multiversallogs | the soul secured in her existence, smiles.

Entry tags:

the soul secured in her existence, smiles.

Who: Lucius Malfoy (Sr) and "Vanessza Bernat"
What: It starts with a dragon.
Where: Badside.
When: Misdi sundown.
Warnings: Character death... sort of.

If a woman falls to her death in Badside, when no one is around to see it, does she make a sound?

Probably, but Lucius Malfoy is not street-level when it occurs and wouldn't be able to tell you. He is in some sort of partially incorporeal state of flight, hearing more the pained screeches of the dragon bellowing across the sky in the wake of-- something. Indefinable injury that involves pieces of the beast falling in slower spirals than the rock-drop of the brunette, sword-wielding woman plummeting for the ground. Recognition is quicker, unfortunately, than the ability to act, and by the time he is disapparating completely out of the sky to short cut his own flight path, Vanessza Bernát has dashed herself upon the pavement.

He lets the dragon go. It may well die of its own injury, although dragons are made of sterner stuff than most. The street is not entirely devoid of life, although most are ducking and hiding in their own apartments, brickwalls and high windows and disrepair defining this corner of Baedal. Lucius isn't really observing his surroundings, anyway, when he lands on the street and steps out of the unfurling mass of transformative smoke that seems to meld back into his silhouette, the turn of his coat. The wand is out, silver handle gripped tighter than dueling instructors typically recommend.

Expression openly shocked as if he is not really believing what he just saw, for all the the death of some random Muggle woman would hardly have blinked on his radar some precious few years ago, he approaches, the clip of his pace even but not entirely unhurried.

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Blood is still spreading, pooling underneath her from where her head has cracked open on the stone upon which she landed so suddenly and brutally; her crossbow is broken under the weight and angle of her body, her sword has clattered out of her now-useless grip. The medical satchel at her hip has fared better than she has, delicate items within it strapped for safety, and what just happened seems utterly insane. She'd been far too high to imagine surviving when she sawed the claws off a beast carrying her through the air.

One still clutches her shoulder; there is blood there, too, where it tore through her coat and sweater and skin. The inelegant way she'd sawn at it had been almost more exasperation than desperation, but there's no guide-book for how to handle this and there is no precedent and as much as she loves to be surprised--

When she breathes in, sudden and deep and gasping, her head still hurts - she can feel bone fragments she doesn't need any more between her and the bloody stone beneath and it's not the kind of thing a person enjoys having a preexisting sense memory of. The problem is never the falling; the problem is always the landing.

It takes a few moments for thoughts to catch up with the rest of him, that there is no emergency and no spell and no need to call for help and nothing Lucius actually need do at all on account of the fact that the woman is quite dead. He's seen and been around quite a lot of it, some at his hand, in front of him, standing beside him, and as the bodycount of relevant people ticks up by one, he feels the loss a little bit like something more chipped away from something else that was already eroded and jagged edged.

It's a pity, really. He quite--

And then she's breathing. Noisy, like the drowning.

Caught between deep revulsion and surprise, and more amicable concern that should have him rushing to help her, Lucius simply stops and takes a step back, and soon enough, points his wand at her in instant suspicion and disgust. It seems relatively likely that something ungodly might be puppeting the broken body of a dead woman - he's certainly seen worse in the thickest parts of the fog.

Of course, he isn't about to avada kedavra it right away, and he'd like that to be an intellectual need to know what it is he's killing. In truth, he's just not wholly convinced he still isn't looking at Vanessza.

It probably isn't typical ungodly puppeteer behaviour to make an irritated and plaintively pained sound in the back of her head when she first starts to move - healing doesn't mean she doesn't experience pain and there is still a claw in her shoulder, scraping bone against bone - and probably not to make that first attempt and then...not, for a minute. The jagged and broken parts of the crossbow that didn't quite make it through the fall are underneath her, digging into her, and her coat probably would've been more of a cushion against it if not for the sheer velocity of the fall--

There is a moment where she just lies there, catching her breath, and thinks several things not repeatable in polite company that are entirely forgivable under the circumstances. Immortality doesn't make death fun. It just makes it survivable.

Under said circumstances, perhaps it's also forgivable that registering and reacting to Lucius isn't at the top of her immediate priority list. That there is someone there and pointing something at her is something she's aware of, but several separate factors shunt it further down on concerns (wariness not an unreasonable reaction and present holding pattern meaning rationality that can be reasoned with, where reasoning with means flatly lying to; ultimately she assumes nothing but I can handle it and if she really does have to kill to protect herself, now is the time to get away with it) and instead reaches for remnants of the dragon clinging to her.

