[[open post and announcement: no mourners, no funerals]]

[ravkanwitch]

[cw: discussion of death!]

Nina knows that word of Shen Yuan's death has been slowly spreading. She tried to put out a general warning of danger right after it happened... but she's not sure how many people were warned by it. She wasn't in the right mind at the time, after all. This time, she's more careful and collected. With SecUnit's help, she's alerted and gathered everyone who's interested for an important announcement in the lobby of the mansion. Despite all appearances of bossiness and stubbornness - all quite true - Nina has never been in charge of anything so serious. Kaz, Zoya, and the King himself; she followed their lead. As people slowly begin to gather and she attempts to compose herself, she wonders why she decided to put herself up to this.

Deep breath, Zenik. Pretend that - well, that this is pretend. She's back in the orphanage as the official greeter, making an important announcement to all the other children. She's the governor of a small town, making sure that all the citizens are aware and prepared. It does have to be her, after all. She's playing a crucial role in everything. She also doesn't want anyone else to carry the emotional load.

"Hi," she tells everyone gathered, trying to paste on a somber but not-too-morose expression. "Thanks for coming. I'm sure some of you have heard part of this announcement already and I'm sorry that it took so long to pass this information onto everyone else... but there was an incident not too long ago. We're not sure what caused it, whether it was the house or whether it was an individual, but... Shen Yuan is dead." There's most likely a reaction at this point and Nina forges onwards as confidently as she can, pitching her voice above the hubbub.

"But there is a way that he can return. We're sure of it. We're just trying to figure out the details, which might take a while. If you want to know more about that, you can ask Magnus, but I'm not sure how much he can tell you. Also, if you encounter any signs of Shen Yuan's spirit, you can talk to--" Here she meets Aleksander's eyes almost instinctively; this line of conversation is something she's purposefully kept from him. "You can talk to myself. Or... to Lan Wangji. ...That's all. Thank you."

A confident start but slightly deflated by her last few sentences, Nina steps back and allows for conversation to happen. If anyone would like to speak to her, she's looking much less strained and grim than she has in a while.

[[Feel free to post a single comment reaction and/or start a thread with Nina in the comments!]]

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[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon is silent for a long time. She's trying—and mostly failing—to put herself in Tally's shoes on this. To believe in a higher power, not the way she believes in God, but as in an authority that does things like let things happen in the lives of specific people like this—for her money, if something with a consciousness brought her here, they'd brought her here and dumped her. No further interference, just observation. Maybe that's the rat feeling talking.

She finds it kind of unbelievable that no pretty has ever killed anyone, and even if they haven't she doesn't like that hardly ever caveat re: the Specials—it's fucked up for only one class of person to have the right to violence. She also has a hard time with Tally's assertion that she was safe, at home, when that safety had come with the price of the cuff on her wrist, the constant surveillance, the enforced naiveté.

"It's not sense-missing," she says, finally. "It's just also not possible."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's heart sinks.

"Is there really no way to have a world of free people, of ugly minds, without things like murders or killing animals or destroying the environment happening? If it was you who had been murdered... that's too high a price to pay. But I would hate for you to be a pretty," she adds, the thought of it suddenly arresting her: Gideon glassy-eyed, feminine, without any of her scars or weird reddish hair... it's just wrong. "There's just no right answer."

[ninth_cavalier]

"You don't think I'd be a hit at parties?" Gideon jokes, but there's little actual humor in it. She'd already had a whole mental breakdown about going to a party here, there's no way she'd hack it at one of Tally's sexy sense-missing soirees. She sobers the rest of the way, leaning a little against Tally, touched that she'd prefer Gideon not be murdered. "Ugly minds come with ugly emotions, ugly urges, including toward violence and shit," she admits, tacitly including herself in this. "There's no right answer. But I think some answers are more wrong than others. And I think it matters, like, what we do when violence does happen."

[tallyyoungblood]

Gideon's solid alive-ness reassures her a little, as do the sparks that still rise up in her when they touch. There are definitely pros to being free.

"Right," she says softly. "I guess at least when he comes back, we can ask who did it. And punish them."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon takes a breath, and lets it out again. "Yeah." If he knows, in the first place. And if whoever it was doesn't strike again, or ruin the plan to bring him back. And if it was a person, and not the house itself. She swallows again. "This is—how it started. Last time."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally remembers telling Gideon that it was over, whatever horrifying thing she'd been going through before she got here, and her anger at whoever killed Shen Yuan fills her with a white-hot rage. She breathes deeply, trying to calm herself down.

"What do you mean? Like there was a murder? At, um... Canaan House?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"There were eight murders at Canaan House," says Gideon, evenly. Nine, if you count Sex Pal, who technically blew himself up. Eleven, if you count Protesilaus and the poor real Dulcinea, secretly dead on arrival. Thirteen, fourteen, if you count—no. Stop counting. "One of them on my watch. Jeannemarie Chatur, cavalier to the Fourth. She was—" she has to take a quick little breath, here, "—fourteen. Her necromancer was thirteen. He was already dead. I fell asleep, and when I woke up—" she stops talking, her jaw set.

