Topic: scattered pieces

Delahada

Date: 2009-03-26 05:46 EST
I wish I could tell you.

That thought kept Salvador awake for many countless hours longer than he may have liked. Since the first of spring, since the harsh lesson his mother had taught him, he had thought on little else but that. There were too many secrets between them, and he didn't like it. Too many secrets between himself and the sinner.

Karma Made Flesh he was called, and sometimes he wondered what that meant. Among his other titles, he was also Secret Keeper. People told him things, and he kept much of what they said in strictest confidence. He was not a member of the ever popular rumor mill that others whispered about. Things he learned he did not spread around for the world to know. Some things were not his secrets to share. It was a code he stuck to as often as he could, but sometimes...

Sometimes it hurt the ones he loved, and those were very few and far between.

He wanted to shout the things he knew to the heavens. He wanted to scream them in the sinner's ear. He wanted to tell him what he knew so badly that it made him ache in ways he'd never felt pain before.

There were stronger forces at work here, his mother had said. He thought he could defy them. He had tried. As soon as the words started to pour out of his mouth as syllables, something shut down inside of him. He blanked out and hit the floor. He even tried writing Sin a letter to say exactly what he was thinking, but the precise words came out a garbled mess upon the page. A dozen crumpled scraps of paper had hit the trash that day.

Thirty-two roughly hand carved wooden chess pieces, half of them maple and half of them walnut, were scattered in no particular order upon the coffee table. He paced before them and wondered often how to solve this puzzle. There had to be a way. That seemed to be their shared mantra concerning completely different matters these days. There had to be a way.

In the late hours of one evening that bled into the next, an idea struck him. When he was alone. When the sinner had snuck out of the apartment without his knowing. While he paced and pondered on the nature of the complication as a whole. He had an idea and gave it a try.

Crossing to the window sill in the living room, he picked up his journal and flipped it open to a fresh new page. Removing a pencil from his pocket he paced back toward the sofa and flopped onto the cushions. Closing his eyes, he cleared his head as best as he was able and focused first on seven specific letters. This was a mental exercise he had never challenged himself to attempt before. Those seven letters were the key. He locked them in his mind and then scattered them amidst the thousand other disjointed thoughts that plagued him daily.

Those seven letters were bold and bright, and they spiraled around the jumble of other, dimmer words. Opening his eyes, he put the pencil to the page and pulled the words out one by one. Seven letters out of eighty words. They remained bold and stood apart from everything he wrote. When the flow was finished he set down his pencil and regarded the page with some mild speculation.

"That one was easy," he thought aloud. As things go, he had to consider also that perhaps it had been too easy. This first was a practice run. He felt exhausted, still, after even just this one experiment. Tomorrow, he decided, he could try another, and if that didn't work he'd have to think of something else.

The apartment was empty, and that didn't settle well with him. He got up, took his journal back to the window sill, placed it there and grabbed his coat. "It's never easy," he muttered while walking out the door.

Delahada

Date: 2009-03-29 04:29 EST
are you clever sin

Tomorrow had not exactly gone as planned. An entire notepad's worth of crumpled paper filled the trash can. It took him two days to figure out how to beat this next puzzle. After two days he wrote down only four words.

Much like the first exercise, the letters spiraled and swirled throughout his thoughts. They danced bold and brilliant amidst a sea of a thousand others. Copies upon copies of a total twenty-six. Mentally he nudged them around, the few that glowed and the many that did not. He rearranged them in a variety of different ways, until he found just fifteen that fit together in a single sentence. He wrote down only four words.

There was nothing special about those four simple words. No letter stood apart from any other. They were all lower case. He couldn't compell himself to capitalize the important ones. He couldn't even write them harder or make his hand retrace them with the pencil to make them more bold. Some overpowering part of his psyche kept him from being capable.

Stronger forces were at work.

"Now I know how you must feel sometimes, Madre," he reflected to the empty apartment. Lord only knew what the sinner was doing at this hour, at this time, but again Salvador had the place to himself. That seemed to be the only time he was even capable of thinking on this puzzle at great length.

He sighed at the cat, who was sitting on the couch and staring at him half-lidded as he paced. Like cats do, she seemed to be wearing this expression that told him in equal parts that he was an idiot and she already knew the answer. Kavi blinked and he restrained the urge to throw something at her, only frowned.

"All those riddles you say sometimes," he told the empty air. She may have been listening. He didn't know. Chances were she was, but on this she remained silent. Not even a tickle of a sensation to let him know that she was aware. "How do you say it?" She didn't tell him, even from a distance, even in a whispering breeze that carried copper chime song. She said nothing. "Some truths men aren't meant to know, right?" Silence. "Is he still a man, though? Am I?"

Salvador could have spent the entire evening asking himself questions just like that. The meaning to life, the universe and everything. Where had he heard that? 42. He paused and looked out the balcony doors in wonder. That hadn't been a conclusion he had reached on his own. Not being a big fan of reading, he was oblivious to the origin but the meaning hit him profoundly. "Math."

Reviewing his four simple words again, he rubbed his jaw and thought long and hard on how to map out the formula. The first answer was simple. "Subtract nine," he thought aloud. Kavi blinked at him again as if to say, "Well duh."

The next problem was how to tell the sinner that, and then furthermore which nine precisely would he have to remove from the puzzle. He looked around the scarcely furnished apartment and looked for something, anything that would work well as a tool to work with. His attention landed on the empty easel and the collection of oil paints in their tubes. Crossing over to the stand, he grabbed one of the tubes at random. The color didn't matter; he couldn't see it anyway.

Dirtying up the canvas itself seemed like a taboo, so instead of actually giving painting a try, he paced around the room and considered the rest of his options. He flipped the tube of paint in his hand while he thought. Making a mess was something he was tremendously good at, and the insane driving force inside of him said it didn't matter what his canvas was made of. So he crossed to the wall that bordered the hall and the balcony doors.

