multiversallogs | 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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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.

the soul secured in her existence, smiles.

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