En Pointe

Feb 25th, 2018 05:41 PM

The drive back to the hotel was so silent that the inside of Crane's vehicle might as well have been a leather upholstered tomb. Finally, however, the black Accord rolled to a stop and the silent march up to their hotel room began, Crane's stride so even and measured that she might as well have been on a parade ground, and her back couldn't have been straighter if she'd been walking toward a firing squad.

Finally, they reached their room, the keycard flashed in and out of the lock, and the door closed with a quiet click behind them.

They were alone.

Crane moved to the side of her bed, knelt, and came back to her feet, the dull matte black finish of her Makarov pistol glinting in her hand. The magazine was ejected with a echo of the door lock closing, and then Crane ejected the round from the small pistols chamber before she let the slid flick back into place. She set the small engine of death onto the coverlet of the bed and then walked towards Shrike. With a steady, deliberate slowness she brushed her jacket aside, lifted her blouse away from her side, and drew the Sig Sauer P229 that had sat holstered behind her hip, the compact, predatory gun fitting oh so naturally in her hand before she flipped it around and proffered the handle to the young talon, the muzzle facing Crane's own flesh.

"Take it," she whispered, the volume muting the vehemence in her voice. "Use it if you want to."

**Shrike** · Feb 25th, 2018 07:31 PM

In silence they travel.

In silence one seethes, and the other casts a wary eye over the supposedly stable one in this unbalanced partnership.

In silence they walk to their room.

In silence Shrike locks the door as Crane busies herself with her gun. The Talon assumed the other women was going to clean them not...

"I am not going to shoot you!" the Murder Bird screeches, snatching the predatory weapon as instructed, but instead of us ring it, she releases the clip, and ejects the round from the chamber.

Crane, as her minder had, of corse, taught the blade favouring Arrow how to use and maintain her hand held engines of death.

The weapon is shoved at the Guardian's chest. The Talon releases hers and lets the metal fall, or be caught.

"What. The. Actual. Fuck!?"

Feb 25th, 2018 08:22 PM

Crane snatched the weapon back as it was shoved towards her and then slid it back away, holstered and out of sight, even if the weapon was useless without its little seeds of death ready and waiting to be planted.

"What's the difference, Shrike?" Crane shot back. "What's the difference between you shooting me, here and now, and you pulling that vulgar shit in the middle of the cafe? Do you see me as an enemy? Do you resent me that much?

For anyone else, Crane's rage would have seemed shallow and impotent, but after months of inescapable contact, this was the angriest Shrike had ever seen her, an almost helpless desperation building somewhere behind her eyes, a mania that had been planted long ago, a vulnerability that could be so easily exploited if Shrike just reached out and pushed...

But was a vulnerable moment the totality of a person? Was it the epitome of who they were, a true glimpse of their soul, or was it one more thread in the shifting tapestry of their lives, one more current in the sea of their psyche, one melodic line in a far grander composition?

"I'm not trying to hurt you, Shrike," Crane professed, reaching out to gently grasp the other woman's head and hold her gaze flush with Crane's own.

"I did not give you that envelope to hurt you."

**Shrike** · Feb 25th, 2018 08:50 PM

"The difference is is wasn't directed at you" a hiss, spat out between clenched teeth. "I was-it was contained." she retorts, feeling the carress of her oil slick lover. She forces back a gag, as she shudders.

Eyes dance, searching as the Guarduan rages at her softly.

Shrike's will could come to bare, reach out and press the pair closer then the press of skin to skin allows.

But right now, she should let the nightmares lie.

"I-I-" she stutters, staring into Crane's eyes, salted water slips and spills. "But it did."

**Cayce** · Feb 25th, 2018 09:15 PM

Wong account! Ignore

Feb 25th, 2018 09:16 PM

"I know," Crane agreed, her touch as soft as her voice. "I know it hurts, but that's why we had to talk about it. Maybe I should have waited, maybe it was my fault for trying to have the conversation then, but I knew that it couldn't be avoided. Dance is a part of who you are. The dedication, the sacrifice, the perfection found beyond the boundaries of pain, I know that's something you need in your life, but is dancing professionally the only way to do that? Or is that just the dream of the woman you used to be?"

Finally, Crane let her hands fall away, freeing the young Talon once again, though a part of Crane still hungered for the contact, wanted to brush the tears away and hold Shrike close. It wasn't what Shrike needed, though.

