mottled collection

“My owner doesn’t have the time to babysit a piece of property.  Her time is spent on copyright infringements and setting up other jobs.”  She taps gloved fingers on the bar top, lips pressed together, “Or with her daughter.”  She doesn’t hold anything against Eleanor.  In fact, much better an owner who kept her hands off and stayed primarily on the business side of things than ones who were, for lack of a better term, hands on.

          Eleanor, at least, has not left any scars.

“I thought it might help you,” she murmurs, one hand taking the offered menu, “since you seem keen on helping me.”  Her eyes flicked across the first page, and she flips it over before finding the salads.  “Comfort isn’t one of my personal priorities.”  Her head lilts to the side.  “Humans first, Toons second.” The bartender returns, finally, with her glass of water, and his dark eyes light on the menu in her hands, smile a bit tense.  He raises a hand with another menu - “Guess you won’t be needing this, then!” - and backs away before asking if she’s prepared to order.  He’s blacker now; she can tell, but this isn’t new.

“Jessica.”  When she turns, it’s with a questioning look - no furrowed brows, no wrinkles.  “You aren’t from around here, are you?”  She hasn’t left the country but she knows there are other places - Japan, in particular - where Toons are able to gain ownership of themselves.  But the United States has never been one of those places. Perhaps it is a law obsession; rules and regulations to try and keep things in check, regardless of whether they actually work or not, and when there are few breaches, it’s assumed the rules keep Toons in check, and people are patted on the back and the status quo kept.

elisabeth hewer (via elisabethhewer)

@uncutice

                “Water, please.” And a menu, although she does not say that.  Human food - real food - is still a luxury, as most vendors raise the prices where Toons are concerned and most Toons aren’t paid enough to buy any even at the normal price.  Even when they do have the money, there are only so many restaurants willing to have Toon patrons at all - the higher the class, the fancier the building, the less likely they will be allowed in, and if they push, the results are often disastrous.

She could take advantage of this woman’s kindness.  That would at least assure the price wouldn’t change drastically on her.  But, then, there would be consequences to that, too, ones all too common to her people and those who stand up for them on any basis, trouble she can’t afford (and, blast the personality she was written with, doesn’t want to cause the human next to her).

And the word friend still tightens her spine, makes her throat ache.

“Thank you,” she says again after the bartender leaves, a mixture of black and brown in a looming brightness, “but I’d be careful.  People tend to not react well to Toon sympathizers.”  This is an understatement - with the exception of children, the vast majority refused to acknowledge Toons as individual persons with personalities of their own, and everything that happened with Judge Doom had not helped that.  The fact that a Toon could masquerade as a human, could murder them without thinking, had not helped any grassroots rights activities, had only made the laws and the discrimination more rigid.

Toons were dangerous to humans.  It was a well-accepted fact.  Even when they weren’t.

“They will do better if they believe you own me.”  A pause.  “My owner is not enough in the public eye for any of them to be confused, and she won’t be bothered by it.”  This is a lie; Eleanor will be bothered, even if her own eccentricities would be an easy enough explanation for the actions.  “Especially if safety is a concern.”

          “Thank you.”

For all intents and purposes, she should now feel relieved.  Her request, however small, has been accepted, and she is free to sit and rest.  But as she leans onto the stool - ever so careful not to lean too far, lest she upset - there is no change in her demeanor.  She has not regained power; she has simply decided with whom the power should lay.  (If she can not choose herself, then at least this blonde woman seems nice enough.)

Jessica smooths the front of her dress with one hand, eyes glancing again through the other patrons.  No Toons.  In fact, quite a few of the humans are watching them; she locks eyes with one for a moment and he seems equally a mix of blue (as to be expected), ember, and something bright and colorless.  This makes her murky by comparison, although if she looked, she would see strands of periwinkle and a mimicry of his ember.

But she doesn’t look them over long, doesn’t waste more time gauging the current and possible future reactions of the others in the restaurant (she was right - much better than an alleyway), yet still doesn’t allow herself to relax.  (She is not human; she cannot relax until she is home.)

She also does not expect to be served, so when the workers proceed to ignore her, it isn’t a bother.  Better to be ignored than to be kicked out completely.

Which prompted her next statement, one that she is careful to say.

Such patterns had not escaped her watchful eye. It was peculiar, how shortly after appointments in which Hannibal complained about an individual (often in a passive aggressive and roundabout way, using her as a soundboard for ideas and lies and charming notions) they tended to turn up dead. Whether they were murdered or it was a staged accident or a strange suicide or simply and mysteriously absent made no matter. The common denominator was the same.  Thus, were it not for her ‘friend’ in need, she would not have come. She was ever careful to keep her personal life separate from Hannibal’s sphere – no small task in the limited upper echelons of Baltimore in which their invitations tended to overlap – and she had taken to accepting less and less invites and retreating more and more into her shell, appearing to be a veritable recluse by contrast. Though she was naturally introverted, she would never surrender to such complete isolation by choice. She enjoyed parties, took pleasure from wearing nice gowns and sweeping across dance floors in the arms of a competent man, and – to a degree – she enjoyed socialization. There was a certain joy to be found in mining the assembled ranks for interesting tidbits and fascinating perspectives.  She shared that hobby with Hannibal.  

So instead, he relaxes into a smile as he stepped back - close lipped but still somehow warm.  His dark eyes wander the room, take in the dresses and clothes and sheer well manufactured look of the people, and his smile weakens a bit in discomfort.

          “Admittedly, I do feel out of place.             It’s not really my kind of party.”

Which, of course, implies that he felt comfortable in any party, which isn’t the case.  The larger the group, the louder the people, the harder it is to be...him.  But all this reservation feels like suppression, and for him, that’s worse.

At least in bars and parties of the lower class, there’s whiskey.

He’d love two fingers of whiskey.

          “I’m not sure how it measures up.”

The thought leaves. She bids it farewell.

“I guess I should’ve seen this place sooner. I might as well just move in, to be completely honest. I’m a hazard.”

She shifts closer, very careful. Close enough to keep some small distance. She feels it’s needed, necessary. Alana knows that it’s closeness that screws the figurative pooch for her, as it were.

Or, at least, none had in the decades she’d lived there.  There certainly were no rules against it, so far as she can remember, it just simply wasn’t done.  Isn’t done, if the past is anything to go by.  (Given her own state of being, she is not quite so certain it is.)

Jessica Rabbit notes the closeness - more importantly, she notes the distance and is glad of it.  Not that she does not....  No, there are certain temptations in standing too close (not that she is, in particular, worried about that), certain expectations of it (she may be concerned on this end).

Perhaps it is simply the respect to her person that she enjoys where so many others - even while she has been in this human form - have had little to no respect for her or her desires at all.  (She can name seven of the top of her head - two of them dead, one no longer in any position to make any moves even if he so desired it, one too old and too traumatized to be much of a contender, one somewhere in Japan, and the others...well.)

She stops in front of the bright red cartoon curtain on the other end of the tunnel (the sides of the tunnel have slowly been shifting from their brick and mortar to something of a more artistic design, the concrete beneath their feet turning from painted to paint).  “ToonTown is just on the other side - there will be singing birds and flowers and probably the sun, if he’s in a good mood.  It’ll be really loud at first, but it’ll quiet down...a bit.

Don’t you ever underestimate my ability to crush you where you stand—

To demolish those you hold dear,