kellan ziegmann/dean winchester (crossroaded) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-30 22:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | dean winchester, gwen stacy |
Who: Ainslie and Kellan.
What: Unexpected meetings/reunions.
Where: Hole-in-the-wall bar off the strip.
When: Recently. After the memories plot.
Warnings/Rating: None. Some language and mentions of violence.
The dim lights of the bar - not high class, but not his usual shithole either - reflected off bright clothes and mirror surfaces and ice and did nothing to illuminate Kellan where he sat, a hunched figure at the bar, holding onto an untouched drink and staring at nothing. It wasn’t that busy, which was for the best. He didn’t want to put up with bullshit of any kind tonight. Or, frankly, ever again. Drunk assholes would have made things unbelievably unbearable, and probably gotten him arrested when he tried putting their skulls through the wall of glass bottles behind the bartender. It had been a bad month, and the other day had been worst of all.
Mumford. The name was familiar, and with that one little revelation, everything had fallen into place. She’d worked for them and they had her killed. One of them put her down and the other one did nothing to stop it. Wayne and Andrew, he knew their names now - it didn’t take much looking for him to find information on criminal families. He was going to put them both down. It was going to be a blaze of unfathomable glory. Anybody who tried to get in his way … well, he’d dealt with interruptions before, when he was less dedicated to an eventual goal. He didn’t like shooting people but god damn if it wasn’t effective.
Kellan tilted his drink away and gloomily watched the ice shift to accommodate gravity. For all the anger and revenge and everything else along with it, it was hard to fight feeling like absolute shit. Not guilty, not depressed - couldn’t have been either of those. Just shitty, probably had something to do with the lack of sleep and lack of work.
Ainslie did not drink often in the bars that could be found on every corner of Las Vegas. Bars were things that did not exist in her life before coming to the Estados Unidos. On her isla, people drank at home or at fiestas, but only the men you did not wish to know drank together in places such as these. But she made an exception that noche. The memorias had left her feeling lonesome, and she did not like this feeling. Her studio echoed, hollow, and a glass of wine alone only made this worse. She had never felt so alone as this evening, and so she made an exception.
She dressed in rojo, because it made her feel like Santa Barbara was helping her to overcome this great ache. A long sundress and sandals and her red hair free to the center of her back. She was still fresh-faced enough that she needed to show her identification at this bar, the first one she came to, and she tucked the identification back into her bra once she was done.
She did not draw attention to herself, no more than the red hair and the red dress did without her making any attempt at it, and she wove through los cuerpos to the bar, where she slid up on a stool beside an hombre she had not yet looked at. She ordered a mojito, yearning for a taste of home that would not ever taste exactly right, and then she turned to the hombre at her side. She could not see his face, but she recognized that hunch of shoulders as something she often felt herself.
"Does the ice answer your questions?" she asked, voice heavily accented, Cuba and warm days beaten down to refinement along the line.
In not paying much attention to the bar around him, Kellan didn’t see anyone enter or exit - criminal, cop, or otherwise - and wasn’t expecting anyone to address him. Sit next to him, maybe. There was an open stool on either side of him. But the flash of bright bright red drew his eye, sparking a memory of a night that - no. Bad enough that he was already sulking, something he never did; he wasn’t about to get bogged down in memories that would make him angrier. (Not more depressed, because he wasn’t depressed. Couldn’t possibly be.)
He glanced over at the young woman, standing out bright in the darkened bar and watching him. He shrugged at her words, the accent unfamiliar and heavy but not, for him, indecipherable. For someone who barely spoke any languages outside English, Kellan had always been quick to understand even the most mixed of languages.
“Of course not,” he said with a snort. “It’s ice.” The cigarette, on the other hand, at least offered comfort. He picked it up off the ashtray at hand and took a long drag that didn’t do much to ease the tension in his shoulders. “You sure you’re in the right place? They don’t do big parties here.” So he assumed she was looking for, what with the red dress and the age. She was probably the youngest person in there, or at least looked it.
There was no familiarity in his voice, and there was no familiarity in his profile, but the way he formed the words that came from his lips triggered a child's memoria, and she touched her hand to his arm in an attempt to draw his attention fully. She desired more than this glance that he had given her (too quick to determine anything by), and she desired more light to see him by, but she knew that even her orishas could not grant her this last request.
"Turn to me, si? I wish to see your face," she said, and perhaps another person would worry about such a strange request, but there was something otherworldly about her, something raised shoeless in wild places, and she was not very good with social convention. She wished to see his face, to see if the memory triggered from her youth was imagined. It would not be such a strange thing; she was lonely.
It was an automatic response to turn at the touch to his arm, one barely held in check; Kellan’s head twitched slightly her way, but it was just a touch, fingers against his sleeve. Not a threat (yet). Not a demand for something. Only that, and a question.
