October 31st, 2006

[nomorekaraoke]

Ahh, the late October evening air is crisp and sizzling with the bustle and excitement permeating 6th Street. Just an hour or two ago, the streets lay quiet and calm, like before a storm. And what a storm it is. Tonight is the biggest night of the year for Lorne - the only night he can go out with a bang (so to speak), and glam it up without having to worry about mobs and pitch forks and torches and all kinds of peer pressure. He can be lean and green and having a fabulous time. For any other demon with a sense of dignity, Halloween is the be all and ban all of faux pas-es. It's a night where silly wannabes co-mingle. It is just not done.

But Lorne will do it and do it well for every year he can muster. He'll be in his hundreds, old and wrinkly and hunchbacked, and he'll still come here for the big event.

***

And when the darkness has fallen over the city, and the parade lights up the city streets with eerie lights and chilled merriment in equal doses, Lorne dances down the line like it's 1999, all feathered up, glammed up and having a ball.

You never know who you'll bump into, and the best part? You can pop into a coffee shop or a restaurant on the way, get to know someone better anytime you want to. If he should be so lucky tonight, it would be the icing on the cake and the cherry on top.

Comments

[sunnydalealum]

She's standing with her back to the wall formed by the stairway, arms folded around her midsection.

"Little bit," she says, barely audible.

[nomorekaraoke]

He nods, silently berating himself for being such a fool.

"Listen, I know what this looks like, but I just wanna make one thing perfectly clear, okay? I didn't mean to scare you."

He looks at the young woman square in the face, at what must be her eyes behind the mesh. "I also didn't mean to follow you down here, but then, you know, I kinda didn't mean to let that lamp post knock me out either. My not-meant-tos just keep stackin' up, don't they."

Speaking of which, he fetches a small compact mirror (intricately adorned in black and red embroidery; some kind of Asian floral theme) from inside his jacket - not so fabulous anymore - to survey the damages.

[sunnydalealum]

On the one hand: does he really expect her to believe that he didn't follow her on purpose?

On the other: Beth knows all about not-meant-tos.

Muffled: "Sorry. About your nose."

[nomorekaraoke]

No. To be fairly honest, he doesn't expect her to believe one single word out of his green cake-hole. Then again, he doesn't believe what people tell him, as a rule. It's only to be expected. You don't trust demons, not even if you are one.

"I'll survive, and don't you apologize. I don't recall you roundhousing me, pumpkin." The mirror is returned to its pocket; the handkerchief isn't, even after he's stopped bleeding. Eugh.

He takes a deep breath, fails, and tries again. Through his mouth this time. "You got no reason to trust me not to do all kinds of nasty to you, but... You know, to be fair, I don't really have any reason to trust you're a lamb either. Looks and deception and all that jazz."

Just making conversation. Snazzy.

[sunnydalealum]

"Looks and deception," she repeats, nodding. "Specially tonight, right?"

She's reminded that he can't see her face, not even her eyes; it makes her a little less nervous. A little.

"Is that why you were out in the open? Because people would think it's a costume?"

[nomorekaraoke]

He chuckles, which comes out as a snort, and gee if that isn't sort of embarrassing. "I'm the only demon I know who dares show his face come All Hallow's Eve, but then I'm, what do the kids call it? A special snowflake."

It might seem out of character for him, if only you knew, that that last statement is almost completely void of self-deprecation. He actually thinks it's kind of funny. It's the first time since this little merry-go-round that he's smiling.

"Clever and mysterious." He pats his chest, where his heart would be were he a human - or most any other humanoid demon. Pyleans are special in all sorts of ways.

"I think I'm falling already. Head over heels." But enough with the banter. "Yeah... I can't exactly go to the movies on a whim, you know?"

[sunnydalealum]

"Yeah."

Just the one flat syllable. She doesn't mean it to come out quite as bitter as it does.

It's just -- she was having fun, out watching the parade, thinking herself safely anonymous behind her mask, and now -- is she going to have to hide for the rest of her life?

(An unexpected addendum to that thought: Like he does?)

[nomorekaraoke]

"Oh." It's got layers and layers of meaning, that two-lettered response, and it sends his grin waning. "Oh, dear. Don't I know the feeling."

She's on the run. But from whom? From what?

[sunnydalealum]

She raises her head a little, looking right at him for the first time.

"I guess maybe you might."

[nomorekaraoke]

"Lemme take a stab at it? Not literally of course." Of course.

"You meet some new friends, everything's champagne and roses and fun times. You spend more and more time with them, getting real close. Why, you'd do anything for them, just anything, because you know they're good people. In some sense, you're like a family, you and the guys. It's like that for a long time. It's like you don't even remember what you were like before you met them."

Bitter? Excuse him while he lights up a cigarette. Hell yes, and it's only ameliorated by the fact he's a bajillion miles away from the memories. "And then one day, push comes to shove, and all the good things you and your bosom buddies worked for...it makes nice pavement for a certain yellow brick road what smells of sulfur."

[sunnydalealum]

At the words you meet some new friends, she tenses but doesn't move away; if this is a trap, she thinks grimly, let's hear it.

And then slowly the tension goes out of her as she listens.

He's not talking about her. He's talking about him.

