faderift | now the world is only white noise

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now the world is only white noise

WHO: Chloe Price and yoooooooou
WHAT: Chloe's suffering from some exaggerated anger & stubbornness, looks a bit blue, and doesn't particularly cared for being forgotten. Alternative title: Graffiti The Shit Out Of Things
WHEN: During Phase II - IV
WHERE: The Gallows because lol where else
NOTES: idk like... swearing and stuff is pretty norm for her, some mentions of previous abandonment issues/parental death.

[ A ] i'll set fire to this whole place (phase ii)

Chloe wasn't unfamiliar with people suddenly gaining abilities, exactly; between the freaky shit that happened with Rachel that could or could not have been some kind of weirdly elemental driven bullshit, and then Max literally getting the ability to rewind time out of nowhere, it was becoming kind of a Thing in her life. What she wasn't used to, though, was being the one to have them.

Specifically, she wasn't used to being the one to accidentally set shit on fire without meaning to, and it was freaking her out more than just a little. She wanted it to go away because what if she accidentally burned down Kirkwall? It's not like she hadn't seen fires start and get out of control before. It was gonna be her fault and she was gonna get in way more trouble than she ever had before and shit, shit, shit --

In her panic, she'd accidentally set some of the papers she'd been trying to sketch on aflame, making her groan and quickly try and put out. "When's this gonna stop?"

[ B ] i don't even care about my house (phase iii)

She was more than relieved when it finally went away. More than ready to no longer have to put up with smelling like smoke and hoping that she didn't actually burn someone just because she got too flustered. It felt like maybe she'd get a break, a respite from what felt like non-stop symptoms since the moment she'd gotten here, except that her skin never stopped being blue and she was getting pretty sick of it at that point. She'd started cracking jokes about trying to match her hair just to make herself feel a little better.

It didn't seem like anything weird was happening, but the longer her skin remained that awful color, the more angry she got about it. The hotter her temper flared, the more agitated she became at the idea of not finding a cure. The crystals saying that it could lead to death certainly weren't helping anything and she found herself wanting to reply asking if announcing that kind of severity was a normal thing for the healthcare providers in Thedas, despite the reality of mass panic and --

Whatever.

What did she care?

She continued to try and preoccupy herself with drawing. She could be found in various places around the Gallows, trying to get some semblance of freedom despite the quarantine by not staying in her room, charcoal in hand, paper in front of her, and looking... well, probably anything but approachable, given the tension that radiated off of her and the scowl on her face. Anyone who wanted to approach probably did so at their own peril.

[ C ] don't know how i'll ever break this curse (phase iii)

The agitation was not helped by people forgetting about Rifters. She didn't have a lot of people she was close to here, exactly, but there were at least one or two people who should have recognized her face and regardless, people had been fairly consistent about at least acknowledging the existence of Rifters, good or bad.

Being ignored was something that made her stomach churn. Memories of Max abandoning her, fear of her mother forgetting about her like she seemed to have forgotten about her dead husband, an entire school pretending she was mute so they didn't have to talk to her.

So Chloe was doing the only thing she knew how when it came to coping with her anger; destructive behavior. Not drinking, this time - no, it was more destruction of other stuff, primarily in the form of graffiti where she could manage to actually partake in it. It hadn't taken much to mix together a bit of black paint, using her fingers as a brush. A general 'fuck this place' sort of attitude having overcome her as she filled blank walls with sometimes not the most friendly of images or words. Probably easy enough to wash off since she hadn't exactly found a decent binder in this place, but someone really ought to stop her before she did too much and got herself in trouble.

Or maybe they could catch her and get in her trouble regardless. It would be her luck.

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She flexed and clenched her hand a few times, even as Fern managed to pull the door open, as though stretching it out would somehow make it work like it's supposed to again. The longest it's lasted thus far is five minutes. She can handle not touching anything for five minutes, right?

And then she sees Fern has a bag and she knows the polite thing to do would be asking her if she wants her to take that and fuck. Of course.

