capeandcowllogs | in and out of stages

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in and out of stages

WHO: Zevran (

niceassassin) and OPEN.
WHERE: Around the City.
WHEN: The night of Saturday, May 14th.
WARNINGS: Terrible references to sex. Anything else on a case-by-case basis.
SUMMARY: Zevran goes out to try to make up for the lost time during kid week. Come help him out, join him, or try to foil his plans: whichever is your fancy.
FORMAT: Whatever you prefer!

By noon on Saturday, the memory of the past week is clearly stretched out in Zevran's mind like a poisoning victim, and by late afternoon, he can no longer tolerate it. It has been a very long time since that kind of vulnerability and sentimentality was so fresh in his recall. Oh, yes, moments of it escaped during his journeys with the Grey Warden, but they were mostly controlled. This, this is different and unwelcome.

Fortunately, by the time dark is falling and the artificial lights that seem so excessive to him are coming on around the City, business as usual has mostly picked up again--at least in some places. The denizens of the City, newly freed from the spell, will be seeking contact with other adults. So the most popular of social places are scrambling to be ready for them--be they parks or clubs. Zevran's usual haunts are still getting their feet back under them: the gaming stores, the fantasy bookshops, they remain closed for now. But he's determined to take a positive view of things (all the better to forget how frightened and deluded he was before the spell ended). This is an opportunity to try out new grounds, to find out if the less nerdy demographics in the City are just as willing to enjoy the company of an attractive elf with a foreign accent and a ready smile.

And so begins this night's adventure: drifting from bar to pub to club, idly attempting to seduce the bouncers outside the latter, investigating the people within. And maybe keeping an eye out for anyone interesting outside, as well. It is a moderately cool night; he has an excuse for a jacket. Which means he can bring his dagger along, just in case violence enters the equation. He is not averse to that.

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There's a momentary spark of something in her face at those words, but if it could be likened to a spark for fire, it seemed snuffed out -- or rather, that it failed to catch whatever it was meant to light.

"I have." Her eyes turn away from him then, her attention falling with the glass on the counter. She doesn't drink from it, but moving fingers over condensation is distraction enough. "I'm... not meant for things like that."

He watches her fingers move, and he wonders what it is they have done that she draws away so much. For a little while, he says nothing. What can he say to such a thing? He has said the same thing himself, more or less.

"Don't believe for a moment you are the only one." Oddly, his tone is more wry than harsh, with just a hint of gentleness to it. "But you're being very misguided indeed. The privilege and burden of love is a different matter to the pleasure of sharing a night of passion with a warm body. Or two, or three."

He should write a self-help book.

Perhaps an audio-book. He would probably garner more fans that way.

Back in the bar, the designs her thumbnail traces are not much in the way of artistry; merely etchings of absent movement. Her voice sounds resigned when she speaks, with a tone that carries as if it used to hold space for sadness, but has shed that off over time. Neither happy nor upset.

"Maybe that was the wrong word. I'm not... capable of it. I've tried..." A hand rises to massage the juncture of her shoulder and neck, sliding up before becoming the brace against her jaw; a shrug of the opposite shoulder, closer to Zevran. "... but love... passion... they're not emotions I can feel."

She smiles then, which is probably a strange reaction to a declaration like that, but Terra hasn't been painting herself as the most normal of humans during this short conversation anyway. "Don't be disappointed. I'm sure... a normal girl would find you charming."

Edited 2011-05-15 08:36 (UTC)

He no longer looks lecherous or charming (depending on your interpretation). Instead, he just looks puzzled. "You can't appreciate a fine body, a handsome face?"

Laughter, low and soft. "I know a normal girl would find me charming. I have had enough encounters with them, yes?" Just a hint of arrogance there, yes. But hey, it could be worse. He seems more amused than smug. "But you are a mystery, and that is more intriguing."

To that she can only shake her head, though she does finally pick up the glass. "Not how you mean," she answers, and then with a tilt of her head indicates further down along the bar to a gathering of more ordinary people than the two of them. "I know they're attractive, and--" with her empty hand, indicating to another group, "--they're not really, but... it doesn't... mean anything to me."

It's there that she takes the first sip, and her level features change into an almost comical expression of surprise and confusion. Clearly, whatever she was expecting it to taste like is nothing like what's actually in the glass. Oh, mixed drinks.

"And they," here Zevran indicates a third group, "are somewhat attractive, but have terrible hair. There are many degrees." He's just giving her a useful lesson, really.

"Ah--you don't have to drink it if it's upsetting to you." He pauses, tilts his head in confusion. "There's no one you've had feelings for?"

"I didn't expect a taste like that," she explains, taking a more tentative second sip. It's not bad, but it's not something she would order for herself. The glass is set down gently to decide how to answer.

"...Once. But they weren't my feelings. It was... 'divine intervention.' Is that the phrase?" She shrugs, a lighthearted dismissal of her own failings. "Love goddess."

"Alcohol, too, is an adventure," Zevran supplies. "One never knows what this year's wines will be like, either, or so I heard back home." He subsides into silence, though, to listen to her story, his brows knitting together as he does. "Oh...? Where I am from, the gods are more silent than that. Should they exist at all."

"This was here. Where I'm from, they're sealed away," she explains, sitting up a little straighter now that the conversation wasn't quite as heavily resting on her shoulders -- at least, not on how she lacked as a person. "Aphrodite isn't from this world or mine, but still has a lot of power."

