Mordecai Roberts (septman) wrote in revoltic, @ 2019-11-03 00:00:00 |
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Mordecai was still considering his next move when he returned to the house. Likely, he should consult with Julia and Ellana now that this plan had failed. First, however, he needed something for his head. He opened the cupboard above the refrigerator. "Aspirin or mimosa?" he mused aloud, hearing a step in the kitchen behind him. There were things about New York that Alicia didn’t mind but overall she felt a little bit out of place here. It wasn’t like Atlantis where the option to leave was even there. She hadn’t meant to leave Atlantis, hell, she hadn’t wanted to, but it happened and here she was. It was always hard for her to not show the familiarity she felt when she saw Mordy, well Mordecai. Alicia had started to try and think of them as two different people who just happened to be well, the same person for the most part. Just different experiences. “You didn’t get into too much trouble last night did you?” Alicia asked as she reached for an apple and started tossing it from hand to hand. “Or was it bad dreams?” Mordecai turned and leaned back against the counter. He quite liked his housemates. There was a certain degree of awkwardness that he tried to bury with Alicia - the awareness that someone knew him so well without Mordecai knowing her was uncomfortably reminiscent of others whom Mordecai trusted much less. That awkwardness now went side-by-side with a familiarity and kinship Mordecai felt for very few people. Those memories were the reason he felt safe in saying, "Not as much trouble as I expected." He smiled wryly. "I've had worse dreams. It never seemed fair, hearing about others' experiences. The news seemed to be always terrible and the headache worse. When stuffing a load of memories in someone's head, the least one can do is make the process less painful." He grimaced. "Granted, I brought this one on myself. As usual." He hesitated before elaborating. "I hoped the Amber might be used to magnify a summoning spell. It didn't work. Clearly." He turned back to the cupboards. "So I'm trying to decide between drowning my failure with a hair of the dog that didn't bite me or behaving like a responsible adult and putting Captain Becker's training to use." Blinking a few times at how open he was she almost felt like this was her Mordy. One of her best mates from home, or well, Atlantis. His honesty and openness was more than she expected. Alicia opened her mouth a couple of times about to ask questions but found herself struggling to try and keep the balance of being awkward in her knowledge of him and his lack of knowledge of her and their friendship. "Wait a second." She let out when he dropped Becker's name, Alicia didn't remember mentioning him, she might have, but not enough for him to pull out... "You bloody prat!" She said with a big grin. "You, you didn't." Well, it seemed he had. "I'd say it's more of a celebration and a drowning." All right, perhaps that revelation had been a bit more dramatic than necessary, but Mordecai had always enjoyed a little bit of drama. He smiled despite his aching head. "I wasn't trying," he admitted. "But it is a silver lining - a rather broad one, even." He hesitated still sorting through what he remembered having told her in the other world of the people back in Twelve-A. "I thought Gabriel might have helped with - a project." The reluctance to elaborate was not for any distrust of Alicia on his part, but Ellana's troubles weren't Mordecai's to share. He'd considered making the attempt when Oliver brought up Thea's condition - that had struck very close to home - but he hadn't yet finished his preparations. Besides Gabriel could ewwbe a stickler about some things. Necromancy was frowned upon in Twelve-A, and Chrestomanci might have considered it undue interference in another world to meddle with the results. ...Although Gabriel, as Mordecai now knew, could surprise on occasion. There were too many 'what ifs' to dwell on, too much spilt milk to clean up for Mordecai to grieve what the amber hadn't given him. "I trust your judgment," he said aloud. "Celebrating it is." A lot of Alicia wanted to ask about the project but the way he said it made her a little bit less likely to push for it. “Well, did anything help?” She asked curiously. That wasn’t anything about the project, just if it helped or not. “How much do you remember?” Alicia asked watching his expression, she couldn’t help but wonder how much of his own world and Atlantis he now knew and how much that might be good and bad at the same time. She supposed if she didn’t know about it all it’d be a bit overwhelming. “Good, I’ll start making mimosas.” Mordecai laughed a little bitterly. "It didn't help with the project I had in mind, but it did reinforce my awareness of repeating old mistakes. I remember going home - and why - and back to Atlantis, but I haven't done it." The tidal wave of emotion from holding his soul in his hands for the first time muted by