kore_logs | Apologies are difficult...

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Apologies are difficult...

Who: Meyer & Ned
What: Meyer has some apologies to make, given what happened during the week they were all not quite themselves. Apologies, needless to say, are difficult.
When: Forward dated to Day 67
Where: Ned's house.
Warnings: Swearing? Feelings? Definitely awkward apologies.

A very wise -- and very cunning -- man had once told Meyer that knowing when to apologize was more important than being right. It was also more important to apologize at the opportune moment than to simply do as your conscience dictated (if your conscience dictated anything at all.) The apology needed to sound genuine; it had multiple parts, all of which fit together in a specific way: it was a careful balance of humility and grace -- not too subservient, yet not grudging; not overly wordy, but eloquent and to the point.

Yet for everything Arnold Rothstein had taught him about apologies, there was no simple and straightforward phrasing to fall back on when your apology included seeking forgiveness for turning into a vampire and attacking a near stranger. No apology gift seemed to suffice, either. At home he might have offered a bottle of liquor or a wad of cash, but neither of those seemed quite right here.

Lost for a proper script, Meyer felt a little like he had as a child, when he was still learning the complex game of wriggling out of trouble. It was like going in front of an angry tribunal when the victim knew just as well as you did that you were guilty -- except as a child, the tribunal had been his mother, and in this case, the tribunal was Ned.

That was why, as he stood, hat in his hands, in front of Ned's house, he had to take a deep breath. It wasn't guilt that filled him so much as the queasy fear of losing a potential ally, but luckily, that feeling and guilt translated the same on his face: an unsure smile, a furrowed brow, an appropriately contrite expression all around.

He took one more deep breath, and knocked twice on Ned's door.

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Were he a more moral man, the fact that Ned seems to implicitly believe what he says to be entirely without guile might produce some sense of guilt in him. People rarely take him at his word when he talks about gambling; most of them either assume that anyone who runs a card game is generally cheating -- true, to some extent -- or that their card game masks other, more nefarious activities -- true, unequivocally. Ned, however, seems to accept that Meyer's special form of crime (though of course he hadn't described it as crime) is actually done out of some sense of altruism. It's not guilt that fills him for so easily having tricked this man, but a certain sense of wonder; how can anyone be so trusting?

"I bet making pie's a pretty satisfying job. Nobody could hate a guy who feeds them stuff like this." He gestures with his fork to the nearly devoured piece of apple pie, pausing before he takes the last bite so that he can savor it. The unspoken message is, of course, that people can (and do) hate him in his line of work, but then, that would probably be true even if he were simply a card shark -- people hated losing money.

It's obvious from the conversation thus far that he's not necessarily going to drag any additional information about Charlie into the discussion than what's absolutely necessary. He has the feeling from the cautious way Ned asked about him that he might be more frightened of Charlie than he ever was of Meyer -- this is a common response, even back home, although occasionally a misguided one -- and he doesn't want to bring up any lingering resentment or anger at being kidnapped.

The recipe for making Ned happy is a fairly simple one: compliment his pies, even if only by implication. When Meyer says no one could hate him because of the quality of his baking, he ducks his head, smiling. He has one of those faces that is transformed by a smile. It's as if a light has been turned on inside him and keeps spilling out, bright and contagious.

"Thanks."

He doesn't even catch the implication that some of Meyer's customers might hate him for running the card game. He assumes that Meyer means him, because Ned got into the habit, over the years, of assuming that everyone would hate him unless he gave them a reason not to. He'd seen all that play out in his school years. Right from his arrival, the other boys had despised him, had excluded him and bullied him and hurt him when they got the chance, for no reason that he could ever identify. (He'd often wondered if they couldn't sense there was something off about him, something that made him a target). But when he'd snuck into the kitchen at night and made them all pies, they were suddenly his best friends. The lesson was clear: the way to stay safe was to keep everyone else as satisfied as possible.

"I was thinking about maybe trying to set up some kind of pie shop here. Or restaurant. Except without money, because what good would that do any of us here? But there are plenty of people in town who aren't good at cooking and it would be more efficient to set up communal meals, particularly since the supplies are limited. It's just a little daunting. Don't know where I'd do it or if I'd be able to convince anyone it's a good idea."

"Well, you don't necessarily need money to run a business, right? You could set up some kinda barter system, maybe offer to cook for people if they brought their own ingredients, something like that. The way I see it, it's a great idea. People need diversion; they need entertainment. What's better than some comfort food?"

