voyagers | party post } { fool and king, ghoul and ghost

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party post } { fool and king, ghoul and ghost

On the evening of the twenty-ninth, the ballroom on the main deck of the boat is decked out in lavish black and gold, thanks to Carol and Sophie, and the assistance of the very strong men they enlisted to help (thank you, boys). It's been a while since Carol has thrown a full out ball, and she liked the chance to stretch her event planning limbs again, even if those attending are mostly the ghost robots in their cater waiter wear.

A soft music is playing over the guests as they enter. As they pass through the threshold, there's a table with simple masks for them to choose from, in case they've forgotten their's. Once they pass through the main archway, they'll find their way to the large dance space where the ghost robot band is sitting, because live music is so much better than a recording, and they actually don't sound half-bad, all things considered. They also take requests, so feel free to tell them that song where you always wondered what it would sound like with a full orchestral backing. There's a large, expansive dance floor in the middle, and you're welcome to get out there and shake your groove thing whenever you see fit.

Tables with food line the far left wall of the room, as well as clusters of tables for the guests to sit when they so choose. There's also an open bar nestled into the far corner, for all your alcoholic needs. There are also plenty of dark corners to slip into, if you don't want anyone to see what you're doing, however the narration suggests watching those dark corners carefully. Rabbit holes lurk in pretty much every shadowed area of the ballroom and while they won't always drop you into a strange location of your choosing, there's a high chance they will. There's probably a high turnover of people arriving back in the ballroom, looking like they've gone five rounds with a bull.

Probably because they have.

The boat seem to want to promote this event as much as possible. While not everyone loves a good ball, some non-attenders may suddenly find themselves in attendance, completely dressed and no idea of how they got there. Trying to leave? Might not go so well either. For some, socializing isn't so much a choice as a punishment, but there are probably plenty of people to help you have a good time.

Or you could go on a trip to Narnia. One never really knows.

[OKAY BALL IS GO sorry I was late getting this up. Rabbit Holes are to be used at your discretion, but if you need suggestions or want me to randomize something for you, just shoot me a PM/private plurk/ping me (

iluvroadrunner6) and I will give you a scenario. Otherwise, mix, mingle and have fun with all the pretty formal wear. o7 Actionspam/prose/whatever floats your boat for this, it was easier to just write up the top part in prose.]

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Cora's spent a lot of the last six years just trying to survive. She's been too worried about keeping her head down to find the balance for other things, and even if she did, it's not like she had anyone to share it with. All she had was doing her best to stay alive and hoping that she would hear something about the Hale alpha - that they weren't gone for good.

"I guess." She shrugs again. "Just bad luck or something."

Alek tilts his head curiously.

"Do you really believe in luck?" he asks. Some say it as a form of expression and others take it a bit more literally. He hasn't decided yet for himself, so he's curious what she thinks.

She pauses for a moment, actually seriously considering the question. She doesn't want to think that there's something so serendipitous as luck, but at the same time, how else do you explain it? Did she really bring everything that's happened to her on herself?

"Sometimes there isn't another way to put it."

Alek nods slowly in agreement.

"I've always liked to think it doesn't exist. That we make our own luck." It means he's in control, when there are already several things - one big thing in particular - he has no control over. It means he can affect change in his own circumstance, if he just does things in a certain way. There's a comfort to that, but it can largely be an illusion. "But sometimes... yeah, there really isn't. Ending up here kind of proves that."

Cora's had her control ripped away from her too many times to feel like she actually has any. It's not that she doesn't try to fight back, to charge at the brick walls and the losses and try and reclaim some of it for herself, but she knows that she's always going to keep losing. There is no upper hand against things like death. Trying to fight against the supernatural is like fighting an uphill battle.

All she really wants is a home. A pack. It's probably the one thing she's never going to find, but at least she has Derek now, and she has Derek here. That's the part that matters.

"I think when it comes down to it, it's what you do with it. That's the only real control you get."

