thanks clarke (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
strove) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
meadowlarklogs2019-10-07 01:20 pm
strove) wrote in meadowlarklogs2019-10-07 01:20 pm
[open log] i don't care about the mess you made
WHO: Clarke Griffin, Riku, and Goro Akechi + anyone who wants to do some dreams or other stuff
WHERE: Dreams, New Amsterdam.
WHEN: Month of January IC!
WHAT: Dreams, memory shares, etc. General open log things.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation for Akechi and Clarke (respectively).
Of course, thematically they're different:]
riku: mistakes of the past, worries of the present
[These days, Riku is more or less at peace with himself. Once, his dreams were mercurial and lacked control. They showed his worry about strength. Power. And at times, Darkness—the Darkness that reigned over his life, that acted as a threat. These days, that Darkness is as much a part of him as anything: trapped in his heart, a constant in motion. A part of who he is.
But there are themes and motifs that reoccur. Friends fading away. The danger of thinking too much, even if the thoughts don't string together. A friend slipping, falling into a wave of Darkness. More recently: images of his home falling apart, of New Amsterdam falling to the same ruin, crashed into by a wave of dangerous Darkness.
And of friends dying. Of not being able to do enough. Of the struggle of having to accept that they will do as they do, even if he can't do nothing. His hands always tied, forced to be idle, passive. Accepting that, too.
There is always a push for logic against even the most irrational of thoughts. Always.]
clarke: guilt, the lives she's taken, a peaceful interlude
[Many of Clarke's dreams take place separate from what would be her mindscape. Her dreams are of green: sprawling trees with a beautiful, forested canopy. A bright sun overhead, though sometimes there are two. But in the horizon, there may or may not be ruin: ruins of a city that managed to come together in the aftermath of an apocalypse, or ruins of a world, covered in dirt and sand, and strange creatures that burrow into the ground and can dig into someone's skin. She doesn't dream of those creatures, not often.
When she can, Clarke dreams of what could be: a life in this area of rich, fertile environment. A time with her daughter, her mother, her friends. Bellamy is there when he can be, but during times of strife, it seems she has a hard time facing him. (This Bellamy is older, with facial hair and a calmer expression. Like he knows to keep what he can inside.)
When there are people present, there is always a pressure. Of being boxed in, of being the one to find the solutions. Clarke always feels as if her answers are the wrong answers, and they show here. But there is no resentment toward the many, many people in her life: angry, making demands. Just an acceptance. Clarke doesn't feel as if they're wrong to ask so much of her. Besides, she put herself in that position to ask to make those decisions.
After all, she is a mother. A leader. But also: a tumor. A cancer. These days, Clarke doesn't let those thoughts creep up, but in dreams, who can say?]
akechi: wasted potential, what could have been
[Akechi doesn't dream of exact moments or of exact places: he dreams of the settings he likes, with drawn out, complicated scenarios where he's called upon to solve a problem. Solve any problem. Because he is someone who came into his power at an age when he was already embittered by the world, embroiled in hatred for everything around him. His mother committed suicide when he was young, and he was forced to be passed from home to home, a blemish upon his family and upon the world. An illegitimate child and a problem. Rather than choosing to overcome these notions, Akechi internalized them, took them to heart.
His dreams reflect this: colored often in blacks and reds, with Akechi moving alone, carrying every purpose that he believes that only he can accomplish. His dreams are a sign of how he deluded himself: believing that his long term plans would become something at some point.
He is extremely intelligent, and his dreams show it: with him trying to make logic out of nothing, out of the world around him. He seems to be at odds with it, caught between a sense of justice (inherently emotional) and a world out of order, one that's inevitably going to be that way no matter what.
If Akechi's gambit had paid off—if he had been aware that he was a part of a game with a gambit in motion—his view of the world would've taken hold. It would've fallen into disarray, granting control to a single deity because people are inherently messed up. At the heart of his dreams, this is a singular, notable truth. It's just one that's at odds with what Akechi really wants: to be praised, loved, and seen as less than a blemish and more that someone who can accomplish things. He just hasn't admitted as much to himself.]
ooc notes
[The general overview here is to give people an idea of what my characters' dreams would contain. This is an open log, and you can request a starter hitting on one of the notes above! I'll also be posting closed requested starters below. I'm also open to memory sharing or characters just catching up, though the former may need to come along organically (as none of my three know it's on the table).
If you'd like to discuss further, hit me up on plurk @ medieval or on discord at alison#8996.]
WHERE: Dreams, New Amsterdam.
WHEN: Month of January IC!
WHAT: Dreams, memory shares, etc. General open log things.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation for Akechi and Clarke (respectively).
Of course, thematically they're different:]
riku: mistakes of the past, worries of the present
[These days, Riku is more or less at peace with himself. Once, his dreams were mercurial and lacked control. They showed his worry about strength. Power. And at times, Darkness—the Darkness that reigned over his life, that acted as a threat. These days, that Darkness is as much a part of him as anything: trapped in his heart, a constant in motion. A part of who he is.
But there are themes and motifs that reoccur. Friends fading away. The danger of thinking too much, even if the thoughts don't string together. A friend slipping, falling into a wave of Darkness. More recently: images of his home falling apart, of New Amsterdam falling to the same ruin, crashed into by a wave of dangerous Darkness.
And of friends dying. Of not being able to do enough. Of the struggle of having to accept that they will do as they do, even if he can't do nothing. His hands always tied, forced to be idle, passive. Accepting that, too.
There is always a push for logic against even the most irrational of thoughts. Always.]
clarke: guilt, the lives she's taken, a peaceful interlude
[Many of Clarke's dreams take place separate from what would be her mindscape. Her dreams are of green: sprawling trees with a beautiful, forested canopy. A bright sun overhead, though sometimes there are two. But in the horizon, there may or may not be ruin: ruins of a city that managed to come together in the aftermath of an apocalypse, or ruins of a world, covered in dirt and sand, and strange creatures that burrow into the ground and can dig into someone's skin. She doesn't dream of those creatures, not often.
