abraxaslogs | [ OPEN ] i know some places and i've seen some faces

[ OPEN ] i know some places and i've seen some faces

WHO: sam wilson and anyone/everyone.
WHAT: captain america cookout.
WHERE: sam's horizon domain
WHEN: third saturday of september (aka, about 3 weeks after the jailbreak)
NOTES: see below!

HELLO ALL AND WELCOME TO SAM'S CAPTAIN AMERICA COOKOUT!!!!

Over the last week or so, Sam has been going out of his way to contact as many people as he knows to invite them to a cookout at his place in the Horizon. He knows that after the jailbreak, a lot of people were separated, and this was his first thought on how to bring people together. The purpose behind it is simply because Sam thinks that the one thing all of them have in common, opinion on the Singularity and their situations aside, is that they were all brought here and can actually access the Horizon. He sees merit and use in coming together when they can, especially in ways that don't involve the politics of the land they're now living in. So, what better way to do that than around food?

The long and short of it is - this is a peace meal. Leave your issues at the door. Sam has very few rules and there is very little he will give in terms of what this cookout will entail, but three things he will make very clear:

1.) There will be no fighting at his home. You want to duke it out? Take it somewhere else. There will not be warnings or second chances. Don't be an ass.
2.) There is no meeting or serious reason for this cookout. Literally, he just wants people to come together who may no longer be able to see each other due to the travel constraints. It's meant to be fun. Come have fun. (he knows y'all know what that is, even when some of you pretend you don't). Bring food if you want to! There is also a kitchen (if you know what that is) and places to crash. Hope you like seafood!
3.) Anyone who can come into the Horizon is welcome. He'd love it if everyone came, so spread the word.

The cookout itself is set up out front, with picnic tables and chairs and fire pits and lights abound. There are tables set up near grilles if anyone wants to do any actual cooking outside, and a table (probably multiple) set up with sides and napkins and utensils. There are a variety of different places to go and sit and hang out while you're eating. Anything and everything you can want is available - food, drinks, yard games, music playing from out in the trees that will remain consistent unless someone tries to find the speakers and hijack the playlists, etc. If you can't find something outside, you're more than welcome to check the house.

All throughout the party, too, there will be a new friend. Red, as Sam fondly calls him, is a blood-red hunting hawk with silver in between the feathers. He can be found circling around Sam quite often, or perched on his shoulders, but also if you are out and about you can often see him checking up on anyone and everyone. He's a very curious little bird, and also pretty sassy, if you want to interact with him.

If you haven't, or have, been to Sam's domain before, feel free to take a look around. Anywhere is open (save for one locked bedroom) so everyone has open access, but most of the cookout itself will be located in the front yard.

OOC: This is mean to be an OPEN LOG, so leave your TLs or closed threads below! This party will last basically as long as people want it to, but the idea is for it to be an afternoon into the evening. Y'all have free reign save for destroying Sam's home, but if you have any questions, hit me up on plurk (disarmingly or disco (dai#3757). Sam's TL is below, and he will be bouncing around like the good host he is, but lets get a little party started.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Benefits of downing actual toxins for the job; even the most vile liquid can't compare. Which this isn't. Vile, he means. It isn't that, it's just—something. Overwhelming might be more accurate.

He eyes her with an amused sort of exasperation. Delighted with herself, isn't she? He takes another drink. (Mm. Ugh.) Why not. She's not reaching to reclaim her cup yet, though the vodka bottle's on the ground between them if she wants to trade for that instead.

Of course she has. Surprised there's still some on her, that it's not all made its way inside her by now. ]

If you're tempting, don't bother. [ He's promised Sam he'd keep an eye on the party, besides. He wiggles the drink she's gotten him to try ] You've had your success tonight. I'm rarely so easily convinced.

[ He should have known it would be overwhelming the second she informed him that she was the one who made it. Look at her, does that look like a woman who does anything in a way that's not overwhelming?

She giggles again and shakes her head. ] Nah, I'm not tempting. I mean, I literally can't imagine it, that's all. Most people, you get a sense of what they would be like all amped up or mellowed out. You're just...

