multiversallogs | supposing i had courage

Who: Jaime Lannister and Irene Adler
What: The Woman and the Knight meet at the Arena.
Where: The Arena
When: Misdi
Warnings: Violence under cut, more TBA probably!

This is starting to become normal, Jaime reflects. This dance, and his partners. This one is rather big, but not impossible, a rocky hide and massive horns that curve inwards like a bull, face conforming to the shapes of one but certainly there's intelligence in its eyes, too. It has a sword as rough as a farmer's tool, and held like an axe, making Jaime's not insubstantial longsword look as delicate as a lady's ornamental dagger, but he does know better. Some of those betting might not.

But there were opponants like this at home, really. Human ones, granted, but big and slow and arrogant, the barely legitimate sons of minor lords, about as noble as a sack of bricks. They moved in vaguely the same way. And they tired easily.

Jaime is getting tired too, which has to do with his armor, the kind he always wears. Medieval steel plating, a skirt of scale mail, shining silver over leather. He's foregone the helmet as a distraction, deciding that if his head was aimed for, there is little that mask can do against this one's blows, and he'll take the ability to see and hear with better clarity to avoid such a thing. He gets called a few things in the Arena; 'the knight' is particularly unoriginal, as is 'Sir Jaime'. 'Tinman' was rather good, usually what he gets when he loses. He is not the only sword wielding, armor wearing human to enter these grounds, but he is one of the more persistent, and embraces the character given.

The fight is a lengthy one, but finally, there's an opening, and his sword comes up beneath the brute's armpit, finding less craggy flesh. There's a river of red blood that streaks along his sword and down the monster's side, and though it snarls in agony, it switches sword hands. But one last clash of steel sends it staggering to a knee, and Jaime squares the end of his sword against the thing's throat, the temptation to dispatch it making his fingers lock around the hilt.

But the fight is ended like that, and rather than he called a murderer, again, Jaime withdraws.

He clears the space for the next fight, and this was certainly his last one today. There is a dent in his breastplate that appears to pain him, considering the line his mouth is making, and off to the side, his sword is set aside, fingers reaching for the buckles of leather and metal.

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Irene isn't here to gamble. Maybe it would be a little more normal if she were- but she's just here to watch the show.

She looks out of place but doesn't act it, and every last high fashion touch serves to make the way she vies for a good view and holds her ground against the people who want her spot that little bit more unsettling. She comes here often, and quite a lot of people give her a wide berth after what happened to the man who took her bag the first time she came. Not that anyone has any way of linking that to her, and he's probably recovered by now, but people do love a rumour, which works out just fine in her opinion.

And she's very careful to carry the same bag, mysteriously recovered, whenever she comes here.

The glint of eager interest (bloodthirst?) in her eyes is almost frightening, and she doesn't miss a detail of the fight between Jaime and his opponent. It's a good match, though it's not the best she's seen, and she isn't particularly fascinated until she sees Jaime's fingers tighten on his sword when the bull-like xenian comes crashing to his knees, as if he hasn't already won.

Which is exciting, really. Especially because she can hear the mutters of annoyance around her as people lament their losses; the bull had been the favourite.

She considers the remaining schedule for the day- hers and the Arena's- and decides that there is nothing she can't miss for the sake of conversation. Anyway, Irene is, as ever, a spectator rather than a fighter when it comes to this sort of fight; she's much stronger than she looks and capable of using surprise to her advantage, as well as an assortment of weapons, but when it comes down to it physical fights are other peoples' domain. This means that having friends who can physically hurt people is of vital importance to her.

(See also: the truth of what happened to the man who took her bag).

She keeps her balance neatly despite the terrain under her heels, slipping through the crowds with polite, excuse me, coming throughs which people tend to obey before their minds catch up with their feet and they wonder why.

"You just lost quite a few people quite a lot of money," she says as she draws close, voice clear and carrying, laced with amusement. She rather sounds like she's congratulating him. And she hasn't lost that slightly unsettling glint in her eye, either.

Sometimes, she doesn't come for the fight at all; she comes to see people cry out in frustration when they put their last shekels on the wrong combatant- or shriek with joy when they choose better.

