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grecoisms · 6 years

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title: vanderlyle, vanderlyle (1/3)

pairing: connor / kara

summary: "he is not really surprised - the programme that ordered him to search for her among the masses of men and machines perhaps never truly finished running. would not, will not."

(1) baptism

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

the thing wearing human clothes fools him for about twenty-five seconds, the time it takes an average human male to sprint down the stairs at rosa parks bus terminal and reach the exit. but there is no escape from here; and anyways, no human would have that look in their eyes. not in this city - that hunting, hunted kind of cold calculation, the ready to risk it all attitude.

so when he and the deviant lock eyes in the pouring rain, connor does what the piezoelectric battery pumped by the trillion of carbon nanotubes inside his artificial, synthetic cranium does best: he calculates the odds of each preconstructed scenario regarding the reaction of the other machine.

he knows she is doing the exact same thing.

incipiently, all ax400 models were designed to nurse and care. this, by definition, made it weaker. physically, like each android, it could easily endure long distances and extreme weather conditions all the same, but the child she has chosen to run away with and insisted on protecting - a malfunction like no other - would not tolerate the hardships that follow an escape in the pouring november rain, let alone the velocity needed for an escape like this; in the daylight, in an open field.

because the child simply cannot take it. they are both small, yes - the android does not reach five feet five; and the child is young. maybe they could have hidden, had they not been spotted so absolutely. they could have stayed hidden; stayed in what they considered safe. the anonymity, the namelessness, the walking between what can and cannot be.

the erasure of labels.

but something must be rusting within his circuits, for connor has to cancel the preconstruction process. he has almost, it seems, followed the rabbit down the hole (//memo: the [little girl's name] is [williams, alice]). he is back in the rain, in the motel, staring dead in the bright blue eyes of the deviant, who straightens her spine in the shadows. her hair is brightwhite (//analysis: [white] is a [tactical disadvantage]). behind her, a sicklypale figure emerges, her mouth agape. williams, alice. she is in what humans would call a shock.

connor looks back at the deviant (kara, he remembers. its name is kara. the child is alice) who licks her lips, all anticipation.

he still has not told hank anything, though he is but two feets away, shivering as the downpour cleanses them.

//analysis: [symbolism] of [water]. clarity, cleansing, new beginnings.

he is not very sure why he looked this up all the sudden, except he knows now and does not like what he has found. in his discomfort, or as to tear his mind from it, he finally opens his mouth.

"lieutenant!"

his shout is drowned by a thunder. the policemen turn anyway, and so does connor, back to find the android and the girl holding hands, their shapes a haze in the waterfall around. the deviant shakes her (itsitsitsitsitsits) head. there is something very primal, very human in the way she clenches her jaws.

it is useless to run.

the ax400 model does it anyway.

(2) confirmation

We almost always forgive those we understand.

jericho is a quiet canvas around them – an avalon, she thinks, the name escaping from a fairytale that is stored in her database – and it is a welcomed transition from the mayhem they escaped from. still, the sudden, shocking peace is delicate. feeble. kara dares not hope yet. she has had one unpleasant surprise too many in the past.

and yet. maybe it is the sheer novelty of it, or maybe it comes with merely being alive, walking on the unordinary pathways, but there are better-tasting surprises everyday.

for instance: the calluses on markus’ hands don’t mend as he carves and builds and forms a new table with dozens of chairs from the finest of steels.

”stainless” he explains to kara one evening as she reports the missing androids, as she lists the ones they need to hide or need to house or need to help.

when she presents him the names of their dead, she finds she cannot look him into the eyes and instead, looks down; down, to the reflective surface of that finely crafted table, all new and all whole. her reflection in it is shockingly bright and blinding. hopeful, even.

as she looks up, she finds markus both serious and smiling. she finds that it has been easier to understand such contradictions since she took alice’s hands in the house she does not want to name.

and oh. the surprises and the wonders.

like alice wanting to learn how to sing, and north knowing how to, her sharp features softer in the light of the evening when she is with them. when she is with alice.

