I've waited for a long time.
Yeah the slight of my hand is now a quick pull trigger,
I reason with my cigarette,
And say your hair's on fire, you must have lost your wits, yeah.
- Foster the People
Slipper-shoes, newly plucked from some window shop, were nearly soundless on the stairs. Just a soft shuffle of sole, nothing more. Viki did not walk on air so much as drift, directionless, as fickle as the wind. The dress she wore had a look of patchwork again, newly assembled, and in dire need of a seamstress who might make the stitches right. For now, blocks of cloth looked oddly pasted on a white base, once a slip, mayhap, and underthing. Viki was not in tune with the latest in fashion. There were even brambles in her hair, spots of green in the otherwise two-tone.
She moved into the empty commons without a thought as to why. Perhaps it was best to ask again. Her nose touched the round rim of a table, empty of its occupants and eager to spill its secrets. But she was not for secrets this time, no. She would wrench answers for questions, before they were forgotten.
Everett had been holed up in his room with a quill and a multitude of open tomes and notes. He was not found there so constantly as once was his custom. Still, two-oh provided a fine sanctuary that was more his own than anything in this world had to offer. His sanctuary did not, however, come with drinks built-in, so he had to make his way down to the commons to heat water for tea, or perhaps to pull a decent stout from the tap.
His syncopated rhythm always made a little sound as he moved. Down the stairs he came, fairly graceless but very steady. He wore a trace of the old days in the way his shirtsleeves were haphazardly rolled and spotted with ink. Beneath the mess, though, was a grounded confidence. Peace. Relative contentment, all things considered.
What was that? Viki bent her head low, so that the lobe of her ear touched down upon the surface of that table. Oh. And suddenly, off-blue were aligned with the rest of the room, and there was Everett, at the foot of the stairs.
The seer smile for the familiar stains of ink, traced the tribals on her own arms as if they were one in the same. Black skin, different birth. The girl straightened and skipped freely to reveal herself to the poet, but crashed instead. The seer hoped his confidence had feet.
"Oh..." The sound held both amusement and concern. He knew the little thing was made of tough stuff. Still, to see her falter caused him to worry, a little. As any decent brother might.
"Viki...are you yet living down there, dearest?" He made his way with all due efficiency towards her, to help her to her feet (and perhaps her senses).
? Here, Ev-ver-ett?? Her face was a mask of questions for the one who threw her, but he was her kitestring. Thus assisted, she turned to him with an impish grin, plucking a flower from the end of a curl to place in his hand. It was yellow, it had four petals, and one threatened to split from its siblings.
?I go where my feet go, Everett. You know that.? Her hand made contact with the end of his sleeve, tugging playfully. ?Where is the lover? Is she above??
"Nay. She is in her gallery, hard at work tonight. Spotting herself with paint, I gather." Everett smiled at the very thought of her, tall and strong and always so artfully mussed. The poet tucked the flower behind an ear, securing the stem between the frames of his spectacles and his head.
"Drink with me. I want to know where your feet have been taking you, if you are at liberty to say, of course." He wrapped an arm companionably about her shoulders and began to move towards the bar, where he would fetch them something.
The little thing followed, sucking on her lower lip, perhaps in preparation for the offered drink, perhaps to swallow the story of footprints. She stole into an empty barstool, bare legs swinging shamelessly, kicking off shoes. There was no need of them here and no one to scold her or tell her to fetch them. Strangers were constantly doing that, and even when the seer recognized their faces, she still found them strange.
?Rooftops.? There. It was some spot of truth. She started to hum something she heard in the street, about a king with too many wives and a knack for dispatching them. ? Sometimes here. There was a house.?
"Hmm," he said in simple reply, eyeing her from across the bar as he looked at things to drink. Everett tried to take in the details and read between the lines. She was a little poem; nothing was ever said outright.
"You know that my room will always be your room, too, even when I've started living somewhere else for most of the time. I shall always let it, so you can always be here." A kind smile, and then he gestured over to the shelves of bottles.
"What would suit you? Do you want tea? wine? ale?"
? Oh nau, I cannaut live there anymore, 'fore I saw something in a pictureframe that said he would come again if I went there, like the night I lit up all your candles and-I-think-I-might-pay-you-for-them-when-I-have-t he-money.? A rush of sing song to hit him hard, her fingertips taking a stab at percussion, keeping the tempo of a tune soon forgotten when her attention snapped to the many glittering bottles that lined the back wall.
