darkart: ( commission, dnt ) (in the boiler room)
sᴇᴠᴇʀᴜs. ([personal profile] darkart) wrote2016-02-03 09:37 pm

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SEVERUS SNAPE

pushfall: (⚕ and we part with a letter)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-17 10:12 pm (UTC)(link)
[ She prefers the method of manually setting the table, maybe out of habit alone, despite her appreciation for the ability to do so otherwise. Maybe because it's a throwback to reality and a different sort of life that she had, with family dinner and everyone with their own task. Nuclear families are for the birds, though, and they're in space.

Claire moves and fills glasses with water on her own anyway, looking to contribute in some way. If there is a crumbly corner of that bread missing before either of them are actually sitting down... well, Claire can't be held accountable for that. She sits first, content to be off of her feet and in one motion. Even sitting still, she can still recall the faint trace of walking down a slope, but it's diminished substantially. ]


I couldn't believe how starving I was when we came out of there. It's so weird. How being down there makes you not realize that you're hungry. Or makes you not hungry. I'm not really sure. [ She has practically perched on the edge of her stool, one leg crossed over the other. ] Do you think there's anything that isn't water to drink in that fridge?

[ She isn't getting up otherwise. ]
pushfall: (⚕ there's a fever in my heart)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-18 01:18 am (UTC)(link)
I'll stick with water, I think.

[ She hasn't garnered a taste for wine, really. Sweet white stuff is what she's used to having at holidays and is easily substituted with just about anything else at the table. Claire can't get drunk anyway, so she doesn't see a point. She's interested in the bottle of blue stuff, but not enough to drink what might be some kind of cleaning product mistakenly filed as a beverage. ]

It kind of reminds me of this book that I read once. [ Well. That's not entirely factual. Claire gets up again to help him with napkins and silverware. ] Tried to read. I don't think I ever got through it completely. Skipped around a lot. It's called House of Leaves, and it's like this story within a story about this family whose house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. One day they come home from a trip, and they find this door in their living room that wasn't there before and behind the door is a hallway, I think. Eventually they go in it and the hallway leads to another hallway and then another and another, and it's just this maze that's constantly rearranging itself over and over. I remembered it when we were down there this last time, and we came to that huge room and the archways. And heard all those noises.

[ Her fingers play a little with the edge of one of the napkins and she furrows her brown trying to remember other details. ]

Being a book, I'm sure it's all just a metaphor for something, but I'm just saying. If there's a minotaur at the spot where all the halls meet, I'm not gonna be surprised.
pushfall: (⚕ if the streetlight smashed above me)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-18 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
[ Claire laughs, though not with much humor. ]

You'll probably figure it out on your own before anyone else that way.

[ What she's capable of doing has been broken down on a fundamental level, has been dissected and manufactured in a certain sense, has been quantified and qualified by science. Claire still prefers René's theory on the subject, or at least that branch of philosophy, and she thinks it feels wrong not to recognize a marriage between the two. ]

After going down there more than once, after being brought here in the first place, it seems kind of stupid to discredit one line of thinking in favor of the other. Whatever's going on here is probably some sort of combination of the two anyway. Or some other, third variable we haven't thought of yet. [ She sits again herself, dragging her stool around so that she can sit next to him rather than across. ] Or it's something worse than a minotaur with a really massive amount of gravitational pull.

[ Privately, she puts her vote in for that one. At least that's something tangible you can fight against. ]
pushfall: (⚕ the nights of all my youth)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-18 02:50 am (UTC)(link)
I guess it's just difficult to kind of suspend your definition of reality like that, whether you're used to thinking that way from a scientific point of view or not. [ Is probably the most complex sentence that has ever come out of her mouth. Claire isn't even entirely sure it means anything. She is very aware that he is a lot smarter than she is. ]

I know someone who can time travel, I've time traveled, so it's not, like... a completely impossible idea to me, but the one time that I did it, it was really weird and I'm still not sure I'll ever be used to thinking that way when my whole life it's just been - [ She puts her left hand at one end of the table, her right at the other. ] - this is time. Start to finish.

[ Of course, how logical that is for someone whose right hand needs to stop denoting a finishing point is up for debate. ]

I thought black holes were supposed to be bad. That they just suck you down until - [ She presses her palms together. ]
pushfall: (⚕ vowels vow to hold your name)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-18 04:15 am (UTC)(link)
[ Unsure yet as to whether or not she finds the connotation in 'mutation' or 'mutant' distasteful, Claire wrinkles her nose a little all the same. It does just sound weird. She's never liked any of the terminology associated with people who are different other than... just different.

All the same, the reaction is gone as quickly as it came, and Claire distracts herself by taking a bite of food, which she can feel warming her from the inside out. Swallowing, she nods. ]


Teleportation, mostly, but it definitely meant he could bounce around through time as well as space. [ She gestures with her fork. ] That sword I have is actually his. Sort of. I think. Maybe.

[ Time travel. She's not going to mention the time that she met herself as an infant. Things were weird enough that season. ]
pushfall: (⚕ someday the sky will run out)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-18 05:01 am (UTC)(link)
Go back in time, step on a butterfly, destroy the entire world. Sounds about right.