“Fuck--” is a very satisfying word.

That's fine, not noticing him, because as Benevenuta recovers and evaluates, Lucius is doing nothing more interesting than keeping his wand trained on her down his arm gone rigid. He's had an interesting day-- an interesting week. Although he does not quite take to the monster-plagued city in the younger Severus' 'fish in water' manner (which, Lucius imagines, is a question of youth), he doesn't hate it either. Trust him to accidentally hone his skills in combating monsters as a valid career choice in Baedal weeks before the sky opens up to rain down more of them; killing things is at least satisfying. Clean, metaphorically speaking.

Literally, it's quite messy. His coat has seen better days.

She swears, which is both crass and somewhat unmystical, but Lucius isn't moving his aim just yet, almost forgotten about it. He had the ludicrous notion that he ought help her stand, as fitting for a gentleman. It is irritating when his rusty social instincts kick in at the most incongruous moments.

"Vanessza?" seems like a good place to start, watching her-- remove a piece of severed dragon claw from her shoulder in abstract concern. Well.

She is a doctor.

At the sound of Lucius' voice - and of course it's someone she knows, of course it's him and not some stranger who she'd never have to see again (she doesn't have to see him again--) - Benevenuta thinks about being crass again, for just a moment. It stills her hands, which is less than pleasant when in the process of trying to pull claw free of bone and tissue; it's something that should really be done, with a body like hers, quickly.

But now she's conscious of her audience, and so where a moment ago she'd prepared to wrench it free she takes more care. As if it matters.

--and the crossbow is still digging into her back. She feels distinctly like she wants to be sick, which frankly is not something she has time for right now.

“Yes,” she says, for a lack of something cleverer.

A no might have been better, in some ways.

Lucius lowers his wand so that it's directed towards the ground between them rather than at her, still held like he could hex her in a moment as necessary, for all that he cannot imagine what that would be. Another reason to remove his aim. He is looking closer, now, a frank sort of stare at the spread of gore she landed in-- created-- from the red drenching the cobblestone, the broken pieces of is that a crossbow visible, the shattered fragments of bone and grey matter.

She should be dead, obviously. She was. He ought to have taken a hint the first time he found her executing a thestral with a sword as if it were business as usual.

After a moment, the wand lowers completely to his side with an audible huff that is almost like a laugh if Lucius were ever prone to that ever, but it's certainly close enough, a sound that is both cynical and exasperated. He feels immediately foolish not only for this very moment but for every other moment.

The sound she makes is a huff of pained frustration, in turn; doing this faster would've had the benefit of being over faster, but she's careful because the mere fact of his witnessing this doesn't mean she's going to stop lying about it. Not if she thinks she can get away with it--

--maybe even if she thinks she can't. Frankly.

“I landed in someone's blood,” she says, as she sits up, unstrapping the useless crossbow from her body with what she mentally designates her 'good arm'; it doesn't sound like she's daring him to contradict her. It doesn't sound like a lie, which is probably why he's laughing at himself right now. It never sounds like she's lying. It sounds perfectly sensible, except for everything he's already seen. “I need-- um-- you can move from place to place? No?”

Apparation, she means, dancing around asking him for help.

Remarkable.

Lucius can give credit where credit is due; it's a terrible lie, context considered, but delivered so well. One pale eyebrow raises in frank incredulity, but he doesn't say anything right away; still in that zone at simply looking at her and reordering his understanding. The more direct question stirs him, casting a look upwards at the sky.

The dragon has better sense than to take its revenge. But all the same. By the time he's looking back at her, his focus in on her fresher injury, although he keeps it only to a subtle glance, back to her face as he finally steps forward and offers her a hand up. "Quite understandable. It's rather slippery underfoot.

"Your residence?"

And if he has to see for himself what damage the pieces of claw left behind, if any at all, then so be it.

“The ground floor,” she says, alert to that glance at her shoulder and careful to keep the unbroken skin hidden beneath (torn) cloth and blood, careful to keep favouring it as she lets him help her to her feet. The sword she carries, and after a slight hesitation she picks up the crossbow as well, cradling it with her 'bad' arm and supporting both against herself with the good one, with the hand holding the sword.

