Life Lessons

First topic message reminder :

Ruby Winters was a young woman of around twenty two, not that her parents would remember this fact. She was their youngest child. A mistake. Surplus to the achievement of creating their eldest. It hadn’t taken long for Ruby to stop ‘bothering’ her mother with her drawings as a toddler, knowing the response would always be the same; ‘Lovely’, without so much as a glance. She had taken up the piano, to which her father had told her was a waste of time and energy, after all... they didn’t need two pianists in the family. As she grew older, Ruby tried to ask her father to school her in the family business, to which he had told her it was not her place to know the family business. The business would belong to her elder sister one day, it was a useless endeavour to show Ruby how it worked. Eventually Ruby simply ceased interacting with her parents. She spent her days living in the farthest part of their sprawling mansion from them, not that they noticed. The young woman tried finding a job as anything at all, but as soon as they saw the name ‘Winters’, she was laughed away, most companies telling her to just go ask daddy to make her a pony, or whatever it was little girls wanted these days. Such statements barely made sense, as she had only the faintest understanding of what her family did. She knew they were part of a partnership that owned an extremely popular theme park that only the very wealthy could afford, such was her reason for staying away from it; She wanted nothing at all to do with anything Winters.
While she had grown up wanting for nothing in the material sense, the youngest Winter’s daughter was extremely poor when it came to personal relationships.

Ruby nodded. “I’d like it very much.” She wondered if her father knew about the dinosaurs, or perhaps he simply didn’t k ow enough about his youngest daughter to want to tell her.

“Too ducking right you will!” Joseph hissed. “You’ll go up,there, make yourself presentable, then you will come right back down here and pretend you are not an embrarssment to the family name!”

Milo smiled at her. "Good. You'll really like the labs where they train the hosts to act real. The baby dinosaurs are the best part." Milo said, once again taking her hands in his and pulling her toward the access point. 

Joe made a face, a thing that was entirely her, and turned to stop up the stairs. She knew better. If she didn't remain calm this would all be over far too soon. "What is this party for?' she asked quietly.

Ruby didn’t protest the physical contact as she may have until just recently when Milo took hold of her hands. No one had ever cared if she would like something.

The look Joseph gave Joe was one she would never have received if he thought her to be herself. “Get changed. Now, girl!”

Like ruby Milo usually stayed away from people. He found them to be cruel and strange. The ones that came to the park were only interested in pleasing themselves. They didn't care who they hurt in the park or out. Ruby was a refreshing change to this.

Joe made a mad dash for her sister's room and was once again disappointed to find that Ruby had nothing to wear. She couldn't see herself going to the party in anything the younger girl had in her closet. There wasn't a dress to speak of that would suit her. She finally settled on a muted skirt and top from her own closet that she'd rejected years ago. Keeping the same hairstyle as when she'd left the park and she somehow managed to look like her sister though in a skirt if someone were looking close they would see the ankle tattoo Joe had gotten a few months ago. But since her parents didn't know...

“Why do you work for the park?” Ruby asked as they rode the large elevator down to the sub levels. “Doesn’t it spoil the mystery of it all for you?”

Joe could easily pass for her sister around these people, even her parents. They wouldn’t care of their youngest had a tattoo anyway, as far as they were concerned she was no more than a dirty secret anyway. The only unfortunate part of her masquerade plan, was that Kraven had arrived while she had been upstairs changing.

"The mystery?" Milo asked, raising an eyebrow. He had to think about it for a long moment before he realized that she was still new to all this and younger than he was. "I've been working here ten years, honey. The mystery of this place went out for me probably the first day or so. I hate to say it but people...the real ones ruined it. They treat the hosts like shit. It's hard to think of them as anything but toys. If I don't I'll start feeling sorry for them." He admitted. "I'd get fired if they knew."

Joe tried to lose herself in the crowd of people. She was trying hard to catch gossip, to find one person talking about what this party was really for. If her sister was supposed to be present, a narrative had nothing to do with it.

“Ten years?” Ruby echoed, giving Milo a quick once over. “Then why stay? If you hate the people so much, and feel bad for the hosts, why not leave?”

A blonde woman bumped into Joe, and was about to apologise until she saw what she was wearing. “Oh my, did you just escape imprisionment?” She asked with a self amused giggle.

