The Smoking Gun [log]
Who: Slayer [dandy_step] and Taki [sanctumhuntress]
When: Tonight (April 7), around midnight
Where: Taki's apartment
Warnings: None, really
Summary: Slayer gives Taki the information she's been looking for, and they do something akin to bonding. Now with 75% more depressing family history!
Taki sat curled up on her couch, reading through a flimsy paperback novel with her mind only half on the words. The rest of her thoughts were occupied with anticipating when, where, and how Slayer was going to appear to her again. Unless it was wishful thinking on her part, he’d apparently understood her unvoiced request. Though she had no doubt she would be seeing him again, she was completely unsure how he would actually contact her.
Somehow, the fact that he had her address in that little file of his didn’t occur to her again, possibly because he didn’t seem the type to knock on her door and just explain things. No, it would have to be much more painful than that.
Slayer was about to invade somebody’s apartment. Taki’s to be specific. She was right about the file having her address, and it led him to be floating right outside her windows. He grinned, before merely focusing on the interior of it, particularly her kitchen. He’d been there before to catch her, managing to miss every time before somebody noticed a light was on. Perhaps he’d get lucky.
Inside Taki’s kitchen, a strange, coffin shaped hole appeared in the air, with a golden light on the other side. A shadow moved below it, vaguely man shaped, moving like a snake on a few too many stimulants. The shadow suddenly stood up, and in the light stood Slayer, whole and complete, and the door vanished behind him. He immediately noticed the kettle, and flicked the burner for it on, while thinking amusedly to himself how silly invitations into a home were.
Taki had been prepared to mark her place in her reading, set her book down, and maybe go out for a walk to think a few things over some more, when her sixth sense suddenly started screaming at her that there was something in her apartment that was not entirely human. The next thought to enter her mind was that she should probably go kill it. Tossing her novel down on the couch next to her, she slipped one hand inside her sleeve and withdrew a knife she had stashed there in case of such emergencies. She had a good idea of what had just invaded her living space, but there was only one way to find out…
“How the hell did you get in here?” As Taki spoke she stood just outside the threshold to the kitchen, knife held in a manner that would have probably been threatening if the person she was facing was at all affected by stab wounds.
“Hello to you too.” The kettle had begun to boil, and he turned it off and ruffled through a cabinet for a pack of tea and a cup. Throwing it together, he turned and said “I came through an open door, of course. Tea?” It was probably coming off as extremely arrogant and obnoxious to be asking her if she wanted a cup of her own tea in her own home. Then again, Slayer didn’t really care.
She struggled for a few moments, apparently trying to figure out how to express how much was wrong with the situation in words. ‘My door is definitely locked,’ ‘Couldn’t you have given me a warning?’ and ‘You could have asked for tea like a normal guest,’ didn’t seem to be fitting together into a coherent rant, however, so instead she decided it would be best to just get down to business before she snapped and attempted to remove his liver with her bare hands. “Did you bring the papers I wanted to look at?”
He raised an eyebrow under his monocle. “Straight to business I see. Yes, I did. Along with a few other reports that pertain to you. Mutant watch reports, some other things.” As he said this, he pulled from his jacket the folder from their first meeting, significantly thicker than the last time, and handed it out to her. “And you never answered. Tea?”
Hesitating only slightly, she slid her weapon back into its hiding place and took the folder from him. Sliding into a seat at her kitchen table, she pursed her lips and shook her head slightly in response to his question. It probably wouldn’t be any use pointing out to him that it was her tea, would it? Flipping the folder open, she began to shift through it to find the relevant information. “Is there any reason you grabbed this file out of however many others there were?” She doubted that he had run off with an entire building’s worth of information, though it probably wouldn’t surprise her.
He stirred his tea a little bit, before taking a testing sip, wincing slightly at it. “It’s easier to collect single folders in alphabetical order from a number of facilities. Garners less suspicion. I’d just gotten to Fu when we met.” Sipping the tea again, to his satisfaction, he added “Strange coincidence, I must say." He moved to her table, sitting down on his cloak on the way, and floated level with her. "What, exactly, are you looking for in there anyway?"
“Lucky me,” came her obviously sarcastic reply. And, of course, that brought her to a very important question: “What for?” Glancing up at him, she opened her mouth to say he could use the other chair, but again decided to drop the subject. So far that strategy was making her life easier, so there was no point to second-guessing it now. “I’m just looking for confirmation about what you’ve already told me. I’ve been worried about it for a while now… since I mentioned my sixth sense to Toki, actually.”
