[Is it possible that he sounds, well... balanced now? He might still be a little more on the tired side, not quite up to his usual brisk energy; but the flat, dead tone is gone, and his voice is full of warmth once more. There you are is said with relief, not judgment.
He takes a breath, sighs it out softly.]
I'm... Yeah. I'm okay. It's been a rather tumultuous week. I think you might be better off having slept through it.
[For just a second, he flips over into pure Constable Fraser mode:]
The short version, as I understand it, is that Bill Cipher and Ford Pines somehow hijacked the Barge and brought us to one particular iteration of the Pacific Northwest in order to find the man Cipher believes 'created' him. During the hatching of this plot, Cipher apparently promised one or more co-conspirators that no one would be harmed by their pursuits, and in his attempt to create what he felt would be a safe distraction, he cast a spell that both rendered everyone invulnerable and brought everything we imagined to life.
[And then he can't keep it up anymore. If she hasn't yet figured out why he sent that first message she's going to before long, and he just can't Constable Fraser himself through that particular humiliation. He sighs again and glances somewhere off-camera, rubbing his eyebrow.]
As you can imagine, the fallout was... was rather worse than I think he expected. And to be honest, I'm not sure what became of him or Pines, though I assume they're either back aboard or soon will be.
[Which means he's admitting that it fucked him up enough that he didn't do anything about it and hasn't been keeping track very well.]
[It makes Caitlin's head spin, trying to keep up, and she's already
a little groggy from the barge coma. She blinks a few times and lets the
explanation sink in, eventually nodding. Her expression softens when Fraser
switches gears.]
And how are you doing?
[On second thought:] Do you want some tea? If all the
hallways are back to normal, we could meet in my cabin.
Then I'll meet you there. Just come on in when you get there.
[ As it turns out, the hallways aren't a problem --
everything seems relatively normal, actually, but chances are she's missing
the worst of whatever this flood -- no, sabotage -- has wrought. It's not a
far trip from where she's been comatose in Bucky's cabin to her own, so she
should already be there by the time Fraser arrives, and starting to sift
through the assortment of tea bags and coffee pods that she still has on
hand. ]
[He still knocks, because he can't not -- but at least he opens the door right after that, so that it serves as more of a warning than a request. At least he smiles when he sees her, too.]
It's good to be up. I'm still not sure how long I was out.
But it's good to see you, too. Come on in, have a seat. [She
gestures to the row of stools along the kitchen island, and passes him the
box of tea bags. There's a pretty wide variety.] Tea?
[He hops up on a stool and rifles through for a moment. He's feeling uneasy enough to want something soothing, he decides, and passes back a packet of helpful-looking chamomile.]
It can't have been much more than two weeks, I don't think, but it shouldn't be too hard to narrow it down from there. What was the state of the Barge, the last you remember? Things like the gravity anomalies, the elevator, and so on.
It was awful. The anomalies were bad. The hallways just ... kept going.
[She picks out a similarly decaffeinated bag for herself and
prepares the mugs, filling them with heated water from the fancy coffee
machine.] The distances between places were always changing, and my
powers were acting weird. It felt like the whole ship was trying to turn
itself inside out, and I couldn't figure out how or why. [And that
had made things much, much worse; she'd been aware of less and less as the
days went on, more and more frightened of the way reality seemed to bend
and break around the barge.] I think the coma was kind of a
blessing in disguise; I probably would've lost my mind trying to figure it
all out and make it stop.
[She brings the mugs over to the other side of the island and sits
on the stool beside him. He's already told her some of what happened, and
she can guess how he feels about it.] How did you deal with
everything? Better than trying to encase yourself in a block of ice, I
hope?
[He takes his mug and holds it in both hands, looking down into the steaming, brewing liquid like it will hold a better answer than the truth. While he's waiting for that inspiration, he notes:]
You didn't really lose all that much time, then. That, ah-- well, let's call it that stage persisted for a few days, overall, and then the outcome you were dreading came true: the ship did, in fact, turn itself inside out, thanks to the portal. And that persisted for about a week, along with the spell, so you'll only have been out for about a week and a half.
