multiversallogs | WHAT'S THE MATTER, MARY JANE

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WHAT'S THE MATTER, MARY JANE

Who: Mycroft Holmes & Lyla Tzigano
What: An unplanned morning meeting.
Where: Sobek Croix; the grounds of the Hellsing Guild Hall
When: Coardi, Kavadry 22nd
Notes: Closed post.
Warnings: Discussion of/allusions to drugs, alcohol, and addiction.

It's been nearly two weeks since Mycroft began working for Hellsing, and he's been kept quite busy. From what he can gather, affairs are always lively at the guild, but the current effort to scare up some of the Candlelighters has shifted things into a yet higher gear. He is more than used to spending most of his time working—in fact, returning to such a routine has helped him not to linger so obsessively on the uncertainties of his situation—but peace, quiet, and solitude are never amiss in Mycroft's book, either.

It's early in the morning, and he's arrived at the guild hall ahead of time in order to take the opportunity to walk the grounds. Sobek Croix is a beautiful district, and despite Mycroft's usual preference for keeping nature at a distance, he finds he can't help but enjoy the way it keeps everything else out, particularly around Hellsing. The sound of the nearby forest doesn't bother him as much as other things do, and the feel and scent of it is even pleasant. As long as his shoes stay clean and he stays dry, he thinks he and nature may co-exist more happily than he had anticipated.

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Lyla has an unsettling gift for going unnoticed--it's one of her abilities, in fact, and when she wants she can move through these woods wrapped around Sobek Croix like she's not even there, with nary a sound. This morning, she's not particularly expecting any company at this hour, so the subtle camoflauge is just self-defensive instinct--usually when she comes wobbling home just after dawn, it's quiet. It gives her time to unwind, to wash the artistically exaggerated and smeared eyeliner from her face (only to reapply it more cleanly), to try to come down from whatever she'd taken the night before, and to pretend everything is fine. Because Hellsing is Hellsing, and because individuals with superior coping mechanisms are not exactly in high supply, very few people are particularly inclined to challenge her on it.

Or maybe it's the tightly closed, simmering anger that comes swinging to the surface whenever certain subjects come up.

There's an old stone bench just around an alcove of trees. She stands on the edge of it, cigarette between her lips, exhaling smoke up to the pale early-morning sky. It's not just her make-up that's a mess: everything she wears is a peculiar mix of cheap and excessive, layers of silver rosaries and bangles and rings accompanying a solitary baphomet she wears as a private ironic joke, shorts too short for pretty much anybody outside of the Vault but especially a teenage girl who still has the colty too-tall-too-skinny vestiges of adolescence to her build, accompanied by thudding black combat boots with hot-pink laces, and a leather jacket that looks like it's twice her age. Her t-shirt has holes and a dead rock star's face on it. There's glitter in her dark hair, which is in a braid that has seen better, neater, moments.

She does not, to put it mildly, really fit into Sobek Croix's somewhat pastoral environment. Neither does Mycroft, at least in her estimation--she knows he's there before he's even in her field of sight. It's the heartbeat (and the human blood). She doesn't move when he rounds the corner, initially, mentally calculating if she still looks like she's coming out of her K hole, but after a second she turns her head, like a statue of a delinquent. Her pupils are indeed a little unnaturally dilated, but she isn't visibly trembling any more, at least.

"Huh," she says, both artless and curiously elegant (possibly the latter is because of the former, and not in spite of it) when she suddenly drops down to actually sit on the bench, legs swinging, "I was wondering when I'd meet the new hire."

The rural Tennessee drawl is in full effect this morning, for the record, gilded as it is by something peculiar--specifically, the Eastern European Travellers' spin on Southern accents. Her voice is unreasonably rough for her age, like she's gone without speaking for long periods of time, both as a result of her partying the evening prior and her smoking habit.

Hellsing has quite the motley crew in its employ.

Mycroft looks over at the sound of the girl's voice, umbrella coming out of a swing to rest at an angle on his shoulder as though it were open.

Within the first moment of observing her, he's pinpointed (among other things) several too-familiar signs of a hard morning-after. Whatever it is she's on, it's serious, and it's not a new habit. He doesn't know whether she's human or not, and he doesn't know what types of effects certain substances have on various xenians (something to look into), but he knows what this looks like.

He's not sure whether he wants to run toward her or run away.

In the end, he takes a hesitant step in her direction, eyes continuing to evaluate her condition. Stable (for now). Dehydrated. Slightly exhausted (awake 18-20 hrs if human). He can smell the scent of cigarettes from here (chain-smoker). Not completely sober yet. The checklist is like a well-worn path in his head, and it scrolls on and on. Still, only a faint shadow of concern shows in his eyes, at the corners of his mouth.

"Mycroft Holmes," he says, falling back on manners. "Assistant Political Coordinator. I assume you must be an agent, Miss..."

She nods along with what he says, and then there is a faint tensing in her jaw, as the gesture apparently informs her that she now has the beginnings of a headache. That's fine. She'll handle it by downing half the old, beat-up flask she has weighing down one pocket of her jacket--later, alone in her room, where no one can see.

