View source for Log:You Look Like a Person But You're Not

{{ Log
| cast = [[Czcibor Kowal]], [[Lolly]]
| summary = Immediately after [[Log:A Bit of Laundry|A Bit of Laundry]]. Czci goes to answer some of Lolly's questions and is given a glimpse of how far in denial Lolly is, OH BOY.
| gamedate = 2017.12.06
| gamedatename = 6 December 2017
| subtitle = <nowiki>(Guilt-Causing)Presence + (You Should Feel Bad)Persuasion.Guilt Tripping</nowiki>
| location = [[R08]], The Plank
| categories = Changeling
| log =  
 
Anyone who needs a hefty bag can steal Czcibor's laundry 'basket'. The disguised tin soldier tilts his head a little, watching her for a second in puzzled concern, while still maintaining a Nice Safe Distance. (Not that it would be safe for something like, oh, Fleeting Spring. But it's safe, right? It's safe.) Then he looks away, up, and across; he's idly watching the television when she finally answers, so he wrenches his attention back and gives her a quick and sheepish smile. "Okay. Sorry. I'll go first so I'm not behind you," he says, lifting up his empty hands, and then preceding her out into the rainy night with that unmistakeable limp.

Determined, apparently, to avoid being a threat.

"If you don't, you should probably carry mace," he calls cheekily over his shoulder as he swans out the door.



----------------



Across the plaza, Czcibor had his hands out of his pockets at his sides where Lolly could see them, and walked ahead of her so she could see where he was and what he was doing, and he definitely shivered in the cold rain like a normal human being, leather jacket getting wet. By the time they make it into the club, his hair's plastered to his head-- but at least the inside of his jacket is warm and dry, so as soon as they're through the door he shrugs out of it and drops it on Lolly's shoulders because even if this is her club ''her shirt is see-through and she is cold'' wow.

He gets one look around the place and starts blushing, but thankfully, the lighting is weird so maybe no one will notice--

--that is, until Lolly lets them into her office. And then she can see it.



Lolly is not anyone's image of a sleazy strip club owner. She should be a hardened booze-nosed man with a sly yellowing smile and swarthy skin, possibly a moustache or a gold tooth or two, not a fresh-faced twenty-one year old -female- who can't even rent a car yet and refuses to undress where anyone can see her.

The jacket, presumptuous as Czcibor's actions indubitably were, is NOT shrugged off onto the floor; certain body parts are all too gladly hidden!

Once the door is closed, the noise level decreases dramatically, pounding bass left as a dull and throbbing pulse of sound, and Lolly promptly lays the jacket on her desk before scooting around behind it, dropping into her chair and rolling it forward. Very far forward. Far enough that she can lean down and hide her chest behind the desk forward if she slouches, which she does. "So... um. Welcome to The Plank?"



It may make things easier on Lolly that a) she can actually ''tell'' where Czcibor's looking, since with the mask on he actually ''has'' irises and pupils and all that noise (even if the irises are flat metallic silver rings), and b) he is literally looking at everything ''but'' her chest. His blush is slo-o-o-o-owly fading, but he does shift uncomfortably, then wince, then shift back, and he picks up his jacket so it doesn't drip all over her desk, and then look sort of blankly behind him for someplace to hang it up, and decides... the doorknob probably, maybe, and sort of awkwardly hangs it there. "Thanks. It, uh. It's very nice."

The elemental reaches up behind his head to knot his fingers in his hair there for a second, clearly looking for something else to say, and eventually comes up with, "I like pirates. Sometimes I dress like one when I'm flying my hot air balloon. Because air pirates." And then he pauses because that was probably the single most dubious thing he's said to a total stranger in quite some time.



Lolly just...stares. Blink. Blinkblink. Evidently that is just a little too weird, because she blurts a nervous, "Do the other fairies do that, too? The looking human thing? A bad one took me somewhere really planty once, but, um, you didn't seem to want to do that." She gives him a dubious look. "I think. Despite appearances, I would make a terrible crewmate on a pirate ship in the sky. I get super airsick."

The entire time she speaks, she keeps her chest below desk height, which makes things a bit awkward. Hi, slouchy slump deskhugging. At least it's warm in here, and dry. If nothing else, the very thoroughly scrubbed room smells like cherry blossoms and incense.



