bigapplesauce | History Obliterates [closed]

Current Music: November 26, 2013

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History Obliterates [closed]

Steven is finally gone, and the Balladeer is alone with himself.

He needed this. He hates to be alone, but he needed this. For days the knowledge (and lack thereof) of what he's done has been crawling under his skin like a physical itch - the one assassin he should be most familiar with, and all he knows is what Greta relayed to him second-hand, from a search somebody did on their cell phone. It's funny. It's really very funny.

One way or another, he ought to know everything about this lost assassination. Either it's his job, or it's his. So once he's alone, he takes himself to a library and gets out every reasonable book he can find, plus a few documentaries on DVD. There seems to be a lot of ridiculous conspiracy theories surrounding the whole thing; sadly, he can't quite convince himself any of them could be true. If Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy, the Balladeer would never have any connection with him at all.

(The stop at the liquor store is an afterthought, a whim built on memories of a thousand morose drinking sessions he never joined. He wonders bitterly if Sam would laugh, and buys whiskey the man could never afford.)

He goes home and spends the day reading. At some point, he opens a bottle. He meant to eat something with it - that helps, right? - but instead he ends up putting one of the documentaries on to watch. He just needs to know.

He loses track of time.

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"Second oldest," Greta says after a moment's thought. "Of the two of us, here. I beat you by a day." Given that the Balladeer's actual age is a mystery, that seems as good a milestone to judge by as any. Not that it matters, really, what he might be second of. She's getting distracted.

What were they talking about? Magic, that's right, and she hums knowingly into her glass when he mentions his song-related abilities. The Rift might dish out magical powers, but the Balladeer's always spoken of that one as if it's one he's always had. And that makes sense. It's not as if she found him clutching his head over all the foreign melodies he was suddenly hearing.

"See?" she says. "Maybe you're magic, or... I don't know." She's back to gesturing with her glass, a bit more expansively now, but it's okay because the glass is emptier. She won't spill on his couch. "Different. Special." She takes a pensive sip. "I s'pose you'd have to be, if you're a narrator."

"Ahhhhh, yeah! That's right!" It's a funny coincidence that they arrived so close together. Lucky for him, too. The Balladeer's quiet for a moment, turning her phrasing over in his head. "Does that mean that's my birthday now? I think that makes sense." The only other dates that are significant to him are days that other people died, and he certainly doesn't want to choose those. Birthdays aren't something he's thought much of before, but it seems like a fun, normal thing to have.

He just shrugs over the thought of being magical. He doesn't think of himself as magic or special. It's always seemed natural. Sure, none of the assassins heard music. But he never cared what they did, so it all came out the same!

Being a narrator is a different matter. "It helps," he agrees. "If I had to ask them their stories first, it'd never come out right. They lie. That's why they need a narrator." He takes a sip of his drink, rather wishing as he watches Greta that he had a little more alcohol. Maybe they're meant to meet in the middle. "It was never supposed to be for just any normal person, but I guess there's no reason it would've turned off when I left."

Greta blinks. That's right; if he doesn't remember anything of his past - or doesn't even properly have one - then he doesn't have a real birthday. It doesn't strike her as a tragic loss compared to the other things he's been lacking (she wouldn't know the concept of a birthday party if it bit her on the nose), but at least it's easily replaced.

"I don't see why not," she says with a wry smile. Come to think of it, she could almost call her arrival date her birthday. It's when her old life ended and her new one began. But birthdays aren't all that significant to her way of thinking; why bother changing it?

She attempts another sip and realizes she's emptied her glass already. Well, that won't do. She gets to her feet, pauses a moment to make sure she's steady, then toddles back to the kitchen for another, absently nodding along to the Balladeer's words.

"It seems more like the sort of thing the Rift would give someone," she says. "But if you already had it, and the Rift didn't change things at all, it must be part of you."

She tops off her drink, then gives the Balladeer an assessing look. She didn't miss the rather envious look he was giving her glass before. "D'you want one? You have to have another muffin if you say yes. Those are the rules."

The Balladeer's not inclined to throw himself a birthday party either, but if he's going to start moving through time like a normal person, he wants to track it. Most of his life has been rooted in observance of anniversaries. Trading them out for some happier ones sounds nice.

"That'd be an awful thing to get out of nowhere!" He turns to follow Greta's departure, tossing an arm over the back of the couch to face her more clearly. "God, I can't imagine just having to deal with it all of a sudden. Weird enough getting used to big crowds." For his own part, he doesn't mind his ability in the least. It can be inconvenient at times, but so can any sense. He'd never wish to lose his sight simply because the sun was too blinding.

And hey, now he's found a good pair of sunglasses. "Gabriel can make things quieter for me now sometimes. Like...like earplugs." He gestures at his temples, where earplugs certainly do not go, and chuckles. "It's the only way we could even talk, he just about wiped me out just in that dream."

