ataraxionlogs | a truth so strange it can only be lied into existence

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a truth so strange it can only be lied into existence

CHARACTERS: Doug Rattmann (

suckersluck) and OPEN!
LOCATION: A random side hallway near Engineering.
WARNINGS: Mild craziness?
SUMMARY: Doug's spent a week trying to cope with his arrival, and he's well overdue for a slightly manic art therapy session.
NOTES: Doug won't hang around very long after finishing the painting, but you're free to have been watching him, catching him fleeing the scene, or miss him completely and just admire his ramblings. All up to you!

The paintbrushes were the easiest to find: stored away in his locker and wrapped in cloth, they were worn and reliable and familiar. The paint was more difficult, but an unlocked storeroom finally provided enough to work with, and a quiet corridor near Engineering felt out of the way enough for a mural.

Finding the paint couldn't have come at a better time; Doug's mind hurt. He'd spent a week with his thoughts tying themselves in knots, trying to work through what was real on this impossible ship, and what was just his mind lying to him. It was an overload -- there were people here, not sleeping test subjects or dead scientists or homicidal AIs. There was food, showers, beds, hints of normalcy that left him nervous and paranoid. His fingers itched to paint.

With one hand clenched around the brush, he sorted through the mess of his thoughts, finding a thread and following it to an idea, and expression. The first stroke came slowly, carefully, thoughtfully -- but with the second, third, fourth, his paced picked up, and he lost himself in the art.

Doug came back to himself with a clearer mind and a paint-speckled lab coat. He felt settled, tired but calm, and he took one long look at his work before quietly gathering his supplies and turning to leave.

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For a split-second he blinked, open, he looked like that was the first time he'd ever heard such a thing from someone. That hey, at least he was blunt - and he was surprised by it - yet he couldn't find it in him to get up in arms about that. It was the truth, he did like it here. A lot.

"I don't love it yet."

With that he went on a mission through his belongings, for a cigarette, and thought back to what he was going to ask.

"So what's your story, anyway."

...close enough.

The yet was enough for Heather, and she smiled to herself. Until his question, when she chewed at her lip for a moment.

"I work in a coffee shop," she said, shrugging. "I'm kind of an orphan, so nobody's really going to miss me except my plant and whoever has to cover my shifts."

She paused for a moment and debated whether to continue. He had asked, and she had just moments ago sort of congratulated him on being upfront, and he thought he was (and possibly even actually was) the living embodiment of the Netherlands, so he didn't have much room to make accusations of crazy. So she decided to elaborate, even if it came out in a bit of a rush.

"And before that I avenged the murder of my adoptive father by killing the leaders of the cult he rescued me from, exorcising myself of the God I was supposed to bear for them, and killing it."

"Sucks for your plant."

He had feelings about plants, okay. Parents, not so much. He flicked on his lighter and inhaled away, more than ready to settle back for a tale.

...okay, he needed to smoke on that a bit.

Nope, still needed a recap.

"One step at a time, kid."

Heather laughed and ruffled her fingers through the back of her head, a little self-conscious and a lot amused at the absurdity of the situation.

"Uh, there's a cult. And they believe that their God will be born to a human woman, cleanse the world by fire, and bring about paradise on earth. The first girl they tried it with died, but she - well, I, made... you know, this is pretty much just going to get more complicated. You sure you want the whole deal?"

The first thing he notices is the present tense. Is there a cult, here?

"There is, or there was."

Shit in the past belongs in the past. He'll listen, but only if it's right.

"Was, I guess. I mean... is, where I've come from but they're not on the Tranquility. As far as I know. After I did what I went to do, I left. Didn't look back." She shrugged, tightened her arms around herself. The cult - running from them even before she knew they existed, chasing them down after her father's death, hiding afterward - had taken up so much of her life it was hard to drop the idea that they could have been hiding around any corner. But if they were here, surely she would have found out by now.

"Was. There was a cult."

Right. He sucked in a breath and blew it out toward he rest of the gardens. This shit sounded complicated, but hey, he asked.

"Alright. So there was a cult...that somehow fucked ya up."

"Yeah." She nodded slowly, processing how she was going to phrase things even as she spoke, skipping over Alessa and Cheryl because frankly this was hard enough to explain without getting into why she had memories from before she was born.

