tushanshu_logs | Light 'em up

Light 'em up

Characters: EVERYBODY
Date: sundown on November 29th to sunrise on November 30th
Location: A plaza in Earth
Situation: The population of Keeliai could use a little warmth. So Chekov set stuff on fire and invited everyone over.
Warnings/Rating: None, but please put something in your comment header if necessary.

On Wednesday, everyone received the following audio message (and text attachments in English and Russian) from (1) Pavel Chekov in their inboxes:

“Hello. I would like to invite you to a bonfire in Earth sector on Friday at sundown. Please feel free to bring friends.”

A plaza in Earth sector is buzzing with activity-- most of it from one young man. He spends the day lugging folding tables and pushing wheelbarrows of supplies into the plaza. As the day wears on, several entrepreneurial kedan set up stands. By sundown, the plaza is lit up with three large, roaring bonfires. Most of the ice and snow has melted away, leaving a few patches here and there in the furthest corners of the plaza. One patch a bit away from the fires is completely devoid of snow and ice-- it's a sort of dance floor or performance area. Some music is playing out of one of the upper windows of the buildings overlooking the plaza. It's varies from quick and frenzied to slow and soothing. Of course, anyone is welcome to claim the floor to perform a magic show or do a little singing of their own.

There's a hodgepodge of various folding tables set with the essentials: raw vegetables, the closest equivalent of marshmallows Chekov could find (next to the chocolate and graham cracker substitutes), and sausages. There are skewers and tongs lying around should anyone need them. He also brought a few jugs of water, which are refilled periodically. It's not much, but it's the best he could do with a limited budget and not a lot of time. The kedan have taken the opportunity to sell what Chekov couldn't bring-- hot beverages and food, blankets, scarves and gloves, and several other simple wares.

It's not a grand setup, but there are roaring bonfires, food, and good company.

(Posting this slightly early because of Thanksgiving chaos. Let me know if you have any questions)

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"That he cares so much? ...or that somebody cares at all?"

Had it been anyone else, the question might have sounded harsh. Almost cruel. Her intentions were neither, and it showed in her tone. She was still mad, but her words were anything but spiteful right then.

"The latter. I... they both know the things I have done. The things I can still do."

He wouldn't even have shut her out if it sounded harsh. Harsh was also honest.

"They both look instead at what I actually do. Them, and Brown." He closed his eyes for a moment. Her, he still missed, twice over. "And they try to make that easier. Less... incomprehensible."

He opened his hand, palm to her, referring to the conversation they had when he had been three. "Understanding is one way in which I can take help. Because I can check things, if I need to. Verify the conclusions."

She did exactly what Kyle asked. Watched him closely. Putting more weight into his movements. They were speaking of other people aloud--Richard, Kyle, and whoever this Brown individual was (Midii didn't recognize the name)--but his gestures spoke of more. It was a reference to her as well. Past conversations shared.

"That's what Kyle told me. To pay attention to the things you do. Not so much the things you say."

Paaaause.

"I do too say things that are important!"

Indignation was a go.

She almost smiled at how easily it had been to predict he would react that way. But she didn't.

"You do." A brief flash of...something passed over her eyes as she thought back to their last conversation. To the conversation she'd witnessed with Eponine. Her eyes lowered. "You also say things that hurt."

"I know. I was trained to identify weakness and exploit it." He shrugged. "And that does not even touch on that..."

Damian cut himself off, there, looking in the direction of the nearest bonfire, eventually going on in a tone that was even stiffer than his usual cadence.

"I am aware that I say things that are hurtful. I sometimes mean them that way."

"...do you hate me?"

The fact that he was trained to hurt...didn't bother her. So was she, albeit it in a much more indirect way. The fact that he even meant to sometimes hurt others didn't bother her either. It depended upon the person and circumstances.

What bothered her now was the notion that he was deliberately(?) using these tactics on her.

"No." Firm, unhesitating, steady. "Even aside from the fact that I hate very few people, you are - somebody I find worthy of protection and teaching. And... learning from. I do not believe that falls into the category."

He almost added that it would be probably better if she were to hate him. But that would mean he had to explain why, and he was not... anywhere near ready to ask if what Eponine had said had any grounding in reality.

Not to mention that the quickly-encrypted conversation might be... not what she would want brought up, just now.

Someone to protect. To teach. To learn from. Even if all that was true--and she did beleive him, because why lie about that now?--it was still so...impersonal. He was still putting a certain distance between them.

"So you just don't like me."

Midii surprised herself at how calmly she was able to get the words out. Combined with the expression on her face, and she almost seemed to portray an attitude of apathy towards the situation as a whole.

Maybe she was a better actress than she thought.

A moment of consideration, and she shifted in her seat before lookin back up at him. "When we were in the Dream arches a while back..." It both was and wasn't a change in topic. A relevant tangent. "There was a boy. I know you saw him, yet you never once asked me who he was, or even his name."

Damian still didn't do deer in the headlights.

But he did freeze, his body tensing, harsh, his face going sharper, his already exhausted look going mostly too-sharp, in the firelight. So it is true.

