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(no subject)

Who: Jessie and OTA
What: Backfired exorcism=Angelville memories
When: Day Sixteen
Where: Baggage car to start
CW: Angelville (S3 spoilers possible) and fallout, smoking, religion, will edit as needed

Ever since the mission Jessie was not dealing well with that exorcism backfiring.

Marie L'Angelle was in her head and making her feel ten times worse. Jody and TC only adding fuel to the fire. So cue the battle going on inside her mind and on occasion bleeding out, those could be heard on occasion if anyone with sharp ears came near the baggage car. But after hearing she should be in the coffin Jessie does the next best thing.

She's sleeping on the baggage car floor.

Oh sure she is faking that all is well: she does chores (maybe too perfectly) and is seen around the train. She even restocks her cigarettes from the train store (steering herself for lectures in the process but she sticks to the luggage car to smoke). But eventually the ghosts come back and keep the damage from Angelville alive and well. Add in her ongoing claustrophobia, her sleeping on the floor and who knows what else and its clear.

Jessie is spiraling and hard.

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Peter's spent most of his day with his Aunt but at some point he goes the dressing car to lounge and maybe nap if he can manage it like he usually does. There's a lingering smell of cigarette smoke in the dressing room and he almost decides to just fins somewhere else to lounge-maybe go back to his aunt and use her as a pillow. He stops though as his ears pick up some shifting.

Buttercup likes to hang out in the luggage car so, thinking that it's probably her, he moves to surprise her but that's definitely not an eleven year old girl. It's the woman that smokes. What is she doing on the floor?

"Uh.. Ma'am are you okay? Do you need help up?" He offers.

"Deserve this, don't deserve help.' the memories in full swing and its showing. But in a small moment of reason Jessie does let Peter help her off the car floor. Mostly she's steering herself for the worst aka being put into the coffin and put back underwater.

Peter makes a face as he helps her up. Her words don't make sense to him but he can tell she seems to be having some kind of panic attack-that she feels she deserves? Oh boy. He can do this. He can calm this lady down. Probably.

"Hey-hey, it's okay. I think you deserve help so I'm gonna." He tells her gently. "Let's uh... I know-can you do me a favor? It's really easy-just name five things you can see. Can you do that? Take as long as you need to but just five."

It takes maybe 10 minutes but it feels longer since Jessie is deep in the memories of Angelville. "Luggage lots of luggage. Random parts. My lighter and smokes. So much ugly purple." meaning the uniform.

Peter's patient, he doesn't try to rush her and gives her all the time she needs to come up with five things. He nods encouragingly at each one although he's not too sure 'random parts' counts but he's not a therapist so who knows.

"Okay, good. We're on the right track, now name four things you can feel. This one's a little more tricky but really concentrate." Is this helping at all? He certainly hopes so.

"A small burn on my thumb, almost dropped my smoke. The floor, the ugly uniform and the smoke.' it took a bit but somehow Jessie did it.

"Aw, C'mon, the purple's not so bad. My Aunt's on the Orange Team. She hates it-said something about it feeling like she's in prison which is hilarious because Aunt May's like-uh... right. Not helping, Peter." He shakes his head.

"Next is uh..." What was the next step of the grounding coping technique? "Three things you can hear."

"You, the engines I think and whatever is moving around outside."

Does she really do her faking that well? Because there are some perceptive elves on this train.

The last mission was not easy on most of them. Some took it worse than others and Fëanor can't blame anyone for being a little on edge. The burning city took a toll on one of his own sons so he's more likely to be understanding to anyone else's suffering.

Still, when he finds her trying to fall asleep on the baggage car floor it's pretty clear she's more than a little on edge.

"Hey, you're sure you're comfortable here?"

"Deserve it." comes the too prim voice. Jessie was hip deep back in Angelville since she had been train napped during her escape. Between that and the last few days she's not exactly had time to deal properly. "Exorcism backfired, deserve this."

"Nobody deserves to sleep on the floor."

That coming from someone involved in one of the worst massacres of his time? He knows what he's saying. Though that involved part might be a serious understatement.

"You tried to exorcise the goblins? Bold."

Not very wise but bold. Fëanor heard something truly bad happened where the Purple team was but he missed the details as he was himself more occupied with his sons returning with the rest of the Red team in the state they did.

'I deserve it." was all Jessie could say. But when Fëanor noted what she did a tiny smile does escape,"Only thing that made sense honestly."

"I still see no reason why," Fëanor says shaking his head. He paid for his own bad decisions and paid dearly. So such a situation is not new to him. He has his regrets but none of the self-loathing. "You made a decision to the best of your knowledge. Maybe you miscalculated, maybe not. Maybe nothing, short of physically eliminating the creatures, would have worked anyway. Still, I don't see how that's supposed to be the grounds for self-flagellation."

"It made sense at the time, was sure it was going to work." Jessie finally could speak

"Then you did what was in your power to do and there's no reason for you to be so hard on yourself." Fëanor is not easy to convince most of the time but this is just plain folly. Or she's not telling him everything.

"Unless" he pauses watching her for a moment "Unless there's something else that's bothering you?"

"Argh!"

That noise was the sound of a ninja tripping over a person lying on the floor of the baggage car. Followed swiftly by the noise of him thudding into the wall, luckily before he could splat on the floor.

"What the hell?!"

"You know this is also the smoking car?" as the dark haired woman lights up mid snark.

"But also the lying-around car?!" Edge turned, still leaning against the wall, because he feared straightening up would lead to stepping on her or tripping over something else.

"Basically."