"When I was a baby, my father took me away from them. He hid me. But they found us. Killed him. I followed them back to where they were based, found out that they were using me. To, uh, bear the God. It had been inside me and I hadn't known. So I got it out." She made a face as she spoke, memories of Claudia's actions less raw but still disgusting. "One of the leaders took it into herself and bore it instead. She died. Then I killed it." She shrugged. "And that's about it."

...okay.

New universes: sure.

New species: sure.

This? Oooooh kaaaaay. He wasn't even smoking anymore, the damn thing was just hanging from his mouth. Uselessly. It took him a minute to even remember he was smoking, but, hey. She had no reason to lie, right. None of that would do her any good here.

"That's fucked up."

Yep. About the only thing he could say to that.

And that was such a normal reaction that Heather couldn't help laughing again, weirdly relieved at having told someone and particularly at his understated response. She dropped her arms from where they were and stuck them in her pockets instead.

"I thought so," she said, grinning at him. "Sorry you asked?"

She laughed; he shot her a puzzled frown over the cigarette in his hand. What, it was fucked up, she just agreed. People laughed at weird shit. With one last inhale he thought about the question, a little too seriously.

"...no."

It was a good thing to know, especially as now he was vaguely wondering if he was standing beside someone who might snap and go stabbity on him, without warning. So he pinched out the end of his smoke, frowning as the paper and a few loose strands of tobacco fell to the ground, and kept poking.

"But after that - things were normal."

"Yeah," she said. "Apart from the whole winding up on a spaceship without warning thing, that is." She shrugged, one hand reaching for nearby greenery, not exactly stroking the plant, but toying with the leaves.

"I guess once it was out of me they didn't really have a reason to come after me anymore. If there are any of them left, that is. I got the impression Vincent and Claudia were what was holding that whole deal together." And then, because that deserved at least a little explanation - "They're both dead." And that was what let her keep it together, through all the bad dreams and missing Harry. That the people who deserved to be dead were dead. She supposed a better person would have found it in their heart to forgive them by now. Luckily, Heather never claimed to be that good.

Netherlands sent her an annoyed look at the spaceship thing - of course that wasn't what he was talking about - only to blink as he watched her play with the leaves. Huh.

For a moment he felt like she was talking to herself and had to glance away, to look out over the rest of the gardens. Not that he minded, exactly, but it suddenly seemed like he was intruding on something. There was a fine line between being curious and being a gossip.

"They prob'ly wouldn't be stuck on a goddamn spaceship, anyway," he pointed out, still idly observing the plant life and oblivious to all thoughts on forgiveness.

His pragmatism made Heather smile, and she stopped harassing the plantlife and shrugged.

"Turns out all I had to do to be free was get trapped in outer space. Figures it'd be something simple like that." But sarcasm aside, what he'd said fired a tiny spark in the back of her brain - people did turn up here, from different times and different places, so... no. She couldn't afford to start down that path, so she squashed the thought down.

"If they did show up here it'd probably take them about four minutes apiece to piss people off so bad somebody threw them out the airlock," she supplied. "These people? Bigger assholes than you can imagine. And I get the feeling you know from assholes."

Edited 2012-02-13 19:22 (UTC)

"That's not very free," he huffed. Sure, he got the sarcasm, but being stuck and with nothing to do but worry over what was going on just grated at him. Couldn't even bike to get his mind off of it for a while.

He glanced over, not sure if that was an insult or jibe or what.

"Most of the people I know are morons. 'less you're talkin' about me," he muttered, shifting his weight and thinking. "Duke of Alba was an asshole. If ya..." His lips thinned as he thought better of that example. Maybe he was too used to being around countries - most humans weren't history buffs, were they.

"Well." A shrug. "He was. If they're that bad they'll prob'ly get the shit kicked out of 'em."

Heather's eyebrows lift yet again.

"Bad as the Iron Duke? Hardly." Okay, she was showing off a touch, but having a father who educated her to within an inch of her life had to have some benefits, right? And no, she didn't mean him; she meant the way he kept himself close and quiet, like trusting people had bitten him in the ass before. Then again, maybe he really was just a jerk. Still, on some level it felt so good to say this stuff to someone and have them react like it was just any other really bad day.

"I'll be first in the kicking line. Shame my boots didn't come with me."