"Um--," starts Kowal uncertainly, "I mean before we get into addressing any misconceptions you may have, here, do you-- uh-- do you want to go put, um, maybe a different shirt on? Something dry. Dry clothes?" He glances back at the door he hung his jacket on, then thumbs over his shoulder at it and glances back at her. "I could go back out there, and wait for you to get me. It's not a problem."



Lolly glances down at herself, clears her throat, and pulls a stretchy keychain out from under one of her messy, rain-bedraggled buns, green-rooted white hair getting stuck in the loops on the way off. "That's...um...yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea." Frowning to herself and muttering something in Japanese again, she scoots quickly toward the door they did -not- walk through to get in here, hesitates, then takes a moment to phrase a polite, "Please, um, don't kidnap or, like, mind-control anybody while I'm gone?" Her blush is still human enough to be pink, though being a Fairest, even if she's a wee little baby Fairest, it's a very lovely rosebud pink and looks beautiful. 

Without waiting for him to answer, she ducks into her private place, footsteps soon fading. When she returns, a few minutes later, her hair is down, it has obviously been combed, and she is wearing a ratty, very black and not remotely see-through t-shirt with a worn out Zelda emblem on it. The black of the cotton shirt only leaves the unnatural whiteness of her hair all the more visible, its combed-out ends, no longer curling, reaching down below her shoulder blades.

She zooms around behind the desk again, hurrying to resume her seat, as if that will protect her somehow.



She doesn't wait, which is good, because he's already rolling his eyes. By the time she comes back out, he's half-sprawled in the chair opposite her desk, having pulled it far back enough that he can neither loom nor crowd her. Before she's even seated herself again, he points out, "If I were one of Them, do you ''really'' think I'd be talking to you like this? Do you ''really'' think I'd be doing laundry, for Christ's sake? I don't even-- look, I told you who I am, I'm Czcibor Kowal-- I live over in Tamarack Falls, I'm originally from Poland, I spent a bunch of time in Austria which is where I met Petra, and all I do aside from annoy people, read Star Trek novels, angst, make dad jokes, and fly a hot air balloon is ''protect people''. Like people who go into the hedge without even telling anyone else where they're going, without armor or weapons or anything..." He ''eyes'' her. "I'm just like you. Only older and more fucked up."



Lolly gives him an odd look, not quite understanding, before bursting out with, "One of who?? And how the fluff should -I- know what fairies like to do? You look like one, you're friends with a guy who might as well BE one of the guys who visited the fairy who, who took me away in the first place, and--" She cuts herself off with an effort of will, outburst over, to listen to the rest of his description in uncomfortable silence.

The young woman flushes again at the accusation in his tone -- and eyeballs -- but it's the end which really seems to bother her. She stares, stares some more, opens her mouth, then gives her head a -strong- shake, denying everything. "No, no no. Like...wait, you mean, like, when I get older, I'm gonna look like THAT?" She points at Czcibor, green-veined eyes wide with horror. 

The prospect is enough to set her trembling again, and a shaking hand hastily reaches up to drag all of her hair over her left shoulder with a behind-the-head grab-and-pull, fingers fidgeting with it. "Is this, like, one of those weird steal babies because the tribe can't procreate things? Am I gonna turn into a fairy too?" Tears well up in pleading eyes which all too obviously beg him to tell her how wrong she is. Because she -has- to be wrong.
 


At this, Czcibor puts his elbows on the arms of the chair and drops his face into his hands, muttering something in Polish. One silver eye peers out from between his fingers and he sighs. "Sorry. The last thing I wanted to do was scare you more. How long have you even been home? A week?" He shifts in the chair, pushing himself up to sit more upright, and looks apologetic, and kind, and chagrined. "Nobody knows ''why'' They steal people. They all have different reasons and none of them make any human sense. If you're there long enough to start using magic, then-- you're already one of ''us''. The Lost. Changelings. The more power we get, the more we learn to use what's theirs, the more in danger of becoming like Them we get unless we're very, very, ''very'' careful."

