sixthiterationlogs | I'm waving through a window, oh, can anybody see, is anybody waving back at me? [OPEN]

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I'm waving through a window, oh, can anybody see, is anybody waving back at me? [OPEN]

WHO: Samantha Moon
WHERE: Various Locations (see below and put one in your subject!)
WHEN: First week of October
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Will update as needed, but just assume Sam's potty mouth

Kitchen at the Inn
It scared Sam a little bit that she was starting to develop a routine. But she was. And whether that meant she was settling down or giving in, she couldn't really say. And she wasn't sure she wanted to analyze it too much. At any rate, for the time being, she was just sort of going with it. Which meant that the first thing she did in the morning was swing by the kitchen. She always waited until after people had done their breakfast thing, so she wouldn't be in the way. Or, more accurately, so her Rube Goldberg-esque distillery wouldn't be in the way.

She usually made about three batches of potato vodka every day, at this point. As long as there were potatoes. She was always careful to cut out the eyes and save them for the botany freaks. Sometimes, she would experiment, trying to mix in different flavorings.

They usually all tasted vile.

But that was fine, since the vodka was strong enough to burn off a normal person's taste buds, anyway.

There was something calming about sitting on the counter, watching the way the diamond-like bubbles traveled through the tubes. Like one of those glittery stress-relievers on the corner of a professor's desk. Sam played little mind games, counting and following and observing. Anything she could do to avoid thinking.

Didn't help much. She still saw Avery's name, like a fucking neon sign on the inside of her eyelids, every time she blinked.

Spear Fishing
Sam decided it was pretty safe to assume that she'd never go down in history as a singularly spectacular fisher. But there was a gross, morbid satisfaction to spearing fish. Likely, it was a combination of factors, the most obvious being that what she really wanted to spear was the faces of their generous Overlords. At least fishing was more productive than hitting a tree with a lead pipe. Her hands still stung from all of the cuts and bruises she'd inflicted on herself. Not to mention the ones Danny had given her.

She wadded up to her calves in the water. The Overlords had given her a pair of black, short pants with laces up either side that, unfortunately, delighted her little Goth-loving heart. And they were perfect for getting wet. Sometimes she wore them with her scrub tops or some of the shirts she'd collected over the past year and a half, but today, she was just in a sports bra.

One thing she would absolutely never take for granted again was the way the sunlight felt on her skin.

Schoolhouse Library
Of the many gifts she'd received from the Overlords, the one Sam trusted the least was the large set of colored pencils. She'd watched one-too-many horror movies growing up. She kept expecting some bizarre plot twist. Every time she'd draw with red, someone would lose blood. If she drew monsters, they'd come to life. Somehow, drawing a picture of something might whoosh it into the circus. The usual tropes from her life before she was, in fact, the monster at the end of the horror movie.

But there was nothing.

Which wasn't to say she started to trust or anything like that. But she did start to draw.

And out of a desperate need to be useful to someone, she'd taken it upon herself to start decorating the library with headers for each category of books. Science. Sports. Mathematics. All of it. With perfect, neat handwriting, she labeled the sections, then drew little pictures around and through the letters. Spinning planets with rings of fire. The pennant over Wrigley Field (if only...). An elegant Pi, like a rusty shed with a roof curved by the rain.

The project was good for long nights, when Sam couldn't sleep. But sometimes, she'd be in the middle of drawing something that would remind her of...

She blinked and saw it again. Avery's name.

And somehow, on stolen bits of paper and old napkins, his face started to appear, thin and bony and redheaded. Just like she remembered him. Just like he'd been when he...

...no. There was no point in thinking about what he'd done to her any more.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"True," Steph concedes. "If I was doing it right I'd be on proper gym equipment." Most of her injuries are minor and come from scratching her arms and hands on branches.

"I'm Steph. Village recluse, apparently."

