In the absence of sun (Open)

[QUEBEC]

Yellow was a good color.

Quebec focused on it, trying to decide just why yellow was a good color. It was... warm. That was it. If he painted the sun just right, if he worked very hard to paint its rays coming out from the great circle of it down to the people he had painted on the ground, he could almost feel the warmth.

He had only one memory of the warmth that belonged to him, that he had experienced himself. The other memories had been someone else's, and he couldn't feel the sun on his skin, he could only feel someone else feeling the sun on their skin.

He carefully gave the figure that a ray of sun was coming directly down on brown hair, hoping it matched his own. Blue went in for the eyes.

Quebec set the paint brush carefully into its glass of water, put his hands in his lap, and closed his eyes. He tried to remember the sunlight as he walked outside, his handler right beside him. He could, if he concentrated very hard, remember it.

He had seen Echo fall, and been worried, before his handler herded him back inside. But it had not been Echo that led him to keep the memory... but realizing that the sun had been out here the whole time, and he had not seen it before. The sky was so pretty.

He opened his eyes, smiled around at the room in general, and shook the paintbrush in the cup until the water had taken all the paint out. He began to paint another figure on the paper.

[JULIET]

[QUEBEC]

Quebec had painted the black outline of the second person, and had filled in a not-quite-pink color for the skin. One of his engagements had been as a famous artist's date to a gallery opening and he was vaguely aware, from what he remembered from the back of his own head, that paintings could be better than this.

He painted all the time... why did his paintings never get any better? Sometimes he tried to make people who looked more like people, but his arm did not seem to move right. At least his people always seemed happy. Quebec's smile widened at the thought.

He hadn't felt anyone behind him and looked up quickly, happily surprised to see that someone had been watching him. He nodded, gesturing with his paintbrush to the other chair at his table.

"Hello, Juliet," he replied. "Of course you can sit with me, there is another chair. Would you like to be the other person in my painting? I am trying to remember the sky."

Should he have said that? He'd commented on something he remembered once in front of his handler and had been taken right back to Topher to be wiped again. It hadn't worked the second time either. But that had been a long time ago, before things had gotten very... close here.

"I mean," Quebec said, trying very badly to backtack, "I mean. What I was told the sky looks like?" His voice twisted the last into a question. Was it a good enough story? Or was it all right to say he remembered?

[JULIET]

[/i] aware (of her surroundings, sexuality, everything), and he… he might be, too. Was he asking to paint her in the picture because of simple innocence, or was he asking to paint her because of what Priya and Tony where? Lovers. Lovers… that didn’t come across right with her, partly because she’d never had the chance to grow up to know love of the opposite sex.

However much her mind was against the idea of a man painting her with him on a picture, Juliet still realized that he was a doll and that he might not get those ideas. Instead of flat out telling him ‘no, you may not,’ Juliet smiled again, “Yes, Quebec, you may paint me if you want.”

You never knew with dolls.
[/ul]

[QUEBEC]

"Thank you," Quebec replied to the compliment about the picture. "I try to be my best."

He began to paint in yellow hair, then stopped, lifting his eyes to look at Juliet. "Your hair is not really yellow," he said aloud, like this might be something Juliet did not know. He frowned thoughtfully, then took white and mixed it with the yellow, clumsily, to make a lighter color.

Juliet's hair was just as pretty as the rest of her. Quebec was a little nervous at her being so close, and could not decide why. She was never anything but nice to him...

"It's not right," Quebec explained. "The sun. The colors. I cannot seem to make my arm remember how to make things look right. See? I made the yellow lighter, but the color still isn't right. I wish I remembered my own sun more than once."

He looked up at her again, then back down at the two people he had painted, the crude figures standing next to each other, each with their own ray of sun.

"I was worried you might tell," he said, thinking, beginning to paint in the blue sky. "Once, I said that I liked Hotel's shirt because the blue reminded me of how nice the sky was, and they made me go see Topher. I don't like the chair." He paused. "But... maybe things are different now."

[JULIET]

[/i] He had said, and Juliet’s laughing eyes grew sad, if only for a second. He was still just a doll at heart. But he was a nice doll; though all dolls were made to be good, some were… not. Point in fact: Alpha. Though her smile stayed plastered onto her face, she did not know what to think. He was just another doll.

Except he was thinking a little differently than most dolls. He realized that her hair was not just plain yellow. He was more aware than he knew, but then again, most actives were. The fact that he remembered going to Topher was another point in fact.

