-- sally + richie

[enables]

SALLY & RICHIE the box

after nine months of death and dismay in the apocalyptic shithole known as the box, sally was a lot closer to her wit's end than even she realized. so when a total stranger offered to be haunted, she had no idea it would lead to a spot in the heart of a found-family that rivaled even josh and aidan back in boston. but that's precisely what she found in the gecko brothers. even less expected was to find someone she could actually trust with all the deep, fucked-up parts of her, which is what she found in richie gecko specifically.

i could honestly wax poetic about these sorry fuckers for ages, but let's just skip to the threads, shall we?



NAVIGATING THE TIMELINE: though this timeline is mostly about sally and richie, her threads with seth are both relevant and important (because they're great and they hurt me), and so are her threads with the trio's in-game rival lorne malvo - so i've included all three. any threads with richie are marked with a █, seth-sally threads are ▒, and malvo-sally threads are ▞. i've also included relevant memes (▎) and summary/context info (⁘).

it's also worth noting that i occasionally link a thread and then have a (sub-thread.) link. this is specifically because sometimes the relevant character isn't the first one to tag the top-level - so the first link is the top-level/starter, the sub-thread is the rest of the thread.

█ 09 10 14 ⇢ ❝ YOU CAN HAUNT ME IF YOU WANT. ❞

richie offers to be haunted. sally's genuinely touched by the offer. she pops on over to his place, where she gets a smile, some humor, and casual physical contact (or at least an approximation of it) - all before she's familiar enough to realize how unusual any of that actually is. they proceed to shoot the shit about the nuances of ghosthood.

( EVENT: SPOOKTEMBER'S A PLEASANT SURPRISE )

▒ 09 26 14 ⇢ ❝ PLEASE TELL ME YOU'RE NOT USING PATRICK SWAYZE TO TELL ME MY GHOSTHOOD IS BULLSHIT. ❞

sally thoroughly confuses and depresses seth gecko, shortly before finding out he's richie's brother and informing him that she's basically been haunting his house for two weeks. surprise!

▎ MEME ⇢ HEART MEME (FT. RICHIE).

in case y'all don't know how heart memes work: hover over each heart for the relevant hovertext. (unless you're on mobile, in which case skip the heart memes because the hovertext isn't mobile-friendly.)

█ 10 09 14 ⇢ ❝ I'LL BACK YOU UP. ❞

( sub-thread. ) sally arrives at the gecko house with a warning, but despite richie's best efforts to fight them off and sally's most impressive ghosting, the creatures very nearly suck the life out of richie. sally decides that's not an option she's able to reconcile with.

( EVENT: ENERGY VAMPIRES )

▒ 10 14 14 ⇢ ❝ I WOULD'VE DONE THE SAME. WHAT YOU DID. I WOULD'VE DONE IT TOO. ❞

sally respawns with an actual body but makes a solid attempt to die of hypothermia before she gets to enjoy it. seth swoops to the rescue with a warm jacket (mostly warm because he's still inside it) and an escort somewhere dry. they bond over being totally down to do literally anything to protect their brothers. then sally gets a crash course in being a bank robber, which she naturally totally aces (ahaha).

( their brief flirtation ultimately goes nowhere, wrong time/place and it never really comes up again. )

█ 10 25 14 ⇢ ❝ THAT'S THE FIRST TIME ANYONE'S SAID THAT TO ME. ❞

sally's been m.i.a. and richie shows up at her bar to figure out why. turns out, she wasn't sure he'd care once she wasn't a ghost. turns out, he maybe kinda does. he's rewarded with ice cream (on the condition that he fuckin shares), possibly to butter him up for the abrupt declaration that he's her date to the upcoming not-shady-at-all halloween masquerade. bonus for a morbid conversation about her very first death that may or may not subtly blow the entirety of her mind.

