come_sailaway | it's my party and I'll cry if I want to

it's my party and I'll cry if I want to

Who: Gal Friday + YOU
What: Icebreaker party
When: 3/13, evening
Where: Rischie
Warnings: TBA

[the morning announcements alter daily now, by the second week of the month. one week until the party. four days until the party. the party is tomorrow.]

The new cruiser get-together will start at 9PM tonight at Rischie! Remember: The dress code is cruise elegant! Hm? [there is a sound like a crackle and pop of static.] The Captain says he won't be attending, but he'll be paying extra special attention to everybody who does!

[if that's a sufficient enough bribe.

"but we don't have cruise elegant clothing," you cry. but you do! have you not checked the top drawer in your room's dresser, where at most two perfectly suited formal outfits are located? you have? but they weren't there before today? don't ask questions. just get ready for the party.

the house lights in the club are at full brightness, giving everything the sort of uneasy liminal feeling a room gets when used for something opposite its intended purpose. booths line the walls, and small tables and chairs sit between them and the dance floor, which is empty except for one table, holding a series of "HELLO, MY NAME IS..." nametags and sheets of glittery stickers. Friday is there, of course, standing by the table. she's even dressed up! and if your character hasn't corrected her previously, their name tag will have their true name. there are also a few buffet tables with refreshments on them, and trays bearing canapes and flutes of champagne float by. (deftly avoiding minors! excluding Jinx, but only if Venti is within close proximity. welcome to parenthood, barbatos!)

once everyone is settled in, Friday will clear her throat (??) to get everyone's attention and explain the rules of the night. it's an altered version of twenty questions: every person in the room must answer ten questions about themselves, asked by their fellow passengers, collecting stars for every answer considered acceptable. when they have 10 stars, they're allowed to leave!

oh, yeah, the door to the club shut about five minutes ago. it doesn't seem very eager to open back up again.

time to break some ice! breaking ice and cruises always go well together, after all.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"...Do you want a sticker?"

This counts as a personal question, right? What's your most immediate desire? Like recognizes like, with that deep underscore of anxiety, and Clarke is more than willing to help get everyone out of this room before anything more alarming than just being locked inside happens.

Look, she's even already peeling one of the sheet and offering it towards him on the tip of her finger.

Oh no. Oh that's... actually really sweet. He feels the corners of his mouth turn up in what some dusty part of him recognizes as a smile. And he says, "Yes."

He holds out a metal finger for her to stick one arm of the star on it so he can transfer.

And, in order to be fair, he asks, "Do you want a sticker? Or would you rather. I ask a real question?"

That's a quick change — from a man facing down the gallows of interpersonal questions to a man struggling to remember which muscles made a smile — but no one could call that anything other than an improvement. And smiles, however rusty, have the habit of drawing out mirrored responses. Though Clarke's is a little pinched and stiff, one wrong whisper away from slipping off her face entirely.

The proffered sticker is neatly plopped on the tip of a metal finger, and despite the very sudden real questions Clarke has about that, she's just going to file that factoid back for later. It's really not the weirdest new thing she's seen this week.

"I'd rather the doors opened right now and cut this whole party short. But if that's out of the question, I'll just take a sticker."

"I would rather that, too," he admits. He fixes the sticker onto his torn name tag, and peels off another to give to her, instead. "If we have to get to know each other. Can't we do it our own way?"

"Maybe we're not doing it fast enough."

This is a bit of a heavier statement, laden with Clarke's inherent distrust of their mysterious captain and the reason behind their existence on this boat. But then there's the break as she accept that sticker, follows his lead and puts it on the edge of her name tag. It's enough time to curb that desire to immediately rock off into unsubtle paranoid implications, and when Clarke looks back at his face, she pauses yet again.

Small talk is hard.

"So. Want another sticker?"

They can absolutely do this twenty times and get the hell outta here, this is a solid plan.

"Yes," he says seriously. Small talk is hard. He's already got a few stickers, so twenty times won't be necessary, at least. "You can ask a real one if you want. Just. I don't remember much, so I might not be able to answer."

There's the immediate drag to ask why don't you remember much? and dig into weak spots like she's the one with a metal appendage, complete with claws. Because that's just who Clarke Griffin sort of defaults to in times of stress, constantly looking for a foothold here, a crevice to desperately grasp at there. But she's not without empathy; can read a room quite well, and appropriately dial back her caustic edges when they don't do her any good.

So there's nothing underhanded or purposefully rude in any of her following questions. But it's a bit of a coin toss to allow a stranger to ask me anything when they aren't familiar with any landmines under the surface.

"How'd you lose your arm?"

He opens his mouth, shuts it, and after a beat of silence finally answers, "I don't remember. There was snow. Being carried while the stump was bleeding. But not what happened."

That sensation of absolutely needing to offer an apology despite arguably not doing anything wrong is strong in her chest now. Swelling, taking up space in her throat until Clarke can ultimately swallow it back and just nod. She's sorry for touching sensitive, raw nerve endings of traumatic events, but not for asking.

Also that's kind of a terrible answer, far from considered acceptable by most standards. Yet she's still peeling another sticker, offering it his way, and trying to play fair.

