INBOX.

[cyansoldier]

Do me a favor?
Don't call me.

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A short while after his conversation with CT - Oak & Iron

[ss_buttcrack]

OOC: The Conversation with CT

Crichton steps into the Oak & Iron in the evening to catch a bite after his shift in the enforcement office, and that's when he spots her. New face, 5'11", red-head with vibrant green eyes? Check, check, and check. Guess he's having company for dinner.

"Carolina?" he asks as he comes up to her with his hand out to shake, "I'm Commander John Crichton and I believe we have a mutual acquittance. Got some time to talk over a meal? My treat."

[cyansoldier]

Company is the last thing Agent Carolina expects, sat at an empty table in the O&I.

'Carolina?' he says, like a cop. She'd know the cadence anywhere, having used it plenty herself. Not exactly a cop, but as a Commanding Officer the sentiment doesn't differ very much.

Arms crossed, the fiery-haired ex-soldier leans back into her chair.

Crichton's poor hand goes unshaken.

"Depends on what you want to talk about."

[ss_buttcrack]

Tough cookie, huh? Unfazed, he keeps his hand out. "I want to talk about that mutual acquaintance. CT and I are good friends, so I said I'd come introduce myself. Is that seat taken?"

[cyansoldier]

"Does it look taken?"

CT— she should have known. What she can't be certain of is what he knows, and that unknown element drives a serrated knife through her nerves.

Carolina, relenting, gestures to the empty chair across from her.

"...Fine. Be my guest."

[ss_buttcrack]

"Thank you," he says with aggressive politeness as he uses that hand to reach for the chair and turn it around backwards. That's right, he's going to straddle it like everyone's least favorite youth pastor.

"Just to set the record straight, I really am here as her friend. Enforcer might be my day job, but you're not being interrogated, okay? That title I gave you is a civilian title from my home on Earth. I didn't come here to bust your balls."

pre-celestine's dance

[ownperson]

Outside of Carolina's window, there is the sound of fists hitting her makeshift punching bag. Not rhythmic, or controlled; not a routine. Raw emotion, the likes of which she's heard many a time, when South commandeered a corner of a gym to beat a bag until her hands hurt more than her head.

Carolina told her she could use her gear, so, here she is, choosing to trust that Carolina meant it.

[cyansoldier]

A noise— a flat, packing fwmp, fwmp, fwmp!— from the yard. Carolina, in the kitchen, making another lackluster cup of coffee, pinches her brow. What the...? She crosses a threshold into the living room, across the living room to a front facing window and finds—

South. Beating her sandbag to all hell. Beating her sandbag like it's just spat in her face and called her every stupid compound-swear insult under the sun. Carolina knows this exertion. This particular forward strain of South's body, like she might eject her brain straight out of her skull with enough force.

Carolina comes out onto the porch, leans in the doorway.

"Hey. Wanna talk, or keep punching?" A genuine question.

[ownperson]

Another strike, hard enough to risk breaking the damn thing, and South stops, breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling in heavy waves. Sweat glistens and tacks her hair to her face, as much from the walk up here as the exertion of each punch.

It takes her five seconds to catch her breath enough to respond: "...can we do both?"

[cyansoldier]

Carolina's already crossing the yard, coming to stand on the opposite side of the bag to hold it steady. Another free-swinging punch from South and she'll be on sand clean-up duty. Teamwork, right?

"Of course." Her hands hover against the bag. "I'm listening."

Friendly visit (Dated After FEARS event but before dance of celestine)

[ss_buttcrack]

He'd say the last wringer they all went through in town together was a real doozy, but then all of them have been. All in different ways. This one, though, felt a lot more personal and intimate. It sparked a lot of questions that led to answers he wished he didn't have to acknowledge. At least he and Sally have agreed to keep their friendship, even if they decided they aren't the one for each other romantically. He can think of worse outcomes. When he does, a few names keep popping up in his head: people he should check in on. Today, it's Carolina. Lucky her.

"Knock, knock," he calls out as he clunks his knuckles against her front door. "I come bearing gifts." The gifts are a cup of still-steaming coffee and a stack of ginger snap cookies.

