cloakandclaw | [Millways] By the Lake

[Millways] By the Lake

Much like the days when he first got to this place, he finds that the trees by the lake soothe him. It's a stubborn door that refuses to open, even under the threat of emergence by a planetary elemental: there's nothing he can do about it. No stranger to disappointment and to captivity, he knows he has little choice but to wait it out. If this is where he's destined to be, then... he will have to do his atonement from a distance and remain separated from his beloved.

Tonight, he's crouched on a low oak branch overlooking the lake. It suits him; it suits his mood; it suits his need for silent observation. The night is crisp and chill, but it doesn't bother him: he's neither warm nor cold. The neutrality of temperature he felt on the boat he took to the western continent is nothing new but being home again served to reinforce it for him. Still, he refuses to give thanks to Chaos, who he still likes to see as an unwelcome intruder to his solitude.

To his thoughts of the past, and of Lucrecia, and of home: does Chaos share his thoughts? Feel what he feels? He doesn't know: his memories of time in that form are very poor indeed. It's almost as if he wasn't even there.

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Maya's face is grave as she walks by the shore, her hands in her greatcoat pockets. The coat is long and dark, effective-enough camoflauge (to ordinary human eyes) against the night, though her hair and her face shine too brightly to be concealed under the light of moon and stars.

She pauses at the water's edge, glancing down -- and her eye is caught by something reflecting the light. She crouches down. It is a shard of glass, edges smoothed by long shifting under the surface of the lake. It's green; looks like it may have been part of a bottle. A remnant of some old lake party. Maya carefully digs it out of the sand and turns it over between gloved fingers.

After a moment's consideration, she sits on the sand.

"Maya Antares." She's the one with the name that sounds like a poem: he met her early on here. From his perch in the trees he nods; she may or may not be able to make that out, just as she may or may not remember him or their conversation.

It's a risk he's willing to take, and he only takes calculated risks these days unless he's in battle and then all bets are off. Standing on the bough, he leaps down lightly to the ground below, cloak trailing through the night sky behind him. When he's in the middle of a conversation, he prefers the balance of power to be even. It can't be if he's in the tree and she's seated on the ground. The inequity of it would drive him... a little madder than normal, and that's something he can't really afford.

The thread he hangs on by most days is already tenuous enough, and being stuck at this place again isn't doing anything to make that better.

Maya's head comes up, swift and sharp, at hearing her name spoken. It is not, perhaps, incredibly difficult to catch sight of the man in the tree, especially once he makes his move.

Vincent is, after all, rather memorable.

"Vincent Valentine," she says. She smiles up at him without rising, her weight resting back on her hands, and the piece of lake-glass resting in the sand beside her knee. It is a genuine smile, if small and quiet. "Care to join me?"

He does: his answer is in his movements and in a moment he's seated by her side, one leg stretched out, the other bent at the knee. The lake water is like glass tonight, like the shard she's got by her side. It's calming. When he shuts his eyes, he can almost imagine himself on the Junon ferry, heading towards Lucrecia again.

But inevitably his eyes open and he sees... the lake here instead of the ocean, and the odor of fresh rather than salt water. There is no western continent, no Mt. Nibel, no waterfall cave and... no Lucrecia.

In an unusual display of finesse, he glances at Maya and says something... almost normal.

"You're well, I hope?" It's a question he reserves only for those he actually likes.

"Well enough," says Maya, with a light incline of her head. It's a polite response, but a friendly one; she isn't about to elaborate, unasked, on the war, on the waiting, on the unease aboard the Konstantinov. (It is an honest response, too. She is well enough, like she has been these past nine years.) "And you?"

"The same."

It's more of a considered response than it seems: it could mean that he's either well enough or the same as last time. Both are true, after a fashion. Not much changes for him any more. All the changes happened more than thirty years ago although... some of his... forms were revealed more recently than that.

"I find it quiet and relaxing here by the lake. And you... look contemplative." He won't put words in her mouth, but he will report what he sees without judgment. Whether or not his observation is correct doesn't matter so much. He's been wrong before, and he's sure he'll be wrong again more often than not.

