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

[norea]

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?

Comments

[rhinemaid]

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."

[neverbreaks.livejournal.com]

"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.

[rhinemaid]

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."

[neverbreaks.livejournal.com]

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?"

[rhinemaid]

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.

[neverbreaks.livejournal.com]

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."

[rhinemaid]

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.

[neverbreaks.livejournal.com]

The sad reality being that Jules had suffered little better at the hands of humans, strung up and seared and cut until the monster forced it way to the surface to tear her freedom from their hands and their life from their throats; from sulfur slaves, humans who gave up their autonomy to serve devils and banish monsters and hybrids. Emilia, who said she loved her, and apparently was simply biding her time until she could escape without backlash. That was humanity, and with even that, with all they had done, they were still right. It was Jules' kind that inflicted pain, and the abominations that brought hybrids into being that had shattered the humans world and forced them into that violence. Humans were pain and suffering, but maybe that was all they had, anymore. Maybe that was all Jules' and her kind deserved.

She's lost in her thoughts, because even with the breaks in the hedgerow, they ultimately remain a maze. It's a surprise, almost, when Ilde touches her arm, and Jules barely manages a weak smile. "You too. Good night," she somehow manages, before her gaze settles back on her hands.