[Closed] Driest of Seasons

A high speed chase. An unexpected reunion. Just another Yaris in Vienda.

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A large forest in Central Anaxas, the once-thriving mostly human town of Dorhaven is recovering from a bombing in 2719 at its edge.

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Rhys Valentin
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Tue Sep 17, 2019 11:50 pm

almost uptown
Late Afternoon of the 10th of Yaris, 2719
"I'mnot always an ersehole. I'm just putting on my best for old time's sake." Oh, maybe there was a bit of a slur there, just a slowing of the tongue in the Yaris heat that seemed to have settled into every fucking pore right cozy-like alongside all that whiskey he should not have downed so quickly. He was usually much better at pacing himself but, well, sheets to the wind and hatcher-may-care as he felt lately, this time, he was just shit all around, apparently.

Secrets and kindnesses? Who needed them?

Rhys didn't.

He scowled at the bottle instead of allowing the full expression that furrowed into his well-carved features to fall onto Niccolette, "You did think on me poorly—don't pretend you didn't. It's fine, you know. I fuckin' deserved it." Blue eyes drifted upwards from the table, but the stretched thin, bled dry blond was sincere, believing every word that dripped like spilled Brunelleschi, "Still do. I did this to myself—you? I don't mean harm by it. I just—things are hard. This is hard. I—whatever. You don't have it any easier, and I know it."

He sighed, letting all that alcohol sink in, yearning to drown in it, eyelids heavy for a moment until the dark-haired Bastian's retort about Hawke dragged a laugh out of him, reluctant and rough with sarcastic disbelief,

"None of your business or not, I know just enough to be dangerous, I suppose. But it's not on my docket. I'm nothin' more than a blackback-riding patty now." The once-Inspector hummed, resisting the urge to add that there was very little at the end of her path but betrayal and more death. But, then again, hadn't he seen the same? Wasn't he headed in the same direction but along a different route? The words were sour like bile, like the churning of his stomach as his mind mulled over shared truths. He should have been horrified or angry or sad, but wasn't he already? Niccolette's associations didn't bother the Seventen like they should have, already too numb to betrayal, already so used to assuming he couldn't trust someone else in uniform, let alone another galdor who'd never worn one.

This was, perhaps, a trust out of necessity. Nicco wouldn't be able to finish her mourning—Rhys may have come across as calloused, but even he understood that—until she'd solved this problem. Hawke held that in his greedy hands like his own heart was trapped beneath the thumb of Damen D'Arthe.

"Not the same 'cause we're not swinging for school children anymore, no shit. Just means I don't have to pull any more punches in your company. Good."

It was with great effort that he shifted, that he raised his glass with a slowness that surely only he could perceive as frustrating, smirking as the gesture was returned and then grinning, lopsided and admittedly no longer entirely in a sober state of mind at her toast. Then he drained it—whatever was left in there—setting the poor thing down heavily, upside down, definite, only to be startled into focus by the wave of heat that washed through her field and through his senses and startled into focus by the vicious undertone to her words.

"Ashes and blood, indeed."

He watched the embers of her fierceness in her expression and turned as she leaned back in her chair—too quick, a little clumsy, fumbling through his dark green-dyed coat, fingers brushing over those damn four snaps, and tugging his notebook and his pen out. Setting them on the table, squinting and sputtering a few curses before he returned to his godsbedamned coat to dig for his spectacles. The way he shoved them on his flushed face revealed his distaste for their necessity, but he wasn't at all sober enough for them to make a difference.

Thumbs navigated through notes, hunting for a blank page. Pages and pages of his studious, intuitive Inspector habits flipped by,

"You don't have a choice now—to come to dinner." He murmured, words moving closer together, mind burning alcohol for fuel, bright and too hot, "You'll bring everything you know and, uh, and a bottle of wine. I'll roast something with garmon and organize what I—no—we, Charity and I—we—know. I can only pretend to guarantee things will go smoothly. It will take a lot more than fucking wine for that—"

Rhys sucked in a breath, aware that he couldn't even guarantee his wife sober. He wrote his address. A Dives address. Painted Ladies. A rowhouse. With trembling hands, he tore the thing, tongue pressed against that damn scar, careful not to rip his handwriting, careful not to force himself to start over. Blue eyes narrowing from behind the lenses, he slid it across the table,

"—that address isn't public record. You can get me arrested with that, if you'd rather."

Probably hung, too.

