[Charlie] It’s late enough at night that most people who have families and responsibilities have been in bed for hours already, but those of them who consider themselves creatures of the night are just getting themselves ready to go out into the world. He has no clue what sorts of hours or schedules the occupants of the apartment next to the Family Barbecue on South Racine Avenue keep, but he hasn’t called ahead to forewarn anyone of his arrival when he gets off the bus, glances around the street, and steps up onto the stoop.
The buzzer sounds out, and he waits.
[Maija] Calling ahead wouldn’t do any good. These residents have no phones. No cell phone, no landline, no real way to contact them, and that’s exactly how the too-thin waif likes it. She’s not sleeping though, as she doesn’t have to work until the dinner shift tomorrow. Curled up in the living room, a book laid across her lap, she still jumps when the buzzer sounds.
Perhaps, it’s Wahya, deciding to actually use the door for a change. Doubtful, but possible.
She unfolds and drops the blanket and book on the couch as she moves down the hall to the door, where the other end of the intercom resides. “Yeah?”
[Charlie] “Hi, Maija,” comes the dopey tenor that had been at her table several days ago, “it’s Charlie.”
It’s the skinny, darkly complected spirit-talker who had come to the apartment earlier in the week to seek Wahya’s advice about dreams he has been having, who wanted to ask for help learning some rites. The kid had stayed for dinner, where he hadn’t talked much but had answered whatever questions had come his way, and then agreed to meet Wahya at the Caern the next night at sundown.
So far as Maija can tell, that’s what happened.
“Is Man–I mean, is Wahya there?”
[Maija] Blink. Oh. The quiet one. She doesn’t answer right away, contemplating the possibilities of just telling him to go away, and what Wahya would say to that. (Wahya said he was safe. Wahya said he was ok. Wahya said…. a lot of things.) She leans her forehead against the door for a moment, as if gathering strength, then hits the buzzer again.
“He ain’t here, but ya kin come up if ya want. If he’s gonna come back tonight, it’ll be soon. S’come on up..”
She hits the other button unlocking the door downstairs, waiting till the light indicates the doors been opened before she starts to unlock the door before her. By the time he gets to the top, she has it unlocked, and opened slightly, watching to make suer he’s on his own before she pushes the door open the rest of the way.
[Charlie] “Al–“
The door snaps unlocked, and Charlie quickly nabs it to let himself in. She can’t hear him tromping up the stairs, his footfalls light and kept to the edge of the steps as he ascends, and he has his hands in his pockets as he approaches the door.
If he’s showered today, he doesn’t look like it. Not that he smells overly horrendous, but the kid’s curly hair is sticking up in more than one place and he has a thick, vicious stab running from well beneath the sleeve of his black t-shirt all the way down to the crook of his elbow, like something tore him open recently.
“Hello,” he says, cheerfully enough, as though he hadn’t just greeted her downstairs.
[Maija] In contrast, she’s showered recently. Her hair is still damp, the tank top she wears is as well, along her back. She eyes him a moment, and then steps back so that he can come in and move down the hall to the living room. ONce he’s inside, she goes about locking the door securely once again.
A beat, as she moves behind him to reclaim her place on the couch, her steps silent on the wood floor, the sound mufled by the thick socks she wears. Her only other clothing is a pair of boxers that barely cling to her non-existant hips. Like this, it’s easy to see just how thin she is, how breakable she seems to be.
“Ya alright?” She nods slightly to the scabbed over wound, “Wanna beer?”
[Charlie] The only sound Charlie makes as he moves across the wood floor comes from the muted falling of his hiking boots with each measured step. Although he looks like a stiff breeze would blow him over if he wasn’t paying attention the kid has some muscle to him; yet his solidity doesn’t showcase itself with undue noise or fuss. He stands in front of the couch instead of inviting himself to sit down, and he nods when she asks if he’s alright.
“No, thank you,” he says, as if reciting a line from a play instead of organically producing the sentiment. He’s learning. He was polite enough when he had stayed over for dinner, even if his table manners could use some–okay: a lot of–work. “Thank you again for dinner, you know, the last time I was here. It was really good.”
[Maija] He turns down a beer, and she grabs her blanket and retakes her corner of the beat up couch again, covering her legs with the soft flannel, and gesturing. “Make yaself at home.” she gestures toward the couch, and leans over to grab her beer bottle from the floor. It’s still cold, and half gone.
