multiversallogs | Furniture shopping! [open]

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Furniture shopping! [open]

Who: Brie Cormac and Mina Barrett and OPEN
What: Furniture shopping
Where: All across town
When: Just after sunset
Notes: Feel free to run into them at any furniture/deco store.
Warnings: None yet

It pained Brie not to live with Mina - she had done so for nearly a year before arriving here. But the thought of complete darkness when she was allowed to feel sunlight was too unbearable. But despite moving in with Jones, she was determined to see Mina regularly and often, especially with the anti-vampire movement going on.

Thus, now the proud renter of an empty room, Brie needed to get some new furniture and there was no one better than Mina to take her shopping.

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Mina wanted to say that hell would most likely freeze over before Mina was able to move out of the inn. She doubted very much she would live to see such liberation. But that felt very cold and this was meant to be a jovial occasion. So she did what she did best and plastered on a bright smile.

"My dear," she said, putting a hand on Jacqueline's elbow, "believe me when I say that when that time comes, I'll expect nothing but the finest of gifts. I imagine you'll be able to afford the best of the best, working for Hellsing."

Jacqueline laughed. "Exactly. You're getting a great deal out of this."

She pulled a sales attendant over and pointed at the two pieces she'd like to purchase, and the man hurried off to fill her order.

Absently, Mina watched the sales attendant. "He's attractive," she muttered. "You know, a few months before you arrived, I was fool enough to enjoy a drink with a very handsome gentleman."

It saddened her, actually, that nothing had come out of her encounter with Castiel. She had held high hopes that he might, perhaps, restore her from her deadened state. But such things were not meant to be and trying to fulfill that need always had a way of reminding Mina how lonely she felt.

"There's a very old expression among the Crone. You're probably too young to have heard it," she murmured. "It's written in Latin, but roughly translates, it says, 'A Kindred always hides, a Kindred's fate is known, a Kindred always stays in the dark and all alone.'"

Jacqueline reached for Mina's hand.

"Mina, you won't be alone. Not as long as I'm here."

She smiled.

"And now, you know you're going to have to tell me about this handsome gentleman."

It seemed a bit academic to point out the obvious flaw in Jacqueline's logic. Mortals died. It was the natural way of things. And now that Jacqueline had returned to mortality, she too would one day leave Mina. But why depress the girl?

Why depress herself?

Mina shrugged absently. "He's gone now," she said dully. "Sometimes, people around here just have a way of disappearing. But it's no matter. I've never been good in relationships. As Tom used to tell me, I make a wonderful wife, but a terrible woman." She scowled. "Or was it the other way around?"

Jacqueline looked concerned.

"Wait, you're saying that people literally disappear? Like, someone killed them disappear? Or mysterious disappear?"

Mina made an absent gesture with her hand. "Poof," she said. Obviously, she suspected there was plenty of the former option, but in this case, she meant the latter. "I imagine it's quite like the way we vanish from our worlds."

She paused. "Then again, perhaps not. Since I disappeared on St. Valentine's Day and Jones never seemed to notice."

"I could have sworn that you never left. You were there for my wedding."

But Jacqueline shrugged. No use dwelling in a depressing place and what it reminded her of.

"I guess in a place that randomly absorbs people, maybe it also randomly spits them out."

"An apt metaphor," Mina said with a wane smile. "'All we are is the spit of fate.' I rather like it. If my mother were alive, I would have her needlepoint it into a pillow. Gold letters, I think. On a blue cloth. Regal, for such a sentiment."

Mina paid the clerk. It was a trifle annoying, this business of worrying about a budget. She had been blessed back in Chicago, to have a fine paycheck to fritter away as she saw fit. She had no need to pay for rent back there, she could stay in the hospital. Nor, for that matter, did she have to pay for things like blood and booze. One of the few advantages of being with Doyle, she supposed.

"What else do you need, my dear?" she asked, turning back to Jacqueline. "Now that your furniture budget has been so generously increased?"

"Thank you Mina." Jacqueline meant it. Once she starts getting paid, and that will be soon, since she just started at Hellsing, she was going to buy lots of things for Mina. Maybe even get her her own basement apartment.

"An armoire perhaps?"

Mina nodded curtly. "Let's see if we can find something suitable," she said. "But do call it a wardrobe, dear. Your father would be sorely upset if he heard you using the French." She meant it more in jest than anything, but it sent a pang of sadness through her. Jack. She missed Jack so bloody much.

Looking at Jacqueline now, Mina couldn't help but remember the last time she had seen Jack. He was so unhappy, desperately worried for his wayward girl. They had spoken at length about it, ultimately coming to the conclusion that, indeed, the hardest part of love was letting go.

If only Mina could learn to take her own advice.

Jacqueline giggled. "A waaaaaardrobe then," she said, mockingly.

"But I think I might be a bit tired for the night. The pieces we got already will be good for now. I'll do more furnishing as I go. What we could think about however, is getting you a new place."

Mina's eyebrow lofted slightly. That felt like it had come out of nowhere. "Me?" she repeated. "Are you concerned for my safety? I assure you, Anna and I are getting on just fine." She paused. "Well, I haven't killed her yet."

