zora steele đź—ž kara danvers. (zorel) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2019-03-30 17:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, * kit, * terri, c: beau alderman, c: zora steele |
WHO: Beau Alderman & Zora Steele
WHEN: Tuesday, March 19, 2019; Afternoon
WHERE: A pizza buffet near Dunhaven
SUMMARY: Beau and Zora eat way too much pizza and find they may actually need to worry about superpowers. And choose to ignore it for now.
WARNINGS: None!
There had been one plus side to Zora’s living arrangement and that was the fact that she’d already boxed up the vast majority of her things and put them in storage while she was sleeping on her sister’s couch and that meant that she hadn’t had to go through the first half of the process of moving. But now that both Lyra and Remi had moved out and the lease had been switched over to her and Mal’s names, she had the pleasure of moving all of her boxes in and figuring out how to fill the now empty apartment with their combined things. While it seemed like a daunting and tedious task, she loved every second of it because with each box that was emptied came a step closer to a home she shared with the love of her life. It had taken a lot for them to get here, but here they were. Of course, the universe never seemed to be mollified by the idea that two people could be too happy for too long and so, while Mal was away working and Zora was at the apartment unpacking with the help of Beau, the universe had deemed it a decent time to not only give her another memory of Kara’s life, but to hit her with more than two decades’ worth of memories. It was a testament to the fact that she’d spent most of her life composing herself and schooling her features to hide what was really going on inside that she didn’t break down beneath the weight of it all right there in the middle of her living room. Instead, she’d pushed a box to the side and declared that it was time for a pizza break. She needed something other than organizing the apartment to distract her from everything she had just seen and essentially lived through. And...she was hungry. She had now been sat at the table for just over an hour with Beau at a pizza buffet just a short drive out of the town. Folding another slice in half, she took another bit and then, swallowing, said, “That’s just it, I’d had a dream here and there, you know? But nothing like this before. It’s like I blinked and lived an entire other life before I could open my eyes again. Has that happened to you? Or am I just personally going crazy?” Beau was no stranger to the dreams of Dunhaven, and the ways in which they could nearly upend a person’s sanity. He had been best friends with Zora since they were merely five years old, though even he sometimes had a hard time reading her when she didn’t want him to know what she was feeling. So, when she had suggested a pizza break as he helped her unpack the moving boxes, he had instantly agreed. If it was something that she needed, he wasn’t going to argue. At first, they’d just settled into the booth with a couple of plates and started eating. They’d both made a couple of return trips to the buffet, though honestly Beau wasn’t paying all that much attention to what he was eating. He had listened to her carefully when she begun to explain her most recent dream - one that had happened just today - though it was almost eerily familiar. He finished another bite and shook his head almost solemnly, “You’re not going crazy.” Another bite of a cheese stick passed his lips before he elaborated, “Something like that happened to me just recently.” He still remembered it vividly. He’d been in his dorm studying for an exam, and it had hit him like lightning. Beau had lived parts of Barry’s life, never seemingly in any kind of order, but in a stroke of the clock, a fraction in time, he had lived through what felt like the majority of Barry’s life. Some things he’d already seen, and some he had not. Some he saw so many times he realized that Barry had skipped in time, but in the end...Flashpoint remained, and he remembered...what seemed to be everything. “I was studying for an exam and then all the sudden,” he waved a piece of pizza in the air nonchalantly, “everything hit me. It’s like I was going along having these dreams, and for whatever reason, the universe decided that I wasn’t understanding enough or...I don’t know, I was soaking it in too slowly. I didn’t even know that could happen. It makes me wonder if I’ll dream of him more or not, but...I haven’t since.” Zora didn’t know whether or not she felt relief at knowing she wasn’t alone in this. It was nice having someone who understood, especially considering how their dreams related to one another’s, but she knew how overwhelming this latest round was for her and she didn’t wish that on her best friend. “Yes, exactly that. It was like it was ready for me to just figure it all out already. Like a little here and there wasn’t enough anymore.” Pressing her lips together, she leaned forward on her elbows. “I’m going to have to fill Mal in when he’s home, if he didn’t get the same amount of memories I just did,” she said, though she wasn’t crazy about the prospect. There was no part of her that hoped he had. The last thing she remembered about Mon-El was him leaving to be a hero, for all of the same reasons that made her love him. And while it was pretty clear that he still loved her, too, it didn’t change the fact that Zora now remembered him being married to someone else. It was something she was trying not to dwell on. Mal was here and they were together and nothing was going to change that again if she could help it. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she took another bite, swallowed, and said, “But basically, you’re telling me you got your memories all in a flash. Eh? Eh?” Beau knew what she meant immediately when she said she’d have to tell Mal about the event that had transpired. It was important, and hers included him. His situation with Josie was a little different. He didn’t like the memories of being in love with and marrying Iris. In those moments, he was so entirely removed from Barry. He could relate because he wanted and had those things with Josie, but to remember loving someone else wasn’t exactly easy, even if those feelings didn’t transfer to this world, “I told Josie just after it happened. Once I’d gained my bearings. I hope Mal got spared from them this round, for his sake.” He smirked a little, laughing at her pun because it was one that he’d made before - and had since been trying to avoid making again if only because the Barry in him was exasperated by it, “Ha. Ha.” Beau loved puns more than most people, so it really did bring him some amusement, “I did, though. It doesn’t seem to have changed a lot for me. Other than just knowing what happened there.” He had been really hungry lately, but he’d written that off as stress eating for mid-terms and memories, “I keep wondering if there was some other reason for it. Maybe all the planets aligned just right. We should ask Mal about that one.” “I'm glad you all are able to share those things with each other,” Zora said, a small smile on her face. “I know it can't be easy, all things considered, but I love that you all have that kind of relationship. It's strong,” she said, picking off another pepperoni and popping it into her mouth. She didn't know whether or not she actually wanted Mal to remember their other life. On one hand, it would make it easier for them to relate to the other's shared dreams. On the other, she didn't want Mal to have to deal with everything Kara and Mon-El had been through, not when they'd finally found themselves in such a good place. It was already overwhelming enough for her, and the last thing she wanted in either life was for the man who held her heart to hurt. Pressing her lips together, she mulled Beau's comments over. “No, I can't think of any reason for it, either. The dreams were so sparse before, you know? Like Kara was only there when I needed her the most and then mostly gone again,” she replied, though it wasn't entirely true. Kara was always there, the memories always felt real, but it was like Zora had only been given just enough to survive whenever she needed a reminder of her strength. Things were good now, so why had Kara shown up in full force this time, with no gaps, nothing left out? “I wonder if it has anything to do with why other people are talking about suddenly having powers,” she continued, though the idea of anyone in their community having something like superpowers was completely outlandish. Beau loved Josie in a way that he couldn’t really define or describe to anyone. They just fit together, from the moment that they’d met. It had been worth defying everyone that said they were too young and wouldn’t be able to make things work, “It is. Honestly, the dreams are the only challenge, and it’s not even really that they’re trying on our relationship. They can just be a lot to process sometimes on their own.” It came with the territory of not sharing the same worlds in their dreams, and with both of them having someone they loved on the other side of that. It was the one place where Beau felt truly distinct from Barry...where they diverged from an otherwise meshed path. True, they hadn’t had the same life experiences by far, but Beau could connect in some way to all the other things where he suppose he refused to settle into that part of Barry’s life. He loved Josie as much or more than Barry loved Iris, and that...was as close as they could get to being seamless on that front. Beau nodded along as Zora mused over the possibilities for the sudden surge of their dreams, “I don’t know. Maybe...but I think we’d have noticed if we suddenly developed super powers. Like, if you were invulnerable and could fly and I could run at super speed, wouldn’t we have noticed that?” Those were not, he knew, Kara’s only powers, but they were the two most obvious, he thought. He took another bite of pizza and swallowed, “Beyond that, I don’t even know if it’s physiologically possible for that to happen. We haven’t had any kind of catalyst to set it off like Barry had, and Kara was born Kryptonian. They’re dreams. Could those things even manifest just through dreams?” Zora finished off her slice of pizza and then shook her head. “Oh, no, I definitely didn’t mean that there was a chance we’d be getting superpowers, too. I just meant maybe these other people are getting those while we get massive info dumps in the form of dreams.” She