She waves away the thanks with a slight shrug of slender shoulders. “Wasn’t nuthin. Just leftovers from work. I kin cook better than that when I’m of a mind…” If she’s tense, she hides it well, though there is nothig in her expression that confirms one way or the other. She is a master at hiding, a pro at masks, and keeping the tension along her spine from being readily noticed.
Inside, a single mantra continues – Wahya said he was ok.
[Charlie] Compared to some of the Garou whose presence she’s been in before, Charlie’s Rage is an unimpressive entity, almost an afterthought. There’s a otherworldliness, a general weirdness about him that vastly overpowers whatever primordial anger might otherwise be lurking within him, but if that scabbed-up wound on his arm is any indication, he’s still a fucking monster.
So a little tension is to be expected. If he notices it, he doesn’t comment on it. He just sits himself down at the other end of the couch, and folds his arms into his lap, hands between his knees. He has long pianist’s fingers, spindly and with knobby joints. The only scar she can see on his body is a gunshot wound’s ghost going through one side of his throat and exiting on the other. It’s the size of a dime on the left side and a quarter on the right.
“Are you Uktena too?” he asks the blonde.
[Maija] She doesn’t seem to take up much space on the couch. In fact, she almost seems to disappear under the blanket on her lap, against the cushions, well used to fading to the background. She has been taught well, and not at all kindly. Surprisingly, the majority of her scars are hidden, though if he was looking, he’d have noted a scar on her leg that is precise and surgical in nature, faded with age. The others were hidden, even under in her minimal clothing.
“Nah.” she answers, easily enough… (carefully though, always.) “Gnawer.” explains why she always has food on hand, hm? “an’ you? Wahya said you was a shaman… but figure that’s ya moon, not ya tribe…”
She lifts her beer to her lips, taking a long slow swallow, before resting the bottle on her knee, the fingers of her other hand idly picking at the lable, peeling it from the bottle slowly…
[Charlie] “Yeah, that’s my moon,” he confirms, sniffing harshly as though to clear out his sinuses. He had been sleepy-eyed and tired at dinner several nights ago but seems if not wide awake then at least alert enough that he isn’t in danger of nodding off while waiting for Wahya to come home. “I belong to the Black Furies.”
[Maija] She blinks, and turns to study him for a long moment.. “I ain’t never met no guy fury afore…”
Of course, she hasn’t met many women furies, either. He had looked tired, and sleepy-eyed, but she didn’t think much of it. She doesn’t think much of it now, really. She’s more curious about his being fury – as well as the way he said it.
“Yeh belong to ’em?”
[Charlie] “Mm hmm.”
There’s dead air for a few seconds as Charlie replays the threads of the conversation and reorients himself with the tone of voice with which she has asked her question, and then he starts as though it’s come to his attention that she’s looking for something more there.
“I mean… my parents were both True, right? So like, my mother was a Fury and they say my father was a Child of Gaia but I don’t like… I don’t know, I’ve only ever met my mother’s side of the family… anyway, they couldn’t find my father or his pack or anything when I was born, and it’s like… not real honorable to pawn off male metis babies onto other tribes, like they do it with females all the time but not so much with the males? Anyway, what I meant was, they’re the ones claiming me, not like, the Children of Gaia or anybody else.”
This kid must have an easier time talking to spirits if he’s any good at what he does.
[Maija] She stiffens slightly, to hear he’s metis, though it’s something she tries to control. She’s living with a wolf-born for heavens sake, Charlie’s simply at the other end of the spectrum. and wahya said he was ok. “Oh. Jus’ sounded weird, like ya ain’t thought ya was fury, jus’ belonged to em. LIke they thought ya was some sorta property or some shit.”
There’s a flicker of something in her eyes, across her face as she says that, though it’s clearly something internal, nothing he said.
“Ain’t met many metis ether. Though I ain’t one t’seek out Trueborn anyways.”
[Charlie] [Pause!]
[Charlie] He had to have been expecting, or at least prepared for the possibility if we’re subscribing to the notion that he knows better than to expect much of anything from anyone he meets, that Maija was going to react the way she does to hearing that he’s metis. He’s had worse reactions than that before, and he’s been treated worse, even by Kinfolk. The Garou aren’t the only one with prejudices and misconceptions about his lot.
So Charlie just weathers her reaction, and reaches up to rub at his lower jaw as he watches her.
