Desserts

Loose Ends

As soon as they're out of that dive bar and into John's car he's glancing over at her. Like he wants to ask he what's up, what has her riled on the other end of that phone, that chime of a text, but isn't going to ask. Like he'll let her bring it up on her own.

Instead he asks, "Where are we headed?"

As he looks into his rear view once, then the side mirrors, like he expects something to pop out raring for a fight. But once the engine's on and he's pulling his vehicle - an inconspicuous late model Honda Accord in black without so much as a dent - out of its parking spot and onto the road.

Lux

As soon as they're out of that dive bar and into John's car, Lux leans against the door resting her arm along the window's edge, fingers curving against the dashboard like she's thinking about tapping them but is instead going to preserve a silence, presents a delicate-cut profile with her lashes low, but her gaze distant but not quite distant enough, all tarnished up with smoke. She gives him the warehouse's address, and then slouches in the passenger seat so she can rest her knee on the dashboard.

She doesn't fidget, but she's wound-up tight and it takes a minute or two -- and another glance at her phone, just, ah, checking the time -- before she cuts John a little glance and says, "Alone at last! You are my favourite cavalier, Johnny." Miniscule pause. "So what's what happened to Winthrop have to do with," and there is a pause here; a pause, because her mind goes back to the warehouse, "Edward?"

It would be a lie to say she wasn't going to ask anyway, but it's a good distraction and gauge as she tries to figure out what the hell she's going to do and say and wouldn't it just be nice to tell a story that tells the truth, unslanted.

She's tapping her finger now, tap tap.

Loose Ends

"What happened to Winthrop is..." A pause follows it, like he's considering how to put it out there. This is a different setting. This isn't a loud dive bar. It doesn't have its energy. It has a different one of two predators stuffed into a driver and passenger seat an arm's length away from one another. Two predators who are friends, but predators nonetheless.

"What happened to Winthrop is," repeating himself before he continues, this time without a hitch, "what happens to any despot. He got what he deserves," the beginning of a greater tale, the kind she wants to hear so she can tell her own.

"Lux, we share a lot of things. But this is me putting it all out on the line. And I think it's something you can understand. Because we did it for the good of our Sect," he goes on.

"Or at least that's what Ezra says. But for me, it was the reason for backing him on it," his words wavering, not like he's trying to convince himself, but hoping it can convince her.

"We put a stake in him. He was running to a bunker to wait out the war, and Ezra - don't ask me how - knew where it was. Low key meant low security so he wouldn't catch attention. Less room for loose lips to sink his ship," he says, again a glance in his rear view, like this might be one of the things that has been hanging over him. Trying and wearing him down.

"Because this was when it looked like the Sabbat was going to win. And we wanted a bargaining chip so we wouldn't have to give up the city. A gesture of good faith," his voice is grave, like someone with too much money in his pocket in a bad part of town. Nervous at his own place in the game that played out longer than most had expected - a city in stalemate.

"Now, Camarilla might be sending reinforcements, and what are we supposed to do with a staked Prince if it goes the other way? But there's Rasmussen, refusing to even mention Winthrop. Always gave us his graces, but what if the rest of the city or the Ivory Tower finds out?" He ventures this possibilities as he finally looks over at her again, eyes off the road almost for too long before darting back and correcting course.

Lux

[ ....

Percept + Empathy. Are you really being straight with me? Willpower because, man, if this is a trap.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Lux

[Haha. Oh dice, you know when a char is really invested.]

Loose Ends

That fear. That apprehension. Oh, there it is, as real as it can be expressed by anyone without a pulse or the need for breath, with cool blood in hot veins like the Brujah sitting beside her in the car that barrels down Colfax and hangs a left onto another artery of metropolitan highways and byways.

And there is no sign he's laying in wait to spring a trap, to let a ruse collapse upon her like some net and hoist her for some personal gain.

No, he's sharing this for another reason. Because he know (or hopes against all hope) that he can trust her. Because he's desperate enough to take a chance on that hope. And when he mentions Ezra, there's a fear there too. Because he looks cornered, as cornered as anyone can be who is part of a conspiracy against the praxis of an entire city.

"He's not Bernard. But he's all we've got. Was all we've got. But then I saw Everett and you, two Anarchs of different minds voicing their opinions like they mattered to one another as much as their own, I saw a different option," he blurts out when he notices she's looking at him, or at least first does, but as he continues his thoughts become more structured and confident.

