Kitiara Uth Matar (dark_lady) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-05-23 14:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, kitiara uth matar, raistlin majere, tasslehoff burrfoot |
Who: Kitiara, Raistlin and Tas
What: Kitiara pays her little brother a surprise visit, is introduced to the OC
When: During the body swap plot
Where: Raistlin and Tas' apartment
Warnings/Rating: Low/None
Status: Complete
Kitiara knew that Raistlin and Tasslehoff hadn’t exactly rented a penthouse suite. She was a little surprised at exactly how dilapidated the building looked. She supposed that’s what you could expect when you allowed someone like Tasslehoff to not only find a place, but to sign your name to the lease. Raistlin maybe hadn’t had a say in it, but he’d consented when he neglected to break Tas’s nose and leave him behind.
She waited until someone left the building, and then quietly slipped through the door before it could close behind them, and made her way to the apartment she knew belonged to her little brother. The building didn’t seem much more well-maintained from the inside. The paint was peeling off the walls and the bannister, and there a very unappetizing scent of someone’s powerfully spicy cooking overlayed on top of the smell of a wet animal. Her nose wrinkled and she scowled so hard at someone who was about to leave their suite that they quickly rushed back inside and locked the door behind them, which put Kit back into high spirits. After all, she was seeing her little brother for the first time quite some time.
There were a number of reactions she expected when she knocked on Raistlin’s door, a duffle bag slung casually over her shoulder. There was the one where he tried not to act pleased when, in fact, seeing his older sister’s smiling face would be the highlight of his day. There was the one where he scowled at her and asked her what she wanted.
What she didn’t expect was Raistlin to throw open the door with vigor, take a moment to recognize her, burst into a smile she didn’t think she’d ever seen on her surly brother’s face, yell her name, and then throw himself into her arms with such momentum that she was forced to take a step back in order to keep her footing. It was so unexpected, in fact, that she was at a complete loss for words.
It had been three days of utter misery that had started when Raistlin had awoken from a dream of riding aback a griffon to find himself in Tas’s bed. It had been disorienting at first, and more than just a little confusing. Confusion gave way to sheer horror when Tas, in Raistlin’s body had come bounding into the room.
Raistlin should have expected that it was only a matter of time before some kind of mind switch took place in a place like Orange county, and in a way he sort of had. It did not put him in any better of a mood, however. In fact, since waking up on Friday morning, Raistlin had been in the worst mood he’d ever been since arriving in Orange County. It did not help that he was unable to use his magic. He couldn’t even read his own goddamn spellbook using Tas’s eyes. He supposed it was fortunate, then, that the Dreams had given Tas the glasses that allowed him to read the language of magic.
It had been useless to tell Tas to keep his hands off his spellbook, but he did manage to convince the Kender to not attempt to use feather fall to jump off the roof of their apartment building while in his body. Raistlin had to patiently explain to Tas that he needed to study the spell first, commit it to memory. It took more than a cursory look over a spell to do that and fortunately, Tas’s attention span didn’t quite last that long.
In the ensuing hours, Raistlin - with the use of Tas’s glasses - had been pouring over his books in a desperate attempt to find a way to reverse this mess. He didn’t care if it was someone’s Dream bleed over (which apparently it was). Raistlin wanted his body back sooner rather than later.
And that was what he had been doing when a knock sounded at the door. Raistlin ignored it until he heard the tell tale noise of Tas beating feet to answer it. He had tried to get Tas to act a little more refined while borrowing his body, but that had been a fruitless effort as well. He may as well have tried to teach a duck to oink. Raistlin’s time was better spent searching for a reversal and would deal with the damage control to his reputation as a surely asshole later.
Then he heard his own voice call out Kitiara’s name. Raistlin’s attention was snapped towards the front door. His sister? Here? Now? And with Tas answering the door as him?!
