I am cold against your skin, you are perfectly reflected [forward-dated to Thurs]
[OOC: Pretend this totally happens Thursday; I just won't be around during the day tomorrow so I figured I'd throw it up here now. :)]
The Crown Fountain is one of the few things about the weird amalgamation that is Grant and Millenium Park that hasn't been destroyed, by some miracle. It's still there, the extra-large faces still spitting out ( Read more... )
The Crown Fountain is one of the few things about the weird amalgamation that is Grant and Millenium Park that hasn't been destroyed, by some miracle. It's still there, the extra-large faces still spitting out ( Read more... )
Comments 66
He stops in front of the fountain to light a cigarette, happens to glance sideways to see a floating face in the water, and jumps backward at the sight.
"Jesus fuck."
It's going to take him a second or two to catch his breath again, and when he does, he walks back up to the fountain. She's alive, isn't she? She is. And he knows her. Sorta. Met her once.
"You... okay?"
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Except then she might get lost, and that kind of getting lost hurts more.
"I can't feel my hands," she says, finally, slowly swishing one arm around the in the water. There are goosebumps on it, but she had the foresight not to wear her sweatshirt into the fountain, at least; it's on top of her messenger bag on dry land. She can put it on when she finally decides to get out of the fountain. "You can't feel your calm."
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He breathes a visible sigh of relief when she finally does speak. If she didn't after awhile, he'd drag her out and... lay her up against a tree or something. It's a sound plan. Really. No one has ever accused Rusty of having brains.
His fingertips run across the top of the water. If she's been in there awhile, it's not surprising that she can't feel her hands.
"You might... wanna get out," Rusty offers. This is his expert, medical opinion, of course.
He tenses further when she talks about his not being able to feel his calm. It's not like he's ever comfortable talking about that shit or talking about anything. "Guess not. Usually can't. Worse now though."
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The water makes pretty patterns, reflecting the sky -- she can see her legs broken up by clouds, a juxtaposition of herself and something that should be good, safe, but just remind her of things she doesn't want to think about.
"No," she says, vaguely. She doesn't really want to get out. Maybe it'd be a good idea for most people, but she can't die. It's no big deal if she gets sick.
She tilts her head at him. "Not always so..." She can't find the right word, so she raises a numb hand out of the water, making little awkward motions with it. "So...here-and-there." If she had all the feeling in it, it'd be easier to pretend to conduct what she feels. All the numbness in herself and she can't numb out the buzzing.
"My hands are numb and my bones are buzzing," she tells Rusty. And then puts her face in her hands.
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It is nice to feel like herself once more. It's nice to feel the ground under her feet, in a sense.
"Hey," Elizabeth says when she sees Kaden outside. She waves her hand and smiles. "You're not usually outside, but it's... not usually been so nice out either, huh?"
It will honestly take her a moment (or 50) to notice the bird or the way that his eyes look. For all that she's changed, being almost completely unperceptive of her surroundings remains.
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"Hey kiddo," he says, but doesn't get up. "I figured I'd take a little break, enjoy what you strange, midwestern people call 'nice' instead of sitting in the library." He chuckles, but it's cut short, like he's not sure he should even be laughing at that.
So he turns his attention back to the bird. "How've you been holding up, since the attack?" he asks. His mind is flitting between the anatomy of the sparrow, the wanderer he ran into the other day, Elizabeth's Calling, his cousin's breakdown, how tired he is...on and on and on. Maybe her answer will give him something else to work with, to keep everything from spiraling around and getting muddled.
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She does notice the red in his eyes, because she's closer. It's habit to always look everyone in the eyes. Just in case... If they're dying, she needs to be there. She will be there. She won't let anyone die alone, especially someone she cares about. It's not his death that she sees. It's how read his eyes are.
"Are you okay?" The concern translates easily to her expression. "You look... tired."
Elizabeth blinks. It takes her a moment to remember what he's talking about and then she does. "Okay. It's been... really weird these past couple of weeks, but I don't think that has anything to do with the attack. I mean, helping people die is-- It's what I do. It's what I know." It's really, really heavy after awhile, after so many people dying, as much as she knows that she's doing good and that it would have been worse if she hadn't been there, but- It's now ( ... )
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She waves dismissively to him. "Feel free to go along your day. No atrocious inadvertent apocalypses, apparently. Astronomically aprobable."
Someday, she will find that pigeon. Someday. Don't mind the crazy lady in a labcoat, Kaden. Not that you aren't used to crazy people in labcoats.