( EVENT: BUILD-UP TO THE MILDLY INVOLUNTARY HALLOWEEN MASQUERADE BALL )

█ 10 31 14 ⇢ ❝ I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT YOU'RE A REALLY CONVINCING PERSON. ❞

the masquerade in question. richie shows up lookin' adorable as fuck and sally's into it. a brief dancing lesson turns into lingering eye contact and a pretty excellent first kiss. (they disappear to make out somewhere more private offscreen.)

( EVENT: THE HALLOWEEN MASQUERADE BALL )

⁘ 11 01 15 ⇢ RICHIE GECKO IS MURDERED.

before sally even makes it home from the previous night's fuckery, richie's already off trying to capitalize on a bad situation. he's murdered there, little does she realize. she doesn't know what happened or when, just that he's missing and her only real option is to wait for an exceedingly anxious 5-7 business days for him to hopefully respawn safe and sound.

▞ 11 03 14 ⇢ ❝ YOU MUST BE A GOOD FRIEND, SALLY. ❞

a sketchy dude shows up on the network looking for richie. sally's having none of it. a fact that said sketchy dude makes a case of when he does get richie on the line.

( additional reading: malvo and sally meet in person shortly after, unbeknownst to her. )

▎ MEME ⇢ TL;CR MEME

in which you basically just ramble about your cr by request. we've got richie to sally, we've got sally to richie, and we've got malvo to sally (and indirectly to richie).

⁘ EARLY NOV ⇢ SETH GECKO GOES MISSING.

no body is found - he just plain isn't seen again after the shitfest of the masquerade (did he even go? hard to say). so that's a not-great thing.

█ 11 18 14 ⇢ ❝ YOU'RE REAL. AND I DON'T WANT TO HURT YOU TOO. ❞

in the aftermath of almost killing kate fuller, richie's silently melting down, and sally's not about to let that happen. she seems to maybe help, with a little assistance from split-personality anecdotes and a brief debate on what is or isn't reality.

( EVENT: THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD )

█ 11 29 14 ⇢ ❝ SAY HI, YOUR NAME'S RICHIE. YOU LIKE LONG WALKS IN THE MORGUE & TOUCHING DEAD THINGS WITH YOUR BARE HANDS.❞

richie actually makes it to thanksgiving, where his waterlogged self is briefly fielded by nora before sally ushers him off to the bathroom so he stops dripping on her floor. casual morbid banter strikes an unexpected nerve, and she narrowly avoids putting her big foot in her even bigger mouth on one of the few happy holidays the box actually afforded them.

( EVENT: PERIPHERALLY RELEVANT THANKSGIVING POST )

⁘ 12 01 14 ⇢ SETH GECKO IS OFFICIALLY GONE.

for like a month now, richie and sally have been biding their anxious time for him to come back. see, there's a board full of names of people who aren't coming back (or who won't remember you if they do), and if his name isn't on the board, it means he's coming back... right? wrong. see also: sally venting about it a couple of days later.

█ 12 02 14 ⇢ ❝ I DON'T LEAVE PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT. ❞

sally's stress-cleaning the club's storage and giving away everything she inherited from the last owner but doesn't want. which is basically all of it right now because seth's gone and everything's fucked. richie touches bases with a few requests, and after some stuff-giving and a brief malvo-flavored interlude that sally literally could not be less thrilled about, she brings him a godawful amount of stuff and they low-key feels jam re: not ditching each other.

█ 12 06 14 ⇢ ❝ I'M JUST THAT GOOD, WHAT CAN I SAY? ❞

surprise horchata isn't enough to make a guy forget that his brother's gone, but it sure does help for a minute.

( additional reading: sally can't help but troll the hell out of starlord. it's a mess. a mess that even richie gets in on. )

▎APPENDIX I ⇢ PANCHA GANAPATI LETTERS

so a couple of pals of sally's made pancha ganapati a big fuckin' deal in the box that year, and it's all about clearing the air and forgiveness and apology and moving on with your life. sally told them she'd give it a shot, but most of her people aren't even there, so she 'celebrated' in letter form. there was one for seth, and even though he was one of the few she could've pancha ganapati'd in person, she wrote one for richie too. 'for' being a relative term, since she had no intention of delivering them.