In case it wasn't immediately obvious, Meyer's extremely business-minded. When the opportunity to discuss business arises, he can't help but jump into it with both feet, wanting to immediately puzzle over the difficulties and possibilities, wanting to figure out how a business can prosper. There's a darker side to this puzzling, too -- he's almost always thinking of how to make competing businesses fail, of how to take other people out of the picture before they become dangerous.

Luckily, Ned opening a restaurant wouldn't threaten him in any way, directly or indirectly. In fact, he might reap the rewards from it, if the rest of Ned's cooking is anything like the way he makes pies. His own business here is as yet undetermined, but he imagines it will have quite a bit to do with poker. That, after all, is something that can work well in any town.

Ned is nodding along with Meyer's reasoning. The idea is starting to seem more solid, now that he's run it by a few people and they have all given their support. He talks more warmly about the subject, eager to hear Meyer's take on things: clearly he has a knack for this sort of thing. "We'll all have to share ingredients, yes. It's not just comfort food. It's not practical, everyone hunting on their own, cooking on their own, trying to make the best of what mismatched things they have around their own houses. If we bring it all in one place, have a few people who know what they are doing handling the food, we can make a little go a long way. The only difficulty is convincing everyone it's a good idea, that we're not just trying to... to steal all the food or something."

He remembers how badly wrong things went when all he was trying to do was make an inventory, after all.

"Some people won't like the idea -- that's fine, they don't have to be involved in it. Might be better for everyone if they weren't, actually. And there'll probably be people who try to take advantage of the idea, too. People who do try to steal the food, since it's all in one convenient place."

Food being scarce does strange things to people. He's seen it time and time again, both as a child and as an adult. Though supplies here aren't dangerously low, they could start approaching those levels unless more food is found. He likes Ned's idea, thinks it could actually work out, but there's no sense in being overly optimistic about something.

"And the people who have no idea how to cook would probably appreciate the help. Gets a little old eating things out of cans all the time."

"I would think so, yeah." Meyer is right, and certain contingencies will need to be planned for, perhaps even a kind of security arranged. But those are just the finer details. The plan itself, new and unformed as it might be, is solid. Ned is bolstered by this, feels better at the mere thought of a project to dedicate himself to. Should keep his mind off the captivity, off wondering what the next horrifying experiment will be and if he'll survive it.

Speaking of keeping his mind off things...

He gets up, goes back to the counter and the egg-wash. "Can I just say it's really odd, knowing you're from the '20s?" He wonders if this is how people like River and Daneel feel about him - that he's this slightly baffling relic of a bygone era. "I suppose it doesn't matter much, in a place like this. But it's still blowing my mind a bit."

"It's strange to me that you're not from the '20s," he replies, smiling slightly. "It makes me wonder what the future's going to be like."

And about his place in the future, but he's not sure he's eager to learn that. If there were someone here who could tell him how it would all turn out, tell him his own fate, he's not sure he'd want to know. It seems like knowing those things could unravel some kind of horrible mess that could never be put back together again. What if someone knew your eventual fate, and what if that fate was unpleasant? The fate of the world, though? He'd like to know that.

"What's odd about the '20s, anyway?" he asks, curious to know just how much things have changed. "I mean, aside from the fact that you all have better technology and dress more casually."

"I can try to tell you, if you'd like. I'm no historian, but I could give you a general overview or answer questions." Ned rather likes the idea of himself as a mysterious oracle of the future, dispensing prophecies both hopeful and horrifying. Of course, he wonders if telling Meyer about world events will in some way alter them if he's ever brought back, but he remembers what Galen said. He'd been back home, for a brief period, and had remembered nothing about his stay here. Chances are the same will happen to the rest of them, if they are ever put back where they were taken from.

"I don't know. No odder than any other time. It's just... after a while, decades start to pick up cliches. In the films its all jazz and bootleggers and Model-T's." He smiles at Meyer's comment on his clothing, glancing down at his flour-smudged grey t-shirt and apron, "It's stuff like that. People dress a little different, speak a little different, think a little different."

"Most of those cliches sound pretty accurate to me," he says, laughing a little. The bootleggers part, especially, hits close to home, but he's not sure how anybody around here would take it if they knew the extent of his involvement in that particular business. From what he's gathered, alcohol is perfectly legal again for the majority of the people here, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't a criminal in his own time. Besides, he doesn't know how drug laws have changed, and bringing up the heroin business seems unwise, too.

