betterthanaplan | Haven, Maine, over the weekend

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Haven, Maine, over the weekend

The last time Octavia had been to Haven, she'd gotten arrested and Gloria had had to go yell at the Chief of police.

The last time Duke had been to Haven, he'd gotten arrested and Gloria had had to go yell at the Chief of police.

They could both be forgiven for being a little nervous pulling into the harbor now, even without the "let's go meet our mutual therapist in person" part of the deal.

[for one! NFB due to distance]

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Octavia shrugged.

"Shared, yes. Not a secret."

Welcome to Octavia's occasional habit of getting hung up on terminology, Claire.

"Shared," Claire agreed. "That's an important distinction to you."

Welcome to someone calmly and coolly asking you to explain that habit, Octavia.

"Because that's what it is," Octavia rasped.

She may have still seemed a little reluctant to talk, but... This was already much more than she'd managed to say on the phone.

Turned out actually seeing the person she was talking to was important for her.

Which Claire was definitely making a note of. Video calls weren't quite as nice in 2010 as they'd be by 2020, but she was making a note to look into the technology anyway.

"How did you and Duke meet?"

"At a bar, in Fandom," Octavia rasped, after a beat to take in the slight change of subject. "I'd been there for a couple of years, he'd been there for a little while. He came over to talk to me."

She'd seen enough movies in this time to know that wasn't a particularly remarkable start to a relationship.

Claire smiled anyway. "And you two hit it off, clearly. If you don't mind my asking . . . how'd you end up in Fandom in the first place? I don't quite understand how all that works yet."

"If that's something you want to understand, you're asking the wrong person," Octavia replied in a dry, faintly unimpressed drawl, though the tone wasn't really directed at Claire, as such. "One minute, I was in the woods, and the next, I was in a different forest, a hundred years earlier."

Claire's brows shot up.

". . . So something of a culture shock, then."

To say the least.

"You get used to those," Octavia drawled, "after the first few."

"Were you used to it, when you showed up in Fandom?"

"A little."

She could guess the next question. But she would let it come to her, instead of rushing to it.

Claire nodded. "What about the first time it happened to you? When was that?"

"I was sixteen."

Octavia looked off to the side, although aside from that, nothing about her demeanor changed. It was mild, like it had been.

"Don't know if Duke told you, but I was born on a space station. The Ark, where having more than one kid was illegal. And I had a big brother." Have. Had. Both worked in this context. And otherwise, too. "At sixteen, I was discovered. My mom was floated into space, my brother was demoted from a guard to a janitor, and I was thrown in prison."

"First, it doesn't matter what Duke did or didn't tell me. It matters what -- and how -- you tell me. Second. . . ." Claire bounced her pen in the air for a moment. "Second, that's absolutely batshit nuts and I can't even imagine having to deal with all that at just sixteen."

Octavia shrugged one shoulder. She had more distance between herself and that particular trauma, by now. Mostly thanks to all the more recent things, but still. "Multiverse doesn't care what you can or can't handle."

General 'you', obviously.

"Maybe not," Claire said with a shrug of her own. "But that doesn't mean people can't sympathize. So . . . you lost your family and got arrested. But you came to Fandom from a forest. How'd you get there from space-prison?"

"About a year later, the Ark was failing, and they needed to check if the Earth was survivable yet."

Octavia's tone was so mild and flat that someone might've mistaken it for bored.

"And since the Ark executed all its adult criminals, all they had as far as expendable people went were the juvenile delinquents. So they packed a hundred of us in a dropship, and sent us down to the Ground."

"What the fuck?" Claire said.

Sorry, were psychiatrists supposed to be detached and neutral? Claire had never been good at that.

"That is deeply screwed up, I'm sorry. You need so much therapy."

Octavia's eyes flicked back to her, finally. "If that's enough for you to make that call..." she rasped, trailing off.

The implication was that there would be much worse stuff coming up later. Yes.

"Oh, I'm sure you have plenty more trauma," Claire said. "But yes, that much alone would be plenty for me to make that call."

"Well, you're the expert."

"I am, yes." The corners of her mouth flicked up in a small smile. "So . . . this is going a bit better this time, isn't it."

"A little bit," Octavia drawled.

It was going a lot better. She hadn't fallen into a lengthy, stony silence even once!

"That's good. Why do you think that is?"

"Because I can see you," Octavia replied, easily. If still mild. "And that no one else is here." Tiny shrug. "Sure, the whole place could still be bugged, but I'm not that paranoid."

She would generally claim she wasn't at all paranoid, actually, but a recent conversation with Lucifer had left her kind of questioning that.

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