Blue

Lux

Denver University is an old establishment. The keyword: establishment. Because college students are never rebels, are they? People who learn: they know their place, right? At least the edifice would have one believe that: Denver University and its (main) library would have you know that. Traditional is how it looks. Fortified. All brickwork and simplified arches and circular windows less ornate than some but here there's even ivy, and of course the library by the Anderson Commons has open windows, too, all suggestive of light and learning because learning is all about light, right?

Sure.

Lux is in a chair by a long dark window. The window is dark because outside evening has drenched the campus (and the clouds have a voice [and that voice is thunder: Heaven, clamorous]), has given it shadows and darknesses and the glass keeps it back. Because the window is so dark, it is haunted by her reflection -- moody curve of dark eyebrows, isn't she an elegance, intractable chin and delicate bones and a sweet shadow of a mouth an enigmatic sweep of long thick lashes because her gaze is cast down at the laptop (borrowed [this is not mine]) in her lap. But she is also wearing dark colors, and her reflection only takes what is moon-skinned and potentially luminous and the shadowed contours there-of -- so the reflection (Echo) of her (Narcissus) in the window doesn't mirror back faithfully the dark skirt or dark jacket or even her dark hair, twisted away from one side of her face in something loosely resembling a victory roll and caught at the back of her skull by a baroque metal clip on which a metallic butterfly (or moth [Psyche, see?]) is perched.

She is curled up in the chair as if it is more comfortable than it is; she has one leg hooked at the knee on the arm of it and her shoe is disengaging from her heel. Her shoe is ridiculous, of course, all Barbarian gold ornament and lacquered realistic Monarch butterflies.

And she is not smoking, but she does have a match between her lips and a pack of cigarettes on the other arm rest.

Verna Gardner

Verna is leaving the library. She's been here for a while now, but the place is large and easy to lose a person (or oneself) in. So she hasn't noticed even one such as Lux, with her butterfly shoes hanging off of a limb hooked on a chair.

Her own heels are shorter, much less adorned things that nonetheless make a satisfying series of clicks as she walks. She's carrying her own laptop in a shoulder bag. To complete the look, she's wearing gray heather slacks and a bright pop of a blue blouse, and if she really thought hard about it, there's a reason why she gravitates towards blue lately. It was his color.

And Lux, the creature she now spies (it's not that difficult) lounging in a chair, she was his friend. The regular clicks of Verna's heels on the floor stop.

"Excuse me? I hope I'm not bothering you, am I?"

Lux

Lux is not an unnoticing creature, not here, not now, she hopes not ever; she does try (to sharpen herself, to hone herself into something that will catch a movement before the movement has a chance to blossom into certain doom).

And Verna's heels are not quiet; so just before Verna stops and says excuse me Lux turns her head (with an offhand sort of grace, see, a casual sort of poise that seems unlearned, immanent). Verna in Renaissance blue; the only colour for Madonnas and visions of Perfection.

Lux's gaze startles, because of course she remembers Verna well. Lux is not one of those people who doesn't remember people, especially when they've been revealed to be passionate, or when they're connected to even more interesting people.

Lux isn't an asshole. Anybody can be interesting.

And Lux's gaze startles, perhaps because Verna makes her think of their mutual aquaintance, and perhaps the startlement quickens into something more private (shadowed).

"Stephen's assistant; Verna, wasn't it? Verna whose favourite thing is the universe, how perfect it is and how one can see that perfection if one, what was it? Look under the surface."

"You're not bothering me," the suggestion of a wistful smile.

Verna Gardner

Verna returns the smile, muted because of course there is an elephant in the room that so far has gone without mention.

"Good. And you are... Lux, of the interesting shoes," she says, remembering the angels that adorned Lux's feet the last time. It's pretty much the only thing that she can say of Lux yet, they having just barely met.

"And yes, I was Doctor Andrássy's assistant." Doctor Andrássy, because at one point he suggested she call him Stephen and she just couldn't. "I suppose you've heard what happened?"