When she can, Clarke dreams of what could be: a life in this area of rich, fertile environment. A time with her daughter, her mother, her friends. Bellamy is there when he can be, but during times of strife, it seems she has a hard time facing him. (This Bellamy is older, with facial hair and a calmer expression. Like he knows to keep what he can inside.)
When there are people present, there is always a pressure. Of being boxed in, of being the one to find the solutions. Clarke always feels as if her answers are the wrong answers, and they show here. But there is no resentment toward the many, many people in her life: angry, making demands. Just an acceptance. Clarke doesn't feel as if they're wrong to ask so much of her. Besides, she put herself in that position to ask to make those decisions.
After all, she is a mother. A leader. But also: a tumor. A cancer. These days, Clarke doesn't let those thoughts creep up, but in dreams, who can say?]
akechi: wasted potential, what could have been
[Akechi doesn't dream of exact moments or of exact places: he dreams of the settings he likes, with drawn out, complicated scenarios where he's called upon to solve a problem. Solve any problem. Because he is someone who came into his power at an age when he was already embittered by the world, embroiled in hatred for everything around him. His mother committed suicide when he was young, and he was forced to be passed from home to home, a blemish upon his family and upon the world. An illegitimate child and a problem. Rather than choosing to overcome these notions, Akechi internalized them, took them to heart.
His dreams reflect this: colored often in blacks and reds, with Akechi moving alone, carrying every purpose that he believes that only he can accomplish. His dreams are a sign of how he deluded himself: believing that his long term plans would become something at some point.
He is extremely intelligent, and his dreams show it: with him trying to make logic out of nothing, out of the world around him. He seems to be at odds with it, caught between a sense of justice (inherently emotional) and a world out of order, one that's inevitably going to be that way no matter what.
If Akechi's gambit had paid off—if he had been aware that he was a part of a game with a gambit in motion—his view of the world would've taken hold. It would've fallen into disarray, granting control to a single deity because people are inherently messed up. At the heart of his dreams, this is a singular, notable truth. It's just one that's at odds with what Akechi really wants: to be praised, loved, and seen as less than a blemish and more that someone who can accomplish things. He just hasn't admitted as much to himself.]
ooc notes
[The general overview here is to give people an idea of what my characters' dreams would contain. This is an open log, and you can request a starter hitting on one of the notes above! I'll also be posting closed requested starters below. I'm also open to memory sharing or characters just catching up, though the former may need to come along organically (as none of my three know it's on the table).
If you'd like to discuss further, hit me up on plurk @ medieval or on discord at alison#8996.]
how light carries on endlessly [ closed to the OA ]
All of the light itself is natural: there is no sign of any kind of electricity or electrical outlet, though it's likely obvious that this had been a skyscraper of some kind, built to house numerous offices or apartments.
While there were no people there, Clarke will soon appear alongside The OA. Her announcement is made with a shuffling of sound: too loud, perhaps, but also evident of how little life there is here.]
This shouldn't be here, [she says, though she doesn't indicate what she means. Confused, she turns to The OA.] Neither should you.
no subject
Such is the way of sleepers. Such is the way of travel, in dreams as in life as in death. One always forgets.
There's something raw about it, the wound open to the sky, the precipice, which tickles and tugs at her memory as she approaches it -- unclear at first and then unmistakable. She closes her eyes, pausing a mere handful of feet from the wreck of the windows, that long drop, and it's the darkness that reminds her. It had smelled of earth then, of growing things, forest soil. She, sightless, feeling the change in the air, scenting metal on the wind, feeling the ground beneath her feet turn soft, uncertain.
And then the blow had fallen. She remembers that, too, and Clarke appears with a rush of sound that in the stillness is a tumult. OA jolts, eyes snapping open, and turns her head sharply to take in the new arrival, her lips parted around a soft gasp -- though she does not cry out, weighed down as she still is by the sluggishness of somnambulance.
This new stranger's confusion is palpable; OA feels sympathy, but no agency. The former flickers across her face, a slight and temporary furrowing of the brow. The latter hardly needs expressing: her own presence is a mystery to them both. Should. also, is a loaded word, one with which she opts not to engage for the moment.]
I don't know this place.
[It's a half-agreement, intoned impassively. She doesn't know this place, but that doesn't yet alarm her. The part of her that knows, deep down, that she's dreaming isn't alarmed either. It's too preoccupied with listening intently.]
What is it?
[This place, she means, to Clarke. What is a far more interesting question than where.]
no subject
In her dreams, it's still in one piece and full of life. Down below, people run through the streets hurrying to get somewhere, the streets themselves made up of bits of wreckage and ruin throughout the decades. Though Roman-inspired architecture forms parts of the foundation of Polis, the rest of it was put together through sheer desire to make something great. What one person might call a maze made out of the remains of a junkyard, another would call it their home. Clarke wouldn't know the first comparison, so she happily settled upon the second.
Polis in her dreams is a place of anxiety, trauma, regret. It's where she wasted her days with Lexa, feeling as if she needed to keep her distance. Wasted her time so that she could've left sooner. Wasted the opportunity to keep the love of her life alive. But it's never empty. There is always the threat of people—here or somewhere else.
Halfway broken like this, it seems wrong.
She swallows—or, at least, mimics the movement behind it. Dreaming, lucid or otherwise, is always a strange thing. Clarke never needed anything inside her mind when she'd been trapped there, hoping for an opportunity or a foothold of some kind so she could wrench back control. But she still feels herself making the motions. Doing what psychologically makes sense. She doesn't even think of it.
As she turns, she considers her words. What to say.]
