infomodder | IC contact [Mask or Menace]

[Idly, his fingers drum at the side of the glass. Perhaps he should step in or say something once his dog flops over in what mud he's found, but nothing comes out in the bearded monster's direction.]

I imagine what you consider a kid has changed over the course of time. [Will's probably a kid to her, but according to societal norms, he's definitely not. The age of adulthood has changed throughout time, varies from culture to culture, so the idea of saying aren't we all kids to you? is a little ruder than he can bring himself to be. Disrespectful. Telling her how to feel.] What's it now, 21 and under?

Depends where you come from.

[A child in the United States might not be the same as a child in a country in Africa.]

Tend to go by that; where I am. It's how they're raised, what they've learned, how they deal with the world.

[Most of the time she probably doesn't come across as very smart or thoughtful, but there are some things that she can be a bit more aware of. To her, there's no definite age for what a child is, but it's still something quantifiable.]

[He follows that, especially here. Here where there's...]

I was busy trying to survive high school at the same age some of the kids here were in big organizations, living behind Walls in fear of the world beyond it. Or going past them to keep them standing.

[Or breaking them down, apparently. Will's not saying any names, didn't see Kara talk to the Titan kiddos, but he knows things happen privately as much as they do publicly. He shrugs, pulls a face.]

I'd take the locker vandalism over that any day. Difficult to know that here, isn't it? Who's a kid but more mature than most adults. We're all from such different places, it's...little overwhelming.

[Or maybe that's his empathy problem speaking.]

Can be.

[Difficult to know it here, she means. Or maybe she means it can be overwhelming, but she doesn't have the same empathy problem that Will does.]

Usually doesn't take too long to make a guess. But I'm good at picking out soldiers.

[Since they're on the topic of the Titan kiddos.]

[The Titan kiddos are sure all right with Will.]

Comes with the territory of being you, doesn't it?

[He might not be well-versed in many religions or systems of beliefs, might not have studied mythology much at all, but he can use Google, or its equivalent in this universe. He can use the library. He can get curious and wonder what shield maiden really means outside of what media portrays, the weird armor on the chest that leaves the legs completely bare, teenage boy masturbatory fantasy shield maidens.

There's still on judgment, simple hints of curiosity. The territory of someone's nature is a crapshoot, can be a mess, but it's what he deals with as much as what he has to deal with on a daily basis.]

Yep.

[He's right there, at least; what a soldier is, what a warrior is, has changed a lot over the years but Kara still tends to be drawn towards them, can still pick them out in a crowd if she needs to.]

And I've just got used to 'em, spent most of my life around soldiers.

[Before she started working for the Council.]

[He's quiet, looking off at nothing in particular, almost like he's not aware, not livid, not there with her anymore. Lost in his own thoughts or seeing something no one else can. At least, until he finally speaks and makes it apparent he's with her to a degree that might be uncomfortable.]

Times change. Soldiers change with the times. [A wave of the hand holding the glass.] Soldiers from culture to culture are different. Systems of morality, of good and bad, legality, it's all a mixed bag. A tossed salad that can't decide if it's fruits or vegetables, what the theme is. Get stuck here, some people are soldiers, might find similarities. What feels like it adds up, but nothing fits like it used to. Think you've found some people who you can get along with, have a basic understanding, but there's facets that they can't get. Won't get. Maybe don't want to get. Salad gets tossed again, find rocks in it. Inedibles. Getting rocks in your salad from someone you don't know is much different than someone you thought friendly chucking them in. Telling you to enjoy it just the same as the rest, acting like they're croutons, like you're the one who's not seeing anything how it really is.

[And then what to do when that situation arises other than get something hard and strong to drink? Coping in unhealthy ways is probably far different for her than it is for him. His liver, his body is mortal. Too mortal, full of other mortals without him knowing it.]

What're you gonna with the rocks?

[Throwing them back is probably not the best answer when it comes to interpersonal relationships. He may not having many good ones, but he knows that much. Turn them to ice and have a drink is a much better answer. Will's having a drink himself.

Food comparisons, metaphors, similes, it's better than going creepy. Isn't it?]

[She tries to follow, she really does, and only because she does like Will and he's been good to her, but she.

She just can't.]

The fuck, Will?

[Perhaps he should have been creepier. Though he does have to wonder from time to time if the people he talked to in that way, laden with metaphors and similes that got a point (the exact point or otherwise) across were just humoring him. Indulging him. Or maybe the creepier is better because it's more concise or maybe he should just stop thinking about how he misses certain kinds of conversations from certain people because certain people were not at all what they seemed to be.

