Ab asino lanam

Participants:

dantes_icon.gif deckard_icon.gif

Scene Title Ab asino lanam
Synopsis Dantes wants to know how Deckard knows. Deckard doesn't want Felix to know how he knows. WHAT COULD DANTENOV'S SOLUTION POSSIBLY BE?
Date December 16, 2008

Central Park

Central Park has been, and remains, a key attraction in New York City, both for tourists and local residents. Though slightly smaller, approximately 100 acres at its southern end scarred by and still recovering from the explosion, the vast northern regions of the park remain intact.

An array of paths and tracks wind their way through stands of trees and swathes of grass, frequented by joggers, bikers, dog-walkers, and horsemen alike. Flowerbeds, tended gardens, and sheltered conservatories provide a wide array of colorful plants; the sheer size of the park, along with a designated wildlife sanctuary add a wide variety of fauna to the park's visitor list. Several ponds and lakes, as well as the massive Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, break up the expanses of green and growing things. There are roads, for those who prefer to drive through; numerous playgrounds for children dot the landscape.

Many are the people who come to the Park - painters, birdwatchers, musicians, and rock climbers. Others come for the shows; the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theater, the annual outdoor concert of the New York Philharmonic on the Great Lawn, the summer performances of the Metropolitan Opera, and many other smaller performing groups besides. They come to ice-skate on the rink, to ride on the Central Park Carousel, to view the many, many statues scattered about the park.

Some of the southern end of the park remains buried beneath rubble. Some of it still looks worn and torn, struggling to come back from the edge of destruction despite everything the crews of landscapers can do. The Wollman Rink has not been rebuilt; the Central Park Wildlife Center remains very much a work in progress, but is not wholly a loss. Someday, this portion of Central Park just might be restored fully to its prior state.


This used to be by the body of water called the Turtle Pond. There is, oddly, an equestrian statue of a Polish king, Jagiello, raising two swords to the sky from among the brush and bramble that has grown up on the once assiduously tended lawn. Along a path by it is loitering a dark-haired man in a dark coat, face only sporadically lit by the end of a cigarette. He more or less has a little sign on that reads 'YOU TOO CAN BE A SPOOK, ASK ME HOW' on him….but hell, if anyone's out here in this weather at this hour, they already know. He only occasionally raises his head to eye the waning moon casting its light over the expanses of snow.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Deckard has finally purchased a pair of black boots to go with his black overcoat, gloves, and cap. His scarf, at least, is grey. Sort of a splash of…if not color, lightness. After a fashion. He stumbles occasionally, but snow has been here for several days, now, and it's not like he hasn't seen it before. Or. It's not like he hasn't hasn't seen it before.

The occasional flicker of blue about the tall shadow of him doesn't slow his progress tremendously. If anything, it makes Dantenov easier to pick out amidst the lifeless bramble and various other overgrown snarls of black and brown stripped bare by the winter. His approach comes around from the direction of the horse's rear, which is appropriate.

Dantenov indeed. He looks bored, and profoundly weary. He turns at the sound of Deckard's approach, and eyes him, as if he were something the Fed were considering buying. "You okay?" he asks, tone neutral, if not actually unfriendly. There's some little shelter from the window in the lee of the base, where Dantes is loitering.

"Are you?" is the reply, likewise neutral if inherently more irritable on account of the source and the cold. "Face planting into a car and then catching a bullet with your shoulder and all. Unless you've decided to further muddy the water with an army of clones."

That gets a slow blink of feline amusement, as Dantes rolls the cigarette over to the corner of his mouth, the better to speak through the ghost of an amused sneer, in the best Bogart fashion. "God, no. One of me is enough. Now, who am I?" he wonders, spreading his hands, as if he intended to produce a bunch of flowers from his sleeve.

Suspicion triggers, just enough for Deckard's gaze to take on a sideways angle from his examination of Jagiello and his mighty steed. There is no light there, rather, a painful lack of it. Everything is dim and dark over murky snow and the city sky blanched sickly purple overhead. He has no special advantage. "Felix?"

"Very good," the man approves, quietly, letting his eyes half-lid, as he takes a deep drag. "And how did you clock me?" There's no threat in his tone - merely that weary droop, and tendency to favor his wounded arm. No sling, though really he should have one. The light of the cigarette is far from kind, only calling attention to graven lines that even Sonny's best efforts can't merely will away.

