Owner	Pose
Terry O'Neil	Somewhere in a corner of the abandoned Landmark Mall, Terry O'Neil is restless. The Cheshire cat is bundled up in a corner of Leonardo's dojo, trying to sleep, but he can't. There's far too much on his mind. Like, for example, guilt. He sighs and reaches for his cell phone. <<Colette, I know you're there. This is message #34. Please answer me. I need to talk to you.>> Then he sets it back down and tries to get himself into a mindset for sleep. He's send many messages, and not actually counted them so the numbers may be a bit off. All have been ignored, as far as he can tell.
Colette O'Connail	Yes, Colette has been ignoring the messages from Terry. As far as she is concerned, he did indeed need to talk to her, and failed to do so because he was too busy arguing with Kate. Too busy being self-absorbed. She is not happy with him.     She has other things to do than deal with Terry right now. Such as to find out if Carol, who apparently also knew she had a clone, is going to be equally as blase about the whole issue of not telling her she had a doppelganger on the loose, /spying/ on her. There is, however, no sign of Carol. Apparently she's off-world at the moment.     So Colette has been doing some digging of her own. Following up on the few slender threads she has been able to unravel from this tapestry of deceit, based on the small amount that her doppelganger had told her during the hour or so they had waited Terry's return at the tower. It hadn't been much of a conversation -- mostly DoppelColette speaking and normal Colette not responding.     One of those threads had led Colette to a Russian moon-base. Built rather hurredly after the League had opened the Watchtower, and rather close by, it's quite obviously there more for the sake of Russian pride than Russian practicality. It is equipped to monitor activity on the Watchtower, though it's no big secret - more of a message from the Russians that they /can/.     Though they /can't/, because it's one thing to construct the base, it's another to keep it manned, and frankly the Russians aren't really that interested. They were just making a point.     However, it's convenient to know about. And when Colette finally decides to respond to the 34th message from Terry, she does so by sending him a message with a photo of the interior of the Russian moon base, and a time an hour hence, to meet there.
Terry O'Neil	The Rabbit Hole opens and through it comes Vorpal. By this point he has run out of clean clothes to wear and all of his clothes are being washed in the mall's slap-dash cleaning facility. Donatello fixed it, but he can only do so much with the (by now) ancient equipment. So Vorpal showing up in the Eeyore onesie is not something he had planned ahead of time, but it was the only clean thing he had while waiting for the cycle to be done with. This is the furthest he has Rabbit Holed, and quite frankly it barely felt like anything at all. If he weren't otherwise preoccupied, he would show a lot more curiosity about it. "Colette?"
Colette O'Connail	When Terry arrives on the moonbase, Colette is not immediately visible. This is rather surprising, because Colette is always there first, wherever there is. It had been one of the things that was different about alt-Colette, who had never shown her counterpart's tendency to want to arrive first to everything.     The place doesn't look like it has been used a lot. There is plastic wrapping on some of the equipment still. There is also an incongruous note taped to one of the viewports written in English, saying 'Thanks for the use of your moon base. I tidied up after myself. Sorry for using some of your oxygen.' Below it, written in a different hand that Terry will recognize as Colette's, is an addendum reading 'The beds are hard, room service takes 7 days to arrive, and there was nobody on reception. 1 star, would not visit again."     Terry has about enough time to take all this in when the airlock lights come on and there's a sound of air cycling. A few moments later there's another ping and the inner door opens. Colette steps inside, and looks at Terry with an arched eyebrow. The inner airlock door slides shut behind her.     "So. What?" she asks.
Terry O'Neil	In space, no-one can hear you scream. These are the words that suddenly comes to mind. The wisdom of this all is suddenly entering into that section of his brain that marks things as 'suspect.' Nevertheless, he is here now, and there's nothing to be done. "So. I owe you an explanation..."
