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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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."

"The less people and buildings," he nodded. That also meant less cars, hopefully. He understood they were commonplace and an important means of transportation, but he still disliked a lot of those bigger and faster ones. Loud and dirty.

"New Zealand was like that. The air was cleaner."

"Did you like it better? New Zealand? I've never been there, not for long." Not this New Zealand, anyway. It didn't have the sort of tourist attractions that would get her to travel.

There he went again, slipping into another world. He had spent the majority of his time in New Zealand's land panicking and on the verge of losing his mind.

And being harassed by sheep. The smell had taken a while to wash out of his hair and clothes.

"It... was alright... I wasn't there long either."

"It's a beautiful place." She meant that, too. But something about his reaction suggested he didn't feel the same way, which intrigued her.

"We briefly stopped in some city to catch our breath." He wondered about Donna briefly. "To tell the truth... the porter sent me there when I was brought back here."

"How strange." She knew it could probably send anybody anywhere, or at least. It should have those capabilities, unless there were some spiritual anchors at work that Natasha just didn't want to think about. But it never seemed to send anybody anywhere. Everybody went to one place. And then back. If they were lucky.

He nodded, quite embarrassed over the topic. Maybe she hadn't seen his video entry where he was bombarded with those sheep.

"It was..."