AFTER-ICE-CREAM-PARTY

[pecker]

[Boy everyone is so bloodthirsty tonight. And now a kid is dead and another is gonna execute. Do y'all need some baskin robbins, because it seems like you do!!! So before everyone can leave, Niwatori raises her voice louder than it's gone before now to draw a little attention, and then deflates immediately when she actually gets it.]

Excuse me, please! U-um... this case was really hard, and I think we could all use some time to cool our heads before we finally go back. So... ice cream? Who's with me?

[she'll lead the pack there and anyone else can go home or to visit Clarisse on the set of Orange is the new Black.

Niwa's not that good of a host though, she just gets her own ice cream and lets everyone serve themselves. Who is she to limit your freedom. (Someone who doesn't want to be partly responsible for a Millium Monstrosity, that's who.)]

Comments

[snideper]

You don't know what you're talking about!

[She turns to Natalie, unfolds her arms, but there's nothing for her to hit so they end up held up almost like she means to strike. The bars keep her from Natalie, though (she thinks of hitting her, of course she does, all she knows is violence, but somehow the thought just makes her stomach turn worse), and she doesn't stand, so nothing could come of it if she had a target.]

It's only natural that the weak die and get left behind. That's the way of things, always. Lady Eremiya gave us a chance despite our uselessness and we gave our service in exchange—it's, it's only natural she'd dispose of me for falling short! Why keep anything useless around? But if I could prove I could still be of use for her, that I'm still...I was still worth something...!

[Of course she was being used. What's the value in anything if it isn't useful? A person disposes of useless things, and why not useless people? But she can't accept that it was wrong of Eremiya, that she was just being used, that she ever offered care or praise insincerely.]

[robitussin]

...You're not useless even if you fail.

[It's simple, but after listening to that, it's all she can think to say. She looks... Upset is the closest to this emotion, but it's hard to make out anything more detailed than that. Unthinking, she shifts to wrap a hand around one of the bars.]

I'm - sorry nobody told you that.

[snideper]

Stop it.

[All this tenderness makes it worse, this little gesture of closeness, that awful sadness in Natalie's expression. Reese stayed with her, but she'd never struck Reese. They knew each other all their lives. They had no one else. If she shouts or jeers now—What if Natalie leaves her?

She's lost too much to deny her own weakness anymore. That, too, makes her want to vomit.

With a shaky breath, she finally adjusts; she doesn't stand, but she turns to face the bars fully, crossing her legs. The movement shakes hair in her poor braid out of place. She quiets down again, but it takes effort enough to make her breathing shake.]

If a knife breaks, you get a new one. If an arrow snaps, you throw it out. If something doesn't perform its duty properly, you find something that can.

That's just...how it is. I'm of no use to Lady Eremiya anymore. I've proved it. That's...that's all.

[robitussin]

Knives and arrows don't feel, and they can't improve like a person can. So, if a person makes a mistake... It's not the same thing. They can do good again.

['They can start doing good', she almost thinks to say, but that seems to cruel to say given Clarisse's position - and her future.]

[snideper]

Feelings are useless weakness. They get in the way and bog you down. And people don't change. Give them all the help in the world, but if they muck it up when it matters, it's their fault the work didn't stick. You give someone a second chance and you'll just watch them botch that, too.

[But here she doesn't mean to argue, only explain; don't you realize what you're looking at, what's happened here? That this is her, that she is proof of all of it.]

[robitussin]

[There's a long moment, a barely perceptible exhale, as her hands loosens on the metal bar. Her arm doesn't return to her side, though; it meets with the other arm to cross in front of her. She tries to make her expression neutral, firm, but there's that same undercurrent of distress.

It's too late. She should have known.]

Do you - want to get some sleep, or do you want company?

[snideper]

...

[Natalie is wrong, start to finish, all the way through—except when she had said Clarisse doesn't have to be alone. Doesn't, not didn't; people don't change and neither does she, there was never a world where these idiots would have accepted her. But Natalie had offered to stay. Whatever the answer is, it doesn't mean I'll leave you alone.

She'd only called out to Reese as she was leaving. Reese could have kept going, and who could blame her? Worse yet, she could have not heard. Then, Clarisse already lost too much blood to even stand on her own, and even the hideout had become colder than the storming outside, and she still told Reese to leave. But now, with hours to bide until the spectacle of her death, no countdown or feeling towards her end, only her own awful thoughts in this unfamiliar place...

She can't look at Natalie's face. Her voice comes weak again.]

Do...do what you want.

[Even now, she can't find weakness (maybe strength) enough to admit she wants her to stay.]

[robitussin]

...Okay. I'll do that I want.

[It's not hard for her to interpret that; in more ways than one, they're a little bit alike. She takes a seat, leaning against the bars and glancing towards Clarisse. There's a silence for a few moments, too uneasy for her liking, so she clings to the first thought she has that might break it.]

You wanna hear a story, or anything?

[snideper]

[Oh.

Clarisse breathes out, ashamed at her own relief. It all feels so pathetic, this longing and warmth and fear. Her weakness has already been on full display now, though. More careful than she needs to be about making sure they don't touch, she moves to sit parallel to her cell door, shoulder leaning against the bars so she can face Natalie.

She doesn't understand. This time last week, that infuriated her.]