The figures were little more than stick-figures, she saw. He was worrying about a painting, his painting, and Juliet wondered if it were her that had started the worrying or him. If it was her, she might as well go up to Ivy and ask to become a doll again because she was injuring the delicate balance between dolls and themselves.

Juliet didn’t know many people who liked the chair. She had liked it when she was actually Juliet because she knew that treatments were good, and that she’d be someone else, if only for a while. Sera liked the chair because she had gotten rid of her worst memories when sitting in it. Was she the only one where the chair had been good? But her questioning, tumultuous inside did not show on her face.

“I think you made the colors as best you could with what you have.” Juliet declared, trying to bring a smile back onto Quebec’s face. It would not do to have a sad doll, and then have a handler come by. Soon the handler would be wondering, just like that staffer was wondering about her.

“Maybe you could add some orange or red to the sun.” She suggested, “The sun looks yellow from far away, but it actually has many different colors.” Like people have different layers to them, Juliet thought. Even the dolls did, like Quebec was showing her. Not for the first time did she wonder if she had layers like that when she was a doll, and if she had showed them.

Juliet looked at a handler as he walked over to his active, who was painting two tables away. In a lower voice, she said slowly, “I don’t think you should speak like that to your handler or to the staff. You might be asked to get a treatment.” Her bright blue eyes looked at him, and then down at her paper. She wondered if she would still follow her handler if he asked her for a treatment… or if Topher had taken that part away.
[/ul]

[QUEBEC]

Quebec's hand went still, where he was painting, and he looked up to see she had leaned in even closer. Which was helpful, since he'd been about to ask exactly what color her eyes were, but also made the nervous twist in the pit of his stomach even worse. It was a good kind of nervous, though, which made him even more nervous, because what kind of a nervous could possibly be good? He could feel himself smiling at her, which was a good thing he thought, but what if it was the wrong kind of smile?

He wondered if any of the people who had been in his head with women or men on engagements had felt this. He couldn't feel what they felt, only sit in the back of his head and watch. The way Topher sometimes watched them from his room, through the glass. Quebec knew what things had happened, one thing leading to another, but he did not know how anything felt.

"I know," He responded, cheerfully reaching for the orange when she suggested it. "That I shouldn't. I don't like the chair," he repeated, painting some orange squiggles in over the yellow of the sun. He bit his lower lip in concentration to hold the paintbrush steady, steady enough to paint a thin orange line down the side of the yellow sunbeam.

"I never go away like I am supposed to anymore. It's not good when I am in the chair, but I like to be here all the time. I think you are here all the time now, too. Are you here all the time?"

Quebec raised his head to smile at her, and held out the paintbrush. "You should paint the red," he suggested.

[JULIET]

[QUEBEC]

"You don't like being here all the time, Juliet? Your voice is sad," Quebec said, a little worried. "Don't let me make you sad. I try not to make people sad. I just have a lot of things I try not to say... I think I'm saying them all to you now."

He watched her paint, eyes slightly widened. Impressed at how clean she could make things look. Much better than his.

"I was an artist's boyfriend once," he said in a hushed voice, not wanting them to be overheard. "I told him how good all his paintings were. I think you paint better than he did. That was a long time ago."

He overheard things about the outside world, why they didn't go out so much anymore. Why they weren't sent out like they used to be. What he had heard made him wonder if the artist was still... around. Or if he was gone.

"His name was Leo."

He carefully moved the painting aside, to dry, and picked up a blank sheet of paper from the small pile at his side, laying it out on the table. He smiled at her still, but looked much more nervous about it now.

"Can you show me how to hold the brush like you do?"

[JULIET]

[/i] doll to have. Just talking to him now was going against her little rule set that she had made for herself. She didn’t want to get anyone in trouble for what she did.

“I think I paint better than him because I’m a woman,” she commented nonchalantly, “I heard once that women usually can make cleaner things than men, sort of like the lines I made.”

A lie. She had always been good at drawing. But she didn’t want him to be discouraged because she was as close to an actual as she could be now and he was still a doll. She watched him carefully move the painting to one side before picking up another one. This one was blank, a blank slate just waiting to be filled… like a doll’s mind.