"Understandable." Trauma, black outs, self preservation, etc. "Do you want to ask me something too?"

He considers, while accepting another sticker of his own. Then asks one that got asked him earlier, and he hadn't had an answer for. It seems like something most actual people would have an easy answer for. "What kind of music do you like."

'Actual people' being a bit of a big ask, when virtually no new music has been created in the last 100 years for her. Vaguely Clarke can recall the beginning chords of C2C's - Down The Road, but as for an acceptable way to summarize music she's actually liked?

"Older music. Anything with a piano, actually. I don't listen to it much." A beat, then a vague gesture up at the speakers warbling out shrill mingling music above their heads. "But I know I hate this."

He nods firmly, holding out a sticker for her. "Me, too. It's awful. I don't know what I do like. But it's not this." He pauses. "A piano. What is that." It sounds familiar, but he can't chase down a picture of it in his head, or what it sounds like.

Her companion may have lead this entire conversation with the disclaimer that his memories were faulty, but in this exact moment Clarke has to wonder if he's messing with her. And upon deciding he's not, struggles for a long moment on how to best describe a piano.

It was... just a piano.

"Um. You know John's, on the fifth floor? There's a piano there — it's the table-like insturnment with white and black keys. Sounds a little like, uh —"

Guess what, sticker-buddy. Just for you, she'll even do her best attempt at humming a few notes. It's not amazing, singing is not a valuable talent in the apocalypse, but Clarke can probably carry a tune.

"It's a very calming sound."

He goes back over his mental map of the ship, finds John's, thinks over what's in it--

"Oh. Oh, yes, that, okay." He'd seen it, he'd filed it away, he hadn't even tried to put a name to it.

He offers her another sticker, because between reminding him what a piano was and humming for him, she definitely deserves it. "Someone should try to play it," he comments.

On occasion, she's nice like that, and it's lovely to be recognized and validated with yet another sticker.

Off-handedly, as she's adding to her nametag badge of gold stars: "I'd volunteer to test a lot of things here, but you're going to have to find someone else for that."

"Yeah, I don't know how, either," he admits. Which should not be a big surprise, given he'd forgotten what a piano even was. "Do you think it's hard?"

She's not exactly well versed in amnesia — as the fallout from traumatic brain injury or an extreme emotional coping mechanism — but has heard enough anecdotes to know he shouldn't discount himself so aggressively without even trying. Music was one of the few activities that transcended memory, written like notes into the muscles or immediately comforting like the scent of your mothers hair.

And barring compartmentalized practice, or just plain raw talent...

"No harder than pressing a key with your finger. But with no guarantee you'd be any good without a lot of practice — just like any other skill."

He's pretty sure HYDRA wouldn't have bothered teaching him piano. It's not exactly a weaponizable skill. And he's still not quite reconciled to having a full life before HYDRA. (He's getting there, though.)

"Maybe Johnny or Watson know how to play," he muses. "Or Diana. She plays guitar. Maybe she'll know piano, too."

"Oh —"

Oh, because even in this rather small, confined space, it's still wild to meet someone new and realize they've got less than two degrees of separation. This is the smallest populace Clarke's ever lived among, which is honestly saying a lot. But yes, Johnny, Watson...

"We could ask, I guess. Diana, I mean. She seems..."

Clarke trails off, but for once with an optimistic lilt to her tone. She doesn't know how to describe Diana yet, but when they'd met the woman had shown her nothing but genuine earnestness, and that was admirable. It almost wasn't worth remembering she'd cried blood in light of how deeply she felt the need to protect humanity. Meanwhile, Clarke did not leave a stellar first impression on John Watson, and vice versa.

"She is interesting," he agrees with what he assumes Clarke might say. He probably means something closer to "kind", but he's still learning how to recognize kindness. "She played me a song that I recognized. And then helped me remember a story I saw once." Or maybe three times. He's starting to think he saw it three times, actually.

As she's floundering to say nice things about strangers — one's that ooze kindness that Clarke also hasn't got any idea of how to deal with, especially so seemingly freely given and unconditional — this is a welcome distraction.

"What story?"

Stuck on a spaceship orbiting Earth for almost 100 years, with nothing but what the original astronauts brought on board, the tradition of oral retellings had been central to her childhood. Books were coveted, stories loved and often retold. But the entire human compendium of tales hadn't survived throughout the generations following the apocalypse, and the youngest were left starved for something new.

Compliments are hard, he agrees, Clarke. Statements of fact are one thing, but actually coming up with nice things to say is weird. He has no experience with it.

That he remembers, anyway.

"The Wizard of Oz. I remember seeing it in a theater." A pause. "I think. I'm pretty sure."

"Oh!"

A wave of surprise breaks over Clarke's face before she can entirely reign it in. Some stories, some movies transcend time and space, it seems. Even if she'd never seen it, she knows —

"That was one of the first movies in color, wasn't it? And it's where we get Somewhere Over The Rainbow."

"That was how I recognized it," he nods. "Diana was playing the song. And I knew it. The more she told me about the story, the more I remembered." He doesn't know about the first movie in color, but he does remember: "When the scene goes from black and white to color. It's amazing."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

it's my party and I'll cry if I want to

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