This is the remains of Polis. [She crouches down then, putting her hand over the floor. There are shards of glass there, which is surprising. That shouldn't have survived, either. Her mind is a tricky place.] It's the capital for a group of people who survived on the ground during the apocalypse in my homeland. We're in what is the throneroom. Or audience chamber. [I nearly died here once.
Clarke doesn't think or dream of that day as often. It's never her near-deaths that stick with her, or never as much.]
Do you know the geography of the United States of America? [Clarke realizes it's an odd question, what with them being in the dreams and all. In a dream. But it's where her mind wanders and goes, falling on a more geographical definition of "where" they are. She can provide that. Somewhat, anyway.]
no subject
There's something in the set of her brow as she nods, a quiet sympathy. She's never survived an apocalypse; for that she has no context. She can understand endings, though, the bittersweet pang of memory complicated enough that the mind catches on it, revives it in dreams.]
I-- sort of.
[OA squeezes her eyes shut. Another nod, more vigorous, and a little gesture of the hand -- go on, I'm following. It's easier than trying to explain: she doesn't have the visual context of a map, wouldn't know how to pick that country out among any other if one were placed in front of her, much less point to a given location. She knows it in relative terms, though.
When OA was a girl, Nancy had taken her hand and placed it against the surface of a raised relief globe. She'd run her fingertips over it slowly, felt out the boundaries of continents, traced the ranges of mountains. We're here. Her small fingertips had settled naturally into the the depressions of the great lakes, Michigan and Huron nestling her new home between them and Superior arching above. Ever after she'd been able to find them again with relatively little effort, the one place on the Earth that seemed made for her hand.
Later she'd learn other measures: Claude, Michigan is a little over 14 hours by bus from New York City. New York City is five hours by single-engine plane from... somewhere. Somewhere is an unknown number of hours' drive from the side of a two-lane highway in the middle of Missouri, which is three days' walk from a homeless shelter and a bridge, which is, give or take, 200 feet above the water.
So she knows. She knows enough.]
It's okay; I'm following. This is in the United States?
no subject
Clarke had been knocked out by the wave when it happened. Here, there is no risk of that.
(An understanding: that's already happened. Again, it's already happened again.)
No matter where she is, Clarke Griffin always exudes a certain degree of tension. It's not in her movements: Clarke moves as if she's sure of herself. She rises up and walks with perfect posture; her head hangs high, eyes pointed forward over the horizon. She moves to the edge of this room, glass crunching under her boots. That draws her closer to the line between the land and sky.]
I never know how to explain where this is, where I went. What happened about a year after I went there with my people. An apocalypse hit once, and then again, and all the remains of human civilization were wiped out all over the planet. So, I try different tactics. I start with geography. Or I claim I went on an exploration mission to see if the Earth as survivable. And before this happened, for that short year, it was. [A monologue of sorts. She turns and looks at The OA.]
Of course, usually that comes later. Usually I know who I'm talking to. I've seen you, of course. You were there with us in the lab in Spinetail, but I don't know who you are. I'm Clarke. This is—well, more precisely, this is a building that crumbled and fell when my world ended the second time. We probably need to find a way down from here.
no subject
Her own imagination fills in other gaps as she listens. The desolation of the place takes on greater meaning; the gaping wound in this structure seems all the more raw. An apocalypse. Two. People falling away like leaves until the branch is almost bare. A pang of hurt worries at her, its influence visible on her face -- an emotion she knows can't possibly compare to the raw, devastating reality of living it. Surviving it. Death is nothing to be afraid of, but loss?
A hint of this is visible on her face, a touch of hurt in her eyes, when she nods again. Spinetail. That touch of context allows everything to slide a little further into place: this really must be a dream.]
I was there. The lab.
[For the briefest of moments it seems almost as though that's where she's going to leave it, that simple confirmation. This is a dance she's done quite a few times since her arrival here, the exchange of names, and every time feels like a minor moment of truth. Perhaps hers will feel less out of place in a dream, perhaps that would be one small mercy, but when she does speak again, the reason for that fractional hesitation is probably self-evident.]
I'm the OA.
[The statement carries some of the quiet solemnity of confession, but is otherwise entirely conversational. She's found that other people seem to find it easier to accept the name if she herself refrains from acknowledging its strangeness. That means deliberately failing to anticipate the usual follow-ups -- does that stand for something? What does it mean?
What people choose to ask or not ask is far more interesting to OA than avoiding the questions entirely. In lieu of that, she leans into the practical, sketching a slow circle to take in the room, possible exit points -- aside from the obvious, that precipice and the void yawning below.]
Do you come back here often? You said 'this shouldn't be here' -- in life, or in the versions of this place you're holding onto?
[She spares Clarke glance.]
I'm not judging. I have my own recurring cataclysms. Smaller ones.
[Here the slightest, conceding shrug of one shoulder as OA moves a few steps deeper into the building, towards the door leading into this room, or what's left of it. There must be a stairwell somewhere... no, scratch that. In life there would be a stairwell somewhere. Here and now, the rules cannot be assumed.]
no subject
For instance: she knows they all come from different worlds with different cultural traditions. Her time on the ground—and later, on a distant world named Sanctum—instilled her with this knowledge. As frustrating as a new culture could be, she couldn't judge it. Shouldn't judge it. (She did, once. As often as Clarke repeats her mistakes, she learns from some of them.)
So it's a name, an identity. One that doesn't hold as much weight as OA's final words: the reassurance. Clarke smiles, allowing some of the tension that she carries to slip away. Oh, it'll find its way back: typically to the crease between her eyebrows, to the slight wrinkle on her forehead. Despite being in her early twenties, she carries so many burdens.]
Thanks. [It's a start. She's sincere. Clarke's world is an ugly one, after all.]
