Open Action: Fleet Wide

[killedwithlove]

Who: Cole and EVERYONE
Broadcast: No
Action: EVERY ship in the Fleet, bar Marsiva, Three Twins and Tourist (Though you can easily find him on another ship if you're from one of those)
When: First week of the month?

[This is a thing Cole does.

He travels the Fleet a lot, from ship to ship, meeting people, talking to people, hanging out. He sees people he knows and meets new ones, or ones he just didn't encounter before

He wants to help everyone. Which means meeting them first. Or finding them. Doing that might involve poking through the ships, even if he really shouldn't. Or going through personal belongings. Sorry about that. He's curious.

And armed. It is worth mentioning he's got a pair of wickedly sharp fighting knives on his back. Sorry about that as well.]

Comments

in that case, have a tag :)!

[poetontheinside]

Oh, yeah, that makes sense, just keep doin' what you're doin', then! [He sort of- spins around, trying to put his feet back underneath himself, and starts rubbing at his arm. He'd known there wasn't a lot of privacy on these ships, but he'd at least thought some places were limited to the people who actually lived here.]

What are you doing here?

[killedwithlove]

Okay.

[Words accepted completely on face value, Cole turns and starts looking again.]

Looking for whatever it making the echo. I think it's in here, but I can't hear like I used to. But I say the right thing more often.

[poetontheinside]

You-- [He lets out a frustrated sound, wordless, and stomps forward. He slams the door of the locker shut, narrowly missing Cole's fingers, and glowers at him. And Ray isn't unkind, but he can be blunt and unthinking in that way children sometimes have- right now he's too unsettled, too angry to think about the way his words can sound.]

You some kinda headcase or somethin'? What the heck does that mean, an echo?

[killedwithlove]

[Cole is quick, fingers moving and then rolling out of the way in a fluid, almost inhuman motion that brings him to his feet and to the side of Ray.

More impressively, his hat doesn't get dislodged by the movement.]

I don't know what a headcase is. An echo... it's like a sound that comes from everywhere, but nowhere. There's an echo of pain. Older than you.

[poetontheinside]

[Ray takes a few steps back, mostly to avoid getting smacked in the face with that hat.

He frowns, messes up his hair, fidgets with the seam of his sleeve. It's still all mumbo-jumbo as far as he's concerned, but it's starting to sound like something. He's skeptical, but he's trying hard to fit what Cole is saying into his own world.]

So you're a psychic? You can feel energy and whatnot?

[killedwithlove]

Yes. No. [He frowns and pulls on the brim of his hat, rocking on his feet.]

I know hurts. And how to heal them. I'm Compassion. And Cole. And I'm learning how to be people, but I'm not very good at it.

[poetontheinside]

Yeah? Well, uh, I'm Ray, and I'm pretty good at being people. But I think I'm also the oldest guy on the ship, so I dunno whose echo you're pickin' up on, there.

[killedwithlove]

Hm. Maybe.

[Age wasn't always worn on the body. Cole himself proved that. So did others he knew.]

He has the gift. You don't want to believe in it, but you find it hard not to. It's frightening.

[poetontheinside]

[He frowns, thinking about what 'he' Cole could be talking about- one of the other guys of the ship? Because he doesn't know them all that well, and he sure doesn't know them well enough to be frightened. And everyone with gifts that he's met, here, he's believed. So that doesn't really leave a whole lot of other options, and he frowns deeper- if this guy's psychic, that could also mean-]

You're talking about Fraser? My Fraser, the Mountie, that guy?

[killedwithlove]

Yes. Your Fraser.

[He nods and rocks on his feet again.]

He has a wolf. I didn't know people kept wolves as pets.

[poetontheinside]

[Irrationally, he feels panic rising through his chest- this guy doesn't know Fraser, shouldn't be talking about him, shouldn't be saying that Ray is scared of Fraser. He's not, they're partners.]

Dief-- he's a half-wolf. He's deaf.

[Shit, Kowalski, keep it together. He rubs at his brow with his thumb, then drops his hand immediately when he realizes he's doing that thing that Fraser does, that nervous tic. When did he pick that up?]

[killedwithlove]

Not scared of Fraser. But what he does... it scares you. Because you don't understand it and can't explain it.

