[ It is sometimes difficult to tell if Clea's atelier is a workshop or a terrarium, hot and humid as it is. The reason can be found in the gigantic glass enclosure that wraps around two walls of the room, full of tropical plants, logs, and caves as well as one very large boa constrictor. A few smaller enclosures can be found on the opposite wall. ]
Shoes, s'il vous plait.
[ She reminds the other woman with a gentle chide, not looking up from where she's sitting at a vintage hardwood desk, sorting through the photography from her recent trip to the Amazon. Most of the photographs have been placed in the 'lacking' pile, but there are a small number of which Clea approves. She holds a photograph of a small brightly colored frog up above her head, examining it with a frown, going back and forth on its merits.
If she must question, it is a no.
She adds the photograph to the pile of rejects and finally turns to give her 'guest' her full attention.
There are few people Clea allows in her atelier out of a desire to preserve her privacy, but she is one of them. If one wishes to acquire interesting goods, one must make interesting friends, and the best way to ingratiate oneself is to provide services. The jobs provide a suitable challenge and a network which is unburdened by questions of legality, though Clea prefers to keep herself away from the messier side of that world: she's not trying to end up bleeding out in an alley like a common thug. ]
It's been a long time. I was beginning to think you'd become banal - acquired a husband, children, and a golden retriever. Please do not ask for a donation to a children's school.
[ Her voice has a teasing lilt to it, as the notion is ridiculous. ]
What name are we using today, madame?
[ It is fascinating how the other woman so readily inhabits her personae. Clea has never had a talent for acting or disappearing; she is too much herself. Yet this woman is an actress par excellence of the deepest sort, entirely subsuming herself and yet never being lost. ]
[ She does have a fake identity she's working under currently, of course, but it doesn't matter. Root is here on the Machine's orders, specifically as herself -- which is interesting. It's almost like a personal gift if she didn't know better. Root loves puzzles, and excuses to see people she likes -- and she hasn't had much downtime since she decided to follow the Machine. Not that she's complaining (never) but she is, unfortunately, a flesh and blood human who can't go on endlessly.
She's sure this little assignment isn't solely for her benefit, though she does think that might be a secondary motive. The Machine doesn't play matchmaker for her agents' primate social needs, not past that one time when she was young and she introduced Harold to Grace. No, the Machine never tells her much, and in this case it was even more minimal than normal: visit Clea. Someone she hasn't seen in years but has thought about quite a few times since. It's rare that Root clicks on a personal level with someone, and when she does, she latches on. Not tightly -- she's like a cat, always leaving to do her own things but coming back routinely for treats and attention -- but assuredly, leaving no question of her attachment.
Root pauses momentarily to kick off her three inch heels as directed, leaving her in sheer black pantyhose and an understated color-block dress, hair artfully tousled in a chignon. She could be any well-dressed professional Frenchwoman wandering in off the street.
Leaving the shoes carelessly to the side, she pads over in stocking feet to examine the pile of pictures, head tilting to orient them better. A smaller, more honest smile finds its way onto her face. ]
These are the rejects, right? [ she asks, taking a guess. ] Can I have one?
[ Though she would never admit to anything so gauche, Clea does feel a sense of pleasure at the address: Root has never struck her as the sort of woman to bandy about endearments. Clea watches Root approach with interest, looking her up and down to appraise today's presentation. It stands in contrast with Clea's own, as the artist had intended to devote the entirety of the day to working and had dressed accordingly in flowing, impeccably tailored linens allowing for freedom of movement, shirt sleeves rolled up past her forearms and hair tied back in a braid.
Clea's grey eyes flicker over to Root. She wonders what the purpose is of Root's visit: It has been some time since she's requested any of Clea's services. ]
If you insist, though you deserve better.
[ Why she would want one from the rejects, Clea isn't certain. The photographs Root sees all look like they could easily belong in a nature photo exhibition - photographs of exotic flora and fauna both - but in each Clea has identified what she's determined is a glaring flaw.
