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Arla Lawrence ([info]mathemafishian) wrote in [info]age_of_miracles,
@ 2008-03-10 02:24:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:mermaid, postman

Thread: Postman & Mermaid
Who: Arla Lawrence and David de Souza
When: Late evening (rather late-late evening), March 9 (into March 10)
Where: David's office
What: Arla's frustrated about training for her scary battle assignment and she's been training so hard that she's hurting herself. David said he had some salve that would help her hands, so she's gone to bother him.


_________________


It was late and most people were in bed, but Arla was so sore and exhausted that she couldn't sleep. Her skin was thick, tough like a dolphin's, but she'd still worn through it on her knuckles where she'd started punching the bag and couldn't stop. There were a lot of emotions to work out. An assignment and she was so out of shape that she wasn't sure if she could handle it. She'd spent almost the last year incapacitated for one reason or another and she hadn't been in her right mind... and now this.

Oh, and the funny thing was? All she wanted in order to calm her nerves was a drink, but she wasn't allowing herself to have one and it was like Chinese motherfucking water torture. So now, she was twitchy and high-strung and more tightly wound than ever, no matter how tired she was, and she was hurting in all kinds of miserable places. In fact, it was almost like her bleeding hands were the least of her aches and pains right now. But.. David was offering a solution to some of her pain, so she'd thrown a bathrobe over her shorts and tank top and she went shuffling across the hall to the guidance office that doubled as David's living room.

"David...?" Shoving her glasses up to rub at her tired eyes, she rapped on the door frame with her knuckles. "Shit! Ow... ow." She kissed her wounds, sucked on one that had started bleeding again.

"Shit, fuck, ow. David?"

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-10 07:05 am UTC (link)
"Coming!" By all rights, David should have been asleep. If it hadn't been for that misplaced book, he probably would have been, but he'd found it late, and therefore started reading late, finished late, and at some obscure hour of the morning found himself still awake and looking at the network.

Which was probably just as well.

The door opened, and almost immediately a steaming cup appeared in the space.

"Take this," David ordered, a smile on his face. "And drink." An obscure herbal tea made out of the oddest combination of things, it claimed to soothe and relax the drinker. Honestly, David tended to find that it just tasted Organic enough to seem effective, but that usually amounted to the same thing.

He stepped belatedly out of the doorway, giving Arla enough space to actually come in.

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-10 02:54 pm UTC (link)
Arla stared at it for a moment and sniffed it, then gathered the mug into her hands. She was one of those people who liked obscure herbal things. Apart from her really unhealthy obsession with mint chocolate chip ice cream, Arla was essentially a vegan ninety-nine percent of the time. It wasn't a moral choice, she just happened to have a digestive system that wasn't all that good at breaking down animal products----she wasn't a carnivorous fish. So, she experimented sometimes with the organics and the herbals and other floofy heathnut things just to survive and----

Oh, hey, it didn't taste that bad. She blew across the surface and sipped, cradling the mug with both webbed hands and shuffling into the room. She was dissheveled and exhausted-looking, her hair a tangled mess. "I feel like shit," she grumbled, "but this might help. It's not gin, but it might help."

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-10 05:34 pm UTC (link)
She looked like shit, truth be told. Dishevelled and underdressed, yes, but it was more the way she was holding herself, tird and beaten. The fact that she was the one who did the beating helped. Slightly.

But a neighbor collapsing in a heap in the middle of his office wouldn't be very good for any of them, so he made a gestue towards the couch tucked off to the right of the door.

"Ah, there you've got the Postman in a nutshell; not gin, but it just might help." David laughed. "Feel free to sit down -- I'll just get that goop now before both of us forget." He turned with a nod and retreated back into his bedroom, leaving the door open behind him.

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-10 06:18 pm UTC (link)
"What---oh. Yeah. I have the memory of a goldfish sometimes," Arla said as she slumped down into a chair----shit, and promptly sloshed some of the hot tea all over her hands and lap. Good job, idiot. She hissed and managed to set down the cup instead of dropping it. The tea stung her worn hands because it was hot, but hell, the herbs were probably good for them. She wrapped her hands up in her robe to dry them, gritting her teeth when the rubbing hurt.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid----it's like... I'm so capable, David, I swear," she called, raising her voice so he could hear her. "And then I get overwhelmed and it's like... all piling one on top of the other and unless I write it down and reason it out like a math problem I can't handle the jumble of stuff. But this? I can't write down all the unknown variables in this equation. Believe me, I've tried, and there's no formula for this. I can't believe he's sending me out to fight. I mean, I----I fucking volunteered, right? I said I'd help. But he's supposed to be the voice of good judgment, and I can't believe he's sending me out."