"All I know for sure about the future is that you have a second World War. And you have something called cellphones." That's what he's managed to pick up from people so far, mostly because he hasn't been asking many questions, for fear of seeming ignorant. Of course, he couldn't logically be expected to know the future, but as someone who wants to know everything all the time, he doesn't like being at a disadvantage.

Ned realizes somewhere around the moment when Meyer says second World War that, actually, summarizing the events of the last century is hardly the kind of light conversation he was hoping for to distract him from their current situation. But he doesn't want to go back on his offer, just because the majority of human history seems to amount to horror and tragedy. He'll just try to balance it as much as he can with the good things.

So as he starts carefully layering the fruit into the pie crust, he talks. Picks up where he imagines Meyer left off, tells him about the end of Prohibition, about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. He tells him about Pearl Harbor, WWII, D-Day. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Holocaust. Tells him about Communism and the Cold War, about spies and McCarthy and mutually assured destruction, Vietnam and Korea and puppet dictators across Latin America. Tells him about the collapse of the British Empire and independence movements all around the globe. Tells him about Watergate and the sexual revolution and hippies, the war on poverty, the war on drugs. Tells him about civil rights and women's rights and gay rights, the collapse of the Soviet Union.

At that point, he realizes that he's been talking for a very long time without pause, without even looking up from the pie which is now entirely filled. He glances over at Meyer, realizing he probably should have gone slower, given more context, found more evidence of human decency to mix in with all the rest.

Some of what Ned says makes sense, is the logical extension of things he's already seeing happening in his time: women's rights, civil rights, the end of Prohibition, the economic collapse, all of that has always struck him as something that will happen sooner or later. There are other things, however, that he can't begin to imagine, although he has no reason to believe Ned would lie to him, especially about future historical events (how strange it is, to think in terms like that -- it's history to Ned, but the future to him.)

When Ned finishes speaking, when he looks up from the pie, he'll see Meyer staring at the table, seemingly lost in thought. He's fiddling with a book of matches, clearly wishing he had a cigarette, needing something to do with his nervous energy. Maybe there's something sad on his face, but then, he's always had an unreadable face -- it could just as easily be deep thought, an attempt to process all of the events Ned has explained to him over a relatively brief amount of time.

"I see," he says, and his voice is flat. His brain is stuck somewhere between World War II and the Cold War, trying to unravel what he's just heard. He swallows hard before he speaks again. "And people think the '20s were odd."

"Oh."

Ned can tell he's miscalculated. Meyer might not be saying much or doing much, but there's something in his stillness, his distraction, that bodes ill. In their interactions up to this point he'd been so attentive - polite, but also watchful. Now that focus seems to be turned inward, or elsewhere. The tonelessness of his voice, the fidgeting with his hands: Ned picks up on these cues without quite realizing he's doing it and knows that he's made a mistake.

And he should have known better. These aren't just things out of a book, for Meyer. They are things that might - probably will - happen to people he knows. His family and friends and neighbors. The thought that he might have depressed or perturbed Meyer is a painful one. Ned chews on the inside of his lip, wonders if he should apologize. He decides against it. Apologizing would mean admitting that he can tell Meyer is upset, and it's probably more polite to pretend he doesn't notice.

"There are people here from thousands of years later than either of us. Like River. She was living in a spaceship, before she was brought here. Can you imagine?"

It's a fairly obvious ploy, but Ned hopes it will be an effective one. If worst comes to worst he can always give Meyer another slice of pie. That would make the atrocities of the next few generations a bit more bearable, right?

Meyer knows that Ned is attempting to take his mind off of the load of information that he's just had dumped in his lap, and although it doesn't work, not exactly, he appreciates the effort enough to look up and smile that charming and glossy smile. "It's fine. I was going to find out sooner or later, about all of that stuff. Better I should find out from a guy like you, right?"

What he means is a guy who's not using that kind of information against him, who's not gleeful about what he's had to say but who looks genuinely remorseful for having had to say it -- a guy who's willing to try to distract him by moving the conversation on to something else so that he doesn't have to dwell on it. He doesn't even call attention to Meyer's discomfort, which a less thoughtful individual might. Meyer's not sure he believes in true kindness anymore (or maybe he never has) but he thinks that as far as these things go, Ned's probably what most people would call a pretty nice guy.

"River seems like the kind of person who'd be living in a spaceship," he says, that smile still in place. "I don't mean that in a derogatory way. She just thinks differently than the rest of us."

Ned matches that smile with a very small one of his own - not so charming, and not so glossy. For all Meyer's politeness, he knows he could have delivered a lot of that news more sensitively than he had. If he ever comes across a situation like again, he thinks he'll know better.

