theresnodoor | Not Quite OOM

Entry tags:

milliways

Not Quite OOM

It's about space and time.

And how neither pass, when you spend your days in Milliways.

And nights.

And mornings.

And evenings.

Rachel copes. She doesn't live, she doesn't thrive. She just copes. Gymnastics and magazines and people who pass in and out of the door. The occasional trip to the Labyrinth - with company - and the effort she goes to in order to make sure no one notices just how often she walks into it herself.

Sleeping in a bed with a hawk perched nearby, pretending she can't feel the way he watches her.

Pretending she has nothing to hide from him, not anymore.

But today?

Today Rachel is swimming in the lake. It's a good day for it. Nice and sunny, even outside the Caribbean beach. The water is cool but it's easy to get used to. And Bar even gave her a nice one piece.

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Steph looks over at her, and for the first time a tiny grin is quirking her too-serious face.

"Oh, you know. Fine."

It's funny because of what they're not saying, even though it's hanging in the air so loudly all around them.

Giggling is a possibility here.

The tone of her words tipped Rachel off first, too light, too silly.

Glancing over and catching sight of that tiny grin...

Yeah, Rachel has a tiny smile of her own.

Okay. Maybe some giggles, too.

Maybe more in common than just horrific deaths, Steph realises, and finds her tiny grin becoming warmer, happier. Not forced, now.

"You know," she offers, "if you get enough of a run-up, you can jump from some of the balconies up there right into the lake. it's way more fun than talking about the weather. Which was totally next on my list of Kinda Awkward Conversational Gambits."

Rachel glances at her again, smile fading.

She knows exactly how far you can jump from those balconies.

Though she hadn't hit the lake that time.

"Is leaping off of tall buildings part of that list?" she asks, forcing her smile back, tight but present.

Amused, part of her.

Wondering, maybe. About a dead-once-dead girl. With a love for adrenaline.

Steph's smile is a little bit wistful as she looks up at the building, picking out the room that used to be hers, moving along to the room that she shares with Kita now. It's mostly full of ghosts. Her stuff and Kita's stuff, scattered around where Indy used to make waffles, where Goldy brought her daughter, where Mel -- Steph tries not to think about Mel. Ghosts of people who aren't even dead, just ... gone, and she doesn't really have much hope that they'll be back.

"... I keep forgetting it's not part of everyone's list," she remarks, with a little grin. "It should be. It's fun."

"...I know."

She does. That night is on her mind a lot, wondering what other morphs could be used. She'd never thought about landing as a human, but if Steph could reach the lake, there's no reason why Rachel couldn't.

So long as they use a balcony that isn't her own. Isn't one she shares.

"Yeah, it- it sounds fun. Let's do it."

"Oh, I - I didn't mean we should ..." Steph stumbles, words caught in her throat, hesitating over a face-saving lie.

Then she ditches it, unspoken. Why bother?

"It was wishful thinking. I can't do it. Yet." She waves at her leg. In swimsuit and hoodie, her legs are bare - and although they're faded, pale, the scars are still there, running up and down her skin, clustered at the back of one knee. "Can't run fast enough to jump. Yet."

The yet is very important to her.

"Oh."

She tries not to stare. She gets so far as glancing before forcing her gaze away. The wave of that hand or not, those are scars from a girl who was in a war.

You just don't stare at those. Ever.

"Swimming's easier?" Rachel asks, watching the water.

Steph nods, and there's appreciation for Raxhel's care in the smile she gives the other warrior.

"Speed doesn't matter. And there's more resistance. I'm so close to being able to run again, so close, but not close enough for roof-jumping just yet. It's been a while."

"So what do you do?"

"At the moment?"

Steph shrugs, with a tiny smile.

"I wait. Not sure for what. I'm kind of out of the fight, and I don't ... really know what I'm meant to do with that."

"No, I mean, like..."

Rachel smiles, slight, glancing over.

"Do. Like, daily. Since the old options are out."

"Oh, right." Steph grins, dismissing her own confusion with a handwave. "I'm, um, nursing. In Kenya. We go from village to village bringing medicines and giving vaccinations and stuff. I think Lesley's trying to make me into a healer instead of a fighter."

She picks up a pebble in her left hand, bounces it once or twice on her palm, and then flicks it out across the glassy surface of the lake. Seven, eight, nine skips before it sinks. No hesitations or sense of performance on Steph's part. Just a girl, skipping stones.

"I'm not sure it's working, honestly."

Rachel can take a running jump and leap off a balcony.

But she can't skip a stone like that.

"...it doesn't sound like it would," she admits, quiet but firm. "I don't... I don't think people change like that."

"I thought maybe I could at first," Steph says, flicking another pebble. Exactly the same direction, distance, and skips as the one before. Exactly. "But I'm itching to ... I don't know. Not back to Gotham, probably. Everyone I knew thinks I'm dead. Maybe Nairobi needs a Batman."

She's only mostly joking.

Exactly. Rachel nearly misses what was said in watching that stone, frowning at it.

"Well... maybe it does."

Steph's laugh is soft. "It totally doesn't. I think I'm going to have to look for answers somewhere in the real world instead of in my past. Once I'm back in shape."

Flick. The same distance. No coincidence. (Just the subconscious pattern of a thousand throws before.)

"What about you? What do you do all day?"

A warrior without a war.

Rachel shrugs, watching the stone skip again.

Exactly the same.

Like her. Day in, day out. With the occasional trip out someone else's door. The Labyrinth.

"Can you show me how to do that?" she asks, abrupt.

Steph's watching Rachel, not the pebbles, and it takes her a second to catch up with the conversation.

"-- skip stones? Sure, I guess. It's pretty easy, once you figure out how to twist your wrist right." Instead of flicking the pebble that's in her hand, she tosses it to Rachel, picking up a new one for herself.

"I used to be better at it before. Now --" A shrug. "Re-learning. Like everything." Her right arm won't quite do it yet, and Steph doesn't want to force it, not when she's so close to healed.

It's pretty easy.
I used to be better at it before.

The right thing to do would be to point out that Rachel can't do it at all.

But that would be admitting she doesn't know how to do something.

She can at least catch the pebble tossed in her direction, rolling it in her fingers for a moment. "How much longer are they giving you?"

"Well, Lesley doesn't expect me to be trying to get back to combat readiness," Steph says, smile slightly wicked. "Or know I've been working so hard on my own. Her estimates aren't much use. But ... I figure another couple months. Especially if I visit here and squeeze some extra time in."

She holds up the pebble and moves her wrist through the skip in very slow motion, not actually releasing the rock. "You want to spin it as well as throw it. Like a tiny frisbee."

Rachel smiles back, blooming into a slow grin.

She feels worse for the whole hauling-over-the-bar thing. Steph is... she's kind of Rachel's sort of girl.

Watching Steph's hand carefully, she tries to mimic the motion, very slowly. It feels odd, unnatural and new. But so did punching when X started teaching her.

(she's still crap at it, but it's definitely easier than it was)

She runs through it a few times, not releasing the pebble but moving in that same slow, controlled motion.

Steph grins at her. "Don't overthink it. Just throw it."

Steph's ... not big on long-range plans. Other than the ones tthat matter, like "get back to health, fight crime."

She gets another glance, another smirk. Rachel snaps her wrist and lets the pebble go.

Where it sinks with a final-sounding plop!

And Rachel scowls at the water.

Steph shrugs. "You got good distance. It takes a while to get the rest of it. I mean, it's kind of cheating for me, with the Bat thing and all that."

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