I wish to see your face? Immediately, Kellan felt a twinge of suspicion. She hadn’t looked familiar to him, but his life had been a long one, and the enemies he’d made numbered in the hundreds. Just because he didn’t remember her didn’t mean she might not remember him, ready to get revenge for something he did in ages past. She didn’t seem the type, but, according to half the people who suffered at his hands, neither did he.
He didn’t turn to face her fully, only gave her a quarter-look so he could keep one eye firmly on her. His jaw was brushed with stubble, and when he took another drag on the cigarette it tightened the muscles in his face.
“Why?” he asked, letting the suspicion filter into his tone without much to damp it down.
She stared.
The glow of the bar made it dificil to see well, but she had not lived the years he had lived, and she had not known the number of people he had known. She had grown up locked away in a place the world did not know, and only few people came to the castillo that was her home. Si, she recognized him. Si, though she did not know what he had done for her abuela, did not know his job. But this did not matter, in a desert filled with unfamiliar faces, he was familiar, and for a young woman who felt very alone, this was all that mattered.
She smiled, blue eyes bright and freckles standing out against her pale skin. "I was very small when you saw me last, but you have not changed so very much." She touched her fingers to his temple, with no true sense of personal space. "A little gray," she said, and her fingers traced to his jaw, "a little stubble, but very much the same, si?"
To be recognized was something Kellan didn’t like. Oh, if it was his work he was recognized for, that was fine; that was a compliment. And if it was someone who knew Kellan, then that was fine too. But his past was strangely tumultuous enough that recognition as someone other than the very man he was right now was a bad thing, and when the girl spoke, it made his flight instinct seize up and tense every muscle in his body.
When she was small … since she was in the bar, she had to be eighteen at least, a little younger maybe but almost certainly older. When she was very small, much more particular. That meant there was no chance she’d met him as a teenager. No, it had to have been more than five years ago, which meant that whoever she was recognizing, it wasn’t him - it was one of the shades that he’d cast aside.
The smile was unexpected, as was her sudden touch. Instinct made him draw away as he watched her with wary surprise. Thoughts raged across his mind like flickers of fire, wondering if what she recognized was an old man or a murderer or an arsonist or someone who’d done her family right. Or wrong. There was a friendly almost-familiarity to her smile that put him closer to the ‘right’ side of things; if he’d killed her family or destroyed her life, there’d be a forced edge to that smile.
“ … not completely,” Kellan said carefully, not willing to give away any more than he had to. “It depends on who you think’s very much the same.”
Ainslie had been trying to remember his nombre throughout all the fear and discomfort and distrust that flashed in his ojos. She did not have it yet, but it was on the tip of her tongue, almost there for her to grab. Instead, she went with descriptions, because these she knew very well. "Mi nombre es Ainslie Giacoma? You worked with my abuela, and she did not talk like me. Her nombre was Clara, and she has gone now, but she was- She worked out of Chicago, and we lived in Cuba despues, after." She stammered over saying what her family did, that they were not good people, familia, but she knew her last name would tell this story for her, si? And perhaps she should be afraid of a man in this life, but she had not feared her abuela, and by the time they moved to Cuba her abuela was only doing the things she needed to do in order to keep them alive. The familia was run by her tio, her uncle, and it was until this day. If her abuela had hired him, then he was not one that she needed to worry over.
She smiled brightly, and she leaned back. "Jackson. This is your nombre,"
Giacoma … frantically, he rifled through the history of his entire life (lives?), trying to place the name Clara Giacoma, Chicago, Cuba … oh. That did strike a memory. He hadn’t left the country often, but when it came to work, he’d travel as far as he had to. What he remembered of the Giacoma estate was that it was out of the way and lavish, and that the old woman running it was nothing but business-minded. But that had been years ago. A decade, if he was right. There was a vague recollection there of a little girl running barefoot through the estate, watching him from around corners, but never quite talking to him.
Whatever else he might have said, though, was cut off when she said the name of a missing man. He was tempted to grab hold of her and shut her up but didn’t. Drawing attention would only make things worse. People would notice him, see him rather than the girl in the red dress, so Kellan only fixed her with a dark look, his jaw tight as he clenched his teeth together.
“Not anymore,” he said, quietly. “He’s been gone for a while now. The name’s Kellan, now.” That he would appreciate her not letting slip that he used to be a man wanted across most of the Western U.S. went unspoken and, he assumed, as a given. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She gave him a look that was too wise for her years, one that said she understood running. They had been running all of her life nearly, si? Her abuela and her. When she had gone abroad, she had used another name, one bought and paid for her by her abuela. When she had run to the states, she had done the same. It was only now, now that her abuela was dead and she was older, that she had tired of running from el pasado.
"I am tired of running, of hiding, Kellan." She intentionally used the new name he had given her, the one that was his own way of hiding, she believed. "I have done this all of my life, hide. Now that my abuela is dead, I am not doing it any longer. I am careful. I pay with cash, and I use no cards. My social security number cannot be found here. I hide, but as myself ahora."
