InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "*sporks*"

Katherine Athena (oceantoocean) wrote in we_float,
@ 2010-05-21 22:37:00

Entry tags:

character: alistair icenhour, character: katherine athena, plot: sympathy for the devil

Who: Alistair Icenhour and Katherine Athena.
What: Conversations and further strategy.
When: Saturday, May 22, 2096
Where: Waiting for the Interurban, Fremont, Seattle
Status: Closed; in progress

"Well." Katherine said as she came to a full stop in front of the four statues. "That's something, isn't it?" Her arms, still clutching the notes from a brief meeting with the mayor, pressed her notebook up against her chest without even thinking about it. To protect her heart.

"Waiting for the Interurban" was what someone had titled the work of public art so many years ago that even Katherine, who studied her city's history carefully, knew little about it. It had become an institution--four stone figures standing, on which the public draped clothing and changed outfits at will. However the figures had changed. Someone had sewn on extra limbs into some of the outfits, added lumps of stone to the heads... in short, they were jokers.

"You don't have to stare," a teenage girl stopped and told them, plucking a headphone out of her ear for a moment. "It's been like that since Wednesday." She snapped a piece of gum and rolled her eyes. "I think they shoulda added something more dramatic. Like maybe the Troll." Before Katherine could get more words out of her mouth, the girl had stepped back on a board and let the air hover her down the street.

"Wednesday," Katherine repeated, stepping a little closer.

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	oceantoocean 2010-05-30 12:36 am UTC (link)
	"You," she said, meeting his caution with her own. "Or are you planning to leave this fight?" (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	theseainsideme 2010-05-30 12:53 am UTC (link)
	Alistair blinked again, jaw slackening slightly. "And just what plans did you have for me, Katherine?" he asked, something astonished in his voice and something, very, very tenuous. "And just what do you think you know?" (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

oceantoocean
2010-05-30 01:02 am UTC (link)

She swallowed. "What plans do I have for you? The same plans that I've always had. That you'll stick with this, to the end. That you think we're doing the right thing and that, if something happened to me, you'd continue on."

"That's what I know. That you can be trusted." Katherine said. "What I have to ask now is, do you still believe in my agenda, now that it's changed? Can you do this, knowing that what I actually want is wild card equality? Because, Alistair, everything else has been a terrible lie."

She cleared her throat. "Gun rights. Education. Separation of state and federal governments. All of it... just paled to that, in the end. To this incredibly selfish idea that I had that one day, I could force the world to accept the fact that there wasn't anything a joker could do just as well as a nat."

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theseainsideme
2010-05-30 01:27 am UTC (link)

It seemed gauche to think that his heart was threatening to break out of his chest considering what Katherine just told him, but it was pounding fiercely in there, trying to keep up with the strangling feeling in his chest.

He had to calm down - hyperventilation did not work well in him.

Alistair bit his lip and tried to slow down his breathing so he wasn't burning up all of the dissolved oxygen. Closing his eyes, he said, "Senator, I will not run for public office." He opened his eyes. "Ever. If that's what you're thinking about with this 'continuing on', you need to come up with a different plan."

He shook his head and arose from the couch, hoping that the pacing would help him calm down. "I'm not going to say that I don't agree with your stance; I have even more at stake in it than you do. And I dare say that I have been the most trustworthy person in your acquaintance these last fifteen years and you can ask Burt about that one. But Katherine..."

Alistair paused and faced her. "Either I am a partner in this or I am not in at all. I am not going to be treated like a pawn in this grand scheme of yours - I am not one of them." Alistair gestured outside of the door, meaning the band of delinquents she'd assembled but really, he could have indicated the entire world outside of the room they shared.

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oceantoocean
2010-05-30 01:43 am UTC (link)

"Believe me, Alistair, I know far more about my husband's inability to be trusted than you will ever know," Katherine snapped. "I have no intentions of you running for public office. If that happens, if I fall, then that won't work. We'll have failed in such a way that no one will try for another twenty years."

"What I want- no, what I'm asking- is that you'll consider..." She breathed in, her finger scratching her ear fiercely. "I don't know what to do if this all goes crashing down. I don't know who takes it up. All I know is that I want to know that it's not for nothing at all. I know that there has to be a plan but I don't know where that starts or what it is."

"But if I fail, does it stay political? Can it?"

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theseainsideme
2010-05-30 02:13 am UTC (link)

"What do you mean does it stay political - everything is political!" he bellowed, voice pitching in his uncharacteristic show of worried panic.

Alistair rubbed at the back of his neck. "What justification are you going to give for having voted for the Wild Card Act? How are you going prove that you haven't mind-warped the entire state of Washington into voting for you? Or the Senate?"

Sighing, he started meandering again. "How are you going to prove that this hasn't all been a lie? Or that you aren't doing this to destroy America? What are you going to say after you tell the truth to the Press?"

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oceantoocean
2010-05-30 02:17 am UTC (link)

"I know everything is political," Katherine said, her voice sharper than it had been before. "There is nothing in my life that isn't." She stood up, reaching out to touch his shoulder in an attempt to stop him from walking away.

