multiversallogs | i understand how riots start. i just don't understand why they ever stop.

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i understand how riots start. i just don't understand why they ever stop.

Who: Ilde, Remy and Erik
What: Erik needs 'reading material', and also a beer. Remy and Ilde are here to help.
Where: A riverside restaurant and bar of Remy's choosing.
When: After this log and this post.
Notes: I'M SORRY I'M ALL OVER THE LOG COMM >_>
Warnings: Mentions of blood and sex.

While Ivan may ordinarily be a light sleeper, the intoxicating nature of Ilde's blood tends to knock him out like the dead (so to speak--) and when she disentangles herself to pack up her sealed bag for the water, he doesn't stir. The folders go into the bag first, followed by clothes she won't have trouble pulling on by the river, a pair of shoes and her purse. She leaves it open, sitting on the end of her bed in Ivan's shirt to call Remy and Erik both before she leaves (letting Erik know she's on her way, letting Remy know she had copies handy and she'll bring Erik to the bar) and before she drops the CiD in with everything else and seals the bag. There's something extremely useful about having something she can take into the water with her, and knowing her luck one of these days it's going to get broken, but until then...

Ivan- I've got something to do tonight. I'll be back before morning. If Angus gets in again, just put him out.

Once she's refastened the bracelet she was wearing earlier, she slings the strap of her bag across her body so it'll rest against the back of her hip when she hits the water and lets herself out of the villa to go down to the river. It's familiar territory, by now, and she changes form mid-motion, diving deep down where she knows it best. She has her own landmarks to follow - rivermarks, if you will - and getting to Brock Marsh isn't terribly complicated.

Surfacing when she reaches the bridge, she lingers in the water for a short while, just watching.

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As likely as it is that Ilde would never have found this place on her own, she's become fond of it through the time she spends with Remy - who she greets, signing, «Hello, yes I've practised,» before he can prompt her about it. So there.

Her hair is still dripping down her back, but the rest of her is slowly drying off in the air and she won't puddle where she sits so she judges that good enough to come onto the patio and join him, drawing Erik along with her.

Far from cute or adorable, it's grotesque and alarming, because whether or not Erik has ever seen Remy before, he knows him well. It's just as he said to Wanda that first night - Magneto frightens him, and it has nothing to do with his power or his politics. That charisma is quicksand.

But Remy is a superb actor - this is the man who managed to fuck Sinister over twice without any mutant factions catching on, who manipulated his way into the ranks of Apocalypse, who not even Charles Xavier can crack into. Wanda is much more compelling and important motivation than spite; Erik'll never see that fear, and he'll never get an inch. It's how Gambit works.

For now he's got other things to focus on. (Or pretend to.)

«So I can stop talking along, now?» His hands move without his mouth, though he's still smiling, unusual red-on-black eyes focused on Ilde. «What's with that face?» He extends his left hand to her, not for a handshake, but slightly beckoning. What's up with you, fille, he can tell. When his gaze flicks to Erik, it's less familiar, but no less congenial. He raises his head in greeting, then offers his right hand to shake - with anyone else it'd look awkward, multitasking like this, but there's a certain lazy grace about him that looks fine doing just about anything. "Remy LeBeau."

Erik eyeballs Remy sort of sideways as he draws near to complete the gesture, by no means hesitating, but nevertheless seeming unsure even for a moment after their hands meet. No one will be blamed for finding this strange, really. It is, a little. But perhaps this will clear it up:

"So you are real after all. I was starting to wonder."

There. Quip deployed. Now comes the full confidence of his handshake, along with the pretense of a friendly smile. That isn't to say he looks at all unfriendly, though. Today's been a Day, is all. He's not really feeling it. So they can just lie at one another with their faces all night, how about that.

(He eyes Remy's contact with Ilde, too, albeit briefly. Just for the record.)

'Competence' is one of those things that Ilde uses to judge whether or not someone else is allowed to care about her - Remy isn't delicate, like her father, so it's all right to just make a face at him and go when he beckons. If she won't actually give him an answer then at least she fails to pretend there isn't a question to be asked, slinking into his personal space like a cat that thinks she's being very sneaky, leaning into the side of him (a little tension eases, not much) and watching Erik from her new vantage point.

...with Remy's eyes. This is a game she's not going to get bored of any time soon.

"Your reputation is preceding you," she murmurs, fleetingly entertained.

He'll do his pretend coddling (they both know that's the reality) of her later; Remy has no need nor desire to prove anything via his closeness to this woman. His arm around her is familiar and plainly platonic, his expression amused at her immediate aesthetic mirror.

