InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I want u around 4 a long time."

April (i_steal_time) wrote in expresslogs,
@ 2012-03-31 21:36:00

Entry tags:

!open, {samantha parkington, {sylvia weis

With a Kitten
Characters: Sylvia, Samantha
When: Saturday night
Location: front parlor car
Warnings/Rating: None anticipated
Summary: Sylvia plays with a kitten
Status: Complete

Sylvia was glad to be moving again. She'd had more than enough of corpses, and disease, and everything else. She'd taken her kitten to the doctors, which had been interesting for both of them, but they'd said the kitten was fine as far as they could tell.

She'd also found several bags from a pet store in her room when she'd gone back, with no idea who'd actually left them there. She assumed it had to be one of the witches since they were probably the only ones who could have gone out and back fast enough, but she appreciated it all the same.

After being fed and cared for (and given a flea bath), the kitten seemed to be doing well. She was still toying with names for it, and having little luck in that area. She thought she was going to end up settling on Misty, but she really wasn't sure. Maybe she'd give it a few more days and see if anything else came to her. Or if people better with animals had some sort of suggestions.

Taking one of the toys from the bag, she trailed it along the floor. When the kitten seemed interested in it, Sylvia trailed it out the door and along the hallway until she came to the parlor car. While she wasn't very social, she knew she'd never meet new people penned up in her room -- so it seemed better to hang out in more public places. Then there was at least some sort of traffic and the possibility of someone saying hi.

Settling on a couch in the front parlor car, Sylvia continued to trail the toy around for the kitten to play with and pounce. She rested her free hand across her lap as she played with her little white kitten.

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i_steal_time
2012-04-02 02:33 am UTC (link)

She couldn't help the slight expression of surprise when Samantha admitted her date. She knew there were people from that far back -- and farther -- but it was still a little surprising to hear. "I ... know," she said. It wasn't what she'd been starting out to say, but it didn't seem worth trying to explain that 'friends' wasn't really a word in her vocabulary at home.

But that was her father's fault. Her father kept them like that. Her father had enforced it all. If Will was here, she was sure they'd be making all kinds of friends, but ... he wasn't, and on her own she was floundering. "There are ... a few people," she assured Samantha.

She watched the kitten, still not completely sure what had prompted her to pick the thing up, but ... she had. And now it was her responsibility. "Good," she admitted, wondering if she was going to turn into some sort of fretful mother hen, panicking every time the kitten did something strange that might be unusual. She was sure she'd get to know Misty Snowflake eventually and be able to tell normal from not-normal, but ... she wasn't there yet.

"She's a survivor," Sylvia said quietly. "And I guess she must be smart." Though Sylvia supposed she could just have been constantly crying and Sylvia had only heard it when she had. But she liked to think the kitten had heard her and then started crying.

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smparkington
2012-04-02 02:52 am UTC (link)

"That's good," Samantha said, giving Sylvia the most encouraging smile she knew how to give. "I can be your friend, too, if you like." If there was one thing Samantha was good at, it was making friends - and goodness knows that was a skill that was going to come in very handy on a train full of lunatics. If she could put that skill to work twofold by making friends with people who seemed to have trouble in that department, like Sylvia, then so much the better. It was the compassionate thing to do, and it was a personal mission of Samantha's to always be as compassionate as possible.

"Cats are very intelligent animals." She nodded, drawing the little scrap of paper the kitten was batting around, then focusing on Sylvia's face. Samantha had always admired people with strong jawlines like Sylvia's; they were so striking. "And most survivors are smart. They need to have their wits about them to stay on top of their surroundings." In a way, everyone on this train was a survivor, lunatic or not. They were all just trying to use their skills in the best way they could to stay alive day to day, in the hope of... what, exactly? Being rescued? Hearing stories of people who'd been on the train for months at a time didn't give Samantha much hope of that.

"Anyway, I think she's lucky to have you," Samantha continued, beginning to fill in Sylvia's facial features. Just quick lines, nothing too detailed, but it was still a fairly good resemblance. "You play with her and you clearly care about her a lot. What have you been feeding her?"

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i_steal_time
2012-04-02 03:51 am UTC (link)

Was that how it worked? Was it just as simple as saying 'let's be friends' and it happened that way? "All right," she said cautiously, unsure she believed it really was just supposed to be that easy. Maybe she should try that. Then she was struck by an amusing thought: Maybe she'd network Ray and say 'let's be friends' to see what he said back.

