InsaneJournal

Who: Kitty, Diana and later Lara
What: Meetings at the museum!
When: Recently
Where: Museum
Warnings: Family-friendly!



Luckily, Diana didn’t take long to adjust to her new surroundings. Though that was helped by the fact she was at home in a museum. Sometimes people could be a little more difficult to handle, she still was a little of that wide-eyed kind of person. She wasn’t completely naive, she knew the world wasn’t always fair, but she still had maintained a very positive outlook for humanity.

Currently, she was walking through the exhibit on ancient Greece, making notes on her iPad that was tucked against her forearm. The notes were related to the various objects on display. She was wearing a dark red elegant-looking dress and her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She definitely was eye-catching and had quite the sense of style.

“Guys!”

Two kids, about 12 or 13, came jogging down the hallway. A Vietnamese boy and a girl and nearly identical except for their clothing, they were paying little heed to anything around them.

Moving quickly to catch up was a brunette woman wearing a loosely buttoned up shirt and skinny jeans. Her wavey hair was tied back and she was younger than Diana. The kids were clearly in her charge. "Come on, walk!"

Diana’s ears perked up when she heard a woman calling after a couple kids. She heard the jogging footsteps before she lifted her head to look at the kids. She could only smile and shake her head. So many kids liked to run in museums. Or just in general. Diana had been one of those kids once. She lowered her iPad after locking it and turned to eye the two kids.

“Careful now, you don’t want to accidentally trip and fall into one of these displays. It would not end well for you,” she said in a humorous tone to the twins. The displays around them had various weapons and armor sets. Luckily the pottery displays were further back. She then looked at the woman who came in after them. “Though I could tell you a story about children who don’t walk when they are told to.” Her dark eyes were glimmering with amusement.

“Yeah, I’d murd...er….” Kitty came to a stop and stared for a heartbeat. She swallowed a momentary gay panic and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “You know, I think we really ought to hear this story, don’t we.”

She glanced at Leong and Nga, who at this point were pretty used to their adoptive mom’s gay panics and it was obvious why she wanted to hear the story. And also that glare. They were were acquainted with that glare.

Catching that momentary stare, Diana didn’t call attention to it. She then turned her attention back to the kids. Now it was making a good story. “There once was a young girl who ran everywhere every chance she got. She refused to heed her mother’s warnings, or even stay at her mother’s side. There was so much to see and do, and her mother tended to move too slowly for the girl’s liking. One day, they were in a market, and something caught the girl’s eye. As usual, she went running towards it with no thought to anything around her. As a result, she ran into someone, and they fell into one of the stalls. A chain reaction happened and ended with several stalls having their goods scattered on the ground, and a statue in the market square was damaged. The girl’s mother had to pay for damages, and that little girl needed to have her wrist leashed to her mother’s any time they were out.”

Diana told the story with quite the bravado, obviously having a knack for storytelling. “You should never run in museums because there are countless priceless artifacts housed here. And some of these items could even carry curses. Do you want to carry a curse around for the rest of your life?” She asked. Okay maybe she should’ve been in the Egyptian exhibit for this story. Mummies made curses much easier to believe.

This woman was beautiful, and there was something almost lyrical to her voice. Whoever she was, she'd have been one of those women at Xavier's that simultaneously made her self-conscious and also deeply closeted.

The story was interesting, and kind of cute and Kitty thought it might be a true one. She couldn't help the grin on her face as it worked it's magic on the kids. Leong's eyes were wide and he glanced at the display, then back at Diana. "No!"

"It would really suck to be leashed to mom." Nga wrinkled her nose.

"Ow. Ow. Right in the heart." Kitty put her hand to her chest, feigning a mortal wound. The true mortal wound was that Nga called her mom and Kitty's eyes glistened a little.

Diana smiled warmly, pleased that her story got the point across. She leaned down a bit, she was currently over six feet tall in those heels of hers, and looked at the twins. “Good. Respect your surroundings and they will respect you in return.” She said before she straightened again and looked at the woman. “Hopefully now they won’t have to be leashed to you in public.” That warm smile was still on her face.

Her accent was also a bit difficult to place if someone wasn’t familiar with accents. It was exotic, but she did speak English well enough to be easily understood.

