Greetings!

Who: Bob and Rain
Where: Chapel steps
When: After the chicks in the stocks get loose and before Lina does the job thing

Bob wasn't particularly impressed with his presents from the scientists. The leather-bound journal: At first, he'd mistaken for a book. Opening it, he let out a snort of disbelief. The scientists were still going to require that every participant keep a journal? Well, he would have some choice words to record... But later. He moved on to the walkie-talkies. Those, at least, would be useful, for someone. He'd donate them to the general supplies. The Easter basket got another snort. The scientists must think it amusing to treat them like children, Bob supposed.

There was a final gift, a folded square of paper. Bob had to hold it out at arm's length to make out the print. It was a map of the grounds, printed with the names and, he assumed, the current locations of each of the house mates. Or at least where they'd slept the night before. His heart sped up and he read the names eagerly. Twice, just to be sure before he cursed softly, hopelessly. The map only confirmed his worst fear--one person had not made it out of the mansion alive.

"Unbelievable," he muttered, rereading the names just to be sure. There were two new additions. They were still adding new participants to the experiment! Bob let out a heavy sigh, stretching as he hauled himself up out of the pew where he'd spent the night. God, had the scientists even bothered to prepare the newcomers for the prospect of the primitive conditions they were going to have to face? He doubted it. The new arrivals must be so confused. Overwhelmed. Probably furious, too. Great, just great. He scrubbed a hand over his face and through his hair, then headed out the door. Time to trot out the welcome wagon.

He paused at the top of the steps. A young woman sat on the stairs. She didn't look familiar, and Bob was fairly certain he'd figured out who everyone was.

"Hello," he said. "You wouldn't happen to be Rain Cassidy, would you?"

"Ola! Indeed I am." Raid said merrily, since it was pointless to get distressed over something silly like having to sleep not in a house that was burning for a night. Of course, her cheerfulness was highly influenced by waking up to chocolate. And eggs, but yeah, she could have had eggs whenever she felt like. Chocolate, though! She was good with that, in spite of the fact that she was going to wait until after she munched the hardboiled, happily colored easter egg (hers looked like tie-dye, and she couldn't help but be impressed by it - how did you tie-dye an egg, for god's sake?), carefully avoiding the yolk. "And you?"

"Bob Moran," he greeted her, coming down the steps to stand below her. She seemed awfully cheery for being dressed in pajamas and facing a camping trip of unknown duration. Maybe the scientists had briefed the newcomers after all. Maybe she had good news... Something along the lines of when the white-coated bastards were going to get tired of making everyone play campfire girls and provide them all with some decent shelter and food.

"So, how are you, Ms Cassidy?" Small talk first. Bob found himself reluctant to question her too much. For one thing, she might tell him what he didn't want to hear--that they would be stuck in 'Survivor' reruns indefinitely. He'd rather put that moment of truth off as long as possible.

"Eh, tired. But that's what I get for waking up in the morning instead of the crack of noon. Afternoons," she told Bob, "are way more my style." Of course, she had no idea when and how long she'd been sleeping in the princess room, so she might've actually gone to something resembling a normal sleeping pattern. "And call me Rain. Would you care for a marshmallow peep? Looks like we don't have any microwaves for a proper peep joust."

"No thanks." Bob waved off the offer of candy. Normally he had no objection to peeps or bunnies or any of the other commercial trappings of Easter, but today the colorful confections annoyed him. He felt angry in a disgruntled, disjointed sort of way. But none of that was Ms Cassidy's fault. Rain's fault, he amended, and made an effort to keep his tone of voice pleasant.

"It's difficult to sleep in late when you're camping. After a few days, though, we all ought to get used to roughing it." He still harbored the faint hope that a few days was all it would be.

"Oh, man, no kidding. Spring comes, bam! You got birds and squirrels and all sorts of things making noise outside your window." Rain snorted, distinctly remembering the first day of Spring in the house, wherein she had raced outside and promptly started yelling at a very confused animal. "But no worries, I like nature! I'm good."

