cassidy moran has ended all the revels (revelsended) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-04-17 21:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | prospero, roxanne |
Who: Cass and Wren
What: Meeting again
Where: The Edison
When: After the attack at Aubade
Warnings: None
All Cass could really say about Wren’s new occupation was that it wasn’t what she had been doing before, and he was grateful for that, regardless of the horrors that shift had sprung from. The club was not the sort of place he would have frequented had she not been there. The combination of coppers, reds, and warm industrial metal did appeal to him, however, not a thousand miles off from the way he’d chosen to deck out his own home, and there was comfort in the familiar, as strange as it might be when clad as a burlesque. A girl at the door took his coat from him, leaving him feeling and looking a touch out of place. He wore a casual suit, with his hands in his pockets, and he swept his gaze across the club, trying to see if he could spot Wren. He stayed away from the people clustered around the bar and sitting at tables, opting instead to stand and look.
He somehow felt as if he might not know her anymore, not on sight. They were different people than they had been when they had last met, and though he knew she had seen him in the street, he still felt strangely anxious, seeing her for the first time in months. Would she look well? Would she be the same, or like someone else, someone he didn’t know?
Wren had already performed, and she saw him come in well before he saw her. She stayed out of sight for a full twenty minutes, just watching him, trying to find the familiar and the new in the way he carried himself. That he remained standing did not surprise her, and she smiled as she waited to see if he would give in and take a seat. When he did not, she would around to the bar and asked for a drink, which she carried over to him.
She was still dressed for the stage, a red corset that barely covered her nipples and pink ruffled pantaloons riding low on her hips. She wore no shoes, and she had on her wig, which was of good enough quality to pass as her hair. It was short and ringlet-ed, and she had a pink ribbon holding the pale, pale blonde off one cheek. She came up behind him, and she cleared her throat, and she smelled of roses and tea as she held the drink out to him, for when he turned around.
Cass turned around, and he didn't recognize her at all, for a moment. She didn't even smell the same way he remembered, but then he saw the curve of her lips and he knew. "Wren," he said, trying to disguise his surprise. She looked...well, she looked beautiful, even though the difference between what he'd expected and the reality left him a touch off balance. The height of her clothes, riding low and high at top and bottom, made something flicker in him that he'd thought long disposed of. It was a long moment before he took the drink from her, only realizing after taking her in fully that she was offering it to him, not even looking at the contents. "Hi."
He did look a little different - a little less thin, a touch better rested. The things that followed him, the haunted look, they hadn't disappeared - but still, he did look better than he had when he'd left. "You're blonde," he said, smiling a little, for the moment just overwhelmed with how good it was to see her, rendered uncharacteristically speechless by it.
“Not really,” she said, a pleased smile on her lips for the fact that he looked better, healthier. “I thought you looked happier,” she said of the time she’d seen him on the street, “but it’s more true close up,” she added, slipping a hand into his and tugging him away from the crowd and toward the back of the club without thinking anything of the intimacy of pulling him along with her, the touch almost nothing in its lightness. “It’s a wig,” she said, referring again to the pale blonde. “You’re the second person that’s said something about it. I’m thinking about making it permanent,” she confided. “It makes me look older, less vulnerable.” The ruby red lips helped with that, as well, but she didn’t say as much.
"I've always been fond of red, personally," Cass admitted. "But blonde suits you just as well. I will say, though, that if you look any older, perhaps that is you, and not the color." He let her tug him through the club, ignoring the looks that they received from watching patrons, what they thought of a dancer pulling a man to the back of the club. He was busy focusing on the light touch of her fingers, and giving himself a moment or two to just enjoy being in her presence again. The rush of emotions was full and immediate and intense, and not at all what he'd expected. He'd thought that things would be completely different, that he might not feel the way he had before once he finally came face to face with her again. But no, for better or worse, he felt the same way he had before he'd left, enough so that just a light touch on his hand was like a small, rare gift.
She pulled him through the throng and past the crowd of bodies to the door labeled Dancers Only, and then she tugged him through it. The hall beyond was quiet, the girls all out front or on the stage, and she didn’t think anything of it, of what the clients would think. She looked over her shoulder at him, curls bobbing with the movement, and then she looked back down the dark and quiet hall. She didn’t let go of his fingers until he was in her room, and then she just turned around to look him over better, now that they were somewhere quiet. She didn’t jar from it for a full minute, and then she nodded toward the nightstand. “Let me get your money,” she said.
