The problem with dangerous people...

[noteasytobepink]

Who: Clarice and other students
When: Off and on through her time in Bill's world.
What: Clarice stays sharp. Sort of. It's complicated.

She didn't do much until she was cleared, medically. Only an idiot pushed an injury when there was the option to rest. She even did physical therapy religiously, but given mutant bodies, well, she tended to heal better than expected. She didn't have a healing factor, no, but she did have the heightened metabolism and that tended to help when she had the option of decent nutrition.

She tried to take the down time as a gift, she did. She only ran at first. A lot, on the ground, along the mountains, through the trees, she just ran, keeping up her wind. But a month stretched into a handful of months and she took up climbing and woodland parkour, trying to simulate vectors and angles she encountered in combat.

Then it happened; it was simple, and stupid and it shouldn't have bothered her because she had a good thing here, but she got winded. Doing something simple, for her, was harder than it should have been. It should have been alright because it was a sign, right? That she didn't need the combat skills any more. Not here, there was nothing to keep her sharp...

...but she couldn't really believe that. Working as a florist, hah, dangerous stuff. Stepping up to deputy? A breeze, and...she couldn't let the skills go. Something small, and terrified, and grim deep inside said she couldn't, and that voice had never led her wrong.

That just meant she had to get creative because no one would approve, especially not Bil.

When trapped and unable to train? Go to the source. Go to the people Mr. Creed had lived with for a while that had given him skills to teach her.

...or go to that area of the world anyway and hope to find someone who spoke with fists and feet properly.

She went to Vietnam. Stepping away for a few hours here and there to comb dripping jungles, watching and waiting until she saw the proper style. Perisai Diri was obvious even to her who'd learned it piece meal and adapted to a young, flexible teleporter. She didn't know the language beyond afew polite phrases given as ritual to teachers; she didn't have to.

She did have to stand up to being tested, women, after all, were not known as fighters even in Vietnam. Not hand to hand fighters anyway. She was in shape enough to pass that at least, though no one would call her a master by any means.

She couldn't even dedicate a few hours every day in training over there, just enough to stay sharp. Just enough to know the people coming at her when they lined up in a class or in a brawl session could be better than her. That edge of 'I'm not enough' that was true training. She always managed to scrape through. She was a lot like those she trained with after all, a child of depredation and war. They trained to keep a tradition of holding their land, she trained against them to stay alive, and they taught each other some interesting tricks as snatched weeks bled into months which hemorrhaged into years.

Bill had his alone time to relax and do his own thing; she had hers. It was more relaxing, at times, than even sex because it was confirmation that she could survive. Even in a world such as this there were people who understood, as the man she was growing to love didn't, and so she allowed silence.

She didn't ask where he spent his free time when they didn't have plans; she didn't offer what she did with hers. It was the best she could do some days, even days like this when she slipped in the back door covered in mud along one side and eyes still glowing from power use and high emotion. There had been an honor awarded tonight; it was a good thing...she just...wasn't sure Bill would understand if she offered to share the honor as she'd been invited to.

She wasn't sure how to ask.

One thing was certain though, she'd need a shower before she decided anything, yes.

Comments

[noteasytobepink]

"It gets lonely in here without you..." she teased easily, drawing little muddy patterns on his chest before the spray hit.

And, well, cold showers would be still be fun as long as he was there? Hot water was nice, yes, but not necessary for clean!

[wheelsy_sheriff]

"Well wouldn't want you gettin' lonely." Definitely wouldn't want that!

Since she was the muddy one he let her have most of the water, and was even so nice as to lather up a rag and help her get some of the dirt off.

"Lemme get that for you," he said, wiping mud from her shoulder and following through with the rag to her chest.

[noteasytobepink]

She chuckled and started working shampoo through her hair since she could let him handle the washcloth it seemed! "I do appreciate not being lonely!" she admitted with a grin. "And I kind of have a question to ask you."

[wheelsy_sheriff]

He was careful and thorough with the rag, making sure he took care of all the mud for her.

He lingered a moment on a spot on her hip that looked a little more purple than pink, but held in his question about it in favor of hers.

"Yeah? Well maybe I'll kind of have an answer," he teased.

[noteasytobepink]

Bruising could look like that but it just been a glancing blow! "I've been taking classes, kind of? And I'll be advancing ranks, a lot of the students have significant other to see them off? It's...the end of the classes, you learn the final forms in one go since they can be dangerous and then you don't return. It'd be about five hours I think? That seems the length for the people before me being away."

[wheelsy_sheriff]

He knew, which was why it had caught his attention, but perhaps her words were explanation.

"Classes? Yeah?" He gave her a curious smile.

"I thought you already knew Karate an' such," he teased, thinking of course that she'd enrolled in something down at the Y or somewhere.

Leaning in he nibbled her shoulder, smiling against her skin. "Be happy t'be your significant other, darlin'. When's it at?"

