multiversallogs | breathe air you're not used to

Entry tags:

breathe air you're not used to

Who: Claire Bennet & Severus Snape
What: Familiar faces in new places
Where: Here and there
When: Shundi afternoon/evening
Notes: N/A
Warnings: TBA

Claire hasn't been here long: long enough to establish that she's not where she expected to be when she woke up a few days ago; long enough to rationalize that keeping her head down and her voice just another hum of the crowd's was the best course of action; long enough to have put the more important aspects of her observations of Noah into practice as well as she could with the money she had been provided with upon being let out of that room. The clothes she has been given are muted and very not her, but that's fine with Claire, as is the length of her hair, barely brushing her shoulders as she leaves the Inn, determined to venture a bit further than she had the day before.

Her room at the inn is small, compared to what she's used to, but it's given her a place to sit and quietly gather her thoughts, get her bearings, put away the emotions she can't use to fall back on now that she's someplace new and alone here to boot. If this place is anything like the City, reaching out and contacting the others she's seen on this place's version of the Network would be beneficial, but she can't shake the doubt that has been systematically built into her over time. She needs to suss out the details first, establish certain boundaries, and get as acclimated as she can to eliminate all the blind spots.

It's never worked very well for her before, but she's never been one to admit defeat, and so she takes a street that has become somewhat recognizable and walks for a while, catching her reflection now and then and refusing to be as startled by it as she was the first time she looked at herself in this place. It's looking at herself this way that she catches sight of a set of shoulders and head of hair, a way of moving, that could be familiar.

Claire turns, twisting her head so that she can look over her shoulder, following those shoulders with narrowed green eyes, her own posture tight as her hands curl into fists where she's got them stored in her pockets. The decision to follow him comes only a few moments after she's spotted who she thinks must be - can't be - Severus Snape, and it's only when she's risked losing sight of him that she takes off, hurrying at first but slowing to a casual stroll once she's not in danger of missing him around a corner.

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In ten years - maybe even five, less - Severus Snape will never be followed, not for an instant, without his immediate notice. But that familiar grace is still in its infant stages, and arrogant in his (admittedly flawless in its purpose) spell that hides him from witches and wizards, he pays no mind to any lingering eyes upon him. He's used to being stared at, or so he thinks in the abyss of his self-hatred; he cringes back sometimes too every so often, when a mirror catches the corner of his eye just so. (He'll never grow out of any of that hate. Not ever.)

It takes a certain sort of person to barter for items contraband even in a place like this, that would melt the hands of anyone else, but Severus has a keen, fear-inspiring gaze and a deceptively soft-spoken acid tongue to back it up. He does not slip around a corner, but hovers outside of a stall in the market, nitpicking quietly and scrutinizing something unpleasant behind kept in a small covered jar.

What she knows and remembers of him doesn't line up completely with this new image, the more of it she's able to see. It's a bit like seeing photographs of her parents and friends from when they were younger, caught in new poses and with brighter and less guarded and rehearsed smiles. Or it would be a bit like that if any image of Severus she had ever imagined or stumbled upon contained smiles.

Claire still hasn't caught enough of his face to be sure that it's Severus she's actually found, and the way she's able to follow him at all nags at the healthy amount of doubt trying to cloud her judgment. The Severus she knows wouldn't be tailed so easily, and the only other explanation, if it is him, some version of him, for her being able to skate by with such relative ease is one that puts her a little more on edge, makes her a little more careful of where her feet fall.

He could know that she's there and be waiting for an opportunity to turn and prove it.

Here, all bets are off. Her relationship with him, with anyone, makes no difference if her face is new, and it's a lonely thought to have. There isn't enough room for it to take over, though, not when she's doing her best to blend in and sneak a good, long look in at the same time. 'What would Noah do?' approaches to the situation are overridden in her eagerness, and Claire wishes she could say that she ends up surprised to find herself at a stall a few booths down from his, but it's impossible. She stands behind a small semi-circle of interested buyers, observing while trying not to be observed, barely noticing that she's ignoring the merchant until she's faced with a question and forced to respond with a perplexed, "What?"

He could get these items cheaper, he knows, but it would be more time consuming and he doesn't feel like it; only a few weeks of this place and he knows his own corners and shadows like he knows his office back in the castle he's barred from. He is, at present, on a schedule dictated by his own dislike of being out and about, and cares little for economy when it concerns his employer's budget and not his own. His work is what matters, not his receipts.

Work is calming. It's something he needs, both to occupy himself and to pay his way in this city; unbound by shaded dark-light laws and with access to material from the whole of reality, he finds himself fascinated and, unsurprisingly to him personally, somewhat in demand. (Or rather, his employer is in demand; Severus himself does not broadcast his name, and only works through a third party.)