[ Par for the course where she comes from, apparently. Thinking about it too much gives her a headache, which is saying something. Claire also doesn't address that last bit of what he's said instantly, content to let it slide by and underneath the silence that follows her butterfly comment. Their silence is not uncomfortable, which is remarkable in its own right. She just finds herself at a loss as to what she wants to say or how she feels about any of it altogether. All in all, though, she's too tired to argue with herself. ]

It used to scare the hell out of me. I hated it. I definitely didn't think that it was beautiful. [ Admitted like every word has its own brand of agony attached to it, scraping up the back of her throat with every syllable. ] Not even because of what it was just... it still scares me. A lot of the terms and conditions attached to it, what it means for other people. What they want to do with it. You can't bottle time travel or telepathy. You can't live forever off of being able to fly. Here, most people are pretty public about what they can do, but I'm constantly just wondering if it's a good idea to be open about it at all. It's beautiful, but it's hideous, the way you think about it. The way I think about it.

[ Can she even trust people like Charles and Erik, who are so like her in that capacity but who have done shitty things to people like Rogue? She wants to help - people, with the mysteries, with everything - but the idea of at what cost has been so beaten into her since day one that secrecy and paranoia and distrust become hard habits to break. ]
pushfall: (⚕ three points where two lines meet)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-18 05:23 am (UTC)(link)
[ Saying that it doesn't open up some deep ache in her to hear that would be an astronomical lie. Claire has never wanted to actually not be alive anymore - maybe when Sylar had her head cut open on the table; even paralyzed the overwhelming sense of violation and guilt and shucked responsibility had at one point made her just want to say fuck it - and hearing anyone say that is going to be heavy, let alone someone she actually cares about. ]

I'm glad you're not.

[ So there.

Her voice is clear and present, no expression or overabundance of necessary or unnecessary emotion. Just something that is, without pretense. Because she thinks maybe he needs to hear it. Maybe everyone does sometimes. ]
pushfall: (Default)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-18 06:29 am (UTC)(link)
[ Bad enough to say you wanted to be dead, Claire thinks, but she's not really prepared to have that kind of a conversation following where she's just been and with how much she just wants to be here, with him, without having to get into the heavy details. That's all she does, though, is skirt around heavy details. The same way that she skirts around feeling as ashamed as she does complimented to be praised in that kind of way.

Claire knows that she's kind, and loyal, and apparently ferocious, but she's also secretive, and selfish, and manipulative, and although the worst of those things she has been trying to put behind her for years, they're still there. Kind is such a simple word but more than anything she gets stuck on it, especially around him, knowing the way that people treated him growing up, knowing some of what he's been through and what he'll go through. That knowledge doesn't persuade her to treat him any differently than she would if she didn't know, but maybe it makes her think that he deserves it more. Especially more than he allows himself. ]


I still don't know about beautiful. [ Bullets and broken glass and split bones and knitting skin, that copper tang that she has swallowed a hundred times. She lets the pad of her thumb catch across one of his knuckles and thinks that one day she might possibly see it his way, but - ] I'll take ferocious, though.
Edited (:E) 2014-10-18 06:30 (UTC)
pushfall: (⚕ i am a mosaic)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-18 07:10 am (UTC)(link)
[ She looks at him once and then looks away to grin down at her food, only to look back up almost immediately after while her face is still trying to twist to hide the expression. Not that she wants to hide it from him, only that she feels kind of embarrassed but in the best kind of way. More than anything, she knows that anything Severus offers her by way of a compliment is going to be an honest truth in his eyes, and even if she's not great at taking it at face value, she can very much appreciate the sincerity behind giving it at all. ]

Stop it. [ Playfully, her tone matches her knee nudging him in the side of his leg, and green eyes widen momentarily to stress the point. ] I'm gonna get a big head.
pushfall: (Default)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-18 04:07 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Claire glances back down at her dish, which is emptier than she remembers it being. Suspecting witchcraft, she's decidedly less ravenous than she was before they sat down and retroactively wipes her mouth with the napkin, although there's nothing there to actually wipe away. With a little less than half of what she started with, she tucks in to make the rest of it disappear, snatching a piece of bread and dissecting it into warm, delicious pieces. ]

Did you stay awake the whole time we were down there?

[ Not as incredulous as one might except. She knows that he doesn't power down until he makes himself. Rather, her voice is a little flat, as if this is totally the sort of thing she anticipated him doing. ]
pushfall: (⚕ you can hear the wind come in)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-20 02:06 am (UTC)(link)
I think that's a good idea, if there's a next time. [ Her tone is gently insistent, as if trying encourage the notion that this has been a good plan all along and that he probably should have entertained it, at least, this time around. But Claire gets it, too. If she had been in his position, she sincerely doubts she would have so much as blinked without feeling responsible. ] Honestly, for most of the quite times, all you missed was Erik playing a bunch of Queen and David Bowie. You definitely could have worked in a nap there.

[ You know, around the grinding noises, murals, archways and impossible rooms that they found. Otherwise it was all Bowie all the time. ]
pushfall: (Default)

[personal profile] pushfall 2014-10-20 03:22 am (UTC)(link)
You and me both. [ As unafraid of being chewed on by manticores as she is, running into them would open up new avenues for a host of other potential problems. ] I mean, it might've made a better story out of the trip down there, but I think I'll take 'kind of redundant' over 'chewed on' any day.

[ Of course it's easier to distance herself from the severity of their excursion now that she's out of the fire, clean, well-fed, and able to rest the arch of her foot on the bottom rung of his chair. That doesn't mean she doesn't recognize that they were lucky, even if getting lucky means being frustrated with a less than clear number of results. ]

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