Bahir Commentary
LJ entry: http://xmm-natalie.livejournal.com/164457.html#cutid1
Originally posted: 8/25/2009
Requested by: xmm_al_razi
Notes: Goodbye between Natalie and Bahir. Also a shit ton of introspection about their relationship and also Natalie.
*cracks knuckles, gets down to business!*
I feel like this commentary needs to be prefaced with lots of babbling before I really dig in. I suppose that's half the point of commentaries, but still...
Alright then. Here we go.
This is one of my favorite scenes in a long time. Anyone who talks to me for like, three seconds about RP and why I love it knows that my favorite thing - indeed, the only thing that keeps me playing after nearly ten years - is the intensity that comes from a really good character relationship. In particular, emotion. I was rereading one of Rossi's commentaries last night (this one, about their very last scene before her death, which was a rather wicked fight), and in it he notes that I am something of an angst whore. Which is true. It's not that I love angst, note - what I am drawn to is /emotion/. There is something about a scene that just absolutely crackles with it, whatever the emotion. It draws me in and holds me fast and leaves me breathless in the course of it. That connection, that emotional spark - be it love, hate, anger, jealousy, rage - is what I constantly long for in RP.
What that translates to for me, in RP, is an absolute adoration of deep, subtle, lasting relationships that build on history and get to a place where you can take characters in directions they never would have gone on their own. Although I’ve played a number of romantic relationships, both serious and not, both of my most serious and deepest character relationships have been friendships. With Sabby, it was Percy. With Natalie, Bahir. Both of these relationships were really excellent at pushing my characters beyond their comfort zone and into places I’m not sure would have been possible without them. Natalie especially, I think, because she is typically a very even-keeled, very self-sufficient person who, unlike Sabby, relied on people not because she /had/ to, but because something about them made her /want/ to. She was kind of bad at casual friendships for that reason.
Here is the part where I talk about things that are only relevant to a few people: This is, I think, maybe while Natalie has never quite had the same snap for me that Sabby did. While in some ways she was a /better/ character - certainly a better person, a healthier person - she has never been the tumultuous hurricane of pure emotion that Sabby almost always ran on, and she didn't tend to have the swings, the depth, the passion. To put it plainly, it was often harder to find her /interesting/.It's funny to talk about her like this, what with having only just wrapped her story last night, and that in a way that is not really a 'wrap' so much as a 'fade to black with occasional opportunity for cameos'. But in some ways, that’s appropriate, too. While Sabby absolutely insisted on a dead by the side of the road ending, Natalie is very much a ‘fade to black’ sort of character. She has her moments of spark and passion and despair and doubt, but by and large she’s just a very dedicated, very self-assured, very competent sort of woman who at the end of the day is mostly concerned with what she thinks of herself rather than what others think, and who likes her job and does it pretty darned well.
And yet, despite this, I’m really sad to say goodbye to her. And this scene is one of the reasons why. I knew at this point that Natalie was going - quite honestly, I’d known about as long as I’d known Bahir was going. This is because of what drives me in RP. Natalie’s been hanging around Home for about seven months now, and for the most part, she’s an awkward fit at best. She’s very useful, but she’s also very unhappy, and unhappy in Natalie tends to result in inward withdrawal. With Bahir there, there’s at least a way to draw out of that withdrawal. With him gone, the odds of her forming those new connections, that snap-sparkle-pop that I love so much, were greatly diminished. And let’s face it - I’ve been playing Natalie for three years, which is a pretty good lifespan and history for a character. As much as I hate the process of ‘new’, it’s probably time!
So here we have a scene that was, for me, very much about goodbyes. Clearly, on the surface, it’s about Natalie saying goodbye to Bahir, and he to her. But it was also, I think, a goodbye for us, to these characters and to this character dynamic that has been one of the best I’ve played, ever. Although I knew I’d have Natalie for a couple weeks beyond this scene - probably even some scenes with Bahir (and indeed, I had a few phone calls), the reality is that this scene was, for me, the end of an era.
The scene:
Tonight's dinner was no easy feat - the remnants of various Thai dishes that are scattered around Natalie's living room, balanced on the coffee table and tucked onto the floor, smell delicious. They /were/ delicious. A round-trip to San Fran away for perfect Thai takeout, reheated for consumption. It's like old times, if you ignore the part where they're in California, and all of Bahir's earthly belongings are packed away. Natalie's been doing a great deal of that. Ignoring. Conversation is light, filled with denial and focusing on things academic and personal and not at all job related. As she leans forward to steal another rice noodle, she notes, "I still want to see that zombie movie. The one with Woody Harrelson. It looks killer." Deep.
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Bahir admits, leaning back with his hands folded loosely over his abdomen. He is full. He is so full that he keeps whining intermittently about it and then leaning forward to steal another bite. You know, that kind of full. "If you want to see zombies, you should've asked to get assigned to the mission." Oh, wait. Are we avoiding job discussion?
Natalie is having a very rough time saying goodbye. The honest truth is that she pretty much followed Bahir to California - the job was tempting as well, and the motivation good, but without him, she probably would not have left her cushy job offer and her cushy takeout in New York. And this goodbye is harder than the usual, because she knows that there are stresses to this job, big ones, and she's losing her best friend and her support. Her lifeline. The one person in the entire world who she feels comfortable going to and saying 'Life sucks right now, I need a hug.' Natalie grew up a child of divorce, and the child of academics. Smart and capable, she did a lot of raising of herself - and then she went into a field where she spent a lot of time proving herself better than others in order to be considered as capable as others. Most of her life's conditioning is to be inwardly-driven, to rely on herself, and not to be overly flamboyant with the declared need for help or support or even understanding. Most of the time, she's pretty good at this. But she knows that over the past three years, she's slowly given pieces of that up in order to lean on Bahir now and then - and that's going away.
She's convinced here, by the way, that she is losing Bahir entirely. She has historically failed at long-distance relationships - her high school boyfriend, Elias, and to some pretty good extent, even her mother, who moved to California to take a job at Berkeley when she was 13. The reason she fails is a little complicated and a little not. She tends to get wrapped up in her work, her here and now, and sometimes people just drop off the radar. More importantly, she has a bit of a thing about being abandoned that goes pretty deep, which she doesn't really recognize at all. So when Elias left, she wasn't even interested in trying. He was gone, she was moving on. Bahir... is harder. But she expects that it will come, and she expects that the job she's still doing will drive a wedge between them pretty swiftly. The secrets.
She's dealing with this, right now, by ignoring it. There are several scenes before this (and after this, actually) where she dealt with this in her more usual way, which is to withdrawal into herself. But right now, she's hit a point where she's terrified of how much she's going to regret that if she doesn't enjoy her last few days, and right here she's absolutely ignoring the fact that it's even happening. In fact, she's almost pretending that they're celebrating - the Thai food, brought all the way from San Francisco. The conversation that acts like they're going to be seeing a movie together in a month (by the way, I'm sorry, that movie looks AWESOME and I am seeing it on FRIDAY). This is a very practiced sort of casualness that is as much about Natalie fooling herself as anything. Bahir, for all his failure to play strictly by the rules in this first pose, for the most part humors her throughout the log. I suspect he knows how hard this is for her!
One of the things that I adore adore adore about long-term relationships is the casual ease with which you establish habits and give and take. I like the bits in Natalie and Bahir that get off-cammed almost as much as the ones that do: here, Bahir's whining, which Tez tells us about but which we don't see. In fact, a lot of them are off-cammed - they did a lot of mutation training in their early days that we RPed only intermittently, and they have had a standing Tuesday lunch date for a very long time, and only a handful of those are played. They worked together in a research lab for a year or so, and we played it, but certainly not every day. This works very well because one of their binding points is their work - not just together, but separately. They have an understanding and respect for each other that is based on who they are as academics, and if you've ever met an academic, you know that they typically cannot shut up about their work. Natalie and Bahir get most of that out of their system off-cam. Because frankly, I'm not a mathematician. I do not need to RP about her job 24/7. But it's still a very important component of who she is, and this relationship allows me to keep that firmly in place without having to wave the flag all the time.
Natalie looks horrified, turning wide eyes to Bahir behind the frames of her glasses. "Seriously? Zombieland? You haven't... Bahir. It looks /amazing/. They drop a /piano/..." Her lecture is abruptly curtailed by the suggestion, and she breaks off, nose wrinkling as she slumps back into the couch. "I don't do that shit," she answers.
"They drop a piano...?" Bahir looks over at Natalie, and kicks weakly at her ankle to prompt her to continue. "Do they do something awesome with it, or does it just fall?"
"On a zombie!"
Bahir looks seriously unconvinced by the amazingness. "Oh."
Natalie's love is not specific to zombies, although she does enjoy them - she has a soft spot for the creepy and spooky, which is mostly because I do, and because in one of her early scenes (with Bahir actually I think) I needed a movie for her to watch, and I wanted it to be kind of dumb, the sort of thing she liked but might be embarrassed to like, and I threw in Rose Red. To be honest, my next character will probably like spooky and creepy too, because I find it fun to play with! Shut up.
Natalie grumbles and adjusts so that Bahir can't reach her ankle. Not without effort, anyway.
Bahir puts the effort into kicking her. He is determined. "What else do they do?"
Natalie's ankle is on the couch! Does he stand? Is he /that determined/? "Stuff," she grumps, enthusiasm clearly dimmed.
He is not that determined. Bahir gives up with a disgruntled mutter. "Sorry. I am sure the movie will be completely amazing and awesome and other good adjectives beginning with a."
"Yeah," says Natalie, disgruntled.
"Woman makes ghosts yet still has an inexplicable affection for horror movies," Bahir tells his interwoven fingers. "Kind of weird!"
What I like about this here is how very palpable the awkwardness is. Natalie and Bahir are characters who do not usually lack for conversation, or interesting things to say to each other. They can usually carry a conversation when I think there is not conversation to be carried - and it doesn't usually matter whether I the player am tired or worn or any such thing. If I'm off, Tez is on, and boom, there's a spark. But here, in this, there is not. The poses get shorter, and they get stupider - by which I mean, meaningless. We have some fun going back and forth with meta - especially in a bit here - but reading over this now it seems so very clear to me that they are Avoiding a Subject. This is small talk at its best. Or worst. It is /painful/.
"They aren't ghosts," Natalie answers grumpily. After a moment's pause, she adds, "And I can't always make them, anyway." Clearly she has at some point told him about the kidlets and their missing time.
Obviously. Bahir shrugs. "Well," he says. "Close enough."