He takes a careful breath, then laces his fingers loosely across his midsection. "I got out about fifteen years ago. I already looked a lot like what you saw me as in the laundromat. You're ''not'' gonna look like me, you're not some fucked up fairy's idea of a toy soldier. But if you learn more magic, more contracts-- if you use the powers you got more and more, then you're going to get more powerful. If you let yourself go crazy and don't find help from other people -- other Lost -- who know the kind of shit you've gone through, then it'll be easier and easier to become like Them. The real fairies, the True Fae. We generally call them the Gentry. 'We' being more people like you and me. People the Gentry stole and changed."



The Polish piques her ears' interest, fear briefly abated by linguistic fascination. When asked how long she has been out, she starts to answer, then hushes as he continues. Aaaand stares. And stares more. And more, depressedly trying to understand, since, uh, he does NOT look old enough to have done anything like that FIFTEEN years ago. Though, it is worth noting that she shows no signs of puzzlement about Contracts. That, she accepts with the slight nod of someone who -does- understand.

"Um. I've been back a while. Almost two years? Haven't really, um, seen many fairy people. They were scary, so...I kind of avoided them? Then my uncle died, and I inherited this place, and I moved here, and holy fluffernutters there are SO MANY of you!" Pause. "..Us?" The prospect of being part of a fairy-related 'us' doesn't seem to thrill her.

Falling silent a moment, she holds a finger up to keep him from talking, other hand still twisted in her hair. A little frown line between her brows is the visible evidence of her Thinking Face. "...If you were a toy soldier, why do you walk around like some fluffing Disney princess? Flowers and stuff under your feet."



...and yes, that does in fact earn more Polish invectives, muttered under his breath, and the human-looking tin man slouches in the seat again and tilts his head back to glare at the ceiling, forgetting that he has that awful scar all the way around his neck. A scar like once upon a time he was beheaded. Hopefully his defensive indignation will take away from that a little bit. "Iiiii haaaaate my mantle. I'm not a Disney princess! I'm just--"

He sighs through his teeth and hunches up in the chair, sitting like a surly sixteen year old with one leg extended and the other bunched up with the heel of his shoe hooked on the edge of it, and he grumblingly inspects the Gin Blossoms logo on his antiquated t-shirt. "There's courts of us. There's a freehold in Tamarack Falls, right, okay. That means there's a bunch of us all in one place, trying to keep the Gentry off our backs, and we hand power over four times a year. With the seasons. The equinoxes and the solstices. I'm in the Spring court-- that means the concepts I deal with the most, in theory, are rebirth and new growth, and the emotion of Desire. The flowers and whatever are just how Spring shows everyone I'm aligned with it. It also generally gives other Lost the suggestion that I might be able to heal them if they get hurt, because that's part of the rebirth and new growth aspect-- there are contracts that each court offers."

He glances up at her, finally-drying black hair considerably fluffier, and half-shading those shining silver eyes. "Obviously I can heal. I healed ''you''."



Lolly presses her lips together -very- hard. No laughing at the scary fairy flower man who hates his flowers. The scar...uh, her eyes sort of skitter away from that, uncomfortable, and she Does Not Ask. 

"Why're they called courts? What's the point of being in one? I can heal, a little. That's...um, that's why I was out there. The fruit? I use it to make the girls feel better." 

The 'girls' who are uniformly at least 10 years, if not 20 years, older than she is.

"The fairy who took me away...I don't really remember what it was like. Sometimes I dream about plant stuff. Does that mean I'm a princess too?" She seems dubious. She's also nibbling on her lip again, and won't quite lift her eyes, seeing as the needling she's doing is entirely deliberate.



"I'm not a princess!" grumbles Czcibor, sticking his chin out and huffily looking AWAY from Lolly. "I was a prince for a while but I gave it up for Lent and stayed that way." He lets his leg drop to the floor and crosses his arms, glowering at the floor between them. Except that the corner of his mouth is twitching. And he's looking up a little bit, just with his eyes, to see her reactions.