That night, after writing four simple words on the next blank page of his journal, Salvador Delahada painted two more symbols in big bold blue on the north wall of the apartment. Those two symbols were a hyphen and a number nine. Minus nine.

Delahada

Date: 2009-03-30 10:25 EST
(4-1) x 5

Later that same evening he scrawled that small equation upon the wall above the first smear of paint. Four minus one times five minus nine. Just one small piece of the greater puzzle. There was a lock in his mind, but where was the key? He had to find it and give it to the sinner. Sin had to unlock the door on his own, he knew; he couldn't simply tell him.

That night he had dreamed of white shadows. Finally the seared in vision of a painting was dwindling away. He was beginning to dream his own dreams again. These ones weren't any less disturbing, but at least he still woke from them the same way. Never in a cold sweat. Never with a shout. Never fearing for his life. The following morning, his eyes snapped open and he found himself staring at the after images glued to the ceiling.

After breakfast, his daily exercise routine, and a shower, Salvador found himself pacing the living room again. This was becoming a routine while he pondered. Thirty-two roughly hand carved wooden chess pieces, half of them maple and half of them walnut, were scattered in no particular order upon the coffee table. He had left them there for days. They mocked him silently, taunted him. Sometimes he swore they were looking at him the way Kavi does. One of them gave him an idea.

Stepping over to the coffee table, he scattered all those chess pieces aside. He crouched low and spilled all but one of them onto the floor in disarray. This gave the cat something new to investigate, new toys to play with. She hopped down off the sofa and started batting around a bishop. Salvador didn't care. He left one on the table, a white knight. After admiring it for a long, thoughtful time, he reset that single piece upright on the very center of the coffee table. That was the key to the first letter.

Rising from his crouch, he turned to face the wall, the beginnings of his mural. Nine letters had to be removed from the original message, but how to tell Sin which of those nine had to go? Again he paced, circling around the easel and its paints. This time, as he passed, he collected all the tubes and carried them to the wall.

His first thought was to paint lines under the minus nine, but as soon as he squeezed a random color onto his fingers the motion stalled. He reached out, his coated fingers hovering inches from the wall, and felt muscle locked. "No, of course not," he muttered sourly. "That'd be too easy too." The number of lines he inteded on smearing on the wall was the answer, and he couldn't simply provide that.

The letters that important were stuck to firmly in his mind. He was too keenly focused on them, and because of that he couldn't concentrate on any code that would give them away. The remaining nine, on the other hand, seemed fair game. So he thought on them at great length.

Closing his eyes, he rolled the unimportant letters around in his thoughts. The answer was so simple, too easy, but nothing compelled him from that course. Instead of several lines, he reached out and smeared only one under the hyphen and the nine. One long bold line in green paint to underscore the equation above. Undereneath that line, he painted a series of numbers in a row.

1 18 25 15 5 22 5 18 23

"Minus nine," he murmured, stepping back from the wall. What a stranger mural he had begun to paint. So far it only consisted of numbers. Salvador wasn't much of an artist, as far as he knew. He had never really tried to paint or draw. But pictures didn't stand out quite as clearly as numbers did in his mind. Except, perhaps, for four simple words.

He looked over his shoulder in consideration. From across the room, he stared at his journal which was there, as it was always, propped against the window sill. Looking down at the coffee table, he examined the placement of the single white knight while squeezing paint from a different tube onto his fingers. Then he looked back at the wall.

paper words

Mixing green and red made an ugly shade of yellow that day. He smeared that message onto the wall as well, in that color, larger than the rest, right across the number nine and everything in between, diagonally. If anyone should know what that meant, it was Sin. He was counting on it.

Delahada

Date: 2009-04-03 07:14 EST
Curious whispers crawled through the dark.

One of them echoed like the distant chime of copper caught in a breeze. "You speak not ... of a man," it said. Such a softly spoken voice hovered and haunted surrounding black.

A dim orange glow pooled up from below, then ignited into the dance of licking flames.

A building was burning. The fire whispered too, and it was cold. "No. It is not his to keep. It is for those who walk beside him. It is for you to take when I have long lost it again. It is ... a great weight to take," said blue glowing ice.

Shadows at his feet began to boil up. The world was black, and that shadow was white. Color here was inverted. Everything was wrong. This shadow had a face. An angular muzzle with shadow-sharp teeth, too many to count, in rows and rows along the inside of its jaws; two eyes, reflecting the fires which surrounded it. The Jackal squealed in hungry delight, its jaws opening wide beyond realistic compare, thick tendrils of shadow oozing from between its teeth as it leaned in and engulfed him in one swift swallow.


Salvador's eyes snapped open.

Awareness, consciousness, collided into his senses. He was staring at the ceiling. It was morning, but still too early for the sun to be nudging light through the windows. The bedroom was dark and Sinjin lay sleeping peacefully beside him. Burned into the ceiling itself was a bright white afterimage that he found himself staring at for some time, until he blinked, and then it was gone.

If there were a clock nearby, he would have listened to the seconds tick away. Could have maybe counted the length of time he lay there on his back staring at the properly shadowed ceiling. The dream still clung to him.

Dreams like that should have had him waking, screaming, shouting in a fright. But he remained so dreadfully calm. Not a single bead of sweat coated his skin. No tremor of fear shook his body in any way. Salvador was numb, and that should have been unsettling. Did memories like that count as a nightmare, he wondered? He should be sobbing, gasping for breath, shaking throughout every limb. Instead he felt cold and dead, empty.

Carefully he rolled out of bed, slow and meticulous so as not to wake the sleeping sinner. Every time he blinked he could still see the after image of that glaring white face. White when it should have been black. A different kind of shadow entirely, and he seemed to be the only one who ever saw them that way.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he leaned forward and pressed his face into his hands. He sat like that for a time longer than he could calculate, until the next compulsion struck him. His mural was incomplete.

Barefoot he crept into the living room. He didn't turn on any lights. In the drab gray gloom of early morning, he gathered up the tubes of paints from Sin's easel and stood before his wall. This time, he painted pictures.

