There was so much time. So much that had passed, and taken place... there was so much to be angry about. To blame... to hate. The times they shared together were unforgettable, yes, but tainted by hasty choices she could not find herself forgiving. Her choice, nearly two hundered years later, would decide if the Captain. Charlie Skinner, would spend more time in limbo, or begin again, in aworld that would work against her, until she learned how to live life in the fast lane... in the year 2010... how?... the grudges Bones held, lasted for hundereds of years, and at any rate it would make no difference, except for the fact, she had asked Mystress when she could stomach the idea of asking for advice from one as devout as her. Mystress had sat quietly for a good half hour, thinking about how she could help this human, and how the supernatural might come to her aid in bringing someone back to the world Bones loved and knew. "You must forgive... Lady Bones... you must forgive her for every wrong she has ever committed against you" the old doe seemed hopeful, and not in the least bit of doubt Bones could do it This is what helped her, and lead her to make the decision on the early morning of Easter Sunday. She made the difficult choice then and there. She glanced over at the clock on the wall. 3:45. She allowed a tear to fall. "I'm so sorry Charlie..." a moment of silence filled the room and then she felt stirring just next to her in bed. She flipped on the light, which flooded the apartment. "Charlie?"
The little stirring was followed by the most ungainly thud, and half of the blankets and bedding shifted violently to one side as something heavy dropped to the floor. A moment’s pause, then a deep, familiar grunt came muffled from the sheets. One word clearly stood out, resounding in a perfectly dismal cockney accent- “Bollocks.”
The form of a woman- if you could call her a woman, from the bulk of her muscled shoulders and forearms, the state of her hair, sat up clumsily, leaning against the bed beside her. She ran one hand over her face, rubbing her eyes against the bright, unnatural light. Her tangerine orange hair ruffled, and uncharacteristically left down, tangled and reaching the bottom of her shoulderblades.
Glancing across her shoulder, she turned slightly, hissing at the light above, she took in her surroundings, once again experiencing that lost newcomer feeling that she detested. The scar across her nose sealed her identity even as her deep blue eyes cracked open and peered across the bed, not quite yet seeing the form of the other woman she knew so dearly.
All of a sudden she realized she had hands again. And she quite suddenly shrieked- a short, sharp cry of shock as she stared, wide eyed at her hands. Her *thumbs* had been returned to her! And a proper body- none of that quadrupedal namby-pamby nonsense! She took a moment to remember how to use her human limbs as she struggled her dazed self back onto the bed, sitting on the edge of it.
Turning finally to look back at her unwitting host, she blinked, quite unable to speak. All save a very meek, wavering word, her second spoken in the twenty first century:
"...hullo."
Bones stood there staring for a moment, the bed being shifted with the weight of the other... former... captain bouncing about in shock. "Holy shit," Bones said slowly, and looked at the familiar ginger hair of Charlie. "My, god. Charlie, you're actually... here?!" Bones jumped out of bed, in black flowy pajamas, her bare feet hit the floor, her right foot covered in a black skeletal tattoo, and her toenails painted to match. Her white hair flowed over her shoulders, in a partial knotted mess. ".....how?" she got back up on the bed with wide eyes, her knees pressing into the mattress, her feet sticking out. A clawed finger reached out and poked Charlie's shoulder, and then recoiled. "Holy shit," she said for a second time. "You've got to be kidding me." She got off the bed, and crossed her arms, as if waiting for an answer Charlie couldn't possibly give.
Charlie watched Bones flit about, as unsure and confused as she was herself. At the poke to her shoulder, she recoiled with a whiney yelp.
"Bah! Them nails is sharp, gehl!" she snips, rubbing the spot, and grimaces back. The expression so clear, familiar and unchanged despite the years of non-existance. Her head tilted slightly to one side- this was a new knack she had picked up from her time in the Forest, carrying a little curiosity as she noted the bedclothes, the tattoo on her foot. The very small changes she barely registered consciously.
Then she cracked a lopsided grin.
"How in God's mercy am I surposed ter know, Bonesy?" She chastised her gently. "One minute I'm layin' me head down fer a nice kip, an' th' next I'm on th' floor wi' ye jumpin all o'er me- an' I'm me again."
Turning to herself again, she hastens to pull the blankets up over her bare skin, shoving her hair back over her shoulders, to get it out of the way. It takes her some moments to gather her courage up enough to look at her former love.
"Come ter think, where *are* we? An' why am I 'uman again? An' how the feck's that lamp so brigh'?"