?I think wine. It comes of fruit. Did you know that, my Everett??
?From grapes, aye." He surveyed the selection, finding something French that didn't strike him as too pretentious, his brow furrowed as he tried to ferret out the meaning of the words before her song.
"What did you see in the picture frame, Viki?" Two glasses, one corkscrew. Everett was careful, though off-center a bit as he leaned heavily on his left side.
? You must naut get angry if I tell you, Brother. I would ask of the air if you will be angry but I think it is an insult to you, being that you are right in front of me, all outlined in your ink and smelling of books and another's paint.?
She paused, catching her words, less the tumble out prematurely. Aqua swam into those bespectacled, even as they concentrated so clearly on the cork-and-screw.
?He almost lent me his Shadow, Ever. If you are angry he may never!?
Everett filled the glasses a rather civilized amount...cannot have it sloshing from the brim...and kept his dark eyes trained on the girl. Carefully, one glass was set before her and he kept one for himself. Everett was frowning at the idea that he might be angry, though he could not possibly imagine what would make him feel thus.
"Have you known me, ever, to be quick to anger?" Everett was not even really slow to anger, either. He always needed to think about the way things made him feel, at length, before he could ever afford the luxury of feeling them.
?Nau.? The seer was so fast to reply, for it was an easy thing. The poet was softness, and safety, and that was part and parcel why she loved him so. Slowly, her legs kicked up a new rhythm, letting the half-finished dress fly, endless movement of a seer-shark. She colored the supports of the barstool. The bottoms of her feet were black as pitch.
?He blames me, you know. That I could not see the woman you love. The one with all the color in her hands. I see her now, clear as this.? She lifts a wineglass, his, and then her own, as if to prove the point doubly so.
?But I could naut see before. Love does that. It blinds even the stars.? Her lips cupped the rim of that glass, tasting first only the tumbler. ?He was angry well before I saw his sister in my sleep.? Her words threw bubbles across the rich, red surface.
Everett was not angry, but felt a pang of disappointment and a cold sinking in his stomach. The tiniest bit of guilt which he knew full well was not a rational response, but so often, reason gets lost in the emotions of the truly decent. That people suffer is enough. Everett was certain that 'He' was Gideon, and though he could not begin to puzzle out what she meant by sister, he, at least, had a response for her first remark.
"Dearest, I hope that you know that it is very unfair for him to fault you for that. We did not stay here nearly as often as I would stay with her, where she lives. We value our privacy--so completely. Had I known that he was even..." Everett stopped, trying to puzzle out how to finish that sentence. In the city? In the world? Alive? Everett had been left to assume the worst, really. He came back from a war, physically diminished and emotionally spent. So many of his friends had left, disappeared, perished. He searched for every last person, and hardest to find was Gideon. Gideon had vanished without a trace. At least Victoria Chylde traipsed through a dream or two, reassuring him of her existence.
"Love heals, moreso than it blinds, I think." He sipped his wine, and was grateful that it had a little bite.
?It is okay, Ever-and-ever.? She took the wine as if it were tea, slow caution, dainty lift of her littlest finger. In two sips, she had set it down again.
?He sent missive. It crawled beneath your door. We met above the street.? Quietly, ?he had fashioned a Shadow from a man...?
A chill creeps down the back of her neck, sheltered and hidden by that mane of haphazard curls. Those last quiet words are offered to the poet with a hint of idolatry. She looked not herself when she spoke of the Shadow. More desperate, more raw. It was the look of sexual starvation and the endless thirst of a drunkard. Her eyes peeled to the door, as if in hope to catch him there, in the dark beyond.
?When he let the Shadow have me, the world went quiet.? The world, her world, all worlds. Aqua eyes lifted again, addled and then suddenly still. Not a blink as knuckles went white with her grip on the wineglass. ?And then Gideon threw me to the wall and the stone said nothing. Naut for three days.? Three. She found the correct amount of fingers and held them over Everett's nose.
"He..." The words that followed were puzzled, perhaps almost hurt-sounding. Everett could not picture it, as he had never seen with his eyes what Gideon was. The man had worked tirelessly to conceal all that was in his monstrous nature from the poet, and the poet (who was, in more than one way, near-sighted at times) truly did not know that side of him.
"He...laid his hands on you?" Everett caught her fingers in his own ink-spotted hand, squeezing them with the gentle affection he felt for the strange little thing.
There was pressure in her fingers. Surprised, the seer looked down and beheld a set of hands not her own. She smiled for containment, pressed a kiss to the top of his hand.
