poly_chromatic | ♦ ♦ 12th Contract

~~A breach in the City's barrier?~~

[ He's noticed this population-influx in past Network entries. Tourists. Some leave with the weekend, taking Citizens with them. Others stay behind -- semi-replacements. A law of equivalent exchange -- something gained for something lost? ]

[ He doesn't know. ]

[ He's caught between observing the phenomenon up-close, or retreating Underground. But parsing his separate threads of choice, he decides to stay Topside. To, for once, maximize instead of satisfice. There might be familiar faces. There might be outsiders with answers. He wants to learn more about the City. He wants out. ]

[ And solving any problem is predicated on understanding it completely. ]

It's really crowded today, isn't it? [ Li sits in a bustling little caff, enjoying breakfast. He slices into the strawberries with a fork. The juice runs out, dark-red, like blood. He smiles at his device -- calculated, a perfect mix of innocence and sweetness. ] It almost reminds me of rush-hour in Tokyo. But hopefully there's no need for train-tetris or pushmen. It's sort of a Fact Of Life back home. But not everyone here would enjoy that, would they? [ He skates the strawberry around with his fork. Bites into it neatly. ] I wonder how many of these visitors have been here before...?

[OOC: Gimme all the trolling! Gimme! Just please avoid spilling his real identity over the Network :3 ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Tables, even small ones, tend to have two chairs.

A thin hand, a few fingers suspiciously crooked, alights on the empty one across from Hei. One attached to a woman with the hauntings of poverty on her frame, but vibrant crimson hair and soft green eyes.

Cry Ha-]

Is this seat taken?

Edited 2012-11-04 02:53 (UTC)

[ Cry Havoc indeed. But the name he associates with her is always Carmine. Monster. Teammate. And, in their final encounter, friend. His eyes skip from her crookws fingers to her face. There's an uncertainty in his silence, and his gaze. But it lasts for only a split-second. ]

No.

[ He doesn't smile. But he is totally sincere, because to them, social amenities mean less than nothing. ]

Mmm.

[He doesn't smile, but she does. That half-sheepish, half unsure smile, always doubting if she was truly feeling. Reveling in feeling.

Havoc slips in to the empty seat, folding her thin hands in her lap, looking him over.]

Doing well?

[ He ignores the spark of deja vu in facing her. The last time, it was at the empty bar, where he'd fed her after that brutal interrogation. Where they'd shared quiet assurances, strange revelations -- unlike anything two Contractors ought to. But weren't they both anomalies in their own way? Two remnants of a bloody war, given a seeming second-chance. ]

[ Which, in Carmine's case, was cut too short. ]

I've been worse. [ If not better. ] I wasn't expecting to see you here. [ But death means so little in the City. ]

Edited 2012-11-04 03:21 (UTC)

I wasn't expecting to be here.

[She's glad he's doing well. She's honest. Hei... he deserved-

She settles in to her chair before she lets her gaze wander, going a bit vacant for a moment, her voice a low murmur.]

I think I've been here before. A long, long time ago...

None of us were.

[ He still regards the City as a manifestation of the Gate. Surreal. Rampant with illogic. But for once, he doesn't care. If it's giving him a chance to see a fallen comrade... ]

[ He gives her a hard look which softens to almost-contemplation. ]

Just you? Or were there others?

[ It's enough to warrant a trip to the Hall of Missing. He can't rule out the possibility that -- perhaps, perhaps -- Pai was once here too. ]

Ah...

[Her gaze grows even more distant. Time was a strange concept- it had stopped when she had died, hadn't it? Yet coming here... there were the vaguest memories tickling the corner of her consciousness, memories of people and cities and curses.

A boy with blond hair and blank eyes. A smoker, her killer. A drinker. Him. A girl with her water. A girl with Pai's face.]

So many others. Are they- is it only you now?

[It was hard to focus on this moment, when other moments lurked behind her eyes.]

[ He watches her roll into herself, a spectator to the byplay of memory. He wonders what -- who -- she's seeing. The City enjoys erasing and distorting minds. But if she still remembers ... ]

Just me. [ Except for today. He saw Yin. He spoke to Misaki. He met Amber. ] It's strange. The Gate isn't here, either. You'd think that without it, we'd return to our normal states. Become human.

[Carmine's actions are slow, the sort of pondered, measured actions. Crooked fingers curl, and she looks him over once more.]

You don't feel human... ?

[He'd always been more human than the lot of them.]

[ Half-wasted, wreathed in melancholy, she looks exactly as she did before her death. Regret blooms,that he'd been unable to thank her. Which itself is such a human urge -- even if it's blunted, second-hand. ] Sometimes I do. But other times... [ He breaks off, unsure. But it's a rare moment of candor. He can drop the facade, be himself with Carmine. Whoever that is. More and more, he's finding he doesn't know. Li. The Black Reaper. Both of them are roles. Functions to be fulfilled. ]

[ But who is Hei? ]

[Despite the abuse she had suffered at his hands, blows and broken bones, she has no qualms about touching him. Her eyes soften again, and her crooked fingers curl again, but this time, reaching across the table, to curl over his hand. Squeeze, weak, but there.

Had she been able to finish what she was trying to tell him, before the ice in her chest had taken her life away?]

Hei, you've always been special.

[ She'd never finished, and the What ifs had zagged in like lightning bolts afterward, jarring him with recollection in the midst of work, food, sleep. She would always be someone he couldn't sufficiently help, hadn't sufficiently mourned, whom he'd finally had to box away, undigested, in the rush of everyday life. ]

[ But she's here now, and her words, the touch, are a consolation. It's tangible, and the tangible and solid trumps the abstract for Hei every time. He returns the pressure of her hand. Very light, but it's there, with the traces of a smile. ]

Special. [ Or anomalous. ] Maybe that's the kind of people the City collects. [ It'd explain why Carmine is here too. An assemblage of miracles and oddities. ]

[Havoc's smile blooms in turn, even if she will always have that look to her that emotions in themselves are awkward and unfitting things, she still revels in them. Feeling-]

If so, that's why you're here.

[A return squeeze, before she lets her fingers simply rest.]

Maybe for a long time.

[Like she was, in those fuzzy, hazy memories.]

♦ ♦ 12th Contract

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