Setting Things Right

[Robert Cross]

This scene occurs a few nights after Withered Kingdom

It has taken time for Cross to even consider leaving Alice's side. Since their reunion, the Burned Man has desired nothing more than her presence, her company. Slowly, though, he's started moving out to explore the ruins of what was once the Deep Kingdom. If only for short periods. Shaking his head in dismay at the work to be done.

And yet, despite the overwhelming nature of the task before him, Cross is happy. As happy as an Undead Monster can manage to be.

Happy to be here. Happy to be with her. Happy to be home.

He's decided to start small, with clearing out their sepulcher. Opening up the catacombs would be next. A major undertaking. But for now, he's content to make them a space to share again, other than the Caldarium.

He'd let Alice know where he would be. And Cross is aware that she's close, somewhere nearby in the gloom of the underground.

When she comes looking, Alice will find him just where he'd said she would. Dressed only in a pair of black jeans as he works in the filth and the darkness, his senses heightened to an unnatural degree, the scars on his torso exposed to her touch if she should reach for him.

Working silently. Trying to wrench something of the old Necropolis out of the ruin it has become. Ignoring, for now, the Hunger. The urge to emerge from the depths to hunt. Soon, he promises his Beast. For what little it's worth.

[Robert Cross]

Book keeping!

[Alice Hart]

It was...nice. More then nice, to hear sounds other then ones she made herself in the depths of the Necropolis.

It was also surreal. Every time she woke, scenting Robert and hearing his voice...it made her heart flutter. But the bubble the two of them encased themselves in the last few nights had to be breached. Six months was a long time, (even if it really wasn't for beings who had forever) night, by night the face of the Domain changed, not just in ways that Robert would be expecting, but in ways that even surprised Alice, and she was here to witness them happening.

The most surprising would be why the Wraith in the water was thrashing and gnawing the chain that her tenuous control was.

She was so fucking hungry.

Soft steps and the rustle of the fabric of her dress tell the Burned Man was Alice appeared behind him. Silent for the moment, listening to him work. She stays back, even when she'd rather press herself close, because she doesn't want to trip over whatever Robert had already pulled away from the collapse.

"Evening." she says, because she doesn't really know what else to say, and there was a lot that she had to cover.

[Robert Cross]

The space, such as it is, has been mostly cleared. The room wasn't that big to begin with, and the rubble inside had largely been the result of his makeshift shelving and desk giving way.

The cinder blocks that had once been incorporated into those two structures were either stacked against the back wall of the sepulcher or neatly piled further down the tunnels, depending on whether they could still be used. The wood he'd acquired for the construction of his shelves and desktop would have to be completely replaced. Though that wasn't an issue.

Cross forces himself to keep working, even as the sounds of her approach come to him from a long way off. He's crouched down, rearranging the last few cinderblocks, when she stops at the door. The smell of her fills the room, familiar and unearthly, and then comes the sound of her voice. All of it accentuated by his heightened senses.

"Good evening." There's a warmth to his voice that only she will be familiar with. That only comes when he's addressing Her.

He stands, turning, in one fluid motion, and with a few steps reaches her. Taking her hand in his, without speaking, the Burned Man draws Alice further into the sepulcher, to demonstrate his progress. "See. Things are coming together," slowly guiding her this way and that to allow his sightless partner to reacquaint herself with the space.

"I'll need to rebuild the shelving. The desk. Or maybe get a proper one..."

He trails off for a moment, lost in thought, before coming back to himself.

"How are you?" She can feel a scarred hand brush a stray hair from her face as the question is asked.

[Alice Hart]

Her lips quirk upward, her grin as always too wide, too sharp, and too fake, at the warmth in Robert's voice. She'd noticed that when her eyes fell to ash, Robert had been warmer to her. He's been more demonstrative in his affection. Alice wondered if it was that he'd finally realized his feelings, or that without eyes, he felt it was safe for him to emote.

A started, falsely delighted laugh escapes the Doll as Robert's hand finds hers to draw her farther into the sepulcher. At each mention of what was already different and what was planned, Alice nods, strings lull, only to be pulled taut.

"...a partition, maybe. And maybe a..a bed." Alice says softly. Threads of faux-embarrassment could be found in her hollow voice.

His scarred hand coming close bush against her face heightens her embarrassment. It wasn't like she'd ever done...any of this before!

Her thoughts scattered, "Hungry." leaves her lips before she can think to stop them.

[Robert Cross]

A bed!

Of course. A bed.

Cross is a creature of very few comforts. His life, and unlife, has thus far been a spartan affair. He'd slept on a mattress on the floor when living. Sometimes at the station or in his car, when on the job. And now, well, it was usually just the floor. Sometimes, there might be a sleeping bag...

But, for Her, "A bed, of course," he answers. His eyes leave her face for a moment, sweeping the space, taking in the dimensions of the Sepulcher once again. "And we might be able to make a partition work."

Cross is new to this as well. Love. Even cohabitation is a new experience, really. There had been women, while he was alive. But no one that ever mattered. Or stayed longer than a week. He was not an easy man to be with, even then.

But now he's looking at her closely again, a hint of concern in his eyes. The note of desperation in her voice, when she'd professed her Hunger. It wouldn't do.

"Well, let's head upstairs then. Find something for you." It would be good, to hunt beside her. To watch her, see how she'd grown into her new situation since his departure.

