closed.

[jalan]

WHO: Daenerys Targaryen, Darlene, and Jorah Mormont
WHERE: Dany's house in De Chima.
WHEN: Nowish.
WHAT: An interruption and a change of topic, probably.
WARNINGS: TBA

[ Remembering her last winter in America feels a little like remembering an anomaly as opposed to a valid season to be prepared to embrace. Her apartment is, as a result, as warm as a casual disregard for the power bill will make it, and the offering she has for Jorah, when he arrives, is coffee. It hasn't snowed today, but it promises to snow tonight, the wind outside having taken on a more enthusiastic bite as the steady march of winter presses on.

Unnaturally rapid seasonal change, for them, and she supposes she ought to get used to the cold. In Westeros, she will be a winter queen for sometime. ]

I left on the 28th of November, [ she's saying, seated, draped in fine knits. Her hair is loose from her braids, still impressed with them in tight waves. She hasn't left the house today, sleeping longer and longer, in spite of the fact she does not look as though she has slept at all. ] I don't remember anything of it.

[ No new memories, for her, which seems to be a slight point of anxious annoyance as she drinks her own coffee. ]

Comments

[khaleesipls]

[ Jorah never developed a taste for coffee. He’s probably even told Darlene as much, in an argument, or in defense against the purchase of some modern appliance.

But here he is drinking it now, every fiber of self control torqued to its limit to keep the bitterness off the rough hew of his face. Jaw set, a swallow closed tight, he sips while he listens, one elbow on the table.

It helps that he has worry to occupy himself with.

Daenerys looks like she hasn’t slept; she doesn’t look like herself, as he left her, and the only doctor whose name comes to mind is Chilton. Doctor Frederick Chilton, psychiatrist, whose book he’s been reading despite its mocking dedication to Turtle. It’s fine, though, because he ignores the voice reminding him over and over in the back of his head. ]

The same happened to me last year, [ he says, instead. ] Before I turned into a bear. [ And mauled Senator Mitchell.

It’s worth mentioning that he’s wearing a sweater too. His is adorned with bears in festive hats, dancing among knit snowflakes and red tinsel. He’d refused an initial offering wherein the bears bore antlers. ]

[jalan]

[ It's very fancy coffee, at least. Smoother than your standard fare, almost sweet on its own, even if she's helped it along with sugar and cream. They must all have their modern things to attach to, to take some pleasure in, that they might even miss if they were able to remember it when they return home.

Showers are good too.

She nods to this as she cups her hands around ceramic, fidgeting with a chip in the rim with the edge of her thumbnail. She had, for a time, a different power, but hardly understood the effects of it, any accidental use of it made into the problem of those around her rather than herself. ]

And you, too, learned it the hard way. [ Wry humour struggles through bleak exhaustion, a brief smile, gone behind the next sip of coffee.

She looks at the bears on his sweater as she does so. It's a good sweater. ]

[khaleesipls]

[ He mirrors her smile in slighter kind, thank you, I hadn’t forgotten unspoken in a slant at his brow. The memory persists in a discreet pass of his tongue over his teeth, onward until he sands it out with a longer swallow of coffee.

It’s not just the flavor that’s trouble. It’s the caffeine, prickling at his heart. ]

I could stay here while you sleep.

[ Outside her bedroom, alone with magazines and his mobile device. It’d hardly be the first time he will have done it. Just the first time without a sword at his hand. ]

If only for the night.

[ She looks like she needs the rest. Framed politely, and with pressure more assertive than friendly suggestion. ]

[jalan]

[ Her gaze dips downcast into her coffee (which, on that note, she ought not to be drinking) at his suggestion, the tone of it, mouth pinching as she does not immediately agree. ]

Therein lies the problem, [ she says, drawing her gaze back up. ] I've slept more hours than I care to admit, but I wake as though I've barely rested. Sleep is where the incessant dreaming lies.

[ A shake of her head, irritated. ]

My hope is it will pass, when what seems to be plaguing everyone else passes too.

[nastygram]

[Speaking of plagues....

De Chima is not one of Darlene's usual haunts, not since Elliot disappeared a year ago. Lack of visits not based on superstition or sentimentality or anything. More like she just doesn't have a reason to go.

Except Daenerys lives in De Chima. So when Darlene, out on her post-ported bender, is looking at a map at a bus stop and realizes, oh shit, Daenerys, she turns her steps that way. Of course she knows where Dany lives.