"Kinda like that," she says, even though past a certain point the stories don't match at all. Because the people she was working with --

"Only you don't know they're good people," she hears herself say, without intending to. "Not the ones you're working with, not the ones you're pretending to work with, you just picked the side you thought was gonna keep you safe and not make you do anything horrible. And you picked wrong."

[nomorekaraoke]

Another deep sigh breaks his silence as he listens, watching the young woman, and it strikes her just how young she must be. How old she must feel.

His face, thinly veiled by smoke as it is, remains passive; guarded. Only his eyes can't keep up the facade. Maybe their stories are worlds apart, just like they are or seem to be, but he knows some of her pain.

"But that's just the thing, isn't it? You didn't know. You believed you were doing the right thing all along. It isn't what you did that hurts. It's the betrayal of trust."

[sunnydalealum]

She shakes her head.

"Shouldn't have trusted her in the first place," she manages before her throat closes entirely; the mesh behind the mask may hide the sight of threatening tears, but it can't hide the sound.

[nomorekaraoke]

"Oh. Oh, no, sweetie. Don't cry." He takes half a step forward, hesitating only because he's scared her once already and he isn't at all keen on making the same mistake twice in such a short time span. Instead, his voice lowers to a soft murmur.

"Lemme tell you something about picking sides. There are no sides. There's no clear cut right and wrong, there's no black and white. It's all one big, whoppin' gray area, and the only thing you can do is follow your heart even if it leads you straight to Hell."

If you have one. "You did, didn't you? You had faith in someone, you thought you were doing the right thing. You believed you were. Didn't you?"

[sunnydalealum]

And, well ... did she?

"There are sides," she says finally, low. "Doesn't mean either of them's right. I thought ..."

Her arms are folded tight around her stomach again, against the ache and nausea, but she can say this; she can say this to him because he has no idea who she is.

"It doesn't matter what I thought. People got killed and it was my fault."

[nomorekaraoke]

Strangers in the night. Frank Sinatra had no idea.

"It matters," he insists that it does, and probably would years from now. It's his way of justifying his own crimes, big and small. He believed he was doing the right thing. He really did.

"Just, maybe not the way you think it does."

[sunnydalealum]

"How do you think it matters, then?" It's sharp, sharper than she would ordinarily dare, but all the rules of ordinary seem to have been put on hold for the moment.

[nomorekaraoke]

And that hint of a bite is all the drop Lorne needs to have his martini glass overflowing.

"Hey!" You show teeth, he shows his. He may not have much of a bite, but he doesn't take crap from anyone. Even if this eerily surreal thing of theirs doesn't count as crap, they are both getting a bit too close to the core of things to be entirely comfortable.

As if they were ever comfortable to begin with. "It matters. If it didn't, we might as well just end it right here and now and throw ourselves on the rails and wait to die a horrible death. Why prolong the misery of knowing it doesn't make one lick of difference what you think, all that matters are the consequences?"

He shakes his head. "Fuck that. It matters, because it's who you are."

[sunnydalealum]

"You don't know anything about who I am," she snaps. "And maybe we should."

Her hands are down at her sides, clenched into white-knuckled fists; she's pushed away from the wall to face him directly.

"Maybe we deserve to, and maybe if I had the guts I'd have done it months ago, and what fucking difference would it make to anybody?"

[nomorekaraoke]

"I know enough."

He grits his teeth to keep his voice down - neither of them need an audience, and who knows how long they have until the next train comes by. Not much.

"If you think you deserve to die, you wouldn't have been up there enjoying yourself in the crowd. You're running. Hiding. You don't take risks."

Another long drag on the cigarette. "If you wanted to die, you wouldn't have run away from me. You were running scared of what might happen if I caught up with you."

[sunnydalealum]

Not much at all; there's a gust of warm air from somewhere in the distance, moving their way.

Very low: "So if I'm trying not to die because I don't want to, even if I deserve to, what does that make me?"

[nomorekaraoke]

"Human."

He turns his head to face the rails, considering taking the easy way out. He gets on, she stays. It's the least he can do, get out of her hair.

[sunnydalealum]

"Human." She laughs hollowly. "What would you or me or anything like us even know about being human?"

(At the far end of the platform, where the track enters the tunnel, there's a steadily growing gleam of light against the tiled wall.)

[nomorekaraoke]

He doesn't say that he knows a great deal more than she thinks. He doesn't tell her that some of the best friends he's ever had were humans (once, in one case).

"Killing yourself would be the easy way out, doll. No more misery, no more suffering, no more feeling sorry for yourself. No more chances for redemption, you just...cut everything off before it hurts too much. Is that what you think you deserve?"

[sunnydalealum]

She looks away from him, and stares down at the tracks. There's a flicker of motion as something small, a rat or a mouse, dives into a hole under one of the rails.

The rumble of the oncoming train is getting louder, and her voice underneath it is just barely audible.

"Maybe."

(Soft and clear in her memory: Took off the mask. See the lies in the truth. Now you know who killed you.)

"If it's that or be a killer for somebody."

(Same memory, different voice: Live through this.)

Her feet are aligned precisely on the yellow safety line warning commuters not to get too close to the edge of the platform. She sways, just slightly, with the wind of the train's approach.

"They would have had me kill you."