Feelings.

That was wrong. It was so wrong, and it meant so many wrong things, inside Damian's mind. But he forced himself to respond, even if it wasn't immediately to her accusation.

"I thought I had asked you too many questions about what I saw already. It was..." He hadn't really paid attention to the boy. He hadn't been trying to kill her, not like the corpses. "The safety of others - yours included - tends to take precedence. The boy did not pose a threat."

He paused, then his voice lowered even more.

"I should not point that out, because thinking that would probably be better for you, but if what you said before that were true, do you think you would know as much about me as you have been allowed to?"

The irony of it all was that Damian's reaction came from words unspoken. She told him he didn't like her, and he didn't deny it. But not once did she turn the conversation back to herself. To her own feelings, whatever they may be.

She'd never been very good at that.

"You're right. He wasn't the threat. I was. He was right to want to shoot me, but he didn't. He abandoned me instead." Something he was also completely justified in doing. "The only person I ever might have loved aside from my family, and he pointed a gun right at my face and called me a traitor."

"And it's just as well you never asked, because I wouldn't have been able to answer. He had no name. He never had a name. From the time he was born, he lived his life as a nameless soldier...because nobody ever cared enough about him to give him one."

Sadness. She both pitied and envied him for it, even now.

"You have no idea what I think, Damian. I used to beleive you did, but now, I don't know anymore."

Damian rarely denied things - he tried to argue the ones he didn't agree with. But he was reacting to words that had been spoken. In a different conversation, days earlier. If that girl harbors feelings for you...

"I do not pretend to know much about love, even less so who you might have loved, but would not acting as he felt and believed was right be more reason to do so, rather than less?"

It was an honestly curious question, even thought the tension hadn't left Damian's body at all, nor his face. Nor had he looked back at her.

"And, no, I never did know what you thought. That is why I am asking." Did it even matter?

Sometimes, right now included, he almost envied somebody without a name. Who could be anyone and, even more, who could be no-one.

"I don't know."

An honest answer to an honest question. She had always been able to read Nanashii ("No Name") better than anyone else. Yet the one time he blatantly displayed his emotions, and she could no longer figure him out. Why he let her live. Why he then turned and walked away. She might never know.

"I think...to deny somebody a birth name is to deny their very existence. Names mean something. They're more than just something other people call you. They're your memories. Your heart. Your mind. What you mean to other people, and what they mean to you. You can know everything there is to know about a person, but if you don't know their name, then it means very little in the end."

That was what he was denying her when he refused to call her Midii. Whether he realized it or not.

And that wasn't what he'd asked, but he let it go. Perhaps he should just get back to addressing her as he wanted to, have her get angry with him again, and get this conversation done with.

Except...

Everyone goes away. She hadn't said it that way, but he'd heard it, anyway.

He didn't argue with her words. He didn't argue what calling people by the some logic meant to him (he wasn't up for explaining that, anymore - it didn't matter to the people who needed to understand it).

But, after some silence, he just said, quietly, "nearly nobody calls my brother Richard. They call him Dick." I call him Grayson. But she knew that. "Are they denying him his birth name?"

To Midii's credit, she contemplated it for a moment. Acknowledging the third party addition to their debate. If one could even call it that.

"Does he like it when people call him that?"

She was the one who brought up generalizations, nebulous third parties and overall statements of spiritual nature. He was merely asking for clarification.

"He is more accustomed to being called Dick. But - the one I know from home, at least, not the one you met - he always seems glad when Pennyworth calls him Richard."

And Damian had never asked. He wasn't going to, either.

He had a point.

"I know what a nickname is, Damian. Somebody I used to know would always call me Mid. It's still my name, and it's still just as personal. If he doesn't mind, then that's different. But they should still call him what he wants to be called." There were exceptions and variations and none of this was as cut and dry as she was trying to make it out to be...but that one statement, she could always fall back on. Because it was genuinely what she believed.

He often did.

They weren't necessarily helpful points.

"I suppose if he answers, then he wants to be called that." It was... neutral. And he still hadn't moved.

"You suppose." Throwing his own words back at him. Particularly as he seemed to pride himself earlier on finding facts and verifying them himself. "Have you ever even asked him?"

"No, I have not." Even. Almost calm.

"That doesn't seem like you."

A strange claim to make, considering she'd all but admitted she may not know him as well as she once thought.

Of all things, that made him move, shrugging a little with a quiet, polite(ish) snort. Even relaxing, slightly.

">Tt.< It is complicated." He considered it, for a moment. "If anything, should Grayson be called by a name that he does not like, he would likely make it his own, anyway."

There were both warmth and respect, in the evaluation.

Complicated.

That summoned up a lot of things fairly accurately.

"But it's so...impersonal." Her lips pressed together, for lack of a better way to describe what she thought. Unaware of what she was about to inadvertently let slip: "Last names are for people you barely know. Strangers. Not people you care about."

He shook his head quickly.

"First names are for junior, lesser people."

Without hesitation, or thinking about it.

Her brows lightly furrowed together. Suddenly very confused.

"Who told you that?"

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