moneyballer | IC CONTACT;

[There are many moments in life that Asher wishes he could take back.

What happened just 2 or 3 seconds ago? Yeah, that's being added to the list.]

I-it's... It's, um-

[He stammers momentarily, realizing the errors of his ways. Insistently, he holds out a hand, biting his lip.]

Never do it.

( There has to be a point in time where she will stop having moments where she stares at Asher, and she Judges. In fact, most the time she doesn't, but this is like the username fiasco.

Pointedly, primly, while digging out a whole spoonful of Nutella, she says: )

I think that's not much of an explanation.

( The Nutella.

Goes right into her mouth. )

[He's seen that look before, and it's enough to get him to avert his eyes.]

It's not that important.

[Said while rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.]

But if anyone offers it to you in Woodhurst, just... Run, okay?

[Asher folds his hands over his chest, pulling up a chair beside her.]

Ugh, besides...

That's not really what you wanted to talk about, right?

( she shuffles her feet, shaking her head and keeping the spoon in her mouth for the moment. just, uh, okay. she's fairly sure he's talking about drugs, for all that's a more nebulous concept to her personally. she also has a knee jerk dislike of it; it's easy to nod her head.

and, eventually, pull out the spoon. )

I'm worried about how things are going to be when we get there. With the sickness, and stuff. I'm not... I'm not in a position to help a lot of people, or investigate a lot of things. So what should I be doing? To be helpful? I have to be helpful, or else I don't get to go home. For a long, long time.

( because of how sparing energy works, she thinks, but... these are her worries. new nightmares to keep her up at night. )

[He leans on an elbow, listening carefully.

God, he'd forgotten all about that. Chihiro may be a child, but her insight is pretty spot on. When they had arrived, there had been some promise of that, a return home if you played by the rules and did the team proud. Somewhere along the way, Asher Millstone had forgotten about home.

Because this place is starting to feel like it.]

I think... What matters is that you try? Though, I'm not sure-

[He shakes his head, cracking a smile that's not at all happy. Her words break his heart because they are so sincere, because all she wants is to return to a normal life and go back to the things she knows.

This is what he wants for her too.

She doesn't deserve this.]

Have you talked to the higher-ups about it? Like, asked... Maybe what it is you can do? 'Cause you're under some pretty special circumstances.

They might be able to make some exceptions for you.

I don't think our seniors are really... higher ups, exactly.

( she says after listening, reaching out to pick up the nutella and scoop out another spoonful. she doesn't eat it right away; instead she sets the nutella down and belatedly realises she's just been horribly unhygienic. she frowns a little at herself, then hopes Asher doesn't notice.

hopefully he doesn't mind. )

I want to go home. ALASTAIR knows that, already. Me going home isn't more important than stopping things like in Perdition's Rest. Even if we didn't know everything that was happening. I know that.

( she stares down at her spoon, breathing in through her nose, out again through her mouth. it's close to a sigh, but not quite. )

It's my duty to help out. That's what I tell myself. ( her eyes come up, searching for his. not for long, she doesn't usually hold eye contact for long, but to know he's facing her. )

My circumstances aren't really special. They just are, like for everyone. I don't exactly want my home to be so unstable that it needs me back in it, you know?

[She goes on in such an honest way, he doesn't have the heart to tell her what he really thinks.

That her circumstances are special, that she is young.

Instead he soothes her quietly, by reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. Afterwards he rubs little circles into it, something that always seemed to calm him down when he was Chihiro's age.]

I wouldn't blame ya if you did, though.

[For hoping that things would change if she went missing.

Because god knows, he feels that way all the time.]

Nobody's perfect, little C.

It's okay to put yourself first sometimes.

[ok butt hunni take ur own advice lmfao]

( It's a little strange, because she doesn't come from a family that indulges overmuch in physical reassurance. At the same time, she's been learning how much it can help over her time here; remembers how it'd felt important in the Spirit Realm. Remembers how she used to love that security, in being hugged by her parents; lifted and spun around in her father's arms.

So she lets this be reassuring, too. Though in turn, she reaches up, patting Asher's arm. )

I'll try if you try too, all right?

( It's not due to any great insight, other than patterns she's seen in many of the adults here; but he asks for something that is both harder than it used to be and easier than she remembers. It's only fair for her, in her mind, to ask the same from him.

srsly asher take ur own advice boi )

[Times like these are what push Asher farther and farther down. He wishes that in this moment he could do something to alleviate her worries, that he had some kind of magic getaway scheme, but all he can do is stay close and listen.

Shifting in his seat, he takes a moment to fold his arms and then rest his head upon them, murmuring wistfully.]

How long has it been? Since you left home.

[She's been here at least as long as he has, as he spoke to her during the second or third month of his stay.]

I don't know. Not exactly.

