cairne (cairne) wrote in darkcarnivale, @ 2012-01-30 21:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | cairne, saxon |
You're the love that I've looked for, come with me, and escape.
WHO:Saxon and Cairne
WHEN: Monday the 30th, Evening
WHERE: A suite of hotel rooms near the grounds.
WHAT: While Cairne is still working out their permanent living situation and arranging the purchase of a trailer, he and Saxon go over what's required for the act. They both learn much about the other.
RATING:Mild, with a chance for an 'ew' moment, I suppose? A little blood.
Saxon
Three days since a stranger had offered her a place in a circus full of horrors; horrors, she had now come to realise, that included herself. There was no denying that the glimpses of others - and still more, in plain sight - that she had seen around the carnival, were not human, and yet they retained features of them. It screwed with her mind, having trouble (yet not having trouble) separating human from alien, though she would not even have thought herself capable of parting them barely a week ago. Perhaps there was something to do with the gathering of so many here, for her to feel the alien in herself all the more keenly.
This stranger, to be precise, had invited her in. With the look of someone out of a film that she couldn't place, or an old poster, he was nevertheless just as off-human as the rest of them. His act sounded innocuous enough - everyone's heard of a contortionist, seen them in regular circuses or shows. He certainly didn't seem to avoid pain, or quite literally dislocating his limbs then and there. For the purposes of an act, it seemed at least, he was very into realism.
It was what he required her for that really caught her. Saxon - just a name, a combination of letters for now - could her place really be as simple as a distraction for the audience to follow? She wasn't so unaware of the world as to miss the foot in the door he had offered her, but as to what ultimate purpose, she had yet to learn. Until such time as it became apparent, she would reserve judgement, and trust.
"You're lucky I spent time in the Scouts," she says, as they pour over a complex diagram of rope-ties, shown over several sketches of the human form. "Are you sure you can get out of these?"
Cairne
Maybe he'd seen right through her when they'd met, her watching with only barely curious eyes. Maybe he still didn't know how to categorize her, but there is always something that seems to draw his eye toward the inhuman. He stands politely at the other side of the table, as he watches her comprehend the ropes, take in the diagram.
He cradled a scotch in the hand he wasn't leaning on, voicing a wordless agreement to her assessment of the complication inherent in the ties. "It's mostly decorative," he says, "For show. The holding ropes are always the ones around the hands and arms."
He looked up, straightened, and set aside his drink. If he dresses down ever - in anything less formal than expensive slacks and a waistcoat that pulled tight against his middle and turned him into all long lines - she has yet to see it. It's possible that he didn't. Lifting one hand, he undid the link - always a link, and never a button, it drew the eye to the motions of his hand - and began to fold back first one sleeve, then the other. He sets the links carefully next to his glass.
"You know how to tie a straight jacket?" He asked, instead of properly answering her question, and he stepped aside to retrieve it. He wasn't tall, shorter than she, in fact, but the length of his stride and the tailoring of his clothing lend enough illusion of height that she might have been surprised the first time he approached.
He stretched one shoulder in a circle, then the other, and pulled the jacket on as one might a fine dinner coat - only backwards of course. He continued, waiting until she took up the straps. "I chose you," he said, taking a deep breath and focusing himself, his eyes finding a point to fix on as he continues, "because I could see you had strong hands."
The ghost of a smile might touch the very end of these unconventional words. "And - a strong mind to go with it."
Saxon
The moment the illusionist moved, Saxon's eyes flickered up to follow him. She didn't dress as if about to attend a corporate party or a ball, like him, and she suspected that it was a part of his act in public. Gowned instead in a simple cardigan and tight jeans, she gave him a look long enough to attain that he wasn't about to do anything untoward, and in some respects to warn him not to, before she returned to the diagram, blocking out part of the design with her palm to better see the placing of the links.
There was no way her attention couldn't be caught by that question, though, and when he neared with the jacket in hand, she responded, her tone dusted with irony. "I've never had to tie up my suitors." Their difference in height didn't faze her as much as she assumed it must have affected him: being almost six foot tall without heels had been a bane on her romantic life ever since puberty. Nonetheless, Saxon experienced the unsteadiness of expecting someone taller from their manner at that moment, long enough for him to cut into the pause.
