maskormenacelogs | quoth the raven, macklemore

People insisting on giving her things, willingly accepted or not, was baffling to Annie. So was a preoccupation with fashion, something afforded to the rich, and not anything she worried about when her own choices made her blend in effectively enough. No, she wasn't prepared for social gatherings of the sort the imPorts were being requested to attend with greater frequency, but that wasn't a big concern.

Not yet. She'd address that situation when she must.

Annie answered the door, in unfamiliar pants and an over-large sweater she was borrowing from Reiner. Very girl next door, holding up a map in one hand, a messenger bag slung over her shoulder. Her book bag, in truth, but easier to use in the interim than worrying about anything else to carry her (very slim) wallet with its bills and plastic card.

"Ready to head out? We can take the train to another part of the city to get closer to two or three of these."

It was one way of saying hello.

They certainly made a contrast: Connors was wearing casual attire (at least, casual attire for him): a pair of jeans and a striped polo shirt. Wallet, phone and keys were in various jeans pockets. He stepped back, so that Annie could leave the house without running into him.

"I've lived in New York--I'm fine with trains." Although, he paused for a moment, going over thoughts in his head. "Nonah's got the monorail, right? The one that was attacked a couple of months ago."

Connors hadn't been to that event. He only knew of the monorail attack through newspapers, news programs and word of mouth.

Annie steps past him, turning around and closing the door - locking it, even - with her lips pressing into a thin line. She'd been here for that attack, had even been on the monorail, in the sections that had plunged from the upper area below street level. For a first time riding on anything even remotely like a train, it'd left an impression. A terrifying one.

She'd been forcing herself on trains ever since.

"Reconstruction isn't complete yet. It should be soon." That's enough on that topic, neutral as her voice is in stating the facts. It would be finished sometime soon. Annie would make herself ride on it through the city, not because she loved the idea, but because she'd make herself confront that irrational fear even if she couldn't breathe through most of it.

She'd done similar things most her life.

"Did you take the train up here from the Porter?"

"I did," Connors replied, with a nod and a smile. He was fine with trains. In fact, he was exceedingly fine with trains. What he wasn't entirely fond of where planes and boats. Trains were on land. If he had an...incident, he'd be on land. Planes and boats, on the other hand, were dangerous. God only knew that the Lizard didn't need to be forty thousand feet in the air.

"It was pretty comfy. Still, a train's a train. It wasn't really anything special."

"We'll be heading back to that station." She tucks her map under arm, her communicator out and open to a text interface with a list of thrift stores and addresses. "There's only three on the list Rikku gave me that are practical to get to within Nonah. The transit here for public isn't horrible... but some of these walks aren't practical for an afternoon's activities."

Sliding her keys into her pocket, Annie nods to the stairs down to the street, moving down them and waiting to see what kind of pace Connors would set. "People build sprawling cities here. They're all so immense."

Let's not talk about irritation brought on by friends trying to help in all the wrong ways. Annie supposes she's grateful Minako had targeted her clothing and nothing else. There are other intrusions she'd mind more in the end.

He was setting a quick, yet leisurely pace as he started to walk down the street, back towards the train station. After all, he doesn't want to be that person who walks too fast and others have to catch up.

"That's America for you," he replied, with a little shrug. "It's a car culture down here. Back up north, in New York City, you can manage to get pretty much anywhere just with public transportation. But the further south you get, the more room there is, and the more things are spread out." Based on his little frown, he obviously had mixed feelings about the fact that everything was so spread out. He liked it...but when you didn't drive, public transportation became a must. Some places were better at that than others.

"Is it the same toward the middle of the country? How about further out West?" Annie settles in with his pace, keeping up without any visible trouble. As used to matching a marching order as she is, this is a relaxing sort of stroll.

She mentally reviews the map under her arm, plotting out where it is they'll want to exit the train, and if it's worth taking a bus and heading further out, or if her companion will be up for the walk. Annie prefers walking in the end... since she's not borrowing one of the hovercycles to get around today.

She watches his expression, wondering at his thoughts. Public transit is such a new concept as far as this ease of accessibility that any of it existing at all is a novelty for Annie.

"I haven't been out West, but I'm assuming it is." After all, to the best of Connors's knowledge, the middle of the country is just corn fields. Corn fields and Mount Rushmore in there somewhere. And then you had mountains, and of course you had to have cars if there were mountains.

Fun fact: he knows pretty much jack shit about the Midwest. And, as shown by his furrowed brow and thinking expression, he's not gonna find out much anytime soon.

"I've mostly spent my time around the East Coast. Again, I wouldn't know for certain."

