Participants:
| Scene Title | Ubi Concordia Ibi Victoria |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Isis rudely awakens her host and goes on to explain the favor she needs from Diogenes. |
| Date | July 30, 2009 |
Cliffside: Diogenes's Apartment
What an eerie apartment, scarcely lit by a lone bare lightbulb, screwed into its socket embedded in the scarred ceiling which seems as though it is about to collapse. The walls share a similar amount of cracks, marred by veins of the old sickly green paint that's reluctantly dying and falling off to reveal the ugly cement underneath it. The apartment itself is quite small. There is no hallway; the door opens up directly into the living room that serves as both the kitchen and the dining room as well, and to the left of this room is the ridiculously undersized bathroom, sporting both the bathtub and the toilet that, while unsavory, were made a little bit more hygienic than the two initially were by the flat's owner. The bedroom is situated to the right of the living room, and it's a small one, with a sizeable dresser against the wall opposite of the door-less entrance to the room, a window to the left, and the bed to the right. Cheap bed sheets are left as they were when the man woke up and rose out of it.
A bit farther away from the bedroom was the desk, pushed against the wall. It's amazing it hasn't fallen apart yet, albeit the same could be said about everything in this flat and the apartment itself. Atop the rough, horribly aged wooden surface lies the Bible, a few crumpled up sheets of paper (plenty written on them) and the philosopher's bag. The chair is missing. Well, not exactly; it is broken into useless pieces, lying at the foot of the Eastern wall, paint missing in huge chunks on it. Presumably, the chair flew in the midst of a fit of rage. The old fridge can be found in the left corner next to the exit, with a small table nearby and two chairs pushed up to it. Another noteworthy detail is the large detailed map of New York City above the desk. It has X's, and numerous, differently coloured lines were drawn on the streets, denoting certain routes that connected said marked locations. Some locales have notes attached to them. Finally, this apartment actually has old-fashioned windows. Two of them, at both sides of the desk.
Diogenes had returned home rather late, even if 'late' meant that he simply returned past the curfew. It's nearly midnight, and he returns home with something that helps him survive the night - a bottle of vodka. Not one to drink it without anything to supplement it despite his Russian roots, he instead would mix it with orange juice. Initially, he planned to hide the 'evidence', purely because he didn't want Isis to find out he used what was left of her money to purchase something to get drunk. However, it just so happens that he simply falls asleep closer to dawn, smashing his face into the desk and simply passing out after exhausting his body and mind beyond what either can handle. As he shuffles about in the middle of his sleep, he knocks the bottle over, and although it doesn't roll off the table, its tip is over the edge and a small pool has formed on the ground. That's how Isis would find him.
The throbbing of her wounded hand wakes Isis earlier than she might usually. She groans as she sits up slowly, examining the red stain on her bandaging before looking around the strange room, running her free hand over the sheets of the bed. With a sigh she pushes up, glaring down at the clothes she'd worked, fled, and slept in. Brushing her finger roughly through her short, disheveled hair she steps out into the main room to find Diogenes in his passed out state.
She rolls her eyes and dips off towards the kitchen first, collected towel and returning to begin mopping up the mess. She watches the unconscious drunkard from the corner of her gaze where she's crouched at his side before reaching up and grabbing the Vodka bottle by its neck. She lofts a brow and sighs before stealing the last remnants of the liquor for her own lips, only to then set the empty bottle with a sharp THUD down beside Thomas's head. "Wakey wakey," she coos.
Not the most pleasant way to wake up, to be sure. It is made all the more unpleasant by his mind, since it is quite habitual for the human mind to respond to any sort fo sensory input during sleep in the form of dreams. Or nightmares, in Tom's case. He shoots up as though a bee stung him in the butt, a couple of sheets of paper that he drooled on stuck to his face, forming a featureless mask. Quickly, he lifts a hand to crumple and toss the papers aside regardless of their content, and he looks around. Noticing the empty vodka bottle, he frowns. He didn't drink all of it. In fact, he nary drank a third of it.
Then he notices Isis. He groans, moving a hand to rub the back of his neck that was incredibly sore for an obvious reason. "Did you… drink all that?", he asks, pointing to the empty bottle with his other hand, leaning back to recline in his seat.
Isis sighs and shakes her head, her fingers spidering around the neck of the bottle to spin the empty container with a soft grinding noise atop the desk. "Nope," she says simply, and points to the soggy towel at her feet. "Glad you put use to some of the money I gave you." She glances at the label on the bottle, determining the value of the brand and its likely cost before turning on her bare toes and slipping off towards the bathroom. "I need a shower," she mumbles.