“Tas! Wait!” He called out, but it was too late. There was Tas, arms wrapped around Kitiara, and Kitiara looking rather shell shocked at the sudden and uncharacteristic sign of affection from her younger brother. Raistlin pushed the glasses on top of his head and put his face in his hands with a sigh. He had no idea how he was going to explain this.
Tas still wasn’t sure if he couldn’t do featherfall if he flung himself from the roof. After all, it didn’t seem like that hard of a spell. Really short, actually. Just one word, unlike some of the other spells like Fireball. And Tas had always performed well under pressure. Still, he supposed there was a chance that he could fail. He’d been practicing by jumping off Raistlin’s office chair so far, which hadn’t resulted in him floating gently to the ground yet, but had resulted in several bruises which he was carefully keeping hidden from Raistlin and a visit from a very annoyed downstairs neighbour, who had agreed to stay for a couple of beers and had become Raistlin’s Tasslehoff’s new very close personal friend.
Tas released Kitiara at Raistlin’s warning, having forgotten once again that he was in the wrong body. “Oh, sorry about that, Kit!” Tas said cheerfully. “I’m actually Tasslehoff! And that’s Raistlin. Come in!” he said, pointing toward his body.
Kitiara straightened once her brother released her, taking stock of the situation. She had sworn she had just heard Tas tell himself to wait. And then Raistlin was spouting a ton of nonsense.
She had heard that sometimes twins pretended to be one another. They’d copy one another’s mannerisms, and try to pass themselves off as their other sibling. She couldn’t recall Raistlin and Caramon ever partaking in such foolishness. For one, the twins weren’t exactly indistinguishable - Caramon had always been much more broad of shoulder than their wiry brother. For another, she suspected that even if Caramon had wanted to play, Raistlin wouldn’t go along with it.
Which was so strange to see him playing along to what was no doubt Tas’s idea. And he was doing a surprisingly good impression of Tasslehoff. Tas had always been good at impressions, but he usually couldn’t get very far into one before he burst into giggles, which meant he was showing surprising restraint now. And that hair. Was Tas wearing one of those weird hair clips?
“I expected better of you, Raistlin, than to go along with one of Tasslehoff’s hairbrained pranks,” Kitiara said to Raistlin’s body, following him into the apartment. “And Tas, what are you wearing?” she asked. As she spoke, she took a firm hold of Tas’ topknot, and attempted to yank it off his head.
They say that you never see your face, that you only see it reflected or in pictures. So seeing his own face for the first time not as a mirror image had been hard enough for Raistlin to adjust to, seeing himself do and say things that were so undeniably Tas was even harder. And just to add insult to injury Kitiara of all people had chosen that exact weekend to randomly show up at their front door unannounced and looking as though she was going to stay a while.
That had sort of always been Kit’s way, though. Ever since she had left home, she had come in and out of Raistlin’s life like a wind and a storm. He should have expected that sooner or later she would arrive here as well. He wasn’t displeased to see her, he never had been, he just wished she had chosen a better time to wander back into his life. He also wished she wasn’t yanking on the hair on his head either.
“Ow!” Raistlin yelped when Kitiara grabbed hold of Tas’s topknot and gave it a good yank. Gods above, how did Tas stand having so much hair?! Raistlin had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do with it half the time. He could cross having it yanked off the list, though.
He pulled away from Kit and pushed her back with his elbow. “This isn’t a prank, Kit,” he told her in Tas’s voice. He rubbed at his eyes wearily. There was no easy way to explain this that didn’t make him sound as though he’d completely lost his mind. That is to say that didn’t make Tas sound as if he’d completely lost his mind. Then again, this was Tasslehoff, outlandish stories were his specialty. May as well just dive right in.
“I really am Raistlin,” he said placing a hand to his-Tas’s chest. He then pointed to his own body a few feet away. “And...that really is Tas...in my body...Tas stop grinning like that, this isn’t funny!”
Kitiara was more than a little confused. For one, Tas’ hair appeared to actually be real. It had been a few years since Kit had last seen him, and maybe his hair just happened to grow ridiculously fast, but it seemed like a stretch.
