video/action: Bloodsport OTA

[bb_wolf]

Who: Bigby and anyone listening
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: On the Bloodsport
When: Now

[Having been unconscious for two weeks, when Bigby woke up he had promptly decided to take a couple of days to sleep it off. It's only now, after a shower and some food that he bothers to take to the comm.

He's in the shuttle bay, where his massive bulk fits best.]

I was thinking about starting some kind of immortals evening. Get together. Bitch about how things have changed over the last couple of centuries. Commiserate with others who get the whole 'living for fucking ages' thing, if that's what floats your boat.

Just finding it weird, being surrounded by so many mortals. Fables keep themselves to themselves. No point making friends with mortals for us. Anyone interested?

Comments

[stretchy_girl]

[It's nothing personal it's just that she can't be bothered to go to the trouble of forming a face when there's barely any light.]

I'm in my early twenties but have every reason to believe I'll go on living indefinitely.

[bb_wolf]

I wouldn't count you. World of difference between the beginning of facing hundreds or thousands of years, maybe, and being at the other end. You're... a child.

[He's not trying to be condescending, just stating facts. She's a baby in comparison to some of them.]

But really, I'm just throwing the idea out there because in my world, we don't socialise with mortals. Everyone I know, I've known for hundreds of years. So if you wanted to come, I'm not going to stop you.

[stretchy_girl]

[Nobody likes being called a child and Gemini's no exception, so when she speaks next her tone is hostile.]

Be careful who you call a child. I want to meet people who I won't have to watch grow old and die. Besides, your opinion doesn't matter to me anyway, if I want to be there I will be.

[bb_wolf]

You are a child to me.

[He doesn't bluster back. He doesn't even sound hostile, just calm.]

They why did you ask?

[stretchy_girl]

[It's hard for someone proud to say that they want to be accepted. She's silent for a long moment, her feelings swirling.]

Good manners.

[bb_wolf]

[Bigby waits for her to find an answer she's happy to give.]

You're in for a long time with the same people. You'll hate them and love them and avoid them for centuries and not be able to imagine a life where they're not there, eventually, because when everything is fleeting, they're nearly as permanent as you.

You're welcome.

[stretchy_girl]

I don't have any love left, only hate.

[The words escape her before she can stop them, some of her bitterness welling over the dam she'd built for it. It's not an admission she'd normally make to one of her few friends, let alone a total stranger, but the added thought that everyone she knows will one day be gone leaving her even more alone, is driving her back to that dark inner pool of despair.]

[bb_wolf]

Bullshit.

[He'd said similar things when he was young. He had hated the world and everything in it. He had raged and fought for centuries.]

You'll hurt. You'll rage and hate. Might take fifty years. Might take five hundred. One day, you'll realise that you don't have the energy to hate and be angry. That it's not worth it to keep everything at arm's reach forever.

[stretchy_girl]

You don't know what I've lost. I don't have that choice.

[There's so much pain in her voice, she wants to rage, to scream, but it would only show that she's weak. At least the wolf-creature on the other end doesn't know who she is, a small salve for her pride.]

[bb_wolf]

Mother? Father? Family? Country? Sense of self?

[He watched his mother die, her body torn apart by scavengers. He watched his father not care a damn and simply wander off, on to the next part of his immortal life. He's been burned alive, boiled, drawn and stuffed with rocks... He's been bullied relentlessly by larger siblings from the day he was born. And none of it... really means anything by now. Not after hundreds upon hundreds of years.]

Do you think you're the only creature to swear your loss is too great for anyone to understand? You have forever. You're too young to grasp what that really, truly means, yet.

One day, the pain will stop being raw. You can cling to it, nurse it, you might keep it alive and burning for two, three, five hundred years.

What about the next five hundred? The five after that?

[stretchy_girl]

[He's spot on with four out of those five. Her mother is dead, murdered by one of the so-called supervillains and the pain of that loss still reverberates, partly because she fears never having a family ever again. But she can't dwell on her pain any longer, not when it's so much easier to let anger rule her.]

I have forever to grasp how I'll never be able to enjoy an intimate moment? You'll forgive me if that thought isn't reassuring.

[bb_wolf]

Yes, of course, you will never be able to make any sort of intimate connection with anything ever again, because you will be a static and unchanging thing which never grows, learns or evolves.

[His voice is dead flat.]

[stretchy_girl]

You try having a body that doesn't respond to your desires.

[Her voice is venomous in response. It's something that she would never normally confide to a stranger, but this whole experience isn't normal and has made her stressed and angry, and once she starts talking about her troubles it's hard to build that dam up again.]

[bb_wolf]

I have.

[Bigby had to learn to smother his shapeshifting abilities. His brothers revelled in it, Bigby just wanted it gone, an unwanted reminder of his father.]

Intimacy is more than bodies.

[stretchy_girl]

[She really desperately wants to believe that, and his admission makes her reach for the visual button because maybe he could understand. But she stops her tendril before she presses it, pride stopping her and making her blurt out immaturely.]

You don't know anything.

[Now she shuts off the connection altogether, twisting and coiling about the heat exchanger as her feelings roil, deeply unhappy and depressed.]

[bb_wolf]

[She's hung up when he replies and he doesn't care.]

Yeah, sure, I don't know a thing. I'm just an ancient manifestation of fear with a hundred generations under my belt, that the fuck do I know?

[He likes having the last word, even just to himself.]