"Our society," she began haltingly. "It was my father, mostly, I guess. And who he was. But ... I had guards, all the time. From ... my twelfth birthday on, I ... had guards. So it was difficult to ... just be. To say what I thought, or to do anything knowing that what I said, what I did, was going to be reported back to my father." In her later years, she'd gotten a taste of defiance, and she'd ridden that for all it was worth. But that was child's play compared to what happened after she met Will. "So I ... don't know how to make friends," she concluded awkwardly. "Even now, I expect to see Constantine over my shoulder or something, and ... of course he's not here."

She wasn't sure if that crossed a line into oversharing, but she didn't really know where the lines were. Samantha was the first person she'd really just sat down and talked to, so it was interesting.

"Are they?" She replied, watching the kitten. She guessed so. She seemed smart enough, anyway, so Sylvia was content to accept that.

"I don't know why I picked her up, really," she confessed, though she had a slight sense of deja-vu, like she'd already said that. "Someone found some kitten formula, and once she's bigger, there's a couple of bags of kitten food. People here are ... they're very considerate. I didn't even ... ask for any of the things, but after I posted about not knowing what I was doing, someone had put the things in my room."

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smparkington
2012-04-02 03:16 pm UTC (link)

"Guards?" Samantha looked up from her work, slightly taken aback. What sort of peculiar turn had society taken that a child of twelve needed to be guarded? She herself had been a highly sheltered, spoiled child, of that much she'd been made aware as she got to know Nellie. But although she'd been safeguarded from much of the world, she couldn't say she'd been guarded in the way Sylvia was describing. "That sounds horrible," she said sympathetically, setting down her pencil for a moment; she made as if to touch Sylvia on the shoulder, but thought better of it after a moment. If Sylvia was this skittish about simply talking to someone else, it wasn't likely she'd take well to being touched.

"I'm so very sorry," Samantha said instead, picking her sketchpad up again and beginning to smudge a few lines here and there. "I can't imagine feeling as though I were being watched all the time, as though any small thing I said or did would be reported back to someone." Constantine, she thought, must be one of the guards Sylvia'd had. "I know it may be hard at first, but you can speak freely to me. And to any of your friends on the train."

Samantha picked up a red pencil, beginning to shade in the divan a little bit. "You had compassion for her," she answered, shrugging. "You're a nice person and you wanted to do something nice for her. She's all alone and you wished to comfort her." She looked up from her sketchpad and smiled. "See, you could always try to find out who left you the kitten things. Make friends with him or her. How old is the kitten now?"

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i_steal_time
2012-04-03 12:34 am UTC (link)

“My father …” Sylvia trailed off. “He was very wealthy. So we were all … protected from harm. From everything.” Her eyes half closed as she recalled Will’s reaction to the ocean beyond the house. And her own. We don’t go in. Will had changed everything, and for a moment, Sylvia missed him, wished he was here. “It was … restrictive,” she agreed. “But everyone … had guards. No one trusted anyone. Everything was just … fronts and facades and none of it was real.” Sylvia glanced over to Samantha curiously at the abbreviated motion. She wasn’t sure what the intention had been, but she wasn’t sure she would have minded.

“I’m getting better at it,” she agreed. “I had … an adventure, just before I showed up here. I learned a lot.” A lot about her father. A lot about Will’s world, the ghetto, the world outside of New Greenwich. A lot about what it was like to have minutes, seconds to your name, and how that felt.

A nice person. Sylvia wasn’t sure she’d ever think of herself that way. Did nice people rob banks and destroy society as they knew it? Did nice people shoot Timekeepers for doing their job? She had only meant to scare him … and he’d survived. Well, he’d survived that. And he was surviving here. “Maybe,” she said. She wasn’t a bad person, she didn’t think. Will had a point; they were just … fixing things. It wasn’t stealing if it was already stolen.

“Maybe I’ll ask around,” she decided before she shook her head to the question. “We don’t know,” she said. “The doctor guessed somewhere between four to six weeks, but it was hard to tell because they didn’t know how long its development was slowed because of the … situation.” Sylvia was content to take an average of it and call it five, but in the end it didn’t matter too much to her.

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smparkington
2012-04-03 02:33 am UTC (link)

Samantha wasn't following everything Sylvia was saying, but she was still able to more or less understand what the final outcome was: she'd been lonely, unable to trust anyone and unable to relate to people. Or to situations. Now the young woman's peculiar demeanor made much more sense to Samantha, and she nodded. "Well, I can't relate to having guards, or not being able to trust anyone," she replied honestly. "But - I can somewhat relate to having been wealthy and overprotected. I wasn't prepared myself the first time I came face to face with the world's harsh realities." She thought back to the day she'd walked home from school with Nellie, Edith Eddleton's lips curled into a sneer: Samantha Parkington, does your grandmother know you're walking home with a servant girl? "But it doesn't sound like it was quite the same as your life," Samantha admitted, beginning to sketch again.