"Oh, please." She took the straps and threaded them through each metal pair of loops on his back, jerking tightly on each to a perhaps unnecessary degree, just to make sure they were tight. "You found other hired 'hands' too tedious. Did they take too long?" The fifth strap went across his chest, under and over his crossed arms, and Saxon stepped to his side in order to tie it. "Felt like finding a new piece of ass to fill in for your troubles. I'm handy with a few knots and I know all the words to Stormy Weather, what use is that in a circus?"
She looped the strap between his legs and brought it up the other side with her left hand, without moving over, waiting to see whether he would flinch, before tying that too. Won't yank you there, mister contortionist sir, Scout's honor.
Cairne
He had yet to make a pass at her, and his only offer had been to the letter what he had overtly expressed - simply that she would assist him, and draw eyes when necessary. He has been - even outside of his act, if his whole life isn't just wound up into that definition by now - a perfect gentleman. He answered her look without even an arched eyebrow, shouldered the insinuation about his personality without complaint.
"Never?" he asked, allowing only the very faintest of disbelief into his tone. He turned his head to watch her over his shoulder, allowing her to tie him into almost helplessness without a word of complaint. He even shifted his stance helpfully so she wouldn't have to reach impolitely.
"I'm a showman so you won't believe me but - I hadn't done this act in over ten years when I asked you to assist me," he said, ceasing to follow her as he measures - without moving - how much tension she'd put into the straps. She hadn't gone easy on him - but not tugged cruelly tight either. "But really my proposition was exactly what it read. You know - this part, it isn't the illusion."
He didn't flinch - the other straps she'd fit on him had given no evidence that she'd abuse her sudden power while he was incapable of retaliation. Possibly, he had measured that much of her already - or maybe he just didn't worry about pain. There - all set. He held perfectly still when she finished, to make his point in helplessness as much as words.
"Contortionism, historically, is equal parts a male and female tradition," he said, possibly reciting from an old act. "However, since I'm not a cute asian girl, no one wants to pay to see me sit on my own head all day - hence the escapology. Any dozen magicians can get out of a straight jacket - most of them use a rig, a trick. It makes it faster, less painful."
He stepped forward, turned around so she could see the whole thing. "What we sell, as a team, is romance - we give the audience a chance to hold their breaths, to feel the suffocating crush and how hard it is to pull out of it. They get to twist and squirm and grunt - and some people they eat that up. The others - well, that's where you come in. They want to see you worry, so they can worry with you."
Suddenly, he exhaled sharply, shifted one arm as far up into the sleeve as he could get it, pulling up at the shoulder to take advantage of the slack with his free hand, rotated sharply in the sleeve sometime while he spoke. There's a jangle of catches, and then instead of pulling his arms over his head, he actually shrugged one shoulder out of the neck of the jacket itself, clawed the trailing edge of it down with the other ensleeved hand, and drew the whole arm in what must have been a painful motion out of the top of the jacket, then the other, before pushing the rest of the contraption down over his hips and onto the floor.
"Which means you have to be worried - that," he said, looking down at the jacket. "We can't sell that. They want to see me work for it. And they want to see that you don't know if I can do it."
Saxon
"Nothing more unnerving than part of the crew losing her cool," Saxon said. "Agreed." She braced her hands against her hips while he moved away and turned to show the entire rig to her. Part of her, she was surprised to find, was actually excited at being able to discover what made up this illusion, the archetypal 'behind the scenes'.
Then, in a matter of seconds, the jacket she had made sure was perfectly tight was now crouched around Cairne's ankles on the floor. It had looked as realistic as he had told her to expect, but evidently he could escape, despite the pain. She listened to him describe the act, and nodded. "Has there ever been anything you couldn't get out of?"
Is there anything I really should be worried about, she meant. "I'll give them what they want, but if you get in trouble, have you any safety nets you can fall back into? I don't want to be clearing monster or demon or whatever you are off the floor."
She held out a hand for the straight jacket, wanting to look at it a little closer. It had seemed normal when she had strapped it onto him two minutes ago, but maybe she had missed something. Straight jacket tying wasn't exactly in the Girl Scouts manifesto.
