fandomtownies | Groovy Tunes, Tuesday

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Groovy Tunes, Tuesday

Alice was restless. She couldn't seem to settle on any particular music, so she had grabbed a handful of CDs entirely at random and was switching between them as the mood struck.

She had a pen, and she had paper; she was doing her utmost to write to Leto. She couldn't send it. Not yet. But perhaps writing it would at least make her feel closer to him, in some manner.

That would require actually finding words, to-day. She was, instead, writing out Dearest Leto, staring at the paper, scribbling it out and tossing it aside. There was too much to say and she had no idea where to begin.

Typically, she began by taking a fresh sheet of paper, scrawling Dearest Leto, across it, giving it a very bleak look for several minutes, and then crumpling it up and to join the others. So she was not having considerable success, just yet.

(open/ocd-free)

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Kate was having a wandering sort of day. She didn't have anywhere to be so she went everywhere, it seemed. And that took her past Groovy Tunes and --

Correction. It almost took her past Groovy Tunes, but as she was passing by, she caught a glimpse of an awfully familiar redhead through the window, and without a second thought, was coming in to investigate.

"Alice?"

Well, it could've been someone who just looked like her.

Alice glanced up, prepared to pose herself firmly and answer questions about music and hide the scribbled notes. Instead, she felt a rush of affection.

"Kate," she said, warmly, and in a decidedly un-Alice fashion, moved to embrace the other girl with an impulsive ~~and thoroughly duckable~~ hug.

Odd. She didn't typically like to be touched. But she still felt a strange kinship with the girl, from all their otherworld adventures, and perhaps that stretched far enough to call her friend, in this one.

She could use one, at this moment.

(sorry for late reply, I was napping!)

Edited 2011-06-21 21:48 (UTC)

Kate was maybe a little surprised by the hug, but that didn't mean she didn't easily enough accept it. She felt the weird link between them too, and hugs were pretty awesome anyway.

"So, definitely not just a new kid who just happens to look like you," she concluded with a quiet chuckle, embracing the other girl back.

[No worries, naps are important!]

"It might be, but it isn't," Alice said, disentangling herself with a decided flush. "I apologize, I'm not quite myself. I mean, I am, but not in the way you were fearing. Though it would have been delightful to have kept up the pretense, that I'm some other Alice and you're some other Kate entirely, and see how far we could traverse in a conversation before pretending to be entirely lost."

If that didn't convince Kate that this was Alice, nothing would.

Yeah, the way Kate had to pause to parse that in her head was definitely familiar. "I think I get confused enough as it is," she remarked then, though not without a smile. "Is everything okay?"

Alice stopped herself from saying "yes," then "no," then "more or less," and stood there quite oddly as she thought of how to answer a quite simple every day question as if it were a complex math problem. Possibly one involving trains leaving Chicago at 3 pm.

"It's no good," she said, shaking her head. "I've no answer for that. My mouth and my brain aren't on speaking terms. I'll fire one or the other and we'll come back to it later. How is everything with you?"

I have a strange parasitic bump invading my torso was not a socially acceptable response.

... It was moments like this that reminded Alice that she was going to be a horrid excuse for a mother.

Kate raised an eyebrow at all the hesitation. But then this was Alice: strangeness kinda seemed to be a part of the deal.

"Fine," she replied with a little shrug. "Right now, at least. Awaiting the next disaster as always. It's Fandom, so those tend to come along."

"One has to wonder what shape the next one will take," she said. "I haven't had the chance to make any decent kills of late. I fear I've gone rusty."

Her vorpal blade was surely saddened by its lack of use. Then again, could parasitically-invaded women put themselves in dangerous situations? Ugh.

There was one question that couldn't help bubbling up to the surface.

"Have you ... seen Leto?"

She, herself, had skipped graduation, fearing the worst. That the timeline was broken, and all was lost.

Now, that bit about kills may have made Kate a little uneasy (though not as much as it might have a couple of years and a few particular friendships ago), but the topic that followed made her smile a bit despite herself.

"Oh, yeah," she nodded. "He showed up for graduation. Have you?"

Alice's heart gave a decided twist. Hard enough to live with his twin, and see Ghanima's blue-on-blue Fremen eyes.

"Not for several months," she said. "He stumbled into Wonderland, sick from the spice trance. I gave him aid and sent him on his way. Has he managed it, then? The Golden Path?"

