goneawayworld | Smoke on the water

Who: Catra and friends (this includes you)
What: Dankness
Where: The bowels of the Rig.
When: Sometime amidst Christmas stuff
Warnings/Notes: Deals with weed/people getting high/drug stuff.

When Catra had started waking up with strange stuff in her room, she hadn't really been sure what to make of it. It wasn't hers. It definitely wasn't anything that Jorgmund, in their idiotic wisdom, would give to her. Thankfully, since she wasn't a square like Adora she had managed to understand just what exactly this water pipe was. Her first attempt at using it had been tentative, but the experience had been... relaxing, more than anything else that she'd done recently on the rig. And weirdly enough, the bowl on it never seemed to be empty. Useful, even if it was made out of some weird horn-like material. Point was, it was chill.

Naturally, she had to share with her companions ('friends' was still asking a lot of her).

She had scampered off to the bowels of the Rig to the space that Tenten had once-upon-a-time commandeered for a little get together. It was off the beaten path and hard to find, which made it perfect for what was something Jorgmund would probably frown on. Especially considering how much they seemed to hate their prisoners doing anything that made them happy. Once settled with some blankets and pillows, she had sent a message out to others, inviting them to come join her. Why had been left vague and mysterious, the only instructions being to 'bring blankets, pillows, and maybe a snack.' When people arrive, they find Catra in her little nest, the water pipe set out in front of her along with some pilfered snacks and fruit from the gardens.

"About time someone showed up. C'mon, this'll be a good time."

( Open to anyone, really. Even if Catra might not specifically include someone, feel free to say someone else clued them in, or just stumble in and crash. All good. Catra will be too chilled out to be too upset. )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Usually when someone's telling someone they're bad, it's more about themselves than it is about the person they're insulting." He sighs, content with the crossfade he's got going on. "Take it from someone twice your age who gets insulted all the time. The best thing about having a soul is that you get to decide who you are, not anyone else."

"Yeah, Shadow Weave is a bitch and I know that better than anyone," Catra says emphatically. She reaches out for the water pipe and lights up for another toke. She needs one if she's going to be talking about this crap, okay? There's a moment of silence except for the bubbling of the bong and then she exhales a cloud of heady smoke.

"No way are you forty," she says, distracted by that part of his statement for a moment.

"I've been trying to decide who I am and none of it is like, working, you know? I was supposed to be the... leader. The ruler. To prove I didn't need anyone. Even Adora." Thing is... she actually does need Adora. She needs that girl like she needs food or water or air.

Edited 2021-01-13 18:29 (UTC)

"Thirty-five. Close enough. You're what, nineteen? Twenty?" He take another slug of whiskey and reclines with his arms behind his head.

"'Supposed to be'. That still sounds like you're listening to other people tell you what you should be. No one's 'supposed to be' anything if they don't want to be." This from a man who's spent his adult years criss-crossing the continent fighting monsters because it's what he's good at and likes to do, who has no stable home or relationships or even legal documentation or anything but the freedom of deciding where he wants to go next. "Your age is supposed to be for figuring it out, anyway. Mind if I smoke in here?"

It already smells like weed, why not add in some menthol?

"Twenty," she says with a grin.

"Sure, whatever you wanna do. I'm not gonna get on you for like, whatever." She waves a hand and gives a faint scoff. "Yeah, no one is supposed to be anything but that doesn't stop people from telling you that your whole damn life."

"Like I said, close enough." He grins back, then lights his cigarette. Nicotine, marijuana and alcohol, what a great combination Dan loves.

"Oh, trust me, I know." He doesn't know about it from childhood, because when he was a child he fit neatly into the role his family expected of him, but for the last few decades?

He considers how much to tell Catra, then decides just the stuff that's public knowledge somewhere or other on the Rig.

"I can't read, I live in a car, and I strip and pick up garbage and clean toilets for money. Trust me when I tell you I get it about people telling you what you are and why it's not good enough. It's all just a perspective shift. It still hurts but you can decide you know yourself better than other people know you. After all, you get to see you all the time and they only get to see you some of the time."

"Yeah, I have to spend all the time with myself. But like, what if they're right about me?" A pause. "I mean, I guess Adora could be right. She believes in me, you know? She believes in me a lot and like... like... I dunno I have a hard time believing that it's for real." Catra says with a low sigh. Her buzz is a little harshed, but the emotion isn't really enough to bring her into a complete downer at the moment.

"Trying to unlearn all the crap Shadow Weaver fed me as a kid is the first step, I guess."

"I'd trust Adora's judgment over theirs. She knows you better than most."

He nods, taking a long drag of his cigarette. "It takes time, unlearning what you learned as a kid. It gets programmed in young. Just try and remember that what someone says about you and what you are two completely different things, and half the time they don't have even nothing to do with each other."

"She's also an idiot." Catra says that with all affection, of course. Adora might be an idiot but she's Catra's idiot, dammit.

"I hope so. Sometimes I'm not so sure, you know?"

"I understand. I think that's why you oughta surround yourself with folks that remind you. Not folks that kiss your ass or anything, but that remind you that you're the one that gets to judge and decide you."

He sits up to take the bong from her for another hit.

"Honestly? Only one person has ever done that for me in my life and it's Adora." That sounds really sad, when she puts it that. She hands over the bong willingly enough, however.

"Well, you're on the Rig now. New people, new life. Might could be a lot of people telling you to brush off what people who don't know you tell you you are."

He hands it back.

"Yeah, I guess it's a new start," Catra admits as she accepts the bong. She doesn't take a hit from yet, just looks at it with a pensive expression.

"...I mean, everything was crap back home anyway."

"A hell of a new start, but a new start." He raises an eyebrow and keeps smoking.

"You too, huh? Seems the common theme. I wonder if they picked so many of us from such disappointing worlds just so we wouldn't try and go running back."

"Maybe. It didn't work, though, because anywhere is better than this shithole," Catra says with a roll of her eyes. She leans forward and takes another hit from the bong, though her ears are still perked towards Dan.

"I'd rather be back where I was than here. That's how much this place sucks."

Smoke on the water

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