Logs:Waiting Game

Waiting Game
Dramatis Personae Joshua, Mirror
In Absentia	2025-01-16 "{Do you really feel like dancing?}"
Location Rafah, Gaza
There is a celebration in the streets, right now. It's a tense one, to be sure -- in the rubble, with so many missing after this long long year-and-some, how could it not be. It's still a celebration, and the music and the cheering and the dancing is reaching in to this apartment -- nearly empty currently, the family outside with the rest to talk and to dance and to discuss what might come next. Mirror is sitting by the window -- they've pried away one of the boards that boarded it, just enough to peer out and down into the street below. There's no power in here, no lights; the spill of sunlight from the slit in the window covering cuts a harsh bright swath against their deep brown skin. Joshua's appearance is quiet as ever. Just a shift in Mirror's peripheral vision, and then he's dropping down against the wall to sit by them. He's slumped back, eyes closing as he drops his medic kit -- not to rest beside him, it just vanishes into the aether. "Fam's all outside." Mirror looks away from the window. Briefly. Their eyes cut aside to Joshua, and then they tip their head back to thump against the boards. "Not all." Their gaze is tracking back to the warm afternoon outside. "{Do you really feel like dancing?}" They have switched to Arabic for this question. Joshua cracks one eye open. His head rolls to the side, then back up. "{Not sure that's what matters.}" There's a long stretch of quiet from Mirror after this. The sounds of rejoicing outside wash up into the room, flowing over them. Their eyes have narrowed, then slipped closed, like this will keep the sounds out. "{Ceasefire doesn't start till Sunday. Feels preemptive to cheer it on now. They'll probably drop double the bombs between now and then just to teach us a fucking lesson.}" "Probably." Joshua is standing up again. Unhurried. He peers out the window, then down at Mirror. "{Seven and a half decades. You think after Sunday they'll chill?}" His brows have lifted, questioning, after which he jerks his head towards the window like, c'mon. Mirror is slitting their eyes just a tiny bit. It makes their expression look all the more like a scowl, sharp and narrowed -- but their posture is easing. Their voice is softer. They get slowly to their feet, head shaking. "{... I guess if we wait for it to be safe we'll be waiting a long-ass time.}" "{The fuck has waiting ever gotten us.}" Joshua's hand claps to Mirror's shoulder -- by the time, a split second later, they reappear on the noisy street outside, the rare smile that's slipped across his face with this may as well have been an illusion.