“I like to know what’s going on and what the government’s doing. That includes what the government plans for its agents. It helps piece together the narrative.” He spoke of it all like it was a play, and all he had to do to get the script was dig a bit. At her mention of Toki, he made a tsk tsk sort of noise. “Rule 1: Never reveal yourself to someone involved in the government. Whether they’ll choose to use you…” he paused, looking hard at her, “or simply kill you. As soon as you become a threat or outlive you’re usefulness, it’s done. And it’s on page seven of the main report, by the way.”
“It wasn’t something I did lightly. I figured that since he had treated me as a daughter…” She trailed off, sighing slightly as though disgusted with herself. “Stupid and naïve, I know.” It wasn’t that Toki had given any obvious indication that he was keeping tabs on her for the government and thus directly involved with whether she lived or died, but it was about as likely as Slayer being able to beat her in a fist fight. Shrugging at his look as though to assure him that she understood she was being used, she turned to the indicated page.
As she read, her brow began to crease and her lips pursed together once again. Ultimately, she read the page three times over, just to make sure she wasn’t misunderstanding anything. Finally, she slipped the document back into place and said, “It’s funny. Now that I have proof of it, I don’t want to believe it.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re human. The inconceivable tends to be very difficult to accept. Your own adoptive father is prepared to sacrifice you all because you could be what? Different. It is a sad fact that has repeated itself through history.” He smiled a little bit, before his lips pursed in thought. “…Now that you know, and have your proof, what are you going to do about it?”
Pulling the papers Slayer had added to the file out to examine, it was a few moments before she answered. “Nothing yet. I can’t leave since that will just mean they have no reason to keep me around. My having other abilities isn’t inevitable, so I might just be putting myself in more danger than necessary.” She’d be safe as long as she was useful to them, so it was probably best to hide under that protection for as long as she could. It raised some potential moral quandaries with her work, but her survival was ultimately more important.
He nodded, as if he knew her reasoning quite well. “Good. Milk the cow until it’s dry, if you excuse the cliché. Nice place by the way.” Finishing his tea, he got up and walked to the sink to clean it out, before placing it in a tactically positioned draining board, as if he was perfectly at home. “However. Are you capable of living with that eating paranoia that maybe other abilities manifesting is an inevitability? If it is, what then? If your former colleagues come knocking your door down, you won’t have much choice in the matter.”
Giving him a thin smile, she replied, “I’ve been living with eating paranoia as long as I can remember. I don’t think what it’s over makes a difference.” However, considering the question of what she would to if it did happen. “Find a better way to get blood out of the carpet, first of all. If you want a serious answer… Find another place to stay. I can play cat and mouse with them as long as they want.” Honestly, she wasn’t sure what else there was to do. They would probably win in the end, but she could extend her life for a couple of years, at least.
He chuckled at her, more out of amusement than mockery. “You really are an assassin. A hard life you lead, one plagued by fear and anxiety, but if you can overcome it…ah, glory.” By the end of his small speech he was looking out the window, lost in some nostalgic flashback of centuries past. “But don’t mind the ramblings of an old fool.” He paused, and looked at her, something in her last statement ringing in his ears. “Find another place. And stripped of your current job, how would you support it? There are very few low key jobs in this city, and those that are? Have their rats. They will find you. You cannot, and I honestly think will not run forever.”
“An ‘old fool?’ Well, those are your words, not mine.” She met his eyes with a level stare, face oddly indifferent for one discussing their eventual death. “Then tell me, what else is there to do? I’ll avoid them for a year or two, and then they’ll kill me. That would be an inevitability.” Jaw clenching slightly, she added, “And don’t speak like you know me. I know you’ve read through all this,” she gestured slightly at the papers, “but this is still only our second meeting. What makes you think I won’t? I can’t exactly fight the entire system on my own.”
Slayer merely listened to her, his face slowly hardening. “I speak not because I believe I know you, but because I know, very intimately, what you are. You are human, and an assassin, even if that is not quite what your profession is called. If there is one thing I’ve seen, it’s that humans, assassins more so, will always, always give in. After long enough they will always break.” As he went on, he seemed to grow colder, as if every word summoned up painful memories, far too many for any single lifetime. After a moment, he pulled his pipe out of his pocket, and politely asked “Do you mind if I smoke?”
Taki was rendered momentarily speechless as he withdrew the pipe, somewhat surprised he was bothering to ask. The shift in his tone from not particularly pleased to perfectly polite might have also had something to do with it. “Go ahead, but light the candle on the counter. It covers up the smell.” She nodded to a short, fat, creme-colored candle as she spoke. She turned back to the papers and began to glance over them yet again, before she very abruptly set them down and looked to him once more. Slowly, as though she was testing the waters, she said, “There’s another question I’d like to ask you, not about all this.”
