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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"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."

Rachel sighs - snorts, almost, for the forceful exhale through her nose. And the continued scowl.

She picks up another pebble while Steph talks, glaring at the water where her last rock had failed.

"The hero thing? They made you throw rocks?"

Steph nods, with a small smile, her eyes distant. "For, like, months. Had to be able to hit five out of five targets with one handful of batarangs before I was even allowed on the street.

"... not that I didn't go out anyway, but, you know. For the Big Bat's approval."

So grinny.

Rachel laughs softly, rolling the pebble between her fingers.

Then throws it.

plop!

Sigh/snorting again, she reaches for another pebble. "Yeah, yeah. Placate Dad so you can go out and play without getting the lecture."

"Pick a flatter one," Steph suggests, offering a different pebble. "This one's better. And try to angle it just a little bit - like this."

Because she's trying, this time, this one skips until it's almost out of sight.

"I always got the lecture." A grin. "Always. It got to be comfortingly familiar after a while."

"Yeah," Rachel agrees, eyes narrowed as she tries again with the new pebble, trying to see it skip across the water. That's easy enough - mental concentration hasn't been a problem in a long time.

She doesn't grin when it skips twice - but she does have a smug little smile.

"Sometimes it's nice to have something to ignore. And practice in just smiling and nodding is good for school."

"Ugh, school. I guess I'll have to go back to that, too." Steph gives a small, approving nod to Rachel's stone. "I mean in classrooms and stuff. I'm doing school by long-distance at the moment. It's ... really weird."

"Sounds like it would be better," Rachel replies, picking through the stones between them to find another. Small, flat. She can do that.

"No teachers, no kids, no lunch period."

"Yeah, I like that part of it. And you can sleep in as late as you want, no classes. But then it's kind of left up to me to get the work done, and I'm not really the greatest when it comes to book learning any more. Although I guess I'm better than I was before I was --"

She hesitates, glancing at Rachel, warily.

"I mean, while I was dead I read a lot. I got used to it."

Rachel smirks and keeps her gaze forward. The rock skips twice again, but a little further, a little more secure.

"Yeah, finding time isn't really hard."

She still doesn't read much. Magazines, sure. But fiction doesn't interest her much.

No freakouts this time. That's good. That's very good.

Steph picks up a handful more rocks, inspecting them for weight and smoothness before piling them where Rachel can reach them and discarding the unsuitable ones.

Eyes down: "I remember. I mean, it gets - strange, in my head sometimes. The two pasts I have. But ... I remember enough that I know what you mean. Finding time was so never the problem."

Rachel pauses, fingertips pinching a small stone gently.

She does not want to talk about this. About Milliways and how to deal and the time.

She throws the rock with a singular plop! and says the first thing that comes to mind, "I don't think I'm getting enough distance.

Even though, on that throw, distance was all she got.

Steph's not always the best at picking up unspoken signals. But -- she's learning more than just how to move again, this year. Dealing with everything.

So she nods. "It takes more strength than you think. You can build it up."

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