Jaime pauses what he's doing, noticing her voice before he sees her approach. A flick of a glance up and down, judgemental and assessing because she is something of an oddity, here, before he continues removing his breastplate, the steel and leather lifted off his shoulders and set aside. Setting aside the dent in the armour and the ugly bruising that will inevitably be blossoming under his shirt as a result, he is not entirely unscathed, a few scrapes and scratches adding character. There is blood, too, on his sleeve, where that scrape to his breastplate was deflected away and nicked beneath his upper arm, but it appears to bleed worse than it is.

Anything worse, truly, would have probably meant a hit he wouldn't have been able to recover from so easily, and thus--

He scans the crowd when she asserts this, a smile beginning to tease at the corners of his mouth, taking off his gloves. His sword is in its place at his belt, still dripping crimson. The smell of blood, dust, and sweat embodies the Arena, and he carries it himself. "I find that knowledge oddly satisfying," he says easily. His accent sounds cultured, in an older world sort of way. "By now they really ought to know better."

"Hadn't they?" she agrees, voice light and easy, leaning against one of the wooden railings and folding her arms, smirking at him in a way she has which suggests she knows everything about everyone.

Sometimes, it's not much of an exaggeration, but the truth isn't really what matters; acting as if you're omniscient is almost as good as actually knowing everything. It's all about bluffing.

"Well, I come as much for the gamblers as for the combatants," she says airily, keeping her eyes on him, a grin on her face which implies that they're in on this together. "Maybe it's best they make mistakes."

...combatants and gamblers alike. No one comes to the Arena looking for happy endings for everyone.

Fingers, free of leather gloves, searching after the wound to his arm, but it isn't major enough for expression to flicker across his face. With that, Jaime's attention and care for himself fades from focus, enough to look at this lady and wonder, automatically, what she wants; either from him or the Arena as a whole. High courts of lords and ladies were often attracted by events of blood and death, but this seems less the case for Baedal, but there is a sort of affectedness that translates, to Jaime, as aristocracy.

Not that this ever counts for much to Jaime. He's seen the best and the worst of the high born. Just an observation. Just like;

"Perverse," he replies with, after a moment of thought.

She gives a grin; it looks like the only genuine smile (as opposed to a smirk) she's granted him thus far.

"Perhaps," she agrees; "but look where we're standing."

After all, this is quite literally a temple to violence. If anything, coming here for that- the raw human emotion and spirit, the desire to kill or be killed, the winning and the losing- well, isn't that more pure, technically, than coming to gamble?

If you want to argue purity.

"Oh, I couldn't agree more."

The fighting ground is being prepared for the next. Spatters of blood are found and scattered with sand, bookies are stirring the ground. Jaime himself comes to watch, without gambling, but with the avid focus of someone analysing his own sport as opposed to experiencing the visceral rush it might bring him or the people around him. A glance, to see if there's anything worth watching happening yet.

There isn't, but he does snag a look at the bull-like xenian he'd bested, his on fingers stretching and relaxing again in a reflexive attempt to rid himself of tension, before looking back to her. "A brawl without a worthy audience is a shameful affair." A nod to the grumblers. "They're a part of the spectacle, whether they like it or not."

"Of course," she agrees, smile hanging onto the corners of her mouth. "It's not a performance without someone to watch." If perky were ever a word that could be applied to her, now would be the moment- when she's talking about her theories, things she's noted in her own life, looking delighted with herself all the while, though any modesty or innocence she espouses is tongue in cheek.

"Though- so sorry- you don't look like a performer, exactly." Which is to say that whatever he's doing here, it's more like sport than whatever he got up to at home- as far as Irene can tell from the way he carries himself and (most importantly) the tempted twitch of his sword at his opponent's neck.

Jaime pauses, there, considering the fight he just participated in, brows coming together. He knows he fights more viciously here than he did at home, for all that death was more likely an outcome of such clashes even at the Arena; but that's what happens when you're normal, and everyone else are monsters. "I'm paid to win," he agrees. "And those that come up against me may be part of the show, but they come away lacking. I prefer to have best of both worlds.

"Pray, what do I look like?"

supposing i had courage

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