”you gave your name yet?” north murmurs as alice runs to find the battered monopoly board game josh smuggled home as a gift. the name of some properties are illegible, but they make do. alice is inventing new names, new realities as they play.

”to what?” panic roses within her in less than a nanosecond. she does not want to promise anything in the long run. jericho may be sanctuary, but it is built on a powder keg of ideologies. she does not want alice and her to be here when it explodes. and canada is still a viable option, after the cold touch of winter eases its grip on the state.

north senses her fear and her lips turn thin. she might like alice, but she must think kara a coward. kara does not blame her. the definition of taking action is very much different in their heads.

still, north's voice is not unkind when she answers.

”connor is teaching how to imitate proper cursive. in case someone needs it in the future. we can even choose our own surnames, if we want.”

the flashback of her own clumsy, hurried writing at the motel's reception floats back in. she doubts she can get away with something like that again. at the border, for example. she shudders what the officials would do after beholding her cramped loops. and how in the world will she help alice learn, in case she needs it? she has never even asked her whether she can read, let alone write.

"alright" she hears herself saying, though her voice comes as through a filter, as a dream. she has seen connor here and there in jericho, haggard and pale, mostly conferring with markus, then disappearing again. it is safe to say she has not sought out his company. "alright."

"you met him before?" north asks, watching her face carefully.

kara thinks of their nigh-death experience on the highway, his grip on her shoulders, the smells and sounds tasting vile around them. it has been a month or two now. and even if she shudders at the memory, she does not fold herself smaller like she used to.

north does not press her further. this, she notes, is also surprising.

days fly by. markus has given her smaller assignments since they arrived here, talking and helping some of the newcomers, finding them places and aid josh in listing what they lack - as always, mostly android parts, new ones - and through rose, she has been in contact with androids from cleveland and hamilton.

the holo-messages she receives are short, angry and desperate. her answers are short, faux-calm and factual. most of the neighboring cities seek constant help and instant escape; something neither kara, nor markus can promise. and though kara does not like saying no to people in great need of support, she hates lying and fake-reassurance more. they simply do not have the resources to hide any more people presently.

at the end of the week, north smuggles alice some toys she has promised while kara learns to repair smaller defects and system failures from lucy. then she realizes that albeit she is making herself useful, she is stalling for time.

lucy guesses her thoughts before she can order them in place. she is getting used to it.

"he is here" lucy's hands are very cold as she touches her hands and turns her towards the stairs. and there, alone and thinner than she remembers him, stands connor, with new holes in his jacket and some dust on his pants. he is staring into one of the markus-made fires, lost in thoughts.

alright, she thinks and straightens her shoulders. she has danced her dance with him already, and there is no need to worry anymore since they are on the same side. they want the same things. don't they?

it is only thanks to the light of the fire that the former deviant hunter has some color in his face. even the carefully placed moles under his eyes have lost some of their darker hue. suddenly, she remembers the rumors around the camp, the ones that murmur about connor acting as a double agent and how he serves as the main source of intel between jericho and cyberlife. looking at him right here and now, with lanky fatigue on his boyish face, the thought seems laughable. but kara has seen enough to know that appearances are deceitful.

and for a moment, she does not care about her fear or his face. she needs a tangible truth, like ink-blotted writing on a piece of paper, or forming a name with one's mouth.

