strangetrip | [GP] All we can do is learn to swim

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[GP] All we can do is learn to swim

Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. - Vicki Harrison

"You're sure?" Regina already knew the answer but demanding that Sam tell her what she already knew satisfied something petty in her. Or maybe just something hurt that hoped he'd have a different answer than her locator spell had already provided.

"Yeah." Sam half-rolled his eyes at her as he leaned across the pink bar counter to grab bottles of beer from the Silver Bar ice bin -- probably the results of Rebekah's last work-effort at the Inn -- for himself and his newly arrived companion.

Briefly, Regina considered burning a hole in the seat of his jeans, but it wouldn't bring Rebekah or any of the absent ones back. Instead, she took refuge in straightening her A-line and walking around the stylish counter Sam lay across like he was surfing the waves of grief. She took down a bottle of pointlessly pricey champagne, and then found the precise cut-crystal glasses Rebekah and Miss Fisher had preferred for their afternoon indulgences. She poured herself a glass and one for the person who dared her openly bitter expression.

"So who all are we missing?" they both said at once, glared at each other and sighed. They both knew the answers, in their own way and for their own reasons. And neither of them wanted to say.

Rebekah Mikaelson. Henry Winchester. Jack Robinson. Phryne Fisher. Dorothy Williams. Angua von Uberwald. Jaime Vegas. Harry Dresden. Lydia Martin. Raleigh Becket. Yasmeen. Joanna Beauchamp. Constance Bonacieux D'Artagnan. Lindsey McDonald.

"Grief is like the ocean," Sam clearly quoted from some fucking where, and Regina tuned him out until he added, "All we can do is learn to swim. Rebekah told me that."

Now Regina rolled her eyes; they weren't friends. "Shut up, Sam."

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First Lara. Now Henry.

You'd think with the life she'd lived, Kitty would be used to it. Losing people.

Maybe she was. She was used to the anger and hurt and fear and, more than that, she was used to the pure, blind rage at being absolutely powerless against it. She could walk through a wall, short circuit a spaceship by plunging her fingers into its computer console, but she couldn't keep a human from disappearing from a space roughly the size of her high school.

Or maybe the rage was an excuse. For not wanting to care. That had always been Jean and Ororo's job. Even Moonstar's. Not hers.

And when she looked out across the bar at all the grieving like walking wounded, she didn't feel compassion. She felt...tired.

"I'm a terrible person," she mumbled to herself and went back to tending bar. In that capacity, she could be friendly, express concern, lend a listening ear. No one expected her to come across the bar with hugs and handkerchiefs, and certainly not with answers.

"Nah. Alcohol is a public service." Butters wasn't in as much of a funk as he thought maybe he should have been. After all, he'd lost Harry before, and, y'know, a checkout notice at the front desk was a lot better than a bloody crime scene and a silent lake. Harry was probably home, and Chicago needed Harry Dresden more than Butters did. So he managed a weak smile as he met Kitty's eyes. "Terrible people would be hoarding it, not handing it out."

"Oh, hey." Kitty hadn't meant for anyone to hear that. But, well, she guessed if anyone was going to hear it, the doctor/medical examiner was probably a good one. He'd probably seen a lot worse in his day than a girl who couldn't care. "I guess you've got a point. Someone has to stand back here and poison livers."

"Keeps me in work," Butters chuckled. "Well. No. Keeps one of the magic people in work, I don't have the supplies to treat liver failure. But I could definitely tell you that's what someone died of, if they did."

"No one dies here," Kitty observed, tart and pithy. "Even if they were going to, they wouldn't with at least three mages who can literally raise the dead." She shrugged and set a glass on the bar for him. "Not that I'm complaining about the absence of death, but it doesn't mean a whole lot when people just disappear instead."

"That makes two of us," River slid a glass across the bar for a refill - she'd moved on from tea. The grief so evident in others was likely not even a flicker on her. Sure she would miss some of those who had gone, but she'd felt grief so deep it had almost stopped time.

She would be fine.

"I have an excuse being raised as a single minded psychopathic assassin will do that to a girl. What's your reason?"

Kitty blinked at River's pronouncement and spent a few seconds processing it while she refilled her glass. It probably should've bothered her more than it did, but if anyone knew that being a psychopathic assassin wasn't necessarily a chosen or permanent path, it had to be Kitty.

Besides, her best friend was a murderess thousands of times over. It was a little late to start moralizing now.

So when she set the glass down again, she shrugged. "Daughter of genocide twice over? First the Jews then the mutants." Not that that meant anything to River, since they'd never discussed what she was or what she did. "Forced to stand on the sidelines while millions were destroyed? Or maybe being able to phase-shift fucked my emotional network."

