sixthiterationlogs | Reason says I should have died three years ago...

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Reason says I should have died three years ago... | OTA

WHO: Sam Moon
WHERE: The Inn's kitchen
WHEN: January 8 (Sam's birthday)
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Language, rumination on violence and death

When you didn't get older, birthdays kind of felt like a joke. At least, that had always been Sam's feeling on the matter. She wasn't really sure where she stood right now, considering the situation. But all she really wanted was to spend the entirety of her birthday in a blanket fort, watching all three of the original Space Wars movies on her iPad. Unfortunately, as so often seemed to be the case, the fates were conspiring against her. Actually, she had pretty much come to the conclusion that it was somehow her own fucking fault she'd been abducted and tossed into this Skinner Box, but Sam had a habit of passing off blame when she could. So it was obviously the fucking fates.

And Karen, of course. She loved blaming Karen for things. And visions of the night they met--her "other birthday," as Karen euphemistically called it--kept going through her head.

She rolled onto her back. The slight motion made her feel unreasonably sick. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make sense of the whirling colors above her, but she couldn't focus. It was like the whole world had been smudged with Vaseline. And something wet was starting to seep into her hair and the cotton of her tee shirt. Sam tried to lift a hand to touch her forehead, but she couldn't.

More sounds rang out above her, like a symphony of violence. But a face suddenly filled her vision, coming into sharp focus. It was the woman who she'd briefly made eye contact with, the one with the short hair. "Samantha?" Her voice echoed. "Samantha, can you hear me?"

"What's going on?" Sam mumbled, not entirely sure she'd actually spoken out loud.

"An excuse to air past grudges," the woman said. She brisky swept Sam's wig off of her head, freezing momentarily at the sight of her red hair beneath. Whatever surprised her, she shook it off quickly, probing at the damage to her forehead. Sam let out a yelp of pain as blackness flashed across her eyes. "Your cranium has been shattered," the woman said. "You're going to bleed into your brain."

To banish the thoughts--really, all of her thoughts, Sam wandered into the kitchen. In the last few weeks she'd become increasingly obsessed with trying to figure out how to build a still. They had potatoes after all. Potato vodka couldn't be that hard. Applied chemistry wasn't her area of expertise, but she figured the challenge would only help keep her mind off of...things.

So her birthday would be spent in the kitchen. Quietly humming It's My Party by Leslie Gore under her breath, she experimented with whatever glasses, tubes, and burners she could rig up. In between each attempt, she would pause to write up a full debrief in the little notebook Jude had given her. Occasionally, birthday cakes and balloons would sneak into the margins of her notes.

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There was a thought. People celebrating Sam. Hell, she’d be thrilled if anyone even noticed she existed. How was it that she had come to have so much middle child syndrome when she was an only child? Well, youngest child actually, she supposed. But only child in all the ways that counted.

“Well, I’m aiming for minimal puke. But that’s good to know,” she said.

She made a broad, sweeping gesture to the bowl at the end of the counter. There was about a pint of murky clear liquid inside. “You’re welcome to sample the product. Although maybe I should have you sign a waiver first.”

"Yeah .. that's why you have to cook them really well, otherwise people can get sick. See? I know some stuff aside from sports and football and fitness gains," Major says to no one in particular. It's not as though Sam had just claimed he has limited knowledge.

He makes a face of consideration as he draws closer to the liquid. Probably a far cry from the Absolut he's used to, but hell - he'll give it a shot. Why not? Even if he dies, he's just .. get sent back home. It's not like he's got much to complain about in that case, except for leaving Ravi behind.

"My waiver is being willing to try it in the first place, I'm pretty sure. But I'll sign something if you really, really want me to."

"It isn't every day you see a voluntary guinea pig," Sam said, folding her arms across her chest and leaning her back against the edge of the counter top. "Go ahead. Let me know how it goes down." She supposed she ought to feel a pang of guilt, considering her family's history of experimentation. But fuck that. It was her birthday.

Anyway, she was reasonably sure it wouldn't actually hurt Major.

Well. Pretty sure, anyway.

...sort of sure?

"I'm pretty sure you'd get a lot of them, if other folks knew you were attempting some kinda home brew here." Major picks up the pint and swirls the liquid around it a few times, bringing it up to the light to inspect. It looks good enough, as far as he's concerned. He lifts it to his nose to give it a whiff, and damn, is it strong. He coughs a few times, taken by surprise by the potency of the stuff, and then lets out a laugh.

