Marina Andrieski (andrieski) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-09-18 23:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, holland vosijk, marina andrieski |
WHO: Marina Andrieski & Holland Vosijk
WHERE: Near the library
WHEN: TODAY
WHAT: Marina’s attempts at avoidance go sideways
WARNINGS: I don’t think so??
STATUS: Complete in gdocs
A few days had gone by since the fairy ball and Marina felt no more at ease with her current situation than she had that night. The dress had been something she enjoyed and the mask as well. Everything past that was not enjoyable to her. She hadn’t enjoyed the general feeling that things didn’t always seem the way they were and the tricks were discomfiting. All of that might have been bearable in a way, but then Holland - at least it sounded like Holland. She thought she caught a hint of two different colored eyes - had to go and do something stupid. She had thought it a joke, but the minute that the girl was freed, she was quite aware of the reality of it. As he spoke, her eyes focused first on his face and second on Ethan’s - or who she hoped was Ethan. It had caught her off guard and she hadn’t had the time necessary to prepare herself for how to react. It took longer than necessary for the genuine look of confusion to disappear and the neutral mask of indifference to replace it. That had been after she’d stared at Ethan for a long moment. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Julia in that moment because she felt far too exposed and she wasn’t sure she could let Julia see it. Instead, she let Ethan. He felt more neutral, safer somehow. She couldn’t explain why it was the way she felt, but she’d avoided discussion of it after the ball. She could have left then, but Julia was still trapped and she needed to find a way to get her back, so she’d focused on that instead of the feeling building in her chest. It felt wrong and it wasn’t because she was aware of any returned feelings. It was because he’d felt so similar and she’d been curious and so she’d avoided it and now it felt tainted and wrong. She didn’t want expectations. She didn’t want people wondering how she’d respond. She didn’t intend to respond. However, it seemed that helping Julia had gotten her scorned, which brought her to the place she was now: Incorporeal and more annoyed than ever. So she’d gone somewhere quiet, somewhere no one was supposed to be. Unfortunately, she recognized where her aimless wandering had brought her and she felt the immediate urge to leave. Instead she just stood still in the hopes that having no physical form would help keep her from being noticed. Maybe his natural inclination toward noticing her magic would fail him in this instant and she could escape. She could be anyone, she could be the Rabbit Woman or the Unimpressive White Man or perhaps even the Girl Who She Didn’t Know Well. The angry one that was teaching battle magic. She took a few careful steps back before going still again. -- Holland had left the fairy ball the instant Kell had been released. He’d removed his mask, and found himself back in Charlotte’s home. Within seconds, he had cut his hand, traced one of the marks on the wall, and stepped through to Shanghai, where he got easily lost in the hustle and bustle of the city. He didn’t come back until Tuesday, only for his shift at the library. Marina had never seen him there, to his knowledge, and he wanted the money. More than ever now, he wanted to travel, to go to the countries he’d left marks in and be able to buy himself train and bus tickets. He went straight to the library, and stayed there until his shift was over. Then he left, by way of the front stairs; his mark was just between two of the buildings nearby. But as he walked, he caught a familiar scent. Magic of a specific kind, the kind from Marina’s world. Everyone from her world smelled that way, but still. Holland couldn’t have said why, but he thought it was hers. Or maybe he was just expecting the worst. His steps slowed, and then stopped, and he looked around carefully. She was nowhere to be seen, but her magic smelled close, nearby. Somewhere that he should be able to see. He stretched his senses as far as he could, but he couldn’t feel any magical being nearby. Just the scent on the air. Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was an enchantment of hers, or of one of her friends. Maybe it was some kind of revenge, for humiliating her. He put his hand in his pocket, curling his fingers around his knife until it slightly cut the skin; he was ready to dispel the magic with a simple command, if necessary. But he took another cautious step forward, and nothing happened. Except that the scent of magic returned, the same baseline, no flare that indicated its use. He was fairly convinced that someone was nearby. “Show yourself,” he said in a low growl. -- Marina studied his face for a moment, watched as he tried to find her. Never before had she been so pleased to be formless. Angry as she was, she didn’t want to be discovered. It was enough to make her want to open a portal, but she wouldn’t. Not where someone might see her. She wasn’t even sure she could do magic like this. She couldn’t see her hands to know if they made the right movements. She was sure she could trust the way it felt, but it was hard to be certain. She didn’t want to make a mess of anything. She stayed still in that moment, but when he spoke, she decided she needed to get away. She knew she was caught, so she tried to think of something so that