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And of course, with that kind of warning, he can't help but be at least a little curious. Not that the lab coat had piqued his curiosity to begin with; not often one sees people in lab coats wandering around outside the library. "Should I be watching what city fowl I catch?" he asks.
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This person wants to talk to her. Kat does an about-face, striding back towards Kaden. "There's just a pigeon on the loose that somehow managed to get its beak on a toxin that could possibly destroy half of the city, if it managed to get out," she says, as if this really isn't a big deal. She leans forward, to the point that she would be invading Kaden's personal space if he had any, squinting at the sparrow. "But how do you know that it's the boldest yet slowest of sparrows? Can you talk to them? No, don't answer that. I don't really care if you can talk to sparrows because that would be the most boring thing ever. I can't imagine they have much to say that's interesting. You however, might. I bet you have lots of interesting things to talk about."
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"No, I can't talk to them," he says, looking back down at the sparrow, running one finger down its back. "At least, not directly. But this one, this one came right up to me, and didn't fly away fast enough when I grabbed for it. So in away, it did tell me that. And right now, it's telling me it's scared, by its breathing and the beating of its heart." He holds the sparrow up as if it will catch the light, somehow; the sparrow gives Kat a rather frightened look and cheerps at her. Kaden smirks past the sparrow at her, and adds, "As does its struggling."
Then the sparrow is moved back down, though Kaden just keeps looking at Kat. Tilts his head. At this point, Kat's getting treated to the public version of the Fuchizaki Stare©; the only thing missing is the laboratory and the palpable ( ... )
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She looks up when she feels Arlin come in. "Hello," she says.
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Duncan, for his part, looks over at the space where the stack used to be, determines that they weren't things he was working on, then tilts his coffee cup at his boss and goes right back to his computer. He's focused on something right now.
Arlin rifles through the papers, more for something to do than to really get an idea of their content (though he's making note to have Duncan send him summaries of some of these). "I'd like to run some plans by the both of you, if you have a minute," he says. He knows they both have a minute, though he's not sure if it'd be better to let Duncan finish up whatever he's so focused on first.
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"Yes, Arlin," she says. It's somewhat apparent that she's struggling not to snap to full attention. She knows that this is not the Laboratory, and Arlin doesn't expect that of her, but old habits are hard to overcome sometimes.
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Which is when Arlin puts the files he wasn't really looking through promptly down, takes a moment to form the sentence properly, and says, "I'm going to Moscow for a bit, to oversee some things there." Before either of them can say anything, he holds up a hand and continues, "I'd like the both of you to stay here. Duncan, you can do as you always do, and fill in for me when it comes to doling out jobs and the like; I trust you with that. Luka, you're doing a good job here, and Chicago needs us more than Moscow."
He pauses, glancing at the both of them once more before finally looking out Duncan's office window. "I just can't stay in Chicago much longer," he mutters.
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...it might be worth wondering where he got an entire bin of Lego Robotics parts, but the answer is probably just "Lynn's." He's pretty sure most of them don't work. He's also pretty sure he can make them.
Have an unsuspecting J, Huck.
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Instead, she gets herself into position as best she can, spitting the nut into her hands and making a face. (Nuts of the nondelicious variety taste even worse than the delicious variety, for the record.) But then she reaches one squirrely arm through the vent, takes aim, and throws the nut as hard as she can at J's head.
And then retracts said arm as quickly as possible and tries to stifle giggles as best she can. This is the best game, if she's gotta be a squirrel.
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J whips around so fast you'd think someone had been shot, scanning the room and the door and - when those turn up no one - the room again, and the wall and ceiling. Okay; door, possible; there are a couple of vents in the room, also possible; and wasn't Sark able to turn invisible at some point in time? Not that he thinks Sark has come back from his long period of having disappeared only to throw things at the back of J's head, but J considers throwing a handful of lego parts through the air to see if they meet any resistance anyway.
On balance, though, he decides just to make a probably-wrong assumption and see if anyone corrects him. It's the most expedient option half the time anyway.
"Owen," he pronounces. "If you're really hurting to shoot me again, I'm fairly sure you could come to an arrangement with my guardian angel."
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Until J started accusing the open air of attacking him, and the name he called the air wasn't her.
So have a bunch of giggles from the vent above your head, J. And a pair of beady eyes.
"I ain't Owen'n'I already gotta 'rangement," she says, twitching her tail at him. "I get t'shootcha if you tell annaone 'bout this form."
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