[ Raising her hand, she draws a steady line through the air, which is impressive because she might not actually be able to walk in such a straight line right now. ]

Smooth. Even-keeled, my mama would say. Anyway, that punch'll do you fine.

[ She certainly doesn't, which in truth—might be half the reason he's sought her out. Of what little company he keeps, almost none can be categorized as underwhelming.

His gaze lifts up towards her. Is that what she means. There's a noncommittal noise that suggests he's not disagreeing. It is, he thinks, a rare thing to have someone observe this at him without the implication that it's only as expected. Rumours, confirmed. ]

It's a talent. [ He studies her for a moment, both curious and prodding, lightly, all at once. As though some part of him is still figuring her out. ] Does it bother you?

[ She finds his presence to be somewhat calming, actually; home is loud and the people that are left are in a perpetual state of anxiety, even the ones who have it made. They're teetering on the tightrope of the society left in the plague's wake, and they all know it. Today's favored acolyte is tomorrow's headless corpse in the body truck if they're not careful, and even if they're not, there's the looming threat of war between the groups left. And that doesn't even take into account all the drugs everyone is doing.

Her head tilts as he contemplates her, and her smile softens a little bit again. The flames reflect in her extremely dilated pupils, and she shakes her head again, more slightly this time. ]

No. I like it. Why would it bother me?

[ His gaze is unblinking, and where his finger rests on the flimsy cup, it stills. It isn't her answer that surprises him a bit, but an expression on her face he'd not expected to see. He wonders—is there anything she misses? From the old dead world she holds so much disdain for? How much of that disdain is born out of the fact that that world is forever lost, whether she finds any value in it or not?

Maybe those are questions for when there isn't an excessive fucking combination of liquor consumed by both of them. (Or maybe now is exactly the time for it, exactly why his thoughts are wandering in the first place.) ]

It bothers some. [ Which does not, in turn, bother him in particular. It is what it is. He shrugs, brushing off any lingering sense he might've given that there's anything more going on beneath. ]

I'd hate to be dull company.

I don't think anyone who kills monsters for a living can be dull company. Besides, I'm not lookin' for you to impress me or anything. I just like talkin' to you.

[ Which, quite frankly, is more than she can say about a lot of people. Most people never would have sat down with her in the yard, let alone have a conversation. She'd just come out of solitary, and it meant a lot to her. ]

Where'd you end up, anyway? Out there.

[ It'd been a deadpan offhand remark, which she replies to with unexpected sincerity. His expression shifts, thoughtful, because he does not care, frankly, what people think of him or his presence, but. Perhaps he doesn't mind hearing it, either, from someone whose company he isn't opposed to in return. He hums in response, without pursuing it further. ]

Free Cities. [ Exactly how free, he's still determining. Though, it's true he hasn't had the chance to give much thought to where she might've gone. He's assumed she must've fled one way or another all right, seeing as she's enjoying herself here. ] You? Living a quiet life amongst the sheep and goats?

[ Because that's an image he'd rather like to see, if that's what happened to her. ]

[ She reaches down and grabs the bottle of vodka, lets him have the rest of the punch. She's already a million sheets to the wind. The way she takes a pull off the bottle is almost like an afterthought. ]

More like the fish and the crabs. We went to Nott, it's down by the ocean. I never saw the ocean before. Where I'm from, it's in the middle of the country, thousands of miles from the beach. You doin' okay out there, in the Free Cities?

[ Nott. He cocks his head. Only a small handful he can recall hearing, who have gone there. Interesting.

Like her, he’s moved past giving a damn what he’s drinking, and if some part of him is subconsciously preventing the cup from ever emptying—he’s only paying half the attention he should. The rest of him is thinking about what it’s like to never leave a place your whole life. To have never set foot near the sea. ]

Not even once? [ He considers. He knows it’s not uncommon. Folk who live and die in the same shit farmland they had for generations. He just can’t imagine it. There are parts of being what he is that’s—complicated. But his ability to roam where his path takes him isn’t one. (So then why had he settled in the Horizon, his first time in, when he could’ve so easily chosen to wander?) ]

Surviving. No one seems to give a fuck yet, who came from where. [ He pauses. It’s been weeks. If no one’s come for them yet, perhaps Thorne has let it go, but…it leaves him uneasy, the thought of the few who chose to hide in plain sight within Nott. ] You should be careful, in Thorne’s territory. Last I heard, they marked the prisoners to track them down.