[tallyyoungblood]

When Tally had watched the Boss run into the forest to die, she hadn't actually seen the moment the Specials had killed him, but she remembers the dizzy-making horror of the moment all too well. The Boss was old, too, and made the choice to take the risk. Tally can't imagine seeing an ugly-aged kid--practically still a littlie--dead.

"I'm so sorry, Gideon. Right now must feel utterly scary, if it's kind of the same." That's an understatement, but Gideon's clearly trying to keep it together, so Tally doesn't let her full horror into her voice. "I hate whoever killed Shen Yuan. And whoever killed those kids."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon closes her eyes. Honestly, talking to Tally sometimes reminds her a little of talking to Jeannemarie—how instantly willing, even determined, she'd been to be friends; how much she cared about things being right, being fair. It makes it worse, right now, like Tally is the kind of person Jeannemarie could have grown into, if she'd been given time. Usually she can push it down—tell herself Jeannemarie had been young but she'd been a cavalier, she'd been prepared to die for this, for something larger than herself. That she wouldn't have wanted to live without Isaac, the way Gideon wouldn't want—

She opens her eyes. "If Harrow's not dead, she exploded that bitch from the inside."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Well." Tally blinks. Maybe she should give Harrow more respect than she's been giving her. "Um. Good." Tally means this, too. Someone who murders a fourteen-year-old in her sleep deserves whatever's coming to them. She thinks of the Special Circumstances arrest script: I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.

"I feel like we have to take self defense more seriously," she says. "I mean, you're great at it, but I have to get better. But, also, like. You need a day off. I don't know how you're not totally dead from stress."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon shakes her head. "I've had nothing but days off," she protests. "I don't even know what a day on looks like, here. And right now—" Right now the last thing she needs to do is take more time doing nothing. "Nina thinks it was the house itself. That Dark was one way to fuck with us, and this is another. Not saying we don't ramp up your self-defense, but I wanna do a little more prying into what this place is, too."

[tallyyoungblood]

"You work out, like, every single day and minute," Tally points out. "Maybe just one day of sitting around and watching movies on the wallsc--or, um. Reading a book. I guess. Ugh, this place is so bogus. Then, yeah, you're totally right we should look into what this place is. I think we should go to the edge of it sometime. Like, out in the woods. I want to see it for myself."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Ew, books," says Gideon, who doesn't know what a movie is. "I have been trying to learn to fish, though. In case the kitchens stop working again. People do that to relax, right? And I ran out there, the first day. To the edge. Only I couldn't reach it, this place just—looped me around."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Killing small animals is so not my idea of relaxing," Tally says. "Also, I utterly hate magic. Why does the world have to be literally logic-missing? Maybe no one killed Shen Yuan, and he just stepped on some kind of bogus magical land mine. Maybe investigating is pointless if there's no pattern at all."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon frowns at her. "Maybe it's pointless, so we should just do nothing? That doesn't sound like you, Whirlybird."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's cheeks flush a little, embarrassed at her childish outburst. "Ugh, you're right. I'm just being a littlie about it. It can't have no pattern, can it? What did you mean, looped you around?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon holds up a hand, two fingers pointing downward, and motions like a little person running. "Ran all the way out to the edge of things, over here—" she stops the little person in front of Tally, then picks up her other hand to continue the motion back the way she came, "—and it turned me right around so I ran right back."

[tallyyoungblood]

Despite her still-foul mood, Gideon's little finger person makes Tally smile. She thinks about suggesting making a Rusty compass, but knowing this place, it probably just wouldn't work.

"Okay, so, the physics is logic-missing, but clearly someone wants us here," Tally says. "What we need to figure out is why, and what they want. Maybe this was about teaching Shen Yuan a lesson. Or his boyfriend."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon leans back on her hands. "I never even met Shen Yuan,¹ but Luo Binghe does seem like a guy who makes enemies easily."

¹ Weird! Why's that?

[tallyyoungblood]

"Does he?" Tally frowns. "He's always been nice to me. If a little, um, intense."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, yeah, I like him a lot, personally," says Gideon. "I'm training to kick his ass, since he wiped the floor with me the first time. But the second I mentioned that to Lan Wangji, he got all weird and protective on me, told me how dangerous he is." She shrugs. "Some people just ruffle feathers."

[tallyyoungblood]

"You don't think Lan Wangji did it, do you?" Tally asks. "He seems all middle-pretty normal, but maybe he's hiding a dark side."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon considers it. "I don't think so," she says, finally. "I didn't get the sense that he was actively angry with Luo Binghe, or wanting to hurt him—just worried he might hurt me, in that kind of paternalistic way, you know?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Right," Tally sighs. She looks at Gideon, trying to gauge how she's feeling. "Um... do you mind talking about this stuff? Is it too much like what happened to you at Canaan House? Because... as much as I think you'd be a great co-investigator, it's not always on you to solve everything. I'm sure everyone is having discussions like this, and probably with more information."

[ninth_cavalier]

"It's... I don't know," says Gideon. "I don't think it feels quite real? I didn't—see it. Shen Yuan's death. Last time, I was always—" she waves a hand.