Diana's smile was the kind of smile that could make a person melt. Kitty was sure that everyone who met the woman fell instantly in love.

It didn't hurt she had at least six inches on her right now. "It would, as Nga said, suck."

She planted a hand on a cocked hip. "So how old were you?"

Diana had certainly met her share of people that had become smitten with her at first sight. That definitely wasn’t anything new to her. Though at the question, she had to laugh. “Perceptive. I was eight or thereabouts. It was a lesson I did not forget either.”

“Can’t say I did anything that bad.” Not in this life anyway.

Kitty offered her hand, “I’m Katy. Kitty.. I’m Kitty.” She gestured at the kids. “This is Leong, and Nga.”

“Lucky for you, then,” she responded. She then took Kitty’s hand and shook it. “I’m Diana, it’s very nice to meet you, Kitty.” She then looked at the twins with a smile. “It’s also very nice to meet you Leong and Nga.”

Honestly, Kitty had only done one unforgiveable thing in her mother's eyes, but that wasn't a conversation for a stranger. Though Kitty found it easy to talk about sometimes. It still hurt.

Diana had a strong grip, which wasn't unexpected. "Yeah, lucky me."

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Diana." Leong gave her a sweeping bow, and his sister rolled her eyes.

"Can we go look at the Egypt stuff?"

"Walk, don't run, and don't touch anything or that special dinner tonight isn't happening."

"We promise," they said, pulling that Creepy Twin Thing(tm).

Really, Diana had more stories of things she did that had displeased her mother, but those weren’t precisely to be used for teaching lessons. She smiled widely when Leong bowed, and she did give him one in return.

The Egypt exhibit was certainly a wonder to behold, but Diana’s focus was currently on the one for Greece. She’d go through the Egypt exhibit later.

“Mind yourselves so that the mummy does not get you when you least expect!” She warned. Once the twins were out of earshot, she looked back to Kitty. “You must be very proud of them.”

“I am,” Kitty admitted. “Sorry about that though, they’re very excited. First time they’ve been back in the OC since last year. They usually stay with my dad. School and everything.” And the Oc was so dangerous but she was truly, genuinely happy to have them back in town. Happier than she’d ever expected. She hoped they didn’t want to go back to Chicago.

“They were a surprise I never knew I wanted until they ended up in my life.”

“No harm done. Had they actually caused damage, things would be different. Children will be children.” Diana could handle it. And if something had gotten damaged? She could’ve handled that as well without going postal on them.

“Sometimes that is how life is, taking turns we never expect and ending up better than we ever imagined.” Diana wanted kids of her own someday, but not just yet. She’d always liked kids.

"Yeah..." It had come through tragedy for Kitty. Her perfect normal life gone in a ball of fire. But she'd had the twins, who'd relied on her, and that had helped her recover faster. She'd had no choice. For them she'd had to. "I don't know what I'd have done without them, to be honest. They needed me and I needed them in a very dark time of our lives.”

“I am happy that you had each other. It does make things easier to get through when you have others there with you.” Diana said, a soft, empathetic smile on her face. She couldn’t claim to have had any really dark times in her life, but she knew that having people around made such things easier.

Diana was just a warm ball of sunshine, wasn’t she? A true cinnamon roll. Kitty found herself smiling again. “So what brings you to the museum on a nice day like today?”

Diana had certainly been called a ball of sunshine at times. She was just a positive person with a positive outlook on life. “I work here, actually. I am an antiquities dealer. I am reviewing what we have here.”

“Oh? What’s your specialty? Or is a general field. Color me curious like my name sake.” If there was one thing Kitty liked it was making new friends. She kind of sort of needed people to like her, it was kind of a problem.

“Ancient Greece is my area of expertise. I also know much about the Minoan culture as well, as I am from Crete, actually.” Born and raised on Crete, which explained the interest in Minoan culture as well. However, Diana was Greek through and through.

That might explain the accent a little bit. And definitely the interest. Kitty flashed her a grin, tucking some hair back behind her ear. “Do you miss it? I’m from Chicago originally. Not as storied as Greece, but I miss it sometimes.”