She whispered. ?It was naut for very long.?
Clearly, Everett was missing the point. The point was the wonderful things the Shadow could do. Might do. Would do. ?I liked him much better when we danced. He is a good dancer. He carts music in a li'el box.? Sadness stole into the corners of her eyes. ? I do naut think he will want to dance with me now. 'Fore I went to see him to press upon the Shadow and give up the secret of his sister, but all I could get out was her comings and goings. Not even the when. ?
Her sigh was heavy, stirring the rest of her with it. ?Gideon is lost, Brother. He will naut hear anymore I have to say, and his Shadow does naut want me. ? Heartbreak.
Clearly, Viki was missing the point. Even if she lied, hurt you, ruined your life, stole your family, connived...you still never, never, never ever put your hands on a woman. Putting your hands on a woman that Everett loved and felt deeply protective towards certainly challenged his statement that he felt no anger. He took a breath, barely soothed by her words, slightly moreso by the kiss on his hand.
"Lost...to his Shadow, do you suppose?"
?Nau, and yes. I see three of them 'round Gideon. The Sister, the Shadow, and the Student. I would be fourth at his side, all mixed in, if I slept in your room, Everett. It is that I saw in the pictureframe. So I will naut. Even if the Shadow can silence the world.?
She turned his hands over, traced the lines that lay there as if she could read them. There was some conspiratory smile in the wake of this motion, as if she had read some Everett tomorrow in the swirls of his flesh.
?He is naut like you, Ever. Naut like I, although I am naut like any here, 'cept when I am above, ablaze.?
"Perhaps it is for the best that he will not dance, sweeting. If he is so lost, then...how could I know that you would not also be lost? That was a terrible time for me, you know. I am uncertain if I could bear to lose you thus, again." He had released her to sip his wine. "You are my family here, in this place."
?Amvel. Thank you, Everett.? Her nose crinkled as he drank his wine, as if she were tasting a bit of the same at the back of her throat. It tickled and burned, strange fruit. She had forgotten her own glass, but it was waiting patiently at her elbow. Wonder of wonders.
?I call you Brother, as you are. As for Gideon, I do naut know.? Her voice grows tiny. ?I can only stay in Two-Oh when you are there.?
Yeah the slight of my hand is now a quick pull trigger,
I reason with my cigarette,
And say your hair's on fire, you must have lost your wits, yeah.
- Foster the People
Slipper-shoes, newly plucked from some window shop, were nearly soundless on the stairs. Just a soft shuffle of sole, nothing more. Viki did not walk on air so much as drift, directionless, as fickle as the wind. The dress she wore had a look of patchwork again, newly assembled, and in dire need of a seamstress who might make the stitches right. For now, blocks of cloth looked oddly pasted on a white base, once a slip, mayhap, and underthing. Viki was not in tune with the latest in fashion. There were even brambles in her hair, spots of green in the otherwise two-tone.
She moved into the empty commons without a thought as to why. Perhaps it was best to ask again. Her nose touched the round rim of a table, empty of its occupants and eager to spill its secrets. But she was not for secrets this time, no. She would wrench answers for questions, before they were forgotten.
Everett had been holed up in his room with a quill and a multitude of open tomes and notes. He was not found there so constantly as once was his custom. Still, two-oh provided a fine sanctuary that was more his own than anything in this world had to offer. His sanctuary did not, however, come with drinks built-in, so he had to make his way down to the commons to heat water for tea, or perhaps to pull a decent stout from the tap.
His syncopated rhythm always made a little sound as he moved. Down the stairs he came, fairly graceless but very steady. He wore a trace of the old days in the way his shirtsleeves were haphazardly rolled and spotted with ink. Beneath the mess, though, was a grounded confidence. Peace. Relative contentment, all things considered.
What was that? Viki bent her head low, so that the lobe of her ear touched down upon the surface of that table. Oh. And suddenly, off-blue were aligned with the rest of the room, and there was Everett, at the foot of the stairs.
The seer smile for the familiar stains of ink, traced the tribals on her own arms as if they were one in the same. Black skin, different birth. The girl straightened and skipped freely to reveal herself to the poet, but crashed instead. The seer hoped his confidence had feet.
"Oh..." The sound held both amusement and concern. He knew the little thing was made of tough stuff. Still, to see her falter caused him to worry, a little. As any decent brother might.
"Viki...are you yet living down there, dearest?" He made his way with all due efficiency towards her, to help her to her feet (and perhaps her senses).
