Difference between revisions of "Log:Somebody That I Used To Know"

17 November, 2017

In which Elia isn't, but is awfully close, tin hearts can break, and he knows more than he should about how she's made.

It wasn't supposed to snow until tomorrow, but it's snowing now for damn sure. The mountainside near the hedge gate is all scrubby brush and tiny trees and rocks, and... snow. Snow snow snow. At least the snow means the air's not quite as cold as it could be, this early in the winter, but it's covering paths and eating up trails and spoor and anything worth tracking is underground and/or asleep this late at night anyway.

The cloud cover is one solid mass of nope, which means it's not entirely dark, either.

On the mountainside it looks like someone's stolen and placed, or actually legitimately installed, a statue. What light there is is reflected off the statue's surface, where the snow hasn't dusted it or started piling on it or drifting against it; it's shiny metal. It looks like some kind of old soldier, maybe one of the Green Mountain Boys or something. Very Artiste, to put a statue way out where no one's gonna look at it, but this is probably part of a national park or something, and maybe there's a plaque to go with it.

Or maybe it's bait.

It wasn't supposed to snow until tomorrow. Jack told her that, looking at his cellphone! He said 'tomorrow, snow, today, not snow.' And then it snowed! This is such treachery. And it is totally ruining Elia's day. She was going for a run and now her day is all fucked up.

So here's what's happening: there's a galaxy in the form of a woman, with stars flashing at her temple and throat, running in a black greatcoat, shivering and whimpering. Running down the mountainside, wending through the trees. Dark hair clings to the sweat on her face as she pauses at the foot of the statue, taking a deep breath. One hand rests on the tin soldier's foot, unselfconsciously. Blunted fingers with no nails, comets racing across the blue-black skin. She curls up at Czcibor's feet, digs in the pocket of her coat, pulls out her phone. No service, still. A low, throaty growl, and she stuffs the thing away. A curl of her Autumn Mantle whorls dried leaves around the pair of them, sending out crawling pumpkin vines from her feet as soon as she pauses.

It wasn't supposed to snow, it's cold, she's tired and cold, she has NO SERVICE, and statues aren't supposed to talk.

"...Liane?!" comes a hollow, tinny voice, echoing from inside the statue, like someone put a radio inside it. And then the statue moves. "Moze boj--!" it exclaims, surprise and concern wreathed all throughout, though its mouth doesn't move, and its face is the same gentle, mild, pleasant mask cast in shining metal that it was when she got there.

Even if she starts attacking it, he will literally ignore it in favor of pulling her into a giant stupid hug. "You're freezing! How did you find me?? You're FREEZING!"

All of those things are so true. And statues aren't supposed to hug her. When the statue starts to move, Elia's stubby fingers have claws that phase into being on the end of them, raking over the tin man's surface and leaving not so much as a dent, at least not the first round. It's mostly just being startled.

The following facts are true:

Liane's greatcoat had large tears across it, mended with red thread by Leka and purple patches by Czc's late rabbit motleymate.

Liane never took off her bracers, and this woman is not wearing bracers. Her forearms are bare under the coat, which is pretty obvious when she's flailing her arms at the tin man, trying to get free from the FREEZING COLD UNKNOWN TIN SOLDIER hugging her.

Liane's accent was Viennese native. This flailing creature, who looks exactly like her, sounds like she's from New England.

"Let -- go! -- of! -- me! You arrrrre frrrrree-zing!"

"Kurwa mac, przepraszam! --sorry! Sorry," the tin man says, alarmed, letting go and leaning away. "I'm sorry, I forgot-- I'd only meant to stay out here half an hour, I have no idea how long it's been--"

Some of that cold fades abruptly as the apparent statue lets go of the elemental clause that made him so, and he's definitely warmer, and that's definitely cloth, but she's also over there now, and he's also fishing in the satchel at his side. The one thing about him that didn't change, of course, is the giant black sword strapped to his back, but it'd been covered in snow, too. He shakes some of it off him as he stands up so as to fish better.

Then! Out comes a thermos and a couple of chemical hand warmers; he opens those and shakes them out and hands them over first, then opens the thermos and offers it. "Chicken noodle soup," he explains, "from that Crossroads Cafe place."

Just because he's noticed these differences doesn't mean he's saying anything about them. Yet. Carefully not saying anything, in fact.

