Will Gorski (officerstrange) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-11-18 19:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, kala dandekar, will gorski |
So far, it’s not been so bad. A little… strange, but not necessarily in a bad way
Who: Will Gorski and Kala Dandekar
What: Meeting in person for the first time
Where: A very public cafe
When: After this post, end of August
Rating/Warning: Low/none
Status: Complete
Kala didn’t know how to feel about all the comments she received on her post. All she wanted was to try and meet people and hopefully find a job. She wasn’t expecting people to claim they dreamed about her, and even more terrifying know her birthday. It was creepy. It almost made Kala want to stay off social media. She knew there was a reason she never tried it before.
There was one person who seemed a tad less creepy than the rest. For some reason Kala agreed to meet him. Kala got to Baxter’s Bakery well before four. She ordered a vanilla almond latte and got a table with a good view of the door, and close enough to the door that she could escape easily if she needed to.
Will couldn’t blame Kala for being uneasy about this meeting. After all, if Sun and Lito had come into his post talking about dreaming of him and sharing a birthday, he likely would have been pretty hesitant to meet either one of them too. At least he had managed to stop Lito from mentioning anything about the orgy. That was a little too much.
He went to Baxter’s right after work, still in uniform, thinking it might help put Kala at ease at least a little bit, assuming she wasn’t part of the growing part of the population that didn’t trust cops.
He recognized Kala immediately, though before going to sit with her he ordered a coffee. Once he had it in hand, he made his way to her table. “Hey, you’re Kala, right?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know, pulling out his chair. “I’m Will.”
Kala did notice when the police officer walked in. It was a bit reassuring honestly. If things went badly with this Will person at least there was a policeman nearby. However she didn’t realize the officer was indeed Will and was a bit shocked when he came to her table and introduced himself. “Yes,” Kala replied as Will took the seat across from her. “You’re a police officer?” she asked stating the obvious.
“Yeah,” Will said, giving what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Just got off shift and didn’t have time to change.” Which wasn’t a lie, at least, even though he probably would have worn his uniform even if he had had time to change. “You’re a… pharmacist, right?’
“Yeah,” Kala replied. “Or I was back home.” Even though she still had the degree she didn’t have a job just yet. Though she supposed the title never really went away. It wasn’t like she was an ex-pharmacist. “How long have you been a police officer?”
“About six years now,” Will said. “Though most of that time was in Chicago. I just started working here about two months ago.” It seemed longer, given that he’d already gone through a freak snowstorm, and a demon/zombie attack, not to mention the strange dream with Lito and Sun.
“What made you decide to come here?” Kala asked. She was well aware of the fact that she was asking a lot of questions. But if Will knew as much about her as the Lito person did it was only fair she got to know more about him too.
Will couldn’t fault her for asking questions. He usually asked a lot himself, but this was definitely a time more to put Kala at ease than anything else. “I needed a change of pace, and I hear the weather’s nice over here,” Will answered, which was his usual answer. But, despite this being the first time meeting Kala in person, he trusted her. “And a lot of my coworkers in Chicago thought I made the wrong call when I brought a kid who’d been shot to the hospital. It was pretty hostile for a while.” He was sure the, in time, everyone would’ve forgotten and the hostility would die down, but he wasn’t about to forget it any time soon.
“How is bringing a child who needs medical attention to a hospital a bad thing?” Kala replied not following why things got hostile for Will. “Isn’t saving people what your job is all about?” Well she supposed it was protecting them, but saving them fell into that category if you asked her.
“Depends who you ask,” Will said, frowning a little. There were plenty of cops, and a Supreme Court verdict, that said cops didn’t have to protect or serve anyone, they just had to uphold the law. “A lot of them questioned me, wondering how I’d feel if someday in the future, the kid killed someone, or if that someone was a cop. I just couldn’t work with people like that anymore.” Even if he did regret leaving Diego behind.
“Or,” Kala said. “Because you saved him it could have turned his life around. And he wouldn’t have ended up shooting anyone, particularly a cop.” How could people possibly let someone die because of what they may or may not do in the future? She didn’t understand. “I wouldn’t want to work with people like that either.”
“That’s my thought on it,” Will said. You couldn’t judge people based on how they were in their teenage years. Will himself had spent a lot of time in the back of a cop car as a teenager. Nothing too terrible - shoplifting, mostly - but he’d still had a rebellious streak, and if things had gone differently, who knew how he would have turned out. It didn’t make sense to just give up on someone. “So I put in my transfer, and wound up here. Something about the place just seemed to call to me.” He couldn’t really put his finger on it, but since meeting Lito and Sun, and now Kala, he was starting to think he could figure out the reasons.
“Yes,” Kala agreed. “I know what you mean.” Granted it was also the only other area she knew other than Mumbai. But she still felt some sort of strange pull to this place. She couldn’t exactly describe it.
Will gave Kala a bit of a smile. “So far, it’s not been so bad. A little… strange,” to say the least, “but not necessarily in a bad way.” Not always a good way either, but as weird as being connected to Lito and Sun was, he couldn’t say he hated it.
“Strange like people acting as though they know you when you’ve never met them?” Kala replied. This was part of why she was meeting him. Might as well get to the point.
It had to come to this eventually, Will thought. After all, that was half the reason he’d asked Kala out for coffee. To explain this… whatever it was. “Yeah, like that,” he said. “I know this is going to sound strange, but we had this dream. All at the same time, before we had ever really met.” Well, he and Lito had met before the dream, but that didn’t seem particularly important. “And you were in it. You, and a few other people we haven’t met yet.”
“How is that possible?” Kala asked furrowing her brow. It sounded insane. And yet being here with Will, as crazy as he sounded, there was something about it that just felt right. Like she could trust him. Even more than that, it sort of felt like he was part of her somehow.
Will shrugged. “I’m not really sure,” he admitted. “It’s something to do with this place. From what I gather, people have had all sorts of dreams of another life. Some that have given them powers. Other people on the network have shared dreams with one another as well…” He frowned. “Though, I haven’t seen any that have been quite as close as ours,” he admitted.
“What does that mean?” Kala asked with a furrowed brow. She still didn’t understand how people could be connected through dreams. And what made their supposed connection different?
“I don’t really know,” Will admitted, a little sheepishly. Not having the answers didn’t sit right with him, especially not now when he had to explain things to someone else. “In the dreams, it was like… I don’t know. We could go anywhere in the world to see one another. And that everyone’s feelings were my own. That we were all… somehow connected.” He took a sip of his coffee. “It really doesn’t make any sense when you say it out loud, huh?”
“None of this makes any sense,” Kala replied. She was trying to keep her frustration and confusion at bay. Especially because there was a part of her that did somehow trust Will. Even if she had never met him before today. It was odd and she didn’t know how to explain it. Which just went along with the theme of not making sense.
“You got that right,” Will said with a bit of a smile. “But hey, at least you’ve got us to help figure it all out.” Us being Lito and Sun, though he thought that probably went without saying. Even if Kala didn’t feel it now, he was sure that she would soon.
“Yeah,” Kala said with a small smile. “At least there’s that.” And even though she was just saying it to appease Will, there was part of her that believed it.