strangetrip | [GP] Check-In Day: What a nice surprise; bring your alibis

Entry tags:

[GP] Check-In Day: What a nice surprise; bring your alibis

Every check-in day conjured memories of her first, and all of the others, which inevitably meant she spent the day with Lara on her mind, and Petey, Illyana, and Wyatt. She'd been blessed with dear friends and loves arriving, and yet she never stopped hoping she'd figure out the mess that was this pocket universe and get home.

It was starting to become complicated, though, almost a year later. It would hurt to lose the people she'd grown fond of here, almost as much as it would be good to get home. She didn't know what to do with that feeling, but it was what it was. All she could do was tend the bar with patience and understanding, and keep an eye on the readings her crude energy measuring devices out on the road sent to her.

For all the people that came in and out, it was a quiet day. So between drinks, she spent most of it bent over a notebook with a cup of coffee in her hand, trying to design better instruments to dismantle Yana's shackles. Maybe Percy could help her build them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Time to do something about that then, don't you think?" Coby asked with a wink. "Anything special you want to hear, that a white boy from California can play?"

An answer to that popped into her head and Sunny didn't second guess it. "How basic would it make me if I said 'Fire and Rain'?" It wasn't her taste typically, she liked high life and Afrobeat and hip hop, but...

"Aw, not 'You are My Sunshine'?" he teased. "We're going full white boy, I see. I can give you a little James Taylor. 'Fire and Rain' works." It was a good fit, he decided. For here, and for the two of them.

"Don't you dare!" But she was laughing. From another person at another time she might have glowered, but she needed the joke.

That was better. From tears to laughter. "I don't know. We'll have to see what inspiration hits once I take the stage."

Coby waited a beat. "Or maybe I'll save that for a private serenade sometime."

"You are not unpunchable, Coby Ward," Sunny warned, but the twitch of her mouth gave her away as not being at all serious.

Well. She was serious about the fact that few people were unpunchable, but she didn't think it was likely that she was going to hit him, now or ever. Actually one of the few who was...

Her eyes went wide. "Is Anael here?" she asked quietly.

Oh, Coby knew he could be very punchable, which was why he started to tease about being the opposite, when Sunny's question delivered a worse punch than her fist could've. "C'mon, you know you wouldn't pun-ch Anael," hitch breaking mid-word and finishing achy without a hint of the play he'd started with.

Sunny knew Anael. And loved him, because it was impossible not to. And knew them both well enough to ask the question in the first place. "I've tried. I'm still trying. Either he can't hear me because of whatever this fucking place is, or he can't get here. Or his duties are keeping him too busy to come, but he's never left me this long when I've prayed for him."

The hitch said everything, but it was the profanity that really made Sunny wince. "I'm sorry," she murmured. It was a feeble thing to say, but that didn't make it any less true.

Coby nodded, subconsciously rubbing his sternum and the ache of emptiness in his chest. "I'm not giving up. We'll see each other again. If not in this lifetime, then another." He had faith in Anael. Anael would be here if he could. And his path was twined with Shamsiel's over more lifetimes than Coby could know. The thought, made it bearable, most of the time.

Which might sounds like nonsense to some people, but the concept of other lifetimes was part of Sunny's culture, her magical heritage. Anyanwu had seen many lifetimes, hers was just the current one. "Well. Apparently I'll be around for a while, too. If you ever need to talk about him."

"Yeah, I wish you weren't stuck here too, but I'm not complaining about having a friend around." He'd probably take her up on the offer too. Having someone else who knew Anael, it was good.

"Sometimes... with people coming from all sorts of worlds and times, it's possible for somebody you know to show up, from before they met you. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey shit like that." He didn't know if Sunny knew Curnen. As small world as London had felt sometimes, it was a huge city. No reason to think they were close, but some warning was probably helpful.

Sunny frowned at that, thinking. "So... that's why you asked if I knew you." Because there hadn't been a guarantee. She'd been fortunate.