But there were serious questions in there too, so he relents, and the playing-to-entertainment eases off as well. "I really don't know why they're called courts. But it's a part of the whole seasonal giving up of power, and when power gets handed over to the next season, someone in it ends up with the crown, and therefore in charge of everybody for that season. The courts ''exist'' for the purpose of getting and then giving up power, since it's something the Gentry just straight-up don't understand. They're like 'why the hell would anyone voluntarily give up power?' But that's because they only know how to abuse it, not use it. With great power comes great responsibility! Which means oh my god so much paperwork."

He blinks, then, and pats down his pockets, then goes over to get his dripping-less-by-now jacket -- limp, limp, limp -- and comes back with it, fishing in ''those'' pockets. He proceeds to look comically dismayed. "Of fucking course the one day I find someone who could really goddamn use it, I'm not carrying any blushberry jam." He looks up at her, concerned. "Listen, if you want to go into the hedge and get stuff, ''please'' call me to go with you? Or just ask me to get them for you? Or join the Freehold-- you're a healer, there's a whole healer organzation within the freehold, and we've got a whole huge greenhouse half in the hedge where we grow this stuff."



She doesn't laugh, but there IS at least a faint hint of a smile, even if it's a nervous one. Creepy metal flower-foots can do jokes: lesson learned.

The bits about giving up power and seasonal shifts and Gentry, well, her eyes glaze over, expression blanking, and she seems to take him seriously about the paperwork. Then again, she IS a business owner. So much paperwork. So much.

Weight shifting with a creak of leather and plastic from her chair, she swings it side to side a few inches while he searches in his pockets, wariness temporarily abated by the limplimplimping, but blinks up at him at the prospect of, you know, calling the virtual-stranger creepyperson or joining his magic brigade, green-veined eyes wide. "I--um. Please don't be offended, 'cause I've seen what your girlfriend can do when she's upset, and I'd really rather not have my spine crunched too, but, um, I don't -know- you people. Why would I trust you? You -say- you were taken away, but..." Awkward shrug is awkward, and apologetic, lips twisting a bit before she tugs half of one in to nibble on it. Those eyes plead with him to understand.



The man's eyes widen. "Oh no I'm not offended," he says, straightening up. "Uh, and she's not my girlfriend, she's my best friend. Well, one of them. And we only fight monsters, but how would you know that? But anyway I'm not offended at all, that's totally understandable. And good thinking. You know from contracts-- do you know anything about pledges?"

He puts the jacket over the back of the chair, then lowers himself back into it, literally all of his body language forthright and helpful, in problem-solving mode. "If you do, we can make one, and you can bind me to only ever tell you the truth or something. Whatever you want. I just seriously want to make sure you're safe, especially if you're planning on ''staying'' low-key, you know?"



Miserable. Yep. That's it in a word. Miserably honest, she admits, "I...know exactly enough about pledging to know that I have no clue what I'm doing." 

*THUNK* goes her forehead on the desk, albeit half-pillowed on a hand.

"I helped some of the Folk there, the gnomes or whatever. Hobgoblins. It was kind of an accident. I didn't -know- they were crossing the street, but...well. Stopped them from getting run over by a bus back in D.C. That was bad enough. Then I ended up getting bitten by a dog that was chasing them, like, two weeks later, except I had no fluffing clue -they- were the ones being chased." Lolly rubs her arm, though there's no sign of any injury, no scars. 

"Um." The pale-haired woman shrugs, awkward. "Anyway, they kept babbling on about fate and debts and wouldn't let me go until they did stuff for me. They told me about the Contract thing, and showed me some fruits and stuff, the way to make doors take me into the Thorns. That's...uh, pretty much the extent of my knowledge."
 


"... wow," is all the Pole can say after a moment, head tilted, marveling at Lolly. "I mean I fell out of the hedge for the first time basically right into a werewolf, but lucky for me he was super nice. I also had no idea I wasn't human anymore." He reaches up to rub at the bridge of his nose for a second, clearly trying to figure out what to say.

Finally, "Okay. Well: you know how you activate contracts? Like you put power into them-- glamour? You can do the same thing, put glamour into ''imagining what you're supposed to look like''. And that's how you can look human again. You can look in a mirror and see your human face, that regular humans see. You wanna try it?"