I don't come here when it's like this. I've dreamed of it crashing on me while I tried to get in to a bunker underneath. I've dreamed of what it was like when Polis was ... whole? [That final word hangs in the air. It's like Clarke can't decide if she likes it.
She moves on.] As you can guess, it's usually different. I think ... there's a metaphor here? Do you buy into dreams being metaphors?
[Clarke clearly doesn't know if she does.]
no subject
I do. We're creatures in time; the stories we tell ourselves matter.
[She does believe that, viscerally. Reality is too strange, too complex, too mercurial to be defined in any real way beyond one's experience thereof. The senses lie to the brain which lies to itself, true. At the same time, all one can really experience is that lie -- does that not make it functionally true?
She doesn't bother trying to put these things to words, not yet. That would send them too far adrift too quickly.]
Someone once suggested to me that dreams are our way of processing information we're not perceiving consciously. Subtle cues, things we maybe don't have the context or time or attention or energy to understand when we're awake. I think that's true, in a way. I think... the body has to know something before you can really understand it, and the body knows time, so it understands story.
[OA reaches out to rest her fingertips lightly against the door.]
I guess the question is, what is it that you're processing? Where does it come from, the world or you? Both? Why do you keep coming back here, and why is it different now?
[She turns her head to look back over her shoulder at Clarke. The previous questions were half-rhetorical -- she invites answers, but certainly isn't going to demand any.]
Does this feel right?
[A nod towards the door. This is Clarke's place -- it seems safe to assume they're operating within the logic of her dreams, not OA's. Just as well: OA believes some of her own to be prophecy.]
no subject
She views the door, curious about what could be outside. What could be beyond a fixture like this that juts upward into the sky. She worries, too, knowing it could be dangerous. But what isn't? How often does she have dreams that don't end in bloodshed? Yes, they may be a way of processing. Clarke feels as if she may be processing forever.]
It's the only path we have. ["The only choice." Only not an oxymoron, not a thing that contradicts the words that come before.]
I believe this might speak to isolation. I'm not sure. Do you think it's possible that you're not influencing it?
[That's a question that needs to be asked. Clarke doesn't know her. Doesn't know anything about her. She's thoughtful, though. She's approaching this analytically, which Clarke can't help but appreciate.
The door itself will open when OA reaches for it. Once she does, there will be a city on the other side: less "modern" than New Amsterdam, but still with hulking skyscrapers. There won't be any trees, and the people will look like they're going through the motions, walking through life without a care in the world.
Clarke will seem to recognize it immediately, though it won't keep her from approaching the door.
She got out once, after all.]
no subject
[Even the city doesn't feel like hers, though there's a subtler flash of recognition: it looks closer to the world she recognises, her Earth of 2016. Skyscrapers menacing the skyline, people moving through the snarl of city streets oblivious to the high strangeness of the place, its lurking menace. It's wonderful, alive, terrifying. OA made the worst mistake of her life in a place like this.
Her eyes are wide with the memory, pain and fear commingling on her face before they give way to wonder, to slowly-dawning joy. She lets out a sharp breath, not quite a scoff, not quite a laugh. It's the wrong reaction to the memories this vision dredges up in her, but it's the honest one.
She turns to take Clarke in, as interested in the dreamer as in the dream, if the two can even be said to be separate entities.]
It's like New York! Like how I... imagined New York, um... I went there once, but I never saw it.
[She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. Seeing isn't relevant. She lived it.]
It was so alive, so many people, cars, everywhere. All going places. Nobody... stopped.
[Her voice trails off; she finds herself slipping back into the memory of that day beneath the statue, of running her fingers over the inscription on the pedestal. Letters she couldn't read, neither with eyes that couldn't see nor with fingertips that couldn't parse their forms, save just well enough to know that they were words.
She'd waited all day.
Nobody stopped.]
There are different kinds of isolation, different ways to be alone. Is this another of yours?
[She seeks out eye contact, waiting until she has it to give a gentle nod of the head towards the doorway, the city beyond. One of her hands reaches into the space between them, moving as though to touch Clarke's own -- though she never makes contact, never really comes close before the hand falls back to her side. The meaning is clear enough all the same: Together?]
no subject
That feels foolish now in this moment. She had never dreamed of cities, but of trees and mountains and sunlight, of lying in the grass and smelling the scent of flowers in the air. That had been no more realistic than watching films based in New York City, rife with romantic interludes and monster attacks.
In that way, she's happy that she and OA are doing this together. Certainly, they're new to one another, but this interaction is already forcing Clarke to see the world a different way. That's a perspective she'll always accept and take whenever she has the chance. It doesn't mean she'll change with it—but she'll keep it in mind. Absorb it in time. Do with it what she will.
She takes OA's hand. The last time she went into the City of Light, leaving the reality of Polis, she had been alone. This time, there's no need for that. Perhaps that's the message in this.]
I was alone when I came here, [she finally says. The emotion that seeps through the bond is clear: gratitude. Pleased. A hint of grief, because this is where she last saw Lexa.] It's called the City of Light. [There is some hesitation with sharing this, but she shares it just the same.
What if the City of Light had been the promised land? To some degree, Clarke hopes to make this planet into her people's City of Light.
As she strides forward, she holds on to OA's hand, eyes pointed ahead. The City of Light, as it seems to be called, has a grayish sky, but not due to any hint of rain. That's just the way it is. There is some sunlight peaking beyond the clouds. But the air is temperate and easy to handle, all without a hint of humidity. It's perfect: created to be that way. To be large and hulking and yet not at all overwhelming.
(Of course, the City of Light is actually just downtown Vancouver, but it's not as if that's true within a meta context.)]