In the upper left hand corner in a mixture of colors that blended into something horrid, he painted two eight by eight grids side by side. On the first he put his thumb print inside the second square in from the left on the top row. On the second grid he put his thumb print two rows down from that and one column to the right, within that square. This message matched up to the secret one he had left on the coffee table, which by now Kavi had turned into a toy. This was the code to the first letter.

The dream stuck with him. At this point he was beyond thinking. The pictures plastered themselves to the wall in technicolor without any conscious effort on his part at all.

Below those two grids he painted a spiral. From its center point, the spiral curved down and around, giving it the appearance of the letter C with a fancy little curly cue in its top bend. Beside that spiral he marked a line, a little dash, and then next to that he painted a shoddy image of a baby chicken facing left. Those two images were both equally keys to the second letter, and may have looked familiar.

Beneath that, he next painted three horizontal wavy lines that lay parallel to each other. One over the other over the other. This one was very simple, but it was the best his mind could make for the key to the third letter. Here he paused a moment to wipe his brow with the back of a wrist. The vision was fading. He had to hurry.

The next one was obvious, if one were to think the way that Salvador does. He painted one small filled in circle and drew two more circles around that one, rings. Just as simple as the one before it. This was the key to the fourth letter.

Below that he painted another shoddy picture, this one of a human hand. Salvador's artistic skills were nothing to brag about, but he tried his best. His attempt was to draw that hand with the palm facing out from the wall, all four fingers bent down and the thumb bent inward, almost like a loose fist. Some of the paint smeared and marred the image, but this still was the key to the fifth letter.

For the last and final letter, the key was something else entirely. Underneath everything else, at the bottom of the wall, he painted a thick bar and to the right of it a filled in circle. Together they appeared as a magnified dash and dot, side by side.

It was finished. He stepped back from the wall and dropped to sit on the coffee table with a heavy sigh. Paint coated his fingers and hands, splotches splattered his arms. Again he had neglected to use a brush. He worked best with his hands anyway, and for Salvador finger painting his mural was the way to go.

All he could hope for now was that the sinner was clever. A flash image of that white, dog-faced shadow jumped into his vision when he looked up to regard his masterpiece, his mess. Shaking his head abruptly, he ground the back of a wrist into his eyes one at a time, and then got up to go take a shower.

It was finished, but this was just the first.

Delahada

Date: 2009-05-07 02:56 EST
There was a face in his dreams, and he wasn't certain how it got there.

A square jaw coated in a neatly trimmed beard. Pale eyes, a color he didn't know. So light they were probably blue, maybe even close to white. The faintest tinge of difference in the line between iris and sclera. Hair a pale shade; it could be blonde. Worn in a ponytail, tight and neat. He knew this face. He knew the name of the man it belonged to.

Maranya had pointed him out once. There was a time. Staring at a blank expanse of sky and the imprint of that face burned into his retinas, projected against the clouds, he remembered. Lucien Mallorek, the Barrister. She had pointed him out to Salvador one night when a whim had him sharing a table with the doctor. They hadn't been formerly introduced, but that was often the way things happened. He dodged introductions rather easily.

They shared a name, he realized. It took him this long, but Salvador finally discovered an easier to decipher piece to the great big puzzle he had dumped on Sin's wall. A single link in the chain where once there had been many.

On his way back to the apartment, he picked up a few things. Among his new artistic arsenal were a block of charcoal used for drawing, a large 11x14 sketchbook, a box of nails, a hammer, and three dozen long stem roses. He didn't know what color they were. The lady he had bought them from had been too astounded by the number he purchased to remember having a voice to tell him anything about them at all. The color didn't matter anyway. The flower itself was the important part.

From a distance he took a look at the interior of the apartment. Fate smiled on him this day as it did every other. The sinner was not at home. Hell, Salvador shouldn't have even been at home, but these compulsions were impossible to shake. Despite all the bindings that kept him silent on this matter, he was starting to believe that there was one break in the armor that sealed his lips shut. Something, someone, must have been on his side.

He wanted to tell him. Was this the loophole in the contract? Was this the only way? It must have been, because he felt no discomfort in following through with this task.

There remained the one decorated wall, collecting yellow stains from clove smoke to cake the mural images. Chaos in thought was splashed on that white surface. Not anymore. Dumping his load on the coffee table, Salvador set himself to work first by flipping to the first fresh page of his new sketchbook and drew the likeness from memory that he had seen this morning in his dreams.

Salvador was by no means a sensational artist, but his mind was like a camera and his hand a copy press. Closing his eyes, he let charcoal and fingers do the walking across the page. It was a near perfect likeness, enough to make the man in the picture recognizable. It took him an hour of aching wrist to complete, but only because he hadn't stopped for any other thought that tried to catch his attention. When it was done, he ripped out that page and nailed the picture to the wall right over the mess of a mural he had painted weeks before. Dead center. Destined to get someone's attention.

That was the first name. Two men. One name. A loophole.

His second task was to leave one wall blank between his mural and the next. To that wall he took the rest of the nails and all those roses. He snapped the blooms off their stems and nailed them one by one to the wall. Thirty-six blood red blossoms tacked to painted sheet rock in a very specific order. They formed the shape of an enormous letter E.

That was the last name. Salvador stepped back and nearly applauded himself for his own cleverness. Instead, he smirked.

A dull throb lanced up through his temple, and he turned to glower at the blank wall in between by rubbing that spot. One in between remained empty. Two in one. He could imagine the letters burned onto the wall clearly, but he couldn't compel himself to simply write them. How in God's name was he going to rework that one into translation? How was he going to tell him?

First name. Last name. He glanced between the two. Alone they weren't enough. His fingers tingled from the feel of simply thinking them, the near invocation that if spoken aloud would summon him. And he was never happy when he summoned him.

FioHelston

Date: 2009-05-13 01:37 EST
Sin and Ali stood before the paint-smeared wall, angled shoulder-to-shoulder, dark trench nearly touching gray cashmere. She?d already learned enough to know that when he was caught up in whatever he was doing, Ali tended to carry on his internal dialogue externally; right now, a low, deep rumbling hung poised in the air between the men. He was speaking quietly, but if she?d wanted to, she could listen in easily enough. If she wanted to.