Saxon had appreciated the lack of noticeable interest in her, but it was part of her to be abrasive about that. Taking the stereotype and then turning it back on the other person had worked for her so far in life, so in effect it had evolved from a habit into an almost unintentional part of her natural speech. If the receiver didn't like it, well, that wasn't 'interest', was it?
There was a certain 'act' that a woman whom society deemed above a certain level of attractive had to learn, if she was to survive. Part of it was acknowledgement, pledging that the interest had been understood. Then, there was leading someone to believe that their efforts had been successful, and finally, what magicians called the prestige. She learned, and therefore she needed to perform. Perhaps, it occurred to her, while she became aware of the room around them and the way this whole meeting had been set up, that she was not altogether new to this after all.
Cairne
"To worry about me," he said, pushing the envelope as he stepped entirely free of the jacket, and handed it back to her - it's regulation, which in a way makes it a little easier, but he didn't mention that. The wider neck allowed his particular brand of escape, didn't press on pressure points or strangle him when he struggled against it. "You have to love me a little - but not for real."
He reached for his scotch, took a precise sip, and then set it back on the pad of hotel paper that the room had supplied. He unrolled his sleeves, straightened his waistcoat, and then at last lifted his hands to smooth his hair back where some of his bangs had fallen free, all this before he glanced at her to gauge the effect of his words.
Her question brings a smooth, self-satisfied look by way of answer. "That would be telling," he answered, leaving his shirtcuffs undone as he leaned comfortably against the doorway to continue drinking and watching. "Real love is full of ups and downs, moments of extremes. The audience doesn't want to see a reality like that - they want to project themselves onto us. They want to think that they can do what we do."
"And no, I don't work with nets. If it makes you feel better, however, I can hold my breath for twenty minutes." He didn't grace 'monster or demon' with an answer, letting her draw her own conclusions by his lack of denial. He turned his gaze away at last, here's the tricky part, really. Here's the 'sell'.
"In exchange, I'll protect you. You have the ability to be very convincing, when you want to be. It catches attention, doesn't it? The sort you don't like?" He knew the answer already so without meeting her eyes, he draws breath and continues on. "I won't let anything you don't want to happen to you happen."
"Want to try my wrists?" he asked, instead of pushing any further, asking for an answer with 'deal?' this soon - she can think about it for a time, if she likes.
Saxon
"Or worrying about you," she conceded, with a look. The straight jacket was in her hands and halfway through examination when the next phrase was spoken, and although she didn't pause, something seemed to fall through her. The silence stretched between them, aggravating her, emphasizing what had been said. Cairne may have been expecting a reaction when he looked up, but he would have found her examining - slightly too thoroughly, possibly the same places of - the jacket in her hands, before he next spoke. She could see no reason for her voice to break the silence, no need for anything there but wordless acceptance of a business plan.
But when he continued on to dwell on the same thing, she could not help but comment. "You keep talking about love," she said, rather sharply, the nails of her thumb and forefinger accidentally clicking together. "It is an act. When you're acting a story, it isn't real. It demeans the word, to use it over and over again."
She noticed her grip was overly tight on the jacket, and quickly loosened it. The 'safety net' of a lot of air was at least some comfort, but it was evident that this man wanted to put himself in dangerous situations. Her act wasn't any part of that; he was welcome to them.
"What if I can protect myself?" Saxon asked, setting the jacket down on the table and folding her arms, but he's already moving on and she follows his train of thought despite herself. "Yeah- okay. C'mere."
Cairne
He let her be silent as long as she liked, carrying on as she puts the jacket through its paces. There's no trick in it, no hidden openings, no extra play in the sleeves. There's no trick in him either. "Nothing is real," he answered, and finished his scotch, ice-cubes clinking in the glass as he lowered it and covering up the click of her nails unintentionally but conveniently nonetheless.
He put the glass aside again, on the pad of paper he'd been using, and with a wry expression, offered his hands forward. She was free to take them behind his back instead if she preferred, of course - and with the willingness to drop the subject, in favor of perhaps vengeing herself upon his skin, he wouldn't have been surprised if she did treat him a bit more savagely this time.
"How should I talk about it, then?" He asked, with genuine curiosity - he hadn't expected passion on such a such a subject as ... passion, not from her. But he didn't really know her yet - and perhaps he had already assumed too much. "I don't assume that you can't - but then why are you here?"