"Real ghosts would be way creepier," Natalie disagrees instantly.
"More moaning and chains," Bahir agrees.
"I hate you," Natalie announces. She leans forward to punch at his shoulder.
Bahir takes the opportunity to kick her. "Filthy liar."
Natalie IS STILL ON THE COUCH. "Truth!"
IF SHE CAN PUNCH HIM, HE CAN KICK HER. "Not even close. You just wish your mutation involved moaning and chains."
FEET ARE WAY AWAY FROM HANDS. "You just wish your mutation were as cool as mine," Natalie retorts.
LOOK IT IS SIMPLE GEOMETRY. "My mutation is pretty fucking cool," Bahir says immediately.
"Filthy liar." NO KIDDING WHAT IS BAHIR FLEXY BENDY BOY?
WELL YES, ACTUALLY. HOT, RIGHT? "Your jealousy is transparent."
We lapse into really stupid meta-caps because our characters are stuck in a rut and we don't want to be as bored and awkward as they are. This conversation is so inane that I might fall over and die from it. Really. Everything I said about about why I love RP and what makes it tick for me and relationships I adore? COMPLETELY FUCKING ABSENT RIGHT HERE. Except that's kind of the point - it's a relationship that's about to be absent, and if they're dealing with it by pretending that fact doing exist, it pretty much drains their relationship of everything that makes it good, anyway. They are based a lot in honesty. This is a pretty big heap of lying. It's a good thing we're funny, though!
Abruptly, Natalie falls silent for a moment, her frowning gaze directed toward the floor.
Bahir glances over at Natalie, and shifts slightly, leaning toward her. "Hey," he says after a moment.
I don't really know why that comment in particular set off the change. It may have just been that she realized the lying, too - I'm not sure. What I love about this set of poses, though, is that although they are minimal, they say so very much. Tez is one of my very favorite people to RP with because not only can she do this, but she can take it, too - my pose is one sentence, not even a full line. But from it, she understands what it means, and she responds in kind. Natalie is thinking about his departure. Bahir knows it, and he reminds her - through the shift of his body, the span in which he allows silence to just be, the pointed breaking of that silence - that he's still here, and that he feels the loss of this, too. I absolutely adore being able to be subtle with things.
Natalie stirs slightly, unfolding her legs to lean toward Bahir in return. Just as abruptly, she requests, "Dance with me?"
Bahir blinks once, and then grins. He rises and holds his hand out to Natalie, solemn.
Natalie stands, stepping toward Bahir to take his hand and then tug him a few steps to a clear space, just in front of the tall windows that show off the rising Chemeketa moon.
Rerouted without complaint, Bahir teases, "Tango?" as he places his other hand at her hip.
Natalie slides into Bahir, hands falling into place with easy familiarity. Her ponytail shivers as she shakes her head. "Still don't know how," she reminds, her smile slight. "Waltz."
Here is a place where the weight of history pays off. Natalie and Bahir don't dance often, but the first time they danced was significant. Natalie as I created her could not control her powers well at all - when they got turned on, she could not flip them off again. This caused some problematic situations, including a time when Bahir caught a glimpse of her ghosts through a crack in her door, very early on in their relationship. She let him in. He suggested she try distracting herself. She claimed it never worked. He asked her to dance. Somewhere in the middle of trying to remember the steps to a waltz and navigate the furniture in her not-sizable apartment, the ghosts went away. This is the first thing Bahir really /did/ for her. They went away thanks to his telepathic touch, and even though Natalie knows that now (she didn't then), I think in her head there is something special about the idea of dancing with Bahir. Something that fixes things, and heals them.
There's a subthread here about him teaching her to tango for a Hellfire ball she never got to go to, but it is not a very big one. Mostly, this is Natalie needing something to do that is /them/, that is their /relationship/ and their /friendship/, but that doesn't necessarily require her to talk (although she decides to). And it's nostalgia. Waltzing with Bahir. How far they've come.
Bahir heaves a put-upon sigh, but does not further the joke. It takes him a moment to shift from stiff memorization into smoother muscle memory, but it is a short moment. He grins at her, squeezing her hand, and then draws them both across the floor in a smooth glide. They lack music, but it is not terribly hard to find a compromised timing. "I wonder if anyone else here knows how to do this."
I adore this pose. I think maybe it is their entire relationship in one beautiful, simple metaphor.
Friendship of the nature they have did not initially come easily or naturally to either of them, and once in awhile I think that still shows up. Their inability to communicate properly, or deal with a situation. Like this one. But eventually, both of them seem to slide into something that is thoughtless, something that /works/, and something that relies on that point of connection they have. Playing off each other. Moving together to find compromised timing.
Natalie's muscle memory is not nearly as good, her movements not half so practiced, but her trust of Bahir is deep and well-practiced, and she moves effortlessly with his lead. "Probably some," she murmurs, tilting her head just enough to look up at him with quiet eyes. Her smile is sad. "Do you remember the first time we did this?"
"Long time ago," Bahir says. His voice is soft, matched to hers, and his expression is vaguely wistful, gaze distant. "Long, long time." His eyes sharpen on her again, focused, and his smile shifts a little wry.
The metaphor does not carry through Natalie's pose - this is more concrete reality - but the depth of the relationship does, namely in her trust of Bahir. That trust is pretty rock solid and several miles deep. It's almost the sort of unwavering thing that becomes unquestioning, that /must/ be unquestioning because she can't risk losing it. That's how she got through the InCi revelation that shook their relationship in the wee days of XF - in the end, she stopped questioning because what she would gain by it could not compare to what she would lose.
I absolutely adore pretty much everything from this point onward. I don't know what it was, but we were /on/, this night. Everything speaks volumes, to me, and Tez is at her absolute best in terms of evoking emotion and atmosphere with a few bare words, and she's pretty damn good at it at her /worst/. It's another reason I really like playing with her. Wordchoice conveys so much in so little - a wistful expression, a gaze that shifts and sharpens on her.
"Not that long," Natalie answers, shaking her head softly again. With a flicker, they are joined on their dance floor - Natalie and Bahir, far more awkward, far more unsure. Her smile widens a touch, and she stretches to speak loudly, /this/ form of communication still uncommon between them, if not uncomfortable. The words draw into sharp focus at the front of her mind as she looks up at him. << It was the beginning, I think. >>
"Well. They were very busy years, then," Bahir says, grinning down at Natalie, and glancing over at their illusionary counterparts. He does look a little older now -- no gray hairs, he's not Percy, but there are faint lines of tension and strain that had not been there. He is not listening, telepathy courteously shielded. HA HA.
I find it really interesting here that Bahir sees the start of their relationship as a long, long time ago, and Natalie does not. I'm not quite sure what this means. I wonder whether any of it relates to the way they are saying goodbye - Bahir leaving, Natalie left. She wants to cling to the relationship as present, as living and breathing. Or maybe it relates to the length of relationships in Bahir's life. TEZ. Flesh this out for me!
There's no argument about the second, though - they were /very/ busy years. In the three years they have been friends, they've both had the mutant-flu, Bahir has been kidnapped and attacked by Creed, Natalie has gone missing in a plane crash, Bahir broke up with Percy, Natalie dated Ben, Natalie lost Ben (and some other friends), Bahir started dating Percy again, New York saw an AU, riots, a blackout, Natalie was severely burned by a rogue pyrokinetic, the world almost ended, Bahir lost his twin, and they became supersecretspies.
So, you know. Eventful.
Now let me talk about telepathy here. This is one of the things about their relationship that I like, actually, and maybe one where they are a bit different. They both know that the other is a mutant, and they don't try to pretend otherwise or completely ignore it. But they also don't pay much attention to it, most of the time. X-Factor has been a real strain for Natalie in that sense. Not just because of what the job is, but because of what she does, and what her mutation means, and what it can mean, and the things she could be doing with it, and what makes her useful. Natalie loves this aspect of her relationship with Bahir because there is a part of her that has always been very wary of being judged on what she is by default rather than what she's chosen to become. This isn't just a mutant thing. It's a woman-in-math thing, a child-of-academics thing, but also, /especially/ in XF, a 'woman-who-can-show-the-past' thing. It's what she hates most about being here. Here, she's not Doctor Natalie Simon, mathematician of rising influence. She's the girl who can do ghosts. Sometimes. When it doesn't take too much energy. It has nothing to do with her /choices/ or her /desires/, but with how she was /born/.
Her interactions with Bahir and his telepathy stem from the same place. Percy and Bahir talk a lot through telepathy. Bahir and Natalie never, ever do. This is not because she doesn't trust him, or because telepathy makes her uncomfortable. Although she is not the /happiest/ about the idea, she trusts Bahir implicitly and would have no real problem with using it if he seemed to really want to. It is instead a sort of recognition that their connection comes from a different place. They are not friends because they are both mutants. Their mutation is incidental. Who they /are/ is something different, something more. I suspect they see a bit differently on this - Bahir has a very different relationship with his mutation, and with the 'mutant community', than Natalie does. Natalie spent most of her life trying to keep her mutation turned off, hiding from it, feeling trapped and held hostage by it. XF is the first time she's ever used her mutation regularly, or for anything even approaching self-gain, and it raises all sorts of conflicty questions inside her. It makes her uncomfortable.
So really, strange as it seems, I think that in some ways the lack of telepathy between them is a sign of a certain type of closeness, at least on Natalie's part. Again, I suspect this may look different from the other angle, but for her, it's basically a valuation of /other/ things over this - because her mutation has never been a part of her like Bahir's has, and she's been at odds with it for so long.
STILL. There is something undeniably intimate about telepathic touch. I'm not sure why she felt the need for it here, when it's so rare, and when it doesn't matter, but I think that may be it. I think it's also that she's not sure she has the words, or the words + the willpower, to go where she wants to go. Telepathy is easier. Telepathy can speak a lot of things that she can't, or can't make herself. And to some great extent, the very fact that she asks it says 'pay attention'. 'Listen up'. 'This is important.' Because it's so very, very, very unusual for them.
And I think it's notable here that she evokes both of their mutations, their very different mutations, in this pose. Dancing here, talking telepathically, with their 3-year-old ghosts dancing beside them, is them as complete and full person, nothing hidden. It also reminds of how far they've come. In their relationship, from then to now, in her control, in her abilities. A year ago, she couldn't have switched those ghosts on like that. Three years ago, she couldn't have switched /any/ ghosts on at /all/. That change is basically Bahir.