"No fair," Sam said, offering her a quick quirk in the corners of her mouth. "I thought I was the village recluse. Haven't you read crappy teen vampire fiction? Brooding and lamenting and all that shit."

It still amazed Sam--truly and deeply amazed Sam--that everyone in the village was just okay with the fact that they were living with a vampire. She'd advocated heavily for the drop of the Masquerade, back home. But she'd never expected it to go like this. She supposed the extenuating circumstances were the extenuating circumstances. But still.

No one had come after her with a stake yet.

She offered Steph her hand. "Hi."

"So sorry to horn in on your niche," Steph sarcastically apologized before shaking the offered hand. She'd been through a lot of shit very recently, up to and including death. Maybe that made her an honorary vampire? She'd prefer that to being a zombie.

"Nice to meet you. I love your hair, by the way."

Sam shook her hand, firm and genuine. She realized, in that moment, what it was she liked about Steph. The comment about her hair. It had come after a solid five minutes of conversation. Sam didn't get that a lot. It was usually the first thing anyone said about her and, come on, there was so much more to her than her hair. Admittedly, she could have just stopped wearing the wig at this point. But that wasn't really the point.

"Mutual," she said. "I tried going blond once when I first moved to LA. Didn't really work for me."

It had been an interesting social experiment.

Not that Sam believed in the social sciences.

Steph knew too many people who dyed their hair to be phased by anything short of Starfire's supernaturally iridescent locks. The compliment just made her laugh.

"Thanks. I got to try all sorts of cool colors at that party, but I don't think I care enough to keep up with it."

She vaguely remembered people with funny colors at the party. But not much else after the fool she'd made of herself when she got super drunk on Bucky's blood.

Never again.

Never again.

"I wouldn't trust anything our Overlords gave us anyway," she said. "I could probably make some hair dye, if you ever wanted, though. I mean, how hard could it be? It's just chemistry."

Steph shrugged. Maybe it was the depression talking, but she felt like consequences just didn't really matter to her anymore. So the candy had led to some awkward slip-ups. It didn't get her killed.

"If you want to. I never took chemistry."

"Don't bother, it's pretty boring." Sam could occasionally be quite the science snob. Probably because it was one of the few arenas in which she could genuinely claim any sort of expertise. Or accomplishment. True, she would never win a Nobel or be a household name. But she and the other members of the Ordo had done some impressive shit.

'Impressive shit' being the very, very technical term for it.

"Biology's where it's at," she continued, with a slight shrug. "Genetics is even better. It's like every person is a book and you can just...read it."

Steph snorted a laugh.

"Nerd." It was an affectionate insult. She had the odd habit of gravitating towards nerds. Probably it was just that she enjoyed the company of smart people.

"History class is the only thing I miss about high school."

"History? Oh, glass houses, Miss Steph, glass houses." History was dangerously close to the social sciences. Still, after spending so much time with Avery, Sam had to admit, she was beginning to understand the appeal.

But that didn't mean she wasn't going to tease Steph right back.

She liked her. It was weird.

Shaking her head, she smiled. "I think we can both agree that high school was just crap and call it a day."

She huffed, her smile turning sad.

"I don't know, it wasn't so bad. It made it easier to keep up with my friends. I wish I'd been able to finish."

Well, there was a story Sam could relate to.

She crouched down in front of Steph, her knees moving as effortlessly as a well-greased hinge. One of the benefits of having genetically-engineered genes was that you didn't get all creaky.

"Can I ask why you didn't?" She paused. "Or is that too personal?"

Steph grinned wryly. It was incredibly personal, but the combination of her sheer refusal to feel ashamed by it and the enjoyment she got from making other people uncomfortable meant she was all too happy to share.

"Got pregnant. Then I was just too far behind to go back. It would've been weird, you know?"

If she was hoping to make Sam uncomfortable, she would be deeply disappointed. Sam had dropped out of college for a more uncomfortable reason, so she wasn't exactly one to judge. Which was kind of ironic, because usually, Sam kind of loved to judge.

