(no subject)

[cheerleader]

Who: Claire Bennet & Will Graham
What: being the most awesome people you will ever meet
When: Late on Night 467
Where: Odin 112
Rating: Probably PG-13, just to be safe. These two talk about really great things.



[She thinks she's doing well, for being in yet another new place, this time living with a bunch of guys she doesn't really know as well as she probably should. But no matter how well she assumes she's doing, the truth is pretty depressing. She tries sleeping, but can't escape nightmares and paranoid thoughts of things that might happen to her here in Asgard. It's ridiculous, and she knows it, but she's been conditioned to never rest and get comfortable enough, because something really shitty might happen at any given second.

She hasn't been living with Will and the others for all that long yet, but hasn't managed an actual night of sleep in any of the nights she's been around. Despite her relatively bubbly talk to them over the bracelet, her attitude in person is more cautious and detached. She keeps to herself, unless she's in the mood to put on a happy face and bother them about something pointless. And since many of those moods haven't struck her just yet, she's holed herself away in her room and only really has emerged at night.

Tonight's no different, a nightmare related to Nathan being killed pulls her out of sleep with a shout. Worried that someone might hear and come in and check up on her, she tiptoes out of her room and into the kitchen. Where she finds something decent to snack on, and busies herself with sitting up on the counter and toying around with her shadow. One of the larger dogs sleeps on the floor at her feet, relatively undisturbed.

Her power is fascinating this time around, much less traumatizing than getting flight. There's no daddy issues to sort out now, and she's freely able to tug up at her shadow and start attempting to transform it into a small wolf-like dog creature. She's not sure it really fits her, though, and flattens it back out to its original shape with a swipe of her hand. What she tries to construct then is a bird, something that resembles a phoenix.

There's a sound of someone else up and moving that gets her to stop what she's doing midway, and looks over toward the doorway.]

And here I thought I was the only one who kept really weird hours around here.

Comments

[infomodder]

[Will never woke up shouting, as far as he knew. Bursting into water? Sure. He might have shouted a bit in his cell at the Baltimore State Home for the Criminally Insane, but that information never reached his ears. He imagined if he had, he'd be one of the first to know. Sit inside that dunking booth and be asked what he was shouting about, if he was shouting at something or someone in particular. Sat there and quietly zoned out, went fishing, gave Chilton absolutely nothing he wanted until it gave Will something in return.

Of course, that would require Will to sleep more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. Shouting didn't wake him. Snorting, hooves against the floor? Brought him to pretty quickly. He hears her and makes no move to check up on her, figures she'll knock on a door if it was bad enough to make her seek out social interaction. But he cannot at all deny the growling in his scarred gut that has him staring at the smallest dog on his bed like a Goddamn child in time-out. Can he go now, can he go now, can he go now? He realizes he can go whenever he wants. He lives here, too, had helped pull strings to secure it in the first place. All he has to do is pull on a pair of pajama pants (it's the middle of the night, for fuck's sake, and he the whole "I have brothers" thing he might get if he appeared in his boxers isn't something he cares to deal with) and run his fingers through his hair a few times before he makes his way out. He doesn't know if anyone's informed her of his diet or what had happened to him not long before she moved in, and he's not sure if that's a good conversation to have right off the bat. First in-depth conversation involving their cannibalism experiences and Will's former diet. That seems a little gauche, even to someone who has problems being sociable on Will's level.

Not that anyone matches him, but still.]

Sorry to burst your bubble, Claire. [He doesn't sound sorry because he isn't, spares her a glance to say as much if that droll mutter doesn't get it across, takes in a bird (phoenixes are following him, apparently) without making that obvious, and heads to the pantry. He'd go for something on the bottom shelf if bending wasn't an odd sensation, so he's stuck staring at a bag of mixed nuts. It's not meat, so it might as well be ambrosia. There's no concern if she finds it rude when he pours some into his hand and shoves it into his mouth in one go, and even less when he doesn't hesitate to talk as he chews. Satan visited him in the hospital, got on the bed with him and his three-headed hellbeast, what did he have to care about in regards to what people thought of him anymore?] Not sure my hours count as hours. One of those...sleep fifteen minutes at a time, maybe thirty if I'm lucky types.

[He hadn't wanted to do much with healing, insult that it was. Stuck working with shadows when he'd spent so much time working next to darkness and playing along that he was going to join it, Hel was an insult, too. He just had to get over that and learn to deal with it. That was easier with someone else in the same house, even if she was young. It was easier to share toy with shadows when he had a partner who wasn't waiting on him to bring the long pig, which was he barely seemed to pay much attention to his own shadow as he manipulated it, a small feathered stag that took interest in whatever Claire shared next as he moved to lean against the counter, unable to sit up on it without looking like he's ready to vomit.]

[cheerleader]

[One eyebrow quirks up at his eating habits, and the other curves upward when he speaks. She's lived with her brother Lyle for most all her life. She's seen disgusting boys at their worst, so this really isn't all that awful. It actually puts her at ease, because it makes Will seem more approachable, more normal. Well, as close to normal as people like them can get.]

Great, so you have sleep problems too.

[He's a lot like her in quite a few ways, and while normal people would find their similarities disturbing, she just thinks they make Will a pretty upstanding citizen. An upstanding citizen that didn't look very comfortable with trying to find a comfortable position to stand and talk in.

She doesn't focus on him for long, though, because there's a second shadow animal in the kitchen. The sight of the stag gets her to squash her phoenix down to nothing. As if it's a real animal, she holds her hand out and clicks her tongue softly, so it can come in closer and get to know her.]

He's beautiful.

