Scene #9501: Two Reputable Women Definitely Go To The Walden

Owner	Pose
Schneider Greco	Two days ago: a pure white dove arrives for Vertin. It does not have the silvery capsule. It has a piece of paper inside a spent bullet casing, instead. The penthouse apartment is a perverse creation. Ten years ago a 'penthouse' was a servant's shanty, often illegal, always drafty, hastily built atop a skyscraper just to keep it out of view. Then, like how lobster has become fine dining, the rich realized they rather envied the view. First in New York, and then everywhere, they evicted their servants and made 'penthouse' mean 'luxury'. It's night, and it's raining, and it's cold, and the lift-girl's hair is still dewy-wet herself. She smiles at Vertin- "Good evening to you, um, miss. What floor?"- and makes a silent 'oh' with her lips when told. Ding. "My dear lord," There's a scent of oranges. Schneider's back- she isn't wearing the coat- one could count her vertebrae, all the way up to the white feather-boa at her neck- is turned to the elevator, as she opens a bottle of wine. "you are so very unhappy, aren't-you? Or you would not have come here a-lone." She turns at last, looking back over her shoulder at Vertin with those dewy crimson eyes. 'Alone' was a called shot. Her eyes are smiling. BANG-- no, no, it's only the pop! of the cork. "What is it, I won-der, that you think you are looking for? Do you know, my dear lord? Or do I have to tell you?" Behind her, rain washes down the glass windows in thin cataracts, dappling the lights of the city below beyond recognition. The checkerboard tiles of the room are familiar. Around a low table, a silk-white cushy couch and armchairs are arrayed; the walls are dark polished wood, and somewhere else a record player is singing. But none of that is very important at all. You'd have to tear your eyes off Schneider to notice it. https://youtu.be/SWvv1WDwsLs
Timekeeper	<B-anter> Flamel Parsons says, "I should ask someone if I can get you an invite to The SAFEHOUSE. You could have a whole fascinating talk about this with someone I met." <B-anter> Vertin pauses. "That hardly seems safe or responsible." PHONE: Phoning Flamel Parsons, Vertin says, "If you're able to arrange that, I'd consider doing it." That this invitation finds Vertin shortly after they confirm the location of the Walden as a Manus base of operations could be a coincidence, or it could not. The address being different than the one she knows could be a warning to stay away, or it could be a promising neutral ground. The dove could be a message, or so could the casing, or.... Sonetto is left stationed a short distance away from the apartment building. Vertin's loyal assistant believes that she's occupied with a brief personal mission, a euphemistic language of non-communication that allows Sonetto to turn a blind eye to her engagement with the Watch, and a silent agreement that she'll have to act if Vertin goes too long without checking in. That's her only backup, a block away and blind and deaf to her intentions, as the mooring that Vertin's tether spools farther and farther out from. Without her, the only grey checkerboard on Vertin's person is on her suitcase, half-concealed by the rain-slick hem of her coat. The world that cultivated Vertin's soft-spoken assurance when informing the lift-girl 'The penthouse, thank you,' is one that brought her frequently to the seat of power. It's also one that trained her to use the time traveling up to double and triple check her preparedness to face what waits for her, her reasoning, her lines of questioning, and her escape routes. None of those plans mean much of anything when the door slides open to greet her with a bare white spine. "Schneider?" Their stuttering half-step forwards allows the elevator doors to slide shut behind her, leaving them alone. Not moving from her position there, because doing so means moving closer to Schneider, Vertin recovers from her surprise to lower her voice back to tentative neutral. "Aren't you alone, too?" It's equally a non-question as Schneider's, a called shot in return. Even though her request was, as she didn't know at the time but knows now, to meet Forget Me Not, Vertin is absolutely certain without checking that he's not waiting in one of the rooms to the side. The partnership that a coordinated pair greeting like that would require is one that Schneider wouldn't be part of-- dressed like that, this can only be her penthouse. Finally, the squeak and then clack of Vertin's shoes signal her movement a few steps away from the elevator, still not closing the distance between her and Schneider. Diagonally offset, to see her hands in motion without being so bold as to circle around to whatever Schneider's front might look like without the coat on. "I'm not certain what you mean. I came here looking to have a proper conversation with a member of the Manus Vindictae. Do you suspect otherwise?"
