[hr][hr][h1][b][i][color=910A1C][center]Ivanna (Brendan)[/center][/color][/i][/b][/h1]

[img]https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th/id/OIP.O77Oc6dRw8IVEt2AVI9Y8wHaHX?r=0&rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain&o=7&rm=3[/img]
Location: Château de La Lune:
Skills: N/A
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As Brendan shouted for Felix, they were vaguely aware of Felix shouting something back to them just as they reached the stairs.

They didn’t stop, didn’t process what it was that Felix was saying until they were already a good way down. That was when their eyes fell to the bottom of the stairs. They saw what was at the bottom of the stairs. They gripped the handrail, heart racing.

Felix was down there, but Renee was down there too, and she was very still. Brendan called out to her but she did not respond. 

Brendan’s first thought was that she almost looked fake when she was so still like that. Like a Halloween decoration. It was a bizarre and awful first thought to have, but it was like reality had put some sort of filter over it all that was keeping Brendan from feeling like anything was actually real. Nothing seemed to matter or have consequences. 

They struggled back up the stairs turning to face the others.  Wondering if the others even would recognize them as being the same person as Ivanna?

Their attention was turned back to present the situation. One of the others, a doctor, was being brought over. 

Well. Fuck. That was when the filter was removed and Brendan really realized. It was real. That Renee was dead or dying or [i]something[/i] very wrong. Brendan reacted so much more suddenly and intensely than they would have ever imagined. The fact that they'd written stories where people were dead did nothing to prepare them for what it was like to see someone in real life who was dead(?), and really why would it have prepared them for actual death(??)  They felt sick. Their stomach twisted and they felt sweaty and weak. She’s not dead, she’s not dead. Right? They were getting a doctor, so she wasn’t…but good goddess, was she still. Felix had been holding a sheet. Wasn’t that a thing? You cover dead(?!?) bodies with a sheet? 

Oh god. Brendan put a hand on the wall. They felt weak again. 

Renee was either dead, or in a state where Felix was expecting that she was about to be. What had happened? Was she sick? Heart attack? Had someone hurt her? She was at the bottom of the stairs, maybe she fell down them. You can die from that, right? Thunking down the stairs like that? A character had died that way in one of Brendan’s fanfictions, but then again, that was just a story they'd written. This was not just some fictional thing being done for some writer’s entertainment, it was[i] real[/i]. Brendan turned and looked back towards the stairs. They were just far away enough now that they couldn’t actually see her body, but even just turning in the direction caused that weak feeling to come back to them. 

The wall was not currently doing enough to keep them standing. They leaned harder against the wall, desperately trying and spectacularly failing to grip a flat vertical surface. Oh god. That doctor was gonna come back and say that Renee was dead.

And then what? She was reincarnated? She was someone new, like that story that Superfetch had read to Brendan once when they were drunk at 2 AM, the one they couldn’t get through because they couldn’t stop laughing at Brendan's comment about how the story’s title, ‘The Egg’ would be perfect if Brendan ever wrote an autobiography? Or maybe Renee was in heaven? Looking down on them all now while endless steaks with HP sauce and doing whatever she wanted for eternity? If heaven and hell were real, then certainly Renee was in the good place, right? In the Discworld book series, Death took different people to different places depending on what they’d believed in life. Or maybe all those theories were wrong. Maybe when someone was gone, they were gone.

Brendan thought about Renee herself, about what was both the pair’s first and last interaction. Brendan thought of Renee’s body down on the ground. There was a similar quiet to when they’d seen her sitting at the bar last night. Brendan thought of how they’d tried, and probably failed, to comfort her. They almost wanted to go do that again. To go sit by her body and tell whatever scrap of life and soul might be left that everything was going to be okay. To know, or at least imagine, until they were presented with proof otherwise, that Renee would hear them, and feel some comfort, wherever she was now.

But Brendan had the feeling that if they went and looked at that body again, they’d full on just pass out. They were already so lightheaded that they were curled up as they leaned against the wall, practically sitting by now. As they swirled in uncertainty, the one thing they felt sure of was that they were not going to be able to reach Renee. They felt they should try anyway, but instead they focused on themself, on not fainting, which felt incredibly selfish.