Julia (technicality) wrote in repose, @ 2018-05-07 02:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, julia langdale, leena bertolini |
Log: Leena B and Julia L
Who: Julia L and Leena B
When: Fuzzy-recent: pre Jersey
Warnings: Nada
Settling back into a routine was -- different. Her Repose routine involved a lot less therapy, a lot less people but there was still the near constant fresh air she desired. This time around, it also involved a lot of worry for Damian. Even some for Cat who had been a little on the quiet side, but she wasn't at the point yet where she would worry. They drifted in and out of communication anyway. They'd talk again when they were ready, and until then, she wasn't going to go to the station for the key.
Even things were going better in the man zone, and Misha had been alright, that had been more a matter of needing to get to Damian to make sure he was safe rather than an overwhelming urge for company. Company was usually an underwhelming urge, unless it was someone in particular.
Right now, that was especially true as she was staring down at her generator that had offered her a few black puffs of air before shrieking and dying. She didn't know how to fix it, hell, she didn't even know what was wrong with it, so she tried kicking it with the edge of a booted foot. It squealed a little on the floor of her cave and she groaned, eyes rocking heavenward. If she didn't have to have her therapy sessions, she'd just wait, but it ran her phone charger and gave her the illusion of light. And an enclosed space that wasn't public -- something her therapists wanted to see.
Sighing, her gaze dropped back down and she nudged it with her foot again. No dice. Reaching down, she grabbed the whole damn thing and hauled it outside, under the bright sun where she could maybe see it better.
Julia’s trailer was parked someplace out of the way. The first month she learned where the tourists came and where the drunks roamed late nights. She learned the sound of the wolves and the way early light hit the windows and how to wake slowly, toes curling against cheap white sheets without a maid in sight. It felt like luxury, being alone, the kind of luxury you didn’t buy with a black AmEx in a store that was super Pretty Woman. The trailer didn’t have a generator: it didn’t need one. The computer on the desk sat dead and her phone was cheap and light on circuitry. It wasn’t needed and Julia was all about need right now, need and want.
She got up early. Easier, to get things done in town before the rest of town woke up and roamed around, buzzing with smartphones and laptops and switching on sound systems in stores and setting up electronic stocking systems for the day. It felt the way she remembered hangovers and she was late this morning because she got in late, the town car purring to the edge of town like a bad decision dropping you off at the door. It was going to be a week she stayed indoors or out of the way, but she was out because reading in the trailer as the sunshine poured down on regency heroes and spencers and muslins was getting claustrophobic quick.
She wore jeans and a soft, dusk blue shirt that had the kind of liquid movement of the best kind of silk and sneakers and Julia wasn’t expecting the girl. The generator was dead: that was easy. It didn’t register, which meant it wasn’t going to resurrect any time soon without help. That wasn’t the same of the girl and Julia stopped a couple feet away.
“You okay?” It didn’t look like it. But it was probably better to ask.
Leena, she was used to hikers and people that drifted close. She was used to the sounds of the forest, the chipmunks and the squirrels, the woodpeckers beating against trees, she was even used to the birds and the wolves that never seemed to get close but maybe that was because she spent plenty of time marking her space in the way wild things did. And she was well accustomed to hearing them coming. The woman in jeans and the silk shirt were no exception and she was not a hiker.
Hikers didn't wear silk in the woods. And the way the wind caught the fabric, making it fan like a banner in the breeze, spoke of money that Leena knew in a distant sort of way. "Fine," she said, clipped, suspicious of someone out in here in luxury when there was not a damn luxury to be found between the trees -- unless you were looking to be alone. Or a hippie. She didn't look like a hippie either.
Neither did she look like she was armed, which would have gotten a completely different reception that would have begun with Leena's fists. "Are you lost?"
Julia wasn’t a drifter or a hiker. She wasn’t under the skin of trees and birdsong and the way wolves skirted living creatures, she was born with the stain of city smog and it wasn’t going to rub free. But she wasn’t temporary, she was a blend and she crouched near enough the generator that she could get a feel for whether or not it even could resurrect.
