Kesi Freeman ⭐ Aaron Burr (inimitable) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2019-04-05 23:38:00 |
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As much as Asha was itching to spill everything to her brother (not that there was a lot yet), she’d forced herself to wait until after they’d eaten, until after she’d cleaned up and put the dishes in the dishwasher. There were other things she wanted to know, in any case, like about how he was doing, how his job was going, how the kids were, if there was anything new in his life. And, honestly, she wanted to put it off until she could have both her hands free for a consistent amount of time. As skilled as she’d gotten in sign language, the combination of eating and signing wasn’t her favorite, not when it was something particularly complicated. Did she even have the words for everything? She filled both of their wine glasses again before sitting down in her new armchair and tucking her feet up underneath her. She’d been a bit preoccupied since moving in and hadn’t quite finished decorating - or unpacking, for that matter. The important things were there: a new living room set, books in her bookshelves, a dining table. But she hadn’t managed to put artwork up yet. It could wait; she wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon. “Her name is Zelie,” she signed, and Asha immediately felt relieved to finally confess. “I always knew … I had dreams when I was here for college, and I knew there was something different about them, but I never knew what. Now we know.” -- Kesi had no room to judge Asha about the state of her apartment, especially considering that he shared his own living space with someone else. Not that he minded the latter, of course, but it did mean that he had other considerations for the common areas, and it wasn't just all within his own purview. But it was good to have Asha back in town, now, so she could take whatever time she wanted to get properly settled. Their shared meal had been a good chance to catch up on the more mundane parts of their lives, and as they settled in afterward, Kesi knew that they'd be moving on to other things yet unconfessed. "Zelie," he repeated the name, fingerspelling it out slowly, so as to commit it to memory. "I didn't have dreams until I moved here after Gallaudet," he offered, though he wasn't sure if Asha would want to talk more about Zelie before he went into his own dreams. "Where is she from?" -- Briefly, Asha desperately wished she could have warned him, even though she knew that she hadn’t fully comprehended what was happening at the time. It would have just appeared like she was having very, very vivid dreams, however -- like her brain had gone somewhere extraordinary to relieve her of the stress of her undergraduate studies. The difference now was that there seemed to be physical manifestations, and that the dreams weren’t just stopping. “Zelie Adebola,” Asha told him, spoken and signed because she was still getting used to saying it aloud as well. “She’s from Africa.” She laughed lightly. A fictional nation in western Africa. Go figure. “Not from any real place. It’s a country with magic. Magic that was destroyed. Or so everyone thought.” -- Kesi nodded, appreciatively, when Asha spoke of Zelie's origins. Africa, at least, was certainly better than a character based on an old white man. (That was complicated on its own, anyway.) "When you'd said magic, I'd sort of hoped Harry Potter," Kesi offered, trying to bring a bit of levity, however brief. "Magic was destroyed," but if Asha was dreaming about it, that meant, "but… Zelie still has it?" -- “I think so.” Asha frowned. There were still so many missing pieces. A part of her really wished she could just see everything else in one fell swoop. (Another part of her really didn’t want to see anything else, but if she had to see more…) She nodded her head and added, more definitively, “yes.” She’d seen that much. She didn’t understand how it had happened yet, but she’d felt the power surge through her fingertips and she’d seen the shadowy figures rise from the ground. It was terrifying and electrifying and powerful. “How it comes back is what I’m missing,” she continued. “I’d take Harry Potter, too. At least that I understand. I don’t know Yoruba at all.” -- Yoruba. As she spelled out these unfamiliar words, Kesi echoed those same gestures, trying to commit them to memory. "I don't know if you can… force yourself to remember things. Most people seem pretty content to ignore that the dreams exist at all. So connecting those missing pieces might not really be in your control, yeah?" Which wasn't an ideal answer, of course, for anyone who liked to be in charge of their own lives. -- “You’re right. It’s not.” That part had been difficult to accept, so far. Even though she’d come back to Dunhaven partly to get answers to questions she’d had for years, she only had more questions so far, and no one seemed to understand much. Whether or not she would ever see enough to connect the dots, or when that would happen, was beyond her control. The sooner she accepted that, the better. “She can animate the souls of the dead,” Asha added, because she knew he must be wondering. “She can help free them, help them move on. But she can use them, too.” It sent a chill down Asha’s spine. -- It was a bit different, for Kesi. The man he was dreaming of had books and documentaries written about him. His life had been studied and dissected and told over and again in the public domain. There were statues of him. But there was nothing like that for Yoruba or Zelie or anything that Asha was seeing. "Shit," Kesi exhaled, slowly, taking in this new information. "That's... heavy." -- Shit was right. That was why she’d wanted to share. It had become clear that it was possible. Not just one person had started displaying their gifts, so to speak, but several. “I came back for answers, but this?” Asha shook her head. “I didn’t expect this.” Instead, she’d gotten more than she bargained for. She’d gotten a hell of a lot more uncertainty. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell sooner.” -- "You don't have to apologize," Kesi insisted, easily. He wouldn't expect that Asha told him every aspect of her life- they were both adults and could make that designation however it seemed to serve them best. But it was nice to be able to share it, now, even if there wasn't much to be done about it. He was quiet for a moment, then finally- carefully, slowly, fingerspelled out the name of the man he'd seen in his own dreams. "Aaron Burr." Kesi laughed, shaking his head. "Trust me, I know how ridiculous that sounds. Worse, it's Aaron Burr from Hamilton. So, I mean, at least he's black." -- It wasn’t easy to shake the guilt off her shoulders, even though she knew that her brother wasn’t angry and that he didn’t blame her. Had Asha seen something more during those early years, had she given it more thought instead of letting herself write it off as stress-induced, they might know more by now. She didn’t want to think about how she could have prevented it, not when Dunhaven had given Mateo back to her. His dream-person got an arched brow out of Asha, and she stifled a laugh behind her wine glass, but only just barely. “Could be worse, could be King George,” she pointed out. But Burr didn’t have a necessarily uplifting story, either in the musical or in real life, so she could see why it wasn’t exactly welcome. -- Kesi pulled a face, wrinkling his nose and shaking his head. "Right, that would definitely be worse." Despite not being able to hear the soundtrack for himself, Kesi had gone to see an adaptive showing of the production in Chicago the year before. And it was good, he could admit that, though he likely would have enjoyed it much more if he hadn't had Aaron Burr in his mind already. "Lyra and I went to Harrisonburg a few weeks ago. The hotel had murals of James Madison in the lobby and in the rooms, too. I had this… visceral reaction to seeing him." Kesi shook his head. "So of course I live somewhere that there's Founding Fathers shit on every corner." -- That didn’t seem quite fair, but nothing about this entire situation was really fair. It wasn’t bad enough that Kesi had another person in his head, but on top of that, to be faced with reminders of the history he already had in his head had to be exceptionally annoying. “I don’t know about you, but I definitely want to stare at old white men all the time. Talk about really setting the scene for romance.” While Asha never went out of her way to relentlessly pester him about the status of his something with Lyra, that didn’t mean she was above teasing him, now and then, over their on-going companionship. “How’s she feel about it? I assume I don’t have to go all big sister on her?” -- "Who doesn't?" Kesi rolled his eyes- glad, at least, that Asha was able to take this all in stride. It was definitely something they wouldn't be sharing with their parents, so having another confidant was a good thing. "Oh, as soon as I saw them, she climbed up on the bed and took every one of them down from the wall." He remembered that part of their trip rather fondly, actually. Yes, Lyra teased him- she was, of her own admittance, kind of a shit- but it was… different. Not that Kesi could have, or planned to, put such things into words. "We didn't put them back up when we left, either." Shaking his head, he added, "No need for claws out. But you'll be the first I tell if that changes." -- “Better be.” Asha really hadn’t doubted Lyra, ultimately. Whatever she was to her brother was between them; Asha wasn’t going to meddle, wasn’t going to insert her opinion on what sort of life he should lead for himself. What she did know was that she’d liked her, and that it made a part of her heart bloom a little to hear about how she reacted to the paintings. Labels aside, she’d been a good friend to Kesi, and that counted for a hell of a lot in Asha’s book. “I’m glad you have someone who gets it. Or at least is supportive,” she added. “I, ah. I told Mateo.” She didn’t think she’d mentioned him by name yet -- it was still new, not even two months old. “He was more chill than I thought he’d be.” -- "So am I," he admitted, with a bit of a wry smile. It was… an understatement, but maybe that was more his way- and Burr's, too- than anything else. Kesi's eyebrows raised, however, at the mention of a name- and he spelled it out just as she did, to be sure he hadn't missed something. "Mateo," he repeated, nodding and trying very hard to hide his smile. "That's your... " A vague hand wave- not a proper sign by any stretch. "Man?" -- “Something like that.” Boyfriend felt too -- juvenile, maybe? No, that wasn’t the problem, even though she felt too old for how casual the word felt to her (and Mateo was several years older than she was, too). Her hesitation was, most likely, based more in that they hadn’t discussed that at all. They’d just slipped into a routine like it was a favorite old sweatshirt, well-worn and comfortable. That part unnerved her, truthfully. “He’s a good man,” she added. “Lawyer. Lives here in town. You’d like him.” She paused, and narrowed her eyes at her brother - playfully, but definitely with some scrutiny. “Don’t tell Mom.” -- Kesi wouldn't push for any further definition than something like that, even if he found it rather amusingly ironic that neither he nor Asha seemed eager to define what they had or what they were with/to their not-partners. "Lawyer?" he echoed, with some interest. Though, of course, that was probably good. "At least he understands your work ethic, then." Because there were quite a few men who couldn't have matched Asha in that particular arena. At Asha's insistence, however, that it stay a secret from their mother, Kesi paraphrased her earlier question, "I don’t have to go all big brother on him, do I?" His sign, here, just referenced his own height rather than his age. -- Her laugh came out mostly as a snort, and she shook her head. It was tempting, just to watch Mateo squirm, but she knew she should probably resist putting him through a cross examination given by her brother. Whether or not Kesi still wanted to if he ever found out how they met and how neither of them had bothered to reach out for years… well, that’d be up to him. “He’s good. It just hasn’t been that long. I don’t want to jinx anything.” It’d been a long time since she’d found someone who could hold her attention like Mateo had, and who wasn’t intimidated by her. The spark she’d felt years ago was still there; that had to mean something special. “I can ask him to have dinner with us.” -- Kesi held up crossed fingers, then, and nodded his agreement. "No jinxes." The offer of dinner was a good place to start, and for once Kesi didn't hesitate to add in, "I'll bring Lyra." If she wanted to come, of course, but he had a feeling that he could convince her. "They can commiserate over their Freeman-related fates." -- Asha nearly referred to it as a double-date, but then she thought better of it. That wasn’t the sort of pressure she wanted to put on either of them. “Bet she’d love that,” Asha answered instead. “To get to join forces with someone to gang up on us.” Everything was sort of falling into place, she thought. Their work lives, their personal lives. Memories aside, she felt like she was in a really good place. She was lucky. Far luckier than she thought she deserved, but she wasn’t going to complain. She lifted her wine glass towards her brother again. “Cheers. To us.” |