come_sailaway | are you out there? can you hear this?

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are you out there? can you hear this?

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

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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.

"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."

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."

"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."

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."

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

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

"Do you want to tell me why?"

"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."

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.

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'."

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."

"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."

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

A small hesitation.

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

"He was a jerk, but like a a normal jerk. Always wanted to fight when I didn't wanna, because I didn't wanna, because he thought it was fun when I got mad. Sometimes I wonder if he thought I was actin'." A faint smile finds its way onto his face. "He thought me playin' with dolls an' gardenin' with Ma were weird, an' he wasn't quiet about it. But he thought that bein' weird was fine, an' he taught me how to box when other kids bullied me over it."

A pause. "I was so mad when I left, an' so hurt when I came back. I'm tryin' my best to remember the good stuff, 'fore I forget it."

"I know what you mean." Her smile is small, and trembles a little. "About trying to remember the good things. My brother Ludwig and I used to be a little like that, when we were small. Except I was the one who thought it was great fun to make him mad."

“Really now? Proper lady Cassandra, the bratty sister?” He turns his grin her way, puts his free hand on his chest in dramatic surprise. “My image of you is truly shattered. I’m shocked, frankly.”

He laughs, lightly. “Older or younger brother?”

"Older. The youngest before me -- I was the last of seven."

She maintains the smile, but it's gone a little pensive. "It's just me and Percy now."

"That's... hard." He regrets saying it immediately, so he tries to save it. "I could barely handle the one older brother. Six sounds like a lot."

He starts to lower himself to the floor, his hand never leaving hers. "That was the hardest part of seein' him last month. Realizin' I'm older than he was."

When she realizes what he's doing, she drops down next to him, cross-legged under her skirts. "It was a lot. Brothers and sisters. I'm ... I've passed all their ages now except Julius, he was the oldest. Almost twenty-two."

She leans her head back and a little sideways, against the cabinets lining the counter.

Okie nods along as he listens. A nervous laugh creaks out of him, before he tries to cut it off.

"Sorry, sorry, I just- I thought this is the worst I've ever felt about beating him at something, it shouldn't be funny."

A choked laugh sputters out of her as well, too quickly to suppress.

"Oh," she manages, "no, it shouldn't be but it absolutely is, don't be sorry."

He laughs with her, feeling guilty and absurd and connected and safe. Everything, in a moment. And it clicks.

"I don't know when it happened, but I think you're my best friend."

Her breath snags on something mid-laughter, and she has to gulp back some dreadful undignified sound in her throat before it comes out.

"I ... don't think I've ever had a best friend before. Or been anyone else's."

Edited 2023-12-01 04:29 (UTC)

"That's a shame. You deserve one, an' you're more than good enough to be one." A squeeze of her hand.

"Hey, you remember a couple months back, up on the sports deck? Would you be- Can I ask- Is it okay if you're my someone else?"

Edited 2023-12-01 05:42 (UTC)

I figured everyone had someone else, she remembers him saying on that day, unhappy and resigned; and herself, on a different day, pouring out her shame to Security like a hurt child, I just want to come first for someone.

Her heart seems to swell in her chest, to glow like a little coal of warmth.

"And -- would you be mine, then?"

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mistertwister - 2023-12-01 07:37 (UTC) - Expand

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