Diogenes tilts his head back and puts on an expression that is best described as a request to be hanged. Or shot, preferably. Gazing at the ceiling, he responds to the woman's sigh with one of his own. "I paid the rent… bought food… Couldn't I have bought something to help me through the night? It didn't even cost that much", he retaliates. And, surely enough, the brand was far from luxurious; it wasn't the cheapest, but it certainly wasn't in the more expensive range. As he rises to his feet, he can't help but feel more grateful for those mornings when he wakes up in his bed after just a few hours sleep. His entire body felt sore from sleeping in an awkward position. He grunts as he stretches. "Don't spin the tap too harsh", he warns her, "Otherwise it'll fly right off."
"Drinking as a crutch…" She wrinkles her nose as she turns about, and lofts a single brow at Diogenes before shutting the door.
The door opens to the steamy interior of the bathroom a short while later, Isis kept modest with one towel tucked around her body while the other is used to ruffle her short, crimson locks into a semi-dry state. She glances around to determine what sort of trouble Thomas has gotten into in the short while…
Thomas looks down at the wet towel. How'd that happen? Suddenly, he feels like a child whose ice-cream fell to the ground. The situation was quite similar. He even pondered whether he should wring the towel above a glass, before realising he is not that desperate. A glance is sent towards the bathroom, although its more of a wary one than a lewd one, considering that he didn't want to spend a half hour trying to fix the tap again. Lazily, his hand grips the neck of the bottle, and he slides it off the desk as he wanders off towards the trash bin to dispose of the unfortunately empty vodka bottle.
Next, he goes on to make breakfast. A procedure he usually skipped back home, and when he didn't, he'd suck up to his mother so that she would prepare something to eat, instead. Thousands of miles away from his home, things were different. However, even though he defeated his laziness to make breakfast not only for himself, but for his guest (albeit calling Isis a guest when she paid for the rent would be a crime), it's naught but sandwiches. Rye bread, mayonnaise, tuna. There's only big plate, adorned with said sandwiches, neighboured by two tall glasses filled with orange juice. As Isis enters wearing nothing but towels, Diogenes thins his lips and arches both of his furrowed brows. "You do realise I'm not gay, right?", he'd ask with an increasingly growing smirk, eyeing the girl.
Isis halts short of the table, the towel atop her head obscuring one dark eye. She looks from Thomas down to herself and back again - suddenly uneasy. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "Part of me would be disappointed if you were, but…" She suddenly blushes and turns back around. "I'll get dressed." Even the Ice Queen has her weaknesses. She hurries back towards the bathroom to get dressed, bare little feet leaving little footprints of condensation in her wake.
He turns his head to the side, even if his gaze remains on her. Inevitably, his eyes take her entire form in, but surprisingly he doesn't stare; his gaze returns to meet her eyes. "I didn't grew up in a basement", he remarks with a lighthearted snort, moving over to the desk to grab the chair and bring it back to the kitchen table where it belongs. On his way, he extends his earlier note, offering a succinct explanation: "I practically grew up without a father, and my sister would walk about the apartment topless completely unphased." As he sets the chair down in front of the kitchen table, he sighs softly. "Still", he shouts out, "I'd prefer it if you were clothed for your own dignity's sake." With that, he sits down, but doesn't start eating. He'd actually wait for her. Unless she took too long that is.
She wouldn't take long at all, too eager to return - to eat and to hear more about his family. Isis pops back out of the bathroom and slips into the empty seat with a quick smile. "A sister, huh?" She keeps her eyes down at the food set out before her, so as not to make the question too probing. She tugs her feet up, tucking them in beside her in the chair as she snags a half of a sandwich. "I have one of those," she remarks with a nostalgic sort of smile. She looks up though, and makes a slight gesture of pointing a finger at Diogenes. "The topless thing is weird, though," she quips with a smirk, before taking on a more serious expression. "Do you miss her?" She steals a bite of the 'breakfast' as she watches Thomas.
Obviously, it'd be unlike Diogenes if he didn't punctuate niceties with sarcasm. "Which isn't to say", he begins only to insert a dramatical pause, "that I wouldn't enjoy you running around naked." As Isis returns to claim her seat and join in on the breakfast fun, Tom casually reaches out to grab a half of a sandwich; he would speak no more of his past at the given moment, instead focusing largely on replenishing his energy. Drinking helped him stay awake during the night, but not the day. He wasn't one to drink during the day, either. "'One of those'? Since when are siblings on the level with cabbages?", he inquires with a sneer. After a bite of the sandwich, he directs the conversation to a different topic. "I think we should talk about the mess you're in. Sappy talk can wait."