The deal only takes him a moment to consider. "Yeah, sure." The muffins are good. And so is the booze! He hadn't been having much fun with it before, but actually having drinks with friends makes him understand the fixation a little better.

It does seem a bit dramatic for a Rift Enchantment. "I would have found you doubled over under a tree," Greta guesses, wrinkling her nose. That's assuming it would have kicked in immediately. She's not really sure if that's how it works. It took her a while to notice her own Rift thing, but then again, hers is a bit more subtle (if not downright vague).

"Oh, good," she says in response to the tidbit about Gabriel. She'd thought he might be able to help on that front, but hadn't thought to ask for a follow-up after the Balladeer had been to see him. "Though - hang on, does he turn down the volume on everyone?"

Drinks made, she carefully carries over both glasses and the requisite muffin, setting the whole collection down on the coffee table. "I mean," she clarifies as she flops back down on the couch, "is he turning down himself, or turning down you?"

The Balladeer picks up the muffin, idly peeling off the paper. "Himself. He can turn it all the way off, it's creepy. Like talking to a doll." He likes Gabriel a lot, but he thinks he'd prefer only interacting with him over text message to having the angel turn off his ability entirely. A few minutes with a silent Gabriel is one thing, but to have the entire city suddenly go quiet around him sounds like a nightmare made real.

He takes a bite of muffin, chewing with a thoughtful air. "I've been thinking about asking him to do it to Johnny. So we can talk. I feel bad about..."

There's a lot of things he feels bad about, at this point, so he just waves a hand to encompass all of it. "I didn't even know I could do that." If you'd asked him before, he would absolutely have put money on Johnny in a fight between the two of them. He's never thrown a punch in his life. But apparently his body can still do plenty in the wrong hands.

'Creepy'? Greta arches an eyebrow, but doesn't comment. The lack of real music in this universe puts her off sometimes, too; it's not as if she can't appreciate how odd the loss would be if it was fresher, and more intensely localized.

Her expression sobers when he brings up the fight, and she considers reiterating that it wasn't really him, and that of course he'd never do those things. Instead, after a few moments' thought, she says, "Well, it wasn't really a fair fight. No one wanted to hurt you. It was still your body, even if someone else was in it."

Oswald, it goes without saying, had no such reservations.

"I'm sure Gabriel patched him right up," she adds. Johnny's injuries may have been worse, but he didn't have to carry them as long. "How's your head?" She reaches over to push his hair up and away from the fading mark above his temple, to show that she's not referring to the alcohol. "It looks like it's healing nicely."

The Balladeer tilts his head to one side, the better to let her see the wound. "It feels fine." It looked a lot better this morning, at least, though he hasn't paid it much attention since. It's good that it wasn't such a bad cut after all. He may not have been tending to it very closely. "Think it hurt Steven more than it hurt me."

He knows by now that Steven hadn't meant to hit him quite like that; he never would have suspected he did. It must have been scary. Head wounds bleed a lot, enough that he'd just thrown out the shirt he was wearing rather than make any effort to clean it. The kid feels worse than he should about it.

"It'd be okay," he says idly, turning his attention to his bruised knuckles. "If I did get hurt. That's better than someone else - he'd kill someone if he thought it'd help."

Steven had been rather upset about the wound, despite their attempts to reassure him. It probably wasn't even the worst of all the damage the Balladeer sustained. It looked alarming, but there wasn't much to it. There might be a pink mark for a while, that's all. The damage to his hands was probably the bigger problem, considering how he spends his days - and Oswald's the only one responsible for that.

She pulls her hand back and tsks softly. "I wouldn't call it better," she says, giving him a pointed look. "We wouldn't let Oswald kill anyone just to spare you a few bruises, but we don't like seeing you hurt, either." She can't even imagine what that must have been like: waking up covered in cuts and bruises from a fight he didn't remember - a fight he didn't even take part in, really. It's not fair. With a nod towards his hands, she adds, "Just because some rogue took your body for a ride doesn't mean it's okay that you have to carry all that around afterwards."

"Well...no, I guess not," the Balladeer admits, only slightly grudgingly. There's still bitterness there, but he wouldn't honestly argue that he deserves to be beaten or anything. Oswald might be a different story. "I just wish he'd been stopped faster." Johnny was a mess. Even if Gabriel fixed him up right away, he still shouldn't have been like that in the first place.

The muffin is pretty much gone, and he reaches for a bottle. Just a little more - he's not really trying to drink himself into insensibility anymore. "He didn't break a finger, so I don't mind. People've been looking at me weird though." He gestures to the bruises on his face. The big one, he thinks, is probably from Iman. She did mention being a boxer.

"If it happens again, he will be," she replies evenly. It's not something she wants to consider - she'd much rather it never happened again - but it's an easy enough reassurance to offer, because it's true. Should Oswald make a reappearance, there won't be any time wasted with wondering what's going on. They'll know who he is, and they'll know to keep him contained.