A sigh preceded her pouring herself a glass to match River's. "I care. I just don't want to."

"I've found that those forced to witness the loss of millions care far more deeply than others. Even if they don't seem like they do." The younger woman reminded her a bit of the Doctor, he cared, even when he acted like he didn't.

"It hurts to be helpless."

"Amen," Kitty said, and upended her glass as if she'd said L'chaim. She'd have said it out loud, but it lacked the fuck-you punch in a place where death couldn't take hold.

She poured another glass for herself and eyed River's. "I'm tired of caring. Tired of helping when I need help as much as anyone. It's not any of their fault--" She gestured with her chin out at others beyond the bar. "I've been saving the world on weekends since I was thirteen and it doesn't leave a lot of time for dealing with the rage about it needing saving."

There. Her shrink would be so proud.

Feeling the rage at fate, at all the terrible things you'd seen or done without any say struck a familiar chord with River.

She drained her own glass, she knew about rage. Icy and lodged deep.

"Maybe that's what this place is for," she said thoughtfully, offering her glass.

Moving almost on autopilot, Kitty filled River's glass, acknowledged an order from Regina, filled it, and returned to where she'd been like an unquiet ghost with nowhere to rest.

"That's a hideous thought," came her response, as though she'd never stepped away from the conversation at all.

"That is one of the nicest explanations for this place that I've come up with," River sipped her drink. There was a lightness to her tone that didn't match her eyes.

"You'll hate the others."

"Try me." Kitty winced at how jaded her own voice sounded. She gave River an apologetic look. "What I mean to say is that I've probably been in or seen worse."

"Prison, though admittedly one of the more comfortable ones I've been in if it is." River started her list as she sipped her drink.

"Some sort of conditioning, subliminal or otherwise. To what end I haven't any idea." Something else she was personally acquainted with.

"An experiment, and we're the rats in the maze..."

"An extra-dimensional prison seems like a ludicrous expense for less than forty people. It'd be far more efficient to house them in their own dimensions. I guess it could be something like the Stanford prison experiments and the jailers are here with us, gaslighting us, but it's been nine months. If they're trying to get us to turn on each other, they're doing a shitty job of it."

She ran her fingers across the countertop and shrugged to herself. There were prison worlds she'd heard of, but even still.

"The conditioning is plausible, but other than 'pink isn't evil' or maybe that it is, I can't think what they're going for. An experiment sounds more plausible, or some kind of Limbo or holding dimension where they're keeping us on ice 'til they need us for something."

"Some conditioning isn't quite so overt," River told her and there was a look there, knowledge deep in her eyes that Kitty might understand for what it was.

"Whatever the purpose, at least we know now that it's possible to leave."

Kitty did see and did understand and simply nodded a quiet acknowledgment of the point.

"And supplies arrive, so it's possible to get in. I have small drones trying to track the entrances and exits, but so far they haven't caught anything. When they seem close, they either black out or inexplicably leave their routes."

"The same thing seems to happen to any of us who get close." River mused, having done her own reconnaissance upon arrival. "Not technology I am familiar with, but not impossible."

"Not impossible at all. With the right equipment, I could create something like it," Kitty agreed. Then, running her hands through her hair, she pulled it back, twisted it into a knot, and stuck a stir-stick through it to hold it in place. "The problem is that anything I could build, I should also be able to find and counter. And I can't."

"You'll only find it if whatever generates the field is inside it with us. If it is generated from outside it would be just as inaccessible as anything else outside."

River had considered this possibility herself, but she hadn't found anything either.

"Fair, except that I have an advantage when it comes to forcefields." She'd yet to encounter more than one or two that she couldn't eventually phase through.

Since no one was looking, she phased her hand through the bottle sitting between them and back again.

River arched a brow at the words, and the demonstration.

"Well, that seems like it would come in handy. Next time I need help getting out of a cell I know who to call."

"The next time you need help disrupting electronic circuitry or getting inside somewhere that wants to keep you out." Kitty shrugged slightly and sucked down her liquor faster than she ordinarily might. "I have complete control over my molecular density and matter phase, among other things."

"You know, I've never actually had any trouble getting in somewhere that wants to keep me out." River chuckled and flashed a smile at the younger woman.

"Feminine wiles and a blaster open so many doors."

At that, Kitty laughed and offered a more relaxed smile. "Slipping in unnoticed and kicking the guards in the head has always been more my style."

[GP] All we can do is learn to swim

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