tampered | log; ongoing

log; ongoing

When; Monday, January 21st
Rating; PG-13 (for implications?)
Characters; Saya

repairedbywebs and Dorian Gray

missedyourheart
Summary; A spider and an immortal meet in a park...
Log;

There was something about winter. It made her sluggish, almost subdued; the weather was hard on cold blood. It made her hungrier than usual, and seeing May bleeding out her eye the night before had induced her usual form of hunger. So she had eaten something (or rather, someone, no point in going absolutely hungry and wasting herself on something as insubstantial as animals) and gone on the Network just as the rush of new Citizen had flooded in.

He seemed so charming. That, in itself, was rare. There was something off about the way he spoke, and she was intrigued by the imperfections in the perfect.

She twirled her parasol, the prototype for the one she had sold to Mikaela, and strolled, spotting him lingering next to the tree. She stepped forward, her skirt swirling about her. "Hello," she said, her voice soft and whispering.

AB always grated on the the throat.

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The tree had been all that had been promised. Dorian had stood under it in a shower of fragrant blossoms, and for a time, had let the swell of joy in such beauty eliminate all other thoughts.

Henry would have had some pithy observation about impermanence and nature. Or perhaps even Henry Wotton would have been reduced to mute appreciation of a cherry tree in full bloom in January.

Thoughts of Henry brought him back from his reverie. This City held such promise of new experiences, and the women? They were so unlike those of his home. Perhaps other than Mina...

He pushed that unpleasant thought aside. She was a vampire; that was explanation enough for why she was not some dull thing.

May would be a toy to use and throw out most likely. The Hargreaves family intrigued him. There was such potential there.

And Saya... there was something about her.

As though summoned, the whispered greeting brought his eyes down from the branches to take in the speaker.

"Glorious." He spoke as though the word had been drawn from him without calculation. That was both lie and truth. The word had presented itself to him and he had allowed it to be spoken.

"Saya." He moved his cane to his left hand and held out his right. "What a pleasure."

She caught the word, and processed it, truth, truth, lie. People spoke in riddles, sometimes, especially people whose eyes said that they were older than his body appeared. It could be truth - he could be old, or it might be that he had seen too much. Either way, Saya didn't much care.

She offered her hand and nodded. "Pleasure, Dorian," she stated cautiously. The name Dorian always made her think of Oscar Wilde, which made her think of the Ventrue who he had based the book off. Some Giovanni rituals were nasty things. "Have you seen much, yet?"

She turned to look down the path. Cherry trees were bad places to nest, the blossoms got caught more than insects. Her parasol turned with her, but her hand remained poised, cold and bloodless in the air.

Dorian took her hand, stepping away from the tree with her, hand in hand as though they were more familiar than they truly were.

Chilly. Pale. Did she indulge in the various tinctures known to women to make them paler and more exotic? Belladonna? Perhaps. What did it matter? These female mysteries belonged behind dressing room doors.

"I have seen little as yet. I thought we might explore together."

No belladonna - the coolness of her skin was natural, a feature of literally having no actual blood in her human form. She nodded slightly. "The park is lovely," she said, twirling the parasol, looking much more feminine than she actually was, "and the nightlife, at least, is entertaining."

She looked him over. 1890's dress, late Victorian. The sun made it clear he wasn't a vampire. If not that, then he truly was from the Victorian. She was suddenly smiling, the thought her her ankles flashing as a turn on oddly archaic. Perhaps she should have chosen a longer skirt.

"I've been here for almost six months," Saya said with a soft note of apathy in her voice. "You're staying with Alexis Hargreaves?"

"I am," Dorian agreed. Her affect intrigued him more than her attire; he'd already seen women dressed much more provocatively than Saya during his short time in the City.

But her behavior - forward after a fashion on the "network" and less so here... Well, the unpredictable held its charms.

"Lord Hargreaves recognized a familiar accent and was generous enough to offer me a place to stay. Do you know him well?"

"I do," she said, twirling her parasol. When was the last time she had used one of the blasted things? She liked sunlight, it calmed her down. But it was the dagger in the base she brought if for. Not like she couldn't defend herself otherwise.

"He's not very reliable," she added. "An occult man."

She turned and smiled slightly, her lip cocking into a predator's smile. "Would you know about that?"

Dorian would be charmed by the feminine mate for the sword in his own cane if he noticed.

"The nobility don't have to be reliable," he observed. "All they have to do is know the right stories to tell in proper society."

The thought of Alexis as an occult man who was estranged from his son intrigued him and amused. Already he was considering that there were diversions to be created from that.