█ 12 20 14 ⇢ ❝ I DON'T WANT TO DIE LIKE THIS. ❞

( sub-thread. ) two bitchy humans huddle under blankets and defy the laws of thermodynamics to the brink of death, aka basically your average tuesday in the box.

( EVENT: BABY IT'S COLD OUTSIDE )

█ 12 25 14 ⇢ ❝ YEAH, OKAY. GLAD SOMEBODY THINKS THIS IS FUNNY. ❞

a short thread in which richie savagely abandons her at the mercy of bloodthirsty mistletoe. (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration.)

( additional reading: sally and handsome jack discuss the finer points of stabbing malvo in the jugular, ft. richie gecko turning murder jokes into murder plans )

( EVENT: MERRY BOXMAS )

█ 12 31 14 ⇢ ❝YOU'RE LUCKY I'M HERE TO RESCUE YOU, YOUR NEW YEAR'S WAS AT LEGITIMATE RISK OF BEING EVEN LAMER THAN MINE WAS.❞

( currently locked by cb. ) sally ditches a new year's eve shindig full of people she doesn't want to kiss for new year's to come hang out at home with someone she does.

⁘ 01 01 15 ⇢ THE BOX GOES INTO REGULAR ANNUAL MAINTENANCE.

this year, to save on resources, all individuals within the box are put into full stasis for the full maintenance period (january). during this time, they experience a shared dreamscape - one which starts out just this side of paradise but which ends the month as nothing short of a nightmare. relevant details can be found in phase 1 and phase 3 of this write-up to give context to january's threads henceforth.

█ 01 01 15 ⇢ ❝ SALLY AND I AREN'T MARRIED, IF THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT. ❞

in an idyllic little town in a massive shared dreamscape, one seth gecko arrives with bags in tow. richie and sally give him the tour and field un-subtle questions about the nature of their relationship.

( EVENT: OH, DREAMWEAVER! PHASE 1 )

█ 01 04 15 ⇢ ❝ THE RUMORS SAY WE'RE SHACKING UP. I TRUST YOU TO KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. ❞

( sub-thread.) richie intimidates the fuck out of the cute mailman with the hots for sally.

( EVENT: SEE ABOVE )

█ 01 04 15 ⇢ ❝ IF I GET SICK I'M BLAMING YOU. ❞

richie's a childish cotton-candy-stealing little shit. sally remedies this with like fifty dollars worth of carnival food that she savors every bite of.

( EVENT: SEE ABOVE )

█ 01 22 15 ⇢ ❝ RIGHT, SO THE MAYOR? HE'S APPARENTLY HANDING OUT GUNS NOW. ❞

shit sure went awry in idyllic verdance bluffs. after reggie's given no choice but to shoot her, sally hauls herself home with a brand new hole in her leg. fortunately, richie the supposed architect seems to know exactly what to do. she casually fails to mention who exactly shot her. it's safe to assume he finds out regardless, considering he definitely tracks the guy down and gauges his eyeballs out a couple of days later.

( EVENT: OH, DREAMWEAVER! PHASE 3 )

⁘ 01 27 15 ⇢ THE LOCALS FUCK SALLY (AND RICHIE?) UP REAL GOOD.

we had every intention of threading this out but we only had time to get the starter up before all of our other january threads ate us alive. i need to consult with cb for a definitive answer on what happened to richie (if anything? he may not have shown up after all? it's a little hazy) - but regardless, sally herself ended up with her lips stapled shut, the 'MONSTER' lettered scars on her back carved off, and various hot coal burns on her body. not fun.