She shrugged her shoulders a little. That it was dangerous went without saying. She had money that belonged to the Giacoma, and a bloodline that would be advantageous in an arranged marriage within the Familia. But she did not want these things. She wanted to be free, and it showed on her pale features. 'I will not bring you trouble, but would you let me hire you, if I needed? There are no friendly faces here for me."
Chance was a problematic thing, chance and recognition. For as much as Kellan knew he was screwed if the cops found him, he had surprisingly few criminal enemies. However many of them didn’t like him, relatively few of them wanted him dead. He preferred to antagonize the law, which was honor-bound to jail him rather than put him down. Ainslie, though … crime family. Mob family, even more dangerous. From what he remembered of her grandmother, he wouldn’t have been surprised to know that they had enemies crawling out of the woodwork. Hadn’t that been a tangential reason the woman had hired him? Find these people, make them pay …
“Hiding as yourself only works to a certain degree. You could at least change your last name.” Giacoma. Sure, she could deny her family ties, and her accent was bound to throw people off, but someone was going to recognize her. Someone was going to figure her out. “But.” He took another long drag on his cigarette. “If you can pay, I’ll work. Your grandmother was a decent person, so I’m not gonna turn you down.” Less out of the old woman’s memory than out of the realization that yes, he did still have to work, that it might be better for him to do so than to spend another week and a half nursing his own self-pity before exploding.
He paused, then glanced sidelong at Ainslie.
“Hope you don’t want me to put anyone down, though.”
She shook her head, red hair tumbling over her freckled shoulders. "No entiendes. I am not in the business. I am not in la Familia. I only wish to feel safe. I do not wish anyone harmed. You can do this? I was not worried antes, before, but now the Yakuza is here, and I only wish for someone to watch my puertas, and to keep an eye on the studio." She shrugged again, and it was obviously a habit she had. "It is nice, tambien, to see a familiar face in this place. It is strange, si?" She did not go so far as to mention journals and keys, but there was a question in the tilt of her head. She hesitated.
"I do not wish for you to think me loca, crazy, but I had strange-" Pause. "Strange dreams recently, and they have made me worried tambien." She placed a hand on his arm, and she smiled a young, reassuring smile. "It is nothing, I am sure, but I am willing to pay to feel a little safer just now. Entiendes? Do you understand?" Her expression when she looked at him said she had lived a lifetime of being denied nothing, and this begging, it was new to her.
"Kellan," she repeated, as if using this new name of his would convince him to help her.
The Yakuza? Kellan couldn’t help it; he snorted, barely choking back a laugh into a hand as he tried to disguise it with another drag on his cigarette. It was such a bizarre concept to show up in Vegas of all places that he couldn’t help himself, no matter how unsure, how serious, how wary she looked. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, more that he just couldn’t help his reaction.
“Strange is one way to put it.” This place was pulling him back into old connections, old memories and lives he didn’t want to recall. It made him suspicious but not enough so to start looking for clues. “I’ll do what you need me to. I’m not very good at protection, but I can do revenge pretty well.” His face darkened slightly at the words, eyes focused somewhere beyond Ainslie. A hand on his arm and his name. Yes, he understood. “I get it. Pay, and you’ve got a wildfire waiting at every enemy’s doorstep.” He finally did look at her, eye to eye, not suspicious or ready to bolt but part intrigued, part resigned, part the same firebrand he’d always been no matter how many times he changed his name or how many years piled on his shoulders.
Kellan tilted his neglected glass toward her, a half-toast of a new business agreement.
She understood his laugh, because she too thought it an odd place for such people to be, but it did not change the truth, si? "They are trafficking mujeres here," she explained calmly, and she smiled a tired smile when he agreed to what she asked. She wished she did not have to take such measures, but it seemed there was no running from el pasado, not truly. "Where am I to wire money?" she asked, even as she slid off the barstool and watched him half-toast. She could see his eyes now, this hombre, and she knew he was different than the one who had worked for her abuela when she was only a small girl, but she was different too now. Much of the wildness tamed by life and lessons, and she did not blame him for his changes as well. "I will have it to you by morning," she assured him, and she expected him to believe she was good for it; the Giacoma had enough money to buy him five times over and still have billions left over.
She stepped away, and then she stopped. "It was nice to see you again. I wish life was different for both of us now," she acknowledged maturely, understanding, and then she turned in a swirl of red.
Trafficking. No, not something he associated with. A man of his tastes didn’t need to. Besides, those kinds of people were usually out of his pay grade. Yakuza, though …
He gave her the place, the number - it was one he’d used in the past. Trustworthy at least to the degree that large sums of money passing through from one unnamed source to another were considered normal rather than noteworthy.
“I’m sure you will,” Kellan agreed amiably, and tilted his head back to take a long drink. She wished life was different, huh? He didn’t. Not quite as much as she did, anyway. For all the shit his life tended to process, he liked what he had. Now if only he could keep what little there was left.
Dean could go, though. Shithead didn’t do anywhere near enough to pay mental rent.