"connor" her voice is low, but she feels a defiance that makes her giddy. he jumps a bit at the sound, alarmed. maybe it is the familiarity of her voice, or the strangeness of his name in another's mouth.

here, she thinks, i named you. now, name me back, if you dare.

he turns towards her very slowly. his eyes are almost black as he stands in from of her, his back facing the light. "oh" he says, he breathes. the remnant of his strength seems to dissipate, and he rubs his hands together. he cannot feel the cold so it must be a nervous tick. "kara."

king and queen of cantelon - how many miles to babylon? she remembers out of nowhere, knowing deep in the hardwires of her thirium pump that it is a nursery rhyme, meant to be sung for children afraid of the dark. and here, half in the dark, half in the light, as kara watches connor and his shaking hands, she feels something she would not call anger. it is a relief, of some sort.

he opens his mouth to say something else, but decides against it. jericho continues to roar around them, world so dynamic, while he dares not even blink in fear of scaring her. or so she thinks.

will I get there by candle-light, she wonders; and then: to where? she searches the answer in connor's lost face, his sharp features and learnt movements. will he get there with her, to that place of wonders - arcadia, babylon, jericho. etcetera. and the list goes on.

kara inhales. connor exhales. or is it the other way around?

"i need your help" she says. there is a sort of finality in her voice.

"oh" he echoes. and does not correct the repetition in his mind, because theretherethere, on kara's mouth, a smile is forming.

(3) penance

And her light stretches over salt sea equally

somewhere halfway amidst the epiphany of his own rebirth and the ending of the world, connor spots kara in a dilapidated and dusty church. he is not really surprised - the programme that ordered him to search for her among the masses of men and machines perhaps never truly finished running. would not, will not. how to explain this? connor labels this question, and puts it away into a folder of his vast database-mind that has no name yet.

//note: irony - her hair gives her away that soft halo light behind the grime and the smoke he mirrors with his own disheveled self. when he approaches, his movements are careful and slow. finally, a choice he can call his own. and as he lowers to face them, he sees that she remembers. remembers him. oh, and her eyes are sharp again, the blue irises leadlike and unforgiving.

she tightens her arms protectively around alice's sleeping form. the tautness of her sinewy body, the ache and the awareness slipping through. he notices, with some suppressed pride, that she does not bother to hide these signs anymore. she is more alive than not. more alive than him.

if he were braver man, or rather, a man at all, he would kneel down to her feet, show the lines of his palms. a confession. a task most urgent. somehow, he does not doubt she would listen.

"i am sorry i put your lives in danger" he would say. his words would be clumsy, but she would accept them anyway.

but he is neither brave, nor a man, so he simply walks away - to find markus and cover the sight of her face with new input. it is a tedious task not to simply sit down on the cold hard stones and attempt to memorize the tender lines of her face.

//research later, connor orders himself as he walks away, synonyms for lovely.

the thought does not give him a headache like it did the first time hank touched his shoulders and he had to - no, wanted to - look up all the synonyms for friend. he discarded the order then. he does not do it now.

the synthetic walls around his thirium pump regulator shiver and shimmer. it is not an unpleasant phenomenon. he does not understand this either.

#connara #connor x kara #kara x connor #dbh #an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind #otp: you. me. infinity #My writing

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persephonesgossip-blog · 6 years

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fondue for the mudracker

A New Beginning

Yo and Hello from JBI and Brittany Pierce, here to bring you the hottest gossip and introduce our newest speciality. Minus the cheese, there’s a total lack of cheese, we’re working on it.

We all love The Sirens and Divine Influence, obviously - who doesn’t? And since some of us can’t see the tour live RIP all you broke fangirls and tiny children, we wanna make sure you get to see all the drama. So welcome to our new blog for all the ladies on Persephone’s Tour. As The L-Word taught us, too many ladies all together is gonna bring some MAJOR drama. And lady loin tingles.

Speaking of that specific l-word, let’s start out with the only one who’s officially used that word - little Miss Kat Hummel...

Of course we’re all major fans of Kat’s Korner (maybe not all of us?) and we’re stoked for her upcoming fashion line, but is that all we want from her? Of course not! We want her to be rocking with The Sirens 24/7! But is that what Kat wants? The answer is maybe a yes. Rumor has it that Kat is going to drop out of the band to focus on her fashion endeavors. Probably because her socialblade suggests that reviewing shoes and bringing Marley on here and there can only give her so much ad rev. She lacks cheese, I’m telling you, cheese and cats = YouTube success.

