desert places

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie steps through into the second-floor corridor and stands aside, holding the door wide for Olivia to follow her. The air on the other side is dry and cool, with the slight brittle chill that only comes with air conditioning.

"Welcome to Taos," Charlie says, lightly.

Comments

[flip_the_lights]

Charlie classifying her powers as not just a separate thing from her, but a thing with a life of its own...Olivia's noticed it a few times. Never this pointedly, though.

"Is that how you caught each other's attention?"

[ladyfirestarter]

"Yeah. It was ... it felt like we knew each other, even before we did."

Her fingers are remembering the smooth clay of a figurine that isn't in her pocket anymore.

Soft: "We got pretty close."

[flip_the_lights]

"Can I ask what happened?"

No louder than Charlie.

[ladyfirestarter]

She glances back at Olivia. "Lot of things, but -- you mean why we're not together anymore?"

It still twinges a bit, saying that out loud.

[flip_the_lights]

She nods.

"Or if...something happened to him," she says.

Charlie's use of the past tense could imply a lot of things.

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie shakes her head. "I thought something might have, for a while. I still don't know. He just ... stopped showing up, at Milliways. Coming up on five years, now."

She shoves her hands in her pockets, looking out at the horizon again. "There was this little clay statue thing he gave me, when we started dating. A kouros, he called it. It let us talk to each other, even when he was in his world and I was here. And -- it got destroyed, over here."

[flip_the_lights]

Olivia hisses out a small breath of sympathy.

She's thinking of Peter, despite herself: the visions she had -- hallucinations, more like -- while Over There. The way she held on, even when she barely knew who she was.

"I'm so sorry," she whispers.

[ladyfirestarter]

"I miss him." No louder. "I mean, I'm okay without him, but ... I really miss him."

A beat.

"But there were a couple of ... really, really important things he did for me, before then. And one of them was that he changed me, changed my body, so it was immune to my own fire."

[flip_the_lights]

Another flash of memory strikes Olivia: a pile of business cards, and YOU'RE GOING TO BE OKAY penned across a notepad. She breathes carefully, pushing away the lump before it can coalesce in her throat.

"That's incredible," she murmurs.

That's the work of a god.

[ladyfirestarter]

"Yeah."

She's smiling, and out of all the complicated emotions underlying that smile, for a moment the ascendant one is remembered wonder.

"It really was."

[flip_the_lights]

Her expression coaxes an unthinking smile out of Olivia, hers small and wistful. Most of what she can think to say sounds terribly trite. I'm glad you met him; I'm sorry you lost him.

It may be best not to say anything at all, and simply reach out to put a light hand on Charlie's shoulder.

[ladyfirestarter]

The touch on the shoulder gets another glance, and a small smile, crooked and grateful.

"Anyway," she says, and it's a sentence all by itself: let's move along.

[flip_the_lights]

She nods, and lets her hand fall away.

"Would you be all right staying out here a little longer?" she asks. "I'd like to see if I can refine the telekinesis a little."

The fire, in retrospect, might do best to wait for another day.

[ladyfirestarter]

"Yeah," Charlie says, "I can stay out here a while yet."

And if she's noticed that Olivia seems to have dropped the idea of trying out the fire, well ... she's not going to say anything.