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[shootsharp]

MASK OR MENACE, HEROPA; floating in a most peculiar way.

[ The mood of the street changes when it begins to rain with a cheerful summery patter that is nevertheless relentless enough to cause a stir. Umbrellas bloom and raise. Footsteps quicken, and the open-sky mall clears of people as they change their trajectory for cover.

Except for Teddy Flood.

It's been some minutes. Water gathers between the crevices of the bricked ground he stands on, boots fixed in place, and rain strikes off the wide brim of his hat, finding a path to run and coming down at a intermittent trickle down his back. The flare of his jacket only barely protects where his conspicuous revolver hangs at his hip, because he's making no effort to do so. He's making no effort at all, still as a statue. Not even breathing.

His blue eyes seem both blank and focused on some mysterious point in the air, raised up, roughly towards where the city skyline looms up into the patchwork clouds above. He is midstep, one hand raised, his expression relaxed into inscrutable.

Some pause to take in the sight of him, as if judging whether or not this is some kind of street performance. Someone's shoved a five dollar note into his breast pocket. Others snap pictures.

Teddy doesn't notice, watching the sky. ]

MASK OR MENACE, NETWORK; the stars look very different today.

excuse me i seem to have fallen
off the beaten trail you wouldn't
happen to know which direction
lies sweetwater would you

MASK OR MENACE, HEROPA; planet earth is blue and there's nothing i can do.

[ Metal-shod hooves click and plod on wooden planks as Teddy slowly steers his horse across the boardwalk. He cuts a distinct figure amongst the beach-going Floridians, boots dusty, hat unironic, good form in his saddle and an openly carried gun at his hip. The novelty drags some glances his way, and he tips a nod to those nearer without too much in the way of conviction.

Because he is distracted.

A subtle redistribution of his weight in the saddle is enough to stop his horse from his slow meander to a halt as Teddy looks out over glittering blue ocean. After a moment, he swings his way out of his saddle, touching down with the subtle thump of boots on plank, the jingle-jangle of horse tack. Keeping leather reins wrapped over his knuckles, he moves closer to where wooden railing bars off the drop onto the yellow sand that stretches off into the frothy waves. ]

Comments

[fordshadowing]

[ The breaking away from the scripted response is a curious and wonderful thing. It means that although other hosts may wind up here, the sudden and dramatic change wouldn't damage them irreparably. Of course, Teddy is more of an adventurer. It's in his nature to accept newer places and events -- to guide guests through them. Just the way he will likely wind up guiding Ford through this city.

Unless he goes dramatically off script. ]

Heropa. [ He punctuates each syllable, tasting the name on his tongue. ] And how long have you been in this Heropa?

[shootsharp]

Not long, [ he says. Reliably, Teddy is disinclined to dramatically do very little save for what he is told. His squints a little at the old man from beneath the shadow of his hat, but Ford has his attention. His engagement. ] And I don't care to stay any longer than I have to.

[ Whatever his loops, Heropa was never factored in. ]

You likewise find yourself off the beaten trail, mister?

[shootsharp]

[ Setting the champagne bottle down, Teddy lifts the charged glass up for Ilde tag, slick with champagne that's been out too long to be very cool, but froths fresh and expensive all the same. ]

I strongly suspect he's got more in mind than just a ring and a surname himself, Miss Ilde.

[ His hand on her thigh remains where it is without being particularly lecherous, solid and assumptive as a dog's paw. It's neither that nor truly a man's hand, but feels like the latter when it squeezes, briefly. ]

Where to next?

[trouvaille]

( ilde takes the glass. allows his steadiness to feel comforting and is conscious of the way it's sort of like how she likes sitting with other people's dogs when she visits their houses and not like - she thinks she wouldn't say these things to a real person instead of just vigorous furniture. she doesn't think about whether or not she thinks the real people she knows would listen.

and all of this is recorded, probably, but 'socialite might not be totally ready for marriage' isn't the kind of breaking news you have to sift through thousands of hours of data for. no one cares. teddy isn't even listening any more than anyone else, he's just hearing. someone wrote everything that comes out of his mouth. )

Let's go down to the waterside. Out of the lights.

( ilde drains the glass. drops it - behind them, where he won't have to walk through broken glass - and pats his shoulder more or less the same way she'd pat the dog he isn't. )

Bring the bottle, you old romantic. Do you really think that's what marriage is? Did you ever want to try it?

( she likes a story. wonders what was written for him, what they were thinking when they wrote it. if the bachelorette package warrants something with any nuance or if she's supposed to just get wasted and find out if the Ken has got a vibrate setting since she last played with dolls. )

[shootsharp]

[ Teddy moves as requested, champagne bottle and girl both wrangled as appropriate. He doesn't move with ulterior motive or intent, innately, just a series of protocols that dictate his actions, responsive to external stimuli. Any woman, or man, is free to read into those things, of course. Later, a bridesmaid will probably perch her ankles on his shoulders and be much obliged.

