are you out there? can you hear this?

[not_the_last]

Who: Cassandra de Rolo & OTA
When: November
Where: Around the Serena Eterna
What: on all levels but physical/literal, shouting into the void
Warnings: Game-typical angst, canon-typical angst, others to be added as they come up

A. what's the future, who will choose it

She's ... anxious, she decides, is the right word. Anxious about the Voyager plan. What if it gets discovered and stopped, what if it proceeds as planned but fails to break out of the demiplane, what if it reaches the outer world and is discovered by something only interested in taking advantage of whatever it finds --

The anxiety never gets anywhere near the point of making her want to call a halt to it. Not this time.

Still, she does find herself wandering about near the signpost and its accompanying book, to see who's writing in it. Not that it makes any difference, but ... it's something she can keep an eye on.

B. you never know who's still awake

Cassandra is rarely if ever to be seen around the buffet these days. One might spot her in the kitchens, though, usually very late at night, usually making something involving potatoes and/or cheese. Sometimes, similarly late at night, she might carry a snack to eat elsewhere around the ship; usually more cheese, with crackers, or cured meat, or a little jar of jam or relish of some kind. Usually somewhere that doesn't attract a lot of people, as though reluctant to eat in company with anyone.

Are you up very late and avoiding company too? You might run into her.

C. play the madmen poets

She's aware that it's unwise, perhaps now more than ever, to do anything to shut out or dull her awareness of her surroundings. Nonetheless: it may also be something she needs now more than ever.

As a compromise, she's only using her music player when she's got a good view of the rest of her surroundings, or when she's otherwise fairly sure nothing can get close to her without her knowing. So 'while flying' is a good option, as far from the ship as she can get while still able to make it back before her wings fail; another is perched on a high roof or crows' nest, some spot she can only get to by flying. And occasionally, very occasionally, in the library while seated with her back to a wall

There's so much music in this little box, and she still hasn't heard all of it. This month she's working her way through the repertoire of a bard with a rough but compelling voice, and trying to make out what his verses are talking about. (You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows is possibly the first intelligible thing he's said in this song, and she still isn't sure what he means by it.)

D. wildcard

Comments

[not_the_last]

"Okie?"

Her voice sounds ... cautious, a little uncertain.

(Not alarmed, surely. Surely there's no cause for that.)

[mistertwister]

Okie's face shoots up immediately at the sound of her voice. "Oh, Cass, hi."

There's a half second he lingers on her, before he quickly finishes wrapping so he can give her his undivided attention. "Just doin' some trip prep. Nothin' too- Well, nothin' outside of the normal unusual."

[not_the_last]

"Trip?" For a moment she has no idea what he's talking about.

[mistertwister]

"Oh, uh, into Tommy Bahama. I need some more stuff to scrap for projects, and there's some interesting stuff in there if you ka bit deeper. It's where I grabbed all the bags." He gestures vaguely at the totes on the ground next to him. "Plan is to walk a half day in, get some sleep inside, grab some goodies, then out again. So I'm packin' food I think'll stay good a couple hours."

He gives a gentle smile, hopes it's reassuring. "What about you? What's got you up at my hours?"

[not_the_last]

"Oh," she says, a little feebly, "I always have trouble sleeping, and I was ... I was hungry."

It's entirely the truth, and it sounds in her own ears like she's lying.

[mistertwister]

"Yeah?" It's an invitation. To share more, if she's comfortable. "I get that. I haven't slept normal since I came back from the Hedge. Dunno if I even could anymore."

[not_the_last]

"The Hedge?" She's sincerely curious, of course she is, but it's also a way not to talk about the thing she doesn't want to talk about.

[mistertwister]

"Yeah. I figure you've at least heard the term Changelin' get tossed 'round here, but maybe you haven't." He shrugs. He doesn't mind telling her, wouldn't mind giving her more details, but that doesn't mean he won't need to warm up to it a bit.

"Bottom line is this cruise ain't my first or worst magical kidnappin'."

[not_the_last]

"Erin's told me some," she says, "but ... I wouldn't say that I have a strong understanding of it."

This cruise isn't her first magical kidnapping either, and it would be difficult to say whether or not it counts as her worst. She's not going to say so just now, though, for fear of derailing whatever Okie is likely to say next.

[mistertwister]

"The Hedge is a kinda barrier between where I come from and where They are. I, uh. Got grabbed by the Gentry when I was fourteen. I had a fight with my dad, ran from home. Ended up on the wrong side 'a the Hedge." His voice stops there, and he fights to get a hold of it again.

"The thing on the other side, it- it turned me into the sky. Stretched everything I was over top of its shitty play-pretend world, poked me in the soul so I'd stay a storm, 'cause that's what it needed for its game. I was in there three years."