[Alice Hart]

Alice laughs once more as Robert answers her. He didn't make a huge deal about the bed. Alice thought perhaps he might. When they last shared his sepulcher it was on the floor in sleeping bags, but Alice's thoughts hadn't been simply something extra to spend their daysleep, but for...other activities that a bed might prove itself useful for.

"If it we can't make a partition, we can always carve out some more space...or I could simply carve my own sepulcher...we could connect them." Months, and months ago, she'd wanted her own Sepulcher, but as the Clan slowly but surely diminished, and the Awakening of her Blood it seemed less important. Maybe now it was time to think about it again.

Just like that. He stops thinking about rebuilding and focuses on her, it was sweet, but it always made her think she wasn't doing enough for him.

"It's going to be a little harder then going upstairs and a few streets over to find a vein to sink my fangs into." the mishandling of her confrontation with Bea rang once more in her mind. She could have done more, used her powers as Seneschal and her ending Bea wouldn't have needed a punishment.

The imagery she'd invoked herself had the Wraith thrashing, it's once rare hissing, was a constant thing in the back of her mind. "I did something stupid, told Ale because I had to tell someone, she's replaced you as Reeve. She brought me to Prince Clarke." it's then that she realizes that if Robert had only come back sooner, Alice would have gone to him, and he wouldn't have brought her to Asa. He would have helped her hide the body as it were, and they wouldn't have brought anyone else into it. "She didn't feel like she could sentence me herself. As...a member of her Coterie, and the Domain's Seneschal." that really wasn't how she wanted to tell Robert about those things, but it is what it is.

Alice sucks in a unneeded breath, just so she could sigh. Shaking her head.

"I've been Banished to the Barrens until July."

[Robert Cross]

“That is an option,” Cross replies to her suggestion concerning a connected set of sepulchers, clearly mulling it over, a hint of approval in his voice. But before he can continue discussing such “domestic” matters, she’s detailing her recent troubles. And hinting at changes beyond his expectation.

For, while Ale’s selection as Reeve makes a certain sense, along with their formation of a Coterie, Alice’s ascension to the position of Seneschal catches him completely off guard. It’s not that the Burned Man finds the promotion unimaginable. Quite the opposite, Cross has always considered Alice to be strong, shrewd, capable of leading. Even before they’d taken up together. Even when others seemed to underestimate her. Indeed, there’d been times when Cross had to remind Alice herself of her strength.

An image returns to him, from one of the last courts he’d attended in Sacramento. Asa and Alice, dancing slowly and in full sight of all.

Cross is filled with a feeling of pride. And fear. To be the voice of the Prince at such a young age is an honor. It is also, innately, a precarious position. To speak for the Prince is to become a target for his enemies. Or of the Prince himself, should he prove dissatisfied with what you say in his stead.

These emotions and worries, though, are pushed out of his head when he hears about her sentence.

”Banished?” he hisses.

The scalding rage of his beast ripples across his scarred flesh, the intensity of its ire compounded by his own hunger. And suddenly it’s not just blood he wants, but Their Blood. The Blood of Ale and Asa, of those who would dare punish Her, deprive Her in such a manner. Fuck their positions. Fuck their power.

With a quick exertion of his will, an audible grinding of teeth, Cross restrains the Monster inside him. Now is not the time for such thoughts. Now is the time to figure out what, exactly, could’ve resulted in this state of affairs. And if they might be rectified.

“But what could you have done? What could get you, the…” the title still seems odd, “the Seneschal of the Domain, banished?” His voice is significantly calmer, but there’s still a touch of outrage there. Of disbelief and anger, though controlled.

[Alice Hart]

Alice hums, an always hollow sound, while her mind's already thinking of just where her sepulcher could be located without bringing the earth down around them, and close enough to Roberts so connecting them was plausible.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the expected reaction of Robert finding out she screwed up enough to be Banished. Alice shrinks into herself. Misinterpreting the Burned Man's anger, believing that it was directed at her. At her fuck up.

She should have been better, she shouldn't have been so stupid. She shouldn't have gone alone. She should have brought a fucking knife!

The questions come, and Robert uses her title. For a moment Alice smiles her too wide too fake smile, then it's gone, as a mockery of self-deprecation fills her hollow voice.

"I killed someone. A member of the Domain. Frenzied. Ate her. Not...not that. I didn't consume her soul. I didn't. I wouldn't. Not even when I couldn't think!" she clutched Robert's scarred hand, suddenly desperate for the Burned Man to believe her.

[Robert Cross]

As Alice grows more agitated, Cross lets go of her hand and wraps an arm around her shoulders. If her fingers happen to brush his chest just above his unbeating heart, she may feel, nested among the patchwork of scars there, a new and more regular patch of raised flesh. In the shape of a cross.

"I never thought you would. Never." The statement is final. True.

He's silent again, studying her features, her profile, in the darkness of the sepulcher. Again, there's that feeling of pride, no matter the circumstance.

The blind doll is now Seneschal. And she can take care of herself.

"How did it happen?" he prods her on, gentle but insistent. Surely, if she'd been threatened, assaulted, even verbally attacked, it could be seen as an affront to the Prince himself. Or at least made to seem that way.

He's still trying to understand why She should be punished in this situation. Unwilling to admit that Alice may be in the wrong.