The not-galdor refrained from saying the whole truth, drunk enough to have some damn empathy, drunk enough to know it would have been too sharp, would have cut too deep in the company of someone he should have done a better job comforting in her loss. He tasted too much of his own, bitter and dry and yet aware he was still thirsty,

"But that would leave too much unfinished, and I'd be really pissed off."
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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Wed Sep 18, 2019 1:10 am

Late Afternoon, 10th Yaris, 2719
Uptown
Niccolette stared at Rhys from across the table and she let out something that on a less delicate person might have been called a snort. ”Rhys,” Niccolette said, leaning forward, tongue flicking out to moisten dry lips. She could not quite think through the haze of alcohol, her eyes fluttering for a moment; the whiskey seemed to be sinking ever deeper in, and there was a low deep buzz in her, somewhere where nothing could hurt. That numbness eased out, slowly, dancing through her. “By Hurte, is that really what you -“

Niccolette shook her head. It had been long enough, she thought. What was the point in hiding it any longer?

“I liked you for months before we met,” Niccolette said, slumping back against her chair. “Of course you were - you are - an ersehole,” Niccolette shrugged. “And I was not Charity, and in the end, you were not Uzoji.” There was something soft on the taste of his name, a sadness that bubbled up and floated away on the alcohol, leaving only a lingering memory, easier to swallow alongside the whiskey.

“It was not love,” Niccolette said, thoughtfully, studying Rhys’s still handsome face. She thought perhaps she liked it better with the scars, in the end. “But I did not know that for a long time.”

The honesty was as uncomfortable as it was uncharacteristic. Not blood this time though; this one was a scar, old and long since healed, and Niccolette did not mind the showing of it so much. It had long since stopped hurting, even if it was still strange to bear it to Rhys. It was almost easier to switch to talking about Hawke and his bedsheets and if she saw the humor in that, it was only because Niccolette had learned a lot of late about the true meaning of relative.

Rhys met her toast with his own words once more. Niccolette drained the last of her Brunelleschi, and found herself listing slightly to the side. She gripped the table, firmly, righted herself, and watched through heavily lidded eyes as Rhys wrote out his address for her. Niccolette took the paper, and she nodded.

“I shall put it with my citation,” she told Rhys, and giggled; there was no bitterness in her tone, and she still seemed almost amused by it. “And you thought I was not a criminal,” Niccolette began to giggle again, and tucked the little slip of paper into her bag, safe and secure with her fine.

It was a little too much, Niccolette thought, Rhys’s attempt to make a joke of the seriousness of what they had shared tonight. It fell flat and hard against the table between them, and cut her laughter off, slicing through the faint remnants of the giggles as if they had never existed. Niccolette swallowed the last of them, shrugged, and turned her empty glass over opposite his. The last droplets of whiskey tumbled slowly down the inside of it, looking against the table.

“I do not see any point in having you arrested,” Niccolette tried to sound causal; she did not think it worked. “I shall come for dinner,” she looked at Rhys again, and shrugged.

“I should go,” Niccolette pushed her chair back now and rose; she wobbled, unsteadily, and held onto the table a little too tightly, her hands shaking. Just to the carriage, she thought - she knew she was too drunk to walk back to the Belleverie - just to the carriage, and she could cry in peace, alone, and not have to be watched once more. Just back to the carriage. Just a few more moments.

Niccolette picked up her small purse, her umbrella, and steadied them both. She looked at Rhys again for a long moment across the table, not quite so steady on her feet as she had been, all too aware of the heat behind her eyes. “It was good to see you, Rhys.” Niccolette turned, doing her best to hold herself straight and upright, and made her way unsteadily towards the door, towards the scathing bright sunlight beyond, towards the privacy of a carriage and a hotel room, towards the inescapable loneliness of her own sorrow. She did not look back.

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Rhys Valentin
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Thu Sep 19, 2019 4:09 pm

almost uptown
Late Afternoon of the 10th of Yaris, 2719
"You what—" Rhys sputtered and it was for the best that he'd turned his glass over, that it was empty, and that he didn't have a drink in his hands to spill. Blue eyes narrowed and the tall blond realized that gathering his thoughts properly had become difficult, oozing and thick as they were, and he leaned on both palms against the table.

"—months? Why—I might have known your name, but I didn't know you. Not until that night—I—months? You said nothing—" Not that he'd even really noticed other girls for most of his student career at Brunnhold before Damen D'Arthe deemed him unworthy of even a friendship with Charity. He was, of course, quite aware that others of the opposite sex existed, but if any of them had ever looked his way with interest before that summer, he would have been deaf or blind to the attempts, "We were kids, and I was angry—not an ersehole—oh, fine. I'm still angry 'bout the same shit. Look how far I've come! Godsdamnit, I guess I'm still an ersehole, too."

His jaw clenched, face flushed now not simply by too much whiskey for an officer supposedly on duty in the middle of the afternoon but also now by obvious and sharp surprise, by aching embarrassment, and by a flood of nostalgia he'd not particularly been prepared for—

In the end, no one had ever been Charity.