Colette O'Connail	"Yeah, you do. But you were too busy arguing with Kate and Kian to bother giving it to me," Colette says flatly. She walks up to Terry, pulling something out of her pocket, and holds it out to him. A lump of dull gray rock. "Here, have some moonrock," she says. "Souvenir."     On closer inspection, Colette's clothes are quite dusty. The Moon has a lot of dust on it, and it tends to get kicked up when walking around on it. The coating of dust is most obvious on her shoes, but it gets everywhere. The Apollo astronauts returned to Earth in space suits turned gray with the stuff, but Colette hasn't been out in it nearly so long. It's still pretty obvious though.     And it smells strange. Kind of like charcoal, but a bit more acrid. Maybe like gunpowder.     Colette walks over to sit on a table, and looks back at Terry. "She was staying here. Mentioned it to me. Took me a while to find the place, but here it is. So. Explanations. I'm not sure your explanation is going to tell me anything I don't know now anyway, or can't guess. What I don't really understand is how it didn't occur to you that... you know, what with there being a whole theme of people's doppelgangers attempting to kill them, I didn't deserve a warning."
Terry O'Neil	Terry looks at the moonrock for a second, and then slides it into the pocket of his onesie. "Thanks..." Crossing his arms, he leans on the nearest available surface. "She told you about our first meeting, right? When she told me that she had been spying on you. Do you remember what I told you about the Lois doppel? And the Gar doppel?" 5r
Colette O'Connail	"No, she didn't tell me any of that," Colette says, staring out the window. "Mostly told me a bit about herself. Remember when I told you why I was sure there wouldn't be a doppelganger on that world? My logic was good. I would not have chosed to be born in an environment like that. She wasn't. There was one place on Earth that was not under ZZGU's influence. She was born there. In a refugee camp. That's the difference between us."     There's no sign of anger from Colette. She seems remarkably calm, all things considered. "She thinks I got it wrong. That I missed out on having a tough life. I wasn't forced to face the realities of suffering. According to her, I'm drifting through life doing nothing and having no purpose, because there was nothing to push me into finding a purpose. She had that, I didn't. Know what?"     Colette turns from the window to look at Terry, tilting her head to the side. "She's wrong. She fucked up. She lost the opportunity for balance. She was raised in an environment that skewed her perspective. Whether you think it skewed her perspective for the better or not is irrelevant. It makes the entire excercise dishonest. Lacking in true neutrality. It proves nothing. She just /let/ one side of the debate win."
Terry O'Neil	"I'm not going to debate hypotheticals. The particulars of whether or not you chose the right path or not isn't what shaped my choice. Because she was born where she was born, we were able to avoid our world ending up like theirs. That's where my POV is, you see? And look-" He holds out a hand, "She didn't kill you. She had the chance when you were asleep. Doppels can't resist that impulse- that's why what happened to Gar..." Terry goes quiet for a second. "Let me put it this way. Someone who would be intent in murdering you and taking your place would have killed you and taken your place. She wouldn't have told me. And even then, I'm one of the weakest Titans- she could have erased me. Just like you can." He sighs, "But my reasons aren't as important as the fact that what I did hurt you beause I didn't tell you."
Colette O'Connail	"You're not one of the weakest Titans, you're one of the strongest. Take your head out of your ass for one fucking minute, Terry." Colette rolls her eyes and goes back to staring out of the window. "You keep saying shit like that. Don't you realize that it's just as vainglorious a boast as if you were puffing your chest and saying how great you are? You're so determined to persuade everyone, including yourself, that you're a nobody. Why is that? So that if you don't live up to your own ideals, you have an excuse?"     She shakes her head and sighs a little. "Look, Terry. I don't really care. About why you made the decision you made. I mean it's not like I doubt you thought it was the right decision to make. I'm not questioning that. I just have to lower my expectations, I guess. I mean not just about you. Look at Kian, bringing up that whole thing about the museum again. It's just so.... narrow. But I should expect that."     "Do you know how long I have been alive, Terry? Not alive. Wrong word. Sentient. Conscious. Thinking. I've hinted to you about it before." She turns back from the window to look at him. "I don't. No real way of keeping track. There's a way I could find out, but it would be dangerous. But I can estimate, and I'd say your ancestors at the time hadn't yet come up with the concept of multi-cellular life."