There it is, and for a moment the desire to shut this down before it even starts is so strong that his whole body seems to tense up, even his hands going kind of white-knuckled on his tea. He doesn't want to do this, and she knows he doesn't want to do this, and it doesn't make sense to when she must already know what's happened.
Something in him wants to be fiercely angry that she's trying it anyway, but after the library, anger scares him more than anything else he could feel; so he tries to stamp it all back down, making his voice cool and terse. "Caitlin."
He looks up at her face, finds her ready to listen, wanting to help... and just as suddenly, the fight goes out of him. He sighs, the tension in him going slack again, his expression going tired and hollow. He still doesn't want to go into the excruciating details, but he doesn't want to fight. There has to be some kind of middle ground. He has to be able to just... tell her what he needs.
Which he tries to, quietly, wearily. "I thought it was her. I really did. But it wasn't, and honestly... I'm ready to put it behind me. All of it, I mean. Victoria." He blinks a few times, rapidly, like he's getting misty -- but then he just looks back down at his tea, and no tears come. "I'm ready to put Victoria behind me," he says again, very softly, like he has to confirm it for himself.
She sees the cold come over him as surely as she's felt it on herself, and
she regards him steadily, unmoving even in the face of the clipped way he
says her name like a warning.
Caitlin doesn't say anything. She doesn't push any further than she already
has, and yes -- she knows she's toeing a line, here, but if she doesn't
take the risk to nudge Fraser right to the edge of that line, close enough
to see what's on the other side of it, then she's not really doing her job
as well as she could.
She's relieved when he does speak, in words that are quiet and a little
ragged, like something inside of him is starting to get a little scuffed
up, not quite as pressed and polished as the facade he wants to show the
world. And even if there's an exasperation with it, even if he's
tired, she knows this can only be good. Caitlin smiles, and makes a
sort of aborted attempt to reach for his hand, thinking better of it almost
as soon as she has the thought in the first place. The truth is enough, for
right now, without having to heap physical contact on top of it.
And she's skeptical, but he repeats the phrase with a little more
confidence, and she's sure that she can believe him. This, she'll take at
face value. "Good," she says, still gentle, with the quietest emphasis.
"I'm sorry you had to go through something awful like that when I wasn't
there to help. You know if I'd been awake I'd have been right there with
you, right?"
"I'm glad you weren't, honestly." That's not because of Caitlin herself, as stressful as things between them can be at times. It's that thinking about anyone else 'meeting' the fake Victoria makes him shudder with phantom humiliation. He sighs, rubbing his brow -- not his usual little tic of discomfort, but like he's been awake for 72 hours straight. Tired is hardly even the word for it at this point.
"I let it go for far too long," he admits. "Three, four days. I didn't even question it." He frowns, another spike of anger coursing through him, this time self-directed. Mostly self-directed, anyway. "My mind filled in all of the gaps. She had a door, she said she was an inmate..." He shakes his head, presses his lips tight together. He doesn't want to be this angry about it. He can't be this angry about it. Not at himself, and not at the people who set him up to stumble like that.
"And it makes sense," Caitlin says. "If you don't know that there's another
reason that something is happening, the simplest explanation is usually the
correct one. It's a lot more logical that someone from your life back home
would appear here as an inmate than her presence being the result of a
spell. It just isn't the first thing you come to - especially if it's
something you really want to be true." She shrugs, but there's still
sympathy in her eyes.
He smiles a tiny bit now, though without much humor or happiness. "I'm all right when I'm not thinking about it," he murmurs. "I spent the last couple of days off the ship, down in Portland with some of the others, and it helped. I felt pretty close to normal by the time I made it back."
"But when I learned the truth before that," he goes on, smile fading, "and when I think about it now, I feel..." He trails off, and after a moment, shakes his head, leaving it there.
He feels. He feels a lot of things; too many things. He's trying to remind himself very forcibly that the feeling isn't a problem in and of itself, because he's started to realize that there's something of a pattern forming: the harder he pushes down that piece of himself, the worse things get when it pushes back. And that's the lesson he'd forgotten about Caitlin Snow and Killer Frost, isn't it? It hadn't worked that way for them, either.
