#empath problems (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dragony) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maskormenacelogs2014-06-06 01:56 pm
dragony) wrote in maskormenacelogs2014-06-06 01:56 pm
take a look at all the pressure
who: Ruka, you saps
where: Heropa, here and there
when: 5/31 - 6/6, varying times
what: A selection of gratuitous slice-of-life scenarios as filtered through the life of someone who's never happy
warnings: ???
[ 1 • that high school in Heropa that everyone gets enrolled in but barely anybody attends on a regular basis, morning through afternoon ]
Weekdays are schooldays, but not for everyone. Those outside the proper age bracket, for one, and those with little desire to attend despite their inclusion, for a second. For Ruka, it's the second. As someone who grew up educated on the internet, followed by swinging from homeschooling to testing forward into a specialized university degree, high school literature and economics are hardly an appealing way to spend the muggy Florida afternoons. Heropa is a small town, and a small town means a smaller population, so there's only one high school within the town limits. It means, she knows, that she's not the only imPort enrolled here, when she musters up the energy to attend, but sometimes it feels like it. Maybe it's her spotty attendance or her unusual appearance that does it, or perhaps it's her uneasy discomfort with crowds and strangers, but no matter the day she attends, Ruka can't help but feel on edge. It's a challenge to not use her power, to not form a literal bubble around her in order to establish the boundaries of a metaphorical one. She doesn't trust any of them. She can't. But even if she won't register, it's too big of a risk to evade their every system, isn't it? Those aren't limits she's willing to risk her neck to test.
So from one class to another, she keeps to herself; volunteers no answers, asks no questions, and certainly doesn't try striking up conversation with her fellow students. Arrive, go through the motions, depart; so long as the effort seems to be there, she thinks, it'll be alright. But no matter the day, the pattern goes as usual: ignore the guys on the debate team in first period that spend at least five minutes every morning bandying about new theories about what happened to her face (if anything); glower at the girl next to her in calculus who thinks that just because she's sitting on Ruka's blind side that she won't notice someone trying to copy her work; skip gym class without the faintest pretense to instead commandeer some small table in the library and hide with publications of world atlases through the decades; get kicked out of U.S. History and sent to loiter in the hallway, as usual, for "detracting from the learning environment."
During lunch, sitting in some lesser-frequented area of the courtyard, she wonders if it's worth the effort to finish out the school year... that is, if she isn't at this point simply leaving for the day, too tired and having exhausted even the pretense of caring for her "permanent record."
[ 2 • city bench in the downtown (only) shopping district ]
She can't do everything by herself.
It's something she tells herself--tells anyone who listens--over and over, but perhaps today those words should be, she can't keep trying to do everything by herself. Because that's what keeps happening, isn't it? She assesses how she feels at a given time, determines what she needs to do and how much strength she'll need to do it, and finds herself short. She then determines who would be likely to help her with such minor tasks, and promptly throws the whole mental list away. That's still a cost to her, in the end; those who do favors are kind, or calculating, but regardless expect some prize in return, whether it be friendship or a favor, and the inability to provide either would simply breed resentment.
As for someone who already is her friend, she can't ask Karkat to do everything for her; he resents her enough already.
But the temperature is high today, and Ruka never remembers to account for how much more energy it takes to do the shopping with the sun on her back, when she never allows herself the embarrassment of clothing lighter than opaque cotton or sleeves shorter than the wrist.
She can't keep going on like this, she thinks to herself, and maybe this is heat stroke, and maybe she should just let herself pass out here, but what if someone steals her bags? That would make the whole endeavor even more pointless. So for now, maybe sitting in the shade, heels of her palms pressing against her mismatched eyes, maybe she'll be able to muster enough energy to at least get back to the house from here.
Maybe.
[ 3 • government housing district, dusk to pre-dawn ]
She wishes the buildings were taller. Or perhaps it's better to say, she wishes she lived in a proper city, with proper buildings of proper ambitious heights, and that she once again lived on one's peak. It's been a long time since she saw her childhood home, but a life so far from the ground and so close to the stars is a hard one to forget. Ruka still doesn't know the names of all the asterisms, their constellations, but the night sky patterns are mostly the same here as they were in the City, and as they were in Neo Domino City before that. Te difference lays, she knows, in her position on this globe, rather than the positions of the stars beyond it.
It's about midnight, and she can't sleep — but when it's one, two-thirty, four in the morning, sleep is just as difficult to find. It has been easier these past few weeks, but no solution is perfect. It's not fear of the dark or the unfamiliar surroundings that shake her, but the rumble and ache of a restless heart, a racing mind. Picking out stars seems more productive than looking for shapes in the spackle of her ceiling. Better still, to watch other imPorts make their way into or out of the residential neighborhood this late, to guess their reasons, their plans and motives... it's more productive than dwelling on her own.
