Clarke Griffin (wanheda__) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2020-06-10 17:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, clarke griffin, john murphy |
Who: Clarke Griffin & John Murphy
When: Backdated: Early May
Where: A Book Store
What: Random Meeting of Dream Acquaintances.
Rating/Warnings: Family Friendly
Status: Complete
One of Clarke’s favorite places to be, besides a hospital, was the bookstore. Reading had always been one of her favorite past times and that hadn’t changed even as her workload once she became a resident had gotten busier. She always seemed to find the time to read somehow whether it was on her breaks or before or after her shifts. Either way, she always found the time and that meant that she also needed to go to the bookstore as often as she could, which was where she was on her day off.
She was looking for something new. Something unlike the other books she usually read and was walking down an aisle, just looking at the covers, waiting for something to jump out at her. Waiting for a cover that she couldn’t walk past, but so far everything just seemed so boring. She was beginning to think maybe she might make a post on the Network for book recommendations. See what other people were reading these days.
Taking a break from the theatre meant John had a lot of extra time on his hands. He wasn’t working, didn’t have to because he lived in his parent’s basement and didn’t have rent or utilities to worry about. He was free to come and go as he pleased, and that meant spending a few afternoons in the bookstore.
Books were easy. He could get lost in books. And like Clarke, he enjoyed browsing, fluttering by the shelves to see if anything jumped out at him. Which meant sometimes being so wrapped up in the books and the shelves and the possibilities that he lost track of the real world around him until he nearly collided with someone.
“Oh. Sorry,” he said automatically, paired with an awkwardly executed sign due to the books he held in his dominant arm.
Clarke had just pulled a book off the shelf and was skimming the back, her own back to the end of the shelf so she was unaware that anyone was coming around into the same aisle until they collided with her, which caused her to turn quickly, “Oh, wow. No, it’s okay.” She said, assuming that the guy hadn’t walked into her on purpose. She was about to say something else when she got a good look at the man and her eyes widened slightly as she realized that she had seen him before. In her dream.
Murphy. He looked so different than the confrontational delinquent from her dreams that she almost wasn’t sure it was actually him or if her brain was just randomly putting faces from her dreams onto other people.
John might look a bit older and less wild than the Murphy of his dreams, but he recognised Clarke right away. She’d emerged as something of a leader of the Delinquents once they were on the ground. He’d known who she was on The Ark, but she was untouchable, then. She had been the daughter of two prominent people, and would never associate with the likes of a lowly farm station boy like himself.
Except that dream persona wasn’t him. He was an arrogant bastard that John felt little in the way of a real connection. Honestly, the more he dreamed about his space life, the less he liked the way his dreams chose to represent him. He was rude and brash and did stupid, impuslive things to make himself feel more important when he was, quite literally, nothing and no one of any importance. He didn’t even have enough farm station knowledge to help with the growing of crops.
This wasn’t really the time to analyse his dreams, even if he was confronted by someone who seemed to have walked right out of them. He blinked at her to clear his brain. “Clarke?” the name rolled off his tongue. He didn’t know this person in front of him, but his dream self knew her dream self. He had no idea really how to process that.
Any doubt that this was the Murphy from her dream world was squashed when he said her name. There was no other way that this man would know her name unless he’d already dreamt about her, “Murphy?” This was probably the most surreal thing that had ever happened to Clarke and she wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. She knew that there were people who dreamt about the same dream world, but she had assumed that those people must have already known each other. She hadn’t expected she might actually meet someone who shared hers since there had been no one in her dreams that she had recognized aside from her parents.
He nodded in response to his name on her lips. Well. This was new. He recognised a few people in his dreams, mainly his parents. And a couple people he’d known in school or something. But he didn’t know her, and here she was, as if she’d walked right out of his dreams into the real world.
“I’m deaf,” he told her using his voice. It was difficult to sign with anything in his hands. “I can read your lips, so look at me when you talk.” He wasn’t deaf in the dreams, he had no issue with his ears at all, so she had no way of knowing that he was deaf outside of the dreams.
Clarke’s eyes widened slightly as Murphy said he was deaf. Having dreamt about him, not too long ago, that was the last thing she would have thought his real life counterpart might have been. “Oh. Okay.” Clarke had thought about learning side language a few times, figuring that it would be a good thing to know especially at the hospital in case she ever had a deaf patient, but with all of her hours at the hospital it had left her with very little time to try and find a class or any other way to teach herself, “Wow, so you’ve dreamt about me then?” It really was the only way that Murphy would know her.
“Yeah,” he said. It wasn’t so much dreaming about her as she was just sort of there. One of the emerging leaders of their band of misfit delinquent teenagers, but it amounted to the same thing. She was in his dreams, therefore he dreamed about her. “I woke up with the tracking bracelet on, a few nights ago. The one they put on us when they sent us to the ground.” He probably didn’t need to explain, but figured it couldn’t hurt.
As Murphy mentioned the wristcuff, Clarke’s gaze went straight to his wrists, searching for the cuff briefly before lifting her gaze back up to his face, “What did you do with it?” Clarke had heard about things crossing over into the real world, but she hadn’t experienced that yet and now she wondered why Murphy would have gotten something and she hadn’t. At the same time she assumed that if everything happened the same way for each person then things would be boring.
“I took it off,” he told her. “Cut it off,” he amended. It wasn’t like he could just take the damn thing off. “And I gave it to Pidge to look at.” To see if it was actually transmitting information. He needed to check in with Pidge about that. He didn’t really think there was anything to report, even though the bracelet had been powered when he woke up, it went dead the moment Dan broke the link.
“How did you do that?” On the off chance that Clarke ever woke up with the cuff she wanted to know the best way to get it off. Unlike in the dreams she didn’t see any reason to wear it in the real world; it wasn’t like it was transmitting information anywhere. “Wow, so, how weird is this?” Meeting someone she’d dreamt about was probably the strangest thing that had ever happened to her and she’d seen some strange things in the last few months since joining Valar.
“Bolt cutters,” he told her. He had a small fading mark on his palm from where he’d tried to get it off with a screwdriver. He was going to have a scar, but it was minor. He wasn’t worried about it in the least. The fact the bracelet had been on his wrist when he woke up was far more troubling. “It’s very weird. Do you know anyone else, in the dreams? I know Bellamy.”
Clarke nodded, making a mental note to keep that in mind in case she ever woke up with the wrist cuff from the dreams. Not that she had any bolt cutters, but she would figure something out, she was sure. “Nope. I mean, just my parents. They’re the same in the dreams and real life.” Her eyes widened slightly as Murphy mentioned knowing Bellamy, “Really? I wonder why you know someone from the dreams, but I don’t. These dreams make absolutely no sense, do they?”
“They make no sense at all,” John agreed. There was no sense to be made from what he dealt with in the dreams. And while they had taken different paths the moment they’d hit the ground, their dreams were intertwined. She was in his, he was in hers, and here they were having a random encounter, meeting for the first time, in a bookstore.
“No, they really don’t.” Clarke said, shaking her head, “Hey, if you have some time, would you want to get a coffee?” She gestured towards the adjacent cafe inside the bookstore, “I mean, if we’re gonna dream about each other, we might as well get to know each other a little, right?” She smirked, raising her brows as she waited for Murphy’s response.
“I’d like that,” John nodded. He wasn’t on any time schedule, he had nowhere he had to he. He could take a few minutes to grab a coffee and get to know Clarke. He was nothing like his dream self, so he was willing to give her the same benefit of the doubt. Not that Clarke in the dreams seemed to be an asshole like he was, but still.