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Tweak says, "Hoist the mainbrace."

dǫçţǫŗ şɭęęƥ (shone) wrote in valloic,
@ 2022-03-04 08:08:00

Entry tags:

!: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: dan torrance, ₴ inactive: melody williams

Melody Williams & Dan Torrance

WHAT: Winding down after the Sphere nonsense, and having an existential crisis talk
WHERE: Looking-Glass Teas
WHEN: After Mel returns
WARNINGS: Not so much
STATUS: Complete

Do you by chance have a secondary career as a motivational speaker?

The place wasn't exactly what Melody would have expected going by the name, but she liked it. If she were honest, it suited her better than whatever Wonderland fantasy she'd somehow conjured up in her mind before entering.

Her ribs were (more than) bruised, and her sleeve didn't quite cover the bandage on her right arm. But she'd fared better than many during their ten-day adventure. And aside from the fact she was moving a little more slowly, sitting a little more stiffly, one might not even know anything was wrong. That was a very River trait, ignoring the pain, hiding the damage…a skill Melody had drawn on because it was useful to her in the moment. Unfortunately, a tendency toward being late, even when choosing the time herself, was something Melody had always been every bit as guilty of as River.

But once they were both settled with tea in front of them, she smiled. "Not to criticize your profession, but these are much preferable surroundings."

Looking-Glass Teas definitely had a certain aesthetic about it - Dan liked the place, had been here a few times, and the exposed brick reminded him of a café you might find in Brooklyn. There were all sorts of shapes to make out of it, and the mismatched teacups were a nice touch. Not everything was organized or uniform, and the apocalyptic decor was reminiscent of standing on the brink of reality - of course, a lot of Alice in Wonderland was like that anyway, no matter the re-telling.

Plus, the tea was good - Dan was a coffee person through and through, but he did enjoy a good cup of aromatic leaf water here and there. Especially if the person he was with preferred tea, otherwise he might never come to a place like this (unless Claire wanted a tea party - she was fond of those). “No offense taken,” he chuckled, stirring his tea - pomegranate lemon black tea, something good for spring. He was excited to try it, at least. “My profession’s necessary but I wish I didn’t have to see people as often as I do.”

The time in the sphere for some people had been rough. Ten days for them but five for those in Vallo - Dan didn’t understand how that worked, but then again, most things in Vallo likely weren’t meant to be understood beyond a rudimentary level anyway. “You’re recovering okay?”

Out of sync time was something that no longer even gave Mel pause. There were plenty of reasons time might have moved, or appeared to move, differently for them than it had for those left behind in Vallo. She was still more upset that she’d been attacked by a book than anything else.

"I’m fine, sweetie." Apparently, she lied almost as well as River, too. "To be honest, I didn’t mind it as much as I’d have thought."

That, at least, was the truth. She’d always enjoyed a good adventure, but her idea of adventure had been a remote dig or backpacking across the country. Not exactly the same thing as being trapped in a semi-homicidal puzzle box.

“I’ve kept the dagger. And the sword.” But she was carrying the dagger with her.

Fine, sweetie was definitely a lie - and Dan didn’t even have to flex a bit of the Shining to be able to pick up on it. But he also wouldn’t push too hard about it - decompressing here in a relatively quiet spot with a cup of tea was effective, and not everything needed to be discussed in detail either or talked through, necessarily, in order to actually get through it. Dan figured that his presence and support with being something of a pillar would be helpful, and he could most certainly offer that at the very least.

“It’s not the first time Vallo’s snatched people away to another dimension too,” he huffed a laugh without humor, finally lifting the cup to take a sip. “I think this is the third time? Though ancient Vallo wasn’t another dimension, per se, it was just a surprise trip to the past.” He could have done without it, personally, but it turned out okay - these things always did.

She’d have laughed, but it would have hurt. She settled for a nod. “I did get the impression it was becoming something of a habit.” She idly spun her cup one direction then back the other, but she wasn’t paying it any attention. In fact, she wasn’t quite looking at him now either. “The funny thing is, I think it’s the sort of thing I’ll be good at, and I’m not sure if I want to be.”