Charlie's face flashed a brief, inspired grin as she added; "But it makes yer look so pretty so I shan't complain." Oh-ho. All these years in limbo has preserved the charmer well.
Bones stood completely unmoving, either totally unimpressed or in total shock. But as always, with severe shock, Bones played her poker face. Her mind was twisting and her blood was racing, even if her eyes and her face didn't give her away. She paced around the room, went in the bathroom and slammed the door, the hissing sound of water could be heard. She opened the door up again and leaned against the frame of the door and stared at Charlie again. She pointed at the lamp, about to explain electricity to her, and then dropped her hand. Her heart sinking to realize what she had done.
"Goddamn it!!" she roared and then punched her fist against the wall leaving a dent. As if knowing what Charlie was going to say, she cut her off. "Everything Charlie!! That's what!..." she took in another large breath and walked over to her drawers, pulled them out and slammed the bathroom door again with a bundle of clothes in-hand. Bones muttered a long string of sentences to herself then ripped the door open completely changed. She turned her head quickly to the woman on the bed, her white hair shifted to cover part of her face. "We are in the year 2010. That is almost three hundered years from when we last saw eachother. Shit has changed Charlie. A whole shit lot has changed. If you're going to live here in this time, you're going to have to adapt pretty goddamned fast. There's electricity, cars, tall buildings, television...." Bones brought her pale hand to her forhead and dropped her mouth in a frown. She tossed Charlie some clothes and then motioned to her. "Come on Skinner, we're going for a walk."
Chastized and silenced, Charlie shrank back. Perhaps her time as a stag had changed her. Where before she might have shouted and railed right back, she held stock still, and watched Bones stomp around. When clothes were tossed to her, she took them quietly and dressed. Thank the light above, she still remembered how to make buttons work on the shirt she was presented. The zipper on the denim jeans confused her, but she pulled them on and did the top button before trying to work out how it fastened. The material on both garments seemed dimly familiar, but strange against her skin. Never would the captain have thought that she missed the roughness of the wool of her time. Quite by accident she worked out how to pull the zipper up by tugging on it a bit. If the mood of the room had been more jovial she would have marvelled at the efficiency of it, perhaps to say that she could have used trousers like these back in her day.
Instead, once she was fully dressed with socks and all on, she gathered some courage that seemed unavailable to her when she was without them, and stood from the bed, crossing the room tentatively towards the other woman.
"Before we go- I fink yeh'd do well ter calm down, lass. S'not th' end o' th' world, it's just... strange, tha's awl. Siddown, pour yerself a nice brandy an' breathe a bit." She raised her hands placatingly, speaking slowly and carefully- like one might deal with a very angry tiger. She glanced over her shoulder at the dent in the wall and puzzled over it. Surely Bones had not put a dent in bricks and mortar , and certainly not wood either. How thin were the walls made, in this future-time?
Bones' silver eyes watched Charlie cross the room slowly towards her. "Not the end of the world?... Charlie, you ended my world as I knew it..." Bones hung her head, knowing they had already established this conversation in the forest. She shook her head and then looked back up at the captain again. "Nevermind, it's going to be a while until I can get used to this blasted idea. Looking you in the face again isn't exactly soothing at this moment in time Skinner. It's a little more than shocking." Bones twisted around to the apartment door, and hissed under her breath. "Shit..." she turned to her again. "We have a lot to do, and you have a lot to learn." she stated blandly with a sigh, realizing just how much Charlie did have to learn about the 21st century. She couldn't worry about Charlie's feelings at the time, she was still trying to untangle her own, but she knew Charlie would grow on her again, whether she liked it or not. Before leaving, she glanced over at the clock. 4:32.... great.
Charlie tipped her head back to look at the ceiling, and let out a soft sigh.
"Awlrigh'." she muttered. She had only spent a few months with Bones while she lived and breathed, but even such a short time had told her two things about the woman; first, that you can't win an argument with her, and second, that Charlie couldn't stand to anyway. Arguing with Bones was like headbutting brickwork- pointless and often resulting in a headache. Sure, Charlie knew that probably the best thing to do would be to sleep on the issue and address it in the morning over porridge and mead- or, whatever it was they drank and ate in these times. But Bones was on a warpath, and Charlie was certainly not in the position to argue with her. Was she ever?
As she came out of the bedroom, she was pleased to hear the roar of the sea. She hazarded it must be dawn or dusk from the dim yellow light illuminating the room from outside. She turned to look. What she saw, blew her mind wide open.
