Foster van Denend (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
criticallyfucked) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lostcarnival2018-04-09 10:50 pm
criticallyfucked) wrote in lostcarnival2018-04-09 10:50 pm
Entry tags:
[CLOSED]
Who: Rita and Foster
When: After the space olympics
Where: Trailer 18
What: Rita continues to thirst for Foster's book. Foster continues to be weird about that.
Warnings: Foster.
Foster has approximately two whole minutes of warning, if that much. It's not even a warning, really--Rita lights up his radio with the news that she's coming over because she wants at his book (why else would she be coming over?), and then she's beating up his door and he's barely had time to stand up.
In fairness, standing up is slightly less easy now that he has four legs and all of them are longer and have more joints, but most of the issue is motivation. It's only because of Lambert that he manages the scramble, and even then she gets to his door before he does. Which is fine.
At least by the time he's at the door, he's managed to put on a smile.
When: After the space olympics
Where: Trailer 18
What: Rita continues to thirst for Foster's book. Foster continues to be weird about that.
Warnings: Foster.
Foster has approximately two whole minutes of warning, if that much. It's not even a warning, really--Rita lights up his radio with the news that she's coming over because she wants at his book (why else would she be coming over?), and then she's beating up his door and he's barely had time to stand up.
In fairness, standing up is slightly less easy now that he has four legs and all of them are longer and have more joints, but most of the issue is motivation. It's only because of Lambert that he manages the scramble, and even then she gets to his door before he does. Which is fine.
At least by the time he's at the door, he's managed to put on a smile.
no subject
She shakes her head at his offer. "Doesn't matter, really. I didn't use chairs that much when I did research back home, either." Rita takes out a notepad and pen, then sets them aside and reaches out to take the elaborately-decorated book and carefully ease it into her lap.
no subject
To watch.
As for the book--
Depending on whether she wants to start where she left off--
--well, it might take her longer to find that page than a page of interest, first of all. None of these pages are numbered, see.
no subject
Foster receives an unimpressed look as he seats himself (seriously, he doesn't have to watch!) But he's quickly forgotten, and a small grin forms on Rita's face as she immerses herself in the dense sea of words in front of her.
no subject
He's figured out how to present a facade, the kind of consistent, self-serving lie he so disdain--but which has been specifically asked of him by the Ringmaster, and so wear it he will.
But he's a little frustrated, to be honest. His orders were to assist Rita, but he isn't being given anything to assist with. What's the point? What use is he, if she won't actually use him? Patience is a virtue that he possesses very conditionally; these conditions are basically the opposite of ideal.
As she left off last time, timelines make a universe increasingly unstable in direct correlation to their prevalence, but realms--a sort of self-sustaining micro world created by magic rather than physics and so on--are effectively infinite as long as the magic is maintained. This information takes a while to unravel from the text, however... the author seems more invested in waxing poetic about the verb form of Creation and the sustaining forces in life and magic.
Foster finally breaks.
"Do you need me for anything?" He asks, his voice level and his smile strangely deprecating. It's not very clear whether it's self- or directed at her, but the light in his eyes--
"Turning pages? Holding the book?"
no subject
It's in one of those long stretches of silence that Foster's outburst catches her by surprise. She looks up from the book, then scrunches her face at those suggestions. "No," she blurts out immediately, evidently repulsed by the ideas. Reading a book isn't exactly a two-person job! "If you're that bored, go take a nap or something. I'll wake you if I've got questions."
That has to be the problem, right? Boredom? Because Rita can only imagine how painfully dull it must be to watch someone read a book, and she still can't fathom why Foster would inflict that on himself.
Mobile tag, hope it makes sense
If. If he's bored
Foster is so immediately disgusted that it actually forestalls his reaction, enough that it comes out clearly rather than in disjointed pieces, mutilated parts of the underlying problem.
"My job is to provide myself in service to you. If you don't use me properly, then I have no use at all," he informs her, despairing now--desperate now, but it's emphatic without getting louder. It's a prudent time to note that the way he's placed himself has her blocked from the trailer door, but there's no violence in his tone, not this time. Just something clipped and insistent, urgency in every syllable.