She can't say she's surprised, not as they turn toward the station here, little more than a ticketing booth and a raised platform with gates and fencing and a bench or two for those waiting until the next train came through. "Are you ever planning on heading out West?" How much of a drive for exploration did people have when their lives were caught up in what they saw day to day?

When they didn't come from inside, or outside, deceptive Walls? There had to be some greater sense of freedom in what one could do, unexplored as the potential might be.

"Actually? Not really." As he caught a look at the station, Connors pulled out his wallet, fumbling with it slightly, trying to walk and one-handedly pull out a few bucks to buy a train ticket. "If I were to travel out west, it'd had to be on a train or a bus. I don't trust...well, I don't do planes well." He hadn't told Annie about the Lizard yet, had he?

"And I don't know if I want to spend that long cooped up in a small space like that."

Annie pulled out her own transit pass, watching Connors. They haven't conversed over his particulars before, though she'd heard about some incident during the continuum mining. Linking the two definitively wasn't really her style.

"Could go on a car trip with someone else. Means you can stop whenever you need to." She walked up the ramp, stopping by the ticket terminal with all its automated options. If he needed to buy a ticket, she figured it would be somewhat more polite to wait before marching right through the plastic gates to the platform proper.

"The problem with that is that you need someone else to go on a car trip with," he remarked, with a chuckle. As someone who regularly took the buses in Heropa, the idea of actually buying a train pass hadn't sunk into Connors's mind yet. After all, he liked Heropa and didn't plan on moving. This was just a special occasion.

"I haven't driven in ages, and my son can't drive either." Putting the money in the ticket vending machine, Connors punched out a two trip pass--after all, they'd have to go back to Annie's house. "My wife did most of the driving." His tone was conversational, almost forced, but with a small hitch in his voice as he mentioned his wife.

"You could head out with a Cybertronian. If they let you ride along, then the car on the trip is your travel companion." Annie sounded serious enough that she might only be serious. She was joking, though she knew what he meant in a greater sense of things.

Especially when he mentioned he wife.

"How long has it been?" Since he lost her. Annie kept her voice conversational, a soft question meant to be easy to ignore if he needed to ignore what she'd said in the first place. Moving through the turnstall, she headed down the platform, glancing up at the next arrival time. Four minutes from now.

"I don't know about you, but traveling in a sentient car just seems too strange to me." Could the Cybertronian feel it if he spilled something in the car? Did they feel it when he was sitting on them? It opened up a whole can of worms that Connors wasn't so sure he wanted to deal with.

But yes. Back to his wife. Back to Martha. He needed to talk about it, he knew that much. Connors spent so much time in his work, in his research, that talking about things was tough for him. "A few years now," he carefully responded, trying his hardest to keep his voice level. "It was cancer. We were divorced at the time, but..." But he still loved Martha. But they were only divorced for her own safety. But he continually wanted to make it work, to make things better. "But that didn't really change much between us."

"Cars are strange to me as a whole." How Cybertronian sensibilities factored in is beyond what she cares to contemplate, and never having needed to expend that much energy on thinking it over, Annie simply opts not to do as much now.

She doesn't know what to do with this... information about Connors' wife. She has questions, since she doesn't know the particulars of what he's talking about (cancer is a disease, she surmises, but what kind she doesn't know) or what the purpose was behind them divorcing if it didn't change much between them.

Protecting people... she can't say it's her first presumption. She doesn't know families, let alone love, well enough to understand. "Why did you divorce, in the first place?"

There was a pause. He knew he needed to tell Annie. He wanted to tell Annie. Not that many people here knew about the Lizard and he knew that more people needed to know about it. It was only safe. It was the best option. He was slowly coming to the opinion that the more people that knew about it, the better they could react if something were to happen.

...it was hard to admit it, though.

"We divorced because it wasn't safe for her. A long time ago, I made a terrible mistake. The result of that mistake is that occasionally I...become something else. Something dangerous. It can hurt people."

She studied his face, hearing the train announced, hearing it barrel down the tracks their way. Something he couldn't control, or else he wouldn't have pushed away someone he loved (two someones, wife and child, she presumes, unless he hated his kid, that happens, nothing says love is granted equally, or granted at all) to protect her from himself.

"What was the mistake?" The end result, too, but if they were starting anywhere in difficult territory, best to start somewhere concrete.

"I thought I could fix my arm," Connors simply said, trying his hardest to keep his voice level. "I injected myself with a serum based on reptile DNA, that I thought could enhance the regenerative properties of human cells enough for me to regrow my arm. Obviously, it failed."

Looking back on it now, the whole idea seemed ridiculous. But he was (and to a certain extent still is) desperate. And desperation was a strange beast.

"One of the side effects was that I...well, I occasionally lose control and turn into a giant lizard monster." He tried to say that as matter-of-fact as possible, like turning into a lizard monster was something that happened to anybody.

