capeandcowllogs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

WHO: Gil (

invoking) & Natasha (

latrodectus)
WHERE: A nice but somewhat bland business luncheon establishment.
WHEN: Some ordinary weekday afternoon.
WARNINGS: N/A
SUMMARY: Gil and Natasha have an Awkward Business Lunch.
FORMAT: Whatever.

Natasha was enigmatic by nature and by design; maybe that was why she'd decided to take Gil to lunch.

It was a very beige affair, this restaurant, with heavy cream curtains and a light touch of gilding to the chairs. The tables were spaced wide enough for talking and the waiter (who called himself Mark) wore a black vest with a suitably pastel tie. Without glancing at the menu, Natasha could tell the food would be competent, but lacking in imagination.

Business as usual.

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"And you're going to listen?"

That was interesting to her, his ability to accept orders that didn't agree with him. If the doctor told her to stay in bed and rest, she'd get up and walk out. Most people she knew would get up and walk out. Something about risking your life for a living, laughing in the face of danger.

Nine times, came a voice in the back of his head. Nine times, Gilbert.

His good shoulder sank and his gaze drifted past Natasha, lost in his own little world for a fleeting moment. Finally, he blinked and returned to reality to answer her question.

"I... I guess?" Gil realized he must have sounded as conflicted as he looked. "I've never had health problems from smoking," he added, honest.

"Then you haven't been doing it long enough." Natasha had even gone on public health crusade, once, back when she felt she'd lost without a cause. It had been more about her than it had been about smoking, about the drugs, and she knew that now. But she could still recite the Surgeon General's warning if she had to.

That was all boring, though. Things stuck in the past that should stay there. She wondered what it was that caused Gilbert to lose his focus— but she didn't ask. Not yet.

He was grateful there wasn't any indication she was going to chide him for his bad habits. He was fully aware what the cigarettes could do to him, but they proved more than difficult to quit.

"Compared to some, not really." He had picked it up because of Oscar. What a terrible mistake. "Have you ever...?"

"Smoked?" she shook her head. "A little, back in the days of my misspent youth."

White cigarettes, with long black holders. She smoked them in opera gloves, her shoulders trimmed with mink. Natasha didn't regard those days with fondness, but she could not muster for them the warmth of regret.

Gil regarded her with surprise, followed by mild amusement. He had difficulty picturing Natasha as a young girl and doing things like that. In spite of the fact he only knew her as the woman she was now, that air of professionalism and class wasn't something you just acquired. That was learned over a period of time, either on your own or instilled at a young age.

"May I ask you something? If it's not out of line." It felt like a bold move on his part, so he watched for her reaction.

"You can ask." She wasn't guaranteeing an answer, her features fixed in that same placid expression that seemed to come to her like a rainwater to a gutter.

Well, he had already asked if he could ask...

He shifted in his seat slightly, a touch hesitant before he finally came out with it: "Are you from this country? In your world, that is." He observed the room briefly at that point. Americans were strange to him.

"I've lived here, for… many years. It is my home." She paused, to take a sip of water. "But I do not think of myself as American."

His side of the table remained untouched. He hadn't drank the water, touched the napkins or even poked at any utensils placed neatly before him. He seemed more preoccupied with keeping himself rigid and maintaining polite conversation than anything else.

"No?" Her red hair reminded him of Rufus Barma and his lineage; a foreign dukedom that emerged in his country not too long after they had left theirs. "Where are you from originally?"

"Volgograd." Of course, they had called it something different, then. She couldn't deny Russia, though Natasha did not embrace it. But Stalingrad was engraved on her soul, written into her with white-hot fire. It was nothing she cared to speak of aloud.

Her lips set in a grim line, and for once she forgot to change the subject.

A bit of the color drained from his face, noting the sudden tense atmosphere of the conversation. Again, he didn't know much about the geography of this world, but without delay he realized this wasn't a subject he should have pried into.

"Oh." Evidently at a loss at what to switch the subject to. "I see."

"You don't know where that is, do you." She was more interested in where he came from, the differences. Maybe now Natasha could find out.

Caught.

He leaned back in his chair, looking rather sheepish. "No... it might not exist in my world at all. The same for this country."

"Where are you from, then?"

If the answer was something like Oz, she'd have to recalibrate.

The likelihood of Gil discovering his real birthplace was next to non-existent, or so he hoped. That didn't matter anyway-- it's not what she was after, right?

Yet the question stirred something inside his chest, whether he knew it or not.

"Usually I reside within a city called Reveille," he said.

She noticed how he distanced himself with that language— not I live or even I come from, but I reside.

"Wake up," Natasha says. Quietly, like an echo.

Something prickled his temple. He managed to restrain himself from reaching and rubbing the side of his head, only because he wasn't comfortable showing any signs of tension.

"Sorry?" He shook his head. Must have been spacing out.

"Reveille," she repeated. "It's from the French. It means wake up."

"Oh," he looked relieved. "Right... it's the capital city. Though, this city is much larger than it." Much more crowded too, he felt.

"Do you like the feeling? Of a big city, I mean." The waiter brought over her drink and Natasha turned to acknowledge him, waving with her hand but not saying anything. She'd just gotten her nails done yesterday, and she did not say much through that, either.

When the wine was tasted and deemed satisfactory, Natasha angled back towards Gil. "I've always found it can be terribly lonely."

Despite having stuck to water, Gil warily double checked to ensure he wasn't being served any alcohol. He's done with that quickly, his expression firm but thoughtful.

"It's not something I thought of much," he admitted. "But this city is still strange in many ways for me. Even the air here is thicker than I can remember back in my world..."

He ignored the comment about it being lonely. That was something he felt should be kept to himself and not bother her with.

"It's the pollution. When they invented factories they didn't know they could run out of air."

This was something they kept out of the textbooks she read when she was a little girl. But there was always a price for progress, and that is something the textbooks taught very well.

He remembered the air in Sablier. Heavy and foul, especially the closer they got into its hole. Some of it was from the city no longer being kept after the Tragedy, some came from whoever or whatever else was decomposing down there.

"I've read a little about that." He didn't comprehend everything and only got the gist of it, really. "Something about it affecting the weather?"

"It can, yeah. I used to live in L.A. It's worse there— the fog can cling to you."

And here, L.A. was meant to be a crater. That was a pity. Natasha didn't mind leaving at the time; in those restless days she was always craving a change of scenery. What irony, to get stuck here now when she was somewhere close to settled.

"If you go to the middle of this country the skies get bigger. The air gets different."