They were poring over the mathematical equations smeared in blue and yellow paint that lay beneath the drawing of Lucien and the ruined roses. Already, the edges of the petals were curling inward and turning brown. They were loose at the center, falling away. She knew how they felt, most days.

They smelled lovely, though. Like dessert and sex, maybe.

While the men pondered, she stared at the drawings. Both the sketch of her Lucien, and the smaller ones she?d taken to calling ?hieroglyphics? in her head. Not to mention the grids. It seemed simple enough to her, perhaps because she?d decorated her studio in a similar fashion for so long.

?It?s a chessboard,? she murmured, but they were engrossed in the formulaic code in numbers smeared on the wall. A knight?s first move, in fact. A lovely, perfect ?L? formed of two forward and one to the side.

She wasn?t sure what the loop and the chick were supposed to represent. Those still puzzled her. But the remaining four figures were plain as day.

The water was the sea. Phonetically, ?C?.

The bulls-eye was another phonetic clue. Bulls-eye, or ?I?.

The loose fist, the way the fingers were positioned, was an ?E? in sign language. She was impressed. She hadn?t realized Sal could finger-spell.

The last was Morse Code. She?d played with that with Flea, tapping little messages back and forth on her headboard before bed in the evenings. ?N?.

??CIEN.? And Lucien?s face sitting there staring at her to confirm it. She didn?t care what Sin said in the park earlier, it was a ?LUCIEN? they were looking for. She wasn?t sure what the rosy ?E? was all about, but she?d bet one of her past iterations that she was right about the first part.

?It?s a Lucien,? she said quietly. But not our Lucien.

Delahada

Date: 2009-06-04 04:36 EST
May 13, 2009

One conversation led to another, as it always does. The Inn was dreadfully quiet. Empty save for four people and three ghosts. Fionna was one of them. "How is your puzzle coming along?" she quietly asked aside of Sin.

Puzzle, puzzle. The mention of a puzzle should have clicked the paranoia to life, but it was so vague. Puzzles could be anything and everything, and Salvador was still busy sorting through his own in his head. Way too many of them. Witchy distractions didn't help any either, so he just ... closed his eyes and frowned.

"You're the only one who's come close to figuring anything out," Sin grumbled, slouching against the couch. "Because Sal makes everything difficult." Sin slung a nearby-- something at him. Probably a coaster.

Completely oblivious, it beaned him in the forehead. "Ow. What?" His eyes snapped back open. He rubbed fingers to the spot, and glarined at Sin like what the hell was that for!

"You still don't know who this Lucien is?" asked Fio, a cut of her eyes Sal's direction, speeding there with the coaster so that her gaze and the cardboard circle hit their targets at the same instance.

The other person in the room remained silent. She was an anomaly. Oil in his vinegar. Kept popping up at the most inopportune times. He was beginning to wonder if she might be obsessed with him, stalking him, and was starting to wish she'd just go away. Especially given the nature of this conversation, when it finally dawned on him what they were talking about. His eyes widened and he himself went silent as well. Very, very still.

"No idea," Sin admitted, lifting his shoulder. "I know that it has some relation to Ambrose, though." That much being obvious since Salvador had absolutely nothing to say on the matter. And he looked mildly freaked out.

"Ambrose have a last name?" Fio kept an eye on the boy, the beginnings of a tiny frown curling.

Although, the longer the name hovered in the air and no lightning bolts crashed down on his head, eyes roving as if looking for just such a calamity-- And then there was that. He twitched and snapped his attention back on Fio. Not saying. Palms to handrests. A thought ticked out, four times, with a single nail. One. One-two. One. An introspective glaze hit his eyes when that happened, purely subconscious.

Were those ones long taps, or short? She listened closely. D-E? One, one-two, One ... X? or D-E? She decided to try saying them. "X." A pause. "X rose." Just playing to see what would get a reaction. "De rose."

Some thought or another had slid him into an introspective mode. He'd been oblivious. Snapping back to awareness, eyes still wide, he shook his head slowly. Realizing. He rolled his fingers back into a loose fist and settled it just like that, unmoving now, on the armrest.

Sin exhaled a slow sigh. "I think I'm going to head over to Peccavi."

Fio was whispering to herself, just playing around the name, and because she was still headachy. "Derose Lucien derose... a rose by any other name." She shook herself out of it, looked up at Sin, and resigned herself to the loss of her shoulder for now.

Salvador's attention slid over to Sin. Apologetic. A furrow hit his brows and his eyes tipped down before closing. I wish I could tell you. That thought always tumbling through all the rest.

"Be careful," said Fio. You look so tired, she thought. I wish I could help.

Even before the sinner could completely slip away, Salvador cracked. A thought slipped out. "It's ... the shape of the rose." He could say that much. Forced it out. Seemed a struggle, but he managed it. That much he could say.

Fio's attention was instantly back on him. "The E?"

Salvador gave only the vaguest nod.

"Can you give us more than that? Something that sounds like the rest of the name, maybe? Like you did for Lucien?" Her voice was gentle, for all that the questions sounded eager. "I used ... used to play a game with my daughter."

Sinjin was tired, broken, and Nineveh had left him; his evening wasn't over yet, and his bedroom was filled with puzzles haunting him through the night. Offering them both a wan smile, he headed for the door. His slipping out and leaving the boy with Fio to question made the game that much easier.

She continued to offer him ideas. "Like, if she wanted me to say, 'Piper,' she would show me a picture of a pipe, plus the letter R."

A shaken sigh escaped him. Relief, maybe? The moment the sinner was out the door. "Not both of you." His eyes opened slowly, once he was certain Sin was gone. He focused on Fi, then, and nothing else mattered. "I can't tell him, but you're on it. You got the first name. And... yeah. Just like that." He couldn't say it.

"All right. But you can show me clues, and if I figure it out, you can tell me so?"