Not Nicco. Not anyone else on Brunnhold's campus. No one in Numbrey. Not a body in Vienda, either. The Circle only knew that Rhys had tried his damndest to find a replacement, to snuff out the candle he'd kept burning for the delicate pianist, all to no avail. He'd not always made good choices, desperate in his need for some way to forget, but the dark-haired Bastian across from him had never been someone he'd ever considered a mistake.

Sometimes, the only way to see the truth was to sift through all the falsehoods, and Rhys had made a fool of himself over the past decade sorting through relationships—good, bad, and stupid—to find truth staring him in the face all those months ago in Roalis in some unlit alley, pale and familiar and perfect.

He choked a laugh—more half a sob than any noise of humor—staring at his regrets reflected back at him in the sunlight filtered through what amber liquid was left in the bottle on the table. He ground his teeth harder, suddenly uncomfortable in his seat, suddenly wanting the oppressive Yaris heat to melt him out of his chair and onto the floor. Slowly and with far more effort than should have been necessary, he let his bleary blue hues wash back to Nicco's face. He started a few sounds first, stopping and starting, letting the sting of her admission sink into his chest just as hard as any Seventen's baton ever had.

"That's not fair."

Like fairness was even an acceptable topic anymore. Like he had some sort of pedestal to make such declarations on. Uzoji was dead. Was his wife sober at home? Was he sober now?

The not-galdor curled nails against a well-waxed tabletop, "That's soooooooo not fuckin' fair. I didn't—I prob'ly still don't—I didn't understand love all those years ago. That doesn't mean I didn't feel anything for you. I did. I thought I knew what I wanted then, y'know. And no, it wasn't you. It wasn't anyone, really, and I sure did my damndest go of things over the years to make sure I was right. It took a long time—too long—for a lot of things."

Not that he was still getting anything right. Was he? Was he really? Unlike Niccolette with her fierce obviousness, with the brightness of her well-defined emotions of love and loss, justified in her deep hurt because she'd clearly had deep feelings for that Mug whose face he'd broken with so much pent up frustration over what he'd thought he'd wanted all those years ago, Rhys feared that he'd clung to an ideal for so long that he'd tarnished the reality in his ignorant fumbling in the dark, in his hurt rebellion. He'd waited too many years and looked away too many times like some fucking coward—and surely, he still was one, but one older and stronger—that there wasn't enough of himself to give to Charity Valentin to honestly call love. Had he bled that dry, too? Truly, he hoped not, but those fears fueled him, seethed inside, and whispered to him. Those doubts gnawed at the fault lines of his once-broken bones: his delicate pianist's struggles with opiates were surely his fault. Was all this—was this his fault, too?

He was frowning. All the well-carved lines of his face drawn inward, furrowed with the puckering of scar tissue over his eyebrow and wrinkling the otherwise comfortable curve of his lip as it became a thinner line. He was far too full of whiskey to have any modicum of control over the flare of hurt that bubbled up into his glamour like so much hot bile, the Perceptive-laden thing weighed down by far more emotion than was at all necessary. His heart forever on his proverbial sleeve given his chosen conversational focus.

It was difficult to focus enough to find his notebook. To write properly with his pen. Everything looked blurry. Behind his eyes felt as much on fire as the depths of his narrow chest. His glasses were surely just foggy from the heat, from the moisture that clung to his skin.

"It wouldn't have been my first guess, no. Not in a million summers, Nicco." He arched a pale brow, smirking as the petite woman righted herself, but unable to find the same inebriated humor in it as she did. He bit back, perhaps harder than necessary, grasping desperately for something firm to hold onto and finding only that hard familiarity of ersehattery he wore like a metal mask.

"And I'll keep your name off the lists." Rhys returned, and the words were as generous as they were slurred from the lips of a Sergeant of the Seventen. It was a kindness he couldn't properly express, a kindness that fell too flat here, a kindness smeared in far too much of the blood that had pooled under the table, unseen but not unfelt, at their feet.

"I'm a better cook than I am a friend. I promise. I really promise. Like it matters."

