( open ) everything else was just remembering.

[wising]

It isn't a feeling Sarah is used to anymore.

Boredom.

It has been a long, long time since she's been able to stand still, and she finds, more often than not, she does not know what to do with this stillness. Being on the ship means having an imposed vacation from her real life and her real problems, and while she can't say she's entirely against that - it also feels like hiding. Pretending. Waiting can be more excruciating than having no time at all, and Sarah would know. For the first eighteen years of her life, she thought she wouldn't have the time to wait.

Now she has it to spare, and she is reacquainting herself with pleasures she's forgotten; watching old school movies while indulging in chocolates and staying up late into the night to watch the stars. These pleasures are age-worn in her memory, like a picture that is fading. She also finds, like most people do, some things are like riding a bike. A sketchpad and charcoal pencils have been located, and the rest becomes simple.

There is a bar by the pool and there is a fallen angel by the bar. She holds the sketchpad in one hand and the charcoal pencil in the other, like she is remembering.

She will offer to draw a face portrait to anyone who is interested, like she did the first day she ever arrived to Chicago.

There's a symmetry to that.


( ooc: prose or spam, i will match you! )

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[wising]

"Sarah," she says, without missing a beat.

She shakes Nathaniel's hand, something about him almost familiar - though she is certain she has never met him before. Her memory isn't fuzzy like it used to be. "And why not your face?" she asks, amusement thinly veiled.

Curiosity often gets the better of her when it comes to people's answers.

They're more revealing than most understand, and it helps her capture their faces better.

[wising]

Describing Chicago as dizzy is not that far off the mark.

Helen's optimism and joie de vivre makes Sarah smiles, even as she opens up her sketchpad and starts to consider the lines she will draw and the shades she will use. She's about to comment on this grandfather of hers, until Helen says that name.

She says that name and her heart almost gets caught in her throat.

Lifting her gaze back up again, she studies Helen more closely. The double of her mom. A part of her is unwilling to believe. A greater part of her starts to hope. "Grandpa Fletch? You mean ... Fletcher?"

[wising]

Unfortunately, Sarah will not recognize most of anyone.

There's only one person she would find familiar, should they ever find their way across the ship, and his name is Adam Hale. She hasn't caught the familiar scent of cigarettes and whiskey, however, so she isn't getting her hopes up. It's been a long, long time since she saw Adam. He gave up his freedom so she could have hers, and it's something she will never forget.

"I'm not sure yet," she answers Ethan, lifting her gaze up. There isn't recognition, but it's friendly, if not subdued.

"Maybe I'm waiting for inspiration to strike."

[therewillbelight]

Sometimes there just aren't easy answers. You'd think, being a cop, facing that reality every day, that Jim would be more at ease with uncertainty, with not knowing the answer.

He's not.

But nothing can be done about it, and he really ought to stop harassing this young lady for information like this is an interrogation.

"You're an artist?"

[undermyfeet]

" ... Sort of." A lot of people in their particular community would probably consider him one, but not in the way that Sarah means. "He mostly did a lot of ... reproductions?"

Aka Forgeries. For those paying attention.

[eluding]

WAILS, this makes the narration want to throw Adam at her too. HE IS ON THE SHIP.

Ethan sees the lack of recognition in her expression, and he keeps the smile on his face which is also subdued but friendly, genuine. It is good to see her even if she doesn't know who he is. It's especially good to see her as old as she is, knowing she lived past what the books would say she could live to.

He also knows what that means and what a loss that must be in a way no one but her will ever know and feel but it is good to see her, living, breathing, with a sketch book in hand and a smile on her face even if that smile is subdued.

"There's quite a lot to be inspired about on the ship so it shouldn't be very long," he says with a sideways smile. "Are you new?"

[wising]

Sarah releases a tiny laugh at the question.

It sounds like an old bell, like she hasn't used it much, and she hasn't. She wouldn't have minded if he kept asking. Sarah, more than anyone, understands gnawing on a bone. "My sixteen year old self was."

Or thought she would be. One or the other.

"I guess you can say by day I'm a detective, by night I'm a tortured artist. It's the 'tortured' bit that sells it."

Insert deadpanned expression here.

[therewillbelight]

"...You don't say."

That's got his attention. Not that she didn't have it before; she had information, and was kind and lovely to boot. But this.

"Me too." He sits up straighter, grinning. "A detective, I mean, not an artist." He pauses, also deadpan. "Maybe tortured."

His city, it's trying.

"Are you with the police or private?"

[wising]

You just described yourself there, Jim.

A smirk lightly curves on her lips. If she knew his city, she'd be inclined to agree.

Sarah tilts her head to the side with a funny expression; she knows her answer will probably confuse him at first. "Police. Almost a decade ago, I met two Detectives, one of whom was head of a Fringe division. It's a special task force devoted to science-related crimes and phenomena we don't yet understand. You could say they needed my expertise. I started out as a consultant and ..."

Her voice trails off as she glances back up at him with a smile. "Here I am."

[therewillbelight]

It is a bit confusing, because, in his experience, the words don't really go together. It's not something he's familiar with.

But the work he can understand.

"It's different than what I'm used to," he admits. "I'm just a regular police detective from New Jersey. Trying to make a difference in a city and police department that are corrupt as hell."