“Huh uh,” he intones when she explains that she thought that he meant he was property, although if he had to reconsider his words that wouldn’t be too far from the truth of how the Furies back in Boston looked at him. He doesn’t elaborate. He watches her face, his own brow pulling when that something crosses through her eyes.
She’s not one to seek out Trueborn anyways.
“How come?”
[Maija] He weathers her reaction, and if she noticed anything off beat, she could fall into the ‘its not you, its me’ line of explanation. But she doesn’t notice, and he asks another question, and that raises a whole nother line of thought.
She doesn’t trust anyone. It took her time to trust Wahya, though much less time than before. Every person she’s trusted in Chicago has died, or left. And Wahya’s already pulling away…
She looks up at Charlie, then down to tug at the edges of her blanket as she contemplates what to say. She finally settles on.. “I ain’t had much good come of knowin’ anyone in the Nation. Been raised up under a man and his whore an’ a passel of others what done thought I was they’s property an’ punchin’ bag. Those what ain’t think that, tend t’tell me it’s my own fault. So’s I tend t’keep to myself. Safer that way.”
[Charlie] Maybe it’s a good thing that Charlie came to the girl’s apartment on a night that didn’t hold his tiny sliver of a moon overhead. Those are the nights when he’s full of questions, when he raises notions that don’t have easy answers and drives everyone around him close to cracking with the volume and relentlessness of his inquiries. Those are the nights when he would ask Maija things that would be difficult enough to tackle even if this weren’t the second time they’d ever met each other.
“You shouldn’t listen to those people,” he says, squinting slightly, as though attempting to make out how his words are affecting her from across the scant distance on the couch.
[Maija] Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes, she can be surprisingly forthcoming, sometimes she’s completely shut off. MOre often than not, it’s the latter when it comes to the Nation, though she’s been trained to speak when spoken too. It oddly takes more strength to keep her mouth shut, than to just let everything spill forth.
A skinny shoulder lifts in a shrug, before her hand – fingers always cold, pale – slides over that same shoulder and fixes the thin tanktop strap into place. “Ain’t so easy.” A pause, and she studies him a moment. “They say it’s my fault cuz I ain’t stopped it afore I did. but they ain’t know th’ whole of it. Even Wahya. He think I’m weak, cuz I get scared.”
There’s quite a bit of hurt under those words, truth be told. Even though they talked about it, even though she understands that he can’t truly understand what she’s been through.
[Charlie] There are words people use to describe Charlie that aren’t exactly flattering. People think of him as a doofus, or a space cadet, or just goofy because of the fact that he constantly has a sleepy expression on his face, as if he has just woken up or is on his way to bed soon regardless of what time of day it is. When he’s in large groups or in certain parts of the city, particularly close to graveyards or the bawn, people have caught him zoning out on more than one occasion. Maija might have seen him do that for a moment at dinner the last time he was over, just stop digging into his food to listen intently to something that she couldn’t hear and Wahya wasn’t attending to.
She hasn’t been in the Umbra with him. She never will be. She’ll never witness how spirits will stop whatever they’re doing to hover closer to the young Theurge, or how Banes will cluster in one place to try and corrupt him, or make him join them. Hopefully she’ll never see that on this side of the Gauntlet either.
As dopey as the kid seems, as occupied as he looks gnawing on a blunt thumbnail as he watches her, Charlie is listening as she speaks. Maybe it’s because he has nothing else to do while he waits for Wahya, or maybe he’s actually interested in what she has to say. In either case, he doesn’t space out as she’s talking, and his question comes after a moment of consideration, after he drops his hand back into his lap.
“Do you think you’re weak?” he asks. Coming out of his mouth, it sounds like an innocent enough question.
[Maija] He’s listening, and maybe he’s understanding. Maybe he’s judging. She has no way to really know, as this is only the second meeting. She expects the latter, truth be told, as that’s all she’s ever known.
When his question finally comes, she doesn’t answer right away. She doesn’t shift in her seat, but she doesn’t look at him, either. It takes her a while, but she finally answers, her hand lifting agian, this time to tuck her hair behind her ear.
“In some ways, t’be honest. But not th’way he thinks. If I was weak, I’d be dead – I ain’t never woulda run, never took off on m’own, never survived for all this time without no help from the stupid fuckin’ nation that ain’t give two shits bout me anyway.” It’s said tiredly, without true anger. More acceptance, than anything else.