Natalie tiptoes up and taps a finger against his forehead, silent request to open up in there. Her fingers brush against his cheek briefly before they find his shoulder again, and she frowns faintly. << Listen to me! >>
The gesture is helped by the touch of skin, telepathic reception intensified. "Wh--?" << What? >> he says after a quick telepathic glance to confirm that, yes, she was trying to get his attention. Humor hues his thoughts.
And of course Bahir doesn't even notice. Because he does not listen! Natalie knows this, if she's thinking. It's just-- you know! EMOTIONS. Anyway, I thought this was kind of funny, that she has to ask, and also that she refuses to /ask/. The more I think about it, the more I think this is about not having to /speak/ the words. Not having to deal with watching them get caught in her throat or lost in a sniffle.
This is also the section of log where every pose starts to get very physical - not just in terms of where they are what they're doing, but physical contact. Natalie is not, as a rule, a physical person. Sabby would cuddle with anyone at the drop of a hat. Natalie is more restrained. It's not that she doesn't like it - it's just that she respects and requires respect of personal space, and it's not until she's comfortable with someone that she even feels the desire to be touchy with them. Witness Tom's request for a hug last night. There are a number of previous scenes where, if Tom had been Bahir, she would have been smothering him with hugs. But they aren't at that place yet. Even her romantic relationships tend to work like this. With one or two exceptions, Natalie is a 'wait' kind of girl. Wait to see if it's worth it.
So it really does mean something, the way she wants to be physically touching Bahir in this log. He's the one person she's physical with, and she feels that loss keenly. Because she's not inclined to get snuggly with most people, that's another thing the loss of Bahir means. No more hugs on bad days, no more lazy leaning over a movie. No more solid silence of touch. She may get to keep Bahir in some sense, but there is absolutely no question that /this/ is going away. The thought doesn't make her happy. So she starts by asking him to dance, and then she starts stealing touches. A brush of her fingers here, a squeeze at his shoulder there.
Natalie's smile returns, quiet and fleeting. << I said, >> she repeats, feet moving in time to an unheard beat as she curls her fingers at his shoulder. << It was the beginning, I think. >> Behind them, a smiling Natalie calls Bahir an overconfident prat.
<< Well, at least you already had a good idea of the kind of person I was, >> Bahir teases, his thumb rubbing over her knuckles in counter-caress.
I like that Bahir seems to return this, too. As the scene goes on, the physical grows increasingly intimate, as well - not just a stroke, or a brush, but a caress. I'll probably talk about this more in a bit, because right now I really kind of want to talk about another thing I adore about Natalie and Bahir, and playing with Tez in general, which is their particular brand of banter.
Natalie tends to come off as abrasive and unlikeable to a lot of people. Part of this is, I think, because her way of communicating and connecting is uh. Sometimes in direct opposition to what people expect. With Bahir, it's not a problem - Bahir gets that. In fact, he does it too. In the ghosts here, you see Natalie calling Bahir names, and it's in all seriousness too, not a joking or teasing tone in sight. But yet it /is/ joking, it's good-natured insulting, the sort that comes from fondness that's not admitted to out loud. It really is true that they show affection for each other by pet names that most people consider insults. Part of this is that both of them are exceedingly confident people - it doesn't actually bother them much if someone thinks they're assholes. It tends to startle Natalie when someone cannot take some poking, because it's very rarely malicious. It's sometimes a little judgmental or condescending, but surely people do not care about that! Right? Right.
<< From the start, >> Natalie agrees, the tones of her mind sadder than the expressions she lets creep onto her face. Her fingers twist in his, encouraging the touch. Affection and wistfulness twines through her mind, coloring every syllable. << You have always been good to me. For me. Look at the difference. >> Telepathic touch can feel the complete ease with which ghosts disappear, blinking out of existence with no effort at all.
Bahir pauses the whirling slide of their steps, drawing Natalie into him rather than leading her across the floor. He tips his head, brushing a kiss on her brow as he lowers their joined hands. << Your friendship is an unlooked for gift, Natalie, >> he says, allowing the usual strict sterility of his thoughts to fall away, emotion seeping through to hue his words with something more than affection. << I can't imagine how I would've gotten through the past few years without you -- and I can't imagine what it will be like to not have you nearby. >>
Here are the things Natalie can't say aloud, or won't. This is the most frankly honest they have ever been with each other, I think. For the most part, their importance to each other goes unspoken. They don't say 'I love you' or 'I missed you' or 'you're a great friend.' They just are. They just do. I don't think that either of them says these things here for the other person - Natalie understands everything that Bahir tells her here, and I think he understands everything she tells him, without the telling. Natalie says these things here for /her/. Because she wants to be /sure/ that he knows, she wants to have said it. She wants it to be a little more concrete and real than 'he knows.'
I am so, so, so very bad with tepe meta, folks. Telepaths who play with me are magnanimous and forgiving in dealing with my bad. I forget to put stuff in, I'm awkward when I do, and I have absolutely no knack at all for imagery. That said, I think I don't do too bad here - mostly because it's strict dialog/emotion. And oh, I know Natalie's emotional state right now, and I know it well. I steal words from Tez - wistful, affection. And also I think I'd just read a book that was really strong on the imagery that helped my prose. Hm. What was I reading? I'm going to go look. Oh! Ink Exchange. Not the best book ever, but a lot of really strong visuals, the sort that make your head all cloudy with living in the world. I think I'd spent the few hours prior to this devouring it. That helped. ANYWAY. Tangent.
I love the shift in mood here, and how easily Tez accomplishes it. Have I mentioned how wonderful she is at mood? The pause in the dance, the drawing closer. The serious attention. The brush of a kiss.
And here is the first time we see something else, too. Something 'more than affection.' I'm not going to write about this right now, except to say that I think it is present through the rest of the log, even if not explicitly spoken.
Natalie blinks rapidly for a moment, squeezing his hand as telepathy speaks things words never quite have. Emotion is thick in her throat and in her mind, echoing and amplifying Bahir's. << Me either, >> she says simply. She lifts her eyes to fix them on his, dark and serious. << You have changed so much about my life. You are so much the reason I am me. >> Memories swirl, fleeting and fast, touching on mutation and research and heartache and pain and worry and fear and change. << It's silly, >> she adds after a moment, her mental voice tentative. << But I can't even imagine who I'd (I'll) be, without you. >>
Bahir squeezes Natalie's hand and then lifts it, kissing her knuckles. He holds it there, between them, and regards her with a steady fondness. "Yeah," he breathes, words spoken but intimacy scarcely lessened by the softness of his words. << For all there is in New York for me-- >> His thoughts touch on research, on home, on family, on friends, on /hot, fresh takeout/. << --there will always be something missing. Your friendship -- You mean.... >> Even telepathically, he does not have the words, and has to rely on something more primitive: an empathic surge reflects shared affection, colored by closeness, ease, and trust, but heavily foreshadowed by looming loss.
So in reading Rossi commentary last night, I saw that I talked there about how, although I'm rarely self-conscious about turning the emotion in a scene up to 11, I still have a hang-up about having characters actually /cry/ on people. This is still true. I still do not know why. But there are things that tend to happen that indicate struggling to fight tears (Natalie helps my hangup in that /she/ would hate to be caught crying by someone most of the time). Blinking rapidly is one of them! Probably it would be clearer if I said 'blinking back tears', but then I'd be on my hang-up, and we just can't have that!
I have a hard time saying a lot about this because I think the pose says it itself. It's straightforward and blunt and honest, which are all traits of Natalie. But it's also open, which is not. She's not just honest about what's asked - she offers. That's unusual. Her emotion here echoes, amplifies Bahir's - not just affection, but the 'more than.' Which I think is maybe the first time I have ever put that on screen.
This is one time I have actually really had a good time with playing telepathy. Because I could whirlwind through so many things, and the understanding is /there/, even with words unspoken.
Bahir ramps up the intimacy here, and the scene takes a steady crawl from 'you are my best friend and I will miss you' to something that is almost dangerously more. This is the second time he's kissed her - forehead, knuckles - in this scene, and it's not a touch that is common between them. It's not unknown for Natalie to kiss Bahir on the cheek, but she usually does it when she's amused and trying to throw him off balance. I don't /think/ the forehead kiss ever really appeared before XF, although I can't recall for sure. Suffice it to say, kisses of any sort are not an every day occurrence between them. And neither is this sort of steady, serious regard, this holding of things, this savoring. /That/ is entirely new.
Gosh. Reading this again, those last few sentences of Tez's almost make me cry.
Natalie shakes her head, fast and hard as tears spring to her eyes. << Don't, >> she says instantly, breathing the word aloud on a whisper to match the firmer mental command. "Don't." Her hand tightens in his. << I know you have to go. I hate it, but I know... >> Emotion sweeps by, sharing the recognized sense of loss, of purposelessness, of /yearning/ that being trapped away from his life's passion brings. It's tinged with no small share of her own. << Don't make it harder than it already is. >>
"You started it," Bahir says, trying to tease and failing a little, voice rough. He releases her hand only to wrap both his arms around her and pull her in. It is inevitable that a hand will lift, two fingers curling through her ponytail. The shields over his telepathy remain thinned, but he holds back the touch of his mind
.
And Natalie does. Sometimes, hang-up or no, there is just no help for it - and if there is one person I am comfortable inflicting virtual tears on, it's probably Tez. Because she feeds my angst-whore tendencies. And really, how do you respond to that last pose, except to cry?
She hits the point here where she can't do it anymore. The open and sharing hurts too much, and she needs to draw back. She had spent a lot of time prior to this thinking about Bahir going, but I don't think it /hit/ her until this moment, the completeness of it, the totality, what it would mean. I also think that, with the intimacy of this particular telepathic conversation, she is starting in a very, very small way to admit some things to herself about the extent to which Bahir means so much to her that she had never previously allowed herself to admit. Not in so many words. Not explicitly. But in a very small way, allowing herself to actually feel it. Her need to draw back is strong enough that she needs to make it real, too, out loud. Don't. Stop. I'm going to fall apart if we keep doing this.
I love that Bahir plays with Natalie's ponytail so much. He hasn't always - it's a relatively recent development. But I have always always loved Natalie's hair, and playing with what it means to her to have it down, to have it up, what it is about her that makes her the sort of person who is perpetually ponytailed (you never knew so much could be packed into a ponytail!), and I like that Bahir likes it, too. Also, I just think her PB has fucking amazing hair. And there is something so tender and intimate about playing with someone's hair like that.
The fact that Bahir withdrawls so quickly at her request says something about him, too, I think. Through much of this scene, Bahir gives what Natalie needs, and what she asks for. In some ways, I think it's a very Natalie-centric scene.