[Her voice is soft and thoughtful as she muses it over, eyes scanning over the stag. She wonders why Will's chosen to create this particular animal, but she figures it's a pretty personal matter. So she doesn't question it, and instead moves her hand about to turn her shadow into something else. It's a smallish bear, one that probably isn't bigger than an older cub. It's a little too cute, so she equips it with giant claws and fangs. It's only then that she laughs a little, and sends it over to bother Will's stag.]

At least being up late together means we can figure out this power stuff. I like this better than flight, so I don't mind working with it.

[infomodder]

[The comment about his sleep has him looking back at her with an expression that, if coupled with words, would only need a duh. Will's had sleep problems far longer than he's been in Asgard; it's not bragging or one-upping, it's just a part of him, same as that little shadow stag with its odd shape and feathers that she's just called beautiful.

That's enough to turn his attention back to it as she takes interest, eyebrows furrowed. He's tried a dog or two, but ever since he returned? He knew exactly what anything he could make needed to be, knew that if it worked without his waking thoughts, that if magic misfired again in a way that was influenced by the individual, there was only one thing it could be. Animal-wise, at any rate. He'd refused to let it turn into the other thing that plagued him, that stared at him as he laid on a bloody floor, that came to him in nightmares, that looked across from him in court and called Will a friend. The stag was all the reminder he needed.]

Should see him when he's as big as he used to be. Big as I knew him to be. Pull stuff or ride him like a horse big. Jack of all trades. [Pull rope around a monster's neck until it was enough to kill him. Skewer with antlers, set on fire. Destroy bodies like some bear and wolf had a bastard love child that turned into a deer somehow. Oh yes, that little beautiful stag could do anything it wanted. Or, more accurately, anything Will wanted. The more he'd made it, the more it had started acting of its own accord, which reflected Will and someone else to a degree he wasn't fully comfortable with and didn't care to study. Faced with Claire, the stag made a few motions easy to read: his head bowed as nostrils flared, a hoof pawed at the floor, ears swiveled from defensive to offensive to neutral. He wasn't going to touch her, but he came close anyway.] Used to have healing. Morbid as it sounds, like this better than that, so I don't mind working with it.

[He really doesn't mind it at all, continues eating like nothing out of the ordinary is going on. He's contemplating pulling out some candles and turning the lights off and ignoring the his shadow as it sniffs at the bear and dances around it like he's not sure what to make of it.]

What was wrong with flight?

[Blurted out around a mouthful of nuts, looking off at the wall but unfocused on anything easily spotted. What could have gone wrong with flight? Other than that time everything fouled up and Whale had probably nearly broken his back with it.]

[cheerleader]

It's the power my dad had, back home. My biological father, I mean.

[Which probably isn't much of an explanation, but it's probably pretty easy to tell she has daddy issues pouring out of her. So she allows that to be all for a few moments, and takes some more time to admire Will's shadow animal. She can only imagine being able to ride on something way more majestic and impressive than she is. But it's better to imagine that than think of Nathan. She's still not over Sylar killing him and parading around wearing her dad's face for nearly a year.

But, as things tend to go with her, talking about her dad makes her think exactly of what she doesn't want to. Which only serves to frustrate her and make her angry, to the point her hands are balled up into fists and she's left glaring over at her stupid shadow bear. In a matter of seconds, she destroys it down to nothing, and it ends the same way her phoenix had. ]

I didn't get to know him until I was fifteen. He...died a year or so ago.

[Daddy issues definitely killed the flight power for her, and opened up a new world of messy in letting Will get to know her better. Everyone in Asgard has powers, but she knows that not everyone comes from a version of Earth where people with abilities exist. It's basically opening up your arms and shouting HEY I COME STRAIGHT FROM A COMIC BOOK.

At least Will doesn't seem the type to mind that sort of thing, and she's grateful for it.]

So shadows. Shadows are safe. Maybe if we work hard enough, you can make him as big as he is back home. It'd come in useful for the things that happen here.

[infomodder]

[Fathers and daughters, daughters not getting to know their fathers until they were older, fathers not being there, issues ran deep on both ends. He didn't need to see the tension in her fists to get how deeply it ran for her, didn't need to look at her very long or watch the bear destroyed to feel her anger. There's more to it than, perhaps, being born a bastard to a poor single mother, left behind by a man who didn't care. Or, perhaps, being the daughter of a mistress and ostracized for it. Orphaned entirely? A plethora of options that he chooses not to ask about, because it's too damn late to get into much of anything on stomachs that have nothing but crappy snacks in them.

Harder to fiddle with shadows with as much as light as there is, which is why he goes back to the pantry and sets the bag away (he's still paying her attention, not ignoring her), pulls out three candles for if the power goes out, a box of matches, and makes his way to turn off the main light. The one over the sink is all that's left until he can get those candles up and running, the stag morphing to match Will's now that it's dimmer.]

He's not real. [Straight from a comic book? No, he doesn't mind. Why would he? He could not think of a single comic book involving cannibals; it must have been nice, in its own way. He's too focused on setting up the candle at good points for an exercise in shadows, lighting them while looking at the wicks, the dog in the room about as bothered by the change as he's bothered by anything she could say.] He's a hallucination. Nightmare. Turned him into something helpful later on. Almost watched him die. [Maybe he did die. Maybe Will's dead. Maybe they're both dead, though if Will's alive, that stag is going to be something different, something different than it is even now.] Us Average Joes can do the same to their kids. Other people's kids. Build them up or tear them down—try the bear again, send her after mine.

[Us could be taken as men in general, Will's sort of men, the mundane and normal and ones who could not fly. It could also be taken as fathers; she can read into what she wants. He's getting himself some whiskey, paying his shadow no attention. Doesn't need to. The stag's got Will down enough to know how to behave.

He couldn't teach Abigail to fish. He couldn't teach Claire to use her shadow. Better yet, this last one? They could learn together.]