Saxon
At that, she laughed, following the glass with her gaze as if only just realizing upon its removal that she wanted some. Too bad. Her slip into friendliness remained, taking that wry look as a challenge. "Turn around."
A quick sort through the paraphernalia in the table drawers revealed several methods of constraint, but she was looking for something challenging, where plastic just wouldn't cut it. From the back of the drawer, she gleefully retrieved a pair of manacles, sauntering back over to him with them dangling from her palm. "Don't peek."
They clasped his wrists together at what looked like an uncomfortable angle. She hoped it was. While she was working, she had time to dedicate to his question, although it may not seem so. "It's a story. You're talking actors; a play. Much Ado About Nothing. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Why talk about an act as if it is real?"
She fastened the restraints and gave an experimental tug on the chain between them. It held. "Why am I here? Where else? Why are you here?"
Cairne
He turned - what could she really surprise him with, aside from one of his more difficult contraptions? Unless she had smuggled her own pair in under her skirt, there were only the familiar options. He wouldn't object, irregardless. He heard her shifting, and catches the wrist of one hand in the opposite at the small of his back, chin up and eyes forward, in a Soldier's pose of 'ease'.
From the sound of it, she is looking for the most interesting looking pair. Good girl. He keeps his attention forward. "I would never," he assures her, solemnly. At this stage in his life, he has found that he enjoys surprises. Not that anything much can truly do that anymore. He let her twist his hands, shifting his shoulders until she could shackle them however she wanted. He knew the manacles from the feel of them on his wrists, ascertains he's correct with his fingers.
"Yes," he agreed, letting himself stretch the word out as he discovers which set she's chosen. A tricky pair. Excellent. He'll have to work the lock. He turns around to face her, the movements of his shoulders perceptible because of their proximity only, as he works on the escape. "A play. I didn't mean to imply reality - simply that for those moments when we most command their attention that the audience must believe it's real. That's why - I never rely on tricks. I could make a card appear from the air, call up white pigeons out of nowhere. No one ever questions, at the end of an illusionist's act, right?"
"There's no danger in rabbits and hats, and no reality. Perhaps they'll see my reality and think it must be an illusion, but they'll still know - if just that one thing hadn't gone right, if the lock had stuck," he doesn't laugh, but looks up, and his eyes are brighter than she'd ever seen. "The reality is that they want me in equal parts to succeed and to fail. Maybe I want both, myself."
"But it's not real, you are correct." He drew his hand around - one hand is freed, and with it he hands her the lockpick he'd used -a fine, thin wire, little more than a filament. He braced his free hand on the remaining restraint, to show her in plain sight the more difficult escape. His thumb slides forward, then down, along into his palm, and he abrades a long line of skin off the top of the knuckle and the back of his wrist, but then the circle of iron slides free.
"I'm here because I find it interesting to be here," he said, offering her back the manacles for her inspection, though she'd already seen how he'd gotten the lock undone. He lifts the side of his hand to his mouth, and sheers off the flap of abraded skin along the side of his thumb with his teeth. "And you didn't answer my question."
Saxon
Her eyebrows rose at his admission, and for the moment when the fervour gleamed in his eyes, Saxon returned it. And then- nothing, brought back down to normality with the swiftness of practise. "I really don't know you, do I," she said, with a little smile at the corner of her mouth caught somewhere between ease and disquiet.
The lockpick was taken and slid into the pocket of her jeans, while she watched him brace his hand for the second escape. The method took her by surprise, regardless of the expectation, and she took the manacles when he was done without much scrutiny, wiping what could be blood or sweat off on the waistband of her pants before the restraints joined the jacket at the table.
"Which somewhat answers you. Making the discovery that you're not human, fun- as it may seem, when you were a child, is not something I would rather do around my parents again." She eyed him, adjusting her position slightly so that she could lean back against the table edge and curl her fingers over the edge. "There's something violent about my.. condition. You want to help with that? Then I'll help you."
She crossed her legs with a whisper of fabric. "I draw people, then I want to kill them. Sometimes, they even make me hungry." The knuckle of her right hand tapped the table edge twice, then ceases. "Bit of a useless gift if you ask me, unless you want to get locked up. Maybe I already am. Maybe this whole place isn't real." She looked up, deep down hopeful, perhaps. "Did you think of that?"