"Everybody knows me somehow," he says, shrug in his voice. There's a sort of understanding commiseration to that remark, like he knows something of what Erik's been through today - and maybe he does, for more than one reason. This is the big glaring flaw in his plan of apathy, after all: he gets it. Completely. In his old age (ha), his loyalties to his people have begun to outweigh his ability to hate. (Oh, Creed, you'd just fucking laugh, wouldn't you.)

Easily, he herds them towards a round wooden table at the edge of the deck, surrounded by worn but comfortable chairs with plastic-covered cushions. It's all very rustic and homey, but it works. "I know we got things to go over, but I got a proposition for the two of you while we're here." A pause, both for them to sit and because he's Southern and that's just how he talks, "Let's just sit here for a bit. You look half-drowned for real and you-" hi, Erik, "...I figure you've heard some shit today."

'Some shit' is what he's going to leave it at. Because.

"We can get to our business in a minute. It's a beautiful night in our prison city an' this place has good beer with awful chips."

Just breathe, everybody.

Edited 2011-10-22 04:52 (UTC)

Having waited for Ilde (and her new eyes, cheeky brat) to situate herself first, Erik is still in the process of being seated when he is so suddenly addressed, and pauses at once to look...especially attentive, at Remy, if only for an instant. Purely on reflex. Possibly expecting to be confronted with another round of 'some shit'. ...But no. The feigned smile returns, crooked thing that it is, and he settles at the table without fuss. He doesn't look particularly out of place here among all these people, especially once he removes his flat cap and sets it aside (and fixes his hair), and leans back to occupy the chair fully, looking very much like he hasn't been off his feet in days. It is the way such chairs were meant to be used, after all.

"Sounds good," he says finally, and leaves it at that because no it doesn't. He came here for business, not to hang out, or whatever this guy thinks is going on. Granted, he is curious too, but aimlessness is the very last thing he wants right now—or ever, really—because it does nothing to still him inside. He looks calm, certainly, in the way a rattlesnake might look calm beneath its rock, but Erik is by no means relaxed.

Still. They are here, and it is beautiful out here. Out here in this place that he despises.

When it's time, he'll order a pint of whatever's on tap that he recognizes.

'Relaxing' is something Ilde is terrible at, especially in company, but she's had a strange kind of evening and with or without beer (without, her inability to drink in moderation isn't made for deviousness) the notion of just taking a breath isn't such a bad one. If that breath happens to be full of nicotine, so much the better.

"I can't drown, I tried," she says, however, because that's the kind of (disturbing) pedantry that occasionally comes out of her mouth.

All the tiny violins for both your neurotic asses - is something Remy does not say aloud, even if he thinks it (in varying degrees of affection and wryness, guess who gets which). He sits, and the ease of his body language is genuine; he can be watchful and paranoid and relaxed at the same time. It's a gift. (A gift of lifelong functional PTSD.)

"Thank you for your scientific contribution, fille, would you like a cigarette?" He's getting one of his own out, see. And he's apparently used to Ilde. ... Just Ilde, yes. He signs when he's not doing anything else with his hands, watching to see if she's paying attention.

"Apparently this place used to be a floating bar," he muses. "But people kept fallin' off drunk."

"You would think they might've seen that coming." Dryly spoken, of course. He can be wry, yes, but he doesn't have to be enthusiastic about it. You two can't make him enjoy himself. And he didn't want a cigarette anyway, so there. (That's not true, he wants like a hundred of them right now.)

If either of them catches Erik looking, by the way, which he will be doing now and then, there's nothing suspicious about his gaze. He's only looking. ...Well, he's sizing up Remy a little, but that's a typical custom pretty much everywhere, and it passes quickly enough besides.

«Yes, please.» Ilde may only be recently learning to sign, but she's already mastered 'making it look tart'. She's relatively sure Ivan has taken to killing smokers, on that note- it would account for why his tobacco brand is so inconsistent, lately. This is one of those things she examines briefly, then sets down away where it won't interrupt more interesting or important thoughts.

"Réjean fell off a boat," she says, thoughtfully, resting her elbows on the table. A moment later, she amends, "Got shot off a boat. I caught him in the river. He's not so bad."

...alternately, Ilde just likes really bizarre people.

He thumbs a cigarette out of the pack and offers it to Ilde, then holds the box in Erik's direction. You too, Mr Surly? Abuse of his hospitality, he's got plenty of cancer sticks and only smokes when he's not at home.

"There's a famous one in Vietnam, they just laugh at people who fall off." Thanks, Remy. He lights his cigarette between his fingertips then leans over to do a dumb human pet trick - he snaps his fingers at the end of Ilde's cigarette and it lights. Magic! (No, it's the back of his index finger brushing the paper and charging it for a split second, but it looks neat and corny as hell.)