“I might be considered weak cuz I ain’t trust anyone, an’ I find it hard t’trust anyone, but I think that’s more survival than anything else…”
[Charlie] The kid sitting on her couch isn’t a Half Moon, isn’t one of the lawgivers of their Nation; he’s a Crescent Moon, a shaman, and the role that was prescribed to him by Gaia was to deal in matters pertaining to the spirits. He coaxes spirits into aiding their Gaian neighbors, he heals the wounded, he conducts rituals that keep the physical realm safe and free from taint. In the course of his duties he asks questions, and he solves riddles; he doesn’t attempt to fit what he learns into the greater context of the laws that have been laid out, and he certainly is in no position to be passing judgment on Kinfolk, or on the human- and wolf-born among them.
Maija doesn’t know him from the man in the moon though. For all she knows, that’s exactly what he’s doing: judging. If he is, he’s doing a good job of keeping his thoughts off of his gaunt face.
“Does it matter so much,” he asks, “what other people think? Like, especially people who have no idea what it’s like to be Kin? I mean…” He reaches up to idly scratch at his upper jaw with his nails, furrowing his brow in thought. “Wahya’s wolf-born. They have totally different standards for what ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ are. And like… I mean, I’m not trying to defend him or anything, but if you go your whole life letting what other people say bother you you’re gonna start believing it, and… I don’t know, if I took everything anyone ever said about me seriously that’d make me worse off than they are, you know?”
[Maija] She only knows him as a man of Wahya’s moon, and she doesn’t know what he’s thinking, how he’s deciding what to say. She shifts in her seat, a moment, just changing positions so that she can grab her beer and take another long swallow, before she sets it on the floor again.
She rests her elbow on the back of the couch, and rests her head against her hand. “It’s not that I take it seriously from th’rest of ya fuckers.” Smooth, Maija. “But when its someone ya think is a friend, it aches. I ain’t got much in th’way of people t’talk too. Everytime I get close, they get kilt or up n leave. So when someone I think I kin confide in says shit, it hurts. I know I’ma be used an’ abused by th’Nation. No offense. Is all I known. Then when ya let ya guard down jus’ a little bit, I get smacked down again.”
Another slight shrug. “Wahya’s gonna leave, too, ya know. Says he can’t ‘keep’ me. Even if I ain’t wanna be kept by no one. I ain’t belong t’no one but me, ya know? that’s th’way I want it, anyway…ain’t ever th’way it really is.”
[Charlie] This kid isn’t a debater. He isn’t a smooth talker, and he doesn’t have a lot of fully-formed opinions waiting to be handed out at the slightest provocation. This kid speaks a language that only spirits can understand, and he knows how to draw more strange symbols than he is able to produce proper English letters, and he sleeps during the day because the pull of the moon is so strong in him that he simply can’t rest when the sun’s down, and he never seems to blink.
That’s supposed to be a sign of madness, is failure to blink regularly. It’s as if he’s only done it a handful of times since he sat down on the couch with the angry young woman. Either he’s afraid to take his eyes off of her, or Charlie is a little more cracked than most people are able to grasp on first meeting him.
He can’t be much older than her, yet the difference in their demeanors and their individual representations of their ages is staggering. Maija seems as though the entire world has put her through the wringer; Charlie hides his trauma. He could have turned out to be a bitter, irritable jerkoff, Joey had tried to tell him. This isn’t Joey sitting across the couch from him.
“Maybe he’s not really your friend,” he says, after a pause that seems as though it would have taken up the entire evening if Charlie didn’t keep an eye on it. “Or he thought you could handle him telling you what he thought. I don’t know.”
She didn’t ask for his opinion, either, did she?
[Maija] And there’s the crux of the matter, right there. What truly hurts, more so than bones breaking and skin shredding and mind fucking. Maybe none of them are really a friend, even the ones that say they are.
“Maybe not.”
There’s a slight shake of her head, as she watches her fingers pluck at the blanket that covers her thighs. “Jus’ gets lonely. When ya ain’t got no one.”
[Charlie] This is where the judgmental individual would have an opinion for her. Would have advice. Would have some words to try and tell her why it is that she’s lonely, or what she can do to absolve the loneliness, in either case proving her point by essentially pinning all of the blame for her situation squarely on the bony shoulders of the young woman hidden beneath a blanket.
Charlie doesn’t do any of that. He nods, but he doesn’t speak.