She leaps away from him and falls into the sort of crouch that's nothing so much as reflexive. Ugh. It's all so almost exactly right. The wraps around her ankles are too dark grey, but the feet are the same, the weird digitigrade things that are half-human, half-wolf. The absent flexing of her fingers where the claws phase into and out of existence. It's just... weird. Almost, but not quite, an awareness like a hole where a tooth used to be.

"O... kay... " answers Elia, crouched a few feet away, hands on her knees, balled close so that her body retains as much heat as possible. She edges a little closer at the offering of food -- if she's ever re-taken, it'll be food that's her downfall. Food, or Jack. But that's another story. Edging closer, her hands snake out and snatch both hand-warmers and thermos, and then she edges back just a little bit. Edge edge. "There is good ba-con therrre," she offers guardedly. And then: "Why arrre you gi-ving me yourrr food?"

Because she honestly doesn't know.

And she doesn't know him from Adam. Something freezes somewhere in the back of Czcibor's heart, the one that he wills into existence through sheer force of stubborn refusal to give in, and he doesn't know what to think. What he does know is that even if she's some kind of fake, some kind of ploy, some kind of ... something ... even if she's a trap, set just for him, she's freezing cold.

She takes them, and the steadfast tin soldier's hands drop to his sides. "Because you're cold, and you're probably hungry, because you're in the middle of nowhere burning a lot of calories and you've only got maybe what fits in your coat," he says reasonably. "I can take care of the tired, too, if you want, but eating's more fun, and that'll warm you up." He glances down and to the side and starts fishing around in the bag again. "I've got some catseye clover in here too, if you want the spicy." A beat. His featureless silvery eyes turn toward her again, hands stilling over the bag. "Still going to have to walk back to town. I flew here and then used a lot of magic be-- OH. HEY. We only killed them like an hour ago maybe? Maybe an hour and a half, like I said, lost track of time, but there's a fucking giant dead briarwolf just on the other side of the gate."

She doesn't know him from Adam, not really. But there's something on her face, some sort of odd curiousness. (Interesting fact: there are a few Manikins in The Arena. Elia has even met one. It is a strange thing. Metal men who tend things. Their Graces can't make them, so now and again She trades for one. That'll be an interesting conversation, someday.) "Hrrrr," Elia agrees quietly, cracking the hand-warmers and stuffing them into her pockets so that her pockets can warm up while she drinks the soup. Her ears, previously flat back against her head, come out to the sides of her head, sort of a halfway thing. Status: cautious, but curious. Watching him, with those eyes where he can tell exactly when she looks at him, exactly when she looks away to open the thermos, because of those white hollow-moon irises that appear and disappear, like a moon reflected on a black lake.

"Eat-ing is my fa-vorrrr-ite," she agrees, adding, "ex-cept forrr... hmm. Jack is not herrre." The words are almost thoughtless, like she forgets what an 'inside voice' is. A big swallow of the soup, and another, and another. Most of it's gone already. "I don't like cats," she mumbles, adding, "Is the clo-verr made of cats?"

"Yes. Will have to walk. It wasn't sup-posed to snow," Elia whines, pulling the thermos in against her chest, leaching the heat from it. She perks up a little bit, and blinks wide-eyed. "Is... is the in-sides still ... o-kay?"

It's just not fair. She's probably a trap. But here she is, and she's cold.

"It's made of clover that grows in the hedge. If you eat a salad's worth, it gives you glamour," Czcibor tells her, finally procuring a small paper bag from the satchel. "It tastes kind of like horseradish, so if you don't like spicy-hot then it's kind of a terrible way to get it." She's watching him with cautious curiosity, and he's mostly just regarding her with a mild expression. He doesn't ask who Jack is, or say he knows eating is her favorite.

'Is the insides still okay.' Finally, the tin man's face breaks into a smile, a little affectionate and a little helpless and somehow very sad. "They should be, yeah. It can't have been more than two hours, and it's cold. Come on, you can have as much of it as you want-- I swear the thing's the size of a draft horse." He gestures, then starts up the slope the little ways it'll take to get them through the gate and onto the edge of the looptrod.