“Yes, I do miss it very much. It was hard to leave, but I’m also not one to be kept from seeing the world.” Diana said with a chuckle. It had been quite the discussion with her mother, especially over some of the places she’d wanted to travel to, but in the end things had been amicable. After all, Diana had promised to go back to visit as often as possible. And if her mother’s schedule allowed, she’d come here to visit as well.

“What drew you to travel? I spent some time in London and Japan, but there’s a lot of places I haven’t had a chance to see yet.” Again, dreams didn’t count. Except when they did. “Missed out on a few chances, but it can get very exciting living here in California a lot of the time.”

More than enough to sate her thirst for adventure. “Even if I have to find ways to keep things exciting.”

“The sea, in part. My mother and I used to travel to mainland Greece, and other islands, rather often. I always wondered what lay beyond the horizon. And learning about the various countries in school made me want to visit as many as I could.” Diana had been a good student, always curious about other countries and ways of life.

“California must get exciting from time to time. It is rather different than Crete or Greece, but I do like it so far.”

“What was your favorite place to visit so far? I graduated high school very early, finished college when I was 18. So I took a couple of years. One in Japan, then another in London. Got a job offer here so that’s where I ended up.” Kitty thought it was funny that she no longer had that job. Hers was much more exciting and occasionally involved saving the world. “I work in IT. Managing a large network, particularly in security. Lots of sitting around so I have to keep up a training regimen to not turn into a donut.”

“I find it difficult to choose one. I probably should not say anywhere in Greece considering I may be biased. Rome is a fascinating city, though.” Diana had been to several places in Italy, but Rome had caught her attention moreso than other places. Probably because of the sheer history within Rome itself. And the Colosseum was definitely a sight to behold.

“You excel at not turning into a donut,” she said with a warm laugh. “Keeping up with your children must also keep you in shape.”

“I always wanted to visit Rome.” It had been her second choice for her honeymoon. Something told Kitty that wouldn’t have changed what happened to Xi’an. “There’s so much there to see. I don’t even have the time to see it all. Even explorers probably don’t get to see it all.”

She was sort of acquainted with one, in that ‘I see you on the network and we’ve chatted a few times’ sort of way. Kitty generally tried to avoid Lara Croft if only because that was a crush that would go no where.

She gave Diana a mock flexing pose. “It helps. They’re usually back in Chicago, going to school there and staying with my dad. He doesn’t mind. Suddenly getting grandchildren made his decade. I’m hoping they’re considering moving back here for the next school year. It might be a good time for it.”

“It’s as they say, so much to do, so little time,” Diana responded. She had a lot more of the world that she wanted to see, to learn of, but time was short. And she tended to prefer not to take too many vacations from her job to take trips. Sometimes she simply settled for whatever trips she needed to take for her job.

She laughed again. “It certainly could be. Perhaps ask them what they think about it, and go from there. Perhaps they’d rather stay here with you.”

Kitty thought they might, and she’d reached a point where she realized that sending them away to ‘protect’ them was the wrong thing to do. And maybe not necessarily what Xi’an would have wanted. She was about to say something else when someone interrupted them.

“Excuse me.” A very British accept came from a very amused looking Lara. “But I think you might have misplaces these.”

Lara gestured to the twins, who were calm and wearing souvenir safari hats from the gift shop. Nga kept looking a little starry-eyed in Lara’s direction.

“What happened to the Egypt exhibit?” Kitty tried not to glare at Lara for interrupting her conversation with the extremely tall and fascinating Diana. She managed to succeed.

“That’s my fault.” Lara smiled cheerily. She wouldn’t blame Kitty. Diana could almost turn her head and she didn’t react often. “I started explaining things to them and the next thing I knew I was giving them a little tour.”

Diana looked bemused at Lara and Kitty, then at the twins. “Then it is a good thing I am not a tour guide, otherwise you would have put me out of my job, Lara,” she teased. “But at least I can assume no disaster happened and mummies’ curses came down upon unsuspecting children?” She queried, teasing again and keeping up a bit of the conversation from earlier.

Lara laughed. "I'm sorry. I was in to check on a few things and ran into them. They have a lot of questions and if you get me talking..."

"Its okay," Nga assured her. "You could talk for hours and no one would mind..."