She winces a little at his bruises, even though they're fading. Not for the first time, she wonders if one of them should have tried to wheedle Gabriel into patching the Balladeer up, too. It had felt a bit risky during those first few days, in part because she wasn't sure Gabriel would feel charitable towards the body that beat Johnny half senseless (regardless of who was steering it at the time), and in part because she wasn't sure the Balladeer would concede that he deserved to have his injuries brushed away.

She's not sure if it's worth suggesting the idea, now. Gabriel doesn't have a monopoly on healing people, but the Balladeer's far enough along the natural road that it seems less urgent. It does still look a bit dramatic, though. "I suppose you could tell people you were mugged," she says. "If they asked." She frowns in broody indignation as another thought occurs to her. "No one's been bothering you, have they?"

"Oh, no." The Balladeer seems a little surprised at the notion. "Why would they? They don't know."

Actually, he's not certain of the climate anymore. Back home, he'd have had a much better read on peoples' current thoughts about assassins; as it is, he hasn't been thinking about it at all. But it was only fifty years ago. He's living with the children and grandchildren of the people who would have formed his lynch mob given the chance.

And, mostly, they've just been concerned. "That's mostly what they think. I didn't come up with a story about it, but I haven't been telling them otherwise either." He frowns faintly. "Sort of what I do with most of my life." To everyone. Like with everything, the story's bizarre enough that he's not sure they'd even react poorly right away. It might take a little while for people to realize they should.

She'd meant something more along the lines of 'pestering for details,' but of course people wouldn't - not the locals, anyway. The Balladeer's injuries might be impossible to ignore, but that doesn't mean New Yorkers would go so far as to actually question him. On the other hand, if she hadn't known what had happened, she probably would have been relentless.

Maybe it's just as well. He can let them think what they want, and save himself the additional trouble (and heartache) of having to explain the whole mess over and over again.

"Well, your life is a little hard to understand," she says, not unkindly. "And with the way some people here feel about people like us, it's not always a good idea to be too...," she wrinkles her nose, "forthcoming." Even without all the Oswald business, she wouldn't blame the Balladeer for keeping his origins to himself. It's not as if she launches into her background with the check-out woman at the grocer's or what have you. Then again, all of her actual friends are fellow Rifties. She hasn't been mingling with the locals as much as the Balladeer has.

Regardless, it's not worth dwelling on. "I told Iman I'd show you a movie," she says with far more sobriety than she actually possesses. "D'you want to watch one?"

"Ah, yeah? I dunno." The Balladeer waves his glass, watching the alcohol slosh. "Most've my busker friends know I'm not from around here." To say the least - he may not sing his own his life story, but he's not as cautious as some about telling people he came from the Rift. That would require too many lies; he can hardly even remember the name on his own ID half the time.

Those are his only real local friends. It seems like a lot of people to him, but he knows his perspective is skewed. "But you know. Lots of ways to become a busker." Some of them have pretty interesting backstories of their own. You don't dig too hard.

And, speaking of, a movie would be a good change of pace. "Sure. What movie? The only ones I've got are..." He turns to look for the Oswald documentary, only to see that Greta's moved it somewhere. "...not good."

Greta wrinkles her nose. She wouldn't have them watch one of those miserable things; that ought to go without saying. "Noooo, no," she says with a little frown. "Not them. 'S on Netflix. We just have to... get to it."

So, it's just a matter of making that happen. She stares at the darkened television screen for a moment, as if hoping it might turn on and connect to the internet as a personal favor to her, then turns her head to cast about for a laptop. "How do we get to it?" she muses, as if it's a far more intriguing puzzle than it really is. She supposes she could just use her phone in a pinch, but the screen's awfully small, and one of them would have to hold it unless they came up with a way to prop it up.

The Balladeer follows Greta's gaze, watching the TV. It sure is doing a whole lot of nothing.

"I don't know." He imagines he's more comfortable with technology on the whole than Greta, but a lot of it is still pretty new to him too. As far as he knows, the Internet did not exist in Hinckley's day. He knows how to use his phone, and the Internet by extension, but he hasn't made much of a foray into other gadgets just yet. "It's online, right? So..."

So, he doesn't actually own a computer. He'd thought about it, but really - it's a lot of money and he's hardly ever at home to use the thing. Come to think of it, that might be why none of the movies at the library were checked out. You can just do that sort of thing online now!

"Do you have a computer?" he asks, a little sheepishly.

"No," Greta admits, ducking her head. She's thought about it. Iman has pointed out on more than one occasion that the Internet is the best resource for learning about this time and place, and it would be easier to read things on a larger screen (and type things on a larger keyboard). But they're appallingly expensive. She still has moments where the size of her own modest stipend makes her feel a bit dizzy, and she'd have to devote - at the very least - a substantial portion of one such stipend to a computer. It's too much; the thought makes her break out into a sweat.