Clea draws out a photograph from the much thinner pile of those that had met her standards and passes it over to Root for inspection: A large white bellied Caiman alligator in the midst of preying on an anaconda, mouth having just clamped down on the doomed snake. The two animals are framed by lush green leaves and bright blooms - a multilayered photograph Clea had painstakingly developed in the old way in a darkroom.
It's a much more interesting piece than the ones Root is considering. ]
[ Root says plenty of things she doesn't mean -- she lies constantly, from her name to her accent to her personal investment in someone -- but if she's here today as Root, that means she's not here to lie. She knows how to interpret it when the Machine gives an instruction like that.
Which means the term of endearment is perfectly genuine and not flippant, and Clea's insistence that Root deserves better provokes an amused widening of her smile. ]
It's hard for me to hold onto material objects these days, so I didn't want to take any of your good ones, [ she explains, which is perfectly true. ] But I can still appreciate them.
[ She examines the one Clea is silently suggesting. ]
I like it. Comforting to think you haven't changed much, either.
[ What a life that must be. Clea is no gauche consumerist, running out to purchase the latest plastic doodads to fill the void in her soul, but she does take pride in curating her environment and her belongings. She finds joy in the craftmanship of her clothing, the carved wood of her furniture. She enjoys the history of her home and the atelier, places full of history and secrets.
She hands the violent photograph to Root, holding it in the air between them. ]
I will consider it like a zen garden or mandala: Enjoy it in its transience.
[ Clea smiles at the compliment, for that is certainly what it is. She leans back in her chair, stretching her arms far above her head and arching her back. She's been sitting too long. ]
[ Root has almost nothing she physically holds onto. If she stays somewhere longer than a few weeks, which is rare but does happen, she'll start to accumulate possessions -- but she's prepared to leave them all behind at a moment's notice, everything from top to bottom. She can pick up new things on the go as she needs them, whether that's stealing or legitimately buying them somehow. It doesn't matter. The things that are important are completely immaterial.
Like Clea offering to give her one of the photos she feels passes muster nonetheless. There's a softer edge to her smile as she takes it from her, and now she's looking at Clea instead of the photograph, watching her stretch and propping her hip against the desk in sly suggestion. ]
At the atomic level, nothing has a definite measurable position or trajectory, [ Root offers, which is her way of flirting. Her appreciation of math and science occurs at an almost transcendental level, something she feels in her soul, something better than and beyond humanity. ] It's true transience. The act of measuring it alters it, meaning if you can measure one aspect, you can't know the other.
[ Root is not a soft person. That is what makes drawing out traces of it so satisfying - as an artist, Clea works to draw out things from people they don't know exist within themselves. For the average person, that is discomfort. Violence. Their primal selves. Root is in touch with that aspect of herself. No. From this woman, Clea delights in finding the pleasures.
And so she is satisfied both with the smile, soft and hidden, and with the way Root's eyes follow Clea's movements. As intended: Clea has been trained to perform, to inhabit her body for the viewing of others, and she knows how to draw eyes. She knows that the way she arches her back creates a pleasing curve that complements her body, knows it places her chest in the sunlight and reveals she wears nothing beneath her linen shirt.
She can't help but smile as Root starts talking, offering up fundamental facts about the universe like a penguin offers a pebble.
Clea spends most of her days around people who would not know authenticity if it hit them over the head. They crave it, chase it, and yet every aspect of their being is measured and polished. There is something charmingly real about Root's responses, and there is something wonderfully complex about that realness coming from someone who so frequently inhabits lies. ]
And yet larger things can be measured. It is interesting how reality can simultaneously contain so many different natures, all of them true.
What is beautiful in it to you?
[ The question is genuine. Clea looks at her expectantly. ]
[ Root pretends to be soft to lure other people in, takes full advantage of the natural assumptions people make about a tall thin woman with a sweet face and a kind voice. It's one of the reasons she so rarely feels known and accepted; she knows that who she really is isn't someone most people are comfortable with. In a funny way, getting past the exterior layer reveals only a middle layer of cold callousness, and beneath that is only where she's able to be vulnerable and express true softness like this. Which she does long to do sometimes.
However cynical she is, however many people she's killed and tortured and is willing to do so again, Root is just a person. She does want to be understood. It's a very unfortunate human failing that she is not exempt from.