“Nah,” she said now, easily. The girl was clipped, but Julia had seen a lot of girls clipped and suspicious, girls who wore purple at their wrists and throats, with chipped teeth and black eyes. She wasn’t on the defensive but she was slight in jeans and worn sneakers under expensive silk, and she wasn’t packing any weaponry. She crouched, and it hurt like fuck because it pulled under bruises hidden under silk, and she breathed sharply and said nothing.
“Not lost. I’m out here a lot. You got another one?” She didn’t want to touch it. The generator made a lot of juice, which meant it would hurt a lot if it ran. If the girl had another she probably wouldn’t have dragged it out here. “I’m Julia.”
She understood cities in the same distant way that she understood Julia's silk blouse was money. "Most people don't come through the forest in silk," Leena pointed out. And if she wasn't lost -- her head tilted slightly as though she was peering at a puzzle she didn't quite understand yet.
There was no evidence of weaponry on her, but she knew plenty of women that didn't need guns or knives to fight and had every bit the chance to be just as dangerous without them. Julia didn't look like a scrapper though. That didn't mean she wasn't dangerous, and there was still an edge of wary in Leena's eyes as she took a step back. The sharp breath was noted, filed away under the mystery of the silk clad woman and left there until she had more points of reference.
"I don't," she finally answered, quietly. "I'm hoping to revive this one. Or, figure out if it can be revived." She glanced down at the machine at her feet and frowned. After a moment's hesitation, she looked up, head still tilted. "Leena. Are you any good with these?" She said with a wave of her hand, clearly indicating the busted generator, but the v of her brows clearly she thought the answer was going to be 'not'.
She knew what it felt like to lose something you were counting on still running. It wasn’t her own panic but Julia could feel the shadow of it bubble from the bottom of her gut up her throat and that was weirdly soothing, in a way. To still know how to panic over shit like that. There were all kinds of fragments of yourself you could give up and she looked for the ones she still had, regularly.
But that was all beside the point. The girl, Leena, didn’t have another generator. And probably didn’t have the cash for another one. She wanted to pull out the black Amex and buy another. Have it shipped at extortionate cost. She wanted to offer the trailer (no, she didn’t want to offer the trailer because it was home and it was small and defined and hers) or to find half a dozen others more than Julia wanted that ugly, hulk of metal alert and biting. Leena looked at her like she didn’t believe Julia had an answer.
She remembered that look. “I like silk.” She did. It was sensuous, it felt good in a way worn-cotton couldn’t. It wasn’t guilty pleasure but coming to terms with the new fragments she had she liked - Julia tucked strands of dandelion-blond behind her ear and angled her arm between Leena and the generator, until the sharp blade of her shoulder was an obstruction.
“Yeah. My dad was good with engines. But it may just need a little kick.” Which wasn’t a lie. You could tell the truth and still not tell the truth people expected. She reached, and she exhaled and she reached. It felt like having something under the skin. A subway map or a diagram, all pain-points outlined in neon but an orientation nonetheless. She felt along pathways she knew were there and she found what had worn itself out and burned the generator out. She didn’t know how long it was or how short. It hurt, gloriously. It flooded every input she had until all she had was electric and getting back into her body would take care of the cold sweat and the heat Julia was giving off under silk.
The generator hummed. “Can’t have been that bad. Maybe it just didn’t want my dad’s car-engine treatment.” Julia smiled like it wasn’t blindingly painful.
The cash for another generator was both hers and not. She liked saving her money, she was good at it, that wrapped up wad of twenties and hundreds had been what saved her and she still had most it, plus what was on the Visa that she never used, and the accounts -- the inheritance from Bruce.
She still wasn't ready to touch that, even if it meant having a new generator. "A little kick," she echoed, quietly as she took a step back from silk clad shoulder shrapnel. It wasn't like this little slip of a woman was going to steal it. The fucking thing was heavy and even if she did get it off the ground, running was going to be hell with it. She wasn't going anywhere, and Leena watched with curious eyes until she realized there was nothing she could repeat in what she was seeing.
Oh, Julia of the silk love might be touching the thing, but she wasn't using tools and shit on it. It still barked out a cough and then flowed right up like it only went down for a refill on gas. And while Leena had no senses that would accurately predict someone using powers or magic, she still had her damn eyes to witness what was happening.
Eyes that went slightly round when Julia stood up and wince-smiled at her. Secrets? Those Leena knew and this was one of them. "Just needed a kick," she said quietly. "Are you okay? Do you need to sit down or anything?"