Cairne
"I'm hard to know," he agreed, lifting his mouth only briefly from the sting of his hand. It was almost beyond explanation, what he was - how he was, at this point. If she asks more directly, he may answer, however - it's been long enough since he's been this interested in anyone. That was what this was all about, if he's truthful to himself. A lack of interest. He swallowed, and the shallow flap of skin he'd torn free from his knuckle slid down his throat - but his expression didn't change.
"Neither of your parents carried it?" He asked, and then moved for the decanter - this time when he pours, he does a second glass as well, carrying both over to the table - his is in his bloodied hand.
Settling on the table's edge, he offered her the clean glass. "I can help with that, to an extent." She continued on, as if she could deny reality, and he looked up, listening to her, but allowing his attention to go skyward. He has chosen to with his back to hers, so neither is forced to face each other. She would deny all of this? Deny it or not, existence being real or not, or a story in a book or the dream of a gnat - they were still stuck here. They had to make the best of what they had.
"If we shadows have offended..." he said, drawing the end of the statement up to make it a question - and referencing back to her suggestion that all was a Midsummer Night's Dream. "For someone who insists so hard that there must be a line between the act and life - you are quick to surrender it."
Saxon
"Not that I know of," she replied, casting her mind back to memories close to the surface. Her mother, her father. "I'm an only child." As if any other child would have had a chance in a household centered around and hanging by her singing. The glass was handed to her, and almost instantly it broke her out of thought, her insides tensing up as she realized why. Oh no.
The blood. And Cairne turning away, which made it even worse. She fought the fear - it didn't matter if she did anything here, whether reality or dream, they had agreed that this place was one not like the home she had known. While the tension started slowly to drain away, she spoke, to try and keep her mind off it.
"Well if it isn't real, then it doesn't matter does it?" Saxon huffed a rather high laugh, "I can go on with my life!" She glanced over to him, then with a drop of dread shifted her gaze from where it had landed on his hand to the back of his head. "Just have to wake up. Perhaps the straight jacket was my own mind's way of telling me where I am." She smiled again, exhaling with triumph at the deduction.
"Why don't you pinch me? See if I disappear."
Cairne
He noted the sudden change in her expression, and realized that what he had simply thought of as polite had conveyed something entirely different. He wasn't afraid of her, certainly, but he knew she was a predator. He shifted, opened out the way had placed himself so that he was sidelong to her instead, and lifts the other glass as well - she can chose it, if she likes. Perhaps they had broken free from reality, but they were still constrained by where they had arrived. He didn't flinch from her.
He just listened, instead, and watched. His eyes had become impassive again, deep as is wont to happen. "It matters," he assured, letting her pick her glass. "We are held it, and so it matters. Besides, don't you want to see how the dream ends?"
"Is that what you'd like? To disappear?" He surrendered the glass she chose without comment, and without pulling his hand away quickly. By his attitude, he'd let her seize it and sink her teeth in if she really wanted, but he doesn't expect that she does. "I don't believe that's true."
Saxon
She took the glass from his clean hand, anyway, and had a moderate sip. The smile had vanished with the drop of the drink, where she spinned it in the grasp of her hand. Hysterics, Saxon? Surely not. His first two words sank into the quiet, and she wordlessly agreed. Wherever this was, it was her reality for now, and so she would have to make the best of it.
"Sometimes," she said, facing forward, away from the both of them. "Sometimes I would." The offering of his hand was noticed, but not acted on. As if she was going to bend to all his ridiculous self-sabotaging urges. "When you can't help but be noticed, you try to find creative ways you won't be." Saxon tilted her head sideways, towards him, and offered her glass for a toast. "Doesn't work."
"Mostly I have disappeared, though. A lot of people used to know me - really know me, not just-" She gestured with a hand movement between the door before her and her chest. "They'd know my name, and they'd give me a lot of attention for it."
One glance, brief, that was all that she allowed herself, even if it did pull at what was quietly unspooling tension in her gut. "Age tends to make a man forget you," she said, with a touch of humor. "Why- the ex-star drawn to an ex-star? I don't think you care too much about how it ends, but surely you must've cared about beginnings, once."