"That one was the easiest." Clearly the first puzzle had been a pain, though. The first wall. Briefly unfocused for a moment, then back on Fi with a nod. "I can try."

"Okay."

Thinking on this hard for a moment, he scratched his head. Brows knitted fiercely and gaze averted. To give her clues, he had to find clues himself. "You saw them." That much was obvious. One wall a cluttered mess. A blank wall. Then the rose E. She nodded. "There's one. That's the first. Then there's the shape of the rose." His hand slid to the back of his head and scratched there while he analyzed, agonized, with a grimace. "Between that there's more." Subconsciously, his other hand tapped out the rhythm with a single nail again. One. One-two. One.

She repeated his tapped phrase. One. One-two. One.

That caught his attention. Lock of gaze on her finger. Not realizing, until that moment, that he'd been doing that, again. "The middle." How could he say this? "Number of eyes. Number of legs. Arms and ears and how many it takes to tango." He couldn't just say how many, but he could get that close to the obvious.

"Two, two, two, two, and two. Ten?"

"No." He shook his head. "Not that complicated. Just..." His fingers locked up and he frowned at them. Fought with them until he could get up just enough to make a peace sign.

"Two."

"Right." He exhaled and his hand relaxed, lost its shape.

"Two is in the middle," Fio mused. "Between Lucien? And the Rose E?"

"Right." This time he nodded. Then twitched, casting a paranoid glance aside. He could feel the swell of just how close she was, the itching in his veins. He scratched the underside of a wrist nervously, then looked back at her.

"Lucien Two Rose E," she said in order. Testing.

A shiver hit his spine. "You've ... got the first and last." She just didn't realize.

"Two in a different language? Or... is two rose e the last? Turosi?" She was guessing blindly.

"Nngh. No. Forget the two a second."

"Rosy."

All he could do was nod. Close enough. Pronunciation and spelling didn't always match up, but she had it by sound alone.

"Rosee."

"Right. That's the last."

"Ok. So Lucien Rosie. And two in the middle. Two what?"

"Don't--" He lifted a hand, teeth bared in concern. "Don't say them all at once." If she figures it out. He could already feel the tingle of a near summoning in his veins. Pulling back his hand, he scratched his jaw. "Two between." Two in the middle. He couldn't think of a way to say that more clearly without giving it all away too easily. Without suffering for simply saying it.

Fionna was as tenacious as gamer intent on perfectly completing just one more level. "DD? DeeDee... DiDi..." Two 'D' in 'Middle.' The only thing that kept her from saying Lucien Didi Rosie just to try it out was Sal's grimace earlier. But she thought it.

"No," he said, after a really long time of being blank on the matter. Eyes closed tight, he rubbed his forehead, trying to force out ideas. "I've been having trouble with this one." Which is why that wall was still blank. "All I've got is that tower in France. Letter blocks, but I don't think I can use those. I can see them well enough, but every time I try to carve them they're all blank."

"Two between ... two... in the middle." She was going to worry this damned puzzle to death, and it felt good to have her mind off of how unhappy she was. "The Eiffel tower?"

"Right. Yeah, that thing. They tie together. The names fit there." French names.

"Du... De la..." The white tips of her front teeth zigzagged across her lower lip pensively.

"No. Nothing like that." Shaking his head. His hand fell away from his face, eyes opened, and he sighed heavily. "It's... Two names in the middle like how I have two names on the end." Fio might not know his full name, though. "Azar-Gonzalez."

"Okay." The was a pause, a long one. "Is Eiffel one of them?"

"No, no." That'd be too easy. Besides, he hadn't known the name of that tower until Fi told him just now because that's how much Sal cares about things like that.

"All right. I am drawing a blank, I confess. There are two names we haven't figured out. One is like the Eiffel Tower, but it isn't the Eiffel Tower. Is that much right?"

"No. Uh." Shaking his head. Probably just as frustrated as she was. "The names fit there." He couldn't think of any other way of saying it, or something else was keeping him from saying it any other way.

"They're what? French?"

"Yes!" Breakthrough! Eureka!

She caught a bit of his enthusiasm, clapping her hands together and rocking back in her seat. "You know what?" A little of the animation back in her eyes. "I have to tell you, you're really good at this. You've made us see so much without breaking any of your rules." She could appreciate that. It was how she'd survived.

He expelled a breath, like they'd just been working extremely hard on some vigorous labor. Clasping his hands together, he leaned forward. "Okay." Elbows to knees. Think, think, think. "Heh." That made him smirk a little sardonically. "It's a pain in the ass."

"Well, you're doing great."

"I think ... I can do this." Closing his eyes to picture the sequence, mentally scrambling it up. Riddles and rhymes were in his blood, after all. "Of five there's three. Of eighteen, two. Then ten and one, fourteen, sixteen and nine."

Here's where she wished Ali was there. Numbers made her head swim like too much champagne. She repeated the riddle aloud. "Can you tell me if this is a substitution code or a math problem?" She looked up at him, from her hands, where her fingers were tracing numbers on the knee of her pants.

"It's a cipher." He could tell her that. "If it were math..." He opened his eyes, leaned back and rubbed the back of his neck. "It'd be something like... Four plus six equals two." Even though that wasn't accurate.

"So ... like ... the fifth letter is 'E', and there are three 'E's?"

He smirked, because it really was that simple. Childish, really, as that's grade school. He also gave her a nod to confirm that guess.

She started counting, and whispering out the alphabet to herself. "Three 'E's .... two 'R's ..." He nodded twice, right and right again. "A'... 'J.' 'N' ... 'P' .... 'I'. Is that right?"

Salvador spared a glance aside to someone who had just come in. He jerked up his chin, just to acknowledge him and his greeting. Leaning back in his chair, he folded his arms and fixed his attention back on Fio. Calculating. Processing. Then another nod. "Right."

"These letters make up one of the words, or both of them?"

"Both."