Natalie falls into him, her own arms wrapping tight around his middle and squeezing almost to the point of pain. She buries her face against his shoulder, letting tears seep into the fabric of his shirt. There's silence for a moment, and then she says, << I lied. Come back. >>
<< You're so fickle, >> Bahir whispers, words overlain with a teasingly misogynistic cast. She is fickle because WOMEN are fickle. He holds her close, solid and steady and warm, and releases her ponytail only for his hand to fall against the nape of her neck, thumb sliding over skin. He rests his cheek against the top of her head, the continuing touch of his thoughts a steady flow of bittersweet affection.
She IS fickle! Teetering on the edge of dealing with it and not, she apparently decides that falling apart /with/ him is better than falling apart /without/ him. It takes her a little bit to admit it, but she does. And she cries. And in my next pose I say 'some time' and I expect that what I mean by that is that they stand like this, holding each other, with Natalie giving up the battle and letting tears win, and Bahir stroking her neck, for several minutes at least.
This pose is at least a little funny in the midst of this because in the very early days, Natalie and Bahir had a legitimate fight about sexism, and they almost were never friends because of it. OH HOW FAR THEY HAVE COME.
Natalie's mind returns the touch, floating between sadness and warmth. She stays like that for some time, her cheek turned against the solidity of his shoulder, her fingers laced against his back, eyes closed against the touch of his hand against her skin. Eventually she speaks again, although she does not stir. << I'm not coming to see you off tomorrow. >>
<< Well, that will keep me from being tempted to change my mind at the last minute. >> The words are teasing, but there is truth beneath them, an acknowledgement of the pain of separation.
<< You've had plenty of time to change your mind, >> Natalie says, sad acceptance twisting around her words. << I know you're going. I just don't think I can watch it. >> Somewhere, a drifting thought gives wry acknowledgement to the melodrama of the statement, but it doesn't undercut the truth behind it.
Bahir squeezes the back of Natalie's neck, acknowledgement and acceptance conveyed wordlessly, and his arms tightening just slightly.
Did I mention that I had a really great time with the physical in this log? I'm not a very visual person, I can't often really /picture/ a scene. But here, I can. I have a great sense of it, and that's largely due to Tez giving me a lot of really great stuff to play off of.
She doesn't go to see him off because she can't be /this/ in front of anyone else. This scene was tough on her. Very, very tough. She can't do it twice, and she can't do it where others - where Percy - can see. It's private.
There is a small shade of OOC influence here - clearly Bahir /is/ leaving, no matter what Natalie says, for OOC reasons, so I have the choice to let her be angry at that or accept that. But really, at the heart of it, it still feels right. Natalie would never really, truly ask Bahir to stay, because she could not have him here when he wants to be elsewhere without being twisted by guilt. Natalie is an independent person - she's been raised that way. She watched her mother basically leave her family and relegate her to holiday visits almost entirely because she got a really great job offer. She doesn't understand a world in which it's okay to ask someone to make a sacrifice for a relationship. Or... where someone would say yes to a sacrifice for that reason. It's just not really even on her radar. So because she can see his point, because she understands, she really does /understand/, even while every inch of her hates it. That's not to say that she doesn't understand sacrifice - she would make one herself. In fact, she did. It's that she cannot ask it of someone else.
Eventually, Natalie pulls back. She takes a single deep breath, steadying herself as her hands find Bahir's shoulders again and she tips her head to look up at him. For a moment, she stands in silence.
With slight reluctance, Bahir allows Natalie to ease back, but his arms remain looped around her. As she looks up at him, he lifts his hand to take her ponytail between his fingers and give it a light, affectionate tug.
I adore adore adore ADORE the way Tez plays with silence with me. Here, in this scene, we've already had awkward. Now we have reluctant, and affectionate. Steadying. A few scenes later, we'll have more awkward, uncomfortable, and lost. I feel like silence can say so much, and I love having someone who isn't in a rush to pose overtop of it. Because there are other things that happen in a silence. Expressions and glances and touches. Sometimes silence needs a few poses to breathe, to expression the emotion behind it, whatever it is. To linger.
Natalie wrinkles her nose at him in instant annoyance, half-hearted and reflexive. Exhaling, she slides a hand from his shoulder to his cheek, tapping her thumb lightly there. After a drawn out pause, she says quietly, "You know I love you, right? You are the best friend I've ever had."
Bahir gives her just a slight smile: slight, but warm. "I love you too, Dr. Natalie Jo Simon." He starts to say more, then stops, and shrugs. What is there TO say? They said it all telepathically. His lips quirk.
You know, I wish I could remember, but I really can't. Is this the first time they have said this to each other? I think it may be. If not, it's certainly the first time they have said it with this /weight/, with the intensity. Sabby used to tell Percy she loved him all the time - and she meant it much the same way that Natalie does, here. But Natalie doesn't say these things as easily.
There is a hint of something else here, too. That thing that she is letting herself feel, just a tiny, small little bit. That part that ends at 'you know I love you' and doesn't go on to clarify 'you are the best friend I've ever had'. Their posture here is not really one of best friends.
Natalie gives Bahir a grin in response to that, warmth flashing in her eyes as she lifts on her toes to brush her lips against Bahir's cheek in a feather-soft whisper of a kiss. Rocking back, and then drawing back, she says, "I'll see you later."
Bahir's tone is teasing as he smiles back at her and says, "I look forward to it." He hesitates a moment, standing still as she withdraws, and then swoops in to press the lightest of chaste kisses to her lips, pulling her in again. /Then/ he lets her go, stepping back.
Here is the kiss as it usually happens. Fast and smiling and affectionate and light. And then here is the kiss as it never has.
I believe Tez coinflipped for this pose. I'm glad she did it, though, because although I don't know whether it would ever have come out on camera, really, fully, truly, this is an undercurrent that has been between them for a long time. And here at the end, I'm very happy that it got at least a little bit of screen time.
I love everything about this. I love the hesitation, the stillness. The sudden swoop and the light, chaste kiss. The pulling her in. The stepping back. It's such a strong visual, and so telling about their relationship. I don't know what was in Bahir's mind for this kiss, but to Natalie, it feels like-- I don't know. An acknowledgement, an almost-invitation that at the same time very clearly and very carefully isn't. It's chaste. There is no need to feel guilty over this, or confess to best friends' boyfriends. But there is that undercurrent, and there is that pulling in before the stepping back. There is that space given, that space that feels like a choice she is given.
Natalie stills at that touch, standing exquisitely motionless in Bahir's arms for a long moment, her eyes closed. She opens them again when he steps back, and there is something naked and yearning in her eyes as she looks at him. The moment stretches out, thick with hesitation that draws taut until it seems that something between them must snap. At the end of it, Natalie steps back as well, and does not say any words of farewell.
And fuck if I don't love my pose here, too. Exquisitely motionless is clearly something I got from the book I was reading, because I am not usually that good. This pose is about the space, the short span of time, when their relationship balances between one thing that is, and one thing that maybe could be. It's probably why I got a little purple - this is another one of those silences that needed room to breathe, and to be. Because it's not a quick one, or an easy one. Natalie /yearns/. That thing that their relationship could be - she wants it, and I think it is the first time, ever, that she has admitted it to herself. The only time since, too. In this moment right here. She hesitates. She /almost/s.
Except she doesn't. She steps back, and her stepping back is not Bahir's stepping back - it's not room for a choice, it's a choice made, for the both of them.
Eyes moving over her features, Bahir watches her, studies her: he all but memorizes her expression, his own eyes a little wide, his posture a little too tense. When she steps back, he draws a breath. It never quite makes it to words. He dips his head, eyes closing in a silent goodbye, and then he crosses to the door
.
And hell, does Tez respond to it /beautifully/. She gives the silence time to play, too, and it's such a full, gorgeous, eloquent silence. I love how you can read him here, without a word. The waiting. The expectation. And then finally the reaction, the recognition of the unspoken decision, and the acknowledgement of it. To some extent, of her right to make it, and of the one she made.
Natalie folds in on herself when he goes, listening to the door close before she abandons the makeshift dining room, dance floor of her living space for the small comfort of her bed. She doesn't need mutation for the ghosts tonight. They are thick enough behind her own eyeballs, a bittersweet ache as she curls up and gives into tears. The next morning, she still does not say goodbye.
There is never a goodbye between them. There is 'I'll see you later' and 'I look forward to it' and the kiss. It's a little silly and a lot sentimental, but it means something to Natalie, that that's how they ended. With no goodbye. That's how she wanted it, and she's happy that Bahir understands that, maybe even wants it, too.
My purple comes out here again, but I still like it. I've always loved Natalie's ghosts, even though that's not really what they are - it's the one aspect of her I will miss a /ton/ as a character trait. There's so much to be done with them. And I like when I can draw distinctions and parallels between her ghosts, which aren't really, and the ghosts that actually do haunt.
Natalie is heartbroken here. I mean that in a fairly literal sense. She has some pretty deep-rooted abandonment issues. Her mom, who left for California when she was 13. Her two major relationships, which both ended in the betrayal of ongoing cheating and very messy breakups. Friendships that she lost in the course of these relationships. Bahir is not like either of these, but there's still that edge of panic, that quiet voice that whispers that she is never going to be enough to make anyone stay. That she is far down the list of priorities, and always will be. It's not a fair voice, or a nice voice, but it's a voice that whispers in her head a lot.
And she's heartbroken for the choice she just made, too, because it's not the one she wanted to make, and it's not the one she /would/ have made, except for the fact that Bahir has a boyfriend, a boyfriend who loves him and who he loves. And she cannot, will not, absolutely will /never/ be the other woman. Ever.
It's not that she thinks that's what Bahir's asking from her here, not really. But it hits too close, and she can't bring herself to do it. To make herself Zenith, to make Bahir Ben, to turn Percy into /her/. And although Natalie really, truly does love Bahir, and I suspect would be pretty happy with him in a very different sort of relationship, to some extent she is also self-sufficient enough to also be happy with him in this one, if not perfectly so. There is always going to be some small part of her that wonders 'what if' and wishes 'maybe' and... yearns. At least until she finds someone to be for her what Percy is or has been for Bahir. But she can have most of him this way, and most of him is something she can be happy with. Most of him is what she eventually went back to New York for. Not just most of him - I'm not sure if that alone would have been enough. But most of him, and all of her, lives in New York, and that's a combination that's too good to pass up.
And so she works in New York, she crashes in Bahir and Percy's guestroom, they make coffee and curl up on the couch and watch Star Trek and he does research and she does research, and so life goes.