But she already had been. Or will be. It was all dreadfully confusing.

“You knew her, liked her? Me, I mean. What was I like? What kind of person did you think I was?”

Dan hummed thoughtfully. “Hopefully you won’t have to be good at it too often here,” he pointed out. “We’re all good at things we don’t necessarily want to be, at least back where we come from.” Some of those skills just shouldn’t be applicable - like was he good at tracking and hunting psychic vampires, and putting a bullet into their brains from a distance? Yeah, sure. Did he hope it wouldn’t be an issue here? Most definitely.

He was nearly certain that Rose the Hat, with her breathy voice and the way she oozed sensuality, was long gone - but nearly certain wasn’t all the way certain, and if she’d been right she also wasn’t the last of her kind either. Dan could only hope that Abra would be equipped to deal with those threats, since he was no longer around to put himself in between her and those who wished to harm her.

Taking another sip of tea, he considered the question. “I did like her,” he said about River. “She was a good friend. Strategic. Driven by her feelings, even if she didn’t like to talk about them much,” he offered a ghost of a smile. “I think she knew - there were just some things you couldn’t change. Fixed points in time. You have to let things play out sometimes.” Which was hard for most to accept.

Yeah. Mel was struggling with that bit. Who was she back home? Who was she here?

She'd been fairly proud of her career as an archaeologist, knew her skill. She'd always tried to be a good daughter, look after her parents. There had been days she could have put more effort into being a better sister, but that had worked itself out in the end. As River, she'd been none of those things. Oh, she'd been an archaeologist and a daughter and even a sister, but she hadn’t really been any of them. She'd been good at waking up in unexpected places, chaos, running. Killing.

The closest Melody had ever gotten to wielding a weapon was threatening her (not yet) ex-wife with a trowel, practically a weekly occurrence between them when they were on a dig. But she'd not hesitated on either occasion she'd found need to use one since arriving here.

Strategic.

Yes. She could see that. Cold. She could see that, too.

“Nearly everything in River's life was decided before she was born. She knew that. I knew that. Time always gets its way. Eventually.”

She took a sip of her tea, giving herself a minute to consider what she wanted to say next.

“My life was nothing but a series of choices. I chose to study archaeology. I chose to leave home. I chose who I fell in love with, when I married her. And then I chose to divorce her, even though we both knew we were still in love. I chose to settle in Las Vegas, much to my mother's disappointment. It was my life. There was no question in that.”

And now all she had were questions.

River had once said the only decision she ever made for herself was choosing to love the Doctor. Dan believed that - seeing them together, when they both had been in Vallo, cemented it for him. It was such a stark contrast with Melody, who had an entirely different life. She was struggling.

“What do you think your life is now?” he wanted to know. Was it composed of choice? Or was there something else at play? Besides the usual Vallo bullshit where they didn’t get to decide who stayed or who went - could they build something here, go down new paths, put the puzzle pieces together in new ways that they never considered before?

Well, Dan definitely thought so. But he supposed not everyone did and that was a choice too.

"No longer my own." It was the simplest answer she could give. "I don’t think it has been since..." She pushed her left sleeve up enough to reveal the mark on her wrist, only faintly glowing today. Letting her sleeve fall back down, she took another sip of her tea and shook her head. "That’s when all of this started."

She’d been trying ever since to keep herself divided into two people, but she couldn’t.

"In some ways, nothing has changed. I still love my parents, my brother, my wife." She smiled. "Ex-wife." Those things were important, of course, but it was getting harder to separate Melody’s thoughts and emotions from River’s. And why wouldn’t it? She was the same person, wasn’t she? "But sometimes I forget I’ve never been to The Library. I never married a time traveller or spent half my life in a cage for him."

She did laugh this time, without any humor, and immediately regretted it when her ribs protested. In very River fashion, she carried on after only the vaguest pause.