Terry O'Neil	"Whoa, whoa there. Colette, I am talking in scope of /power/ levels here." He raises a hand in objection. "If you decided to end me with your powers, I'd be toast, I've got nothing to directly retaliate with. My powers are all indirectly offensive. In the dreamworld I'm a tac nuke. In the waking world, I fall into the 'rogue' slot of a D&D party. Or Displacer Beast. Leonardo thinks I'm a Displacer Beast..." He frowns. "Lower your expectations? Do you realize what position I was in? Don't say shit like that. She had knowledge of really bad shit going down. She asked me to promise to keep her secret as proviso. You weren't involved in the Doppel hunt, and even if you wanted to be... you didn't have her intel. She was from over /there/. I had no reason to believe she was going to try to kill you. For fuck's sake- do you think I'd even be comfortable if I thought it was a possibility? After almost losing Gar and my mom?" He groans and rubs his forehead, "This is why I don't want to talk in vagaries about this. I want you to tell me what /you/ would have done in my place, with the same outcome. Because if I had turned her over to you- you would, what, have killed her? Even if you hadn't, you wouldn't have trusted her- she helped save all of us and you still didn't trust her- so she would have fucked off. And then what?"
Colette O'Connail	"You're talking nonsense, Terry. Really, 'indirectly offensive'?" Colette asks, giving Terry another shake of her head. "What happens if you open a Rabbit Hole inside the sun and point the other end at someone? Or disrupt the electrical signals that keeps someone's heart beating with a wave of chaos magic? Or instead of using your illusion powers to summon up bizarre illusions to confuse people, you created convincing illusions that make people think a bottle of hydrochloric acid was cola? You're a tactical nuke in the waking world, Terry. You just don't realize it yet. The only things that hold you back are your imagination and your morality."     Colette hops to her feet and walks over to the window. She stands in front of it for a few moments before pulling a sharpie out of her pocket and starting to write on the window.     "What I'd have done? Simple. Told me. Why not? What was the reason you didn't? Because you were worried I would have killed her? Nice, Terry. Real nice. I didn't trust her because I didn't have any fucking /reason/ to trust her, Terry. I didn't know what fucked up situation had made it possible there was a doppelganger of me. Right until the moment she was standing in front of me. I had no reason to think that she wasn't about to try to kill you all, because you never fucking /told/ me.     Colette finishes writing and takes a couple of steps back to look at her handwork. Scrawled across the window of the Russian space base are the words 'Putin sucks wet farts from dead bears.' She gives a nod of satisfaction, puts the lid back on the sharpie, pockets it, and sits down again.
Terry O'Neil	Terry holds up a hand, "Whoa, wait. I want to address the rest of what you've said- but I have to observe that physics aren't exactly my strong suit. If I opened a hole into the sun... wouldn't we all, like, /die/? Wouldn't the atmosphere catch on fire? I mean..." He gesticulates, "I know that you can only get so close to lava before you start burning up. And that's, usually, what, two thousand farenheit? The core of the sun is..." were you paying attention in school, Terry? "Twenty million? I want to say? I'm a journalist, not a physicist, but wouldn't that just... /destroy/ the earth?" That's one hell of a derailment.
Colette O'Connail	"No, of course it wouldn't," Colette says with a vaguely distracted shake of her head. "The atmosphere isn't exactly that flammable. Notice how it doesn't catch on fire every time someone lights a cigarette. Nitrogen is very non-reactive, and the thermal energy that encourages oxidization from free atmospheric oxygen reduces very rapidly from the heat source. Nuclear explosions don't set the atmosphere on fire, do they? If you opened a rabbit hole to the core of the sun, you'd probably do a whole lot more damage from the kinetic energy of hydrogen spewing out from the rabbit hole at hypersonic velocities due to sudden massive decompression than you would from the thermal energy of that hydrogen."     She gives a shrug of her shoulders and a slight grin. "I'm no physicist either. But basically it would depend on how long you kept the Rabbit Hole open, and how big the opening was. At a guess I'd say it would scale from something like enough to vaporize what was immediately in front of it to the power of a small hydrogen bomb. But I mean yeah. If you try, probably best to make sure it isn't pointed at you."
