as_damaged | ☎ voicemail

It's perfectly natural for people to drift apart, here in the City the same as any other place; and really Cameron's more prone to it than most. Her habit is to throw herself into work when things aren't going quite right, and here it seems like making plans is an invitation to disaster.

But there's a time for reconnecting, a time when it's more than a "wouldn't it be nice?" Losing people is something she understands all too well, and if it's an ironic reason to meet it's also a pointed one.

She's not early but not late, lips curving in a small smile as she crosses the lobby, her coat already buttoned, a pair of gloves clutched in one hand.

"You haven't been waiting long, I hope."

"No," he shakes his head and returns her smile in equal parts politeness and authenticity. With an understated nod of his head it's out the lobby front and into the cold, though Peter evidences no gloves or mittens himself, simply sticking his hands deep into his coat pockets. Around them there is the mild hum of other people speaking, directions being given, and machines - always machines -, but with the opening of the entry and then the closing, that noise dulls away beneath the surprising quiet of the outside. Even at early afternoon the snow laden exterior is comfortably muted.

"In the mood for anything particular or...?" he pauses a few feet out and to the side of the automatic doors so as not to be in the way of anyone coming or going.

She pulls her gloves on as they step out, taking a deep breath. Snow is less of an annoyance in a City with little automobile traffic, and it doesn't turn so quickly to gray slush. It's pretty enough that the cold doesn't worry her.

"There's a sandwich shop a few blocks down." Far enough from the hospital that she doesn't usually bother, which makes this feel like something of a special occasion. "If that's all right with you." Cameron smiles, easing a little of the subtle but ever-present tension in her face.

"Sounds lovely," he says and means it. He has to remind himself not to offer his arm because as some people have pointed out to him, to most people of a more modern age that's the sort of thing reserved for couples rather than simple courtesy from a man to a woman. That mildly innate tendency quelled, he walks evenly with her stride, whatever that might be.

"I was about to ask you how your day has been, but in truth I'd be glad to hear more of how you've been overall as well," he remarks, polite but conversational all at once, that casual kind of closeness that people beget most easily when there seem to be no expectations in particular.

That's a difficult question, the kind you don't want to answer truthfully no matter how earnestly it's asked. That's the case (for Cameron, at least,) whether the answer's good or bad; she's disinclined to bragging and complaint alike, preferring when she's able to maintain an air of self-assurance. Unflappable. But truthfulness, too, is a matter of import and doubly so with Peter. It's one of the things she likes best about him, his (to use a heavy-handed word) nobility of character.

"It's been... a difficult few weeks," she admits, shrugging to dismiss a little of the emphasis on the words. "But I've been trying not to dwell on it. I think the City makes us more resilient, if nothing else."

The smile he sends her way crafts itself from something sympathetic and something further inquiring alike, a slight nod inclusive. Resilient is a word he often associates with the way people prove time and again in this City that they can recover from a myriad of difficulties they would otherwise not even conceive of much less encounter in their origin-worlds. He appreciates that fine balance of honesty and perseverance but it seems almost condescending to say as much, so he doesn't.

His smile stays however, a little soft at the corners. "If that's what people want to believe, I think it's quite true," he pauses, "I believe it, in any case." He hesitates, aware that this might be overstepping, but then he very much expects that the option to not answer his questions is self-evident to someone like the woman beside him, someone practical. "I had just been asking Susan whether she would...choose to remember this place, or forget given the choice," a preamble really. "I don't think I could ever decide to forget, myself. There are too many things worth committing to memory in spite of the difficulties." Here he cants a gaze over at her, steady. "What do you think?"

"I've asked myself that any number of times," Cameron says, looking down the street before them in a slightly unfocused fashion, her mind somewhere else. "I can't get past the impossibility of it to decide what I'd prefer."

The downside of her pursuit of rationality. There are pros and cons to forgetting and remembering alike, anyway, and the question of whether the good memories would outweigh the bad ones is too philosophical for her to sort out one way or another. Decisiveness has never been Cameron's forte. "Besides," she adds, a wry little smile tugging at her lips, "If I woke up at home tomorrow remembering all of this, I'd be forced to come to the conclusion that I'd had some kind of psychotic break." Reality remaining inviolate is an essential prerequisite for the assumption that the City is, in some fashion, real.