She might also just be tiring of certain members of the band. “Members” being used very lightly. Her stepsister, Fiona Hudson, is playing drums for The Sirens, who don’t have their own drummer, on tour. Obviously they’ve used drummers before, and Kat seemed friendly enough with other replacement drummers...but have you noticed how little she mentions Fiona on social media? How Fiona is the only Siren-of-sorts who hasn’t appeared in a Kat’s Korner video? The two don’t seem very close at all. Could family tensions force her to leave? Maybe so, especially since both Marley and Norah could easily take over keyboard and possibly bass when needed. Spoiler alert, Fiona’s height probs makes Kat feel too tiny since she wants to be the biggest thing in the band. Too bad Mad Marls has that covered.

Kat leaving, as mentioned, would let her focus on her well-known first love, fashion. We also assume that means she could focus on her girlfriend, Kitty Wilde of #KittyKat fame. Oh, sorry, we mean “friend”. Friends don’t invite friends to do the couple tag on YouTube, just saying. Obviously. After all, Kitty should have time with her fellow feline-named female once Rachel Berry goes on Broadway, a gig she has lined up right after the tour ends. We all know Rachel loves Broadway and majored in musical theater at UCLA, so will she choose to stay on stage? And, if she doesn’t, can her band really recover from a Broadway hiatus? I hate her.

Kitty, while “close friends” with Kat, has also openly called Rachel her best friend, as the two have known each other almost their entire lives. Kitty only pretends to be in the God Squad so she can convince people she has a soul. It seems rather interesting that Kitty would be so close to the two people who are rumored to be leaving. Is it something she did? Maybe she wants more time with Kat - or maybe she wants to start and empire of her own, and had to recruit Kat to help her start a fashion/make-up/social media fame platform. We’ve noticed how her follower number has grown exponentially since #KittyKat vlogs started, and we wouldn’t be surprised if all of that success went into her little blonde head. Kitty is just a knock off version of Quinn and knock offs always fall apart.

Regardless, we wish Rachel luck on Broadway (no), but not enough luck that she’ll actually get recognized for her work. If she does a good enough job she could get a Tony nomination, which will lead to more job offers, and that might just be the end of Divine Influence... Tony should keep his award and Rachel should keep being horrible somewhere I don’t have to see it anymore.

...Unless someone takes over for Rachel. Lead singers do have a history of being replaced - we’re looking at you, Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac, etc. - but could Divine Influence be doing the same thing? Blair Anderson speaking of, who even IS Blair?????, a back-up singer/dancer on the tour, also studied musical theater at UCLA, and she obviously knew Rachel. There’s even evidence of her being friends with the other members of the band. Sabrina Smythe, the manager of both bands on Pesephone’s Tour, has said their back-up singers have been working hard and well with the bands, She even made special note that Blair could have a solo during the encore which is a shame because Santana Lopez should totally get to sing, and it doesn’t take much searching to find out that Blair has made a demo herself. Is this tour going to be her audition to take over Rachel’s spot? And, more importantly, would we care about the band anymore if Rachel’s not a part of it? Hmm. We just don’t know. Wait... we care about the band right now??

What else we don’t know? Why are there back-up dancers in the first place? Jackie Williams made a smash in Divine Influence’s “Hey Beautiful Angel” music video, but was it enough that they really decided to add dancers to the tour? Back-up singers, sure, which Jackie also doing, but it’s oddly coincidental they managed to book her months afterwards, right? Sabrina announced the search for other back-up for the tour shortly after the video debuted, and Jackie was a part of the search team. Something about that seems rather off, don’t you think? Sad pandas unite for me not making it on the tour. I dance way better and am way hotter and have bigger boobs. So.