A snort. "Show off," he muttered, even if he looked slightly amused. Well, his mouth was set in the same line as always, but his eyes looked amused - if she'd known she could've just disagreed, right. Right. So she was a show-off who...well, wouldn't look at him with a blank stare if he bitched about long-dead assholes. Good to know.

He glanced down between their boots despite himself, because his boots did show up in his locker, and noted that he'd probably be better suited for ass-kicking regardless of footwear.

"That's a dumb idea. Y'don't look like you can kick anyone's ass."

Heather just shrugged - she had no answer to that, even if she was tempted to make a comment about showing off and dramatic scarves and look-at-me hair. She was showing off, but she deserved to. Which was why she bridled a little at the comment about asskicking.

"Were you just not listening at all to how I killed a God?" Of course, that wasn't kicking ass so much as being quick on her feet and nifty with a shotgun, but he didn't need to know that. Except that her mouth was twitching up into a smile again at the silliness of it. Oh well, maybe he couldn't see from all the way up there.

She'd get a combination of history lessons and vague, standoffish answers if she pried about those things. He kept both around for reasons both practical and sentimental.

Netherlands rolled his eyes - yeah, he heard. "I was. You never said anythin' about how ya did it," he pointed out, sounding entirely unamused. Which was pretty standard, so whether he meant it as an inquiry, as a jab, or as petty bickering was up in the air. Probably all three at once, because at any rate he didn't know what was so damn funny about all of this, and if she had some crazy powers, that was good to know too.

"I cheated."

It was true, to some degree; but more than that it was so much easier to be glib about it than to explain it. And anyway, surely that was an achievement in itself, having the grit and the wiles to cheat against a God? But her ability to talk about it has faded, whether she was joking or not. So she shrugged, leaned and plucked a leaf from a plant that had become a favourite of hers, one her father used to call pineapple sage. She didn't know if it was a true name or not, but she did know it fit. She crushed it between her fingers, freeing the scent, and held it out to him.

"Here."

That gave him pause, "cheated". Cheated how? He wanted to know out of curiosity, sure, but mostly because the word itself set off alarm bells. At the same time he figured that the untrustworthy wouldn't readily admit to cheating. Damn.

He idly watched her pluck a leaf as he thought, frowning, fretting more over the word than what she was doing. She held it out and his attention snapped back, part way - enough to warily reach out and take it. But he couldn't get his mind off of it entirely. So instead of asking what the plant was, he asked what he really wanted to ask.

"Cheated, or tricked." It wasn't a question, so much as a demand for an answer as to which it was: to him there was a difference between the two.

She watched him for a moment, silent. Once he'd asked, she realized she didn't really know. Was it cheating to press every advantage you had, even if they weren't fair? No, hell with that; there was no way any of that mess had been fair. She shrugged, plunging her hands back into her pockets.

"I'm not sure. I fixed things so it would be weaker. Tried to stop it before it even started. And I'm - I was stronger there." But with that she sharpened, looked him right in the eye again. "I don't regret it. It might not have been the bravest way to do it, but it needed doing."

He simply watched her in return, slowly crushing the leaf in his fingers as he waited. While he wasn't the most patient guy, he was fine with waiting around for an honest, thought-out answer... though what she described didn't sound like either cheating or tricking. It took him a moment to think it over, he knew what this was and he'd seen that look, or something like it, before. Many times.

Oh.

No shit, Nederland.

"So uh. Survived."

That was the word he was looking for.

She blinked, almost startled by his response. It was the kind of thing she'd expect to hear on telling someone what she'd been through, a soothing you-did-what-you-had-to-do platitude to smooth the way. But she'd already decided he'd be the last person to dole out that sort of thing if he didn't mean it, which was why she stood silent for a moment before she could think of anything to say. She knew he didn't mean it as a kindness; that didn't mean it didn't feel like one.

"Yeah," she said, and this time her smile wasn't amused or mocking but real, grateful and sad. "Survived. It gets to be a habit, doesn't it?"

He might have looked pretty damn young, but he was old. He'd seen that look, he'd seen it on himself, even. It wasn't a kindness, it just was - fact, or whatever - he went back to observing the leaf in his hands as she stood there, only flicking his gaze back up once she spoke.

"Maybe," he murmured, and went back to looking at the foreign leaf in his hand. "Wouldn't know."

Every time he'd died, before now, he'd come back. Survival was something his people had to worry about, not him, not exactly. Here, though...

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