[He snorts a little, not really considering how impolite that is. He
can't quite conjure enough detective sitting here talking about
Fraser.]
Yeah, you can say that again. People like to think they know him, but it's
all-- whatchamacallit, water off a duck's back. You think about it too hard
and the things you think you know they just slip away. Me, I know him,
'cause sometimes he tells me shit that actually means something. But I
don't think there's a lot of people that do.
[Something twists in her gut, and the frown lines deepen in her brow. It's far, far too familiar, and she's not sure how she's supposed to help anyone open up when she's barely out of those woods, herself, when she's fairly sure that she's ready to duck back into that darkness any day now.]
First of all, don't tell him I came over to talk to you. [He says
this with a wry little smile, but it's pained.]
I-- I think he's just about stopped hating my guts, but he don't like me
that much right now. I've been working with him for a year and a half, but
this guy, he's never met me before. And I think he hates that I know him,
but he don't know me.
Well, if you're from a different Earth than he is, then he might not even be the same person you know. He might have lived an entirely different life that led to the two of you never meeting.
[She's patient, not defensive, and prepared to draw diagrams if needed.]
But even if he isn't -- you have to see how that's unsettling, for someone to come along and say they know you, when you're already not predisposed to making close friends.
I know. I mean-- everything he's told me, that's just stuff from my past.
From before we met.
[He's spent hours and hours thinking about this, but it still feels
wrong, makes him a little queasy.]
I try not to, you know, to pry too much. But he's my best friend, or the
guy he migh be, in the future-- that guy's my best friend. I can't just
ignore him when he's sitting by himself in the dining hall, y'know?
[Fortunately, claims of time travel are also not lost on her. One small benefit of working with a superhero team.]
No, I know. That's -- you're probably doing the right thing. I know if I were in his position -- I mean, I was, about a year ago -- but I would need someone to just be stubborn and refuse to give up on me. That's what my warden did, even when I tried to push him away. He didn't push back. He just kept showing up.
[He looks almost embarrassingly relieved to hear her say that, and
he switches his coffee to one hand so he can rub the other one over his
eyes.]
Yeah. Yeah, that's what I've been doing. He's too fucking good at pushing
people away with his million-dollar vocabulary and the Inuit stories.
Right? I don't envy you, he's gonna give you a hard fucking time.
[Weirdly, he'd come here intending to see what she was about, to see
if she cared about Fraser. Not like Ray does, but at least a little,
at least enough. But Ray follows his gut: he can feel, clearly, that she
does. So all the fight has drained out of him, and he just feels
tired and lost and a little scared for Fraser.]
Anyway. You got the file, and you know him a little, but if you wanna know
something that ain't there, I thought I could...
[Help. He used to be great at translating for Fraser.]
[She seems very certain about this, and she is; the file itself is currently trapped in a thick block of ice in her freezer.]
If the reason he's here has anything to do with trusting other people, or trusting himself, it's not fair for me to know more about him than he knows about me. And I told him that, but he just said the Admiral wants me to read it. That it's in "the rules."
And ... maybe a year ago I might have done something just because it was in the rules, but now ... I don't know. I don't want to be his boss. We were starting to be friends.
[And it sounds like he needs friends just as much as she does, frankly.]
[He actually rolls his eyes at that-- of course he said that,
of course. The fucking rules, the rules he pretends he never ever
breaks.]
He wants you to read it so he can gloat about being right. I read Aurelius'
file, but if you don't wanna, don't do it. And I think you're right. He
needs a friend way more than he needs a boss.
Did you-- did you get him into the Enclosure yet?
[Ray did, once, but he wasn't actually there for it. He just
conjured up a winter wonderland and left the door ajar, for him to sneak
in.]
[Her expressions softens a little, and it might even be a bit sad, now.]
I did. He showed me one of the places he grew up -- Alert. Not that he said that's what it was, right away, but ... it was beautiful.
[She says 'beautiful' like she means to say 'important,' even if that's not the word that comes out. In this case it's sort of like knowing that it's one automatically makes it the other.]
[It's ugly and he knows it, but he feels a sharp pang of
jealousy when he hears that. He knows he shouldn't feel it, but he has to
turn away and take a sip of his coffee to process the idea that Fraser took
someone else up to Canada. Even if it's fake Canada, even if it's pretend
Canada.]
That's good. [He manages, finally, kicking himself for feeling this
and showing it. He's an open book on a good day, and he's
practically an audiobook right now.]
Back home, sometimes he'd take me to the park. Pretend we were camping out
in the wilderness, instead of in the middle of Chicago.
