I don't exist

[deservesadaisy]

Who: Ivan and Ilde Decima
What: in-person meeting and comparing notes
Where: out and about in the Brock Marsh area
When: Veerdi, early evening
Notes: If anyone feels a burning need to run into Ivan pre-Ilde, feel free, but brace for possible trolling.
Warnings: They are both terrible people.

Since the militia's raid, Ivan has mainly been cautiously exploring his new city. He's not quite sure yet precisely what he intends to do; he'll get bored eventually, he'll need to do something, but in the meanwhile, he's gathering information and blending in without much effort.

He's looking at some of the new inventions in a curiosity shop in Brock Marsh, and though Ilde has never seen his face, she could very well recognize his voice as he asks the shop keeper a question, clipped English with a deceptive hint of Wales and no hint of Russia at all.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

"I'm too sober to know that." Ilde grimaces, crossing her ankles and tucking them under the bench, ladylike in lingering mannerisms.

[deservesadaisy]

"I never read any, but I can only imagine." Speculatively, "Carl used to read a lot of the new vampire novels that came out. Mainly so he could mock them at parties." He and Carl had never been close, but it had been an amusing quirk of his.

[rhinemaid]

"You're odd, and so is Carl." Not that she has the slightest idea of who Carl is, but the point remains; that's as bizarre a habit as it is hilarious.

[deservesadaisy]

"Everyone is odd, it just becomes more notable with time, I suspect." He shrugged. "But Carl had his own eccentricities beyond that. One amuses oneself how one can, I suspect." Carl by perversely taking a human lover, Ivan by becoming a war tourist.

"You're odd yourself."

[rhinemaid]

"I'm a fairy. We're allowed." She made that up. ...it's fairly valid, but it's more of a case of 'right by accident' than 'right by knowledge'.

[deservesadaisy]

"Fairies are and vampires aren't? That seems fairly arbitrary. What about ghosts, are they allowed to be odd?" He's only slightly trolling.

[rhinemaid]

With a perfectly straight face, Ilde tips her head and says, flippantly, "I don't believe in ghosts."

...about six years ago, that was true.

[deservesadaisy]

He gives her a look equivalent to oh come now.

"They're generally annoying as hell, you aren't missing much."

[rhinemaid]

"I guess that's just about a professional opinion, too, isn't it." She suspects, for instance, that she'd find him much more irritating if she were herself much less perverse. (Whether that's an aspect of her nature or merely her temperament is something she sometimes genuinely ponders - it's frustrating how much she doesn't know, and sometimes leads her to odd trains of thought.) "There are ghosts in Sobek Croix, apparently. I haven't been."

[deservesadaisy]

"I suppose they're no more annoying than everyone else, but they get so fixated." He shrugs. "And then they're just so glad you can see them, they tend to worry more about saying something than what they're saying."

[rhinemaid]

"Empathy's not your strong suit, is it?" Well, vampire, though Ilde isn't certain of precisely how much of an excuse that is. It seems as though they might be as varied as everything else around here.

[deservesadaisy]

"No," he says, catching on a smile. "No, not particularly."

"Is it yours?"

[rhinemaid]

"Sometimes." But bleeding hearts don't take so well to murder as a lifestyle choice, and sometimes she just doesn't give a fuck. Sometimes, for that matter, she has to remind herself not to fall into the same trap as her enemy; the enemy is Prometheus and its ilk, not humanity.

[deservesadaisy]

"Mm." He pulls out a cigarette. She was certainly more interesting than his average acquaintance. "I think I like your sort of oddness, though. It's unusual."

[rhinemaid]

"I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or not." Or, to be more accurate, she isn't sure whether she should find it complimentary, regardless of what Ivan actually means.

[deservesadaisy]

"A bit of both, likely," he said, not quite smug, but pleased. She reminded him, in certain specific ways, of Helena, which meant he was inclined to enjoy her company to an extent.

[rhinemaid]

"That would go along with the rest," she concedes, tucking her feet up underneath herself on the bench.

[deservesadaisy]

He takes a drag on his cigarette, sitting in companionable silence for a moment or two.

"What did you do? Before the world ended."

[rhinemaid]

"I suppose that depends on whether you mean before, or before I knew," she says, considering the water in front of them instead of the vampire beside her as she seems to be deciding whether or not she has any interest in actually answering this question to him.

[deservesadaisy]

"Either. Both." He shrugs. "Whichever you decide to tell me."

[rhinemaid]

"I grew up in Florence, I was attending a Catholic boarding school in Britain. I never finished, I was kidnapped shortly before everything went to hell in a handbasket." Her tone and her choice of words are both precisely matter of fact; she lays it out and disassociates herself. "Containment facility for supernaturals in the US held and studied me for five years, until Sonja broke me out." Presumably a diagram isn't necessary to indicate how pleasant the experience wasn't.

After a few moments, she adds, contemplatively, "Baedal's sort of like a holiday."

These aren't secrets; it would be difficult to obscure the fact there's a five year gap in her life, or that she's still traumatized, or that there are triggers leftover from it, and frankly besides that- in her own world, these weren't things she was hiding from anyone. Plenty of people know simply by dint of the way she came to be a part of what they're doing, and she finds that given the option here in Baedal to keep it to herself, she doesn't feel a need. Discussing how she feels about it isn't going to happen, but that it happened at all - she isn't the one who should be ashamed. She isn't going to let herself be that.

[deservesadaisy]

He doesn't press for how she feels; he can guess enough, and frankly, his sadism doesn't run in that direction. He likes watching civilizations burn, because large conflicts are harder to predict than people, for him.

"Well, it sounds like you deserve one." It was always going to happen - science, religion, more witch hunts. It was just a matter of when and what the trigger would be.

[rhinemaid]

"We have things to do there, still," she says, with a shrug, "so not for long."

[deservesadaisy]

"Should I be afraid that your Sonja is going to try and kill me for speaking to you?" He doesn't seem worried, per se, but he figures it's good to know.

[rhinemaid]

"She's not my jealous boyfriend," Ilde points out, with fleeting amusement. "You haven't done anything we might need to kill you for yet. I'm sure you'll know if you do." How distressingly straightforward.