sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Harvest Feast 🍂

[MINGLE] Harvest Feast 🍂

WHERE: 6I Inn
WHEN: 10 November, all day
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE POST
NOTE: Details can be found here.

In the wee hours of November 10th, before even the earliest risers have roused themselves for another day, items begin to appear in the front room of the Inn. Decorations first — Boughs of autumn leaves in their reds and golds, wreaths of dried flowers and silken ribbon, flickering candles among the goards and berries and acorns. The food arrives next, the decadent aroma slipping up the Inn stairs to tempt those lingering in bed — Every imaginable harvest time delicacy, from roast turkey and ham to smoked salmon and oysters; fresh, soft bread warm from the oven to plum pudding and ice cream. And did we mention pie?

Once again, it's time for a feast. The bar is stocked, the coffee is brewed and the tables are groaning with food. Indulge, there's more than enough for everyone — That is, if you don't lose your appetite worrying about what it will all cost.

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"I am known to be a genius with food," Ravi self-praises, seeing as he's more than happy to take credit for these sorts of things. It's only a shame that he couldn't figure out how to deep fry anything on the table with the equipment they have, because that would've been even better. Ravi reaches back for his glass of wine to sip, lifting up his plate to Kira.

"You want some?" he offers, still tiptoeing lightly around the rumours and the potential things that he's heard have been happening.

"Yes please." Whoever this guy is, he can sit beside Kira as long as he wants. He gets a chunk of the turkey taco onto his plate and digs in, sighing through a few savory-sweet bites. "I feel like the last decent meal I had was Thanksgiving," he says, washing it down with another sip of hot coffee. "I know it's basically the most propaganda bullshit holiday since Columbus Day, but as of today, I've stopped caring."

Ravi moves some of the food around carefully so that when he puts it in, he isn't dropping any food on the ground. He moves it to Kira's plate and squints at him, because that's not true at all, but he's not sure why Kira is talking like that. "It definitely was after that," he says, feeling strangely pedantic.

Maybe it's that after he's dealt with Major's memory loss, he really doesn't have time to tiptoe around someone else's. "We've absolutely had feasts since then and you've been there."

Well, fuck him for trying. Did everyone here know him before? Considering the size of the place and his penchant for--having a completely normal level of active social life, of fucking course they did. He's gone from the big city to a place with a smaller population than the body shop full of displaced Manhattanites.

At least--there really is no at least. He can't tell who winds up more disappointed every time this happens: the people expecting him to be someone he might not really be, or him expecting to get to just react to all of this some kind of normally, as it happens. He didn't have any bullshit expectations about any of the people around him. They're all strangers.

"Not to make it seem like my reality is more valid than yours, though to me it super is, I've only been here about--seven days." There was a copy of Frankenstein in the house: he's started dog-earing a page every time he wakes up and he's still stuck here.

Ravi narrows his eyes at Kira, because the problem with that is that no, he hasn't been. He's been here much longer, but a part of him is honestly already tired of having this argument again and again, around and around, with no different results. "Seven days," he echoes.

"Seven days, but yet, I can know you," he feels compelled to point out, because apparently Ravi isn't done arguing yet and he's only getting started. He should leave well enough alone, but Kira's a friend (and a good one, at that), so he's not ready to take this lying down.

"I'm aware," he drawls, popping another bite of pastry into his mouth to staunch some of the defensiveness sitting in his chest. It isn't anyone's fault, the way things are--but it's not his either, and he can't pretend he remembers anything they tell him to be true.

Or that he fully believes all of it. He can't believe it, with his power stripped away.

"The point still stands," he adds, reaching for his mug which, by percentages, is more alcohol than coffee when he tips another sip into it. "To me, the person most important in my decisions about what I've done and not done, and where I've been--seven days. I know you all can't help but take it personally, apparently, but I can't do anything about it."

Except lie, which is really difficult when he doesn't know anyone's name or even three basic facts about them. Or, he knows things like: this man is tall, has a beard, and pairs foods well.

Ravi inhales sharply and deeply to bite off a lot of bitchy, annoyed comments. It's not Kira's fault that he doesn't remember, nor is it his fault that he got stolen away to have his memories surgically removed. The only thing he can blame is this ridiculous place, but even that feels useless, because he's just come off it happening.

Exhausted, he gives Kira a steady look. "They could come back," he points out. "Some of the others, they've been experiencing memory loss and they start to come back," he says, persistently attached to the idea because he desperately needs to think that Kira isn't going to completely forget him, not so easily.

"Have they?" Genuine curiosity undercuts his own annoyance, and they're left sitting there, trying to find some common and acceptable way to deny what the fuck is going on. It's less that Kira wants to have been here for months, but it would be nice if this current situation could go away. He'd remember, this conversation would stop happening, people would matter to him, and he'd understand why his powers are gone without having to ask.

Fuck, did some of them already know? He doesn't want to tip that hand by asking that either. "How much are they forgetting," he asks, not wanting to grab the idea and give either of them some false hope. Forgetting is one thing: Mark said that was the second time he's come out of that fountain. "How long is it taking to get it back?"

"My roommate has been dealing with it," Ravi says, wishing that his voice didn't fill with so much hope. It's a touch pathetic, honestly, given that he knows he's grasping at straws and trying so hard to cling onto something that he has no control over, yet he's going to do it.

"They forgot everything about this place, sometimes even from before that," he says, because Ravi's not entirely sure that there are patterns to any of this. "I'm not saying that it's happening to you, I'm just noting that the timing is really coincidental and it might be."

Well-timed as it might be, Kira's still sitting next to him with his hands clear of a year's worth of scars and scrapes, knuckles clean of his old burn marks, and a freshly scabbed head wound looped up from his ear. More than losing a memory, the man who was here before has been overwritten in even a physical way.