She was tracing out the letters with the tip of her fingers on the cloth, since she hadn't a pen and paper on her. But codes and puzzles were how she'd saved her memories and kept her secrets. She doubted even the monster himself had figured out half of what she had hidden on those walls. "Okay... let's rule out the obvious first, or confirm it. Jerri?"

"Ri--" Wait. He didn't want to give the wrong impression by saying okay like that. Brief and abrupt shake of his head to clear that thought, then: "No." Not Jerri.

"Pierre." A glance up at that.

Well. Damn. Fio's quick. He sucked in a sharp little breath, brows high with surprise. It took him a delayed moment to nod stupidly. She's got one.

"That leaves us with..." She started counting, from memory. "E ... j ... a ... n. Jane?"

Still mildly stunned, all he could do was shake his head, no.

"Jean. Jean-Pierre?"

Another sharp, quick breath sucked in. He lifted a shaky hand, a single finger up, and nodded real slow. Yeah, that's it. Safe to say he's a little awed by how easy that was. Then again, this was Fio, not Sin.

"Lucien Jean-Pierre R--" She caught herself, clapping a hand over her mouth. She'd been a little too excited. "Sorry," she mumbled through her palm. He might be better off with Sin.

Salvador stiffened, held his breath. Close. So close. Incomplete, but close enough to bring on the heated tingle. He looked around only by turning his eyes, as if he expected doom and destruction to rain down on them suddenly anyway. But it never came, much to his relief.


__________________________
(Converted from live play, with thanks to the player of Fio Helston.)

Delahada

Date: 2009-06-04 04:55 EST
Evening flooded into the early hours of the following morning. There was chaos. There had been an encounter. Nothing ever went as planned, but when Salvador returned home to the apartment he shared with Sin, he was compelled to write a message for him in his journal.


14 de mayo 2009-

There's one. That's the first. Then there's the shape of the rose.

Between that there's more.

The middle. Number of eyes. Number of legs. Arms and ears and how many it takes to tango.

Two between.

The Eiffel tower. They fit there.

Of five there's three. Of eighteen, two. Then ten and one, fourteen, sixteen and nine.

Four plus six equals two.

Those two are one.

The middle.

She knows.


Later that day, in the evening hours at the Red Dragon Inn, Fio gave the sinner a slip of paper with a name written on it. The trouble was that only one person knew how important that name was. Maybe two. But there was only one who was glad to be free of it, consequences be damned.

Sinjin Fai

Date: 2009-06-04 10:14 EST
The weather in France was unseasonably warm and the sun beat down through the glass windows of the library and down onto Sinjin. It hadn't been as difficult as he was expecting; there were only three L.J.P.S.'s, but all of them seemed to lead unremarkable lives, from the first in the early 1200's, to the most recent one in 1873.

He stared down at the ancient records, exhausted and nearly broken. "What does it mean, Father?" He asked, and no one was there to answer.

Silence, as thick as the motes of dust in the air, hung around him. Sin looked up and away from the book, inhaling deeply. "His name," he began, "is Lucien Jean-Pierre Rosie."

When shadows as thick as sand began to bloom at his feet and he found himself staring at a pair of deep-set red eyes, Sin trembled.


All at once, he understood what he had done.

Delahada

Date: 2009-06-04 11:37 EST
June 2, 2009

The sinner had been gone for weeks. This was not unusual. Salvador was accustomed to these occasional bouts of must needs get away. Part of their pact, their bond, left him with that understanding. Sometimes Sin just needed some time to himself, and whenever he needed it Sal gave it to him. So he didn't worry.

This morning started off quite like any other morning. After breakfast, his morning workout, and a shower, he decided it was one of those mornings in which he needed some of that nasty Red Dragon Inn coffee. So he dropped on in, mulling over the dreams that plagued him and the memories that had cameo appearances in the lot of them, to get himself a cup of java sludge. At least it wasn't as bad as Bess's batches.

Crouched on the porch, her back to a beam, hands hidden up her sleeves, as she stared emptily at the street, was Madison. Some girl he'd met one day or night when the Inn was less crowded. She seemed a friendly sort, which clashed with his own personality. Catching a glimpse of her through the corner of his eye, he grunted in his haste to get inside and get to his coffee. She followed him inside and did not fail to be unnaturally cheery. "Morning, Sal."

He made some sort of noise that more or less translated appropriately to 'good morning.' What he really said was, "Nn."

Her finely arched brows tilted at that, and she grinned. His noncongenial personality didn't scare her off one bit. Madison picked up her mug of old, cold coffee and said, "That sounds about right"

Salvador only nodded a couple of times slowly, his jaw pressing right into his scratching nails with each nod. After
which he partially smothered a yawn with his knuckles. That about covered the extent of their entire conversation, because not long after that he sensed a presence that completely ruined his day.

Work made Marcus a night-creature and the strands of a red dawn told him his day should be done. Yet here he was. Before the man ever made it in through the doors of the inn, Salvador's eyes were fixed on it with a frown. He loathed the door. Hated the door. The door was his most hideous enemy in all creation. And seeing that expression had Madison instantly alert, and silent. She looked to the door as well.

It did not take long. The businessman entered, his suit well-tailored, but with more than a five o'clock shadow on his jaw. Sophie's disappearance treated him poorly. Madison treated him to a cheery hello. Salvador, on the other hand, grumbled his name begrudgingly. "Marcus." That was as civilized as he could manage. Marcus showing up anywhere other than his office always spelled something irritating.

"Good morning." The businessman nodded curtly to the woman, having no desire to be here, see her, see him, or anyone else. Marcus crossed toward Salvador. "Bastian needs to speak with you." Need, not want, desires, requests or any other polite term.

"Bastian can suck my c*ck." That's what he thought of that. He reached aside to pick up the coffee pot, now that it was done brewing. He tilted forward slightly to set the coffee pot on the bar. Just in case Madison wanted to fill her mug back up. Maybe he didn't want any for himself now after all.

"I told him you might say something akin to that." His voice cut dry. "Losing Mister Fai as a result would be no skin off my back. Good day." Another curt nod to Salvador and his company. He turned to leave.