Arrogance and complacency will never beat out paranoia, however, and though it takes longer than he'd like to admit, he does, ultimately, notice that he's being tailed. In fact he notices it shortly before his fair-haired shadow is questioned by her exasperated host, and when Claire looks back, she will be greeted by a silent, but very pointed, stare from the wizard a few meters away.

Yes?

Claire is stuck with her mouth hanging open, not in surprise or astonishment or even with the distinct intention to argue with that pointed look in any way she can. Rather, she's caught between wanting to respond to the vendor with something that won't make her sound like he's caught her unawares and searching for the right way to counter the look that is currently pinning her in place.

The result has her snapping her mouth shut a moment too late, too long after she's turned to face Severus, but she does make up for it by pressing her lips into a firm line and attempting to match him pointed look for pointed look. It might work better if there wasn't some odd flood of relief filling her chest and fingertips.

His face is, despite being younger - and the moment is too fresh for her to think about much outside of the fact that she's actually looking at Severus - one that she knows, and while Claire doesn't smile, there is an involuntary softening at the corners of her eyes and mouth once this sinks in. It could easily be mistaken for an admission of guilt, being caught red-handed, and she'll wait to get his reaction to her face, to her, before pressing on the way that she wants to.

Severus.

It's never gotten stale from disuse, not in the years he's been gone, but now the syllables seem heavy and thick and too hard to work her voice around. Instead, she turns her back fully on the booth, absorbing as much of his appearance as she can without looking anywhere but at his face, and says, "Are you following me?"

His eyebrows go up, and the dry look is certainly just as familiar as his bizarrely youthful face. Yes, girl, he sees what you did there, and he is not impressed. (Another familiar thing: Severus Snape? Impressed? Surely, it would be snowing in hell.) For a heartbeat he's silent, and then he turns back to the shopkeeper he was dealing with, paying and collecting his strange items before moving over to where the young woman is, closer but not quite close enough to touch even at arm's length.

"I've seen you before," he says, a forced edge of dullness to his voice soft voice. It's not comforting, and he's refusing to let himself become unsteady; his spell hasn't broken and he knows it, feels it, and so she cannot be a witch. But whom would look at him so, if not a witch?

"The girl the bar. Years ago." He tilts his head, taking in that softness like it's an explanation he can read printed in plain English. "You had a camera. You know me, don't you." He moves imperceptibly closer, at that, and it isn't a question. "Claire Bennet."

She knows something. Something about him.

His reaction hardly throws her, and Claire can't tell if it's frustrating because of that or because it's the response she gets at all. She isn't sure what she was expecting, other than to be met with a stranger's face when he finally turned around. Maybe it's that leaving her unequipped to process this correctly. Maybe it's the three years spent on a different plane of reality that has conditioned her, numbed her to situations like this in some way so that she doesn't run or jump, yell or cry. His reaction being what it is, she can't decide if offering him a smile would even be a good course of action.

So she waits, pressing her lips together and running her tongue against the seam there: a less obvious nervous habit than fiddling with the ends of her hair. It's only when he addresses her directly that she breaks the seal of her mouth with a soft sound, brow furrowing without hesitation as she realizes that she has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

"I didn't work in a bar when we knew each other," she replies, and doesn't back away. If anything, she'd like to step closer and examine him better, but approaching him like some sort of science project might not go over well. "And you weren't... I never met you in a bar. Severus." It's not alien at all. Still, she feels the need to add, just a second too late not to sound awkward and forced: "Snape."

She spares a glance at those strange items he's purchased, wondering if she could name some of them thanks to those months spent stocking inventory in his shop. She looks up, guarded. "I don't usually start strange conversations in marketplaces with potential strangers. I know you. I don't know if I know you. And I don't know if that makes sense."

Inexplicably, considering the entire thing is convoluted and nonsensical and downright insane, Claire's disconnected not-explanation settles most of his nervousness. This is something he can deal with; alternate realities, alternate people. He's seen it before, he's dealt with it, even studied it. It's one of the reasons he works so hard to avoid the others from worlds like his (and he knows they're there, he can feel them in his very skin, burning) - there's just no telling.

And there's no telling now, either.

"Unfortunately it does." Still that strange far-away voice, the one he uses when he's teaching but not yet disciplining, the one he uses when he details detentions or exams; impersonal but watchful, but now there's something there underneath, like it really is unfortunate. "If you know me, you know that it's unwise to approach me in public, using that name." This, this is quintessentially him - the drama, the cloak and dagger seriousness, and it would be funny or irritating if it wasn't dead-on accurate with the sheer horror of the war.