“Excellent.” Pulling out a match and striking it on the counter top, he lit the candle and his pipe in one motion. “I’ve been getting small trouble for it. Apparently some people don’t like it. Second hand, or something like that.” Shaking his head, he took a long puff before blowing out a small parade of amusing shapes with the smoke, starting with bats and degenerating into even a rabbit. He raised an eyebrow at her, his lip curling up curiously into something resembling a grin. “Is there? Then ask it.”
“I can’t say I blame them, honestly. I just don’t want my kitchen smelling like tobacco for a week. But, since you were kind enough to bring the file to me…” Letting him smoke would be a small sacrifice. She simply watched the shifting form of the smoke in a mixture of amazement and amusement, before writing it off as the most useless vampire ability ever. Which meant back to the point she was trying to get at: “How did you know my grandmother?”
“Oh. Her. I was wondering when you’d ask that.” He sighed a bit, before sitting down again, like an old man getting ready to tell a story to a bunch of rowdy kids. “It was…oh, I’d have to say…Fifty, sixty years ago. I was looking for a sneaky bastard who stole my pipe to make a profit off it. Not the first time, but it’s my favorite pipe, but anyway. I tracked the scoundrel to a street corner, where he was talking with a woman of…questionable modesty, not all too politely either. I hadn’t had a good smoke or a drink in a few days, so I jumped the gun and sank my teeth into his jugular. Tasted horrible, he had at least seventeen different blood borne diseases in him, so I snapped his neck, and took my pipe. All while this woman watched.” He took off his monocle and started to clean it a bit.
“Well, after biting someone’s neck you can’t quite act like it never happened, so I simply introduced myself. It turns out he was a customer who’d regularly beat her senseless and never pay, and he did it to nearly every girl who worked the block. She was quite receptive to the vampire thing, actually. It may have been fear at first that made her invite me to her place for some tea. We talked, though all she wondered was what the hell a vampire was doing in that part of town. She told he she’d had a daughter, a few years back, but had to give it up-your mother. I left, and came back the next day. You could say I was…fascinated by the woman. Not infatuated, no. I’m not one of you, you could say it was…scientific curiosity. When her pimp came over a few weeks later, I’d shadowed behind a door, while he beat her senseless for not meeting her pay quota. He left her nearly dead, really. I, out of…bad habit, tasted a drop of her blood. It was…odd. Tasted of strawberries. I cleaned her up and when she woke up, she thanked me, and I left. Two weeks later, she called me back. Her pimp showed up again, and again I hid, to watch. Except this time, she drew a switchblade and ran it through his neck. Then she started to cry.”
He wasn’t looking at anything at this point, almost recalling the memory as if it was playing back in front of him. “I held her for a while, telling her it’d be alright, but she told me it wouldn’t. She took a step back, and told me I’d been the best friend she’d had for quite some time. After that, she told me she had terminal breast cancer-that’s what I tasted in her blood, and she had about…three weeks to live. And with her pimp dead, and her life running on empty, she begged me a favor.” He closed his eyes, not out of pain, but as if coming back to the present was a chore. “Can you guess what it was? Three tries.”
Taki watched him tell the story with a morbid sort of fascination, expression quietly horrified. “I… oh. Oh, I see.” She didn’t bother to answer his question, fairly certain she knew what the answer was. Since she figured that had been quite enough twisted family history for one night, she simply let an awkward silence fall over them, looking away from Slayer and subconsciously laying a hand over where she had stashed her knife in her sleeve.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was wondering whether or not she should have been offended that he had told her she looked just like a whore, even if she was technically related to her.
He took a pensive puff of his pipe. “It looks like you have a good guess, but I’ll tell you anyway. She begged me to kill her, give her a quiet, respectful end to her life. She didn’t have insurance, so she’d suffer from the cancer until it ripped her apart. I honored what would be her last request. She went with a smile, if it’s any comfort.” His expression was grim, another drag, before he added “She was an extremely kind woman in horrible circumstance.” He paused a bit, before grinning and adding “Much like you, except as I said. She was kind.”
“I thought as much.” Once again, she allowed a respectful though uncomfortable silence fall over them… until he took his jab at her. In spite of herself, a small smile tugged at her lips. “Ha. Ha. I’m sure you think you’re funny, don’t you?” Dryly, she continued, “You know I would already be dead if I had any human sympathy left, though.” Mostly because she wouldn’t be very efficient when it came to her job, what with morals getting in the way of killing and all.