Not even once. [ But not for lack of wanting. It had been her greatest dream to get out of Pratt, get into the real world and actually make something of herself. She hadn't exactly anticipated needing nearly all life on the planet to die off first, but it wasn't the worst thing in the world. ] I always wanted to go to the ocean, but I didn't have the money.

[ She nods and wedges the bottle in the space between her calf and thigh, so that she doesn't have to keep holding it, then looks back at him with an almost hopeful smile. ] Actually, the... mayor, maybe? The guy who's in charge of Nott, he's real mad at Thorne and he kind of hates the royals. So we're being protected. But I've been savin' some money to hire a mage if we need to portal out quick.

Edited 2021-09-30 02:41 (UTC)

Hm. Suppose in here, you can see as many oceans as you desire.

[ As many places. He’s not one to play with it, the limitless expanse of this plane, but he can understand the appeal it holds. He wonders if this is even the extent of it. Connected to the Singularity—it must have more to it.

He peers at her. Nadine had said the same. Nott, splintered from the rest of Thorne. She had not mentioned, though, that the man who oversaw the city explicitly defied the royal family. He turns that over in his mind. That level of authority, untouched by Thorne’s influence, is interesting. Especially when even the Duchess seemed unwilling to turn against Thorne, despite her disdain for the High Mage. ]

We. [ He rubs his thumb on the rim of the cup. ] You’ve found people?

I mean, I could, but I'd just be makin' oceans that I remember from pictures, right? Like, you hafta know the thing you're tryin' to make? I've seen enough pictures in my life. I wanted the real thing. When I'm not here, in the Horizon, that's where I usually go, the beach.

[ Julie had been a dreamer locked in a box in her old life, obsessed with the idea that if she just wanted and visualized hard enough, she would someday get everything she'd wanted, deserved. She'd filled her childhood bedroom with vision boards, covered the walls with even more pictures. And when she had to leave home because she couldn't move her rotting family members out of the house on her own, she'd gone to the local warehouse store and made even more vision boards to surround herself with. If she was going to be alone, at least it would be with the thoughts of wonderful things.

She doesn't really know how to do that in Abraxas, a culture so far removed from everything she's ever known. So she spends a lot of time in the Horizon, making all the things she'd longed for before. But she has the ocean for real now, even if it's not crystal blue waters on white sand beaches.

Nodding, she takes another sip from the bottle, then tucks it back at her side. ]

Well, I kinda always had 'em. We're from the same place, me and Flagg and Nadine and Lloyd. So even when I was down in the dungeon, I wasn't exactly alone. But Nadine dragged these two little bitches along with us, it's the worst. One of 'em is just whatever, but the other one is that French whore I whomped back at the castle. Fuckin' dirty bitch.

Maybe. [ He’s not doubting her so much as musing over it. People approach the Horizon differently. There’s Kay on the one end, whom he’s certain has created nearly everything from her imagination at large. Then there’s him.

He considers asking what she made instead—in part because he thinks he might like to see it some time, whatever it may be—but saves it. His eyebrow lifts instead. Mm. Several of those remarks, he isn’t getting into. Not his grudges, not his business, even if he tucks the information in the back of his mind for when it becomes relevant. But he does know the names Lloyd and Nadine. ]

I met them. Lloyd and Nadine. [ He gestures around them to indicate the Horizon. ] First time in.

[ He doesn’t know them in any real sense, in other words, aside from the brief conversation he had with Nadine earlier in the day. With all that he’s been drinking, it’s a bit more obvious in his expression that he’s putting something together. Three names, only two he recognizes. Lloyd was a guest, not a prisoner, and Nadine noted Thorne imprisoned the man she married. So the third, Flagg. He realizes who that must be. ]

Flagg is her husband.