distance as such things had always been - at least in Twelve-A and here in New York. Mordecai tried to grasp that feeling of being whole and pull it out of the memory, but it slipped away. Even with his soul, it wasn't as though he'd been good at such things. If he had been, perhaps Rosalie would have stayed in Atlantis. Mordecai closed his eyes for a moment. "A year ago, I think. We'd recently celebrated Bonfire Night," he said finally. "It's a bit foggy. I hadn't been particularly sober lately." He paused again and then added with studied nonchalance. "She left." Alicia - unless her own memories dated to far, far earlier than seemed likely - knew who 'she' was. "But we had a chance to sort things out, at least." She hadn't trusted him, but she had forgiven him. After a fashion. "That's more than I expected." Rosalie had always been the one to make Mordecai feel as if he could be what he wasn't. He'd thought it was just her until last winter. "I wonder if I ought to tell Lu-" He corrected himself quickly. "-the Pevensies that I've seen their Narnia or if it would be unkind." “If only it were easy to not make old mistakes sometimes.” Alicia had made a few herself but she didn’t really know how the whole memory of it but not actually doing it thing worked. She supposed somewhat like knowing other people knew her from other worlds, but she didn’t remember any of that. She’d just heard about them. A weight started to settle around her heart as he brought up Rosalie. Sometimes Alicia really wanted to hit Rosalie over the side of the head, not that she could, or she would, she just hated seeing Mordy in pain. Putting down the glasses she waited until he brought up the Pevensies to step over to him and wrapped her arms around him in a comforting hug. “Some closure, so to speak, even if it isn’t what you hoped for, is better than nothing,” she said pulling back and nodding. “Well, I’m sure Lucy, and the rest of her family would be interested by all the stories.” Alicia had noticed they seemed close. If she were honest she was jealous in the sense that she just missed feeling close to people. Especially her closest friends. She had Clarke at least, but Clarke was a bit further behind and seemed to have things somewhat figured out here. Alicia felt a little out of place. "If only," echoed Mordecai. "Such is life!" The hug felt both natural and strange, but it was welcome. Closeness was not actually something he was accustomed to, even with the new memories crowding his head. A lifetime of secrets he couldn't share had made it an illusion, at best, with his handlers always a summons away to remind him if he forgot. In New York, as in Atlantis, he had almost gotten lost in the illusion. In New York, as in Atlantis, he had found family. "Unfortunately, I've a besetting weakness for the combination of beauty, spirit and integrity. The lure of the opposite, I suppose." To Alicia, Mordy was one of the first people she came to truly trust in Atlantis, she’d had Jemma early on but they were vastly different and the people from home, but Mordy had been the first person she’d really opened up to in Atlantis. “I don’t know, I’d say Katie doesn’t have the same amount of integrity,” she held up her hands. “Only joking!” It was easy to tease Katie, even if she wasn’t here. “But maybe it isn’t so much of a lure of the opposite as it is finding people that compliment you.” Mordecai smiled slightly. His memories of Katie Bell certainly fit the description. Alicia's reference implied somewhat more than the friendship he remembered, but he could see how a spark might have grown. It could have been Katie he was defending from the gentle teasing with his next quip. "My father would have said that courage was integrity." With a levity that Captain Roberts would have sighed at, Mordecai continued. "Something about virtue needing to be tested, unpleasant as that sounds. I do like compliments, though." Deliberate misunderstanding was almost an automatic defense, but in reality, there was a little too much truth to her words. "A match to the missing pieces in the soul then?" he asked with the same forced cheer. "What a terrible burden to inflict on a person one claims to-" He faltered. "-Care for." That was always dangerous territory, so despite the ache behind his eyes from doing so, Mordecai tilted his head back and laughed. "Let's see about those mimosas before I get any more maudlin, and you tell me about your night!" Alicia wasn’t sure she always thought of courage as integrity, depended on what the courage was used for she supposed. She just smirked at his comment though. “I don’t know, maybe that person is finding something in the other person as well, making everyone a bit stronger.” That was how she’d been starting to feel about Erik before coming here, that there was faults and flaws in both of them but together they somehow weren’t as bad. “Alright,” she smiled, letting her thoughts on the subject go, she knew he had a headache. “Mimosas it is, and you can hear all about how utterly dull my life is here.” |