Lux

"Yes," Lux says. The suggestion of a smile is gone now; was it ever there? Instead, the set of her mouth is solemn; is troubled. The shadow in her eyes is still private. It will always be private (contained [bruise]).

But private or not, there is always a shadow in Lux's eyes, and she hasn't yet moved out of her languid drape in the chair, curled up so comfortably- she does now after her lashes flicker (as one does, when one is trying to contain), slender fingers curving along the edge of her laptop's screen and leg slipped from the chair's arm so her foot can touch the floor.

Grounded.

"I am sad," she says, lucent in her honesty, after a second. "I will miss him and the police," a contemptuous lift of her chin. "But how are you holding up?"

Lux

ooc: ahem, new punctuation + blocking wot will make more sense.

"I will miss him; and the police," the beginning of heat; then a contemptuous lift of her chin.

Verna Gardner

A layer, a veneer of normal cracks, and Verna's face shows it. I am sad. I will miss him. I am not holding up well. But she puts the mask back in place. It's just not right to have such strong feelings over a boss she only got to see every once in a while.

"I'm not going to lie. It's been hard," she says, and sets her shoulder bag down by another, empty chair. "I mean, that job was really the best. While it lasted. Mostly because of Doctor Andrássy."

And oh, now, she could go on a long detailed stream of conversation about why that's the case. She decides to try to keep it as simple as she can, as emotionless as she can. She takes a seat in the chair she's claimed, and yeah -- that decision goes out the window.

"He was so kind. The last time I saw him was at a University faculty party, and he said he'd secured a grant for me to go back to school in the Fall. He said to study hard, and not to forget the little lab I worked in before everyone had to call me Doctor Gardner," she says, and her voice starts cracking near the end.

Lux

It's the fingers of the right hand which are curved around the laptop's screen. The match that was between her lips before Verna spied her and stopped at her table is in the palm of her left hand; now it is tucked behind her left ear, bared as her right ear is not because of that victory roll and that clip, the light a-gleam on her hair, see, all caressing when she moves her head as she does because she adjusts her posture to be less aloof (it was never aloof [could it ever be aloof?]) and more of a listening thing. Her eyes are on Verna.

Best job. While it lasted. Doctor Andrássy. So kind. Study hard. Don't forget. And Verna's voice, beginning cracking at the end.

"I did think you two would get on," she says. "Like fizz in soda pop or wine in a cup or a bee in a flower. And it sounds as if I was quite right; but I already knew that. He did mention how clever you were."

Perhaps this is rhetorical: "You won't forget it, will you? The little lab. Stephen."

Her voice is quiet and low; but also intent. Brushed, perhaps, with something yearning; but she is often yearning. She likes to yearn and to want.

"Do you think you'll be able to continue his work?"

Verna Gardner

Lux says that he mentioned her, how clever she was, and it near to breaks her heart. She lets out a breath, and then forces her lips together, to try to stop the tide of sadness inside. At least, she can try to stop it from showing.

"I'll never forget. I can't. Neither the good nor the bad," she says, and looks out the window, until her eyes refocus on the reflection of Lux within it.

"I can try. I pulled our data and calculations out of the lab -- some of his notes. I'm going to see if I can't continue the work when I go back to school. Maybe take it to one of the professors whose research would be made easier by his breakthrough," she says, and she takes a worried glance at Lux.

"Actually, that's been bothering me a bit. The doors -- all of the doors in the place looked like they had been broken down by battering rams. It didn't look like the actions of some random hoodlums. It looked like a calculated attack.

So I thought, well, maybe it was somebody who didn't want his research to go on, someone for whom cheap ways of creating quantum computers would be unprofitable. But they destroyed everything in the place except for what they needed to to keep that from happening. It just doesn't make any sense."

Unless they thought, perhaps, with Doctor Andrássy dead, the research couldn't continue. Verna gets a chill up her neck at that thought.