Not that he recognizes this about himself, but he does feel it on some level. No amount of wishing he could remember makes it so. He's never laid eyes on this man in his life. He can't even guess his name.

Practicality reasserts itself: "What does that mean for right now, though?"

Ravi doesn't do the bitter thing and say that it means he's tired and he's not sure that he can do this again, but there is a very heated, childish part of him that wants to. Of all the things that they've been put through, this is oddly the one that's causing him the most strife, seeing as he's managed to lose two close confidants, thanks to this.

"I don't know," he says bluntly, not couching that in softness like he should, either. "I'm not exactly a professional head doctor, just a medical examiner. My experience with memory loss starts and ends with a drug that I can't perfect."

"Well, cool, I know what you do for a living," he says, not necessarily meaning to be glib. It's an odd and annoying thing to deal with, especially when they were getting along just fine, moments before. Surely he's the same person, on some level. Surely he still possesses whatever they liked about the old one. Unless the old one was from before everything, somehow, and more fun or something.

Nobody needs that version of him here, honestly. He'd be fucking useless.

"Why don't we just go back to eating Thanksgiving Tacos and just - start over? I'm Kira, you're -" he has to cut off, implying the question of the man's name.

"Ravi," he says, wishing that his voice didn't sound so hollow and empty, but he feels like he can't shake it out. Trying to keep his spirits up, he tells himself that not all is lost, that Kira is still here and alive and that's good, right?

It should be positive, it should be good, but it still feels so awful and exhausting. "Ravi Chakrabarti, from Seattle," is what he says with a nod of his head, trying to be positive and move on. He can do this, he just has to keep pushing through.

So much for happily eating cran-turkey-pastries and dosing his coffee with - God, did Jax actually turn him on to bourbon? No, even he has to admit that vodka doesn't go in coffee. He wonders at the odds of the bar having Kahlua, the way it's modeled after some bygone era where people didn't put booze in cheap plastic bottles to signify their strength.

"Kira, from New York," he says in kind, though it feels a bit rote. "Which I guess you'd know. Feel free to fill me in on how deep the mindfuck goes, if you don't want me repeating my...self."

"I know a lot about you," Ravi admits, because if he's honest, well, Kira had been one of his best friends. It stings to use the past tense in this situation, because that means that he's lost hope that he's actually going to see Kira getting his memory back. That's difficult and he tries not to let it show, but the stormy cloud in his eyes probably doesn't help matters.

"I mean, if you want to tell me again, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing," he offers. "It can help to maybe bridge the gap between us?"

"But are we talking like, I like pina coladas and getting lost in the rain, or something bigger?" Because the bigger stuff - without the context of why he told this man any of it, there's the opposite of any desire to tell him now.

Easier for someone to just know, and they can work their way backward from there. "Give me some idea of what I was trusting you with; Thanksgiving tacos only get you so far."

Ravi isn't sure that Kira is really meant to be hearing this sort of thing so soon, because he's not entirely sure that anyone would react well to being told that someone knows so much about you when they're a stranger. Still, Kira did ask. Well, sort of.

It's going to come up eventually, that's what Ravi tells himself. "You told me about someone that you were looking after, before you came here. That you usually only did things casually, but before, you had someone," he says, figuring this is as good a place as any to start. "I didn't get the name. Maybe this time around, you'll eventually trust me enough again to offer it?"

He's hopeful, but not optimistic, if that's a thing.

Ravi gets to someone you were taking care of, and Kira takes a gulp of his fortified coffee to counter the way his heart leaps to his throat. Then Ravi continues, and the liquid does nothing to dislodge it. Ty: he's talking about Ty.

They'd gotten a moment, maybe two - but Kira can't entirely remember. He hates that, he hates the fuzzy way the world had been. If he'd known he wasn't going to stay, he'd have fought harder to stay awake, to pay attention. Ty had just come out of that ugly fever, had started to smell of something other than rot. Had stopped dying, and Kira doesn't even get to be there, to see him well enough to lay into and lecture.

And this stranger knows.

When Kira looks at Ravi again, it's tight-lipped, utterly searching. Trying to understand by sight alone why he would have shared it. Did he share it, or was this place more elaborate than he knew? His memories were gone - or maybe they didn't exist. Maybe they were remembering it all wrong, and everything taken from him was some kind of fabrication. So he could show up and have his head fucking caved-in by blows like this one.

Before this week, he'd have to remember that the simplest explanation is likeliest, but which even is simpler? "Maybe," he exhales, occupying himself again with his drink. "I am planning to get spectacularly drunk now, so who fucking knows what I'll say."

"Seeing as I have no more personal supplies and it's been a very shit month, I might be quickly behind you," Ravi promises, of the alcohol. He feels weary and worn, but he's clearly not totally off the mark when it comes to Kira. It's just that Kira doesn't actually remember him right back, so he's not sure what to do from here.

Getting drunk sounds like a perfect plan. "Maybe it'll come back," he offers. "Maybe not, but we can work around that, right? We can figure out something."

What is there to figure out: they're stuck here, and he's either the same person or he isn't. The scab on his head seems new, but what he says of Ty: that was still recent.

Trying to think about time that way just has him reaching for the bottle, changing the ratio in his cup to more alcohol than coffee. "Getting drunk together is a great way to become friends," he offers.

"That or playing Call of Duty until the sun comes up, but given the lack of power, technology, and kindness in providing us with video games, I really don't see that happening anytime soon," is Ravi's deadpanned reply, so getting drunk will have to do. He holds out his cup with a nod to fill it up to the top as much as he can.

"On you go, fill that up, might as well get me as drunk as possible."

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[MINGLE] Harvest Feast 🍂

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