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-10 07:06 pm UTC (link)
"Slow down, Arla." Fortunately, whatever it was that was stealing his pens and reorganizing his bookcase had left David's medicine cabinet alone. Retrieving the tub of what actually looked more like hand cream than anything else, he picked up a second cup of tea from his nightstand and returned to the main office -- where Arla somehow looked more distressed than when she came in a moment ago.

The salve was set aside for the moment, as David settled himself on the couch and tried to figure out what could have happened in the minute and a half he'd been in the other room.

"What's he asking you to do, anyway?"

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-10 08:22 pm UTC (link)
"Kick ass and take names like the rest of you guys," said Arla, pulling her hands out of her robe now that they were dry. Her clothes were still a bit tea-soaked, but... she'd smell like herbs. Cool. "It's just that there are fewer of us and I'm just surprised ... I dunno. I want to say I can do this, no problem. It's just been a while. At least he gave me Boston. There's water. Nice of him, yeah?"

She scratched the side of her nose and smiled sheepishly. "Every time I talk to you I freak out and tell you way too much crap," she said. "You're the guidance counselor but you're not on the clock. Don't you ever just want to talk about yourself? Doesn't that drive you nuts?"

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-10 09:19 pm UTC (link)
The air smelt more strongly of tea than it was supposed to, that was it. Ah, well, there were worse things to spill than water and herbs, hardly the end of the world if the carpet smelled like chamomile and ginsing. And quite honestly, David could understand why Arla was nervous - he was nervous, he who had been training daily for years whether he wanted to or not. Neither of them had abilties that directly translated to combat -- her less so than David. Fun times ahead.

Her question, though, caught him off guard and threw him off of that line of thinking. It wasn't that the answer was difficult, but when was the last time that anyone had ever asked him? The role of a guide had been with David so long that there really were no off hours, and everyone around him seemed to sense that. He didn't mind, but to have it pointed out was strange.

David waved an easy hand. "Me? Oh, not really. I don't have many stories worth telling." The lie was easier because of how far from the truth it really was. Oh, there were stories, but telling them meant thinking about them, and most of those memories were burried for a reason. "Please, don't feel like you're dumping things on me. I promise you're not driving me crazy."

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-10 10:32 pm UTC (link)
"Bullshit," said Arla, leaning forward and then reaching for the tea again. She took a sip, watching David carefully. "You have interesting stories; you just don't have shit you want to talk about. I know what that's like. I don't blame you. It's not a big deal or anything. Don't tell me." She smiled and set her cup down.

"Don't tell me and rub that stuff on my hands, baby."

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-10 10:53 pm UTC (link)
Well, as long as she was the one explaining his reasons they made perfect sense. David shrugged, acknowledging the truth of it with a half smile ... and then laughed outright.

"Baby?" he repeated, eyebrows climbing with amusement. "If I'd known it was this easy, I'd have offered you goop months ago." Rising, David picked up the container and perched again on the arm of the sofa nearest to Arla's chair. "The way to a woman's heart is through tingling hand-salve. I'll have to remember that."

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-10 10:59 pm UTC (link)
Arla gave an overly-flirtatious growl and held her hands out. "You know it," she teased, wiggling her fingers. A playful side? A friendly side? Yeah, sure, Arla had all those things, and David seemed to bring out the best in her. Maybe it was because he ... didn't expect much from her. Or something. Arla wasn't sure, but she really liked his company. She didn't want to throttle him, she didn't have to prove her intelligence or her sanity. She was just there, in his presence, and David seemed enough on the straight-laced side that she could shake him up a little.

"I could do the goop myself, you know."

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-11 12:12 am UTC (link)
David snorted, unscrewing the top of the container and collecting a fair amount of the cream onto two fingers. No idea what was in it, a home-made remedy he'd picked up from someone in the sewers in Columbus, although from the effects he'd guess a combination of Vicks, lidocaine, and iodine. All of which were probably wrong.

"I don't think so," he retorted, shaking both his head and one goop-covered finger before setting to applying it on Arla's knuckles. It had been a long time since he'd had this much fun with someone else, without the benefit of a game or some other mutual distraction. She seemed to bring out the best in him. "Tease."

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-11 12:46 am UTC (link)
Arla hissed and sucked in her breath. It stung a little, but the longer he rubbed it in, the better it felt... even though it tingled a little and she couldn't decide if that was cool or uncomfortable. "Tease? You're the one giving me tea and greasing me up with goop. Me, I've just got a couple of oozing wounds... mmm, delicious, I know."

She grinned, surprised at herself for grinning. Yeah. The playfulness, the ease... it all seemed to find her way back and she scooched forward in her chair happily. "Unless that kind of thing gets you off. Big old gaping wounds... in that case I am completely guilty of being a tease."

