doloresabrnathy (doloresabrnathy) wrote in helladjacent, @ 2017-04-09 23:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | !jumps: post-zombie fog, character: dolores abernathy, character: kate bishop |
Who: Dolores Abernathy and Kate Bishop
What: Roommates getting acquainted
When: Backdated; last Thursday
Where: Room 505
Warnings: Mild; mentions of death
Status: Complete
It was quiet in Room 505. Louise had disappeared several days before, seemingly without ever having been there in the first place. Dolores was worried at first, and distraught over the loss, but she had a feeling Louise was better off. Louise wanted to return to her world, and have her life. It was good she’d be getting it.
Without the company, the room felt huge, and it was always quiet. There were several piles of books scattered around on the various horizontal surfaces in the room, everything from fiction, to spellbooks, to history books from worlds that she’d never heard of. And she’d read them all.
Reading was what she’d been spending most of her time doing. She didn’t do it all in her room. She walked around the hotel with a book in her hands, or found a new place to sit and read, so long as it had light, but she always ended up back in her room at some point.
Now, she was sitting in one of the chairs in the room, reading a book about a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe.
Kate wanted to find Clint, or Wanda, mostly Clint. It was meeting Bucky Barnes, who had no clue who she was, that made the young Avenger reconsider her priorities. She wasn’t mentally prepared to talk to a Clint Barton who might have been a Hydra agent on his world or worse -- look at her blankly without recognition.
Thankfully procrastination had been invented and she could go find her room first and set her stuff down. Kate had a pretty healthy ego and sense of self-worth but her experience with alternate worlds was never fun.
When the door unlocked and she stepped in, Kate was surprised to see someone already there. Reading. “Oh… uh, hey?”
Two beds. Because this was a hotel, or a dorm, or a kind of nice prison.
“I’m Kate. The hotel assigned me to this room.” She shifted the duffel bag on her shoulder with one hand, and offered her other hand outstretched to the stranger.
Dolores was surprised away from her book when the door opened, and even more surprised when someone came in. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so surprised. She knew the hotel was constantly getting new guests, and it was only a matter of time before her roommate was replaced.
“I guess that makes us roommates,” she said, setting her book aside as she stood up and crossed the room to shake her hand. “I’m Dolores. It’s nice to meet you, Kate.”
The clothes themselves were not a dead giveaway of Dolores’ time, but the name was a little dated. Kate said nothing about it yet as she tried to fit the pieces together. She also looked at the beds covered in books and looked back to Dolores.
“So… which bed is yours?” Kate smiled, as if to suggest it was no big deal. Dolores probably preferred to have the room to herself, and neither one of them particularly wanted to have to be stuck there.
Dolores glanced over at the beds, only then realizing just how much she’d spread out over the past few days.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, but she was still smiling as she went over to the bed which hadn’t been touched in a few days and gathered up the few books that were on it. “You can take this one. I got so wrapped up in readin’ the past couple days, I didn’t even stop to look at the mess I’m makin’.”
It wasn’t really that messy. The only mess was the books. Maybe she did need to bring them back.
“Did you just get here?”
“Yeah. A few hours ago. So… have you run into anyone you know yet? It kinda looks like this hotel is really into the alternate dimension thing? Or taking people from different time periods? I already met one person I know from back home but I guess he didn’t know me and… it’s a thing. We’re not going to run into alternate versions of ourselves in here, are we?”
At least one thing could be said for Kate. She seemed to be rolling with her new situation. At least until there was someone smart enough to figure it out or America showed up. Kate gave it a fifty/fifty shot. Maybe Loki - that was less likely.
“I’ve met alternate mes, it was not fun.” Kate opened up her bag and started to untangle and unpack her gear; her bow, two quivers, a lot of arrows, some clothing.
Dolores wasn’t entirely sure which question she should answer first. Kate seemed to be taking being at the hotel fairly well, which was good, and from the sound (and obvious look) of it, they’d also come from very different worlds. Granted, it was possible Kate meant she’d met alternate versions of herself the same way that Dolores felt like she’d met different versions of herself, but from the way she said it, she had a feeling Kate was being literal.
