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[baedalites]

Who: EVERYONE.
What: Swap meet.
Where: The Apache and surrounding environs.
When: Sukkardi the 14th of Haneden
Notes:

• Swap Meet Spreadsheet: Pre-chosen swaps are green. Assigned are blue. There were a few characters that were selected more than once, so objects were assigned on a first-come first-serve basis. If you have any issues or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the mod team.
• For objects that might not be immediately apparent as belonging to their owners, there may be a picture or name attached, or players are welcome to have their characters ~just know~ it's for them. Drr drr drr, bb.
• Party post nights are a great time to come join the chatroom.
• The topic threads are just suggestions; if you've got somewhere else that your characters simply must be, make your own thread.

Warnings: None yet. Please put warnings up on individual threads.

The Apache is much the same as it always is: dimly lit, with the jukebox playing in the background, and the bartender serving whatever's on tap.

Comments

Paging Ilde

[catiana]

Tatiana is weaving through the Apache, a camcorder hanging at her side in a small canvas bag, searching the bar for the girl she'd seen on the tape. She'd felt odd watching it - intrusive - but she figured it was the best way to find the genuine owner.

She couldn't help feeling a bit envious. She and Laurie didn't have any videos like that. Her dad had been gone by then, and her mom definitely wasn't interested.

Tatiana figures they must be nice memories to have, especially here, so she's going to give them to Ilde if it takes her all night.

[rhinemaid]

Contrary to the sort of expectations that might come from having watched that video - there is a lot of alcohol in that family movie and at sixteen Ilde had long been considered 'old enough to drink with Daddy', with only the caveat that he mixed her drinks for her so as to keep an eye on how much she was drinking (parenting! learning how to mix cocktails from your father is a bonding experience, thank you) - Ilde is actively avoiding the actual bar area, having acquired herself something nonalcoholic and carrying it more than actually drinking it.

As much as she likes the Apache, she prefers it when it's quieter and not so full of people (even people in her cohort-- especially people in her cohort); when she can be more selective about her crowd experiences. Bigger places than this suit here, or places where it's easier to be background noise (you're never the center of attention at Anarchy 99, even if she'd stopped going there months ago), or just...places where she feels less like she's been corralled into socializing whether she likes it or not, lured down by the promise of something from home.

In the hands of some stranger, which she likes even less.

--but she is here, and can be spotted on the other side of the bar in the lounge area, fidgeting with a bracelet.

[catiana]

Tatiana keeps the bag tight against her side as she wanders away from the bar, into the crowd. It's instinct, more than anything; she learned early that if you want to keep something, you hold on tight.

She hasn't explored the lounge area yet, so that's where she heads. Her lips quirk at the fat leather chairs; she always used to want one of those.

Her gaze travels from one patron from another, searching, searching - oh. Her brow furrows as her steps slow. That - well, she definitely looks like the kid in the video.

So what now? What does she say? She can't stand her staring at her, that's just creepy.

So she puts on her best smile and strides forward. "Hey, um, Ilde?"

[rhinemaid]

...approximately as creepy as the way Ilde looks at her, impassive and wide-eyed with a curiously fixed gaze; it's just sort of the way she does, between the way she focuses to lipread and the way she just...is. It's not intentionally rude or unsettling, but it does sometimes have that side-effect when she's not consciously making an effort to off-set the impression she gives.

Which she's not, currently, but she flexes her fingers slightly and softens her expression, aware of how close 'impassivity' and 'bitchface' can be at times.

“Yes.”

[catiana]

Well, that's a bit disconcerting, but her smile doesn't waver; she's met that sort of gaze before. Sometimes it meant bad things, sometimes it didn't.

She's still a bit relieved when Ilde's expression softens.

"I'm Tatiana. I...have something that belongs to you." She slips the bag of her shoulder, gently reaching in and pulling out the camcorder.

[rhinemaid]

She doesn't recognize it, at first. It doesn't mean anything, it's just somebody's camcorder-- she hasn't even seen one of those in so long, in half a dozen years at least. Not since she was at home, really at home, in Florence with her father, shoving him away from her as he tried to narrate her life into--

She's taking it from Tatiana and opening the playback before she's finished the thought, before she's realized that she's going to. The softening in her expression doesn't last as the video begins to play - but it doesn't twist, either, it's just that odd distant stillness, self-contained, whatever response she's having to this hidden behind opaque quiet. In miniature on the screen, Emery's laughing, the conversation a mix of Italian and English, Hasibe Ozcelik on screen in a bikini with a glass in one hand and a ruler in the other, slapping it against a blackboard as she holds forth on what makes him great.

Ilde doesn't react at all. It's just easier.

[catiana]

Tatiana steps back, to allow Ilde some small measure of privacy. She would leave, but she finds herself gently shooing away anyone approaching - people who are curious, people who just happen to wander near.

She tries not to listen to the video, but she can hear the laughter from here and it makes her heart clench a little. Stupid. This isn't about her.

tw; references to suicide and suicide attempts.

[rhinemaid]

Some distant part of Ilde is grateful to Tatiana for running that interference - later, maybe tomorrow, this video will be something good to have. It'll make her laugh, seeing Hasi and her father, hearing her uncle's voice when he tells Emery where that camera will go if he doesn't watch it; it'll be something she can share with people she cares about, this connection to her own history. Her own face, young and less complicated, and the way her father used to pull her under his arm--

She remembers that she thought of him as she was dying. In the last moments, when there was nothing but Ilde and blood and the choices that she'd made, she remembers a hitched breath because there was no time left for sobbing and the thought that she never should have written him that letter if she was only going to die a handful of months later. She remembers thinking I did it, Daddy and her last breath was an inappropriate laugh, choked, because she'd succeeded where he'd failed and all she felt was guilt for giving him hope. In that moment, it never entered her mind that he might not be alive somewhere, her letter in his fist, because he is her father and she needs him to be--

It will be good, having this. Later. She closes it; turns it off.

“Thank you.”

[catiana]

Tatiana turns her head, eyes widening slightly.

"Oh, um - you're welcome." She could say of course, that it's nothing, but she's never waived gratitude; if that's all you can give in return that can sting like hell, no matter how it's meant.

She hesitates, and then, "I watched some of it. So I'd know who to give it to. Sorry."