It's not like they usually bother her, anyway.
[ 4 • wildcard; tagger's choice ]
[ Housemate in Residence 10 annoyed about someone making tea at two in the morning? Grocery shopper colliding into that idiot loitering in front of the pastas? Forced to sit next to this weirdo because it's the only open seat in the coffee parlour/tea house/restaurant? Door to door salesman? Whatever strikes your fancy, let's make it happen. ]
where: Heropa, here and there
when: 5/31 - 6/6, varying times
what: A selection of gratuitous slice-of-life scenarios as filtered through the life of someone who's never happy
warnings: ???
Weekdays are schooldays, but not for everyone. Those outside the proper age bracket, for one, and those with little desire to attend despite their inclusion, for a second. For Ruka, it's the second. As someone who grew up educated on the internet, followed by swinging from homeschooling to testing forward into a specialized university degree, high school literature and economics are hardly an appealing way to spend the muggy Florida afternoons. Heropa is a small town, and a small town means a smaller population, so there's only one high school within the town limits. It means, she knows, that she's not the only imPort enrolled here, when she musters up the energy to attend, but sometimes it feels like it. Maybe it's her spotty attendance or her unusual appearance that does it, or perhaps it's her uneasy discomfort with crowds and strangers, but no matter the day she attends, Ruka can't help but feel on edge. It's a challenge to not use her power, to not form a literal bubble around her in order to establish the boundaries of a metaphorical one. She doesn't trust any of them. She can't. But even if she won't register, it's too big of a risk to evade their every system, isn't it? Those aren't limits she's willing to risk her neck to test.
So from one class to another, she keeps to herself; volunteers no answers, asks no questions, and certainly doesn't try striking up conversation with her fellow students. Arrive, go through the motions, depart; so long as the effort seems to be there, she thinks, it'll be alright. But no matter the day, the pattern goes as usual: ignore the guys on the debate team in first period that spend at least five minutes every morning bandying about new theories about what happened to her face (if anything); glower at the girl next to her in calculus who thinks that just because she's sitting on Ruka's blind side that she won't notice someone trying to copy her work; skip gym class without the faintest pretense to instead commandeer some small table in the library and hide with publications of world atlases through the decades; get kicked out of U.S. History and sent to loiter in the hallway, as usual, for "detracting from the learning environment."
During lunch, sitting in some lesser-frequented area of the courtyard, she wonders if it's worth the effort to finish out the school year... that is, if she isn't at this point simply leaving for the day, too tired and having exhausted even the pretense of caring for her "permanent record."
She can't do everything by herself.
It's something she tells herself--tells anyone who listens--over and over, but perhaps today those words should be, she can't keep trying to do everything by herself. Because that's what keeps happening, isn't it? She assesses how she feels at a given time, determines what she needs to do and how much strength she'll need to do it, and finds herself short. She then determines who would be likely to help her with such minor tasks, and promptly throws the whole mental list away. That's still a cost to her, in the end; those who do favors are kind, or calculating, but regardless expect some prize in return, whether it be friendship or a favor, and the inability to provide either would simply breed resentment.
As for someone who already is her friend, she can't ask Karkat to do everything for her; he resents her enough already.
But the temperature is high today, and Ruka never remembers to account for how much more energy it takes to do the shopping with the sun on her back, when she never allows herself the embarrassment of clothing lighter than opaque cotton or sleeves shorter than the wrist.
She can't keep going on like this, she thinks to herself, and maybe this is heat stroke, and maybe she should just let herself pass out here, but what if someone steals her bags? That would make the whole endeavor even more pointless. So for now, maybe sitting in the shade, heels of her palms pressing against her mismatched eyes, maybe she'll be able to muster enough energy to at least get back to the house from here.
Maybe.
She wishes the buildings were taller. Or perhaps it's better to say, she wishes she lived in a proper city, with proper buildings of proper ambitious heights, and that she once again lived on one's peak. It's been a long time since she saw her childhood home, but a life so far from the ground and so close to the stars is a hard one to forget. Ruka still doesn't know the names of all the asterisms, their constellations, but the night sky patterns are mostly the same here as they were in the City, and as they were in Neo Domino City before that. Te difference lays, she knows, in her position on this globe, rather than the positions of the stars beyond it.
It's about midnight, and she can't sleep — but when it's one, two-thirty, four in the morning, sleep is just as difficult to find. It has been easier these past few weeks, but no solution is perfect. It's not fear of the dark or the unfamiliar surroundings that shake her, but the rumble and ache of a restless heart, a racing mind. Picking out stars seems more productive than looking for shapes in the spackle of her ceiling. Better still, to watch other imPorts make their way into or out of the residential neighborhood this late, to guess their reasons, their plans and motives... it's more productive than dwelling on her own.
