cartesianism | AFTER-ICE-CREAM-PARTY

AFTER-ICE-CREAM-PARTY

[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.)]

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...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?

[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.

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

Doesn't ring a bell at all.

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

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.]

[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.]

[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.]

[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.]

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.

[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.]

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[A pause, and then a shrug.]

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

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]

[After a moment:]

Well, good.

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

Anything you want to talk about...?

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?

[She pauses for a long moment, confused and surprised. Both accepting it and not accepting seem horrible to her.]

Do you... want me to? Use it, I mean.

I mean— [She huffs, not half as indignant as she wants to sound.] I just—I don't like waste. That's all. It works just fine but it'll probably just get burned or buried or whatever.

[There's another long moment before she shifts, moving a hand through the bars.]

Okay. I won't let it go to waste.

[Clarisse pulls the arrow-shaped stick from the circle and sets them both in one hand to leave the other free to untangle the plaits in her hair some, thoughtlessly yanking out the strands that get caught in her arm guard. And she...hesitates, a moment longer, with the hair pin in her palm. Here she holds the closest thing to proof that Reese loved her—but if she doesn't understand that, even now, she couldn't hope to understand Natalie if she had any more time than she does at all. In the end, this, too, comes down to usefulness.

Clarisse presses the accessory into Natalie's palm, harder than she means to.]

[As she watches her hesitate, she almost takes her hand away, shakes her head, does something... But before she can convince herself that the right move, it's already in her hand.

Before she brings it back through the bars, though:]

Are you sure?

Yeah.

[Her answer comes quickly enough, at least, even if Clarisse needs another short moment before she draws her hand back.]

I mean, what am I gonna do with it?

[She doesn't have a response to that, and while she nearly just slips it into her pocket... Part of her feels like Clarisse won't want it to move out of sight, and besides - I don't like waste.

Slowly, she slides the arrow out before moving it into her hair, using it to fasten a ponytail at the nape of her neck.]

I'll, um, keep it safe.

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AFTER-ICE-CREAM-PARTY

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