"Why are you pretending to be dead?" In the absence of actual threat, Deckard is wary without being particularly gun shy. His breaths come at a regular rolling fog, not yet worried enough to thin and quicken in the biting cold. His profile is a little strange under guise of knit cap and clean-shaven jaw, but a Deckard is a Deckard.

Dantes notes, plucking the cigarette from his lips to expel a slow breath, "Because people looking for you were threatening the few people in this city I happen to give a damn for, and I couldn't give them that information. If they thought I'd lived through the results of their torture, they'd be after them, and after me, and I can't stand alone against them." Apparently the entirety of the FBI doesn't count? There's a pistol riding under his shoulder, as before. "Now, how did you recognize me? Obviously, you've got some sort of vision trick in your repertoire."

Deckard says nothing initially. Rather, he eyes Dantes and glances back over his shoulder, half expecting to see a little pack of lesser spooks creeping through the underbrush. "Maybe I'm telepathic," muttered eventually, he works his jaw and looks back again with no particular attention paid to the the pistol. If anything, he works overtime to avoid it, studying the other man's feet. "You called me out here in the cold to ask if I see things?"

"Deckard. Don't lie to me. Don't even try," There's no anger in his tone - it's light, curiously expressionless, without rancor or pleading. "This is important. The bird girl and her buddies, presumably Sylar himself, wanted you badly enough to torture and murder a Federal agent. I don't want to go through that again. I'm not interested in who you're running with now, unless they've managed to get ahold of you already. Now, what can I do to keep this disguise from being an exercise in comical futility? I did or am something that you saw, despite all this work. And how many people have you told since you saw me? The blonde guy with the gun?"

"I told him you were a fed so he wouldn't kill you. Asshole." Defensive in the wake of the T word, never mind the K one, Deckard takes a step forward rather than one back, annoyance cast harsh over the long angles of his face, made all the longer by the absence of hair standing on end to balance it out. "I didn't tell him anything else. If I wanted you dead don't you think I would have kept mum the first time around?"

Dantes closes his eyes. "I'm not accusing you of anything, Deckard. But if I've got a little flag on me that says 'Felix Ivanov, undercover, terrorists shoot me now,' let me know, for the love of Christ. I can change this face again, disappear, but if it's all a little exercise in futility…." He spreads his hands again, opens his eyes, leaving a little arabesque of smoke behind.

Nothing again. Jaw jutted, Deckard falls back into familiar suspicion, and still doesn't answer the question. "You could have your brain transplanted into a dog and you would still be having clandestine meetings in the park. You're always going to have a flag."

No need for X-ray vision to see Dantes grit his teeth against the temptation to get rough with Deckard. "Jesus fucking christ, speaking of dogs, throw me a bone, Deckard. We're out here by our damn selves 'cause I don't think that arson thing they've tried to hang around your neck is real, but I got fucking kneecapped and shot by people who had a hard on for you."

"Then repaired and given a new face by people who have a hard on for you." Another step forward is cocky, maybe, given the circumstances, but he takes it. Fedo's got a gimpy arm, and Deckard still has some personal frustration with the whole situation to deal with. "You protect and serve, Ivanov. Your life is supposed to be a fucking mess."

He does have a gimpy arm, and it's the pain from that that's part of what's making him irritable. Apparently Good Cop has left the building, and it's time for Bad Cop to make his appearance. Because Fel's good hand comes out with inhuman, viperish speed to snag Deckard's collar, and Deckard will find himself slammed up against the smooth basalt of the statue's base. "Fuck you, Deckard, fuck you. I didn't sign up so terrorists could take me apart slowly for their own amusement. I didn't give them -anything- on you because I don't ever betray my informants. But I'm one man, and I'm the only thing that's keeping a full scale manhunt off your back. If I die for real, that's it, and when they catch you it will be the chair or the firing squad." There's a little bump of Deckard's skull against the stone, and Fel is practically nose to nose with him - he smells of smoke and something faint and pleasant, like aftershave, and he's shaking, an odd tremor that goes with a heartbeat far, far too fast for any normal human.

The back of Deckard's neck and the space between his shoulders takes the brunt of the blow, punctuated by the sharper bounce of his skull against cold stone. Static sings white around the edges of mundane vision, all before he has time to realize he's about to get schooled. Never mind having the time to calculate an appropriate response. So. Instinct dictates an inappropriate one instead.