Cairne
He neither wanted nor didn't want the attack. She had control, he observed, and that was all he took away from her refusal. He lifted the glass to his mouth this time instead letting the melting ice turn the scotch sweet on his tongue, less sting. He lifts his own glass to meet hers. "It's a fine line, being noticed and still invisible. You give people a reason to dismiss you, and they will. Make use of that initial attraction, and then throw it away. That's what this place is for."
"You don't miss it," he observed, bending one leg at the knee to let it rest on the table. Cairne loops an arm around it, the one not holding his glass, and leans into the support. His next sip - though he was listening to her - is interrupted by a decisive snort.
"I would argue it's decidedly the contrary, " he said, and lifted his glass away from his mouth, reached out to pull his cuff back to where it won't drag through the forming scabs. "But you have to have the proper concept of age, and the proper ability to step back and appreciate the whole of it."
"Hardly a star," he demeaned himself, as usual. "I go where things are interesting, and I find a distinct need to be just the right amount of interesting myself - it keeps me invisible."
Saxon
"The day my peers dismiss me, I will pour you a drink," she said, with a smile, but on glancing away, the words she had so casually spoken span around in front of her, twisting inward with doubt. Instantly, a dozen questionable moments came back to her, running from her teenage years right up to the present day.
"No." The word slipped out without her processing the meaning first, but when she realized it, she could find nothing to argue the contrary. Cairne's reaction gave her time to pull back from it. Saxon smiled open-mouthed into her glass, tipping the rim back against the bridge of her nose. "And you have that concept, do you?"
"An invisible contortionist would bring down the house!" She winked, nudging him with the edge of one sharp elbow. "I'm sure they would pay you handsomely for that, although they may all be more interested in your assistant. Just an FYI."
Cairne
"I'll hold you to that," he answered, since she apparently didn't believe in his methods. She'd see if they worked or didn't. Arguing for them would do far less than experience. He set the glass aside and reached into the inner pocket of his waistcoat to pull out a leather case, slim - rounded at the sides.
"Do I?" He asked in return - if she can ask questions in response to questions, so can he. He pulled the top off of the leather case, revealing two metal tubes - probably to protect their contents from crushing considering the sort of trouble he gets into on a daily basis. He worked the top off one of these tubes with a series of twists, each motion precise. "How old do you think I am, anyway?"
The tube surrendered, featureless metal surface coming apart to reveal the cigar within. The other must have held a second - or possibly something else entirely, and he just relied on the implication that it did. He shook the stogie free, turned the case over with a chuckle, and unclipped his lighter from the back. "More popular than a flea circus?" He asked, wryly, continued, "I'm counting on them to be more interested in you from time to time."
Saxon
It wasn't so much an absence of belief, but a withdrawal. Careful of where she would put her feet, and in a sense, skeptical. Saxon had spent the best part of her life hyper-aware of scrutiny, and part of its constant presence was perhaps down to the perpetual expectation she had of it, but that didn't encompass all of it. Where he had learned to use that to his advantage, she would rather have had little to do with it, although from spending time with her, you might not have thought it. The subconscious learning and listening where the conscious mind would not, it could be.
She leaned back, setting the scotch on the table with the shift in position so that she were holding her weight on her hands. The nonanswer got a purse of her lips, but she didn't comment. And as for age… "Forty going on a hundred? That looks pretty old." She indicated the case with a nod. "You've taken care of it, though."
"You're interesting," she said by way of answer, turning in to face the side of him and raising her hand meaning to take the lighter from him. "I think that'll be difficult. But I'll perform an exemplary role in this operation." She flicked thumb and forefinger together in an imitation of a lighter flame, indicatory of what she meant to do, in case of hesitation. "They won't take their eyes off me. Satisfied, o great one?" But her tone is gentle, not mocking.
Cairne
He didn't know everything about her yet - certainly not enough to estimate exactly how she'd react to every situation, but he's a quick study. He has seen how she holds herself in reserve, and in return he'd been careful not to push too much on her trust. She'd already extended him a lot of courtesy, just by going along this far. He wets the capped end of the cigar in his mouth in a motion that might have seemed awkward had he not obviously done it enough times for the motion to have a deliberate haste.