he wouldn’t get it in his head to lash out with his magic. “I can’t.” She frowned. “I, the blonde woman who works for rabbits...on a boat...cannot do it because I have been cursed.” What was her name again? Oh, right. “Alice.” Yes. Alice. -- Holland recognized her voice immediately, and he went very still, tension in every line of his body, especially his jaw. He would have simply walked away, except -- except she’d said I can’t. “You’re a terrible liar,” he said flatly. “What do you mean, cursed?” He wanted to know why she was here, why she’d come near him -- no, he didn’t want to know. It would only make him angry. He definitely wasn’t going to ask. But if the fairies had done this to her because of what he’d said… then he had an obligation to try to fix it. As he’d said to Kell, he owned his demons. -- Marina noted the shift in his body language and she wanted to walk away as fast as she could because he knew who she was. She hadn’t really thought he’d believe that she was Alice, but she’d hoped. Instead she had to deal with whatever had happened because he didn’t believe her lies. He didn’t even pretend to. Not that she would have if she’d been him. That annoyed her in the moment and she crossed her arms over her chest. “I should have gone for the angry one,” she said after a moment. “I tried…” She frowned because she’d been about to tell him the truth of what happened as if it didn’t reveal part of herself. “I did something the fairies didn’t agree with. Something about rules. Been like this since.” It was true, but it left out the part where she willingly helped someone and got fucked over for it. She allowed for a brief silence. “I didn’t know you’d be here.” In case he was likely to assume she was looking for him, which she’d very much not been. -- Holland kept his eyes fixed on the street. Her voice came from somewhere off to his side, but he didn’t want to look at her, even if he couldn’t see her. She would be able to see him looking at her. He didn’t bother to respond to her attempt to recover from the lie. Unless she could have disguised her voice, he would have recognized it. He had an ear for voices, for any smallest noise actually; it had come in handy in Makt. But if he’d said that aloud, it would have sounded like it had other implications. Creepy, or sappy, or obsessed. “This isn’t because of what I said?” he asked. He had been trying to break the fairy’s magic, not bring it down on someone else’s head. But he wouldn’t have put it past the damn fairies to have other tricks up their sleeves. He considered offering to dispel the curse, but he doubted it would work, or if it did, it would dispel Marina’s magic and possibly make her disappear entirely. Which he didn’t want to happen. Still tense and impassive, he added, “It was only the very barest of truths, a flicker of… nothing, really. I assure you, it’s gone.” The only thing he felt at the moment was fury and loathing, but that was dangerous too. The fairies had gotten under his skin, and he hated them for it. -- Marina wanted to roll her eyes, but it wasn’t like it could be seen, so she sighed instead. The annoyance felt evident enough. It was easy here and now to just show how she felt on her face because people couldn’t really tell one way or another. It was freeing in that aspect and particularly frustrating in every other aspect. She was basically a ghost. A particularly annoyed ghost with none of the ability to fuck with people. She could scream if she wanted to, but she didn’t. She just wanted to stop being...this. “Not everything is about you, you know.” She made a point to allow her annoyance bleed into her words. If he was going to be ridiculous and remind her of what happened, she didn’t care to hide her general frustration with things. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes when he spoke again, though. Fucking Christ. “Just something to say, was it?” She wasn’t sure if she was annoyed by the fact that he’d said it was nothing or just the fact that she was still talking about it. She chose to believe it was the topic itself. That made the most sense. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyway. It was stupid to say. Could have picked someone else to have fleeting feelings for, though. Might have been less stupid. Probably not, but maybe.” -- Holland would have relaxed, except that he wasn’t sure he believed her. Not because he thought it was about him, but because they were both clearly on the list of people the fairies had wanted to mess with. The more he kept thinking the word fairies, the more absurd his own thoughts seemed. He didn’t react. He breathed. “It was the answer they were looking for,” he said. “I was just playing their game.” He shrugged. “All feelings are stupid. I’d like to be immune to them, but I’m not, so all I can do - under normal circumstances - is not act on them.” He was not as calm about that as he sounded; there was still a glimmer of fury in his one green eye. He looked in her direction, then, or rather turned his head slightly in that way, but kept his eyes on the street. Anywhere else, he risked looking at something that was not her face. “Were you looking for a solution to your curse?” -- She wasn’t sure what to say about that. The answer they were looking for. What it meant was that he’d meant it at some point, which she’d already figured, but he was confirming it. Only he said that it wasn’t the case anymore. It wasn’t something she really believed, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to believe the