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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Corbie blinked and considered that idea for a moment. Then she shrugged and poured the liquid over her scoop of ice cream. It was all going to the same place anyway, and it wasn't like she'd never put anything questionable in her mouth before.

Her doubts went away when she tasted it.

She grinned. "Oh, this is dangerous."

Edited 2017-10-09 23:55 (UTC)

"More to your waistline than anything else," came Regina's amused reply. "Then again, a witch with heartache's always dangerous."

Witch. Sorceress. They didn't make distinctions in her world. But Corbie had always insisted, so Regina amended, "Wizard, in your case."

Corbie smiled around the spoon in her mouth. When she'd swallowed, she explained, "Where I'm from, calling someone a witch is rude. Maybe not from someone annemer, but from another wizard it's basically calling someone a backwoods hick." And all that implied from bad education to worse manners.

"Ah." That, Regina understood. She used it derogatorily more often than not. She just happened to include herself when she did. A bit of reclaiming the word and a bit of flying her bitch flag. "If I'm being that kind of rude, I call people 'peasant'."

Not sure what exactly to do with this information, Corbie only shrugged. "Annemer sometimes use it, too, but they don't mean the same thing. Mildmay'd use it when he was referring to someone with a specialty. Nature witch. Blood witch. Everybody else's a 'hocus.'"

Regina nodded and bit at the inside of her mouth. She'd met Mildmay and Felix each a few times in passing, and Corbie missed them so much, it was tempting to tell her. But she didn't want to upset her again today.

"Have you had enough ice cream for me to ask what drove you behind the chair?"

Corbie paused, her lower lip disappearing into her mouth, and she worried it with her teeth. "Phryne," she said finally. "And Joanna. And Harry."

Two people she'd avoided like the plague and one she'd avoided like a stomach flu. Regina sighed and supposed Joanna would have been surprised to be someone Regina preferred to literally anyone.

"A witch, a wizard, and woman of the world," Regina mused aloud. "Mentors? Regardless, I'm sorry for the loss."

Corbie nodded. "Joanna wanted to teach me. Harry did, too, but I wasn't ready for that. I was finally ready to talk to him again and ask what the fuck he was talking about."

And Miss Fisher, she supposed, had understood Corbie's liberal attitudes toward sex. Probably she'd shared her history with the woman. This reminded her, she did want to find a way to let Corbie know it wouldn't bother her.

But the reference to Harry rattling on provoked a sigh and pursed lips. "What did he say?" Regina couldn't begin to imagine, or, more precisely, she could and she would very much prefer she couldn't have.

"He knew I had magic before I said anything," Corbie mused, frowning into her bowl. "He said he already knew me. I got scared and I ran. But I been watching him and he didn't seem like a bad guy and..."

"Oh for fuck's sake," slid out of Regina's mouth before she had a chance to stifle it. "For a wizard, that man had the brain of a crack-addled goldfish."

She sighed then and gave Corbie a tender, almost maternal look. "And you never found out what he meant by already knowing you, is that right?"

Corbie hadn't the first clue what crack was, but she could take an educated guess. She just shook her head. "I think he tried to tell me before, but I didn't understand."

Regina pressed her lips together, rubbing the as though to smooth her lipstick. "If I could tell you what he meant, would you want to know?"

Because of course, she did know and had been keeping precisely that from Corbie herself. She'd done it out of kindness (she hoped), but Corbie might still take it wrong.

Corbie blinked slowly, considering that question. Did she really want to know? "Yeah," she said after a long moment of silence. "I do."

Regina poured them each another glass of whiskey almost instinctively. They were going to need it.

Head tipped forward, she stared down at the table a moment, and when she looked up again, fingers brushing her hair back behind her ear, there was more warmth and familiarity in her gaze than before. "Before we came to the Inn, some of us were in a different world sort of like this only bigger. Myself, Snow, Yasmeen, Raleigh, Harry, Jaime, Lydia, Jack and Angua. We weren't all friends, but most of us had met. We also knew many of the others here, but from different points in their lives or entirely different universes. You were one of them."

"I don't remember anything like that," Corbie said, not unlike what she'd said to Harry then. Only now instead of a rising panic and fear, she was attempting to puzzle out how this could work and what it meant.

"You wouldn't." Regina glanced down at her glass, swirled the liquor in it, and settled her gaze on Corbie again. "She was older than you are. Either it hasn't happened for you yet, or you're not the same Corbie."

"How much older are we talking?" Because that was the easiest thing to grasp, not because that was the most important thing to know. She shook her head. It was a stupid question. "And if you recognized me, how would I not be the same?"

"A few years. No more than five, probably." They'd never discussed their ages. Like so many other things, it hadn't been important.

"You look the same, but you don't know as much magic as you did. I don't know when or how you learned most of what you knew in Gotham, but it wasn't all the same style you work in now. That could be because in some other version of your world, magic is different. There's no way to know, but it doesn't matter. As far as I'm concerned, you're the person I knew." Younger, and less confident, but still Corbie.

Corbie's brow was already furrowed in a pin scratch of a frown, and it was slowly deepening as she tried to get this to make sense.

But then she realized that it wasn't going to make sense. So it'd have to do something else instead.

"So she did learn to be a wizard?" she asked in a small voice.

"Yes. A very accomplished one." Regina smiled again, this time warmly and encouragingly. "You organized several of us to create very powerful wards for an orphanage you were protecting. Very cleverly."

She'd had help, of course, but now was hardly the time for specifics.

Corbie's eyes went huge in her face as she tried to wrap her head around the very idea. She sat up a little straighter. "I don't think you're lying to me," she said. "But how do I know you're not making this up?"

"You haven't told me the name of your mentor's brother in this world," Regina suggested. She was sure of that. Felix might have come up. "His name is Mildmay. He has an old injury to his leg. You also have a blind friend named Kay."

There had been another one. A blonde who seemed more of a rival to Felix than anything else, but she'd never met him to recall his name.

Corbie had mentioned Felix, but she wasn't sure she'd even mentioned he had a brother, but the mention of Mildmay's name riled her up all the same. And Kay she definitely hadn't mentioned at all. Even if she had, she would have referred to him as Lord Brightmore, or the Margrave of Rothmarlin. Not Kay. Never Kay.

Tears sprang to her eyes, but she firmly wiped these away. She nodded. "Okay."

[GP] All we can do is learn to swim

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