He murmured, backpedaling and feeling a wave of nausea with the shift, expression faltering into a wince, sucking air through his teeth as he watched the dark-haired Bastian who was still just as lovely and graceful as ever, drunk or sober, as she had been a decade ago, attempt to make a timely, if not clumsy, sort of exit,

"Niccolette—for fuck's sake—"

The tall blond sighed her name, scrambling to tuck his pen and notebook away, scrambling to set coins (too many!) on the table, to gather his jacket into his arms without knocking over his chair or knocking the bottle onto the floor. He managed to keep one glass standing, but the other tumbled to one side and tinkled onto the sticky wood at his feet. Rhys cursed over it, stared at it, and felt the world spin. Broken little pieces too much of a metaphor for how his life seemed to look anymore: shattered. And now way more guttered than he'd intended to be. He felt the weight of so much—too much—whiskey tug on his limbs but it wasn't as heavy as the weight of too many words. His stomach churned, turning so much alcohol into bright, hot fuel, and he might have moved too fast to make an attempt to catch up with the Bastian,

"—lemme get a cab. C'mon." He was not at all any steadier on his feet, and it would have been both an exaggeration to say he'd intended to brush against the shorter woman and an oversight to say he hadn't, "I can totally behave myself, Mrs. Ibutatu."

He couldn't walk home, either—oh gods, he was in uniform anyway. He'd been so careful these past few months, and now—

Look at him.

Ruining everything.

"I prob'ly shouldn't wander back to headquarters. Maybe."
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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:50 am

Late Afternoon, 10th Yaris, 2719
Uptown
There was nothing left in her for his self-pity, Niccolette thought. She felt dizzy and sick enough on her own account; the pleasant buzz of the Brunelleschi had turned bitter and foul, churning about inside her.

At first she had wanted to hurt him, if she were honest with herself. She had cut him and made him bleed, had watched it well up and drip to the floor, all to feel. And then, remorseful, she had let him watch her bleed. It had not helped; he had wallowed still, drowning in his own pain with all her help, as if she had held his head beneath the surface of it.

And at the last - at the last, Niccolette thought, bitter and remorseful, she had opened herself up to try to soothe him, to reassure him - and he had reacted as if she had hit him. He had jerked back, called her unfair, and she had felt the sting of pain in his field. She had wanted to make him feel better; she had not meant her words as an accusation, but an offer of friendship. She had not wanted, had not intended, that he bare his own scars too; she could see they had not healed, not yet.

She had not needed - had not wanted - to know all that he had not felt for her. She had known, of course. Perhaps she had always known. Perhaps she had known even then, for all that she could never have articulated it; she would not have dared. And if he had loved her? Would it have been enough? He had never been Uzoji, and for a moment Niccolette was grateful for it, grateful for all that hurt and pain and confusion, because it had not been so hard to sever herself from him, when she had realized. When she had seen him and Uzoji, bleeding before her, and she had felt not exhilaration but pain - Uzoji’s pain - she had never hesitated and she had never regretted. She still did not regret, not where it mattered.

But - her words, perhaps it was regret she felt for them. She had wanted to make it better. She had wanted to help. It stung worse than Niccolette could admit even to herself that she seemed to have done just the opposite.

It had taken a while to sink in, to filter through the drunken haze of the whiskey. I did that, Niccolette thought, and then she thought she might be sick, and the laughter that had been so easy a moment ago felt a thousand years away. She could not look back at him, even when he cursed and called after her, even when she heard the shattering of glass against the floor.

“No, Rhys -“ he brushed against her, the warm, heavy weight of him oddly comforting, and Niccolette flinched and pulled away, trembling. Tears were rising like a wave inside of her, and she blinked, futilely, as if she could hold back the tide. He was trying to joke still, offering to see her home, and she did not think he understood - perhaps he could not - why she had wanted to leave.

Hurting each other, Niccolette thought, aching and miserable. With deception or honesty; with fear and friendship. With something she thought still might be love, if not the kind one felt for a lover. Niccolette did not know; she had never had a brother. She had never thought to ask Uzoji; she had never known there would not be time.

Niccolette pushed outside, into the light, a step more like a stumble through the open door, into the quiet, empty square. Even in the shade of the bar she could feel the bright, sharp afternoon sun, the warmth of it reaching for her. She shuddered, just a step or two from the border where the shade bled into the sun, from the place where she could not hide.

It was beginning to creep down now; the shadows were growing longer and longer, but the heat of the day had not yet gone; the sun had baked it into everything, into all the streets and walls and corridors, and that heat rose back up, glistening in the air.

“Please,” Niccolette said, softly, standing there. She clutched her umbrella tightly with her ringed hand, her purse pressed between her arm and her body. The golden dress trembled with her, the fabric shuddering and shifting. “Do not make me cry before you again.”

It was too late, Niccolette thought. As if saying the word had summoned the wave, had convinced it to crest and break inside of her. She twisted away from him, and sobbed, taking a half-step back from the border between sunlight and shade, sagging against the wall of the bar. She sobbed, then, her whole body shaking, weeping tears of blood and Brunelleschi. They ravaged her, those sobs, and Niccolette surrendered the fight to them, because she knew better than to try.