More appropriately, she supposed dourly, Anna hadn't killed her yet. As a Kindred, Anna was no match for Mina. She knew it. Jacqueline knew it. Everyone in the city of Chicago knew it. As a Fae? Mina was nothing but dust in the wind.

"Anyway," she continued, "given the current climate, I don't think it's practical for me to start constructing a haven. Things are just too dangerous right now."

"I just -" Jacqueline looked a bit troubled. "I'm worried. That's all."

She reached for Mina's hand.

"I've gotten used to us looking after each other. You doing most of the looking after." She smiled, and began to whisper. "What if we built you a haven beneath the building Jones and I live in? I just want you close by. In this climate, who knows what will happen? At least this way, I'd be able to make sure nothing happened during the day."

Mina squeezed Jacqueline's hand lightly, carefully taking into consideration the fact that she was a bit more delicate than she used to be. "We can talk about that," she said. "Assuming that a haven becomes necessary."

Oh God, she really didn't want to discuss this. Not here, not tonight, not with Jacqueline. But it was unavoidable now.

"To tell you the truth," she started slowly, choosing her words carefully. "I've been considering another possibility for the future."

Noticing that perhaps the furniture store wasn't the best place to discuss serious things, Jacqueline started leading Mina out.

It was reassuring to know that Mina was amiable to the idea of a haven. But her next words intrigued Jacqueline.

"Oh?"

Mina followed Jacqueline. Without giving it much thought, she switched over to ancient Norse. It would be easier and she had a feeling the conversation was going to get very loud, very fast. "To be perfectly honest, I've been seriously considering going into torpor," she said.

She knew that wouldn't elicit a good response, so she rushed on quickly. "There's a blood shortage, Jacqueline. And a horrible, unaccepting climate right now. I might have a better chance of survival if I can ride out the storm alone."

Jacqueline stopped walking.

No no no. She must have heard that incorrectly. A small part of her had known something like this was coming. Jacqueline just hadn't expected that it would be this.

"How in the WORLD could I protect you if you're completely unconscious for the next BAJILLION YEARS?" Her voice was loud. Thank the lord Mina had the sense to switch to Old Norse, because Jacqueline instinctively followed.

Oh dear. It was as bad as Mina feared. She turned around to face Jacqueline, keeping her voice and her expression as calm and level as she could manage. "It's not your responsibility to protect me," she said. She wanted it to sound like she was doing Jacqueline a favor, letting her out of an unwanted responsibility. Really, Mina never envied the ghouls who had to protect vampires. They were meant to be following their own paths. That was why she never made ghouls.

"Jacqueline," she said, reaching out to touch the girl's arms. "My life for the last two and a half centuries has been about serving the Amazons. And about finding Tom. I have neither of those purposes any more. And I'm living in a hostile world, with precious few friends. Torpor may be the logical course of action for me at this time. And it will free you to live your life without having to concern yourself with me."

Jacqueline pulled back. There was something about being with Mina that always made Jacqueline regress to her childhood. And she certainly screamed at Mina like she was a teenager.

"It's not a burden for me Mina! And what, do you think that torpor will do for you? Just go to sleep now and ignore your problems? Ignore me for 200 years? "

And then it hit her. She probably wouldn't be alive then.

Immediately, Mina knew that Jacqueline had just realized her own mortality. Which, in a way, finally answered the question that she had posed to Doctor M on the evening she disappeared from Chicago:

Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occured to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering. Stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. It never occured to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squawling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, theres only one direction. And time is its only measure.

"When our time is limited," she said softly, "don't you think it wise not to squander it?"

Suddenly, what was left of her life seemed so bleak. A kindred's life, while not indestructible, was immortal, and she had always had time later to do this or that. What did she have now? Sixty years left? But what guarantee is there that simply because she looked twenty now, she'd live an average human lifespan?

She had already lived longer than her body could possibly have handled. What's to stop her from being dead tomorrow, or an hour from now?

"When our time is limited," Jacqueline repeated, "we want to spend it with the ones we love." If Mina went into torpor now, Jacqueline would never see her again.

Mina laughed softly, reaching out and taking Jacqueline's hands. She gave them a little squeeze. "My darling," she said, with such affection that it almost sounded like someone else was speaking, "No one has loved me for a very long time." She said it rather flippantly, without any regret. It was a simple statement of fact and Mina was not looking for pity or compliments or flattery.

She simply wasn't loveable.

"Come," she said, taking a deep breath. "Let's find some place to sit. You need to eat, I imagine."

"Well, maybe not like that." She was being a little snarky, but still good-natured. Mina had been like a mother to her since she left home. There was no way Jacqueline didn't love her.

She had forgotten about the eating thing, again.

"That might be nice. And it seems that you do as well."

Without responding to the comment, either comment, Mina scanned the street, picking out a bar. It wasn't exactly a tavern, she she could smell something cooking, so she supposed it would do. On the odd occasion when she actually went someplace other than the hospital or the Inn, Mina took to visiting bars, a different one each time. She enjoyed the ambiance of places like that. It made her sentimental, almost as much as the sea.

"This one," she said, walking over to the front door and holding it open for Jacqueline. She switched back over to English. "Take your hat off, dear, we're indoors."

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