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 Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 8:44 pm
Question of the day: How do you ask your friend's girlfriend, who also happens to be said friend's queen of a parallel realm, if she would like to go on a completely platonic dinner run with you while said friend is in a possibly permanent nightmare land-induced coma?
It was a problem that would have stumped even the greatest minds of the world, and Johnny King was no exception. In the back of his mind he was wondering if he had gone insane, wanting to spend more time with Cora than duty demanded. She hadn't exactly made the hours in the hospital fun; rather, between her and Dylan's father the green haired teen had spent more time hanging with Jesse's body than he had with Dylan's. It was a rather sad thing to admit, and even sadder that he'd beat their previous record of "time spent in each other's company without trying to kill each other" by nearly double. Somehow, he couldn't bring himself to be proud of his pseudo-diplomatic feat. (Would Dylan be pleased he hadn't said anything too unkind to his brother's body?)
Still, with Gaia nowhere to be found, the cavalier of the Maze wasn't sure he was supposed to let Cora out of his sight. While Dylan had never expressly ordered him to guard her – she did have her own soldiers for that – Alexandros wasn't around to protect her and neither were over half of her sailor scouts. What with the increasing number of monster attacks on the street, he had a feeling letting the Black Moon Queen wander unattended would be bad form. Unfortunately, that left him with the problem of presenting his decision to her. A slip of the tongue could imply that he thought she was incapable of protecting herself and he had a feeling he'd end up in some very hot water if he went down that route.
Johnny was instantly reminded why he had such minimal contact with female royalty.
They were waiting, rather awkwardly in the teen's opinion, to cross at the nearest stop light near DC Memorial. Visiting hours were long over and Cora hadn't managed to weasel any extra time out of the nurses. They had given the usual speech about order and equality of rules whilst shooing the pair out with the rest of the crowds. Johnny had found that the urge to inform the nurses that they were guarding someone essential to the city's survival diminished with each passing visit. Maybe he was just getting soft. Hector would have laughed at him for it.
The red hand opposite them switched to a white person, indicating they could walk. Johnny's eyes darted to the lights, Cora's face, and then the ground as he finally asked, "Are you hungry?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2010 7:43 pm
The two of them hadn't spoken much. Cora had kept herself busy more or less at all times. She sat at her mother's bedside, watching HGTV reruns that aired in the mornings; she hovered at Dylan's, watching his body shiver, even sleeping, with heroin withdrawal -- watching the way his rib cage shrank away with each exhale of breath. She took lunch with Fallon -- a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich with wilted lettuce that they sold in the downstairs cafeteria, and which her friend would never have approved of -- but which she hoped she'd understand. If Ronnie's family was there, she sat and talked with them awhile, but otherwise she perched on the edge of her friend's bed and talked to her about the day's events, how the others were doing. By the time she looked in on Jesse, she usually ran into Maddy -- they coordinated schedules, but they didn't tarry long. Two people at the same bedside was an overlap, and overlaps were inefficient, stretched as thin as they were.
Cora and her father ate early dinners with her mother, and it was hard to keep her cool when her father was standing there with her: a few days before the Pyrite Crystal had hit, Mrs. Grant had told her daughter over dinner that she'd scheduled to take a personal day for Cora's prom, so she could go with her to her salon appointment and help her get dressed and ready. Of the three of them, Cora's mother had been the most thoughtful, the most involved. Cora and her father each had a habit of doing their own thing, demanding their own space. Even now, they hardly talked, and planned to meet up with each other only as a belated, surprised afterthought -- her father had his own plans, she had hers. It wasn't easy, or maybe the problem was that it was all too easy.
She spent the last of her visiting hours with Dylan again, if his dad wasn't there. When she felt up to it, she read aloud to him from The Book of Lost Things -- but when she didn't, which was more often, she paced near his window. From there, she took photos of the traffic light several stories below at street level, each time she saw it turn from red to green again.
