sixthiterationlogs | ( OPEN ) gotta get back gotta get free.

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( OPEN ) gotta get back gotta get free.

WHO: ~~Mayor~~ McChilicheesedog
WHERE: House 6, House 60, and beyond
WHEN: October 15-November 5
OPEN TO: OTA (closed prompts in comments)
WARNINGS: animagus times, general obliviousness, dust moths, tba

OPEN TO ALL.

After cooking for the Stark Expo, Frank had bailed pretty quickly thereafter, not wanting to stick around for the thank-yous and/or any derisive comments. He also really hadn't felt as though he had much to contribute to a "tech conference" even with no tech to be found. At first, he considers going to find that book Mark started with all the skills and scratching his name off every page, but he finds himself heading to the Lake instead.

Before he knows it, he's heading down to the Bunker and straight for that powers vending machine. He studies the choices for a long time, remembering his conversation with Kamala and wondering if this all isn't an elaborate trap. Maybe it does nothing? Just another way to mess with their minds. He's heard whisperings of people hearing one another's thoughts recently and decides he needs to pick something tangible. Something he can prove definitively worked or didn't work. His finger hovers over Animal Transformation, but then he swallows, steeling himself. To Hell with it, right?

It isn't Frank Castle who runs out of the bunker and back onto the surface, but a coyote. He will be easily spotted loitering outside House 6 like he's trying to figure out how to work a doorknob in this state. When he gives up, he goes to lay down in the backyard, like he's watching over the animals in the pen. The groffle and zalpaca graze on as if oblivious to a predator nearby. Perhaps because they sense it's not really a creature who intends them any harm. After a time, Frank nods off in that state and a croc-dog finds him, curling up under his chin to join in the nap.

Over the next week or two, people might spot the coyote who comes in close to the Villages, most often he'll be outside the Schoolhouse or the Inn but never does he try to venture inside or close enough to be caught. If someone catches his eyes, he'll run off towards the forest.

WILDCARD.

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Frank rolls his eyes, but ends up smiling anyway. She does have that effect on him, especially when she's right.

"You should try it. I'm curious what your animal would be."

Now that he's hydrated again, he takes the tiniest sip of liquor and settles back in to watch her. It's been too long, he thinks, since they've been in the same room together. At least, without a teenaged chaperone.

"Knowing my luck, probably a rat," or similar varmint. She would be content to land on cat or squirrel, to go about her business unbothered, or bear, to really keep people at bay, though like she said before, bird is the word. The learning curve might be painful but she would like to know what it's like to actually fly, not just hurl herself through the air and land in a small crater. Total control, from liftoff, through soaring and all the way back down, Jess can't imagine anything better.

His smile only grows fonder, holding his glass with both hands though he doesn't intend to take another sip for a while yet.

"Rats are kinda cute." And what's more, he thinks it might actually be a good pick for her, even if they have shit reputations. So does Jessica, but they both have good track records and they're damn good at their jobs. Okay, he's taking this a little too far, maybe, even in his own mime. Still: "And really smart... for rodents." He probably didn't need to add that qualifier.

She could see him taking rats in as easily as he would a coyote or other stray of ill repute.

"I didn't say they weren't," she gives a good natured (???? ????>?) correction between bites of oatmeal, mouth full when she clarifies, "cute." And smart but everyone knows that, that's why they get locked up in cages, bred to die. Comfy for a short time, perhaps, but prone to having their brains scrambled and cells messed with. No thank you. She would rather scurry around the gutter eating dumpster fries and getting chased off by brooms. "Plus I read somewhere, they were a total scapegoat for that whole plague thing." Whether that's true or not, it's a deeply relatable animal regardless.

He seems to consider it like he knows any better than her the history of plagues as a rat-borne illness.

"Have you tried it? The machine?" Frank is still convinced it's a wicked bad idea, but since when does he follow through on anything less.

"Huh?" Jess stalls as she tries to remember. It's like recalling a dream, one so real and vivid and mundane that she can't determine if it actually happened. "Uh, I think so." She has a vague image of what the machine looks like, or what she thinks it looks like, standing in front of it, contemplating a selection. Considering what a big, risky decision that would have been, it's peculiar that her mind can't solidify the event nor the events surrounding it.

Her crinkled gaze zips to her cup of moonshine, wondering what percentage, if any, it's contributing to her mid-term memory lapse.

Okay, he's not that drunk. That was definitely weird. Frank pushes both glasses away from him and leans towards Jessica, watching for anything anomalous in her gaze.

"It wasn't a trick question," he affirms, concern for her spiking all over again.

