maddeninghatter | IC Contact

( AHSKAHJDA she can't say she doesn't jump at that, because sound!!! Cue a fit of (semi-nervous) giggles. )

That is so not an answer!

[ RADIO SILENCE

...maybe he's hiding somewhere? ]

Don't make me sic the dogs on you!

( The plural might be misleading. It's really tempting... she needs to keep working on stamina, and she paces her morphs and use of her Initiative granted weapon.

Though she looks between the (very packed, neatly organized) closet and the very dust bunny filled under-the-bed. )

Looking for something?

[ He's standing behind her, having emerged anticlimatically from his bedroom doorway. He's still in his pajamas; he's been doing lots of napping since he got back from the Outlands. Sheep-wrangling is hard work.

His hair is sticking up - more than usual. He rubs his head and adds sleepily: ]

Have you seen my tablet anywhere, by the way? I think I might have left it on the sofa.

( He left the thing in the couch?! Collette breaks out giggling, hands coming up to her face to cover her mouth. Oh no. Now she was thinking he'd really just be lurking anywhere he felt like it. Break could be normal, too! )

I think I've been hearing it...!

( Twisted around as she is to get a look at him, her hands fall away from her mouth and her lips quirk up in her own amused grin. Break's hair is reminding her rather much of Caesar's, if infinitely more... silvered with age. (Or something. Some people were just naturally that fair!) )

I was actually looking for you. Did you want tea or something? You look kinda out of it!

( Which she marks as him being tired, as she reaches out to her wheels and turns herself around, then rolls backward a foot or two. It gives her hands something to do other than fiddle with her clothing, or pick at her tablet, brush her hair off her face and drape it over either shoulder. In spite of herself, there's a nervous flutter in her stomach. Last time this had not gone well. )

[ He'd heard her bumping around. Now connecting the dots....... ]

Were you looking for me... under the sofa? Ahahahaha!

[ As he drops onto said sofa and starts rummaging around in the cushions, he adds: ]

Yes, yes - tea would be lovely!

I was going to ask you to bring me a dust-bunny souvenir! It's been a week, I don't think even Bertie's got the energy to have moved the furniture and dusted under it all again.

( Yet. Either way, it's off to the kitchen, and fiddling with the mugs that are left on the right level for her to figure out if she wants to go kettle or microwave.

... Kettle. Something else deserves a chance to scream around here. She pulls it down off the stove, then maneuvers next to the sink, water masking any other sound for the moment. Once it's on and the burner's turned up high, she rolls back out of the kitchen entrance. )

Jack's sent me a text message. He thinks I'm mad at him.

( Said very, very neutrally. )

[ He's startled, of course. But he has done enough thinking over the past week or ten days, to be able to do some more. Click-click-click. If Collette is telling him this, after what had happened, then clearly... ]

You haven't replied.

[ Oz had been puzzled at their exchange, when he'd come to find Collette. Meaning she hadn't spoken to him, either. Which means: ]

And you haven't spoken to anyone about our--

[ A wry smile. He should have trusted her. ]

Good. Good girl.

You better start explaining, Break.

( She laughs,lips twisting up into a lopsided smile. Kelly would have been irritated, responding with sarcasm. James would have had a bite behind his asking why.

Collette sounds amused... amused by the good girl, at least. If it'd been clever girl, she would have laughed until she cried. Unintentional movie parodies! )

Because I want to know why I haven't said a word to anyone.

( And why she hadn't told anyone about what had happened, except for what he'd heard, with Oz -- and that was the sum of it. Not even with Caesar... and goodness knew, he was the most likely to hear her say anything.

But she likes thinking on happier things and teasing when she's with Caesar. Not talking about these things that hurt or frighten her, especially when outside of his control. )

I want to know if I should be worried that he's one of the two people here that I know of who were given time stopping abilities by the Initiative.

[ Whatever explanation, whatever slice of the truth he'd been starting to say screeches to a halt. ]

What--

[ He twists around on the sofa, galvanized and astonished. ]

"Time stopping abilities"?

Wait, you didn't know?