[He sits on the floor, like a child in class might, looking up and still hidden by the brim of his hat.]

Half wolf dogs are good if you raise them from very young pups. Master Dennet said that, even though he's a horse master. Cullen said that they're never as reliable as a mabari, but no dog is reliable like a mabari.

[poetontheinside]

[He stands there, awkwardly, for a second, until he feels himself fall down on the edge of his bunk bed. Even though something in him is telling him to just turn around, walk away, he's in this conversation now.]

He's just Canadian. [Even if Cole wasn't who he was, it'd be obvious from his tone of voice that he doesn't even believe that himself.]

I dunno what a mabari is, but Dief's pretty reliable. Got us outta some tight spots a couple times. But I guess you know that, huh?

[killedwithlove]

[It tends to be how conversations with are. They happen, whether you want them to or not.]

I don't know what that is.

Mabari dog are Fereldan dogs. They're very intelligent, they can learn language and understand complex orders. They bond with a person and will stay with that person until death.

[poetontheinside]

Dief, um-- he reads lips. Fraser says he reads lips, anyway, but I think he just likes to have an excuse for not listening. [He's antsy, obviously, more than usual. He fidgets with his sleeve, wiggles his toes, picks at his nails. He misses Fraser and Diefenbaker, suddenly, deeply.]

[killedwithlove]

Maybe he does. He might be very clever. He might need to, to know what people want from him.

[He rocks back and forth on the spot, feeling the mounting stress.]

Will you tell me about your Fraser and Diefenbaker?

[poetontheinside]

[The movement unsettles him further, so he turns his eyes away, focuses on his feet. The request is nice, though, something familiar.]

We were supposed to go on adventure, me 'n him, that's why I got all those clothes in my locker. It was up in the Northwest whatsits-- places, whatever. Fraser's from there, so he knows how to do that, which is pretty cool. Fraser, uh, he's my partner, we work together, back- home, in Chicago. He came to Chicago to find the guys that killed his dad, and then he sorta stuck around. [It's an odd echo of Fraser's spiel, and he shakes off the memory of Fraser's voice, telling this story over and over] Dief's his buddy. He is pretty smart.

[He looks back up at Cole, feeling younger and smaller than he is] How'd you know about him?

[killedwithlove]

[Cole watches and listens attentively, trying to remember it all so he doesn't have to just pluck the memories from Ray next time. He has no idea what Northwest whatsits might be, or Chicago, but maybe it was a city?

He hears Fraser's voice in the memories, missed and messing at the holes.]

You brought him with you.

[poetontheinside]

Like, in my memories, you mean?

[He wishes he had brought Fraser with him. He spent all these years without Fraser, but now that he'd known him it's weird to do something new without him.]

[killedwithlove]

Yes. Your soul and mind have brought him with you.

[He knows what he means. The Fade isn't like the world. In the Fade, you literally brought the people you knew with you.]

Both of them.

[poetontheinside]

[He feels like he ought to struggle against that- 'soul and mind', that's kind of a weird thing to say. Fraser shouldn't be in his soul.

But it's a comfort, and too much of one to protest wholeheartedly.]

I bring anyone else with me? 'Cause it's kind of a small ship.

[killedwithlove]

Do you really want me to look?

[He can. Fraser sits the most open and raw, but he could listen closer and twist his way deeper. He doesn't think Ray really wants him to.]

Or are you asking because you want to pick at the hurt?

[poetontheinside]

['The hurt'-- he immediately thinks of Stella, of the divorce, of why they hadn't worked out. He's surprised by how long he hadn't thought of her, how much this has settled into a dull pang of regret instead of the raw pain it had been for years.]

What-- what's that mean? How does this whole-- [he makes a vague gesture] work?

[killedwithlove]

She's of the stars and smiles sharp and bright sometimes. You both promised forever and then one day couldn't bear the thought anymore.

[He wrapped his hands together, playing with his fingers.]

I don't know. I just do it. Solas can tell you more. He understands, but he has much better words than I do.

[poetontheinside]

[He twists his hands in his lap, looks down at where his fingers are linked. That's Stella, alright. Couldn't bear the thought of him.]

Is he here too? Or did you bring him with you like I brought Fraser?