Schneider Greco	"Aren't you alone, too?" "Mhmhm," is the only answer that has for a long second. The waifish body that the name 'Schneider' wears is too busy pouring two glasses of wine. Its face is turned away. Click. Ah. There's a gun pointed at Vertin's face, now. "My-dear-lord," she says, turning to smile and walk towards her victim, "the chicken, ahh, is alone with the fox. What a strange one, to say the fox is a-lone with the chick-en." Schneider is perfectly dry, but doesn't hesitate to touch Vertin's sopping-wet shoulder, face in close. The glint in her eyes prickles even when they're so dewily relaxed. Their lips aren't so far apart. Warm breath, warm smile, warm gun-barrel pressing against Vertin's collarbone... It slips inside the lapel of their coat and lifts it up off their shoulders. "... But I am not here to eat you up, my-lord. Mhmhm, not as Lord Forget-Me-Not would." Her hand slips under their lapel too, and then she's divesting Vertin of her soaking coat with gun as a mere utensil, hanging it on the coat-rack by the elevator doors. She thinks nothing of turning her back on them, it seems. "You are here for ex-cite-ment, my-lord. You are here to be threat-ened, or cap-tured, or menaced. You feel desolate, my-lord, and lost. The night, it is for those the day gives nothing. You are here for me." She turns. The couch and table, with its wine-glasses, beckon.
Timekeeper	For someone who's executed people with little warning in front of them, Schneider pointing a gun right at Vertin draws their attention past the muzzle and towards the smiling face behind it instead. She makes steady eye contact, though her grip tenses around the suitcase, and the slick sole of her shoe squeaks when twisting slightly against the tile, mirroring the click of Schneider's gun-- a chicken wouldn't be coiled so in the face of danger, but neither can a rabbit leap quickly enough to dodge the jaws of a predator. "I'm not helpless," She leaves it there for a moment, while Schneider steps closer to her. Her words vanish in a trailing breath, lips not fully closed, as Schneider crosses the no-man's-land of arm's reach, and then closer, without stepping back or stepping towards. Without a scrap of fat as buffer between skin and bone, the rain stripped her of warmth like a corpse, ghostly-purple and prickling with goosebumps, her own exhalation chilled like her lungs are still full of the winter air from outdoors. Gun to her collarbone, Vertin's voice lowers just slightly. "The fox is alone when the farmer checks on the henhouse, as well." "... But I am not here to eat you up, my-lord." The coat's sleeve cuffs are too tailored-tight to slide off so easily, and the suitcase bars one side besides. Unthinkingly, Vertin steps back to finish the job herself once her shoulders are already shucked free, tugging off one sleeve and shifting her suitcase between her hands to remove the other. She's drier underneath, but not 'dry', and the parts of her suit that aren't made somewhat bulkier by her waistcoat stick to her like a second skin. "I had expected a meeting with Forget Me Not as a discussion between our two factions." Theirs, which has no representative here besides herself, and the print on the suitcase she refuses to let go of. "If I were captured, there would be agents who come looking for me." A beat. "But not until morning, I suppose." There's a sense of teetering hesitation, like she's on the edge of a cliff, and a step towards the couch sends her plummeting off of it. Vertin came here for a meeting, but in every iteration of that meeting, she and the Manus were on opposite sides of the table, rather than on a couch. The suitcase stays, tucked up under her arm like a stuffed animal, as Vertin lays her hand on the edge of one of the glasses to 'claim' it, but without sitting down yet. "Would yours come during the night?"