"Sometimes, sweetie, I forget I’m real."

“I imagine, given everything you’ve been through, it would be easy to forget that,” Dan said. His fingers, rough and calloused, traced the edge of his own tea mug as he let it cool a little more. The steam from the hot cup wafted like smoke, a fragrant magic unto its own. “But - you are real. I can at least help remind you of that.”

He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be constantly at war with yourself in such a way - there was no easy solution for it either. No instant fix, not with magic or probably much of anything else - like those absolute points in time, those absolute events, some things were just unable to be changed. Maybe amended or worked around, but vanquished with the snap of one’s fingers or something? Not so much.

"Which one of us?" It was a pointed question, but one she didn’t actually expect an answer to. How could he know when she wasn’t even sure herself anymore? "Her body. Her memories. Hell, I even fell in love with someone else, and I don’t know if it was me or something left behind from when I was her, drawing us together."

Maybe in that last instance it had been a little of both. Jo did have a certain charm, even if she never would have imagined herself with someone like her before she’d met her. But she and the Doctor had always seemed like an odd pair on the surface, too.

"I think it would have been easier if I’d hated her, or if you’d given me a reason to. I wasn’t without flaws, I know that. And her life was a series of horrors and prisons, with a handful of shining moments in the middle. She never thought it wasn’t worth it. She just kept living."

Mel had never considered herself weak, but she didn’t have strength like that. She’d never needed it. But River could also be cold, calculating. Sometimes she still lost herself, and other times she simply misplaced her conscience.

"Whose life do I choose? Whose instincts should I follow? How long do you think I’ll be able to tell the difference?" She smiled across the table at him, gentle if a little sad. "Maybe I am real, sweetie. Maybe you’ll have to keep reminding me. But I’m losing part of myself. The only question is which part."

He smiled a little, thinking back to a conversation he’d had with Catra. Different circumstances, of course, and Catra had been through different things - but the crux of the conversation had been about acceptance; those types of talks were always difficult to have, because simply accepting something for what it was happened to be a real damn difficult thing to do. It was a part of life, a stage of grief (which didn’t really go through stages but was more like a hurricane, a churning ocean that lived inside of you instead) - but it was hard.

“Well - those are tough questions. Maybe it’s a matter of figuring out who Melody Williams is, and what that means to you. And who River is, and what that means - does she live at the heart of you, the core of your being? Is she you? Accepting that she may be could be easier but what’s easier isn’t always...feasible, I guess,” Dan mused. “Ultimately I don’t think you need anyone to tell you who you are. You know who you are.”

Could be that she’d lost her way a little, but Melody would figure it out. Of that he was certain.

"Do you by chance have a secondary career as a motivational speaker?" Despite the light note of teasing, she was grateful simply that he’d listened, and that he hadn’t tried to tell her what she should or shouldn’t be thinking. He wasn’t the one with two conflicting lives in his head, as far as she knew. In fact, here, she seemed to be fairly unique in that regard. "I understand why I liked you. I would be surprised if she wasn’t annoyed in the beginning. She never did care for sharing her feelings."

Melody didn’t seem to have the same hesitance in opening up. Honesty all but spilled out of her. Most of the time. That seemed to be changing now, too.

"I think she was me. Or will be me? Could be me again?" She thought that might have been less confusing if Dan were a time traveller. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t. It still gave her a headache. Melody William’s life, her life, that she was fighting so hard to hold onto, felt like a pale shadow in comparison, in danger of slipping away completely.

Taking a careful deep breath, she gently started to spin her teacup again. She didn’t do well with idle hands. “I believe you know enough about my life. For now. What about you? It seems you have me at a disadvantage. You mentioned something about a wife?”

A motivational speaker? Dan took that as a compliment - his eyes crinkled at the corners when his grin deepened; it was a warm smile. “She definitely didn’t care for sharing her feelings in the beginning,” he agreed. It had taken awhile for River to open up - but with enough patience and time, it happened. Like cultivating a particularly stubborn flower and coaxing the petals to open, something like that - it had definitely been something, to see her bloom here in Vallo.