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-11 01:12 am UTC (link)
Touch light, David was devoting most of his attention to not hurting Arla more than he knew the application of medicine was going to anyway. Excessive personal experience had taught him a thing or two about bruised knuckles, but the delicate webs of flesh between her fingers were different, and he wasn't sure how that really worked.

He looked up only after he finished with her right hand. "Ah, but I couldn't possibly be a tease." With a little smile, he held up his left hand, where an unobtrusive dark gold band caught the light. "By definition, I'm respectable." The admission that he was married normally went in the long list of things David preferred not to talk about - mostly because it led to other stories that tied into other things, all of which ended in grief. In this case, though, it seemed like it was probably one of those things better mentioned early.

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-11 01:20 am UTC (link)
Arla's webbing was incredibly sensitive, cracked and raw in places. She flinched when David touched it, but it was a vulnerable place, and usually it was an erotic place for her. She was almost about to give into that idea when he held up his hand.

Oh. Shit.

"Oh. Oh." Arla instinctively drew her hands back, even though she hadn't been doing anything remotely wrong. "Duh. Of course you're married. No surprise there... hah... of course."

---But his wife wasn't here. Arla's brain clicked, thinking. Not because she wanted David, but because she just realized that his wife wasn't here and shouldn't she be? Maybe? Was she dead? Was she... somewhere else? Was he divorced and not wanting to admit it?

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-11 01:34 am UTC (link)
"Oh, no." David shook his head with a small sigh, that perpetual twinkle still in his eyes when he looked back up. "Come on, promise you won't start treating me like I'm from another planet." That was the other problem, of course, the married man in the middle of a world of people who didn't, for whatever reason, have that additional lable tacked on. Occasionally more difficult to make friends because of that than because of a potentially disastrous mutation, which was why he wasn't massively inclined to make the general announcement.

"Not 'of course'. I actually haven't seen my wife in almost ten years ... there was an accident, and it was a long time ago." David shrugged slightly, and gestured for Arla's other hand mostly to take the attention off of what he was saying. "I've just never been inclined towards lies, even through omission. Here, let me finish this."

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-11 01:53 am UTC (link)
Arla was blushing brightly, embarrassed at making a total ass of herself. "I didn't know... I'm sorry," she said. "I mean, I'm not sorry you're married. I'm sorry about... whatever accident. Really. That's terrible. Did she leave, or ...? No, I'm not gonna ask. That's really fucking rude of me." She held out her hands again. "Finish and shut me up. You said you don't like talking about your shit."

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-11 02:07 am UTC (link)
"We always said no one becomes a Morlock without good cause." More creme from the container, which was then set down on the floor. "I guess you could say no one starts them without a better one." David looked up with a smile, though his hands kept moving.

"I can't blame you for being curious. I set myself up for it with the mysterious lead-in." And really, if he'd known he'd been about to reveal a piece of his past, David really wouldn't have led in with something about secrecy. Ah well, hindsight, 20-20, until he went to work on it. "I think, though, that's all I'm going to say right now."

Throughout it all, David's expression remained light, if slightly wry, no sign of effort to keep it that way. Either he genuinely didn't mind, or he had a lot of practice with repression.

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-11 05:13 am UTC (link)
Arla kept her eyes on their hands, David very dark and Arla incredibly pale. She kept flickering her eyes up toward his and the stupid thing was, she hadn't even been thinking about flirting with him for any purpose other than joking around until he said he was married. Now she felt stupid and her thoughts had turned into inappropriate "what if" scenarios in her head. Stupid.

"That's all you hafta say," said Arla, smiling a little. "I mean, I----okay. I'm still thinking and trying to get an answer outta you and I'm not going to get one. I'm just curious. Insatiably so. Every question that's posed, I have to find an answer. That's just how I am. Work out the variables and solve the equation. Even when the answer's not worth finding out and not nearly as complicated as you thought it was... it's..." She chuckled helplessly----looked like she, too, had a lot of practice with suppression. Not as much as David, because when she suppressed things, she got all twitchy like a toy that was wound too tight. "It's my tragic flaw."

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Arla's right hand involuntarily tensed up. David had seen it happen before, the first time they really talked, and the fingers twitched violently before curling up like a tense claw. Drawing her hand back, she tried to shake it out. That never worked, but she always did it anyway. She just had to wait for the spasm to die down and relax itself.

