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[anewlanguage]

[Cain is aware what day it is and, as you probably guessed, he's drunk. Plastered. In the garden, twirling a ripped-off stick deftly between his fingers. He only slips at the end when he's meant to catch it.

He sings, too, as he's wont to do.]

...but I've still got my health, so what do I care?
My best friend, alas, is a glass solitaire,
but I still got my health, so what do I care?

By fashion and foppery, I'm never discussed.
Attending the opry, my box would be a bust....


[ooc: feel free to catch him in the gardens, the halls, wherever. I'm not bothering with much continuity, it's a free for all.]

Comments

[routemistress]

[Iris leans close, because touch; he's clouded with the wrong kind of drunk and the thornbushes are bigger, blacker than on his good days, but he's himself. It's grounding and uplifting at the same time. She isn't trying to influence his mood, she never does, but her own should be more perceptible. If he cares to look.]

Modesty don't suit you, sweetheart. You're magnificent. Humans generally, I mean.

[This with a sly smirk for him.]

...Dusty, probably. Cilla. Emmylou. Kirsty. Janis. Too many to choose just the one.

[anewlanguage]

[He's afraid to spread this mood to her, and even drunk he's doing his best to keep his soul on lock down. It's not a rebuff, or the equivalent of a locked door; he just doesn't dare venture out right now. It's as introverted as David Cain can possibly get.]

Janis Joplin? Heh, now there's a woman I could've made a home with. How many years did y'see on earth anyway?

[routemistress]

I'll take you out to the Proximan Chain, you can try your luck. She'd love you.

[She's not trying to intrude on it, but she's there: a kind of Iris-coloured, palpable mist, crystalline with concern, interposing itself between him and everything else.]

...Got a bit tricky to keep count, what with all the alternates and that. Most of the 1970s. Good chunk of the Napoleonic Wars. The odd dirty weekend in the Jurassic - don't ask. What is it with some folk and dinosaurs?

[anewlanguage]

[He refuses to let himself reach out to it, but he gets a distinct sense of comfort from her being there, concerned for him and willing to stay with him anyway.]

I always figured if someone wanted to be around giant carnivorous animals, they could go take a dip in the Nile. Plenty of crocodiles there who looked just the same back when.

[routemistress]

[It's enough. Entwined interdependence isn't a thing either of them want anyway - well, only on select occasions, at least. This is better.]

Old friend of mine [and by old friend, she means lover] - she 'ad a massive thing about 'em. Kept 'em as pets. Dinosaurs, I mean, not crocs. I never did see the point; they're thick as bricks, they don't 'ousetrain and you can never keep a cleaner. They do 'ave nice feathers, mind.

[She touches one of the plumes on her favourite hat.]

[anewlanguage]

Too bad I'm not a poacher, you and your time travel'd make me a wealthy man. [...He already is one. He just doesn't care much for the money; he'd become an assassin for the experience. Money just allowed him the means to keep improving his talents.]

[routemistress]

[It's a different, an older passion that lights Iris' eyes, now.]

Oh, there's so much out there. It does me 'ead in that I can't take you out of 'ere. Yet. What is it with me and people who want to wrangle bloody dinosaurs?

[And then, as if apropos of nothing.]

...There's cloning firms'll pay a lot for skin an' feather samples. Don't 'ave to finish 'em off, even, just 'old 'em down long enough.

[anewlanguage]

You offering me a new job? [He grins, though, because even if he's never been terribly interested in the ancient past, he loves adventure.]

[routemistress]

You'll want summat after 'ere, won't you? There's a lot of multiverse out there.

[So does she; it's a large part of why she loves him. And although Iris isn't a planner-ahead, much, she's got a good sense of timelines, of possible futures - and unshakeable faith in his eventual graduation.]

[anewlanguage]

[He's not sure what's going to happen after this. Though he won't say that--admitting it feels dangerous--it's there in his expression, a whisper if her mind is near enough.]

You know me, I'm up for anything.

[routemistress]

[Which is a lie, but not one Iris takes issue with; it's one he wants to be true, and the exceptions that make it a lie are so very specific. So she smiles, because he'll tackle that exception sooner or later.]

The question is, love, is the multiverse up to you?

[anewlanguage]

[His lip twitches, very slightly.] I don't plan to make ripples in it. Think I did enough of that in my own universe, eh?

[routemistress]

Enough?

[She says it with a lifted eyebrow, not very willing to believe in his capacity - or at least his desire - not to ripple, once he's taken his time regrouping and reassessing. But it's the second thought she responds to, at least tangentially.]

...can I ask you summat? 'Ow'd you get into the business to start with?

[anewlanguage]

[He smiles, stretching] Ohh...I was in the military. Special forces, that kinda thing. Figured out I make better money and prob'ly a bigger difference being a mercenary, so I left soon as I could and started making a name for myself. After a while didn't matter if I was making a difference as long as the pay was high and the job was interesting.