The minute stretched long, and he looked back at her, not wanting to break the silence. When she finally did move away, he walked a little further into the room. It was a good deal better than the place she'd been living in Hamartia. "This is nice," he said, appreciative, mostly just glad that things seemed to have improved for her. He still wished she didn't insist on earning money on her body, of course, but they'd had that argument a thousand times.
It was harder to ignore her other occupation, however, and while she rooted around for the money, guilt cut back against him again. He shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be encouraging her. But then the usual argument came back, that she would do it no matter what he said, and that she ought to be protected if she insisted on it. So instead, he asked, "Do you like it here? Do they treat you well?"
She turned when she found the money in the drawer, and she walked back to him and held it out, before motioning to the white chaise in the room. She took a seat herself a second later, curling her legs beneath her and smiling at him. “It’s quiet,” she said truthfully. “Once the club closes, it’s just me here, and it gets a little lonely, but I don’t have to pay rent. The owner of the club is a friend, and he lets me stay for free,” she explained. “The work isn’t bad. It’s better,” she said with equal candor. “Tell me about you instead. What have you been doing since you’ve been back?”
Cass took the money, trying as best he could not to show his reluctance to take it from her. She knew how he felt about this sort of thing. It was foolish for her to pay him for something he would happily give her, but that would spark another argument about charity, one of those forbidden subjects they would never see eye to eye on. He sat down on the chaise, hands resting lightly on its edge. “I’m glad,” he said. He couldn’t tell her how glad he was. Maybe this was a step on the way to something better. Maybe the fact that she’d finally stepped away from her old profession was a sign of progress. “And it’s safe here for you after hours?” He didn’t like the idea of her in this massive place by herself.
The question was a good one. What had he been doing? “What do I usually do? I reacquainted myself with the bookstore, ran into an old friend. I’ve read a dozen books and found myself working on one, though it’s not finished and I doubt it ever will be. I’ve followed the news,” he said, speech slowing a little, studying her face. “And worried about you.” The man killed at Orin Monarch’s speech had made him think of her, of the risks she insisted on running.
“It’s safe,” she assured him, hugging her knees up to her chest and looking at him. “And you don’t need to worry about me. I’m better than I have been in a long time, I think. Leaving taught me things, things about me. I’m calmer again; I’d lost that,” she admitted, reaching out to touch his wrist affectionately. “Tell me about your friend?”
He turned his wrist up under her touch, exposing his pulse and dragging her fingers over his skin with the motion. “You deserve that,” he said, looking up at her, then down at his wrist and her fingers. “Her name is Valerie Anna. She’s Orin Monarch’s fiancee. I met her two, maybe three years ago, when I first came through the portal. She was married to someone else, and we were...well, we were together. I came here chasing something that was beyond my reach, and I fell in with her because I didn't know what else to do. I think I thought it would fix everything somehow." He lifted his fingers, tentatively, touching her wrist, sweeping his thumb over it. "It didn't, of course. She wasn't going to leave her husband for me, and when I realized that, I left. I came here."
“But you loved her?” Wren asked with quiet surprise. Why shouldn’t he have loved her, she thought. Just because he’d acted like he didn’t have anyone else when they met, like there had been no one since the girl on the boat. “Do you still love her?” she asked then, pulling her fingers back and folding her hands in her lap. It was a strange, how something so small changed so many things. She had perceived him, for whatever reason, as not having been out in the world very much. “I imagined you locked up in your tower for all those years in between,” she admitted, giving him a curious smile. “What is she like?”
He had to think about it, and there was a pause. "I did," he said. "It wasn't the same as the way I feel for you, or for Clara." there was a slight break there, but he could almost say her name without any sort of hesitation, and that had to be a sign of progress. "But, no. I don't, not anymore. She's a strange woman. I still care about her, but I'm starting to think she might not be as in love as she says with these rich men she marries." He looked up, sharply. "Don't take that too seriously. I'm likely just being cynical." He didn't like to think about it, the idea that he'd misjudged her all this time, but somehow he never doubted that she'd gotten involved in the affair for reasons other than money. She'd had her husband for that, after all, if his suspicions were right.
"It wasn't a very long affair," he said. "A few months. Then I shut myself away again. It seemed...I had practice at it from Musings, years and years of it," he said, rueful, "and I didn't know what else to do. You were mostly right."
"She's beautiful and a bit of an enigma. She has the kind of carriage people used to attribute to good breeding, and she has a soft spot for jazz. I don't know much at all about her history. She never seems to want to talk about it."
