riverviewlogs | got caught up again

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got caught up again

who: Anderson and you, hopefully! Open!
what: Anderson tries to adjust after arrival. Prompts for floor 10 in the communal housing, the shooting range, and shopping. Also feel free to respond with anything! She's on the police force so any potential coworkers have an easy way to run into her, or be doing something suspicious and she'll investigate. Additionally, I have no attachment to prose, so please feel free to switch to brackets.
when: Various
where: Various
warnings: She is telepathic and empathic, although not very aggressive with it. But please fill out her permissions before threading!

    > FLOOR 10

Anderson is an astonishingly easy roommate to adjust to. It might even take a while to realize she's there. She's used to Spartan living, and it shows: she never leaves traces of her presence around in the communal areas, and she cleans up after herself promptly, immediately. That doesn't mean she's a hermit. She's morbidly interested in meeting all of her roommates, just not quite forward enough to seek them out in a concerted fashion.

But feel free to describe something they would be doing on an average day, and perhaps they could run into each other.

    > SHOOTING RANGE

About the only place she still wears her Judge's armor now is the shooting range, where she goes to clear her mind and practice with the local firearms. She intends to get up to snuff on every single weapons comp there is, as one of the only remaining things that she considers inside her comfort zone. Some part of her relaxes just to be back in the uniform with a gun in her hands.

Anderson has never considered herself one of those Judges that can't turn off when they're off the job, but she's starting to realize that only works in comparison to other Judges. Not in comparison to average citizens, or at least not the ones here. She feels completely unmoored, at a loss, pretending she knows what she's doing as she's had to pretend so often before. When she's really having a hard time adjusting, she uses her Lawgiver, keeps up on pure target practice. She's frighteningly efficient, and she doesn't practice only kill shots; she fires to disable as often as to kill.

The new weaponry takes more concentration, but is enjoyable in its own way. She can be found several days a week practicing, if not shooting then stances, smooth reloading, safe carrying positions. She's thorough.

    > SHOPPING

Easily the strangest part of her week is shopping. Anderson's prior shopping experiences have been starkly divided: the dim memories of her childhood in the poorest slums of the city, where her parents could barely afford anything and shopping was fast, sparse; and the luxuries she used her tiny disposable income on as an academy student, the Hall of Justice providing everything she needed to live and nothing more, same as a military cadet. Those were a chance to breathe, an excuse to get out and be among the people she wanted to protect as much as it was to fulfill the purpose of shopping.

Here, in the Quarantine, she is here to shop. She needs clothes. Toiletries. Cooking supplies. Books to read-- for pleasure. It's a bit overwhelming, truth told, not in the scope but just in the mundanity of it. Anderson had gone from poor mutie to terrifying Judge with nothing in-between, and suddenly being thrust into average daily life is a bit baffling. She doesn't dislike it, though. She enjoys the chance to see life from a new angle, appreciates the amount of decisions she can make with no consideration for regulations or for anyone else. She can take her time, since she's still in training at police headquarters and hasn't shifted to a full time schedule yet.

She had to rent a car for the day in order to have somewhere to stash all her purchases. Circumspect and restrained, she doesn't have a ton of them, but here and there she can be found poking through more feminine shopping areas, makeup or jewelry or sundresses, pondering. It's not a part of herself she's ever really considered before, usually on the defensive or the offensive, never just herself, and she's curious.

For about a week, you can run into her shopping for just about anything, poking around in interest even if she has no intent to buy.

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[At the sound of her voice he turns with the stiffened swiftness of a thief caught in the act. While he is draped in a mantle of discomfort, she will notice too that his carriage is of the upright sort that is ironed into children by parents who insist that what they are and whom they came from is is in itself cause for pride my boy my Harvard boy.]

Yes'm, I suppose so. I was just looking for something to fix.