The bottom of her satchel is soaked; the whole mess stinks of whiskey. At least going back to her apartment hopefully means an opportunity to restock whatever else may have been broken in her fall--

“I moved; not far.” The explanation is...not really an explanation, and a bit absent, the kind of incongruous focus on small and immediately irrelevant details that would be normal right now. Shock behaviour.

She's very good.

When they disappear, they do so silently. It's about as much claim that Lucius can make towards being a ninja with exception to other charms of concealment. Appearing is much the same; reality around them seems to briefly distort as if they were being fit back into time and space in the momentless blink between then and now. It is not as pleasant as it appears effortless, dull pressure squeezing Benevenuta from all sides, releasing only when they snap back into reality. The smokey flying is probably more pleasant.

The world dissolves and reassembles around them, and usefully-- perhaps-- the immortal will be blinking to the sight of her newer apartment interior, the floor beneath her feet a sudden kind of feeling, even the air and the change of the light, with Lucius' hand on her wrist the only constant in that momentless speck of time when both of them where no where at all.

He doesn't immediately let go.

There's a click as the end of his cane connects with the floor, the wooden sheath resolving back around it with a flick, an absent minded spell that doesn't have to be said out loud. "You know, I rather think I deserve an explanation," he says, losing that prior moment of too-sincere concern for her falling-into-someone's-blood story. For a moment, he is as haughty as he was once infamous for, even beneath the whiskery grey-blonde at his face, the shabby condition of his clothing and everything else, the old blood of monsters spattered at coat hem. "A proper one."

Her instinct is nothing chastened, but irritation; he thinks he deserves an explanation, does he? Deserves? What about her foot in his arse, she could probably find someone who thinks he deserves that--

It's been a long week. She takes a breath, then pries his hand from her wrist, carefully and deliberately.

“I think you should let me clean up.” It's almost kind. It says no, you don't.

He flicks a glance to where she is working his grip off her arm, and releases her promptly so as not to engage in some petty tangle for physical assertion that would be largely unnecessary. Lucius' stare down his nose at her is as cool and colourless as ice chips.

"You may do whatever you like, but I would like to understand how a woman can survive a fall of some hundred feet from the sky and recover well enough to lie about it," Lucius says, and though these words are inherently challenging, he is inherently understated. Temper is a slow burn beneath the surface, that initial self-deprecation of being played for a fool slowly turning outwards.

He might have expected and preferred 'chastened' over 'irritated' at being caught, anyway. "You were dead."

“I patently was not.” The way she says it is-- unfair, really, because it's still not chastened, it's not even defensive. It's reasonable. She's standing in front of him now, of course she wasn't dead; isn't that a mad thing to say? Of course she doesn't hold it against him, and he's very kind to help her now, but she wasn't dead. Don't be silly, Lucius-- but it doesn't go that far, either, it's not patronizing.

It takes a long, long time to get that good, and if he'd seen just a little less, it isn't hard to see how easy it could've been for someone else to accept her version of events.

“I'm going to-- I have some of those potions, from Monsieur Snape, for my shoulder and my back. I'm going to take a shower and clean up. I wonder if I could prevail on you, for your wards-- I have seen other places not fare so well as mine has so far.”

A tilt of her head. “But if you would rather go--”

You bloody well were is on the tip of his tongue, and it'd be nice if being well bred was the reason he doesn't say it in all its graceless petulance. It isn't that, unfortunately, it's that Vanessza has more to say, enough to stop him silent and simply stare down at her in much the same way he had when she'd first taken those initial gasps for air.

Astounding. "This is rather old hat for you, isn't it," he says, instead, almost too curious at the absurdity of it all not to take a step back from more subjective anger. But it does at least indicate that no, he is buying none of that, nor is he particularly inclined to let it go.

Although, more literally, he is inclined to let her put herself together again. There is only the tiniest sneer at his mouth; "Go, then." He has wards to put up and she has grey matter to wash out of her hair.

So old hat that there is no brief smile of self-satisfaction at this concession - but there might have been, had he caught her a few centuries earlier. He may not let it go, but he's conceded at least a reprieve, and frankly she really does want to get safely under the spray of hot water, to wash out blood (and-- yes, grey matter, and bone fragments, and no matter how many times this happens she thinks it will never be pleasant). There is a slight hesitation, a lingering; she watches him over her shoulder before she goes upstairs.

