Room 504, Monday Evening

[intraspective]

Ino had made it through the day. Between getting back, going to class, and talking to Tyler-sensei, she’d figured that whatever Hinata-chan said that she’d totally done her quota of being around and putting her schedule back on normal sort of tracks.

Of course, that’s when she made it back to her room, showered and wriggled into her jammies that Ino realized, depressingly, that she wasn’t sleepy. Making a phone call killed all of thirty seconds, and then she pulled out several gardening magazines and tried to start planning for Tyler-sensei’s flowers. Maybe she would go the love note route, just to make him facepalm.

Her door was left open, as a matter of course.

[Door and post are open! ETA: Anything mission related, beyond it happening, is NFB please!]

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[intraspective]

She stayed close by, even while leaning over to grab a chocolate bar that she dropped in his lap. "It's good for you," Ino informed him. "And Dojima-san. Is she okay? I mean, not a zombie, that's a good start but like..."

Okay okay. Because he didn't seem to be exactly there either.

[withoutverona]

Mmm, chocolate. He unwrapped the bar slowly. "She's getting better," he said. "She doesn't want to talk about it. We're just ..."

They were in bed, not talking, which Ino could probably put together from the length of his pause.

[intraspective]

Ino smiled slightly.

"Together," she said, nodding. "That's good at least. Can't blame her for, you know, not wanting to talk 'bout that..."

[withoutverona]

"It's not as though there's anything to say. It was awful, Ino, all of it."

A pause.

"They took Reno, too."

[intraspective]

She chewed on her lip for a minute.

"That does explain a bit," she admitted. "He stopped by earlier. Was jittery."

So she'd nonsensed at him 'til he'd seemed better.

[withoutverona]

"He was at the shop but wouldn't say much," Romeo said. "He's to buy me a drink tomorrow."

Romeo ran a hand back through his hair. "If I tell you something, will you think even less of me?"

[intraspective]

"Said a lot, but little 'bout the week," she shared. Bad week had about summed it up. "But he ate my chocolate and looked steadier when he left."

Ino took a deep breath. "I don't know. It depends what it is, will you tell me anyway?"

[withoutverona]

Romeo smiled weakly. "He probably wasn't eating." Romeo hadn't been, and Reno was even worse about such things.

Taking a breath, he said, "They came after me on the beach, Reno and Yurika. I was out alone. I was stupid. I would have let them eat me if a woman, I suppose she's a police officer, hadn't come along to shoot them and make a trooper take me home. I couldn't see the people I love dead, again."

[intraspective]

Lover not a fighter. Dreamer not a killer. Ino couldn't understand that.

She bit back a sigh. "I don't understand that," Ino said honestly, "I can't imagine giving up like that, though I can sorta see the trail of thought that'd lead down that path." But it was weak. It was losing. "Were you thinking at all?"

It wasn't asked sarcastically.

[withoutverona]

Romeo shrugged a little. "I wasn't not thinking," he claimed. The chocolate was almost too sweet as it melted in his mouth. "I tried before, when my friend and Juliet died back in Verona. I've never claimed to be strong enough to stand alone."

[intraspective]

She sighed.

"And without those two, you were all alone?" Ino asked, pulling her knees to her chest. "No doubt they're the most important to you, but does that mean no one else matters at all? I mean, what 'bout your other friends 'round here, and I'm not even talking 'bout me, since I was away and seriously don't count in this situation 'cause of that."

[withoutverona]

Romeo just looked at her for a moment, seeming half ashamed and half put out. "I thought we had already decided I'm no good at logic, or at impulse control."

[intraspective]

"I know," she said, with a patience she didn't really feel, but dammit she could not lose her temper at him right here and now. "I know. I'm just saying, that if you focus all your life so much on one or two people, that you can't think, don't think, of the rest of your friends when they go away..."

Ino shrugged. "It's... depressing. Not just for you, for the people you leave behind, who thought they mattered, and then it turns out they do and yet not enough because they couldn't help pick up the pieces. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm not insulting you."

[withoutverona]

"I'm not insulted," Romeo said quickly. "And that is what kept me here. It's why I fought the zombies. But in moments ..." He shrugged. "Has anyone you really love ever died?"

[intraspective]

"No," she admitted. "People I've admired have died. People I've cared about have disappeared and never come back. But dying... I've been lucky so far."

[withoutverona]

"You are lucky, or blessed," Romeo said quietly, envy tinting his voice. "Mercutio died in my lap after a fight I should have fought. Juliet killed herself. My mother died half of grief and shock from it all. Then to think I'd lost Reno and Dojima too ... death finds me too often, yet it always stings."

[intraspective]

She went to brush his arm with her fingertips.

"What sort of counselling do they offer people in your world? For when people die?" It wasn't exactly an idle question. "It stings 'cause you care. There's no shame in that, only in what you do in caring after."

[withoutverona]

"I'm not insane, Ino." That was offered sulkily.

No, he hadn't gotten any counseling. Ever. He'd gone to church a lot.

[intraspective]

Ino was afraid of that, really.

"You're not insane," she said soothingly. "I never said you were, how did you get that from what I said? Grief counselling is really important, you know."

[withoutverona]

"Is it?" Romeo asked. "I talked to my priest until I was sent here. He helped a bit." Not much, though. "I never thought to do more."

[Sleeeeeep, but SP please? NIGHT!]

[intraspective]

Ino took a moment to call everyone in his world a bunch of idiots. Honestly, she was fifteen and she knew this.

...of course, her world had a lot of death, starting from when they were really young and expected to learn how to kill people.

"It is," she said firmly, settling herself so she was a bit more comfortable. "It's not something that should be neglected either, though that's no fault of yours. Grief is... hard. Individualized. But there's... patterns, and once you've got the pattern, you can see how it fits different people. Do you know how many stages there are of it?"

[SLEEP WELL! And SP for the win!]

[withoutverona]

Romeo's world thought the church was the answer to everything.

"The part where it burns so much you wish you would die, that would be first," Romeo said. "Then the part where you have to go on and live. That's the rest. Ought there be more?"

[intraspective]

She considered him.

"Those're the two that are the over-arching idea of it, but it's in the... process of those that there's almost... stages. They can be different for everyone--some might skip some of the stages, and some might get stuck in one for years until they don't know that they're still not 'done' grieving."

Ino played with her hair. "Ideally, during these stages, there's going to be someone there to help you learn to deal."

[withoutverona]

This was completely new information to Romeo. "I was never alone, I never truly have been," he said. "But I've never had a counselor. What are your stages?"

[intraspective]

"We've got ten, at home, that we're told about, though I think I read something at the clinic 'bout this world mostly using a slightly different model that combines the stages a bit more, which works too, as there's a lot of overlap," she said, listing them off on her fingers. "1. Shock and denial, 2. Emotional outbreak, 3. Anger, 4. Sickness, 5. Panic, 6. Guilt, 7. Depression and loneliness, 8. Re-connection issues, 9. Hope, and 10. Reaffirmation."