A soft whuff of breath -- half-amusement -- and Maya's mouth takes a wry upturn. "You could say that, I guess," she says. "I came here in the hopes of avoiding too much contemplation."

Avoiding the view of the snow-covered skeleton of a city below the skyfurnaces, and the knowledge that whatever happens will not go well, for any side.

That tic of her mouth takes on a more positive tilt. "That, and enjoying the warmth."

The Scottish spring may not be a tropical paradise, but to Maya, after the infamous bitter Nokgorkan cold, it is temperate and exotic.

"I'm here to work on my tan."

It's a joke, one of the few he knows how to make. "I've found that often, what one wants is not what one gets. The more we seek freedom from our concerns, the less likely that seems to become. It's one of fate's crueler jokes."

The words are said without passion, without bitterness, without recrimination: it's simply fact based on personal experience and observation.

"However... sometimes... simple company can ease that." Gazing out over the lake, his voice quiets: he misses his friends, plain and simple. "Since we talked, I was able to leave this place but... now... I can't. Again." That reality weighs as heavily on him as anything.

It's a joke, and Maya's response to it is a startled-but-genuine one -- she laughs. The sound doesn't echo back across the lake; it was too quiet for that.

She sobers to listen, though; as she nods, silent and understanding and agreeing.

"I'm very sorry to hear that," she says, once he's finished (and she means it; a sentimental, sympathetic soul at heart). "You must be frustrated with this place. You're right, though -- simple company can help." The sidelong glance that she shoots him is guileless, as she smiles just a little. She likes this man, who -- apart from certain aspects of his taciturnity -- is so unlike anyone she knows. "I'd be honored if you'd stay in mine, a little while."

His answering single nod is the only sign that he agrees to her request, and whether she's truly honored or not... he is. Social interactions are not easy for him but he's tired, a little defeated by circumstance. His time at home was difficult on so many levels, but it was his. It was real; that's his reality and it's where he knows how to be.

Here, just moving about with any sense of grace at all is a challenge. There are a few people who make it easier and Maya Antares... may prove to be one of them but then again, she may not. He's only met her the one time.

"Frustrated with the place or not, there's little I can do about it. Anger would seem to be futile and so... I wait. It's what I can do." And during the wait he repents, tries to make up as best he can for sins either real or perceived. Studies the place and its visitors; learns the lay of the land; gathers information because information is what helps people survive. When he puts it this way in his mind it seems so dreary, but were it described to him in those same terms, he would beg to differ. There are always little details, little testaments to important things, and one gathers insight by gathering information.

With the clawed index finger on his left hand, he draws an idle design in the sand, then sets the shard of worn glass in the center of it as if it's surrounded by the walls of a fortress.

Maya watches the fortress-building, smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

"That's a very patient point of view," she says. "What do you do to pass the time?"

He almost says I try to will the red out of my eyes; I like to think that some morning I'll wake up and look in the mirror and see brown eyes looking back just like I used to but he doesn't: he's never told that secret to a single soul -- not even Lucrecia -- and he won't give it away now. Maya's question is fair, although he finds he's having a hard time putting a viable answer to it.

As he often does, he gives the question a good amount of contemplation and consideration. The lake water ripples gently; there's a general rustle to the leaves. Overhead, moonlight filters in to where they sit.

In the end his answer is simple and inarguable.

"I... live."

It's something he has a hard time not doing, seemingly. "Making a study of this place has proved to be a... fairly good use of time." The trees and forest are places he takes particular interest in; he nods toward them. "The grounds are... deceptive."

Maya watches the forest, for a moment; the wind rustles through the leaves, which she hears better than sees in the dark, but they don't look particularly strange.

"Deceptive?" she asks, and she looks back at Vincent. "How so?"

Nodding subtly toward the trees, he frowns. "The distance is deceptive. One can walk through there for hours and not get anywhere, or be back where he started. Even following a straight and true line, the results are unpredictable."

He's a trained tracker; he knows what he's doing when he assesses an environment. It's something he had to excel at with the Turks and it's an ability he knows he hasn't lost. "The same thing holds true if one travels at the treetop level." Or above it, but he doesn't need to tell her he can fly. He's still getting used to that one himself.