Originally posted: 8/25/2009
Requested by: xmm_al_razi
Notes: Goodbye between Natalie and Bahir. Also a shit ton of introspection about their relationship and also Natalie.
*cracks knuckles, gets down to business!*
I feel like this commentary needs to be prefaced with lots of babbling before I really dig in. I suppose that's half the point of commentaries, but still...
Alright then. Here we go.
This is one of my favorite scenes in a long time. Anyone who talks to me for like, three seconds about RP and why I love it knows that my favorite thing - indeed, the only thing that keeps me playing after nearly ten years - is the intensity that comes from a really good character relationship. In particular, emotion. I was rereading one of Rossi's commentaries last night (this one, about their very last scene before her death, which was a rather wicked fight), and in it he notes that I am something of an angst whore. Which is true. It's not that I love angst, note - what I am drawn to is /emotion/. There is something about a scene that just absolutely crackles with it, whatever the emotion. It draws me in and holds me fast and leaves me breathless in the course of it. That connection, that emotional spark - be it love, hate, anger, jealousy, rage - is what I constantly long for in RP.
What that translates to for me, in RP, is an absolute adoration of deep, subtle, lasting relationships that build on history and get to a place where you can take characters in directions they never would have gone on their own. Although I’ve played a number of romantic relationships, both serious and not, both of my most serious and deepest character relationships have been friendships. With Sabby, it was Percy. With Natalie, Bahir. Both of these relationships were really excellent at pushing my characters beyond their comfort zone and into places I’m not sure would have been possible without them. Natalie especially, I think, because she is typically a very even-keeled, very self-sufficient person who, unlike Sabby, relied on people not because she /had/ to, but because something about them made her /want/ to. She was kind of bad at casual friendships for that reason.
Here is the part where I talk about things that are only relevant to a few people: This is, I think, maybe while Natalie has never quite had the same snap for me that Sabby did. While in some ways she was a /better/ character - certainly a better person, a healthier person - she has never been the tumultuous hurricane of pure emotion that Sabby almost always ran on, and she didn't tend to have the swings, the depth, the passion. To put it plainly, it was often harder to find her /interesting/.It's funny to talk about her like this, what with having only just wrapped her story last night, and that in a way that is not really a 'wrap' so much as a 'fade to black with occasional opportunity for cameos'. But in some ways, that’s appropriate, too. While Sabby absolutely insisted on a dead by the side of the road ending, Natalie is very much a ‘fade to black’ sort of character. She has her moments of spark and passion and despair and doubt, but by and large she’s just a very dedicated, very self-assured, very competent sort of woman who at the end of the day is mostly concerned with what she thinks of herself rather than what others think, and who likes her job and does it pretty darned well.
And yet, despite this, I’m really sad to say goodbye to her. And this scene is one of the reasons why. I knew at this point that Natalie was going - quite honestly, I’d known about as long as I’d known Bahir was going. This is because of what drives me in RP. Natalie’s been hanging around Home for about seven months now, and for the most part, she’s an awkward fit at best. She’s very useful, but she’s also very unhappy, and unhappy in Natalie tends to result in inward withdrawal. With Bahir there, there’s at least a way to draw out of that withdrawal. With him gone, the odds of her forming those new connections, that snap-sparkle-pop that I love so much, were greatly diminished. And let’s face it - I’ve been playing Natalie for three years, which is a pretty good lifespan and history for a character. As much as I hate the process of ‘new’, it’s probably time!
So here we have a scene that was, for me, very much about goodbyes. Clearly, on the surface, it’s about Natalie saying goodbye to Bahir, and he to her. But it was also, I think, a goodbye for us, to these characters and to this character dynamic that has been one of the best I’ve played, ever. Although I knew I’d have Natalie for a couple weeks beyond this scene - probably even some scenes with Bahir (and indeed, I had a few phone calls), the reality is that this scene was, for me, the end of an era.
The scene:
Tonight's dinner was no easy feat - the remnants of various Thai dishes that are scattered around Natalie's living room, balanced on the coffee table and tucked onto the floor, smell delicious. They /were/ delicious. A round-trip to San Fran away for perfect Thai takeout, reheated for consumption. It's like old times, if you ignore the part where they're in California, and all of Bahir's earthly belongings are packed away. Natalie's been doing a great deal of that. Ignoring. Conversation is light, filled with denial and focusing on things academic and personal and not at all job related. As she leans forward to steal another rice noodle, she notes, "I still want to see that zombie movie. The one with Woody Harrelson. It looks killer." Deep.
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Bahir admits, leaning back with his hands folded loosely over his abdomen. He is full. He is so full that he keeps whining intermittently about it and then leaning forward to steal another bite. You know, that kind of full. "If you want to see zombies, you should've asked to get assigned to the mission." Oh, wait. Are we avoiding job discussion?
Natalie is having a very rough time saying goodbye. The honest truth is that she pretty much followed Bahir to California - the job was tempting as well, and the motivation good, but without him, she probably would not have left her cushy job offer and her cushy takeout in New York. And this goodbye is harder than the usual, because she knows that there are stresses to this job, big ones, and she's losing her best friend and her support. Her lifeline. The one person in the entire world who she feels comfortable going to and saying 'Life sucks right now, I need a hug.' Natalie grew up a child of divorce, and the child of academics. Smart and capable, she did a lot of raising of herself - and then she went into a field where she spent a lot of time proving herself better than others in order to be considered as capable as others. Most of her life's conditioning is to be inwardly-driven, to rely on herself, and not to be overly flamboyant with the declared need for help or support or even understanding. Most of the time, she's pretty good at this. But she knows that over the past three years, she's slowly given pieces of that up in order to lean on Bahir now and then - and that's going away.
She's convinced here, by the way, that she is losing Bahir entirely. She has historically failed at long-distance relationships - her high school boyfriend, Elias, and to some pretty good extent, even her mother, who moved to California to take a job at Berkeley when she was 13. The reason she fails is a little complicated and a little not. She tends to get wrapped up in her work, her here and now, and sometimes people just drop off the radar. More importantly, she has a bit of a thing about being abandoned that goes pretty deep, which she doesn't really recognize at all. So when Elias left, she wasn't even interested in trying. He was gone, she was moving on. Bahir... is harder. But she expects that it will come, and she expects that the job she's still doing will drive a wedge between them pretty swiftly. The secrets.
She's dealing with this, right now, by ignoring it. There are several scenes before this (and after this, actually) where she dealt with this in her more usual way, which is to withdrawal into herself. But right now, she's hit a point where she's terrified of how much she's going to regret that if she doesn't enjoy her last few days, and right here she's absolutely ignoring the fact that it's even happening. In fact, she's almost pretending that they're celebrating - the Thai food, brought all the way from San Francisco. The conversation that acts like they're going to be seeing a movie together in a month (by the way, I'm sorry, that movie looks AWESOME and I am seeing it on FRIDAY). This is a very practiced sort of casualness that is as much about Natalie fooling herself as anything. Bahir, for all his failure to play strictly by the rules in this first pose, for the most part humors her throughout the log. I suspect he knows how hard this is for her!
One of the things that I adore adore adore about long-term relationships is the casual ease with which you establish habits and give and take. I like the bits in Natalie and Bahir that get off-cammed almost as much as the ones that do: here, Bahir's whining, which Tez tells us about but which we don't see. In fact, a lot of them are off-cammed - they did a lot of mutation training in their early days that we RPed only intermittently, and they have had a standing Tuesday lunch date for a very long time, and only a handful of those are played. They worked together in a research lab for a year or so, and we played it, but certainly not every day. This works very well because one of their binding points is their work - not just together, but separately. They have an understanding and respect for each other that is based on who they are as academics, and if you've ever met an academic, you know that they typically cannot shut up about their work. Natalie and Bahir get most of that out of their system off-cam. Because frankly, I'm not a mathematician. I do not need to RP about her job 24/7. But it's still a very important component of who she is, and this relationship allows me to keep that firmly in place without having to wave the flag all the time.
Natalie looks horrified, turning wide eyes to Bahir behind the frames of her glasses. "Seriously? Zombieland? You haven't... Bahir. It looks /amazing/. They drop a /piano/..." Her lecture is abruptly curtailed by the suggestion, and she breaks off, nose wrinkling as she slumps back into the couch. "I don't do that shit," she answers.
"They drop a piano...?" Bahir looks over at Natalie, and kicks weakly at her ankle to prompt her to continue. "Do they do something awesome with it, or does it just fall?"
"On a zombie!"
Bahir looks seriously unconvinced by the amazingness. "Oh."
Natalie's love is not specific to zombies, although she does enjoy them - she has a soft spot for the creepy and spooky, which is mostly because I do, and because in one of her early scenes (with Bahir actually I think) I needed a movie for her to watch, and I wanted it to be kind of dumb, the sort of thing she liked but might be embarrassed to like, and I threw in Rose Red. To be honest, my next character will probably like spooky and creepy too, because I find it fun to play with! Shut up.
Natalie grumbles and adjusts so that Bahir can't reach her ankle. Not without effort, anyway.
Bahir puts the effort into kicking her. He is determined. "What else do they do?"
Natalie's ankle is on the couch! Does he stand? Is he /that determined/? "Stuff," she grumps, enthusiasm clearly dimmed.
He is not that determined. Bahir gives up with a disgruntled mutter. "Sorry. I am sure the movie will be completely amazing and awesome and other good adjectives beginning with a."
"Yeah," says Natalie, disgruntled.
"Woman makes ghosts yet still has an inexplicable affection for horror movies," Bahir tells his interwoven fingers. "Kind of weird!"
What I like about this here is how very palpable the awkwardness is. Natalie and Bahir are characters who do not usually lack for conversation, or interesting things to say to each other. They can usually carry a conversation when I think there is not conversation to be carried - and it doesn't usually matter whether I the player am tired or worn or any such thing. If I'm off, Tez is on, and boom, there's a spark. But here, in this, there is not. The poses get shorter, and they get stupider - by which I mean, meaningless. We have some fun going back and forth with meta - especially in a bit here - but reading over this now it seems so very clear to me that they are Avoiding a Subject. This is small talk at its best. Or worst. It is /painful/.
"They aren't ghosts," Natalie answers grumpily. After a moment's pause, she adds, "And I can't always make them, anyway." Clearly she has at some point told him about the kidlets and their missing time.
Obviously. Bahir shrugs. "Well," he says. "Close enough."
"Real ghosts would be way creepier," Natalie disagrees instantly.