Is there anywhere you'd like to go? Anything you'd look for in a city? [Will it adapt to them as it did to Clarke one day, years ago? It must. This is a dream, after all.]
no subject
That's the bulk of it, the swell of emotion that bleeds back through the bond: gratitude of her own, grief of her own, but most of all compassion. That hint of the depth of Clarke's own loss does not surprise her. She's not met anyone among the displaced who has never suffered it, and the mind sticks on emptiness. Dreams gather in the voids left by the absence of places and people well-loved. Besides, the Displaced are all adrift, waking and dreaming. To cling to one another is not a luxury, it's an imperative. All benefit.
It helps that the city -- of light, apparently -- is so thoroughly absorbing. As they emerge into it, OA tilts her head back to take in the towering buildings, the grayish cast of the sky. That soft wonder blossoms in her again, tempered by the regret that comes over her in response to Clarke's question. It's... complicated. Most things are. She could give a half-answer, brush it off, lie; none feel like the right answer. She's asked Clarke to confront herself in interrogating the meaning of the dream, the very least she can do is reciprocate.]
I don't know, I... somewhere green, maybe. Somewhere with trees.
[A pause, a rush of longing. Regret. Waking, things might be different. Waking she could forgive herself. In dreams, though, she knows how this story goes.]
But I don't know that that's for me to want anymore. I think if there's a message here for me, it won't be found in the sun.
[A beat.]
Is there a subway?
[If they're sharing catastrophes, that's where hers will be found. She spares Clarke a glance as they walk, expression solemn.]
Though if we have a choice, maybe we should seek out happier things. Maybe that's the point of all of this.
[Is it to walk into the dark with a companion at one's side, or is it to pull one another out? Both? Neither?]
no subject
Walking on, Clarke does feel a distance sense of something she hasn't felt for a long time: fear. At least—fear of this kind. That she might begin to bleed from the nose and might begin to convulse, unable to remain in this reality without it beginning to attack her. But the metaphor holds and doesn't unleash and assault. Perhaps it's OA's hand in hers. Hard to say, really. Hard to say.]
Let's look for green, and then we can find the rest. [What is to be found in the sun? During the EMP, Clarke had fled from New Amsterdam, escaping beyond the walls when she had a chance to see what was outside. Though the sun beat down on her and her friends as they moved through the wooded terrain, she had survived it just the same. Her blood allowed her that. Last time she was here, the blood was only temporary. Now it's permanent. Perhaps that's part of the message?]
But tell me—why don't you think the green is for you ... how'd you put it? Well, for you to want. [She doesn't want to misquote OA, so she gives up on it altogether. Her point is clear.]
I used to dream of the green, too. Of the sun beating down on my face. I think it's a nice dream to have.
[All around them, the terrain shifts in subtle ways. The path up ahead adjusts to them and their arrival. Neither of them will be able to see it, but this concrete pathway will eventually lead into a large park, located right in the center of the city.]
no subject
[Longing here, even the vaguest hint of nagging jealousy. It's a difficult thing to come to terms with, and more difficult still to explain. OA takes in a breath as though to speak, hesitates, mulls the answer over.]
Maybe that's the wrong way to put it. Wanting isn't the problem; I...
[There's a palpable trepidation here, the gravity of something huge and heavy waiting just across some kind of threshold, threatening to spill out across OA's emotional landscape, run juggernaut wild through her psyche. Like any bull in any china shop, it can be gentled if approached from the right angle. She's trying to find that angle, trying to discern what best to carry with her when she does make that approach.
Her hand tightens almost imperceptibly around Clarke's as she draws in a deep breath.]
I don't know, maybe part of me doesn't think that I deserve it, not when I haven't... helped the people I need to help, not when they can't be there with me.
[The memory is sharp, visceral, the bleedthrough unintentional:
Her fingers fall on the handle of the knife. She knows immediately what it is but she, sun-dazed and hungry, so hungry, her stomach roiling around emptiness, all she can think about is the smell of bread.
The world is dark. In the memory this is not alarming, because the world is always dark. There are shapes, flares of static and colour, synaesthetic reactions to sound -- the brain fills in for what the eyes do not see. Prairie Johnson is blind.
She turns to the cutting board and she hears the locks on the door ratchet shut off to her right, hears Hap turn and still as she pats her way across the cutting board and the knife skitters, metal on wood, when she bumps it. It belongs buried to the hilt in his chest. In another world maybe that's where she puts it. Instead her hands move on; she finds the loaf of bread, whole and unsliced and heartbreakingly fresh and she lifts it to her face to inhale its scent.
It is the loveliest thing in the world. It's normal.
Prairie takes up the knife, measures out a knuckle-length of bread, lines the blade up by touch and begins to slice. The process unfolds from her, automatic; she feels her face impassive, her sightless eyes staring straight ahead. As if in a trance, she finds the edge of the countertop with the backs of her hands, tracing and measuring its length in a graceful, practiced gesture. Always the backs of the hands, never the fingertips, especially with a blade about: she cannot risk losing any sensitivity in her fingertips. At home, reading is one of the only means of escape that she has, the only way she can move through the world as other people do.
There's chicken in the refrigerator; she finds it by scent, the greens by touch. Condiments, condensation pearling on the glass, wetting her fingertips. Inexorably, inevitably she carries herself through the motions. Her thoughts are bell-clear. Bread. Mustard. Greens. Chicken. Bread. Set the knife crossways, lined up by touch. Palm across. Press. Plate.
She holds it out to him and wonders why, wonders why she's doing this; all she wants is to eat and yet--
"Take the other half."
And yet--
"You won't eat because the others can't."
She says nothing.
OA is back here, in the dream, on the sidewalk. Here with Clarke. As far as these things can be measured, safe, unaware that her descent into the past may not have been undertaken in solitude.]
Mostly, though, I don't think I can run away from it. The things underneath. The things I'd rather not see. I have to go into the dark. That's what living is: going into the dark, every moment. Bringing light to what you need in a day. We have to go through it to get out, and I think... I think that's where my answers are.
no subject
Her lips part, eyes pointed forward. Pupils as dilated as possible, now taking in entirely too much light. They close, squeezing shut, dealing with the feeling that she's just experienced. They reopen, centering and focusing. Blurred lines in the periphery coming into clarity.]
