multiversallogs | 003 | OPEN. red lipstick on the end of a cigarette.

003 | OPEN. red lipstick on the end of a cigarette.

Who: Hasibe Ozcelik, and OPEN.
What: A show premieres at The Vault.
Where: The Vault.
When: Evening til the wee hours of the morning.
Notes: I will set up sections in the comments for people to hang out.
Warnings: WELL IT'S AN ADULT CLUB, SO.

The show starts at nine o'clock, and the bar is full pretty quickly thereafter, but the variety in the club is pretty striking. Xenians in their best suits, non-Xenians in leather and ripped fishnets, everything in between. There doesn't seem to be a lot of cultural divide here between human and not, even given recent issues. Hasibe makes good on her promise to have members of her cohort given seating preference, as she's sweet-talked the cocktail dress-clad hostesses, and the bartenders (in their vague approximations of suits with very open shirts) are aware that she's invited a lot of heavy drinkers. ...she just assumes people in her cohort want to drink--they've been kidnapped to a strange city with many new things to offer, so why wouldn't they?

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Ilde isn't doing much drinking tonight, but she's also not refraining (reasoning somewhat inappropriately that if Ivan wants an actual relationship with her then it's perfectly reasonable to add 'sometimes you have to carry me out of bars' to 'things that relationships entail') and so she slides in beside Jules to get the bartender's attention - which isn't too hard when she's letting the pearl-gleam of her skin show through the illusion, more. It's easier to get attention when you catch the light in motion.

Cocktail ordered - brandy alexander - she tilts her head and nudges Jules, personal space being for people who aren't within arms' length of Ilde. "Hello. We talked on the network, didn't we?"

A little surprised by the nudges, which seems a bit more pointed that the general bustle of a crowded bar, Jules glances over mid-sip. "Yeah. Yes, in fact, we absolutely did." She's tired, utterly weary, but she holds out her hand to shake out of some kind of hopeful habit. "Jules. You're..." Give her just a moment-- "Ilde? Is that right?"

Personal space isn't a great issue for Jules, but she has been just the slightest bit more tense, more cautious and nervous, since Levi came storming into her life and very skillfully took it apart. Her tensing is subtle, though; it's not like she hasn't settled into being in crowded bars, the last few nights. It makes this kind of thing fractionally easier. Alcohol and forced exposure, a recipe for numbing oneself if your name if Julia Grumley.

"It's nice to meet you in person."

"Ilde is right, with the e." Il-duh, almost, and since they're talking now she settles herself on a barstool beside Jules, easy and feline as you please. "My...boyfriend is a stupid word," she decides, after a moment, veering into tangent before she's even properly got halfway through a sentence. "Ivan, my vampire-" is that really better, "-I wanted him to meet a friend of mine from home who's performing here, Hasi. Did you see her in the show?"

There's a hint of pride when she talks about Hasi, not proprietary, just really glad to know someone she thinks is so talented, intelligent and beautiful. Look how cool she is, world.

Just the barest hint of a smile, a bit worn, that at least she'd gotten that right. The dramatic shift in tone, though, and the somewhat sensitive nature of all things romantic make her blink for a moment, just to try and gather herself. Get a handle on things, breathe, and then carry on. "I... see." Of course, a vampire. Not shocking, given what Ilde had told her in their initial conversation, but it takes a moment for everything to sink in. When it does, at least then she can brighten her expression a bit more genuinely. "I did, actually. She was very good."

And very immune to fire. Hasi has given her no other sulfur slave vibes, not made her skin prickle with mere proximity, but all those things are so fresh that any comparison to a sulfur slave sparks thoughts that, no doubt, have lead to the many drinks she is currently throwing back. It all stacks up; being in Baedal is just a little much. "Actually, she's something of an acquaintance of mine, she was kind enough to show me around the city."

She stops trailing her fingertip around the glass' rim, and takes another sip. A generous sip.

Fire's always been a little fascinating to Ilde, but in the same way that a long, harsh winter is fascinating to her; clean destruction, inasmuch as that isn't an oxymoron, and something new. (That sums up how she feels politically most of the time, too.) It caught her attention in the performance, regardless, but for very different reasons.

But that's not what she's thinking about, currently: "She's good with people," she says, in a blithe understatement of the case.

"A bit like saying matches are good at starting fires," Jules replies lightly, laughing quietly as she steadily works on her drink. That, at least, had been one positive of Baedal - talking to Hasi has been something of a refreshing change of pace.

"How do you know her?" Just quiet, curious, as she idly tears little strips off her napkin and arranges them in a haphazard pile.

"It was about six years ago now?" Ilde thinks for a moment, but- yes, that feels right, she was sixteen and she's nearly twenty-two now. "Daddy met her in London and they were seeing each other for a while," and while Emery was a relatively young father when Ilde arrived on the scene, not that young, "so when she was filming in Italy, she lived with us for a few months."

If anyone else was recounting 'the time my dad invited a twenty-two year old to live with us for a few months' might be a little awkward; from Ilde, it's more like 'Daddy's always had exceptional taste in women, and so that's my life'.