( she admits. the time in Perdition's Rest threw off her count. being in Oska, then there, and now back in Oska? )

It was spring when we'd moved. Then here, it's been fall, and winter. I don't know how many months it is by now... I'm not really sure what calendar we're supposed to look at. Time's been really weird.

( because she's also been told that the time here means nothing, in a sense. that one day, they will be able to send them home, and to the time they were last seen. so what is it? what is this time passing? what are the memories and experiences, lovely and horrible both, going to mean in the end? it's complicated. she sets all that to the side, for now. )

Dad got lost when we were trying to get to our new house. I was going to start school in a new town, and I wasn't happy about it, not really. Then we were at the abandoned theme park... Dad said a lot of them went under when the bubble burst in the 90's.

( she's reciting this without fully understanding the economics she's discussing as if they're somehow disconnected from her reality. in ways, that's exactly what they are: disconnected. )

He and my Mom couldn't keep themselves from eating. There was all this food there, and no one around, and — and that's when things started going weird. I didn't remember that stuff until I'd been here for a while, you know?

[There are moments in time where one can feel a mood shift entirely.

Asher sits up suddenly, posture straightening as he processes her words. Until now he had suspected that her world was as normal as could be, because she was so very human, so very familiar. Then she says things that don't make sense, that strike him as peculiar.

Dad got lost.

She recounts all this like a person trying to make sense of a table full of scattered photographs, as if she's seeing everything and it's not making sense.

He and my Mom couldn't keep themselves from eating.

To be fair, his world isn't really normal either. How normal is it, to work in a house where so many people whisper and worry all the time, to work in a town where his professor's husband went missing and girl's body was found in a water tank. Asher has yet to process this.

He is always in the dark.]

You didn't remember... Like, you just didn't think about it or-

[A thumb rises, pressing against his lip in thought.]

There was a moment where it all came back to you?

Edited 2017-02-07 08:44 (UTC)

( She hesitates, turning both options over in her mind. Neither is quite right. She didn't choose not to think about it; it hadn't been reachable. Not forgotten, not forever, but forgotten for the time being. And it hadn't all come back at once. There'd been no dam that broke, revealing all these things.

They'd come back in pieces, until the narration started to make sense again, with gaps and stutters like an incomplete reel. Watching a movie that had audio on, but skipped, screen going dark and starting up again somewhere further along.

She shakes her head, licking nutella off her spoon. )

Kind of not either? It hasn't all come back to me. I just remember most of it now. Stuff would remind me? Here and there, like seeing something out of the corner of your eye in a place you walk by all the time, only noticing it for real for the first time.

[what the flying fuck]

Um.

[don't b this forthright u pile of human excrement]

That sounds kind of effed up, yo.

( she pulls the spoon back out of her mouth, giving Asher a very grave nod. )

It was very effed up, yo.

[Asher is more of a feeler than a thinker by far, and it is times like these where his emotions get the best of him.

There is nothing he can say to make any of this better, but there is something else he can do.

He wraps his arms around her waist all of a sudden, the gesture similar to something he often did for his sister when they were both younger, when the Millstone siblings were still talking and their old house still felt like it contained something that resembled a family.]

You'll get out of here.

[And he will do everything he can to make sure that it happens, even if that isn't very much at all.]

( the hug surprises her, if only because people here are across a spectrum of physically affectionate. Asher is easy to see as being affectionate. maybe because his angles are so soft, compared to many. it's something she appreciates even as she manages to wrap her arms around him too, spoon clutched in hand but angled away from his back. no need to get him dirty. )

Mm. Asher, where do you want to be?

( she knows she'll end up somewhere, sooner or later. but... )

[He is soft nearly everywhere, from the line of his jaw to the space around his middle. The softest part of him, however, would definitely be his heart.

Her question is enough to make him draw back, gaze quizzical as he considers the weight of that inquiry. It is one he used to ask himself all the time, one he knew the answer to from the day he first saw his father in court. Or at least, he thought he knew the answer, until David Allen's case changed his mind.

Such is the nature of a ripple effect. The waves have risen and fallen and shaken his identity further, seeping inwards and dismantling the core.]

What?

You mean like, in 20 years from now, or...?

Edited 2017-02-23 23:34 (UTC)

( she leans back to look up at his face. )

Do you actually know where you want to be twenty years from now?

[If you had asked him this question a year ago, he would have known the answer.

Rich, successful, and with some bodacious babe to call his wife... To be top gun at some bombass law firm, or even a judge like his father.

Now he isn't sure if he wants any of those things.]

I don't know.

[Honesty is something he is learning a way, because the person he's spent the most time lying to in the past twenty-five years has been himself.]

Happy, I guess.

That's it.

IC CONTACT;

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no this cute nickname

i love it...

IT'S SO CUTE

this bonding is all cute okay

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