All told, it doesn't take that long to get to the house. Darlene has sobered up a little by then, at least. Which sucks. She has been enjoying the cotton-wrapped feeling of being totally wasted. Like she doesn't have to think too hard or watch what she's saying or come to terms with what went down, all that missing time she's got to reconcile, the updated folder, the same shitty feeling of waking up in a government building and being greeted by name.

The point is not thinking of that. Darlene squashes down her thoughts as she squares up with Daenerys' door. Her knock is good and firm, punctuated with--]

Hey. Hey, open up! I see your light on, bitch.

[It's a friendly bitch.]

[khaleesipls]

I might be able to stop them.

[ He’s waiting for her when she looks up, eyes prying after hers with an earnest clarity. Khaleesi please.

If the dreams are borne of power, he can stifle them. There’s no reason to resort to quackery. What do the framed certificates on Chilton’s wall even mean? No one knows.

Darlene’s knock sees him turned sharply to the door, breaking pressure off like a snapped steam line. But it’s her voice that needles him to bristle, thundercloud tension looming in his slow rise from his seat.

Late, he looks back to Daenerys.

If she hasn’t seen the motorcycle by now, he could slip out the back and around with this latest arrival being none the wiser. ]

[jalan]

[ She hesitates, in making eye contact. Some inner conflict, on what can and can't be fixed by negating. If only for the night, he'd said, and her expression resolves into that look she gets before accepting advice.

And then her door is being knocked on. Her expression softens into something both exasperated and fond. ]

Wait here a moment, [ is more apologetic than instructive, but still unknowingly cuts possible exit routes off at he pass, rising to her feet.

Daenerys opens the door, not terribly concerned whether or not she looks like trash from her non-sleeping, or that Jorah, at the table, will be in full view once Darlene has progressed past the stoop. Dany opens the door, bare foot and draped in a fuzzy dove grey cardigan, which she clutches a little tighter around her at the sudden slice of cold wind that comes in.

Ugh. She steps aside to permit Darlene entry rather than try to have any kind of conversation where winter can take swipes at her. ]

And what are you doing out here?

[ In De Chima, rather than her home. ]

[nastygram]

I was partying.

[--Darlene says, as she breezes into Daenerys' place, somewhere between like she owns it and familiar bestie. She's already shrugging off her faux fur when she spots Jorah. A grin spreads over her face, a little drunk, a little mischievous, a little knowing, a little mean. And a little drunk.]

Oh shit. Am I interrupting?

[Not that she would be deterred from strutting into the house proper, dropping her purse off her shoulder and her coat on the floor. Very much at home.]

So-rry. Don't mind me.

[khaleesipls]

[ Jorah’s coat is on a hook at the door with his helmet; he watches the spread of Darlene’s faux fur across the floor like it’s something she’s excreted. Flat affect.

Too stubborn to succumb to the temptation to excuse himself now, after that grin, he draws up and bolsters instead. Shoulders back, jaw locked, he waits on his feet and in silence in a sweater that glitters when he shifts his weight warily (and wearily) to one side.

When isn’t she partying and/or interrupting? ]

[jalan]

You were.

[ Said in the tone of someone who doesn't particularly mind, closing the door behind her, stepping over dropped coat. ]

And there's no party here, I'm afraid, [ not actually on purpose giving Darlene further ammunition ] only business. So, we're drinking coffee, not vodka, if you'd care for some.

[ Given her current fog of sleep deprivation, she hasn't quite figured out how to navigate the competing attentions of a happily drunk Darlene and-- well, Jorah, now on his feet, matters still undecided between them, so she's going one thing at a time. Darlene and sobriety and a safe trip back to her Porter, or perhaps loading her into the spare room.

She touches Darlene's arm to usher her towards the living room set: throw rugs, designer pillows, the occasional scorch mark from misbehaving dragons. ]

[nastygram]

Business, huh, [with a grin, but she backs off from wherever she might have taken that. You're welcome, Jorah.] Sounds lame. Meanwhile, coffee sounds frickin' fantastic, sign me up--

[And it is just then that Dany touches Darlene's arm, fingertips to skin left bare without that layer of coat. And that's when it hits her, a memory so forceful it makes her want to hurl, for a moment--before that mingled happy sad seeps in, the feeling of coarse hair between her fingers, a memory that exists inside of another memory. Braids, sand, tents. Bells. A sour smell, sweat for sure, and something deeply animal. Pale against dark. What the fuck, thinks Darlene, and then she slaps Daenerys' hand away.]

