strangetrip | [GP/EP] Pie for Pi Day

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[GP/EP] Pie for Pi Day

The only ones who might have known yesterday held any significance were Jag and Sunny, and if they did, they also knew her well enough to know she wasn't big on celebrations. Her one tradition, a new deck for her birthday, hadn't been possible this year, since she hadn't found anything like a tarot deck on Asphodel Station. But that was okay.

Pi Day, on the other hand, was worth celebrating. Everybody liked pie. Last week, she'd talked to Pike, who had been curious and excited about a holiday for pie, and seemed eager to help. Yesterday, she'd put a notice on the bulletin board, hand-lettered over a watercolor scene of pies and more pies. She'd also made ice cream in a variety of flavors, since she wasn't Bobby to freeze it on demand, in less time than it took to prepare the custard base. Today, she left the non-pie food preparation to Ignis, the chicken chef, and anyone who wanted to fend for themselves.

Today, along with Pike and anyone else who wanted to and knew what they were doing, Emma baked pies. Fruit pies and cream pies. Quiche and pot pies. Shepherd's pie and meat pies. Hand pies, savory or sweet, baked or fried. As close as she could get to real Brooklyn-style pizza this far from Brooklyn. Some were decorated with the symbol π or the first few digits of the number it represented, as a vent in a top crust, piped in whipped cream, or carefully laid out in caramelized onions depending on the pie. And because she couldn't resist the visual pun any more now than she could the first time she celebrated Pi Day at the castle, a square apple pie (one of Bobby's favorites) and cherry tart (a recipe she'd learned from Sabine, the fruits a deep ruby red against white cream and pale crust that would have appealed to her cousin's aesthetics).

It wasn't the same as Pi Day at the castle, but there was a bustle and energy as people moved between the kitchens, the bakery, and the cafe, sitting to talk over a slice, or helping each other choose what to taste next. As long as Emma stayed busy, she could enjoy the memories without dwelling on the people she missed.

And there was pie. Everybody likes pie.

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"That sounds more like Nina's precog than mine. She can read variables shifting, and nudge them the way she wants sometimes. On the other hand, I only get visions when I'm looking for them, have some control over what I see, and a framework to provide context for interpretation, and she can't." She wondered if he feared the madness of Cassandra the way she did.

"Whether Brain called it seeing the future or not, the mental processing to work through that much information at once is amazing. Dani says psi minds aren't meant... they're too big for our minds." He wouldn't know who Dani was for it to matter, and saying out loud, without context, it didn't sound like sense at all. But Emma knew what it meant.

"But you know about my powers, and I'm guessing you don't use heuristics to calculate probability outcomes." That was her calculating probability, based on what he'd said, and what she could cold read off him. "You're not a baseline, and you do have a higher metabolism." Her head tilted as she thought, putting what she knew into familiar context, while acknowledging she was likely wrong. "Steve isn't a mutant, but he heals fast and has the metabolism to go with it. He was part of a supersoldier program, a long time ago. But that doesn't mean I think you are." It would fit with the Magician's influence though.

"Supersoldier, huh?" The names for this things were so interesting in this world of mutants. Maybe Manticore needed to work on their imagination. Everything was more or less technical.

She was right, though. She had shared a lot about what she could do. Still, just thinking about saying it so openly made his barcode itch.

"How about you give me one of those readings? What better way to find out, right?" Assuming it was the real deal, but being turned into a cat from magic made you start believing in some of the less likely things.

"Sure. If you want." She looked, finding a recently vacated table nearby, and going to claim it. She didn't mean to assume Alec would follow, but if he wanted her to read for him he would, right? As she sat, she pulled her Shadowscapes deck from the pocket of her apron and tucked a foot under her on the seat. She nodded to the place opposite her for Alec to join her.

"Just... be sure what you want to know, or what you want me to know. If I See it, it's true, or will be, they're kind of the same thing for me."

He sat on the other side and nodded. He definitely didn't want to know the future. Max would probably kick him in the face for not asking, but that was her thing, not his.

"Okay. That's good to know. Do I just... sit here and think about it, or do something?" He had never seen a reading before.

"Shuffle the deck," she explained, setting her cards in front of him, "thinking about what you want to know. When you feel like you've shuffled enough, give the cards back.

"You can tell me what you asked, if you want, but you don't have to. My mind will make the connections anyway."

The cards were slightly longer than playing cards, and there were seventy-eight cards instead of the usual fifty-two, so it sometimes took a moment or two for people to get used to shuffling them. It didn't fit right with muscle memory.

