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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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?"

Mina leveled her eyes on Jacqueline. "I could give you a list of reasons longer than Doyle's cock," she said, momentarily forgetting herself. "Adventure, the chance to do something meaningful, the chance to do something good, immortality, a lifetime of your mother and your father." Jack would, of course, be utterly scandalized by such language in front of his daughter. A bit abashed, she cleared her throat. "Pardon my language."

She looked down at her chipped nails a moment before continuing, "But if I'm honest with myself, and honest with you, so much of it was for Tom. Finding Tom, avenging Tom, making sure what happened to me never happened to another innocent soul." She smiled slyly, "Not that I was ever innocent."

Jacqueline managed a smile.

"I can understand that. But now that he's ... gone, the rest of it, does it not matter? What do you expect to wake up to a few centuries from now? Tom still won't be here. What will you do then? Why not find something new to care about, now, this century?"

Smiling absently, Mina lowered her feet from the table. She leaned forward, resting her temple on he fingertips, giving Jacquelin a look.

"Did you have something in mind?" she asked.

She didn't, but Jacqueline was going to start making things up if she had to.

"At least we're not in Arcadia anymore. We could seek to do good here, in Baedal, until we find a way back home. Then we can find my parents, find Luke, and we can all set off together. Go somewhere new, fight another good fight."

"Yes, well, having never been in Arcadia, you will have to tell me what that was like sometime." Mina frowned slightly, wondering if there was even a world for them to return to. She didn't like the thought of Anne and Jack and Luke being gone, but she wasn't going to voice it. Jacqueline pretended to be tough, but it would crush her. Of that, Mina was absolutely certain.

There were a lot of hopelessly optimistic ifs in Jacqueline's suggestion, but it wasn't worth arguing. "Well," she said slowly, "I haven't made my mind up yet. And I promise not to do anything drastic without telling you first, all right?"

She let out a small, mirthless laugh. "Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow night, I'll turn round a corner and meet the next great love of my life. We never know what the future is going to bring, do we?"

Jacqueline smiled. "All right. You know where I stand."

Mina's comment set off a train of thought in Jacqueline's mind, which started with Jacqueline setting Mina up on a blind date, and ended in happy marriage. But she decided not to voice that part.

((OOC: This plan will end sooooooo well.))

"Then we're settled," Mina said, putting her feet back up on the table again. Simple as that. Out of sight, out of mind.

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