Terry O'Neil	The brief look of alarm in Terry's eyes says very much why Terry is often cautious in pushing his powers like that. He gulps briefly, and makes a note to never, ever consider opening anything into the sun. "Right. As for why not tell you? I made a promise. To someone I had good reason to trust. I mean, I trust Hawkeye, but I haven't told her your secret." He pauses, "/Gar/ doesn't even know your secret. I make mistakes, but one thing I do try... is that I try to keep my promises and secrets."
Colette O'Connail	"And that promise you made to a total stranger supercedes the implicit promises of friendship?" Colette asks, one eyebrow slightly arched. It would probably be easier if she was showing more emotion. It would certainly feel more in character if it seemed like she was mad about all of this, but the same uncharacteristic calmness prevails.     "You could have got her to agree to you telling me. I mean think about it -- that would have gone a long way towards making it easier to trust her, wouldn't it? But no, you chose to let her spy on me in peace instead. You could have made your co-operation with her dependant on her coming clean with me. If she's the person you're claiming she is, and she was all about saving the world, would she have refused?"     Colette shrugs her shoulders and runs a finger down the leg of her jeans. She holds the finger out to Terry to show the fine layer of dust she has picked up there. "Try not to breathe this crap in by the way, it's probably pretty bad for you. Lots of silicates. Small, very jagged particles. Would be murder on the lungs. Know why the moon is so dusty? I mean it's way dustier than the Earth."
Terry O'Neil	The redhead lets out a sigh. "She didn't spy on you after she made contact with me. I told her not to. Look... my training's that of a reporter. I'm sorry I screwed up - Lois drilled me that you have to protect your sources, and to me she was a source. She gave me intel. I thought about this all wrong and now you're angry at me. Fine. I screwed up," He grumbles, "Mark it on the calendar. Any day ending in -y wll do, really." He grabs the sharpie and adds something else. It's a very rude thing involving Putin's name and a pun on putting things. It really isn't very nice. But, again, he's a journalist, and no journalist on Earth has warm fuzzy feelings for /that/ guy.
Colette O'Connail	"Stop it Terry," Colette says with a shake of her head. "Just fucking stop. Every time you come out with that whole 'oh no I screwed up all the time, I'm such a fuck up' crap, you're devaluing the apology you're giving. Don't you see that? You're trying to make yourself the injured party, the victim of circumstance, in the same fucking breath as apologizing. It doesn't exactly make the apology seem /honest/ if you're trying to guilt trip the person you're apologizing to into feeling sympathetic towards you with your very next sentence. You do it all the fucking time, Terry. Grow up."     Colette stares at Terry for a few moments, then shrugs her shoulders. "Just think about that, okay? I'm not angry with you. Apparently you think I'm some permanently angry monster who can't be trusted not to murder people you introduce you to, but whatever. I'm not angry, I'm just making a point. You'd do well to listen to the points I make, because I may be an angry, murderous psychopath, but I give really good advice. Honestly, sometimes I think you're as bad as that Robin guy."     Colette dabs her finger to her tongue, tasting the dust. She makes a face, then wipes her finger off on the table top. "Everywhere's dusty. It's just that on the Earth, there's wind that moves the particles of dust against each other and they erode down to much finer particles. There's water and it gets absorbed into the water, soaks into the ground, or is taken up as rain and falls into the sea where it settles into sediment and eventually forms into rock. Here on the moon none of that happens. Meteors smash into the surface and break up into particles of dust and it erodes far, far more slowly. But it's the same everywhere, really. The universe is just vast empty spaces and dust. Sometimes the dust does interesting things, but usually it just sits there.
Terry O'Neil	"If you're not angry, then why are you on the moon?" Terry asks, crossing his arms. "I'm not asking for sympathy. I keep fucking up. Hawkeye certainly busted my balls over what a scre-" He stops himself and glances to the side. "I'm supposed to go to the tower tomorrow to talk about this with leadership. So maybe I'm a little sore about--- nevermind. This whole thing is just... ungh." He turns around and kicks at the wall. Lightly. "Fucking doppels. God /damn/ it at least I'm glad that is all done with..."