▒ 01 27 15 ⇢ ❝ C'MON, SISTER, TIME TO BLOW THIS JOINT. LEAVE A FEW OF 'EM FOR SOMEONE ELSE. ❞

( sub-thread.) seth pulls sally out of a fight she has no way of winning but sure as hell plans to try to. once they're safe-ish, they take the opportunity to bitch at each other about who's in charge and who isn't allowed to get themselves killed.

( EVENT: SEE ABOVE )

▎ MEME ⇢ HEART MEME, ROUND 2

same deal as the first one. have some sally to richie, some sally to seth, some seth to sally, and a good old-fashioned malvo/sally face-off.

⁘ 02 02 15 ⇢ SALLY SLEEPS IN HER OWN HOUSE FOR A CHANGE?

after the dreamscape, sally uses nora's disappearance as an excuse to crash with josh for a bit. she's got a lot on her mind and honestly has no idea where she stands with richie now that seth's back but doesn't remember to trust her... so she's giving them space. laying low. we'll see how long that lasts.

█ 02 07 15 ⇢ ❝ OH. YEAH, SHE'S HERE. SHE'S, UH - KEEPING ME COMPANY. ❞

richie un-subtly locates sally and also kind of manages to human at josh in the process.

█ 02 08 15 ⇢ ❝ FIGURED THE LAST THING SETH WANTS IS SOME RANDOM CHICK HARASSING HIS BROTHER. ❞

richie tells sally to come back. she can never seem to say no to him. ( note to self: ask cb what the fuck re: 'freezer cat' )

▒ 02 08 15 ⇢ ❝ IT'S WHO YOU'RE GONNA PROTECT WHEN THE NEXT BIG WHATEVER HITS, AND WHO YOU'D BE READY TO KILL TO DO THAT. ❞

later that same day, sally serves seth a platter of the cold reality of living in the box and somehow earns her second invite back 'home' (she sure didn't miss that word choice) in a six hour span.

▒ 02 11 15 ⇢ ❝ TRUST ME, MY REGRETS PRETTY MUCH STAY ON THE INSIDE THESE DAYS. ❞

seth and sally unofficially celebrate her return to the casa de gecko with a good old-fashioned drink-off. they bond over terrible luck and a mutual affection for one richie gecko.

█ 02 11 15 ⇢ ❝ MAYBE FOR YOU. YOU'RE THE EXCEPTION TO A LOT OF THINGS. ❞

richie showed up to her drink-off with seth just in time to escort sally home while seth (in all his drunken glory) closed up the bar in her stead. they have a piggy-back heart-to-heart that richie didn't entirely volunteer for, then a couch heart-to-heart that he did.

█ 02 15 15 ⇢ ❝ I CAN GO, IF YOU WANT. ❞

sally's brain won't shut down. in an attempt to head off an existential crisis, she crawls into bed with richie. it works.

█ 03 09 15 ⇢ ❝ THAT THING WHERE I DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS ALONE. IS IT STILL ON THE TABLE? ❞

for the first time since she arrived over a year ago, sally's actually desperate enough to consider eating human flesh a preferable alternative to rotting to death again. richie tries to reassure her of the necessity of it, but she pretty much just implodes over how fucked up he doesn't seem to realize she actually is. it actually manages to piss richie off, another first for sally. let's see if she can un-fuck this one.

▒ 03 10 15 ⇢ ❝ HE'S NOT EXACTLY TALKING TO ME RIGHT NOW AND I CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT CLOSE-RANGE. IT JUST-, IT GETS TO ME. ❞

sally's boarding up the bar with intent to hide there and wait out the latest murderous shitfest, but seth shows up looking for her. while he helps her board, he pries for a straight answer on why she's steering clear of the casa de gecko. he more-or-less gets one.