[Her smile turns sympathetic; she can tell something is wrong, even if she can't intuit exactly what.]
I'm sure he cares. Your version of him. But ... he doesn't have those memories, here. He doesn't know you. You have to ... I don't know, start over.
[And as much as she hates to admit it, that concept does give her some insight as to how she'll have to approach Fraser now that she's his warden. If he's going to act like they don't know each other, she's going to have to get on board, no matter what he's already shared with her.]
[He squirms, taps his fingers against his half-empty coffee cup. He
didn't come here to be comforted by her, even if part of him needed to hear
this.]
I'm trying to. If he'll let me. But until he does, I'm just gonna be there
to drink coffee in his, uh, general vicinity.
He's a good guy, Frost. The best guy I know, even if he don't know me right
now. I know him, even if he fucked something up. [And he
thinks he knows what happened, but if Fraser hasn't told her and she isn't
reading the file, he's not telling her.]
He deserves the fucking best, even if you wanna rip his head off sometimes.
[She's quieter, now, thoughtful; Ray sounds in many ways like some of the people -- one person in particular -- that she knows well, back home.]
I know.
He's lucky to have you, even if he doesn't know it yet. Just ... keep drinking that coffee in his vicinity. And try to separate this version of him a little from the one you know. Because again, if it were me, and my best friend from back home were here, I would have a hell of a time just ... I don't know, foregoing what his expectations would be, for me.
There's a whole side of myself that my friends didn't want me to be. And I was scared of it, because I knew I was capable of being ... bad. Really, really bad. I was mean. I was ... I hurt people. So of course no one who knew me would see Killer Frost -- this other side -- as anything other than a villain, with their friend Caitlin Snow trapped inside. They would just help me perpetuate that belief about myself, that the "real me" was the good girl who followed all the rules, and anything else was just my powers developing their own personality.
But it's not. It's all me. Snow, Frost ... it doesn't make a difference. I can be kind or cruel, timid or confident, anything in between. And I'll admit I'm still figuring all of it out. But I couldn't have done any of it if I had someone breathing down my neck that any part of me was real or not real. Not -- that I'm saying you would do that, or that what he's going through is anything like what I did. I honestly don't know.
But he does strike me as someone who might be concerned with presentation, and expectations, so it might just ... it might be something to watch out for. And it's why I say to try to get to know who he is now -- or who he'll become, because it might be different from the person that you know, in your time.
[She's already the kind of person you take the time to listen to,
and when she really starts to speak he goes quieter than he has yet. When
he stops tapping his foot, his fingers, stops moving, it's obvious.
He's listening to her, and he's thinking about her words. He tries to
remember what he thought Fraser would be like before he met him-- he turned
out to be so different than the files said, what other people said.
She's right. He really is that guy in the red serge, willing to do
anything for his fellow man. But he's also the guy who waited in that crypt
with him, even though it wasn't all legal, because he knew it was important
to Ray; he's also the guy who will make fun of a guy so subtly no one hears
it; he's the guy who came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of his
father and remained because he pissed off the whole of fucking Canada.
He's all of that. The only thing he isn't is the guy who knows Ray. He can
live with that. And maybe he should let Fraser know that, instead of
assuming he already did.
He takes a breath, then leans back against her lovely couch and gives her a
smile. He's such a dumbass, thinking he could tell her shit.]
[And the fact that other wardens wait months or even years for an assignment doesn't factor into the fact that Fraser is here now, as someone who could uniquely benefit from the road she just traveled. Maybe this wasn't an accident after all.]
You're approved, Snow. [He gives her a tight little smile, but he
means it. Fraser may be his best friend, but they're not alike at
all. He has to work to understand him. Caitlin feels like she gets
things about him so easily, so instinctively. It's a good thing.]
If he starts pissing you off and you gotta vent, you come and find me. I
get that.
[She holds up a hand, just to let the temperature around her drop, and a small, imperfect globe of ice appears in her palm. As she forms it, her appearance changes: eyes glinting silver, lighter hair spilling over the brown, skin sparkling like new fallen snow.]
Happens when I get mad, too. Can't control it, then.
[There's a subtle shift in the tone of her voice, too -- a faint echo, like wind through glass.]
[He hears it, sees it-- but it doesn't scare him. He leans in, not even close to touching, but curious. His eyes flick from the globe to her eyes, then back to the globe.]
It's like the Admiral searched all over the fucking universe to find someone perfect for Fraser. He musta loved that. But I'm guessin' it ain't been all that nice to you?
No. It's been ... hard. [She lets the sphere slide into her coffee cup, and sets it aside.] I had to learn how to control it so I didn't accidentally freeze everything I touched. But I had some good teachers here, before they left.
