Scene #9226:

Owner	Pose
Rita Ma	'It worked.' Carmen says so. Who's Rita to question her? It would've been easy to take another swing. It would've been chancy, on her last reserves with a dozen enemies in arm's reach, but easy. But that message took it out of her. She'd slipped away- maybe off the balcony- and into the unlit night, head and gut churning with even uglier things than usual. "I need to get something to eat," she hive-touched Lilian with, a few moments later. The strained-like-piano-wire tone of it means "before I die or eat somebody". "Maybe a restaurant would be nice?" In the hopeful lilt, there's an invitation. Of course nowhere in L Corp's district is open. All the lights are out, and the bright stars shine overhead, with nothing to blot them out. Lilian can catch up just as darkness turns to light at the next district's border. Rita has re-weaved herself by then, in her black-and-white Trideag digs, but she looks like shit. Her tentacles are scuffed and abraded, compromising the disguise with damage-textures that don't belong on fabric or skin. She got the borders of the colors a little wrong. Where it couldn't copy the mutated eye underneath, an imitated iris overflows its sclera like scrambled egg. The streets are quiet and cool still here, far enough from the tree. Not much feels like it's changed. "Know anywhere good? I don't have a lot of money on me," she finally says. Her voice is dry. "As long as it's not Twenty-Three." https://youtu.be/AlUU8CkcHJ8
Lilian Rook	§Like I told Justin. What good is it if I don't spend it?§ Lilian already hadn't been able to take another swing a while ago. She'd kept going in spite of sense and feasibility. Without the desire to harm Angela, all she could lean on was the determination to not lose. When everything ended in the uneasy, unpleasant compromise it had, even she knew there was nothing left in the tank to go on. §I'm starving.§ Inhumanity aside, Lilian hardly looks any better. Quite possibly worse. Without the ability to heal her own wounds, she'd somehow asked less of Rita than Rita was willing to give herself. Her cleanest change of clothes were the one she was alread wearing. Most of the blood isn't hers, but the freshest is. For once, she doesn't feel like the time excuses her stopping to wash her matted hair. Sheer bloodymindedness pushes her away from pleading with Xion to just take her home. Putting one foot in front of the other, over and over and over again, until she is so many streets down that she's lost count, is just a matter of practice. 'As long as it's not Twenty-Three.' "I'm thinking of shutting that place down." says Lilian, dully managing the most exhausted possible rendition of an even tone. She's finally brought out her phone, miraculously only somewhat damaged. She squints at the scrolling lists on the spideweb cracked screen. "Not any particular reason. It's just hearing that name makes me think of some decadent creeps that I hate." The ride share she'd called sixty seconds ago pulls up to the curb, and she gestures Rita into the back seat, past an utterly terrified looking driver, caught way out of his element. She tosses a wad of ahn into his lap, says "For the seats. And keeping your mouth shut." and turns side profile to the rear view mirror to stare out the window, chin in her palm, elbow aginast the door. "I wish it looked any different outside." she says. "What an exciting three days that must have been. For everyone who thought that it might be the first day of the rest of their lives." . . . . . . . . Ten minutes later, after nearly passing out in the car seat, Lilian taps her fingertips to the bulletwound in her side, grimaces at the semi-sticky wetness they come away with, and shoulders her way out the door and up the steps to TamaYuRa south side. The group outside splits through just at the sight of the two of them, long before recognizing who they are. The inescapable glut of corporate security manifests as two men who know better than to approach anyone soaked in so much murderous aura, residual or otherwise. When the greeter looks indecisive about whether to call the cops, Lilian flashes her company card to send her skittering, and then removes one seated group simply by looking at them. All but collapsing in a corner booth, Lilian shivers lightly in the air-conditioned interior. Tossing her empty lighter on the table, she strikes up a weak flame with a fingersnap, and lights up one of her remaining cigarettes directly under the NO SMOKING sign. "Can you hold it in long enough to bring me back something?"