Edited 2021-10-02 10:37 (UTC)

[ Julie is, unfortunately, not a particularly creative sort. She can throw parties and decorate, sure, but she can't imagine new things particularly well -- everything in her domain is just a copy of things she'd always had or wanted in real life, clothes and rooms and just miscellaneous stuff. She might dream up a pet for herself, but it would be nothing like the inventive animals she's seen other people make, her locations would be nothing deep and meaningful.

Honestly, it's probably for the best. Who knows what kind of weird drugs and sex toys she might be able to craft if she had a wild imagination? ]

Oh yeah? What was it like, with no one rememberin' themselves? Lloyd brought me, my first time, and he could remember me but I didn't remember anythin'. Not even the Inferno, that's his domain. It's where we lived back home.

[ She scoffs and rolls her eyes. ]

Yeah, Flagg's her husband. Whatever.

[ What was it like. That’s a hell of a question. There were those who had an easier go of it, he imagines. A thoughtless experience. Disconcerting, but nothing to especially dwell upon. For him, between his first time in and Yennefer making her way to him during hers, it’s festered, and he can't shake it. What does it mean, to feel the loss of what he knows without question was never real?

For a minute or so, he’s silent. What curiosities he holds for Nadine, for Flagg, for Julie's apparent distaste over it all, they slip away. Tempting, to brush her question off with a remark of no significance. He doubts Julie would care either way; she seems to be asking just to ask. Maybe if she'd caught him in a different moment, he might've done exactly that. Instead, he finds himself admitting what he has not to anyone else for reasons he can't explain. ]

Like...you lived a life that wasn't yours. [ His answer comes quiet, contemplative. ] We made the only homes we ever knew. Then you wake up and it's gone.

[ The days had expanded strangely in a place with no real sense of time, and though he understands, logically, they were here for only about two weeks, it'd felt more. Days or months or years, it doesn't matter: the entirety of his existence within the Horizon had filled that brief period. And he remembers with far more clarity than he's ever wanted of having only ever had that life and nothing else. ]

[ She lets that idea settle for a moment, turning it over in her head. While it's very true that she was mostly asking for the sake of conversation, she also does pick up the fact that this is a meaningful, important answer. It must be hard, she considers, to have been in that first group. No one to lead or guide you, stumbling through all of this by accident. She too remembers existing only within the boundaries of the Horizon, though she had been very quickly clued in to the idea that there were things she couldn't remember -- she'd been brought by someone who could walk her through it.

But she remembers the sudden sense of loss, once she was told that she didn't remember. A gnawing desire for memories she hadn't even known existed until the words were spoken. She can't imagine being in a huge group of people that all knew nothing outside of the dreamscape, to have to remember that whatever idyllic, pain-free paradise you'd designed for yourself was fake and all the suffering was real.

Gently, Julie reaches out and touches his hand around the cup. ]

It was still your life, y'know. It was... this place gives us the things we deserve, from what I can tell. The real world is shitty and just wants to hurt everyone in it, but most of us didn't do anything to earn that. Whatever you had here, it was real enough. Everything you felt about it was still real.

[ There's another brief pause, and she sighs. ] Y'know when you asked me before what I was doin' when they brought me here? Well, when I said nothin', I meant it literally. I was dead. This place is all I have now. So it's real. You're still gonna be real to me out there, Geralt. Why does any of the rest of it have to be different?

[ Her hand is warm. Geralt doesn’t reach back, but notably, he doesn’t pull away, either. There are few he’s met who have little they’ve left behind, and little waiting for them to return to, as he has. She’s one of a small handful he thinks maybe understands what that is.

He can’t say if it’s true, what this place gives. Maybe it does, maybe that’s what it’s meant to do: to afford all those who enter the chance to live what they deserve. If they are capable of it. He’s not sure he is. He’d built that home, that life, with a girl that existed only as a shadow, and then she’d. Vanished. Before he actually awoke. And for all that he’d felt the hollow in his chest, he remembers after he stopped searching for the girl and simply got back on his horse, alone, that was when it felt as though things finally settled into place. Like he’d found where he was always supposed to end up.