Sexual interest is at least a human failing she doesn't mind so much. Not that she'd ever make it easy for someone she was genuinely interested in. Where's the fun in that? Clea asked, so she's going to be subject to Root waxing eloquent instead of leaning into the flirting. One of these is a much rarer opportunity than the other for Root. ]
I used to get upset about the inevitable cosmic entropy of the universe, [ Root says thoughtfully, answering obliquely. Like Clea perceived, it's a more authentic sort of response, her real thoughts, unpolished. ] Humanity is disappointing and we're only going to get worse with time.
[ She pauses. ]
But now I think if each of us is a flare, just a speck in the infinite, that means we can do anything, be anything. If it's impossible to measure that means it's impossible to define, no permanent end state.
[ The truth is, she found something that gave her hope, and Root is both in awe of that and overwhelmed by it. Root is always unapologetic about her decisions, but she knows she'll die for this one, and she's betting sooner rather than later. It lends a quiet urgency to her words as the bottom layer, beneath the higher layers of light humor and sarcastic self-awareness. ]
I did change, just a little. That I did surprised me.
[ Clea listens. She turns her body toward Root, giving the other woman her full attention. Root does not strike Clea as a woman who speaks honestly - truly and authentically - often. Fortunately for Root, she is also not boring, so Clea actually enjoys having her as a conversational partner. If she did not, she would not have indulged her and would have kept their interactions strictly professional.
Root expresses the sentiment differently than Clea would have, coming at it from a different angle, but it's a sentiment that Clea can nevertheless understand. It also speaks well of Root's character that she does express the sentiment at all: too many people who are enamored of computers, science, and technology are locked in a perpetual search for The Answer. Which does not, of course, exist. ]
After my brother died, I could only look upon the future with despair. My parents ceased to care for themselves and my injured sister, so they all became my responsibility.
[ She'd spent her days in drudgery: making certain nobody found her parents in the Canvas while ensuring their bodies were cared for. Caring for Alicia herself after the first nurse had tried to sell pictures of her maiming. The world was full of vultures: her family's seclusion had been interesting. Paperwork, planning, and caretaking, day after day. Clea hadn't even wanted to leave their manor: if her sister's friends could betray her, who was to say Clea's would not do likewise? ]
When I considered my life in the future, it was with perpetual weights on my neck, sinking me down into weeks and years of being as a pack mule or a servant.
[ A sentiment many would consider horrific. Caretakers were supposed to be happy for their burdens, to be positive and act only out of love. They weren't supposed to have any feelings about what they placed aside. Clea was supposed to welcome the idea of being her sister's advocate and caretaker for the rest of their lives, for decades, even as it was thrust upon her as suddenly as the injury had been on the remaining younger sibling. She was not supposed to resent the constraints this placed upon her ability to live her own life. ]
I only considered surprise to be a negative at that point. Surprise had stolen my brother and my life from me.
[ And so, for some time, it had provided no succor. ]
Then, someone I had known as a child and moved away returned unexpectedly, and she came calling. We ended up in a small shop, trying lavender ice cream together. She had not been in any of my thoughts of the future. She had been a surprise, but a welcome one.
It served as a reminder that the future is not set in stone.
[ It's typical Root to drop in on someone she hasn't seen in years and immediately lapse into a conversation about the entropic state of the universe and whether it's possible to find hope in that immutable decay. Then again, this is precisely why Clea even knows her as Root -- she'd been drawn to this early on, and curiosity is a precious thing for Root to feel about another person, something she nurtures. She can tell there's a heaviness to Clea's past that's honed her to an edge, like a chisel chipping off pieces of stone until it reveals the barest, most minimal form underneath. She's always liked that.
Even so, she remains convinced the Machine did not send her here for her benefit. Which means she listens to Clea's story with personal interest, and with something more. Something sharper. ]
I don't get surprised very often, [ Root confesses, because existence was for so long just drudgery to her. ] But you've always managed to surprise me.
They tried to contain you, but you're too much to be contained. If it wasn't that visitor and that ice cream it would've been something else. You got out of there somehow -- that part was inevitable.