( EVENT: CTRL-F "HAVE YOU HEARD THE MERMEN SINGING?" )

█ 03 15 15 ⇢ ❝ WHAT WAS IT LIKE FOR YOU, TO MAKE THAT FIRST CUT? ❞

sally comes home with an apology and a plan of action: to give richie the soul lock charm so that no matter how fucked up her ghost might end up, there's zero way for her to possess him or hurt him in any way. not that she thinks she ever would, but she can't be sure she wouldn't, either. they stumble into conversation about the time she almost killed danny and bond over how it feels to take a life.

█ 03 16 15 ⇢ ❝ YOU SMOKE? ❞

sally and richie smoke and bullshit about moms and shredding ghosts, all the while admiring the finer points of a giant eyeball statue.

█ 04 01 15 ⇢ ❝ SOMEONE BETTER CHEW THEIR LEG OFF AND HOPE FOR THE BEST. ❞

the technicians are going back to their 'cabin in the woods' roots, and the casa de gecko plus their least favorite person have to fight for their lives. i super dropped the ball on threading this but basically the geckos end up getting murdered but sally and malvo make it out, injured but alive. sally stays behind to pull her shit together re: the geckos' vicious murder and ends up stress-eating the things that killed them.

( EVENT: THEIR SUBTHREAD IN SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW THE STORY? )

▞ 04 01 15 ⇢ ❝ YOU THINK I'M A PAIN IN THE ASS NOW? PULL THE TRIGGER. I DON'T DIE LIKE YOU DO. ❞

sally drags her ass home from the cabin in the woods with every intention of drinking on the floor of the shower, only to find malvo relaxing in their kitchen, having helped himself to their food and their private belongings. she's having absolutely none of it and shoots someone for literally the first time in her life. should've aimed for the head - maybe then he wouldn't have been able to beat her ass in her own kitchen.

█ 04 03 15 ⇢ ❝ I'M SO FREAKING MAD AT YOU GUYS, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW. ❞

the geckos respawn and return to the casa de gecko (which is covered in blood) and the sole surviving resident (who is also still covered in blood, and also drunk). hugs and first aid ensue.

█ 04 20 15 ⇢ ❝ I-, I SHOULDN'T HAVE, I DIDN'T MEAN TO. ❞

sally's imploding over trying to cannibalize peter quill and over the increasing quantity of visible rot on her body. for lack of anything else to do, richie shows her that he knows how to sally almost as well as she knows how to richie. it actually kind of helps?

▒ 04 29 15 ⇢ ❝ ON MY WAY HOME AND I GUESS WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT SOME SHIT. ❞

sally finally briefs seth on the whole 'rotting cannibal' deal. he takes it about as poorly as possible without actually shooting her.

▒ 05 06 15 ⇢ ❝ DON'T BE AN IDIOT. ❞

sally lets the network she's gonna go awol for a bit. seth briefly humors the notion that he has room to tell her not to.

█ 05 08 15 ⇢ ❝ AS IT TURNS OUT, DECOMPOSING ISN'T ALL THAT QUICK. ❞

as if there isn't enough going on already, sally's finally reached the point of no return and holed herself up in an abandoned house to rot to death alone. which is clearly an invitation for richie to literally pick the lock and let himself in. part of her hoped it would be. they trade questions to pass the time until she falls asleep with her head in his lap.

▒ 05 11 15 ⇢ ❝ SAVE 'EM FOR RICHIE. ❞

seth's still sore at sally for running off to die... but how can he be mad at the world's most persistent booze-providing ghost?

▎ MEME ⇢ HEART MEME, ROUND 3

you know the drill. have some sally to richie, some richie to sally, some sally to seth, some seth to sally, and of course sally to malvo + malvo to sally

▞ 05 22 15 ⇢ [ HEY, OLD BUDDY, OLD PAL. ]

malvo's attempting to sleep when sally makes good on her warning. threat. promise. technically he didn't actually kill her, but that's kind of irrelevant right now.