"Lyla," she says, "Tzigano. Been with Hellsing for almost a year."

Which reminds her that she'll be nineteen in a few months. That's weird to think of, so she pushes the thought aside in favor of blearily studying the other party in this conversation. This elicits a moment of double-vision, but a hard blink takes care of that, and she sort of wishes she'd had a half hour more to come to her senses, but she can never tell how much of her hand she's showing. Ketamine, not unsurprisingly, does not do wonders for one's self-perception.

It also does not do wonders for one's arms. There's the faint reddish blush of erythema from the injection site at her elbow, echoing all the way down to her wrist, visible when she lifts her hand to push strands of hair escaped from her braid away from her face. She'd never shot up before this week, so her hyper-active dhampire health is reasonably aggravated at this new assault on its well-being.

"Smart to get a look at the grounds this way." In the early morning quiet, that is. "Not so many of the nighttime monsters out, but none of the others are up, either."

She assumes that's what he's up to, anyway.

"Yes," he says, sounding just a bit distracted. "I'm afraid I don't appreciate a crowd."

Mycroft sees the inflammation of Lyla's skin as she moves and the slow, hard blink as she refocuses on him, and this, too, is familiar. Lingering close behind, though, is the reminder of the loss of his brother's trust, and that is more than enough to keep him from saying anything too forward.

He takes a couple careful steps closer, staying attuned to her reaction. "What are the agents' assignments today, do you know?"

Mycroft has a decent idea what they are, but he wants to keep her engaged, just for a little while longer. Just until he's sure she'll be alright. He can't imagine her working like this.

She takes a drag from her cigarette before she says anything, mind ticking over what she knows. Things are far-flung lately, and she can't tell if she feels disconnected because of how things in her own mind have been since Dean died, or if they're genuinely not as tight-knit as Lyla thought they all were for a minute. But that was then and this is now, and right now, the concerns are different.

There's a little head-tilt at the question. Being Nuala's right-hand man, as far as Lyla knows, she's got a feeling he might already know.

"Well, everybody's on Candlelighters watch." Fucking Candlelighters. "Got a vampire gig up in the Spatters tonight, myself; somebody done messed up and got themselves caught out feeding there. I'm thinkin' there's a mess of them, a system set up. Guess they reckon nobody's gonna notice if they stick to them dirty poor folk, yeah?"

A slight sardonic widening of the eyes, a razor edge to her closed-mouth smile that she doesn't quite maintain. Too beat. She's got until dusk to get herself together.

"They got one of our guys killed. The Candlelighters. So."

Mycroft knows all about the business with the Candlelighters, but he hadn't been aware of Lyla's assignment in the Spatters. At least it's not until the evening. That should give her some time to sleep it off. He wonders if she's going alone; if so, the possibility that she's human has become much slimmer. And the 'poor folk' comment speaks for itself.

As her eyes widen, he can see her pupils are still dilated, but not so much that he can't clearly see the rings of blue that surround them. Darker than Sherlock's, he thinks, but it still feels as though echoes of his brother are everywhere.

"I was briefly informed about that," Mycroft says, regarding the death in Hellsing. An agent called Winchester. He looks Lyla over once more, and a few things come together.

"You knew him well."

The traces of amiable humor slacken and fade, slightly. It's not hostility, quite, but it's like she's ready to become protective of this memory. There's a measured inclination of her head, as she doesn't want to stir up that headache again, and she ashes out her cigarette on the arm of the stone bench. Still pausing before she says anything. Normally her reaction times are instant, instinctive and vicious the way animals' are, but coming down slows everything. Ketamine takes her out of her body.

"Yeah. Dean got me in." She cares about Integra and Nuala, but she feels a bit like a Martian around them sometimes; Nuala may be an elf, but in both cases there's a pretty goddamn distinct class disparity. But that, too, may be something that Lyla has taken to amplifying in her head lately. She fixes on Mycroft again, a once-over flick of examination.

"Are they gonna make you carry?"

Weapons, that is. Handguns are seldom in supply in Baedal, but some people do use them, and Hellsing is a bit gun-happy in places. (Lyla doesn't use guns because Lyla has her bare hands, but still.)

"I'll not be required to, no," Mycroft replies. "My only previous training is with firearms, and as you know, such knowledge is not... ideal for our surroundings. My talents don't tend toward the physical, I'm afraid, so the best protection I have seems to be a box of cigarettes."

He gives her a wry smile, one that comes surprisingly naturally. Her rough voice and coarse accent grate on him a bit, but. But.

But what, Mycroft? he asks himself. But Sherlock's left you chasing this ghost forever? But now your brother may be gone from your life completely, and you never managed to be forgiven? But she seems like your last chance?

He's nothing if not honest with himself.

Still, however true all that may be, there is something else that keeps him here. Maybe if he doesn't look right at it, he won't be forced to lie to himself about what it really is.

She matches the wryness in the smile with one of her own, exhaling with a ghost of low sound in it--not quite a self-directed laugh, but close, bordering on it. "That'll get you further than somebody might think, out here."