still didn’t entirely know if she believed in the possibility of suddenly have superpowers like so many people seemed to be anonymously claiming on the network, but if they were, then maybe it was for the same reasons that the universe had deemed it a good idea to give Zora and Beau entire second lives. Still hungry, Zora reached for another slice from her plate and, coming up empty-handed, glanced down to find that she’d already finished off the pizza she’d gotten on her last trip through the buffet line. “Huh,” she said. Then, pushing her glasses up on her nose, she glanced over at Beau. “I think I might need a refill.” Beau considered this for a long moment, and finally nodded, “Maybe that’s true. I guess the universe might have thought we needed something different. I’m simultaneously glad to know what’s happened so I don’t feel like I have secrets lurking around the corner in my dreams, and also...it’s a lot and not all of it is good.” A lot of it, in fact, had been very, very bad. Sometimes Beau didn’t know how Barry kept himself optimistic and moving forward. It was difficult, and sometimes Barry overstepped boundaries in an attempt to keep those he loved safe. He wondered if he had the same flaws, and hadn’t even realized it. Beau looked between her and their empty plates, and nodded along, his stomach still feeling somehow - impossibly - hollow, as though they hadn’t been eating for the last hour. “Time for another trip up, I think.” His stomach gave a rumble of agreement, and he laughed a little. Their server had been clearing plates as they used them, and as he stood from the booth, he added, “I kind of feel just a little bit bad for all the dishes they’re going to have to do.” He couldn’t really remember how many plates had been removed at this point, but it was customary to get a new one every time you went up to the buffet. Certainly they hadn’t been up to the buffet more than a few times, though, right? Not if he was still hungry. He couldn’t really remember how much he’d eaten at this point, the conversation had taken up too much of his attention to keep any kind of count. While she and Beau pushed away from their table and made their way back up to the buffet, Zora pondered his words, wondering just how bad his memories had gotten outside of what she knew of Barry herself, or outside of the few times they’d crossed into one another’s universes to help the other. Though she was still slowly processing all of her own new memories, she was trying very hard to push all of the hard memories to the back of her mind until she had to work through them. Between moving, school, and upcoming vacation, she didn’t have time for the more difficult memories and what they meant for Kara--for her, if she was being honest with herself. She may be in a different world, in a different body, a different life, but she now felt the undeniable truth that she was Kara as much as she was Zora. She was still thinking about the implications of it when she started to reach for the spatula to grab some pepperoni pizza and a nervous hand took it away from her. She looked up, confused, at the young girl working behind the counter. “Um, sorry,” the girl started, glancing between both Zora and Beau. “Um, I know it’s, you know, an all-you-can-eat buffet, but the manager said we really couldn’t give you more than the seven pizzas you’ve already eaten unless you, um, well-- unless you buy another for additional buffet.” Beau was observing the buffet, a plate in his hand, trying to decide what it was that he wanted to eat this time when he heard the girl speaking to Zora. He frowned a little as she continued, a little bit offended about the implications until his mind really listened to the words that she had spoken. ...the seven pizzas you’ve already eaten… “There’s no way that we’ve eaten seven pizzas,” Beau argued, though his tone wasn’t quite as confident as he really wanted it to be. They had been there for more than an hour now, and he did remember they’d made a few trips up to the buffet a piece, each time coming back with...more than one laden plate of food, “I mean...we...we haven’t eaten seven whole pizzas. Right, Z?” This time, he looked a little uncertain as he glanced at his best friend, brow slightly furrowed. Zora blanched and tried to make a mental calculation of how much they’d eaten over the past hour, but it was hard to do so on the spot while feeling at least marginally humiliated by the situation, in general. Taking a few breaths until that knee-jerk reaction to feel unreasonably ashamed passed, she finally let herself think about how many plates they’d gotten. Seven pizzas, approximately 56 slices, and she’d gotten around four slices each time she’d come through the buffet. And they’d been up, what, three times? No...she thought harder. They’d been up thrice before she’d made a quick trip back to the bathroom, and then twice after that when she’d had to step away to take a phone call from her sister. And then she’d come back and they’d gone up….twice more. She frowned and glanced over at Beau. “No, she’s right. We’ve… we’ve eaten about seven pizzas, give or take.” The gravity of that statement hadn’t quite hit her yet, but it was close. In addition to the slices of pizza they’d had, Beau had also indulged