Schneider Greco	"My-lord," Schneider says with slightly lifted eyebrows, "if you are thinking of who would 'come for' you, we are ver-y diff-'rent animals." She follows just behind Vertin, but detours behind the couch, to press a palm to those cool rain-slicking windows for a while. Her gun is back in its holster, somehow. "My Lord Forget-Me-Not would have you dead, I think, or laid before my-Lady Arcana," said with her breath fogging over the glass as if those were exactly the same fate, "before the stroke of midnight. My-dear-lord, I have spared you from him~." "As for-me... mmmh, no-one knows where I am." It's said with no awareness of vulnerability. Or maybe with the constant awareness of it, such that the careless admission dropping from her lips doesn't budge the needle. Schneider steps over the back of the couch, then reclines across it, picking up her wine-glass and swirling its contents. Her other hand twirls the loose end of the feather-boa as it hangs down, and then she drinks, eyes half-lidded. One finger crooks itself off the glass to beckon: 'closer'. "The wine, it helps with the cold? Oh, my poor lord, you are near to freezing." She tugs at her (dry, warm) black coat laid over the couch's back for emphasis, intending to settle that around Vertin's shoulders if given the chance. "Mmmh. That ear-nest-ness, it is beautiful. But my-lord, what could the Manus and your Foundation speak of? What would you ask them, that they could wish to answer, or tell them they do not know? Much better it is us, my-lord. I can be so... yielding."
Timekeeper	"Maybe we are." Vertin's agreement, following Schneider's confirmation that no one from the Manus knows where she is, is too easily noncommittal, sentence ending with a hollow space where a 'but' should go. It doesn't follow, not immediately, as Vertin cups the stem of the wine glass between her fingers, still standing, and still clutching the suitcase. Her breath ripples across the surface of the fluid, invisible for how shallowly her chest rises and falls. Despite to her words, the feeling that seizes her so abruptly that it even takes herself off guard is precisely the opposite. Delayed, like she'd been holding her breath or clenching her muscles and only just now noticed the ache, it's impossible to remove from her mind now that the neural pathway's been connected. Abruptly, a long minute after her previous sentence ended, they continue it, thumbnail skirting along the rim of the glass. "I'll count myself thankful for meeting you instead, then. They'd come search for me only to make up for the mistake of letting me out of their sight, and I'd hate to justify their fears by only leaving them a body to find." The suitcase slips from their arm, being dropped on the table with the broad side standing up facing the couch, like a television, or a privacy curtain. Vertin circles around and sits, lowering herself just within arm's reach of Schneider, thighs folded tightly and spine held away from the back of the couch. Then, upon seeing Schneider's sitting posture out of the corner of her eyes, awkwardly shuffles herself five degrees angling away, bringing the cup up to her lips and taking a sip to surreptitiously hide an imperceptible flustered expression. "It's-- there's a chill out," They agree lamely, halting as the coat falls around them. Directing their eyes towards the windows, to cross the direction of Schneider but focus on the rain trailing down the glass, another quarter of the wine is downed before Vertin responds. "As organizations, there may be no common ground whatsoever. But when organizations clash, it's the individuals involved who come into conflict with each other, and it's those individuals whose perspectives I can't know without asking. Even gaining nothing is more knowledge than I had before asking." "And," Another slightly lame pause, uncharacteristically halting. "Much better it's you. You're a topic on a lot of people's minds, lately."
Schneider Greco	The coat, whose lapel Schneider gently tugs around Vertin like a blanket, smells like citrus over old fine ash. It's still warm from Schneider's body. Her eyes, as she reclines again, linger on the improper un-frown of Vertin's lips before reluctantly re-meeting their gaze. "There is a chill out, my-lord," she says to smooth and reassure, the curve of her lips exactly suiting the wine-glass's rim. "And yet, you won't lean towards me? Mmmh..." Gulp. "... What a proud lord." "You're a topic on a lot of people's minds, lately." The way she bats her eyes couldn't more clearly convey 'how about on yours?'. But she becomes a little more grave as her thoughts settle. "... It has mostly been the topic, I think, of how you can no-more trust my friends who once were yours. I know why this must be, my-lord, but please believe-me, I have no pleasure from it. By-now you must already know, I am not some diehard desperado of the Manus." She tilts back her head, baring a pale-delicate throat, and pounds back the whole rest of the wine glass before reaching across to put it on the table. Schneider considers the bottle for a second go. "... I care for myself and my fa-mily. I am doing the best, my-lord, that a-ny-one can, born into a dying era." Her gaze is still cast off to the side. "And you? You really do not hate the humans, do you? I thought--" Ding. A light above the elevator comes on. In three to five seconds, those doors will open. "Mannaggia 'a madonna," Schneider murmurs, and her gun casually finds her hand. A half-expected inconvenience. Dimly, on the other side of the elevator doors, a man and a woman are talking.