Isis watches Diogenes a few moments longer than is necessary, canting her head gently to the side to observe him from behind a few untamed strands of choppy read hair. After a moment she gives a slow nod. "It was a joke." She waves it away, her own desire to speak on 'sappy' matters suddenly crushed under the boot of Thomas's sour comment.
She steals another bite from the sandwich and shifts uncomfortably in her seat. "I mentioned that accidental swap - the man's body that I was 'stuck' in for a week? Well, it seems he went to the cops." She lowers her snack and uses her freehand to rub at her brow, attempting to ease the headache already beginning to form behind them. She hisses and pulls her hand away, looking at the sloppy wrap she'd try to reassemble after her shower. "Anyway," she forces through the tension of her grinding jaw. "I was at work and this officer came out of know where. She knew my name. I assume I can't go home in that case either."
Diogenes doesn't react. It's as though they were continuing the discussion regarding their sisters. He appeared to be completely unphased, even if beneath that thick and seemingly impenetrable layer of his stoic demeanour lied chaos of various thoughts, slowly being assembled to resemble more of a tree of decisions and consequences that they will lead to. In the meantime, he simply ate the breakfast he prepared, occasionally looking to Isis to check up on her. Yes, he wanted to hear the full story and he would only ask whether she is okay to hear the story that would have remained untold, but it's still a form of care, isn't it? "So, you're a fugitive?", he asks. It is soon revealed to be a rhetoric question; more of a voiced thought that led to another. "Have you anything at home that is of some importance? Documents, perhaps, money, or anything else?.." His tone is just as neutral.
Isis shrugs as casually as she can manage. "Pictures. I want my pictures." She wanted much more than that, but she'd already come to the realization that much of her belongings would need to be left behind. "I should get my money out of the bank - I'm not sure how far this will go." She takes another bite before pushing the half-eaten sandwich away from her. She lost her appetite. She sighs and begins to unravel her bandaging, prodding aimlessly at the slices on the back of her knuckles. "Can we talk about something else?" she asks as the little nips of pain begin to overcome her sour thoughts.
"I am pretty sure I could get you some of the things from your apartment. Nothing heavy or big. It would be made much easier with you, but I will understand if you don't want to. This is risky." Unlike Isis, he continued to eat. Not that he eats much, however; two sandwiches and he's already had breakfast. As he grabs the second one, he glances to the redhead, noticing how she unwraps the bandages. Curiously, he keeps his eye on the soon-to-be-revealed injury in order to check up on it. "Remember how I've told you I almost killed my father?", he asks in his stoic tone, bringing his sandwich to his lips to take a bite. Once he swallows, he continues, his voice growing sterner: "It sparked a huge conflict in my family. That's when I left. That life is lost. I no longer have a mother, a sister or a father… Not that I ever had the third one." Another bite.
"My sister is thousands of miles away, and we hate each other more than sworn enemies do. And your sister? How many states away is she? I am pretty sure she misses you as much as you do. I have already told you that you have things and people to lose. What I am doing… it will eventually lead to my demise. I'm a sour little bastard verging on insanity, and I thrive on others' misery." He finishes his sandwich quickly to rise from the table. "I need to change your bandages."
"Just because you left them behind doesn't mean you don't have them." She looks up abruptly and it is too obvious that she aims to convince Thomas as if to do so would be to convince herself. "She's not far. Massachusetts. She's only twelve." The soft corner of her lips twitch ever so slightly, tempted to draw up in a smile they never reach. She gives the next slice a sharper prod then the last, enough to prompt a fresh little stream of blood and reclaim her thoughts for herself once more. "I think you like people to believe you're a sour bastard. And, some of the time you are. But… not always." She holds out her hand as she turns her dark gaze back up to Thomas.
Silence is what Isis would hear in return. Diogenes walks past Isis towards his precious bag that is resting on the desk. Burying his hands inside, he searches for and finds a roll of bandages, medical cotton and a tiny bottle of iodine for disinfection. When he returns to the redhead poking haphazardly at her wounds, he places all three on the table and brings up the other chair closer to her. Throughout all of this, he is as silent as a night in the middle of a forest. He greatly missed his family, but to admit such would be to prove himself wrong - and being wrong is something he simply could not stand. For similar reasons he does not respond to the fact that his demeanour might be a facade. It made life easier.