Terra pauses, giving Zevran an almost appraising look. "She'd like you."

"Some would say the same of the elven gods of my world," he says--quietly, quieter than before, as if he didn't like the idea of other people knowing that he actually pays attention to silly myths told by silly people who live in forests. "Mmm, it's not important. Tell me about this Aphrodite. Of course she would like me. Everybody does, yes?"

For the first time that evening, Terra actually laughs, inner wrist rising to shield her mouth as she does. It's not cruel, even if it's the ego of that statement that drives it, and it ebbs off quickly enough.

"She likes worshippers," she says, still clearly amused. "I have a feeling you'd be good at that."

Banter aside, Terra rolls her shoulders, edging back into more serious tones. "When I told her this, she decided to give me a gift. So that I could feel love... and feel love in return."

She is no longer looking at Zevran, looking instead at hands once again playing with the water gathering on the sides of her glass. The smile is barely a twitch at the corner of her mouth.

"But... acting on them broke the spell. Before then, I thought... that I couldn't feel it because I didn't understand it. Now I know the truth. It's not something I can feel."

She is, in the end, a monster.

"Hmmm, let me think about it." He taps thoughtfully on the bar for emphasis. "She's not the distant sort of god, is she? More the kind who appears as a beautiful woman? Yes, I think I could worship that."

But he falls silent as she tells her story, his mouth tugging down a little even as he fails to realize it. "But you felt it, yes? Under her magic." It sounds like blood magic to him, but that's not something he particularly cares about. He's no templar, after all (although that is an amusing thought). "Perhaps the question is whether you should feel it or not."

Her attention once again returns his way, and once again it is confusion pulling at her brow.

"Should?"

He has to tread carefully here. If he says too much, the subject returns to him, and he has to think about whether what he's saying applies to him as well. At the same time, though...well, the thought of a lovely lady like Terra being convinced she can't feel love or passion is sad, okay! He'll try to help.

"Oh, there are some souls who don't feel such things at all," he admits carelessly, with a regretful shrug. "Golems, for example. I think it is not in them. But you, you have felt desire. Are you sure the reason you no longer do is not simply because you have told yourself you cannot?"

And see, now he's not talking about himself at all, he's talking about the sad associates he knew who refused to believe they could actually enjoy sex instead of using it as a tool. People like that. Not people who freely admit to enjoying sex but deny that they're capable of love. Like him.

It is something to think about, what he says, and Terra's expression becomes more mild in thought. There are many --many-- who have told Terra that she is capable of love, both in this world and in her own. The problem of course lies in the fact that most of them do not know the manner of what Terra is, or do not understand how it makes her different. After all, she thinks now; why would she be capable of such a thing, being the only one of whatever it is she is? Humans and Espers aren't exactly the type to mingle at bars with one another.

Finally, she answers.

"If a tree is set on fire, then put it out... would you think the tree could combust on its own?"

He shrugs. "If it's a possessed tree, certainly. Magic can do strange things. It is a pain to fight one of those things when your techniques are more suited to humanoid bodies, let me tell you."

"Ordinary tree," she clarifies, shaking her head. "Someone being susceptible to magic... doesn't change what they're capable of alone."

He pauses for a moment, then lifts his hands in surrender. "It isn't my place to tell you what you're capable of, is it? You don't look like a golem to me, or a spirit of the Fade, but perhaps that is your nature. It's hardly my problem."

"Not a golem," she assures, (and that's more Zelgadis's chimeraic territory than her hybrid one) but her curious streak has not yet been stamped out. "But, what's the Fade? Something from your world?"

That's easy enough to talk about--it doesn't concern him at all, as far as he knows. "Hmmm, yes. It's where mages' power comes from, and where the rest of us go to dream. Supposedly our spirits pass through there after death, but having not died, I would know little of that."

The way he says it indicates that he is not a mage, which Terra can easily tell just from how close he sits to her, but something about it strikes her as momentarily strange.

She can't figure out why, though, so the notion is quickly forgotten.

"I don't recommend it."

He laughs, or starts to. Then he trails off and looks at her more closely. She hadn't seemed like the type to make that kind of joke. "You speak as though from personal experience."

"I do," she says with a nod, and takes this wonderful opportunity for another sip of that ridiculously-named drink. It's growing on her, and perhaps might be helping her speak more freely. "The dying isn't so bad... depending how you go. It's... the coming back that's hard. Things change quickly when you're not around."

"I always thought it would be the dying that would be so bad," he says, frowning a little. "There are many painful ways to go. Poison, blood loss, a knife in the heart or a slit throat. Particularly poison. Most unpleasant."

If she's going to speak from experience, then so will he. It's just that he's always been on the other side of the "dying" experience. The "killing" one. "So it's true? We imPorts return."

"We do. All the ones I know have." Admittedly there are very few of her acquaintances that she knows to have died (and come back, of course), but it's the principle of the matter. "It took nearly a month for me... half of me anyway. The rest came later."

For the topic, she's surprisingly neutral; it's several months in the past now, and the person responsible is long since gone from this world. Terra hopes that Lina won't remember any of this if she returns; Terra's kept quiet about the who and the how this long, and letting that out seems pointless to her.

"Mine wasn't so bad... because I had some control over it. How I went." Here, though, she smiles; almost cocky. "Poison isn't enough to kill me."

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