A Private Dining Room, The Estate, Glacia

[glacial_queen]

The small dining room that Karla had set aside for her 'out of town' guests to dine in tonight was one of the ones they hadn't gotten around to denuding of Ludmilla's and/or Hobart's horrible taste in decor yet. Karla had chosen it deliberately, figuring her friends might get a kick out of how completely hideous it was. Everyone knew that extravagantly tacky surroundings aided digestion, right?

Well, Karla was a Healer. She's swear to it, anyway.

And, who knew? Maybe she'd give everyone a souvenir or something! 'I came to Karla's coronation and all I got was this ugly figurine.'

This was how they knew she cared!

Tomorrow was for long, boring speeches and painful formality. Tonight, she was looking forward to just hanging out with friends, having a good time, and threatening to make people sleep in some of the bedrooms that had thus far escaped redecoration.

Any question where Glacia's treasury had wandered off to?

[Open for pretty much anyone who wanted to be invited for the coronation that's absolutely not happening tomorrow! Up early for mega SP, because SP is wonderful. NFB for off-island shenanigans.]

Comments

[heromaniac]

Momoko raised her glass to him and then took a small sip. Ah, so tasty. "Mmm. It's been nice. It's my first time back since the war ended. It feels different to be here and be relaxed.

"Well, as much as I can relax in this room, of course," she gave a soft chuckle.

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

"I'm fairly certain relaxation was the last thing on anybody's mind when they were decorating this room," Junior decided, smiling faintly and raising his own glass in return. "Honestly, I was starting to worry that this is how everyone does it in Glacia."

And, if so, why sunglasses hadn't been invented here just yet.

[heromaniac]

"Oh no." Momoko's headshake was almost painful. "Please don't let this room colour your opinion of the rest of the country! This is totally the result of a personal bad taste. Probably the former Queen? She had odd tastes."

Momoko looked around and was grateful she'd gotten her old rooms back. They had way too much furniture, and the wallpaper was horrid, but it was thankfully devoid of creepy statuettes and most of the other 'touches' of the former regime. "It almost makes me miss sleeping in the back of a supply wagon."

"If you're here for a few days, you should try to get out and see some of city. It's not the best representation either, but the best places are a bit of a distance away."

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

"I... might ask my son if that would be possible," Warren decided, after a moment's thought. "I'd like to get to know this place better, now that he's made it his home."

And now that it seemed less and less likely that he was ever going to stop doing so.

"Might I ask what places you think of as the best?"

[heromaniac]

"I love the whole country," she smiled apologetically. "I can't really pick any place over the other, unless it's the sky over the mountains."

"Honestly? If you're able, a tour via horseback would be nice, though slow. You miss too much if you go by coach or Winds." Her face lit up. "Ah! If you can, try Vanalor! Its about ten days ride from here, but the innkeeper makes an awesome spiced cake that they serve warm with a glaze made of apples..." She was trying not to drool, honest.

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

"I... will definitely have to ask about that, then." If Junior was at all the sort of person who thought 'ten days ride' sounded even remotely appealing, that was. "I suppose it depends mostly on just how much time I can afford to spend here, when there's business to take care of back home."

[heromaniac]

He would be lucky to get Warren to agree to visiting the stables at all, such were Warren's feelings for horses.

"Ah!" Momoko perked up at the mention of time. "Didn't anyone tell you? Time moves differently here! If you're visiting for the weekend, it's, like, four or five days here. Or it is on the earths I've lived on."

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

It was entirely possible that Warren's feelings for horses actually ran in the family somewhat.

"Longer still for me," Junior admitted. "I don't entirely understand how the time difference works, though it's not for lack of trying. So long as our shipments make it here to Glacia on time, for the time being I'll make do. Multiple worlds... it's still relatively new to me."

Of course, so was the idea of his son not being seventeen and living at home.

[heromaniac]

Momoko's laugh was an honest one, so it was rather loud, sorry. At least it was sparkly and catchy?

"You can get used to it, I promise. I've just moved to another world where it's not only in the past for me, but it's a different past." Momoko smiled at him. "It gets to a point, though, when it's second nature."

...

She leaned forward a bit, grinning evilly. "Plus, I totally have a program on my computer that can tell me the date, if it's a world I know." Shh!

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

That was easily the single most sparkly laugh that Junior had ever heard. He answered it with a blink, and then a little smile of his own.

"I don't suppose you would know where I could get my hands on that program?"

Because, if nothing else, it would come in handy for figuring out just how many days apart he was going to have to send Christmas and birthday gifts.

[heromaniac]

For asking that, he totally got bonus points. And a small touch on his arm. "My friend back home wrote it for me. I'll get him to email you a copy."

...

"You have email, right?"

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

"As a matter of fact..." Junior took a moment to reach into his pocket, producing a card for Worthington Labs with his contact information on it. "It's difficult to run a company without one."

Funny, that!

"I appreciate it, Ms...?"

[heromaniac]

"Akatsutsumi. Momoko Akatsutsumi."

She set her wine down to take the business card with both hands and a slight bow. She took a moment to read it and smiled as she read aloud his 'title'.