He put those thoughts aside, liking the twist of lips that made Saya less delicate and more dangerous. "Would I know about occult men? Oh yes, what man of my station has not attended a seance or two? Fashion and fancy coming and going. One day pendulums in the parlor, the next holding hands in the dark with that exotic German medium on one side and an eager ingenue on the other?"

"You fancy exotic company, then?" Saya said, her smile still predatory. She was intrigued by this man, like she had been intrigued by Papa. Men who felt they had a good deal of control were always interesting to watch, interesting to team with, and in the end, fascinating to break.

She thought it over blandly. "My experience with the way most find the occult is as a medium for sexual deviancy. One can claim that the demon of who know what took over and that they found their sexual truth in that." She paused to yawn a bit, and not in boredom. "Why bother with excuses? Admit that you prefer to have sex with the lights on and your wrists bound to a post and get over it."

She looked at Dorian from the corner of her eye. "I have no patience for fools, you see."

No patience for fools, no desire to pretend, and that smile, made all the more tantalizing by her yawn.

Oh yes, Dorian was intrigued.

"You have much experience with people excusing sexual deviancy? The demon, to my mind, is not excuse enough for the judgmental eye of society, because it requires a public accounting."

No, his way had been so often to present an appearance of smiling innocence and care for others. His actions might be spoken of, but he was still admitted in society because he never admitted wrongdoing and his guilt over it was kept for times of communion with the portrait he could no longer look upon.

Saya's smile curved the corners of her mouth just slightly, and she looked at Dorian, her hand against his tightening just a touch. "People excuse everything. Everything is excused, and everything is a lie. Don't think otherwise. Even when people believe they are telling the absolute truth, they only say what makes them the most comfortable. Most of the things people see they cannot fathom, so their brains fabricate a lie about it."

She paused and brushed their hands closer to her side, almost an accident, almost on purpose. "Homosexuality, sodomy, rape fantasies, bondage, sexual slavery - most of the time, people cannot come face to face with it. The word master, in a sexual setting, is a lie for that very reason. It's a facade put up."

She licked her upper lip in a quick, almost catlike fashion. "Society judges, and so people excuse."

Then she paused. "But you know all this," she said with a twist of her parasol. "You don't need me to tell you."

Dorian loved this frisson of fascination Saya excited in him. She wasn't the first woman to speak frankly of things women were "not supposed" to dwell on, but she was new - cold, articulate, beautiful, and in a new place, in new clothes, with a difference.

In his quest for experience, a difference was always exciting. At least until it was understood and he could move on to the next experience and the next frisson and fascination and five-minute, five-week, five-month love affair.

This one might be five-minutes, but for now, he was charmed and that sufficed. And with this woman for this five minutes, he could say things he would not ordinarily. At least not with someone so new to him.

"Of course people lie. People lie with manners, people lie with omissions, people lie with truth told in such a way that it will not be believed." He tucked his cane under his arm and pressed her hand between his as though to warm that cool skin. "What lies are we telling each other right now?"

Saya's world was built up with indelicate truths, harsh and terrifying visions, blood and guts and things far more brutal. She stopped and turned so she stood in front of him, shorter than him in stature with the blunt, warm wooden end of her parasol leaning into his chest. She looked intently at him for a moment.

"You lie with omission. You lie with words. You think and act before you see, and you dismiss before you care." She cocked her head, her brown eyes seeing more, seeing in eight different lenses.

"I'm lying about nothing important, and that in and of itself is the biggest honesty there is." She leaned forward and touched her lip just to his cheek in a parody of a very sweet kiss. "And yet I'm not telling you everything."

Of course she wasn't telling him everything. No woman was ever going to tell a man everything.

And what she told him of himself might be devastating to someone younger - to the youth he'd once been - but he was too well-armored by years and a self-serving philosophy for her words to strike him now.

Cold lips, cold hand, cold words. Wonderful. An ice sculpture to admire. Would she melt in the heat?

"If we told each other everything, we would grow bored too quickly. Leave me some mystery and I will do the same for you."

That wasn't precisely true. She told most men she was with everything. There was a sense of fairness in her, long held over from her initial change, that almost required it of her. But usually the telling was accompanied by dinner, which solved the problem of a sustaining relationship.

She backed up just enough, her cold hand still sandwiched firmly in his. "I'm only cold in the winter," she said bluntly. "I'm afraid my health is very poor."

She moved forward again, not paying attention to flowers, or trees, or anything so politely appropriate.

"So tell me, then, Dorian," she said, bowing her head slightly, "Your opinion. On whatever topic you may choose."