( the thread's pretty short but she basically does more of this and keeps him up through the night without actually harming him much if at all... at least this time. )

█ 05 27 15 ⇢ ❝ LIKE, PICTURE A REALLY BIG BOWLING BALL THAT KNOWS YOUR SINS. ❞

( currently locked by cb. ) a super brief thread in which sally informs richie of the mayhem surrounding the giant eyeball he's so fond of.

( EVENT: MOSTLY JUST THIS FLAVOR-TEXT )

⁘ MAY - JULY ⇢ A LOCALIZED APOCALYPSE GOES DOWN (WORSE THAN THE REGULAR WORLDWIDE APOCALYPSE).

so throughout the threads dated in may up to this point, this shitshow (see the weekly briefings at the bottom) has been going down. the long and short of it is that the technicians have failed to cause enough death and suffering and the old gods are throwing a tantrum, but the technicians do have an escape plan. at the end of may, everyone's loaded up onto a train aimed for a different 'box' across the country. the next couple of months are that trip, with regular stops and post-apocalyptic mayhem occurring on said stops.

it's safe to assume that throughout her time as a ghost, she poofs in to check on sally and richie fairly regularly regardless of which boxcar she's technically supposed to be in. it's also safe to assume that she's struggling unusually hard as a ghost this time around (see her next thread with seth as a prime example) and absolutely would've shredded herself sooner rather than later if the respawn technology were active while the train was moving. as it stands, she has no idea if shredding herself would be permanent, so better safe and crazy than gone and sorry.

( we kind of fell off of tagging consistently at that point, the game was hella fast-paced and i had life going on, but i'll try and fill in the gaps with context here in the timeline! )

▒ 05 31 15 ⇢ ❝ WE'LL FIGURE IT OUT, OKAY? WE'LL FIGURE IT OUT, WE'LL ADAPT, WE'LL KEEP GOIN'. ❞

too many people were lost, too many good people who didn't deserve to die. now sally's cracking, more so than she has thus far in box, and she's too intangible for anything to ground her. that doesn't stop seth from trying, though.

█ 06 13 15 ⇢ ❝ JUST - REMEMBER YOU TRUST ME, OKAY? ❞

( sub-thread. ) at the fourth stop, shit goes awry at record speed. remember that soul lock sally told him to wear? yeah, it's time to take that off so she can do the thing she was trying to prevent herself from doing and maybe save his life in the process.

( EVENT: MIGRATION WEEK 2 + SCROLL UP IN THE LOG ITSELF )

█ 06 22 15 ⇢ ❝ SO I KILLED A GUY. A SNIPER. WITH HIS OWN KNIFE. ❞

( currently locked by cb.) so sally kind of brutally killed a guy and it takes all of two hours for her to cave and tell richie.

( EVENT: 'SUNDAY, DAY 3' IN THE LOG POST ITSELF )

⁘ 06 25/26 15 ⇢ SALLY CANON-UPDATES.

as june comes to a close, the snipers from the prior week are given context in this big battle. short version: one of the few cities left intact is pretty sure that killing the technicians and destroying their work will prevent further destabilization of the world they live in, so they basically want to wipe everyone on that train clean off of the map. technicians and player-characters work together to prevent that, complete with insanely quick respawns to bring fallen player-characters back from the dead in record time.

sally spends the first half of the battle possessing enemy soldiers and marching them uselessly them to their deaths at the hands of a serial killer pal. then she catches wind of the rapid respawn rate and she leaps at the chance. the thing is, they're trying to win a war here, and sally may have been an effective fighter as a ghost but not so much as a corporeal human... so instead of just respawning her, they canon-update* her to a much more combat-ready point in her future: the middle of season 4, when she not only has 500% more black magic as a ghost, but that ghost is sitting pretty in her alternate-timeline body which just so happens to be a brand spanking new werewolf. (her life is a mess, i know.) the wolf is turned loose into the enemy soldiers and proceeds to tear a decent number of them the fuck apart. possibly some of our own guys too, but fuck it, they'll come back.

i have literally no idea what the geckos were doing during this fight. like i said, shit was stupidly fast-paced and we got kind of spotty for a bit.