"Tch. The f*ck you mean, losing him?" Salvador was glaring at the man's back. He wanted to stick a knife there, clearly.

"I haven't the foggiest. Perhaps Bastian can tell you all about it when he's done sucking your c*ck.. as you put it so eloquently." Marcus spared a final glance to the boy, hard as steel and just as rusted, before the door shut behind him.

If he could have burned that door to cinders the way he was glowering at it, oh how happy he would have been. Those words had been annoyingly cryptic, and he didn't like them one bit. Madison turned her attention back to him before he could brood on the implications much further, however. She smiled, and he wanted to punch her in the face when she asked, "Are you okay?"

Flicking a glance to the sound of her voice, he frowned. "I'm fine." Though he sounded more irritated than peachy keen. His head twitched aside, then, eyes closing, arms refolding. The scowl was still there. He searched and sought with his lesser known clairvoyant talents. He tried to pinpoint the sinner's signature, one he knew intimately well, but came up with nothing. There was only a void where he should have been.

"Nnngh." His teeth gritted on that elongated, frustrated noise. The fading glimmer of some preternatural light was in his eyes when he opened them. "But he might not be," he muttered. "I have to go." Sal pushed off the back bar and hastily trudged through the commons to get to the door. Once he got there, he yanked the door open and prowled out into the morning like an anxious lion. But his destination was certain.


______________________________
(Adaptation taken from live play, with thanks to the players of Madison Rye and Drifmark.)

Delahada

Date: 2009-06-04 11:48 EST
Less than an hour later....

Did Sabine ever sleep? Was there ever a changing of the guard? Well, whoever it was behind the receptionist's desk that morning was startled the moment those double doors to the main entrance of Ambrosio Enterprises were flung open. Salvador shoved them out of his way as if they were nothing more than irritating clumps in the crowd on a busy street. He did not stop. He did not pass Go. He did not collect two hundred dollars. Nor did he really give the receptionist any time to squawk at him appropriately before he was racing up the stairs to Bastian's private offices and plowing through those doors.

Bastian, despite Salvador being not fond of him at all, was a wonderfully intelligent man; he explained to Sabine and his guards to predict the half-fae's likely abrupt arrival and that he would be waiting. True to his word, Sabine only stared wide-eyed, started to say something, and gave up as Salvador stormed off and toward the library that was Bastian's offices. The guards stared, but did not stop him, and the doors were unlocked. Inside, the curtains were drawn to block out the morning light and the blond Frenchman was seated behind his desk, glancing over a series of very old letters. Perfectly calm gray eyes glanced up when the boy entered. "Good morning, Salvador. Thank you for being prompt."

"Where the f*ck is he?" Those five amazingly eloquent words poured out of his mouth in a seething rage the moment he crossed the threshold. Bastian may have been sickeningly polite, but Salvador was anxious as the lion who just lost his mate that he may actually be deep down inside. The Frenchman's insatiable charm rolled right over the searing hot waves of discontent that encased the fae child so tightly. He tossed the doors to the library closed behind him, just for the pleasure of listening to them slam. It would have to do for now, since what he really wanted to do was tear the whole goddamn building down.

"To be truthful, I am unsure. I suspect you had the same results as I am trying to find him." Bastian quietly collected the letters he had been reading, setting them aside with the same reverence he had for any other texts. "He left for France two weeks ago. Sometime during that trip, he went missing."

Spitting and snarling, figuratively and silently, he prowled directly over to Bastian's desk and put his hands down roughly. Well, okay. Actually he put his knuckles down, as tightly curled into fists as his hands were. Besides, he really didn't want to touch that desk, despite how furious he was, to pick up any residue memories from its surface. As soon as he got there, those words sank in, and the candle flame of his inner fire was snuffed out as quick as someone snapping their fingers. By one word. "France," he hissed, eyes wide and mouth falling open. The pieces clicked into place that quick. "F*ck."

"Indeed. To put it simply." Bastian, calm and patient as ever, leaned back against his chair and steepled his fingers together. "He went there to research a name, Salvador. A name he should not know." At that moment, Bastian's eyes held the weight of the lion's instead of a librarian's.

Elbows locked and knuckles still in place, his head dropped forward, nearly chin to chest. A little over three inches of hair didn't do well as a curtain, but the angle at which his head was bowed masked his expression just fine. His shoulders started to shake. His whole body quivering for some bizarre reason. Slowly, slowly, a sound came out of him. Something like: heh. Heh heh. Haha heh! Yeah, that's right. He was laughing, like a frighteningly delighted crazy person.

Bastian was silent, patiently waiting for the boy's fit of madness to pass while he watched him. If he had any true reaction to that, it was kept rather privatized.

"He did it." Those three words bled into the maniacal laughter first. Lifting his head, he drew back one arm to punch the table with the knuckles of his right hand. A low victory pump that landed on polished wood. The grin on his face was wide and fierce and was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. "He figured it out." The weight lifted off his shoulders was entirely inappropriate.

"He did, it seems. But in truth, it creates a larger problem. It was something Sinjin was never meant to know, for as much as I am sure the secret has pained you. He is now at ... a strong disadvantage. A dangerous one." How did Bastian know all this? The sage of a kindred was obsessed with knowledge, certainly, but this was almost too much. "Sinjin going missing is the first sign of it. What will ultimately become of it, I am unsure."

"Oh f*ck you," Salvador snarled. A frown leaped in to destroy his maddened glee. He pushed off the desk with his knuckles, dropping his fists to his side. Except for one. He lifted one hand to point a deceptively sharp nail at the Frenchman. "F*ck him too. I didn't ask for that secret. I didn't want it. I told him he should tell him. And now I'm free of it. F*ck you all and your goddamn consequences. It was his by right to begin with."

"What is done is done, Salvador. I make no judgment on it." Or anything else; Bastian seemed an innately passive creature, and now was no different. Besides, his charge was not the protection of the sinner. "The next step is to see what's become of Sinjin."