"You can wind up where you started without making a complete circuit. I don't think this... asteroid we're on is very large -- there are times when the bend in the horizon is so marked and so evident -- but the distances are... nontraditional."

Perhaps that's a better way to put it than deceptive.

"...Strange," muses Maya quietly, taking a longer look at the trees. "Though maybe not expected, given how impossible this place is."

She runs her fingers through the sand beside her. "It can't be helpful for getting lost in there, either, always winding up where you've started."

The laugh he lets out is small and tight and bitter. On most people it would probably be mistaken for a sound of disgust but... he doesn't laugh very much and as such is out of practice with it.

I lost myself. It's one of the first thoughts he remembers having after he woke up on Hojo's operating table, looking down to see what he'd become. He hoped it was a nightmare but... wakeful reality has proved otherwise. There are days when he's capable of little more than sitting curled up in the corner of a room, his hands around his knees, his head buried against the light because the light points out all that he's become and reminds him of all that he's lost. As hard as he tries not to fall prey to that sort of behavior, there are times he just... can't help it. He doesn't claim to have things worse than anybody else, but... there are moments -- fortunately few and far between -- when he can't stand the circumstances of his life for another minute.

The only thing he fears is actually losing himself in those moments. Whatever it is that keeps Chaos at bay... well, he's been lucky for the most part.

So far.

He turns to Maya Antares, the woman with the name like a poem, and studies her by the light of the moon. "I think... if someone really wants to get lost, it's not that hard. Even in a place where the distance moves in deceptive ways."

Breathe, Vincent, Breathe. It appears to be the key ingredient to maintaining a semblance of balance.

Maya blinks, though only once; she can never tell where the conversation is going to go, when she talks to this man. Her eyebrows rise, just a little bit.

"Do you want to get lost, Vincent?"

Her original assumption was 'no,' though -- you never know.

Now there's a question he chooses not to answer: it's so personal and deep he's absolutely disinterested in discussing it in any depth whatsoever. If it were his choice, he would be so much more than lost.

He'd be dead. He never asked to be... reborn, reanimated: the taste he had of death was comfort enough in a vast sea of unhappiness and... the concept of being lost is tempting. But like death, it's something Chaos won't allow for him: in all his travels across his home world, he's unerringly put one foot in front of the other and moved swiftly and effectively toward his target. At first he thought it was a remnant of old Turks training but he's learned differently. Chaos's sense of direction is unerring, flawless, and brings him where he -- it -- wants to go... at least on his own planet.

When he turns to answer Maya, he's impassive as ever. Thoughts burn, but they do so privately. "Everybody does, from time to time."

That's what he'll admit to at the moment.

"And you?"

In the lake, something -- some creature -- laps at the surface rhythmically. The sound is almost soothing.

Maya is lost. She has been ever since the burning sands of Kar Dathra's Gate, even if she hasn't always been ready to admit it.

Her eyes flick away swiftly, to the lake. She tucks her legs gracefully underneath herself, and there's quiet (disquieted, under the surface, though not really due to the question or the subject) good humor on her face when she looks back at Vincent. "Everybody does, from time to time."

"Touché." There's a moment of companionable silence during which the both of them simply... look out over the lake. There's no need for words to fill the silence -- it's not an uncomfortable silence -- but eventually he turns back toward Maya and nods.

"I think... I'll give it another try."

Getting lost in the woods here seems to be as valid a thing to aim for as anything else. The worst that will happen is... he'll get lost. And then Chaos or some other form will wake up from deep slumber, tap at his thoughts, and direct him back to where he needs to be.

It happens every time.

"A good evening to you, Maya Antares." As he stands, the cloak rustles around his legs for a minute before billowing out behind him. For now he'll walk, but it's one of his few pleasures to soar from treetop to treetop in this place.

As long as he's alone.

Maya's eyebrows rise, just a little, but she lifts one hand in a wave. "I'll see you around, Vincent."

With her enigmatic companion gone, she turns her attention back to the ripples of wind-on-water across the lake. She glances at the shard of glass resting in the sand beside her, and one side of her mouth tilts upward.

Maya pushes sand with one finger, building the walls around the glass just a little bit higher.

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[Millways] By the Lake

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