As many moments as it takes, she promised herself, the strange humiliation of it already seeping away, lost beneath the sadness. She had no space left for the shame that had been so wrenching only moments ago. It was not a gentle spilling of tears down her cheeks, not this time, but sobs, brutal and wrenching and ugly. She wanted to hate them, but she could not; it would be like hating the ocean. There was no point to it. As many moments as it takes; she gave herself that gift, at least, that hard won gift of forgivnesss. It was not enough, no, but it was all that she had to offer herself, and she knew to be grateful for it.

Her field hung heavy with sadness; blue bled out of her, seeping into the air, the faintest tinge of it visible in the shade, so dark that it seemed to sink her further into the shadows. Sadness leeched into the air too, not escaping from her, but hemming her in, a reminder on all sides of what she always felt, deep down in the core of her. Niccolette wept, and promised herself she would find her control later, once the wave had passed, once she had finished drowning herself in sorrow again.

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Rhys Valentin
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Tue Oct 08, 2019 12:21 pm

almost uptown
Late Afternoon of the 10th of Yaris, 2719
"Ican't—" The tall blond attempted some kind of apology, whatever sincere words he should have begun everything with slurring against a tongue made clumsy by an unnecessarily voluminous amount of whiskey as it churned through his veins.

Just like the Yaris street in the middle of the afternoon, only on the inside.

Too hot.

Somewhere on that street corner just a few blocks away, his intentions had been clear. Seeing her had—well, it had been a surprise. Unexpected. He'd burned bridges once. The Bastian had been more than a mere friend or acquaintance, and in the rush of adrenaline and arrests, her loss had struck him harder than he'd been prepared for. That metallic taste of near-death was always clinging to the back of his throat, and while her words had stirred his sympathies, he was clearly too broken for comfort.

The not-galdor had really fucked up being anything close to comforting, had really fucked up bringing sympathies to her husband's death—unless one counted ripping of metaphorical stitches from metaphorical wounds like some shared display of pain anything close to an acceptable method of sharing in someone else's suffering. If, by any small and remote chance, if that counted, then Rhys had done a fucking excellent job.

But, really, even so deliberately guttered now, he knew he'd just messed something else up, ruined and withered it as if that was all he could ever do with his touch, regardless of how good his intentions had been.

"—I can't change—"

Not himself, apparently.

Not what happened to Uzoji, either.

"—I didn't—I'm sorry."

Niccolette moved to slip away, but Rhys had a long reach and, even intoxicated, the kind of reflexes more than merely exemplary of his Seventen training. He wasn't steady, he wasn't proper—he'd never been either of those things, really—and the arm that wrapped with more than casual familiarity, with far from sober swiftness around her slighter, shorter shoulders was not an embrace that would give in to any objection. He drew her against his side as if taking her under a wing, though he was hardly a graceful bird worth envying in the trajectory of his flight.

Wobbling a little, coat slung over his other half with a wild motion of his other hand, he paused for a moment, desperate to get one thing right in the midst of the mess he'd made—selfishly, unable to hold his own hurt in when reminded of the kind of death that was, most likely, waiting for him around every corner of this path he'd chosen, too. He endured the brunt of her wretched, aching sobs like he'd endured his beating all those months ago—only quieter. Finally quieter—and was as immovable as ever in his drunkenness should the petite Bastian attempt to squirm away from him in her tears.

"I'm sorry."

Rhys repeated, softer, unwilling to be refused the needful embrace, flushed and dizzy, weathering the heaviness of her field, the weight of a sorrow he struggled on a daily basis to contain within the well-ironed greens, to hide behind scars and sarcastic smiles. His glamour, powerful as it was and imbibed with so much Perceptive mona, wove without hesitance in the same bold way his arm had moved to bolster her shaking, weeping form.

True to himself, he didn't give a chroves' erse about the impropriety of it all: he could care less about taking those steps into the sweltering sun toward the street with Niccolette pressed so close, half out of his uniform, too intoxicated for this time of the afternoon.

Gods, it was so very improper, but what did it really matter? They'd both made their choices—and here they were, staring into the bright flames of where those heartfelt decisions had led them.

"I can jus' decide you're resisting arrest, y' know, struggling an' all—" Rhys murmured with an equally inappropriate coyness as if all of her sorrow had finally, truly, completely broken his mind, as if his heart didn't already have festering wounds. Tentatively tugging them both toward the end of the sidewalk with all the intention of waving down a cab and making sure the dark-haired woman was safely home before he bothered to figure out his own shit, before he figured out how to make it back to the Painted Ladies in his current state of being, he added in a slurred sort of growl, "—I'll remind you, I've got cuffs an' everything. But we'd both like that too damn much—"

He snorted ridiculously, laughed too loudly, rolled his eyes and raised his free hand, instinctively hoping all the clocking Circle had some undeserved mercy on his inebriated self by holding in place the precariously-balanced coat tossed over his shoulder, snaps sparkling in the setting sun, waving at one of the empty, moa-drawn cabs that rattled by, waggling fingers while he swayed on his feet, attempting to quell his stupid, totally out of place amusement,

"Seriously, though, lemme get you back to th' Hotel. I've fucked up enough. I can get this part right. I can. Jus' this part." The tall blond told himself as much as he told Niccolette, assuring himself that there was something he could accomplish that was worthwhile in the overwhelming, crushing tide of her sorrow and their surprisingly shared source of hurt.

