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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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."

Jacqueline did as she was told, and she walked in, heads turned. Some sort of sporting game was being watched, and the bar was extremely busy. Still, the men who sat nearest to the door had clearly noticed to beautiful women were coming in, and the walk to a table was not going to get any easier.

"Right. Bars." Sometimes striking looks did have its disadvantages.

Mina did her best to hide her amusement. But it was a bit of a stretch. She followed Jacqueline over to a table, quite content, for the moment to be 'the plain one.'

She pulled a chair out for Jacqueline, ever the gentleman. "I'll say one thing for you," she mused. "You did not get your good looks from your birthmother. Marian O'Reily was not a great beauty." It was risky business bringing up Marian. Mina only resorted to it in an effort to avoid further discussion of her current status in Baedal. It was always better to deflect attention and Mina was very good at it. She always had been, ever since she was a mortal.

"I remember she had a wart on her chin. And her hands were the size of frying pans."

Jacqueline raised her eyebrow.

"Really? She couldn't have been that awful." But honestly Jacqueline had never so much as seen a picture of her birth mother. So all she had to go on was what Mina, or her parents told her. And naturally, her parents didn't like to talk about her birth mother all that much.

It was always quite delightful when one of Mina's plans actually worked. Rare, but delightful.

She walked around the table, slumping down in her own seat and propping her feet up on the table. "Awful implies something about her personality," she said diplomatically, bridging her fingers in front of her chest. "What Marian was, in the end, was lonely, I think. She wasn't a striking beauty. She wasn't terribly smart. She didn't have many prospects. Certainly, not for marriage."

Funny how a woman's future was always measured that way.

"Well, she ended up having quite a blessed life." She gave Jacqueline a bit of a smile. "As did you."

Jacqueline smiled. "Tell me about her?"

She had always been too shy, or guilt-ridden, to ask her parents. Jacqueline didn't want to seem ungrateful, or even unhappy that they had taken her in. Especially her father. She had spent so many wonderful nights out in the city, or at the opera with him, and she could barely bring herself to do anything that might break his heart.

But then of course, becoming a Valkeryie might have done so. Running away probably did.

"Marian?" Mina smiled, tapping her fingertips. She was so deliriously happy that her plan to derail the conversation had worked that it was only now she realized that there really wasn't much to tell. Certainly nothing complimentary. But she would make due. If becoming a primogen had taught her anything, it had taught her to blow smoke, when necessary.

She settled in her seat. "Marian O'Reily was hired by your mother about three years before you were born. Your parents had settled into the plantation years ago, but they were only just getting it up and running. Three maids, a valet, their driver, and a footman. Marian was the last one hired. Your mother...liked her because she could be easily Dominated."

A fool generally was.

"She was a good, Irish Catholic girl. Repressed. Lonely. So when any man gave her attention, she gave in very easily." Mina made an absent gesture. "Which led to the inevitable."

Jacqueline wasn't sure what to think of Marian. She didn't like hearing that her biological mother was a mental pushover. Maybe it meant that she was, at least when she was still human. Wait. Jacqueline was human.

And lonely. Jaqueline felt very lonely. She keeps herself together very well during the day. But when she's in her room alone at night, she sobs herself to sleep, worrying about where Luke may be, whether he's still alive. And now that Mina was thinking about going into torpor, she'd be all alone. With no family left.

Then Jacqueline realized that Mina had deflected the conversation. So of course, she had to work it right back in. And there's no better way than honesty.

"I'd be a lonely girl if you disappeared from my life," she said. It didn't sound depressing, or angry. Jacqueline just said it like it would be fact.

So much for her brilliant plan to change the subject. Mina tapped her fingertips together a moment or two, debating the best way to say what she needed to say. "Jacqueline," she started slowly, drawing out each syllable of the name, "you are younger than I am, you are smarter than I am, and you have a life ahead of you still. A purpose. A reason. What I have is an empty room...well...metaphorically speaking, as I technically have a burdensome flatmate."

Mina didn't enjoy opening old wounds, but it was called for tonight. "You want to go back home, I know that. Because you have so much to return home to. A husband who loves you. Your mother and father who dote on you more than you will ever know." She paused. "I hope you do get back. I honestly do. But you see, I have no motivation. No motivation to go back and, frankly, no motivation to go forward."

Baedal offered her nothing. She was met everywhere with derision and loneliness and broken promises. "I'm tired of things going wrong."

Everything Mina said was right - about who Jacqueline cared about and why she would fight hard to get back to them. But didn't she care about those people too?

"But don't you want to see Mom? She's your sister. And Dad, you two have so much fun together. They're family, your family."

Mina shook her head slightly. "Jacqueline, don't make me say it. I can't bear to say it and I can promise you that right now, you are ill-equipped to hear it."

She felt some heat rise behind her eyes and had to close them for a moment. Mina couldn't afford to cry. She barely had enough blood in her system to sustain her with any semblance of humanity.

When Mina closed her eyes, Jacqueline scooted closer to her seat.

"Don't make you say what? That they aren't your family? Because you know they are. How many times have I heard you tell stories about 'Jack and Anne'? The way my parents look at you after you've returned from being away, if that isn't family -- I don't know what is."

"I'm not talking about Jack and Anne," Mina said quietly. "I have loved your parents through lifetimes. But in the end, the things I did, the things I've been...it was never for them."

She opened her eyes slowly. If Jacqueline was so determined to tread down this path, then Mina could not escape it. She was so very much her mother's daughter. Stubborn. Strong. Annoyingly persistent. "I did it for Tom," she said quietly. "I did it for some illusion of love that no longer exists. So I ask you, what happens now?"

It wasn't hard to imagine how Mina was feeling. When Jacqueline had found out the Luke by her side was a fetch, she felt betrayed. Like the feeling she gave him had been cheated from her, stolen in a way that could never be taken back. Luckily for her, she was able to find Luke. He was in worse than poor shape, but eventually, they were happy again.

When she found Tom, she had been so happy for Mina. Finally, her aunt would be able to find the man she had been looking for. But when they found out -- about his, identity, Jacqueline could see the change in Mina's expression. It was unbelievable.

And she didn't know what to say. What could she say? So Jacqueline looked down at the table.

Mina watched Jacqueline for a moment. Her gaze was not unkind, but there was a hot of unabashed hurt there too. It wasn't Jacqueline's fault, of course. None of it was; not the truth about Tom, nor her failure to understand, nor even Mina's sense of loneliness. But she could imagine how Jacqueline was feeling right now. Flustered. Guilty. Empathetic, perhaps.

Switching over to Norse, Mina spoke in a gentle, calm voice. "You know, I'm not a Kindred philosopher by any stretch of the imagination, but there's something I've noticed over the last few centuries. It's that vampires find different ways to cope with immortality. Some do it by turning off their humanity. Others find someone or something to live for."

She let the unasked question hang in the air: What did she have to live for now?

Jacqueline tried to understand. Part of her could. If it where anyone else who was gone from her life, her mother, father, or even Mina, she wouldn't be crying herself to sleep at night. But instead it was Luke.

Maybe it was because she still had hope that she'd see Luke again someday. But the other part of her, who saw Mina's postion but wasn't in it, couldn't understand. When she was young, she lived to become a vampire so she could join the Valkyries. It was because she believed in something larger. She loved Luke for many reasons, but most importantly, it was because he shared the same values. They fought, side by side, for the same things. He was a pillar in her life, but she couldn't imagine losing her will to live because of him.

But maybe it was because she just wasn't there yet.

"Why did you become a Valkyrie?"

Furniture shopping! [open]

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