"Thank you." After a moment of reading both sides of the card, she pulled her a small cardcase (pink) from her belt, behind her power compact. Carefully placing the card in the case, she pulled another out. She returned the case to her belt and held her own card (pink) to him with both hands and a small grin.

"And mine. Or at least, it's my calling card. It has my personal phone and email on it; they both can be accessed in whatever world I'm in. I don't have business cards at the moment, as my current work identity is secret." And she wanted to keep it that way in case Warren's old world ever needed Blossom.

"But if you ever need my help, please call. I may have feelings about your earlier treatment of Warren, but I don't let that interfere with my work."

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

Warren had done business with enough Japanese associates to know how to exchange business cards, at least. He refrained from chiding himself for not having a bilingual card handy. It wasn't as though he'd been given any indication that he might be trading contact information with a cute young Japanese woman in a reality with magic where time ran so quickly that he nearly blinked and missed a year if he was safe at home in his own.

"I appreciate that," he offered honestly, looking at the information printed on the card and flipping it over to peruse the other side as well. "And, Ms. Akatsutsumi," his pronunciation of her name was slow, but careful. He wasn't going to trip over her name just because he rushed it. "I'm afraid I never did catch what it is that you do for work."

[heromaniac]

He was of the generation that if he didn't stay vigilant, decades would pass before he noticed. He would probably not discover this until the grandchildren were born.

"Ah, my apologies. I'm actually a superhero." She smiled and gave him a V-sign. "I'm currently free-lance, but I used to work for the Tokyo City's Mayor's office. I still do work for them, but anymore it's mostly political. I'm pretty much on-call in several worlds, now."

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

"You know," Junior mused, "I would find that statement to be a lot stranger, even just a year ago."

A year ago his own time. It had been several for any other reality he was aware of, and that was boggling all on its own.

"It's amazing just what can change in a year. I thought I knew, once. Now I'm coming to realize that I had no idea."

[heromaniac]

"That's because we think of a year as a whole thing." Momoko gave him a very sympathetic smile. "When you realize how many months it is... days, weeks, minutes... It suddenly becomes a very long time, 'just a year'."

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

"I'm just now coming to terms with how many years can fit in a couple of months," Junior replied, his tone wry, bordering on something apologetic. "He's grown a lot, hasn't he?"

That wasn't much of a topic jump, was it?

[heromaniac]

Since she was thinking of her first year as Blossom and how much growing up she'd done in those 52 episodes twelve months? No, it wasn't.

She reached for her wine and used that movement as an excuse to turn so she could look in Warren's direction naturally, his father now at her side. "That depends on what you're really asking. He's changed, if that's what you mean? He's no longer afraid to be himself. No longer ashamed." Her smile as she looked at her flying buddy was both fond and proud.

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

Junior quietly took in that smile, and then looked toward his son, sitting next to his Queen, the woman that would someday be his wife, and just silently gauging who it was that he was looking at.

Definitely not the same young man who had just quietly gone along with years of seclusion and humiliation all because of his father's hopes for a cure.

"He was ashamed," he echoed, quietly. "Looking at him now, I can't find anything he should be ashamed of."

[heromaniac]

"Looking back, and being honest, did you ever see anything he should be ashamed of?"

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

Well, that was a loaded question, right there. But being honest...

Junior shook his head.

"No. Being honest, I was only ever ashamed of myself."

For all of the ways he'd consistently failed Warren through his lifetime. First with his mother, then with his inability to stop him from mutilating himself in the bathroom the day he found out about his wings, and then again, over and over and over until now.

Warren had only ever tried to make him proud.

[heromaniac]

Momoko was silent for a moment, letting that confession have the floor, the honour it deserved.

"That's something very hard to live with." She acknowledged his courage in admitting it. "And thank you for sharing it."

"Warren's been through a lot, even after he left your world." Case in point? Claws. "But through it all, he's stayed true to one thing - he was Warren Worthington the third. Not that the name meant anything to the monsters he was fighting or on alien worlds that had never even heard of Earth. But it meant something to him."

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

There was a long silence now, thoughtful, as Junior contemplated the man that his boy had grown into.

"Something he could be proud of?"

He certainly looked as though he had discovered a sense of pride along the way.

[heromaniac]

"The first time we learn to fly, it's usually an accident. A fall or someone drops us; a jump and we get stuck in the air. After that one time, though, it's always in an attempt to escape the ground and get back up there."

She frowned slightly, ducking her head. "But we forget how important the ground is when we're in the sky. Even though it's where we have to come back to. Always. And no matter how long we're away from it, just like the sky, it welcomes us back. Keeps us safe. Despite that, we can sometimes think of it like a trap."

"Who he is and where he came from... That's the ground to Warren's life. It took him a while to realize it isn't really a trap, that it's where he can come back to. Where he can get the strength to fly again."

She gave her glass of wine a swirl. "Not that I think he realizes all of this, my unsure wobbly-winged flying buddy, turned battle hardened Queen's Consort." Momoko hadn't even thought about it until she and Warren had argued over Ludmilla's sentencing, after all.