Who: Aud & Cian What: Teaching Cian Vanish! Where: Mostly in Cian’s Docks warehouse When: Starting in late May, shortly after this, continuing until today Rating: There’s cursing and a whole lot of bad sexual innuendo with a sandwich Status: Complete!
She stood in front of him, arms crossed, gaze drifting about the gambler as if sizing him up. “Mind you, I’ve had different teachers and they’ve all taught me different ways.” It was complete night and day between Alecta and Fumiya. Where Alecta cut corners, Fumiya held fast to tradition. “The easiest way,” she had paused, thoughts having interrupted her flow. “The easiest way is by holding your breath.” She held a straight face, looking back at Cian. “It’s how I started. Kind of like this.” Audrey took a big inhale, staring at the gambler across from her. Closing her eyes, she let time tick, and eventually her body began to fade away until she was completely gone.
A minute had passed and Audrey took a deep breath, reappearing. “Something like that. You try.”
He gave her a skeptical look, but she did fade from sight, and even if it seemed idiotic, he’d decided to trust her on this one. He had to wonder why people didn’t disappear accidentally anytime they swam underwater or who the hell knew what else, but… “Fine,” he said, trying to picture Sasaki -- that asshole -- going blue in the face as a teenager trying to master this.
It made him feel temporarily a bit better.
One thing could be said for Cian Wilde -- he had willpower in spades. His vision had begun to gray around the edges when she started laughing and he realized that he had actually fucking fallen for this; pulling air into his aching lungs, he glared at her as she continued to laugh hysterically and said, “I could make you a pauper tomorrow, you know, tiny.”
Audrey had doubled over, holding her stomach as she tried her best to control her outburst. It wasn’t happening. He had to give her a solid minute at least until she could breathe again. “I’m kidding,” she choked in between chuckles. “Faram, I’m joking.” Wiping a tear away, she got rid of any lingering giggle.
“Ninja abilities lie in mental stillness, being adept at concentrating in even the worst situations. You have to be able to clear your mind of external distractions. Look to materialize your thoughts, at least that’s how I actually do it. Now making multiples, that’s an entirely different story. Vanishing is a lot simpler. With enough practice it becomes second nature.” Audrey raised a brow. “Can you clear your mind, Mr. Head-of-a-Crime-Syndicate?”
“We’ll save multiples for another lesson.” Or possibly never -- who knew, she could tell him, oh, you just cut off your arm and make another you. Simple!
In retrospect, he would be able to admit that he was more annoyed than he should have been about being a sucker. It happened so rarely that it stung all the more when it did.
“You mean meditation or whatever the fuck?” he asked, skeptical now of anything she said (and trying to imagine her stilling her mind). At least this way he wouldn’t look like a fucking idiot. (Unless she told him to chant om or something, then he was done.) “Never know until I try, I guess. Usually not thinking gets people in my line of work dead.”
Audrey rolled her eyes. “It’s a starting point. Get it together, man.” With a sigh, she pushed on. “Yeah, meditation is good. When you want to vanish, you have to let go of,” she struggled to find the word, “whatever keeps you here. Rip whatever attachment there is.” Audrey had taken a seat on the floor, crossing her legs over one another and resting her elbow on her knee, cheek on her palm as she watched him.
He settled on the floor of the empty warehouse too, after awhile, not with the same sort of graze, but armed instead with a healthy dose of wariness. “Ripping attachment. I ought to be good at this.”
(As it turned out, however, he was notoriously terrible; turning his mind off proved to be a task that would take more than one lesson to perfect. There was a great deal of cursing to be heard in warehouse 707 that evening.)
“I can tell you’re not focusing, your breathing isn’t even!” Audrey was pacing around him in a circle, watching him with intensity. “Don’t slouch, sit up straight. Slouching is just going to make you fall asleep.” Her foot pressed on his back, straightening his spine as her hands pulled his shoulders back. Once content with his composure, she sat in front of him again. Her face was entirely in his personal bubble, as if testing if he’d open his eyes and break out of his meditation.