(She moved once already because Jason went through her things-- oh, there were other reasons, but she doesn't like to be known that way. She doesn't like for anyone to know where she keeps her secrets without having been shown by her. Control and the desire for it, that's something Lucius understands, she's sure, but finally she decides perhaps it would be beneath him to go looking and it's not as though she wants him in the bathroom with her just so she knows where he is.

--for other reasons, maybe, but none of them now, and certainly not while he's in this mood.)

The flat has, thus far, fared rather well. She'd locked it up tight when she left and it still is locked, too. Some of the windows of this open downstairs area are smashed, but it's from fallen debris, and a less expensive repair than something else could've been - her flat faces onto a courtyard (wide, but still enclosed), and that's been a boon.

It isn't beneath him to consider it, for a hot moment.

In the end, however, Lucius simply lays down some similar enchantments he's put upon his own residence, ones that will stand up against brute force both magical and physical. A spoken word from Benevenuta herself or a simple touch will be needed permission. Fixing windows is done with a flick of a wand and a muttered incantation, the courtyard protected from unwanted guests with a flash of silver magic that makes, a moment, a sort of dome between it and the open sky, before vanishing into invisibility. Last but not least, the traditional sort of cloaking that inspires the disinterest in other people, that staple of magic that hid so many things from Muggle view, turned around against the siege of monsters outside.

He takes a drink for himself, of course, available liquor that he may or may not have recommended to her once before. A dash in a low glass, foregoing ice for an enchantment that has frost lacing across crystal. It isn't all spite, or needing a drink after the efforts of the day; it's been quite a week, in general, and drinking a few mouthfuls of someone else's alcohol sounds like the best idea Lucius has had since he invited Severus to execute that one rogue herd of thestrals.

Some of which Benevenuta dispatched herself. It makes for some interesting puzzle pieces.

Though she has every intention of going back out into the mess, it's practical as well as a relief to take the opportunity to rest and repair; she'll make something to eat, repack her satchel, debate whether or not she needs to risk ruining another coat or if she can just clean this one the best she can and make it last until the end of the crisis, she'll...probably have a drink, too. For now she comes downstairs, barefoot in jeans and clean sweater with damp hair, and only briefly raises an eyebrow at finding him drinking her scotch.

What she thinks is not that's mine but I expect I'll be lucky if that's all I'm expected to pay him. (She doesn't expect that's all he's going to ask of her, no; he doesn't seem like the type to be inclined to leave aside not knowing something that's been set down before him. Thrown down, by a fucking dragon.)

“You can pour another,” she says. “But we should eat, too. I'll do that.”

Is she really going to saunter over to the kitchen like she has absolutely no intention of explaining hers-- yes. Yes she is.

In part, the drink acts as something of an anchor and a reason not to be dismissed for all that he is breaking into, uninvited, her liquor; so Lucius doesn't object when she sets about her business for all that he tracks her progress with that same chilly incredulity. Waiting for her to clean up had afforded him time to think, as well, but-- he hasn't settled happily upon a single conclusion.

Death is something of a finality, where he is from. Protection spells, healing potions, these things are well and good, and there is a reason why wizards and witches have their morbidly extended lifespans, but once you're finished--

Well. Look at what Tom Riddle gave to pay the price of return. And there's a reason why all the good fairytales are about cheating death.

Charming though she is, Lucius has also discounted 'made a pact with the Reaper'. He summons a glass, after a second, the clatter and slosh of a drink being poured. He follows her into the generous kitchen once he's done, setting the scotch down and sliding it across the silver surface in her direction. "And your shoulder?" is polite enough inquiry.

Immortality is something you have or you don't, where she's from. Benevenuta is a have; Lucius is a have-not. She's still not quite accustomed to having to allow for more variety in the dividing lines between individuals in this strange new world she's living in now, for what that means with regard to so many things.

Someone who expects wonders, expects explanations for them is harder to lie to. That doesn't seem to incline her to stop lying, but-- she's been doing this for a long time. When she wants to tell the truth it's hard for her, painful almost in the way of trying to flex an atrophied muscle, her instincts screaming in the other direction, and frankly she doesn't want to tell him anything right now. This would be too much like a concession, like something she was backed into a corner for, and she prefers to be the one holding the cards.

She says, “Better. Better soon. I'll get some rest and let the potions do their work.”

Bless Severus Snape, and Lucius Malfoy's own culture's clever little cures. She can point to each one that'd have her with just a bit of strain by tomorrow.

It isn't as though he's going to demand she open her blouse and show him underneath the bandage.