"It's been really lovely, seeing her again."

"Oh!" Oh, well. Knowing someone here from before Baedal hadn't occurred to her, but... well, now she thought about it, she could recall Ilde saying something of the like. Or maybe it was someone else? Jules frowns at her drink for making her recall a little foggy. The who was not terribly significant; just that someone told her they knew people from before Baedal, in Baedal.

"That sounds lovely," she manages to tack on, although she is just faintly bemused. Then again, she can hardly talk. Concepts of social norms are a bit out the window, for her. The most pressing concern in their world likely shouldn't be who is seeing who, living with, and so on, but rather how to avoid being eaten.

Although, that didn't keep people from being terribly interested in that sort of thing; case study number one, her own mother. And then she's frowning, because Hasi surely can't be that much older than Ilde, and she's struggling to remember her conversation from the first time they met. "You did say something about time inconsistencies, didn't you?"

After watching Jules trying to do the math through the alcohol for a few moments, not unkindly, Ilde says, "She's six years older than I am- I was sixteen. But I did say that; in my world, after that, there was an apocalypse. And in Hasi's, there wasn't. Everything in Italy was the same, but we diverged after that."

She makes it sound so normal, somehow; she needs it to sound normal, because that's the part of the story where it starts getting a little harder to deal with, and she just doesn't goddamn feel like letting it be hard. It's good that Hasi's here, no matter what did or didn't happen afterwards, and she's never been more pleased to see a cocktail arrive for her than just now.

"Of course, yeah. You did mention that." Jules shakes her head, rubbing her temple for a second to try and massage some sense into her brain. Alcohol addlement is wonderful, save for when you want to be able to pick some sense out of things. That wasn't, unfortunately, likely to stop her in the near future.

Perhaps because Ilde makes it sound so normal, something to be taken as it is, Jules is more willing to just accept - even if she doesn't really understand the ins and outs, whys and hows and what on Earths that rather come with it. Just nod, smile, and accept. "It sounds fascinating."

And confusing, and topsy turvy, and, and and.

And then a few more things, too.

"I suppose my world had an apocalypse, too."

Now, she's either speaking about what happened before she was born, or she's being melodramatic about recent events. Maybe both, really, because she says it simply and then kind of scoffs quietly, just faintly disgusted with herself.

"It makes it different, being here, doesn't it?" A city that feels like a city, she means; they don't have those any more where she's from, not really, and the strangest parts of Baedal for Ilde are the simplest, the fact of its ability to maintain some basic standard of normalcy. So the cabs are horse-drawn and the woman that does her nails has horns and there's a 'city network' - the point is that she can make an appointment and get in a cab and have her nails done. She pays bills, and she has a job, and that's so much weirder than politicking in vampire bars.

In fairness, Ilde is a little warped.

That might be the understatement of the year, but Jules doesn't comment right away, just smiles a little bit at her drink. Jules hasn't gotten to discovering the world of nailcare, yet, or salons, or taking a cab when she could walk. Money is, itself, a bit of an awkward concept. She knows about it, but she's never used it day to day; barter or just outright theft and looting is more often the way, at home. Currency doesn't hold much value. She's been saving, and for now is just paying to stay at the Inn until she finds somewhere else - and marinating her liver, but, well. She needs the reprieve.

"'Different' is certainly one word for it. It feels like everything's been turned upside down, one way or another." A bit lighter than before, less of the jagged edges that touched her words otherwise. "This does seem like a better world than home, but part of me can't stand that I think that."

Surprisingly candid, perhaps; the wonders of alcohol strikes again.

"I don't mind being here," Ilde says, considering, "but I don't intend to stay when we find a way out."

When, not if; she speaks in terms of absolute faith and it's faith in Sonja, mostly, because she trusts her implicitly in ways that are a little bit frightening.

A non-committal hum. Jules doesn't know what to do. If things with Em were different, if... Em hadn't shown her true colours (if Jules hadn't caved to Levi's torture) then she'd go back. In a heartbeat, she'd go back, and she'd have been fighting and tearing apart the city to get a way back.

But she believed Levi, which made Em a traitor, and made her alone; more alone than before, because now she wasn't simply a hybrid. She'd lost what it felt like, being treated as a human by someone who know what you were and didn't care. Her jaw clenches, mouth twisting with a bitterness no kind of optimism can gloss over. "That's a luxury I hope you can enjoy, then."

Harsh; unfair, really, but in this very second, she doesn't care.

Maybe it's odd, then - considering that interesting harshness - that Ilde smiles back at her, resting her elbow against the bar and sliding her little finger around the rim of her cocktail glass.

"We're going to salt and burn New York," she says, conversationally, in the most interestingly neat way; she lays out each word with thoughtful care, deliberate. "It's tainted. We don't get to be finished until it's gone."

She takes a sip, and adds, "But it's nice being able to buy couture again, in the meantime."