“Not likely to fall asleep with you breathing on me,” he said through gritted teeth. His posture was right -- finally -- but after a few weeks of trying to clear his mind and sit mindfully and a whole list of other unhelpful items, he was beginning to seriously doubt the wisdom of this plan.
Gambling had come naturally. He had a head for numbers, a good memory, strong luck. This was nothing like that had been; for the first time in his admittedly unconventional academic career, he found himself facing an actual struggle.
But he didn’t give up once he’d started something unless it was more profitable to let it drop than to power though. He’d already invested time and energy, so this wasn’t that moment.
He took a deep breath, let it out, pushed the thought of her face in his (he hoped she was fucking cross-eyed, that irritating midget) out of his mind. Breathed, in, out. Again. Fed his thoughts to the imaginary fire he’d conjured up in his mind until there was nothing but the flame left. Maybe not the most peaceful imagery, but it worked where nothing else did, so he was going with it.
“Ah, ah! You’re not focusing!” she was quick to retort. Straightening out she fell silent again, allowing him time to gather his senses and focus. Minutes had passed, the blonde picking at her nails, occasionally glancing at him to make sure he still held posture. It had been then he had caught her attention. He seemed so calm, empty. Reaching in her pouch, she pulled out an air horn she had bought before meeting him.
Holding it straight to his face, her smile grew as she let him fall deeper and deeper into his meditation.
Finally, she pressed it.
“Bloody motherfucking hell, what the fuck!?” The volume he could achieve when shouting was pretty damn impressive. Maybe almost as loud as the horn which had practically ruptured his eardrums.
It was probably a good thing that she wasn’t too busy laughing to duck out of the way when he lunged at her, because all things considered it was pretty likely that he might actually have wrung her scrawny neck if he’d managed to get his hands on her. But she simply disappeared (the way he was trying and failing to do) right out of the way; he heard her disembodied voice from the opposite corner of the room:
“Ajora, calm down. You’re going to have to be able to concentrate through worse than a simple air horn.” Audrey remained under her veil, unsure of his rage. She liked her pretty neck without bruises. When she finally felt she could reappear safely, she was a good ten feet away from Cian for safety’s sake. “Try again.”
“One of these days, tiny,” he growled. “One of these days.”
But after a few moments, he settled again, though the amount of energy he expended listening for her approach was probably wasted, considering he never did manage that level of mental quiet again that night.
Leaning against the wall she bit into her sandwich, looking over towards Cian. “So,” she chewed loudly and unladylike, “how was your vacation?” Her eyebrows waggled up and down as if insinuating something. “Fun?”
Cian was the master of the poker face -- though there were about a dozen things he could think of off the top of his head to say about his vacation (too many trees, too much nature, too much quiet, not enough to do other than the obvious, and so on), he only answered, “Sure. I see you people managed not to blow up anything else while I was gone. Nice going.”
“We do what we can,” she shrugged with another bite. “So what did you and Ash do?” The smirk on her lips growing mischievously. “I bet it was just a bunch of—” With her hand she shoved the sub sandwhich against her pelvis as she thrusted forward making lewd sounds. “Oh, Aisling. I’m coming.” she mocked him.
It was probably kind of impressive how quickly he picked up the nearest thing lying around (a roll of packing tape) and threw it at her all in one smooth motion. She dodged, but there were plenty of things lying around, and he considered tossing another for good measure. “Only you make that stupid-ass face,” he said. “You done molesting your sandwich, tiny? Think we could get some work done here?”
Without words she raised her finger to the air, asking for a moment from the Gambler. With one last hard thrust, she slowed her pace and finally stopped. Staring at the sandwich, she glanced over to disgruntled man, “Want a bite?”
He gave the bitten-off sandwich a disgusted look and said, “No. I want to work. Sometime this decade, maybe.”
Because having his former-lover-turned-client-turned-teacher needling him about his sex life was pretty high on his list of things he did not need.
"Your loss," she shrugged taking another bite of her sandwich. "Alright," she spoke with food in her mouth, her words slightly muffled. "Where did we last leave off?"
