[closed] nothing comforts me the same

[3ofswords]

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: The Inn, Room 6
WHEN: Early October
OPEN TO: Karen Page
WARNINGS: Drug/Alcohol mention possible/probably, will add to comment headers if anything else pops up.

---

"Karen," he calls, leaning his head on the door after a thorough knock. "When did you move?" He can only hope she's in there, now that there isn't a porch to stand and smoke on while he waits around. He's not drunk--not anymore. Goldbell tea clearing his breath and cigarettes to ruin it again.

Getting drunk hadn't fixed anything, and hadn't really made him feel better. Human interaction and friendly advice is plan B.

Mark's friendly advice is plan Z, pragmatic and theoretical as it tends to be. This is some bullshit Karen lives day in and out: at least her pragmatism might apply.

Hearing a door down the hall, Kira presses his face into the corner of the frame, next to the hinges.  He hadn't really pressed Ty for his current housing situation, a terrifying oversight.  "If you're not home I'm going to crawl under one of the beds and live there, fair warning."

Comments

[digging]

It takes Karen a moment — She's dressed, if only nominally, but tucked up under the covers regardless, trying to stave off the chill that's begun to creep back through the cracks in the poorly-insulated window panes. She sets aside her book on frontier living and pads to the door in wool socks and her over-sized 'I'm not Daredevil' t-shirt, and blinks placidly at Kira leaning there against the frame.

"I moved when Claire disappeared," she explains, a slight pinch to the corners of her mouth but body stepping easily aside with the swing of the door to let him in. "I didn't really want to spend the winter in that house alone, and I get to claim I'm conserving resources." Plus, electricity.

[3ofswords]

The conserve deez nuts puffs slightly in his cheeks and dies on his tongue, blowing a sigh as he follows her in. "Sorry, I know friends like that are hard to come by." Here and anywhere else: Claire had been more than a competent set of hands at the hospital, she'd been someone like Mark. Very likely to maintain her and others' sanity.

It leaves a breadth of silence as he walks in, surveys a room he knows well enough from previous stays, and decides strewing himself across the still-made bed is a familiar enough gesture to make with someone who once watched him punt a tiny deer back into a cave. "Can I offer you weed or cigarettes in this trying time, or do you have a strict policy against either in your winter home?"

[digging]

Claire had indeed been a rare gem in a place like this, but Karen is just fine not talking about it. She cried, had her moment of feeling utterly helpless and enraged, and is pretty happy lingering in her current state of numbness.

"I'm good," she answers as she moves back to the bed and crawls back atop the mattress to sit cross-legged over the covers. "You look like you've had more than enough yourself." A little like shit, actually, and she presumes he'll eventually wind his way around to telling her why.

[3ofswords]

"I'm still a little hungover," he admits, the arm across his brow shielding him from lights that are hardly overpowering at the best of times. The ceiling holds no interest and no answers: no starting script.

In a way, he's spoiled. Was spoiled. In a household of psychics, no one had to start the conversation. Advice and comfort were coming whether you wanted it or not, and talking about it was easy to wave off. But if he doesn't, he's the weirdo crashing on Karen's spare bed with no explanation.

"I'm here to take back any little tantrums or complaints about not having anybody from home," he sighs. "I found my ex wandering around by the lake."

[digging]

"Oh shit," Karen exhales, eyebrows gently lifting with dawning comprehension. "The one with the jacket?"

But there has to be more to the story than just that, she realizes a tick later. A fight, a skewing of the timeline. Missed connections and no Craigslist to wistfully post to about it.

"And?" she prompts, motioning Kira's way. "It was not the happy reunion you'd imagined, I take it."

[3ofswords]

"Yes," he intones, letting it all sink back in. "You know, that great disaster-movie romance where everyone makes great choices based on having to confront their own mortality."

It's a glib summary, ignoring the history up to that point, but the disaster is the salient point. "So, I know whatever's going on, I'm basically a person. We all seem to agree that we're still people,," he says, looping back and lifting his arms briefly for air quotes.

"But I'm not the same person. And I don't know if he died the day after my memories cut off, and he's missing most of that winter, and literally all of it might be fake, so." He turns his lifted hand in a dismissive little circle. "Hangovers and bothering you."

[digging]

"God, your options must really be in the toilet if you're coming to me with this," Karen replies with a duck of her chin and a barely-there laugh. Truthfully, she appreciates that she has someone to share this screwed-up existential dread with, even if she wishes they were bonding over something else.

She gets it. There are reasons both broad and incredibly specific that landed Kira on her doorstep tonight.