"More moaning and chains," Bahir agrees.
"I hate you," Natalie announces. She leans forward to punch at his shoulder.
Bahir takes the opportunity to kick her. "Filthy liar."
Natalie IS STILL ON THE COUCH. "Truth!"
IF SHE CAN PUNCH HIM, HE CAN KICK HER. "Not even close. You just wish your mutation involved moaning and chains."
FEET ARE WAY AWAY FROM HANDS. "You just wish your mutation were as cool as mine," Natalie retorts.
LOOK IT IS SIMPLE GEOMETRY. "My mutation is pretty fucking cool," Bahir says immediately.
"Filthy liar." NO KIDDING WHAT IS BAHIR FLEXY BENDY BOY?
WELL YES, ACTUALLY. HOT, RIGHT? "Your jealousy is transparent."
We lapse into really stupid meta-caps because our characters are stuck in a rut and we don't want to be as bored and awkward as they are. This conversation is so inane that I might fall over and die from it. Really. Everything I said about about why I love RP and what makes it tick for me and relationships I adore? COMPLETELY FUCKING ABSENT RIGHT HERE. Except that's kind of the point - it's a relationship that's about to be absent, and if they're dealing with it by pretending that fact doing exist, it pretty much drains their relationship of everything that makes it good, anyway. They are based a lot in honesty. This is a pretty big heap of lying. It's a good thing we're funny, though!
Abruptly, Natalie falls silent for a moment, her frowning gaze directed toward the floor.
Bahir glances over at Natalie, and shifts slightly, leaning toward her. "Hey," he says after a moment.
I don't really know why that comment in particular set off the change. It may have just been that she realized the lying, too - I'm not sure. What I love about this set of poses, though, is that although they are minimal, they say so very much. Tez is one of my very favorite people to RP with because not only can she do this, but she can take it, too - my pose is one sentence, not even a full line. But from it, she understands what it means, and she responds in kind. Natalie is thinking about his departure. Bahir knows it, and he reminds her - through the shift of his body, the span in which he allows silence to just be, the pointed breaking of that silence - that he's still here, and that he feels the loss of this, too. I absolutely adore being able to be subtle with things.
Natalie stirs slightly, unfolding her legs to lean toward Bahir in return. Just as abruptly, she requests, "Dance with me?"
Bahir blinks once, and then grins. He rises and holds his hand out to Natalie, solemn.
Natalie stands, stepping toward Bahir to take his hand and then tug him a few steps to a clear space, just in front of the tall windows that show off the rising Chemeketa moon.
Rerouted without complaint, Bahir teases, "Tango?" as he places his other hand at her hip.
Natalie slides into Bahir, hands falling into place with easy familiarity. Her ponytail shivers as she shakes her head. "Still don't know how," she reminds, her smile slight. "Waltz."
Here is a place where the weight of history pays off. Natalie and Bahir don't dance often, but the first time they danced was significant. Natalie as I created her could not control her powers well at all - when they got turned on, she could not flip them off again. This caused some problematic situations, including a time when Bahir caught a glimpse of her ghosts through a crack in her door, very early on in their relationship. She let him in. He suggested she try distracting herself. She claimed it never worked. He asked her to dance. Somewhere in the middle of trying to remember the steps to a waltz and navigate the furniture in her not-sizable apartment, the ghosts went away. This is the first thing Bahir really /did/ for her. They went away thanks to his telepathic touch, and even though Natalie knows that now (she didn't then), I think in her head there is something special about the idea of dancing with Bahir. Something that fixes things, and heals them.
There's a subthread here about him teaching her to tango for a Hellfire ball she never got to go to, but it is not a very big one. Mostly, this is Natalie needing something to do that is /them/, that is their /relationship/ and their /friendship/, but that doesn't necessarily require her to talk (although she decides to). And it's nostalgia. Waltzing with Bahir. How far they've come.
Bahir heaves a put-upon sigh, but does not further the joke. It takes him a moment to shift from stiff memorization into smoother muscle memory, but it is a short moment. He grins at her, squeezing her hand, and then draws them both across the floor in a smooth glide. They lack music, but it is not terribly hard to find a compromised timing. "I wonder if anyone else here knows how to do this."
I adore this pose. I think maybe it is their entire relationship in one beautiful, simple metaphor.
Friendship of the nature they have did not initially come easily or naturally to either of them, and once in awhile I think that still shows up. Their inability to communicate properly, or deal with a situation. Like this one. But eventually, both of them seem to slide into something that is thoughtless, something that /works/, and something that relies on that point of connection they have. Playing off each other. Moving together to find compromised timing.
Natalie's muscle memory is not nearly as good, her movements not half so practiced, but her trust of Bahir is deep and well-practiced, and she moves effortlessly with his lead. "Probably some," she murmurs, tilting her head just enough to look up at him with quiet eyes. Her smile is sad. "Do you remember the first time we did this?"
"Long time ago," Bahir says. His voice is soft, matched to hers, and his expression is vaguely wistful, gaze distant. "Long, long time." His eyes sharpen on her again, focused, and his smile shifts a little wry.
The metaphor does not carry through Natalie's pose - this is more concrete reality - but the depth of the relationship does, namely in her trust of Bahir. That trust is pretty rock solid and several miles deep. It's almost the sort of unwavering thing that becomes unquestioning, that /must/ be unquestioning because she can't risk losing it. That's how she got through the InCi revelation that shook their relationship in the wee days of XF - in the end, she stopped questioning because what she would gain by it could not compare to what she would lose.
I absolutely adore pretty much everything from this point onward. I don't know what it was, but we were /on/, this night. Everything speaks volumes, to me, and Tez is at her absolute best in terms of evoking emotion and atmosphere with a few bare words, and she's pretty damn good at it at her /worst/. It's another reason I really like playing with her. Wordchoice conveys so much in so little - a wistful expression, a gaze that shifts and sharpens on her.
"Not that long," Natalie answers, shaking her head softly again. With a flicker, they are joined on their dance floor - Natalie and Bahir, far more awkward, far more unsure. Her smile widens a touch, and she stretches to speak loudly, /this/ form of communication still uncommon between them, if not uncomfortable. The words draw into sharp focus at the front of her mind as she looks up at him. << It was the beginning, I think. >>
"Well. They were very busy years, then," Bahir says, grinning down at Natalie, and glancing over at their illusionary counterparts. He does look a little older now -- no gray hairs, he's not Percy, but there are faint lines of tension and strain that had not been there. He is not listening, telepathy courteously shielded. HA HA.
I find it really interesting here that Bahir sees the start of their relationship as a long, long time ago, and Natalie does not. I'm not quite sure what this means. I wonder whether any of it relates to the way they are saying goodbye - Bahir leaving, Natalie left. She wants to cling to the relationship as present, as living and breathing. Or maybe it relates to the length of relationships in Bahir's life. TEZ. Flesh this out for me!
There's no argument about the second, though - they were /very/ busy years. In the three years they have been friends, they've both had the mutant-flu, Bahir has been kidnapped and attacked by Creed, Natalie has gone missing in a plane crash, Bahir broke up with Percy, Natalie dated Ben, Natalie lost Ben (and some other friends), Bahir started dating Percy again, New York saw an AU, riots, a blackout, Natalie was severely burned by a rogue pyrokinetic, the world almost ended, Bahir lost his twin, and they became supersecretspies.
So, you know. Eventful.
Now let me talk about telepathy here. This is one of the things about their relationship that I like, actually, and maybe one where they are a bit different. They both know that the other is a mutant, and they don't try to pretend otherwise or completely ignore it. But they also don't pay much attention to it, most of the time. X-Factor has been a real strain for Natalie in that sense. Not just because of what the job is, but because of what she does, and what her mutation means, and what it can mean, and the things she could be doing with it, and what makes her useful. Natalie loves this aspect of her relationship with Bahir because there is a part of her that has always been very wary of being judged on what she is by default rather than what she's chosen to become. This isn't just a mutant thing. It's a woman-in-math thing, a child-of-academics thing, but also, /especially/ in XF, a 'woman-who-can-show-the-past' thing. It's what she hates most about being here. Here, she's not Doctor Natalie Simon, mathematician of rising influence. She's the girl who can do ghosts. Sometimes. When it doesn't take too much energy. It has nothing to do with her /choices/ or her /desires/, but with how she was /born/.
Her interactions with Bahir and his telepathy stem from the same place. Percy and Bahir talk a lot through telepathy. Bahir and Natalie never, ever do. This is not because she doesn't trust him, or because telepathy makes her uncomfortable. Although she is not the /happiest/ about the idea, she trusts Bahir implicitly and would have no real problem with using it if he seemed to really want to. It is instead a sort of recognition that their connection comes from a different place. They are not friends because they are both mutants. Their mutation is incidental. Who they /are/ is something different, something more. I suspect they see a bit differently on this - Bahir has a very different relationship with his mutation, and with the 'mutant community', than Natalie does. Natalie spent most of her life trying to keep her mutation turned off, hiding from it, feeling trapped and held hostage by it. XF is the first time she's ever used her mutation regularly, or for anything even approaching self-gain, and it raises all sorts of conflicty questions inside her. It makes her uncomfortable.
So really, strange as it seems, I think that in some ways the lack of telepathy between them is a sign of a certain type of closeness, at least on Natalie's part. Again, I suspect this may look different from the other angle, but for her, it's basically a valuation of /other/ things over this - because her mutation has never been a part of her like Bahir's has, and she's been at odds with it for so long.
STILL. There is something undeniably intimate about telepathic touch. I'm not sure why she felt the need for it here, when it's so rare, and when it doesn't matter, but I think that may be it. I think it's also that she's not sure she has the words, or the words + the willpower, to go where she wants to go. Telepathy is easier. Telepathy can speak a lot of things that she can't, or can't make herself. And to some great extent, the very fact that she asks it says 'pay attention'. 'Listen up'. 'This is important.' Because it's so very, very, very unusual for them.
And I think it's notable here that she evokes both of their mutations, their very different mutations, in this pose. Dancing here, talking telepathically, with their 3-year-old ghosts dancing beside them, is them as complete and full person, nothing hidden. It also reminds of how far they've come. In their relationship, from then to now, in her control, in her abilities. A year ago, she couldn't have switched those ghosts on like that. Three years ago, she couldn't have switched /any/ ghosts on at /all/. That change is basically Bahir.