[wising]

Sarah smirks. She's reading between the lines there.

"You're going to have to show me your stuff sometime. Have you seen the art room? It's got all the supplies you could possibly imagine. I think I remember how to get there."

It's a 50/50 chance.

[wising]

"Sort of?"

She realizes that answer might be a tad confusing, so she elaborates. She really is better than she used to be at striking up conversations with strangers. Or what she thinks is a stranger. "It's not my first time on the ship, but I haven't been here long the second time around. Maybe a couple of days? The door won't budge, though."

And she's already tried everything; she knows that door ain't budging until it wants to.

[wising]

"So that's why you're tortured," Sarah says with a tiny, knowing smile.

All the good guys usually are. Trying to save cities that don't always want to be saved. Trying to fight a system that is fundamentally against what is right, as opposed to what is convenient.

"Can I tell you a secret? When I was a teenager, I really, really hated cops."

If someone had told her she would become one, she'd have laughed in their face.

[therewillbelight]

"Probably, yeah."

People often find their callings in the most roundabout of ways. His path has always been clear to him.

But at a cost.

"I guess one secret deserves another. My dad was a district attorney in Gotham. After he died? I found out he was corrupt, too."

[wising]

Sarah's reaction isn't overblown.

It's subdued and gentle in its sympathy, like she generally is, until she's angry and the spark comes; like a storm you never saw coming.

"Trying to right his wrongs?" she asks curiously. What led him down this clear-cut path?

[therewillbelight]

"Yes and no."

He settles back, as if telling a story, though if she's expecting a long, detailed one she'll be disappointed. James Gordon is a man of few words. Passionate words. Honest words. Earnest words. Just not many of any of them.

"I lived a kind of sheltered existence, I guess, growing up. I saw the city through that filter. After my father died, and when I grew up, I saw things for what they really were. But I also didn't see any reason they couldn't be the way I'd believed them to be."

[wising]

Wryness pulls at her lips.

She was right; he's one of the good ones.

"I'd like to say my reasons were as idealistic, but I was led to it almost by coincidence." She settles back herself, glancing up at the night sky almost thoughtfully. "Would you believe me if I told you I can see death before it happens?"

[therewillbelight]

"...Really."

It's not a no, and it's certainly not an and you're nuts. But here he is on a cruise ship to nowhere, apparently, pulled in by some unseen intelligence or force.

It would be rude not to at least consider the possibility, even if he has no frame of reference in his world.

"How does that work?"

[undermyfeet]

He bobs his head in agreement a bit because yeah. He's been there once or twice. "I haven't really had much to draw though. Aside from trolling people on the journals because I could."

He then shifts his weight to fish his journal out, before flipping through the pages to find the time he and Angel sketched out a fruit stand off. "I did the pear and gremlins. And the pie. Not the plate, though, that was the other guy."

[wising]

"Well."

Sarah leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "I look into someone's eyes, and if they're going to die in seven days or less, I have a vision of it. Sometimes it's fuzzy and it doesn't always give me details, but I can piece enough together. We don't always get there in time, but we can catch the person who did it."

It's a responsibility she takes seriously. Every life she doesn't save is one that weighs on her, but justice for them should be sought.

[therewillbelight]

He's quiet a few long moments, studying her face. Taking in her earnestness, her conviction. Her ownership of what she can do, what can be done with it.

He leans in slightly. "Do you feel like it's a blessing, or a burden?"

[altor]

Nathaniel takes a long draw on his cigarette and flicks ash into a nearby ashtray as he considers the question. It’s a good enough question, but not one he has an easy answer for.

“I don’t know.” He says after a short pause. “Never seen myself as havin' an interestin' face, I’m just… a kind of background guy.” It’s a lame response, he knows. Or maybe too simple of a response, too quiet. He feels the need to expand on it.

“I’m a body guard. No one pays attention to the body guard, they’re more focused on the person that body guard is protectin’.” He explains. “Everyone else seems to become background noise. It’s… not a bad thing to be, there’s a degree of privacy and peace to it.”

He takes a small sip from his drink. “It’s a nice juxtaposition considering the job I do.” He says as an afterthought.

[wemadeit]

Helen, on the other hand, is almost oblivious Sarah’s reaction. She’s part-lost on the thought of her father that she’s never known, going off on a tangent of wonder; and half-excited on seeing Sarah’s skills as she draws her.

She laughs a little and nods at the question.

“Yup. Fletcher.” She confirms. “I never call him that, just Fletch. My mom calls him Fletcher from time to time, but I think it’s when she’s annoyed or something. Like… when someone uses your real name and you know you’re in big trouble?”
Something like that, anyway.

She looks over at Sarah and tilts her head to the side curiously at Sarah’s closer examination of her, part of her thinking there’s something more. “Why’d you ask?” she asks gently with a slight frown.

[wising]

"When I was younger, it mostly felt like a burden. When you're sixteen, you want to think about crushes and proms, not about some guy who's blowing his wife's brains out." Pardon the frankness, Jim. She just imagines you've seen a lot of things in your life, too. "But as I got older - I guess both. I don't think you can really ever have one without the other."

[therewillbelight]

He has; he understands and doesn't mind the frank talk.

"That's probably the most true statement I've ever heard," he says. "You can't really have one without the other, they tend to go hand-in-hand."