"When I hit on you," Coby said it with the easy confidence she was totally hit-on-able and he probably would at some point. "You'll know. And it probably won't be something as cliché as 'have I seen you around here before?'" It might be cheesier, you never knew, but hopefully not that cliché.

"But... yeah. That's why I asked."

"When you hit on me," Sunny volleyed back, her eyebrow arching up, "you tread carefully."

But her heart wasn't really in it, and her expression soon smoothed out. "Anyone else?"

Treading carefully wasn't always Coby's way, but he wasn't going to push.

"Did you ever meet this girl named Curnen?" It was an unusual name. If Sunny'd met her, she'd remember it. "Tiny brunette from Tennessee. She was busking in London when I met her.

"The first time. She was also the first person I ran into here, only she's never been to London. Didn't have a clue who I was."

Sunny blinked slowly. "About so big," she indicated a height around her shoulder, "extra set of pinkies? If yes, I met her once. She was with Willy Silver, so it wasn't a long conversation."

"That's her. Voice like a bell." Curnen was pretty and hot and sweet and edged. And magic. But of course, for Coby it was her music that mattered most.

"She's here, so you'll probably run into her soon enough. There aren't enough of us not to."

Sunny nodded. Even assuming every room on the premises were occupied, it wouldn't be more than a couple hundred people. Even a fairy or two, apparently.

Another day, she would have been more cautious, but finding herself cut off from her people she found she didn't care as much what happened. Maybe if she trespassed she'd be fetched away to the Library somehow. "And you... know what she is?" After all, he knew about Anael.

Coby was a little surprised Sunny knew enough to ask. She did believe in a lot of the weird shit out there, though, and was friendly with Fin, who was pretty much incapable of not telling people his life story. Bad habit for a tabloid fodder favorite.

"Yeah. I've known. She's not really telling people, though. The older the habit, the harder it is to break, you know. So keep it to yourself." Coby was protective of Curnen, had been almost from the beginning. He wasn't going to hide that.

Sunny nodded. It was a general rule of life, you didn't out people. Though in the supernatural community, that also needed the caveat 'unless they're an immediate danger to others.'

But you could out yourself.

"And what I am?" Because she didn't know who or what was there yet, and she couldn't bear the idea of keeping it completely to herself.

Another surprise, but maybe it shouldn't have been. "Now that's a conversation I don't remember having." Should he know? Did he, when she's from?

"So I can't say what you'll decide to do. But there are people here who don't hide what they can do. Magic and not-exactly-human, and I couldn't even say what else."

If Sunny got in trouble with the Obi Library about it, she'd argue the technicality. The man was the lover of an angel, friends with a fairy, and knew about magic. She nodded once. "I'm a witch."

"You won't be alone. I know at least a couple of others here who are. Or wizards or sorceresses or whatever they call themselves. They have and do magic anyway." Regal Regina and cutie Corbie came to mind first, as different from each other as they were from Sunny.

"And there are others who come from places where magic's normal and out in the open. There's one chick who goes flying around on a broom even. So up to you if you want to hide or not."

She'd opened up to him, only fair he do the same, but whatever he was, it was easier to show first, and he wasn't going to do that here. "Sometime, I'll have to show you what I've got up my sleeves. But, uh, not really the time or the place."

Sunny could not help but think back to another time, another man, another confession. The day that she'd told Fin it was just after he'd confessed to her about his undead state. She'd told him so he might not feel so alone... and he'd been angry with her. Angry. As if a secret she'd had no choice but to keep was any of his goddamn business. That should have been the first hint, but at the time she still hadn't seen what a narcissistic little shit he actually was.

Coby hadn't even shrugged it off. It just was now.

She snorted, the tension going back out of her shoulders. "A broom? Are you serious? I've never seen anyone actually do that."

With two fingers, Coby drew a cross over his pec. "All she needs is the pointy hat. I swear. " Sunny seemed a little more chill after telling him she was a witch, and that was what mattered. If girl on broom upped the ridiculousness and helped, even better.

"We thought there was a lot of weird in London? Or I did, anyway. But here... it's all condensed. Nothing but the fifty or so of us, in a four hour radius."

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA

Re: Sunny - OTA