“I’m the only one here from my world,” she said, and went to sit on the edge of her bed, facing Kate. “And I know there’s people from all different kinds of worlds. I guess they’re probably from different time periods, too… I haven’t met everyone here yet.”
She watched Kate unpack her bag, eyeing her bow and arrows curiously. She wasn’t the first person to have weapons in the hotel, but she was the first Dolores had seen with a bow.
“I don’t think you’re goin’ to meet any other yous here. I think this place is more about meetin’ new people from new and different places.”
“That’s…” Kate paused. Dolores seemed friendly enough. “...Exciting.” That was both the optimistic and pessimistic way of putting things.
Dolores just shrugged. She knew not everyone was as enthusiastic as she was to be at the hotel. For a lot of them, this was worse than wherever they’d come from. This was taking them away from responsibilities and people that were waiting for them. For her, though, this was the escape she’d been waiting for, for as long as she could remember.
“I think it’s excitin’,” she said. “Or at least it’s different. Every new person I meet reminds me how lucky I am to be alive…”
She trailed off for a second, her gaze slight out-of-focus. It was a line she knew she’d repeated hundreds of times, and it came out like programmed dialogue.
“And how beautiful this world can be,” she finished, focusing again on Kate. “Do you fight with those?” She nodded to her bow and arrows, deciding to change the subject.
Kate stared at her roommate and blinked. She probably wasn’t a pod person (or a skrull, or an LMD, or… or…) but the line sounded exactly like that. A weird, practiced monologue she’d accidentally stumbled on.
“Uh, yep.” Kate dumped the loose arrows out on top of her bed that were neatly contained in one of two quivers and began to organize them. “So speaking of the world, exactly which world are we in? I mean, I get this hotel kind jumps from place to place based on what people have posted…”
“I don’t think we’re anywhere right now,” Dolores said, her tone fairly calm despite what she’d just said. “There’s nothin’ but fog outside. Last week, we went somewhere a couple people recognized. There were zombies everywhere.” She grimaced. “It was horrible.”
The fog outside was a little daunting and disturbing, but it was better than the corpses that were walking around the week before.
“I know the hotel’s been lots of places, though, from people talkin’ about ‘em. It never goes to the same place twice.”
“Good to know. Hey, I have a few friends here. Or, they might be my friends? They might also be versions of my friends from alternate dimensions and want to kill me on sight. Have you met Clint Barton or Wanda Maximoff? Just curious.” Kate tried to play her line of questioning off as casual, but after her encounter with Bucky, and having met about a hundred alternate versions of herself who generally tried to kill her on sight, she thought it might be best to be cautious. “I mean, if they’re actually vampires or killer robots, a heads up might be a good idea.”
The more Kate went on, the less sense she made, but Dolores didn’t let the confusion throw her off track the way it usually did. Instead, she just shook her head.
“I haven’t met them yet,” she said. “And I don’t know anythin’ about robots or vampires.” But the fact that Kate was even seriously asking about them piqued her curiosity. Then again, just about everything Kate was saying was making her curious.
“Have you been to other worlds before, then?”
“Yeah,” Kate frowned. “It wasn’t really a good time. Mostly it was a lot of running and fighting and trying not to get killed by about a hundred different alternate versions of myself.” It hadn’t really been a hundred, but it had certainly felt like a hundred.
“That sounds terrifyin’,” Dolores said, with a frown of her own. At least other versions of herself never tried to kill her.
Well... that wasn’t exactly true, but the circumstances then were different.
“Why were they tryin’ to kill you, anyway?”