"That's the Acadian, no? Shady motherfucker, funny." Like recognizes like.

Erik accepts the cigarette with a nod of thanks, and is in the process of lighting up by the time those snapping fingers draw his eye—the reaching toward Ilde does, actually. (Hi.) If there's movement, he's likely to at least glance at it. That's where his mind is at tonight. With raised brows, he finishes up in a leisurely fashion and then gestures with the cigarette to indicate...whatever happened just now.

He's still breathing smoke when he says, "Pyrokinesis?" So casually. Like he's asking what model of car Remy drives.

Remy's description of Réjean gets a sharp-toothed smile - it's a pretty damn good description, all told - through the first exhale of smoke. "We blew up a building," she informs Erik, quiet and still pleased, as a helpful contribution to his inquiry. She knows what the power in question actually is, through their meetings and conversations, but her priorities are fairly clear and Remy can answer for himself, she's just been bursting to say it since the Candlelighters were first mentioned. It's the sort of thing she knows she shouldn't talk about over the network, but damn it, she really wants to talk about the fact that they blew up one of their fucking buildings.

...her smile on that subject is actually just a little bit unsettling.

At Ilde's summary, Remy throws his head back and laughs, real and full and jovial, because that's just the kind of guy he is, and the kind of shit he finds funny. The timing is incredible, too, because the one harried waiter shows up just in time to catch that burst of laughter. Still chuckling, Remy puts in for a pitcher of whatever (and glasses), a plate of chips (fries) and a Shirley Temple (with lots of cherries).

When they're alone again: "Bio-kinetic energy manipulation. Sometimes fire happens in the resulting transference combustion, but it ain't a requirement or a product as a rule."

So he's a walking bomb, yeah.

Edited 2011-10-22 07:48 (UTC)

All right. He kind of likes these people.

In lieu of some superlative or other, Erik answers with a few appreciative nods, and for a short while continues to look at Remy, who will doubtless be totally comforted by the inscrutable nature of this gaze, the minute flicks of his eyes, their glacier blue lit to glow only momentarily by this perfect angle.

He then turns to Ilde, and smiles, perhaps a little more pleasantly than before. "Did you." And before another slow drag, "Just the one?" He's teasing. Probably.

"To start." ...that's not a joke, although it's hard to tell from the sweet way she delivers it- maybe she's just playing, she's never been one to play nice. (Just because she's playing doesn't mean she wouldn't like to wreck significant parts of the city, it just means it'd make her smile.)

She slides her bag toward him with the pointed toe of the high heel she's wearing, saying, "The folders are for you. That's where we got them."

Not that she has strong feelings about the subject, or anything.

"It was practically coming down anyway," he says, voice casual as he leans back in his chair. ... It was sort of coming down anyway, yes, but the destruction was pretty damn vindictive on their part. (And it had felt good to get that energy out. Fuck. It's been ages.)

Remy doesn't say anything about the files. He knows what's in them; instead he watches Erik. He's been watching Erik the whole time (in his own way) but for a moment it's a little more obvious. He wonders, when the other man looks at him, what he's looking for. It could be any vast number of things, really.

Any number of things, yes; he is prepared to explain approximately zero of them.

Ordinarily, these files would be transferred neatly to Erik's own hard leather briefcase, but it was left behind on Earth and out of a sort of pointless defiance he has yet to replace it with a new one. He liked that briefcase. Why couldn't the city have sent it with him instead of the stupid helmet? God only knows where that came from. (It's in his closet right now. Waiting.) ...Anyway, he'll have to carry the folders just as they are, and although he's not about to whip them out in front of all and sundry he does give them a look down where they sit. And since Ilde's leg is so conveniently there, his gaze may follow it on its way back up. Briefly. After the quickest glance to her eyes, as if to acknowledge that yes he is in fact terrible, he settles back.

"Well, I'm sure there are more than a few derelict buildings in this city." He is both willing and very able to tear shit down. "I'll take a look. Is this all of it?"

A little blood presses her trouser-leg to the inside of her thigh just above the knee, and that would be what she was talking about when she said Ivan is a sleepy drunk. (She cleaned it up before she left, but she wasn't putting a bandaid on when she knew she was about to jump into the river, particularly not when the water aids her healing.)

"Copies," she says, smiling back, but leaves it at that as their drinks (and chips) arrive. Her Shirley Temple looks only slightly out of place with the pitcher of beer, and she pops a cherry in her mouth as the waiter sets everything down and excuses himself again, leaving them to it. In his wake, she adds to Remy, "I told you I gave copies to Ivan, too. He's upset about the blood."