[cyansoldier]

The morning starts out like most mornings, these days— nightmare, pitiful amount of sleep, stale coffee and a taste of blood she can never quite seem to wash out of her mouth. It's not real, she tells herself in the place of a good morning, world. It's over. The Fears have slid back into their respective dark, and she's doggedly set on pretending to be an actual, functional human being.

That means responding like a human being when she hears a knock at the door and a voice. Crichton's. Carolina exhales slowly, heavily, considers giving up and shutting herself away in her room for the day. It shouldn't be so difficult to look the people she likes in the face— but it is. It shouldn't be so difficult to just suck it up— it is. You're being an asshole. You haven't seen him in forever.

She greets him at the door with the spirit of a sad, wet cat and looks miserably at her gifts. Too nice. Doesn't deserve it.

"Hey. Uh, thanks." She takes them. "Long time no see."

[ss_buttcrack]

"Yeah, it has been. Sorry about that," he answers apologetically as he hands them over. "Why I thought I'd come see how you're holding up. Before you try to say you're fine, just know that I'm not gonna buy it because I'm not fine. I'm rattled and I don't feel like pretending I'm not. Doesn't look like you do, either. So, can I come in?"

[cyansoldier]

"You're so graceful at the art of conversation," she says flatly, considers shutting his nose in the door. "One day, someone's going to give you a very shiny trophy and punch you in the balls." Not today. She doesn't have a trophy (punching, on the other hand), unless she can mash her feelings into a molten metal blob and shape it into— something. But he's right. She's not fine, and she's been driving herself crazy pretending she is.

"Yeah. Yeah— come on."

She moves away from the door. On entering, Crichton might notice large splotches of brown staining the wood of her floors. A similar stain, more rust-colored, spread out over her sofa, which she's haphazardly covered with a blanket. Blood.

"I..." She exhales, embarrassed. Still holding her gifts. "I don't know where to start. It feels like so much happened."

A few days after South arrives.

[hotgirlsummer]

There's a girl on Carolina's porch. One she's never spoken to before. Blonde, bright-eyed, with peach-pink pouty lips and flushed cheeks from the cold. She's bundled up in as many layers as possible and scowling deeply at her own breath as it crystalizes in the air in front of her.

When Carolina answers, there's an awkward beat before she starts talking.

"Um. Hi. Sorry if I'm, like. Bugging you or anything. I'm looking for someone. Is there a woman named South here?"

[cyansoldier]

"Hi."

Carolina stands in the door with her arms crossed, stolid and somewhat difficult to read. She recognizes this girl from the dance— an argument about wet clothes, calling South in like calling on the National Guard. Tilting her head, she looks almost amused, like a sister who's just found your hidden journal and is here to embarrass you about it.

"She's out right now, if you feel like waiting for her."

She steps aside to welcome her in.

"I'm guessing you talked to North?"

[hotgirlsummer]

"Uh, I mean--- not really. I just knew you guys were friends, and I haven't seen her around that farm, sooo..." Haley makes her way in, rubbing the back of her neck with a mitten-clad hand. "...She's, not. Answering my calls."

[cyansoldier]

She shuts the door behind her. Watches the shorter blonde meander into her entryway, tracking in snow. Are they friends? She didn't want to assume.

"Yeah, she's kind of going through it right now. She'll be staying here for a while. I don't know how long, but..." Carolina shakes her head. "It's bad."

nebulously dated somewhere in the south soup

[liesdontfindyou]

It's... been months, now, since she's been able to look Carolina in the face for any length of time. Seven and a half months, actually, as the Eye helpfully informs her (including the exact date and time just because it can). Hearing it set out like that, it feels ridiculous. The only two people from their world in this place until not even two months ago and they can't even hold a conversation. How stupid is that?

And how much stupider is it that it's only South goddamn Dakota that's brought her to her doorstep today?

Before she approaches, she stands out on the street beyond the property line of Carolina's little farmhouse and looks through the eyes she feels inside. Based on height (and the colour of the bangs trying to fall into her face) it's definitely Carolina and there's no sign of the ridiculously tall, emotionally volatile blonde anywhere in her makeshift bedroom. And, when she flicks her eyes to the part of her strange, magical HUD that controls her radio connection, she doesn't hear her anywhere else around the house either. Good. That's what she needs.

Bundled in her winter gear and with a bag over her arm, she knocks on the door and tries not to look like she's feeling as weird about this as she is.