“Er…” Kate half frowned trying to figure out the best way to tell the story to someone who didn’t know anything about robots or vampires. “So, my friend Billy was trying to help his boyfriend by bringing his dead mother back. Basically he was looking for a similar alternate dimension, where Teddy’s mom was about to die, where Billy would save her from and bring her to Teddy. Uh, he kinda fell for a trap and brought an interdimensional being called Mother into our world instead? ...Mother had some mind control powers, so any time we tried to hide in another alternate dimension to try and plan out our next move, our alternate dimension selves were compelled to find and try to kill us and it got a little out of hand.”
Kate shrugged.
If it weren’t for everything else Dolores had already seen or heard about in the hotel, she would have thought Kate was making everything up. As it was, it sounded unbelievable, but she’d been seeing all sorts of things that she thought were unbelievable.
“Well… I don’t think you’re goin’ to find any other yous here,” she said. And now she hoped they didn’t, either. “But I don’t really know. I’m still gettin’ used to the idea of all these other worlds out there.” Hers seemed so tiny in comparison.
Kate smiled. It was genuine and warm. “Well, we’ll figure it out together. I know I have a big mouth and everything, but it’s not like I started out with any real training. I just have a habit of getting into as much trouble as I get out of.”
After a shrug, she continued, “So what do you do? What is your world like?”
Dolores returned Kate’s smile, but it faltered, along with the warmth in her eyes, at Kate’s questions. Nobody had actually asked her about her world yet.
“My world’s a lot smaller than yours,” she started, fixing her smile a little. “My family and I live on a farm near a little town called Sweetwater. My father raises cattle.” She paused, and shrugged. “My life’s not real excitin’. Sometimes I ride into town, sometimes I go paintin’ near the river…”
Sometimes, she came back to her farm at night to find the cattle on the pasture, and bandits killing her family. She tried not to think about how it felt to be dragged by her hair, and gave a short sigh.
“Where I’m from, everyone’s got a path they stick to. I never would’ve dreamed of somethin’ like this-” she gestured around to the hotel. “Bein’ possible.”
“It sounds nice,” Kate said. “So you grew up on a ranch? ...What year are you from?” A modern ranch and a classic homesteading ranch were two very different things.
Dolores frowned, silent for a moment while the realization dawned on her:
“I don’t know,” she said, her brow furrowed. None of them had ever had a reason to be concerned with the year, or even the day of the week. But she didn’t even know what year the world her world was inside of was in. “It never occurred to me to care before.”
Kate frowned. Her concern masked a deeper gut feeling of that being weird. The weird line earlier, not knowing the year… Miss America had come from a utopian world made up by Wiccan (probably). Dolores kind of felt like that.
“So, no judgements, but are you human?” Kate asked. “It doesn’t matter to me. It’s just… You know what? Forget I asked. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to answer that. It was just a getting to know you question and if I was out of line, that’s my bad.”
That was something Dolores had only just started thinking about before she arrived at the hotel, but again, so far, nobody had asked her. It took her more off guard than anything else Kate had asked, but it didn’t upset her. It just took her a few seconds to answer because it was something she was only just starting to understand.
“No. I’m not,” she said, her Southern accent gone like a switch had been flipped, and the tone of her voice dropped a few pitches. It was back again the next time she spoke. “You weren’t out of line. I didn’t think anybody would notice. I don’t think anyone has noticed, except you… Or if they have, they haven’t said anythin’.”
She didn’t really know how she felt about Kate knowing, but Dolores didn’t make a habit of lying.
“Well, I barely did. I have teammates that are aliens and androids and… other? If you don't want me to say anything, I won't. Can I ask what you are?”
It would come in handy, especially if they were stuck in another weird situation like the one Dolores described with zombies.
“You can ask, but I don’t really know what I am,” Dolores answered honestly. It was strange to talk about, but at the same time, it felt sort of… good. “Someone made me, and my family, and everyone I’ve ever known. We live the same week, over and over again. People come and visit- we call them newcomers. They’re human.”
She paused, her brow furrowed slightly. Her impression of humans had, for the most part, been far from positive.
“They’re not all good people. They come and go as they please.”