Rita Ma	"Yeah," says Rita, with the tiniest exhausted laugh as she stares out the car's window. Her scrambled eyes don't track the scenery. They just stare off, street-lights scrolling over them. "They are sort of creeps, aren't they. Miss Greta was nice, but..." But. There won't be a new tomorrow for her; or anyone. Not that cleanly. Not yet. She nods, weakly. When Lilian almost falls asleep, Rita doesn't, but she does leave a trickle of drool down her seatbelt. - - - - "Thanks, Mr. Driver. Sorry, Mr. Driver." Does she even notice the crowd parting, or the bouncers flinching, or the group leaving their seats? Probably not. She'd look guiltier, if she did. In the slightly-too-bright light of the restaurant's interior, Rita looks still more like a scuffed, slightly mis-painted doll. She lingers by the table's edge, eyes effortfully averted from Lilian's wound to scan the sushi buffet instead, and nods. "Can you hold it in long enough to bring me back something?" "I can control myself, Ms. Rook," she murmurs smilingly, the Most Controlling Herself she's ever been. "I should eat fast, though. Let's get that bullet-hole closed up." It's about two pencils' worth of damaged mass at most. That'll be a couple of sushi rolls to fix, she thinks. She's gone just long enough to let Lilian savor that the tiles are a little cold, that one of the other patrons has a cough, and that one of the overhead lights flickers. The world keeps turning. What was it for? Was Carmen completely sure? We weren't tricked, were we? Angela and Sougo and Lilian and Carmen... they all have special ways of knowing things. I don't. I just have to trust what they tell me. I don't often feel helpless like this. 'What was it for' finds its answer. Lilian can hear Rita ordering, burbly-distant; can hear the stammer in the waitress's voice; and then she slips back in, and sits right next to Lilian instead of opposite. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, and warmth to warmth. The tray in her hands- sashimi, one bowl of steaming miso soup, hot tea, sushi rolls, as much still-frozen shrimp as she could haggle for- clacks against the table. Rita's arm slips behind Lilian's lower back, carefully avoiding the bullet-wound, and squeezes gently. The sigh that the closeness coaxes out of Rita is rich, half-satisfied, a little trembly. Her eyes drift shut for an intoxicating moment of woozy near-relief. "I'm really sorry," she burbles, in a moment where it barely feels like enough blood is reaching her brain. "I wish I'd-- I wish I'd trusted you sooner, more. Everybody there. You were the only one to..." "... A long time ago, I put your sword to my neck. Do you remember that? Why'd I stop?" The fraught little exhalation and second squeeze that follows is only slightly undercut by the grisly sight of Rita eating a meat-packed sushi roll in exactly zero bites.
Lilian Rook	'They are sort of creeps, aren't they. Miss Greta was nice, but...' "Thank god. I was wondering if I was the only one." says Lilian, thinking about Aidan and Kale, and not at all who Rita means. 'I should eat fast, though. Let's get that bullet-hole closed up.' "Sorry Rita." says Lilian, given to a painful smile. "I'd clot it myself, but I don't have enough magic left for that." She tries to resist the urge, then gives up, before saying "I really thought she'd give up if I did it to her, so I suppose I can blame her if I have to." 'Her' meaning Sarracenia, and 'it' being the horrifying affront to her sole source of dignity. She sounds so blasé about it now. Lilian isn't actually reading Rita's mind as she slips away to order, but they're thinking nearly the same thing. The touch of her thoughts are like the distant signal of a lighthouse. Something reaching out in a kind of isolated, yearning, yet knowing by its purpose it cannot really be alone, way. Like Rita leaving harbour, even if only to go down the coast, already makes her lonely. §I don't think Carmen was wrong, but I wish she was more right. I wish she could have loved her life's work more and Angela less. Between the miracle of helping Angela, and the miracle of saving the City, one was clearly closer within our reach.§ She makes a little sound of surprise when Rita returns. They'd obviously spent a great deal of time very close to each other while underground, but something about the energy between them, live when their bodies draw close enough to complet a circuit, tells her that it's different. 'I'm really sorry, I wish I'd-- I wish I'd trusted you sooner, more. Everybody there. You were the only one to...' "Hearing those words from you feels like the one good thing to come of all this." Lilian sighs. The sound of it is exactly as leaky as the words warrant, for once. She shivers faintly against Rita. "I couldn't stand the way things were going, but didn't know how to stop them. Why we'd gone from that day on the train to . . . I don't know. Like everything they were always telling you finally sunk in, and you didn't need me to be there anymore, to talk to or to listen, because I wasn't good enough to justify being around the person you grew up to be." Too late to put it back now. Lilian breathes in the smell of hour old gore and sifts the scent of Miso through it. Her stomach clenches painfully. "I'm guilty of it too. I couldn't think of a single reason that you would, but I know that on some level I must have thought you'd choose to be against me somehow. So hearing that means a lot to me; as a reminder that even if I got a little lost in the middle, I must still be on the right side." '... A long time ago, I put your sword to my neck. Do you remember that?' "Barely." Lilian admits. "I try not to. I'm not certain I could go on if I carried everyone's worst moments with me." Lilian goes quiet as she pulls apart her chopsticks, the least cognizant of burning stares on her from everywhere in the building as she's ever been. "I hope it was because you trusted me to know whether it should have gone the rest of the way. And . . ." Lilian olds up the first roll as if examining if it'll betray her. Or as if to determine whether she should be allowed to eat real food ever again, after what happened. "Whatever I could have done differently, and I didn't, and we might have won if we did . . . I hope you don't hold it against me."