Colette O'Connail	"I told you. She mentioned she was staying on a Russian moon-base near the Watchtower. So I figured out where that would be and came to look. " Colette glances around, then throws her hands wide in a gesture that speaks of how futile that was. "Nothing of any interest here. I think she wasn't lying when she said she wasn't coming back. So yeah, the whole doppelganger thing probably is done with. And you're stuck with me, instead of the nice one. I'll let you break the bad news to Gar. Yeah, she mentioned that to me too."     Colette sighs, steps over to Terry, and rests a hand on his shoulder. "You may not /mean/ to ask for sympathy, but that's what you're doing. It's not fair, and it's not smart. Maybe you don't realize you're doing it, but you're asking for someone to apologize to you for requiring you apologize for your own actions, and that's pretty sucky behavior. You're sticking a finger into the wound you've caused them, when you're supposed to be handing them a bandage. You did it to Kate too, you know. Back there in the tower. It's something you need to work on, because it helps nobody, least of all yourself. You're just perpetuating the vicious circle of self-recrimination you don't seem to even be aware you're in. Which is basically exactly the same thing as you're whole 'I'm the weakest of the Titans' garbage. So just stop it. Break the habit. Stop telling /yourself/ that crap and you'll be doing everyone a favor. Especially yourself."     "Anyway, the point is I'm /not/ angry. And honestly it's too late for explanations now, isn't it? I learned about my doppelganger from my doppelganger, not from you. So there's not a whole lot of point in all this. Talk done, Putin insulted, moonrock gained. Wanna open a Rabbit Hole? I could use a ride back, The terminator is just about over California right now, which means if I go back under my own steam I'd have to trek back from there, and that's quite a pain in the ass."
Terry O'Neil	Terry sighs and says nothing while Colette talks to him. The set of his jaw shows emotion, but his general appearance gives a hint that he's probably not been having the greatest sleep. He glances at her and squints a little, seeing something in his mind's eye. Anger was a cardinal sin, and it simply didn't do for anyone vested with any ecclesiastical authority to be angry, proper, after the initial reaction. No, he recalls, he would be reassured that they weren't angry-- just disappointed, and the muted backgound noise of that disappointment could be absolutely deafening, coupled as it was with a total lack of surprise. Why be surprised when the expected keeps happening? Expectations are adjusted. "... I'm sorry," he says, with some tightness in his voice. With a slow gesture, a shimmering Rabbit Hole is conjured as requested, "...Vorpal Express," he says. Right now he wants to beeline back to the dojo and curl up under the covers Leo lent him.
Colette O'Connail	"Are you?" Colette asks. "Hmm. You know, something I've noticed since becoming a human is that we seem to be really, really bad at knowing what we're actually sorry /about/, know what I mean? I wonder what you're actually sorry for."     "I mean you say you're sorry, but you're obviously not sorry for making the choices you made, because you still defend them. That raises the question of why you're telling me you're sorry. Are you sorry that your actions hurt me, even if you think they were right? Can't be that, surely. I've told you it's fine and I'm over it. Are you sorry for yourself? Probably so, but I don't think that's why you're saying it. You can't just be saying sorry to shut me up, because I already said, talk done. "     She steps up to the Rabbit Hole, stopping at the mouth of the portal to look back at Terry curiously. "It may be a psychological defense. A learned behavior, that saying the word 'sorry' gets you out of an uncomfortable situation. Or it may be an reflex expression of guilt, regardless of the source of that guilt. A little piece of sympathetic magic, an abjuration to drive away the demons you've conjured up in your own imagination. A little sacrifice to the universe you make, the verbal equivalent of cutting yourself as if the moment of pain is something you feel you somehow deserve, as if there was some mystical balance that could somehow turn pain into a /good/ thing. It can't."     She shrugs her shoulders and steps through the portal, her voice carrying over her shoulder all the way from Earth. "You'd do a lot better by just offering to buy me a pizza, you know."