You were blind before. [It's not the most tactful thing that she's ever said, but the look on Clarke's face tells it all: that her brain is still jogging to keep up, that she's afraid she's hurt her current comrade.] That's why. And why you couldn't see it. Is that right? [Clarke doesn't know if that's right. She's guessing. People aren't puzzles to figure out.
But they are puzzles to care about. Listen to and understand.
A memory passes without her realizing it: Clarke in a solitary cell. There is no confusion about where she is, about what she's doing. She is locked away, kept out of the public eye. The walls of the cell are covered in art, with the floor taking her most recent image. Clarke herself is about seven years younger with a long blonde braid going down her back. Her clothes are simple—shabby, even—with tattered sleeves and hand-me-down jeans.
The art is clearly hers, but that's more apparent because Clarke is drawing on the floor, adding to her masterpiece. The picture is a wooded area with a sun coming up over the horizon. She's content to keep to her work, but the door buzzes, announcing someone's arrival—
The memory ends, Clarke pulling her hand back, at least for now.
For now.]
no subject
It was a fair exchange. Nothing was stolen that wasn't also given. She suspects, moreover, that neither of them meant it. Hurt replaces accusation. Hiding the wound helps no one -- OA doesn't bother to try. Instead she nods, silent confirmation of at least part of the statement.]
I was blind. It's okay; I'm not ashamed of that.
[That isn't what hurt her. It's easy to admit to; for the majority of her life it was simply fact. It made her move through the world differently, perceive it differently. It made other people treat her differently, made some things more difficult, other things easier. It was a fact, a quality of life, one she sometimes even misses.
No, the real source of the wound was elsewhere in that memory. It aligns more closely with the one she'd been given in turn.]
But that isn't why. I needed it more because I couldn't see it.
[It's nearly impossible to explain to anyone who hasn't lived it, but she'd tried once before, and she suspects the method she'd used then will resonate here, even if she has to use shorthand. What Clarke had... experienced, the memory she'd shared in, gave her another little insight: she'd heard Hap's voice. She'd heard the closing of the locks, felt the sinking of the gut in response to the sound. She'd known hunger, and fear. The memory OA had tasted in return proves she also knows imprisonment.
What she has to say next, she has to say without eye contact, with her gaze resolutely ahead. They've been raw together and it's been good, necessary, but that doesn't mean there isn't still room for distance. On the contrary: Clarke had released her hand. They've both strayed a little too far.]
The first time you fall asleep in prison, you forget. You wake up a free woman. And then you remember that you're not. You lose your freedom many times before you finally believe it.
[She intones it more than says it, recites it as though they're words she's spoken before -- which they are. That doesn't make them any less true. What follows is entirely for Clarke's benefit, composed specifically for her:]
Seven years, he kept us under the ground. I only felt the sun on my skin for... moments. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Whenever he'd let me up, open the door for me. When you can see, lighting works. You can see it. You know when you're supposed to be awake, when you're supposed to be asleep. When you're blind, without the sun, without the wind, you can't feel time.
[A beat, and then:]
He found me in a subway station.
no subject
That was a year without proper light. Without human interaction. Without the feeling of her mother's arms wrapped around her, consoling her on a bad day or night. That was a year where she had to grieve alone and in silence. It's where Clarke learned to grieve all too well: knowing how to keep it all buried inside. Grief. Pain. Every bit of emotion. It's not that Clarke doesn't feel. It's that she can't let that feeling swallow her whole because otherwise she'll drown in it.
Her fingers flex where they were once holding on to OA's hand. The voice. The sandwich. She nods, carefully, pieces falling together like blocks that were meant to be in one place. The concrete beneath her feet feels so familiar, so much like New Amsterdam now. But none of these buildings show any signs of being the businesses she's walked by and around for six months now. No, it's not New Amsterdam. They're still in the City of Light.]
That's why you think you need to return there to come out better.
[Words that may seem obvious, but need to be spoken. Clarke wants to show her understanding.
She remembers the scars of being buried in the bunker. Her mother's addiction. Octavia's turn toward being Blodreina. The cannibalism that her people had to partake in (the cannibalism that she was nearly a part of, had she been able to return to the bunker in time).]
It doesn't need to be that way anymore. That doesn't need to define who you are. [A beat. She tilts her head forward.] Unless you're fine with it doing just that. I understand that. We can't just shed everything that's happened to us. We can only look forward. Do better than we have before.
[Turn the page.]
no subject
Ultimately it's sound advice. OA ducks her head, nodding down at the ground and releasing a wry huff of laughter. They don't have to carry the tension of the moment either. That can be made better too.]
I know. I'm not punishing myself.
[Her voice is light, earnest. Whatever they're coming to terms with now, it doesn't have to be awful. It isn't, not all of it. Hap crushed her, yes. He crushed her and he crushed the others and like coal they became diamonds.]
I don't think I have to go back there in order to find him. I think I have to go back there to find myself. I don't know; I don't know how to put it. I can't deny that it shaped me. Hap broke us; he... he killed us. We all died more times than I can count.
[She says it absolutely literally: we all died more times than I can count. She means it that way, too, though in failing to elaborate she's inviting Clarke to impose upon that statement whatever metaphor makes it more palatable. There are some mysteries that must be eased into, even in dreams.]
But we made us angels. We're more than he could ever imagine.
[The conviction in her voice is steely in a way she hasn't been before now, but it too fades, replaced easily by the concerns of the moment. When OA turns her head to take in Clarke's expression, she's smiling. It's a gentle expression, fond in spite of how brief their association has been.]
Thank you. For caring. People always want to know; they rarely care to try to understand.