"What?" The question hadn't fully registered, like she'd been too busy focusing on what was in her hands to listen, but the words sunk and she quickly shakes her head immediately after the question. "No - no, it's fine. I'm just... out of sorts. What's up?"

That's a clear enough invitation. Fern's small smile strengthens, and she comes further into the room, but rather than hold the bag out to Chloe, she sets it on the nearest available surface and goes rummaging around in it.

"Nothing, really," she assures her, "I just brought something for you. I thought..." She trails off long enough to make a small sound of frustration as whatever it is she's digging for seems to evade her grasping fingers; really, this bag isn't that big, where could it possibly--

"--ah, here." And she withdraws a bit of paper that has been folded up into a square. Unfolding it reveals a rather cartoonish drawing of a blue-haired girl meeting a stubborn-looking mule. (Evidently, if she'd taken any formal art classes, she'd have known not to fold her work up like that.)

Sheepishly, she offers it out to Chloe. "...Since you drew me something already."

The fact that she'd brought her anything had been touching enough - she was far from used to getting presents. She's not sure how to watch her search without hovering so she stays where she is, arms folded over her torso so she doesn't have to think of what to do with her hands (someday she would learn how to stand still without fidgeting them) and waits until she hears the ah, here.

When she sees the drawing, her first instinct was to tell her how folding ruins the art, but then she actually sees it and there's something of a lump in her throat for a moment for some reason. Maybe it's the exhaustion catching up to her or the emotional turmoil that came with the fear of being forgotten and having something that specifically shows she's not handed out to her, but there's some kind of emotional reaction to a drawing of herself and that cranky animal.

Trying to swallow back those feelings, she went to reach out to take it and --

Her hand goes right through again with an immediate, angry, "Shit." She drags her hands over her face after (at least she can still touch herself, she guesses), frustration evident. "Just -- put on the table or something, I'll hang it later."

Chloe's hand passes right through the paper and, to her credit, Fern doesn't spook like Rooster did that one time a leaf happened to float into his peripheral vision. Her eyes do widen, however, and she looks from the artwork in her grasp up to Chloe's face. "Maker," she starts to swear softly, then turns to quickly approach the table and set the drawing down, because really, sorting out where to hang it isn't a priority at this very moment, is it?

With that done she turns quickly back to her friend, her eyebrows drawn into a deep furrow, and takes a few steps towards her. "I'm so sorry this is happening," she blurts out and covers her mouth with one hand immediately after, because what good does a dumb platitude like that do anyway? "What--what can I do--? Can I do anything..?"

"Not unless you've got a cure for this stupid disease hiding around somewhere." She hadn't meant for it to come out so snappy, a sigh escaping her almost immediately after, her head hanging as she tried to figure out what to even offer. "It'll... clear up in a few minutes." She figured that reassurance was the best she had. How it was reassuring was beyond her, because it also would come back, or maybe not disappear at all this time for all she knew.

She looked at her hands for a moment, watching them as they seemed like they were already fading just slightly more than the last time. "Y'know it's getting to the point where I almost don't care anymore? Like it's just... fine. I was invisible back home, why not literally be that way here too?" She wasn't sure if the growing apathy inside of her was related to the disease, but it was certainly... something.

She immediately recoils some from Chloe's tone--it's hard not to--but the anger isn't really directed at her, which becomes clear enough seconds later. Biting down on her lip, Fern hovers anxiously, uselessly nearby for another moment, watching Chloe go from pushing her hands over her face to staring at them as though they've personally betrayed her. Maybe they have.

"Y'know it's getting to the point where I almost don't care anymore? Like it's just... fine. I was invisible back home, why not literally be that way here too?"