Lux

Her eyes go wide as John tells his tale. The look in them back in the dive bar was all enshadowed and insinuation, could've cut diamonds, could've cut stars. The look in them now is far too complicated thing to describe, but the main seems to be troubled, not quite disbelief, it's all surface reflections shadows and light trembling on the surface of a great lake, except bright because Lux's eyes are a bright color. [Reach in--draw out a sword.] Her breath doesn't catch because she doesn't have any, but there's absolutely no doubt that John has her attention, she comes out've the slouch-curl, sitting up and turning to look at him directly. There's a stillness to the placement of her wrist and her hand, like she hasn't gone for the doorhandle yet, because isn't this a convenient story, because what if, what if, but what she sees when she stares at the Brujah doesn't give her a reason to flee. Or, not immediately. Her breath isn't bated, because she doesn't have any, but her lips are parted like she can't even wait for the next part of his tale, at least until he asks what they're going to do with a staked prince. Then she looks away, briefly.

And then she looks back, eyebrows drawn together and her throat closed. I saw a different option, John says, and Lux...

Lux says, "Johnny. John. You remember Charles, right?"

Loose Ends

"I remember what you told me about him and I remember what I saw of him at court," he begins, and then cuts himself off.

"What does that have to do with Winthrop?" He interjects into his own line, like he'd been about to expand upon what he thought of Lux's sire, but stopped himself.

The Brujah flexes his hands on the steering wheel as he continues. The warehouse isn't too much farther. Maybe another ten minutes of John's speedy driving and their exchanged looks of hopeful desperation and cautious vivisection and they'll be there.

John looks like he's been left, again, with the bag in his hand, after sharing what he had shared.

Lux

Lux doesn't even look at the street and it might not even register that they're almost there. Lux looks at John - haunts his damn face with her eyes. She should sit properly. There are cops around, might pull them over for - well, a seat-belt violation probably isn't what they'd be pulled over for. "Just listen. I'm sharing," she says, first softly, and then her voice tautens: like a thread being pulled, and pulled, a vibrant lash, "Nobody knows."

"He came running to me for help or for hiding or... He came, during the early nights. I know he's down as a casualty of the war, I know he's counted among the finally dead, because let's face it, John, nobody expects a Toreador to ... Even somebody old and mad and bad and Charlie. But he's not. Or he wasn't. I staked him myself."

"I didn't do it for the Sect. I wish I had. I did it because I hate him and because he-"

"He deserves it. He deserves to lie there for a year or more, for a hundred fucking years, deserves to be alone in silence and dust and to go quietly mad."

"I put him in a box, and I put the box in my warehouse."

Loose Ends

"You put your sire in a..."

Fuck.

It registers first on John's face. His hands stop flexing and instead grip for dear life on that steering wheel.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," next, and aloud.

Because he has kept his eyes on the road up until this point. He can see the city and residential zones fading away alongside them into more commercial areas at the city's edge.

"Lux, where are we going right now?" He says it quickly, eyes finding where her cell phone is stowed away in her possession, and then up to her own, and then back to the road.

Lux

"Pull over," she says -- no; suggests. He probably already knows the answer to his question.  Creatures like Lux, they can be so eloquent, look like they mean something, and the way she was looking at him.

Shuts her eyes, then. Moves her hand from where-ever it had come to rest back when she thought maybe John might be spinning a web to catch her in, to rest on her thigh, trail across the door-handle briefly.

Opens her eyes. "Gary," like it's the answer to his question. "He texted about a break-in."

Loose Ends

John does pull over. The hazards go on with a push before his hands are on the wheel again.

The car never goes into park, though. He never takes his hands off that steering wheel. He looks forward for a few seconds, only looking over when she has opened her eyes again. When she begins talking.

On the side of a highway, he sits and looks at her.

"A break-in. Or a break-out. Skeletons from the proverbial closet. Fuck me," he finishes.

Lux

" - yeah." Ash-soft. Hush of fingertips across silk soft. 

Lux lifts her chin slightly, canting her head. Then: she laughs. "The worst thing is you know what I found out earlier tonight, just before we met? I found out, from my fucking descendent, who some fucking shadow kinged bastard fed on last night, that there was a ...voice up by my warehouse, that he was investigating all these homeless people getting busted for property damage around this area and someone tells him that everybody who was busted was hearing this voice, and he heard it too. Imploring him to let him out; let him out of his prison. He even tried, but he gave up. Sickest thing: I'm actually kind of disappointed in him."

Lux doesn't sound angry, or wry, or -- there's no sardonic humor. She sounds sad and glass-instead-of-ice, without the edge. Sounds like the morning star, getting subliminated by a white dawn.

"I'm disappointed he didn't keep trying, because it's not like he knew."

Lux's shoulders flinch up, and she frowns.

Pauses.

Pauses.

Says, "So it doesn't have anything to do with Winthrop. But."