[not_the_last]

"It turned you into --"

She suddenly remembers the chunk of sunlight from Erin's hoard, turned into a pendant, and her stomach wrenches hard.

[mistertwister]

"Yeah." Okie lifts an arm, watches the clouds darken and swirl over it. It only ever gets so much easier to talk about.

"Whipped me up into a tornado, chased me over fake towns an' houses. Got really used to seein' people die from a half mile up. That's why, uh, back in Dedue's memory, when I saw all those bodies from the pegasus... I broke, a bit."

[not_the_last]

She remembers the moment he's talking about; remembers focusing on the matter ahead of them, closely enough that she was willing to let Darcy handle Okie's brief collapse. Assuming it was only the unaccustomed flight, and the death all around them, and nothing more than that.

Shame flickers red in her cheeks, for just a moment, and subsides.

"I had no idea," she whispers.

[mistertwister]

"I don't think you coulda known. I don't think anyone knew then." So don't blame yourself, please.

"But, uh, everything was bad, when I got back out. Didn't have a home anymore, started stealin' an sleepin' in sheds an' shit. Gave up my name, but a couple 'a folks 'round here have pulled that back outta me." There's an edge there. Things that aren't being said, but it's less him hiding them from her and more him hiding from them. "I know you don't like me thinkin' this place is good, but I was at the lowest point of my life between the Hedge an' here. Here was always gonna be better."

[not_the_last]

She remembers what the image of Okie's brother said, what he called him. She isn't going to ask about either of those now.

"I hope you understand," she starts, and shakes her head, and starts again. "I hope I have been clear that I don't hold it against you, finding this place better than where you were before."

[mistertwister]

"I know you don't, it's just... I'm tryin' to let myself want more, still. It's just takin' some effort."

He's full of thoughts, of things he wants to tell her. One of them bubbles out of him. "My name's Cal. You heard already, I know, but I want you to know, from me. Okie is, um. How to say it..." A deep breath. "I'm from a place called Oklahoma. An Okie is someone from there. But it used to be a word other people used to call folks that ran away from there. That's what I am. I thought when my family died, Cal died too. That I shoulda died too. I try not to think it anymore."

[not_the_last]

Cassandra's not sure she's following this exactly -- can it be that common for people to flee this place Oklahoma, that there's a name for it? -- but that's the least important part of what he's saying, a detail she could chase if she wanted to avoid the darker emotional depths of his story.

She finds she doesn't want to.

"It's ... it can be difficult," she says, very quietly, "not to think that. When you're the only one left."

[mistertwister]

"I think I'm the one that did it. I think it's my fault."

[not_the_last]

She swallows. (He killed me, the ghost of Earl said.)

"Do you want to tell me why?"

[mistertwister]

"When I got outta Arcadia, came back out in front 'a my house, it was destroyed. By a storm. The same kind I just spent three years as. The dust was all still kicked up, an' when I, uh, found them. They were warm, still." He sees it, as he talks. All over again, every detail.

"It shouldn't be possible. I shouldn't 'a still been the Storm on that side 'a the Hedge. But I can't make myself believe it wasn't me that did it. Mr. Smith saw it, thinks it wasn't a coincidence, too. But he told me it wasn't my fault, an' I have been able to believe that."

[not_the_last]

They were warm, still. Her throat tightens painfully, all at once, as though someone's thrown a cord around it and pulled.

"I can," she starts to say, and her voice scrapes and catches on something, "I can s-see how one -- how one might --"

All the precision and care she wants to put into it, all the wise insight, crumbles away like a snowbank undercut by a river in thaw. With a breath like a sob, she manages "I am so sorry," and reaches for his hand.

[mistertwister]

He'll never be able to repay her for the feeling of her hand in his. How could he? He focuses on it, lets that burned-in sight of home fade and give way to memories of here. The two of them, talking at pride and the medieval realm and up on the sports deck, dinners with Pops and Ava, their wedding, that afternoon in the garden with Helena, Dimitri calling him beautiful. His life, as Okie.

"It's been just over a year, I think. I don't remember the day. I never got to tell 'em I regretted leavin'."

[not_the_last]

She presses his hand, unable to speak.

And what could she say, anyway, in the face of this? It's not fair is the only thing coming to mind, and surely he knows that already.

Finally she swallows down the ache and tries again, only the smallest bit husky. "I think ... I agree with Mr. Smith. Starr," she corrects herself. "I don't see how it could possibly have been your doing."

[mistertwister]

"Thanks, Cass," he says with a squeeze of her hand. But he doesn't want to dwell on that debate any more than he has to.

"He wasn't like that when he was alive. Earl, I mean."

[not_the_last]

"No, I didn't imagine he was."

A small hesitation.

"Would you ... want to tell me what he was like?"