Defensively, "I know that." Jess's free hand comes to her temple, blunt nails scratching nonplussed circles above her brow. Her eyes lose focus as she looks inward for more snippets of information. What power did she choose? What powers were there? What's the one she has right now? She hasn't used it in ages. "I just don't really... remember. What I did with it."

Her tone is factual, almost sterile, so as to not betray how shaken she is. Her memory is hardly eidetic but it is relentlessly dependable. Right now, she's struggling to remember any distinct interaction prior to or since possibly using the machine, even as she reaches further in either direction. Days could be weeks could be months, she realizes.

"Jess..." She doesn't sound drunk, and she'd never actually forgotten something significant while drunk that he could ever remember. He's ridiculously worried now, his stool starting to tip towards her a little he's leaning so far towards her. "I think something's wrong."

His blatant concern helps to ground her own panic. One of them has to keep it together even though she feels closer to losing it. Until she does, she'll have to convince herself she can figure this out. Jess sits up straight in her chair, abandoning her meal.

"You're fine?" She needs to confirm. If they're not both affected, whatever's clouding her head can't be from their brush with the party or the booze he stole from it.

What would make her forget? Wait...

"Did you die?" He can still remember what it felt like to come back empty, and of course, in his case, he had walked directly into Kilgrave's trap. Oh, wait, she asked him a question. He's asking himself questions, but nothing glaring seems missing. Would he know? In retrospect, maybe. "I think I'm okay."

His chair scrapes loudly against the floor as it almost dumps him out on the ground, but he manages to get a hand out against the counter at the last minute so he doesn't fall although now they are seriously close.

Edited 2018-11-20 05:37 (UTC)

But how would he know? Jess scolds herself for posing a stupid question, a criticism cut short by his precarious attempt to stand. Reflexively, she shoots to her feet and steadies him by the shoulders. When he doesn't sag or pitch forward, Jess lets go and opts not to sit back down until he does.

"When was the last time we saw each other?" she quizzes him intently. She caught his question, you know the one about death, but if it's unattributed to his drunkenness, all it does for her is rip open others wound of doubt and fear. (Obviously she's not dead, she's right here, but what fucked up series of circumstances would cause one arguably healthy person to ask another one that?) First, Jess wants to find out how much time she's missing, then she can work out what happened between then and now. Including how they met.

His chair rocks back to the ground as he reaches for her side, looking up into her eyes and losing all thread of their conversation for a long moment. He holds on with a meaty grip, making it obvious he likes this arrangement and doesn't want it to change. Not least of which because the closer their proximity generally the easier it is for him to have conversations like these.

"Uh. A couple weeks? I think." That one has nothing to do with his memory, just how pointless it is to keep time in this place. If he really thought about it, even now, he could come up with a more exact figure - but somehow he doesn't think that's the point. His expression turns a little dopey the longer he looks at her, but finally he remembers to ask, "Why?"

His hand serves to anchor her there next to the table, wooden edge pressing into her thigh on the other side. Jess searches his face for traces of uncertainty but his eyes seem clear.

"Because I don't remember that," she tells him as she continues to try. She can't place him more solidly than a silhouette of the man right in front of her, and if the world fills in around him, his shadow dissipates and vanishes. Then all that she's cobbled together around it collapses into it, leaving her with nothing. "I don't remember when I got here." Her gaze flickers to the paltry furnishings around the house but none of the walls are scored with the number of days spent here because her life isn't a movie. Back to him, "How long have I been here?"

It's what he'd feared, and he hangs close to her, feeling more and more sober every second that ticks by. His other hand comes up, cupping her cheek as even deeper concern floods his features.

"We've been here six months, Jess." He swallows, shifting so his other knee brackets hers, as if through contact alone he could discern the problem. "What's the last thing you do remember?"

Her eyelids stutter, Jess too stunned to blink. The weight on her heel shifts to the ball of her foot as she leans subtly into the points of contact that have her moored, otherwise she's going to fall on her ass back into her chair. Six months... What is Trish thinking? Has she assumed she's dead, that she was abducted, or that she took off of her own accord? Trish would never think the latter but it might as well be the case if Jess has been gone for six months and made zero progress getting back. Instead she's been sitting here reading and drinking.

"I was out," she says and feels out of oxygen. Jess shuts her eyes and consciously staggers her breath, mocking up some calm before beginning again. "I was out, I was just walking. Trish texted that she was working late, I was looking for somewhere to eat. I was near Midtown."

New York? That's a lot of memory to lose, but it's not like it's unheard of. When Kira died and came back he lost everything from before, Frank really hopes that isn't what's happened. He pushes some hair behind her ear and tucks it back, nodding to show he's listening and he understands.

"How long had it been since Reims?"