There wasn’t a lot to witness. There was no lights, no halo, no siren that went off. God, if there had been a siren, she would have taken a hot bath with a bottle of gin and a razor the minute Nick had to leave town. Julia let off whatever it was that itched under the skin in slow bursts out of range of anything vital. Hospitals. Schools. Traffic lights. It made the Capital a pleasure-pain, all that frustrated circuitry but in a city? No one missed a little power outage if it blew something insignificant. It wasn’t the fucking point, the point was, there was no magic. It looked, if you were looking, a lot like luck.
Julia had perfected painting over whatever crap she had in front of her. It wasn’t an uppercrust thing, it was about as Jersey as it got, blunting whatever hold people thought they had on you. She just did it with a delicacy that belonged to the Upper East Side. “A kick. You sound like you’ve not been lucky before,” Julia shrugged under silk like the expansive gesture was a comfortable one.
“My dad was good with engines, sometimes people drove them in for him to look at and they were fine once they got there.” She didn’t say she needed to sit. She didn’t. She wasn’t going to fall, it wasn’t anything broken, it just felt like needle fragments sloshing around inside a silk bag under her skin. And Julia always had the picture of the jail front of mind. Multiple, actually. He’d printed off a whole series. She didn’t admit jack shit to anybody.
"Not when it comes to electricity," she deadpanned. Truth was, Leena was lucky in getting out of very unlucky situations, of which she had plenty. This was no different. An unlucky situation fixed by a very lucky intermission. A chance meeting, a chance opportunity. She closed her eyes and turned away slightly, her inhale sharp as she shook her head.
"I don't know shit about engines either." She sighed out her breath and opened her eyes again. Her dad -- Bruce was just as unknowable. Oh there were some of the details, his vigilante work, his humanitarian work, but him? Those memories were still lost. "I won't ask, I won't tell, but lets not lie." It wasn't a question of admission; it was a matter of what she'd seen and what she hadn't. Leena rolled her shoulders, nonplussed. "I'm okay with computers, but that's as close as I get to anything electric."
She waited another second, considering. "But thanks. You were headed somewhere though, and I won't keep you."
Leena stood and half-shut her eyes like she maybe wasn’t trying to unpick the loose thread Julia had left out in front of her. It wasn’t real loose, Julia could knit the stitches tight, the cool unreadable chill of expensive apartments and benefits and galas could settle over her features. It would go well with the silk. But the deadpan note was a punchline and the won’t ask-won’t-lie and Julia felt that like a copper strand of wire untwining around a motor in the center of her chest.
“Don’t ask, I won’t lie.” She smiled. It was sunny. Careless. It had a flash of chill underneath, the kind that was teeth and self-protection. Leena hadn’t seen anything. No halo, no alarm, no nothing, right? “Circuits. Not electrics.” It was different, and it was truth.
Julia glinted in sunshine, expensive silk and uncertainty. It was a secret even if Leena hadn’t seen anything worth telling. “I was. Town. I live here.” She didn’t, but she did. That was truth too.
It was the kind of careless that Leena wasn't, not in all the days she could remember. It was the careless she tried on sometimes, an imperfect mask that only worked on the people that didn't know her well enough to know it for the lie that it was. Self-protection was something she understood too, and she smiled, a little half quirk of her mouth that was nothing more than a keen understanding of both things.
"Then maybe we'll see each other around again?" It wasn't laced with hope, but the simple knowledge that this was a small town, not a city. Running into people was a given, it needed no ulterior motive. Besides, she wasn't good at ulterior motives, only at being bluntly, boldly honest regardless of whether the situation called for it or not.
Julia saw kindred. She didn’t know why and she didn’t know deets, she just knew kindred when she saw it. It was the kind of tentative that roamed the city and that lined the shelters at night. She didn’t know what bad this girl with the shitty generator had seen but she knew she had seen it. But all of that, the deets, the reality, it wasn’t the point.
“Yeah, baby. We will.” That much, she was sure. And she dug her hand into the back of her pocket and she walked away from the fug of heat and white-sharp pain that was the generator alive and working and well and Leena, who struck all kinds of chords that Julia couldn’t figure out the song to.