you can keep on getting better [open]

[hauntedsavior]

Who: Anna Amarande and you!
What: May catchall
When: May
Where: A bar in Cellar Door, other locations to come

Content Warnings: Light alcohol use, conversations about humanity and murder, blood, vampirism

a. if you want, you can buy yourself a drink [at the bar]

[anna's made plans with a couple people to hang out this month. it's not a tense environment at all, and sometimes she can even be seen on the tiny little stage playing some chilled out bass grooves for the patrons. no concrete songs, really, mostly just improv for vibes. when she's not on stage, and most of the time she's not, she's nestled herself down into a booth down near the end. it's quiet, well-lit but not obtrusively so. people around here know her and know that that's basically her seat, so any conversations that happen there are as private as they're gonna get.]

[she's expecting a few people to show up as she nurses a beer that's so weak she might as well not be drinking anything at all. probably for the best that she's sober for these talks, whatever they end up bringing with them.]

Hey. Glad you could make it. [she tilts her drink at her guest.]

b. no you'll never drink like me [for kainé]

[there's always been a few problems with going out and hunting beasts, no matter how confident and comfortable it makes anna feel. no matter how many lives she saves, she's always putting herself at risk of corruption or injury or beasthood or all three, and one of these days it's gonna sneak up on her. all at once, extremely loudly and incredibly close.]

[anyway, when she comes back home this time, it's clear that she's been in better shape. she limps her way into the house, and she's at least cognizant enough to fix her roommate/girlfriend with a sheepish little look as she holds her side. the cloth there isn't dripping yet, but it's clear that it didn't start as red as it is now.]

Motherfucker out there got the best of me. [she's talking like she's not in pain, or like she's trying very hard to pretend she isn't.] I think I stopped most of the bleeding myself. Don't suppose we've got anything here that can help seal it up before I go to the doctor?

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

[The door is a handful of seconds away. Anna wouldn't stop him from standing up to head towards it, with any pale excuses he might make. He had thought he wanted to talk about this, to better understand, in whatever way he was able to understand. He was wrong. He often is. His feet are already bracing on the floor so he may rise.

But she looks up at him, expecting nothing, and he is fixed in place by the absence of demand. The difference in their ages has never struck him like this before. He is a man grown, head of his House - but he feels like a boy, the one she saw him as when he walked into this place. She is worn, and tired, and she has set her heart whole and beating between them without asking for anything back.

His hand steals across the table, almost as if at someone else's will, and he leaves it open by hers, fingers splayed to be taken up, if she wants them.]

They shouldn't have done that to you.

[Not for God, whatever twisted logic led them there. Not for anything.]

I'm sorry. I shouldn't have - [he shakes his head with a hard swallow, his voice clotted with an echoing empathy] - you're right. That's what matters, when it comes down to us.

I want there to be a reason. I want to understand. [he's the one who can't meet her eyes, now] Sometimes, I think - if I could understand, then -

But that's not something anyone else can tell me, is it? Or can tell you.

[hauntedsavior]

[it shouldn't be so touching to hear that. she should be hardened by now. but she sees paul reach out a hand, and despite herself, she takes it. one thing that she never heard enough of when she had the original crisis was how they shouldn't have done this to her. how her parents were wrong for what they did. it was twelve years ago and she's mostly over it by now, but any sort of kindness that anyone elects to extend to her will always, always be appreciated.]

Why are you apologizing? [she almost looks confused, but she does understand why he's doing it. or she thinks she does, at least.] I'm the one who brought it up. I'm just not very good at figuring out why people do things, and that goes double for gods.

[she squeezes his hand. looks down at the table, then back up to him.]

There's someone from back home who said one time that he thinks all our lives are unfolding in the right direction, and that stuck with me. I don't know if that means there's a reason behind everything we've been through, but I think it means that you and I are both here, now, having this conversation because it's where our lives have taken us. [and very suddenly, she almost looks... there's a combination of shame and embarrassment on her face.]

I know that's not what you're looking for, and maybe it's stupid to listen to the words of the guy who wrote seventeen songs about partying as hard as physically possible, but... I don't know. It's helped me. Knowing that I'm in the right place, going the right way. Once I stopped being stubborn about it and got some help from my friends to guide me, at least.

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul knows how little of Anna is still human. She told him herself. But the hand that clasps his is warm, the intent that moves her to squeeze their fingers together warmer still. He almost didn't expect her to take it. He barely knows why the impulse moved him to reach out. Everything balances on a grass-blade's width, twisting slightly in a chance breeze, and there is the faintest tracery of surprise around his eyes at all of it.]

I think you're better at figuring people out than you think you are.

[He looks at her like he's watching a something open, a bud or a shell, drawing slowly back to reveal the first hint of the delicate thing it protects.]

Maybe the gods, too. [He brushes his thumb along the outer curve of her hand, a light, companionable touch.] As for what I'm looking for - I think your song writing friend might say that finding other things is part of the unfolding.

[Now it's his turn again to glance away, voice softer, wistfulness not quite filtered out of it:] I don't think that's stupid. It got you this far, didn't it? Despite everything else, you're here, head above the waves.

...and I'm apologizing because... [His brow furrows lightly, troubled, someone on the cusp of an understanding.] Someone should.

[hauntedsavior]

[shit.]

[she's not that drunk, is she? christ. she's not crying but there's the tingle in her nose and she can see the corner of her eye getting a little blurry. no, dammit, she's not gonna cry in front of someone who's, like, a decade younger than her and also royalty. but she'll at least allow herself the vulnerability, the knowledge that she wants to.]

[she clears her throat ungracefully and pulls her hand back slowly, then wipes at her eye for what she's going to pretend is an unrelated reason.]

Yeah, well. 's one of a whole list of things I never got from them, so. Thanks. [hoo boy. dammit, atreides.] And thanks for thinking I'm all right at reading people, too. Always had problems with it, but, you know. Just kind of... try to say what's in my heart, or whatever the fuck's inside here anymore, and see what happens from there.

And if the words of the guy who put out an album called I Get Wet can help you out? [she fixes him with a smile from one side of her mouth, again almost like she's embarrassed to say it.] Well, hell. Works for me. Be sure to hit me up if you ever need more inspiration from, you know. A culture that I guess has been dead for a while, when you're from.