? Here, Ev-ver-ett?? Her face was a mask of questions for the one who threw her, but he was her kitestring. Thus assisted, she turned to him with an impish grin, plucking a flower from the end of a curl to place in his hand. It was yellow, it had four petals, and one threatened to split from its siblings.
?I go where my feet go, Everett. You know that.? Her hand made contact with the end of his sleeve, tugging playfully. ?Where is the lover? Is she above??
"Nay. She is in her gallery, hard at work tonight. Spotting herself with paint, I gather." Everett smiled at the very thought of her, tall and strong and always so artfully mussed. The poet tucked the flower behind an ear, securing the stem between the frames of his spectacles and his head.
"Drink with me. I want to know where your feet have been taking you, if you are at liberty to say, of course." He wrapped an arm companionably about her shoulders and began to move towards the bar, where he would fetch them something.
The little thing followed, sucking on her lower lip, perhaps in preparation for the offered drink, perhaps to swallow the story of footprints. She stole into an empty barstool, bare legs swinging shamelessly, kicking off shoes. There was no need of them here and no one to scold her or tell her to fetch them. Strangers were constantly doing that, and even when the seer recognized their faces, she still found them strange.
?Rooftops.? There. It was some spot of truth. She started to hum something she heard in the street, about a king with too many wives and a knack for dispatching them. ? Sometimes here. There was a house.?
"Hmm," he said in simple reply, eyeing her from across the bar as he looked at things to drink. Everett tried to take in the details and read between the lines. She was a little poem; nothing was ever said outright.
"You know that my room will always be your room, too, even when I've started living somewhere else for most of the time. I shall always let it, so you can always be here." A kind smile, and then he gestured over to the shelves of bottles.
"What would suit you? Do you want tea? wine? ale?"
? Oh nau, I cannaut live there anymore, 'fore I saw something in a pictureframe that said he would come again if I went there, like the night I lit up all your candles and-I-think-I-might-pay-you-for-them-when-I-have-t he-money.? A rush of sing song to hit him hard, her fingertips taking a stab at percussion, keeping the tempo of a tune soon forgotten when her attention snapped to the many glittering bottles that lined the back wall.
?I think wine. It comes of fruit. Did you know that, my Everett??
?From grapes, aye." He surveyed the selection, finding something French that didn't strike him as too pretentious, his brow furrowed as he tried to ferret out the meaning of the words before her song.
"What did you see in the picture frame, Viki?" Two glasses, one corkscrew. Everett was careful, though off-center a bit as he leaned heavily on his left side.
? You must naut get angry if I tell you, Brother. I would ask of the air if you will be angry but I think it is an insult to you, being that you are right in front of me, all outlined in your ink and smelling of books and another's paint.?
She paused, catching her words, less the tumble out prematurely. Aqua swam into those bespectacled, even as they concentrated so clearly on the cork-and-screw.
?He almost lent me his Shadow, Ever. If you are angry he may never!?
Everett filled the glasses a rather civilized amount...cannot have it sloshing from the brim...and kept his dark eyes trained on the girl. Carefully, one glass was set before her and he kept one for himself. Everett was frowning at the idea that he might be angry, though he could not possibly imagine what would make him feel thus.
"Have you known me, ever, to be quick to anger?" Everett was not even really slow to anger, either. He always needed to think about the way things made him feel, at length, before he could ever afford the luxury of feeling them.
?Nau.? The seer was so fast to reply, for it was an easy thing. The poet was softness, and safety, and that was part and parcel why she loved him so. Slowly, her legs kicked up a new rhythm, letting the half-finished dress fly, endless movement of a seer-shark. She colored the supports of the barstool. The bottoms of her feet were black as pitch.
?He blames me, you know. That I could not see the woman you love. The one with all the color in her hands. I see her now, clear as this.? She lifts a wineglass, his, and then her own, as if to prove the point doubly so.
?But I could naut see before. Love does that. It blinds even the stars.? Her lips cupped the rim of that glass, tasting first only the tumbler. ?He was angry well before I saw his sister in my sleep.? Her words threw bubbles across the rich, red surface.
Everett was not angry, but felt a pang of disappointment and a cold sinking in his stomach. The tiniest bit of guilt which he knew full well was not a rational response, but so often, reason gets lost in the emotions of the truly decent. That people suffer is enough. Everett was certain that 'He' was Gideon, and though he could not begin to puzzle out what she meant by sister, he, at least, had a response for her first remark.