[Another thoughtful pause; the distant chatter of passers-by filters through. Dream city, dream people. Do they know they're a function of the imagination? Do they know anything at all?]
Someone told me once that to exist is to survive unfair choices. She was right. What she didn't say is that it's still not wrong to be hurt by them.
[This time, she isn't speaking about herself.]
no subject
Those words make sense. The odd thing is that they don't go where Clarke expected them to go. Survival is at the heart of everything Clarke does. She can't deny it. She wants to change it, but that endpoint hasn't arrived yet.]
Even though she said that, do you think she meant for you to understand that implicitly? ["Understand." But then, understanding can sometimes be the most difficult thing to find and breach. Clarke doesn't always think she gets it. She's always tried. She tries more than ever now, knowing the error of her ways. Being a Displaced has radically changed her perspective in six months. But then, for as bullheaded as Clarke can be, she's always been less inflexible than she may present herself as, open to what the world will do to her. Malleable when she needs to be, even if she doesn't recognize it. It's the recognition that was once a lot harder.]
I once said something about survival, too. It was ... different. But I said that life should be about more than surviving. It sounds like you embodied that once. [Clarke doesn't know whether to take the reference to "angels" literally. By now, she's open-minded enough to think it's likely.]
I'm still figuring it out myself. Do you want to find a subway? Something tells me you'll be able to now. [Since Clarke isn't in denial of its importance. Clarke isn't afraid she's being subdued by someone she's afraid of, but seeking to help herself.
Hesitantly, she extends her hand again to OA, offering it palm up.]
no subject
It's... nice. Nice taking refuge in touch. Easier in dreams -- OA's gut still lurches, but the strange logic of dreams soothes the body where it might otherwise flinch.]
I admit I'm curious what you'd conjure for me, if that's even how this works.
[Wouldn't it be fascinating if it were? Intriguing and horrible all at once. Would Clarke's imagination be kind? Would it shield her from the ghosts that haunt her own psyche? Or, in the absence of detail, would it fill in details far worse than reality? She knows Hap's voice now, but not his face -- out of what monstrous visage might that voice come, should he make an appearance at all?]
I'm happy to try to lead someone through the dark. I'm good at that. I know how to get around in it.
[A brief surge of amusement precedes a chuckle. She's speaking metaphorically, but not strictly. The literal is also true.]
I don't think I'm here to lead other people into it.
[Not her own, anyway. She can encourage them to look into their own, to gaze tenderly upon their own darkness and to realise there's nothing there to fear, but she can't force that either. Or... wouldn't. It's a line she has to draw, one she isn't always able to prevent herself overstepping, but she reassures herself with the certainty that as long as she can see where the line ought to be, she isn't like him.]
The deeper I go, the more I'm going to... remember, and I'm not quite sure how that happened before, the... sharing. I'm sorry. I wish it had been a kinder one.
[In any case, it isn't a no, exactly. But if the city shifts and gentles and leads them into the green, OA isn't going to fight it. There's enough dark to wade through in her own dreams.
She gives Clarke's hand a gentle squeeze, aiming a smile in her direction, genuine warmth crinkling the corners of her eyes.]
She did mean for me to understand, the woman who told me that, about surviving. She knew that to be wounded is to be given proof that you're living.
[The words themselves may be grim, but OA's tone isn't, and the emotions that begin to filter through the bond certainly aren't. On the contrary: she feels lightened. More than surviving.]
The secret is tenderness, I think. Staying open to it. Tenderness for yourself, too. For the places you come back to. Especially those.
[A sweeping gesture of her free hand: this place, the tower, the end of the world. The aches at which one worries like a tongue at a sore tooth.]
Your mind gave us this place for a reason; I don't know if we should ignore that.
no subject
[That's a very mild way to put it. Educational. The feeling within Clarke is uncertain. Not in the touch of OA's hand—Clarke will always feel more whole with her hand in someone else's—but in how all of this works. It's a fleeting, light feeling. Human, rather than entrenched in anything else.
It's time for her to explain. How is this common ground?]
What you saw of my world was more real than this place. The City of Light was a fiction created by an AI hoping to protect humanity from that. But it was a place that also stripped people of their pain, cutting it away the moment they accepted that escape.
[That may pass along the wrong intention. Clarke feels momentarily frustrated. Again: it's not a deep, thriving emotion. It's short, surging and leaving, hidden within the necessity to pass information on to someone else.]
I don't know if it's trying to help me seek freedom from the pain of where I stood. Maybe it was. But I do think it was common ground, and ... more than that, I do think my mind believes the City of Light can be shaped to what's needed. [At that, she begins to pull OA forward with purpose. Her steps aren't quick or rushed. She just needs to leave this spot and see the city.
All of the buildings around them have high glass windows that reflect the outside surroundings. Seeing inside is impossible, as if that much detail can't be rendered within this space.]
I'd try to conjure up a memory of what it was like then. I could see this world, but I didn't know what I was doing. Where I was going. And I was in a lot of pain. I wouldn't want ... I don't want you to experience that.
no subject
This is different. It's undertaken willingly, for one. OA also doesn't get the impression that Clarke is ushering her along out of the assumption that it's something she needs. Strange, really, how accepting help hurts less the less necessary it might be. She has to wonder if that isn't some small part of why Clarke is holding back on sharing her memories of this place: some things that are difficult enough to bear alone are all the harder to show to others. Vulnerability can be excruciating.]
Mm. Lotus eaters.
[There's a strange lurch of pain, of loss -- she'd said it without thinking. She remembers when the books had come, remembers Abel bringing them up to her room. Sounding the words out. It was a small mercy that he'd already left by the time she reached The Iliad, that name on the cover. Homer. This is an even older recollection: she'd read The Odyssey in high school, when she'd been an unwilling lotus eater in her own way, trying to exist in the world through the haze of antipsychotics.