"You could be a little less obvious that you're actually you," she points out, and there is no real need to draw attention to his choice in fashion or his overall presence in itself, no real need to peer at his purchases as if studying the exterior of the bag will grant her permission to see the contents inside. All of that is there in the set of her chin and the brief quirk of an eyebrow. No one's counting the doubts that she had only moments ago, or they're not counting them out loud, and Claire isn't about to bring them up as a conversation point, not when she feels the need to establish that she has some sort of control in all of this.

Maybe the most disconcerting thing about the entire situation is that none of it is insane to her either. She might need to feel some amount of control in order to feel secure, but not over his existence on its own. Three years spent in the City taught her better than that, taught her to expect and anticipate those same alternate realities he's seen, dealt with, and studied. So it doesn't come as a surprise to her when her instinct to keep her distance from him is disrupted somewhat by her desire to reach out and make sure that he's actually real. His face is the only thing that she knows here, and for as independent as she's become, anyone would cling to something they knew if they could. Even if what they were able to cling to was Severus's somewhat out of place personality quirks.

But she doesn't. She stays back, keeps that distance, and does her best not to stare at him. "If I can't call you that, then what should I use?" He hasn't turned and left her in the dust yet. Claire figures that's a good sign.

He has a moment - a visible one, even - in which he almost snaps at Claire that it's only obvious to her, but it's so brazen concerning the nature of his spell that he's immediately irritated that he nearly slipped. He keeps his silence, and an annoyed expression to go with it. Who is this person, who looks at him with such plain familiarity? He wishes he could just turn and leave her, but that is of course, completely ludicrous. This is a variable that holds knowledge about him, and it cannot be left unattended. (He hates it when variables are people.)

"I suppose 'nothing' will not cause anything but petulance," he remarks, sounding a bit snippy. He is not having this conversation - or any conversation - out in front of bloody Merlin and everybody, and the idea of eavesdroppers or even innocently curious observers makes his skin crawl. The absurdity of the pair they make is not lost on him; beyond the sight of a man buying something mysterious and expensive being confronted shortly after by a bright-eyed girl who'd been following him about the place, she is beautiful, and the sort to draw even the most idle of stares. Their contrast is noteworthy.

With a resigned but not entirely tolerant look, Severus glides past her, but not at a pace that suggests retreat. Apparently he expects her to follow him properly, now.

Edited 2011-08-15 05:59 (UTC)

She's ready to snap that she's not petulant, but that kind of a response would be petulant, and despite not knowing what she has to prove to someone she apparently knows in name only, the last thing Claire wants to do is prove him right. Rather than reply, she presses her lips firmly together, sealing her voice in her throat so that it's not tempted to break through her teeth and come barreling out of her mouth. The only purpose this serves is to make her look like a ruffled and irritated chick, puffed up on false bravado.

Instead of immediately following him, she stays rooted firmly to the spot she's been standing in for the past several minutes, until she realizes that if she holds her position in an attempt to be defiant - or petulant, since she's proving him right the more she tries not to - she might lose him and never manage to find him again. It's not a paralyzing or particularly disarming thought, but it's not an idea that she likes, alone in the crowd as she is, and as she suspects he'll treat her as if she owes him an explanation, Claire reasons that she'll be able to get something out of him in return, whether it's regarding this place and how to survive it or answers about the version of her that he knows.

She lengthens her strides as much as she can in order to cut down the distance between them, and if Severus was hoping to keep a low-ish profile by staying a few steps ahead of her, Claire all but shatters that illusion as she falls almost into step beside him. There is a glaring height difference - as there usually is with Claire and anyone else in the world - and she's a bright speck against his backdrop. They've always contrasted, but it's never stood out to her as much as it does now.

"Where are we going?" she asks, but not with the sort of wary hesitation that she probably should give him.

There are no outward signs to suggest that he expects her to trail along beside him like a child, or that he's bothered - specifically, anyway, Severus always looks bothered in general. His face is a cold mask once again, hurrying with a grace that he's fortunately already more or less grown into. In his mind, he's detailing the ways he could kill this girl, if it comes down to it, or rip the information he needs from her mind. (He has no idea. Truly.)

"Where were you going before you dropped in on me?" he asks, mostly rhetorical, though there's an edge to his voice. To what extent would she have followed him, unknowing? What difference does it make now that he's leading her willfully and not unaware?