“Of course I do. It’s one of my redeeming qualities.” Smiling smugger than a cat with a fishing-rod, he poked her next point with a point he’d already made. “You’d have too. You’re an assassin, of sorts. It’s either put part of your soul away or go insane. Trust me, I’ve seen the consequences of both, they aren’t pretty. Although an insane assassin tends to be very creative, I'll say. Not very successful, but creative nonetheless.”
“One of many, I’m sure.” She rolled her eyes slightly, but the smile stayed firmly in place. It didn’t grow larger than the tiny sliver it started as, but it stayed. She nodded to acknowledge his next statement. “I can imagine. Though… anyone who can’t put there morals away isn’t exactly cut out for the work, are they?” After a small lapse in her speech, she found herself asking, “I think I could use some tea after all. Would you mind?” It felt vaguely wrong to make the person who was technically a guest get her something in her own kitchen, but he had seemed quite at home doing it earlier. She paused, turned this train of thought over in her mind, and almost laughed at which ethics actually remained in tact.
“No, not at all. Assassination’s a hard business.” At her sudden request, his lip curled up, and he moved to pop another bag into a mug of boiling water. “Not at all, not at all.” He sat back at the table and handed her the cup, before he decided to comment. “You don’t find it strange how you ask for tea in your own home, and I gladly oblige?” Then he paused, before asking “Oh, do you take anything in it? Honey, sugar?”
“I do… But I’m also discussing my possible death with a vampire in my kitchen over the tea. Somehow, it doesn’t seem all that strange. Besides,” her lips curled just a fraction of an inch more, “You barged into my home with no warning. I’m not going to treat you like a guest.” With that, she lifted her cup as though she was about to take a sip without actually doing so, apparently taking a moment to just enjoy the heat seeping out from her mug. “No, it’s fine as it is.”
“Your life has turned upside down a bit, hasn’t it? Still not much reason to treat me as a roommate.” He paused a second to take a sip, before refuting her assertion. “I didn’t barge in. You invited me to meet you again. You just never specified when and where, so I chose that myself. Simple, no?” He chuckled, as if finding a loophole in a rule that didn’t actually applied to him was simply delightful.
“I’m not. You made the tea, you can serve it.” That seemed like sound enough logic, didn’t it? “Oh? If you had to choose, why didn’t you tell me before you came? It would have to be more convenient than just hoping I happened to be around.” Because if she had decided to go on that walk five minutes earlier, she probably would have missed him. “Of course, the less evidence that we’ve been in contact, the better…”
“Hm. Touché.” As she mentioned him letting her know where to be, he smirked and gave her a look, waiting until she picked it up. When she did, he said “Exactly. It’s better that we meet by chance than by traceable planned correspondences. That way you can just say I invaded your home and there was nothing you could possibly do about it.”
At his last point, she raised her eyebrows slightly. “That’s not entirely false, so I wouldn’t even be lying. You could have at least used the door like a normal person.” Part of her realized that this was most likely like telling a particularly independent cat not to scratch up the furniture and leave half-eaten mice on the cushions-only bound to lead to it happening more often.
“I see no need to use a door when I bring my own. Unless I’m trying to blend in, which I’m not. So get used to it.” He paused a bit, before covering his mouth to yawn. “I’m sorry. I should be off. Was there anything else you were looking for while I’m here?” He didn’t want to overstay his welcome-which he’d do anyway-or just get on her nerves more than he had too, and well, he was tired.
There were a few moments in which she simply stared at him, face blank. Finally, she said, “You do intend to come back at some point.” It was not a question, but an expression of dread at some inevitability-though, granted, it wasn’t quite as full of horror as it could have been. Taking a sip of her tea and looking down at the papers in front of her, she replied, “No, this should be good. You can come by again in a couple of days to pick it up if you want it back. If I’m not around to give it to you, it’ll be hidden under my silverware.”
“Yes. I do. Your tea is amazing.” He smirked as he said it, exposing only a half-serious old vampire. Standing up and moving towards the window, he turned and said “Very well. I’ll come for them in three.” With that, he gave her a nod, his cloak slowly forming a small pair of wings, before seemingly warp and disfigure where he stood. In a second, he simply wasn’t there.
Taki waited a few seconds after his disappearance to make sure he was really gone, before setting her tea aside and letting her head connect with the table in front of her with a resounding thunk. Only after a small scream of frustration and annoyance at the world in general and another minute or two of merely lying there did she sit up again, gathering up the folder and preparing to relocate to the much more comfortable couch. She had three days and she wanted to make sure she had time to get everything read and the important bits copied, so she had better get started.
