Verity and Liam's Place, MHA #6, Monday Morning

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity watched the screens depicting Skywalker's last walk with a rictus that only barely passed itself off as a grin. She darted her eyes over to Liam, who was watching this with way too much satisfaction. She had been watching the whole thing, nodding right along with it, and then those gates had slammed shut and something within her had snapped.

At first, she'd been afraid that something really had snapped. That was a real danger when you were a porcelain music box ballerina. But no, it had just been her mind coming back to herself - and boy, she'd nearly snapped again when she realized she was made of porcelain - and realizing that she was watching a man walk to his own gruesome death.

"No!" she cried as the machine started up.

[Open for him who lives here, but also to anyone wanting to visit/intimidate. Liam modded with permission]

Comments

[arboreal_priestess]

"Yes, of course, agreed," Verity said quickly. "I just needed to check. You understand. We can't afford to be complacent."

[firstofitskind]

"I do understand," Liam said, nodding in what he meant to be a totally reassuring manner. "It's good that you're so good about being on the lookout for traitors! We can't let them interfere with all our fun."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Yup, fun," Verity said, pretending she couldn't hear the murmur of the mice, all of whom were still watching her. "We'll hunt for traitors all day and then come up with something really fun to do tonight. Like the very good toys we are."

[firstofitskind]

"I could watch you dance!" Liam gushed. "That's so much fun, because you're so good at it!"

Normal!Liam enjoyed dancing too, admittedly, just... not with as many exclamation points. And also he preferred dancing with her, now that he was reasonably good at it.

But toy soldiers didn't dance. At least. Unless they were a very specific subset of toy soldier. Which Liam was not.

[arboreal_priestess]

Liam didn't have nearly enough points of articulation to really be able to dance.

Of course, being porcelain, neither did Verity, but she could twirl around and around and around to the tune of her music box and apparently that counted. "I would love to dance for you!" Verity exclaimed, lying and hating herself for it.

[firstofitskind]

He kind of managed it, during those times when the Mandatory Fun (always announced at random times, with little notice) was a town-wide dance.

(Or, at least, he had memories of kind of rocking his whole body back and forth awkwardly, anyway)

"I look forward to it!" he leaned over to- well, the intent was to kiss her on the cheek. But given that his neck and head didn't actually move independently of his torso, it was more a kind of... gentle bumping in to her.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity kept a frozen smile on her face all through the gentle bumping and even returned it with an awkward bump of her own. "Well, now that playtime is sorted, I'm gonna go out and patrol the island. Which sounds like a super-fun time!"

She had to get out of here. And maybe scream.