More fun than usual, I saw. [ No seriously, though, Rey is A+ nice job. And, really, Kate is just looking a little... smug about everything. ] It that obvious?
Edited (i think up better tags days after the fact oop) Date: 2016-08-11 10:46 am (UTC)
[ That makes some of the amusement and joy dissolve from Kate's face, just a touch. Makes her glance away, because they came at these problems from entirely different perspectives - Kate, whose life is half over (should she even live a full superhuman lifespan, and she's not believed she would for many years), and Bianca, who has lived far longer than any being should (in Kate's opinion). The impulsiveness Kate has wired into herself in so many facets of her existence tends to stutter and stop when it comes to feelings, to others.
To letting anyone get close.
She's fucking terrified, still, that it was the wrong decision. That for all Castiel's talking about not letting suffering win and giving happiness a chance - trusting herself with any happiness at all (she has certainly been happy in her life, but not in a soul-penetrating, bone-clenching way; not for a long time) - and for all the things she's clinging to (Carl spouting cliches over coffee and telling her to give it a go; Faith, back before they managed to topple Rosenberg's hold, reminding them all that we all deserve a chance to do what we love, what makes us happy; even Bianca, asking her why she keeps punishing herself and the feeling of fuck I am and the accompanying musing of is she really living up to the kind of life she wants, is she really creating an existence worth the deaths of all her family?), that fear hasn't dissipated at all. She has let herself take so many chances in life - with her own life, even with the lives of others - but done everything to keep herself from taking chances with her heart.
Letting that control go scares her more than all the monsters Hadriel can throw at her.
She swallows, silent for a moment. Life - especially down here - wants nothing more than to remind them that people disappear. That it can easily make people disappear. In that case... ] Long or short, may as well have fun with it. [ Some of that amusement that was lost in her face is in her tone instead, even if it isn't quite genuine. ]
[Bianca looks back, thoughtfully interested. She's accused Kate of emotional constipation before and this, she thinks, is how it looks when Kate strains to overcome it.
She doesn't know what to do to help. She would have, once, she thinks; or perhaps it was just that Iris never stopped to think about how to help. She would just wade in and help anyway.]
[ Perhaps there isn't a way to help. Maybe it's just something she has to fight through alone. Whatever it is, Kate doesn't seem to let it show on her face for too long, lets the question get her full attention instead. ] No. Why?
[She does, and because Bianca is Bianca, she brings her pet hyenas as well as stopping into Delight's bar for a bottle on the way over.
Bianca hands Kate the mirror and tequila without a word. The mirror shows a life that ought to seem utterly alien to Bianca: a suburban house, identifiable as American by the cars parked outside, with a literal white picket fence. There is a brood of angelic small children, some blonde and some ginger. There are dogs - a pair of adorable corgis shown playing contentedly with Bianca's giant spotted scavengers, and at the centre of this mythical household, a man.
He is recognisable to anyone with a certain amount of Terran pop culture knowledge, with his distinctive green hair and his bleached, scarred face; except the version in the mirror has kind eyes, hands that the small children in the silent show clearly trust as a source of comfort and safety, and an understated, gentle smile.]
[ Kate hasn't looked at her mirror since the thing turned up, has kept it locked in that box on the shelf for as long as she's had the box on hand (scavenged from a shop, like everything else here) and resisted the temptation to look, to hear any of the voices from home (she hears enough of them in her head anyway), but when Bianca hangs up, she meanders over to it, watches the scene again.
When Bianca turns up, Kate's door is open and her attention is on the replaying scene. She sets it on top of the box and takes Bianca's proferred gifts, only glancing at the mirror for a moment before she goes to get glasses for the tequila - well, mugs. Whatever. This place didn't exactly offer a lot of options for drink holders - and sets them and the tequila down on the coffee table.
She watches Bianca's scene - her hope - before saying anything, that slight prick of watching something intimate and private hot on the back of her neck. ] He- [ looks an awful lot like an obscure, comic book villain Marc used to think was so cool as a kid. ] - How did you meet?
[ She hands Bianca the mirror back once the scene finishes, settling into a chair. ]
[Bianca holds the mirror in her lap, half-looking at it, her fingers idly tracing shapes on its surface as she sips her tequila.]
It's ...no, it's not a long story. In fact, it's a miserably short one. But it may require a long story to explain the circumstances. Hadriel isn't my first multidimensional nexus point, you see. When the door caught me, I was fleeing the wreck of a multidimensional Barge. That's where I met him - after a fashion.
Edited (because you never spot the typos on the first run) Date: 2016-08-11 05:07 pm (UTC)
[ somehow, the most surprising part of all of that is that she didn't know this about bianca in the first place. it almost figures that there's more of these dumps somewhere, making people miserable. ] Go on. [ if anything, kate's more curious as to why bianca is bringing this all up to her now, what she has in mind by telling this story, or by letting kate see her hopes splashed out on the screen of that mirror like a silent film. ]
[Bianca's voice slips into a rhythmic singsong rhythm when she tells this story.]
