open up now (don't you think it's time?)

[fingersandteeth]

Who: Steven Durante + the other Rockets
Where: Goldenrod Rocket Base in the starter + Tyler's thread, Handsome Jack's place otherwise
When: Late February, immediately after the fossil heist + 10
Summary: Someone is having a quiet crisis following their very first heist! Also, fall-out from some personal revelations + meeting a new Rocket.
Rating: PG-13, with some threads going up to R in terms of language and conversational subjects. Anything too wicked goes to an inbox.

Steven Durante's quieter than usual on their way back from Dirk's Fossil Heist. He keeps looking at his hands. And when it comes to turning in the bag of fossils and collecting their rewards, he doesn't even bother asking if he, Connie, and the other Steve will get promotions from this.

Sure, when the time has come for them to claim their weird abomination fossils, he immediately jumps to claiming one the Pokedex claims is called a 'Dracozolt'--but otherwise, he seems unusually subdued. Something is definitely on his mind and has been since... well, even before Steve P and Connie caught up with him and Dirk.

Dirk might be able to hazard a guess as to what's bothering him. Anyone else probably has to ask.

Comments

[asmywitness]

I don't forget. Eidetic memory.

He holds that up with a little bit of a smug look, before he turns it around again and keeps writing.

It'll still be useful for knowing who I'm supposed to actually care about. Which is nice.

[fingersandteeth]

Steven grins.

I bet that's useful.

[asmywitness]

When he reads the short note, it gets an exaggerated 'eh' kind of shrug.

Pros and cons. Everyone's got things they'd rather forget.

[fingersandteeth]

Steven takes a moment before he writes, Yeah. Point taken.

[asmywitness]

He's quiet for a few moments, tapping the pen in idle movement. His bird - he really should name it at some point - finally turns its rather oppressive gaze from Tyler to Steven.

Finally, he writes one question, and hands the pad over.

What's your world like?

[fingersandteeth]

Steven frowns, staring down at the paper, and then back up at the wall. Finally he writes:

I don't know where to start describing it. It's an Earth, not some other planet. I'm from the year 2015. I come from San Diego, California, in the United States. My parents live up north in Santa Carla. Cars are commonplace. No one can Jurassic Park up fossils. We have Ocean's 11, but then there's also various in-world equivalents of things from my world here, like the Smashing Pumpkaboos, so I don't know if that makes my world more or less like yours just based on pop culture.

He pauses again, starts a new page, frowning thoughtfully as he write:

Hm. What else? Various forms of magic users/supernatural creatures/the undead exist, but most people don't know about them. I didn't until I was in my 30s, despite one of the local comic book shops in the town my parents moved to selling indie comics about how vampires are totally real and here's how to kill them. Also, evidently my old favorite wrestling league (the EWW) was stuffed full of supernatural guys. I'm not into wrestling as much as I used to be for reasons, but knowing that explains a lot.

[asmywitness]

...well that second page is very interesting.

It's the same for me, actually, for a lot of that - except I'm from the year 2018. I'm not so familiar with vampires being real in my world, but other things were. I'm more familiar with

His hand hovers over the page for a moment, and it almost seems to tremble before he finally decides on the right word.

stories about fair folk being real. You know those Irish style ones where they're absolute merciless bastards? That kind of thing. I've done some pretty in-depth research.

First hand experience counts, right?

[fingersandteeth]

Steven gets very, very stiff. He looks up at Tyler, then back down at the paper, and very gingerly he pulls the notepad to him.

They are. In mine. And they are bastards.

The word itself is underlined furiously three or four times.

[asmywitness]

He sees that reaction all too clearly. He was watching for it, staring at Steven with the same intensity his bird is.

He was hoping for it, really.

He takes it back, and flips to a new page; the lines from Steven's fury are still visible. And he writes with great care - his writing has been perfectly neat thus far but this is going an extra mile.

Q&A
What kind of Changeling are you:

[fingersandteeth]

He's shaking a little now. Fuck. He feels-- more profoundly and visibly seen since the night after the heist.

Darkling. Leechfinger kith.

But it's not just that he feels seen. It's standing in the mirror with Jack, learning the right placement for his hands. It's Tio Carlos, picking him up so that he can see onto the table in the pathology laboratory. It's Charley, tiny nose pressed against the diagram in his uncle's textbook, asking him questions in her piping four-year-old's voice.

It's that he doesn't feel alone.

You?

[asmywitness]

It isn't quite as earth-shattering a revelation for him as it clearly is for Steven, when Tyler has been here for all of maybe a few hours.

But no small amount of tension drops from his form, nonetheless, because someone will understand him, and right now when everything else is completely beyond his scope then at least he has that familiarity to cling to.

Wizened. Fatemaker.

Why the fuck are we human again.

[fingersandteeth]

No fucking clue, Steven writes. We aren't the only one this happens to, though. There's some extremely tall pink-haired woman, Rose Universe, who talks on the 'gear as if she hasn't been human before. And Lydia, she was some sort of undead for a while.

[asmywitness]

Glad to know we're not THE weirdest things out there.

You know, maybe. I might be a little disappointed if we aren't.

[fingersandteeth]

We'll have to see next weird weekend, when everyone stops being mundane human for 2-3 days and everything's a blur afterward.

That's what Jack says it's like. I haven't been through one yet.

What Court are you?

[asmywitness]

Summer. He hesitates for a moment, expression uncertain, but continues. They're just the first one that found me and my friend when we escaped together. She didn't stay with them.

...oh. Mai. She would have no idea he was gone.

He frowns then, looking uncertainly away. That was... a heavy thing to realise. That she might just think he vanished off the face of the earth.

[fingersandteeth]

Winter found us. I've been staying with them mostly out of inertia. And because once upon a time the idea of hiding appealed to me. It doesn't much anymore since I came here for... well, a lot of reasons. But it's not like I can re-pledge myself while I'm human.

Shit. I hope your friend doesn't think you went back.

He might lightly put a hand on Tyler's arm after he writes that and passes the notepad over.

[asmywitness]

He looks immediately somewhat uncomfortable at the touch, and uses taking the notepad as an excuse to shrug him off. She'll be fine.

Easier to dismiss the thought and move on, rather than cling to worry and give himself an anxiety attack about abandoning her. Perks of an eidetic memory: pro compartmentalisation.

What about here? Who else knows about changelings?

[fingersandteeth]

He won't try to touch him again.

Carly, Dirk and this non-Rocket kid named Armin know that I ran into some bullshit with faeries, but not much in the way of detail. Both Jack and Connie know more details. None of them know everything. No one else should know anything.

I won't say anything about you, if you don't want.

[asmywitness]

He looks at the writing, and eventually shrugs.

I don't really care either way. Feel free if it comes up. If there's something he doesn't want people to know about his Durance, he just won't tell Steven.

[fingersandteeth]

All right.

Which means he's probably telling Jack at least, sorry.