The ritual of preparation delays briefly as she guesses his age - conservatively in some regards, and stretching away to the end of human comprehension at the other. "That's your upbringing talking," he says, "though I'm flattered you feel I'm a well preserved centurion."
He clipped the end off the cigar with the cutter, but before he could light it she extended her hand for his lighter, which he offers without delay. It's a silver affair, unusual - newer than the cigar case from his pocket however. "Humanity can only think in hundreds, I find. Stretch yourself beyond those boundaries."
The mechanism of the lighter emits a broad, steady flame when it's clicked open, a brilliant blue. "You're interesting yourself," he responded, balancing the cigar in his hand while he reclaims his glass in the same one, his fingers comfortably accomidating both objects. "But I'm satisfied," he agreed, transferring the glass from one hand to the other as she figured the mechanism out, lifted the cigar to his mouth and leaned in to draw on the cigar until it was lit. Several healthy puffs did the trick with so hot and steady a flame.
Saxon
"A thousand, then?" she tried, clicking open the lighter and depressing the button within briefly to check the mechanism. Not your everyday corner-shop lighter, this one. The Saxon of ten years ago would have loved it, today's Saxon admired it for its aesthetic qualities. "A thousand years of going where things are interesting… must have been tough."
"Well, I guess you don't get lung cancer." The flame tongued out, a near-constant blue cone with the press of a silver button. Saxon touched it to the end of his cigar, before clicking it shut again and drawing it nearer to take a closer look. No engravings or initials, just a regular lighter, or enough for one to assume as much. As much of Cairne as the rest of what made him up.
Or at least, so she thought until her the pads of her fingers touched grooves in the back. On turning it slightly in the light, the letters 'C.C' and 'J.K.' flashed into view. It almost slipped out for a moment, her incredulous statement that this couldn't possibly be Kennedy's lighter, before it seemed more prudent to keep it in mind and let it go, for now.
When she was satisfied, she went to return it, before tucking a stray hair behind her ear in what could just be habit. "Funny word to use for yourself, centurion. I would say the use could only be figurative, but from what I know of you-" and that isn't much, not yet, nor as much as I know anybody in this new existence "it may just as well be literal."
"You're an old soul," she said, and picked up her glass again, taking a small sip. "It's okay. We all have our foibles."
Cairne
"Closer," he agreed, and watched her work the lighter as he drank. The corner of his mouth turned up when she suggested it must have been difficult. "Why do you think that'd be difficult?"
"No," he purred, he didn't get lung cancer. It'd take more than that to kill him, but exactly what those conditions are, he'll keep to himself thank you very much. He pulled in a full mouthful of smoke before continuing, leaning back. The cigar smells earthy, sweet - darker and richer and less like tobacco than one might expect. She catches the initials - but keeps her thoughts to herself.
He accepted the lighter back as he exhaled, and then let the cigar rest, clipping the lighter and cutter both back into place as he returned the holder to his inside pocket. "Centurion is actually a misnomer, you know. People use it to indicate a nice round hundred - but the Hekatontarch commanded only eighty three men on average. Theoretically the word takes it's root in Centum - 'a hundred'."
"Centuries - a tribe, a company," he continued, buttoning the top of his waistcoat again, and then taking up the cigar. He diverges suddenly from his memory. "Caesar enim! Viam!"
Then, almost so wryly as to suggest total facetiousness, he had another drag off of his cigar, and with his mouthful of smoke, delivered, "I'm four thousand nine hundred and ninety eight years old."
Saxon
She rolled the glass a little in her hand, enough to encourage the liquid to circle. "Oh, the usual. Wars, dictators, although maybe you don't relate to those, being…" The scotch broke the flow of her words as she took some in from between the ice, before continuing. "Is it rude to ask what you are?"
As he went on to expand on perhaps the most accurate history lesson of her life, if he were to be believed, she caught 'Caesar' in the Latin and glanced sideways, with an inscrutable expression on her face. As he finished with the long verbal approximation of his age, her eyebrows raised steadily higher, until he was done. Then, she laughed once, which kicked into another, and then suddenly she was laughing like she couldn't stop.