"Dearest, I hope that you know that it is very unfair for him to fault you for that. We did not stay here nearly as often as I would stay with her, where she lives. We value our privacy--so completely. Had I known that he was even..." Everett stopped, trying to puzzle out how to finish that sentence. In the city? In the world? Alive? Everett had been left to assume the worst, really. He came back from a war, physically diminished and emotionally spent. So many of his friends had left, disappeared, perished. He searched for every last person, and hardest to find was Gideon. Gideon had vanished without a trace. At least Victoria Chylde traipsed through a dream or two, reassuring him of her existence.
"Love heals, moreso than it blinds, I think." He sipped his wine, and was grateful that it had a little bite.
?It is okay, Ever-and-ever.? She took the wine as if it were tea, slow caution, dainty lift of her littlest finger. In two sips, she had set it down again.
?He sent missive. It crawled beneath your door. We met above the street.? Quietly, ?he had fashioned a Shadow from a man...?
A chill creeps down the back of her neck, sheltered and hidden by that mane of haphazard curls. Those last quiet words are offered to the poet with a hint of idolatry. She looked not herself when she spoke of the Shadow. More desperate, more raw. It was the look of sexual starvation and the endless thirst of a drunkard. Her eyes peeled to the door, as if in hope to catch him there, in the dark beyond.
?When he let the Shadow have me, the world went quiet.? The world, her world, all worlds. Aqua eyes lifted again, addled and then suddenly still. Not a blink as knuckles went white with her grip on the wineglass. ?And then Gideon threw me to the wall and the stone said nothing. Naut for three days.? Three. She found the correct amount of fingers and held them over Everett's nose.
"He..." The words that followed were puzzled, perhaps almost hurt-sounding. Everett could not picture it, as he had never seen with his eyes what Gideon was. The man had worked tirelessly to conceal all that was in his monstrous nature from the poet, and the poet (who was, in more than one way, near-sighted at times) truly did not know that side of him.
"He...laid his hands on you?" Everett caught her fingers in his own ink-spotted hand, squeezing them with the gentle affection he felt for the strange little thing.
There was pressure in her fingers. Surprised, the seer looked down and beheld a set of hands not her own. She smiled for containment, pressed a kiss to the top of his hand.
She whispered. ?It was naut for very long.?
Clearly, Everett was missing the point. The point was the wonderful things the Shadow could do. Might do. Would do. ?I liked him much better when we danced. He is a good dancer. He carts music in a li'el box.? Sadness stole into the corners of her eyes. ? I do naut think he will want to dance with me now. 'Fore I went to see him to press upon the Shadow and give up the secret of his sister, but all I could get out was her comings and goings. Not even the when. ?
Her sigh was heavy, stirring the rest of her with it. ?Gideon is lost, Brother. He will naut hear anymore I have to say, and his Shadow does naut want me. ? Heartbreak.
Clearly, Viki was missing the point. Even if she lied, hurt you, ruined your life, stole your family, connived...you still never, never, never ever put your hands on a woman. Putting your hands on a woman that Everett loved and felt deeply protective towards certainly challenged his statement that he felt no anger. He took a breath, barely soothed by her words, slightly moreso by the kiss on his hand.
"Lost...to his Shadow, do you suppose?"
?Nau, and yes. I see three of them 'round Gideon. The Sister, the Shadow, and the Student. I would be fourth at his side, all mixed in, if I slept in your room, Everett. It is that I saw in the pictureframe. So I will naut. Even if the Shadow can silence the world.?
She turned his hands over, traced the lines that lay there as if she could read them. There was some conspiratory smile in the wake of this motion, as if she had read some Everett tomorrow in the swirls of his flesh.
?He is naut like you, Ever. Naut like I, although I am naut like any here, 'cept when I am above, ablaze.?
"Perhaps it is for the best that he will not dance, sweeting. If he is so lost, then...how could I know that you would not also be lost? That was a terrible time for me, you know. I am uncertain if I could bear to lose you thus, again." He had released her to sip his wine. "You are my family here, in this place."
?Amvel. Thank you, Everett.? Her nose crinkled as he drank his wine, as if she were tasting a bit of the same at the back of her throat. It tickled and burned, strange fruit. She had forgotten her own glass, but it was waiting patiently at her elbow. Wonder of wonders.
?I call you Brother, as you are. As for Gideon, I do naut know.? Her voice grows tiny. ?I can only stay in Two-Oh when you are there.?