Finally. He might have said it aloud, but she still had some sandwich left -- last thing he wanted to do was encourage a replay. “Right, so if I remember after that impressive display of… whatever it fucking was…”
Fortunately, the rest of the session was relatively uneventful.
“I spent so long half-comatose that I almost had it. Probably.” It was also entirely possible that he’d been high on Cormac’s pain medication and only thought he’d flickered out of existence (nothing to do in bed all day but fucking meditate and all), but whatever.
He was close, he had to be.
“Alright then,” she tilted her head to the side slightly, “show me what you got.” Digging her hands deep into her pockets, she watched the Gambler with a raised brow.
Annoying to do it for an audience, but then, she was supposed to be teaching him (even if some days it felt more like she was using him for her own entertainment). “Right.”
So he breathed, once, twice, trying to clear his mind of clutter, compartmentalizing away his myriad thoughts which were not applicable to this, leaving only one: disappear. He wasn’t on medication this time, but he definitely felt a flicker of something.
The flicker as enough to cause her smirk to grow. He had tapped into it. Immediately she had kicked off a tarp that lied over junk in the warehouse. Arming herself with an open can of paint, she splattered the gambler down, his body dripping in blue paint. “I chose blue because I thought it was kind of like your name. But you know, kind of not really.” She grinned looking at her new masterpiece.
“What! The! Actual! Fuck!?”
If she didn’t get out of the way, she was going to be covered in paint, too -- he still had those Haste shoes Ash had given him for his birthday (now painted blue… Faram fucking damn everything) and he was in a mood to strangle her yet again.
Just another Thursday really.
Audrey’s eyes widened, but her grin never left her lips. “Sweet Ajora, calm down. What do you think I’d actually do if I fought a ninja?” Audrey had scrambled out of his way, using a cement pillar to hide behind and try to keep out of his reach. “You gotta be quick on your feet! Wait where did you—”
Quick on his feet he was indeed, and this time, she hadn’t flickered out of sight before he could catch her. His paint splattered hands landed on her hair, streaking the blonde with blue, and he couldn’t help a vindictive little chuckle at the look on her face. “Fucking serves you right,” he told her (the next streak of paint ended up on the bridge of her nose). “You owe me a new fucking can of paint. And a new shirt.” A final smear of paint over her before he finally released her. “Good look on you, tiny.”
Screaming she tried to pull her hair away from him, wrestling with his arms as her face and hair got quick retribution. Stumbling away from him, she held her arms out looking at the damage before screaming again. “I can’t believe you—” she huffed, “You’re—”
With no hesitation, she dove for another for another can of paint, tossing red at him now.
The subsequent tussle was perhaps better suited for children than adults. It was definitely not the sort of game Cian might have chosen, but by the time he’d finally pinned her to the floor some fifteen minutes later, there were streaks of green and purple along with the blue and red, and he was a bit out of breath. “Stay… still,” he demanded, making sure he had her properly in his grip so she couldn’t wriggle away and destroy more of his property.
The next Ring match would have one hell of an interesting arena. Modern art on the concrete. Fucking fantastic.
“You done?” he demanded. “Say yes, and I let you go.” And he’d just expense the paint to her account when he transferred her her earnings next month, since she was so determined to use it.
Audrey wriggled under his grip and weight, attempting to twist her wrists out of his fists. She fought for a couple of more minutes until her body gave up with one final and defeated sigh. “Fine.”
“Great,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm just as the rest of him dripped with paint. Fucking disaster this was.
He lifted himself off of her, trusting her to keep her word (lest she want him really pissed) as he considered whether to just chuck his soaked shirt. In the end, considering the situation and the company, he left it on. “You want to tell me what that was meant to teach me, tiny?”
Propping herself up with her arms resting behind her, she looked up at Cian from her sitting position with an amused look. “Humor.”
“Didn’t think I was paying you to turn me into a comedian.” But after thinking about it a moment, he said, in a flat and utterly unamused tone of voice, “Ha ha. Right, back to work.”
Because if anything, his one source of amusement was the fact that she’d be washing dried paint out of her hair for hours, and that was motivation enough to keep going.