"No." The word comes out of Fern with uncharacteristic firmness, but there's an edge of desperation tinging the edge of her voice too. She takes a step over to Chloe and--well, she can't take her friend's hands, but she can stand in front of her and fix her with a look that she can only hope is as determined as she needs for it to be. "No, it's not fine. You.. you can't say that, you can't possibly mean it. You're not invisible. You're real, you're--you're one of the realest people I've met since I've come to Kirkwall, and I--" Her voice catches, but her frustration is more than enough for her to push through it; no, she won't be bested by the swell of emotion in her chest now, "--I'd barely made any real friends since I got here. Just... lots of people older than me who think they know how I ought to behave, or how I ought to feel about being a mage or being an elf, or being poor, or not being able to read, and it's been lots of time spent listening to other people telling me what's best for me, until I met you. So you see you aren't invisible to me, no matter what. I see you. I see you."

She's quiet then, working her jaw and fidgeting her fingers together. Some of that determination begins to waver, finally, and she uncomfortably darts her eyes off to the side, before they move back to Chloe again.

She can't help the surprise on her face at the words, looking back up from her hands to Fern's now much closer face. Oh. She looked serious. She isn't sure what to say as she listens. She's never felt like she was real, like she made an impact on anyone, or been seen by anyone, because she guesses that short of Rachel and Max, she... hasn't. So she's quiet after, watching her fidget, look around in discomfort as the confidence that she'd had seconds ago seems to disappear entirely.

It's not fine, but it still feels fine, and she doesn't know how to fight that feeling in the moment.

So instead she focuses on some innocuous statement that didn't hold hardly any importance to the actual conversation, just so she's not leaving her with nothing; "You don't know how to read?" Why is that surprising to her? Why does that matter after all of that?

She cringes at herself, and as she shakes off that apathetic feeling, it's almost like her body starts to become more solid alongside it. "I - sorry. I don't - that doesn't matter. I'm -- ...Thank you. I'm trying to say thank you."

"You don't know how to read?"

Well, that's one way to get knocked out of the moment.

"I--" Fern starts, then flushes bright read and reaches up a hand instinctively to rub the side of her face, like that's somehow going to make this less awkward. Already Chloe is saying something else, words that don't quite reach her at first until, "...thank you. I'm trying to say thank you."

"It's all right," Fern replies nervously, hastily, still blushing. It's never felt quite so embarrassing, having her illiteracy pointed out to her before. She threads a bit of hair behind one ear, a nervous tick. "I know my letters, now," she volunteers almost in defence of herself, her eyes averted. "I just--never learned, growing up." They don't send little elf girls to school in rural Ansburg.

She feels like a jerk when she watches her blush, looking down at the ground and shoving her hands into her pockets as she listens to her defend herself against something that didn't need defending. Maybe she did want to disappear after all, because only a jerk latches on to someone not knowing how to read like it really matters. Plenty of people probably didn't, right?

"I could teach you."

Learning the letters was the hardest part, wasn't it? Probably not. She'd never actually helped teach someone something like that before. It's not usually in her to be generous.

If she was startled before, she's doubly startled now.

Uncertainly, she asks, "You would?" Then, after a pause, she smooths some of her tunic down (even though it doesn't really need it, it's just something for her to do with her hands). "I mean, I do have a teacher--his name is Casimir, he's one of the Tranquil mages..."

It sounds, she realizes, like she's saying no. She puts on another quick smile. "But, um," she adds, bites her lower lip, "I could always use help studying?"

Chloe's head shakes a little at the words Tranquil mages, given that she still has... no idea what any of it means. Mage she can figure out just fine thanks to a life of gaming, but the rest of it is still taking a while to sink in.

Either way, she gets the message - she has someone she can learn with already and there's a moment of her feeling stupid, looking like she was gonna say it was fine, cool, glad she had someone! I could always use help studying hits her ears before she can open her mouth, though, and it takes a second for her to realize that she meant her.

She could help her study.

"Oh - yeah, that's - I'm probably a better study partner than a teacher anyway," she said as she rubbed the back of her neck. "Although my teachers back home would laugh their asses off hearing me say that."

"Although my teachers back home would laugh their asses off hearing me say that."

Something about her tone makes Fern's smile spread, gaining warmth and losing the last edges of awkwardness, and she giggles. "Why would they do that?" she asks and looks genuinely perplexed. "Shouldn't they be pleased that you can read?" It doesn't occur to her that literacy is something that anyone, anywhere, would take for granted, considering only one member of her family knows his letters well enough to both read and write letters for the rest of them.