Timekeeper	"And yet, you won't lean towards me? Mmmh..." "It would feel..." Gulp indeed, though Vertin's isn't to swallow any alcohol. "... improper." The serious topic of factional allegiances and betrayals is a much more comfortable line of conversation than the fluttering of Schneider's eyelashes. Despite Vertin's inability to let their gaze settle on any particular part of Schneider, Schneider gets her wish that Vertin turns to face her. She leans forwards, torso twisted to angle her shoulders towards Schneider, wine-holding elbow placed on her thigh just above her knee, and her other hand on the couch cushion between them. Both eyes are visible at this angle under the brim of her hat, and both are steady on Schneider's. "Are they truly? Your friends, I mean." They hesitate, habitually bringing the glass to their lips for another sip, before feeling the need to continue more urgently than that allows. "I'd rather that your heartfelt answer be yes, for what it's worth. But my experience, upon learning that for weeks several of those I entrusted with private information had been sharing it with you, was that they believed they could reassure me, by doing the same in return to you. Despite their intentions being to buy back my trust, I can't say it's made me more fond of them." "I suppose that's why you've become a topic on my mind." They drain the last of their wine, straightening their spine back upright. Looking away again, Vertin ventures somewhat more boldly, "One of several reasons." "... I care for myself and my fa-mily." "... I can't find fault in that." Vertin looks down, shaking her head fractionally. Her finger traces the lining of Schneider's jacket as it drapes down over her arm, having let it settle more comfortably over slackened shoulders without noticing. "None at all. It's a terror beyond all imagining, to see your future washed away with the rain. I don't wish it on anyone." Vertin looks up again, stare refocusing on Schneider with a sudden burst of intensity. "Your family, they're humans, aren't they? Just come with me. I can shelter you myself, and for your family, I'll...." They don't get to follow up on the small shock of surprise they feel when Schneider questions whether they hate humans, interrupted by the ding of the elevator. Vertin turns her face to the side, pinching the brim of her hat to keep it from sliding from the sudden motion, and then again when the glint of the gun catches in the corner of her eye. "What? Is that the Manus? No," Vertin stands up, grabbing the handle of her suitcase again and turning towards Schneider. "The residents of the flat? You can't shoot them." Schneider's jacket didn't fully slide off Vertin's shoulders when she stood up, from small motions to keep it balanced, but it's precariously slipping. Their eyes go, instead of to the gun, to the navy blue jacket hanging on the coatrack by the door.
Schneider Greco	The swirl of feelings that Schneider has about "her 'friends' narcing on her" (wry unease, but not shock) and "being rescued by Vertin" (melancholic, faraway fondness; notes of breaking-bad-news) will keep for these five urgent seconds. . "You can't shoot them." "I wasn't going to shoot--" Schneider hisses back, but her gun doesn't lower. . The elevator clicks into place. Schneider's eyes follow Vertin's to the coat, already resigned to doing this the hard (nonviolent) way. "Merda." The gun in her hand dissolves-- . --into a swirl of blade-feathers, catching the coat's stiff collar and pinwheel-flinging it back towards Schneider's waiting hand. The doors start to slide open-- . --just as Schneider shoves Vertin off to the side and sweeps up the bottle and glasses with one arm. She's fast. Around the corner in the kitchen, there's a closet. . "... So I told 'em, Harry, if Jenny doesn't get our tickets straightened out- say, what's that record you've got on?" "I don't know it. Cleaning ladies must've left it on. Damn it. "Ohh. Sounds kinda romantic, though..." ... The pantry, with shelves arranged around a central cavity, barely has room for their bodies not to touch. Schneider lays Vertin's coat carefully against the door's bottom to soundproof the gap, then straightens up and strikes a lighter for illumination. "You're welcome, my-lord," she purrs up at them, chest pressed to chest.