What the fuck.

[There's a ringing in her ears and she's back to feeling like she's going to vomit. White as a sheet, she stares at Daenerys. Jorah might as well have ceased to exist.]

[khaleesipls]

[ In a few prowling steps, Ser Jorah and his sweater cease to exist much more closely than they did when Darlene last looked away. He’s dropped anchor some three or four feet behind Daenerys, hard in the face, eyes sharpened to slivers -- focus slightly crossed in its overlap between calculation and restraint.

Disapproving of slaps and swears and that parasitic surge of power between them, he looms like a pit available to push Darlene into rather than shoving forth to intervene directly. Quiet, past the steady scratch and whistle of his breath through his nose.

Ready to receive an explanation.

Or an order. ]

[jalan]

[ Daenerys is too surprised to account for Jorah, at first, jerking her hand back to curl inwards at her chest, expression startled. Startled which stays there, Darlene's face bloodless and something animal in her eyes.

Her natural instinct, having felt nothing, where Darlene clearly felt something, is that this, like that which is ruining her circadian rhythm, is her doing. ]

What-- just happened?

[ Now she turns to Jorah, big expectant eyes demanding he answer that question as he is best able. Worry draws a line between her dark eyebrows. ]

[nastygram]

[Darlene is hardly aware of the loom of Jorah, or even the way Daenerys is looking at her. She is focused inward, doing a kind of mental Web M.D. session.

But all pervading over the sense of nausea and the tingling panic growing from her gut is that sad-mingled-happy, that feeling of remembering, so foreign a memory that she can't contain it in her own head. Like trying to fit a big-ass box inside a tiny purse.]

Shit, [she says, faintly,] you did his braids,

[and then nausea overcomes her entirely and, very dramatically, Darlene shoves past Jorah and Dany and goes to throw up in the kitchen sink.]

[khaleesipls]

[ Jaw slacked open to answer, Jorah closes it against the she hit you he has on deck when he sees the way Daenerys is looking up at him. The sound of Darlene’s rotten opossum guts spattering the sink seems to have assuaged his initial start of suspicion; a remnant prickle at his chops betrays more in the way of disgust than it does distrust. He doesn’t turn to make sure she isn’t making a move for the cutlery.

Or to see if she’s alright.

Daenerys committed herself to the wonder of ‘Dolores’ when she opened the door and brought her in. It’s not his problem until the queen makes it so. ]

It wasn’t you.

[ In that, at least, he can reassure her with some certainty. But if she’s that concerned about the possibility -- ]

[jalan]

[ Daenerys is a lot of things, in this world. A warm friend, for those few who have gotten to know her or become people she wished to get to know; fashion icon and celebrity with a carefully curated gallery of monetised selfies; Her Grace, to some, something formed in the recent years out of the dust.

Strange, how little things, memories, can make those things fly away like scattered birds, if only for a moment. It isn't surprise or confusion or horror in her expression, but a sort of blankness as she watches Darlene flee. She could almost feel it, the oil strands of dark hair, parting them with her fingers, winding them carefully, talking in his tongue.

Just for a moment.

Then she looks back to Jorah as the dulcet tones of Darlene hurling fill the muffled silence of this modern day apartment with its plastered walls and glass and insulation. She nods. Quietly; ]

Then it was her own doing?

[ There's been too many random events of memory swapping and dream travel and forest fires not attributed to any of its victims for her not to apply pressure, to narrow it down. Moving, then, around Jorah, ducking to retrieve bottled water from the fridge. ]

[nastygram]

[Once her rotten guts are basically expelled, Darlene sags against the sink. The rounded edge of the counter is digging in to the soft meat of her stomach. Her elbows are basically hitched in the sink, holding up her weight on shaky legs, risen on the toes of her chunky boots.

She spits into the drain. It echoes.

And still she's not done with feeling strands of hair between her fingers, coarser than her own, which is Dany's own, all of it blurring like she's dragging her fingers through wet watercolors. Or maybe like she's puked on the watercolors and she's dragging her fingers through that, which, as the memory settles in, foreign, Darlene's stomach does one of those super cool dry-heaves, and she hunches for a few coughed moments.

The soft sound of the fridge opening gets her attention, despite it all. She looks around, wild-eyed. It's nothing. It's Dany. Darlene stares at her, hard, like a cornered animal. No more fun kicky drunk.]

The fuck was that.

[She missed the memo, that it was her own doing. Or is forcibly ignoring the memo. Or both.]