in some of the cheese bread, bread sticks, and even a bit of the dessert pizza they had on the buffet. He’d thought he would be full before now, but that hadn’t been the case. As Zora did her mental calculations, Beau tried hard to think about the same, though the last hour was a little bit of a blur in regards of how many times they’d been up to the buffet. It had been so many times that he’d stopped counting after the first few. Beau paused when Zora said that they had eaten about - at least, maybe more? - seven pizzas. His stomach still rumbled a little, feeling as though he hadn’t eaten three and a half pizzas all on his own and then some. He ignored the girl that was still standing there, looking as though she’d rather be anywhere else than reprimanding them for eating more than their fill. He asked the question that likely neither of them really wanted to acknowledge, “How are we still hungry after eating seven pizzas?” Zora thought about the question but it was true that she didn’t want to acknowledge the answer to that question. She’d always been able to eat, had always possessed a healthy appetite much to her father’s chagrin. And she’d always been able to eat while maintaining a healthy figure, too. But this wasn’t healthy, this wasn’t normal, and the only memory she had of being able to eat her weight in food with no discernable consequence wasn’t even her memory, at all. She opened her mouth to respond, glancing between Beau and the mortified employee and then, thinking better of it, set her plate down quietly and said, “Nope.” And turned to walk back to the table. “Nope.” Beau was always snacking. He ate more than the average person, but he had a quick metabolism and was almost always on the move. Between his involvement in sports and his morning runs, Beau was used to consuming quite a bit just to maintain his habits. This, however, was to an excess unlike anything he’d ever managed before. This was much more than showing up to class and eating a box of cereal or ordering a meal with extra sides at a restaurant. More than three and a half large pizzas… The moment that Zora denied the question and walked back to their table, Beau handed the stunned employee the unused plate that he had been holding stupidly in his hands this whole time. He followed Zora, his mind racing, and dug into his wallet to throw down enough money to cover their meals and a hefty tip in an effort to mildly make up for the amount of pizza they’d eaten, “Let’s go back to the car. We can freak out in the car.” Zora nodded, barely even registering her movements as she picked up her jacket and her purse and walked back toward the front of the restaurant. Had she not just said that she was sure the onslaught of memories was their version of everyone else supposedly taking on physical likenesses of their dream counterparts (she hated to acknowledge that it might be even remotely possible that she could just be Kara)? Did the universe think this was funny? As she approached the car, and waited for Beau to unlock it, she opened the passenger side door and slid into the seat. Once the door was securely shut behind her, she doubled over, resting her head between her knees. “Oh my god. Oh my god.” She sat back up and looked over at her best friend, and shook her head once. “Tell me it’s not possible, Beau. Please tell me we just ate seven pizzas between the two of us because moving is strenuous and exhausting? It’s crazy, right? There has to be a completely normal reason why we just ate seven pizzas. Right?” When they got into his Mustang, Beau didn’t double over like Zora did, but he did stare at his steering wheel, a little bit of a lost expression on his face as his mind tumbled over what this meant for them. It didn’t have to mean anything, of course. It could be a fluke. There was a perfectly reasonable explanation about why they had each been able to consume almost 12,000 calories a piece without blinking...and still be hungry on the other side of it. Actually...there wasn’t. It was entirely illogical. Nothing about it was reasonable. He looked over at Zora, taking as even of a breath as he could manage, “I want to tell you that it’s reasonable and normal and plausible enough to explain away...and that it won’t happen again. But I don’t lie to you, Zora...so I can’t say it.” His voice cracked a little, but it was true. He’d been unfailingly honest with her since they were five year olds on the playground with truly ridiculous glasses perched upon their small faces, “I think I could eat another seven pizzas.” Zora tried to take comfort in the fact that she probably couldn’t eat another seven pizzas, but she couldn’t because the fact remained that she’d eaten three-and-a-half before now. She appreciated her best friend’s unwillingness to lie to her, even if it wasn’t at all what she had wanted to hear. But without that logical explanation for their appetites, where did that leave them? “Okay, well, first of all,” she started, pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and worrying at her bottom lip, “we can stop and pick up frozen pizzas. That would be way cheaper than going to another restaurant and it would run less risk of getting kicked out of another one.” Then she took a deep breath, trying to pretend to feel