But for now it seems that Meyer is pulling himself together, and Ned is more than happy to take his cues from him. Talking about the distant future is easier, he expects, for the both of them. Spaceships aren't real, somehow, the way the rest of it is.

"I think that's more to do with being a telepath and less to do with living in the future." And, of course, Ned knows a good deal of the way she thinks is due to what she'd been put through, but that's not his information to give out. Even if it were, he hardly needs to add that straw to the already-strained camel's back. It is disgusting, though. How little the human race seems to change.

There's a fondness that comes into Ned's smile as he admits, "She absolutely terrified me, when I first arrived. Jumped off a roof to say hi and nearly gave me a heart attack."

Edited 2013-04-29 02:58 (UTC)

"And now she's like family to you," he says, nodding a little. Although he and River hadn't necessarily started their relationship on the right foot -- nor had he and Ned, for that matter -- he found that he liked her, and perhaps even more significantly, could tell that she and Ned cared deeply for each other. It was strange to observe; a relationship that had been formed within the bounds of this tiny town, a relationship that hadn't existed and never would have existed had they not both been brought here.

"You married back home? Have kids?" He wants to get some idea of what Ned left behind, what his idea of family is like. It strikes him as odd, somehow, that someone could find themselves so close to another prisoner of this town so relatively quickly, although it's not a bad thing, simply an unfamiliar thing. He can't imagine considering someone family except in very special circumstances -- although perhaps being stuck here was special circumstance enough.

There's more to the question than simple curiosity, though. Ned seems like a family man, the kind of person who forms connections to other people, but he can't tell whether that impression was formed because Ned has been kind and seemingly caring throughout their interactions together, or because Ned is impressively good at putting on some kind of polite and solicitous veneer, much like himself. Meyer has never trusted pure, unadulterated goodness. There must be something else there, something dark.

"Yeah, she is." He thinks about how she took care of him, when Jesse was dead. Talked him out of the worst of his despair, made him take care of himself, eat and sleep and keep going. It's still such a foreign idea to him, having a family.

The next set of questions turns his smile a touch wistful. "No, it was just me." No family, no friends, no lovers. He doesn't come out and say it outright, but he's never been good at deception, and the loneliness of that existence makes itself known in his short sentence.

"What about you?" Only polite to turn the question around. Twenty-one seems a bit young for a wife and kids according to his standards, but it's not impossible. He knows plenty of people here have left a lot behind them.

"No, just me."

And Charlie, his mind said, but he rarely said the majority of what came into his mind, and this was no exception. Explaining his relationship with Charlie was difficult, if he were to attempt to be truly honest about it, and it was best left at "business partners," or, with someone he felt slightly more comfortable with, the addition of the fact that they'd known each other for quite awhile.

He wonders if, from Ned's tone of voice, he'd like there to be someone. Perhaps he's lonely, having it just be him and his pies. His second question is seemingly unrelated, but nothing is unrelated in his mind, and besides, he'd divulged his own age to Ned, so it seems only fair to pose the obvious question as well: "How old are you?"

"Twenty-nine." Ned slides the bright green pie into the oven, sets about wiping off the various kitchen surfaces. He wonders, for the first time, what is driving these questions of Meyer's. Is he perhaps wondering how a man of his age ends up with no connections to speak of? It certainly doesn't reflect well, he knows that. Has a bit of a serial killer-ish vibe to it. Lived alone, kept to himself, never would have suspected...

He's still full of productive energy, doesn't want to stop working, so he washes his paring knife and comes to join Meyer with a clean glass mixing bowl and, a moment later, a rather large basket of perfectly ripe strawberries. He sits down and starts trimming off the stems and cutting them into quarters, the movements as practiced and effortless as ever.

"Why do I get the weird feeling you're about to try to set me up with someone?" he jokes. He knows that in actuality Meyer intends nothing of the kind.

It's not necessarily that it reflects poorly -- he knows plenty of people who have very few connections to speak of. He imagines that, unless something drastic in his life changes, he'll be one of those people at twenty nine, as well. However, most of the people he knows with no connections have something hidden in their pasts that they don't care to discuss. It doesn't necessarily speak ill of Ned's character, but perhaps of his experiences. He'd like to know about those experiences, but he knows better than to charge ahead with deeply personal questions without testing the waters, so to speak, as he's doing now.

Ned reads as though he's an open book, the kind of person who will answer questions honestly and guilelessly, but these are the easy questions, and nobody's truly an open book, not when it comes to certain matters. He's interested in seeing how much he can glean from Ned before that open book slams shut, so to speak.