Alek has a pack.

It's currently not complete, but three - sometimes four - out of six isn't a bad number, is it? Sometimes it feels like it's all he can hope for, but he'll never stop wondering where Logan and Adrien are. He's seen Connor, Ethan, and Adam in bouts, and that keeps him going. He just doesn't put a lot of stock on hope alone, but Cora's words resonate with him. ~~If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do~.~~

There's a small pause, because control is the key word here. "You're a wolf, too," he finally says. He noticed it right off the bat. She's like him. Or close enough to it.

She noticed it in him too, but it's not something you just out about another person. Now that they're finally saying it, putting that unspoken similarity out there, there's a part of her that breathes a little easier all the same.

"Yeah," she nods. "I was born one."

Alek never really talks about it, certainly not with anyone that isn't a werewolf. But outside of his brothers, he's never met anyone that's been like him.

(This Alek never met Tyler, and he's a little bit less for it.)

Relief settles on his features. "Me too."

She smiles a bit at that. She's met other wolves before, some better than others, but regardless of who they are that camaraderie is always important. That feeling of sameness that they don't really get with anyone else. Most of the time, they're wandering through the rest of the world alone. That's why packs are so important.

"Are there a lot of wolves where you're from?"

Alek shakes his head in negative.

"Not that I've met. Our species isn't ... looked upon favorably, where I'm from." That's the best way that he can put it. Chicago was friendlier than most places, accepting people of all species, but there was inevitably a ladder in the social politics of things, and werewolves were at the very bottom of the totem pole, only surpassed by demons. "It was mostly just me and my brothers. There's ... six of us."

So, y'know, he was never lacking in werewolf interaction or anything. But it's cool to meet a werewolf that isn't blood-related.

"I don't really think we're looked on favorably in any world." Werewolves are werewolves, and everyone considers them dangerous. "We're hunted, where I'm from. People always tend to try and kill what they don't understand - or what they understand a little too well."

After all, the Argents have put a lot of time and effort into killing her kind and knowing just how to do it. That's how they work.

"Probably not," Alek admits. It's part of why he has a chip on his shoulder, not that he'll admit it.

"There's four main supernatural species where I'm from. You got vampires, angels, demons, and then you've got us. We're at the bottom of the food chain along with the demons, though you got some places with treaties in place that mean we all have to co-exist peacefully." He might as well have put quote marks on 'peacefully.'

She shakes her head, trying to take that all in. "We don't have all of that. Just shapeshifters. The shape you take depends on the person that you are, but it all comes from the same place." She pauses for a moment. "Our fight mostly comes with the hunters. But my family was an old werewolf line. We'd been around for centuries."

It's Alek's turn to take it all in, and he does. He listens, brows lifting slightly in surprise. It's not what he's accustomed to, but it boils down to the same thing - someone wants to hunt them, finish them off like they're nothing but animals. "I don't ... really know much about my family, but we're a pretty old werewolf line, too," Alek says, shifting uncomfortably for a moment. He doesn't say he comes from the oldest werewolf line in his world.

That his father is the werewolf king, and he's a psychopath. He tries not to think of it if he can help it.

Cora knows all about having family members who are psychopaths, unfortunately. She's not going to be present for Peter's next downward spiral, but considering the last one cost her sister her life, she's not looking forward to there being a repeat. Ninety-nine percent of the time she isn't entirely sure what to do with Peter, mostly because there's a large part of her that just wants to welcome him back as family, as pack, and let it be that. They've lost too much to really be picky about it now.

(At the same time, he killed Laura.

Oddly enough, it's not the rest of the murder spree she cares about. They were all people who hurt her family, who destroyed her home, killed her mother, and it's probably unfair but she's okay with them dying for that. It'll never balance the scales, but at least it means they can't do it to someone else.