"Where would I go? This is what I'm good at. I feel at home here if that doesn't sound completely insane."

"What's this party for?" Joe asked, not amused with the giggle. She wasn't one to beat around the bush and she was tired of listening to idle gossip.

Ruby couldn’t help but grin. “It must feel nice, to belong.” She told him. “Joe made me come here because apparently I’m not enjoying life enough.”

The blonde looked at joe like she was an idiot. “You don’t know? Jack Kraven is no longer a free man, he’s being forced to marry that awful Josephine Winters!”

"And she is?" Milo laughed, the corners of his eyes wrinkling with true merriment. "She'll really be having a blast married to that bastard, Jack Kraven." He added, the happiness gone as soon as it had come.

The champagne glass in Joe's hand shattered, spraying both women with the amber liquid. Joe's stormy eyes were dark with rage and she found that she could barely breathe.

“What?!” Ruby’s voice came out as little more than a startled squeak. “Joe and... Kraven?” She added, unable to help how disappointed she looked.

“I know, right?” The blonde breathed. “How in the world did that sour faced shrew get to keep a man like Jack Kraven?”

"Not you too." Milo did nothing to hide the disappointment on his face. "You girls really don't see what a monster he really is do you?" He shook his head. "Nevermind. That's not what you see. It's his looks." All at once he'd shut down on her.

"No one keeps Jack Kraven." Joe hissed, looking down at the blood now dripping onto her mother's pristine white carpet. There was a shard of glass buried deep in her hand. "If you'll excuse me. I need to clean up."

Ruby was quite aware she had offended Milo, and it bothered her that she cared. The young woman didn’t say anything, only turned away from Milo to watch the display count down the floors they were passing through. You girls. Milo was just as bad, lumping her in with every other woman of her age group.

“I’ll say...” the blonde snorted, giving Joe another look over. This was just the way people treated the little sister she was pretending to be every day. It was just as hard to be near invisible, as it was to be the perfect daughter. They were just two opposite sides of a rotten upbringing.

Milo was still quiet as they stepped off the elevator. He tapped in his access code and stepped aside, allowing Ruby ahead of him.  "Maybe you can talk Joe into trading you places and you could marry Kraven instead."

Joe stood in the kitchen, her hand shaking as she tried to pull out the glass. She wasn't sure if it because she was in pain or because she was furious.

Ruby had been about to pass Milo when he all but spat those words at her. “A physical attraction to someone doesn’t mean I would ever want to be in the same room as them for protracted periods.” She replied, looking up at him with a purposeful gaze before continuing last him.

“This was your grand escape plan?” Kraven’s voice asked as his much larger fingers stopped her from pulling at the glass. “To honestly think you could pass as that worthless mouse of a sister? Really, Joe, I thought you were smarter than that.”

Milo wasn't sure what she meant but he followed her anyway, until he reached the end of the hall. He opened the door to the labs and once again allowed Ruby to enter ahead of him.

"It was working until I heard why my father was actually holding this party." Joe said softly. Her hair had fallen out of it's bun and was falling in her eyes.

Ruby didn’t even murmur a thank you she she walked through the door. It had wounded her that Milo dared to judge her because of some silly childhood crush she had had on her sisters fiance.

“Gass in your hand aside... you’re taking this pretty well.” Kraven remarked, with an amused grin that Joe would recognise as belonging to the little boy he had once been.

"You are better than him." Milo said softly, "even just the idea of him. Come on, you want to see dinosaurs first?  Or maybe the people?" 

Joe balled up her fist and punched him in the nose before she could think better of it. "I suppose you're right." She said coolly.

“Why?” Ruby asked simply. “You don’t know me, what if I’m worse than him? A lot worse?” She asked, though the innocence in her pale grey eyes made it quite obvious that was nowhere near true.

Oddly, Kraven laughed as he wiped at his perfect, and now bloody, nose. “Alright, I deserved that.” He re marked, knowing it had hurt Joe as much to punch him, as it did to be punched.

Milo couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah. I can see that." He patted her shoulder. "You didn't answer my question, you black hearted creature. What do you want to see first?"