"I do like spi-cy foods, some-times." Elia finishes the soup, hungrily pouring the last drops of the broth into her face, and licks as much of the inside of the thermos as she possibly can, both heat and food clung to. That's part of the source of the way she talks, of course, but Czcibor knows that, knows the combination of lupine tongue and teeth that she tries to talk around. "I am o-kay for the glamourrr, though, so you can keep it forrr yourrr-self." She sniffles a little, shakes the snow from her ears, and then her whole head. It settles on her dark, stringy locks.

"I would like to have the in-sides. Liverrrs are good for eat-ing." It really isn't fair. "I like piz-za but when you arrre eat-ing in there, then it is the best." She pushes herself to her feet, shifting her weight from foot to foot. "I don't ... know who you thought I was. I'm not herr, and I'm so-rrry forrr that. But. My name is Elia Qua-sey." A pair of comets track up her cheek toward her forehead, and her anchor stars have grown quiet, pulsing slow and regular now that her heart has settled its beat. She holds the thermos back out. "Who arrrre you?"

Putting the little paper bag back in his satchel, the tin soldier nods; he is actually low enough on glamour right now that he was hanging out in the snow on a mountainside like a goddamn statue to meet the catch for turning into air, so there may be some gratitude in there. Which probably really doesn't make sense; the clover was his to begin with.

It's not fair and it's not right. "Yes," he echoes, agrees, at the 'livers are good for eating'; by now he's not facing her, so she can't see his face twist, and he keeps it out of his voice. It's less hollow than it was, but there's still that quality to it--

--and as they step through the gate, his face loses its animation again and his voice sounds like a radio in a tin can, but this time his clothes stay cloth. It's cold on the other side of the gate, too, which is good for the meat still being good-- and the insides, to a degree. Just up the path, the Thornwolf, headless, is on its side, left where the tin soldier dragged it and stopped. The hedge immediately begins transforming around them, everything turning shiny metallic, sharp things that much sharper, light reflecting and scattering off everything.

The Elemental plants himself by the gate and draws a gun with one hand, and reaches up over his back to draw his sword with the other. It should be too heavy for that. It's black, black iron. "Captain Czcibor Kowal der Landeswehr," he answers her. "I was very close to a girl that looked exactly like you, once upon a time. Her name was Liane Fuchs. It changed... but that was how I knew her first. Put the empty thermos back in my satchel, please; I'll watch your back, but that comes with the problem of me garnering rather a lot of attention in the Hedge in the first place-- so be ready to slice out your favorite parts and run for the gate if you have to."

It's not fair, but here they are: Czcibor's Wyrd takes over the Hedge, but Elia's Mantle crawls out around her once she moves far enough away from him. It's not exactly the same, but there are certain Autumn commonalities: the pumpkin vines, the occasional gust of crackly dry leaves that comes and goes, illusory. Elia's head turns toward him, her ears slowly coming up as she tilts her her head back and forth. Curious canine, this one. She tracks after him, light and quick on her strange feet.

Unlike Liane, she leaves footprints. Liane used Nevertread almost compulsively. So there's that.

She pulls her greatcoat close to herself, and comes up alongside him, turning her face up toward the zinnsoldat. Standing in silence, she flicks her eyes away from his face -- maybe toward the sword, or the gun, maybe -- it's only possible to tell for sure where she's looking when she looks at him. And she does look at him for a really long time after that (she could tell him how long: it's actually only 9.5543333 repeating seconds, but when someone's staring at you like that? It feels like a long time). There's something there, something she almost says, but rather than saying anything immediately, here, in the Hedge, the star-wolf reaches out her hand and rests it gently for 1.25 seconds on Czcibor's arm. "I am glad to meet you, Cap-tain Czci-borrr Ko-wal der Lan-des-wehrrrr. I do not know Li-ane Fuchs. I look like some-one who isn't herrr. But that's a-no-therrr sto-rrrry. Not forrr herrre."

She turns, takes off down the path toward the Briarwolf. Pauses, crouched over it, and then her claws phase back into existence, and she tears into the abdomen with a practiced strike. God, it's all so familiar. "If you arrrre low," she calls up the path, "It is the best to eat." Hedgebeast guts for glamour? Yep.

Nine and change seconds of staring. His head turns, briefly, to look at her, and the pleasant non-expression of his face lands the full weight of his not-inconsiderable regard on her for part of them-- but his job right now is to watch, so he looks up again, putting his attention back on the hedge. Even this close to the mortal world, it's never safe, never. When she puts her hand so gently on his arm, he looks again, and whatever he's thinking as she almost says something, then says something else, is buried in those inexpressive features. There's only the slightest nod, and then a very quiet, "Not for here. Go on."