[ She's here today, so she must have. Root is openly admiring, not a trace of reservation in her praise. It's vanishingly few people she has anything complimentary to say about, but those few, she's effusive. And she's become even less reserved since falling in with the Machine. ]
You were never meant to be subservient. To anyone.
[ Clea is pleased that she is a source of surprise. That she adds some of that all-important entropy to the other woman's life. She does strive to be interesting. She could have easily rested on her parents' laurels and name and spent her life creating insipid 'art', or singing absurd songs others wrote that contained as much intellectual substance as cotton candy.
Instead, she has devoted her life to the esoteric and the odd, to plumbing the depths and crannies of the human experience and rendering them. To reminding people that there is more in heaven and Earth than is dreamed of in their philosophies.
To have succeeded with a woman with such a unique life is a source of pride.
To be so admired by a woman with such a unique experience is a source of pleasure. Clea smiles. It is not a soft expression: there is an fierce edge to it, a glint in her eyes. It is an expression of triumph. ]
That is true. I wish I had photographed my parents' faces when they realized I'd taken custody of my sister.
[ They had thought she was bluffing. That they could remain in their fairy tale world playing games while their lives burned and Clea would do nothing.
Clea leans forward and gives Root her full attention, grey eyes examining her thoroughly, as she would any piece of art. ]
You are more yourself than you used to be.
[ Hmm. No. That is not correct. Root has always been herself, even underneath the mask. ]
You exist in more of your potential space than you had before. You grow in many directions instead of one.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fuck it let's do it - modern POI AU
Shoes, s'il vous plait.
[ She reminds the other woman with a gentle chide, not looking up from where she's sitting at a vintage hardwood desk, sorting through the photography from her recent trip to the Amazon. Most of the photographs have been placed in the 'lacking' pile, but there are a small number of which Clea approves. She holds a photograph of a small brightly colored frog up above her head, examining it with a frown, going back and forth on its merits.
If she must question, it is a no.
She adds the photograph to the pile of rejects and finally turns to give her 'guest' her full attention.
There are few people Clea allows in her atelier out of a desire to preserve her privacy, but she is one of them. If one wishes to acquire interesting goods, one must make interesting friends, and the best way to ingratiate oneself is to provide services. The jobs provide a suitable challenge and a network which is unburdened by questions of legality, though Clea prefers to keep herself away from the messier side of that world: she's not trying to end up bleeding out in an alley like a common thug. ]
It's been a long time. I was beginning to think you'd become banal - acquired a husband, children, and a golden retriever. Please do not ask for a donation to a children's school.
[ Her voice has a teasing lilt to it, as the notion is ridiculous. ]
What name are we using today, madame?
[ It is fascinating how the other woman so readily inhabits her personae. Clea has never had a talent for acting or disappearing; she is too much herself. Yet this woman is an actress par excellence of the deepest sort, entirely subsuming herself and yet never being lost. ]
no subject
[ She does have a fake identity she's working under currently, of course, but it doesn't matter. Root is here on the Machine's orders, specifically as herself -- which is interesting. It's almost like a personal gift if she didn't know better. Root loves puzzles, and excuses to see people she likes -- and she hasn't had much downtime since she decided to follow the Machine. Not that she's complaining (never) but she is, unfortunately, a flesh and blood human who can't go on endlessly.
She's sure this little assignment isn't solely for her benefit, though she does think that might be a secondary motive. The Machine doesn't play matchmaker for her agents' primate social needs, not past that one time when she was young and she introduced Harold to Grace. No, the Machine never tells her much, and in this case it was even more minimal than normal: visit Clea. Someone she hasn't seen in years but has thought about quite a few times since. It's rare that Root clicks on a personal level with someone, and when she does, she latches on. Not tightly -- she's like a cat, always leaving to do her own things but coming back routinely for treats and attention -- but assuredly, leaving no question of her attachment.
Root pauses momentarily to kick off her three inch heels as directed, leaving her in sheer black pantyhose and an understated color-block dress, hair artfully tousled in a chignon. She could be any well-dressed professional Frenchwoman wandering in off the street.
