometimes: the darkness and how it intrudes on her thoughts and how she thinks about those things way too often than is healthy. But that's not something that Ella is particularly interested in thinking about in this moment, so she just gives him a little shrug and tries to be as matter of fact about it as possible. It's harder than she likes to do that when she can practically feel her ex boyfriend breathing over her shoulder right now.

"He had issues with strong women who talked to much. Like in his opinion I mean. But I think ya know a looottttttt of people would probably agree with him when it comes to me. Some of my friends even at times. But yeah, he used to like inject these powerful women with a strong paralytic, and then he would cut their vocal cords and let them choke to death on their own blood. Then he'd leave lilies there with them because it was his mother's favorite flower and she'd cared more for flowers than for him."

There's a pause, but it's not because Ella is considering stopping--instead she's just ramping up. "My friend Chloe, she'd gone missing and like we thought it was tied to the Whisper Killer. Pete had given me a key to his apartment and he'd told me he'd had some files there that might be helpful to finding her. When I went over there, I discovered his secret grow room for his lilies on accident. There was also drawn syringes with the paralytic in them and I had grabbed one. I was trying to be so cool but he knew something was up, and when I dropped my keys, he saw that I had unscrewed this little fan thing. So, he started trying to strangle me. I tried to fight him off and then got the cap off the needle and hit him with his own drug and then I called Lucifer and Maze."

A beat before she adds in the interest of full disclosure: "Maze is a demon."

[bilocates]

If it makes her feel any better she's not alone in those dark places. Simon's not one to shy away from it. Even if he has done terrible things he doesn't think he's an evil person. He's trying to save the world from people who are doing, and will continue to do, far worse. As much as he doesn't want to drag her through bad memories it feels important to lay out the distinction.

For all that Simon isn't easily bothered by much he does at least look disgusted at the description of Ella's ex's motive. Sure Simon isn't exactly a bastion of morality, but he's not that kind of a psychopath.

"I'm glad you escaped." Ella's sweet, he wouldn't want to see her hurt because some insecure loser didn't like women having opinions. Wait, hold on... "A demon? You're okay with that? That doesn't scare you?" He might be asking for purely selfish reasons.

[anormie]

“Thanks.” Ella just gives him a grin because honestly she’s glad that she’s alive too. And that Chloe was okay even if she hadn’t gotten the full story from her yet as to what happened. The Chloe who is here was from before she was kidnapped so she doesn’t know and Lucifer is from even earlier which sucks but at least they’re together here. Finally. Ella cannot put enough influence on that finally thing. Sometimes it feels like it took a thousand years for them to get their damn stuff together and not to crush her #deckerstar dreams.

“No, I’m not scared of her for being a demon. When I met her I hugged her.” The words come with a quick and easy shrug. “Don’t get me wrong she can be terrifying but it’s not cause I know that she’s a demon. She’s terrifying because she can be scary. Maze is a bounty hunter back home and she’s like really super good at her job and stuff.” Which probably came from her being a demon which was fine. “Demons don’t scare me, I don’t think. At least the ones I’ve met. Besides, Maze is a friend of mine and she’s part of our tribe. I’m pretty sure Lucifer had to talk her out of fucking Pete up after we knew that he didn’t have anything to do with kidnapping Chloe.”

Ella doesn’t know that Maze had been worried about her not being strong enough to confront him which is honestly way more caring than Ella thought she would experience from the demon. “She also gave me some like really good advice even if like. Pete was so good at hiding who he was that he fooled both her and Lucifer. And Chloe.” There’s a little laugh that has a tight but small ring of bitterness to it. “And me of course. But I only ever dated bad people like that’s who my picker picks. But Maze told me that it’s because I think that’s all I’m worth is how shitty that they treat me. It was kinda hard to hear but I needed it.”