[Maija] He doesn’t pin it on her, and that’s half what she was expecting, and in that he surprises her a little bit. He just nods, and she looks over at him for a long time. She doesn’t say anything, and just studies the sleepy (monster) garou on her couch.
She lifts a hand to rub the back of it against her jaw, idly.
“Sorry. Ain’t meant t’unload. Ya sure ya ain’t want somethin’ to eat, or drink or anythin?”
[Charlie] The kid lifts his arms up over his head, grasping his right wrist with his left arm and stretching with such strength in his reach that the vertebrae between his shoulders crackle like dry wood spitting in a fire. He does this as Maija apologizes, groaning out a “That’s okay!” as he gives his muscles a chance to reinvigorate themselves. When the stretch is completed he turns on the couch, catching one of his legs beneath his body, and nods.
“I’m kind of thirsty,” he admits, finally.
[Maija] He reaches and pops his back with a stretch, and she continues to watch. He’s an odd one. Maybe it’s because he’s Metis, maybe it’s because he’s Theurge like Wahya, maybe it’s because his rage isn’t overpowering her and filling the room.
He admits he’d like something to drink, and she stands, letting the cover fall from her legs to the floor and stepping out of it. She tugs the edge of the boxers that are obviously not hers – they’re too big, they’re falling off her thin hips, and the straightening of the thigh only makes them slip lower, baring her belly, her lower back.
“I got beer, an’ water. An I kin make some hot tea if ya’d rather…”
[Charlie] ‘Odd’ is putting it lightly.
The kid seems as though he’s just been roused from sleep when he completes his stretch and turns towards her, and as Maija stands to head into the kitchen he leans his left arm on the back of the sofa, resting his head on the padding of his biceps and scratching at his scalp with his fingernails. This might be a change of pace for her, but as she walks into the kitchen Charlie isn’t watching her backside but the sofa cushion she’d just vacated.
Both of them are scrawny, but the difference is that there is an inherent power present in Charlie’s physique. He’s all lean lines and muscle, and he looks as though he could flip that couch over if he got it into his mind to do so. It’s got to be hard to have him at her back regardless of how little Rage seems to be roiling within him. He’s got a grasp on his inner anger, but that otherworldly ephemeralness is what’s threatening to consume him.
He spends too much more time in the Umbra and ‘odd’ isn’t even going to start to cover it.
“Water would be awesome,” he call after her.
[Maija] He’s at her back, and it could be more difficult for her than it is. If he does look through the open arch way to the kitchen, he may, or may not, see the strategically placed mirror. Wahya’s snuck up on her too many times – and she learned to keep track of who’s in the living room.
She grabs a glass, and then opens the freezer for some ice cubes, before pouring him a glass of water from the filter pitcher in the fridge. She grabs herself another beer, and then after a moments thought, she grabs a bag of Doritos to, and makes her way back to the living room. She hands him the glass. “Dunno about awesome, but it’s cold anyway.”
She climbs onto the couch, rather than just sits – stepping onto the cushion with stocking feet and then falling to sit cross-legged, with a light bounce and creaked complaint from the old sofa. She settles the beer between her thighs, and opens the back of chips, takes a few and then sets it between them so he can have some if he changes his mind.
“Doritos, on the other hand, Doritos are awesome.”
[Charlie] Charlie uses both hands to take hold of the glass, as though he’s afraid of dropping it or else doesn’t trust either of his hands to accomplish the task on its own, and offers up a murmured “Thanks” in exchange for her having gotten up and retrieved it for him. He had forgotten to ask her not to put ice in it, yet he drinks it quickly anyway, either impervious to the shocking cold that assaults the nerve endings on the ceiling of his mouth or else so thirsty that it doesn’t matter.
He doesn’t slug it back, exactly, doesn’t gulp it as though he’s been abstaining from taking in nourishment or hydration, yet he does drain the glass down to the ice in seven or eight evenly spaced swallows. Eyes flick down to the bag of Doritos, but he doesn’t immediately go for them.
“I like, had this huge scone and like two kolachies–” He completely massacres the word. “–back at The Brotherhood. People keep trying to feed me. I’m so full. Thank you though.”
[Maija] She nods, and isn’t offended at all, it seems. “More for me.” It’s said with a slight curve of her lips at the corner, there and than gone so quickly it might not have actually existed at all. She reaches down for her original beer, finishes it off, and then sets it aside. She opens the one between her thighs, and settles in for a comfortable munch session.