Audrey had been clouded by her own thoughts as of late, she sat across from Cian only a few feet away, her nose dug into a journal she had been scribbling in ever since she had started meditation. Occasionally she would glance up at the man to see if there was anything wrong in his form or to hopefully find the answer to her problems spelled out on his face. Neither seemed to happen. Sticking the end of her pen in her mouth, her eyes drifted back to Cian as she began to space out.
For once, she was quiet. That she was troubled was practically written on her face, but he couldn’t care less, especially considering she was actually not actively inhibiting his efforts today. He had his own shit to think about. The tournament, for one. He was still vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of just packing up and taking off.
And right now, he needed to compartmentalize it. He closed his eyes, breathed deep in and out, tried not to be fucking irritated at his slow progress. He’d nearly had it a dozen times, but nearly wasn’t going to cut it.
He knew the feel of that flicker now, tried to drag it forward. He didn’t dare open his eyes to see if it was working -- recipe for distraction -- but she took the need out of his hands by speaking first.
By the time Audrey had glanced up, her eyes were widened. “You’re doing it!” Her hands immediately slapped over her lips realizing that maybe she shouldn’t have spoken, maybe she should’ve let him concentrate longer but what was done was done.
He did open his eyes then, looking down at himself. For a moment, he thought she was fucking with him, before realizing that his shirt was there but his arms, which had been resting on his knees… weren’t.
“The fuck?”
His retort only caused a grin to grow on her lips. “You’re not going to be sneaking past anyway like that!”
The shirt rose and fell with his invisible (and utterly disgruntled) sigh. “Fuck’s sake, why am I so fucking terrible at this?”
Audrey laughed again, covering her face with both her hands. “You can just sneak around naked. No one would know what hit them.”
“How about no.” And the very idea had what was left of his concentration breaking. His arms reappeared, as did the rest of him, he had to assume. Seriously, he hadn’t even know it was possible to do that. “Much as I’m sure you’re fond of the idea. So what the hell am I doing wrong?”
“Please!” she rolled her eyes, throwing her arms back to prop her up in that sitting position. “I’ve moved on to bigger and greater things,” she tilted her head to the side and smirked. Shaking it off, she nodded towards him. “Try again.”
“Keep dreaming, tiny,” he said with a small sneer. Bigger and better, right. “Hopefully I don’t make just my clothes disappear next time,” he grumbled under his breath. There was another thing for the list of shit he really did not want.
But in the end, he followed her instructions; he tried again.
Maybe it was being nearly shot in the head -- and all the surreal insanity that had followed -- but Cian found himself strangely calm, considering the circumstances. Maybe he’d reached some sort of incredulity threshold -- fuck up at poker, fuck up with the Dragon, get nearly shot in the face by what was probably his closest friend, then engage in some espionage to cap off the evening -- but he’d returned from Ordalia giving even fewer fucks than usual.
Maybe that was why it clicked in the end. Because if he’d managed this the weekend prior in that damn hallway, none of those things would have happened at all, and maybe hindsight was useless, but he’d really prefer to avoid such things in future.
He breathed, emptied his mind, and --
-- disappeared.
Audrey’s eyes widened, her eyes immediately dropping to the floor as if he’d leave her some sort of clue. She didn’t hear him, so surely he was still in the same spot. Smile spread across her face happy at her own handy work. Pushing herself off the pillar she had been leaning against, she dusted her hands figuratively. “Well, I guess my work here is done.”
He stood, testing it out -- it seemed that now that he’d managed to activate whatever the hell it was (he didn’t fully know -- or care -- as long as it worked), he didn’t have to pay any attention to maintenance. He stretched his hands in front of him, grinning, allowing the unguarded expression only because he knew she couldn’t see. “Took you long enough,” his disembodied voice said, but the tone was warm.
Every once in awhile, life did throw a bone his way.
He’d schooled his expression to neutrality before he checked that he could make himself reappear (he could) and stuck out his hand for a shake. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
As they shook, his mind was already on the many, many applications of this new skill.