In the same way that Lucius would not deign to root around her house (while she's still in it, anyway), he isn't going to ask her to open her shirt (in this context). Pride demands he be told what he wants to know. It works in her favour, sort of.

"You'll find the wards in place, as requested," he says, first, casting a look away from her that only tosses straw-pale hair a fraction over his shoulder. "It's been some time since I've done such for anyone apart from myself. Now, I wouldn't believe it a stretch of the imagination to guess that those who once knew me, where I am from, would marvel at the notion of me performing magic for those who cannot wield it themselves."

He takes a sip of her scotch. "We all make our little compromises, here. I saw you fall, and the result. Your spine should be shattered, dislodged from viscera turned to liquid beneath your ribcage, to say nothing of your brain matter still a smear on the sidewalk last we left. I looked.

"With these images still quite fresh in my mind's eye, do you believe I should accept that you simply fell in someone else's blood?"

Just curious.

Edited 2012-03-23 05:07 (UTC)

Benevenuta rests her hands on the bench (something simple to eat - a soup she can just throw together, something simple and filling, and putting it together will ease some of that lingering tension out of her back, where it broke the way he's describing) and lets herself think her way through an answer instead of snapping at him the way she's tempted to.

Her temper, when it gets the better of her, always goes further than she means. It's better to keep a leash on it while she still can.

“It would suit me if you did,” she says, finally, and the wry tone is-- some kind of concession.

The sound Lucius makes is one of irritation; a voiceless, monosyllabic scoff even as his attention trips back into the safe retreat of the drink he's served himself. He can hear her tone of voice, at least.

"I have no particular desire to do what doesn't suit you," he says, after a moment; his tone almost disjointed from the rest of him, distanced. "But the deception doesn't hold, I'm afraid, and whatever it is you are attempting to hide is quite out of your hands." Because it's still truth sans explanation, in it's own blunt and brutal way, except he knows full well there is more to it than simply being capable of resurrection.

The sword and the crossbow see to that.

Movement resumes; she busies herself finding chicken broth, silken tofu, white rice, turmeric, olive oil, here's that pepper and there should be fresh dill...here. All right. It's a soothing occupation, even in a kitchen as alarmingly red-and-black as hers is now, and she lets herself fall into familiar rhythm so she can think more clearly on what to do next.

“I value my privacy as you do,” she says, then, in a frank reminder of all those times she's obliged him in not asking. “Do I lose it, if I wish to help?”

Edited 2012-03-23 12:37 (UTC)

His posture stiffens as if he is about to explain in precisely enunciated terms how that circumstance is very different, but Lucius falls quiet instead. Watching as she sets about her mise en place without necessarily being hypnotised by it; just a little derailed. Perhaps she does have a point.

...no, that can't be it.

"I don't regard it as a matter of privacy--" A vague gesture, glass tipping in his hand.

A saucepan comes out of the cupboard next, and she measures out cups of broth and rice as she inquires, in a deceptively inquisitive tone of voice: “What do you consider it a matter of, Lucius?”

Really.

Lucius hesitates again, but not out of conviction; her tone gives him pause, but he answers her question anyway. "My injuries spoke for themselves, to some extent. There is nothing about them or what I haven't told you that changes whatever notions you have of me," still manages to sound prim, if bleak, which is somewhat his usual anyway.

"I knew you to be a healer of good education and manners, with some taste in wine and conversation. The presence of medieval weaponry and the ability to resurrect are rather incongruous with this concept, don't you agree?"

A pause, and pettier; "I've also never lied to you."

Hasn't he. She supposes he hasn't, at that; she wonders if he would have, if she'd ever asked, or if he'd have told her, or if he'd have got offended at being asked and left. He's a prickly thing, this friend of hers. An observation beautifully borne out by this conversation-- but so is she, sometimes, and the same again.

Benevenuta, the liar, sidesteps his last petty remark entirely. She lies to everybody. Why should Lucius be special?

“Incongruous but not contradictory,” she offers, instead, bringing the saucepan over the heat and glancing up at him over her shoulder. “Neither my manners nor my skills, I think, suffer for these things. I would think experience to be a valuable thing.”

"The Glory Shada sees a lot of swordplay, does it?"

This is so frank and so wry that it's probably not even worth responding to, which is a thing Lucius recognises enough as he loosens the righteousness out of his own posture enough to find a lean against the counter. The argument is dwindling from him, but not yet gone; the prospect that he might leave without answers is presenting itself as an option, but a far less palatable one.