“People try t’feed me all the time too.” considering she weighs all of a buck ten, soaking wet, that’s no surprised. “Fact is, I eat all the time now. Jus’t ain’t ever gain weight. I work next door – all th’left overs I can munch.”
A bony shoulder lifts in a shrug again, before she looks over at him. “So… yah stayin at th’ ‘Hood?”
[Charlie] A question, and Charlie holds the glass in the palms of his hands in an attempt to get the ice to melt faster. With his hands being about the same temperature as the night air outside, it isn’t going to happen any faster than if he just sets the damn glass down on the carpet and waits for the heat in the room to do it for him. His fingers are long and knobby, and they encircle the glass without much difficulty.
“Yeah.”
A beat, a squinting of his eyes as he considers what he’s going to say next, and he absently swirls the ice in his glass.
“It’s not bad. There’s always other people around. Kinda loud sometimes, there’s this guy next door to me who’s always playing the drums in the afternoon when I’m trying to sleep.”
[Maija] That gets a reaction. She snorts and nods. “Alex. He’s an asshole.”
She takes a swig of her beer again, and doesn’t answer for a few minutes. Then. “I used t’stay there. Was…” she gestures absently with a chip. “too much. Too many of’em too damn close.”
A pause, then. “Ya know Marcus?”
[Charlie] Charlie stifles a belch that never really gets the chance to leave his throat, though he doesn’t cover his mouth or excuse himself with the rumbling in his chest. It’s as if making strange noises is as natural as breathing quietly and without disturbing one’s neighbors. He doesn’t laugh when she refers to Alex as an asshole, as though he’s already had a run-in with the guy or at least heard enough stories to help support this theory, and then there’s another question.
“Yeah,” he says. “I don’t think he lives there anymore, but I’ve seen him around. Why?”
[Maija] She looks surprised, briefly, to hear Marcus doesn’t live there anymore, but shrugs it off quickly, as always. “He’s nice t’me. S’all. He checks in every once in a while too. He’s kinda weird… but ain’t never, ya know. Come at me or nuthin.”
In fact, marcus being so nice freaks her the hell out, to be honest. His steadfast believe that the Nation is a Good and Wonderful Place for All it’s Trueborn and Kin is kind of hard to take. He probably shits glorious garou rainbows.
[Charlie] A glance down at the progress of his ice’s melting into water reveals that it isn’t going as smoothly as planned, so he lifts the glass with a tinkling of cubes and stands without interrupting her. His boots whisper on the floor as he moves, not thudding like many men tend to move even when inside homes or places of worship, and moves into the kitchen where he sets upon the faucet in the sink.
“He seems like a good guy,” Charlie says, wooden, as though he’s reciting a line that he’s not terribly familiar with rather than attempting to improvise.
[Maija] He gets up to get some more water, and there isn’t a flinch as he stands. She just watches him, steadily munching on her chips and licking the cheesy goodness from her finger tips between each one.
Charlie moves silently, quietly, and gets some water. There’s something in his tone though… She tips her head, and turns to watch him through the opening into the kitchen. “Ya sure? Ya ain’t sound like ya quite believe that…”
Her tone is one of curiosity, mostly. The more he is there, and doesn’t come at her, the more she relaxes, bit by bit, inch by inch. Not quite as relaxed as she is with Wahya when they’re alone, but she’s not in a flight or fight reaction mode either.
[Charlie] The glass sloshes full of water, the ice cubes singing out as they’re displaced and danced around the inside of the cup, and the kid stands watching the small whirlwind of activity. It makes him miss out on the way Maija turns to look at him, the tone of voice she takes on when she speaks.
Anyone else might have taken that as an opportunity to speak up about what he really thinks of Marcus. Then again, Charlie has undertaken a rite with the younger Garou, has let go of whatever misgivings or anger he had had towards him. All that’s really left is the lasting first impression that the Forseti had made, and that doesn’t need to be brought up in mixed company.
Charlie reaches up to shut down the faucet, and stands in the kitchen slugging down his second glass of water, eyes closing this time as he isn’t facing Maija and isn’t attempting to follow a conversation along towards completion. He hadn’t turned the water on as cold as it could go this time, and the ice has melted enough that when he gets to the bottom all that are left are thin pebbles of frozen water.
Stifling another burp, Charlie coughs a few times, covering his mouth with the crook of his elbow, then sets the glass down on the countertop and answers her.