An unconscious switch flips. Eyes previously dull in the grimy night flare to life, bioluminescence blazing brightly back at Felix in the beat dialogue is exchanged. Clonk. There goes his head again. He blinks hard. The next beat — and they're coming quickly, now — sees him making a harsh grab for the man's wounded shoulder. Whether or not he can beat his reflexes to it is probably pretty questionable.

Ah ha. Well, that's odd. Enough so that Felix recoils just a hair. That attempt at a grab is beaten aside with another of those too-swift motions, and Deck's head gets cracked again against the basalt. "Deckard," Fel's voice has dropped a register, become a growl. "Stop it." He's shaking like a junkie - in this state, his body's like an engine pegged in the red, heart thrumming in a way that should have him writhing on the asphalt.

Ow. Again, ow. Deckard's heart is hammering in his chest and doesn't manage to come close to catching up with Ivanov's. His eyes roll up, away, undead glow shuttered away behind another hard blink while his bared adam's apple rolls in his throat and he swallows down whatever it is he was going to try next. Not going to get there in time. Not while Felix's insides are doing their gerbil on crack thing. "This feels familiar."

"What, you get beaten up by cops a lot?" Felix wonders, edging away a half-pace, though he leans his weight in to keep Deckard pinned. His body is radiating heat like he has a fever, and he's sweating - it's visible in the dim gleam of light from the city beyond.

"Cops, customers, terrorists. …Other terrorists." Deckard is ice to Felix's heat, eyes glacial and hand clammy cold when it lifts to creep its way ineffectually around the arm holding him in place. He strains a little, turning his head enough to take in the rest of the park thataway, but finds only the unhelpful skeletons of trees. "You know those glasses you used to be able to order out of the back of comic books?"

Dantes's gaze searches Deckard's face. "No. I didn't grow up in America," he reminds him. Presumably in Soviet Russia, there are no ads for X-Ray Spex in the back of whatever comic books the state might approve. Who knows?

In Soviet Russia, Spex X-ray you? Deckard is pale. For all his love of fighting, his consistent outclassing of late is hard on the nerves. His heart is still going at a pretty good rate, and his eyes haven't shut themselves off when he finally forces them back onto Felix. Weird, yes. Too bright to stare directly into, no. And they're still nearly nose to nose. Fine. Deckard exhales, all whiskey. "Did they have x-ray machines in Russia?"

It has Dantes closing his eyes against the glare. How strange. "They did. T hat's what you can do?" he wonders, a bit redundantly. "How….fractures…" And then it dawns on him. "Oh, -shit-. You can see the bullet, can't you?" There's something like incredulous laughter in his tone.

Deckard says not a thing. His nose rankles a bit and his jaw hollows against the sound of anything like laughter, reading pretty purely of poorly smothered anger over his current predicament.

There's a slow grin spreading. A little relief. "And what would it'd've cost you to say something from the get go?" he wonders, finally letting go his grip on Deckard's collar.

Felix is getting the silent treatment. Deckard rubs at the back of his head, eyes dimming long enough for him to examine his fingertips for blood. There isn't any. He does not smile. THIS IS NOT FUNNY.

Dantes takes a pace back. "Seriously. What's he point, Deckard?" he wonders, putting his hands in his pockets, as if all the violence had never happened.

"Maybe I don't want the only fuckhead in the government watching my back to go all Where's Waldo on my ass again. Maybe I don't want to be forced into a lead helmet when I do inevitably get dragged back into prison." Deckard retains his slight hunch, strain turned over into irritation without much lost energy in between.

He grunts at that, but no promises are forthcoming. "What's the news? And who was that blonde kid who took a shot at me? What've you gotten yourself into?" Fel wonders, leaning against the base of the statue.

"This just in:" Deckard lifts his hands in a mockery of Felix's earlier magician's gesture, "You're an asshole." That, apparently is the news. His hands fall, Deckard shakes himself out, and he's turning on his heel and tugging his coat lapels back down into a position that doesn't scream, 'sling me around by the collar, some other guy totally just got away with it.'

Dantes just snorts. "So're you," he says, simply, settling his coat again, as if he'd shoot nonexistent cuffs. "Call me if I can help you." Or beat on you more, that was great.

"If I ever get bored of alcohol killing my braincells and want to have my head banged against rocks, I'll keep you in mind." It's a pity they're in Central Park, as there are no doors to slam or stairs to stomp down. Deckard just has to trudge off wetly into the snow with no real idea where he's going.


LET ME HEAR YOUR BODY TAAALK.


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December 16th: Keep Your Enemies Close...
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December 17th: Fucking Antarctica
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