For now, Lucius rhetorics; "Then answer me this; does the truth put you in danger, or is it a matter of principle? Never mind privacy. You left some of that behind among the skull fragments."

The reminder of her own head cracked open on the street like an egg (yolk running--) is not a welcome one and Benevenuta's knuckles clench, tellingly, around the handle of the saucepan. She doesn't actually entertain flicking the contents at the front of him, but it's worth noting that in a higher temper, well. It wouldn't be the most alarming thing she's ever thrown at a man.

“I am accustomed to my privacy,” she says, reframing the question (and its limitations) to better suit the way she wishes to answer it. “For which I have my reasons. And, if I am not wrong in believing that you can be trusted with it,” or in thinking that it's not out of the question he can be maneuvered into keeping her secrets by the suggestion that she already believes he will, “then I wonder what does it matter? You have seen. What more do you want me to say?”

And why?

(The list of people digging into her business, whose curiosity she's obliged to tolerate, is getting irritatingly long for the length of time she's been here - yes, at all of two - and she's not entirely sure if she's getting sloppy or Baedal has a higher count of the type.)

There are two chinks to the chain of Lucius' argument. The first being that he is loathe to beg, and his vocabulary for demanding is a well running dry. The second is that but are you human or not flags far too close to the prejudice that he has, honesty or not, been keeping guard from her. The prejudice that is obsolete but shaped so much of his existence. Muggles are not worse than xenians.

Of which he is nowhere close to Candlelighter levels of disdain, but he feel he ought to know what he's permitting anymore.

So it's a good thing she doesn't ask why.

He clams up into sullen silence again, and finishes his drink without claiming another. Lucius moves instead to set the glass beside the sink. "Simply what it means."

By many standards in Baedal, Benevenuta would be considered xenian. It's not something that she's come to think of herself as; she thinks of herself as something both separate from humanity and deeply, meaningfully connected to it. She has always known the divide between mortal and immortal and rarely thought of it in terms of species. She thinks of it in terms of purpose, of responsibility, of guardianship even--

She loves humanity, she rises to her obligation to it, but she is not beholden to the individual. The individual, in fact, is where she's always had trouble. Relating to them on their own terms is something she's tried to do and something that has eluded her for centuries; their experience and expectations are too unlike her own. She's never known the urgency of a life with an endgame in sight.

That's what it means. Her proud distance, here, the glimpses of just how arrogantly willful she truly is down at bone - this is what it means.

But she says: “It means that I am older than I appear,” in the tone of someone who thinks he should be grateful for conceding even that much. “And that I know what I'm doing. And that I would be very grateful if you would get the crystal power-source down from the cupboard above me here for my blender.”

Well, since he's standing right there, being taller than she is.

The sharper glance past his shoulder that she gets is probably indicative of Lucius catching concession, focused first on the act of information giving in a small, petty moment of satisfaction, before processing the content itself, which-- oh. He had meant it, when he'd sneered about how easy it seemed to be for her, to lie on automatic. 'Old hat'.

He blinks at this last thing, jaw setting. Gratitude, however much she thinks he should have, is not written into his expression, and he is making sure it doesn't. But he does shut up, which might be better, and he does move to the cupboard, which is just a bonus.

Taking the crystal off the shelf, it's held out for her to take.

Benevenuta attaches the blender's charged crystals to settle in - it's always best to plug them and give it a bit of a warm up, she finds, or it chokes like an unprepared public speaker - and lets that silence settle in between them, slink into each space and crevice as she sets her attention on...dinner, probably, she's not clear on what time it is right now. Eventually the only sound is the broth boiling, and she lowers the temperature, lets it simmer, not unlike what Lucius is doing right now.

She rests a hand against the counter and permits herself to look tired.

Maybe that's an act too. Maybe she doesn't get tired. Lucius allows himself this small, petty, suspicious observation before he dismisses it. In a past life, he used to be rather good at negotiation, knowing when to apply pressure and when to leave it for another day, assuming that that's a luxury either of them will afford the other. Presumably, Vanessza has quite a few to spare, at least.

"Perhaps I ought leave you to your thoughts," he says, partially over a shoulder as he wanders away a little to concede some space. His tone, for once, is not overly transparent, and doesn't signify code for his own desire to leave... but assuming that this meeting is fit to continue much longer seems assumptive.

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the soul secured in her existence, smiles.

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