( She supposes she is leapfrogging ahead to her guess, but the way Jack had moved reminded her too much of how she can. Though... )

He doesn't have super speed or anything back home, does he? Like ridiculous, stop go super speed? I mean, I guess that could be it, but it just felt like how I...

( Perplexed, she rubs her thumb over the back of her stopwatch, having dug it out of inside her shirt. )

[ ...

Oh. Dots connected. But he doesn't elaborate, because the memory of how she did it is painful. Crisply: ]

So you've met him before. Of course. I didn't realize. What were the circumstances?

When he got here? There were oranges and stuff. Then --

( She pauses. )

Do you know about my morphing? 'Cause that'll make the next part make a whole lot more sense.

[ When Jack had first arrived...

He had been ill, weak and coughing; he'd one of the first victims of the epidemic. He'd hardly been able to cope with Jack being... Jack. And then Jack had called him "Kevin."

A muscle twitches in his jaw. That man knows so many secrets, so many damaging awful secrets. Things he doesn't want Oz to find out about, nor Collette. ]

You--

[ He has experienced her fish form, obviously, so there must be some other detail she wants him to know. ]

Go on.

( She'd followed soon after to her sickbed, but not soon enough. Jack had been charming, amusing, not the only new face she'd familiarized with that day. But that thought isn't so much on her mind as watching Break is; trying to read what she can from him even before she goes on.

How much to say? )

I can turn into all sorts of animals if I've touched them before while they're alive. I mean, it is and isn't that simple, just touching something doesn't mean I can morph them later. I have to want to acquire them, you know? It's about concentration!

( Ah... but aquire what? Animals? People. The line most miss, and the line she won't invite Break to cross now: people were as animal as the cats and rats of Exsilium. She won't talk about what it could mean, to become other people. )

Anyway, when I do acquire something, like the dolphin I used at the beach, I'm an exact clone of that original animal. There's no mind there, not one that thinks like we do, though dolphins are pretty smart. You can feel that? A potential. But um... does clone mean anything to you? It means I'm exactly the same. Minus any scars, or things like that, but you get the idea. So the second time I ran into Jack, it was when they were bombing the hospital. I shouldn't have -- well, I couldn't just do nothing, you know? So I went in as a canine, to help track down rooms with people still inside, to get the evacuators there faster. I met him in one of the rooms.

( She leaves it at that for now. It's... too much of an invitation to say how it'd unnerved her; how she'd stepped in as a dog and said, "what are you doing?" in thought speak, becaues the intent, the read her colorblind eyes had, was not a happy one.

And then Jack had picked the child up and smiled and said, Saving him, or something of the sort. She would admit to remembering better that first impression than the way Jack took off, carrying his slight burden. And again... he's been so nice otherwise. Even coming back -- he'd come back for her. One weird feeling was one weird feeling. )

[ He wouldn't have made the connection, except that she'd mentioned the mind of an animal. At which point his thoughts drifted over to the possibility - what about an animal with a mind? ]

You--

[ He puts that thought aside, files it away, because he is paying attention to the rest of her story. The next question filtering to the top of his thoughts is what did he do to you? And that thought is enough to kindle his fury--

No. He will set that aside also. It's difficult to think when he's angry. ]

What did he do?

Ah, he...

( She hesitates. She's not sure if she should mention what she thinks she saw. In the end, how she says what happened might say enough. )

He saved a kid.

( Like she's not entirely sure. And a small smile, brief, following. )

I sure surprised him, walking in like that! After the kid, he came back and escorted me out.

[ He has a lot of other thoughts vying for brain space, including what were you doing there, you could have been hurt; as well as his own memories of what had happened during that bombing - what had happened to Oz, what had happened to him...

But he'll push these aside also, because: ]

You're leaving something out.

[ He picks at the hem of his nightshirt, rolling it between his fingers. ]

Enlighten me.

( She hesitates again, because -- she's actually leaving many small details out. Which ones mattered? Not the mention that she'd still been in recovery, that she'd at least been out of the coughing fits. It's too much of a sideline.

So what was she leaving out about Jack? )

I don't know, it was just a feeling when I came in the room. Animals pick up on a lot we don't notice, so just... I don't know. It was different between before he knew I was there and after.