When: Tonight (April 7), around midnight
Where: Taki's apartment
Warnings: None, really
Summary: Slayer gives Taki the information she's been looking for, and they do something akin to bonding. Now with 75% more depressing family history!
Taki sat curled up on her couch, reading through a flimsy paperback novel with her mind only half on the words. The rest of her thoughts were occupied with anticipating when, where, and how Slayer was going to appear to her again. Unless it was wishful thinking on her part, he’d apparently understood her unvoiced request. Though she had no doubt she would be seeing him again, she was completely unsure how he would actually contact her.
Somehow, the fact that he had her address in that little file of his didn’t occur to her again, possibly because he didn’t seem the type to knock on her door and just explain things. No, it would have to be much more painful than that.
Slayer was about to invade somebody’s apartment. Taki’s to be specific. She was right about the file having her address, and it led him to be floating right outside her windows. He grinned, before merely focusing on the interior of it, particularly her kitchen. He’d been there before to catch her, managing to miss every time before somebody noticed a light was on. Perhaps he’d get lucky.
Inside Taki’s kitchen, a strange, coffin shaped hole appeared in the air, with a golden light on the other side. A shadow moved below it, vaguely man shaped, moving like a snake on a few too many stimulants. The shadow suddenly stood up, and in the light stood Slayer, whole and complete, and the door vanished behind him. He immediately noticed the kettle, and flicked the burner for it on, while thinking amusedly to himself how silly invitations into a home were.
Taki had been prepared to mark her place in her reading, set her book down, and maybe go out for a walk to think a few things over some more, when her sixth sense suddenly started screaming at her that there was something in her apartment that was not entirely human. The next thought to enter her mind was that she should probably go kill it. Tossing her novel down on the couch next to her, she slipped one hand inside her sleeve and withdrew a knife she had stashed there in case of such emergencies. She had a good idea of what had just invaded her living space, but there was only one way to find out…
“How the hell did you get in here?” As Taki spoke she stood just outside the threshold to the kitchen, knife held in a manner that would have probably been threatening if the person she was facing was at all affected by stab wounds.
“Hello to you too.” The kettle had begun to boil, and he turned it off and ruffled through a cabinet for a pack of tea and a cup. Throwing it together, he turned and said “I came through an open door, of course. Tea?” It was probably coming off as extremely arrogant and obnoxious to be asking her if she wanted a cup of her own tea in her own home. Then again, Slayer didn’t really care.
She struggled for a few moments, apparently trying to figure out how to express how much was wrong with the situation in words. ‘My door is definitely locked,’ ‘Couldn’t you have given me a warning?’ and ‘You could have asked for tea like a normal guest,’ didn’t seem to be fitting together into a coherent rant, however, so instead she decided it would be best to just get down to business before she snapped and attempted to remove his liver with her bare hands. “Did you bring the papers I wanted to look at?”
He raised an eyebrow under his monocle. “Straight to business I see. Yes, I did. Along with a few other reports that pertain to you. Mutant watch reports, some other things.” As he said this, he pulled from his jacket the folder from their first meeting, significantly thicker than the last time, and handed it out to her. “And you never answered. Tea?”
Hesitating only slightly, she slid her weapon back into its hiding place and took the folder from him. Sliding into a seat at her kitchen table, she pursed her lips and shook her head slightly in response to his question. It probably wouldn’t be any use pointing out to him that it was her tea, would it? Flipping the folder open, she began to shift through it to find the relevant information. “Is there any reason you grabbed this file out of however many others there were?” She doubted that he had run off with an entire building’s worth of information, though it probably wouldn’t surprise her.
He stirred his tea a little bit, before taking a testing sip, wincing slightly at it. “It’s easier to collect single folders in alphabetical order from a number of facilities. Garners less suspicion. I’d just gotten to Fu when we met.” Sipping the tea again, to his satisfaction, he added “Strange coincidence, I must say." He moved to her table, sitting down on his cloak on the way, and floated level with her. "What, exactly, are you looking for in there anyway?"
“Lucky me,” came her obviously sarcastic reply. And, of course, that brought her to a very important question: “What for?” Glancing up at him, she opened her mouth to say he could use the other chair, but again decided to drop the subject. So far that strategy was making her life easier, so there was no point to second-guessing it now. “I’m just looking for confirmation about what you’ve already told me. I’ve been worried about it for a while now… since I mentioned my sixth sense to Toki, actually.”