The Barge is a great ship that navigates the sea between realities. It works as a sort of afterlife for those who die without attaining their full potential - they come aboard, learn and grow, and eventually go back to take up their lives. Or brand new lives. There's no requirement to return to their own worlds. The ship's Admiral also chooses people to work there - those whose experience and nature makes them fitted to help others realise themselves.
There are two Barges, or there were. Like matter and anti-matter, they are opposed in nature and philosophy, yet linked on a quantum level.
I worked on one, and Jack on the other - he knew my mirror, and I his.
And then the two collided. For a month the two ships battled for supremacy. For a month I was displaced onto the other barge, a replacement for my other self. I sought him out from curiosity, at first. I was ...close with his counterpart. I thought a mirror version of him would be amusing.
[She laughs softly, a throaty sound perilously close to a sob.]
The very first thing he did was rescue me from an inmate who decided I should be murdered for everyone's safety. He dropped down from a stairwell and carried me away.
[ Lord, and she thought learning about the murdercave was headache inducing enough. Kate's chin rests in her palm as Bianca talks, half-lulled by the cadence of her storytelling. She doesn't need to say a word - Bianca can manage this description without any prompting. ]
At once?
[ There's a slight, small hint of scepticism there. There's being attracted to someone immediately, Kate can understand that - she can even understand, believes in, clicking with some people so immediately that it feels like you were always meant to have them in your life -, but loving someone? It's a bit much. Love is for years of knowing and trusting. ]
At once. I already knew him, in a sense. His double was a dreadful man, for the most part, and mad as a box of venomous frogs - but he was so clever. He could be terribly charming, when the mood took him.
[She's in full-on nostalgia mode now, and rubs the nearest hyena's ears with a wryly fond expression.]
Jack, though - Jack was like meeting a real prince after growing up surrounded by frogs. He didn't trust me at all - my own counterpart had filled his poor head with the most ridiculous horror stories - but his first instinct was still to help.
[She sighs.]
Rey reminds me of him, a little. A warrior with a soft centre. It's my great weakness.
[ If there's anything Kate knows of Bianca, it's how strongly she feels things. How much she talked about Johanna was proof positive of that, how she strides through the hellhole that is Hadriel all fire and unpredictability. She delights in things, even in the shittiest of situations.
(Kate is, honestly, a little jealous. It's been a long time since she looked at life as anything but a series of events she has to get through in order to fulfil some duty - to Marc, to her family, to all their memories. Whatever it is. It's something she bears rather than embraces.)
It's part of the reason she's happy to let Bianca ramble, in the same way she lets Faith have her speeches. They're both fire, endlessly consumed by life in one way or another. It's also why she can't stop the small smile that she covers with a hand.
(Those horror stories might not be all ridiculous, she thinks, but they may also be outweighed by the good qualities that Bianca manages to possess.) ]
You think if we got one of these mirrors again, our visions would change?
[ Kate's reasonably sure hers would remain focused on home, but less to do with the future that seems so far off and more to do with the immediate. Getting home.
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timeasmymeasure
[video]
Date: 2016-08-06 01:49 pm (UTC)Kate, darling, I have dedicated myself wholeheartedly to having fun for - well, a lady never tells her age. But it's been quite a while, now.
[It's been upwards of 500 years since she could last remember her age, between temporal paradoxes and drunken blackouts, but never mind.]
And you? Do I detect a certain pleased exprression?
| permavideo who are we kidding.
Date: 2016-08-06 02:22 pm (UTC)More fun than usual, I saw. [ No seriously, though, Rey is A+ nice job. And, really, Kate is just looking a little... smug about everything. ] It that obvious?
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 11:22 am (UTC)[A beat.]
Lately, every time I've started to have feelings for a person they're snatched away from me. You saw what happened with Johanna.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 12:39 pm (UTC)To letting anyone get close.
She's fucking terrified, still, that it was the wrong decision. That for all Castiel's talking about not letting suffering win and giving happiness a chance - trusting herself with any happiness at all (she has certainly been happy in her life, but not in a soul-penetrating, bone-clenching way; not for a long time) - and for all the things she's clinging to (Carl spouting cliches over coffee and telling her to give it a go; Faith, back before they managed to topple Rosenberg's hold, reminding them all that we all deserve a chance to do what we love, what makes us happy; even Bianca, asking her why she keeps punishing herself and the feeling of fuck I am and the accompanying musing of is she really living up to the kind of life she wants, is she really creating an existence worth the deaths of all her family?), that fear hasn't dissipated at all. She has let herself take so many chances in life - with her own life, even with the lives of others - but done everything to keep herself from taking chances with her heart.
Letting that control go scares her more than all the monsters Hadriel can throw at her.