(Why do you do that? Yennefer had asked. Second guess yourself, when you have something nice. He’s realized it holds true what he’d answered in return, whether inside here or out there, with or without his memories: he doesn’t know how to keep it.)

His gaze snaps up. What? He stares at Julie for a second. His brows furrow. Shit. His head is far too stuffed with wool to work out exactly what this means, that she’s. Dead. Was dead. Normally he’d have a question or two: does she bear any marks or effects from what killed her, is anyone else with her supposed to be dead, too. (How the fuck.) As it is, the only coherent thought he has is that he genuinely doesn’t like the notion of her being dead. ]

Perhaps it is. [ She isn’t wrong, that it’s—it feels real. Deep down, that’s the problem he keeps having. He was given a tangible life he was never meant to hold onto. ] It’s faded all the same. But we are still here.

[ She’s here. If she’s died back in her world, she’s alive now. That part, at least, he can say is real. ]

[ Even as trashed as she is, she can read that look on his face, and she doesn't want it. It feels like being pitied, and she has been trying her damnedest to go about life here in Abraxas with a brave face, pretending like it wasn't her truth and she doesn't have to admit to it. She probably would never have said a word if he hadn't seemed so sad.

Though the conversation started as just idle question asking, her voice turns soft and terribly genuine. Not because she's trying to humor him, but because she means it. ]

What was it? Your life? [ Then, so as not to seem prying without giving in kind, she adds, ] Part of my domain, the back half, it's just this big, empty warehouse. I can't figure out why. Maybe that's where the people stay when I ain't here.

[ She smiles and sips from the bottle, raising it to him. ] We're still here. We'll make the best of it.

[ She does mean it, he realizes, and in that moment, he finds himself hesitating. This was not, in all honesty, the conversation he meant to have when he sat down. He'd meant to do the opposite. Take his mind off things. Talk about something of no importance. He isn't looking for pity, either. Or to sort out his thoughts in the open.

He's also already said...more. Than he'd intended to. He lifts his hand vaguely, like he's trying to indicate it wasn't anything special. His life, that was, that he had here. ]

A cabin. Up on the mountains. Quiet. [ Quiet. More than anything, that'd been important. The genuine peaceful quiet. There was a girl. He does not say it. Cirilla might be here now, but that girl, the shadow of her, she'd been something else. Something he still doesn't want to acknowledge.

—Wait. He peers at Julie. ] What people?

Edited 2021-10-09 08:23 (UTC)

That sounds real nice. When I hadta walk through the mountains, it was so quiet. Barely even birds to make a peep. Slept better out there than I ever did anywhere else.

[ One thing Julie had made sure to do, when she was faced with the necessity of walking nearly fifteen hundred miles, was chart her course through the things she'd never seen. Mountains in Colorado, the Grand Canyon -- ironically, walking until her shoes filled with blood was still a high point of her short life.

She looks at him curiously when he reacts that way; she hadn't thought that the people were anything special. Were the domains of others not constantly full of subconsciously manifested extras like a movie? ]

The people, they're usually in my club. There's maybe about a hundred of 'em? They're okay, they just dance and party, but they don't really talk to me. And if I only go in there for a minute, then they ain't around. Bartender's always there, though.

Hm. They're still there. The mountains.

[ Just not the cabin. Is it an invitation? Maybe. He isn't thinking too carefully about what he's doing at the moment. Between his and Jon's side by side, snow and mountains are aplenty in that piece of the Horizon. Perhaps she'd like to see it.

When she describes the people—so that's what she means. Most haven't kept the people they shaped unawares their first time in. Himself included. Jaskier, too. The lack of real features on their faces, of any real interaction—it was unsettling. And it spoke too much of what was missing for all of them, their time in here.

Geralt studies her. Trying to decide if she doesn't realize those people manifested from her directly or she simply doesn't mind that their presence. Maybe to her, they're necessary to fill the emptiness of a world normally dead. ] And you leave them there? You haven't tried to unmake them?

I'll add 'em to my list of things to see.

