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Tweak says, "It's alright."

Kimberly Corman hearts nerds (cheatingdeath) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-09-20 23:10:00

Entry tags:

!active, connor temple, day 24, kimberly corman, location: clock tower

Day Twenty-Four, Morning
Who: Kimberly Corman and Connor Temple
What: Trying to find a payphone or, at the very least, civilization void of dangerous people
Where: The clock tower
When: Day 24, 8:30am
Rating: PG
Status: Complete

Kimberly had at least managed to escape the woods unscathed and without the intimidatingly-sized man, King, or the angry woman whose name she had failed to learn. There had to be a payphone somewhere. She'd call Thomas, or her dad, and someone would come pick her up and take her home. When she got there, she'd make her next move - the Stonybrook Institute. It was safer there. The padded room would be boring, but she'd be alive...and safe.

She'd come upon a building, however ramshackle it was and as much as the very idea of going inside made her nervous - bad idea, Kimberly, roof could cave in; could cut yourself on broken glass; break your neck trying to climb the stairs to find a phone... she thought to herself - but she moved carefully and slowly toward the door and into the main room. It was empty and looked uninhabited. There didn't seem to be anywhere a phone would be hooked up, even. "Hello?" she called out tentatively. Maybe if there was someone there, they'd know where she could go to find a phone.

Padding around the room in the socks from King's box, with her eyes on the floor to watch for any rusty nails, Kimberly shifted her own box underneath her arm and squinted in the darkness. King had said there were matches in the box and she could use light, she thought, but he'd also said the matches were wet, which was useless. Besides, Kimberly was terrified to light any of them, anyway. Fire hazard was bad enough, but with Kimberly's luck? She didn't really want to take the chance. "Anyone here?" she tried, pausing in her movement so that she could look up toward the stairs.

Taking a deep breath, Kimberly set her box on the floor and toed it open. She bent down and very carefully extracted the book inside and flipped through it. There seemed to be writing from all different hands. "Huh..." she thought aloud, picking up the pen gingerly and writing a small note. "Like anyone will see this," she muttered to herself, rolling her eyes and dropping both the book and the pen gently back into the box and toeing it shut again. She'd look at the other stuff later.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-24 09:47 pm UTC (link)

Connor's wimpy smile turned into a full-fledged grin when she asked if he was into 'geek stuff'. "Yeah, you could say that," he said with a short laugh. "It's my whole life, technology and computers, electronics, all of that. I've been taking things apart to see how they worked since I was a little kid. Drove my parents insane." It was also just one more thing for them to fight about, but she sure as hell didn't need to know that.

But did she need to know that what was special about him wasn't him, but his career? Maybe not, but it was only fair to say it. No reason to let her go around thinking there was anything great about him. He wasn't Chris or Tonks with their magic powers, or from another planet like Spock or Sigma-guy. He was just the average human with a less than average workday. "Nothing's too special about me," he said honestly. "But my job is. I deal with anomalies...portals through time. I... Yeah, well, I've sort of dealt with the uh...prehistoric." Yeah, sure, that was good enough.

"Cheated death, huh?" he asked, then, attempting to shift the subject some. "You'll find a lot of us have. And, I'm afraid, you haven't escaped that by winding up here." At that, he gave a little groan and a crooked smile. "In fact, it may only be worse. Don't know how bad your near-deaths were before...but this is definitely no better."

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-25 01:21 am UTC (link)

Somehow, Kimberly thought his answer would be yes and she looked down sheepishly even as she smiled. Hopefully, he hadn't taken it offensively. It didn't seem like he had, so Kimberly was at least relaxed even if she felt a little bitchy for saying it like that. "People like you make the world go 'round," Kimberly countered when he said he'd driven his parents insane with it.

Her eyebrows raised in slight - okay, not slight - disbelief when he said he dealt with the prehistoric. "Dinosaurs?" she asked dubiously. Seemed pretty damn unlikely since they were extinct, although if he was serious and wasn't just pulling her leg, it was pretty special... No. It was ridiculous. He had to be full of crap; no way he worked with dinosaurs. "Unless, do you mean, like, in a museum?" she tried.

Suddenly, Kimberly drew into herself a little defensively. "My near-deaths? No. You misunderstand me. I saw myself die in visions...and someone pulled me away from my death right before it was about to happen in real time. I'm on Death's List. I was supposed to die a year ago. I didn't because something made me stay where I was. I was supposed to die in a car wreck, I saw myself die in it...and when I tried to stop it, I ended up putting all the people I was trying to save in mortal peril. And then I watched them all die one by one. In the order we were supposed to, except backward, so if my friend Thomas dies because I'm not there to watch him, then I'm next and here? Here, there's nothing and no one to interfere. I will die. And it won't be pretty. It'll be ugly. So, so ugly," she replied.