Lights. Everywhere. Some were moving! Some changed colours! And they extended into the blackness as far as the eye could see. It took a long moment of wide eyed staring to reason that the roar of the ocean couldn't have been- something else out there was making that din. Perhaps the strange, sparse streams of moving reds and whites. And how very tall some of those beams of light extended. Stacks upon stacks of squares of white and dim blue.
"...Erm... nice view, 'ere, ent it?" she meakly commented, and once the first overwhelming shock had disapated she looked on in a curious glee. Questions started to clearly form in her head. She had that same half-bewildered smile that Bones would recognise from the moment they cracked open the final key and revealed their adventure's epic quarry. That yellow glow lighting up her face from the window might have been familiar too..
"Since it's late, yeh'd best wrap up warm, though."
Bones led Charlie out, and immediatly the look in her eyes made Bones' heart sink slightly. Dear lord she prayed Charlie was a fast learner and she'd have to learn to read too. "... Charlie, I know I began to teach you how to read slightly on the trip we took.... but, I think we might need to keep going." Bones said blankly and watched the sea of cars ahead of them. "Ask away, I know your mind is just swimming with questions now." Bones turned and flashed a half-smile to her, her signature silver tooth catching the light slightly, she stepped off the stoop and walked by Charlie's side as they strolled down the street, Charlie staring at everything and every one.
"Well..." Charlie mumbled in response. Sure, this was a brave, exciting new world. But that wasn't really what she wanted to know about. She turned to look at her once-companion. "Yeah, but- later. What- erm..." she paused, knowing she might well earn herself a smack in the teeth for bringing this up. She fidgetted with the cuffs on her borrowed shirt "Ye, lassie. Tell me about ye." There was a little more to say, but the ex-pirate seemed to have difficulty with the words to say it. "I want ter know, erm, yeh know, what yer place is I surpose. Yeh doin' well fer yerself? Friends, I surpose? I know yeh told me abou' young Lucian. Is he 'ere wi' yeh?"
Bones smiled at the gesture. "You'll find I'm no different than I once was. Still dodging the government when I can be bothered to. Taking out corrupt authority figures, saving the lives of millions but none of them would know me as a friend. They'd more likely see my face and call the cops." Bones gestured backwards. "Got an entire room in there full of real-hair wigs, makeup, face prothstetics, foreign clothing... she tapped the top of her pearly hair-covered head. "and all the fake accents I need right in here... seems to be working out fairly well enough. It's very rarely I go out in public and show my true face to the world and all the asses in it....Though it has been some time, I love Lucian dearly and I send him letters and visit him often, he is starting is own life away from a mother he hardly knows half of." Bones lowered her long eyelashes in a brief moment of pity, then blinked.
"... Not exactly friends. The friends I have are either unsure of everything about me, or hushed code names I frequently brush shoulders with... during work hours." She looked up and breathed in the fresh city air and then looked back at Charlie. "Though my forest friends, Masque, Desanm, Tuna, Fledermaus, Kaoori, Takeshi and several others are really the only ones I can trust, and they can trust me... the real world has been something I just try to survive in as of late in this insane century... things were so much simpler not too long ago. Not to worry, I will outlive it, and all the fools in it." She shook her head, figureing she had blabbed enough.
"Come on, the sidewalks are hardly swarming right now." Bones had a skip in her step as she walked.
[A non-interactive RP Blog. However! Feel free to comment below!]
Bones stood there staring for
Charlie watched Bones flit
"Bah! Them nails is sharp, gehl!" she snips, rubbing the spot, and grimaces back. The expression so clear, familiar and unchanged despite the years of non-existance. Her head tilted slightly to one side- this was a new knack she had picked up from her time in the Forest, carrying a little curiosity as she noted the bedclothes, the tattoo on her foot. The very small changes she barely registered consciously.
Then she cracked a lopsided grin.
"How in God's mercy am I surposed ter know, Bonesy?" She chastised her gently. "One minute I'm layin' me head down fer a nice kip, an' th' next I'm on th' floor wi' ye jumpin all o'er me- an' I'm me again."
Turning to herself again, she hastens to pull the blankets up over her bare skin, shoving her hair back over her shoulders, to get it out of the way. It takes her some moments to gather her courage up enough to look at her former love.
"Come ter think, where *are* we? An' why am I 'uman again? An' how the feck's that lamp so brigh'?"
Charlie's face flashed a brief, inspired grin as she added; "But it makes yer look so pretty so I shan't complain." Oh-ho. All these years in limbo has preserved the charmer well.
((note to self, don't spell color with a u, and Charlie's code is #FAAC58.))
Now the shorelines beckon- there is a price for being free.