He laughs at Ned's comment, watching as he begins cutting the strawberries. "Don't worry, I'm not the matchmaking type. You ever want to meet someone, though? The way I see it, you'd make a pretty good impression with the pies."

"Haven't really given it much thought." Ned's tone says otherwise, though. It's all a bit of a muddle, now more than ever before in his life. He'd given up on romance, before he came here. It was always so messy, so disappointing and difficult. He'd tried dating, in his younger years. Girls, at first, because he'd thought that was what was expected of him. Guys, once or twice, because they'd asked, and because things had gone so badly with the girls. Being gay would have been a simple explanation for a problem he knew, deep down, was a lot more difficult to define. When that hadn't worked, he'd called it quits. Resigned himself to a bachelor's life. Simpler that way.

But now he isn't so sure. Things have changed so much for him, since he got here. He has friends, now. A kind of family, in River. And of course, with what had happened between him and Daneel... perhaps it isn't impossible for him, after all.

A shy smile is twitching at the corner of his mouth, and even though he doesn't need to, he's looking at the strawberries he's cutting as if the process requires every ounce of his attention. That's probably not a faint blush on his cheeks - probably just the light reflecting off the very ripe red fruit.

Edited 2013-04-29 04:05 (UTC)

He can't help but notice the smile -- and the blush, although that's a little harder to pick up on -- and comment on it. "Looks like you might be giving it some thought right now," he says, smiling a little to show that he's not judging Ned for it by any means, nor mocking him in any way.

On one hand, he finds it slightly amusing, how intently Ned is staring at the strawberries, as though that will change his tone of voice or get rid of that shy smile. On the other hand, he finds it intriguing; if Ned has considered it, if attachment of some kind is something he wants, whether familial or romantic, why hasn't he had it before now? There's nothing wrong with his looks, objectively speaking, and he seems perfectly nice, so perhaps there's something else, something about his personal life he doesn't want people to know.

Could it be the powers Ned had admitted to? If so, what about them might make him reluctant to be close to people? Surely they were useful powers, though odd ones. Meyer now sees Ned as some kind of puzzle, albeit a fairly benign one. With a brain that never sits still for long, he's already coming up with plausible scenarios about what deep, dark secrets Ned has. After all, everyone has them.

Is he really that obvious? Ned can definitely feel his face going hot, now, and settles for a simple, "It's complicated." He isn't exactly averse to the idea of gossiping about his love life, but for all that Meyer seems like a nice guy, he is a relative stranger. Happy as he is to answer questions, Meyer isn't getting anything more out of him on this matter for the moment. Besides, everything has been so hectic, recently. He hasn't had much time to think about the good things, in the midst of all the bad. Even he isn't sure what he thinks or wants or feels.

He knows when not to push a topic, and that's as clear a sign as any to back off, so he does. There are many things he'd like to know about Ned, including inquiring more about his abilities, or powers, or whatever he wants to call them, but he gets the sense he has to tread carefully.

"Yeah," he agrees, "Most things are complicated in one way or another." And that's the end of that discussion. It's not so much about Ned's love life as it is about figuring out just who Ned is, what makes him tick, whether or not he could be useful in some way. He's not adverse to the idea of making friends with him, assuming Ned's forgiveness was genuine -- and it seems to be.

"Do you ever bake bread?" It's a completely unrelated question, but it's not without it's own purpose. Ned has some useful skills with this whole cooking and baking thing. Maybe Meyer can benefit from those skills, or at least attempt to learn some of them.

"Yes. Not since I got here, though. Would have to go looking for yeast." There might be some, in one of the houses, or else the storage area with the extra food. Ned's been a little preoccupied, however, with just staying alive.

Meyer, he's starting to understand, is a very curious sort of person. Ned finds it almost charming, the way he keeps asking questions without ever seeming to get bored. He's more than happy to ramble on about his life, if that's what Meyer wants. "Did you... want bread?"

Meyer wants to know everything about everyone, and Ned is no exception. It helps when he actually finds someone interesting, as opposed to the people he ends up regretting he ever learned anything about, and he does find Ned interesting.

He smiles a little, shaking his head, "I'm not asking you to make me bread, you understand, although if I were, I'd of course pay you for the favor. I'm asking if you might be amenable to teaching me how to make bread. If you could find the ingredients."

Yes, he's very curious, in just about every way. If there's something he wants to learn, he does, and he finds that he wants to learn most things.

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