multiversallogs | i heard that you like the bad girls, honey, is that true?

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i heard that you like the bad girls, honey, is that true?

Who: Ilde & Ivan
What: They aren't avoiding one another.
Where: Sonja and llde's villa.
When: After this conversation.
Notes: Anna helpfully gave me blanket permission to have Angus saunter in and out of Ilde's logs and threads as I please.
Warnings: Mentions of (someone else's) suicide attempts.

Giving Ivan her address is less of a conscious act of trust than it is a conscious desire not to trek halfway across the city if she can make him come to her instead; if she thought about it she'd probably say that she trusts Ivan to act in Ivan's own best interests, and she's more confident than Cindy likes that she can accurately keep track of what those are. They've long since passed the point where she feels obliged to justify it in her own head, a detail that she occasionally takes out and examines to no satisfying end. She's used to him, now - it's convenient to her that he continues to be around, and it'd annoy her if he wasn't. Most of the time, he is around, she's not annoyed (at him- well, usually-), and it's not something that she's required to examine.

The cruorvore population in the city just dropped by sixty percent overnight. It's all right to have been a little concerned about what might have happened. She hasn't heard from Katherine yet, either, and that's a nagging worry in her mind that's a bit less complicated.

"It's normal to be concerned about people you know," she informs Angus, scooping him up in her arms with apparent unconcern for whether or not Sonja (who may or may not be home) overhears her talking to the cat that keeps letting himself into their house whenever he spies a window open or a door ajar. "I'm not the one being weird in this scenario." The scenario where she's talking to a cat about relationship drama she isn't having? Totally not weird. A pause. "Don't look at me like that."

Carrying him downstairs against her chest, Ilde waits until she's all the way down the front steps before she sets him down (to better avoid being immediately followed back inside). "Get," she says, succinctly, if fondly. "You don't live here."

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Ivan arrives not terribly long after they spoke last. He's thoughtful, considering the responses he's received; there are a few people he might look up, if he can figure out who they are. Still, time enough for that later; for now, he would put his desire for answers (and revenge) on hold.)

He happens to catch Ilde as she's setting out the cat. "Hello there." Of course he hadn't worried about her. It was just normally good to see her, that was all.

Angus stalks out past Ivan in a way that could be politely described as 'slightly menacing'; that fairy belongs to him, vampire, don't get any fucking ideas. Ilde, straightening, is at least a little bit more friendly than that.

"You don't look so bad," she says, critically, examining him.

"That's a very generous assessment," he says, smiling. In truth, everything physical is more or less healed by now, and there wasn't much to heal; after the rampage, he's in physically better shape than he's been for weeks. His demeanor has shifted, though.

"You aren't looking too terrible yourself."

"It's been quiet." Since. "I've just been working and...not much else, for a while." Music doesn't require a lot of thought, and it might be useful in the future to be familiar with Lionel- it's something to do, something to focus on. Busy is good.

After a considering pause, she turns back inside- apparently presuming that Ivan will come with her. It's a fairly safe bet, all things being equal, and as nice as the outside of the villa is she prefers having her conversations indoors.

"Is this a formal invitation?" He says it lightly, but he has to ask.

Oh, right. That.

"Come in, Ivan," she says, blandly, holding the door open.

He gave her a little mock bow, and enters. "I'm going to have to move," he observes, as he does, "though you probably guessed that."

"What happened--?" Specifically, besides the ripping out of throats; maybe it's just that it would be good not to stay in one place after he killed a lot of people and she handed his address out on the network. After considering that, briefly, she discards the question, saying, "No, nevermind."

With the door closed behind him, she gives him a little push further into the house - the living room is that way.

He goes as pushed.

"I'd tell you, one day, if you really wanted to know." But not, evidently, today.

"I thought you were getting fussy about telling me things." As he had done a while ago- not so sure he wants her knowing everything about him. Ilde's of the opinion he should develop the ability to not be a talkative drunk, in that case.

"Just involuntarily telling you things." But the retort is almost absent. He looks around the living area as he comes in properly. "If I cared that much, I'd stop seeing you."

Ilde has been upstairs mostly, this afternoon and evening, and the living room has the tidy look of generalized quiet- she frisks him for the cigarettes and retreats to the sofa, tucking a foot underneath herself. "Tell me, then."

He sits down after a moment.