* a canon-update, if you're not an rp-savvy person but i linked you this because you needed to see this cr, is where they're basically bumped forward to a later point in their canon, typically in an incongruously short period of time in-game (e.g. sally's bumped forward a season and a half in the span of a few hours' respawn).

▒ 07 01 15 ⇢ ❝ WHY SO HUG-STINGY, ELDER GECK? ❞

seth texts to make sure sally's still on this plane of existence, only to find out that she has her body back and she's fucking delighted. hug bartering ensues. it's honestly super cute.

█ 07 01 15 ⇢ ❝ THERE'S ONE SHACK WITHOUT ANY BROKEN WINDOWS. MEET ME THERE, OKAY? ❞

( currently locked by cb. ) sally is corporeal as fuck and wants richie to meet her somewhere so she can deliver her plethora of news in person.

( EVENT: STOP SEVEN ON THE LOG )

█ 07 01 15 ⇢ ❝ I'M KIND OF A WEREWOLF. ❞

( sub-thread. ) richie meets sally as requested, only to be bombarded with 'hey, by the way, now i'm a werewolf' with a fucked-up side dish of 'and also, when you go back, you completely forget you were ever here'. they share a bag of gummy dicks. things escalate quickly from there.

( i have literally no clue how far things escalate, with the accidental fade-to-black we managed to do. probably not terribly far, knowing richie? who knows. )

( EVENT: SEE ABOVE )

⁘ END OF JULY ⇢ TRAIN ARRIVES IN THE HARBORVIEW CONTAINMENT ZONE.

speaking of dropping the ball, this approximate timeframe was the beginning of the end of my time being blissfully active in the box due to real life shit, so those july 1st threads were literally the only relevant threads in july. pretty much the only other pressing thing that happened was sally having to hastily barter for wolf-strength tranquilizers so she could safely change in the boxcar without murdering everyone trapped in there with her - which i'm not actually positive the geckos even got wind of?

which means we're fast-forwarding to when the train arrives at its destination: the island currently dubbed 'harborview', in approximately the puget sound area of washington state.

it's all pretty spotty from here. in their first month in harborview, sally drank with seth when he was super fucked up about something but i have literally no recollection of what, so i can't even properly contextualize it. fast-forward to september for the two remaining threads, i guess?

█ 09 07 15 ⇢ ❝ IT'S THIS PLACE, ISN'T IT? ❞

the ley lines are fucking with people, and sally's far from immune. she feeds it her own blood for entirely too long before richie swoops in to haul her out of the area of effect. they bandage her hands at home and bond over the dead abusers in their lives.

( EVENT: LAYING LINES )

█ 09 28 15 ⇢ ❝ UNFINISHED BUSINESS, I GUESS. ❞

( sub-thread. ) everything's failed, and this reality's earth is as doomed as doomed gets. the technicians give everyone a two-day window to report to the facility and go the fuck home - but for some, it's a little harder than others. but there's really no other way to spin it: sally her geckos are gonna have to say goodbye.

( the thread cuts mercifully short, but that's definitely not the end. after the last tag, after they've both gone downstairs, sally thinks to give him a last-minute gift of her own: the pancha ganapati letter from nearly a year ago. not that it probably mattered, anymore. not that he'd probably even still have it, once he's out the other side.

before she went home, she also took the time to sit down and write out literally everything she could remember about this place - and especially about the people who mattered to her, most prominently the gecko brothers. honestly, she was probably one of the last to go. the power was flickering nonstop and the ground shook more often than stilled. but she had to try, y'know? )

( ENDGAME: INFO IN THE LOG ITSELF )

( though they reluctantly parted ways, that's not the end for sally and the geckos. stay tuned, idek. )