“I’ve only met him twice,” he says, “and like, the first time, I don’t remember it happening, so…”
[Maija] She’s still watching him, watching the way he stares at the glass, still holding the glass carefully and slugging it back like there’s not enough water in the world at this moment. H doesn’t answer till he’s done, and doesn’t exactly answer her curiosity.
She waits until he’s done, and it brings two questions, two possibilities, she shifts her position on the couch slightly, and offers by way of enticement. “Ain’t to say he hasn’t pissed me off a time or two. He’s got an awful naive way a lookin at shit…”
Then she poses another question – so that he can comment on both. Or neither. Or either. “Ya ain’t remember? Why not?”
[Charlie] He’s apparently decided he’s going to stand in the kitchen while he finishes his water, or while he gets his bearings, or he’s just decided that he prefers standing up to sitting down. The apartment isn’t very large, and he can still see Maija if he angles his body the right way. The water is left sitting on the countertop and he plunges his hands into his slouching pockets as he comes to stand by the stove.
As she speaks, Charlie starts chewing on the inside of his lower lip, his brow furrowed thoughtfully. He’s attending to what she’s saying, but with the harsher lights in the kitchen he seems more distracted, like he’s listening to something outside of the conversation that they’re having. It doesn’t last long, and when it passes it seems as though he’s solely focused on her.
His gaze isn’t heavy or harsh. The kid is young, and looks and acts it. Whatever wisdom he’s accrued as a member of the Nation has come from his actions out in the field, from fulfilling his duties, not from idle conversation.
Maija wants to know why he doesn’t remember, and Charlie rolls his shoulders in an idle shrug.
“Eh,” he says, “they tell me I was like, entranced by a Bane, blacked out and stuff. I guess I was in a coma for a day and a night afterwards. I don’t remember what happened for a few hours before then either.”
[Maija] He moves on from Marcus, and chooses to ignore it. She lets it slide. LIke she said, she’s been pissed off at him before.
She doesn’t seem weirded out that he decides to stand, and merely turns in her seat so that she can still talk to him. she drapes herself over the arm of the sofa, her chin on the cushion, her arms hanging over the side as she watches him with dark eyes – so dark it’s hard to distinguish the pupils from the color itself.
“Sounds scary. That happen often?”
[Charlie] Charlie shakes his head.
“Not all the time. I’ve had my memory wiped out and other weird stuff happen before, but like, I haven’t ever wound up not waking up for hours and hours after being trounced by a spirit.”
For it being somewhat novel it still doesn’t sound as though it’s bothering him over much. Perhaps he’s just able to compartmentalize what is happening to him and what he chooses to divulge to kinswomen he’s just met.
There’s no watch attached to his right for him to check, no cell phone in his pocket for him to consult, and he doesn’t glance around the kitchen to try and find an LCD surface with the time displayed on it. This kid’s concept of time and the passage of it is relatively cloudy, his memory shot through with holes from sleep deprivation and strange hours being kept and divided between two different worlds.
“Hey, I’m just gonna try and catch Wahya later. Thank you for the water.”
[Maija] He waves it away, and than thanks her for the water. Like letting him have something from the tap was some big thing. She shrugs a shoulder with the smallest of grins, that fades almost as soon as it materializes. “Yeah, alright.”
She pushes up to stand again, dumping her blanket on the floor, and stretching slowly, much as he did earlier. She then leads the way toward the door so that she can go about unlocking the locks so that he can go. “I’ll tell him ya was here.”
There’s a pause, and she looks up at him… “Ya kin come back anytime. Cook ya a real meal.”
[Charlie] Maija deposits her blanket on the floor, and Charlie starts out of the kitchen to accompany her to the door. He walks alongside her so she doesn’t have his negligible yet nevertheless present Rage at her backside, and he stands out of the way so that the girl can unlock the door to let him out again.
There’s a nod when she says she’ll tell Wahya he was here, and when she invites him back for a meal, a lop-sided grin appears on his gaunt face. It makes him seem younger for a moment, and then he’s pulling his hands out of his pockets and offering the kinswoman a left-handed wave goodbye.
“Awesome,” he says. “Bye!”
And he’s off, hauling his jeans up higher on his hips before he troops down the stairs, whistling to himself as he goes.
[Maija] She lifts a hand and waves, and then watches until he hits the lower landing and opens the door. When it closes, she closes her door, and relocks the door, and returns to her seat, her beer, her book.. and most importantly, her Doritos.
[Charlie] [Wrap!]