#anywhere!

AAAAAAAAAAA

That's all. Thank you.

It. Is. A top trope. For me.

[Well, two nights in, and he knows at least one thing about Colony 22. 

Someone is going to have to do something about that fucking mattress. What is this, prison? In 1984? 

He gets that the fallout of D-Day meant fewer resources, unreliable heating, a sudden and depressing inability to buy things on Ebay. But what he doesn’t understand is how the apocalypse is an excuse for things like the absence of decent bedding. Severely outdated technology. Rotting cabinets, cracking furniture. Five years is not enough time to turn a “boarding school” (which is, at best, playing fast and loose with the term) into a caveman’s castle. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say he’d left Cambridge on a boat and somehow wound up on the forest moon of Endor.  This place is straight up Ewok’s Ville.

Someone had overheard Teilo’s sour mutter about it, just last night, and they’d explained to him (with a generous serving of condescension, he might add), that the school had been decommissioned in the early 2040s. All he could think was—then why the fuck are you staying here of all places? If Harvard had survived, surely there had to be more remains of civilization on this side of the Atlantic. Somewhere, at least, right? 

But he’s endeavouring at a staunch refusal to let the thought cross his mind that maybe, maybe, he and Sid would have been better off staying at Colony 2. But they’d come this far, spent weeks travelling in the musty, mole-ridden cargo decks of the Merchant ships, and God help him if it was all going to be for nothing. He’s still trying to wash the stench of fish off his clothes. 

No, it hadn’t been for nothing. It can’t have been. But, Christ, what he wouldn’t give for his old bed back. His room. His privacy. His dignity. His book shelf. His rain shower head—God, that one hurt. Even the water pressure here was miserable. So far his experience had been that the dorm showers were about as satisfying as being pissed on, and the training room ones were like pelting off a layer of skin with stones. Or sandpaper. Or bullets. 

He bites loudly into a raw carrot stick. Chews. 

It’s the first edible thing he’s been served here in probably 36 hours. And don’t even get him started on the coffee situation. He’s only just managed to stop weeping about it.

He can feel someone’s eyes on him, and for a moment, he just lowers his forehead, fringe falling into his face, and he seriously considers dropping his head straight down onto the table, but thinks better of it.] So... what’s this about... a bunch of rebels locked up in dungeons? [He asks without yet looking up. And he actually chuckles, then, shaking his head, because it sounds just as fucking ridiculous when he repeats these rumours he’s been hearing. More so, even.] Shit—[he mutters, mostly to himself.] Sounds like a bad RPG game, doesn’t it?

Not claws of the proportions!