His Golden Ticket one was pretty shitty, in retrospect. Maybe Jack just let him talk it out because eventually he'd pull it together into something reasonable. Ish.]

Nothing.

[Nothing that doesn't take a while to explain, nothing he's sure he can explain, nothing he can't fix by just not talking. Easy to not talk if he's drinking and sending his dog a look, his dog now muddier than he has any right to be and looking so happy for it.]

You sure? Seemed like there was a point in there someone I just couldn't keep up.

[She even likes Will enough that she's putting the fault on herself, rather than on him for being really fucking hard to understand.

Because if he did have a point, she'd like to hear it, he'll just need to dumb it down for her rather than use convoluted metaphors.]

[It's not something that she's alone in—honestly, it's a surprise no one has interrupted him before and asked him to either shut his fucking mouth or talk like a Goddamn normal person. Being rude never pays off, but still.]

Have you been to any of the cities here that you knew back where you're from? [A better starting point than ridiculous salad.] Used to live in this place here in Virginia, Wolf Trap. It looks mostly the same. The population, the way the land is—different buildings and businesses, but it's. Almost what I know. It's familiar but it's, it's wrong. [He has yet to do anything like ask or go where his house should be, uncertain if he'll find just a clean stretch of land, if he'll find a grocery store, if he'll find a house that looks like his but isn't, the owner unwilling to sell.] Sometimes the types people I should know, should be familiar with—it's the same way. It's right but it's completely wrong.

[That's one part of it, at least. Right but wrong. Meet an actual FBI agent, she mentions something about X-Files, a department in the basement, something he has no clue about. FBI? He knows that. That's right. X-Files and everything else? He has no idea. That's wrong.

Not wrong in the negative way, but wrong to what he knows. Different.]

[That makes more sense, and she nods to let him know that she's following along this time.]

Loki's here.

[It isn't the long explanation that Will gave, because Kara's never been particularly wordy and has gotten even less so with age. And anyway, she's sure what she's said will be enough for Will to understand. Loki's here, but he isn't Loki from her world, and it's wrong.]

[He does get it, as much (and more, in his own right) as possible. There had once been a younger version of Hannibal Lecter, with an extra finger and eyes that didn't light up quite right, from a different period of time altogether. He'd been something like nervous to see the one he knew (thought he knew), but when it had come to that younger, not right Hannibal Lecter...it was a bit of a trial.]

You hang out with gods back where you're from?

[No judgment. Curiosity, and something like impressed. That's sort of really cool, isn't it?]

They were my gods.

[That isn't quite the answer Will's probably looking for, but Kara isn't quite sure how to explain it. She lets out a sigh and busies herself with her cigarette for a moment, though it's clear she's planning to say more.

Eventually:]

I followed them, worshiped them. Never really met Loki 'cause he wasn't, you know. [one of the good ones.] But he's here, and it's different. Strange.

[She mentions gods, and Will looks up at the sky for a second, busies himself with another swig from a too-full glass while she fiddles with her cigarette. There's more to come and if he's patient and doesn't say anything, he'll get it. It's a little like fishing, only with no lures or waders and more him just keeping his mouth shut. Which he does.

He's had a few short conversations with Loki, seen the mentions of him on the network, but his opinion is pretty undecided. Probably pretty worthless to anyone, too, so why bother?]

Used to read stories about the gods when I was younger. Watered down ones you find in the libraries for kid readers, you know. [He assumes she has some idea. Will never veered too much into the mythological, picked up a few books and moved along to something else. Not his brand.] Seemed like there was a bunch of ways to worship. Follow. And they all had their own thing. [How does one worship a fertility deity other than...] Did you get to pick and choose or was it...kind of did something for all of them?

[A kid who moved all over the Bible belt, where worship was going to church on Sundays, maybe Wednesdays, and staying straight edge and clean and praying over meals and tithing. Tithing even when the money wasn't there, told that God would provide. Would return it. There would be safety if one could only believe and give up everything under His care. For a kid who had problems with knowing how many holes his socks could get before he must go after a new pair, that didn't seem so reasonable. What, would he tithe and a church leader hand him a fresh bag of socks? No, of course not. And what's the point of getting some church family when he's just going to move in a few months?

Better to wander into their open houses, their dinners, their free meals from time to time and listen to whatever they have to say while filling his belly. While making sure that his father had one less meal to worry about providing.

