Growing In the Dark

[deservesadaisy]

Who: Ivan and Ilde
What: Checking in.
Where: Ivan's apartment.
When: Sometime around Sukkardi, give or take.
Notes: None so far.
Warnings: Ditto.

Ivan hasn't been answering his CiD for a few days. In part because, even with Njoki's remedy, his face still feels terrible. In part, however, he's been thinking a great deal. He'd laughed off the growing anti-vampire sentiment for a time, but now it was clear to him that more was going on than simply fear and prejudice. By the time he was well enough to leave his apartment regularly again, he wanted to have a plan in mind, and he had little time for keeping up to date with the Network beyond news postings.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

"I never saw the point of leaving something in its packaging." This is an interesting choice of metaphor, but she's curious more than anything to see where he intends to take it. "Do you have any cigarettes, by the way?"

[deservesadaisy]

"A few." They weren't growing on trees, in Baedal. "You've a craving, I take it?"

[rhinemaid]

She makes a 'little bit' gesture with finger and thumb, stretching out lengthways where she's been tucked up. "And I'm out." Is that a good excuse to have come over unannounced? It sounds plausible to her, but then, Ilde is a creature of impulse at the end of the day.

(It sounds much better than 'I was worried about my murderous vampire ... friend'.)

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan doesn't quite buy it, but he gets up to fetch them each a cigarette. He lights them both, like Paul Henreid in Now, Voyager, before handing one to her.

"Just think, if people were filled with cigarettes, anti-smoking efforts would have a whole new meaning."

[rhinemaid]

Rolling over onto her back, her head tipped back against the edge of the sofa, Ilde gives him a slightly blank look through the rising smoke of the cigarette she accepts. "That doesn't even make sense, Ivan." It does conjure some bewildering images, though, occupying her mind almost in spite of her.

"Where were you thinking of starting? In your conspiracy theories."

[deservesadaisy]

He shrugs, and sits beside on her on the couch. "Predators are an easy target - easy to make people fear. But once they've got everyone looking right, I want to know what's happening to the left."

[rhinemaid]

Ilde shifts when he moves, resting her head in his lap and settling her slightly-arched neck against his thigh, tapping ash off her cigarette into the nearby tray. "So who benefits when people are afraid of predators?"

[deservesadaisy]

"I'd guess the church, generally, but they don't seem religiously affiliated. The militia, perhaps. Whoever is actually in charge. Fear generally, but not always, helps the status quo."

[rhinemaid]

"I was in one of those hives, before the plague," she says, after a moment of thought. "The papers we found there had a lot of anti-xenian rhetoric. We cleared it out before..." The gesture here generally indicates something along the lines of 'blew it to kingdom come'. (That was Remy, mostly, but she likes to think her frank desire for destruction contributed helpfully in some small way.)

[deservesadaisy]

"Interesting. And if you wanted to start an anti-xenian campagin, predators would be a logical place to start. Easy to convince people they deserve to be rooted out." Not...entirely without reason, in some cases.

[rhinemaid]

"I wonder why," dryly. Whatever illusions she still has - and there are a few, some unconscious and some self-protective - her fondness for fangy collectibles has nothing to do with imagining that they're other than what they are. It's one reason why this whole thing sits so badly; being placed in the position of trying to defend the indefensible is aggravating on a number of levels, and she's getting too in the habit of interfering to entirely sit on her hands. "There's sentiment in the city to build on. It'd be a hop and a skip."

[deservesadaisy]

"Precisely." Ivan is what he is, but he doesn't pretend people don't have reason to be leery. That said, not everyone is him; many people were sticking to bagged only beforehand, he knew.

"On the other hand, those behind it are giving us less and less incentive to check ourselves, in the long run."

[rhinemaid]

"In the long run, if you don't check yourselves, you'll still end up dead or starving." Crurovore dominance over a city like Baedal isn't exactly a practical long-term goal, even if they could achieve it.

[deservesadaisy]

"In the long run, if these people have their way, it won't matter whether we check ourselves or not: we'll still be dead and starving. And I trust you're clever enough to imagine how messy things could get in the meantime." Starve a bunch of predators and give them nothing to lose? Insane, but an effective diversion too.

[rhinemaid]

"I wouldn't need to be clever." Not that she isn't, but if Baedal descended into a chaotic supernatural warzone, it'd be a bit more homey.

She sighs out smoke, shaking her head. "I still have the Candlelighter documents, if you want to see if it's connected."

[deservesadaisy]

"If you wouldn't mind my taking a look, I'd be interested," Ivan concedes. "I'm not sure yet what to consider, but I'm going to eventually hit the limit of what I can observe without venturing outside."

And he was going to need blood.

[rhinemaid]

"I can make some more duplicates." After all, it's not as though she's got any particular reason to want information about those people - those people so curiously undiscussed in the media following the plague - kept discreet, even if she's inclined to be careful with the fact that she and Remy stole it and blew up a building. That's good sense.

[deservesadaisy]

"Thank you." He leans over her to rest his cigarette in the ashtray. "I can only hope they don't escalate faster than I can figure it out."

[rhinemaid]

"What exactly are you planning to do? If you figure it out." If, when; either way. Ilde's expression isn't skeptical so much as inquisitive, in her somewhat understated way, as the whole mess unravelling in front of them seems like something that needs interfering with. She's just interested to know if he actually has anything in mind, as yet.

Other than laying low in his flat and being irritated.

[deservesadaisy]

"It depends on what the answer to what they want is. But they're clearly not just going to give me the option of ignoring it." Much as he'd like to. "I've no intention of making myself a special target, but even so."

[rhinemaid]

"Mmn. A little less of the snide might help for starters." She might not ordinarily advise less sass, but in Ivan's case, it's not as though an argument can be made for him being misunderstood. He is, arguably, extremely well-understood, and that's about half the problem.

[deservesadaisy]

"Surprisingly, I managed to survive for a few centuries without your advice," he notes, dryly.

[rhinemaid]

"So miracles do happen," she returns immediately, flippant. "Have you ever been maced with holy water before?"

[deservesadaisy]

"I can't say that I have, no." He sighs. "Though I suppose, if I'd stayed, it would be a matter of time."

He hasn't yet mentioned getting blown up.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde vaguely imagined stakes or beheading might've been involved, when he told her he'd died (again); Baedal's already helpfully illustrated the fact that sunlight won't even give him a tan, for all that he's got an aversion. She's reminded of that by his phrasing, and wonders briefly if he's forgotten telling her - he was, she recalls, a bit sloshed at the time.

"What was going on?" she asks, after a moment.