Natalie tiptoes up and taps a finger against his forehead, silent request to open up in there. Her fingers brush against his cheek briefly before they find his shoulder again, and she frowns faintly. << Listen to me! >>
The gesture is helped by the touch of skin, telepathic reception intensified. "Wh--?" << What? >> he says after a quick telepathic glance to confirm that, yes, she was trying to get his attention. Humor hues his thoughts.
And of course Bahir doesn't even notice. Because he does not listen! Natalie knows this, if she's thinking. It's just-- you know! EMOTIONS. Anyway, I thought this was kind of funny, that she has to ask, and also that she refuses to /ask/. The more I think about it, the more I think this is about not having to /speak/ the words. Not having to deal with watching them get caught in her throat or lost in a sniffle.
This is also the section of log where every pose starts to get very physical - not just in terms of where they are what they're doing, but physical contact. Natalie is not, as a rule, a physical person. Sabby would cuddle with anyone at the drop of a hat. Natalie is more restrained. It's not that she doesn't like it - it's just that she respects and requires respect of personal space, and it's not until she's comfortable with someone that she even feels the desire to be touchy with them. Witness Tom's request for a hug last night. There are a number of previous scenes where, if Tom had been Bahir, she would have been smothering him with hugs. But they aren't at that place yet. Even her romantic relationships tend to work like this. With one or two exceptions, Natalie is a 'wait' kind of girl. Wait to see if it's worth it.
So it really does mean something, the way she wants to be physically touching Bahir in this log. He's the one person she's physical with, and she feels that loss keenly. Because she's not inclined to get snuggly with most people, that's another thing the loss of Bahir means. No more hugs on bad days, no more lazy leaning over a movie. No more solid silence of touch. She may get to keep Bahir in some sense, but there is absolutely no question that /this/ is going away. The thought doesn't make her happy. So she starts by asking him to dance, and then she starts stealing touches. A brush of her fingers here, a squeeze at his shoulder there.
Natalie's smile returns, quiet and fleeting. << I said, >> she repeats, feet moving in time to an unheard beat as she curls her fingers at his shoulder. << It was the beginning, I think. >> Behind them, a smiling Natalie calls Bahir an overconfident prat.
<< Well, at least you already had a good idea of the kind of person I was, >> Bahir teases, his thumb rubbing over her knuckles in counter-caress.
I like that Bahir seems to return this, too. As the scene goes on, the physical grows increasingly intimate, as well - not just a stroke, or a brush, but a caress. I'll probably talk about this more in a bit, because right now I really kind of want to talk about another thing I adore about Natalie and Bahir, and playing with Tez in general, which is their particular brand of banter.
Natalie tends to come off as abrasive and unlikeable to a lot of people. Part of this is, I think, because her way of communicating and connecting is uh. Sometimes in direct opposition to what people expect. With Bahir, it's not a problem - Bahir gets that. In fact, he does it too. In the ghosts here, you see Natalie calling Bahir names, and it's in all seriousness too, not a joking or teasing tone in sight. But yet it /is/ joking, it's good-natured insulting, the sort that comes from fondness that's not admitted to out loud. It really is true that they show affection for each other by pet names that most people consider insults. Part of this is that both of them are exceedingly confident people - it doesn't actually bother them much if someone thinks they're assholes. It tends to startle Natalie when someone cannot take some poking, because it's very rarely malicious. It's sometimes a little judgmental or condescending, but surely people do not care about that! Right? Right.
<< From the start, >> Natalie agrees, the tones of her mind sadder than the expressions she lets creep onto her face. Her fingers twist in his, encouraging the touch. Affection and wistfulness twines through her mind, coloring every syllable. << You have always been good to me. For me. Look at the difference. >> Telepathic touch can feel the complete ease with which ghosts disappear, blinking out of existence with no effort at all.
Bahir pauses the whirling slide of their steps, drawing Natalie into him rather than leading her across the floor. He tips his head, brushing a kiss on her brow as he lowers their joined hands. << Your friendship is an unlooked for gift, Natalie, >> he says, allowing the usual strict sterility of his thoughts to fall away, emotion seeping through to hue his words with something more than affection. << I can't imagine how I would've gotten through the past few years without you -- and I can't imagine what it will be like to not have you nearby. >>
Here are the things Natalie can't say aloud, or won't. This is the most frankly honest they have ever been with each other, I think. For the most part, their importance to each other goes unspoken. They don't say 'I love you' or 'I missed you' or 'you're a great friend.' They just are. They just do. I don't think that either of them says these things here for the other person - Natalie understands everything that Bahir tells her here, and I think he understands everything she tells him, without the telling. Natalie says these things here for /her/. Because she wants to be /sure/ that he knows, she wants to have said it. She wants it to be a little more concrete and real than 'he knows.'
I am so, so, so very bad with tepe meta, folks. Telepaths who play with me are magnanimous and forgiving in dealing with my bad. I forget to put stuff in, I'm awkward when I do, and I have absolutely no knack at all for imagery. That said, I think I don't do too bad here - mostly because it's strict dialog/emotion. And oh, I know Natalie's emotional state right now, and I know it well. I steal words from Tez - wistful, affection. And also I think I'd just read a book that was really strong on the imagery that helped my prose. Hm. What was I reading? I'm going to go look. Oh! Ink Exchange. Not the best book ever, but a lot of really strong visuals, the sort that make your head all cloudy with living in the world. I think I'd spent the few hours prior to this devouring it. That helped. ANYWAY. Tangent.
I love the shift in mood here, and how easily Tez accomplishes it. Have I mentioned how wonderful she is at mood? The pause in the dance, the drawing closer. The serious attention. The brush of a kiss.
And here is the first time we see something else, too. Something 'more than affection.' I'm not going to write about this right now, except to say that I think it is present through the rest of the log, even if not explicitly spoken.
Natalie blinks rapidly for a moment, squeezing his hand as telepathy speaks things words never quite have. Emotion is thick in her throat and in her mind, echoing and amplifying Bahir's. << Me either, >> she says simply. She lifts her eyes to fix them on his, dark and serious. << You have changed so much about my life. You are so much the reason I am me. >> Memories swirl, fleeting and fast, touching on mutation and research and heartache and pain and worry and fear and change. << It's silly, >> she adds after a moment, her mental voice tentative. << But I can't even imagine who I'd (I'll) be, without you. >>
Bahir squeezes Natalie's hand and then lifts it, kissing her knuckles. He holds it there, between them, and regards her with a steady fondness. "Yeah," he breathes, words spoken but intimacy scarcely lessened by the softness of his words. << For all there is in New York for me-- >> His thoughts touch on research, on home, on family, on friends, on /hot, fresh takeout/. << --there will always be something missing. Your friendship -- You mean.... >> Even telepathically, he does not have the words, and has to rely on something more primitive: an empathic surge reflects shared affection, colored by closeness, ease, and trust, but heavily foreshadowed by looming loss.
So in reading Rossi commentary last night, I saw that I talked there about how, although I'm rarely self-conscious about turning the emotion in a scene up to 11, I still have a hang-up about having characters actually /cry/ on people. This is still true. I still do not know why. But there are things that tend to happen that indicate struggling to fight tears (Natalie helps my hangup in that /she/ would hate to be caught crying by someone most of the time). Blinking rapidly is one of them! Probably it would be clearer if I said 'blinking back tears', but then I'd be on my hang-up, and we just can't have that!
I have a hard time saying a lot about this because I think the pose says it itself. It's straightforward and blunt and honest, which are all traits of Natalie. But it's also open, which is not. She's not just honest about what's asked - she offers. That's unusual. Her emotion here echoes, amplifies Bahir's - not just affection, but the 'more than.' Which I think is maybe the first time I have ever put that on screen.
This is one time I have actually really had a good time with playing telepathy. Because I could whirlwind through so many things, and the understanding is /there/, even with words unspoken.
Bahir ramps up the intimacy here, and the scene takes a steady crawl from 'you are my best friend and I will miss you' to something that is almost dangerously more. This is the second time he's kissed her - forehead, knuckles - in this scene, and it's not a touch that is common between them. It's not unknown for Natalie to kiss Bahir on the cheek, but she usually does it when she's amused and trying to throw him off balance. I don't /think/ the forehead kiss ever really appeared before XF, although I can't recall for sure. Suffice it to say, kisses of any sort are not an every day occurrence between them. And neither is this sort of steady, serious regard, this holding of things, this savoring. /That/ is entirely new.
Gosh. Reading this again, those last few sentences of Tez's almost make me cry.
Natalie shakes her head, fast and hard as tears spring to her eyes. << Don't, >> she says instantly, breathing the word aloud on a whisper to match the firmer mental command. "Don't." Her hand tightens in his. << I know you have to go. I hate it, but I know... >> Emotion sweeps by, sharing the recognized sense of loss, of purposelessness, of /yearning/ that being trapped away from his life's passion brings. It's tinged with no small share of her own. << Don't make it harder than it already is. >>
"You started it," Bahir says, trying to tease and failing a little, voice rough. He releases her hand only to wrap both his arms around her and pull her in. It is inevitable that a hand will lift, two fingers curling through her ponytail. The shields over his telepathy remain thinned, but he holds back the touch of his mind
.
And Natalie does. Sometimes, hang-up or no, there is just no help for it - and if there is one person I am comfortable inflicting virtual tears on, it's probably Tez. Because she feeds my angst-whore tendencies. And really, how do you respond to that last pose, except to cry?
She hits the point here where she can't do it anymore. The open and sharing hurts too much, and she needs to draw back. She had spent a lot of time prior to this thinking about Bahir going, but I don't think it /hit/ her until this moment, the completeness of it, the totality, what it would mean. I also think that, with the intimacy of this particular telepathic conversation, she is starting in a very, very small way to admit some things to herself about the extent to which Bahir means so much to her that she had never previously allowed herself to admit. Not in so many words. Not explicitly. But in a very small way, allowing herself to actually feel it. Her need to draw back is strong enough that she needs to make it real, too, out loud. Don't. Stop. I'm going to fall apart if we keep doing this.
I love that Bahir plays with Natalie's ponytail so much. He hasn't always - it's a relatively recent development. But I have always always loved Natalie's hair, and playing with what it means to her to have it down, to have it up, what it is about her that makes her the sort of person who is perpetually ponytailed (you never knew so much could be packed into a ponytail!), and I like that Bahir likes it, too. Also, I just think her PB has fucking amazing hair. And there is something so tender and intimate about playing with someone's hair like that.
The fact that Bahir withdrawls so quickly at her request says something about him, too, I think. Through much of this scene, Bahir gives what Natalie needs, and what she asks for. In some ways, I think it's a very Natalie-centric scene.