She expected him to flinch. "Look at me, Alistair. Just stop for a moment and look at me."

Katherine inhaled. "I don't have to tell the truth to the Press. My life has been a lie for decades. It can go on that way."

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theseainsideme
2010-05-30 03:03 am UTC (link)

"That is not what you just said - the endgame is you revealing yourself. Is it or isn't it?" Alistair said, rounding back at the touch on her shoulder. His tone was sharp and frustrated - stress had snapped him.

"Who do you think you'll be revealing yourself to? God, what the hell do you want Katherine? You wanna be a martyr? President? Traitor? WHAT THE HELL? Give me a god damn direction to go in! You want a plan - I will give you a plan - just give me a god damn direction!"

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oceantoocean
2010-05-30 03:10 am UTC (link)

"I want to be myself!" She shouted back at him. "I am tired, so goddamn tired, of being someone else always! My life is something I don't even know anymore- you schedule me and Tereska protects me and I read the goddamn scripts that someone else writes- I don't even know who writes my speeches anymore! I want to know who in the hell I am! I want to, just once, to have someone in my corner that I don't fucking have to pay to get them there!"

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theseainsideme
2010-05-30 03:37 am UTC (link)

"Then why don't you just--"

Alistair cut himself off at the sudden thud within the wall; he knew precisely what it was. He swallowed hard, tried to button himself down before he ripped the water line out of the wall. He was too animated, too over emotional, too...

He waited to see if the sound would happen again purely to look as if it wasn't his fault. When it didn't, he started up again, voice lower, tone calmer.

"You know who you are Katherine. You just want everyone else to know who that is too." He shook his head, heart still beating furiously. "And I don't blame you for that- God knows it's why I never wanted to be in the spotlight. It's what I hate the most about government. No one can ever be themselves."

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	oceantoocean 2010-05-30 03:40 am UTC (link)
	"No, say it," she hissed. "Why don't I just- what?" There was nothing nice about her in that moment, her face angry and twisted so that it was as ugly as the heart that was rapidly beating outside of her chest. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	theseainsideme 2010-05-30 04:08 am UTC (link)
	He couldn't get animated, couldn't get animated... "Be yourself," he replied simply, curtly, hands fisted at his sides. "Why don't you stop trying to get yourself re-elected and be yourself? Why don't you stop cowering behind the Republican line? No one is stopping you but you." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	oceantoocean 2010-05-30 04:31 am UTC (link)
	"Because," Katherine said. "No one wants a joker." Her voice tightened. "Because people don't vote for me. They're voting for Katherine Athena, the role model with the perfect marriage and the beautiful house and honest, American family values. And I am none of that. No matter what I pretend." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

theseainsideme
2010-05-30 04:43 am UTC (link)

"But you're here. You've been voted for. This is it!" Alistair closed his eyes and bowed his head, trying to remain calm while being utterly exasperated by the woman before him. "This is precisely the same argument we had when you started this whole seditious endeavor. You know how I feel on the subject. I don't need to repeat it save to say that no one ever is going to want a Joker. If you're waiting for that, you're going to die first."

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	oceantoocean 2010-05-30 04:46 am UTC (link)
	"This is it," Katherine agreed finally. Her eyes closed for a moment, then opened. "And I can't take back the past. What's done is done." She felt empty as she said it, the frustration draining from her slowly. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

theseainsideme
2010-05-30 05:10 am UTC (link)

"What's done is done," he agreed. After a moment, he crouched down in front of the couch, one hand balancing himself on the arm rest. "All we can do is move on."

Alistair head tilted gently. It was times like these that he felt his relative youth; for all his experience, there was no experience that could assist him here. He couldn't thread this needle - to have Katherine be a public Joker, keep her job, still actually be effectual. He couldn't.

The ambition in him wanted to though.

He rose up and took a seat next to her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

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	oceantoocean 2010-05-30 05:18 am UTC (link)
	"I suppose it's why I told you," she said. "I needed someone to tell me that it wasn't possible. Someone that I'd believe." Her hands folded quietly, the fight throbbing out of her gradually, with every beat of her heart. "I'd appreciate it," Katherine added. "If we didn't speak of this again." Her eyes stared at her feet, noticing how old they looked. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

theseainsideme
2010-05-30 05:44 am UTC (link)

He turned his head to look at her. This isn't the way he wanted the conversation to end, nor was that the way he wanted Katherine to feel.

"Excuse me," Alistair said after a moment, rising up and going to the half bath.

He went immediately to the sink and turned on the tap to douse water over his face, slide some along the back of his neck. It was a poor replacement for what he really wanted, which was to lie in bed and be alone in his thoughts to properly think and breathe and think. Maybe there was a way? Was he just not thinking of this in the right way? Perhaps it only seemed so impossible out of his own blindness on the subject.

He looked at his fingers, at the smudged makeup from just over his throat. He was just as bad as she was. Worse, maybe. Alistair turned off the water and watched the rest of the water sheet off of him into the porcelain.