opposite. “I don’t do feelings. I barely do friends.” Which was admitting that she did occasionally do friends. It took a certain sort of person to drag her into it. She could only claim perhaps three friends here. She might have with four, but she didn’t claim Vex and she wasn’t really sure she claimed Kenzi either. She was barely certain if she claimed Ethan. She couldn’t really unclaim Julia at this point and she was too tired to argue about their friendship when she’d already been looking for her. People were already aware that Julia meant something. It was exhausting to pretend otherwise. “Not acting on things you want is equally stupid.” She frowned. “But I usually try to keep it to meaningless sex, not...whatever that mess was.” She looked at his face, quietly pleased that he couldn’t see hers. She woudn’t really have cared if he was looking at something that wasn’t her face, but she didn’t comment on the fact that he was staring at the street either. “If there was a way to fix it, I’d likely have figured it out. Julia’s still trying, I guess.” She shrugged, only really thinking about how it was useless in that moment. “I’m not likely to find it here.” -- “I never,” Holland said firmly, “Thought that you did either of those things.” He was completely unsurprised by that statement. “Nor did I say I wanted anything.” For all that she’d seemed to want to change the subject, she also wasn’t accepting his answers in the way that he meant them. They were all true -- except, perhaps, that the flicker of something was gone. He couldn’t feel it at the moment, but he was still here talking to her. He wanted her to understand, that was all. And maybe some part of him wanted to understand why he kept feeling that tug of familiarity, why he was still here trying to explain himself. But that was it. He didn’t honestly believe the feeling was truly romantic, at least not in the way he’d experienced romance before; if it had been like that, he could have walked away from the feeling much more easily. But it was more than Holland had felt in a while, and it was the closest feeling he had to what they were asking for, and the one that was the hardest to speak aloud. That was why they had wanted him to say it. Maybe there were specific words Marina wanted to hear, too. He couldn’t think of what they might be, though. It was easier to respond to what she’d said about the curse, so he did that instead. “I could try to dispel it,” he said. “But I only have one very general spell for dispelling magic, and it might just as soon affect you as the curse. Or it might not work at all. It didn’t change anyone back from being a cartoon.” -- Marina couldn’t explain why she continued the conversation herself or why she found herself still here. She might have walked off and he’d never have known. Well, he’d eventually have noticed, she imagined, but not until she was far enough away that it didn’t matter. Only she hadn’t walked off and she was still here talking to the one person she’d been avoiding for...longer than she’d care to admit. “If you take away my magic, I will effectively kill you, so I’m voting no on that. I’ve done the no magic thing and I’m definitely not doing it again.” She knew she couldn’t really kill him as she was. Not without considerable effort on her part and she didn’t really feel like it. She’d have preferred a simple and easy murder and currently she couldn’t hold anything, so that was too complicated for her. “I’m sure it won’t last. Nothing here seems to last longer than a couple weeks. I’m sure I’ll live until then.” But she was tired of this mixture of existing and not existing. She knew it was existing with a hint of not having a real form, but it felt like she existed and didn’t at the same time. “At least I don’t seem to need food.” -- Holland actually smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “You could try to kill me. Plenty of people have tried before.” No one had succeeded -- not even, technically, Kell. He wouldn’t have managed to run Holland through if Holland had not allowed it. In that moment he had wanted to die. He was still willing to go back and die in order to stop Osaron and bring magic back to his world. But he would not die here, at her hands -- figuratively speaking, since her hands did not appear to exist at the moment in the literal sense. All the same, being threatened by her was oddly reassuring; it put him back on familiar footing. He shrugged. “But I’m also not interested in taking away your magic. I think it’s more likely to do nothing at all, but I’m not inclined to risk it, either.” He did lift his gaze to look at her, then, approximately where he thought her face was, trying to see if there was any shape of her visible. He could sense her magic, but couldn’t see anything; he was staring at thin air. “Are you affected by the wind?” -- “Join the club.” Okay, so it was only really one person, but she was sure that people had thought about it. “The only one successful was a god, but that was an entirely different timeline.” She wasn’t sure why she’d said so. She wasn’t sure why she said half of the things she said or almost said. At least she wasn’t willing to look at it too closely. “You’re not the one that would be taking the risk.” But she’d prefer him less inclined to risk it. It felt a little strange to see him looking in her direction while realizing he couldn’t see her. She felt a momentary urge to reach out and see if he couldn’t see her or feel something, but she squashed it. She didn’t want to touch him. That