Natalie falls into him, her own arms wrapping tight around his middle and squeezing almost to the point of pain. She buries her face against his shoulder, letting tears seep into the fabric of his shirt. There's silence for a moment, and then she says, << I lied. Come back. >>
<< You're so fickle, >> Bahir whispers, words overlain with a teasingly misogynistic cast. She is fickle because WOMEN are fickle. He holds her close, solid and steady and warm, and releases her ponytail only for his hand to fall against the nape of her neck, thumb sliding over skin. He rests his cheek against the top of her head, the continuing touch of his thoughts a steady flow of bittersweet affection.
She IS fickle! Teetering on the edge of dealing with it and not, she apparently decides that falling apart /with/ him is better than falling apart /without/ him. It takes her a little bit to admit it, but she does. And she cries. And in my next pose I say 'some time' and I expect that what I mean by that is that they stand like this, holding each other, with Natalie giving up the battle and letting tears win, and Bahir stroking her neck, for several minutes at least.
This pose is at least a little funny in the midst of this because in the very early days, Natalie and Bahir had a legitimate fight about sexism, and they almost were never friends because of it. OH HOW FAR THEY HAVE COME.
Natalie's mind returns the touch, floating between sadness and warmth. She stays like that for some time, her cheek turned against the solidity of his shoulder, her fingers laced against his back, eyes closed against the touch of his hand against her skin. Eventually she speaks again, although she does not stir. << I'm not coming to see you off tomorrow. >>
<< Well, that will keep me from being tempted to change my mind at the last minute. >> The words are teasing, but there is truth beneath them, an acknowledgement of the pain of separation.
<< You've had plenty of time to change your mind, >> Natalie says, sad acceptance twisting around her words. << I know you're going. I just don't think I can watch it. >> Somewhere, a drifting thought gives wry acknowledgement to the melodrama of the statement, but it doesn't undercut the truth behind it.
Bahir squeezes the back of Natalie's neck, acknowledgement and acceptance conveyed wordlessly, and his arms tightening just slightly.
Did I mention that I had a really great time with the physical in this log? I'm not a very visual person, I can't often really /picture/ a scene. But here, I can. I have a great sense of it, and that's largely due to Tez giving me a lot of really great stuff to play off of.
She doesn't go to see him off because she can't be /this/ in front of anyone else. This scene was tough on her. Very, very tough. She can't do it twice, and she can't do it where others - where Percy - can see. It's private.
There is a small shade of OOC influence here - clearly Bahir /is/ leaving, no matter what Natalie says, for OOC reasons, so I have the choice to let her be angry at that or accept that. But really, at the heart of it, it still feels right. Natalie would never really, truly ask Bahir to stay, because she could not have him here when he wants to be elsewhere without being twisted by guilt. Natalie is an independent person - she's been raised that way. She watched her mother basically leave her family and relegate her to holiday visits almost entirely because she got a really great job offer. She doesn't understand a world in which it's okay to ask someone to make a sacrifice for a relationship. Or... where someone would say yes to a sacrifice for that reason. It's just not really even on her radar. So because she can see his point, because she understands, she really does /understand/, even while every inch of her hates it. That's not to say that she doesn't understand sacrifice - she would make one herself. In fact, she did. It's that she cannot ask it of someone else.
Eventually, Natalie pulls back. She takes a single deep breath, steadying herself as her hands find Bahir's shoulders again and she tips her head to look up at him. For a moment, she stands in silence.
With slight reluctance, Bahir allows Natalie to ease back, but his arms remain looped around her. As she looks up at him, he lifts his hand to take her ponytail between his fingers and give it a light, affectionate tug.
I adore adore adore ADORE the way Tez plays with silence with me. Here, in this scene, we've already had awkward. Now we have reluctant, and affectionate. Steadying. A few scenes later, we'll have more awkward, uncomfortable, and lost. I feel like silence can say so much, and I love having someone who isn't in a rush to pose overtop of it. Because there are other things that happen in a silence. Expressions and glances and touches. Sometimes silence needs a few poses to breathe, to expression the emotion behind it, whatever it is. To linger.
Natalie wrinkles her nose at him in instant annoyance, half-hearted and reflexive. Exhaling, she slides a hand from his shoulder to his cheek, tapping her thumb lightly there. After a drawn out pause, she says quietly, "You know I love you, right? You are the best friend I've ever had."
Bahir gives her just a slight smile: slight, but warm. "I love you too, Dr. Natalie Jo Simon." He starts to say more, then stops, and shrugs. What is there TO say? They said it all telepathically. His lips quirk.
You know, I wish I could remember, but I really can't. Is this the first time they have said this to each other? I think it may be. If not, it's certainly the first time they have said it with this /weight/, with the intensity. Sabby used to tell Percy she loved him all the time - and she meant it much the same way that Natalie does, here. But Natalie doesn't say these things as easily.
There is a hint of something else here, too. That thing that she is letting herself feel, just a tiny, small little bit. That part that ends at 'you know I love you' and doesn't go on to clarify 'you are the best friend I've ever had'. Their posture here is not really one of best friends.
Natalie gives Bahir a grin in response to that, warmth flashing in her eyes as she lifts on her toes to brush her lips against Bahir's cheek in a feather-soft whisper of a kiss. Rocking back, and then drawing back, she says, "I'll see you later."
Bahir's tone is teasing as he smiles back at her and says, "I look forward to it." He hesitates a moment, standing still as she withdraws, and then swoops in to press the lightest of chaste kisses to her lips, pulling her in again. /Then/ he lets her go, stepping back.
Here is the kiss as it usually happens. Fast and smiling and affectionate and light. And then here is the kiss as it never has.
I believe Tez coinflipped for this pose. I'm glad she did it, though, because although I don't know whether it would ever have come out on camera, really, fully, truly, this is an undercurrent that has been between them for a long time. And here at the end, I'm very happy that it got at least a little bit of screen time.
I love everything about this. I love the hesitation, the stillness. The sudden swoop and the light, chaste kiss. The pulling her in. The stepping back. It's such a strong visual, and so telling about their relationship. I don't know what was in Bahir's mind for this kiss, but to Natalie, it feels like-- I don't know. An acknowledgement, an almost-invitation that at the same time very clearly and very carefully isn't. It's chaste. There is no need to feel guilty over this, or confess to best friends' boyfriends. But there is that undercurrent, and there is that pulling in before the stepping back. There is that space given, that space that feels like a choice she is given.
Natalie stills at that touch, standing exquisitely motionless in Bahir's arms for a long moment, her eyes closed. She opens them again when he steps back, and there is something naked and yearning in her eyes as she looks at him. The moment stretches out, thick with hesitation that draws taut until it seems that something between them must snap. At the end of it, Natalie steps back as well, and does not say any words of farewell.
And fuck if I don't love my pose here, too. Exquisitely motionless is clearly something I got from the book I was reading, because I am not usually that good. This pose is about the space, the short span of time, when their relationship balances between one thing that is, and one thing that maybe could be. It's probably why I got a little purple - this is another one of those silences that needed room to breathe, and to be. Because it's not a quick one, or an easy one. Natalie /yearns/. That thing that their relationship could be - she wants it, and I think it is the first time, ever, that she has admitted it to herself. The only time since, too. In this moment right here. She hesitates. She /almost/s.
Except she doesn't. She steps back, and her stepping back is not Bahir's stepping back - it's not room for a choice, it's a choice made, for the both of them.
Eyes moving over her features, Bahir watches her, studies her: he all but memorizes her expression, his own eyes a little wide, his posture a little too tense. When she steps back, he draws a breath. It never quite makes it to words. He dips his head, eyes closing in a silent goodbye, and then he crosses to the door
.
And hell, does Tez respond to it /beautifully/. She gives the silence time to play, too, and it's such a full, gorgeous, eloquent silence. I love how you can read him here, without a word. The waiting. The expectation. And then finally the reaction, the recognition of the unspoken decision, and the acknowledgement of it. To some extent, of her right to make it, and of the one she made.
Natalie folds in on herself when he goes, listening to the door close before she abandons the makeshift dining room, dance floor of her living space for the small comfort of her bed. She doesn't need mutation for the ghosts tonight. They are thick enough behind her own eyeballs, a bittersweet ache as she curls up and gives into tears. The next morning, she still does not say goodbye.
There is never a goodbye between them. There is 'I'll see you later' and 'I look forward to it' and the kiss. It's a little silly and a lot sentimental, but it means something to Natalie, that that's how they ended. With no goodbye. That's how she wanted it, and she's happy that Bahir understands that, maybe even wants it, too.
My purple comes out here again, but I still like it. I've always loved Natalie's ghosts, even though that's not really what they are - it's the one aspect of her I will miss a /ton/ as a character trait. There's so much to be done with them. And I like when I can draw distinctions and parallels between her ghosts, which aren't really, and the ghosts that actually do haunt.
Natalie is heartbroken here. I mean that in a fairly literal sense. She has some pretty deep-rooted abandonment issues. Her mom, who left for California when she was 13. Her two major relationships, which both ended in the betrayal of ongoing cheating and very messy breakups. Friendships that she lost in the course of these relationships. Bahir is not like either of these, but there's still that edge of panic, that quiet voice that whispers that she is never going to be enough to make anyone stay. That she is far down the list of priorities, and always will be. It's not a fair voice, or a nice voice, but it's a voice that whispers in her head a lot.
And she's heartbroken for the choice she just made, too, because it's not the one she wanted to make, and it's not the one she /would/ have made, except for the fact that Bahir has a boyfriend, a boyfriend who loves him and who he loves. And she cannot, will not, absolutely will /never/ be the other woman. Ever.
It's not that she thinks that's what Bahir's asking from her here, not really. But it hits too close, and she can't bring herself to do it. To make herself Zenith, to make Bahir Ben, to turn Percy into /her/. And although Natalie really, truly does love Bahir, and I suspect would be pretty happy with him in a very different sort of relationship, to some extent she is also self-sufficient enough to also be happy with him in this one, if not perfectly so. There is always going to be some small part of her that wonders 'what if' and wishes 'maybe' and... yearns. At least until she finds someone to be for her what Percy is or has been for Bahir. But she can have most of him this way, and most of him is something she can be happy with. Most of him is what she eventually went back to New York for. Not just most of him - I'm not sure if that alone would have been enough. But most of him, and all of her, lives in New York, and that's a combination that's too good to pass up.
And so she works in New York, she crashes in Bahir and Percy's guestroom, they make coffee and curl up on the couch and watch Star Trek and he does research and she does research, and so life goes.