Kate... knew nothing about the Golden Path. That didn't really surprise her much, though, since that just was how she and Leto worked a lot of the time.

"Well," she said, "he was, like, eight years older and had apparently merged with, um, sandtrout...?"

Alice frowned, trying to fit that into what he had explained to her, about prescience and predestination. Sandtrout?

She lowered her voice and leaned in.

"I don't believe I quite ... understand the Golden Path," she admitted. "Only that it seems dreadfully important, from the way he goes on about it, and what he's willing to risk."

"Well, half the important things he talks about kinda fly over my head, and I'm not sure I've even heard of the Golden Path until now," Kate admitted in turn. "But... He's at the same point in the timeline with Ghanima now. And as far as I could tell, being half sandworm is supposed to be a good thing."

"A world of infinite surprises," she murmured. One hand betrayed her by creeping into Enemy Territory and brushing against her abdomen. She rebuked it strongly, and it came back to her side. "Are you still in contact with him?"

"I've been a little all over the place since graduation," Kate admitted with a little shrug. "But I have a standing invitation to Arrakis, so I guess the answer is yes. The contact's just not kept up particularly well."

"Have you ever been?" Alice asked, a fond smile crossing her lips. "The sandworms are especially intriguing, if you manage to ride one across the desert. If you go ... or if you hear from him again. Tell him you haven't seen me?"

"... Sure," Kate replied, after some hesitation, brows kitting together with confusion. "But I thought you guys were --?"

Something. She wasn't sure what terminology to use.

Alice wasn't certain, either. Not before, and certainly not now. She had wanted ...

What she wanted didn't particularly matter.

"It's complicated," she admitted. "I suppose most things are. I've no idea what to do. I don't know if I'm making the right choice, or if there is a right choice to be made. I may have ruined everything. Inadvertantly. And I should say, if I've done so, he's as much to blame as I am, in fairness, but the end result's the same."

The confusion on Kate's face was permitted to stay, but it had to make a bit of room for concern now as well.

"Alice," Kate said, sounding like she was treading carefully now. "What are you talking about? Did something happen?"

Alice glanced around for place to sit. There weren't particularly seats, but there was a cozy spot over to the side where one could sit on the floor. It was one of Dinah's favorite places to nap, after all.

"May I confide in you?" she asked. "I apologize if this is forward."

Still Victorian, every now and again.

(wtf, LJ. give me my notifs.)

"Yeah, of course," Kate nodded quickly, also glancing around for a place to sit. The floor did look like the only option. "I mean I did ask."

And Kate just couldn't help caring. This was Leto's Alice, after all.

"Would you, uh, like to sit down for this...?"

[LJ thinks notifs are snacks for it to nom on, srsly.]

Alice very much needed to sit down. And once she had sat down, she wasn't entirely sure what to say.

Words, perhaps, were insufficient. She ended, instead, lifting her shirt slightly.

The swell of her stomach was slight, barely distinguishable from a mild weight gain. Only a few pounds. She rested a hand on the intruder, the parasite who was complicating her life. More proof she would be terrible at whatever was coming. And coming entirely too soon.

"I've resisted buying larger clothes," she said. "I take things out with safety pins. I suppose you could say I'm in denial."

(not quite as prominent as the icon but I have not gotten to use pregnant icons yet and I've been dying to soooooo)

Kneeling beside Alice, Kate felt her eyebrows shoot up towards her hairline as her hand came up to her mouth. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but she did know it hadn't been this.

"Holy shit," she gasped, "you're pregnant?"

Which may have been asking the obvious but y'know, surprise did that to people.

"I-it would seem so," Alice said, her voice betraying a small shake. "Lady Ghanima believes so. I haven't been to a doctor. It's progressing oddly. Maybe I'm only ill? I've felt ill. Perhaps it's a very strange tumor. There wouldn't be much difference between a pregnancy and a tumor, would there? Except in the end result. One hardly births a tumor."

Alice was handling this really really well. Really.

Yeah, Kate was getting that. "No, no, I'm pretty sure it's a baby, not a tumor," she said like the medical expert she was, instinctively reaching out to put her hand on the other girl's shoulder. "I do think you should see a doctor, though. I mean, progressing oddly how?"

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