When she had curtailed it down to the occasional escaped grin, she spoke, and not in a tone of disbelief or mockery, but sincerity. As unusual as that may have been, she had just loved the way he had delivered that. "So you really are a centurion." The grin came back then, "What was that, some kind of hail?"
It was one way of dealing with it, after knowing a mortal life for so long: laughter. Otherwise she would dive into it and lose herself in the wide implications and just- the whole time of it. To have experienced so much, and it felt like she would get the same brief jump into the atmosphere she sometimes felt while just falling asleep, where she below was so tiny and breaking down into cells, where the universe was so infinitely vast in comparison, and then out of fear, jumping back into her body. What it must be to live outside of that, forever above and aware of the sheer micro nature of it all, she could not know.
Cairne
He managed an expert balance of cigar and glass, so that he could work both with one hand and lean back on the support of his other, mirroring her posture. "It's not rude to ask, but isn't it more fun to guess?"
If he were to be believed, that's the key to the whole situation. He arched his brows at her laugh, and then smiled to answer it. That suited her, he thought. He couldn't tell if she disbelieved him or not, or perhaps she was simply playing along. He won't correct her either way. He didn't agree or disagree on the subject of his participation in Caesar's army. "For Caesar," he translated, "Onward."
He was mortal too, in his own way - eventually he'd die. Many of his kind already had - just that he was careful. "So I still look good for my age?" In this form, anyway - he could choose how he looked. Honestly, it had been long enough since he'd left it that he might be surprised by what he found when he did.
Saxon
She touched her index finger - the one pressed along the side of her glass - to her bottom lip. "Hmm. Well, longevity. The look of a soldier. You don't seem particularly godly, so I'll rule out angel. Likewise, you don't strike me as a fallen one."
"You look human," she continued, her eyes fixed on him, "But then, so do I. So… have you always looked like some actor from the 1940s.. or do you change sometimes? I'd imagine you'd stick out around the Romans." Still wary of a sudden lunge or other attack from this unknown, she nevertheless tipped the same finger forward, landing gently on his nose. "Momma, he hasn't got my nose."
"Oh, you'd certainly do well for yourself in a bar, but somehow I don't think I see you there." She looked at him a moment longer, then unexpectedly broke the close contact, shifting up from the table to stand again. The light lay behind her for a beat, and silhouetted her as Saxon passed slowly towards the door, where she paused.
"There's something about love that's always frightened me," she said, not moving for a moment, before she set the glass down on a surface set into the wall, as if she had forgotten she had taken it. "I think that's something you should know."
Cairne
"You'll figure it out," he answered, with a smile that suggested she was at least on the right track with her rulings out. He sounded confident, watching her as she continued. He actually went more still - the only motion the trailing curls of smoke from his cigar - as she reached out to touch. As if to prove how little of a threat he was, or perhaps just to see exactly what she would do.
"Maybe I am human," he answered her, "and I'm just a damn good liar." She goes on, however, and he lidded his eyes, focusing his gaze - beyond the point of contact, to meet hers. "I haven't changed in a very long time, but sometimes - yes. Bars hold very little of interest, unless I'm feeling particularly submersive."
And then she took her contact - and her whole self away, glass and all. He stayed seated, watching her go, leaving his eyes lidded, relaxed. He watched her trailing hand deposit the glass, lifting his cigar again, and took his time answering, on a curl of smoke. "Because for you, love is a consuming emotion," he said, choosing his words carefully. He looked speculatively at the smoke curling from his cigar before he looked up again at her. "What's frightening about it is if it will consume you or you will consume it."
Saxon
"Maybe I will," she agreed, with a small smile. "And you're not human." If only because he was so raring for her to prove it, one way or the other. Magicians didn't equate with con men in her books, at least, not the books she had grown up expecting to live by, so in this, at least, she thought she could find her way.
His reply had her wordless for a second, mouth half-opening as if to counter, but with no speech to do so with. Instead, she kept quiet, and pressed her lips tightly together for a beat, with an accompanying low 'hm' in the back of her throat. Whether in agreement or appreciation, it wasn't evident.
"It'll make for a better story, at any rate," she said, rather sardonically, her hand finding the door handle behind her, where it rested, and her tone softened. "I'll see you tomorrow." Saxon gave him a smile. "Viam."