It's not like they usually bother her, anyway.
[ Housemate in Residence 10 annoyed about someone making tea at two in the morning? Grocery shopper colliding into that idiot loitering in front of the pastas? Forced to sit next to this weirdo because it's the only open seat in the coffee parlour/tea house/restaurant? Door to door salesman? Whatever strikes your fancy, let's make it happen. ]
no subject
It wasn't a difficult benchmark to surpass, really: aside from that boy who lived in their neighborhood, Ruka's only "hometown friends" were her fellow Signers—and of them, she'd known Yusei the longest at roughly two weeks.
She shrugged. "I don't really know how to answer a question like that. I mean... I lived on Earth, one mostly like this one, but some of the history is different. They're pretty close as far as the years go, but the technology's not the exact same. I can't say much about the culture, either; this isn't the country I'm from, originally, and I didn't know much about America of my world. I was just a kid back then."
no subject
"How long have you been away?" he asked, a little concerned with how serious he made the question sound. It was hard, to think that a girl would know people here longer than friends back home -- although if the longest was two weeks, he was way off mark.
"And what's the technology like?" he added, hurriedly. He couldn't help it. The tech was always going to be a draw.
no subject
Nobody much liked being trapped in circumstances like this, if they had something important to go back to.
"We refugees arrived on this world about five months ago, now."
no subject
He actually leaned back. She was so young, even still, had she practically grown up in a place like this? He'd thought it was bad with Brain Camp, but even after he'd gotten out, he had a home to go back to? At this point, was she going to know what to do with herself, if she went home?
"That's a...long time," he managed, his eyes wide. That probably wasn't fair to her, to show his shock so plainly. He wondered, then, if the eyepatch was from home, or here? Did it matter? Was one going to be better than the other? She was still wearing an eyepatch, and she didn't seem the sort to wear something cosmetically.
"Practically raised by some of the people here, huh?" he hoped. He couldn't imagine a kid living on their own in a place like this.
no subject
She didn't have any guardian taking care of her in this world—even Karkat, for all he did for her, was still younger than she was, and on no planet could he ever be mistaken for a parent—but that wasn't always true.
But when she thought about them now, about the man who'd taken her in, about the people who'd cared for her in her youth, her hands find themselves curling, her fingernails digging hard crescents into her palm. It had only been two years, but they'd been better parents to her than her birth parents ever had. She couldn't remember her mother's face; she'd forgotten that a long time ago. They could arrive here from their world any time, and she wouldn't know them. But the ones she missed more... they could arrive here any time, and they wouldn't know her.
One already had.
"... Practically," she said instead, shaking her head. A story like that was better left behind; it would have been better off destroyed, left behind and forgotten, with the world in which they met. "I guess you could say that."
no subject
They said people left, too, and he had a feeling there was something...there. He didn't pry, of course, but his eyes narrowed. A kid like that shouldn't be left to their own devices, but chances were high that the rotating door would leave her alone for a good chunk of the time.
He wondered, of course, if that was true. Then again, as bad as he was, he also wasn't going to be that nosy.
"I can't imagine it's easy. Hard living makes for hard people, you know? They've made it pretty clear that we're all expected to pull our weight, no matter how young -- was it the same way in the last place?"
Shit, what if she'd been starving?
no subject
"This sort of thing never happened there. Our Porter was run by an artificial intelligence, Lachesis, and she provided what we needed. Single-occupant apartments at the MAC for every new arrival, dog tags to prove our identities--a weekly stipend of funds, no matter how long we were there. It wasn't much, but it was enough--and it was never dependent on how much weight you could pull, or anything like that. Lachesis wasn't like that, and the government mostly didn't want anything to do with us."
Whatever she thought about that line about hard people, she wasn't saying.
no subject
But it was alright. He couldn't imagine getting something for nothing. Where did the money come from? What did people do with it? Did they get jobs, or did they just live for free? He had more questions, now that she was talking about the City, and it felt...important, to get the pieces of the puzzle together. Like there was something he could figure out, if he could just put the pieces together.
"What happened? Uh, there, I mean? Did you just wake up here, like I did?"
no subject
The way she talked, it was difficult to tell how much she cared, or didn't--or why she bothered to hide one or the other.
"That whole universe was destroyed. Our Porter was able to form a connection to this one, and we crossed to this world before we, too, were destroyed."
Not everyone made the cross. Ruka remembered that with too much clarity, feeling that gap grow wider and wider, until the person standing on the opposite end vanished from sight.
If she ever saw her brother again, there was no promise he would be one that knew the City, or all they endured there.
no subject
She seemed the type that was more focused on facts, or maybe it was just that she didn't want to talk about herself. If he were Shepard, maybe he could have gotten her to talk, he had a way about him that made you...want to share your life story with him, even while he shared barely any of his. Not that he'd...shared his life story, or anything.