"You still haven't told me the details behind the favour you want me for", he finally speaks up, taking the woman's injured hand into his hands as gently as one could, as though he was holding a newly born chick in his palm. he reaches for the iodine, opening the bottle with just one hand before flicking the cap away with but his thumb; it doesn't fly too far, as intended. The bottle is placed on the desk, and with the same hand he tears a bit of the cotton off, twisting it into a stick-esque shape.
Isis watches the way in which Thomas handles her hand as if the act where a puzzle to be dissected. She makes no comment, though. "Some people need my help…" She turns her gaze to the wounds on the backs of her tiny knuckles. "So, I'll need yours. I'm going to have to… steal someone's body for a while. Get some information. I was hoping you'd keep an eye on my body. Do you're little," she lifts her free hand and wiggles her fingers towards Diogenes. "paralysis thing, if necessary." She looks up to Diogenes now, her expression serious in that sense that it is reserved and composed as she seems to finally have collected herself back into her usual icy demeanor after now that her thoughts have passed through those of her lost home, work, and goods, and tipping onto the topic of the work that lays ahead. "I'd be helping a great number of people. We'd be helping."
Perhaps Isis shouldn't have noted that both she and him would be 'helping a great number of people'. It certainly brightens his mood, causing him to snort that would have evolved into a chuckle should he have allowed it. Even though he grins, he remains silent, concentrated on replacing the bandages. His grip on her hand tightens only after he stuffs the stick into the bottle with iodine and tips it over to soak the cotton with the liquid; he knows that it's going to sting like little else, and as such he makes sure Isis wouldn't be able to withdraw her hand as he paints the iodine with wild strokes like Picasso.
Isis's slender arm gives only one small, sharp tug on her tiny hand before resigning to the firm grip of Thomas's fingers. She closes her eyes, shutting out the visible world and pulling a soft, though not entirely unpleasant, hiss between her pale lips. "It's not funny," she growls through the bridge of her clenched teeth. "They're going to start coming down on the Evolved. On people like you and I." She quiets another moment, recognizing the pain for all its worth, before soft lids reveal her dark gaze to turn back upon Diogenes. "At least I'm making an effort to do something more with my life than bring people into my own misery."
Even though the pain has faded, she gives her hand another tug, trying to deny Thomas's assistance now.
However, Diogenes would tug the hand in his direction. His usually dull grey eyes now attain sharpness to them. His mother always told him that when he was like his late grandfather - he had soft and dull grey eyes, but once his anger kicked in, they became deep and sharp. Like now. "I need to bandage your hand. You can act prissy and behave like Mother Theresa all you want - after I bandage your hand." Carelessly, he throws the cotton aside, and would carry on to carefully bandage the woman's dainty hand, provided she allows him such. "They're coming down on evolved human beings, yes. And you actually think they will win? Think, Isis. They have guns, and us?.. We can stop bullets, we can summon a firestorm at the tip of our fingers, we can choke people to death, we can steal bodies. Offence, defence, infiltration - we cover all those aspect. We are the inevitable future, and ordinary people are scared."
If Isis decides to show her stubbornness again, he would leave her as is instead of finishing wrapping up the bandages, which he would bite to divide into two bands to tie them off into a tight - but not too tight - knot. Whether he succeeds or not, he stands. "I know it is important for you. You will get all the help from me." He'd nudge her shoulder playfully with a smirk. "I'm going to go scout out the area near your home. Ubi concordia, ibi victoria, Kayla. Remember that." He turns away, heading for the door, not picking up his jacket or taking his bag with him.
Kayla - She so rarely heard the name it made her jump a bit. She looks down at her hand, bandaged as it seeing as she put up no further fight, and matches Thomas's posture in rising from her seat. She lofts a brow at the Latin and twitches her nose in a few rapid little wiggles. "You'll have to translate when you get back," she comments as she allows her expression to ease into a softer smile.
"Thank you," she offers, the words relaying her gratitude for the bandaging and promise of assistance alike. "Stay out of trouble, yeah? I'm going to go grab my money from my account." She'd watch and wait for her host to leave before mingling around the apartment a bit. The bag draws her attention for a long while - dark gaze simply staring at the mysterious little pack before Isis suddenly grunts and denies the temptation, storming out the door and making straight for the bank.