"I don't know what that is," she stresses, glare boring into him. Jess pushes gently at his forearm, lowering his hand from her face. "You don't get it: I barely know who you are. But I know you." Frustrated, she raps his chest with her knuckles. "It's like a crappy dream or a goddamn nightmare." Carrying on in a mounting frenzy, Jess rakes her fingers through her hair from root to tip. As if the length will discern anything. She scans her hands for unfamiliar scars. "I can't have been gone six months." Or longer.

His hand drops heavily to his side, looking at her with naked disbelief. She doesn't remember anything? But then how...

"But that's where I met you," he points out in a small voice, chewing on his lip as he thinks. There has to be some way to fix her. "You weren't gone, you were right here. You just - forgot. It's okay."

Or it will be once he accesses a distant memory of his own, reading about moths that can make you forget and blue flowers that can help you remember again.

"If that's true then you can't go until I figure this out." He can keep track of how persistent her amnesia is. If he leaves, she'll have to resort to leaving Memento-like clues on her body or gouged into her walls. That she hasn't found any before now and can't see any from here, is how she can tell she's having this breakthrough for the first time. So she might not forget again but Jess won't bet on it.

"Could someone do this to me? Was that on the machine?" If it was, she could do it to herself but Jess doesn't understand why she would. The things she wants to forget are too scattered around her past for her pain to be excised with a blunt instrument.

His hand jumps to her arm, encircling it and holding on tight (but hopefully not too tight.)

"You may not know this right now, but I wouldn't leave you alone to deal with something like this."

There's nothing he wants to do more than help her, but he isn't thinking critically right now thanks to that booze. In fact, he's kind of distracted by her lips, staring until she snaps him out of it with her line of inquiry. Could this be a side effect? He had worried it wasn't safe which is why he agreed to try it first... but, of course, something happened to Jess instead. Isn't this their routine by now?

"No one here could do that to you. I need to think." He takes a moment to look around, still hanging onto her though his grip has slackened considerably. She doesn't have coffee, but maybe some tea. His gaze jumps to the flowers he brought and it jogs something distant for him. "I should've know something was wrong, you didn't even make fun of me for bringing you flowers."

Does he ever. Jess isn't so sure she's anchoring anymore as much as she is distracting him. That just perturbs her further because she can't remember him looking at her like that before but she knows he has. Feels it like any half-awake woman would. There's a reason she's not sinking into it, bringing his hands up to her skull to keep it together so she can think, but fuck her if she has any idea what it is -- besides her fault. There's attraction here, she's not immune to it, but she's compelled to hold it at bay for the both of them. Is there someone else she's forgetting or did she screw him over that bad in the time they've known each other?

When he brings up the flowers, she clocks them over her shoulder. "You had them in your mouth," she thinks aloud, reaching for them and dragging them closer. "That's not what's doing it. It's not the booze, or the food..." She's crushing the stems, waned exasperation beginning to balloon again.

Jessica is keeping her distance and he thinks it's because some part of her remembers everything. He has to believe that anyway. His gaze follows her as she pushes the flowers closer, nodding as she ticks off things it isn't. After sparing a lame smile for her commentary, however brief.

"Wait. Wait, I know this." He touches her shoulder as if in farewell before taking a walk around the countertop and squinting at a moth as it lands on a candle, flitting its wings. That's it. "It's the bugs. Get them out of here while I make you some tea."

Frank snatches up the flowers and moves over to the stove to get it lit. He can't risk the moths affecting him just as he's remembered how to fix her. Though it is odd that the one flower that reminded him of her today is the one she needs to get better. Serendipity, or just another fucked up thing about this place. Either way.

"'It's the --' What?" Jess stomps after him, following his attention to the white winged moth. It doesn't acknowledge her, nor do any of the others as she takes in the breadth of the infestation for the first time. Like frost on a window, they speckle her wall and line the ceiling. There are scores more at rest than there are fluttering about her candles. That's no reason not to have noticed them. She can't tell how long they've been there, unable to remember if they swarmed in overnight or accumulated gradually.

It's kind of gross, if nothing else, and she's not buying that they're the cause but there's no harm in eliminating the possibility. Letting him do whatever he's going to do to make tea happen in her kitchen, she crosses to the couch. Jess blows out the nearby candles, relying on the stove for light, and opens the windows as wide as they'll go. Then the door. Back to the couch, she grabs up a blanket and starts to wave off clutters of moths above the window sill.

"Can't believe," she mutters between swings of her arms, "I ever thought these things," one zooms blindly into her cheek, "were cute."

He chuckles, turning around to watch her once he has water boiling on the stove top and flower petals baking in the oven.

"I'd come help, but if I forget everything we get to start all over."

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