Rita Ma	Rita eating is almost cute now. She makes it clear she's still listening to Lilian with little gurgle-muffled mmm, mmms and side-eyeing thoughtful nods. Four-fifths of the packed tray vanishes in about thirty seconds to cartoonish matter-of-fact enthusiasm. Sushi rolls go down whole, pushed more than swallowed. Sashimi cuts vanish one-at-a-time, bitelessly, at terminal velocity. The pile of frozen shrimp goes in two homph-homph crunchy handfuls, shells and all. When it's not human flesh, she doesn't get nearly so lost in the sauce. This is just calorically balancing the sheets. (The smell of hour-old gore sure doesn't hurt, though.) She leaves Lilian a corner of the tray with a reasonable amount of food, glugs her glass of water, and then rubs her cheek on Lilian's shoulder fondly and breathes for the first time in forty seconds. "Mmmm. Hah. The first time... was when we fought the Tarrasque, in Ishirou's world. So you could hurt it with sympathetic magic, since I ate some. And the second time... you were in a really bad place, and I did it to remind you that I trust you." "They're not bad memories. Just... sometimes..." She struggles to admit this, too. Guilty. "I realized I wouldn't do that anymore. And that I wasn't sure why. It wasn't all 'because I want to live, now'." People are staring. Rita's on the outside of the booth, though, and she's taller. She scoots the quarter-inch closer to Lilian that it's possible to, shifts her arm to Lilian's shoulders, and leans forward to intercept the prying stares herself. Human* shield. "... because I wasn't good enough to justify being around the person you grew up to be." Rita's soft heartbreak is felt in the squishing of her cheek as she looks melancholically at Lilian, in the little tremble of her shoulders-hugging arm. "It-- wasn't like that. I promise," she says, after a long moment. Her drooly fingers wipe themselves on a napkin to fidget. "I always looked up to you. Even when we disagreed. I just..." She relaxes- or deflates- a little bit more. ". . . I guess I never knew how to stop 'disagreeing' from being 'siding against you, as a person'. Even when I didn't want it to be." Trying to shrink guiltily, and trying to press into Lilian comfortingly, are incompatible. She chooses the latter over the former, and so Lilian can feel the agonized little suppressed laugh at the end. "Miss Rook... you did your best. So did I. We're... the only two there, except maybe Angela, who did. Of course I can't blame you. You're perfect." Squeeze. With as much firm sincerity as she can find: "You were perfect."
