5th transformation . spam & open video

[permutates]

[ spam ]

[ She's been working herself hard. Maybe too hard: she spends hours a day in the gym, sometimes as many as eight when she's not sleeping. She's read books on how to get in shape quickly and safely - more or less - and she's pushing herself as far as she can go. Trying to find her limits.

Today, she can also be found coming out of the CTS with Kelsier, bruised and mussed and a little bloody, and grinning ear to ear. If you're trying to impress me, it's working, he tells her, and she kisses him on the cheek and flushes bluer and makes her way to the Infirmary to make sure she's got nothing worse than bruises.

She hasn't reached her physical limits yet, but emotional is a different story. Being a child again, with that faith in Charles, has shaken her. Her conversation with Charles before that shook her. And sometimes, even when she's feeling fine - maybe when she's feeling the most fine, paradoxically - she starts crying. And sometimes she can't stop. Tucking herself into a corner of the gardens and trying to muffle the sounds of it so no one catches her at it. It's embarrassing, and she can always eventually manage to pull herself together and make it back to her room. ]

[ video ; open ]

[ Raven is blue, with red hair, not hiding. ]

What's something you've done here, for the first time? Or thought or realized, for the first time.

[ She's not sure what she's looking for. Maybe a little hope. ]

Comments

[itstopped]

[He doesn't know her, and he can't say he's not intimidated by the blue skin, but... less, now, than he once was. Enough not to shut her out the way he might once have done.

Besides, it's not really her but the question that's important, because he told himself he would try to start looking at the good parts of this place. And there's one big one, right at the forefront of his mind:]

I saw Earth.

[permutates]

You never had before?

private/video

[tolaywaste]

[He considers not answering. But he feels like maybe he should talk to somebody. It's not like shit between them isn't awkward anyway.]

I led. And some other stuff.

You?

[itstopped]

Earth is a myth, where I come from. A... promised land.

[indispensible]

saw flowers.

private/video

[permutates]

A few things.

[ She's not sure she wants to say to him. She thinks he'll probably take them wrong. ]

What did you lead?

[permutates]

Really?

[permutates]

Where did you live before that didn't have flowers?

private/video

[tolaywaste]

Nothing big. Just - a friend, doing training exercises. I took the lead. It wasn't as - it came more naturally than I expected.

Spam; gardens

[chlorophylliac]

[It's no surprise that Ivy finds her here.

Usually when people project a need to be left alone, she respects that - she'd want nothing else for herself, and this is the last place on the Barge where she wants to start a fight - but she finds herself...invested, in Raven. For much the same reason she's invested in Morgana (and many of the same reasons she was invested in Harley). She sees herself in her.

And she knows she isn't an easy person to be, that her life isn't easy to live.

She doesn't say anything, at first. Just eases herself into the same corner, sits down alongside Raven and grows the foliage a little dense to give them more privacy.]

private/video

[permutates]

You have what it takes.

You should do more of it.

[indispensible]

just somewhere else. I don't think you'd know it.

private/video

[tolaywaste]

I'm still not sure I do.

private/video

[permutates]

That's okay. I think that part just takes a while.

[ She hopes. ]

[permutates]

Will you tell me about it?

private/video

[tolaywaste]

The confidence?

[itstopped]

Really. The closest thing we have is... nothing. A wasteland.

[permutates]

I'm sorry.

private/video

[permutates]

Believing you're good enough.

[indispensible]

it's not a very nice story.

[After a moment: switch to private/voice.]

If you want to, though. I can.

private/video

[tolaywaste]

Yeah.

I wouldn't have tried at all, except people wouldn't shut up about it. My inmate and Snow and Ben.

private/voice

[permutates]

Maybe you can skip some. Kelsier and I talk sometimes.

But the story has a happy ending, right?

private/voice

[indispensible]

I know. [o.o]

It does. The flowers came back.

Spam; gardens

[permutates]

[ It hasn't been very often that Raven has cried like this. She used to press on. No matter what, she pressed on. Survival was the most important thing first, and then when if she was angry, or if she was sad, she would be snappy and petulant - she would tell Charles. She wouldn't cry.

This doesn't even make sense! She feels fine. She's pulling away from Charles, and it feels like the right choice, most of the time. The people here don't even care that she's blue, that she's different. Or, they care, but it's survivable. She can be herself.

So why is she so sad?

When Ivy sits next to her, she tries to choke back the sobs and wipe away the tears, but it's like trying to hold sand, trying to hold water just in fingers alone.

This is when she realizes - she is thinking oddly clearly, even as her body hiccups any attempt at speech into utter incoherence, like she's watching the world through a distant, sharpening lens - that she hardly touches anyone now, and she used to touch Charles all the time. She used to hug, and hold hands, and snuggle up next to him.

This thought is what prompts her to take a gamble, to uncurl and lean her head against Ivy's shoulder. ]

private/voice

[permutates]

Sounds too good to be true.

...has he told you about me?