Her brother rolled his eyes. "I'm going to curse you."

“I think most of us around here are like that,” Diana assured her. Besides, she’d gotten on a couple tangents with Lara previously so it wasn’t unexpected. She looked at Nga and wondered if she was a budding historian or just had a crush.

For Nga, probably both.

Kitty reluctantly knew she had take the kids home. They had more planned, and as much as she wanted to keep talking (especially now that there was a Brit present, let it never be said Kitty didn’t appreciate a good accent), she had to excuse herself. She offered her hand again. “It was nice chatting, but if you two are going to talk history I’ll never escape, so I better get them out of here now.”

Diana smiled warmly at Kitty, shaking her hand again. “It was a pleasure to meet you Kitty, and both of you,” she said, turning the smile to the twins. “You know where to find me should you wish to come talk to me again.” That went for any of the four present, although Lara had already figured that part out.

Leong shook Diana’s hand, slyly leaving a piece of paper with Kitty’s name and number on it behind as he did so. He grinned and whistled in that obvious faux innocent manner as he started to walk away.

Oblivious, Kitty’s smile was just was warm, before she started to herd the kids towards the exist.

Lara clasped her hands behind her back. “Are you sure you’ve never considered working the front? You’ve a way with people.”

Raising an eyebrow curiously, Diana waited until Kitty and the twins were gone before looking at the paper. Kitty’s name and number. Well then. She chuckled and folded the paper again before looking at Lara. “I don’t always have a way with people. Besides, I far prefer dealing with artifacts. They don’t talk back.” Not to mention more people than some realized were sensitive to accents. “So, what brings you here today?”

“Research,” Lara replied, dropping her hands to her sides and smiling brightly. “What other reason? I wanted to investigate a particular rune I ran across and compare it to something in the museum’s archives.”

“You could always just be here to take in the exhibits,” Diana pointed out with a warm smile. “What rune are you researching?” Chances were that Diana didn’t know what the rune was even if she saw it, but she always liked learning new things.

“Me, just here for pleasure?” It was more likely than you’d think. Lara reached into her pocket, pulling out a folded printout. She snapped it open with a flick of her wrist. It was a circle, with three circles or orbs in a triangle around the circumference.

“It’s entirely possible.” Diana herself would definitely go to museums for pleasure. When Lara opened the printout, Diana leaned in a bit to get a better look. “That is certainly an odd rune. What part of the world did you see it in?” She thought it looked vaguely similar to some runes she’d seen, but couldn’t quite be certain. Her specialty wasn’t in runes or written languages of the ancients.

“Everywhere,” Lara said, entirely seriously. “Peru, Malaysia, India, Mexico…Both in my own digs as well as looking through records from others. It seems to be a common link, and an ancient one.”

The print out was a drawing, of course, but she had several scans and rubs back home. “When I was on my honeymoon in India, we stumbled onto some ancient ruins. I made a rub just like this, because it matched what I saw in Malaysia and Peru.”

Diana’s brow furrowed in confusion. It made sense of things popping up in various cultures that were seemingly unconnected. Pyramids in Egypt and Central America. Myths surrounding things like dragons in every culture, so on and so forth. But this? This was very strange.

And very intriguing.

“That’s almost unbelievable that this symbol is found in so many places. Have you been able to date the places you found them in to any particular period?” Diana was intensely curious about this subject.

“In many cases the symbol is much older than the other ruins,” Lara explained. “By thousands of years in a few cases. I’m waiting on some dating right now, actually. I should get the response in the mail in a few weeks. That will at least give a more precise time frame.”

“Thousands of years?” Diana was shocked. Something like this could threaten to rewrite understanding of history, depending on what it actually meant. Of course, rewriting man’s understanding of human history was definitely nothing new. “That seems almost impossible. Yet with it being found in different corners of the Earth, that must mean it has some significant meaning. Do you have any theories about where it originated or do you not have enough information on that yet?”

“Nothing that doesn’t make me sound like a loon,” Lara admitted. And then there was the fact she didn’t know if her dreams were influencing all of this. Did this exist in spite of or because of her dreams, where the Scion of Atlantis looked exactly like these symbols.