Lilian Rook	Rita shovelling down whole shrimp draws a tired smile across Lilian's face, and makes her stomach churn; more from secondhand hunger pangs just at seeing how much Rita enjoys it than from the minute ember of disgust she can still feel. The ratio may no longer be worth measuring at all. The allure of gore-spattered full-contact anything-goes combat loses all of its shine when it must be done over and over again without any higher reason and with nothing to gain but time. What Lilian remembers most strongly beyond her own maladies is the overwhelming sense of filth that had begun to cling to her. She has to swallow down that numbly soaked in revulsion to feel her stomach growling again, and the first painful shot of saliva behind her teeth. Exceeding the inertia placed upon her by the sticky reek of dry blood, Lilian bites into her roll too hard, and wolfs down the rest, and then the next, and the third and fourth, before she has to stop and breathe long enough to show the tooth-marked crack in the hard plastic chopsticks. She demolishes the rest of the platter, and then replaces it immediately, mowing through a different set of offerings and hardly noticing the difference. The stares of customers in other booths range from fascinated to disgusted to mortified. At least half of them are quietly talking to each other while watching. For once, ever, she doesn't even seem aware of it. Bodily need overtakes social survival instinct by just a sliver. 'And the second time... you were in a really bad place, and I did it to remind you that I trust you.' 'Just... sometimes... I realized I wouldn't do that anymore. And that I wasn't sure why.' Lilian nearly chokes, and it'd be best for Rita to assume it's because of the pace of her eating. She reaches for the water pitcher, and drains a quarter of it dry, meaning to only sip a tenth before she feels icewater it the back of her throat. The hiccup she stifles the sequel of, as the last of it goes down, probably doesn't mean anything. Or so she projects. "Somehow, I feel a little less insane hearing you say that out loud." Lilian says, coughing quietly into her elbow and then letting out a queasy sigh between sentences. "I sort of . . . I felt that was the way of things between us. I couldn't articulate why, or when and where you drew the line, so it just sank into the background noise of all the other doubt and worry and shame." She continues on as if she hadn't suddenly dropped such heavy admission almost incidentally. Focused on Rita, food, and nothing else, Lilian hastily replaces her chopsticks while waiting for her stomach to unclench just enough to eat more. "I don't think I could separate how I felt about you from how I felt about . . . Everything. Everyone else. Myself. And perhaps I don't even blame you. I wasn't so easy to believe in me after Petra came along. I didn't shrug her off as gracefully as usual, and I didn't bounce back quite the same as before. Anyone back then who'd gotten used to the 'healed' me would have been dismayed. It's something I think about a lot." she mutters on, tackling her third plate with vague doubts about keeping it down later.
Lilian Rook	'. . . I guess I never knew how to stop 'disagreeing' from being 'siding against you, as a person'. Even when I didn't want it to be.' "No one did . . ." Lilian whisper-mutters between bites again, eyes downcast for the time she has a blissful excuse not to look up. She tries to summon up 'so I don't blame you', and fails to say it. "It's been so many years. I think I let myself believe that everyone knew the difference. But this whole thing. This ugly struggle of power in absolute terms; something not meant to be 'settled' or 'won', but only 'had our way this time' . . . I've been wondering if people really know 'who I am as a person' at all." "Or if they just know me as some exotic creature that purrs on their shoulder when content, but which turns savage and deadly when stressed." Lilian makes a dry sound of chagrin at her own bizarre metaphor, but doesn't bother to touch it up. "Like I'm something unique and beautiful to feel lucky about getting to handle, until 'you have to expect these things from a savage beast' and the current of frustration that I'm not tamed yet." "No matter how many times we connect, it never feels like I get it across to them. 'Why', I mean. It's always a surprise to everyone." Lilian sighs, loudly. "Even I began to get confused, in the end. But we talked that through. So . . ." Lilian freezes midway into eating when Lilian leans against her. She always does. She's atrocious about physical contact; at least of the more than superficially friendly variety. Pausing on the way to resuming eating, she looks to Rita, first out of the corner of her eye, then turning her whole head, and then her upper body, gingerly hover-arming in a pose of indecision about what to make of Rita's silent chest laugh. 'Miss Rook... you did your best. So did I. We're... the only two there, except maybe Angela, who did. Of course I can't blame you. You're perfect.' 'You were perfect.' Lilian's chest flutters. Her throat stops up with a cough. Her stomach lurches in a way that has nothing to do with hunger. Her face stings, and her vision blurs. It's as if the simple words had physically struck her; not from the front, reeling hr back, but from the blind side, stunning and disorienting her. Her chopsticks slide from her hand and clatter to the plate. Four full seconds later, Lilian places her arm around Rita's shoulders, and in another four, she breathes in deep and shuddering, and squeezes her back. "I'm so happy you're here, Rita. Even if everything else is terrible, there's this. I'd do it all over again just for this." Lilian says in a shaky whisper. "Thank you for being someone I can grow with."