[PRP] The End (Vivien/Chester)

[Smerdle]

If things didn't go just so, Chester had, what, seven or eight months left to live? And yet here he was, wandering into an art gallery of all places, his thoughts elsewhere. In his defense, he hadn't known the world as he knew it would be coming to an end when he'd chosen this elective, and there was no way he was leaving this cycle with slipping grades. Just one paper on one surrealist painter and he would be done.

He shifted his bag's strap higher on his shoulder and focused, pulling himself out of his own mind and turning on his shriveled art critiquing skills.  

[shibrogane]

Unfortunately, it seemed he focused himself right the ******** out of the art gallery he'd meant to go to. Chester's next footstep cracked something, and as his weight settled the cracking noises just continued.

"Well, that wasn't supposed to happen," said the young woman watching the gallery. She had an old textbook propped up on her knees that advertised an incredibly old coding style and had a picture of a moth on a punchcard on the cover. "Hi. I'm Vivien. What's up?"

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

He had walked himself right into the otherworld many times since the first, but never quite like this. Chester wasn't even sure this was the same place, but it wasn't the gallery he had intended to visit, and therefore it earned a sigh as he crackled forward toward a strangely familiar woman. She was translucent and vague. She was a child on the beach. She was Vivien, apparently, and she was neither of those things right now.

"It certainly was not." He was resigned more than frustrated. "I was about to begin some research. Get one last paper done before the end of..." My life. "...the semester."

He glanced at her book. Was that moon code? Lunar landing stuff? He'd never actually seen a entire book of it. "I'm Chester Poole."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Nice to meet you, Chester Poole," said Vivien. She leaned back into her chair, crossed her legs underneath her and regarded him. "But I get the feeling that you're not just meeting me for the first time. Have you met me before?"

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"Yes." He saw no need to be cagey if she already knew. "At a ball in the Court of the Sorrowful One. And at a bonfire in 1969. We jumped into the void." He laughed through his nose, shaking his head. It sounded ridiculous out loud.

"It's nice to meet you too."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"At the cliff face," said Vivien, nodding slowly. "Am I right?"

She smiled. It wasn't a scary smile. It was, you know, just a smile. "It's rare that people who haven't differentiated their powers can find me," she said. "Usually a much stronger link to the magic is needed. Wargs seem to have the best luck... So this must be kismet." She laughed at the idea. "Are you gonna stand there all awkwardly, Mr. Atlas, or are you gonna sit down?"

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

The back of his neck tingled at her words, and Chester quickly found a seat before the blotchy pinkness could spread to his face. Luckily, the other things she'd said distracted him from his embarrassment well enough, though he did clear his throat before he replied.

"Yes, the cliff face. Was that really you? Meaning the you here now, not one from another cycle." The Vivien in front of him was far too young at the moment to have been the age she had been in the sixties, but he was hopeful. If this one had that one's memories, maybe he didn't have to forget either.

"My link is strong," he almost muttered, unlooping his bag and resting it at his feet. Differentiating didn't make you stronger, did it? He packaged up his resentment over the possibility and shoved it away. "But kismet. Yes. It seems that way."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Vivien cocked her head to the side. "That offended you," she said. "The reference to differentiation." She sidestepped the question about whether she'd been the one at the cliff face, choosing instead to focus on Chester's comment about his link to the magic. "Why?"

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

Offended? Was he? Probably. He sat up straighter, not meeting her eyes again until he had considered his words. "Because I've studied very hard, and if someone can just offer themself up to a werewolf and gain more power than I have earned, it would be... disappointing." He wasn't being fair to the people who hadn't wanted these changes—Preacher's grammarless listserv post came to mind—but fairness rarely came into play when feelings were involved.

"Unless a link is something else?" He didn't see how it could be. Strong was strong and weak was weak, at least where things like magic were concerned.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Hmmm," said Vivien, tilting her head to the other side, then back, and then to the other side again, like she was thinking. "How to explain this..."

She seemed to hit on something pretty quickly, because she adjusted her position to be sitting up straighter. Like a TA going from your-buddy mode to teacher mode. Unfortunately for Chester, this TA believed in the Socratic method: "So, you know baseball, right? Say you have a man on first and a man on third. Who's more likely to make it to home? Who has to expel less effort to get there?"

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"The man on third." Chester hated baseball, but he certainly knew it. "Unless the rules change mid-game and anyone can run for home. Then they're equally as likely." He relaxed a bit, appeased by the acquisition of knowledge no matter how it was presented.

Even if the lesson here was that he was substandard.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Right," said Vivien. "But is it possible, within the rules, for the man on third to ******** it up entirely, and not get to home at all? Could the person on first still theoretically make it to home?"

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"Unless the runner on third was struck out or injured badly enough to be removed from the game, the person on first could never pass them without being struck out themselves." Was he the guy on first base, capable of amassing an enormous amount of skill but only able to get as close to magic as the differentiated would allow?

"Beyond that, the man on third couldn't mess things up in a way that wouldn't break the game. He couldn't just wander off. The person on first would still be stuck behind him."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Yes," said Vivien, who seemed to be going somewhere with this. "That's where the analogy kind of falls apart, fortunately. The difference here is that it's possible for the man on first base--the undifferentiated man, you--to pass the man on third base. Not only can you pass him with a little more work, you can also do things he can't. You aren't limited by the fact that you're on a base at that particular point. The differentiated man, the noble or the were or the warg? All he can do is run the bases. You could pitch, or catch in the outfield, or whatever."

She paused for a minute, and then admitted, "I'm not really a sports person. I'm a computer programmer. Or I would be, if I was alive."

She leaned towards Chester. "The undifferentiated don't have a lesser bond with magic. They have a different bond with magic. The undifferentiated are what created the weres and the wargs and the nobles. You could do something similar, if you wanted to work hard for it--but those who have a class or a role or whatever you want to call it? They're evolutionary dead ends, too specialized to survive in the wild."

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

Chester hadn't truly smiled since he'd arrived, not even when he'd loosed his cynical chuckle, but as Vivien's allegory continued, the corners of his mouth crept higher and his eyes crinkled with the barest fraction of the amusement and relief he felt.

"I was a mechanical engineer once. And your analogy was perfect." It made him feel lighter, happier than he had been since before the ball, when everything had been new and full of possibilities instead of endings.

"Do you know what's happening outside?" Because she was dead, and while that explained a few things, it made a mystery of so many others. "Is there truly time to create anything when I won't remember what I was in the middle of? I mean, I've never been more excited to be an outfielder, but nobles seem to have the advantage here when it comes to long term projects."

shibr0gane