"Oh, what sort of an adventure?" Samantha asked curiously, looking up to study the way Sylvia's hair fell across her cheek. It was difficult to draw such short hair; it moved so differently from longer hair, and she had to look a few times before she captured it in a way that satisfied her. "I've had a couple of my own. College has been fairly adventuresome if I do say so myself - I've had the chance to choose my own course of study, which has been fun." She was aware that it sounded dull as dirt, of course, but the fact was that adventure had never been a large part of Samantha's life.

"Well, she's a darling no matter how old she is," Samantha crooned, pausing to reach out and stroke the kitten's head again. "I know you'll take perfect care of her. She seems so happy. If she weren't, she'd have left, you know. Cats are independent that way."

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i_steal_time
2012-04-03 03:09 am UTC (link)

She wasn't sure it was over protective so much as complete and utter suffocation, but she let it go. It was the same result in the end. She was sheltered and she was more naive than she liked to admit to being. Or had been, anyway. "Sounds familiar," Sylvia agreed with a little smile.

What kind of adventure. Well, she'd sort of set herself up for that, hadn't she? What kind of adventure indeed? It wasn't like she could say she'd been kidnapped, fallen for her kidnapper, and helped rob all of her father's banks, could she? "I ... met a guy," she said instead. "And he took me to his side of town which was ... the wrong side of the tracks?" She thought that was the right phrasing. "So my father wasn't exactly happy about it, but ... I was. I liked the freedom. I liked living." She could have done without watching the Timekeeper time out, but that didn't need to make it into the story.

"I'll try," she agreed. She thought she'd get plenty of help though, so she wasn't that concerned. Well, she was concerned, but only in the way of worrying she'd somehow do something wrong because she didn't stop to check if it was okay or not.

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smparkington
2012-04-03 03:41 pm UTC (link)

"Oh, a love story!" Samantha was immediately all ears. "How romantic! I've always believed that even if your family doesn't approve, if you love someone... that's it. I think the same is true of friendship, too." She was a softie, always enjoying hearing stories of others' love lives. Her own had been fairly dull up to now - a few dances here, a bouquet of flowers there, but nothing terribly serious. It was the drawback to going to college, it made you less eligible among society men.

As she finished the shading on Sylvia's collar, she smiled. "There," she said, satisfied, and turned the sketchbook to her new friend. "What do you think? It's a little rough around the edges, but it looks like you." Her style of drawing was angular and calculated, very much the product of formal art education, but there was some raw talent there.

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i_steal_time
2012-04-04 12:35 am UTC (link)

Sylvia smiled, but there were other reasons her father didn’t approve. But she couldn’t exactly bring herself to say that in front of this girl. She … just had a feeling that no matter how good her and Will’s intentions had been to begin with, they’d done bad things. They’d broken society as they knew it, destroyed the relevance of time zones. She didn’t disagree with what they’d done, and the people in the ghetto scraping by day to day -- sometimes hour to hour -- surely didn’t disagree, either.

But how to explain that? There was no way to. So she kept silent on those details. She wasn’t ashamed, but she also didn’t think she could make anyone really see. So instead she just smiled and nodded her agreement. “I’m not sure my father would have approved of anyone I’d bought home.”

Sylvia shifted to lean forward to study the drawing. It was kind of interesting, seeing herself captured in pencil, and she smiled. “I think it’s very good,” she said encouragingly. “Have you been doing that long?” She paused briefly. “There’s someone ese on board who paints. The animals on some of the doors are her work. I bet you two could compare techniques … or something.” If that was even how it worked; she had no idea.

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smparkington
2012-04-04 02:03 am UTC (link)

Samantha laughed, setting her sketchbook in her lap. "I know what you mean," she said confidentially, without a clue in her mind that really, she didn't. "My Uncle Gard has such high standards for my cousins and me, I doubt any of us will ever be allowed to marry! Why, Nellie's sweet on Everett Spaulding and he's got everything anyone could want in a man, but Uncle Gard can't get past the fact that he bets on horses a few times a year." Sheltered as she was, she couldn't see any reason other than paternal protectiveness and love that a parent wouldn't approve of a romantic match. Oh, certainly she knew that money and politics played a part. They always did. And practically since birth, Samantha had always been put in positions where the only people she socialized with were of a similar background to herself, so that she was almost guaranteed to marry within her social class. But she knew that Gard's attitude was due mostly to protectiveness of his girls - after all, if he'd agreed to adopt Nellie, Jenny, and Bridget, how prejudiced could he be?