Will's ideas of worship are a scattered mess, his views on anything of true godhood not something easily shared or digested by most who would hear it, but that doesn't mean he can't listen to someone else talk about it. Especially someone who has experience with what could be considered legitimate gods as opposed to.

Well.

Completely out of their damn mind humans who want to be something they never can.]

Bit of both.

[It's weird to talk about this; she usually doesn't go into mythology too much with humans, because that would involve showing too much about herself, and other supernatural beings either know already or have their own gods, which means they couldn't care less about hers.

But Will is... Will. So she'll explain.]

Odin is the All-Father, so we all worshipped him. And all the Valkyries followed his orders, even though Freyja was the one who made us. Some of us. She's the goddess of war, death, fertility, love, beauty. Thor is the god of storms and strength, along with other things, but mostly we associated him with protecting us. Others are more specific, Baldr is the god of light, Bragi of poetry, Sif is the goddess of earth, Forseti the god of justice, Týr is the god of glory and law.

[That's a lot of words, for Kara, and she isn't even done, but she takes a sip of her drink before continuing, trying to think what to say next.]

We could make sacrifices to them or call upon them, depending on what we needed. Lots of sacrifices to Odin, Thor, Freyr, and Freyja would be made before battle. To Ægir to watch over those going to sea. Freyja, for those wanting to conceive. They couldn't always listen, but sometimes they did.

[With a shrug, she finishes off her drink and lapses into silence, feeling self-conscious for having said so much.]

Edited (okay i'm done sorry) 2014-09-20 05:22 (UTC)

[Will being Will is the thing that gets him in the most trouble. This isn't trouble—hanging out with a shield maiden could, in the end, result in trouble, same as living with an undead wolf, but he'll take his chances. It's nice to hear someone speak of their gods (or any deity) in a way that's not bitter, that's not a sign he should be noticing as something malicious. He's doesn't stare at her as she speaks, but his looking off isn't disinterest or a sign she's talking too much. It's Will being Will. Again.]

That's a lot of gods. [And there's more she hasn't mentioned, he assumes. So many more.] Sacrifices like...cows and sheep and cattle sort of sacrifices? [When that muddy dog finally makes his way over to Will, he shifts just enough so that can he flop down right next him, unconcerned about dirtying his clothes or hands or anything else. The question isn't slow to come out of fear, out of horror at the idea of human sacrifice. He's trying to think of how to word it, nothing else. Which doesn't really matter, he realizes, because Kara knows what he's getting at, and sugarcoating it doesn't seem like her brand. So.] Humans? A mix?

[A mix. Like a bag of salad.]

[She knows what he's getting at; it's something a lot of people ask out of morbid curiosity, and she knows what their reaction will be, though she's not sure if Will's reaction will be the same. He's been different so far.]

Mostly animals. We'd hold a blót where we'd cook the sacrificed animals, share the meal with our gods.

[This is important to her, and it comes across in how she speaks. She misses it, those events, and it's been a long time since she thought of her family and her people and the things they shared.]

Human sacrifice was rarer, but it happened. Sometimes slaves, sometimes volunteers, sometimes leaders.

[It would be impossible for him to miss that this is something she takes seriously, that in between the cursing and what might be seen as a flippant attitude, there's nothing about her gods and old world that she doesn't hold in high regard. That while they may have faded into "myth" and "legend" and "never existed" from what he knows, they're real to her. If he had been inclined to sneer or cringe at human sacrifice, that would have been enough to keep it bay.

But he's not inclined to do that so much, and it's not the fact of the matter that humans were sacrificed that hits him the most out of everything she's said. It's the kinds she mentions, that's what has his eyebrows knitting together and him looking torn between confused and surprised.]

Leaders were used as human sacrifice? [That's different, the focal point. Interesting.] That's a nice change of pace.

[Actually none of it is really all that nice, but none of it can be changed. It's history, in his world, in many of them. And yet to hear that much...it's a fun little tidbit. Of course, whether leaders chose to be sacrificed or whether they were sacrificed to make room for someone better, he doesn't know. But that might be too much to ask.]

Usually don't. Get that sort of thing across whenever human sacrifices pop up in— [He waves that glass as he looks for the word. Movies. Books. TV. Really morbid Hallmark cards.] —anything.

[It's always slaves being sold and people who don't want to do it, isn't it.]

If things were bad...

[She pauses again, lifting a shoulder in a half shrug as she tries to find the words to describe it properly. She might have spent centuries with English, but it still isn't her native tongue, and sometimes, especially talking about how things used to be, she struggles.]