What did he want? Wistful blue eyes met their mirror image and Alistair knew what he wanted. Security. Safety. He wanted all the misery Amelia went through in her adolescence to miss Xaviera. He wanted to know he would always be able to provide for her and himself. He wanted people to not be flaming, bigoted idiots.

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oceantoocean
2010-05-30 05:49 am UTC (link)

Katherine didn't watch as he left. Instead, she rose herself and walked back into the kitchen. Her hand opened the cabinet in which Bart kept his whiskey, then stopped, shutting it quietly.

It wasn't what she wanted.

What she wanted was impossible and not what she'd told Alistair at all. She wanted him to make it happen and then, Katherine thought, she'd been irrational when his response was what any sane person's would have been. No. She paused. Actually, it had been kinder.

"You're a fool, Katherine," she whispered to herself. "A goddamn fool." Her hand opened the drawer again, resting a knife on the counter, then taking out bread and peanut butter again. The motion of making a sandwich, however sick she felt in the pit of her stomach, was soothing. It was a step towards doing something and the scent itself reminded her of those days, however distant, when she hadn't been a monster.

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theseainsideme
2010-05-30 06:40 am UTC (link)

She wasn't in the living room when he'd emerged, no trace of any of the water he'd splashed on himself left. He went to the next obvious location - the kitchen.

He stopped at the threshold when he spotted her, attacking another slice of bread with peanut butter. Alistair took a deep breath and moved into the room.

"Katherine," Alistair began, thinking that he'd never said her name so many times in one day before. He stopped and went to the island to lean against it. "Katherine," he started again, "I don't think I'm the person to advise you on this."

It was bitter to admit it, but he continued nonetheless. "I'm not sure I can stay objective. I look at the position that you're in, the power that you have... I know you feel like you're paralyzed by what you've built yourself up to be and who you are but, but I disagree and I do so not because I have some sort of trumped up confidence in Congress giving you a pass." Alistair licked his dry lips and looked a little ashamed with himself.

"I want the ceiling to be broken. I want the move made. I don't want this left to the next Joker that some how manages to slip their way into Congress cause I'm not sure it'll happen again. It sucks that you are the first because in the scheme of history, you likely aren't. But you're there now. Right now while the future is still being made. Do you really want to leave this to chance on the next generation? How many Wild Cards do you think are going to have the chance to grow up and be something 10 or 20 years into the Wild Card Act? What if their right to vote gets pulled?"

For once, the wistfulness in his eyes was pretty accurate. "You don't know how terrifying that thought is," he said with careful emphasis. "It was one thing when I thought this was just some act of your conscience, some righteous act. But knowing this now, that you're a Joker... I don't know if I can be impartial. I don't know if I can advise you to keep quiet on this. I just..." Alistair trailed off, rubbing the bridge of his nose in defeat.

"Katherine, I've always thought that you were someone worth electing. That you were strong enough to meet any challenge head on and that you genuinely had the people's best interest in mind. I hope you know that," Alistair added, not to placate her but just as a statement of why he'd stuck around all these years. "I just don't know what to do."

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oceantoocean
2010-05-30 06:56 am UTC (link)

"That story that I tell at grade schools about wanting to be a senator and then the president as a little girl? It's true, Alistair, it's all true." Her fingers peeled the crust off her slice of bread. "What I don't tell the children is that Mom told me I was never going to be the president. That was the cost of being a joker."

She took a bite out of the sandwich, looking calmer than she felt. "Call a press conference then, Alistair. We'll see if she was right."

Another bite followed, then a third. It was better to chew than to talk, her mind working through everything that it represented. She inhaled and said, "I'll need a week first. I need to talk to Bart about this. He should know before the reporters track him down."

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	theseainsideme 2010-05-30 03:51 pm UTC (link)
	"A week?" Alistair took a deep, disbelieving breath. Call a press conference. In a week? "I don't --" Alistair stopped and gestured up in the air. "I'm going to need more than a week. You're going to need more than a week." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	oceantoocean 2010-05-30 04:14 pm UTC (link)
	"Then tell me when," Katherine said. "I can wait. Years, if need be. I've waited my whole life up to now." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

theseainsideme
2010-05-30 05:08 pm UTC (link)

He wasn't sure if he was waiting for her to laugh and tell him off or if he was waiting for her to suddenly spout out any number of ideas. Her face certainly wasn't giving anything away.

How did he get here? How is this the way the conversation went? It wasn't lack of oxygen that was crushing his chest, but anticipation, nerves, excitement. Was she serious? Was she?

"Okay," he said, still watching her for any indication that this was not what he thought it was. "Okay."

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oceantoocean
2010-05-30 05:15 pm UTC (link)

Katherine swallowed. She felt cold and flushed all at the same time. This wasn't what she'd expected of Alistair and yet, given his reaction to the team... she wasn't sure how it was possible that she'd expected anything different.

This-this was an honest decision made of personal need and not for political gain. It scared the hell out of her.

"Okay," she repeated, the mask dropping. She looked terrified as her hand once more rested over her heart. Protecting it.