Lux

As Lux listens to Verna, she reaches for her collar as one might reach if one were wearing a necklace one was in the habit of playing with, of smoothing across one's fingertips, but she is not wearing a necklace tonight and her fingers find nothing except her own skin, the sharp bone beneath it, and her thumb trails along the hollow at the base of her throat.

She, too, glances at the window, and her fingers trail from her collar up the side of her throat, thumb still resting at the base. Then they curl into her shoulder and the glance has ended where it began; her eyes return to Verna.

"So you," a pause, and isn't her voice thick as cream, all smoke-laced -- go ahead and lick it up? She clears her throat, and says again, "So you saw the whole thing, huh?"

The hand at her throat drops to the laptop bag on the floor; she leans over her knees (precise, demure- but with a sort of boneless youthfulness) and searches a pocket.

"I don't really believe it was the actions of 'some random hoodlums,'" she says, with quiet certainty. "He did mention once that he only feared fire and these fiends. No names; we discussed other things."

What has she found in the laptop bag? Ah, kleenex in a plastic wrapper, which she profers to Verna. The kleenex is lavender-scented (fancy).

"You don't recall some -- oh, I don't know; somebody who seemed to have it in for him? Any mention of an enemy? It's only, that sounds so terrible, Verna."

Verna Gardner

There are other things that don't make sense. There was the red fluid that turned to ash before her eyes. There was that whole coffee shop incident. But she doesn't mention those. It's... crazy talk.

She just shakes her head, takes the offered tissue. "No. I don't, really. Who would have it in for a scientist?"

Her eyes are a little red, aren't they? So she unrwraps the tissue and dabs it at them. Wait, wasn't there that one woman? The crazy one?

"Actually... come to think of it, the only person I ever heard speak ill of Doctor Andrássy was this woman. She was obviously insane. The first time I met her, was when she walked up and hugged me without warning or invitation. And the next time I saw her, she came up to me again, and said to watch out for Doctor Andrássy, as though he were the strange one.

But she was so volatile, so unhinged. I don't think she had anything to do with what happened, honestly. Just, it's... odd."

She breathes in the lavender. Calming, that scent.

"What of yourself? How are you holding up? You knew him better than I, I'm sure."

Lux

Lux closes the laptop, as Verna accepts the tissue, and then folds her arms across it so that she can lean forward and listen. Her eyes are the color of antique glass -- that hazy green, clotted with darkness along the edges -- and the expression in them is no less intent but does become as meditative as her fingers on the side of her throat had been.

They flash back to Verna when she recounts the story of the hug (dun dun [dunn]), volatile, unhinged, etc., and the whisper of something bitter touches the shape of her mouth. Her left hand finds the side of her throat again. Her fingers slide along the skin and under the heavy wave of her hair. They stay and she doesn't answer Verna immediately or say whatever else it was that she was going to say about the scientist's possible enemies yet.

"I am sad," she says, again. "I often find myself longing for him; and then," she lingers on the word, then, shrugs one shoulder slightly. Because there is no and then. Her voice is not confessional; it is naked, because longing is simple: there is no and then. "That is all there is. And I wonder where he is now."

"Do you believe that he is killed? He and René?"

Verna Gardner

"I don't like to think it. But there was blood in the laboratory. And it has been so long," Verna says, and returns to gazing out the window. "And the police are idiots and can't tell me a thing about what they've found, because they have found nothing."

No, Verna does not like to think that at all. She uses that tissue again, blotting at her eyes.

"I tried calling them about a very tenuous connection I may have stumbled upon, but the detective hasn't returned my calls yet. Can you believe it?"

Of course Lux can probably believe it. The police are overworked in every city. Bad things happen all the time, if not usually to rather unassuming scientists.

Lux

"Yes," she says, with a breath that carries the spectre of a faint laugh that died before it got to be a laugh.