She can still recall the shapes of those words, flowing under her hands. Homer's wine-dark sea. Her own fingertips brushing against those of rosy-fingered dawn. It feels like it happened to someone else.]
I don't know, maybe it is turning away.
[She doesn't sound -- or feel -- certain of that, but she's not entirely sure how to put to words what she does think. For a time, then, a thoughtful silence. OA keeps easy pace with Clarke, gaze raking the façades of the buildings as they pass. Hollow, false, like a film set.]
Common ground sounds more like the other answer. Reaching out. Asking for help. I don't mean that you need it--
[The last sounds like an afterthought, a concession. OA doesn't think there's any shame in asking for help, but she knows how absolutely unfathomable that is to some people, through no fault of their own. She doesn't imagine Clarke is one of them, but in the interest of avoiding insult, she specifies.]
--I mean that the fact we can endure something on our own doesn't mean we have to. Maybe that is why we're here.
[A beat, and then, less to clarify the thought than to add to it:]
I can take it, if it would help you for someone to know.
no subject
Even if it were Bellamy beside her, she's not certain she could. In reality, her memory of this place is vivid still. Bellamy held on to her hand in the real world. Bellamy kept her grounded, only letting go when he needed to go man defenses. Clarke was too far away at the time to know the difference anyway. And in her vision, she saw Lexa.]
It's not that I don't think you can handle it. I'm just—I've been training to be a doctor since I was old enough to, and there's something inside me that rejects the very idea of passing on that kind of pain. [That's not all of it.] I'm speaking biological pain. I had an object not unlike our neural implants in my head that was trying to kill me, and I had a substance injected into me constantly to make sure that it didn't succeed. The line between one and the other ... [Clarke can't even remember the actual physical pain. Seizing. Unable to keep going. It's like an echo of a memory.]
Maybe common ground is wrong, though.
[A flicker of a face, proud and regal. It's sent through their link, but nothing more. Her time with Lexa was precious. Though Markus had spoken to her at length in Clarke's dreamscape, it wasn't really her. And he couldn't really see their time together.]
That room was the audience chamber for someone named Lexa. I first began to fall in love with her there, and this is where I said good-bye.
[The link between the two. Strange, most likely.
But OA could tell that she was lying. Clarke will pull away some of the layers to reveal the truth. It's far more difficult for her than it appears to be for OA.
Or perhaps that's the subject matter.]
no subject
Things like this, perhaps: like taking what she's given and finding something like understanding. Some things are difficult enough to acknowledge, much less speak aloud. OA can't ask for more. She does give Clarke's hand another gentle squeeze, shares her own sensation of loss, a sympathetic echo.]
Someone--
[She catches herself. This should be a fair exchange.]
Homer.
[The flood of feeling says more than she could with words: love and loneliness, loss, yearning, anger, frustration, grief, the profoundest gratitude. Being without any of the others is like missing parts of herself, but this is particularly true of Homer.
All her memories of him are wrapped in hurtful context. She doesn't want to do him the disservice of giving too much, not yet. He deserves to be shared with joy, and so her own response is nearly as sparse: the face of a young man, staring down at her through a pane of glass speckled with condensation, his lips parted and his brow furrowed, eyes wide with hope, the tension of a moment of joyful revelation at the knowledge that for a moment they share only wordlessly: she is seeing Homer Roberts for the first time.
OA's chest tightens; she swallows the sensation away.]
Homer used to say that knowledge is only a rumour until it lives in the body. You don't really know a thing until the body knows it. Love is easy; it's here.
[The hand not holding Clarke's comes up to indicate not just her heart but lower, the gut, the groin. It's a visceral thing.]
I don't think it easily houses goodbyes. We... we stick, like catching on thorns. We come back to these places -- in dreams, in memories. It's like... I don't know, like some part of us can't reconcile what the body knows and what it can't... stomach.
[A pause, low mourning -- for herself, for Clarke.]
Can I ask what kind of goodbye it was?
[There are farewells and farewells, deaths and deaths.]
no subject
[Lexa was a hero. A leader, the Commander of her people. She was a symbol, meant to die in battle carrying out violence and revenge against anyone who would hurt her people. She was strong in conviction and pride, a visionary in every way. But when that took her too far, she was killed: a bullet to her stomach, hitting a vital artery. Clarke wasn't able to perform any kind of surgery to save her, and saw her life quickly slip from her no matter how hard she tried.
There's an image of Lexa on a bed, dying, with black blood around her mouth. The memory here is clear: there is no confusion about the blood. It is black, as it should be. There is a wound on Lexa's torso, clear. Clarke is younger, wearing hair extensions and in tears. That was the first time Clarke let go of Lexa.]
When I came here and was sick and dying because I wasn't supposed to be here as I was, she manifested as a part of that technology and came to rescue me. She held off our enemies so that I could free my people from a lifetime without pain. It's the way she should have gone. [The way they should have parted.
The sky overhead grows dark suddenly, but it feels less like a problem, and more like a chance for the street lights to come on and show them a way. The lights come together instinctively, casting a path into darkness. This is away from where green would have erupted from the ground, instead undoubtedly toward Clarke's subconscious subway station.
She follows it, seeming to respect and understand what her mind is doing. Sending her symbols, just as Becca had done.]
Lexa lives on in that technology, and helps the current commander now. My daughter Madi.
[If this is strange in any way, Clarke doesn't seem to give any hint of it. Speaking of Madi, of Lexa—there is a great deal of grief and sadness. Clarke loves the both of them more than she's ever loved anyone else. Knowing that Lexa is there for Madi offers her some peace, but she loves Madi ... and misses her.]
I guess in that way, being in the throne room was settling because it wasn't destroyed. That's a place of the past that should be gone. Easier to act as if I don't mourn her every day. [But she does. OA can feel it clearly. Distinctly.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)