[noteasytobepink]

"Karate is too simple," she admitted. "I went to one of the sources for decent hand to hand!" she grinned and kissed his temple.

"Mr. Creed started teaching me Perisai Diri when I was very little. This just finished it out really, the final three forms are called 'The Human' forms and it's a learn first time or never kinda thing. Tomorrow if you're free? It's still my weekend so I can spare the hours without interfering with anything here."

[wheelsy_sheriff]

"I have no idea what that is," he confessed with a chuckle. "But it sounds like you could kick someone's ass."

Done with her, he used the rag to wash his own chest, giving her a smile.

"I'm sure I could swing that. Just lemme know the time an' place an' I'll be there."

[noteasytobepink]

"It's a Vietnamese style of Hand-to-hand, and elbow to head and all those other fun things, or rather it's a Malay Peninsula style and the one I'm trained in is Vietnamese" she admitted, rinsing her hair before snatching the cloth from him. "Hmmm? Here, after Breakfast, it's a bit of a trip."

[wheelsy_sheriff]

"Didn't know there was Vietnamese karate. Thought that was just a Chinese thing." He chuckled again, surrendering the rag

"Trip, huh? What'd you do, go t'the jungle for trainin'?"

[noteasytobepink]

"It's not karate, it's far, far more dangerous," she chuckled. "And yes, of course I did." Where else would she go?

[wheelsy_sheriff]

He laughed, "Y'didn't."

A beat, and then he tilted his head.

"Did you?"

[noteasytobepink]

"...yes I did. I don't speak the language, no, but I don't have to in order to learn properly." Was that wrong?

"It's perfectly safe they won't touch someone that has come to see off a student to final lessons!"

[wheelsy_sheriff]

"You did." He stared at her a moment, then shook his head. "Of course y'did."

Turning, he shut off the water, pushing back the curtain to step out of the shower.

[noteasytobepink]

Ah, he was angry then. She watched him leave the shower then wrung water from her hair, trying to think her way through this.

She wasn't going to skip final lessons, no, but it felt like a breaking point if she pushed his coming.

She wanted him there because he mattered...

...why was this world so strange?

"I won't wake you when I leave then."

[wheelsy_sheriff]

He did a quick dry off, then wrapped the towel around his waist, frowning at her.

"Why would you do that?" he asked, and he was trying to keep a leash on his temper, and he was trying not to snap or be angry, and he was trying to understand.

[noteasytobepink]

"Why would I do which part?" She asked, bending to wrap her hair in a towel. "Why would I go to Korea? Why would I take lessons? Or why would I want you to come?"

[wheelsy_sheriff]

"Vietnam," he snapped, losing his grip on that tether. "Why would you-- do you have any idea of how far that is from here? Because I sure as hell don't!"

[noteasytobepink]

"Yes, I know how far it is," she pointed out. She had to in order to get there after all. "And You don't go to a new school with an incomplete training under your belt, it leaves you with bad habits you have to alter and had I just jumped into a new discipline I was likely to mistake a move and accidentally hurt someone. Badly."

[wheelsy_sheriff]

"That's no kind of damned excuse," he grated at her. "What if somethin' had happened to you? What if you'd been hurt, or got into trouble?! I wouldn't have known anything. I wouldn't have been able t'help you."

[noteasytobepink]

"I'm not unkillable," she agreed. "And I left signed and sealed letters with a lawyer to deliver in case of no further contact from me. I would not have left you hanging, but there is very little in this world that can take me out, guns or no guns, plus you have my battle quiver locked up safe in the office. As long as you have that I will not be disappearing."

[wheelsy_sheriff]

"Oh, y'left me a note with a lawyer, well that makes it alright then." He'd lost his hold on his voice and anger and so he stormed out of the bathroom, headed for the bedroom to change.

"An' learnin' karate is a perfectly good reason to go out riskin' yourself an' everything else for, ain't it?"

[noteasytobepink]

"No, being good enough not to die under any circumstance is worth it," she admitted, drying off in the bathroom and not bothering to follow him. He didn't understand, naturally, how could he?

"Tell me, Bill, do you have combat vets here?"

[wheelsy_sheriff]

Her words halted him before he reached the bedroom and he turned back around and returned to her.

"Who's dyin', Clarice?! This isn't a war! This isn't the jungle, or some fucked up world you've landed on before! Ain't nothin' tryin' to kill you here, but you!"

And she was giving him heart attacks and heartaches nearly every time she did something like this.

"Of course we've got vets. So?"

[noteasytobepink]

"Not here, not yet," she agreed. "But even Wheelsy has seen terrible things, Bill. And Korea is the closest thing your world has to where I grew up." It was a sad, but honest truth.

"And what do you do with those vets, Bill? Do you send them home, tell them to take up knitting? Say they can't own a gun? They become weapons to survive, do you take that from them when you decide the fighting is done? I was losing part of my skill and it frightened me. I couldn't allow it, even here. Even now."