Lolly's cheeks heat, flushing a warm and lovely rose at the way he's marveling at her accidental heroism. She nods, though, interjecting, "They said it was payment. Paying for the power, I mean." Eyes dropping, she shrugs a shoulder again as she admits, "I knew I wasn't right. I wasn't the right colour anymore." Fingers pluck at the white hair by way of example. Dunno how it does it. It'll be green for a while, but after a certain distance, it just goes white." 

Nibbling on her lower lip, she drops the hair and frowns at Czcibor. "Is that what you did? You're, like, mind-controlling me into seeing what you want me to see?"



The Elemental blinks uncomprehendingly at Lolly's last for a second, "...no? What even--"

Arms crossing a little more tightly, he gives Lolly a seriously annoyed look. "Why do keep thinking I'm doing mind control? What ''is'' it with this week?" His brow's all furrowed. "''I'' can see the right me in the mirror when I do it. You're just pulling your magic in and remembering how you look, and your magic puts it on you. I can actually ''feel things'' like this. I actually ''get'' physical sensations, I'm not ''hollow'', I can feel my heart beating. It feels like a lie to me most of the time, but some people feel ''more'' like themselves when they do it. I've just been-- I haven't been normal in a long time, is all."



Yeah. That? That is why Lolly is afraid of him. And shows it, fingers curling a smidge more tightly where they rest on the desk, shoulders hunching as she looks away. Please don't eat me, hollow fairy monster man. "I don't like it," is her uneasy, oh so sage reply. "It IS a lie. You look like a person, but you're -not-."

Tactful, too.

Uncomfortable, she starts to say something else when there's a knock at the door. "Captain?" calls a female voice.

Lolly scrambles up to get to the door, opening it a crack, glancing over her shoulder, looking at Amber, then positioning herself so Czcibor won't see the older woman's state of (un)dress. They talk together in murmurs which end in Lolly nodding acceptance to whatever it was the other woman wanted. To swap nights with someone named Ariel, as it happens, seeing as the mixed-blood Captain goes over and erases/rewrites something on one of the white boards. "Um. Sorry. Don't want to forget." 

Forget, right. Like she forgot what she was going to say to -him-. She stares at him, mouth opening, trying to remember...and closes her mouth on a frustrated exhalation. "Drat."



At the 'Captain?' Czcibor half-turns, obviously answering to it, but the distraction's not enough to unseat his sudden bad mood. He's silent for her whole exchange at the door, just frozen in place, And then she's done and she's looking like a fish trying to find words and coming up only with 'drat'. That seems like it's his turn to talk.

"Thanks," says the polish guy sitting in Lolly's chair, tone brittle. "You don't have to be human to be a person. You saved those hobs, they were people, right? They weren't inhuman monsters? Because that's how you keep looking at me."

He stands, then, gathering his jacket with dignity. "It's a lie because I'm not ''human'' anymore, not because I'm not a ''person'' anymore. It's just lying to myself, too, because I get to ''taste food'' and ''actually be able to cry'' when people I love die. I get to have the reactions I ''should'' have and ''can't'' because They fucked me over. Just like they fucked us all over. At least you got to keep your--"

That's where he cuts himself off, shaking his head. "Fuck it," he says, biting the words out, and then he grabs a notepad out of his pocket and clicks a pen, and he writes down his number and 'Kowal', and he tears the page out and drops it on Lolly's desk. "Listen, if you figure out some way you figure you can trust me and not be kind of a dick, give me a call. I don't ''charge'' for ''survival advice''. Or ''healing''. Maybe keep that in mind."

He zips up his coat and lets his mask fall away, and his hands and his head are that dark oxidized tin and lead alloy with shining silvery scars. The scar around his neck is much more clearly a welding seam, now. Solder.

Lolly's office is filled with the roses of very late June, curtains and fountains of them, and wisteria and morning glory and nettles and the fresh washed-clean air of just post-thunderstorm in a garden, and underlying it, the scent of gunmetal and pissy mood.

"I'll come back for my laundry around midnight so you don't have to look at scary scary me, stolen at sixteen in 1996, and trying to do my fucking best to cling tooth and nail to the parts of being human that don't require flesh and blood. Good night, Lolly." The last he says as he's heading for her office door, over his shoulder after he's yanked it open. Then he limps out into the strip club, on his way to go sulk and probably machete some Thorns for the catharsis.


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