“That does not mean you are wrong. Greek philosophers in the 6th Century BC thought the world was round, not flat as many believed. Magellan eventually proved they were correct by sailing around the world.” Diana helpfully pointed out. Just because someone had wild theories that sounded crazy did not always mean they were wrong.

Sometimes, they were correct.

“They measured the changes in the shadows cast by monoliths at different latitudes, didn’t they? If I recall they got the circumference mostly correct.” Lara rubbed a hand over her face. “But my theory is straight out of Plato. Mythic and potentially Earth shattering. I just need to find something to tie it all together.”

“They were ingenious to calculate that.” Sometimes people didn’t give the ancients nearly enough credit for the things they discovered. Not everything was aliens, after all. “I believe you will find what you are looking for. Do not worry so much about what you sound like. What really matters is what you believe, and finding the truth of what you seek.”

Oh, Lara hated the aliens thing. It was a racist argument. She smiled at Diana folding her printout and pocketing it. “Thank you. Somehow, that makes it a little easier to believe in myself. Because when this does come out I’m going to be labeled a bloody nutter. At least until I find it. I really ought to invest in a ship.”

Which might just be a hint.

“You’re welcome,” Diana responded with a warm smile. “Even if the world labels you as a nutter, you will prove them wrong when you find it.” Which was really the best part about proving people wrong, vindication was definitely a good feeling. “A ship?” She asked, tilting her head a bit as she attempted to figure that reference out.

“It would make the search a little easier, once I’ve narrowed the search down.” While Lara had some ideas about where Atlantis actually was, part of her had a hunch that it was in a place no one had ever looked before.

“Since according to most legends it’s sunk beneath the sea.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what Lara meant. She could only mean one place, one that Diana was familiar with through her study of ancient Greece. “Atlantis. You believe this rune is either from or refers to Atlantis?” She didn’t disbelieve Lara, but many had hunted Atlantis over the millennia since its disappearance, and none had found it.

“If not Atlantis, something that helped inspire the myth. We know ancient peoples could travel very far. One simply needs to look at the pacific islander population to know, and some people think even the Egyptians got to the Americas, which I’ve seen nothing to dispute that. So what if there was an ancient culture that spread throughout the world, the remnants of something that has been lost to time?”

“It is entirely possible. Cultures could certainly spread out through the world and assimilate into others. It would not surprise me if Atlantis, or whatever inspired the myth, can be found in the world today. Especially if the people who lived there dispersed into other cultures.” There were records of a cataclysmic volcanic event on an island in the Mediterranean thousands of years ago that many believed could be the inspiration for Atlantis. If such an event happened, that would be good reason why its people spread across the world, seeking new homes.

“Yes, precisely. A diaspora that may explain some similarities between myths and cultures around the world.” Lara didn’t subscribe to the theory that they might have altered things too heavily. A pyramid was a stable shape and many cultures were likely to come to the same solution. But there were too many similarities between various gods, deities and events. A world wide flood was a common one. If such a thing spread from Atlantis...

“I rather think you are onto something, there. Being familiar with the myth of Atlantis, I could easily see connections with other cultures across the world if I came across them.” And vice versa. There was simply so much they didn’t know about the ancient world. Medicine, myths, religion, so much had been lost to the ravages of time, but clues still remained for those who knew how to find and decode them.

Lara smiled, glad that Diana really understood. There weren’t too many in her field who wouldn’t dismiss her, much like her father had been dismissed in her dreams. Multiple versions of her dreams. “Well, I’ll either be vindicated and become famous outside archaeological circles, or I’ll become a laughing stock.”

Considering the time Diana had spent studying history, she’d seen enough similarities across the ages and cultures to know that something like this could be feasible. She wasn’t one who would laugh at Lara and think she was daft for such a theory. “I assure you that you will never be a laughing stock to me. I do hope that you are able to find what you seek. And if there is anything I am able to do to help, do not hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you. I’m sure I’ll be coming to you more frequently.” With anyone else, Bo might actually have something to worry about when it came to Lara getting close to Diana.

“I will look forward to your visits.” Diana said with a smile. Now, she wasn’t always the type to make moves on people, but she definitely wouldn’t do so to a married woman. She respected such things.