She glanced between Tas and Raistlin, not entirely sure whether to believe them or not, but when Tas told Raistlin to stop grinning, and Raistlin immediately burst into peals of laughter which were abruptly cut off with a coughing fit (and then took up his cheerful countenance again when the coughing subsided), Kit was a little more willing to believe that they weren’t having her on. For one, there was no way Raistlin or Tas would have been expecting her. And for another, Raistlin had never been one for pranks like this.
“I think it’s funny,” Tas said after a moment. “I’m sure you’ll look back someday and think it’s funny too. Like, ‘hey Tas, remember that time when we switched bodies and Kitiara was really confused - just look at how her brows are furrowed Raistlin, you have to admit that that’s really funny please don’t hit me Kit.” He hopped away from her raised fist, back toward the door.
“You guys are serious, aren’t you?” Kit asked slowly. This must be what going insane felt like. “Tas can go get us some drinks and you can explain exactly what’s going on here.”
Raistlin looked over at Tas with a frown. The chances that he would ever look back on this event and laugh were pretty slim. He was about to say same, but Kitiara beat him to it by threatening his roommate silently with her first. Raistlin couldn’t help a small smile despite himself. Somethings never changed, no matter how much time had passed.
“Yes, Kit,” Raistlin sighed wearily. “We are entirely serious.” he eyed Tas in his body wearily. As annoying and frustrating as this event was, it could have been worse. At least he and Tas knew each other and Raistlin hadn’t switched bodies with a complete stranger. At least with Tas he could keep an eye on his body and be sure nothing untoward happened to it while he wasn’t at the steering wheel.
The mage turned his, or rather Tas’s eyes back towards Kitiara. Yes, he supposed he did owe her some kind of explanation. Where to start? There was no need to ease Kitiara into things, not when she’d already been shoved in feet first.
“Well,” he started as he removed the all-seeing glasses from his face. “Orange County, come to find out, is a place where a lot of odd things happen.” No doubt if Kitiara had returned home before coming here, Caramon would have told her all about the strange things that Tas had undoubtedly told him over the past several months. “It appears to be the location of some kind of...nexus, if you will, were a handful of denizens are permitted a one way look into alternate times and alternate realities via their dreams. On occasion sometimes events from these alternate realities bleed through into this one, resulting in...well, something a lot like this.” He gestured between himself and Tasslehoff.
This whole thing sounded completely unbelievable to Kit, and if she wasn’t right now staring at her brother stuck in Tasslehoff’s body, then she probably would have laughed in his face. But it was becoming increasingly more obvious that whoever was behind the eyes of the person she was looking at, it was most certainly not Tas. She knew her brother well, or as well as someone could when they hadn’t been home much in the last fifteen years, and she would stake her life on the fact that she was speaking to him right now.
She dropped her dufflebag on the floor next to the chair she sat in, one leg dangling casually off the arm of the chair, looking for all the world to be completely, arrogantly, at ease. Her voice stopped Tas from heading to the kitchen to fetch a few beers.
“Whatever you have in your fridge, I don’t want it,” Kit said. “Come here.” And then she shoved a handful of bills into Tas’ hands, instructed him to buy the most expensive bottle of scotch they had at the liquor store, and told him if he didn’t come back with a receipt then she wanted every last cent of the money he gave her back.
“This is the weirdest comic book shit I’ve ever heard in my life, Raist,” Kit said after she heard the click of a door behind Tasslehoff, a slight hint of irritation in her voice. “What exactly do you mean by alternate realities?”
Raistlin was silent as Kitiara thrust a wad of bills at Tas and instructed him to fetch some scotch for her. He wasn’t particularly keen on Tas going outside in his body, but there really wasn’t anything for it now.