Timekeeper	As Vertin's coat finds its way to Schneider's hand, so do they pull Schneider's back up around their body so it doesn't fall. The suitcase, a wineglass, and the jacket rush out from the living room, a step behind Schneider but following her lead in an instant. . When the door closes, there's a jigsaw puzzle of body parts to navigate in the narrow space. The suitcase is too bulky to go between them, instead ending up wedged behind Schneider, forcing Vertin's arm to snake awkwardly past her waist. Schneider's jacket shifts from both of Vertin's shoulders to just the one, draped like a leather curtain over her arm which rests on Schneider's own shoulder, split halfway between both of their bodies. It reflects the glow of the lighter back onto both of their faces in the dark. In the spice-heavy pantry, the strongest scent is still oranges. A shelf digs into Vertin's back, and she freezes when an automatic attempt to straighten out her hat nearly clatters tins together. "Thank you," She says under her breath, with her heart still racing from the scare. "For that." There's not much maneuvering she can actually do in the narrow space, especially without swinging the suitcase around like a club to knock everything over. Still, she feels compelled by a mysterious force to back her hips away from Schneider's bare legs, and crane her face to the side to not breathe directly onto her. "I imagine this wasn't what you had in mind for our meeting."
Schneider Greco	Schneider feels no such compulsion to not breathe on Vertin. Her head tilts one way- cheek against Vertin's arm- and the lighter tilts the other, amused. "You are welcome," haaah, "my-lord." Heels clack closer over the hard kitchen floor. "--------, ---- ---- --- ----- -- ---?" "--, --- ----, -'ll just have some fruit..." "---- --------, --------." "You're right I will, Harry." Rather than stop talking, Schneider just leans in, lips grazing Vertin's hair and breath tickling their ear. "Mmmmh, well, it could be going worse, could it not? My-lord, ahh, the cloudy nights can be as beautiful as ones where you can see the moon..." The cramped quarters give an advantage to a smaller combatant. Both of Schneider's legs squeeze one of Vertin's... she doesn't press in over-much, but some amount is unavoidable, and so long as Vertin's squirminess remains mild it can curl Schneider's lips. "--- --- ------ -- ---?" "Yeah yeah, of course I'm coming to bed, will you ---- ---- -- - minute?" "------- -------..." "Christ alive, Harry, - ----- -- ---..." The voices fade around the corner again. Schneider withdraws her lips from Vertin's ear, and bubbles into a tiny laugh; but as she leans back against the shelves it dims. Bringing the wine bottle- not the glass- to her lips can't hide that. "... Ahh. My-lord, I am-not happy to hear that my family has been spoken of carelessly... but can those in our positions," ('Our'? Did she take that look in Vertin's eyes?) "really hold our 'friends' to high stan-dards? That redhead who can-not speak Italian, are you not at cross-pur-poses even with her? My lord, we are taking what we can get."