"I'm sure you were observant enough to see that the blood shortage left me worse for wear," he said, diplomatically. If nothing else, she'd certainly felt that it was harder for him not to drain her. "Other vampires here can survive, it seems, on bagged blood - I've even heard rumors of synthetic - but that doesn't work properly for me."

'See', yes, for a given value of kneeing him in the ear; her expression says as much, eloquently, for the brief few moments it's there. "You said." She lights a cigarette each, her eyes on the flame for a moment longer than strictly necessary (it had seemed like a bad idea to burn his building down, and she'd refrained, but- well, it had been a little disappointing not to do it).

She thinks it should concern her more, the deaths.

He takes the second cigarette, after a moment. "The blood affected everyone a little differently, as far as I can tell. Depending on what they are and where they're from. For me it amplified hunger." He says it coolly and evenly, though the experience was nothing like cool or even.

If he'd made it back to the flat, she doesn't think they'd be having this conversation (or one like it)-- even if he lived. Whatever would've happened, it wouldn't have been anything good, and she thinks it would've been, one way or the other, an ending. Dwelling on the thought only produces contradictions in her mind; if it's all just down to luck and timing, why not now? She wouldn't want to see him any more if he'd tried to kill her, and she can only assume that's what would've happened, but it didn't, but only because...

"Njoki left me a message while you were out," she says, resting her bare feet against the side of his thigh and pushing, lightly, with her heels. "Before you texted me. I didn't get any of the messages until later, I was busy." 'Busy'.

"She's more than a little mad." Inviting him in, under the circumstances, had been an intensely mad thing to do.

He'd thought, too, about the fact he'd been subconsciously heading for her. He wondered what that said - what it might mean in the long term. Frankly, he'd never had a mortal lover for any length of time, and even if she wasn't human, she was mortal.

"What did she say?"

"That you were 'resting'. She looked like shit." Ilde had more or less correctly interpreted that, at the time, to mean that Njoki had (with some effort) put him down and done something about it. "She told me before that she could try and find you to see if you were still moving, at least, so-"

A shrug. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, although she wouldn't have advised inviting him in if she'd been available.

"Canny." He'd suspected he hadn't ended up at her house completely by chance. "We both looked like shit for a bit after that, frankly."

"She's ordinarily much better looking than you," she says, in an exceedingly reasonable tone of voice. "It was more noteworthy."

Crossing her ankles, she leans back against the arm of the sofa and sighs out smoke, thinking her way through this evening and the rest of her night. It feels a little odd, all told, and the sensation of not being entirely sure what she's doing is- irritating. Most things that she isn't sure about are irritating, if only because that's the easiest way of classifying them.

"Plans to start shagging her instead?" he asked, exhaling a jet of smoke. He's not sure what to make of how little she seems to care about his loss of control. It isn't what he expected.

It isn't - or it isn't exactly - that she doesn't care. It's certainly not that she doesn't find it unsettling, or worrying, or (to go in a different direction entirely) an offensive violation of the control and choices of a lot of different people in and outside of Mafaton. Ivan included.

But it's hard to react. It's hard to know what the right reaction is; it's hard not to sit there thinking how am I supposed to feel. Ilde is quiet when things go wrong, and she's quiet when things aren't going wrong because she's not used to that and quiet is safer. Be still, and let them see nothing, because it's not for anybody else. It's too much; withdraw.

The deaths seem abstract, and she thinks she can get used to anything, but maybe this isn't being used to, maybe the inability to cope has become an unwillingness to- to something. She doesn't know, and it's all there, and what she says is: "Were you going to kill me?"

Which has nothing to do with whether or not she'd fuck Njoki.

He considers her question, seriously, for a moment. "I wasn't in any state to think about it consciously," he says, finally, more or less honest. "If I'd gotten to you, then yes, probably. I doubt I'd have been able to help myself."

Ivan pauses, then adds, "If you'd let me, I'd probably have recruited you. But if not, then yes. At the risk of being a cliche, your blood is draw, but even if you were human, I'd probably have tried to kill you." And very possibly succeeded.

"I don't know how that would work," she says, critically, before she's properly thought her way through- Anna is the closest she can imagine, and Anna's something else entirely.

It isn't immediately relevant, though. It isn't why she asked.

"I don't either. At the time, I doubt I'd have cared." He'd have still just been reacting.

"Regardless. I don't know if that's the right answer, but it's an honest one."

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