She tucks one knee up, chin resting on top of it. It's a gamine behavior, absent-minded. Her arm hurts, she thinks, and her fingers twitch just slightly as she refrains from pressing on the injection site. They told her that would just make that worse. It's a dangerous game she's playing, since she doesn't know how her physiology will always react--she tells herself she can do these things because she's not really one thing or another. She's got so many of the strengths, so few of the weaknesses of both humans and vampires alike, although holy symbols when wielded by a true believer are never going to be her favorite thing.

Thus the baphomet.

"Nuala doesn't really go in for the battlefield scene, either; you've probably noticed." It's better, she thinks, to disperse their members that way. "Y'all get to just throw me at things and wait to see what happens."

She enjoys it, though; it's said with a hint of self-awareness, like she knows it's not normal to enjoy it, but she can't quite bring herself to care.

"You'll go to the Spatters alone, then," Mycroft says, his assumption all but confirmed. He wants to ask her whether she works during the day as well, what her abilities are, whether her arm will heal by then, but that would all be unspeakably rude. It's no business of his. No business of his at all.

He considers things for a moment, then nods toward the other side of the bench. He keeps his eyes on Lyla, coloring his gaze with just a hint of challenge.

"Do you mind?"

She's not used to people asking, which is what that moment of pause is about this time. There's a shrug of her narrow shoulders, though (Lyla is very thin both by design and lifestyle; this is what happens when your idea of breakfast is a bag of skittles, cigarettes, and diet coke). She's not sure what she makes of this line of questioning, besides, perhaps, simply wanting to know one's colleagues. Her instincts don't tell her anything bad, but she is wary out of habit and nature both.

It's still weird to Lyla that she has colleagues, that she's a part of anything approximating an organization with people who sleep in beds and don't carry razorblades under their tongues.

"Go ahead," she says. "And yeah, it's kinda my thing...well, I mean, can you imagine most folks around here trying to fit in around the Spatters?"

Never let it be said the girl isn't aware of how she comes across.

"I have friends there. People act like the Spatters ain't a real part of the city, but everybody who lives down there knows more about Baedal than anywhere else."

Mycroft approaches Lyla fully now and sits down beside her, lowering the umbrella from his shoulder and leaning it against the front of the bench. He smoothes his suit and then eases back a bit. All the while, he's taking the opportunity to observe his current companion at much closer quarters.

He'd noticed that Lyla had something weighing down each side of her jacket, but he can see much more clearly now the shapes that the edges press into the fabric, the stress their weight puts on the inner pockets. Three items, two of them identical (approx. 12 oz in right pocket, approx. 2.5 oz in left). Two matching items (each in a different pocket) most likely switch or folding blades. Additional item likely a container of some sort (adding in previous observations leads to flask being a high probability). Array of holes in shirt all formed after purchase; none formed purposefully (one formed last night). Men's shampoo (cheap) used 8-10 hours ago, but no change of clothes—stayed at someone (who is likely male)'s house but didn't plan on doing so. Sweat, glitter, alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana—he reads hours of the inanities of partying all over her—

Something metallic. Familiar. Bad. Interesting. Like Sherlock, something that smells like Sherlock—

Oh. It's blood.

Not very much, just the faintest hint of it below the shampoo and club grunge, but the note sticks out to Mycroft like it's in the wrong key. It's not likely that she has an external wound bad enough to be concerned about—the smell would be stronger—and an internal one would be causing visible pain. Perhaps she was in a fight or in contact with someone else who was injured, and didn't manage to get rid of the smell entirely.

He quickly comes back to what she's saying, not missing a beat.

"I've often heard it said that such areas are, in fact, the most real," Mycroft reflects. "Existential questions of reality aside, it's quantifiably true, in a way. One can see all of a nation's most shameful faults magnified and run rampant in these places. The unpolished truth; the sin no one bothers to either hide or claim. Where you find sentience, you find this."

He looks at her. "If that isn't reality, I don't know what is."

In a more alert state, she'd be significantly more attuned to the fact that she's being observed--which has more to do with her own hyper-vigilant wariness than the idea that it's noticeable to most people, because it isn't. For now, she feels like something's on the tip of her tongue, or the back of her mind, or some turn of phrase used to mean close but not quite. She rubs carefully at one eye with her knuckles, in a fairly pointless attempt at salvaging some of her eyeliner.

"Kind of like how people say you can tell the truth about somebody by how they treat their so-called "lessers", but bigger?"

Or whatever it is they actually say. She doesn't remember where she picked that one up. On the tail end of the question, she actually glances half at Mycroft; mostly she watches the scenery, in such a way that suggests she's accustomed to keeping an eye on her location for any unexpected new elements. It's not something she does entirely consciously.

"Yes, I'd say that's precisely it." A different kind of smile appears on Mycroft's face when he answers, something reflective and a degree or two warmer than his normal mask would allow.

He's gathered all the data he can on Lyla for the moment, and if her condition changes, he's likely to notice. He looks away from her and toward the Guild Hall, eyes wandering over the grounds in-between. The place really is lovely in the morning light—it reminds Mycroft of the trips his family would take to the country when he was very young, before Sherlock was born.

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WHAT'S THE MATTER, MARY JANE

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