She just wasn't going to be a fucking hypocrite.

"That sucks," she said instead. "I mean, no offense to babies or anything." But they did have a way of ruining everything.

She could take or leave the discomfort. The important thing was reminding the world that she wasn't ashamed. Which she did now by snorting.

"I'm sure babies everywhere are deeply offended. No, pregnancy completely sucks. I do not recommend it, zero out of five stars."

The snort felt like enough of an invitation for Sam to sit down on the grass. Not close to make Steph uncomfortable or crowded. But not exactly far away, in ten-foot-pole territory. "It's not really an option for me. I mean, it could be, but it would involve murder and magic and some surgeries that are better left to the imagination."

After all, that's how Sam had been born.

"It would also require someone wanting to have sex with me, which is, you know, not on the table."

Steph raised an eyebrow, shifting so they can chat more comfortably.

“What makes you say that?”

She made a broad gesture to her body, to her flat chest, her bony elbows, her wig, of course. "Just this," she said. The high school mean girls once told Sam that she had the sex appeal of a barbecue fork. She'd decided to believe them. Hadn't even kissed a guy until college and that had been her very, very not-into-girls best friend Chad. They'd mostly fooled around just to check the box, as it were.

"And, I mean, have you seen the people the Overlords whoosh in here? Like, ninety percent underwear models. Especially the dudes. Even the bald ones have some kind of sex appeal."

If it weren't for Sam's presence, she'd be halfway convinced that it was a breeding experiment, to create the most beautiful offspring possible.

Steph sighed dreamily, mostly for effect. She’d seen some of the guys alright.

“There are a lot of babes, yeah. Though I could wish some of them were younger...” Now that she was almost certainly single it would have been nice to have a boy toy to distract her from her problems. She shook her head and returned to the matter at hand.

“Boys can be dumber than a sack of bricks, but you are definitely do-able. Trust me, it’s on the table.”

Sam burst out laughing. It wasn't a mean laugh. But the idea of being 'do-able' was just a little silly.

"Well," she drawled, "as long as we're failing the Bechdel test miserably, is there a certain someone around here you have your eye on?"

There had to be. The men were just so utterly...

...fireman-calendar-worthy.

Steph screwed her face up, only now feeling disgruntled about the lack of viable prospects.

"I haven't really been in the market. And all the real hotties are like, twice my age." What she wouldn't give to be old enough for Steve Rogers...

"I'm from LA," Sam sighed. "That's kind of the norm." Which wasn't to say she approved or appreciated it. But then again, who was she to judge? Anyway, her favorite vampire in the whole world looked about a third his age.

Fucking Avery...

"Fucky Darns is cute, but he's super old."

“Yes, I’m sure that’ll be a really convincing argument the next time somebody asks if I’m legal.” She huffed. She wasn’t exactly in a hurry for a rebound, but it would have been something to do.

“Who the heck is ‘Fucky Darns?”

Sam groaned, mostly at herself. "Sorry. Bucky Barnes." She really, really needed to stop calling him that. "Long story on the nickname. It involves copious amounts of alcohol." As most 'long stories' did. "Dude with the metal arm."

She leaned back on her palms, examining the scenery. For a prison, it was pretty, she would have to admit. In that sort of pre-Industrial, primitive sort of way. She was still a city girl at heart. A Chicago girl, if she was honest. But she reluctantly had to admit she could see the appeal.

"Hey," she said suddenly, as the thought--and manners--popped into her head. "Where are you from, anyway?"

"Oh," she said, searching her memory for a face to go with the description. "Yeah, I guess he's pretty cute. Could use a haircut, though." He was just a little too unkempt to be incredibly hot.

She let the silence sit for a moment. She was a city girl too, but after the way she left Gotham she doesn't want to see another skyscraper for at least a year.

"Hm? Oh, I'm from Gotham. New Jersey," she added, in case Sam had never heard of it.

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