Sure. If you have one, I guess.

[robitussin]

It's called The Snow Queen. Hans Christian Andersen. You ever heard it?

[snideper]

Doesn't ring a bell at all.

[a hilarious pick from the person Clarisse spent the most time discussing assassinating royalty with]

[robitussin]

Okay, cool.

[A few moments pass before she recalls how it begins, how it goes.]

So, once upon a time and all that, there was a demon who made a mirror. The mirror wouldn't show any good parts of the things it reflected, but it would make their bad parts appear way larger than they were. The demon tries to take the mirror up to heaven, but it slips from his grasp and shatters into thousands of tiny pieces. The splinters get blown around, and anyone who they hit has their heart frozen. Those people get the effects of the mirror - they can only see the bad things in everyone around them, not the good.

[There's a pause, to make sure Clarisse is following along.]

[snideper]

[She is, and even she nods a little when Natalie pauses, like she means to encourage her to keep going. Even if she never grew up with them, she understands fairy tales and the procedure of listening to them, like, theoretically.]

[robitussin]

[She gives a small nod, then, continuing along.]

So. A while after this goes down, there's a little boy and a little girl who live next door to each other. Kai and Gerda. They're super close, basically as close as siblings. They see each other all the time and play together every day, and all that.

But one day, Kai's grandmother tells them both about someone named the Snow Queen. She says she lives where snow falls the most. So, one day when Kai is at home, he looks at the window and sees someone. After a few minutes, he realizes that the person he sees is made out of ice. He moved away from the window immediately, and then she was gone.

[Another pause, though this one is more for dramatic effect than anything else.]

[snideper]

[It makes Clarisse feel...something, unnameable and twisting in her chest, how easily Natalie calls them like siblings, and all that, and moves on. How stupid and tender she's become, if just the mention does that to her.

Her folded arms loosen, dropping to cross over each other in her lap. She nods again.]

[robitussin]

So... The winter ended, and spring and summer came. Both of them started playing outside together again, since the weather was warmer. One day, when they were playing, Kai stopped and said that he'd felt something hit his eye, and that his chest felt cold. Gerda looked into his eye to see if she could get it out, but she didn't see anything. She couldn't, and he said he thought it was gone, but then he started looking around. He told Gerda that she looked ugly when she worried, and kicked over a pot of roses they had planted because he thought they were wilting and rotting.

It started there, but it kept going - he got more and more disagreeable to everyone around him, until he wouldn't be around Gerda at all anymore. One day when winter was there again, he took his sled and went to the town square, where he saw the Snow Queen again. This time, he agreed to go with her, and they both left the town. Eventually, he started to get frightened and tried to go back, but the sled was going too fast for him to get off.

[snideper]

[No one would ever call Clarisse patient, and for good reason, but here she listens attentively, nods at each pause. Nothing much changes in her expression, and it would be wrong to call the flash of recognition in her eyes light, but she's as close to pleased as her failures have left her capable of that she's putting an incomplete story together.

How stupid of her. But then, no one's ever really told her stories before.]

[robitussin]

[She continues on, detailing the rest of the story. She tells it decently - she's not used to the craft, but there's interest and emotion in her voice as she continues on.

Once it concludes:]

So... There you go.

[snideper]

[She's quiet for a long couple of moments once Natalie has finished; at some point her eyes had gone unfocused and distant again, and it takes that time for her to ground herself back to here and now. Even besides her inability to just say thank you, to express sincerity if she could ever find it in her, when she thinks of some lost, cruel child high up alone in the snow with so sweet a sister undergoing such a journey, loved by everyone along the way, coming back for her presumed-dead playmate over some silly childhood promise—their names are Kai and Gerda, but Clarisse cannot imagine them at all.

What Clarisse ends up saying, strained and uncertain, like she has never asked another person about any mundane detail about themselves before, is,] Do you...have...any siblings?

[robitussin]

[Almost immediately, and more forcefully than it needs to come out:]

No.

[Which might be strange, considering... Well. Dislikes: her brother. Regardless, after a few moments, less firmly:]

...Only child. Sorry.

[snideper]

[If the prickly response bothers Clarisse, it doesn't show; she just responds with a little hum of acknowledgement. She hadn't been any different, after all, furiously scribbling Reese's name off her list of likes the afternoon she arrived.]

It just...seemed like a weird choice for someone without any siblings. That story. I guess.

[robitussin]

[A pause, and then a shrug.]

I don't know. It just came to mind. Not a fan...?

[snideper]

No, it isn't that, I didn't...hate it, or anything.

[Her expression...scrunches a little, almost in discomfort more than disgust, and she shifts in a way that makes her braid fall back and unwind itself a little more, and she pushes it unconsciously back over her shoulder.]

...It was fine.

[nailed it]

[robitussin]

[After a moment:]

Well, good.

[And then there's another pause, uncertain of what to do next.]

Anything you want to talk about...?

[snideper]

Um.

[She looks away into her cell, looks away out of it, starts to fold her arms tight in front of her again, lets them fall loosely crossed into her lap—has to move one hand up to adjust her braid in front of her shoulder again as it comes dangerously close to unraveling, but her hand lingers there for a moment, and her fingers move lightly over the pin at the end.]

...Hey, would you... [Her eyes move to the pin, then the floor.] ...use...something like this?