“I like to know what’s going on and what the government’s doing. That includes what the government plans for its agents. It helps piece together the narrative.” He spoke of it all like it was a play, and all he had to do to get the script was dig a bit. At her mention of Toki, he made a tsk tsk sort of noise. “Rule 1: Never reveal yourself to someone involved in the government. Whether they’ll choose to use you…” he paused, looking hard at her, “or simply kill you. As soon as you become a threat or outlive you’re usefulness, it’s done. And it’s on page seven of the main report, by the way.”
“It wasn’t something I did lightly. I figured that since he had treated me as a daughter…” She trailed off, sighing slightly as though disgusted with herself. “Stupid and naïve, I know.” It wasn’t that Toki had given any obvious indication that he was keeping tabs on her for the government and thus directly involved with whether she lived or died, but it was about as likely as Slayer being able to beat her in a fist fight. Shrugging at his look as though to assure him that she understood she was being used, she turned to the indicated page.
As she read, her brow began to crease and her lips pursed together once again. Ultimately, she read the page three times over, just to make sure she wasn’t misunderstanding anything. Finally, she slipped the document back into place and said, “It’s funny. Now that I have proof of it, I don’t want to believe it.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re human. The inconceivable tends to be very difficult to accept. Your own adoptive father is prepared to sacrifice you all because you could be what? Different. It is a sad fact that has repeated itself through history.” He smiled a little bit, before his lips pursed in thought. “…Now that you know, and have your proof, what are you going to do about it?”
Pulling the papers Slayer had added to the file out to examine, it was a few moments before she answered. “Nothing yet. I can’t leave since that will just mean they have no reason to keep me around. My having other abilities isn’t inevitable, so I might just be putting myself in more danger than necessary.” She’d be safe as long as she was useful to them, so it was probably best to hide under that protection for as long as she could. It raised some potential moral quandaries with her work, but her survival was ultimately more important.
He nodded, as if he knew her reasoning quite well. “Good. Milk the cow until it’s dry, if you excuse the cliché. Nice place by the way.” Finishing his tea, he got up and walked to the sink to clean it out, before placing it in a tactically positioned draining board, as if he was perfectly at home. “However. Are you capable of living with that eating paranoia that maybe other abilities manifesting is an inevitability? If it is, what then? If your former colleagues come knocking your door down, you won’t have much choice in the matter.”
Giving him a thin smile, she replied, “I’ve been living with eating paranoia as long as I can remember. I don’t think what it’s over makes a difference.” However, considering the question of what she would to if it did happen. “Find a better way to get blood out of the carpet, first of all. If you want a serious answer… Find another place to stay. I can play cat and mouse with them as long as they want.” Honestly, she wasn’t sure what else there was to do. They would probably win in the end, but she could extend her life for a couple of years, at least.
He chuckled at her, more out of amusement than mockery. “You really are an assassin. A hard life you lead, one plagued by fear and anxiety, but if you can overcome it…ah, glory.” By the end of his small speech he was looking out the window, lost in some nostalgic flashback of centuries past. “But don’t mind the ramblings of an old fool.” He paused, and looked at her, something in her last statement ringing in his ears. “Find another place. And stripped of your current job, how would you support it? There are very few low key jobs in this city, and those that are? Have their rats. They will find you. You cannot, and I honestly think will not run forever.”
“An ‘old fool?’ Well, those are your words, not mine.” She met his eyes with a level stare, face oddly indifferent for one discussing their eventual death. “Then tell me, what else is there to do? I’ll avoid them for a year or two, and then they’ll kill me. That would be an inevitability.” Jaw clenching slightly, she added, “And don’t speak like you know me. I know you’ve read through all this,” she gestured slightly at the papers, “but this is still only our second meeting. What makes you think I won’t? I can’t exactly fight the entire system on my own.”
Slayer merely listened to her, his face slowly hardening. “I speak not because I believe I know you, but because I know, very intimately, what you are. You are human, and an assassin, even if that is not quite what your profession is called. If there is one thing I’ve seen, it’s that humans, assassins more so, will always, always give in. After long enough they will always break.” As he went on, he seemed to grow colder, as if every word summoned up painful memories, far too many for any single lifetime. After a moment, he pulled his pipe out of his pocket, and politely asked “Do you mind if I smoke?”
Taki was rendered momentarily speechless as he withdrew the pipe, somewhat surprised he was bothering to ask. The shift in his tone from not particularly pleased to perfectly polite might have also had something to do with it. “Go ahead, but light the candle on the counter. It covers up the smell.” She nodded to a short, fat, creme-colored candle as she spoke. She turned back to the papers and began to glance over them yet again, before she very abruptly set them down and looked to him once more. Slowly, as though she was testing the waters, she said, “There’s another question I’d like to ask you, not about all this.”