Speaking of Sabrina Smythe, have you ever wondered if there was another “S” that needed to slip into her name? Perhaps Sabrina Stripper Smythe? A blind item on twitter claims that some tour member has a stripper past, and wouldn’t that just fit the narrative of the Spoiled Smythe? After all, her best friend, Santana Lopez, is known for taking her clothes off, so we can’t help but wonder if she was influenced by her. She’s also the only member of her family to not have a law degree, and we could see a stripper past causing that problem. I’d pay to see that... just saying.

Another degree-less member? Sam Evans. As in, not even a college degree, or even an attempt at college, like Fiona. It’s rather sad, actually. We don’t know much about her past between Kentucky, dyslexia, and moving to LA. Is she hiding some dark past? THIS IS RUDE college is hard :( and Sam is pretty, pretty people don’t need to go to college. Maybe SHE was the stripper.

Eh. Seems unlikely with how innocent of a country bumpkin she is, but we’re keeping our eyes on her. When your past is full of so many blank spots, we can assume you’re hiding something

Then again, do we know anything about Quinn Fabray? Well, about her past? She was friends of some sort with Santana in college, as evidenced by Santana’s old picture of her with pink hair all the way back from their freshman year. Along with the pink hair, there are some now gone piercings and a punk vibe that we didn’t expect.

We also know that Quinn’s real name is “Lucy”, but why did she change it? Could that mean - NEVERMIND QUINN’S THE STRIPPER

And, lastly, let’s get into our beloved Puckerose, both of whom may not be hiding so much anymore...

Norah Puckerman and Marley Rose have been the fan favorite ship of the band since day one. Over time, the ship has grown from fan speculation to fans just knowing it’s true. All the posts about each other, the duets, the songs they’ve written together, and now they live together? Please! Even non-fringe fans are starting to assume they’re dating. I’d date them, too. I’d also date Norah’s new boyfriend, he’s hot.

Which is why we are very distressed to report images of our beloved Puckster with a man. The two seem to be enjoying time in New York City and are all smiles.

While we all just assume Norah’s bi and, yes, we would be okay with her dating guys, we gotta ask...um, what the fuck??

Norah has mentioned an affinity for older men in the past, but this old? Um...what? Originally we dismissed the photos, since there wasn’t much to them and she could’ve just ran into someone on the street who was trying to talk to her. She’s pleasant to strangers...well, sometimes.

But now the two have been spotted together a couple of times, and we think that could be a sign it’s a real thing. One brave TMZ-er got footage of the two of them at dinner before the man - her boyfriend? - asking her to leave them alone while Norah just sat there politely. Norah being a quiet, good girl?? He looks old, maybe she has a bigger daddy kink than Kitty does for Jesus?

We’re kinkshaming this relationship - am I using that term correctly? Whatever, this whole thing is weird!

Of course, maybe it’s in response to Marley’s obvious beard - oh, oops, “boyfriend” - Ryder Lynn. Marley must be good at shaving, she should shave her boyfriends head, too.

Totally cute and believable - if we pretended Puckerose wasn’t living together - right? Except...where the fuck is this guy? We never see him around. Maybe he’s a robot, they’re good at hiding.

And you’d particularly think he’d want to be around after the events of the day. The OG Sirens had a group interview today, and, as soon as it ended, Marley fainted. She was quickly revived and had plenty of water but was rushed away before any questions could be asked. Marley even declined to be on Fondue for Two which totally means she either hates cheese or isn’t eating at all...because we all know she’d love to come pet my pussy’s. Sabrina and Santana put out a message that Marley was simply dehydrated and tired from all the rehearsals, but, come on, we all know “dehydration” and “exhaustion” are code words for drugs - I bet Norah gave her drugs - and mental health issues. So, what’s Miss Rose hiding besides her relationship with her favorite guitarist? Or is the stress of headlining a major tour while her bestie for the restie, Kat, is planning on leaving too much for her?

Well...we’ll have to wait and see.

#ptgossip #jbi #bp #a new beginning #all #ba #rb #se #qf #fh #kh #sl #jp #np #mr #ss #kw

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