And she does, and he sees still more of her movement, her mantle unspooling as it leaves the influence of his own. So like Liane when she was newer, only on his first failure to help her, to protect her more innocent self from Them. Moments unreel in his head, memories and glimpses and things she said to him, things he said to her. And then something Elia Quasey said to him just now: I look like someone who isn't her.

The hopeless, bleak despair that threatens to uncurl in his hollow chest where there should be a beating heart-- it's interrupted by her new words, incongruous and helpful and generous, and the zinnsoldat can't help but laugh: as tinny and echoey a sound as it is, it's warm and affectionate. "Thank you," he calls back, "I'll keep that in mind for when I am lower, and not putting you at risk with my presence. I can't take the chance of splitting my attention right now. Does glamour pool in their bellies like nutrients in the liver?" There's a stirring in the thorns off the path to Liane's left, and Czcibor takes aim, but nothing emerges. "Hurry. I can drag the rest out if you aren't done."

"It is good to know in gen-errrr-al. That they arrre not as good as eat-ing a clo-verrr, but not so bad as otherrr op-tions." This, from Elia, some short distance away. Casual, as she hauls up her prize out of the carcass, as if she were casually unwrapping a burger in a Viennese burger joint, curled up on his lap.

No, not her. Someone else just like her. But just as casual.

Tearing bite after bite from the liver that she's fished out, Elia crouches over the body, her eyes half-lidded with satisfaction. That doesn't mean she's not paying attention, mind you: her triangular ears swivel this way and that, tracking all of the little sounds that the Hedge burbles with at this time of day. Eventually, fingers bloody and head turning subtly this way and that, she starts to stand, and -- something catches her ears. Her head snaps back toward the sound. "It's just ... theyyy arre crrea-tures of this place. You know like when you eat a frrrruit just for the glamourrr and not forrr an-y-thing that the frrrruit may especial do?" Her voice is all too casual all of a sudden, though she doesn't bother to lick her fingers or her jowls, as she might have just been about to do. She doesn't pause for that.

No. She walks, then more quickly walks, then starts to run, abandoning flying casual in the name of not having to fight whatever is behind her right at this moment, not having to fight whatever has scented the tin man or the briarwolf's blood. Running right at him, right for the door. Time to go.

"So, as when there's a chemical in the water, it gets into the plants, and into the animals that eat it," the tin man says, his echoing ghost of a voice a wry thing, not quite bitter. "Yes." He steps swiftly to one side as Lia-- as Elia runs toward him, enabling the running past him part; he stays there a moment longer, waiting to see if whatever's coming is worth fighting and killing, if whatever's coming is going to ignore him or gun for him--

--is it practicality or just being stupid? Sometimes, with this one, it's hard to tell. As Elia's traversing the gate between worlds, the sharp report of a pistol sounds, close and echoing. Then there's silence for a long moment.

Finally, Kowal comes out of there, and there's only a little more blood on him than there was before. "Sorry," he says, "I had to shove the rest of it over the side of the path further up, there's a chasm. Don't need anything else coming this close to the gate. If they want the rest of that, they can go fish."

"Um... yes, surrre." Things that Liane would have understood that Elia doesn't: concepts like that. Things about water and plants and roots. Surely that door swings in the opposite direction, but right now it's very easy to see all of the deficiencies, all of the ways she isn't what she seems to be. That feeling of needing to put the tip of one's tongue where there used to be a tooth.

Whether it's practicality or stupidity, the end result is often the same. And when Kowal comes through the gate, she's still there, pacing back and forth, apparently debating going back in to the Hedge to be sure that he's not just gotten disemboweled by whatever that was. So maybe they're both a little stupid in similar ways.

You can't abandon pack, and someone who feeds you is, at least temporarily, pack-like. Pack-ish. That kind of mentality will probably be the end of Elia someday. Don't abandon your people does tend to be detrimental to people like her. But in any case, she's pacing back and forth outside the gate, breath steaming from her nose every fourth breath. It's three quick breaths in and then a long exhale to clear her nose. Her hands rub together, and her feet leave footprints in the inch or so of snow that's fallen that don't match the feet he sees: the vagaries of the Mask.

