Comments | estdeus_innobis: The rain runs down.

glass_beddau in estdeus_innobis

The rain runs down.

Jul 24, 2008 15:19

[Early evening, Tuesday, July 7 (day 37)]
[Out towards the Voronin Estate]

The day had a fever, today.

One long slick swelter, with the sun sweating through from behind the clouds, and come mid-morning, the clouds went the ill green colour of a fading bruise and the sky howled. Hail--hail, in high summer--and leaves and branches stripped right ( Read more... )

gaueko, wanda, anushka, glass

Comments 51

mistresswanda July 24 2008, 20:43:23 UTC

Lucien came in late, later than I, just as thoughtful and as agitated as I was. There were very little words, but we clung to one another fiercely, as if we might vanish lest we blinked ( ... )

glass_beddau July 24 2008, 23:02:23 UTC

"Think anyone's home?"

"Ohyes." I consider the house gloomily. "My luck hasn't been good enough to allow for the other in weeks." Anushka Voronin... pale little broken-legged spider, picking and picking away at everything I hold close and pulling it out.

What I have will not be made less by her naming it.

The gate's not locked, but rust is crawling over it like lichen. Soft squeal of wet and creaking metal on metal, a graveyard sound, faintly reassuring. Easy enough to slip through, into old gardens, dead leaves. The windows of the house are blank in the dusk, the door is open.

I look back at Wanda. Light still in the sky, and me yet brave enough to say this because of it.

"You don't have to come."

mistresswanda July 24 2008, 23:46:13 UTC

"Oh yes. My luck hasn't been good enough to allow for the other in weeks." Glass mutters rather glumly, staring at the hulking house gathering shadows. I smirk, still not enough happiness in me to laugh ( ... )

glass_beddau July 25 2008, 00:22:16 UTC

"Lady Voronin, are you home? We would like to seek your council."

I glance over Wanda's shoulder into the shadows of the building. The halls and rooms are thick with shadows and dust, carpeted with leaves and cracking with small growing things, and damn, it might be darker than it ought to be, but I can't tell. Never been here before, and the light's dull and strange from the storm, and yes, there's that dull seething apprehension and fear, but mother's bones I am walking into the Shuck's lair.

I know he's like to be here, and that means I can't tell if he is. And I want to be anywhere but here, I really do...

I squeeze the gathering bag tighter for a moment, remember the look in Iago's eyes, and... oh, hell, is this what happens when you mingle curiousity and rage? I take a step across the threshold. It's not near to as different inside as it should be, the smell of green things and water spreading slow amidst the walls.

"Come on, then," I say to Wanda.

Thread 24

(The comment has been removed)

glass_beddau July 25 2008, 19:29:29 UTC

"It will be better if you have something. Something of the place or something of him, or something of the day. A little treasure," and she laughs like wind in the ghost of branches. There's something black streaked and smeared across her fingers, as if she'd been dabbling in bad blood.

Good. I had the right of what she'd need, then.

I open the bag, pull out the shirt Iago was wearing when he saw whoever it was, folded small and soft. There's blood on that, too, but it's really blood, Dorian's, not the soot on Anushka's fingertips. I hand it to her quietly--I'm somehow not taking her for needing an explanation of what it is, or why it matters to what I'm asking--and fold my arms back around myself and my bag. I glance once at Wanda, trying to read the look on her face, catching the Shuck from the corner of my eye.

(The comment has been removed)

mistresswanda July 25 2008, 19:48:00 UTC

This is fascinating. Forgetting that I'm in a crumbling mansion, with a madwoman and a God right behind me that can throw me around like a rag doll, I crouch down, balancing on the balls of my boots, black leather pooling around me like so much darkness. Hands folded fingertips tapping against my lips....
I can not wait to see how this turns out. I swing a look to Glass, back to the God-man again, then fix my rapt attention to the ghost playing in the smoke.

Thread 17

mistresswanda July 27 2008, 01:18:19 UTC

"How is your doctor, anyway?"
Something inside me snaps, I suck in a ragged breath, and Glass's eyes go wide...
The world comes down to a pinpoint in my red washed vision. How the fuck does this thing know about my Lucien? Who told him? Gods help us, I'll find them out too and gut them. I'm only vaguely aware that I'm moving, only vaguely aware that the hell kissed fire in my Lucien's eyes have nothing on the pure hate in mine. I think that's me screaming in primal rage as I spring foward, whipping the blades from my back as I get closer to that fucking grinning face that mocks me, mocks all of us, and dares speak of that which I love more than my own life...
and there are two last thoughts that go through simultaneous as I get withing striking distance.
'I'm so sorry Glass.'
'I'm gonna rip that smile of his face, and it will be the last thing I ever do.'

gaueko_erebus July 27 2008, 01:33:01 UTC

She comes at me. I thought she might. Got one hell of a damned temper, that one, and a huge weak point where that doctor is concerned. It's like an infected gash in an antelope's side. She comes at me screaming, whipping knives from beneath her coat, knives I knew she was carrying, and Anushka hisses at her and presses into my side....

...all of it happens in a split second. Anushka pushed to the side, out of harm's way. Me, stepping to the side, faster than her, fast enough to grab her wrist while her momentum still carries her forward, fast enough to twist it behind her back and she shrieks and drops the knife as I yank her back against me, and the sound of the bones in her shoulder creaking are music to my ears.

"Stupid," I hiss into her ear. My free hand grabs her other wrists and squeezes until the second knife goes. "Gutsy, but very, very stupid. You may be able to punch out a demon, little girl, but I am a very different matter entirely." I give her twisted arm a yank and she screams, "Forget breaking it," I say ( ... )

glass_beddau July 27 2008, 01:45:34 UTC

"Any more questions?"

...wait, is Wanda not dead, then? I saw her as such, torn open and bleeding, blood gone black in the wash of his night and pouring out in a springmelt gush onto the dusty floor.

"Wanda?" Not a ghost, either, I could tell if it were that. My words are a faint echo in my ears; I know them, but can't hear them through the rushing blood. "Pick up your knives if you will, and come away. We're near to done here."

I look at the Shuck, and I can do that now, grinning in the dark with the dead around him and in him, the murder of the world standing there in a long black coat, and through a vision distant as one trapped under glass there's all the raw pain and delight of him, smile like the slit throat of one waylaid in the dark and a shine in his eyes of bone wearing through the skin of the unburied dead.

"Nothing of what he says changes the truth of things," I tell her calm as I can. "Come away while you can."

mistresswanda July 27 2008, 02:05:51 UTC

Dammit! Dammit all! I knew I'd die, I knew he'd kill me, but I wanted to get just one blade into that face of his before I bled out on the floor! And here I am, a joke, arm twisted up behind my back pinned against him, screaming out in rage that he takes for pain as he hisses in my ear, tearing my arm from it's socket and I'm going to die and Glass will have to reassemble me to lay me out ( ... )

Thread 23