"Impaled by a fire ladder through the eye. Crushed by a pane of glass dropped from a crane. Decapitated by faulty elevator doors. Impaled by a piece of plastic tubing when an airbag went off. Sliced to pieces by a barbed wire fence after an explosion. Burned to death in an explosion. Drown and brought back to life - that one was me. Killed by a grill's gas tank exploding. That's what I've seen. That's what I've got to look forward to if I don't get out of here and get back to Thomas. If I can protect him, Death will skip him and then he can protect me and it'll go back to him. We'll take turns forever." Her tone was matter-of-fact and dull as she looked back at him with her eyebrows raised. "This place, no matter how bad you think it is, can't be worse than what I've already lived, believe me. So uh...my thing must be the visions. The thing that makes me special." She shrugged.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-25 06:04 am UTC (link)

Museum. Right. Well, they had met Sarah in one, which was sort of cool. But it was definitely not where he'd started off. And he didn't plan to end up there, either. If he hadn't been recruited (read, begged Cutter to let him join) by the ARC, he'd have wanted to be out in the field. He wanted to find the bones, not show them off. "Not exactly," he said with a slightly smug smile. And then he left it at that. As far as he was concerned, more than enough people knew. If she didn't want to believe in the whole portals through time thing, he wasn't going to force her to. But the sooner she did, the sooner she'd tolerate being in this place.

But then he listened quietly during her story. She actually believed in a pre-determined list for Death and yet couldn't believe in being away from Earth or pre-historic creatures breaking through time anomalies and ending up in the present? How, exactly, was that supposed to work? Not that he was judging; he was genuinely curious. It didn't make a lot of sense and he knew it.

But then she said her friend was at risk if she didn't get back to him. And he wanted to cry for her. Oh, he wouldn't. His masculinity was enough at risk every day. But he definitely wanted to. "I don't know how to say this," he said quietly, "but you won't be getting back there any time soon." Simply put, Kim? You were next. "Seriously? You've seen all of that happen? Because of a car wreck that didn't happen?". Okay, some people would've thought she was mental. But Connor wasn't most people, now was he? "Death sure makes up for lost time, doesn't it? That's...I don't even know what. It's scary, what all you've been through."

Sometimes, a bit of compassion went a long way.

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-26 01:31 am UTC (link)

Brow furrowed, Kimberly looked back at Connor. "Not exactly?" she asked. He either worked in a museum or he didn't, the way she saw it. If he did, it made sense that he worked with dinosaurs. If he didn't, he was crazy. Well, then again, the survivors of the pile-up had thought Kimberly was crazy and now they were all dead. The only one who hadn't thought she was a nutcase was the only one left alive. ...maybe. "How is 'not exactly,' an actual answer to a yes or no question?" she inquired.

Connor said she wasn't getting back anytime soon, Kimberly's brow knit even more deeply and she frowned back at him. If she didn't, Thomas would die and she'd be next. There would be no stopping it. Not until she was dead. As much as Kimberly knew it was well after her time, but she was still scared and she still didn't want to die.

"Yeah. Seriously I've seen all that happen," she said in a low, dull voice as her eyes cast down. "All because I tried to save them. We were supposed to die and when we didn't...Death started tying up loose ends, yeah," she replied with a weak smile that didn't reach her eyes in any way. She swallowed thickly and looked back up at him. "Scary's one way of putting it..." she agreed softly.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-26 05:10 am UTC (link)

Connor exhaled slowly, releasing a pent-up breath through his lips. What he was telling her was less than good news. Would she escape that list being in this place? Maybe. Maybe she'd be one of the few that got a reprieve by being snatched into the glass box. Instead of making her life worse, it would get better. Maybe. "I know you don't believe me," he said quietly, "and I can't say I blame you for that. There's nothing ordinary about all of this. Nothing that can be taken at face value."

Biting his lip, he shrugged. Time to appeal to the part of her that believed in visions, and Death's pre-determined list. "If you can grasp the concept of Death having an actual being, you should be able to accept gaps in time and space travel and the like. Kimberly, I think you may have gotten lucky ending up here. I don't know for certain, but these people, the ones running this place?" He chuckled slightly, though it was almost an angry sound. "They have a way of stopping time, it seems. Of making things turn out how they want."

He started pacing, then, his technical mind working in overtime. The scientist was theorizing, and it was a dangerous thing. "I've a theory that, since you're outside of your own time, Death, your version at least, can't find you here." And now she may as well try and Baker Act him, because she had to think he was certifiable for that statement. He'd just take the padded room next to hers, thanks.

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-27 12:02 am UTC (link)

"I'm the last person with room to call someone crazy," Kimberly replied dully, frowning. "And I know about not taking things at face value," she added. Now, anyway. The visions, with the exception of the first one of the pile up, were never taken at face value. Or rather, when they were, she'd been wrong. Pigeons hadn't killed Tim, the glass had although the pigeons had been at fault. A man with hooks hadn't killed Nora, the elevator had. Doctor Kalarjin hadn't tried to choke her to death, she'd been trying to resuscitate her. "So even though this sounds kind of insane, I...'ve seen crazier."

Kimberly shook her head. "No. You misunderstand. Death is not an actual being, per se. It's just there. It's all around us all the time. There's no Grim Reaper, It's just a non-entity. I...shit, sorry, I know what I mean but I don't know how to explain it, really." Clear would know, she thought but didn't say. "But gaps in time and space? I don't...uh, understand what, really, you mean," she admited. "How can anyone stop time?"

She watched silently with arched eyebrows as Connor began to pace. "Death can always find you when It wants you," she sighed, looking down. "It'd be nice if your theory was right, but even if it was...that doesn't help my friend. He's my responsibility...it's my job to keep him alive."

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