"I wish I had better advice on how to cope with it," she allows, picking idly at some fluff clinging to the seam of one of her thick wool socks. "It's awful. It's jarring. It makes you feel helpless in a way completely beyond anything else this place throws at you. But that's also not his fault." She lifts a slender shoulder in a shrug, glances back up to Kira. "It's not yours, either. And trust me when I say I know how weird it is for this Zen shit to be coming out of my mouth. Blame Claire."

[3ofswords]

"Is advice what we generally meet up for," he asks, even if it sometimes rears its head in conversation. More often than not it's as simple as keep moving, something that's taken on a healthier meaning over time. Brewing pure alcohol for the clinic will always be better than drinking it, and with a little more caution, venturing out into the woods does sound great right now.

"I'm blaming you entirely for your zen shit."

And listening, even if it isn't what he came for. At least he isn't having to talk about personal romantic drama with Mark, of all people. "And I'm not blaming him, I just--I don't know how much I should tell him. Or if I'm still upset with him for things he ostensibly hasn't done, because what could be more useless?"

[digging]

"I mean..." Karen trails off, lifts a hand in an oblique gesture that pretty much sums up the futility of the entire situation. Emily Post never accounted for alternate universes when she was establishing proper interpersonal etiquette. There's no handbook for being a clone with memories that may or may not be real.

"One day at a time," she settles on, then huffs out another breathy laugh. "Like you're in AA. Next week, we're going to write letters of atonement to all the people we've wronged by being shitty copies of the real thing."

[3ofswords]

"I am a flawless copy of the real thing," he says, mock-vicious. "The real thing was just...already shitty."

And Ty wasn't, until he was, and this copy never made it to that point.

Or the point where--well. Kira blusters a breath, arms dropped over the bed, just the ceiling, the light fading in the window, Karen in his periphery. "Maybe it's just selfish. I was a flighty piece of shit for a long time, and that's the version he remembers.

"I'm not exactly a paragon of personal growth, day to day. It would be easier if he just knew, already." The solution to which was obviously to avoid him all the more than he had in New York.

[digging]

"Have you tried telling him?" This does not always work, Karen is aware, having been on both sides of it, but silence really isn't a viable alternative. They both understand that well enough know, she thinks. "Speaking from experience, as confusing and hard as that conversation will probably be, it's better than leaving him in the dark. He might think it's his fault, something he did wrong otherwise. You can't control what he does with the information, but you should at least give it to him so he's not playing against a stacked deck."

[3ofswords]

"Do you have a lot of experience telling guys, hey, remember when I fucked you at your going away party and didn't talk to you for four years, we resolved that because we both could have died?"

It's easier to rip the band-aid here, when he's just being glib with a friend, and one he doesn't think has any reason to expect better.

Better reactions to adversity, maybe, but this one is complicated. Turning onto his side, he lifts his head with a hand and looks at her, then out the window. "He knows about the disparity, I've just been vague on details. There's a whole other existential crisis to get over in the first few days."

[digging]

"No, but I have some other experiences that I'm going to wager are at least as messy, so. At least you had the excuse of the apocalypse. I just have the excuse of being me." Trying to help and screwing it up instead, somehow.

"I'm not saying you have to force yourself into it if you're not ready, Kira," she adds, and twists to shift the pillows up against the headboard so she can lean back against them. "But if it's affecting how you interact with him, if he's picking up on it, then sooner's probably better than later."

[3ofswords]

"The apocalypse is what trapped me in a room long enough to work it out," he assures her. "I had many years prior in which to be me."

And another in which to test the boundaries of what that means. Rolling over, he hangs his chin on his arm and emplores her across the space. "I need us to make a pact. A semi apocalyptic pact, whatever. If I haven't told him by New Year's, just come kick my entire ass."

Left to his own devices: he won't ever be ready, and if Ty isn't going to make it to the no longer official holidays, it won't matter.

[digging]

Wordlessly, Karen slides a look down to her watch and notes the date softly glowing there on the display. "Alright," she allows, even if it seems to her two and a half months is a little excessive. Hopefully it won't come down to her shoving Kira bodily Ty's way on New Year's Eve as they all huddle around the inn fireplace getting drunk on paint thinner.

"But kicking your whole ass isn't saying much, because you have almost no ass to speak of," she adds with a wry tilt of her mouth. "So you can count on me telling him instead and leaving you to fill in the details."

[3ofswords]

"And yet you still wound me, so deeply." Rolling onto his back, the situation hasn't changed--but he thinks he got what he came for. Less commiseration than ultimatum, but what he wants and what he needs are generally opposed.

"I always knew you were just getting close to me for your next exposé." Head falling, one eye finding her over an elbow, he adds, "Thanks."