Well this is something she never thought she'd find herself explaining. Chloe's forehead wrinkled as she tried to think of how to explain public school in a place where it probably had no equivalent. "Well, I mean, where I'm from, school is mandatory for every kid until they're sixteen. Most people go through until at least eighteen because you can't actually do anything if you haven't graduated from high school. So most people kinda knows how to read by the time they're... Six? Seven maybe?" She shrugs, feeling somewhat sheepish about it all of a sudden. Like she should have appreciated it more.

"I got expelled, though. Twice, I guess, but one time they let me back in because I didn't actually do anything wrong. Except like - not. Going. I guess. I dunno, I stopped caring and just sort of blew it off."

Frowning quizzically, Fern is still trying to wrap her head around the idea of a world in which all children are able to attend school when Chloe gets to the last part, about her expulsion. "They made you leave?" she asks, and sounds as though this might be the worst aspect of Chloe's world that she's heard of so far: giving you the chance to learn something, and then ripping it away from you. No wonder, she decides, Chloe stopped caring about it afterwards. How could anyone possibly bring themselves to care about something if they know it could be ripped away from them at any moment?

(Well. There are plenty of holes she could poke in that argument, she realizes, but she won't, not now.)

"Yeah," she said with a nod, swinging her arms a little awkwardly. "I mean, I guess I kinda deserved it. I barely went to classes, I talked back to the teachers a lot, I ditched with Rachel and we kinda set a park on fire." She pauses when she realizes how that sounds. "It was an accident. Either way, after everything, plus messing with one of the school's star pupils when she tried to cheat off of me, I guess the head of the school just got sick of it."

Edited 2018-02-21 23:05 (UTC)

There is, Fern decides, so much about Chloe's world that she just doesn't understand, and the more explanation she hears, the more the confusion shows on her face. For a moment after Chloe is finished speaking, she shifts uncertainly and fidgets her fingers together.

"It all sounds so... different," she ventures with a hesitant, self-conscious little smile. As though afraid, on some level, that her clear ignorance of such things will make her somehow less interesting--

--wait. "A fire? You accidentally set a whole park on fire?"

"It is different," she said with a shrug, looking at her shoes again. Too different in a lot of ways, she was finding, and the longer she was in Kirkwall, the more apparent that became. It was hard to not feel like she stuck out, in a different way than she had in Arcadia Bay.

Maybe that's why she liked being around Fern, feeling a little normal, being treated like she wasn't a weird outsider but just someone to get to know and --

You accidentally set a whole park on fire? She cringed, rubbing the back of her neck, awkwardly laughing. That would be something to stick out, wouldn't it? "Y-Yeah uh... It was already dry out and there was a fire warning up. Rachel got pissed at..." She trailed off, pausing, hesitating - this wasn't really her story to tell, was it? "... some stuff that was going on outside of school and she lit this picture on fire and threw it in a trash can. But she ended up kicking the trash and it fell over and the sparks kinda flew and ended up in some trees? She was too angry to care. The wind picked up and it blew it out farther. And then fwoosh," she spread her hands out with the sound effect, like that was the sound fire made when it moved quickly, "no more park."

Edited 2018-02-22 20:10 (UTC)

At Chloe's illustrative fwoosh, Fern's eyes widen a touch and she leans back almost as though to avoid the heat of the blaze. (Her imagination might be a touch over-active.) Then, with a curious little smile, she admits, "That's... sort of how I came into my own magic, actually. How I found out I'm a mage. I mean, I didn't burn down a park but, you know."

No, silly, she doesn't know. With a nervous laugh of her own, Fern threads a bit of hair behind her ear--her chosen nervous tick, it seems--and admits, "I got so furious at one of my brothers for knocking over Rooster's feed trough in the barn once, and I just..." Blushing from embarrassment at retelling the story, like she's recounting some amateur error rather than a coming of age experience, she gives her hand a little flourish. "...set his hair on fire."