[She is perhaps little older than Quentin's own nineteen years, but her presence possesses a nameless authority that he senses even past her bewildering appearance, a woman with a pistol at her hip and the hips not draped in delicate skirts but encased in harsh denim. His manner of dress traces him back to a bygone era in which respectability was something carefully curated: a crisp white collar and tie with a vest, slacks and, although he is indoors, the jacket to go with it. His manner of speaking too pins him precisely to his home, his land, Mississippi, the country of which even as recently as his grandfather's generation possessed that touch of wilderness still.]

[ She's used to inspiring people to check their conscience just by showing up, but it's not something that's happened here so far. It makes her instinctively reach out to check for malice, the shadow of intended or recent violence, but there's nothing but the uncertainty and nerves of someone very much displaced.

Huh. Okay. Her mental touch retreats, answers attained. Anderson has been finding it hard not to do an automatic initial check to everyone she meets. She's another person who's out of her depth.

She decides not to correct his mode of address (Judges are addressed as Judge, but failing that, even women are addressed as sir these days) and weaves past him to retrieve the milk from the fridge. ] You seem a little lost. Want help? [ Just a plain offer, no pity or anything else attached. ]

[With his back to the counter and cupboards he watches her as if she is some manner of creature he has never before seen and cannot fathom even as she inhabits the same space, and in many regards she is just that. Father and I protect women our women. For her offer, although absent of pity as it may be, and although it is nothing a man ought to be embarrassed about, he assumes a vaguely sheepish look.]

Dilsey always did the cooking. At my father's house, I mean.

[This he offers as an explanation and an answer. The times he had popped into the kitchen, more often as a boy to sneak scraps and less in later years whether out of idleness or as Father's shadow, he had not so much as taken stock of the workings of the stove or the methods by which the indomitable Dilsey sliced or rolled or beat.]

[ Yup. Rich guy. About as far from her own background as it's possible to get. Anderson is too humane to make any character assumptions from someone's background, though, and keeps her judgment reserved for now. Everyone deserves a chance. ]

No one's going to cook for you here, [ she says prosaically, without insult. She's pulling out a carton of eggs and some pre-shredded cheese along with it. ] If you help me, you can learn how to make eggs. [ Anderson won't do things for someone else who's capable of doing it, but she'll help them learn. ]

[To his credit, he goes along without fuss. He has spent scarcely a moment considering the privilege which he has inhabited all his life: rather, he obsesses over the cracks and fractures splitting the old nobility, reducing to ruin what once seemed to stride the earth like a colossus. It is the burden of the past, of those myriad voices and happenings bearing down on him, that save him from the complacency that allows one to be thoroughly spoiled.]

I would be much obliged, ma'am. Eggs sound just fine.

[He shifts then to pull off his jacket, draping it over the counter and rolling up his shirt sleeves in preparation for the work. It occurs to him then that he ought to introduce himself, and with this comes the obvious but perturbing realization that she too must be one of his so-called roommates.]

Name's Quentin, by the way.

Anderson.

[ She has a sparse way of talking, without being short. Anderson's just used to not mincing words. She takes his obvious cue that he's ready to get his hands dirty and slides the egg carton over along with a bowl, set evenly between them on the counter.

Next the trash gets tugged over, and she sets about cracking eggs into the bowl herself, doing double what she'd make for herself. The shells go neatly into the trash. ] Your first few times you'll probably get shell everywhere. Just use a fork to get it out. [ Teaching someone else anything is a bit of a surreal moment; she's been in the academy until recently, and Chief still calls her rookie like it's a title she'll never be rid of.

She snags a fork out of a drawer and offers it out, handle first. ] Whisk.

[He listens carefully, as is his habit, and with the slow patience that is bred into him not only by his father but by the air that envelopes him stores the instructions in the catalogue of his memory. Then he takes the fork from her and sets its tines to the contents of the bowl in a circular motion, not quite slowly but hesitantly. While he works, his glance flickers up to her.]