How to hold the brush? Oh! She hadn’t even noticed she’d been holding it differently, more like she would a pen or pencil than, say, a shovel or with a closed fist. “Uhm, sure, I can try. Do you know how to hold a pencil or a pen?” She asked, demonstrating by taking a brush from the table next to theirs where the doll had just left and holding it like she would write. “It’s not much different than that.”
[/ul]

[QUEBEC]

"How is it different?" Quebec asked, innocent curiosity on his face. "Did yours want to come back? Mine did not want to come back. I was there. I'm always there. He told them to keep me instead. He tried to punch Topher."

A pause, thoughtful.

"I think a lot of people try to punch Topher."

He very carefully picked up in his own brush, watching her hand, then looking down at his own as he tried to copy the way her hand looked. Quebec, even as a blank slate, was left-handed. He pressed his lips together in concentration, thinking. When he had it the way he wanted it to be, he took the blue paint in his other hand and held it out to her.

"Make a line for me, please? I would like to try and... and make the same line. The same as you. But I need one to look at first."

His eyebrows furrowed together.

"Leo made things that looked very angry. I think he did. I couldn't tell him that, though."

[JULIET]

[QUEBEC]

"Do you speak to her?" Quebec asked, even more curious now. He noticed her glances at the staff and kept his own voice low, not quite a whisper. Enough that they could have been any two Dolls murmuring the usual things at each other, especially since Quebec's voice was never anything but cheerful.

"S-sera. Feem. Seraphim," he tried again, and got it right this time. "Do you speak to her? Mine was called Andrew."

He watched her hand as she drew, thinking. It had been very steady the whole time, but if he thought about it, it was steady because she wasn't trying too hard to make it steady.

He smiled, and tried to copy hers. His hand shook a little too hard for it to be a delicate line and he frowned at it, frustrated. "Maybe I will get better if I keep trying," he decided. "I will learn."

He shook his head, thinking about what she was saying. It almost felt like his head was too big for this conversation; he was taking in everything she said, but it felt like he couldn't run after it fast enough to catch it. To keep it.

"I wonder if he is still angry," Quebec said thoughtfully, drawing little spirals with the blue paint and smiling at them. "The man they put in my head liked him very much." He stared at his paintbrush for a second, then carefully painted a blue spiral on the back of his right hand. He held it up for Juliet to see.

"Look. It's better than a circle."

[JULIET]

[/i] not want to live with his body anymore? Seraphim had readily accepted that she was no longer going to be Seraphim but Juliet.

“Of course I speak to her!” Juliet declared, her face lighting up. “In fact, you’re speaking to her now. The only thing that’s different between her and me is… well, nothing! She is me except I don’t like to be called Seraphim.” She hoped she was making since. To a doll, this might all be gibberish, but at least she was talking about it. This was seriously like a weight off of her shoulders.

Maybe he would get better if he kept trying. There was no use in doing something once and then never doing it again. Trying was the best… best what? Way to show that you were different? Juliet watched his shaky line develop, and then watched as he started to draw spirals. He was better at drawing circular objects than straight ones, which was sort of ironic seeing as doll’s minds were only meant to be straight paths. Juliet’s mind was like a tree, sprouting off in all directions.

He drew a spiral on the back of his hand. “I don’t know, truthfully.” Juliet said, her voice neutral again. She had no idea about Leo. “I don’t know much about anything anymore, especially nothing about something that happened to you.”

Better than a circle. Of course, since circles never ended. This spiral had a beginning and an end, but the spiral was not like a straight line. This spiral, it might have symbolized what Quebec’s mind was like now; no longer on a straight path, but starting to figure out who he really was. Juliet smiled and drew one on the back of her hand, too. “You know,” she laughed, “They’re going to tell us to wash it off.”

For once she hadn’t thought if she were an active or not. For once she was herself… whether Juliet or Seraphim she didn’t know, but she was her.[/ul]

[QUEBEC]

"Oh! So you are the same person. I... I think I understand that," Quebec said, trying to process the thought. They were different, but the same at the same time. Maybe it was a little like Andrew, only if Andrew was still there, and spoke to him sometimes.

"I don't. But I will try to understand that, Juliet. I want to understand you."

He smiled at her, a little shyly and to the side, before he went back to painting spirals.

"They may tell me to wash it off. I don't mind," Quebec said mildly. He was still smiling at the spirals down on the page. "I will paint it on again. And wash it off again, when they want me to. I like to be good. I try to be... " He paused, trailing off. He put his brush back into the murky water of the already-oversaturated cup and sat back, looking back at her again.

"I don't know that they will notice, Juliet," He said, stretching his hand to feel the paint on it. "If we do or not. Everyone worries about something now. I try to understand, but..."