Moments ago, it had been him and Charity against what felt like all of Vita.

Now?

Well, they'd always had each other's back, hadn't they?

Tumultuous. Tempestuous. Totally unsafe, but except for that one time when she didn't—or perhaps, even then, she had—the Bastian he'd not simply called a lover but also loved had been there in the lows of his youth as much as some of the highs, whether it was for their betterment or not at the time. They'd not been meant for each other in that way that books liked to brag about, but they'd certainly had meaning.

Was this really so new? Did he not already know what she was capable of simply with the inference from her willingly shared truths?

The cab driver probably took pity on them or he was just desperate enough for easy coin to take the risk the pair presented: two rather strange, sorry guttered gollies in the oppressive Yaris afternoon, both out of place in their own ways. Blue eyes came into focus at brown ones peering from beneath thick, ginger eyebrows, the older wick doing his damnedest not to smirk at them both because one just did not make those sorts of faces at an officer of the Anaxi law, especially when they weren't sober, nor at galdori women in lovely dresses, even when they were obviously crying.

"Ye need a ride? Together, or—"

"No—not—I mean—" Rhys caught himself, confused for a moment as if lost in the blurred landscape of memory and present, reaching to steady himself against the body of the carriage, much to the surprise of the moa in front of it. It ruffled his feathers while he chuckled again, more a giggle than anything else, inhaling sharply to pull some of the slivers of glass that had become pieces of himself together, to sound coherent, "Same tab—mine. Different destinations for m'self an' the lady, however."

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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Tue Oct 08, 2019 3:45 pm

Late Afternoon, 10th Yaris, 2719
Uptown
Niccolette had done her best to pull away. She had done her best to hide the truths that might hurt him, whether he had wanted her to or not. She had done her best to hide the tears; she had wanted to keep that wrenching, heavy sorrow to herself, for though she was not ashamed of it, she knew it was her own to bear. She had done her best to leave him behind in the bar, to go her own way.

Rhys’s apology chased after her, and Niccolette twisted away from that too; he caught her, and pulled her close into his side. She struggled, then, but only feebly, and the hand shoving against the fabric of his green shirt turned and gripped it, tightly.

Niccolette bowed her head against her once lover and still friend and sobbed. Rhys held her close with his arm and his field both, the soft perceptive mona creeping in amidst Niccolette’s heavy burden of sadness. And Rhys did not lessen it, for nothing could, but he made it a little easier for her to bear, just for a little while.

Eventually, the heavy wracking sobs dwindled; eventually, Niccolette was only crying. She tried to wriggle away then, sniffling heavily, and Rhys did not let her go, threatening her with his cuffs instead. Niccolette began to sob again, but she laughed too, shaking, and didn’t resist any more; her hand curled into his shirt once more, and she rested her cheek against him, sniffling, confident in his ability to hold her up a little longer.

Niccolette did not trouble herself much with the carriage; she was still tucked beneath Rhys’s arm as he hailed her, her eyes mostly shut, and she went along without protest as he handed her up into it, sinking gratefully onto the bench inside, dropping her umbrella onto the floor. Niccolette fumbled through her purse and fetched out a handkerchief, wiping at her face before blowing her nose. There were still tears trickling from her eyes, but the intensity of it was gone, that heavy blue in the air lightening, slowly.

Niccolette sighed, heavily, and leaned against Rhys when he sat next to her, her eyes fluttering shut. “You know,” she said, regretfully, long past shame, “I had hoped to go the whole day without weeping,” she shot him a mock-resentful glance from beneath mascara-caked eyelids, then rested her cheek on his shoulder. What was a little more honesty, after these last hours? If it was painful, it was a good, clean sort of pain - the sting of disinfectant against all those bloody wounds.

The Bastian didn’t pick her head up, but she did take a clean corner of the handkerchief and keep working on her eyes, patting them dry and taking what she could of the mess off her face in the small cab of the taxi. Even the most expensive, highest quality make-up was only waterproof for so long, Niccolette had discovered. No matter what promises a vendor made, there came some amount of crying after which eyeblack smeared and mascara clumped. She had some practice, by now, dealing with the aftermath, and by the time she tucked the dirtied handkerchief away again, she looked very nearly passable.