If you don't mind me asking, isn't Anderson usually a surname?

[Yet even a he asks, he is ready to chalk it up to yet another oddity of this incomprehensible woman.]

[ She notices his hesitance but isn't about to criticize someone who's probably whisking for the first time in his life. He'll figure it out. She turns to take out a fry pan and get it going-- she has to chop some vegetables to toss in, too. Nothing fancy, but plain eggs with cheese leaves her feeling a little sad, so she has onion and bell pepper for it. ]

It is. My first name's Cassandra. [ Anderson glances over. ] No one really calls me that. [ Not since her parents died. It would be... odd. Maybe not bad, but there's already so many new things happening to her that leave her feeling unmoored that she doesn't want to add one more. Especially something so personal as her name. ]

[He nods as if in understanding, but for what it is not entirely clear.]

For the Trojan princess who foresaw the city's topple and immolation but nobody would believe her. Even her father, old King Priam, thought she was mad. That was Apollo's curse, that nobody would listen to her predictions and so she alone would be burdened with despair for what hadn't even happened yet.

[As he speaks, he whisks faster ever have a sister no but they're all bitches a curse on us it's not our fault is it our fault breaking up the egg yolks until they meld together in one viscous entity.]

[ She halts mid-chop, hand on the knife floating in midair, as he goes off on a minor rant. Anderson is used to that indicating violence-- she's used to a lot indicating violence; she knows what PTSD is but has no time to acknowledge it in herself-- and does an automatic check.

Said check provokes a wince and a hasty retreat. Damn. Maybe stay out of this one's head. That flash... It sounded like someone else speaking, repeated words, piercing and sharp.

No, she's just going to make dinner. Non-violent, confirmed. Anderson doesn't have a ton of training in how to calm someone down, but she has some, and she'd paid close attention since de-escalation is so important to her. ] Actually, I was named for my aunt. She died before I was born. [ Chopping resumes, steady and rhythmic. ] And people do a pretty good job listening to me. Guess I evaded the curse.

[ It's frighteningly apropos in certain ways, but Anderson herself hasn't fully realized that yet, and what glimpse she does have of it she's not about to bring up now. Her doubts are her own. ]

[But in his mind Dalton Ames is still dropping the pieces of bark into the water and firing the rounds from his pistol, the bark dissolving against the iron will of the bullets, bobbing back up in splinters. Asking, what will you do if I don't leave? I'll give you until sundown. Dalton Ames pressing the butt of the pistol into his palm to hell with your gun. And he, still trying to hit him, willing for his knuckles to sink into cheek and feel the satisfying crack that would never come.

He stops whisking then, reckoning that the eggs are about as whisked as they can get. He almost laughs for her little joke, a slight sardonic ruffling of his lip. He might offer condolences for the dead aunt, but people died all the time and it doesn't seem like anything to be sorry about anymore.]

I was named for my great-grandfather, the old governor we still call him, who was named for his great-grandfather before him. I'm the third one.

[And by necessity, the last one. He has no notion, of course, that the sister whom he thought of as doomed would name her daughter for the uncle she would never meet.]

Edited (useless details) 2017-06-13 22:29 (UTC)

[ Anderson wasn't expecting any condolences; she'd never even met the woman. Maybe that's its own kind of loss, but it's not one she's ever dwelled over. ]

That's a lot of history, [ she comments, rinsing off the knife and putting it away before turning back. ] Eggs? [ She holds out her hand in expectation for the bowl. ]

Yes'm.

[He promptly passes the bowl into her outstretched hand, watching the blended yolks wobble and lap at the bowl's side but not escaping, and hearing his father's voice floating over him that dry, dusty September twilight smelling of wisteria during which he prepared for Harvard. I have listened too long. Heard too much. Then without a task with which to occupy it, his gazes falls again to the gun fastened to her hip.]

If you don't mind me asking too, Miss Anderson-- Is it very usual for a lady to carry around a pistol where you're from?