"That sounds hard. Watching a world get destroyed isn't..." he paused, and shook his head. He didn't really want to talk about possibly losing Earth, either.
"It's not easy. What was it like before it was destroyed? I mean, you said that everyone had money, and apartments, but was it like this place?" Did they worship heroes in the same way?
no subject
"To me, they're very different, but they share a lot of traits that make them different from my hometown, though similar to one another. The mood here reminds me of living in the Tops, sometimes, in a way it never was back in the City, but they're all very... different. You know?"
Her head shook. "Are you familiar with cards at all?"
no subject
Then again, maybe it was something that had to do with her world. He couldn't tell, and it was obvious she was the kind that was going to dodge her way around it. He wasn't going to pry, not with someone he just meant. Just like he would dodge if she asked about Brain Camp -- then again, he wouldn't want to tell a kid about Brain Camp, either. Telling a kid that you killed a guy when you were their age wasn't a great introduction.
"Yeah, I serve...on an Alliance vessel. We play cards all the time, mostly Skyllian-Five-- er, it's like poker."
no subject
Besides. She asked him for a reason.
"Like poker, then. What you're asking me, it's like trying to explain the difference between a straight and a flush, to someone that doesn't know the difference between hearts and diamonds, or what a face card is... or keeps mixing things up with a Tarot deck."
Her gaze softened a touch, watching his face for a reaction. "Does that make sense to you?"
no subject
It would make sense, and Kaidan was...pretty good at research, all things considered. He wasn't a meathead soldier -- but then again, in the groups he ran in, nobody was going to exactly be just the kind who would shoot at a target. That wasn't the kind of people the Alliance looked for.
"Thanks, anyway, uh --" he rubbed at the back of his neck. "I mean, it's good to have a direction to look in. Maybe once I figure out the basics, you could tell me more about it?"
It wasn't just for curiosity's sake. He felt it was important to learn. "I want to get a handle on this place, and it's so...different than any other place I've been."
no subject
At that time, she thought, it would be a little easier to define. Once he knew more about this world—once she could tell he had a better understanding of how society, how technology and history played together in a place such as this, she could explain more clearly where the gulf between them resided.
But until then...
"What about this place is new, to you?"
... they could start somewhere small.
no subject
"Everything's new. I haven't really spent much time on Earth in the past few years, and being in this one isn't...like anything I've ever seen before."
Well, it was a start, wasn't it?
"I mean, maybe in the history books, but this place is different than anything I heard about, too, for this time period. I'm from..." oh, this always sounded weird in his head. He grimaced. "The future."
no subject
It gave some context to a phrase like Alliance vessel, for starters.
"Things seem antiquated to you," she said instead with a small nod, understanding. "Basic things for you haven't happened, or don't exist—if they ever will, in a world like this."
Neo Domino City, and the life Ruka was used to in her childhood, had seemed vastly different from what was possible in the City, but as she's learned about other people, other histories, it's become clear to her that the gulf between them is not near so wide as the ones others must cross.
The corner of her mouth pulled a little to one side, as if for a smile.
"We're not supposed to have flying cars yet, right?"
no subject
"Yeah, something like that," he rubbed at the back of his neck, and shook his head. "I mean, I'm not an expert on history, but I don't think there were? I'm from almost two hundred years in the future," he explained, like that said enough. "I think there were just...gas-run cars, but..."
Well, he was a tech guy, but beyond that, he'd never really finished traditional school, since he'd been taken to Jump Zero. Sure, the military had gotten him some education, but it sure as hell hadn't been traditional. Tech training, mostly, to supplement the already extensive biotic training he'd gotten.
"You don't sound surprised, a lot of people go through this kind of thing?"
no subject
"No, it's pretty common." Different worlds, different times, different species, different forms of reality—why should any one thing be more strange than any other? Her voice was light, mostly casual. "Two hundred is pretty far, that's true, and... I think, anyway, it's more common to find people from past decades and centuries, but you're hardly the first."
From the way she talked, it seemed like she couldn't be surprised by anything.
"On the other two Earths I've known, around this era, cars were mostly gasoline-powered, and none of them could fly. If that helps."
no subject
He looked down at his hands, lacing them together in front of him, grimace on his face for just a moment. It was humbling, to think that it would ever get like that for him, but she was obviously young, and had been young for some time. If she'd started to think of this as old hat, if he's here for a while, it may end up that way too.
Not exactly something to look forward to. "So this world is a little weird, huh? Good to know," he said finally, his voice a little lost, like he was mulling it over.
"It's like they've jumped a little bit, but at the same time...it's like things got knocked back at the same time. It feels...off."