Bones stood completely
"Goddamn it!!" she roared and then punched her fist against the wall leaving a dent. As if knowing what Charlie was going to say, she cut her off. "Everything Charlie!! That's what!..." she took in another large breath and walked over to her drawers, pulled them out and slammed the bathroom door again with a bundle of clothes in-hand. Bones muttered a long string of sentences to herself then ripped the door open completely changed. She turned her head quickly to the woman on the bed, her white hair shifted to cover part of her face. "We are in the year 2010. That is almost three hundered (?) years from when we last saw eachother. Shit has changed Charlie. A whole shit lot has changed. If you're going to live here in this time, you're going to have to adapt pretty goddamned fast. There's electricity, cars, tall buildings, television...." Bones brought her pale hand to her forhead and dropped her mouth in a frown. She tossed Charlie some clothes and then motioned to her. "Come on Skinner, we're going for a walk."
((#4E4848))
Chastized and silenced,
Instead, once she was fully dressed with socks and all on, she gathered some courage that seemed unavailable to her when she was without them, and stood from the bed, crossing the room tentatively towards the other woman.
"Before we go- I fink yeh'd do well ter calm down, lass. S'not th' end o' th' world, it's just... strange, tha's awl. Siddown, pour yerself a nice brandy an' breathe a bit." She raised her hands placatingly, speaking slowly and carefully- like one might deal with a very angry tiger. She glanced over her shoulder at the dent in the wall and puzzled over it. Surely Bones had not put a dent in bricks and mortar , and certainly not wood either. How thin were the walls made, in this future-time?
Now the shorelines beckon- there is a price for being free.
Bones' silver eyes watched
Charlie tipped her head back
"Awlrigh'." she muttered. She had only spent a few months with Bones while she lived and breathed, but even such a short time had told her two things about the woman; first, that you can't win an argument with her, and second, that Charlie couldn't stand to anyway. Arguing with Bones was like headbutting brickwork- pointless and often resulting in a headache. Sure, Charlie knew that probably the best thing to do would be to sleep on the issue and address it in the morning over porridge and mead- or, whatever it was they drank and ate in these times. But Bones was on a warpath, and Charlie was certainly not in the position to argue with her. Was she ever?
As she came out of the bedroom, she was pleased to hear the roar of the sea. She hazarded it must be dawn or dusk from the dim yellow light illuminating the room from outside. She turned to look. What she saw, blew her mind wide open.
Lights. Everywhere. Some were moving! Some changed colours! And they extended into the blackness as far as the eye could see. It took a long moment of wide eyed staring to reason that the roar of the ocean couldn't have been- something else out there was making that din. Perhaps the strange, sparse streams of moving reds and whites. And how very tall some of those beams of light extended. Stacks upon stacks of squares of white and dim blue.
"...Erm... nice view, 'ere, ent it?" she meakly commented, and once the first overwhelming shock had disapated she looked on in a curious glee. Questions started to clearly form in her head. She had that same half-bewildered smile that Bones would recognise from the moment they cracked open the final key and revealed their adventure's epic quarry. That yellow glow lighting up her face from the window might have been familiar too..
"Since it's late, yeh'd best wrap up warm, though."
((OOC Edit for Relevant to interests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGs8vtjDxxY&feature=related ))
Now the shorelines beckon- there is a price for being free.
Bones smiled at the gesture.
"... Not exactly friends. The friends I have are either unsure of everything about me, or hushed code names I frequently brush shoulders with... during work hours." She looked up and breathed in the fresh city air and then looked back at Charlie. "Though my forest friends, Masque, Desanm, Tuna, Fledermaus, Kaoori, Takeshi and several others are really the only ones I can trust, and they can trust me... the real world has been something I just try to survive in as of late in this insane century... things were so much simpler not too long ago. Not to worry, I will outlive it, and all the fools in it." She shook her head, figureing she had blabbed enough.
"Come on, the sidewalks are hardly swarming right now." Bones had a skip in her step as she walked.
Ah, that was a better sight.
Once she was sure she'd cheered significantly, Charlie offered her crooked right arm, her left folded behind the small of her back. It was bitter sweet, in a way, as it was an honest gesture coloured by the fact it hadn't been repeated for centuries between them.
However, before the gesture could be completed, a car drove slowly past the two, minding it's own business. Charlie yelped in terror, and latched herself on Bones' arm, clutching to her for dear returned life.
So much for dignity.
Now the shorelines beckon- there is a price for being free.
Bones watched Charlie out of
(Sorry Skinner had a SHIT week. Back now, for a bit. <3 <3)