Ilde is no where near the Arena when it begins - she's at home watching a man from the store putting her nursery furniture together, she's made him a cup of tea, they're making the kind of pointless small-talk that gets made when awkwardly hanging around while someone else works. Orion sits in the doorway, alert, and while it's quiet even outside, it's not oppressively so.
He's still there when they both start getting CiD alerts, and then things change; the job isn't finished when he leaves, his face drained of colour, but she doesn't (can't) protest. She sits down on the floor in what's going to be the nursery (it hasn't been painted yet), vaguely aware of Orion trotting into the room and settling himself beside and behind her, and she watches, white-knuckled and huge-eyed. The sense of helplessness settles in like a chokehold around her throat and she can't breathe, can't move, can't go down there and fucking do something. She's still sitting there watching - listening, remembering, flinching when she recognizes a face and reminding herself that Sonja is there, that Sonja saved her, that Sonja can do so much more than she can anyway and putting her faith in that, rewarded for it in a way her namesake never was when she prayed to a dead God - when there's knocking downstairs, purposeful but not threatening.
She'd told Lea about the house, Remy and Wanda's house; how it's been empty, how they left it to her ownership, how she doesn't know what to do with it. Lea has an idea about that - she's going down after dark, with a group of them. They'll need a safe place to go. No one lives in the house yet - Ilde hasn't even got around to finding a property manager, like she knows she should.
Of course she says yes; she only has one set of keys, so she'll go herself, and be there to let them in. There's still power and water and it's still safer than some places, so- it's a good idea. She takes the long way and goes via a series of carriages, just in case, giving the last one Ivan's address - she doesn't expect to find him there, and she doesn't, but she stops anyway and if anyone wonders where she was, someone saw her go in and nobody saw her come out. The face she borrows for a short carriage ride and then a brisk walk the rest of the way through Mafaton and Abrogate Green belongs to her godmother, a Russian English woman who is always laughing, who loves champagne and married men, who jumps at every good and bad idea because she never learned how to be afraid of falling. It might be an unnecessary precaution, but she needs the borrowed braveness, anyway, and she doesn't sink back into her own appearance for a little while once she gets there.
remy & wanda's place; ilde's safehouse.
He's still there when they both start getting CiD alerts, and then things change; the job isn't finished when he leaves, his face drained of colour, but she doesn't (can't) protest. She sits down on the floor in what's going to be the nursery (it hasn't been painted yet), vaguely aware of Orion trotting into the room and settling himself beside and behind her, and she watches, white-knuckled and huge-eyed. The sense of helplessness settles in like a chokehold around her throat and she can't breathe, can't move, can't go down there and fucking do something. She's still sitting there watching - listening, remembering, flinching when she recognizes a face and reminding herself that Sonja is there, that Sonja saved her, that Sonja can do so much more than she can anyway and putting her faith in that, rewarded for it in a way her namesake never was when she prayed to a dead God - when there's knocking downstairs, purposeful but not threatening.
She'd told Lea about the house, Remy and Wanda's house; how it's been empty, how they left it to her ownership, how she doesn't know what to do with it. Lea has an idea about that - she's going down after dark, with a group of them. They'll need a safe place to go. No one lives in the house yet - Ilde hasn't even got around to finding a property manager, like she knows she should.
Of course she says yes; she only has one set of keys, so she'll go herself, and be there to let them in. There's still power and water and it's still safer than some places, so- it's a good idea. She takes the long way and goes via a series of carriages, just in case, giving the last one Ivan's address - she doesn't expect to find him there, and she doesn't, but she stops anyway and if anyone wonders where she was, someone saw her go in and nobody saw her come out. The face she borrows for a short carriage ride and then a brisk walk the rest of the way through Mafaton and Abrogate Green belongs to her godmother, a Russian English woman who is always laughing, who loves champagne and married men, who jumps at every good and bad idea because she never learned how to be afraid of falling. It might be an unnecessary precaution, but she needs the borrowed braveness, anyway, and she doesn't sink back into her own appearance for a little while once she gets there.
She makes a pot of tea. She waits.