Leaving the shoes carelessly to the side, she pads over in stocking feet to examine the pile of pictures, head tilting to orient them better. A smaller, more honest smile finds its way onto her face. ]
These are the rejects, right? [ she asks, taking a guess. ] Can I have one?
no subject
Clea's grey eyes flicker over to Root. She wonders what the purpose is of Root's visit: It has been some time since she's requested any of Clea's services. ]
If you insist, though you deserve better.
[ Why she would want one from the rejects, Clea isn't certain. The photographs Root sees all look like they could easily belong in a nature photo exhibition - photographs of exotic flora and fauna both - but in each Clea has identified what she's determined is a glaring flaw.
Clea draws out a photograph from the much thinner pile of those that had met her standards and passes it over to Root for inspection: A large white bellied Caiman alligator in the midst of preying on an anaconda, mouth having just clamped down on the doomed snake. The two animals are framed by lush green leaves and bright blooms - a multilayered photograph Clea had painstakingly developed in the old way in a darkroom.
It's a much more interesting piece than the ones Root is considering. ]
no subject
Which means the term of endearment is perfectly genuine and not flippant, and Clea's insistence that Root deserves better provokes an amused widening of her smile. ]
It's hard for me to hold onto material objects these days, so I didn't want to take any of your good ones, [ she explains, which is perfectly true. ] But I can still appreciate them.
[ She examines the one Clea is silently suggesting. ]
I like it. Comforting to think you haven't changed much, either.
no subject
She hands the violent photograph to Root, holding it in the air between them. ]
I will consider it like a zen garden or mandala: Enjoy it in its transience.
[ Clea smiles at the compliment, for that is certainly what it is. She leans back in her chair, stretching her arms far above her head and arching her back. She's been sitting too long. ]
Perfection can only be refined.
[ False humility does not suit her. ]
no subject
Like Clea offering to give her one of the photos she feels passes muster nonetheless. There's a softer edge to her smile as she takes it from her, and now she's looking at Clea instead of the photograph, watching her stretch and propping her hip against the desk in sly suggestion. ]
At the atomic level, nothing has a definite measurable position or trajectory, [ Root offers, which is her way of flirting. Her appreciation of math and science occurs at an almost transcendental level, something she feels in her soul, something better than and beyond humanity. ] It's true transience. The act of measuring it alters it, meaning if you can measure one aspect, you can't know the other.
I think that's beautiful.
no subject
And so she is satisfied both with the smile, soft and hidden, and with the way Root's eyes follow Clea's movements. As intended: Clea has been trained to perform, to inhabit her body for the viewing of others, and she knows how to draw eyes. She knows that the way she arches her back creates a pleasing curve that complements her body, knows it places her chest in the sunlight and reveals she wears nothing beneath her linen shirt.
She can't help but smile as Root starts talking, offering up fundamental facts about the universe like a penguin offers a pebble.
Clea spends most of her days around people who would not know authenticity if it hit them over the head. They crave it, chase it, and yet every aspect of their being is measured and polished. There is something charmingly real about Root's responses, and there is something wonderfully complex about that realness coming from someone who so frequently inhabits lies. ]
And yet larger things can be measured. It is interesting how reality can simultaneously contain so many different natures, all of them true.
What is beautiful in it to you?
[ The question is genuine. Clea looks at her expectantly. ]
no subject
However cynical she is, however many people she's killed and tortured and is willing to do so again, Root is just a person. She does want to be understood. It's a very unfortunate human failing that she is not exempt from.
Sexual interest is at least a human failing she doesn't mind so much. Not that she'd ever make it easy for someone she was genuinely interested in. Where's the fun in that? Clea asked, so she's going to be subject to Root waxing eloquent instead of leaning into the flirting. One of these is a much rarer opportunity than the other for Root. ]
I used to get upset about the inevitable cosmic entropy of the universe, [ Root says thoughtfully, answering obliquely. Like Clea perceived, it's a more authentic sort of response, her real thoughts, unpolished. ] Humanity is disappointing and we're only going to get worse with time.
[ She pauses. ]
But now I think if each of us is a flare, just a speck in the infinite, that means we can do anything, be anything. If it's impossible to measure that means it's impossible to define, no permanent end state.