"Embarrassed?" she volunteers, without judgment. "Ashamed that you could
let yourself do something like that?" She really is just guessing, based on
what she knows of him and how she might have felt if the specter of one of
her exes had shown up on the barge shortly after her own arrival. And how
she did feel when she was dragged to Zero to melt back into Dr.
Snow. "Maybe even beating yourself up because you think that you should
know better?"
"I should have known better," he insists quietly. "It's humiliating."
Even if his subconscious had helpfully stepped in to flesh out the details, had given her a door and an inmate backstory... What does it say about him, or about him and Victoria, that he'd spent three full days happily in love with a figment of his imagination and hadn't questioned it once? Of course he's ready to be done; if it was that easy to fake, it was never as real as he thought it was from the start.
"You know better now," Caitlin points out, and takes a sip of her tea.
"That's sort of why we're here, isn't it? We can keep on making the same
mistakes over and over until we actually learn what we're supposed to from
them." And if she's being honest with herself -- and she should be
-- she's starting to wonder if maybe there isn't a mistake of her own she's
caught in, even if it wasn't the one she was brought here to learn. But
that's not the point right now. "The fact that you're embarrassed by it
probably means you're moving in the right direction."
"Oh, God," he groans with unusual theatricality. Unusual for Constable Fraser, RCMP, anyway. Not nearly as strange for the man behind the mask -- it's almost exactly the petulant, biting tone he used to take with his father.
"What's next, in that case: I get to relive the Otter Incident of '71?" Which he instantly regrets mentioning, and quickly holds up a hand to forestall her. "Don't ask, please."
This is new, she thinks, and strangely refreshing; she hasn't had to poke
too hard or push too far to get an honest reaction, and it hadn't even been
preceded by the tension that usually splits fine fractures into his facade
before it cracks open. It's like the whole terrible event really did
do some good.
Her laugh is soft and genuine, with an arched eyebrow and lingering smirk.
"Oh, come on, you can't just bring something like that up and tell me not
to ask. I'm asking: what, pray tell, is the Otter Incident?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[voice, right at the start of Pure Imagination] 1/2
[His voice is hushed, almost a whisper, but it's impossible to miss the excitement in it.]
She's here. She's really here this time. I checked.
[And indeed, there's a woman's voice in the background, asking a question Caitlin can't quite make out.]
I have to go. But come by if you want to meet her.
[voice, a few days later] 2/2
Disregard my previous message, when you get this. I... made a mistake.
Re: [voice, a few days later] 2/2
[ The first message leaves her cautiously excited, but she listens through the second one before returning the message with one of her own. ]
I'm so sorry I missed your messages. I was ... asleep, I think. What happened? Are you okay?
no subject
[Is it possible that he sounds, well... balanced now? He might still be a little more on the tired side, not quite up to his usual brisk energy; but the flat, dead tone is gone, and his voice is full of warmth once more. There you are is said with relief, not judgment.
He takes a breath, sighs it out softly.]
I'm... Yeah. I'm okay. It's been a rather tumultuous week. I think you might be better off having slept through it.
no subject
Another flood? [It's the most logical explanation, after all.] I wouldn't mind hearing about it, if you want to share.
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[For just a second, he flips over into pure Constable Fraser mode:]
The short version, as I understand it, is that Bill Cipher and Ford Pines somehow hijacked the Barge and brought us to one particular iteration of the Pacific Northwest in order to find the man Cipher believes 'created' him. During the hatching of this plot, Cipher apparently promised one or more co-conspirators that no one would be harmed by their pursuits, and in his attempt to create what he felt would be a safe distraction, he cast a spell that both rendered everyone invulnerable and brought everything we imagined to life.
[And then he can't keep it up anymore. If she hasn't yet figured out why he sent that first message she's going to before long, and he just can't Constable Fraser himself through that particular humiliation. He sighs again and glances somewhere off-camera, rubbing his eyebrow.]