'Upset'.

Then, to Erik, "It's everything that was there. They must've taken things when they left."

Remy pours himself a beer and offers a quiet cheers - look, he likes drinking, even if it takes twice his body weight of anything to get him properly drunk - taking a drink and leaning his elbows on the table before contributing to anything.

(He thinks of Rogue.)

"Lotta people upset about the blood." He sharpens the tip of his cigarette on the edge of their ash tray, and for all the world sounds as easy-going as he did before the segue. "That was some well done terrorism. Got a lot of dominoes knocked over real fast."

He takes another drag of his cigarette and blows out curls of smoke over their heads.

"I know a guy who's got documents pulled outta one of the other houses - rest of 'em are empty, either they were like that or somebody who ain't talkin' pulled 'em all out. More of the same, plus books about one of the local boogeymen myths. The Baker. And a partial list of names and CiD numbers from old cohorts. Said they couldn't find none of 'em."

He, too, raises a glass filled from the pitcher, evidently trusting Remy not to have chosen something terrible. (He doesn't seem like a terrible-beer kind of guy, at least, so that's a bonus point.)

"If there's any chance your fellow might share copies of those as well, I'll take them."

He does like to read. And thankfully, he is content to receive copies. Although he wasn't entirely forthcoming about his motives during the network broadcast, Erik's intent is not to monopolize the Candlelighters in any respect. He considers it only a pet project of sorts—an issue very close to his heart, surely, but a distant second to getting the hell out of here, only something else to work toward in the meantime. (This may change once he learns more of what his alternate-fellows know to be true, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.)

"It's appalling," he says, and clarifies as his glass touches down, "the blood. Targeting those who strive specifically to avoid preying upon others. You have to wonder if the motive behind it wasn't more complex than anyone's cared to assume so far."

"It has to be," Ilde says, quietly, putting another cherry between her teeth and rolling it around for a moment before she bites through. "Look at their tactics-- look what they did. Starving predators. Don't tell me anyone thinks that's about concern for safety. Someone lit a match. Someone did that knowingly."

...she has a lot of feelings about this, apparently; on the one hand, it frankly irritates her to be put in the position of defending the generally indefensible, and on the other, she has a bad habit of collecting vampires lately and the issue is unavoidably close to her own life. Irritatingly. That distant look (absent, like she's carefully checking out of something that might bother her) she was wearing earlier is back, so perhaps whatever's fussing her isn't so unrelated.

"So who benefits? What weren't we looking at?" A shrug.

(Once, Remy went on a two-day bender with Wolverine, and the both of them actually managed to get pretty smashed. He had the worst addiction to Canadian beer for months after.)

"Despite all the lead up," and he speaks on the slower side here, reflective, "It don't feel like a political statement to me. Nobody took credit. Right?" He looks at Erik and Ilde both, like, Did I miss something that obvious? He doesn't think so. "It's vicious but it ain't targeted at vampires. It's targeted at everybody. Grotesque - they used 'em as a weapon. Terrorists always take credit, no matter what it is. Anonymously, usually, some big collective message to spread out the blame, so they can hide behind a cause. And not a word out of 'em."

He takes another swallow of his beer, shakes his head. "Somethin's weird about it."

The way he speaks of these attacks - it's not flippant or callous; there's compassion, but his anger is old. Jaded. This is not the first time he's sat somewhere and pulled apart the threads of something blood-soaked and hateful.

"They could be waiting." This he says while flicking ash from his cigarette, just now taking on the air of a man genuinely engaged in conversation, however subdued it may be. "Either way, I'm not convinced that it wasn't done primarily as a means of decimating the city's population of cruorvores." He learned not to use the term man-eater very quickly, courtesy of Mafaton. "Whoever's responsible must've known they would end up being exterminated."

With a nod to Ilde, "And who benefits? Depends on who you are... some might say everyone does. Fewer predators to worry about." He does a sort of shrug here, mostly with his hands, then rests his elbows on the table, still trailing a little smoke with each gesture. "The remaining cruorvores will certainly benefit from reduced competition, once they've recovered, but that seems like too convenient an answer to me."

Ilde shakes her head, quickly. "Not convenient. You can kill cruorvores with the right kind of blood--" she sounds awfully familiar with that, which may or may not be interesting, "--but they didn't do that, they took their control away. Piss poor control already, at the edge of desperation."

If decimating cruorvores was the primary goal, even considering the population drop, it was an unnecessarily convoluted plan that put most of the rest of the city at risk. It doesn't sound right to her, somehow.

"If you wanted to make life harder for xenians, obvious predators are like a gateway drug for bigots. I think."

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