[ She accepts the bowl, angling her body so he can see what she's doing without commentary. She goes intentionally slowly, adding a little milk to the eggs and sliding the chopped vegetables off her cutting board and into the hot pan, leaving the eggs themselves aside for now.

From here, it's a few minutes of idly stirring while the vegetables cook, so it's a good time for a conversation. Although now she suspects more than ever that he is from a very different time as well as a different place. ]

It's not uncommon. Men still commit the majority of violent crimes, but that just means women have even more reason to want a weapon to protect themselves. I work with the police, [ which is the simplest way to explain that as well as being true here, ] so I'm legally licensed to carry.

[Quentin, comprehending that he is meant to take this as a demonstration, watches as she lays out each step of the task. Hearing his father's voice yes. They lead beautiful lives - women so fine so delicate, our women Father and I protect our women. Did you ever have a sister? No but they're all bitches.]

Oh.

[Then he is quiet as he tries to reconcile this with what he has been taught - not taught, really, for it is nothing that anybody went out of their way to show him, but rather he absorbed it as if it were some quality of the air or soil in which he grew.]

Well, you're the fist I've met, a woman police officer.

[ She can't help sliding a sidelong glance at him. It's not that there isn't horrific sexism where she's from, because there is, especially gendered violence. The existence of Ma-Ma herself would attest to that, a prostitute who lost her grip on sanity after a john took a knife to her; Ma-Ma took her revenge, and later became a notorious crime lord. But Anderson is used to having room and freedom to fight it. Much as Ma-Ma herself did.

She has never in her life considered she would have an advantage in that. ]

There's a lot of us, [ she says succinctly. Maybe not around here, who knows, but no one else has looked at her sideways so she thinks it must be at least not unusual. ] Can I ask when you're from? And where. You look a bit like someone threw you into the deep end of something.

[ There's some pretty clear sympathy on her face if one is looking for it, although as everything else with Anderson, it is understated and careful. ]

Edited 2017-06-15 20:12 (UTC)

[Awaking in this gleaming grim-visaged city is a more fantastic, more violent version of finding himself thrust into Cambridge, he who until then had rarely left Jefferson and even then never strayed farther north than southern Indiana, weeks and months after which his classmates would still ask, Tell us about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all. He feels again that strange skin of otherness, composed of whatever it was that pervaded the air and soil of the South, the dust and sediment of all those governors and generals his family boasted.]

When I'm from, ma'am? [He balks only a moment at the peculiar question.] It was 1910. June 2nd, to be precise.

[The day he told his buddies that he would see them tomorrow, and he left from his dormitory with no intention to ever walk through that door again. The day he had meant to escape time.]

And I'm from Mississippi - Jefferson, Mississippi, although I came up to Boston for school.

Edited 2017-06-15 20:34 (UTC)

[ Those are all historical locations to her-- Mississippi is an irradiated wasteland now, although Boston is part of Mega-City One-- but significant enough that she does recognize them, and can place them. It also explains a lot. It's easier to be forgiving of someone from a wholly different culture when they misstep, because you don't expect them to know the song and dance.

She suspects her own answer might cause a reaction, so with the vegetables adequately cooked, she pours in the whisked eggs, shifting out of the way so he can track what she's doing. She uses the spatula to stir the liquid amidst the vegetables while it fries.

Then, finally: ] I'm from 2132. The year. Not too far from Boston, though, technically.

[ Climate change in addition to the nuclear fallout really does a lot to change the environment. Not to mention they all have sector numbers now, not place names. ]

[And in the lengthened silence that presages her response, in which he does not watch as carefully as he meant to do, Quentin gets in his gut the same feeling that shudders when in the darkness you overestimate how many stairs are left until the landing, and so your foot falls through nothingness where you were certain the last stair ought to be - but instead of seizing him at once it grows there slowly and only sharpens when at last she answers.]

Oh. Good Lord.