She rushes at him when he comes out of the gate, and hopefully that doesn't end up with a bullet or a blade in her belly, because now it's her turn to hug him unjustifiedly. It's a brief, tight, worried thing, and then when sense overtakes sensibility, she steps back three steps quickly. "Don't be sorrr-y. Thank you forrr shoot-ing it."

The hug is a welcome surprise; the tin man had already re-sheathed his sword and is in the middle of holstering his pistol when Elia attaches herself to his middle, and he puts his arms around her and hugs back, warm and solid and laughing. "It was not a problem," he says easily. "Now: we can go down the mountain and I can go get my car, and give you a ride home, because you are not wearing enough warm clothing for this weather. And then I suggest you make a very small deal with summer when you have a chance, and gain its protection in blizzards." His reanimated metal face is affectionate and amused, and if he is laughing at her, it's a gentle thing. "In the meantime, I can help your being worn out, if the liver did not do all of that job for you."

If he is dwelling on the parts of this that are unfair, it doesn't show. He probably isn't. He's probably saving that for later brooding fodder, having come to the conclusion that emergencies that are now trump bad things that happened before.

"Still, I app-rrrre-ci-ate it," Elia answers, and she hunches her shoulders inside her coat when she's skittered back. "I will also app-rrrre-ci-ate the rrride. It ... I like to rrrrun, but I ... " Well, they've already been over the fact that she wasn't planning on there being snow. She shivers once, twice. "It usually doesn't bo-therrr me. So much." She's lying, and trying to be tough, but, whatever. She shrugs her shoulders, then. "I should prrrrob-ab-ly, yeah. At some point." For someone who hates to be cold, she's awfully flippant about staying warm. At least she's not doing the Liane thing where she refuses so that someone else has to keep her warm.

One hand comes out and briefly touches his arm, and then she's looking down the mountain. "I could be leaves," she admits, "But you arrrre low, so, prrrrob-ab-ly not... " probably not flying down for him. Still, she seems tempted. Leaves aren't cold, right?

She could be leaves. Of course she could. There's something small that freezes at the back of Czcibor's expression, but it melts away immediately, and he laughs and looks down. "Not so low I'm in trouble. Just low enough I'm being conservative. But since I'm going back to town anyway--"

He looks out over the valley, at all the trees, at the gathering gloom of night, and in the distance, its lights so small, the village. Her hand had briefly touched his arm, and there was the sensation of its weight against his torn sleeve with the torn maille beneath it, and now he sighs. "It's fine. You be leaves, Eliaska. I'll be the warm wind behind you."

Usually, Elia's very good at reading the sort of folks who don't give anything away: between Jack's chiropterean expressions and Harry's clockwork face, she has a good amount of experience at sussing out the edges in the way that people react who, well, don't react very well at all. But today? She sees nothing. You know nothing, Elia in the snow.

Maybe in all of the reforming and reshaping, she got a special sort of blindness to Captain Kowal's expressions. Another Very Special Gift from half of her paired Keepers. Maybe it's just shitty luck.

When he prompts her that it's all right? Elia grins broadly. "Let's go sit some-wherrrre in pub-lic and soak up all the feel-ings. Also, therrrre can be some food. Come on." And then she lets out a soft sigh, collapsing inward and merging with her Mantle, into a pile of autumn leaves that skitter and swirl. They dance upward, then curl down the hill.

Maybe part of it has to do with the distinctly Polish fatalism that comes inborn to Kowals which lies beneath any and all hope, determination, rebirth, renewal, and whatever. Maybe part of it is that he's doing what Zephirine taught him so long ago, the thing that's necessary for him to do in order to even speak with the air, nevermind control it, nevermind turn into it--

--letting go.

He'll hold on to everything, somewhere; he'll hold on even if someday it'll be the death of him... but, for moments, for even hours at a time, the toy soldier who is so very good at death, who has such blood on his hands and has seen so much more of it spilt, he can let go of everything that keeps him so heavily attached to the earth. He can let go of everything. A rose who was the wind taught him.

He doesn't even sigh, he just dissipates.

And then there's a really loud and distinct CLANK as his hand-wrought iron bastard sword falls right through him onto the ground.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER

Still muttering really inventive multilingual curses under his breath, the tin soldier keeps hacking his way through underbrush with his machete in one hand and a giant fucking sword in the other, a clutch of merrily dancing autumn leaves making fun of him all the way back to town.