"I'm here to help you," Crane promised, her eyes still fixed upon the other woman. "If you want to join the SBC, I'll help you. If you want to be one of their supporters, someone who is still a part of their world, but free to pursue life on your own terms, I can help you do that, too. You're one of the Awakened, Shrike. The world is at your fingertips, and whether we like it or not, I'm going to be there with you, no matter what you choose."

To the very end.

**Shrike** · Feb 25th, 2018 09:56 PM

The nightmares should lay inert, this was about an envelope filled with dreams and shattering them upon the rocks of vulgarity.

Crane releases her face and Shrike shoves herself away, using the back of her hand to rub away the salted water.

Shadows that aren't gather. Slithering into her own, coiling and resting for the Murderess hasn't basked in the presence of her caustic lover.

Bright swatches, of crimson blood drips into imperfect lines Mind brought to bare.

Her mind reaches forward to touch her fellow's.

A question. A demand. Not an attack.

Feb 25th, 2018 11:21 PM

There was no resistance as Shrike reached out, passing through the barriers of language and flesh and touching upon Crane's mind. Even as their consciousnesses merged, though, clarity was not easily found. Even one mind was more vast than the unfathomable sea, more complex than even the dance of the galaxies about the little rock that was the earth, but as their psyches began to meld, something began to take shape before Shrike.

There was a corridor of memory that had surfaced near the front of Crane's mind, and after a moment of hesitation, the architecture of the Obrimos' mind shuddering in indecision, the corridor opened, allowing Shrike to peer inside:

There was sunlight, so much sunlight, the world bathed in golden rays that bounced off of beige stone and sand, and seemed to illuminate every blade of grass and every leaf in the little oasis near a softly flowing stream. The sound of bright, carefree laughter echoed off of the rock and was carried off on the wind. There was a small figure, scampering about beneath the shade of the trees, black cloth fluttering in the wind as an innocent game was played out among the grass and laughing eyes and a veiled smile turned to meet Crane.

A name floated up from the memory: Mariam, a name that Crane had mentioned only once before, on the night when she had admitted that she'd lost a daughter...

**Shrike** · Feb 25th, 2018 11:45 PM

Freedom is carried by weightless abandonment of the limiting confines of the physical, and for six glorious seconds Shrike gained her wings.

Trust is hard, even with the gentle gossamer touch of her question she expected the Guardian to fight, to protect her secrets, to use spoken language and its inadequacies.

She is directed and allowed, and yet her first reaction is to break the contact and - "I'm sorry!" Miriam was special. Miriam was her's "I didn't mean-fuck!" explodes from her lips, she stalks the room. "Fucking stupid I-!" her talons rake through her hair, pulling it, before she kicks a bedside table.

"I'm sorry!" shifting focus back on the gentle once mother that would always be a part of her life now. "She's your-and I didn't. I only meant to...I only want to know..." taught replaces action, silencing a plethora of repeating sounds.

"I'm not a child." Shrike says, suddenly frightfully calm and deathly still, I'm not a replacement or a spare." she hisses, teeth bared.

Feb 27th, 2018 09:52 PM

...not a replacement or a spare...

You couldn't be, even if you tried, Crane thought viciously, a part of her uncaring if Shrike heard, even if the rest of her was relieved that the telepathic connection had been cut.

It was difficult not to feel angry, not to blame Shrike for every time that she lashed out, not to vilify the fracture willworker and to see a demon in her place. It would have been so easy to use the very first outburst as an excuse, to claim she'd seen the taint of the abyss from the very first moment and pulled the trigger. It would have been easy, but Crane wasn't interested in easy. She would have joined the Free Council if she'd wanted to be a slave to her own solipsistic impulses.

"I know that you don't want me to be here. I know that you don't want a minder," Crane explained, forcing herself to be patient, forcing herself not to mention that she was stuck with Shrike, too.

"I'm not here because I want a child. You know why I'm here. We need to find a way to make this work between us. I thought that we had, but obviously there's still a lot of issues that we have to work out between us."

Date	Action	Roll	Result
2018-02-25 21:32:08	Shrike rolls 7 to Telepathy! (Mind 3 + Gnosis 1 + ea 3) (10 Again)	4, 7, 4, 10, 7, 1, 5, 9	2 successes
2018-02-25 21:28:02	Shrike rolls 1 to Dox 1 -1 MT (10 Again, Chance)	2	failure

En Pointe

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