John St. Germain

"Not every branch can bear ripe fruit. Maybe he needs more time," the Brujah Anarch seeming more forgiving than his Toreador Sect-mate of her descendant's imperfections.

It's also a brief stop, a welcome reprieve from what they're discussing before it all comes right back like a tractor trailer.

"Are we still going?" Looking ahead, hazard signals still blinking away, car still humming with life beneath them. There's that furious life, that live wire, back again after the fuck, fuck, fuck, like John is now still almost... Yeah, maybe even a little curious at what they might find at that address still ringing in on his GPS.

"Bear right at the fork," it chimes in a female's nondescript Midwestern dialect, computerized into separate words stitched together.

Lux

"What kind of person just stops because it gets difficult?" Lux says, to maybe he needs more time. Her fingers curl into her palms, wrinkling her skirt. 

Are we still going?

"Of course."

How neatly the two sentiments dovetailed together. Lux reaches up to knead some tension out of her neck, away from her shoulders, and once the car starts again she says,

"And Johnny, Ezra's never all you've got. You've got yourself and you've got me and you've got the others and you've got Ev if you want him."

John St. Germain

John's nod isn't a simple thing, it's heartfelt, like he's taking in what she's saying and showing its reciprocity in the fact he's willing to head toward that warehouse that might have a disgruntled elder waiting.

Her ally drives on and within a few more moments they've arrived. There's Gary's car outside, and he's leaning against it, a police car driving off from the scene already. He waves them off, and turns to wave John's car up to park again.

Lux

Lux wasn't thinking clearly when she asked John for a ride back in that dive bar. That line about backup: it was nothing, it was a blip. She just needed a ride, and she trusts John more than she trusts Kali. And now she trusts John more than she'd trusted him before, because she has to. Because he confessed, and because she confessed, because sometimes you just want to believe that somebody isn't going to cut out your heart or stake you in the back. Unlife is too long.

Gary's car outside. Police car driving off. No ambulances? That's encouraging, sort-of. Lux takes it as an encouraging sign, although you wouldn't know it to look at her:

She is absolutely still, intent. 

As soon as, perhaps even a moment before, John's car is parked, she's getting out to approach her (ghoul [slave], Guy Friday) associate, "Lay it out for me."

John St. Germain

Gary points down the street to a far off utility pole, barely visible in the darkness except as a shadow darker than the sky above. "Professionals. Cut the main line to the security company and local precinct," his hand coming back, and it's evident Gary is no more or less a professional to the Brujah that follows her out of the car once it's in park and off. The way he navigates the crime scene like a seasoned professional.

"Front door. Alarm went off. Disabled fast enough local patrols didn't hear or respond," pointing to the corners surveilling the building, where cameras as spray painted black. "Had already taken out the cameras from their blind spots - and these weren't easy blind spots to find, mind you. Might've come across from another building to do that. Anyway, inside, opened up boxed. Looking for something. Pile of rugs tossed around. We'll get some wiggle room on the insurance report from the boys in blue - didn't take their own evidence photos, so we can make a claim off it for some compensation based on whatever we want to say was stolen," having a retired officer to act as go-between had its perks.

"I can't find anything worth noting in there, though," and however much Gary knows, it's not enough, and just enough that nothing-of-note is a bad thing.

Nothing of note like Charles with a stake in his chest.

Lux

Lux does not enjoy ghouls. They look at her like she's a tall drink of water and they're just so thirsty. The way she looks at humans sometimes. But every ghoul has its own preferred taste: addicted -- enslaved. Lux does not like them. But Lux likes hers, in a sublime hypocrisy. Lux likes Gary, though she has probably wrecked his life, dragging him out of the human world and into vassalage. Lux liking her ghoul doesn't prevent her from looking at him like he just let the Trojan Horse into Troy against her strict advice once he mentions those rugs: still, fixed eyes -- her heart's in them, or lurking just beneath the surface, informing the temper there; chin lifted, sharp; mouth firm, unhappy; arms folded and the way the light hits her glance changes, there's a flash of brightness and as soon as Gary's done with his report Lux leaves the ghoul and the Brujah to do what they will and to go investigate the warehouse herself.

Because she has to see it.

John St. Germain

And she comes upon it in her investigation.

There are the rugs, strewn about, in boxes just like the one she knows is there. With the number she knows. With the origin and bill of landing she recognizes and with those numbers and letter stamped on the side -

36H2TFKX943 -

and laying there.

That box is a void. A question mark turned on its side and gaping with the top bent back and four nails strewn on the floor before it like its punctuation.

No sign of the stake, though, amidst those nails. Maybe it's still inside him. Maybe she's lucky like that, lucky in that unlucky but lucky enough way with all these cards laid out before her. Or maybe he'd kept it as a souvenir or reunion gift for her.