Truth or perception of truth. Dorian did have a misogynistic streak borne of his upbringing and the rake's life he had lived. A woman could reveal her very soul to him, and there would remain the certainty in him that there was just a little more he wasn't going to see and did not wish to.

Dorian let one hand drop as they walked again. The flowers and the trees were worth noticing for their beauty in January, but he could come alone again the next day to admire them alone or with someone of a more aesthetic temperament.

"My opinion." He smiled indulgently. "My opinion is that in my life I have seen many changes, including this unexpected place, and the one constant I have found is the opportunity to find beauty among them."

Saya streak was more speciest, and as a human, Dorian's opinion would never weigh much to her, even if she were to find out precisely why his eyes looked so old.

The indulgent smile made her pause. "Keep speaking," she said with a slight twist of her parasol, the knife rattling. It was impossible to offend a spider who didn't have reason nor want to care, and she wasn't offended. But she was amused. "Beauty you'll find, even in it's horror."

She paused. "You spoke to the Corinthian, I gather."

The assumption was less a guess and more an ability to read on the Network.

"I did. The man who claims to have not been the Roisin Dubh, but made him." Could Lord Henry have not said the same of Dorian in his fashion? Perhaps that had been the man's meaning.

Regardless, he shook his head in response to her request. "I am no Henry Wotton to be able to go on at length about nothing and make it sound so much more fascinating than something,"

He paused in their stroll to pluck a sprig of unseasonal violet and raise it to his face. "And you told me that you would tell me of your home."

"In my world, it's the year 2008," she began. "I assume it's very much like your world was, only a few years in the future." She paused for a moment.

She thought about what she could tell, and what she couldn't.

"I suppose, really, that my world seems normal to me, but odd to others. Do you have vampires in yours?"

"Two thousand eight," Dorian said slowly as though tasting the words, almost ignoring her question about vampires for a moment before answering.

"Yes, there are vampires, though I have only known one-" His smile looked almost warm in contrast with the cold thoughts of Mina's secret. Hadn't he been a good actor then, looking surprised by the revelation? "-intimately."

"In mine as well." She watched his smile - almost overwhelmingly warm, which in this scenario, also meant it was ridiculously fake. "It's much more common."

She paused and elaborated. "In fact," she said with a slight smile, "The most famous vampires and immortals in history are based off real vampires in my world, but most humans don't know that. Dracula, Camilla, even Dorian Gray."

She paused and turned. "And werewolves. We have those, as well."

Dorian started then, composing himself almost immediately. "Famous immortals, hm?" The laugh was a few degrees away from genuine. "I think I should know if I were a vampire."

Saya smiled. She was right, then. "Ah, but see, I met him."

Her hand tightened. If she had had nails, they would have prickled. "What the mages did to him was terrible. Bound his image in a portrait, and forced him to look at it. Macabre. But he didn't die." She smiled. "Oh, no. He didn't die."

The implication was far worse. Immortality as a wasted corpse, never to be the beautiful man in his portrait. Gruesome as only the Giovanni could manage.

"You met him." Temporize. Smile. Look frightfully interested and squeeze her hand reassuringly. "Then what a coincidence and how gothic a fate."

And not to be his fate.

She had met him, under guard, under key. The werespiders were trusted, but not that trusted. He had snarled at her like a wild thing.

She squeezed tighter now, just touching on the edge of her hydraulic strength. "Yes." Her tone didn't budge from it's dry, almost humoring one. "He was actually fairly insane."

She cocked her head. "But you're no vampire. And you may be Dorian Gray, but you're also not mad."

She released his hand. "Fair day."

"I am most certainly Dorian Gray." And he was coming to the conclusion that she was not anywhere near as human as she appeared, even without the quiet display of strength. "And you? What are you, then to have met the mad immortal and speak of it?"

She smiled, pressing a finger to her lips.

"That's my truth. Won't you revel in finding it out?"

"A mystery behind a lovely face. I have heard it said that the true mystery of the world is the visible," he indicated her with a gesture, "not the invisible."

She twirled. "Visit me if you please. I run the garage aboveground, near the warehouse." She placed her cold fingers on her face. "I'll keep the room warm for you."

"I believe I shall please." He reached for her hand on his cheek to lightly brush his lips over her knuckles. "I shall be fascinated."

She nodded, a quick, brief nod, and then she turned again, strolling away from him, her parasol snapping against the leaves of overhanging trees.

Perhaps it was the start of something interesting.

Dorian tucked the sprig of violet into his buttonhole as he watched Saya's retreating figure.

Oh yes, this was very interesting, and promised to remain so for more than five minutes. Wonderful.

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