Edited 2011-08-16 00:18 (UTC)

Claire tends to think of herself as invincible, which becomes problematic when put up against magic. She's never really experimented much with spells and hexes, despite knowing the people that she has, and walking along with him now, it's something that she wished she had investigated more when she was in the City. Could he kill her? The possibility stops being so interesting when she considers that she still doesn't believe he actually would.

When did she become so trusting?

She casually lets herself drift a few careful steps away.

"You tell me," she responds, without accusation or actual curiosity. Claire doesn't look at him but watches her shoes move over the unfamiliar bumps and cracks in the pavement. "I've only been here a couple of days, just wandering around, trying to... get some sense of direction, so to speak." A shrug, tense and controlled. "I don't really know where anything is here. I thought I'd explore, maybe try to find something I knew or recognized." Someone she knew or recognized, though definitely not him. "So far pretty much everything is nothing I know or recognize."

"Exploring in the unknown," he muses, and leads her into an area of the district that's not... entirely upstanding, but still busy. "Following a madman on his errands, who is familiar to you. Pray tell, why am I familiar to you?" Severus glances over his shoulder at her as he begins to climb a stone staircase that leads them out of the main road and into a labyrinth of cobblestone walkways and shop fronts, clearly designed with only foot traffic in mind. Somewhere down an alley, something is burning.

Warning bells go off, her nostrils stinging with the acrid stench of whatever it is that's been lit on fire just down the way. For a moment, Claire stops again, her feet shuffling heavily against the cobblestones so that the scrape of her shoes echo off the walls. Where are we going? tries to press out from behind her lips once more, but she stifles it, more interested in the fact that he is finally, apparently, outwardly interested.

"What else was I supposed to do? Anyone that I get to know here could be a madman, and I could end up following them on their errands." She takes a step, knowing he'll keep going even if she doesn't. It's after a long stretch of silence that she speaks again, working her voice out around the taste that smell puts in her throat.

"Before I - I came here from... I wasn't at home when I was brought here." Pause. "Well, I was in a place I'd started thinking of as home when I was brought here. I was with my - I woke up here, which isn't exactly a new thing. The last place that I was stuck in used to do the same thing to the people that it pulled in. It was this place, called the City?" Claire phrases it as a question if only to see if it might spark some memory within him. "I was there for three years, got to know a lot of people I never thought could actually exist."

That's somewhat vague, so Claire tries a more direct approach: "I knew you there. An older you. You ran a potions supply store and I worked at the register and took inventory."

She doesn't say, We were friends, though it's there in the slightly plaintive quality of her voice.

He's listening as he moves, hearing her but no visibly reacting; nothing sounds familiar. Severus knows of other dimensional traps by reputation alone, always having been able to rely on technology or magic or even chance to let him dart to and fro out of the Nexus. He was always careful and precise, once he'd done all his exploring. A man on a mission.

It's apparent after a little while that they're in a system of alleys connecting the backs of shops, which gives the area its industrial feel. Another hike up some crumbling stairs, and Severus finally stops at a domed-topped complex and its heavy metal door. One hand on the frame, he glances in Claire's direction, but doesn't meet her eyes.

"Was I dead?"

Claire might have some experience in dealing with the sort of shift being in an alternate reality provides, but the more she explains and the longer she follows him, the more it sinks in that nothing here is the same at all. No familiar faces, no familiar places, and she's on her own, following someone who is more or less a stranger down an alley that looks like something out of fantasy horror. She knows she's never had the best ideas, but this one is starting to appear as if it's going to top all the others.

Their destination draws her up short, and she halts several paces away from where he's standing with his hand on the frame before he actually addresses her again. She crosses her arms, almost as if she's cold, but it's the middle of summer here and even the winding and twisting network of alleyways can't pinch out the heat that well.

His question doesn't catch her off-guard, but she does spend a moment wondering how to answer, which may be an answer in and of itself. "Does it matter? You're alive here, aren't you?" She's not close enough to check for tell-tale signs, but she figures it's a logical assumption to make.

It's a weak answer. It broadcasts emotion; in that moment, he knows more than any interrogation could prove that she's not going to betray him or sell him out. Instead of being comforting or relieved, all Severus feels is bitterness. Of course he was dead. She might as well have an electric sign blinking in the affirmative. Too attached to just tell him yes, too aware to lie outright.

The smile he gives her is cold, and it doesn't reach his eyes. "Quite."

He vanishes into the complex, the great iron door clanging shut after him like it's being pulled by some unseen force, sweeping the wizard away into darkness. (She can try and open it, of course, but it's not going to budge. And who knows what shop front this thing could lead to. Good luck?)

Edited 2011-08-21 02:24 (UTC)

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breathe air you're not used to

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