[On his countenance perches bemusement with a contemplative shadow as he calculates the unfathomable murky years beyond what he had reckoned to be his final day. Between them stretches more time than what separates him from the ancestor for whom he is named, that first Quentin who two hundred and twenty-two years ago had not yet raised his claymore against any English king, had not even raised his curled pink baby fist to his mother whose name had since been lost.]

2132, all right-- [He draws out each syllable of the count, still ticking off those years in his head.] Christ, what's it like then?

[ Yeah, the eggs might be a lost cause at this point, she thinks as she slides in a handful of grated cheese to the frying eggs.

Anderson has only been here about a week, but she's already made the assessment that no one else thinks Mega-City One is a normal place, and in some cases is outright horrifying. ] Where I'm from is probably not your future, [ she prefaces this with. ] It's... busy. Picture Boston stretched down all along the coast.

[ Busy, sure. But he seems at odds enough. She doesn't need to add to that. ]

[He tries to imagine so many buildings sprawling down the eastern seaboard and crowding out the sky, the city stretching as interminably as the years.]

I reckon the city is plenty big already. I never quite noticed how wide the sky is in Mississippi 'til I came back home.

[He tilts his head then, caught by that odd disclaimer and turning it over in his thoughts.]

What do you mean that's not my future, though, ma'am? Aside from the probability of my living for another two hundred years, that is.

It seems like we're all from different dimensions. Someone explained it to me like a river. Maybe we were all going down the same river once, but at some point, it forked. And you can't get over to mine... except in places like this.

[ It's as sensible an explanation as Anderson expects she'll ever find. She's not a scientist and most of this goes right over her head, but in practical terms, she can understand it.

Internally, she's musing about his comment about the sky, trying to picture it. Something like the Cursed Earth, looking out over the endless, destitute landscape like it's swallowed the whole planet, though she knows that's not even close to true. But without that remote hopelessness attached to it. With greenery, instead? It's hard to picture. ]

What's it like? Mississippi? [ Easily her favorite part of being here so far is hearing about everyone else's lives and where they're from. So far, none of the answers have even come close to hers, and she likes it that way even as it brings up a lot of uncomfortable questions. ]

[He considers this explanation for a long moment, laying out in his mind the river down which all time flows, wondering just how many branches there are. He wonders if he could have gone down a different branch, if Caddy could have done so it won't do any good don't you know it won't let me go, or if it ought to have been their grandfather slipping down another branch for anything to turn out differently than it had.

The question is one with which he is familiar, yet he never quite knows how to answer. He sticks with what is experienced at the surface, because the words for what is undulating beneath are harder to grasp.]

This time of year it's all magnolia trees and dogwood and honeysuckle, and wisteria crowding around the porch. Jefferson is in the north country - it's a few hours' ride to the next town over, and a full day out to Oxford. The whole area was wild but a century ago, before my great-grandfather's father bought the land off old Ikkemotubbe.

That sounds beautiful, [ she says honestly, finally picking up the pan and sliding the eggs out altogether onto a plate after a final salting. ]

I have a hard time picturing it. I'm hoping to have a chance to go looking around the outside while I'm here. [ She still refers to it as a distinct place, the outside. ]

[Was it beautiful there? He supposes so. He had taken the scenery for granted because it was simply what he was born into, little different from the air he breathed.]

I hope you do too, Miss Anderson. Though I hear it's dangerous out there, outside the city.

[He watches the eggs slip from the pan onto the plate and, after two guesses, finds the drawer in which the silverware is stored, pulling from it a pair of forks and a pair of knives. It is a rather paltry contribution to the meal preparation, but at least it is something.]

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wronganswer - 2017-07-06 12:12 (UTC) - Expand

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shadowstepped - 2017-07-06 18:42 (UTC) - Expand

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got caught up again

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wow sorry I totally lost this!

no worries! we're pretty close to wrapping it up anyway

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