[ Julie figures that, as long as she's not entering other people's private dwellings with their domain, she's still free to look at the landscapes they've plunked them down on. After all, you can't tell people that they can't look at nature, right? And either way, she's not exactly someone who's afraid to go snooping where she shouldn't anyway.

Her people have features, albeit terribly blank, forgettable ones. Their faces are unimportant -- they are only present to fill the room. She does knit her brow, demonstrating obvious confusion over this concept. ] But I didn't make 'em. Plus, isn't it kind of like murder? I mean, I know they ain't exactly real, but... they ain't exactly not, either.

[ Ah. So she doesn't realize. Hadn't whoever brought her in explained a damn thing to her?

(Who did bring her in? One of the people she'd run to Nott with? Lloyd? Nadine?) ]

Julie. [ Geralt tilts his head. ] You did make them. Intentionally or not. This place—people can't hold form the way an object or an animal can. That's why they don't speak to you. Or vanish now and again.

[ They're not real, but. He gets it. How undoing them might feel. He realizes, he's just fucking glad Ciri had disappeared before he returned. That she wasn't still here, waiting. Because unmaking that. He doesn't even want to think about it. ]

[ Correct, she was taught close to nothing. If Geralt ever spends more than about ten minutes with Lloyd, he will immediately understand the disadvantage that Julie had in becoming acquainted with the Horizon. Bringing her in was the first time Lloyd had come back himself, to the point that he was changing things in his domain even as they made their way to each other from opposite sides of the room. It was the first time he was seeing it all with eyes that knew what it should look like.

The stitch between her eyebrows deepens, as this thought has literally never occurred to her. She is, vaguely, aware that they can manifest things without trying, but she did not believe people to be included -- only objects and possibly animals (Lloyd has some weird nightmare bunnies that she turns tame without trying whenever she gets close). There is a long pause where she obviously starts and stops several thoughts before they ever leave her mouth, and then she finally settles on: ]

Well, I don't know what they're doin' there. [ Which is a lie, now that she understands what's happening. She knows damn well that she's terrified to be alone now, that she's not haunted by the pestilence and death that she comes from. Only the loneliness. ] But it don't seem right to just... wish 'em away or whatever. This whole place, it's connected to the Singularity, right? If we hurt part of it, is it the same as hurtin' the Singularity itself?

[ She curls into a tighter ball in her chair, downs a large gulp of vodka as she looks into the distance. They can't see it from here, but she knows that the monolith lurks in the center of it all. Julie doesn't like the Singularity very much. Even if it's all Flagg wants, it still makes her stomach clench to think of it, to know that she's tethered to it. ]

And if these people are right, maybe we shouldn't be hurtin' it.

[ That is a lie, probably, but he won't mention it. Not his place. He's been avoiding dwelling on his own reasons for bringing forth the girl. He hasn't even told Cirilla, though he knows he'll need to at some point. Just. Not right now.

He's quiet, eyes on her, considering what she's saying. It's interesting. It's interesting she thinks of it that way, that unmaking something is destroying a part of the Horizon as a whole. Is that true? He does know he feels an uneasiness at the idea of someone else fucking with his domain, uninvited, with the intention to destroy. More so than he should, given his understanding that it can all be recreated in a matter of minutes. ]

It was blank when we arrived. Untouched. We all felt...a desire to make. [ His suspicion, at first, had been that Thorne brought them inside to feed it with their creation. Why grant the prisoners access otherwise? Then he learned what they did to Relena. Now he isn't sure. What would happen if they returned this place to its blank slate? It must be possible for it to exist in that form. That was how they'd found it. But Julie's observation, whether she meant it to or not, is beginning to make him reconsider: what if the Horizon was not born out of the Singularity? What if its existence is owed entirely to their interlinked connection to it instead? If more and more of them are connected, would the expanse within the Horizon grow? ]

I don't know. [ His expression softens for a moment as he watches her stare across their little world, before he takes another drink. Shit. He's had too much to theorize over transcendental creations. Or not enough. One or the other. ] Some believe our connection to the Singularity is vital. That may have been part of Thorne's intention. So we have little choice but to defend it on their behalf.

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