Annie matched his tone of voice as the trained sounded off its horn, thirty seconds away from arrival. "Are there any precipitating factors?" Occasionally didn't give enough information to say if it was at random or not.

She knew why people could be desperate to be whole again. She had the opposite kind of terrifying, where the violence committed wouldn't linger, making it a matter of expediency in cutting off a limb or four. A version of Levi's threat could echo through the back of her mind even now - I can cut you right out of there. Doesn't matter if I don't get your arms and legs. They'll grow back, won't they?

But she knew why people wanted to be whole. Watched the soldiers who came back from fighting, unable to function as they had before. The train sped by, slowing down to a stop as its nose reached for the far end of the station. Annie waited for a lull following the train's arrival, moving toward the opening doors before she said anything more.

"Seems like a dramatic reaction to the serum. I'm impressed you're able to repress it as well as you do." It wasn't Annie being glib. Anything that could fully transform a person had a chance of fully consuming them.

Titans, werewolves... there were examples all around them.

"Stress, mostly." Or extenuating circumstances. But there was no way on God's green Earth that he was going to tell Annie about some of them. There was no way to make 'influenced by a magic meteorite' or 'forcibly became the Lizard thanks to an African voodoo witch lady' sound reasonable.

Then again, he was talking to a girl who could turn herself into a giant Titan monster. Reasonable wasn't part of the equation.

As the train arrived, Connors followed Annie on the train. "And it was really bad in the beginning. But, multiple years of trying to keep this thing under control certainly helps."

Reasonable was usually struck right out of the dictionary.

"I suppose when people talk about stress management, you might have a few pointers for personal reasons." She moves to take one of two empty seats toward the middle of the car, where one of the poles from the ceiling stretched down next to the aisle seat itself. "We'll take this three stops before we'll want off."

Sitting down, she pulled out her map, unfolding it to the section of town with pencil marks for the locations Rikku had given her. Macklemore would have been proud.

"What does your son think of all this?"

He took a seat next to Annie, watching as she unfurled the map. That was smart--he was still working his way around the city and hardly knew where anything was. Of course, he was definitely banking on Annie to have the foresight of planning things out, so he was relieved when that assumption was true.

And then came the million dollar question. About his son. "I haven't seen him in a while," Connors admitted, small frown on his face. His body language was telling everything: this was a tricky subject. "He was more understanding when he was younger, but things have changed since then...I really wouldn't blame him if he didn't want anything to do with me."

His son lost his father and mother as any sort of stable ground, then later lost his mother in the more permanent sense. Annie studies Curt in small glances, folding her map back down once she's sure of the route they'll be taking when they exit the train. Slowing down for the first stop, she looks forward, then out the window.

"You'd miss him."

He couldn't help but smile slightly. It was a tired, weary smile, one given by a man who life had beaten down and yet he still was trying his hardest to keep looking at the right side, keep smiling.

"It's that obvious?" He knew it was that obvious. It was super obvious.

"Yeah." They could both agree on that. It wasn't a revelation to him, and to Annie, it's a kinder thing to see than many others. "If only loving someone was enough."

Rather melancholy, but said with a more thoughtful, preoccupied air. If only.

"Wouldn't it be so nice if it was?" Connors remarked, with a little laugh. If only. His couldn't imagine how different his life would be if loving someone was only enough. If his love for Martha, love for Billy would actually negate his mistakes.

"The world would be kinder. Maybe even more fair. But it's not... though I don't believe... or I don't feel that it doesn't make love worthwhile." What might not be enough still mattered. Enough is a concept difficult to reach, as far as bridging the spaces between hearts and minds.

Love still could make things easier. She's seen it, in all different forms, and feels it, in the twisted, sad sense of her affection and love/hate for her own father.

"We're coming up on our stop."

"Going from love to thrift shops." He couldn't help but laugh at that--what a weird combination. Part of him wanted to just brush it off as 'only in Heropa,' but he had a feeling he had just as strange conversations back home.

"We're certainly running the gamut of conversation topics."

"Isn't that what conversations do? If we're bothering beyond the how are yous and how's the weather." She stands, waiting for him to move as the train starts to slow, entering its stop. "At least part of what we're talking about is practical. There are... two? Three, in a few blocks distance from here."

Enough of the edge from earlier in the day is wearing off that she doesn't feel keyed up from the uncomfortable way Minako had left her feeling. People took too much stock in appearances that didn't matter. It wasn't flattering to be forced into accepting someone else's understanding of a concept that didn't matter to Annie. Look good for who? She was more than content with what she had.

"Which one do you want to go to first?" Because again, Connors didn't know the area that well. Hopefully Annie knew enough about the thrift stores to have a preference. Though, in all honesty, he was fine with just going from one to the other, bouncing between the three until they found one that suited them.