Alec began to shuffle, taking probably less time to become accustomed with the different size than a regular person. As he shuffled, he made every effort to think about the past instead of the future. He thought about the training they got starting the moment they could crawl. Learning to fight, shoot a gun, breathing underwater by being chained to the ground of a pool. He tried to keep it to his under 10 memories, but for a moment his mind slipped to being tortured and reprogrammed after Ben had discovered as a serial killer.

He set the cards down and slid them over to her.

A smile started to form when Emma turned over the first card and saw the Page of Wands. The expression quickly faded as her eyes went distant, seeming to focus on something through the cards she continued to lay out in a modified spiral.

"You were just kids," she said softly, to herself really, a sheen of tears forming but not falling. A second round of cards out from the center, and she shut her eyes, shaking her head and swearing in Sinte, with a few Quebecois sacres thrown in.

She blinked, and looked up to meet his eyes. "I'm sorry. Nobody deserves that."

Well, that was a react he wasn't expecting and didn't know how to deal with. He tried to keep his poker face and was pretty successful, although there were slight gaps in his expression.

He cleared his throat lightly and then shrugged. "yeah, well, everyone needs to grow up somehow, huh?"

The flat look she gave him as she gathered the cards back into a neat stack said just what she thought about that, but Emma didn't push. If he wanted to play it off as no big deal, he'd maybe earned that.

"When I was fifteen, my cousin and I were snuck out of the US, because the government was rounding up mutants and putting them in camps, or worse. We were lucky. I have friends who 'had to grow up somehow,' before they managed to get away."

"I don't get the government. They want to use people with powers, but they don't want to deal with them at the same time." He shook his head. A lot of his lack of respect for authority figures perhaps stemmed from this. "And why are people with powers so damn scary to humans?" He rolled his eyes.

Thing was, Emma could understand why people might be scared of her, or other mutants. She just also understood why mutants had reason to feel baselines. She shrugged again.

"What I can do scares me sometimes. I don't blame people for being afraid when they have a reason to be. It's what they do because of that fear that pisses me off."

"That's fair." About being scared. Alec knew he was scary and he didn't have any real powers like Emma or the other mutants at the Inn had. "Even where I'm from the humans think we're dangerous. Even though they're the ones who created us to begin with." Alec felt that particular detail was what pissed him off the most.

That along with what Emma had Seen definitely looked like some kind of supersoldier program. At least Steve had been an adult and able to choose for himself. What happened to Alec was wrong and pissed her off.

"Where I'm from, there's an island, just for mutants. Separatists, who think we can't live with baseline humans and shouldn't have to. Some of them want to go even further than just living in a mutants-only country. But Duninnean, where I was living, it's a sanctuary for mutants, but we live with baselines. It can be done. It's just not the easy route."

"Separatists is really the name of the island? They couldn't think of a better name?" He tried not looking too amused. "Baseline is pretty neat though. Better than 'ordinaries' like some people call them back home. Pretty sure they just made that name because the humans kept making up names for us."

"No." Emma didn't roll her eyes. It could have been an honest misunderstanding, and if it wasn't, she wasn't going to encourage him. "The island is called Genosha. The people who created it and run it are mutant separatists. Some of them are even terrorists. They tried to kidnap me and my cousin, even put bounties on us, when we declined their invitation to join.

"I'm not a fan."

"Sounds like a smart way to make friends." He deadpanned. "We have crazy cult people who think they're the next in the evolutionary change. They don't exactly like our existence either since we're all 'made' and they've been doing creepy special breeding for centuries." And Max was their center of attention too.

"Must be nice then, to be here with people who don't really give a crap what you are or who you are."

Or maybe Alec was the one it was nice for. From what she had seen, Emma didn't blame him for preferring it here to his world.

She didn't answer right away, and when she did, "I've been an outcast of one kind or another for most of my life. Home to me is people... and none of my people are here. Not that I haven't met people here I've become friends with, just... I'd rather be home, where I–" where I can help "I'd rather be home."

"Yeah, I can see that." Much like Terminal City felt like there was a place to belong now, even if the humans wanted to take it away. "In that case, I'm sorry. Maybe someone here will crack the code to this place sooner rather than later."

Memory or echo, Emma said something in Askani, realized she had, and then translated before Alec could ask. "What is, is. It's a saying my teacher picked up from her teacher." Often, Emma changed it to what will be, is, because that was just as true for her.

"I'm here now, so here and now is where I am. Tautology, but a good reminder. Precog - I'm not always good at being in the present."

"I guess I can see that." He nodded. He was all for living in the moment, too. The past was too hard to deal with and the future probably sucked just as much too.

"Speaking of, I should probably let you get back to making pies." To be in the 'present' and not really have to deal with his shit.

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[GP/EP] Pie for Pi Day

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