"I'll find him." He dropped that accusing hand back into a fist at his side. Of this one thing he was certain. After all, he and Sin had a pact. He turned his head to stare through the closest wall of books, as if he could see him there in the distant beyond.

"As you wish. If you need any assistance, you know where I am." Which prompted Bastian to glance at the door and see if any damage had been done to it. Satisfied, he turned to regard Salvador again, quietly but fully.

"I don't need your goddamn help." Rust colored eyes narrowed fiercely. He cut a scathing look back to the Frenchman, let it linger for several long, heated seconds. Then he turned sharply on his heel to march back to the door. "With anything," he added sharply before yanking the door back open. A punctuated reminder of how continuously irritated he was with the whole bound to protect him thing. He put an exclamation point on it when he prowled out of the library and yanked the door into slamming shut behind him.

For a man bound to protect Salvador, he certainly stayed out of the half-fae's way. Expecting that answer, he only offered a polite smile to Salvador's back as he retreated, watching the dust shake off the books and into the open air when he slammed the door. "Someday," he murmured to himself quietly, and retreated to his letters again.

Ignoring any further startled glances from security, he marched on down the stairs and back into the lobby. Seeing the determined and violent expression on his face dissuaded Sabine from bringing any attention to herself. She hunkered down behind her desk and pretended to be invisible until she heard the front doors leading out onto the street rattling shut at their hinges. Then she sighed relief. Thank goodness the building hadn't blown up today.

Delahada

Date: 2009-06-10 17:30 EST
"You're blaming yourself for something that's not your fault."

Stupid Ali and his stupid caring heart. Of all the topics he brought up on things they needed to talk about, why couldn't he have just left that one alone? On the matter of Sinjin, Salvador had told him there was nothing to talk about. He should have just left it alone. He tried to push that issue, and he failed. Failed to get anything out of Salvador at all, but the thoughts were there. The thoughts were always there. Way too goddamn many of them.

Eventually fatigue, and quite possibly the drugs, kicked in and Ali fell asleep in the booth across from him. Salvador was grateful for that, extremely relieved. It meant he didn't have to sit there and continue avoiding speaking. He could sit there and enjoy the silence of his company. Though he couldn't shut his own mind up.

Of all that troubled him these days, there was but one that took precedence over the many. This was a matter of men and monsters, and it didn't concern Ali at all. Yet the man persisted. He stuck his nose in where it didn't belong. It was a personal matter and Salvador didn't want to discuss it. Maybe he should have just told him it was personal instead of dodging the issue entirely. But no. He shouldn't have to tell him. The man should take a bloody hint and leave sleeping dogs lie.

"If you fight for your sinner, if you seek to slay his dragon for him, then lay your sword down -- for you are undeserving of his soul and my attention."

That echo of the past slid in under his guard and taunted him. The monster was long dead and yet still he taunted him. Bastard. Truth be told, he had never wanted Ambrose's attention at all in the first place. All he wanted was for the f***er to go away, forever. But what he wanted never exactly matched what it was his sinner wanted.

"Shut up. You know nothing! How dare you judge me. Tell me what I deserve."

"Deserve?" The word hung in the air for a moment, tentative and unsure while the Elder stood firm, resolved. "My name is Lucien Jean-Pierre Rosie." A name -- a power -- that had not been breeched or spoken since the day it began.

"I'm ... sorry. So sorry."

The living world continued to ebb and flow around him. Ali snored, as much as he was ever wont to snore. Truthfully it was probably only the sound of his even breathing that he heard. Most of the early afternoon patrons had filtered out into the approaching evening. But one wayward soul continued to shuffle to and fro. The aromas of freshly baked muffins infiltrated his recollections, as well as a voice.

Salvador cracked open an eye to peer out from the booth, across the room, and at the stack of baked goods on their platter. That was about the extent of his attention on those oh so tempting delectables, though. His eyelid slid back shut and he went back to his brooding.

"You are forgiven, fae-child ... but you are set with a great task. A burden which you and I have shared; where I am going, it cannot come."

"You have to tell him. I can't hold this secret. Not this one. I can't do it."

"No. It is not his to keep. It is for those who walk beside him. It is for you to take when I have long lost it again. It is ... a great weight to take."

It had been too great a weight to take. Salvador hadn't been able to bear its burden. Too many times had he suffered the sad and suspicious looks his lover gave him. Too many times had he told Sin "I can't tell you." The pain in the sinner's eyes nearly broke him. It hurt to look at him those days. It hurt too much to keep that secret to himself. And so he had begun building a puzzle. If for no other reason than to put his own mind at ease.

He had never really expected Sin to solve the puzzle. In all honesty, Sin hadn't been the one who had. And he told her, when Fio figured it out, he told her never to speak the name aloud. He should have told Sin, but that was the problem. All those greater stronger beings had bound him not to speak of it, not to tell Sin what he knew.

"There will be a time, Salvador, where that name will be the only memory left. When you or he find yourself in darkness. I am the darkness. And in those times, let memory speak. I am bound to you in this way."

"Not to me," he muttered to himself. Not loud enough to stir the sleeping Ali. Not loud enough to travel through the room, to the one soul who remained. She was a whisper in the dark of his subconscious. Unimportant in comparison. "Not just me. Not anymore."

Maybe this was the darkness Ambrose had spoken of, though. That was the trouble with riddles, with prophecy. When that time came that anyone ever spoke of was never certain. It could have been yesterday. It could be today. Or maybe it was even destined to be tomorrow. As far as Salvador Delahada was concerned, however....

"Tomorrow never comes." Another murmured thought under his breath slipped free. He opened his eyes and looked aside, briefly, at the man sleeping in the booth across from him. "You just don't understand," he whispered. And, he thought, you never will.

Much as he might have liked sitting there in that booth all the remaining afternoon, there was work he had yet to do. Salvador left his mug of coffee, untouched, now cold, and slid across the bench to rise to his feet. There he gave a languid stretch,spared one last glance around the room, then prowled to and out through the side alley door.