"So what's the deal?" Edge said, smoothly transitioning his lean into a sort of casual at-ease rest against the wall. "Seems uncomfortable."

"Deserve it."

One eyebrow went up.

"And why the heck would you 'deserve it'?"

"Just do. She says so."

"Who?" Edge looked around, as if expecting some figure to emerge from a corner and declare themselves the malefactor in this scenario.

Maybe Jessie has been faking it well enough, but being one of her roommates, Reigen has noticed the fact that she hasn't been sleeping in her cabin. He's also incapable of minding his own business, so once it's later at night, he follows behind her to figure out what she's been doing these past few nights.

Her going to the baggage car isn't surprising, since it's the designated smoking section (cigarette smell feels almost nostalgic to him, but in a depressing way mostly. It's probably a good thing that he cut back since hiring Mob). However, Jessie clearly isn't just here to smoke. Her laying on the floor makes it obvious.

"Hey, Jessica." He calls to her, not concerned if he's waking her up because she shouldn't be falling asleep here anyway. "This is where you've been sleeping? What's going on?"

"Its Jessie!" Jessie snarked, half in rage and half in reclaiming her nickname. Plus between her grandmother, Jody and TC her real name is shaky enough. "I'll aim downwind if needed." since she is about to light up.

"Ok, ok, sorry!" He's a little caught off guard by the outburst, but hey, he already can guess she's on edge. "Jokes on you, your cigarettes don't scare me. I'm used to smoke." Saying that, he's only half bluffing, since getting smoke blown in his face would still suck.

"Seriously though, Jessie, why are you sleeping here? You're gonna mess up your back like that."

"Deserve it, either this or being tossed into a coffin underwater." Jessie gets out. But the panic on her face says more, she did not want to spill but it came out.

"Tossed into a...what the hell? Don't be an idiot, you don't deserve that!" Reigen's honestly a little freaked out by how specific that is, but he brings down the volume of his voice when he sees how panicked she looks.

"Jessie, look at me. Whatever you did, it's not something you deserve to be punished for. Not by sleeping on the floor, and especially not... the other thing. Seriously, who even does that?"

Jessie lights up within seconds of that unplanned confession. She can't bring herself to reveal more of Angelville,"Exorcism backfired, deserve nothing less.' she almost whimpers.

Ok, now he's really concerned, since he has no clue how to deal with any of this kind of trauma. Still, he can pretend to try and reassure her.

"Ah, so you deal with ghosts too? I didn't think I'd run into another expert here!" Reigen starts off casually, hoping it'll help her relax. "It's a difficult business, everyone's had an exorcism backfire on them at some point in their career. It's not good to punish yourself for it: All of us would be in boxes all the time if that's what we deserved for making mistakes."

"Was in divinity school.' Jessie is of course not spilling more about Angelville for now, "But this was only my 2nd or 3rd try too."

"You have a degree? Not bad, Jessie." Reigen has got no clue about how religious people handle hauntings, given that he's...well, self-taught is a nice way to put it. "Seriously though, cut yourself some slack. Especially if you've only done it a couple times. Who knows, we might run into more ghosts for you to get some practice on?"

She is also in the baggage carriage. Tony has been drinking and so she has deemed it best to stay away. She can cope a night in her suitcase fort, it's safe and full of blankets.

The main problem is this carriage is smelling more and more of smoke and it is a smell that makes her feel sick. It had been one of the main reasons she had moved back into her room in the first place. That and the fact she just woke up in her bed every morning, at least if she started in bed it felt less weird.

She sees Jessie on the floor, she sneaks closer, to see if she is alive. She is. That's... good. She guesses. It would be a lot of trouble to explain finding a body.

"Do you no be wanting a blanket?"

"Don't deserve one." since at the moment Jessie is sure she's coffin bound.

"Did you be being bad?"

She has gotten even closer now, though she's scrambled up into a suitcase pile out of reach. Who had denied Jessie a blanket? Tony? He did sometimes get mad at her smoking...

"Deserve it.' Jessie was not spilling Angelville to a kid.

"Probably. But what did you be doing? Who do be being mad at you?" It was useful to know, she needs to know who would go so far as to punish someone, who had that power here?

She still suspects Tony. But a confirmation would be good, especially if it wasn't him. Knowing who else to be wary of was important.

In traditional Ash fashion, she'd made coffee. Two of them, actually. One for herself, one for Jessie. She didn't know Jessie that well, but she had noticed how Jessie made her coffee, and she did notice Jessie had been acting a little strange. It's not often that someone was more perfectionist about their chores than Ash.

Ash looked for Jessie, eventually finding her on the baggage floor. Ash carefully set herself down so that she was sitting with her legs crossed in front of Jessie. "I brought coffee." She waited patiently for Jessie to stir and get herself situated before offering her the cup. "I've found it helps with damn near everything."

Jessie comes out of her haze and accepts the coffee from Ash. After a sip she does speak,"How did you know I add 3 sugars?" mostly since she's curious. "And I'll aim downwind if needed?" meaning her cigarette.

"You can learn quite a lot by watching others." Ash gave her a gentle smile. It always was worth paying attention to others so that if something like this happened you could brighten things up a little bit. "It doesn't matter to me. Do whatever makes you comfortable."

Ash took a sip of her own coffee before she spoke again. "I admit that we haven't had the chance to talk much, but I imagine you don't normally sleep on the floor. Do you want to talk about it?" She wouldn't push if Jessie didn't, but she may as well ask.

'I deserve it, my exorcism backfired against the goblins." jessie came clean, sort of. Angelville is still touchy and its starting to show as badly as she's starting to fray. "I have to be punished."

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