[The City] IC Contact

[hypnagothic]

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[keepgodwaiting]

[ She raises her eyebrows. ]

You don't?

[hypnagothic]

Why should it?

[keepgodwaiting]

[ She glances over at him, unsure for a moment if he's taking the piss, and then away. ]

Well, it's fucking traumatizing, for one.

[ She says this with less of her usual sarcasm than he might expect, still gazing ahead at the pavement. ]

It'll change us in little ways. We'll forget you have to look for cars when you cross the streets. We'll stop going into new buildings without someone with us. We'll be scared of locked doors, or unlocked ones.

We'll get angry and scared and selfish when the luxuries start getting scarce, and if the luxuries come back, we'll stay angry and scared and selfish 'cause we won't know when it'll change again. Some of us will fall in love and then fall out of love and won't be able to get away from each other. The worst shit we've done will get dragged out for someone else to see, and we'll find out some people around here have done some terrible shit, and we'll have to deal with it, one way or another.

And if we ever get home, we won't be the same.

[hypnagothic]

[ he glances back to her about halfway through her words, watching her while they walk slowly through the dimly lit and empty streets. a few beats pass when her words stop, measured only by the sound of their footfalls, and his answering words are somehow softer without the volume with which he says it actually changing. ]

With such thoughts spiraling through your mind, it is little wonder that you do not sleep this night.

[keepgodwaiting]

[ She sighs, shrugs. It's hardly just this night that she's thinking about these things. It's hardly just this night that she's awake in the small hours. ]

I call it like I see it, bruv.

[hypnagothic]

[ maybe he was just being polite and only speaking to the now. polite or kind. ]

I expect no less from you.

[keepgodwaiting]

[ Definitely one of those.

Johanna chuckles, without a lot of humor. ]

Were you expecting that we'd all get through whatever this is without changing?

[hypnagothic]

I would hope to return quickly to our own worlds.

[keepgodwaiting]

Yeah. But I didn't ask what you were hoping.

[hypnagothic]

No. You did not.

I do expect that those mortals brought here to experience some form of trauma or loss, felt either here or in their own worlds by their absence from it. I do not expect they will leave here unscathed, in either form or in mind.

[keepgodwaiting]

The immortals, too.

[hypnagothic]

... Perhaps so.

[keepgodwaiting]

[ Wry: ] Yeah.

Change isn't pretty, usually. Doesn't have to be bad, but it always hurts.

[ Newcastle and Ravenscar changed her. Without them, she'd probably, what, be bumming around punk clubs smoking three packs a day and scraping by on whatever money she could con out of people through fortune-telling and card sharking? Maybe. Or maybe she'd be dead, or maybe she'd be a nun.

Her life in London isn't so bad, compared to that, even with the nightmares. But it hurt to get there. ]

Christ, this is morose.

[hypnagothic]

I daresay the conversation is appropriate to the circumstances of our location.

[ walking alone, together, in an empty street in the middle of the night. ]

[keepgodwaiting]

[ Johanna snorts. ]

Well, yes. [ She gives him an ironic look. ] We have to stop meeting like this. People will think we're up to something.

[hypnagothic]

They would likely think that more of you.

[ ... was that a tease? is he teasing?? ]

[keepgodwaiting]

You know me. Can't trust a Constantine.

[ She falls quiet for a moment, still looking at him, then glances away with a soft sigh -- not resigned or morose this time, but faintly relieved, like she's re-settling herself after putting on a coat. ]

Thanks for talking anyway.

[ About Burgess, about his family. About her own fears of this place. It would be a stretch to say she feels better about any of it, but ... at least it's something, to be trusted, especially by someone who knows what she's like. To say these things out loud to someone on her own terms, and to think she's understood. ]

[hypnagothic]

It seemed impolite to refuse your offer of a walk.

[ it's not exactly an acknowledgement of the vulnerabilities they've share with each other, but it's not an outright denial of such either. it's his excuse and he's sticking to it. ]