Slowly, a little restored, Niccolette straightened back up from Rhys’s side. She sighed again, the last of the now-faint blue easing from her field, and ran her fingers through her hair, coming it back over her head, rumpling the heavy, dark strands with the ease of long practice. She smiled at him, a little sheepishly, feeling the Brunelleschi still swimming through her veins. There was a heaviness left behind in her stomach, a nausea born of too many swallowed tears, but that too, she knew, would fade.

The carriage was rattling over bumpy streets still, the moa hitched to the front towing the wick and the two galdori across Vienda. For a moment, they rode in silence, but Niccolette did not find it uncomfortable, much to her surprise.

“You are a good friend, Rhys,” Niccolette reached out and took his hand, her small, still slightly damp fingers intertwining with his and squeezing briefly. The living mona in her field fluttered, and there was a sense of openness in her, of reaching out. It was a conscious merging, just shy of full envelopment, much deeper than she had let him in so far – not goldshift and bastly, but indectal and calm, utterly deliberate. “I have missed you.”

The carriage rattled to a stop; there was a flurry of motion from outside, and the wick knocked briefly on the door before opening it, squinting inside at the two galdori as if not quite sure what he would find.

Niccolette fetched her umbrella from the floor, took a deep breath, and gave Rhys a firm nod. “I shall see you and Charity for dinner,” she promised, and then grinned, mischief glinting in her eyes once more, a little more knowing than perhaps he might have expected. “I shall bring plenty of wine.”

Niccolette let Rhys help her from the carriage. She glanced back one last time - not regretting the past, but looking ahead to a future that felt just a little less painful than it had. Just a little less, but she thought, perhaps, it was enough. And then Niccolette tucked her umbrella beneath her arm and strode off glittering through the sinking golden light, her dress sparkling like gold in the setting sun.

This moment, the Bastian promised herself, and the next, and the next, and then all the rest. One by one, she would get through them all.

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Rhys Valentin
Posts: 262
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2018 5:06 pm
Topics: 19
Race: Wick
Location: Vienda
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Thu Oct 10, 2019 11:34 am

almost uptown
Late Afternoon of the 10th of Yaris, 2719
Niccolette attempted to writhe from his embrace, her smaller, lither form twisting away from him. While the movement could have tumbled him off-balance, his arm had snaked around her narrow shoulders and his hand had found her bicep. He was stronger, more determined, and the offering of his physical comfort seemed to slice through her wavering defenses until the petite Bastian stopped shoving him and curled her fingers into his uniform instead. He might have slurred a curse, some mumbled nonsense, the sensation familiar enough to drag nostalgic humor from him, though he said nothing for a few moments, waiting for her rough, body-shaking sobs to slow a bit.

Just a bit—

Just enough to sneak in a joke, leaning closer on unsteady footing so his scarred lip brushed dark hair and his free hand jangled his Seventen-issued belt for emphasis. Niccolette blubbered a laugh and he chuckled in return, the sounds of amusement drowned by more crying still plastering a brief, lopsided smile on his flushed, sweaty face before he snapped his head up again, inebriated but not guttered enough to be totally unaware of his behavior.

Mostly. A little. Oh well.

He waved down the cab, not at all interested in letting the petite Bastian go once she'd settled her face against the side of his chest. The tall blond kept his hand raised longer than necessary, if only to keep himself from wrapping his free arm further around the woman whose life he'd never once thought he'd find himself even remotely tangled up in again.

The cab to stopped at the edge of the street and the driver might have leered at them in a little too much curiosity. He'd surely seen worse, but it was the middle of the afternoon and had Rhys been capable of genuine shame, had he at least been sober, he might have felt a bit of chagrin. As it was, he didn't give a godsbedamned care in all the world what the stranger taking his money theorized about the pair of them, giving his directions as he sucked in a hot breath and attempted to focus his coordination enough to first assist Niccolette into the carriage and then not make a fool of his lanky, inebriated self climbing in behind her.

"The Hotel Belleverie first, please."

Rhys settled, dizzy now, head swimming with the churning of whiskey and too many matters of the heart. He'd not entirely expected the dark-haired woman to lean against him after all her previous struggling, but he shifted to make it all more comfortable, reaching an arm once more around her shoulders in familiarity, unable to resist the reflex,

"You can blame me, I s'pose." He smirked at her poor imitation of a rueful statement, rolling his now-bleary blue eyes and leaning to rest his cheek on the crown of her head once the side of her face warmed his shoulder. He sighed, staring out at the street without anything witty left to say, biting the inside of his cheek and ignoring the sensation of a heat stinging the edges of his eyes that had nothing to do with the sweltering Yaris weather.