"Okay, it's a little stronger than I was expecting. But .. bottoms up!" He takes a swig of the stuff, trying to hold it in his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing it. He starts coughing some more, covering his mouth with his other hand as he does so. Once that's subsided, he waits, looking around like he's expecting something to happen. "Hey, still alive with no new arms or body parts. That stuff is strong as hell, but it tastes enough like vodka to me to call it that!"

She liked to believe that Mendel started out this way.

It probably wasn't true, but hey, it was nice to dream.

Sam grimaced a little, making a few notes in her book. "Okay, I think this one leans closer to the 'silverware polish' end of the scale, but if you're actually calling it vodka, I think that's a definite improvement. More water next time. That might be enough to mellow it out."

Still, she'd call it a win.

Major leans over to take a peak at her notes. He doesn't understand most of them, but he nods as though he's now a part of this crazy experiment. In a way, he supposes, he is - but he is less 'fellow researcher' and more 'test subject.' That's fine. He'd been in that role enough back in his old life with Ravi with the whole zombie thing. This was significantly less lethal and complicated.

"Did you ever do anything like this before? Or are you totally winging it and figuring it out as you go along? I doubt this thing came with any instructions?" he asks, giving the liquid another sniff.

"My area of expertise is biology, not chemistry," she admitted. A member of the Ordo might sneer a little, but Major was way too chill for that. And also not a member of the Ordo. "Genetics, actually. But I took some chemistry classes for fun in high school. Let's call it all...fifty-six percent guess work."

It was a statistic she'd completely made up.

But again, Major was both chill and not Ordo.

"It would go a lot faster if I had the internet..."

"Ah, gotcha," Major says with an understanding nod. "Still seems kinda crazy to me that you and Ravi didn't hit it off. You've got so much in common, with the whole science thing and all." He makes a vague gesture towards her, palm facing out. "He was also oddly avoidant when I asked what he did to make you not like him, by the way. Which makes me think he was just being a general asshat and won't admit it."

Mention of the internet gets a groan.

"To think of all of those dumb videos I used to take for granted. My favorites were the dogs afraid to walk by cats. They always made me laugh for some reason."

Truth be told, Sam had sort of forgotten Ravi even existed. That was the way it went with a lot of people she met in the village. Mostly just because she was so hermit-ish in general. And it was only getting worse, the more she started to realize she was alone. That was a never-ending cycle. A whole ouroborus. Which honestly made her head hurt.

She hated the social sciences.

But leave it to Major to say something so pure and simple.

Sam smiled slightly. "That's because cats are badass and dogs are dumbshits," she replied. "Scientific fact."

"Hey hey hey now!" Major says with a slight pout, both on his face and in his tone. "As the proud co-father of a soon-to-be-full-fledged dog, I resent that statement. Minor is plenty smart, thank you. I raised him to be a smart, independent dog who don't need no man. I mean, aside from me and Ravi, who are his human parents. So, I guess a smart, independent dog who only needs two men. I did have a cat growing up, though. We uncreatively called it "Kitty," but he was awesome. I loved that thing."

Oh, so very much to parse out in that sentence.

Sam blinked a few times, staring at Major. The fact that he had a cat named 'Kitty' and now a dog named 'Minor' were...well, given the fact that he was Major, she could see it. But the fact that he was 'co-parenting' a dog with Ravi?

Well, the could lead her to only one conclusion.

"Are you and Ravi...like...a thing?" Because Major was way too hot for Ravi. Ravi was a five, at best. Maybe a six if he got rid of that stupid beard. But Major? A hot nine.

".... What?" Major asks, blinking. He ... doesn't really get it. Not at first. But then, the proverbial lightbulb goes off, his eyes widen, and he tosses back his head to let out a belly laugh. He keeps going for a little bit before dabbing at the tears that've formed at his eyes, shaking his head. "No, no. Oh man, no. Too bad, right?

I mean, if I were into dudes, Ravi would be The One, I think, but sadly, no. We are just BFFs." A pause. "I mean, I say just, but it's not just, you know? He's .. saved me so many times over. I trust him with my life."

So much for that theory. Sam was still puzzled, but she supposed a big part of that lay in the fact that she'd never had a BFF.

She barely even had Fs.

There was Avery, she supposed. But that was a whole different ball of crazy. Anyway, Avery wasn't here. And she'd probably never see him again. And there were days when she didn't really know how she felt about that.

Sam shrugged. "Saved your life how?" When in doubt about your own feelings, always talk about someone else's.

"Oh, uh." It's been a little while since Major first met Sam, and honestly, their first conversation's gotten a little .. fuzzy, at this point. He reaches up to rub at his chin and face, looking at her through a slight squint. "I told you about the whole, um, like .... zombie ... thing, right? Back in Seattle? Before I came here?"