He seemed pretty impressed when I showed him what I could do.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Private
[He snorts a little, not really considering how impolite that is. He can't quite conjure enough detective sitting here talking about Fraser.]
Yeah, you can say that again. People like to think they know him, but it's all-- whatchamacallit, water off a duck's back. You think about it too hard and the things you think you know they just slip away. Me, I know him, 'cause sometimes he tells me shit that actually means something. But I don't think there's a lot of people that do.
Re: Private
Right. Okay. So ...
[She steels herself with a deep breath.]
Any tips?
Re: Private
First of all, don't tell him I came over to talk to you. [He says this with a wry little smile, but it's pained.]
I-- I think he's just about stopped hating my guts, but he don't like me that much right now. I've been working with him for a year and a half, but this guy, he's never met me before. And I think he hates that I know him, but he don't know me.
Re: Private
[She's patient, not defensive, and prepared to draw diagrams if needed.]
But even if he isn't -- you have to see how that's unsettling, for someone to come along and say they know you, when you're already not predisposed to making close friends.
Re: Private
I know. I mean-- everything he's told me, that's just stuff from my past. From before we met.
[He's spent hours and hours thinking about this, but it still feels wrong, makes him a little queasy.]
I try not to, you know, to pry too much. But he's my best friend, or the guy he migh be, in the future-- that guy's my best friend. I can't just ignore him when he's sitting by himself in the dining hall, y'know?
Re: Private
No, I know. That's -- you're probably doing the right thing. I know if I were in his position -- I mean, I was, about a year ago -- but I would need someone to just be stubborn and refuse to give up on me. That's what my warden did, even when I tried to push him away. He didn't push back. He just kept showing up.
Re: Private
[He looks almost embarrassingly relieved to hear her say that, and he switches his coffee to one hand so he can rub the other one over his eyes.]
Yeah. Yeah, that's what I've been doing. He's too fucking good at pushing people away with his million-dollar vocabulary and the Inuit stories. Right? I don't envy you, he's gonna give you a hard fucking time.
[Weirdly, he'd come here intending to see what she was about, to see if she cared about Fraser. Not like Ray does, but at least a little, at least enough. But Ray follows his gut: he can feel, clearly, that she does. So all the fight has drained out of him, and he just feels tired and lost and a little scared for Fraser.]
Anyway. You got the file, and you know him a little, but if you wanna know something that ain't there, I thought I could...
[Help. He used to be great at translating for Fraser.]
Re: Private
[She seems very certain about this, and she is; the file itself is currently trapped in a thick block of ice in her freezer.]
If the reason he's here has anything to do with trusting other people, or trusting himself, it's not fair for me to know more about him than he knows about me. And I told him that, but he just said the Admiral wants me to read it. That it's in "the rules."
And ... maybe a year ago I might have done something just because it was in the rules, but now ... I don't know. I don't want to be his boss. We were starting to be friends.
[And it sounds like he needs friends just as much as she does, frankly.]
Re: Private
[He actually rolls his eyes at that-- of course he said that, of course. The fucking rules, the rules he pretends he never ever breaks.]
He wants you to read it so he can gloat about being right. I read Aurelius' file, but if you don't wanna, don't do it. And I think you're right. He needs a friend way more than he needs a boss.
Did you-- did you get him into the Enclosure yet?
[Ray did, once, but he wasn't actually there for it. He just conjured up a winter wonderland and left the door ajar, for him to sneak in.]
Re: Private
I did. He showed me one of the places he grew up -- Alert. Not that he said that's what it was, right away, but ... it was beautiful.
[She says 'beautiful' like she means to say 'important,' even if that's not the word that comes out. In this case it's sort of like knowing that it's one automatically makes it the other.]
He said we'd go sledding next time.
Re: Private
[It's ugly and he knows it, but he feels a sharp pang of jealousy when he hears that. He knows he shouldn't feel it, but he has to turn away and take a sip of his coffee to process the idea that Fraser took someone else up to Canada. Even if it's fake Canada, even if it's pretend Canada.]
That's good. [He manages, finally, kicking himself for feeling this and showing it. He's an open book on a good day, and he's practically an audiobook right now.]
Back home, sometimes he'd take me to the park. Pretend we were camping out in the wilderness, instead of in the middle of Chicago.
Re: Private
[Her smile turns sympathetic; she can tell something is wrong, even if she can't intuit exactly what.]
I'm sure he cares. Your version of him. But ... he doesn't have those memories, here. He doesn't know you. You have to ... I don't know, start over.