Well, wasn't that just peachy. Rain's persistent good humor was starting to grate on Bob's nerves. He reminded himself, very firmly, that of course she had no way of knowing the full extent of the experiment she'd so recently signed up for. She hadn't had to flee from a burning building, or witness a young man hogtied and left suspended from a chandelier, or any of the bizarre ordeals endured by the other residents who'd been in the experiment from the start.

"So you're used to camping out? That's good, because we may be here quite a while." Bob paused, as always unsure how best to break the bad news. "I'm afraid I have to warn you, whatever you might have thought you were getting yourself into when you signed on for a 'high stress' experiment?... Well, it turns out that it's a lot worse than any of us could ever have expected," he said.

"Nooo kidding." Rain agreed wholeheartedly. "I kind of figured that one when I got here and all the pipes had burst and there was mold and ugh! The smell! Bloody awful! And them putting up the ballroom over night? And the bug thing? And ohmigod poor Nic? And people dying and disappearing and wolf howls and yeesh. Mind you, it hasn't been all bad. There's a greenhouse." She paused, and pursed her lips. "Was a greenhouse, I should say. And we have all of this great and grand outdoors to explore and play in, and the sun is out, and it's not as if we lack for a way to make fire to keep us warm at night. Heck, they even gave me a fancy journal to do entries in." Rain said. "With a purple gel pen." Because that, of course, mattered.

The light dawned as Bob listened to Rain's recital. She wasn't new to the experiment; she'd been removed for some reason, and then brought back, like Heidi. Heidi--that thought made his stomach churn. She had been brought back just a few days ago. As far as Bob knew, Heidi had perished in the fire. If Rain had been returned to the house one night sooner...

"So, you were in the experiment before. For how long?" Bob asked, grateful for any distraction from the thought of people dying horribly. "I've only been here ten days, myself," he added.

"Since..." Rain had to think. She'd been measuring time, she realized, in terms of crisises, not days or weeks or months. "Before Valentine's Day." She finally decided. "A couple weeks before, I think. It's been a little while. I'm sorry, if I had my contract with me, I could tell you the date from that, but..." she waved to the house. "It's either in that mess of rubble and burning, or in a locker somewhere waiting to be accessed."

"Please. Don't apologize," Bob said, managing a smile. He had to admire Rain's cheerfulness. If he'd been brought back, after already having been through all that she'd experienced, he was sure he'd be screaming and raving by now.

"I must say, Ms--Er, Rain," he corrected himself, "you're taking this all very well. I came out here to warn you, but you know much more about all this than I do, so let me just say welcome back," he added dryly. Coming back to find the mansion in smoking ruins--some welcome.

"Thank you." Rain said brightly, then with a rueful smile she shrugged. "For the past... I don't know how many days, I have had zero contact with other human beings. There are people here, in spite of all their flaws, and I get to have chocolate for breakfast. And - this may sound awful - I hated that house. New wings going up overnight, sudden walls, that goddamn creepy-ass mirror room that I tried to avoid. Even if we're still stuck in the experiment, and as much as I was pissed off y'all partied so hard without me that you burned down the house," she said the last bit as a little joke, and she grinned at Bob to show she was kidding, "I'm glad to see that sucker smoldering in the early morning light. I doubt everyone'll see it that way, but since it's already on fire - or still on fire, anyway... burn, baby, burn."

"No, that's not awful at all. People were subjected to terrible things in that house, and deliberately so." Not the least of which had been the fire itself. "Maybe now that we're roughing it, forced to depend on one another..." His voice trailed off. Hoping that yet another stress situation would convince people to pull together was probably hopelessly optimistic.

"I really doubt its going to happen." Rain said, somewhat more pessimistically about this. "It's not that it wouldn't usually pull people together - I'm sure it would, in real life." Actually, she doubted that, but Bob seemed like a nice guy. "It's just that these people? You and me and them? Don't traditionally all pitch in together." But hey, anything was possible, right?

"Guess we all just have to hope for the best," Bob said. He didn't really have much hope of anything good coming out of the experiment, but why bring Rain down? She had enough to deal with, being brought back when there wasn't even a house to come home to. "Take care, Rain."

"It was good meeting you, Bob. I wish it had been under more pleasant circumstances." Rain grinned and bit off her chocolate bunny's nose.