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

[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.

[deservesadaisy]

"Well, as long as there are no surprises." He is smiling, but more or less frank about it.

[rhinemaid]

"If you get yourself killed-" there is no 'try' in Ilde's version, which is less Yoda and more the awareness that Sonja could kill Ivan just by standing still and letting him taste if she felt like doing it the easy way, "-it's not going to be anybody's fault but your own."

[deservesadaisy]

"Likely true. After all, I've done it before, I'm aware." The 'twice' part he isn't sharing just yet, but the once is self-evident.

[rhinemaid]

"There you go, then." She makes a flippant little gesture with a flick of her fingers. "Don't do anything stupid and it won't be a problem."

[deservesadaisy]

"I will do my best not to push the limits of your idea of stupid," he assured her.

[rhinemaid]

"The world would be a much quieter place if more people would do that," Ilde remarks, mainly because if more people refrained from her idea of stupid, fewer people would be permitted to hold opinions.

[deservesadaisy]

"Is quieter better?" he returns, not quite a challenge.

[rhinemaid]

"Quieter is quieter." That's admittedly difficult to dispute. "What do you want the world to be?"

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan considers, for a moment, honestly. "Interesting," he settles on, ultimately.

[rhinemaid]

Interesting isn't the worst thing the world could be.

"Is it?"

[deservesadaisy]

"Sometimes." He shrugs. "Less and less, but sometimes."

[rhinemaid]

"Not interesting enough to deign to involve yourself in it." Should she be speaking in the plural? Baedal is proof in and of itself that there isn't but one world out there to be interesting or not, but on the other hand, one can only be in one world at a time, and so probably only one actually matters. It's just that which one is currently a little bit interchangeable.

[deservesadaisy]

"I didn't involve myself much ever - that's just temperament, I suspect." Unless you count all the killing people, but he clearly doesn't.

"You sound well-involved back where you're from, though."

[rhinemaid]

"Yes," she grants, after a slight pause. "I guess I am."

Whither goest Sonja, etc.

[deservesadaisy]

He shrugs. "One does as one feels one must, I suppose. Do you find it satisfying? Involvement. Or was it never really a choice for you?" He had no doubt it was, but it might not have seemed one to her.

[rhinemaid]

"It was a choice." And that is what she takes satisfaction in; in that moment when she made that decision, it had been the first time she'd felt so clearly and certainly that this was her choice and she was making it for herself. She's never questioned it since, and it never occurs to her to think about what part her instinctive devotion to the woman who rescued her plays in that.

Having choices to make had been oddly startling, and it's important to her to keep a grip on that. To have and claim agency and to be participating in her own life. For better or worse, she's digging her nails into her own existence.

"It was the right choice."

[deservesadaisy]

"It's nice, when that's clear." He's not patronizing her - his large choices, mostly, have been ones that he hasn't regretted. Or at least that he hasn't regretted entirely.