[And as much as she hates to admit it, that concept does give her some insight as to how she'll have to approach Fraser now that she's his warden. If he's going to act like they don't know each other, she's going to have to get on board, no matter what he's already shared with her.]
Re: Private
I know.
[He squirms, taps his fingers against his half-empty coffee cup. He didn't come here to be comforted by her, even if part of him needed to hear this.]
I'm trying to. If he'll let me. But until he does, I'm just gonna be there to drink coffee in his, uh, general vicinity.
He's a good guy, Frost. The best guy I know, even if he don't know me right now. I know him, even if he fucked something up. [And he thinks he knows what happened, but if Fraser hasn't told her and she isn't reading the file, he's not telling her.]
He deserves the fucking best, even if you wanna rip his head off sometimes.
Re: Private
I know.
He's lucky to have you, even if he doesn't know it yet. Just ... keep drinking that coffee in his vicinity. And try to separate this version of him a little from the one you know. Because again, if it were me, and my best friend from back home were here, I would have a hell of a time just ... I don't know, foregoing what his expectations would be, for me.
There's a whole side of myself that my friends didn't want me to be. And I was scared of it, because I knew I was capable of being ... bad. Really, really bad. I was mean. I was ... I hurt people. So of course no one who knew me would see Killer Frost -- this other side -- as anything other than a villain, with their friend Caitlin Snow trapped inside. They would just help me perpetuate that belief about myself, that the "real me" was the good girl who followed all the rules, and anything else was just my powers developing their own personality.
But it's not. It's all me. Snow, Frost ... it doesn't make a difference. I can be kind or cruel, timid or confident, anything in between. And I'll admit I'm still figuring all of it out. But I couldn't have done any of it if I had someone breathing down my neck that any part of me was real or not real. Not -- that I'm saying you would do that, or that what he's going through is anything like what I did. I honestly don't know.
But he does strike me as someone who might be concerned with presentation, and expectations, so it might just ... it might be something to watch out for. And it's why I say to try to get to know who he is now -- or who he'll become, because it might be different from the person that you know, in your time.
Re: Private
[She's already the kind of person you take the time to listen to, and when she really starts to speak he goes quieter than he has yet. When he stops tapping his foot, his fingers, stops moving, it's obvious.
He's listening to her, and he's thinking about her words. He tries to remember what he thought Fraser would be like before he met him-- he turned out to be so different than the files said, what other people said.
She's right. He really is that guy in the red serge, willing to do anything for his fellow man. But he's also the guy who waited in that crypt with him, even though it wasn't all legal, because he knew it was important to Ray; he's also the guy who will make fun of a guy so subtly no one hears it; he's the guy who came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of his father and remained because he pissed off the whole of fucking Canada.
He's all of that. The only thing he isn't is the guy who knows Ray. He can live with that. And maybe he should let Fraser know that, instead of assuming he already did.
He takes a breath, then leans back against her lovely couch and gives her a smile. He's such a dumbass, thinking he could tell her shit.]
You still think you graduated by accident?
Re: Private
I think there's a lot more that I have to work on before I'm ready to be a warden.
Re: Private
Guess the Admiral disagreed.
[He gives her another smile, small but heartfelt, and then he puts down his coffee and drags both hands over his face.]
Sorry. I didn't come here to get help or nothin'. Just-- to talk. See if he's in good hands.
[He can maybe reboot his friendship with Fraser, but he's always going to care. He can't stop that.]
Re: Private
And? What's the verdict?
Re: Private
You're approved, Snow. [He gives her a tight little smile, but he means it. Fraser may be his best friend, but they're not alike at all. He has to work to understand him. Caitlin feels like she gets things about him so easily, so instinctively. It's a good thing.]
If he starts pissing you off and you gotta vent, you come and find me. I get that.
Re: Private
While you're here ... is there anything else you want to know about me?
Re: Private
[He really thinks about it, biting on his lower lip, before he nods.]
What'd you mean? When you said your friends saw two different people?
Re: Private
[She holds up a hand, just to let the temperature around her drop, and a small, imperfect globe of ice appears in her palm. As she forms it, her appearance changes: eyes glinting silver, lighter hair spilling over the brown, skin sparkling like new fallen snow.]
Happens when I get mad, too. Can't control it, then.
[There's a subtle shift in the tone of her voice, too -- a faint echo, like wind through glass.]
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It's like the Admiral searched all over the fucking universe to find someone perfect for Fraser. He musta loved that. But I'm guessin' it ain't been all that nice to you?
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He seemed pretty impressed when I showed him what I could do.
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