Joe finished pulling her hair out of the bun and tossed it over her shoulder, before returning to trying to pull out the glass. "So they sent you to distract me from coming home. Is that it?" She growled, her fingers shaking with a mixture of rage and pain.

Ruby knew Milo was trying to cheer her up, but she couldn’t help but feel somewhat patronised. “The human hosts, I guess.” She breathed. Even without Joe here, the young woman felt she was living in her sister’s shadow. 

“It worked, for a while.” Kraven replied, again pulling her fingers away, though this time he slid the glass out neatly and pressed a towel to the wound. “You’re going to need stitches, idiot.”

Milo nodded, feeling like he couldn't do anything right. "I need to figure out what your sister doesn't want us to know about Ben while you're looking around." He said softly, motioning her toward a hallway on the right. "Its got me wondering if she hid something on him. Does that sound like her?" 

"Not until I fix this." Joe hissed at him. "Don't tell me this is something you want either. We should both be in there ruining this party and demanding our parents do something different."

Ruby was all too accustomed to being dismissed. “Ask someone who actually knows her.” She replied, then headed out the door he had motioned to. She was in a place she didn’t wish to be, wearing clothes she didn’t like. Ruby felt extremely self conscious of the clothes she had been given, amazed that while they covered most of her skin, she still somehow felt utterly exposed. This park was just more proof she didn’t have it in her to be a Winters. 

“Why?” Kraven asked bluntly. “You want me to go tell him to pick someone else? Someone who doesn’t know the family business, or you?”

Milo watched Ruby on the monitor even as he tapped into the guide's system. There was something there but it was encrypted. It was a message for the younger Winters girl. This was even more worrying to him. 

Joe didn't say anything. For a long moment she watched the dishtowel turn red with her blood. She didn't trust him. She couldn't. He was no better than her father. For all she knew he was agreeing to this just to kill he off on the wedding night. "You and I have never gotten along. This will end in disaster, Jack." She warned him.

Ruby was simply sat with one of the hosts that was awaiting diagnostic. She was watching it with a curious expression, like she was trying to decide what actually made someone human. After all, she knew some pretty rotten humans.

“You have met you, right? You don’t get along with anyone.” Kraven replied with a snort.

"Did I do something wrong?" The old man asked her, his eyes sweeping her face. He seemed curious as he waited for her answer, offering her a smile.

Joe turned her head, his words hurting her more than they probably should have. "I am a doll. I've said that before. I am poked and prodded and forced to do one thing or the other. I am never myself. Why should I get along with anyone? No one knows what I'm really like. Only who I should be." Joe whispered, still staring at the towel.

Ruby jumped so hard she fell right out of her seat and landed on her bottom. It took a moment to gather herself, and of course she had no idea Milo was watching in the monitor. “I... I don’t know, did you?” 

“Well I know one thing...” Kraven reached out and tugged at the ugly clothes she was wearing. “These aren’t you. You can claim you only do what they say... but Josephine Winters never wears ugly, chain store clothes.” He breathed.

"Not to my recollection. Do I need to run a diagnostic?" The old man asked her, still smiling. It didn't seem to bother him that she had fallen on the floor. "I was broken when I woke up. Or shot...I can't recall."

This surprised Joe. She didnt feel that anyone even cared to notice, especially him. "What do you want to do about this, Kraven?" She finally asked him. She reached for another towel, wrapping it around her hand. "You know I'm not going to just stand aside and let my father marry me off. Especially to someone who can't stand me."

“I don’t know!” Ruby spluttered now she was back in her feet. “I’ll get someone...” the poor thing was doing her very best not to be bothered by the fact this was a very naked old man sat in front of her. When he was silent and immobile, he was just a thing. But now he was speaking to her, it made her very uncomfortable.

“You think we have a choice in the matter.” Kraven replied, taking Joe’s hand and applying pressure as he pulled her to the door that lead away from the direction of the party and out into the hallway. “But first, stitches.”

"Thank you, that would be lovely." The old man said, resting his hands in his lap. He seemed to shut down then, staring into space as if seeing nothing at all.

"That's not a priority, Kraven." Joe said thinly. "My father will want to call his own plastic surgeon for it. You know how he is." His kindness was throwing her off, she didn't know how to react to it.