But Ilde asks for a story. Upon being asked-- ]

I got some reckoning to do before I can think about a thing like that.

[ The body of water is black and glittery beneath the artifice of night sky, and the sounds of the party a little dimmer. Without awaiting permission or protest, he indulges in a swig of champagne himself before moving to allow her to dismount. ]

But there's a girl. Better'n I deserve.

[trouvaille]

( it's the little details that really make westworld what it is. that let her feel like she's not just ditching her party to go and drink alone in the dark; they're having a drink together, a conversation. it's just a story, but what's so fucking wrong with that? what isn't. everything in life is just a story someone tells you, or you tell yourself -

this is the story she's telling herself about how it's going to be right, this time. she's going to be better. it's going to be different. )

They always are.

( well. not always.

she sits down at the edge, takes her shoes off, sinks her toes into the sand. holds her hand out for the bottle, imperious in a way that's thoughtlessly habitual and probably typical of the kind of guests that come through here; being a few other things as well doesn't make her not a product of her environment. sad little rich girl marries captain of the rowing team and needs a fucking robot to hold her hand to do it.

he smells nice. of booze, also, but besides that. )

Is she pretty?

[shootsharp]

[ His smile is understated, not quite bashful, but maybe borderline. The champagne bottle is gently landed in her hand, and Teddy finds a place to sit down next to her in a companionable kind of distance. That he is sans shirt and hat doesn't seem to both him, hooking an elbow against raised knee.

It's a nice night. Suspiciously free of mosquitoes. He looks like he's remembering. ]

Hair as bright as a wheat field, and she's got eyes about as clear and blue as a summer sky. You'll have to forgive me, I ain't one much for poetry, but she warrants the attempt. Yeah.

[ Teddy holds out a hand back for the champagne. ] She's pretty.

Her name's Dolores. [ So, not just an amorphous watercolour picture lodged in his script. It at least has a name. Not to forget, however, who his focus ought to be for the evening-- ] Your intended's a lucky man too.

[trouvaille]

Jasper, ( she supplies, supplying him with the champagne as well after a healthy (from certain perspectives) swig from the bottle. ) Knox.

( which is, to be fair to certain bridesmaids who will remain nameless, a lot easier to spell than the painfully english mess that is 'featherstonehaugh'. she does have the passing thought that of course she's blonde, matter of fact. of course her eyes are blue. she imagines him and his cinderella, aesthetically pleasing, an unchanging tableaux of the cusp of romance while people like her come and go and have real lives and messy relationships and grow old, and die.

and teddy will always have some reckoning to do. it would be sad, if.

but the thought is an abstract one in someone who maybe would not be sad, anyway, if. she doesn't envy him the forgetting, but this isn't the real world, and the real world isn't exactly a prize. she can imagine wes, all weed smoke and cologne, maybe it's them who's really free, which would be bullshit but the kind of bullshit she would still have the leisure to close the door on and forget about. )

He's blond, too. And, ( pointing at him, ) pretty.

[shootsharp]

[ There's certainly an innate enough tragedy to these life-sized dolls that probably, for every guest that only wishes to fuck or murder them, there's another who pries their fingers into their artificial psyche and is generally met with uncomprehending scripted responses. Sitting here, Teddy seems content with his lot in life, give or take that glimmer of angst in pensive looks across the lake after the next swig of champagne.

His eyebrows raise at her description in acknowledgement, a nod to follow. ]

Pretty, [ he echoes. ] Four-letter last name.

[ Dolores Flood. Now there's a new idea. Nuanced machine that he is, it goes unvoiced but not unresponded to, shadowing beneath the surface with a twinge making his easy smile a touch more crooked. ]

I declare him a keeper.

[trouvaille]

( flood is also simpler to spell than abernathy. marriage material, right there. on the other hand, lode is easy to spell and has four letters and is absolutely not worth being married to wesley lode to get, so -

ilde hitches the skirts of an outfit definitely designed with maeve's girls in mind and finds where she'd tucked her cigarettes into the her garter, finds the matchbook in the other one, lights it expertly. she isn't actually pregnant, so this is fine, which is a normal thought to be regularly having about different aspects of her behaviour, thanks. )

That's the idea. ( obliging convention more than presumption of interest, she displays the ring - moonstone, like much of the rest of her jewelry, a pretty thing redesigned from an antique. westworld had seemed thematically in keeping with the vibe of it, when she'd been pinned down to work out the details of weddings and parties and - jesus, there are so many parties involved in a wedding and you can't skip them all when you're actually the bride. it turns out.

although she seems to be skillfully avoiding her own hens' night, so, maybe you can. )

I am going to smoke this, ( she decides, ) and then we are going to go swimming.