“Excellent.” Pulling out a match and striking it on the counter top, he lit the candle and his pipe in one motion. “I’ve been getting small trouble for it. Apparently some people don’t like it. Second hand, or something like that.” Shaking his head, he took a long puff before blowing out a small parade of amusing shapes with the smoke, starting with bats and degenerating into even a rabbit. He raised an eyebrow at her, his lip curling up curiously into something resembling a grin. “Is there? Then ask it.”
“I can’t say I blame them, honestly. I just don’t want my kitchen smelling like tobacco for a week. But, since you were kind enough to bring the file to me…” Letting him smoke would be a small sacrifice. She simply watched the shifting form of the smoke in a mixture of amazement and amusement, before writing it off as the most useless vampire ability ever. Which meant back to the point she was trying to get at: “How did you know my grandmother?”
“Oh. Her. I was wondering when you’d ask that.” He sighed a bit, before sitting down again, like an old man getting ready to tell a story to a bunch of rowdy kids. “It was…oh, I’d have to say…Fifty, sixty years ago. I was looking for a sneaky bastard who stole my pipe to make a profit off it. Not the first time, but it’s my favorite pipe, but anyway. I tracked the scoundrel to a street corner, where he was talking with a woman of…questionable modesty, not all too politely either. I hadn’t had a good smoke or a drink in a few days, so I jumped the gun and sank my teeth into his jugular. Tasted horrible, he had at least seventeen different blood borne diseases in him, so I snapped his neck, and took my pipe. All while this woman watched.” He took off his monocle and started to clean it a bit.
“Well, after biting someone’s neck you can’t quite act like it never happened, so I simply introduced myself. It turns out he was a customer who’d regularly beat her senseless and never pay, and he did it to nearly every girl who worked the block. She was quite receptive to the vampire thing, actually. It may have been fear at first that made her invite me to her place for some tea. We talked, though all she wondered was what the hell a vampire was doing in that part of town. She told he she’d had a daughter, a few years back, but had to give it up-your mother. I left, and came back the next day. You could say I was…fascinated by the woman. Not infatuated, no. I’m not one of you, you could say it was…scientific curiosity. When her pimp came over a few weeks later, I’d shadowed behind a door, while he beat her senseless for not meeting her pay quota. He left her nearly dead, really. I, out of…bad habit, tasted a drop of her blood. It was…odd. Tasted of strawberries. I cleaned her up and when she woke up, she thanked me, and I left. Two weeks later, she called me back. Her pimp showed up again, and again I hid, to watch. Except this time, she drew a switchblade and ran it through his neck. Then she started to cry.”
He wasn’t looking at anything at this point, almost recalling the memory as if it was playing back in front of him. “I held her for a while, telling her it’d be alright, but she told me it wouldn’t. She took a step back, and told me I’d been the best friend she’d had for quite some time. After that, she told me she had terminal breast cancer-that’s what I tasted in her blood, and she had about…three weeks to live. And with her pimp dead, and her life running on empty, she begged me a favor.” He closed his eyes, not out of pain, but as if coming back to the present was a chore. “Can you guess what it was? Three tries.”
Taki watched him tell the story with a morbid sort of fascination, expression quietly horrified. “I… oh. Oh, I see.” She didn’t bother to answer his question, fairly certain she knew what the answer was. Since she figured that had been quite enough twisted family history for one night, she simply let an awkward silence fall over them, looking away from Slayer and subconsciously laying a hand over where she had stashed her knife in her sleeve.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was wondering whether or not she should have been offended that he had told her she looked just like a whore, even if she was technically related to her.
He took a pensive puff of his pipe. “It looks like you have a good guess, but I’ll tell you anyway. She begged me to kill her, give her a quiet, respectful end to her life. She didn’t have insurance, so she’d suffer from the cancer until it ripped her apart. I honored what would be her last request. She went with a smile, if it’s any comfort.” His expression was grim, another drag, before he added “She was an extremely kind woman in horrible circumstance.” He paused a bit, before grinning and adding “Much like you, except as I said. She was kind.”
“I thought as much.” Once again, she allowed a respectful though uncomfortable silence fall over them… until he took his jab at her. In spite of herself, a small smile tugged at her lips. “Ha. Ha. I’m sure you think you’re funny, don’t you?” Dryly, she continued, “You know I would already be dead if I had any human sympathy left, though.” Mostly because she wouldn’t be very efficient when it came to her job, what with morals getting in the way of killing and all.