Kate’s eyes narrowed as she tried to put the pieces together. “So… you’re like a Life Model Decoy? You look human and you have your own thoughts but you’re built not born and….”
And…
“You’re like part of an attraction? Tourists come so they can...? Raise cattle for a week?” That didn't sound like that was entirely the case. Kate felt like she was so close to the answer.
“Nobody ever comes to raise cattle,” Dolores said, with a slight frown. “They come to do anythin’ they want. They go to the saloon, or they go bounty huntin’.”
Once, she’d gone bounty hunting. Or maybe more than once… Or maybe the other times were all just memories she repeated. She didn’t really know.
“Or they get bounties put on themselves…” That was something she could go without reliving. “They can hurt us, but… we can’t do anythin’ to them. None of us knew we were any different. We always get newcomers, but… we all love the newcomers.” Then she stopped, the scripted phrase leaving a bad taste in her mouth.
Kate put both hands over her mouth, to cover the fact the fact that her jaw had fallen somewhere on the floor and the younger Hawkeye wasn't sure where it went.
She was still staring.
Kate thought she should probably say something.
Anything.
She managed to blink.
We all love the newcomers.
Eventually her hands went down, slowly. “Are… are you okay now?”
Dolores hadn’t noticed the look on Kate’s face until then. She’d seen looks like hers over the years, but she’d never really understood why people looked at them like that, until now.
“I’m fine,” she said, and she wasn’t lying. Not really. “I’m just different from the others. I remember.” And despite what there was to remember, she was glad she did. “We’re not supposed to remember, but I do.” She shrugged, and looked away, idly toying with the cover of a book on her bed. “But bein’ here’s better than bein’ there, so… I’m fine. Better than I was.”
“Okay,” Kate nodded. That was a good first step. But that to so many follow up questions and concerns. “...It’s just the way you talk. You mentioned the newcomers hurt you. With the way you were made, you’re not going to feel compelled to let anyone hurt you here, right? Like, you can defend yourself? Or leave at the very least?”
“I can, now,” Dolores said, and nodded. “At least, I think I can… I did before I got here.” But even then, she’d ended up dead… again.
“But… if I can’t, I know death works the same way here that it did in my world.” Maybe not exactly the same, but still. She’d died more times than she could remember, and she was still alive. “If you die in the hotel, you come back at the beginning of the next week.”
“It… wait, what?” Kate blinked. That was news to her. Very unsettling news. She decided to stash that back in the corner of her mind until she could deal with it later. “Dolores, will you tell me if anyone ever hurts you like that here? Just… at least until we can make sure you don’t have some really messed up programming in there to let people use you like that. I… I’m smart but I’m not that smart. You may not be human but you are a person. Okay? I…”
Kate felt herself rambling and also felt powerless to stop herself from rambling.
Dolores found herself smiling, despite the topic of conversation, because this wasn’t at all what she expected from someone finding out about her. She’d expected the worst, because she had reason to expect the worst. But Kate didn’t look at her any differently now than she had before, and if she did, it wasn’t the way the newcomers did in her world.
“Thank you, Kate,” she said, cutting her off before she could keep going. “But I’m fine, really. Nobody here knows, except you, and things are… different now. I’m not the same person I used to be.” She still wasn’t exactly sure who she was, but she knew she could defend herself. She’d done it before, and she could do it again. “Nobody here’s anythin’ like the kinds of people that used to come to my world.” That didn’t make her trust them any more, though.
“Do we know everyone here, though?” Kate frowned. “I mean, you’d know better than me, I guess…”
“Well… no,” Dolores admitted with a sigh. “But we’re all stuck here. We’re all on the same side. What good would it do to go hurtin’ or killin’ each other?”
Kate wasn’t sure if Dolores was actually an optimist or simply programmed to behave that way, if there was really a difference or if it mattered. “I don’t know. People do crazy things when they get scared or angry though. I hope they’re smarter than that.”
If they weren’t, Kate had every intention of knocking sense into anyone dangerously out of line.