Ah. The way he moves his gaze forward again is not distancing so much as understanding, remembering how different it is for most people because other worlds didn't exist before this for them. Right. He feels almost foolish for having lost that particular defining trait for the norm, but he has been in this place long enough to grow comfortable as much as one can, to say he appreciates it. Possibly his stance is too skewed regardless of what points of comparison he holds onto and Peter has always been more about duty and loyalty than philosophy himself. If he decides that to remember the things that happen here is part of that duty then there is no question about it; he will because to do less is not in him. But that does not make people who would choose otherwise less because everyone's situations vary too greatly. It remains hard to draw parallel lines because the A's and B's are never the same anyway.

"Well," he pauses, musing. "I wouldn't want that for you," he smiles again, something of his actual age somewhere there, like he has worried about his own sanity before trying to figure out the math for two realities; he has, after all. "Do turn me in the right direction if necessary," he adds, glancing back as they pass another corner. "I seldom eat out." Which is to say: not at all and he has the self-awareness to sound sheepish about it, if unapologetic.

"Well, on the bright side I expect Dr. House would find a physiological cause for it," she half murmurs. "Or he'd corroborate my experience. Though it won't be an issue." There's a certainty to that, which is alternately comforting and desolate. She won't remember all the awful things, but she won't know how to steer the real world in a better direction.

"It's liberating, though, in a sense. Ultimately the City doesn't have consequences beyond its boundaries, so we're not bound by the expectations and mores of our respective realities, unless we decide to remain so." Which most do, which she does as well, by and large. But she appreciates the food for contemplation. "A left up ahead," she adds with a little nod.

Making that directed left, Peter sighs and steps a couple feet apart from Cameron as another pair of people walk right on through. Funny how some of the general public seems to think you will always get out of their way. Peter would rather not but in the City of all places it's better to just go with the path of least resistance in these things. Use that pride for a day when an army camps outside his door or something. Stepping to her side again he pauses only a moment before speaking.

"What sorts of expectations do you mean?" he asks and then adds, a bit apologetic, "You don't have to answer that, if you'd prefer not to." He's curious but he doesn't mean to pry. Peter is generally not the type to do so unless it concerns Lucy or Susan and the word 'date', but Cameron is an exception in several departments. He'd rather not intrude on thoughts she wants to keep mostly to herself.

"I'm not sure I had anything specific in mind," she admits, verging a little on embarrassed because really, it's an indulgent thought to begin with. "But... look at it this way." She slows to glance at him, head tilted to one side, slightly. "To some extent we choose who we are, what we say and do, based on what other people think. We keep doing the things that 'fit' that persona. But here there are no expectations-- no reason a quiet person can't shout, no reason a criminal can't reform, a kind person turn cruel. Nothing except what we bring with us." She looks down. "Not so easy in practice, of course, or even desirable."

He takes his time with her words, not just because it's polite - though there will always be that vague kind of added layer to things, well almost always - but because they both resonate and pick at him in a way he can't entirely figure. Part of him understands it inside the scope of change and how this place presents the kinds of situations that will shape a person differently than home.

"I suppose change is somewhat...relative," he says after a moment wherever on the street they have paused. It is calm outside, quiet with snow and cold that pushes like a heaviness without proper form. "And what expectations we take with us or find here, being different or the same can be either freeing or alienating, depending." He takes a breath, another pause. "It's not one of my strengths, back home, however - change. I find it easier here because the expectations are quite a bit broader, more open in what they entail." Here he smiles a little and finally just gives in to his natural inclination, which is to offer his arm to Allison Cameron and in the same motion start them headed the short remainder of the way to their lunch.

She takes his arm easily, seeing it for the polite gesture it is. Cameron is one of the rare few who's simply pleased to see that chivalry isn't dead, though of course that's a complicated assertion. Chivalry might well be dead at home. Still, she's not inclined to stand on contemporary informality.
"I think it would be impossible not to change here. Everyone is a product of their surroundings, to a certain extent. It's the impermanence of that change, here, that fascinates me."

☎ voicemail

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