"But I don't believe he's dead yet; it is no consolation. I wish I did believe it, but didn't you say it yourself? Nothing adds up quite right, huh? If his work was left intact and why grab the physician too, huh? Something's just rotten, but it must also be more unusual. Perhaps a kidnapping; perhaps we just don't know all the parties involved. Perhaps someone was meant to see what was left and what was taken and make something of it."

Lux has reached for her pack of cigarettes, tapped one out (you're not supposed to smoke in the library), and now she gestures with it, although she doesn't light it yet.

"As for that woman and her involvement, who knows? Clever and inscrutable people have used dumber patsies. Did you really stumble on a possible connection?"

Hope; isn't it an eternal thing?

Meanwhile: here comes somebody, angling toward their cluster of chairs. The laptop owner, ready at last to go. Lux is still ignoring him; she sets the cigarette between her lips, takes the match from behind her ear and scrapes it across a ring, holds the flame to the end of the cigarette she shouldn't be smoking in the library then shakes the match dark again.

Verna Gardner

Verna's eyes go wide at Lux's display of how little the rules matter to her. "You shouldn't do that in here. You'll damage the books," she says, and it's an entreaty, as though the destruction of knowledge must be a cardinal sin. Well, whatever. She's not going to grab the cigarette and put it out or anything. The thought does cross her mind, though.

No, she tries to ignore that when she responds to the question of a connection. She looks Lux in the eyes through the smoke, and says, "Someone threatened me lately. Told me that I was the former employee of the late Rene Jacobs and the late Stephen Andrássy, and if he wanted to get me in a place alone where no one would hear me scream, he could." She says this, but it doesn't sound at all as through she's describing the events with any fear.

"He was being a bit of a dramatic... idiot of a man. But if that threat actually meant anything, which I doubt, I at least tried to let the police know. I don't think they care."

Lux

Lux is not a rules-follower, it is true and usually one of the first things people decide about her, after: she is beautiful; I want to be closer (but that isn't usually a decision; it's gravity). She flicks a glance toward the shelves when Verna conjures up the fate of the poor books resting there-on and makes a careless gesture, too, as if to say look they're all the way over here. The dark glass catches the smoke; insinuates it upward; look at how it is like so many snakes (the opposite of Falling).

"He sounds like an asshole," Lux says, and her eyebrows have drawn together, etched sharp with something that could be concern instead of just trouble.

Speaking of men, the laptop's owner is there now, looking down. Mid-thirties, handsome enough, neatly stubbled, hair just slightly ruffled, but it's all for charm's sake -- because the owner is also well-kept in an effortless sort of way. "Excuse me for the interruption, but I'm ready to go now. Who is this, forgive me," this part to Verna: forgive him for cursing, presumably, because he repeats, "asshole?"

Or maybe forgive him for listening in.

Lux says: "Someone unsavory," in a tone that neatly invites nothing, and then she straightens to give the man access to the laptop if he wanted to pack it away, because she isn't going to. He also isn't going to yet. This might be the place for introductions; if it is, introductions are made, because Lux can be very perfect in her courtesies when she wants to.

The laptop is still on her lap when she says, "Verna, would you give me your number and take mine?"

Verna Gardner

"Oh, of course," Verna says, and recites her phone number, and accepts Lux's, though her eyes keep being drawn to the dirty smoke. It's not the first time she's given her contact information to the dead or otherwise supernatural, but Verna has not the faintest clue of the sort of things that lurk on the other side of natural. What else is there to the universe but nature, after all?

She turns to the man, looking quite disgusted (though not with him). "His name is Jon Marc, he is a girlfriend-beater, and I hear he wants to use her children as pit bulls in some kind of illegal fight. He is the epitome of... of... asshole."

It should be rather obvious to all that Verna isn't the kind of person used to using such language. She's a better sort than that. But if the shoe fits...

"It was good to see you again. I only wish we had happier things to talk about," Verna says, and there her eyes alight on the end of Lux's cigarette again. But it seems she's not going to put it out. The books will gain a tiny coating of nicotine and ash. They'll survive.

With that, Verna picks up her things, and makes her own way out.