But she has her phone, and Iman has added the little Netflix app to it. "We can make do!" she decides. "I've got a little speaker to plug into my phone, and if we take turns holding it, our arms won't get tired." See, there's a nice plan, all laid out. Greta sets her drink down, then wobbles unsteadily to her feet. "I'll be right back! Just going to nip down the hall, quick as you like."

The Balladeer frowns a little at the note of embarrassment on Greta's face. Laptops seem so commonplace in this decade, but it's not like you need one. "I don't either," he adds, probably unnecessarily. "They're a lot smaller and - and cheaper than before, but they're still pricey."

And hey, obviously the phone is good enough! He shifts, moving to let her out a little easier. "I can find a thing to hold it up!" he decides. "Like a stand?" Phones aren't all that big, so it ought to be simple enough to find something to prop it up against. He rises to his feet, waits for the sudden unsteadiness to pass, and then steps around the couch into the kitchen, still holding his drink. Maybe there'll be something useful in here.

"Yes!" That's the spirit! "Teamwork! You'll make a stand, and I'll..." she pauses a moment, then nods. "I'll get the speaker thing."

Right. She nods again, decisively, then heads back to her apartment. Ruckus gets a ruffle between the ears and a fond, "Who's a good girl? D'you know where the speaker went?"

The dog sniffs at the air, then gives Greta a level, unimpressed look.

"Oh, hush," she replies. "I've only had two. I just need the speaker thing so we can watch a movie."

Ruckus heaves a far bigger sigh than Greta thinks is warranted, then pads over to the coffee table and nudges at the portable speaker with her nose.

"See, it was easy," Greta says, picking up the speaker and toddling back out the door. "Back later."

Inside a minute, she's letting herself back into the Balladeer's apartment with the portable speaker held aloft in boozy triumph. "I've got the speaker!"

The Balladeer, meanwhile, continues his drunken search of the kitchen while Greta is away. It's a distracting room to be in right now; he ends up grabbing what few snacks he has around as well. You eat snacks with movies! It's just a few bags of chips, but it's more than he'd have had before Steven. Things like child adoption really force you to stock your pantry.

But after tossing the snacks over onto the couch, he gathers up a few things for phone-stand-making. When Greta returns, he's sitting on the couch again, balancing his own phone on the coffee table with a pair of mugs. "Heeeeeey!" he calls cheerily over his shoulder. "I've got the this!"

Greta beams. "You got snacks!" she says with glowing approval. And he sounds so happy! This is going to be fun.

She toddles back over to the couch to admire his handiwork. "How's it holding up?" she asks, almost sitting down on a bag of chips before catching herself and moving over a bit. Pulling out her own phone, she starts to prod at it, calling up Netflix and looking around for the search function. It takes her a few haphazard tries to find the film in question (probably because she's actually focused on the task), but once she's got it, she looks back up at the Balladeer's improvised phone stand. As if seeing it for the first time, she gushes, "Look what you made!"

"Yeah!" If the Balladeer notices that she's repeated herself, he doesn't show it. It's not much of a structure, but it's likely the most productive he's been all day. That's sort of sad, so he decides not dwell on it. "Here, just put your phone there - " He removes his own and indicates the spot where it was. " - and it's good!"

He may not be great with technology, or have a thing to play Netflix on his TV, but he knows the red screen when he sees it. Has she picked a movie already? He shifts to crane his neck at the phone. "What're we watching?"

Once she has the speaker plugged in and turned on, she leans forward to prop her phone up in the vacated space. "It's a - an am--" she pauses for a moment, grappling for the technical term and failing to seize onto it. "... One of the ones that's all drawings," she says instead. "It's got a forest spirit and a book, and it's beautiful. You'll like it. It's called the Secret of Kells."

She stays where she is, adjusting the volume until it's loud enough, then she leans back against the couch cushions. The screen is absurdly tiny, far too small to appreciate the artwork, but at least the music will sound all right. But still. "It's so small," she says, starting to giggle under her breath.

"Ohhhh, like a - a Disney movie!" the Balladeer volunteers, leaning in to watch the opening screens. "I've seen a few of those. Oh, but not. That's a different company."

He doesn't know much about animations, really. Or movies? But this looks different from the Disney ones. "It's pretty," he comments appreciatively, then snorts. "It's like a pretty little postage stamp!" Maybe some other time they can watch it bigger.

She'd just about composed herself, but when the Balladeer compares it to a postage stamp, she starts giggling all over again. "Shush," she says in a tone that might have been scolding if not for the laughter. "It's perfect. Eat your snacks." She tugs him back against the couch cushions so she can resume leaning against him, then opens a bag of chips and angles them his way.

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History Obliterates [closed]

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