A pause, before she hastily adds with widening eyes, "It was an accident! And we dumped his head in the water trough right quick to put it out but, well." Her shoulders rise and fall in a little shrug, and she smiles again, sheepish. "Anyway, it was all about lying low and hiding from the Templars after that... Maker, listen at me going on--are you feeling any better? You know," you know, her eyes seem to say, "from before..?"

I just... set his hair on fire. The words get a full laugh out of her, one that almost makes her miss her saying it was an accident and how she'd gone about saving him. It felt good to laugh after the mood she'd been plagued with these past weeks, and even if she's still blue, and still disappearing at random, and going from thinking things were terrible to just not caring about... well, anything, Fern still manages to make her feel a little normal for a few moments.

No wonder she enjoyed spending time with her. Well, amongst other reasons, that she didn't want to admit, and she quickly pushed the thoughts from her head (how she could have them when she'd just been talking about Rachel --)

She wants to ask about why she had to lie and hide, but before she can pry for a history lesson fo any sorts, she's asking how she felt, and she quickly turns a slight shade of pink as she holds up her hands to prove she's become very much solid again. "Looks like it. For right now. It... comes and goes, I guess."

"As long as it goes," Fern ventures with another little smile as she looks back at Chloe, and it takes her a moment to realize that her gaze is lingering maybe a bit longer than it ought to. Promptly she clears her throat and again demonstrates that nervous tick by threading some hair behind one of her pointed ears, taking an interest in her shoes to hide her blush. "Well you must be exhausted after all of this," she says, the words bursting out of her in an awkward, ramble-y sort of way, "I really shouldn't keep you from resting. I did bring a bit more of that tea, though, just... just in case."

She smiles again, bites her lower lip, and then looks away. (This is so inappropriate, she shouldn't even be thinking any of these things--!)

"Oh - uh -" Exhausted. She guesses she was. Maybe? She didn't know what she felt, really. There wasn't that same hyperactivity that had come with the earlier flu symptoms, or the anger that had been there for a short time, but the apathy doesn't make her feel tired, it just doesn't make her feel anything.

That seems like a bit much to say out loud, though, so instead she settles with; "Yeah. Thanks. The tea will probably help a lot. Did last time." If she can stay corporeal long enough to make a pot and drink it. But it didn't matter because she'd thought to bring it in the first place and something about that makes her feel warm for the first time in weeks. "I - ... I really appreciate everything you've been doing for me, Fern. I hope you know that."

"I - ... I really appreciate everything you've been doing for me, Fern. I hope you know that."

On instinct Fern ducks her head some to hide the little smile that brings to her face, rubbing at the side of her neck, and she's in the process of saying, "Oh, really, it's nothing..." before she chooses to stop herself. No, it isn't nothing; she means it, very sincerely, and had meant it when she'd put that silly drawing of Chloe with Rooster down onto paper, too. Peering up, she lifts her chin and lets her smile grow warmer, less nervous. "You're very welcome," she says earnestly instead. "Anytime."

Chloe can't help but notice how the smile, and the Anytime makes her face feel hot and that familiar fluttering of butterflies in her stomach. That same feeling she's gotten dozens of times around two very specific girls at home, the feeling that reminds her enough of it that she also gets another pang of guilt. She tries to quickly get rid of it by clearing her throat, rubbing her hands on her pants (were they really sweaty? God that's gross - why are bodies like this?)

"I guess I'll... see you later?"

"Of course," Fern says immediately and takes a few steps back towards the door, then, "--oh, right--" and awkwardly doubles back in order to pick up her bag, which she'd left on the bed. She slings it over her shoulder (the thing looks quite enormous compared to the rest of her).

"Maybe," she starts, chews her lower lip, then suggests, "maybe come by the herb garden tomorrow? If you feel up to it, I mean."

Then, before she can blush any more fiercely or give herself the opportunity to trip over her words another time, she adds a shy-sounding, "Goodbye," and then slips out of the room.

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