Timekeeper	When the footsteps in the apartment get closer, Vertin stops breathing entirely, like her silence can make up for Schneider continuing to speak. There's only a sliver of bare skin on her neck not covered by the collar of her shirt, and it stretches, exposed up to the base of her ear, when Vertin twists her head away to give Schneider clear access for whispering. She presses her wrist into Schneider's side to stabilize her grip on the bulky suitcase, to prevent even its handle from swinging and making a telltale squeak. Vertin's words are barely voiced, but she doesn't stop talking either, despite the proximity of the conversation outside. She'll match that unspoken dare, just not the one where Schneider's thighs squeeze around hers. "Perhaps. I'd certainly rather be in here than out there." Schneider can feel Vertin stiffen as the heel-clacks reach their loudest point right outside the closet. When they pass and fade away, the tension drains out of her; not just losing the anxiety of being discovered, but a portion of the taut inflexibility that she carried into the apartment in the first place. A hushed giggle escapes from her, rusty from disuse, and she sighs before shifting to pull back from Schneider and properly look at her face in the dark. The dim smile residually on Vertin's lips from the rush of relief doesn't instantly vanish when the mood turns, but the humor that was in it dissipates. "I see. So that's how it is." Her eyes slide off of Schneider's face, towards the back of the closet, faintly uncomfortable with the symmetry but not so much that she'd deny it. "The Foundation hasn't been told about your family, as far as I'm aware." Vertin sighs, swirling flour particles in the air with her breath. "Is it fair if I say that causes me to like your friends less rather than more? Despite my own position with the Foundation. I'm sick to death of us having to make alliances just to survive another day. Someday, somehow, we deserve to have safety and dignity."
Schneider Greco	Vertin's giggle mingles with Schneider's own, far less rusty, and yet still unused to the new note which slips in to undermine its smoky self-assurance. "Ahh, it makes me like them a lit-tle less too. But 'we', my-lord?" Fond amusement plays on Schneider's lips, mirroring Vertin's unease, but she doesn't mock the idea to dismiss it either. "Perhaps I am also sick of it, but who has ac-cus-tomed you to better? Or do you only dream of it, my-lord...? Mhmhm, I am not so-much a visionary as you. If I am starving, I dream of soup and bread, not caviar." With a little tchh, she puts her lighter out. Dark. Vertin's coat at the base of the door ensures not even the kitchen's light leaks through. No witnesses; not even each other. In the long dark, Schneider's hand slides up Vertin's arm at the same time her thighs release their leg. It's a stabler, more earnest touch. ". . . You can't shelter me in the day, my-lord." The breathiness of that voice in the dark reveals how close her lips are. "You don't e-ven have 'safety' and 'dignity' for yourself." It's a gentle, pining remonstration. Your dear friend regretting to remind you that she has to go in the morning. "But in the night, my umbrella could cover us both." Outside the kitchen there's a fire escape, rickety rain-driven wrought iron dropping too-many stories down. The wind howls and it bangs. Soon Schneider will open the door, and then the window, and then the stairs have just room enough for two. But for a moment still it's that dark closet, and the sun hasn't risen under the door.
Timekeeper	Vertin is way too passionate about this to back down in embarrassment when Schneider teases her for it, not after the faucet's been opened. Despite the fact that they're awkwardly wedged in a closet, and still having to keep their voices down, Vertin's hushed words are forcefully insistent, straining against the upper limits of a whisper. "Yes! We! The in-betweens of either the Foundation's or the Manus's worlds, only given the choice to compromise or die. They fight, and everyone caught between them dies." She shakes her head in the dark, finally returning to something Schneider said before they were interrupted. "I don't hate humans. But I can't be satisfied with the way the world is, either. The Manus Vindictae are set in their ways, but the Foundation is at least amenable to changing for the better. That's why...." "You don't e-ven have 'safety' and 'dignity' for yourself." The assertion that, by dedicating herself to the Foundation whatever their mistreatment, Vertin can guide the future of the organization towards kinder ends, dies in her throat. Those few words from Schneider strip bare the unspoken abyss in the center of Vertin's words, crumbling away into raw silence. It doesn't really matter how much they believe it-- in the moment, they're both surviving off of scraps from their factions, and no promise of change for the future would get Schneider through the Storm, so the Foundation and the Manus Vindictae alike cease to matter. In the perfect darkness, at a meeting no one knows they're at, the Timekeeper has a precious few moments of nonexistence, where there won't be a report or manifesto written about their words, and nothing they say needs to be for the sake of anyone but the two of them. What they do with it is, Whisper, breath against Schneider's face, soft and hoarse, "... I'm sorry," before lowering her head to close the narrow gap between their lips.