more confident than she really was. “And second of all, maybe this whole eating thing is just a...residual effect of the dream dump. How...how would we even check otherwise?” Because the last thing Zora wanted to do was actively find out how much she had in common with Kara, and she honestly didn’t even know how she would manage it otherwise. “Right. Frozen pizzas would be good. We can even do stuffed crust,” Beau was trying to think on the bright side of this along with her, and he certainly didn’t need to have another instance of being told they had to pay extra at an all you can eat buffet that was not, as it turned out, endless. “Besides trying to see if we’ve somehow...developed their powers, I don’t know,” he offered. Beau went on a run nearly every morning, but he thought he would have noticed if he was running at super speed. Besides that, it had taken Barry some time to learn how to control it and he’d rushed around everywhere in those first few hours. He wasn’t sure how Zora would go about testing if she could fly, and testing her own imperviousness to harm seemed too risky, “Maybe we just got their appetites and not what made them hungry all the time?” It was a flimsy hope, but hope nonetheless. “Yeah, yeah,” Zora agreed, nodding along, even if she wasn’t entirely sure she believed either of their insistences that this could potentially be a very reasonable thing and not the impossible, inconvenient Thing that it seemed like. And the trouble with testing it was that there was nothing she could do that wasn’t potentially hazardous if not done, well, safely. It wasn’t like she could test whether or not she was impervious to bullets or needles, and Kara’s other powers outside of flight had the potential for significant damage if she was somehow able to do them and not control them. Flight was the safest option, but she also couldn’t test that anywhere she could be seen and what if she lost control or didn’t know how to land? The thought was so absurd--was she really entertaining the idea that there was a possibility she could fly?--that Zora just started laughing. Laughing so earnestly that, before long there were tears in the corners of her eyes. “Beau,” she struggled to get out, “Beau, in what life did you ever imagine we would be sitting in your car outside of a pizza place vehemently avoiding the possibility that one of us could fly, and one of us could outrun time? Because that’s what we’re trying to ignore right? Because it’s crazy. It’s absurd.” For a split second, when she started laughing, Beau was concerned for her, until she began to explain why she was laughing and then it did strike him as more funny than just outlandishly absurd. He managed a small laugh, though the weight on his mind hadn’t eased, “It’s absolutely insane.” He ran his hands over his face, slumping back in the driver’s seat a little, though his tall frame didn’t allow him to go very far. “God, Zora. This is not the existential crisis I was prepared for. Like, we’re not even to mid-life yet,” he did chuckle a little more earnestly then, “It’s definitely not part of my fifteen year plan. I’m a linguist, not a superhero.” He was supposed to find some job translating or teaching people second languages. He wasn’t built for being someone that ran into burning buildings or ran halfway across the country to save someone from a supervillain, “I’m...not going to test anything right now. I don’t even think I want to know right now, but...if anything weird does happen, I’ll tell you and you tell me if the same happens to you? We’ll get through it together. No matter which way the chips fall.” The laughter finally started to subside and Zora nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I mean, you’d probably be the first person I’d tell, to be honest.” She let out a deep breath and leaned back in her own seat, mirroring Beau. “And I was pretty sure I’d earned a reprieve from an eventual mid-life crisis considering I already had my existential crisis early, so I’m going to be more than a little salty about this if I have to have another one.” After a moment, she looked back over at Beau and held an uncertain hand out to him. “Together,” she repeated with a quick nod. In this, Beau thought he could honestly say Zora would be the first he would tell, too. Josie was on that list as well, and while it was hard to pick a true first, Zora would understand the gravity of this better than anyone else, “If this turns out to be something…super, I’m inclined to believe that the universe is laughing at us a little.” What would be the point? Beau didn’t really have a use for super speed in his everyday life, and he wanted to be himself, not Barry Allen. Beau nodded and took Zora’s hand in his, a light squeeze and a decisive shake. Then, with a barely stifled sigh, Beau looked back out the front of the car and finally slid the keys into the ignition, “Back to your place?” They might make a stop for frozen pizza along the way, but that, at least, would be quick...though hopefully not concerningly so. Zora let out a weary sigh. Beau was her best friend and she wasn’t entirely prepared for that to ever change into super friend. She decided that was a problem for future Zora, though, and simply nodded for now and said, “Back to my place.” |