peaches and apples

[brainpanned]

who: river & andy
what: meeting the minds
when: 02-02-10, eight-ish
where: salon d'opera, theater four
rating/status: closed, middleish rating?

Comments

[psychic_stoner]

Andy, in short, was confused. It seemed like the girl from the journal, whose name he couldn't remember catching, thought that they had something in common that didn't include her being a Psychic Kid, from what he could tell. It seemed to excite her, that much he had gathered, but she didn't seem to want to talk about it on the forum. Not even under private filters. While he could understand her discomfort with the idea of meeting a complete stranger - male, at that - in a private place, he couldn't understand why she would choose a place like a theater, where there were bound to be plenty of people and mad acoustics, to have a discussion that she seemed to feel was too sensitive to be in written form, public or otherwise

[brainpanned]

He was on time, if that meant anything. She'd been watching the stage with an intent expression, following the repeating scene over and over. There were minuscule changes, she noted. But distracted by the squeaking door River turned her attention behind her, beaming in a sudden smile. Cheerful, spontaneous like the rest of her. Her feet came quickly off the other chair and she stood, extending her hand.

"River." She beamed, hand hanging in the air, waiting. "Though peaches are perhaps nice too."

[psychic_stoner]

As the girl stood, Andy extracted his hands from his pockets and took her waiting hand to shake. "River?" he asked, pulling a pensive expression as he processed the name. ...he liked Peaches better, if they were going to go with hippy-sounding names, but he wasn't going to say anything. It wasn't like Andrew was all that fantastic a name, either

[brainpanned]

It was actually quite likely that their individual perceptions of who exactly was playing the cat and the mouse were very much skewed. River looked toward the stage and then her eyes flickered once more to Andy. She indicated with her chin down at the seat beside her, and settled casually back into her own, knees pulled to her chest.

And even when Andy was sitting, River remained silent for a minute or so, watching the stage. Watching them play the same scene a fiftieth time. River had the lines memorized already. "You're doing it wrong," she murmured, a soft frown wrinkling her forehead. Sighing, she glanced sideways to Andy. "It's the wrong line. The words are never spoken correctly." River wasn't stalling, exactly. More that to her, the connection with Andy was so obvious it didn't need explaining.

[psychic_stoner]

As he stood there, his eyes followed River's to the stage and then when he looked back at her, having seen nothing of significance her glance to the stage was trying to say, he noticed her semi-nod. She wanted him to sit down, he gathered that much, but why wasn't she saying anything? And, more to the point, was that her normal body language, curled up like a small girl, or was something about him making her nervous? He really hoped it was the former.

After a brief pause, Andy took a seat and watched River watching the stage. She really wasn't going to tell him, was she? She had to be one of them. One of the Special Kids. That was the only explanation Andy could come up with for why they were similar and then he thought maybe since he had mind control, maybe she could read them. Which, if she didn't realize that everyone had a different power, would explain why she wasn't telling him. Maybe she thought he already knew. It didn't occur to him at the time that he already knew, in the back of his mind, that their powers didn't

[brainpanned]

Her mouth quirked upwards a little, chin coming to rest on her knees, eyes sleepily half-lidded. It was sort of funny, in a way, how they all managed to come together despite it all. Psychics, freak shows, a bird in the hand with a thousand more in the bushes. Just had to give it a good shake, yeah?

"Different...methodologically different, experimental outcomes are -- are similar." River lifted her head at last, and one after the other, her legs slid from the seat. She gripped the armrest separating her from Andy and frowned, concentrating deeply on putting her thoughts back into readable order. It was this -- the slowly sinking organization and walls that the Doctor had so cautiously built up, sliding into the muck like a psychic Venice. She wished for more lucid days.

"Can't see into yours either," she admitted, looking over at him at last. "But I see the patterns around it." Lifting her hands, she formed makeshift claws and squeezed at the air. "I'm porous."

[psychic_stoner]

Andy's eyebrows raised at her response. The hell was that supposed to mean? There was no experiment involved in his mind thing. Just a fucked up demon-related freakshow of a life that apparently started when he was a baby and went into full swing around his twenty-second birthday. He didn't know what happened in detail and he was fairly certain he didn't want to know. But the little he did know...well. There was nothing experimental about it. It just was what it was. "Okay...?" he asked, drawing the word out unnecessarily to further illustrate his confusion.

If she couldn't read his mind - ah, right, doesn't work on other Special Kids... That was when it clicked in his head - how did she know? "Patterns...?" he asked. "Like what?" She said she was porous and Andy wasn't entirely sure he understood what the fuck that was supposed to mean but her gesture was cause for him to raise his eybrows again and take pause. "Like a sponge...?" he guessed, sounding as confused as he felt. "So if you absorb information - if that's

[brainpanned]

River's mouth twisted in frustration at herself and her own inability to make her thoughts coalesce into coherence. The more flustered she got, the harder it became to grasp logic. Her bottom lip drew in between her lips, hands twisting together in her lap in a picture of distress. This was something that had been hard enough to talk about when she'd been lucid.

"I can't -- um." River licked her lips again and tried to start over. "I don't always see, but feeling is constant. It's complicated -- chronic. Impressionistic! Emotional barriers lacking because they cut them out." Nervously, she bit at her index finger, watching Andy with a hopeful, pleading look.

[psychic_stoner]

Once again, Andy's eyebrows cocked with interest as she started to speak. Talking to River, he decided, must be slightly akin to talking to a stutterer. She was struggling to get him to understand and he was struggling not to shout at her in sheer frustration, because he could tell it wasn't her fault. She looked, after all, genuinely hopeful that he would follow.

So, the sponge thing was off. "I'm sorry, I'm really trying to follow, but bear with me. I'm lacking a pretty decent chunk of brain cells, here, for my recreational activities but...uh," he stalled, racking his brain to try to put together what she was saying. Andy was never very good at puzzles or riddles and River was both personified so far as he could tell.

Running one hand over his mouth and down his stubbly chin, Andy's brow knit as he thought. "Is it like mind reading...except you just get feelings instead of actually seeing what's going on in my head? Like...you just have a feeling that we have something in common but you can't literally see what it is

[brainpanned]

"Not demons." River clenched her hands and unclenched them. "But two-by-two...hands of blue. They cut it out." She tapped at the side of her head, then, glancing at Andy. "Pieces of me. Cut them -- cut them out."

She licked her lips. River did see things -- sometimes. Images or emotions, it didn't matter because River often couldn't distinguish between the two. Whether it was the occasional synesthesia or the whispers of thoughts on the breaths of others, River's abilities seemed to be in a constant state of flux.

Pulling her knees tighter to her chest, she tipped and leaned her head against Andy's shoulder. "Us...you're one of Sam's kind. I'm not quite like that."