apocalypsehowcomm | Log - We Need to Talk (Open)

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Log - We Need to Talk (Open)

Who: Mercy Graves & OTA
When: Early/mid-November
Where: Around the ADI HQ
Summary: Going to some counseling sessions and offering her own counseling services.
Warnings: Will add as they come up!

A. Attending Counseling
It might be the first time she's here or the third or fourth. Stepping through the doors to the counseling center in ADI never does get much easier. She'd feel better if it were some sort of temple, maybe, knowing there were clerics behind the doors or some other leader. At least she knows that some of the time, there is another cleric. Caduceus when he's in is someone she feels safe with.

And today, she has someone else with her. Maybe an old friend, maybe someone she's only just met. They might be there to meet with Caduceus to talk or it might be someone else working in this department.

"You feeling all right with this?"

B. Mealtime Wisdom
It's not just Mercy who needs help. She knows others do, and some of them don't seem keen to head to the counseling center. That doesn't mean she can't lend an ear for those that might want it. She notices someone sitting alone in the canteen when she steps in during lunch or dinner. Maybe they're new, maybe they've been here a while and just look lonely to her eyes. Either way, she steps close to the table.

"This here seat taken? Don't much like eating by myself. Makes it dull as hemming a skirt."

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"And do they train you here?"

Over the course of the past several days, Callisto has come to realize that she and others have rather different ideas of what fighting the Apocalypse means. No one else seems to think that they'll be facing the Entities on a field of battle, but Callisto isn't so sure. It certainly seems like it would be a simpler, more decisive way of doing things than endless investigations.

"Some folk offer training. But it's not consistent. More like whoever's available on a day. Could probably set up something more formal, but I got to do that for my training as a healer here. That's taking up more of my time than I expected. They got things here we ain't at home. There's so much more, and a lot of what I'm learning says some of what I learned already ain't right.

"They said I'm like someone from the past here, even though I ain't from Earth."

"They say that about me, too, and they say I am from Earth." Though Callisto, for her part, sounds skeptical.

"Why are you letting them tell you you're the wrong one? Maybe they're the ones who don't have anything right."

Mercy contemplates that question. "I think they don't know what they're talking about in some ways, but medicines? I seen the research they done here. So many years to learn their craft... They've got knowledge running back centuries and more than that. I'd be hard-pressed to dismiss it entirely, my lady.

"But when it comes to gods and miracles and magic that ain't filled with hate and fear? That's where they don't got much knowing to them. I know some other folk from different Earths who still got magic. Is yours one like that?"

Callisto just shrugs at that first bit. Truthfully, she doesn't care much about medicine, and she'd asked to be contrary rather than out of any strongly-held disbelief in this world's capabilities. Maybe their knowledge is useful, or maybe it'll turn out to be inadequate. Whatever.

"Oh, sure; we have gods and magic coming out of our ears. I've met gods, and not many mortals can claim that."

Mercy's brows shoot up, impressed. "Sure as you say, they can't! What was it like? Was it a good god or an evil one? One somewhere in the middling? Why were you meeting them?"

"Ares, and Hades."

But she's learned by this point that she can't expect everyone here to recognize those names, so she continues--

"The god of war, and the ruler of the underworld. You can put two and two together and figure out why I would have met the ruler of the underworld, can't you?"

Mercy blinks at her slowly. "You got a second chance at life from one of the gods?" That is clearly answer. "How? What'd you bargain with?" Not a life. Lives seem to be worth little to most gods, one who runs a place for the dead even moreso.

"Or did you fight them for your life?"

"A second chance at life? No, no; neither of them gave me anything like that."

Though if her chats with Ares had gone the way she'd planned them to, that certainly might have changed.

"It seems like ADI is what handed that to me."

"You... are you dead?"

She doesn't look like a spirit. But then, Mercy's not many spirits in her life. The idea of her graveyard being haunted by them had always seemed ridiculous coming from people who don't know the first thing about such things.

"I died," she says, as if this is a point of correction. "But I'm not in Tartarus and this doesn't seem like any sort of underworld, so I'm alive again now, I suppose. Or maybe I'm just good at pretending, even to myself."

Which it is doesn't seem to bother her, nor particularly interest her.

Mercy stares at the other woman, perplexed. "Can I try touching you?"

Surely, you cannot touch ghosts!

Callisto, who had been perfectly corporeal in Tartarus, frowns in confusion.

"Why?"

But she's holding out her arm all the same; poke away, Mercy.

"Well, if you're a spirit, you'd be... people ain't supposed to be able to touch you." Except that Callisto seems pretty solid when Mercy gives her a light prod. "You don't feel like you been dead. Have you been down to medical to get a look over?"

This really seems entirely unlikely. Is the woman cold and clammy like other dead bodies she's touched? Not from the initial touch.

"Take it up with Hades," she says, pulling her arm back once Mercy has had her fill of poking and prodding. "I don't make the rules. Did you think your hand would go through me? I wouldn't be able to sit in this chair if I were that kind of spirit, or--"

She gestures down at the half-eaten meal on her plate.

"I don't know the rules!" Mercy huffs. "Maybe- I mean, I ain't never met any dead people before. Not ones that could walk or talk. "Could be you can eat and things like that. Would you be willing to come to medical for a check-up? Just to make sure your heart's beating and the like."

"It's still beating." She presses a hand to her chest, just above her breastplate, as if to make sure. "I can feel it. What else could you possibly want to know?"

"Ain't rightly sure. Anything else odd about you? If there is anything. You'll forgive a body, but I was in the business of putting folk in the ground for a long time. Didn't have none of them come walking out of the graves." That's just weird, Callisto.

"Oh, darling--" she drawls. "Where do I start?"

It's been a long, long time since she's considered herself anything like a typical person. But all the same, she knows that that's not the type of oddness that Mercy is talking about, so after a moment she sobers, answering more seriously.

"No. As far as the things you're interested in go, I'm just like everybody else."

Mercy considers that answer for a long moment. "Then what about the things I ain't showing interest in?"

"Well, for starters, I don't have a heart anymore."

She taps her chest again.

"But only metaphorically."

"You... wait." Now she's confused. "You ain't got a metaphorical heart, but you got a literal one?"

"That's right. It beats, but there's nothing but rage left in there."

Very dramatic, and not entirely true, but it's how she feels much of the time.

Mercy tilts her head. "I don't reckon anyone without a heart'd be here, my lady. It's a place with good folk doing good work. Maybe there's something growing in you."

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Log - We Need to Talk (Open)

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