[ The truth is, she found something that gave her hope, and Root is both in awe of that and overwhelmed by it. Root is always unapologetic about her decisions, but she knows she'll die for this one, and she's betting sooner rather than later. It lends a quiet urgency to her words as the bottom layer, beneath the higher layers of light humor and sarcastic self-awareness. ]
I did change, just a little. That I did surprised me.
no subject
Root expresses the sentiment differently than Clea would have, coming at it from a different angle, but it's a sentiment that Clea can nevertheless understand. It also speaks well of Root's character that she does express the sentiment at all: too many people who are enamored of computers, science, and technology are locked in a perpetual search for The Answer. Which does not, of course, exist. ]
After my brother died, I could only look upon the future with despair. My parents ceased to care for themselves and my injured sister, so they all became my responsibility.
[ She'd spent her days in drudgery: making certain nobody found her parents in the Canvas while ensuring their bodies were cared for. Caring for Alicia herself after the first nurse had tried to sell pictures of her maiming. The world was full of vultures: her family's seclusion had been interesting. Paperwork, planning, and caretaking, day after day. Clea hadn't even wanted to leave their manor: if her sister's friends could betray her, who was to say Clea's would not do likewise? ]
When I considered my life in the future, it was with perpetual weights on my neck, sinking me down into weeks and years of being as a pack mule or a servant.
[ A sentiment many would consider horrific. Caretakers were supposed to be happy for their burdens, to be positive and act only out of love. They weren't supposed to have any feelings about what they placed aside. Clea was supposed to welcome the idea of being her sister's advocate and caretaker for the rest of their lives, for decades, even as it was thrust upon her as suddenly as the injury had been on the remaining younger sibling. She was not supposed to resent the constraints this placed upon her ability to live her own life. ]
I only considered surprise to be a negative at that point. Surprise had stolen my brother and my life from me.
[ And so, for some time, it had provided no succor. ]
Then, someone I had known as a child and moved away returned unexpectedly, and she came calling. We ended up in a small shop, trying lavender ice cream together. She had not been in any of my thoughts of the future. She had been a surprise, but a welcome one.
It served as a reminder that the future is not set in stone.
[ There are still joys. ]
no subject
Even so, she remains convinced the Machine did not send her here for her benefit. Which means she listens to Clea's story with personal interest, and with something more. Something sharper. ]
I don't get surprised very often, [ Root confesses, because existence was for so long just drudgery to her. ] But you've always managed to surprise me.
They tried to contain you, but you're too much to be contained. If it wasn't that visitor and that ice cream it would've been something else. You got out of there somehow -- that part was inevitable.
[ She's here today, so she must have. Root is openly admiring, not a trace of reservation in her praise. It's vanishingly few people she has anything complimentary to say about, but those few, she's effusive. And she's become even less reserved since falling in with the Machine. ]
You were never meant to be subservient. To anyone.
no subject
[ Clea is pleased that she is a source of surprise. That she adds some of that all-important entropy to the other woman's life. She does strive to be interesting. She could have easily rested on her parents' laurels and name and spent her life creating insipid 'art', or singing absurd songs others wrote that contained as much intellectual substance as cotton candy.
Instead, she has devoted her life to the esoteric and the odd, to plumbing the depths and crannies of the human experience and rendering them. To reminding people that there is more in heaven and Earth than is dreamed of in their philosophies.
To have succeeded with a woman with such a unique life is a source of pride.
To be so admired by a woman with such a unique experience is a source of pleasure. Clea smiles. It is not a soft expression: there is an fierce edge to it, a glint in her eyes. It is an expression of triumph. ]
That is true. I wish I had photographed my parents' faces when they realized I'd taken custody of my sister.
[ They had thought she was bluffing. That they could remain in their fairy tale world playing games while their lives burned and Clea would do nothing.
Clea leans forward and gives Root her full attention, grey eyes examining her thoroughly, as she would any piece of art. ]
You are more yourself than you used to be.
[ Hmm. No. That is not correct. Root has always been herself, even underneath the mask. ]
You exist in more of your potential space than you had before. You grow in many directions instead of one.