was stupid. Especially when it was likely to be taken in a strange way considering their combined history of awkwardness. “I don’t know. I don’t really have a form. I guess I can feel myself because I am me and I just sort of aimlessly exist. I’m not even sure I have to walk technically. I could just be a general ball of nothing. Only I can still talk, so I guess I’m like a ghost. Being a ghost sucks. You can’t eat, drink, or have sex. It’s some top level bullshit.” -- “Really?” Holland asked, interested in spite of himself. “Me too. In the future, though. Same timeline.” He shrugged. “I let him, though.” He didn’t know why, but the longer this conversation continued, the more he felt… free. Whatever weakness the fairies thought they had exposed, it was out there. They seemed to have moved past it, back to the way they’d spoken to each other when they first met. Maybe all that the feeling really meant was that they’d had similar experiences, that they might understand each other. Holland wasn’t sure he wanted to be understood, but he was more willing to accept that than the kind of romantic or sexual relationship she seemed to think he wanted. He didn’t want the “mess”, as she’d put it. Which in his experience, the mess had involved being stabbed in the chest, and then killing someone he’d cared about and burying their memory deep inside his psyche where it would never be touched again. “Mess” was an understatement. “After it wears off, perhaps we should have a duel. That would be interesting.” Might as well skip right to the violence, if it was coming. And besides, she seemed like she could put up a fight. If there was anything that Holland wanted, it was a real fight. And he wasn’t going to avoid acting on that impulse. He shrugged. “Or not, if that’s too messy for you.” -- “Really. I don’t remember it. Didn’t happen in my timeline. Everyone else died instead.” She shrugged. Her face showed what her voice didn’t and she was glad for a moment where she could show that it was something she struggled with and have no one else know. “You let someone kill you? I’m going to have to assume there was a reason for it and not because you’re a fucking idiot.” She couldn’t remember any relationships past high school. She did her best to forget high school altogether. She didn’t have much to speak of during her college years. Certainly nothing serious. Brakebills was much the same until she was unceremoniously expelled. It made letting people in more complicated. Marina wanted very much to smack him upside the head in that moment, but she settled for a laugh instead. “Dueling isn’t a mess. We’re teaching our students battle magic. Or...the angry one I don’t remember the name of is. Three whole lessons.” There was definitely a lot of sarcasm in the last sentence. “Not that that’s nearly enough to grasp battle magic, but I don’t know why we’re bringing outsiders in who don’t actually want to be there.” But that was neither here nor there. “Either way, I can handle a duel.” -- Everyone else died instead. Holland didn’t react, but he paid careful attention to the words. He wondered how that trade-off had worked, her life or everyone else’s. He wondered how much it affected her. He had been able to read her face before, but she showed no sign of anything in her voice. It might bother him, if they were the people of his world. The people of another, maybe not. He said nothing about it. “Mm,” he agreed, in response to her question about his death. “I read about it in the book I’m in. I will allow him to possess me, then drain all of our combined magic into a sealed container, from which he can’t escape.” He paused. “But I suspect he also took something else with him, whatever… life force he liked to feed on, because I will apparently die not long after. I knew it was a possibility.” He shrugged. “I unleashed him on the world, it was my responsibility to contain him. I own my demons. Though I suspect he’d have gotten free sooner or later, even without me.” He was not bothered by the fact of his death. Death was freedom from everything that he’d experienced while alive, everything he still carried with him even in freedom, and it was, apparently, the only way to bring magic back into his world. Whatever Osaron had stolen from him, he had not been able to take that. No one could, unless Rhy was right and his death here meant that he couldn’t go back to do it. But he didn’t think that was true. He let a corner of his mouth quirk up just the slightest bit. “A duel, then,” he said. “When the curse has worn off.” -- They had been hers to protect, hers to lead and, while she took quite a bit lightly, she hadn’t ever taken her hedges or her responsibility to them lightly. Neither outcome was favorable to her, but she would take advantage of her counterpart’s death and get away from a world where she no longer had anyone left. She could go back to her hedge. There was no magic, but they would find a way to survive all the same. Steal, cheat, and barter. “I’m in a TV Show. Not me-me, but the other me.” It felt strange to say it out loud. She’d read it and written it, but she hadn’t actually said it. His explanation of his death seemed...unusual. She wondered what it would take to make that decision. She had not allowed anything to possess her. Not that she was aware of anyway. She also wasn’t entirely certain why he was telling her so much. It seemed out of character for him. She considered it for a moment. “Julia tells me that I was helping her. She needed someone to summon a god and