At night there were patrols, holding down the perimeter of the hospital and the neighborhood. Life went on for the people who were awake, and there was work to be done. There was always work to be done. There wasn't much time to chat with Johnny King -- or maybe the truth was that she'd been avoiding it.
"Yeah," she belatedly decided, fixing the strap of her messenger bag where it had gotten twisted over. She wasn't actually that hungry -- she and her dad had split a bag of Orville Redenbacher's a few hours ago, and Cora didn't have much of an appetite these days -- but she didn't want to go home, either.
They stood outside the hospital, watching some of the other mourners filter out past them. At the street corner, Cora looked up to watch with quiet fascination as the street light she'd been photographing changed again -- yellow rising to red, red plummeting to green. "There's an IHOP down on Mason that's still running twenty-four hours, if you're up for that."
Cora didn't know much about Johnny King. From Dylan, she knew he went to Sovereign Heights, was sharp, and played chess. From her own observation, she added that he didn't seem to need his glasses to see anything, that he blushed like he was keeping secrets, and that he was every inch as loyal as Dylan needed him to be. Other than that, he was nearly a stranger.
Well, that was alright. It was just dinner.
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Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 7:19 pm
Johnny tried and half-managed not to breathe an obvious sigh of relief at Cora's answer. It was hard to know with the bluenette if she was being honest or simply polite, but at that particular moment he couldn't bring himself to care. If she'd admitted to being hungry then that meant there was at least a sixty-five percent chance that she'd be willing to go out to dinner with him. All he could do was cross his fingers in his pockets and bravely carry on.
Luckily, Cora's mind seemed to be following a similar track, and provided her venue of choice. "IHOP?" the teen repeated, mind pulling up the menu after a few seconds. Ah, that was the place with the crispy banana caramel cheesecake. It was one of those desserts that you only ate in a) a deep depression, b) a fit of jealousy, or c) before you started your epic weight loss challenge. Seeing as their current situation was painfully close to option a, he saw no reason why they shouldn't go.
"Yeah. Yeah, that sounds fine by me." His voice sounded tired but he chocked it up to the Tartaros-effect. Dealing with the victims of the Pyrite crystal's coma during waking hours was taxing enough. Spending precious sleeping time plagued with nightmares only made things worse. No doubt Cora would have been feeling it as bad if not worse than the rest of them. Had he known her better he might have asked how she was, but the truth of the matter was Johnny King knew as much about Cora Grant as the girl knew about him. They really should have had a proper meet-n-greet before something like this went down. Alexandros would have probably said this was a good time to build bonds and forge stronger ties.
In a weak effort to do just that, the green-haired teen said, "I saw someone changed the flowers in his room. Was that you?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:30 am
"No," Cora admitted with some difficulty. "No, that wasn't me." It was Dylan's mother, maybe, or his father -- or Janice Fitzpatrick who'd known Dylan far longer than she had, ever since the Rasmussens had moved to DC from sunny California. The person who'd changed out the wilting flowers for fresher ones would've been someone who had a right to do something like that. Not Cora; Cora shouldn't have been there at all.
Most of the shops were closed, and at night, every blackened store window became a filmy mirror as they walked past it. Cora could see their reflections, slightly haggard. They themselves looked slightly wilted in the summer air -- but there was no one to change them out with, no backup and no reserve forces.
She could see his reflection as they walked past a chintzy arts-and-crafts shop; Johnny was about a head taller than Cora, as most guys tended to be. He looked like he was searching for something to talk about. She saved him the trouble. "You don't owe me anything, you know," Cora blurted out, diverting her attention to picking at a chipped fingernail. "I broke things off with Dylan before this happened -- we're not even bonded anymore. If this is all, you know, because we have a common cause and we need to work together, that's one thing -- but if this is just something you think you have to do for Dylan, just as a friend, well. You don't."
Cora'd told herself she'd been avoiding admitting that for purely practical reasons, that if Dylan's parents found out, they wouldn't let her in to visit at his bedside -- she wouldn't be able to protect him effectively. That had more or less been a lie. The truth was, she knew the Rasmussens wouldn't care to stop her. She just hadn't wanted to say it.