“You do realize that he will bring you back what he thinks is the most expensive bottle in the store.” Probably the bottle that looked the most fun knowing Tas. “But he won’t pay for it. It will just fall into his bag, as things tend to do. I’m not sure if you will get your money back or not. Cash has a different value to Tas than it does for either you or me.” He rested “his” elbows on the table and interlaced “his” fingers as he peered at his sister. He didn’t mention that he had his own stash of scotch squirreled away somewhere in the apartment. He wanted to see what it was that Tas came back with first.
“This is actually relatively benign compared to some things that had happened,” Raistlin informed his sister casually. His mind wandered back to that fog and nearly getting his neck chomped on by a vampire. That entire experience had been more than simply annoying. It had been terrifying. At least Kitiara seemed to believe that he was, in fact, her brother. That was a step in the right direction and prevented a lot of wasted time. “Do you need me to define what an alternate reality is for you, Kit?”
“I just wanted him out of the apartment,” Kit said lazily. “Seeing that dopey smile on your face was too much for even me. I don’t know how you can stand it. If he ‘borrows’ a bottle from the store, well, that’s all the better. But I will be getting back my money.” Tas wasn’t afraid of anything, but he did have a healthy respect for Kit. Besides, she knew that once she reminded him a few times and possibly helped clean out his pockets for him that he wouldn’t have any qualms handing the money back over.
“This is benign?” Kit asked, an eyebrow raising elegantly toward her hairline. “I’d hate to know what you consider serious, Little Brother. And no, I think I can figure out what an alternate reality is myself, thank you. What specifically are you talking about? A world where dinosaurs never went extinct? Where Germany won the war?”
“I haven’t had much of a choice but to stand it,” Raistlin answered her with a sigh. “Believe me, seeing that dopey smile on my own face has not been pleasant.” Raistlin wondered if the cheeks Tas were currently using ached at all from being pulled in such an unfamiliar manner. He sighed and marked his place in the book in front of him before closing it and sitting back in his seat so that he could have a serious talk with his sister.
“All of those realities and more, Kitiara,” he told her seriously. “As i said there is a small but...active...community of people with this kind of…” he trailed off. Ability? Gift? Curse? All three of those words seemed to fit depending on who it was one spoke to. He sighed and started again. “Every member of this community is able to see into an alternate reality via their dreams. Tas and I happen to share the same sort of alternate reality, but that isn’t true for everyone. Some people belong to realities in which vampires exist, other’s belong to a world in which fairy tale characters have come to life.” His own mentor was the Evil Queen of a particular fairy tale. “Some dream of fantastical lands, such as myself and Tas, and others dream of a perfectly normal world in which only a few details are different. Still others Dream of traveling space and living in galaxies far beyond our own. The possibilities of these worlds are limited only by the people who dream of them.”
“It’s almost like seeing Caramon on some sort of insane sugar high,” Kitiara said. If they didn’t always have such wildly different expressions, Raistlin and Caramon did look fairly similar. But that didn’t make it any less strange.
Kitiara frowned at Tas-turned-Raistlin. If she wasn’t staring proof in the face, she’d find the whole thing completely ludicrous. It still seemed ludicrous, but it would appear that Kitiara didn’t have any choice but to believe what she was hearing. “Fairy tales, vampires, and aliens?” Kitiara asked. “What kind of messed up place did you decide to move to, Raistlin?” She shook her head, the question largely rhetorical. “Why don’t you tell me about your dreams then?”
Kitiara was right. Tas in Raistlin’s body was like watching an overly excited Caramon bouncing around. It was undignified to say the least. Raistlin sighed and shook “his” head. “Please don’t remind me.”
He smiled faintly at her rhetorical question. He had a feeling Kitiara would figure out for herself what kind of messed up place this was in due time. He was thoughtful for a moment before he answered her more direct question about what he dreamed about. He told her about Krynn and the quest they had more or less been tricked into taking. As he did, he also told her about the other members of their party: Tanis, their reluctant default leader; Flint, the grumpy dwarf; Goldmoon, the chieftain's daughter and carrier of the blue staff; Riverwind, who took his job as Goldmoon’s bodyguard perhaps a bit too seriously; Sturm, the self important and pompous knight; Laurana, the refined and formerly overly sheltered elf princess; and of course Caramon and Tas.