[routemistress]

Difference?

[She doesn't ask to what - he'll clarify or he won't, and if he does he might tell her. It surprises her. It doesn't quite fit with the picture she's been assembling, and she's avid for the missing pieces. Nevertheless, she keeps talking, softly, lying on the grass beside him.]

...It is interesting. I'm not a big fan of people bein' dead, you know that already - but I've always loved a fight. Or a challenge. And it's both. I can see it.

[Sometimes too easily for her own peace of mind. But she doesn't say that aloud either.]

cw: mention of child abuse

[anewlanguage]

I was an idealistic kid once upon a time. [He says this ruefully, rubbing his brow] Seeing people starving in other countries, being trained to think it was the fault of the dictators (or elected officials, or whoever) and then not being allowed to go take the bastards out.... Assassinations sounded better. I learned pretty quick that people are people, and they're going to tear each other apart. It doesn't matter how many tyrants you kill, we're basically like any other animal. Survival of the fittest.

Along the way I learned my version of 'fittest' wasn't just about being the best shot and the hardest punch, though. Learned to grin my way through it all, learned to love what I do on and off the job.

[And then he'd had Cassandra. And then he'd learned what loneliness felt like, what it was like to literally have nothing to live for but a pile of tapes with a little girl silently obeying his orders...and smiling at him even after he shot, stabbed, and beat her.]

<3 <3

[routemistress]

They are. Same thing applies to any people that've learned enough to 'ave government and all. It's one way of dealin' with it.

[And there are the thorns again. She's not, today, going to name them; it's enough that they're there, that he can certainly see her seeing it. Instead she leans in, drops a kiss on his temple, that soft spot where the skin is finest.]

It's that I love, in you.

[anewlanguage]

What, that I loved killing people? [He looks up, smiling slightly. It's just them; it's safe to joke about it with her, because so far she has never snapped at him for it. Granted, she probably understands that it's a way of coping and accepting.]

[routemistress]

...A little.

[She does understand: just as he understands she'd have been repelled by someone who wanted to kill only for killing's sake.

Her answer is a shade more serious than his question, and she means it: she means the steel edge of him, the quality that means he won't hesitate, that will throw every ounce of him uncompromisingly behind something once he's decided to do it. And still smile afterwards.]

I've no use for someone that does their life 'alf-'earted.

[anewlanguage]

Now that I've given up the business, who knows what I'll do with my hot head. [He has no idea where to go from here, honestly. But he does know he doesn't want to go back to assassinations. Not as long as Cassandra is alive.]

D'you know when I quit?

[routemistress]

You're an adventurer by nature. You'll think of summat. Or just 'ead out there and see what you find.

[It's what Iris did. She doesn't mention the come with me for a while option either, but it's there.]

One thing about this boat, you've got all the time and all the worlds to choose from. No, I don't.

[She has a fairly good guess, but she'd rather hear him tell it anyway.]

[anewlanguage]

[That's not a bad plan. Not one he's kid-at-Christmas excited to do, either, but he has little enthusiasm for any long-term plan right now. So he does what he's been doing: he focuses on the past, and on the immediate moment.]

She said 'No'.

[routemistress]

[Iris still half-wishes he wouldn't, although she does get why he does - and it's true that Cass made that first crack in him, the one that makes it possible for her, for anything else he's ever going to care about, to get in. She's not in the slightest bit surprised by his answer.]

She would. She's a girl that makes up 'er own mind no matter what. Break 'er and she breaks you right back.

[She says it neutrally, neither praise nor blame: an observation only, but she draws close, sliding an arm around him, while she says it. It's a silent assertion, not that everything's all right - it's not, but this, here and now: this is unconditional, this is all right.]

[anewlanguage]

She learned that all on her own.

[Even though Cain is exactly the same way, Cassandra took the lesson her own unique direction. He sighs heavily, and lays his head on her shoulder.

For right now, he'll accept comfort, even if he hasn't stopped pretending he doesn't need it.]

[routemistress]

[There are a number of things Iris might say, ranging from children do that no matter what to what did you expect to shhh, it's all right, but none of them would be both true and comforting, so she keeps her silence and holds him.

What is true is that she loves him; another thing she doesn't say aloud. Shaping words around it makes it a question that needs an answer, a game with changed rules, and she rather thinks they're both better off without rules or answers - and while her instincts want to distract him away from the grief today's making him dwell on, that feels selfish, perhaps disrespectful, and she chooses not to try.

She holds him, not because he needs comfort but because she wants to; because of the solid strength of him against her, because of the tired power in his bones, because of the scent of his skin against the cool air of the night garden. Not because nothing else matters: it all matters and they both know it - but because this matters, too.]