[cyansoldier]

Mornings are a lot more eventful when you've got an impromptu guest sleeping on your couch. In some ways, it feels bunking in the MOI— which she isn't used to. In other ways, it's like babysitting— which she's even less used to. She's learned tip-toeing around the living room in the early hours of the morning doesn't matter, because more often than not South sleeps like you just ripped the soul out of her body. Carolina sometimes cooks breakfast, and confirms every time that she hates cooking breakfast— hates cooking anything for anyone— and has, maybe, snapped once or twice at whoever dares walk into the kitchen.

The alcohol weening is going— okay. South hasn't died yet, though sometimes she looks at Carolina like she'd prefer that over the state she's in now. It's hard. One day at a time.

Gerry's taken onto her new guest well, and having an extra set of helping hands is nice. Sometimes South cleans. Sometimes South can be coaxed into the field to help her hammer stakes for the fence. Sometimes they train together. Is any of this helpful? Carolina hopes so.

She's in the middle of drafting a grocery list when she hears a knock on the door. With no special eyes to see through layers of drywall and wood— through the pupils of another person entirely— Carolina answers the door blind, sort of— still in her little rectangular reading glasses. (Fuck you, Dad, for the bad genetics.)

The last person she expects to see— the absolute seventh-layer-of-Hell-rock-bottom of the list— is Connecticut, bundled up with a bag slung over her shoulder, the Santa that comes to remind you of everything you've done wrong in your life. Someone she hasn't seen in— Jesus Christ, how long has it been? Carolina's brow pinches. Her jaw goes slack.

"Oh—" she says out loud, like an idiot. "Are you... here for South? She's out."

[liesdontfindyou]

Reading glasses. Huh. Cute. (Makes sense, too, she supposes, given her old man. A little uncanny, really, seeing those eyes behind those frames.)

"Hah, no, not exactly. I still don't think it's a good idea for us to see each other again just yet. I was actually hoping I'd catch you while she was out."

She glances past Carolina into the house like she's checking for just that, like she doesn't already know. Better, she's found, not to tell people you're using their eyeballs unless you have good reason to or they notice something's up. (Which is easier than she'd like it to be, the way her eyes flashover gold without her say so at even the lightest touch of her new abilities.)

"But I am here because of her. I— figured we might want to compare notes."

That's a frankly terrible way of putting it given her actual emotional investment in the woman she's talking about, but well, talking to Carolina is still... complicated. All of this is complicated.

[cyansoldier]

"Keeping tabs on her?" It's intended to be a joke, but comes out flatter than a newly terraformed planet. Great start. God. She has to physically stop herself from pinching the bridge of her own nose.

Compare notes floors her a little, enough to say— "what?"— although she shouldn't really be surprised. It isn't unlike CT to put herself at a distance, emotionally or otherwise. "I don't have any notes," she says, taking her seriously, then steps aside to let CT in.

"What's in the bag?"

Last week of December

[gooddefense]

North knows full well South is still staying with Carolina, so he avoids calling her, just in case. But when she's back out hunting a few days after Christmas and passes near his farm, he props a foot up on his wooden fence and leans on it.

"Hey! Boss! You got a sec?"

[cyansoldier]

Hearing the familiar voice— seeing the familiar shape standing at a tall, friendly diagonal— Carolina slows to a trot. Three rabbits flop limply on her belt, gun slung over one shoulder. She makes her way over, kicking up loose snow.

"Hi. Yeah, of course. What's up?"

[gooddefense]

"Looks like good hunting," he remarks. "Hope your holidays were good! I was pretty into the whole Givingstide thing."

He's only slightly delaying what actually needs discussed. He resists the urge to ask after South, trusts Carolina to have been looking after her. Probably shouldn't know anyway. The distance will help. He has to remind himself of that.

[cyansoldier]

Looking down, she gives one of the bodies a pat. "Got lucky, I guess. They'll make a good stew, whatever I don't sell. If you want some, let me know. Gerry's a great cook. M'glad you had a nice time, though. I didn't get to much of the Givingstide stuff. We celebrated Mittvinter, and... I got engaged."

She's trying not to be annoying about it. Trying and, maybe, failing. Carolina butts his shoulder with her fist.

"You'll get an invite, obviously."