so I offered to help. Apparently I altered her memory at some point, too. She asked me to,” she clarified. “But the god turned my cat inside out and then killed me.” All of it was said in an even voice, like it was a casual, everyday conversation. Almost like she was bored. “Otherwise I’d have the upper hand because you can’t see me.” She was smiling a little at that. “I understand.” -- “The cat seems unnecessary,” Holland said, just as evenly. He wasn’t pleased to hear she’d died, either, but saying so might bring them back to the conversation about his feelings, and he was glad to be away from that, since he wasn’t sure he’d been able to make her understand. “But it is very like a god to use unnecessary violence.” That was the clearest difference he drew between himself and Osaron, himself and the people of his world, like the Danes. He had never once used violence unless absolutely necessary, or unless forced to do it against his will. He had also been the inadvertent cause of violence, but that was different. He raised his eyebrows. “Because I assumed magic that requires hand movements would be disadvantaged when you have no hands,” he responded calmly, not rising to the bait. “But if I’m wrong, then… by all means.” He was not worried about not being able to see her. He also might not be able to directly affect her, even if he hit her, but that didn’t put him at a disadvantage when he didn’t actually want to kill her. But it would be stupid to duel her now if she would have difficulty fighting back. -- “It seemed that way.” She wondered a bit about a version of herself with a cat. She was very much a cat herself, so the concept made sense. It also seemed very much like a witch to have a familiar. Even if technically she was a magician. She still labeled herself a hedgewitch. “Gods seem to be bullshit either way. Especially the sort that start out as regular people.” The Beast was no less cruel because he’d been human. Either one of them. She wasn’t interested in why they were the way they were or redemption archs because whatever they’d been before, whatever happened to them, no one made them do anything. They’d decided. She knew she wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t looking for redemption for herself either because she didn’t need it. “I haven’t tried anything yet. I can still feel my hands. It’s complicated.” But she didn’t think it would be terribly interesting without the surety that would come with being able to see her hands. She wasn’t sure her magic worked this way. At least she already had portals. She tried something simple then, the simplest of spells to make light with her fingers. It felt right, but it didn't work. “You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now,” she said quietly, the annoyance creeping into her voice. -- “I don’t know if Osaron was ever human,” Holland mused. “He’s not really a god either. Just a sentient piece of magic with the ambitions to be a god, and enough power to convince some people.” Personally, he did not view Osaron as a god. Powerful, yes, and perhaps immortal, but still a lesser sort of being than what Holland would have imagined a god to be like. He would have thought a god would be harder to contain. But mostly, he didn’t like Osaron and didn’t want to think of him -- it -- that way. He was surprised that she had not yet tried her magic, especially since she’d made such a cocky statement about him being at a disadvantage while she was like this. He eyed the air where he sensed the presence of her magic, wondering if she was trying now. He couldn’t tell, but there was a brief silence in which she might have been doing… something. He was prepared for her magic to flare up at him, but nothing happened. And then she spoke again, sounding annoyed. “If you can’t affect me and I can’t affect you, it wouldn’t be much of a duel, would it?” he asked rhetorically. “I’ll wait.” -- “Either way, they’re all fucked.” She wasn’t likely to be talked out of it. Not that she thought he’d try. “He sounds like he sucks, though.” It seemed like a lot of people died. Even Julia died in her timeline. Maybe it was for the best, though, since apparently she was with the creepy romcom guy. Nickle or whatever his name was. Dime? Something. Cocky was how she got through life. She’d gone into being a hedge witch with a confidence she felt she’d needed. In the end she ended up as the top bitch in New York, so she didn’t really see it as a problem. It was just that small things seemed problematic when magic that wasn’t hers was affecting her. It was the problem with helping others. There was always a cost and it was almost always not one she was willing to pay. “Fine. But I’ll totally kick your ass once I’m me again.” -- “Mm,” Holland agreed. Just for fun, he tried out her very descriptive words on his tongue. “He definitely sucks.” The words felt a little strange, but he wasn’t sure if it was the meaning or the grammar of it that wasn’t quite right. Either way, he could tell that the descriptor had a negative connotation, and he was comfortable with any and all negative connotations being ascribed to Osaron. He sensed, then, a good opportunity for an exit. “In that case,” he said, stepping down the last few steps, “You know how to find me, when you’re ready.” He moved to pass her on the sidewalk - though for all he could tell, he might have brushed or bumped against her. And without looking back, he headed for the space between the next buildings over, where he’d left his mark, and promptly disappeared. |