She nodded. Zombies were a little hard to forget.

And that was coming from a vampire. Or...well. Recovering vampire. Or something.

"What did he do? Please tell me it involved flamethrowers. I really, really need it to involve flamethrowers." For the hilarious imagery. And because flamethrowers were just kind of awesome.

Major seriously considers the suggestion of flamethrowers, wracking his memory to see if such a thing had happened. After a few moments, he shakes his head sadly.

"No, I don't think .. there were any .. flamethrowers involved. Not as far as I can remember. Which is a surprising disappointment." He considers her with a tilt of his head. "How much did I tell you?"

"Well," Sam drawled, "I'd say 'the basics,' except that I don't know if that's true or not. Zombies are real. A lot of them live in Seattle. Ravi was doing the science-y stuff. And you were doing the brain-eating stuff."

Too soon?

Didn't matter.

"Was he, like, your zombie-survival mentor or something? Teaching you how to not kill people?"

"Huh. I told you a lot considering I just met you," Major says with a light laugh. He doesn't seem to be bothered. He isn't. "Ah, well. It started - at least for me - with my ex-fiancee. She was the one who got turned first, a couple months before our wedding. Obviously ... all of that got cancelled, and .. it .. uh, took a while before she finally told me what was really going on. But Ravi had been the first one to figure it out after she'd been turned." He glances down at the floor, where he moves a stray pebble around with the toe of his shoe. "I got caught up in some real shady stuff, and Ravi .. really stood by me, through all of it. Even though he really, really didn't have to. At all." A pause. "I mean, Liv did, too ... zombie solidarity and everything, but Ravi didn't have to. But he did. And he did everything he could, along with Liv, to get me .. uh. Well, out of prison. Before I basically went Romero and ate everyone's brains in the joint."

Went Romero? She liked that.

But they'd discuss it later.

"A zombie in prison. That does sound like a potentially awkward situation." Same could be said for a vampire, she supposed. "Kudos to Ravi. Eating everyone is...wrong? I'm guessing."

Major's slightly surprised that Sam doesn't seem to blink an eye at the idea of him being in prison.

"I mean, it depends on who you talk to. There are plenty of zombies who think that humans are basically on the same level as any other "meat" out there - cows, sheep, chicken, whatever. That they're really only as good as the brains in their skulls. Probably not much of a surprise if I tell you that I definitely didn't subscribe to that way of thinking, and neither did anyone I was friends with, Ravi included. I mean, Liv was gonna be a surgeon, initially. But after the zombie thing happened, she got a job at the M.E.'s office with Ravi, so she could ethically source her brains without having to kill anyone."

Pretty sweet gig, really. Kind of like a Kindred working at a hospital or blood bank.

Sam was surprised by all the similarities cropping up. It was so fucking hard to escape her past.

She whet her lips, leaning against the counter. "Good answer. About not subscribing to that way of thinking, I mean. I'd have to...throw a drink in your face or something if you said otherwise."

"I'd be surprised if that was all you did, to be honest," Major replies back with a shit-eating grin. "Count on the Seattle-ite to find a way to ethically source brains, though, huh?" He clears his throat, wanting to shift topics away from Liv because thinking about her, talking about her hurts more than he'd really care to admit. It's rare to go a day without her cropping up somewhere in his consciousness. "I wouldn't want you to waste your alcohol child on me in that sorta scenario, though. A punch to the face should do it."

Shit, he was weird. It worked for him. Anyone that gorgeous could be as weird as they fucking wanted to be.

But still.

"Okay, noted," she said. "Does that go for all future opinions I don't agree with? Because I'm not gonna lie, I really like punching people in the face."

Major squints in thought, as though seriously considering it. Truth be told, he is giving it some serious thought. After a few moments, he shrugs one shoulder and then lets out a quiet laugh.

"I mean, not if it's like, "I like blue and you like green, so you get a punch in the face" kind of nonsense. But if it's something really bad? Like, if I suddenly think we should start sacrificing people or that kind of thing, yeah, I give you full, outstanding rights to punch me in the face 'til I come to my senses."

"I should have you sign something for that too," Sam replied. Her kingdom for a notary. Or, you know, a society where finding a notary was your biggest problem.

But she gave Major a smile to let him know she wasn't serious.

Of course not. She was Sam fucking Moon.

No one ever took her seriously, anyway.

"I hope I never have to punch you." And with that, she gave him a stiff salute.

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