She swallows, silent for a moment. Life - especially down here - wants nothing more than to remind them that people disappear. That it can easily make people disappear. In that case... ] Long or short, may as well have fun with it. [ Some of that amusement that was lost in her face is in her tone instead, even if it isn't quite genuine. ]
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 12:47 pm (UTC)She doesn't know what to do to help. She would have, once, she thinks; or perhaps it was just that Iris never stopped to think about how to help. She would just wade in and help anyway.]
Did I ever show you my mirror, Kate?
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 01:09 pm (UTC)> action
Date: 2016-08-11 01:24 pm (UTC)Bianca hands Kate the mirror and tequila without a word. The mirror shows a life that ought to seem utterly alien to Bianca: a suburban house, identifiable as American by the cars parked outside, with a literal white picket fence. There is a brood of angelic small children, some blonde and some ginger. There are dogs - a pair of adorable corgis shown playing contentedly with Bianca's giant spotted scavengers, and at the centre of this mythical household, a man.
He is recognisable to anyone with a certain amount of Terran pop culture knowledge, with his distinctive green hair and his bleached, scarred face; except the version in the mirror has kind eyes, hands that the small children in the silent show clearly trust as a source of comfort and safety, and an understated, gentle smile.]
That's Jack. I only knew him for a month.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 01:37 pm (UTC)When Bianca turns up, Kate's door is open and her attention is on the replaying scene. She sets it on top of the box and takes Bianca's proferred gifts, only glancing at the mirror for a moment before she goes to get glasses for the tequila - well, mugs. Whatever. This place didn't exactly offer a lot of options for drink holders - and sets them and the tequila down on the coffee table.
She watches Bianca's scene - her hope - before saying anything, that slight prick of watching something intimate and private hot on the back of her neck. ] He- [ looks an awful lot like an obscure, comic book villain Marc used to think was so cool as a kid. ] - How did you meet?
[ She hands Bianca the mirror back once the scene finishes, settling into a chair. ]
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 04:32 pm (UTC)It's ...no, it's not a long story. In fact, it's a miserably short one. But it may require a long story to explain the circumstances. Hadriel isn't my first multidimensional nexus point, you see. When the door caught me, I was fleeing the wreck of a multidimensional Barge. That's where I met him - after a fashion.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-14 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-16 05:48 pm (UTC)The Barge is a great ship that navigates the sea between realities. It works as a sort of afterlife for those who die without attaining their full potential - they come aboard, learn and grow, and eventually go back to take up their lives. Or brand new lives. There's no requirement to return to their own worlds. The ship's Admiral also chooses people to work there - those whose experience and nature makes them fitted to help others realise themselves.
There are two Barges, or there were. Like matter and anti-matter, they are opposed in nature and philosophy, yet linked on a quantum level.
I worked on one, and Jack on the other - he knew my mirror, and I his.
And then the two collided. For a month the two ships battled for supremacy. For a month I was displaced onto the other barge, a replacement for my other self. I sought him out from curiosity, at first. I was ...close with his counterpart. I thought a mirror version of him would be amusing.
[She laughs softly, a throaty sound perilously close to a sob.]
The very first thing he did was rescue me from an inmate who decided I should be murdered for everyone's safety. He dropped down from a stairwell and carried me away.
I loved him at once.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-17 09:00 pm (UTC)At once?
[ There's a slight, small hint of scepticism there. There's being attracted to someone immediately, Kate can understand that - she can even understand, believes in, clicking with some people so immediately that it feels like you were always meant to have them in your life -, but loving someone? It's a bit much. Love is for years of knowing and trusting. ]
no subject
Date: 2016-08-23 04:25 pm (UTC)[She's in full-on nostalgia mode now, and rubs the nearest hyena's ears with a wryly fond expression.]
Jack, though - Jack was like meeting a real prince after growing up surrounded by frogs. He didn't trust me at all - my own counterpart had filled his poor head with the most ridiculous horror stories - but his first instinct was still to help.
[She sighs.]
Rey reminds me of him, a little. A warrior with a soft centre. It's my great weakness.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-23 07:54 pm (UTC)(Kate is, honestly, a little jealous. It's been a long time since she looked at life as anything but a series of events she has to get through in order to fulfil some duty - to Marc, to her family, to all their memories. Whatever it is. It's something she bears rather than embraces.)
It's part of the reason she's happy to let Bianca ramble, in the same way she lets Faith have her speeches. They're both fire, endlessly consumed by life in one way or another. It's also why she can't stop the small smile that she covers with a hand.
(Those horror stories might not be all ridiculous, she thinks, but they may also be outweighed by the good qualities that Bianca manages to possess.) ]
You think if we got one of these mirrors again, our visions would change?
[ Kate's reasonably sure hers would remain focused on home, but less to do with the future that seems so far off and more to do with the immediate. Getting home.
But would Bianca still see Jack? ]