( Subtly, like there'd never been a difference there. But she relied on reading those situations; she's spent so much of her life in and out of hospitals, dealing with people who loved and hated and resented or appreciated their jobs and their patients.

Still... )

Then the time thing, that was just how he moved. It reminded me of what it felt like when I was getting used to my stop watch, that's all! Kind of stop go, like I was missing a few seconds watching him take the kid back down the hall. I could have been tired.

( It'd make as much sense. And her eyes, as a canine, were predatory -- they focused on motion, sought it out, chased it down with the aid of nose, ear, all sorts of sensation -- but not detailed. Human eyes saw more detail. Raptor eyes turned detail into an artform. )

You had a feeling. An - instinct. An animal's instinct, that something wasn't quite right.

[ He stretches himself out on the sofa, his legs hooked over the back of it. One arm slides down, his fingertips grazing the floor. He looks languorous, but in truth he is thinking, taking all of this in, rolling it over in his mind and considering. How much to tell her, how much to leave out.

She may be... fond of him (cringing involuntarily at that thought), but she has no real reason to trust him, certainly not after everything that has transpired. ]

You may or may not be aware of this, however...

Jack Vessalius is renowned as a great hero in my country, and is much admired.

( Hero.

Until Exsilium, Collette had never thought she could take issue with that word. It's in being here, in seeing people she cares about destroy themselves on that word, hero, in meeting the people who were the superheroes of her childhood, or the idea of those superheroes as played true in other times and places, that the word has started to become gray instead of pristine.

So she watches Break, wonders, considers asking, realizes she has spoken before the consideration has really occurred: )

A hero for doing what?

[ In a voice that is both silky and droll: ]

Why, nothing much. Simply saving the world, that's all. Obviously, then - everybody who loves heroes, loves Jack. But if there were something not quite right about Jack, as you've wondered... and if the tale of his heroism is also not quite right...

[ Delicately: ]

That would be, ah, disappointing to a number of people.

( Sounds like he lived. Part of Collette wonders if that word got thrown onto any of their backs, once the Earth had been saved. As long as Vanadi had spoken true to her, and that detail, dividing her from the Collette he'd known first, didn't stray. )

People like Oz.

( She says, tone conversational, the upturn on Oz's name the only question she offers. Oz because Oz is the first that comes to mind; all of this a thought process going on while at the back of her mind she's wondering on things both related and unrelated.

She shakes her head, shaking off those buzzing kinds of thoughts. )

What did the story not get right?

It's no secret that Oz and Jack share a surname. Nor that they resemble one another. Likewise, Oz admires heroes, as anyone can tell, from the way he goes on about Holy Knight.

So I'm not telling you anything that isn't already common knowledge.

It is also common knowledge that you and Oz are friends. If I tell you anything he doesn't know, it puts all of us in a difficult position.

[ He has spent so many years keeping all of his private thoughts and secrets so closely guarded. Letting go of anything is wrenchingly difficult. ]

So I'll tell you a little bit more common knowledge, okay? The story of Jack's heroism is incomplete. History has left a great many details hanging. Details that affect not only Jack, but also someone else very close to Oz.

( Where are you leading me, Break? It's a curious puzzle, and not the sort she was so often enmeshed in before here. People warped and wrapped in secrets and stories and things that kept them safe or isolated.

But she can understand one kind of request, or at least an implication. Oz wanted her silence on his incuse; something that would drag him down beyond everything if he and his friends didn't find the righting of it in time. What would a silence from Oz mean in turn? Not her own personal one, but something he could know, even while he couldn't?

Pandora's box. Sometimes you have to let it all go to realize how important the hope is that you hold. And hope, unlike the rest, didn't need to be locked away to stay. Hope for the best. )

Someone here? ( Or someone at home? Ada (if gone now), Gilbert, clearly not Break, could it be Elliot? No... maybe? Or others, people in Oz's thoughts, ones whose faces haven't shown in Exsilium. )

But Jack knows all that. Doesn't he? Because of anything Oz says -- or... ( she falls silent. something else niggles at her, only important because of what she holds back out of habit. ) Families do that, look like each other. Share names and all. So why point it out?

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