As you can imagine, the fallout was... was rather worse than I think he expected. And to be honest, I'm not sure what became of him or Pines, though I assume they're either back aboard or soon will be.
[Which means he's admitting that it fucked him up enough that he didn't do anything about it and hasn't been keeping track very well.]
no subject
[It makes Caitlin's head spin, trying to keep up, and she's already a little groggy from the barge coma. She blinks a few times and lets the explanation sink in, eventually nodding. Her expression softens when Fraser switches gears.]
And how are you doing?
[On second thought:] Do you want some tea? If all the hallways are back to normal, we could meet in my cabin.
no subject
All right. I don't think the hallways will be a problem.
[Caitlin tenderly asking him how he's doing might be -- but then, she seems to have thought better of that.]
no subject
Then I'll meet you there. Just come on in when you get there.
[ As it turns out, the hallways aren't a problem -- everything seems relatively normal, actually, but chances are she's missing the worst of whatever this flood -- no, sabotage -- has wrought. It's not a far trip from where she's been comatose in Bucky's cabin to her own, so she should already be there by the time Fraser arrives, and starting to sift through the assortment of tea bags and coffee pods that she still has on hand. ]
no subject
Hi, Caitlin. It's good to see you up.
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It's good to be up. I'm still not sure how long I was out.
But it's good to see you, too. Come on in, have a seat. [She gestures to the row of stools along the kitchen island, and passes him the box of tea bags. There's a pretty wide variety.] Tea?
no subject
[He hops up on a stool and rifles through for a moment. He's feeling uneasy enough to want something soothing, he decides, and passes back a packet of helpful-looking chamomile.]
It can't have been much more than two weeks, I don't think, but it shouldn't be too hard to narrow it down from there. What was the state of the Barge, the last you remember? Things like the gravity anomalies, the elevator, and so on.
no subject
It was awful. The anomalies were bad. The hallways just ... kept going. [She picks out a similarly decaffeinated bag for herself and prepares the mugs, filling them with heated water from the fancy coffee machine.] The distances between places were always changing, and my powers were acting weird. It felt like the whole ship was trying to turn itself inside out, and I couldn't figure out how or why. [And that had made things much, much worse; she'd been aware of less and less as the days went on, more and more frightened of the way reality seemed to bend and break around the barge.] I think the coma was kind of a blessing in disguise; I probably would've lost my mind trying to figure it all out and make it stop.
[She brings the mugs over to the other side of the island and sits on the stool beside him. He's already told her some of what happened, and she can guess how he feels about it.] How did you deal with everything? Better than trying to encase yourself in a block of ice, I hope?
no subject
You didn't really lose all that much time, then. That, ah-- well, let's call it that stage persisted for a few days, overall, and then the outcome you were dreading came true: the ship did, in fact, turn itself inside out, thanks to the portal. And that persisted for about a week, along with the spell, so you'll only have been out for about a week and a half.
no subject
Well, that's better than I thought. I know some people have been out for up to a month, if not longer.
[A little more softly:] The spell that made things real, right?
orite prose is a thing
Something in him wants to be fiercely angry that she's trying it anyway, but after the library, anger scares him more than anything else he could feel; so he tries to stamp it all back down, making his voice cool and terse. "Caitlin."
He looks up at her face, finds her ready to listen, wanting to help... and just as suddenly, the fight goes out of him. He sighs, the tension in him going slack again, his expression going tired and hollow. He still doesn't want to go into the excruciating details, but he doesn't want to fight. There has to be some kind of middle ground. He has to be able to just... tell her what he needs.
Which he tries to, quietly, wearily. "I thought it was her. I really did. But it wasn't, and honestly... I'm ready to put it behind me. All of it, I mean. Victoria." He blinks a few times, rapidly, like he's getting misty -- but then he just looks back down at his tea, and no tears come. "I'm ready to put Victoria behind me," he says again, very softly, like he has to confirm it for himself.
Re: orite prose is a thing
She sees the cold come over him as surely as she's felt it on herself, and she regards him steadily, unmoving even in the face of the clipped way he says her name like a warning.