After all, they had all day. Or, at least, he had all day. He wasn't entirely sure about Annie's schedule.

Homework. Tutoring work. Cooking work, though cooking was more a process of expanding her ability to do so while staying in careful bounds of the kinds of herbs and light spices that didn't upset her stomach or digestive tract. High goals better suited to a studious shut in than what Annie generally looks like, but no one who seemed to expect she had much of a life or a desire for action greater than what morning runs and sparring sessions provided really knew anything about her habits.

Granted... admitting to murder might make it seem like she's that much more jam-packed full of daring and danger, but that was as idiotic as missing the subtext in the entire confession.

Politics fuck everyone over.

"The closest. No point in walking further if the first will do." She steps off the train, heading down the cement walkway toward the exit with the trickle of bodies heading out, moving by the same trickle looking to get on the train in the meantime.

"Point," he said, with a little shrug. As the train pulled to the station, Connors got off as well, following Annie towards the exit, being careful not to jostle anybody in the process--and shooting people an apologetic look if he did manage to accidentally nudge or jostle then.

Eventually, the two made their way out of the station. "Back to what we were talking about, there's still a little bit of merit in shopping around. You might find something that you didn't even think of in the first place."

"... Like what? I just want more than two hoodies to wear. Blue and grey aren't bad, but... ah. Do you mean like a rain cloak?"

Annie glances upward at him as they start moving down the sidewalk. She stops at the first light, hitting the button to activate the crosswalk perpendicular to where they're been walking.

"Well, what if you want a nice skirt or a nice pair of slacks? If one place doesn't have what you really want, there's no shame in trying somewhere else."

Of course, he had a feeling that he still needed to try and force the motto of 'you deserve nice things' into Annie's head. It would be harder than it seemed.

Annie shoot shim a quizzical look as they cross the street. Why in the world would she want a nice skirt? The slacks, maybe; those weren't so bad. That he even considered it to be part of her deserving something nice doesn't register. The freedom of movement she had in pants wasn't something she'd decide to sacrifice for any particular reason, let alone looking nice.

Who, or what, would she be impressing? With nothing on the table she needs to show a good face for, the possibility is currently out of mind.

"I do know how to shop. I promise. I'm not sure what you mean by saying things like, if one place doesn't have what you really want." Shes not deadset on only one thing, and she's not the sort to buy what she doesn't need (or want, though that one's harder to call).

Connors, on the other hand, is knee deep in hypotheticals. One of the first things he bought here was some form of nice dress clothes, because what if there was an occasion that he needed them? What if he had to go somewhere? He needed nice clothes if he was going somewhere, so he bought nice clothes first off.

Obviously they were coming at different ends of the spectrum.

"Well, if you were deadset on a certain item in a certain color, then just realize that you might have to shop around." Though, as they talked, he had a feeling Annie wasn't deadset on...well, anything.

"... As long as it's not bile colored," she says, as if this is a common concern. (Trust her, with limited colors for dying, it really could be.) "Some shades of green I'd prefer to avoid, but the colors here are more varied and vibrant than anything you'd find affordable back home."

Welcome to easy going central, Connors. Annie simply needed things to be functional, and comfortable. Minako had taken her functionality and exchanged it for a different sort of functionality, tossing comfort out the window in the process. "Kanya would say no whites. Or browns." Nothing military in nature. Then again, Kanaya had shown up that morning and hand-sewn her a blue hoodie, so colors-by-Kanaya is more fresh in Annie's mind. She glances in the windows of the stores they pass as they walk - this one sells and tunes pianos. There's a baby grand in the window that makes her blink, wanting to pause, but continuing onward regardless. Such things they have here...

"I've got to admit, I don't know that much about colors." And boy is that true. Connors's wardrobe ranges the spectrum from brown to black. He's not really one for bright, vibrant colors. In fact, he's not really one for colors period. Hope Annie's ready for color suggestions that may or may not look good on her.

"But no whites is always a good idea--they're annoying to clean." There's a measure of practicality this conversation that Annie would appreciate.

Like Annie would notice, or possibly care. (She might surprise herself learning she does, but as of now, she hasn't had reason to care, so she simply doesn't.) She does find his degree of practicality easy to accept - then again, having to be used to cleaning whites the last three years meant it was just one more inconvenience among many.

"Bleach is supposed to do wonders. We used hot water and hard lye soaps back home." Terrible on the skin. Frightening, really, but not something that could leave an impact on Annie. When they stop at the next crosswalk, Annie squints, trying to read the shop signs up ahead. She thinks she sees the one for their first thrift store. "I mostly work with unremarkable colors, when out of uniform."

quoth the raven, macklemore

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