Jules is swirling her drink around the glass, watching the rise and fall and little patterns in the amber liquid, that way it dips around the ice. The glass stops swirling, and after a few moment, she slowly turns to train her gaze on Em, expression somewhere between neutral, and the subtle dangerousness that seems to seep out when the monster takes hold.

"Tainted by what?"

Her question is crisp. Precise, to meet Ilde's neatness.

It may not be strictly necessary to utterly destroy everything left of New York, but Ilde's rarely (if ever) inclined to contradict Sonja's decisions on anything and if you had a bad break-up with the antichrist (or close enough) then you'd probably have strong feelings about thoroughness, too.

(And let's be honest; Ilde wasn't going to contradict a plan like that. She likes to burn shit down, it's kind of a thing.)

"Corrupted power," she says, almost blithely. "Not right. Feeding on what's left. Vampires are very low on our food chain, if that puts it into some context for you."

That is part of why she's so sanguine about fucking Ivan; the other part is 'Sonja', honestly.

"It gives me some idea, at least." A pause, and she isn't looking at Ilde, but she is extremely aware of her. "Don't you think there's anything worth saving?"

Still, that old hope. Whether it really was hope and faith or simply a lesson long-ingrained, she couldn't tell anymore. In either case, she just tosses back more of her drink. When in doubt, drown it out. A fine policy, to be sure.

And finally, she says something that she doesn't really believe; maybe it shows in how very flat and quiet it is. "Then again. Everybody needs to eat."

Whether the policy is sound or not isn't really something Ilde would dispute - she can't drink enough to compare it for herself, she gets drunk quickly and it burns through her fast - but it is familiar. The fact she doesn't seem to register Jules' coping mechanism of choice is almost more telling of the environment she comes from than if she had taken note of it; somebody else's potential alcoholism is like background noise.

So: "Eating is one thing," she says, mildly - she's still watching Jules, but that's because that's how lipreading works. One day, someone's going to dramatically turn away from her mid-argument and the effect will be utterly ruined by her inability to follow anything said after that. "There's nothing in New York but corruption and prey. Sometimes they make it pretty."

"Maybe that's not so different from how New York was before the sky tore." Just softly, barely thinking that she and Ilde are from different worlds, barely acknowledging her own dry humour as she muses on the stories of the Earth before it was rent apart by chaos.

She shrugs, and tips back the last of her drink - she's going through them too fast - before looking at Ilde. "Whatever's required in the name of justice. If they're corrupt beyond redemption, they should be punished." Her father, speaking with her tongue.

The sky tore; the imagery feels right, feels familiar, and she has an odd, humourless smile when Jules looks back at her. After a moment, she clinks her glass against the empty one she just set down, and shrugs.

"That's how that works."

Jules has a hollow expression, a shadow of a smile that could be called a mockery, if you knew her genuine ones.

"The thing is," and she's musing over thoughts she's had often, ones that made her question all the justification for what she was and what her family did, "the thing is. What makes us any more qualified to make judgement and bring down justice than anyone else?"

Beneath the surface, there's a painful twist in her expression. This is too open, too transparent, but she doesn't even care anymore. "What makes us capable of tearing down something, when we're capable of... of carrying out a sentence like that? Aren't we just the same?"

Ilde sets her glass down on the bar, sliding off the stool-- it's funny, when she talks to Jules, that it veers so sharply between the moments where they understand each other and where the notes are so wrong as to be almost physically jarring. Off key and out of time.

"No," she says, succinctly, like there's something bleeding underneath it; so still as to be both dangerous and self-protective. "We aren't."

She doesn't leave any room for argument. The answer is no, and something about her makes it seem like pushing it would be an act of cruelty.

Something, something not entirely hidden and cloaked in their words and dances, but just something makes her stop her quiet peeling away of the layers, the flesh protecting whatever kind of core lay beneath their vision of so-called "justice".

"Then it's very simple," she simply replies. She doesn't know if this makes Ilde an ally, or an enemy, if it makes her someone to be trusted, someone of a similar credo, or the same kind of bloody monstrosity she was supposed meant to destroy. Where was the line? Who drew it? Who knew what fell on which side?

Only humans were innocent, and simultaneously, there was nothing innocent about them. It was a painful fact, and yet she still wanted to protect them. "I do love when things are simple."

Their respective philosophies on humanity might get in the way of too much closeness; humans tore Ilde's life and world apart, humans locked her in a cage and treated her body like an object of curiosity and contempt, a human jeered at her when she had the temerity to talk like she thinks she's a person. Humanity was the first enemy she learned, us and them drawn in lines on her own skin, and it's hard to forget what's been beaten into you. Especially if, sometimes, you are just too tired to try.

"It was nice to see you in person," she says, touching Jules' arm-- but the conversation took her places she doesn't like going, and she needs to be elsewhere, for a while. Maybe she'll have another drink, too; maybe she'll just find Ivan and bite him if he asks her any questions.

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neverbreaks.livejournal.com - 2011-11-21 12:11 (UTC) - Expand

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