“Of course I do. It’s one of my redeeming qualities.” Smiling smugger than a cat with a fishing-rod, he poked her next point with a point he’d already made. “You’d have too. You’re an assassin, of sorts. It’s either put part of your soul away or go insane. Trust me, I’ve seen the consequences of both, they aren’t pretty. Although an insane assassin tends to be very creative, I'll say. Not very successful, but creative nonetheless.”
“One of many, I’m sure.” She rolled her eyes slightly, but the smile stayed firmly in place. It didn’t grow larger than the tiny sliver it started as, but it stayed. She nodded to acknowledge his next statement. “I can imagine. Though… anyone who can’t put there morals away isn’t exactly cut out for the work, are they?” After a small lapse in her speech, she found herself asking, “I think I could use some tea after all. Would you mind?” It felt vaguely wrong to make the person who was technically a guest get her something in her own kitchen, but he had seemed quite at home doing it earlier. She paused, turned this train of thought over in her mind, and almost laughed at which ethics actually remained in tact.
“No, not at all. Assassination’s a hard business.” At her sudden request, his lip curled up, and he moved to pop another bag into a mug of boiling water. “Not at all, not at all.” He sat back at the table and handed her the cup, before he decided to comment. “You don’t find it strange how you ask for tea in your own home, and I gladly oblige?” Then he paused, before asking “Oh, do you take anything in it? Honey, sugar?”
“I do… But I’m also discussing my possible death with a vampire in my kitchen over the tea. Somehow, it doesn’t seem all that strange. Besides,” her lips curled just a fraction of an inch more, “You barged into my home with no warning. I’m not going to treat you like a guest.” With that, she lifted her cup as though she was about to take a sip without actually doing so, apparently taking a moment to just enjoy the heat seeping out from her mug. “No, it’s fine as it is.”
“Your life has turned upside down a bit, hasn’t it? Still not much reason to treat me as a roommate.” He paused a second to take a sip, before refuting her assertion. “I didn’t barge in. You invited me to meet you again. You just never specified when and where, so I chose that myself. Simple, no?” He chuckled, as if finding a loophole in a rule that didn’t actually applied to him was simply delightful.
“I’m not. You made the tea, you can serve it.” That seemed like sound enough logic, didn’t it? “Oh? If you had to choose, why didn’t you tell me before you came? It would have to be more convenient than just hoping I happened to be around.” Because if she had decided to go on that walk five minutes earlier, she probably would have missed him. “Of course, the less evidence that we’ve been in contact, the better…”
“Hm. Touché.” As she mentioned him letting her know where to be, he smirked and gave her a look, waiting until she picked it up. When she did, he said “Exactly. It’s better that we meet by chance than by traceable planned correspondences. That way you can just say I invaded your home and there was nothing you could possibly do about it.”
At his last point, she raised her eyebrows slightly. “That’s not entirely false, so I wouldn’t even be lying. You could have at least used the door like a normal person.” Part of her realized that this was most likely like telling a particularly independent cat not to scratch up the furniture and leave half-eaten mice on the cushions-only bound to lead to it happening more often.
“I see no need to use a door when I bring my own. Unless I’m trying to blend in, which I’m not. So get used to it.” He paused a bit, before covering his mouth to yawn. “I’m sorry. I should be off. Was there anything else you were looking for while I’m here?” He didn’t want to overstay his welcome-which he’d do anyway-or just get on her nerves more than he had too, and well, he was tired.
There were a few moments in which she simply stared at him, face blank. Finally, she said, “You do intend to come back at some point.” It was not a question, but an expression of dread at some inevitability-though, granted, it wasn’t quite as full of horror as it could have been. Taking a sip of her tea and looking down at the papers in front of her, she replied, “No, this should be good. You can come by again in a couple of days to pick it up if you want it back. If I’m not around to give it to you, it’ll be hidden under my silverware.”
“Yes. I do. Your tea is amazing.” He smirked as he said it, exposing only a half-serious old vampire. Standing up and moving towards the window, he turned and said “Very well. I’ll come for them in three.” With that, he gave her a nod, his cloak slowly forming a small pair of wings, before seemingly warp and disfigure where he stood. In a second, he simply wasn’t there.
Taki waited a few seconds after his disappearance to make sure he was really gone, before setting her tea aside and letting her head connect with the table in front of her with a resounding thunk. Only after a small scream of frustration and annoyance at the world in general and another minute or two of merely lying there did she sit up again, gathering up the folder and preparing to relocate to the much more comfortable couch. She had three days and she wanted to make sure she had time to get everything read and the important bits copied, so she had better get started.