While the petite Bastian wiped the evidence of so much sorrow from her still very lovely face, Rhys' thoughts dug into sore places, dragged him over sharp things, and he breathed unevenly, raggedly holding back any tears of his own, doggedly holding back any flood of his own. Niccolette's smaller self curled against him only made him want to hold Charity tighter, only served to remind him that had he died in that pool of his own blood on the chilled cobblestones of Uptown while Damen watched, no one-no fucking one—would have been there to comfort his wife in his absence.

And Benjamin Tolsby wouldn't have had anyone to stop him.

Those thoughts tasted like bile and he made some helpless, sad noise, raising his other hand from gripping his heavy green coat so tight his knuckles had been white to drag a calloused palm over his face, to try to wipe it all away. It clung to him, weighing down his glamour and causing his shoulders to sag as soon as Nicco sat up and straightened.

Rhys tilted his head toward her smile, leaning back a little and sinking so his knees dug into the front of the small cab, too tall for the damn thing. His smile back wasn't disingenuous so much as weary, frayed at the edges and sore. He blinked at her declaration of friendship, inhaling sharply at the brush of her fingers but curling his with hers tightly,

"I'm a shit friend, but, gods, thank you."

And a shit galdor.

And a shitty Seventen.

And a shittier husband.

His words were slurred. He felt more tired than guttered all of a sudden as if he'd been the one weeping and trembling, as if all the metaphorical blood he'd smeared through the Vienda streets had left him drained and pale instead of drunk and flushed. The mingling of their fields drew a restrained sob from him as he welcomed the unspoken sentiment—it wasn't as if she knew what he really was, it wasn't as though he knew all those years ago of his bastard heritage, and it wasn't as though now was at all the time (if ever) to reveal such things (he'd given away enough!)—but his smile broadened: tentative, sincere.

He hardly trusted anyone anymore—who was left?

Niccolette Ibutatu: ex-girlfriend, Bad Brother, and widow.

Perfect, really.

"I missed you, too." Rhys might have had more to say, but the cab jolted and he gripped the window to keep steady, ignoring the wave of nausea from too many emotions swirled with too much Brunelleschi. He set himself in reluctant motion, smirking at the driver as he rolled his lanky, too-tall, too-intoxicated self out to offer his assistance to Niccolette out of the carriage as would have been expected of any proper galdor—two words that had never applied to him, not really.

"We will be glad to have you, Charity an' I both." He returned the grin with a snort and a shake of his head, "I don't know if there'll be enough wine in all 'f Vienda, but fuck it, we'll be fine."

His hands might have lingered, might have drifted just a little too familiarly over her slight frame as he helped her onto the sidewalk beneath the comforting shade of an intricate stonework overhang outside of the hotel, but it was not entirely out of physical desire, not entirely with any long-smoldering coals of lust for the Bastian who'd been more than just his first kiss. Maybe there was a bit of need there, sure, but moreso there was a bit of apology, a bit of memory brought to the surface by whiskey and tears. He knew better than to hover, than to stay here and pretend—

"I'm really sorry for your loss, Nicco—Mrs. Ibutatu—but I'm glad—I'm glad we've still got each other's backs." His grin faltered, but there was the fiery flicker of promise there, a resolute and tumultuous rebellion in the crystalline blue hue of his gaze. He nodded, letting her slip away, scintillating in the evening light, and shoved too many thoughts of his own back down in to the churning miasma of his alcohol-filled insides while he shoved himself back in the cab, not looking back at her, not looking back at all.

"Painted Ladies." He ordered the cab driver quietly when the man closed the door behind him, peering through the window, though the words were more like a growl, strained while he fussed with clumsily folding his coat and arranging all the official accoutrements of his belt that seemed to suddenly get in his way, while he held what little of himself he could together for at least another street corner from the Belleverie.

If he died now, in the middle of his godsbedamned mess, Charity would have no one. If he died at all, with all of this unfinished, with all of the justice unserved, his ghost wouldn't be enough. Not that he was enough in life—

He'd not given it sooner, he'd not done enough when he should have.

Grasping at what was left, he couldn't hold on tight enough, either.

Rhys sniffled. He snarled.

His countenance wavered once he was alone, too guttered to resist the sadness that already haunted him, waking or sleeping, too guttered to keep the tide of helpless anger and hurt at bay any longer. Niccolette hadn't made any new wounds with her own truths, only carefully excised every stitch, and the taste of blood was so familiar that it was almost a strange comfort while the young Valentin sobbed for what was lost—time wasted, lives ruined, and hopes dashed—and the golden-lit glories of Uptown faded into long, dark shadows of the Dives.
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