She smiled back at Sylvia, not a bit shy about it - if there was one thing Samantha wasn't, it was shy, and she'd always been taught to graciously accept a compliment. "I've been painting since I was a girl," she explained, "and I'm studying it at college right now. My sketches aren't as good as my watercolors, but I'm working on it." She tilted her head to the side, intrigued at the thought of another artist on the train. "I'll have to try to make her acquaintance. I haven't noticed her paintings, but I'll keep an eye out. What is her name?"

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i_steal_time
2012-04-04 03:04 am UTC (link)

Sylvia smiled, nodding again in agreement. Maybe if they ever got to be close friends, she might be able to admit what she and Will had done, but she somehow had a feeling that wasn't a secret that would be wide-spread around the train. The Timekeeper knew, and she guessed he could tell anyone, but it didn't really serve any purpose.

"Nothing wrong with a little gambling," Sylvia agreed. "Especially if it's only a few times a year." The more they talked though, the more Sylvia realized how radically different her society -- her world -- was from Samantha's. Or at the very least how different her family was. She wondered what it would have been like to be raised by someone else. Anyone else.

Sylvia drew a blank for a minute on her name, but she'd seen her in the hallway a few times, and she could probably describe her, but ... "April," she managed to dredge up, pretty sure that was right. "And I think your sketches are good. Better than anything I could do," she offered before realizing that probably wasn't saying much.

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smparkington
2012-04-05 02:01 am UTC (link)

"I might gamble myself, if it were considered proper for women to gamble," Samantha confessed, though there was no shame in her voice. "It does sound fun, watching the horses race and seeing if the one you want to win gets ahead. As long as you don't waste all your money on it, I don't see the harm at all." She wondered, briefly, what gambling was like in Sylvia's world. Two hundred years in the future - she couldn't imagine! People might still bet on horses, but they might bet on other things instead. It was so hard to say.

"April," she repeated, putting her pencils back in their box after giving the sketch of Sylvia one last critical look. "I'll have to make sure to find her. As I said, I think making friends is the only way any of us will survive this ordeal, don't you?" She grinned and carefully tore out the sketchbook page with the drawing she'd just completed - she hoped Sylvia wasn't skittish about accepting gifts. It was hard to get a read on her. "Here," she said, holding the page out. "Now you have a little family portrait, just the two of you!" Samantha laughed, reaching down with her free hand to pet the kitten again.

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i_steal_time
2012-04-05 02:13 am UTC (link)

"My father gambled often," she admitted. "I ... watched." That brought to mind Will again -- but honestly, what didn't? -- and she glanced down to study the kitten as she batted at the scrap of paper. "He was good, but ... Will was better," she added quietly.

"I think she's one of the more social people," Sylvia volunteered. "I've seen her on the network a few times, and ... passed her in the halls." Sylvia smiled a little to the question about friends; she thought she could survive just fine on her own, but she guessed maybe having people around would make it easier.

She took the sketch, offering Samantha a slightly awkward smile. "Thank you," she replied. While she wasn't skittish about accepting it, it was fairly clear it wasn't something she was accustomed to.

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smparkington
2012-04-05 02:35 am UTC (link)

"Sounds like you were very sweet on this Will," Samantha teased, though her voice was not unkind. "I'd love to hear more about him sometime. Or see a photograph or daguerreotype, if you have one." Samantha wasn't gossipy, not exactly, but she did love to hear about people's lives, and seeing as there wasn't much else to do on this train, why not get to know her fellow passengers?

"You're welcome," Samantha replied with a grin, rising from her chair. "It's getting late for me - I've always been early to bed and early to rise - but I hope to talk to you soon, Sylvia. And to sketch something else for you. We could help April brighten up the train!"

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i_steal_time
2012-04-05 02:38 am UTC (link)

For a moment she was afraid she was about to be put on the spot, and she didn't have a story made up about Will yet, and she wasn't sure she could modify the truth enough for it to be plausible. But ... then it seemed like that was a conversation for a later date, and Sylvia nodded. "I don't ... have any pictures," she admitted. "But I can tell you about him," she decided.

"We could," she agreed. She wasn't sure what part she'd play in that, but there was no harm in ... tagging along. Maybe if Samantha made friends with April, Sylvia would get a friend by default, or something like that. "It was nice to meet you. Sleep well," she offered.

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