We had some choice in who led us. If we didn't like them, they could be killed, replaced, so they had to be strong and well liked. But if things under them were bad, crops and wars and famine, sometimes we'd sacrifice them to Odin, to end the bad luck that came with their rule.

[Most people would call it barbaric, would call it murder, and she knows that. But it was done, and with people she trust, she won't lie about it or cover it up to make it seem nicer than it was.]

[Will's first language is English, and he still has plenty of trouble with it. After a casual reminder that choosing words was to be done carefully because each of them had meaning and agenda and finding out that the ones he took for good meant the opposite? He's grown a little more careful himself. Her struggling is noted without him making that obvious.

Barbaric. Murder. Not really anything unusual. He teaches it, talks about it openly, makes a paycheck with it. The reasoning behind it is important, and human sacrifice to get rid of a bad leader and a bad situation...one of the better ones.]

Do you miss that? [His eyebrows lift as he asks, curious but not in the sense that he wants more in-depth details about human sacrifice.] Nowadays, we sit around with our thumbs up our asses waiting on votes or someone to step down while they technically still hold office unless they really screw it up. Plagues would multiply and cover the entire continent by the time we booted whoever it was out with the systems as they are.

[He's not saying it's a better idea. He's not saying he agrees with it. But for someone who lived in times like hers, going to times like the ones he knows...he could step in the shoes and imagine some of the aggravation with how much can be gotten away with only for the bad to retire with limitless funds and protection and never want for anything, no matter how badly they might have fucked a nation (or two, or five, or more) over.]

It's different now. The gods aren't watching.

[That might not have been the reason he was expecting it to be different, but it's - true. There's no point in sacrificing people to gods that aren't really there, it won't change anything.]

Still wish your politicians were held accountable for the shit they do. But it ain't my world anymore. [She lives in it, but she doesn't belong to it, doesn't follow it's rules.] And the leaders I gotta listen to are too powerful to do jack shit about.

[The gods aren't watching—as much as he can suppress a nod of his head, a quick exhale of what would stand in place of a laugh, he can't prevent the odd hardening of his face that comes with those words, can only change it by taking another drink. If any gods were watching over his world, he wouldn't know about it. Just people society classifies as psychopaths without understanding what that means, monsters who want to be more. No gods looking out? He can believe it.]

Tracked this one guy, couple months ago, had a thing for God. [The way he looks up, points one finger idly, it's all the extra effort he puts forth into making it clear he means a specific, supposedly one and only type of God.] We talked about Vikings, the way he strung them up. Made angels out of them, gave them wings—the Blood Eagle. Chose criminals, gifted them a transformation in return for their lives. Their prayers over him as he slept. [For the fact of the matter that Will worked this case, he talks about it distantly enough, technically, like he might with a classroom that he doesn't want to assume their teacher is about to dive off the deep end because the line of work they're all trying to get into is a horrifying, outrageous nightmare. That he didn't nearly quit his job and go play with boats because it was getting to be too much just the evening before class, that he in no way hallucinated a conversation with a dead killer he related to in uncomfortable ways.] Did some looking up on the Norse then. [Gruesome, bloody topic, and yet he manages one of those grimace-smiles when he looks back at her.] And you just told me way more than I learned then.

[There's little grimace left now.]

Thank you.

[Completely genuine gratitude, that, and not at all because of the morbid details gleaned.]

Blood eagle ain't worth nothing unless they don't scream.

[There's an edge in her voice, not anger at Will, but at the idea of someone taking a practice that meant something and using it for their own ends, like some bullshit torture.

She looks away, jaw tense as she shrugs, not sure what to do with her anger when there isn't somewhere to direct, and not sure what to do with that thank you from Will, either. A shrug is all she can give.]

I don't think there was much screaming. If any. Two of them, he did in a hotel room. If there'd been real screaming, it would've— [That is nothing reassuring, he realizes halfway through it, stops himself, tries to find a way to explain it without possibly pissing on a ritual further.] —it wasn't actually that. It was reminiscent of it. He was—he was making his angels from secular sources. They weren't accurate to any one thing. It was a brain tumor in someone who'd never religious.

[The way Will talks about him has a distinct lack of loathing that some might expect, sounds like he's been doing this work a long, long time. That's the easiest way to take it, not that Will relates to this angel maker. Uncomfortably more so now.]

But we found him. He— [morbid train coming through] —turned himself into an angel, strung up in a barn. He's out of the picture now.

[Because he's extremely dead, not because Will actually caught him. But hey, at least he's not massacring pagan rituals, right?]

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