Wren listened, and it struck her that it was more than she’d ever heard him say about anyone that wasn’t Clara. It wasn’t angry, what he said, even with the doubt she’d learned to accept as something wholly Cassidy. The woman could be a saint, she suspected, and he would still doubt her motives, her feeling; it was his way. She smiled sadly when she said the other woman was beautiful, this Valerie she had never met. “Would I like her?” she asked, hugging her knees to her chest again and resting her chin on them. “I know you’re a cynic, Cassidy. I’m not going to hold that against her,” she promised. “Have you asked her not to marry her fiance?”
"I think so," he said, looking at that sad little smile. "She's not as open as you are at all, you're not much alike in that way. But she is kind, and she's good. I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't."
"Good," he said, holding her gaze. He paused a moment. "...I did. Because I don't think any evidence shows he would be faithful to her, or treat her the way I think she needs to be in order to stay faithful herself. She didn't seem to mind the idea. Now I feel even more like she should break it off, but just out of concern for her safety. If recent events have been any indication, just being around him might be a danger." He watched her settle her chin on her knees, and he lifted his hand from her wrist to touch her cheek. "Why are you smiling like that?"
“Can I meet her?” she asked, not answering his question. “I’d like to see the kind of woman you could fall in love with, without being angry at her all the time,” she said candidly, not moving away from the touch to her cheek.
He dropped his hand, the guilt real and immediate. He tried to keep it off his face, and was mostly successful. He was getting better, slowly, at not showing everything he felt, at holding back. "If you'd like," he said. "I haven't seen much of her lately. Preparing for the wedding, I suppose, and now the mess with the masks."
“Because of Orin Monarch,” Wren said knowingly, watching his hand fall back to his side, then to the chaise again. “I would like,” she added. “I don’t work during the day. I could meet you for lunch somewhere,” she offered, tipping her head and giving him a soft smile. “Maybe she’ll tell me stories about you,” she said fondly.
"Luckily there isn't much to tell," he said, smile soft and melancholy if you looked hard enough. "I wasn't exciting." He paused a moment, and then got up from the chaise. "I'll tell her that you'd like to meet her and get her to pin a place down. I'm sure she'll be happy to get away from everything for a while."
His intention in coming here hadn't been to have a conversation about Valerie, but somehow that was what he had ended up doing, and he felt like he'd missed an opportunity or done something wrong. There was no good worrying about it now, he supposed. It didn't matter. She still didn't care for him the way he did for her, and as fond as she might be of him, that would never stop stinging. He didn't know why he'd expected things to be different when he came back. He'd thought, maybe, that he'd improved enough while he was gone - but no, not enough. She was right, he'd said and done too many things to suddenly make her love him now. He knew she'd be contemptuous of him and his tendency to run when he realized he wasn't cared for, that it made him a selfish coward, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
Outside, rain droplets began to patter against the window.
"Your friend," he asked, pausing. "How is he?"
She watched him stand, taking in the movement like someone did a painting or something elegant, and she smiled up at him, after, not moving from her seat, knees still hugged against her chest. “He’s having a hard time,” she said. “His father’s been accused of being a Mask, and that means they don’t have even a little privacy.” Worry flashed across her features, indicating there was more to what she was saying than merely the words on the surface. She pressed her cheek to her knee, tipped her head to look up at him. “How can I thank you for helping me?” she asked. “I know you didn’t have to.” She paused, then, as if she was thinking before speaking. “I asked him if he was mad at me for leaving him, and he was, but he forgave me. It means he’s a better person than me, because I’m still angry you went away.”
"I did hear about that," he said. He'd forgotten for a moment that someone not Monarch had been affected by the accusations - he didn't know anyone connected to the Brandons, just Wren's friend by association.
When she pressed her cheek to her knee, his expression went slightly slack, surprised. "You don't have to," he said. He knew there was an invitation in that, or he thought he knew it, but he knew better, now, than to take it. Guilt washed over him again. Outside, the rain increased from spitting to a heavy downpour, smooth and steady on the window. "You're not a bad person," he said. "You're - that's normal, Wren. I deserve that."
She sat back, and smiled a little - soft, soft, soft. “You’re going to get rained on,” she said, looking toward the window, where water was streaming down the glass, and then back at his face. “I forgive you, even if the anger isn’t all gone yet,” she said, meaning it.
She looked so beautiful sitting like that, staring up at him in the soft light, and it hurt. It was blunt, like that, and there was no use putting poetry to it. "Thank you," he said, nodding to her. He looked to the door. He thought about asking whether she would be going onstage again, but he didn't think he could watch that, not now. "I'll be alright," he said, then added, a touch awkward, unsure as usual how to say goodbye, "I'll call you."
Wren nodded. “I’ll be waiting,” she said.