[shootsharp]

Not in those skirts. Or my hat.

[ Without it, he kind of just looks like some guy, although whoever crafted his face put some character into it all the same. If Teddy thinks she's avoiding her own hen party, he's polite enough not to say so, or perhaps doesn't think it so important, more invested in the lady getting to do as she pleases than he is in prying into her feelings.

Not unless she wanted to, and as far as he can tell, she wants to go swimming. After her cigarette.

That they have been drinking doesn't come up, either. If she starts drowning, he's fundamentally conditioned to save her. ]

You ain't sharing?

[trouvaille]

Oh, not the hat, okay, cowboy.

( she gives him the cigarette she's already lit, stained wine-red with her lipstick, and lights a second for herself, conscious of how bizarre it is that this is the most like herself she's felt in months. no endless cake samples or wedding registries or guest lists or caring about who is sitting where and with who (she does not care, everyone will get up and move around anyway, why does anyone care, can she have a placard on every table that says THE ONLY MESSAGE YOUR SEAT ARRANGEMENT IS SENDING IS THAT I THOUGHT YOU'D GIVE A FUCK I GOT MARRIED AND INVITED YOU AND IF YOU RUIN IT I WILL BILL YOU THE COST OF YOUR ATTENDANCE YOU INGRATE, no, why not--) and she is really looking forward to being married, she thinks, but if the wedding day is going to be the best day of her life her life is looking fucking dire.

here, where it's dark and quiet and teddy talks to her like she's no one in particular, one of a hundred thousand people he doesn't remember - this is good, this is okay. )

If there's one thing I'm very good at, ( dryly, ) it's getting my kit off, so we're all right, there. You can swim, can't you?

[blackhat]

"For all the good it did either of us."

Here they stand in a world alien to them both, Dolores nowhere to be seen.

"You ever put a knife so deep inside somebody you -- " he gestures, vague, over his own middle, black leather glossy damp, "feel the tip scratch the back of the sternum?"

There’s a speculative edge to his squint, too intent through the piddle. Teddy hasn’t put his gun back.

"You can feel it in your teeth."

[fordshadowing]

I suppose you can say that. Though I feel as though I've been wandering off the trail for quite some time.

[ He remarks in his own private amusement to himself, and doesn't bother letting poor clueless Teddy in on the joke. But all idle comments aside, Ford does address the more pressing point. ]

I do believe neither you nor I are going to be leaving this place any time soon. But perhaps there is something you can find comforting about this change of scenery.

[ A beat. And then: ]

Analysis: What is the last thing you recall, Teddy?

[shootsharp]

Teddy's expression is nuanced in its change as the man in black speaks. Gestures. A wintry edge in direct gaze. The man in black's provoked this out of him before; a quiet hostility, a coiling of tension.

Her hands had shivered, her face waxy and pale while vitality leaked out from that puncture driven through her torso. He'd held her the whole ride to the shoreline in spite of the fact that she was as good a rider as he is. Better, even. And in her last moments, she'd said a lot of things he didn't fully comprehend, but stayed quiet all the same, for the sake of every last word.

It was awfully romantic.

There isn't a lot of romance in Teddy's next action, which is the only action one can take with a self-confessed murderer. Gun low, aimed true for the man in black's torso, he fires once, and again. The dispersed crowd and those just getting on with their day flinches and recoils as a unit at the thunder-loud muzzle blast.

[shootsharp]

[ There's that spark of thought, or what passes for it -- a sifting through of scripted dialogue, the chance at improvisation, but gently, that single word puts Teddy's processing at ease.

His eyeline wanders off of Ford, watching the air somewhere to the left of him. ]

Prior to this interaction, I recall witnessing an object, hanging in the sky. There was a great noise from it and other unknown environmental artefacts. My sensory input capacity was overloaded and caused system failure. It was raining.

[ A beat, before he is compelled to volunteer, again; ] They call this place Heropa.

[pluckier]

[Dolores isn't there, and then she is. A pale hand on the neck of his horse, her upturned face limned in city sunshine.]

Hello, Teddy.

[Her dress is the same shade of cornflower blue, but different in this time and world. A more modern cut, no laces at the small of her back, nor ruff around the low neck of her bodice. Her shoes are nude, sitting on three-inch kitten heels, shapely around her feet. Mascara thorns her eyelashes dense as a jungle. She looks like she could be going to work at a bank, or some sort of consultation job; a stranger in a strange, strange land. But some things about her are unmistakably familiar. The tiny ringlets that frame her forehead, the drawl of her voice when she asks, mild as ever,] Did you take the train today?