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Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 10:02 am
Johnny tried to make his "ah" sound as noncommittal as possible. He should have looked more closely at the flowers. The bouquet arrangement would have been indicative of the deliverer's character or their feelings towards the recipient. In hindsight, the ones on Dylan's bedside table had been a little too platonic. It was doubtful that Cora had had anything to do with them. Then again, it was hard to say if she was a flower person or not. Flowers were very ephemeral. She might not have wanted the reminder of mortality sitting next to Dylan's bed.
With the failure of his topic of choice, the green-haired teen was methodically searching for something else. He was slowly running out of cordial topics, not yet willing to test the boundaries between them dictated by their relationship. Weather was out of the question tonight; it didn't even look like it was going to rain. With school still cancelled there was nothing to talk about there. Johnny let his eyes wander over Cora as though searching for some small item that was impersonal enough to discuss between virtual strangers. Cora, however, had other ideas.
Her admission touched on a niggling worry that he'd refused to touch on since the unleashing of Tartaros. Kore's ability had always served to protect the prince from harm, simply because it removed Dylan's opponent's desires to attack him. No motivation, no damage. It had been bothering him why he'd felt the need to activate the Pyrite crystal when he had such a powerful weapon at his disposal. Cora answered that question in one: he'd lost Kore's ability. If the confrontation had involved Dale Cooper as Johnny suspected it had, he would have been in deep trouble.
Nevertheless, it shed new light on the issue of their relationship. If she wasn't bonded to Dylan anymore their courts were no longer linked. Technically, it removed his obligation to her because she was Dylan's, as she said. He just wasn't sure Dylan would have agreed with that kind of technicality. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Johnny replied softly as he scuffed the toe of his shoe against the concrete. "Though I don't think he would be pleased to wake up and find out I'd not done what I could to ensure your safety. I'm comfortable with it being some of both if you are."
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Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 10:54 am
"I love the city at night," the girl announced quietly to her steed. Slightly twitching fingers lifted briefly from the board-game in her hands to pat the carapace of the giant pillbug that she rode upon. "Don't you agree, Pildium?"
The youma, as expected, did not reply to this except to to knock over another trash can as they made their way down the alley. Allabogdanite stretched out, leaning back and looking up at the slim sliver of darkening sky above her head. She said, "I wonder how much you understand. You as a youma, I mean. How much do you see, how much do you grasp?"
She pointed her toes inside her shiny black boot, leaned over, and redid the bright red laces diligently. She laced the other of the pair, to keep with the military standards. Neither boot would come loose tonight. "Cleanliness is next to godliness," she said dreamily, yanking her board before it could slip off her mount's back.
She liked being off her feet for the night. Maybe she would ask her captain if she could always patrol with Pildium. She liked him. He was nice.
With a clatter of overturned trash cans, they emerged onto the street. Allabogdanite blinked in the sudden light, and then her eyes alighted on the pair of teens that she had cut off midstep. "Oh," she said, her mouth shaped like the word. "I'm sorry, did I interrupt something important?"
Her hands twitched around the edge of the board. She itched for action.
"I don't mind letting you finish your conversation before I take your starseeds."
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Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2010 7:41 pm
Pildium was not a very talkative youma. Not that many youma were talkative anyway, but Pildium seemed especially unresponsive. He was not particularly intelligent, nor was he a deep thinker, and with a lack of smarts and thoughts… well, what would he have to say, even if he was thus inclined? So instead Pildium just trundled along, enjoying knocking over the occasional trashcan. Metal trashcans made such lovely sounds and vibrations when they clanked about.
Pildium eventually noticed that Alagon- no, Abogin- ... That girl on his back had begun talking to someone. It took him a couple of seconds to actually comprehend would his antennae were hearing though, so he had gone slightly past whomever his rider was speaking to before he stopped. After another moment of hesitation he backed up slowly and stopped again, content to just stand and wait until he was given further instructions. Maybe he would get to knock some people over? They were nice and squishy.
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