Laura is the one that hurts, Laura invokes that stab of betrayal and it's Laura that will forever leave the question mark in her mind. He killed Laura because she had something he needed. Cora doesn't have anything to offer - what's to keep him from doing the same to her.)

"What's the name?" She asks, just out of idle curiosity, because the narration is assuming they haven't swapped last names yet. Mostly for the fun that will come as a result.

Oh, it will definitely be fun.

Alek isn't expecting it, and he lifts his gaze at the question, realizing they didn't exchange those during their last meeting. Then again, the name he is going to give her is his mother's surname, not his father's - he doesn't know that one, and he doesn't care to. The man can keep it, as far as he's concerned. (He wonders more than he'd care to admit.)

"It's Hale," he answers easily, setting aside the flute of champagne as he fixes his tie distractedly. "Alek Hale."

There's a moment where she stops at the name. It's hard not to, when it's hers as well. It's hard to really hide the way the word hits her when it's something so simple. It must be the fact that she comes from a world where Hales have been burned to the ground, and the once powerful family is now few and far between.

Needless to say, she doesn't say anything for a while, just staring at him in shock. But eventually she manages to find the words and stammer out.

"Me too."

Alek's eloquence is really kicking into gear, right about now. No, really. He's a master wordsmith among men.

He stares at Cora and blinks once, then twice, almost as though he can't be sure he's just heard right. "Wat."

She pauses for a moment, still trying to process this, before nodding again. "Yeah. Cora Hale." This is beginning to be a bit too weird for her, and she has to ask. "Have you ever heard of Beacon Hills?"

Alek shakes his head slowly. "Pretty sure I haven't," he says. Not once in his whole life. He's trying to process it as much as her, before he grows increasingly skeptical. They're both Hales. They're both werewolves. He doesn't want to ask, but. "You don't ... think this means we're related somehow, in another world or something, right?"

Because that would kind of suck, universe.

That would kind of suck, but she shakes her head. Hales take care of her own, and if they were related somehow, Derek or Peter would know. "Except for my brother and uncle, all of my family's dead. I think if we had cousins or something somewhere else we would know about it."

Which is a bit of a relief because that would really suck. Alek's attractive. If she was willing to venture into her teenage girl feelings, she might even go so far as to say she likes him.

Alek lets out a breath that carries relief of his own, before he nods in agreement.

"It's complicated, but at least in my world, there was only six of us. I never met the guy - " Alek is never calling him a father, because he wasn't, " - but I know for a fact he wouldn't have been interested in having more children."

It's hard to admit, but it's true. He wasn't born into a loving family. His two parents weren't married, and they weren't looking to raise a big family. Alek and his brothers were made, because Lucien decided one day he needed a werewolf army of his own, made by his own design.

She pauses, shaking her head a bit a that. "No, that's not my family. We've been around for hundreds of years. Big families lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. My mom was one of the strongest alphas on the west coast."

So ... a completely different experience. She's not saying it to brag, just to make the distinction. She's sorry your sperm donor was not more like her mom, Alek.

It sounds nice. Alek can't say he'd know what that's like - it's been him and his brothers for the longest of times, but he can't complain. They've always stuck together and if he's felt alone, it's never because he's actually been.

"She sounds like she was a badass," Alek says softly. He hears that 'was' and he's lost his own, mother. He doesn't have to excel at social interactions to be sensitive when it comes to certain topics, and his mother is his own weakness.

"She was."

And now she's gone. She has been, for years now, but there's a part of her that things with a place like this ship, maybe, just maybe. It's something she shouldn't tempt herself with, the idea that her mother might have walked through the door and gotten stuck here all those years ago, and one day she might find her as she rounds the corner of the main deck or opens the wrong room.

The way she misses her mother is like the way she misses Laura. It sits like a weight in her chest, a kind of anchor that's far too heavy for her to be able to bear. She wants to let go of it, to give it away, but in some ways that means letting go of them and she isn't sure she's ready to do that yet.

"But she's been gone for a while."

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