Before she disappeared, but. Hopefully that wouldn’t happen again anytime soon - give them a break, Vallo.

“Oh, but yeah, I’m married - her name’s Allison,” he said. “She owns a salon here called Empress Hair Salon. We’ve been married for about a year and a half. Together for a little over two years.” Time flew, it was truly amazing - and despite watching the comings and goings, he and Allison stayed rooted. “She has her daughter Claire here too, who just turned seven. So I’m also a parent.”

It didn’t surprise her, sitting across from him now, that if River had started opening up, it would have been with Dan. And it was nice to know there was someone she could trust, who River would have trusted, if she ever needed to talk about that life, about River's secrets. Because they frightened her more than her own.

“Ah, parenting. I've never had the privilege. That must be a challenge.” Her fingers tap-tapped a quiet rhythm against her cup. Unlike River, she hadn’t quite learned to appreciate stillness yet. “I was just a little older than Claire when my brother was born, so when he got to that age, I remember it well.”

“It’s definitely a challenge on many occasions,” Dan concurred, swallowing another mouthful of tea - it went down easy, soothing his throat. “We try to give her as much structure and stability as we can, even though Vallo’s constantly changing and throwing things at us.” That was an understatement - though at least they’d managed to sort of anticipate when things were going to happen; after a period of calm, there was always a storm. Always. Without fail. “But she’s in school with the local kids and has made plenty of friends so that’s a good thing too. She’s happy here.”

That was all he and Allison wanted for her - and he knew how important this time was to Allison as well, since she was denied any sort of custody rights at all back in her world. Likely she’d never see her daughter again and that hurt. For all Vallo did to them, Dan couldn’t complain too much - because Allison needed this, needed Claire in her life.

“If you’d like to come by sometime, it’d be nice to have you,” he offered. “Dinner. I make decent home-cooked things. Sometimes with hidden vegetables, but.” That was just because Claire was seven and he had to be sneaky.

"It can’t be easy." She’d been here all of a few weeks, and already she could see the instability of life in a place like Vallo. Yet, here Dan was, with a wife and a child, having made a home for himself here. She could see that, too.

But his offer made her shake her head gently. "I wouldn’t want to impose. You hardly know me." Her confessions of identity crisis aside. "But I would love to meet them sometime."

“It’s not an imposition,” Dan promised. “I’d like it if you came by - no pressure, but think about it? We enjoy having friends over.” And family - Allison’s rather large brood, growing and shrinking depending on Vallo’s whims, had always been a delight to Dan. Even if most would argue that the Hargreeves clan was more than a little bit quirky.

But so what? He worked well with quirky. Besides, as someone who came from a small family - and as someone who had never really gotten a chance to know his own half-sister - he was warmed by that special type of togetherness and ‘I want to strangle you but I love you so I won’t’ kind of vibe that came with having a close-knit family.

She took a swallow of tea, then nodded, her hands finally stilling. "I’ll consider it."

There weren’t many people here Melody could consider friends. In fact, Dan was the closest, because he’d known her before, or some version of her. She wondered if it might simply be easier to refer to River as her sister, as she had Brooke and the others. Ah, but that was the trouble. They’d been part of River’s life, not hers. She was too connected to River, had too much trouble separating herself, sometimes referring to her as a separate person entirely and sometimes seeming to forget she’d ever had another life besides.

Reaching across the table, she laid her hand lightly on his arm, her touch warm but fleeting. "Whether I end up as Melody or River or not quite either one, I’m glad to have met you."

The touch was surprising but welcomed - Dan’s fingers managed to brush hers briefly before the moment dissipated, and he offered a smile in reply. “The sentiment is returned,” he assured. And, well, it was always nice to sit down and have a cup of tea with a friend too - those moments felt so rare in Vallo.

Maybe he’d grab one of those baked goods too, the ones at the front counter - it seemed a prime opportunity for one and they did look delicious.