“You’re mentioned in them as well,” he added, “Although, I haven’t actually seen you yet. We were all supposed to have meet in Solace after five years of going our separate ways, but you, dear sister, apparently had more important things to do.”
It was unfortunate that she had, too. Raistlin wondered what Tanis would have done if both Laurana and Kitiara had been members of their little band. Would he have remained as devoted to Laurana if Kit had been around? Would he have shunned the elf princess for the more brash warrioress? What kind of added tension would the two women have brought along with them? Or perhaps both of them would have bonded over the fact that Tanis didn’t seem to know what he wanted half the time.
What was Kit doing while the War of the Lance was unfolding it’s hand over Ansalon? Raistlin had wondered that several times. Perhaps now he’d get the answer.
He finished his tale by describing the attack of the Draconian army at Tarsis, how the companions had become separated and how he, Caramon, Tanis, Tika, Riverwind and Goldmoon had narrowly escaped the carnage on the backs of griffons.
Kitiara listened to Raistlin, needing to remind herself every now and then that he wasn’t Tasslehoff sharing one of his wildly unbelievable stories. But the whole thing was almost laughable at how insane it all sounded. Elves and dwarves, dragons and magic. Maybe it was better that Raistlin was residing in Tas’ body for this. Hearing all this coming out of Raistlin’s actual mouth, completely serious, may have broken her brain.
“That… sounds like some sort of fantasy novel,” Kitiara said after a long pause. “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” she assured him hurriedly, “it’s just… quite a bit to take in.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over her knee. She just had to tackle this one step at a time, and not allow herself to become overwhelmed. The answer was obvious - what could she get out of this?
“You can do magic?” she asked after a moment. “What kind of magic?”
Kitiara was handling this all surprisingly well, for which Raistlin was extremely thankful for. The last thing he needed was for her to fly off into hysterics. Although, histrionics had never been Kitiara’s thing. Considering how the rest of their family was, how prone they were to letting their emotions get the better of them, Raistlin had often wondered how it was that he and Kit had turned out so different.
Raistlin raised a brow slightly at Kitiara’s question. “I can,” he answered her carefully. “I’ve been studying as much as I can. My specialty at the moment appears to be illusions and a few offensive measures, such as fire and explosions.” He narrowed his eyes at her, trying to gauge what she was thinking.
Illusions, fires, and explosions. Those all sounded like extraordinarily useful powers, especially in Kitiara’s line of work. One that she could really make work for her - if she played her cards right. Raistlin was never one to be used. She’d have to convince him that using his skills to help her was in his best interest too.
She kept her face impassive - you didn’t last long in her line of work when you let your business associates know what you were thinking, though those who knew her well might have noticed the glint in her eyes that already said she was working on a plan.
“Interesting,” she said. “You always were good at studying. I’m sure that you’ll have it all mastered in no time.”
It was about that time when the door opened noisly. “I’m back!” Raistlin’s voice rang out cheerfully from the hall. “I couldn’t remember what you asked me to get from the liquor store, but I did find this vodka that’s shaped like a skull that I thought you might like!”
Raistlin narrowed Tas’s eyes at Kitiara. He was aware how ridiculous seeing the normally unsuspicious happy go-lucky eyes of a Kender look at anyone with distrust must have been, but he didn’t much care. He knew his sister. He had no idea what she was thinking, but she had to be thinking something.
He was about to call her on it when the front door banged open, causing Raistlin to jump a little in his seat. Eyes darted towards the hall, hearing his own voice calling out jovially. He sighed and shook his head. Perfect timing, Tas, as usual. No matter, he’d figure out what it was Kit was up to in time.
“I told you he wouldn’t remember,” he said to Kit with a slight smirk. He put the All Reading glasses back on and returned to the book in front of him. “At least it’s in the shape of a skull.”