"Lambert might as well have just given you the book, if that's the case--!"
no subject
At first, she's bewildered at the outburst. "What..."
Then, she's defensive. "What the hell is your problem? The book's still yours at the end of the day. I'm just here to read it. It's not my job to find you something to do in the meantime!" What's this crap about being in service, wanting to be used? It doesn't make any sense to her.
no subject
"Oh, yes, the paper and binding. I am... permitted to keep that much." There's less antagonism, just a dismissive tone followed by soft acquiescence.
"But the contents are no longer mine alone. You're not just here to read. Do you understand? If you were, I wouldn't be here at all. My only purpose here is to serve you, to ensure you know what I already do so that the... hahahaha, the inconvenience of using me at all can be bypassed entirely!"
Is he upset? A little.
He has only one purpose here, one purpose now at all and even that--
Not even that is anything but platitude--is that right? Is that all he has, and even that is empty words?!
no subject
Fine. He wants her to be straight with him? Then she'll do it.
"That's right," she says dryly, eyes locked on him in an exasperated stare. "I have to make a summary of the information found here because yours was a bunch of barely-coherent nonsense."
no subject
Honestly, there's no real comparison here--you can't call it a slap in the face, because Foster has never received one of those unhappily in his life. You can't call it a surprise, because he already knew Lambert didn't understand anything he gave the man.
You can't even call it disappointing, because disappointment requires an expectation of something better or different, and Foster certainly didn't come into this conversation with that.
But he's out of energy to fight it any more. Maybe the hope Lambert gave him--the purpose Lambert gave him--was false after all. Does it even matter? Failure is the norm. That's what should have been expected all along.
"Nevermind. If you have no use for me, then Lambert has no use for me. I have no use at all, do I?" He laughs. It's horribly sincere--truly hilarious, truly miserable laughter.
"I wonder why he even bothered."
no subject
She just furrows her brow, unsure of what to make of that laughter. She thought Foster might be a bit unhinged, and it's looking like that impression was dead on.
"Don't ask me. Figuring out your use or Lambert's intentions isn't my job. Collecting and compiling information is." And it's not her job just because Lambert said so, but because she's a scholar. Rita would pursue this sort of information regardless of who says she should or shouldn't.
no subject
"If I have no purpose, there's no purpose to you coming here, no purpose to my owning the book, or knowing it! I already have the information you want!" There's rising desperation, and with it comes a physical rise--his heavy bear paws planted flat on the trailer floor as his forelegs unfold, his unwieldy body clambering to its feet as (un)gracefully as any horse.
no subject
Despite that concern, however, she doesn't seem too worried about provoking him.
"So what do you want to do about it?" she asks, her tone sharp. "Personally, I just want to finish reading this damn book in peace."
Her Trailer Now
"If I'm not being used, then I'm not just useless--I'm worse than useless! An obstacle, a hindrance--" He sounds on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and he looks like it too. Somewhere between pain, rage, and laughter--it's only Foster himself who is horribly, painfully aware of how much he doesn't feel any of the three.
"Well! At least I know what to do now--!"
It's a horrendous maelstrom of crossing lines, a calamity of not-yet-absolute destruction, an extinction-level event of sucking
agonyanguishnothing, and it's out ofinto the roaring void that he backs up from between the bedframes, this internal torment the only identifiable expression on his face. His eyes are wide and wild, and he still looks, on some level, like he's trying not to laugh."Keep it."
Two curt words (that don't sound much like laughing at all) before he storms out of the trailer, slamming the door behind him.
free book, free trailer
...until suddenly, he decides to leave the book to her and storm off.
For a moment, Rita can only sit and stare after him, bewildered and dumbfounded. "What the hell was that?" No one answers, of course.
A minute passes, and it seems like he really has gone, so she closes the book and, holding it against her chest, stands and exits the trailer. She still doesn't know what was going on in Foster's head, but she's not going to look a gift horse-man in the mouth. If he'll let her take the book, then she's taking it.