Caitlin doesn't say anything. She doesn't push any further than she already has, and yes -- she knows she's toeing a line, here, but if she doesn't take the risk to nudge Fraser right to the edge of that line, close enough to see what's on the other side of it, then she's not really doing her job as well as she could.
She's relieved when he does speak, in words that are quiet and a little ragged, like something inside of him is starting to get a little scuffed up, not quite as pressed and polished as the facade he wants to show the world. And even if there's an exasperation with it, even if he's tired, she knows this can only be good. Caitlin smiles, and makes a sort of aborted attempt to reach for his hand, thinking better of it almost as soon as she has the thought in the first place. The truth is enough, for right now, without having to heap physical contact on top of it.
And she's skeptical, but he repeats the phrase with a little more confidence, and she's sure that she can believe him. This, she'll take at face value. "Good," she says, still gentle, with the quietest emphasis. "I'm sorry you had to go through something awful like that when I wasn't there to help. You know if I'd been awake I'd have been right there with you, right?"
no subject
"I let it go for far too long," he admits. "Three, four days. I didn't even question it." He frowns, another spike of anger coursing through him, this time self-directed. Mostly self-directed, anyway. "My mind filled in all of the gaps. She had a door, she said she was an inmate..." He shakes his head, presses his lips tight together. He doesn't want to be this angry about it. He can't be this angry about it. Not at himself, and not at the people who set him up to stumble like that.
no subject
"And it makes sense," Caitlin says. "If you don't know that there's another reason that something is happening, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It's a lot more logical that someone from your life back home would appear here as an inmate than her presence being the result of a spell. It just isn't the first thing you come to - especially if it's something you really want to be true." She shrugs, but there's still sympathy in her eyes.
"You look exhausted."
no subject
"But when I learned the truth before that," he goes on, smile fading, "and when I think about it now, I feel..." He trails off, and after a moment, shakes his head, leaving it there.
He feels. He feels a lot of things; too many things. He's trying to remind himself very forcibly that the feeling isn't a problem in and of itself, because he's started to realize that there's something of a pattern forming: the harder he pushes down that piece of himself, the worse things get when it pushes back. And that's the lesson he'd forgotten about Caitlin Snow and Killer Frost, isn't it? It hadn't worked that way for them, either.
no subject
"Embarrassed?" she volunteers, without judgment. "Ashamed that you could let yourself do something like that?" She really is just guessing, based on what she knows of him and how she might have felt if the specter of one of her exes had shown up on the barge shortly after her own arrival. And how she did feel when she was dragged to Zero to melt back into Dr. Snow. "Maybe even beating yourself up because you think that you should know better?"
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Even if his subconscious had helpfully stepped in to flesh out the details, had given her a door and an inmate backstory... What does it say about him, or about him and Victoria, that he'd spent three full days happily in love with a figment of his imagination and hadn't questioned it once? Of course he's ready to be done; if it was that easy to fake, it was never as real as he thought it was from the start.
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"You know better now," Caitlin points out, and takes a sip of her tea. "That's sort of why we're here, isn't it? We can keep on making the same mistakes over and over until we actually learn what we're supposed to from them." And if she's being honest with herself -- and she should be -- she's starting to wonder if maybe there isn't a mistake of her own she's caught in, even if it wasn't the one she was brought here to learn. But that's not the point right now. "The fact that you're embarrassed by it probably means you're moving in the right direction."
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"What's next, in that case: I get to relive the Otter Incident of '71?" Which he instantly regrets mentioning, and quickly holds up a hand to forestall her. "Don't ask, please."
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This is new, she thinks, and strangely refreshing; she hasn't had to poke too hard or push too far to get an honest reaction, and it hadn't even been preceded by the tension that usually splits fine fractures into his facade before it cracks open. It's like the whole terrible event really did do some good.
Her laugh is soft and genuine, with an arched eyebrow and lingering smirk. "Oh, come on, you can't just bring something like that up and tell me not to ask. I'm asking: what, pray tell, is the Otter Incident?"
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