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-11 05:48 am UTC (link)
David chuckled. Leave it to the mathematician to view the world as a series of Xs and Os. And given the conditions under which he first met her, he wasn't really surprised that Arla was so willint to accept a half answer; they all had them, and at some level they all understood that. Still, give and take was a part of any relationship. David had said that to Sarena, balance was key, and it held true beyond the zone of councellor preaching at students. Because of his position at the school, whether or not he was on duty, people tended to open themselves up to David. If any sort of real friendship between himself and Arla could exist, which he hoped there could be, there had to be a measure of balance there.

"Maybe eventually," he replied warmly. "I don't want to drive you mad. But, thank you. I appreciate -- Arla? Are you all right?" David frowned, looking from her hand to her face to try and see if she was in pain. The spasm was familiar, the hand curled around the glass, but he hadn't been paying enough attention then to know what it meant, or how it felt. "Is there anything I can do?"

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-11 05:55 am UTC (link)
"I'm fine, and no," said Arla, more sourly than she intended. She didn't snap, but she was appropriately surly about it, using her other hand to try and pry her fingers straight again. "This happens, sometimes. See, David, I have this goldfish, kay? I have a pet goldfish, and this goldfish can only swim circles in one direction, and it kinda twitches when it tries to go the other way. It does weird stuff and crashes into the wall of the bowl, that kind of thing. The fish does that because it was zapped by some electricity and it went tzzt. Fried. Except not really, because it's not a dead, crispy goldfish."

She shook her hand again, and then just set it in her lap, rubbing it over her leg. Fingers were just starting to loosen up a little. "I'm like the goldfish. I'm not going to say I am the goldfish, because it's not a metaphor. I really do have a fucked-up goldfish."

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-11 06:04 am UTC (link)
It wasn't a metaphor. Arla's abilities involved functioning underwater - which meant that she was electrocuted? Underwater? With enough energy to apparently cause what looked to David's untrained eye some sort of neurological damage. The thought was appauling.

"How?" The question came without thinking -- not 'how did she survive', of course. She was a Morlock, and beyond that, from what David knew of Arla she was a strong woman in her own right. But how could anyone do such a thing? And possibly, to a lesser extent, how did she end up in the same tank as a goldfish when they were electrocuted.

Almost instantly, though, he held up a hand. "No, I'm sorry. I'm in no position to be asking insensitive questions. I ... I'm sorry, Arla." Not because he felt personally responsible in any way - but that kind of lasting effect was something that no one needed, and to see it in someone struck almost like a blow.

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-11 01:49 pm UTC (link)
"I dropped a toaster in the bathtub," said Arla wryly, dragging her hand along her thigh in order to spread out her fingers---and they managed to relax enough to settle back to normal. "Tzzt." It was a lie, obviously. Actually, it was meant to be a joke, but under the circumstances it probably wasn't all that funny.

She finished rubbing some of the excess salve into her skin----on her skin, it got all slippery, but it was hard for things to dissolve into it. "No, I... but really, I got zapped underwater and... held down and... it was bad, but I don't actually remember it. You shoulda seen me before." She laughed helplessly. "This hand thing is nothing. I've come a long way."

Clearing her throat, she glanced back up at David. "I tried tracking down the people who killed the Morlocks. My Morlocks. The same guy who beat me, shot me, and left me for dead was the one who did this." She smiled sadly. "Oops."

She was affected by it, sure, but by now she was all right talking about it. A fellow Morlock had the right to know. "Don't think I told you about that just so you'd tell me about your wife. That'd be vindictive."

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[info]memoria_rasa
2008-03-11 09:23 pm UTC (link)
"No, of course not." There were very few people who would actively use personal tragedy to manipulate others, certainly not on a matter so relatively trivial. David had no desire to take the significance of the conversation away from her by spinning it into his web of troubles. Arla's experiences deserved more than that, even if David couldn't quite bring himself to laugh at the attempted joke. Although, there was an element of fairness to it. "If you ask me a question, I'll probably answer it anyway."

At a loss for further words, he shook his head. The massacre of the Morlocks had a definite source, a man behind it who not only seemed to still be alive, but was capable of doing further damage. A mental note was made to find out the name, if anyone knew it, learn whatever he could and see if just maybe there was anything else to be done. Quietly, discreetly, without any more good people being harmed.

None of which thoughts were helpful at the moment -- crusades were a hard habit to break but David pushed it aside, setting a gentle hand on Arla's good arm instead.

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[info]mathemafishian
2008-03-11 11:01 pm UTC (link)
Oh, Arla had names. Arla had a whole list of names, but she knew better than to give those names away these days. At least, she wouldn't give them away to someone she wanted to see alive.

Her eyes flickered down to David's hand----he was so soft with her. Most men weren't soft with her. Remy definitely hadn't been, and... hah, she never wanted him to be. "I... um." He'd answer a question if she asked, but she didn't want to be rude and ask about his wife.

"...D'you want to play Parcheesi?"

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