every morning i walk towards the edge; c l o s e d;

[asklepios]

Who: "Vanessza Bernát" and "Tom".
What: Anti-establishment pillow-talk.
Where: Her Syriac Well flat.
When: Veerdi night.
Warnings: References to sexual situations, reference to recent violent traumas.

When the city began to still, Benevenuta dyed her hair.

The blonde, with the waves she coaxes out of it, softens her appearance and makes her more Vanessza again, less of the thestral-riding Valkyrie woman. She does it herself in the upstairs bathroom, ease and speed of practise and long experience; she'll book herself in with that stylist, later, but she doesn't imagine the salons are up to much just yet and it feels like something she'd like to have done already. It's a small bit of physical sleight of hand that doesn't fool her companion tonight in the slightest, not quite laughing at her earlier when they were navigating feet and hands and doorways to get to her mercifully untouched bedroom, where I know what you are is a tease delivered in expressions instead of a threat.

(The wards held, still hold; her repaired windows, her clean living space and the groceries she'd picked up the day the sky cracked open. And when she looks in the mirror, now, she sees up or down? and potential and not the sensation of brain matter and unnecessary bone washed down her back, against her feet, down the drain.)

It's not the same apartment they were in the last time she texted you should come over - a bigger space, downstairs at least, and it seems as though she's reorganized the way she fills that space, too, shelving system something else again - but she's been blithe about the change so far, simply attaching her new address (just downstairs from the old one) when she'd peremptorily summoned him (which its own different sort of equally affectionate teasing). She'd said stay, so he does, and they sit cross-legged in her bed over the tea that he'd picked up on his way, drinking it slightly cool (it's better that way-- the taste almost solidifies, and she'll keep what's left over after, adding to the already impressive collection of 'teas Tom brings me') from half-sphere mugs and she's queen of this castle, which is essentially why she moved. She's glad not to have to do it again so soon (the wards kept her doors locked and Lucius wouldn't lower himself to digging around while she was still in the flat); it'd have felt more like being forced out and less like control.

She's a bit more domineering than she tends to appear, but she and Bruce understand each other.

Comments

[caballero]

She's just as domineering as Bruce thinks she is, and for that, he's comfortable - he should have felt more guilty leaving Seoraj (and for this), but after a month solid the sensation of escape outweighs it. Not that he was unhappy (the opposite), but like delicate things made of glass, these people who the universe has tricked him into caring for need to go back up in their locked cabinets where he can't break them. Vanessza, by virtue of one thing or the other, is a woman who won't be impacted by so much as a fingerprint. It's safer this way.

"There's a priest in the countryside," he says, and maybe it's from nowhere and maybe it's in response to something she said - you'll never know, says the narrative directive, "who likens this to an episode of a children's serial. A great distraction, and in the next chapter, we'll all be back to normal, having forgotten whatever it is we were worried about before."