• Mature • In The Flesh

[Max]

37 Saun 722
Afternoon



"Easy!" Max exclaimed with an irritable groan from the soiled cobbles of the Westguard street. "For fuck's sake! Watch where the fuck you're going."
"Find somewhere else to pass out that's not in the street," the pedestrian retorted gruffly as he continued on his way. "Worthless damn junkie."

Maxine rubbed her temple where the man had tripped on her head, eyes squinted closed against the blinding sun that greeted her now that she was unceremoniously awakened. She begrudgingly sat herself up and instantly regretted it. A migraine more akin to a hammer to the brain seized her immediately. She raised a hand up to block out the sunlight and peeled her eyelids open. One of her knees was scraped and her other hand's knuckles had a fresh bruise. She remembered neither wound's origin but that was predictable.

Kill me.

The heels of her hands drove into her exhausted, dry eyes as she tried to rub the sleepy hangover out. A shin of another walker knocked into her back and rocked her sideways. They exchanges a flurry of curses but Max found herself too groggy to offer any swift punishment. The best she could do was find her feet and quite literally set to trying to dust herself off. At least now that she was standing other people walked around her. The mess of hair atop of her didn't keep the disapproving stares away though.

Fuck the lot of you.

There was no time for an ego-driven bout of Maxine versus The World to-trial. That would have to wait. Her dedication to undermining Tristane Dorrick and his loathsome family had moved her hunt to Westguard, regrettably. The outlying city outside Etzos wasn't so familiar as Foster's Landing. It was more of a melting pot than anywhere else in this part of the region but she did consciously tried to cover her marks, blesses and curses.

More access to the outside world was attractive to a jewel trading family like the Dorricks. It made sense that Jarl had been sent to do business here, and more sense still that another safe house like the lodge she'd turned to scorched earth existed somewhere in the area. What Maxine didn't appreciate was the increased level of fortification the area offered. That, and her lack of familiarity meant that acquiring her drugs of choice was a challenge she didn't desire. Without Sabrina to help ensure she got her fix, a dangerous edge had come to Maxine's already precarious state.

Maxine winced as she turned toward the sun, which was unfortunately the same direction she needed to walk to start her trial. She reached into her pocket and retrieved a joint of Ambrosia. After some fiddling with the light, the end burned and she sucked the narcotic greedily into her starving lungs.

As soon as the drug entered her system she felt some relief from the harassing symptoms of her unacknowledged battle. At least she elected not to put more blue in her veins to-trial...so far. She shook a hand through her hair like the simple gesture would fix her overall disheveled appearance.

She wandered down the street toward the next destination she planned to stake out, all the while puffing on her Ambrosia. There were some things to note about Ambrosia and Maxine. The first was the obvious: she had an unshakeable affinity to it. The second was less but not so evident; when the drug wasn't driving her to insanity, it placed her in a sort of "sweet spot" wherein her senses were heightened and her mind worked with acute efficiency. That second point was crucial in this moment. It helped her pick up something rather quickly.

I'm being followed.

The Rusalka tightened her jaw but that was the only change in her figure. She kept walking. She kept taking leisurely puffs on her joint, letting it clear away the dooming threat of withdrawal she woke up with. Then, as though it was a planned stop in her route, she turned into a deep alleyway. The moment she was deep enough that she wasn't plainly visible to the average traveler on the main street, she pivoted violently in place with fists raised and eyes wild with anticipation. Her eyes rested on the raggedly silhouette staring back and the hateful tension vaporized. Her expression fell.

"It's you..."

[Kasoria]

They burned her when the first sun had peeked over the horizon. Her son had told them she loved that time of trial. She'd shuffled and staggered and later been carried out to the back porch so she could see it. He told them that even towards the end, he rearranged her room so he could open the windows for her in the morning, and it would be the first thing she saw.

She would have wanted this, he said. For this to be the last sight.

Kasoria had not argued with the boy. He knew Jessye better than he, as more than just a one-time lover and occasional friend. But he did not speak because... because...

She doesn't want anything anymore, son. She's dead. She's gone. Her troubles are over.

Looking at his son as he held the torch, he couldn't bring himself to speak that truth. He stood by in his neat, sparse clothes, ignoring and being ignored by everyone else there. No-one from her side of the "family". They were long gone, to death or negligence. None from Martyn's... save for him, of course. Instead his new family had showed up. A clutch of somber-faced young men who had trained and sweated and bled with him. Flightmaster Nader, in full uniform, ramrod straight and eyes annoyingly, irritatingly, infuriatingly sincere in their grief.

A handful of others. People who she knew, lives she had touched. Standing there sniffling and dabbing their noses with rags as they stood in the ghost of chill that woUld be obliterated the moment dawn rose over the world.

No priests. Signalism didn't need any. Just a pyre and witnesses.

The sun came up. Light bathed them all. Still Martyn did not move. Just stood, with the torch blazing in his hand, staring at the cloth-bound bundle on the bed of wood. She didn't smell of rot or death. Just oil, pungent and flammable. Her rags were soaked in it. Somehow, that frightened the boy more than the idea of smelling what decay would do to his mother.

He didn't move. Lost in thoughts, in grief, in regret, in anger, just... lost. The sun rose and rose and once it was all the way revealed from the horizon, and it's twin was on the way, Kasoria stepped forward.

"Son?"

He flinched as his father touched his shoulder. But that trial, if alone in all of them, he didn't shake it away.

"It's time."

Martyn nodded. He stepped forward. Willing the tears to stop flowing as he lowered the torch... and then all was afire.

Kasoria finished the glass of whiskey. Knocked back the glass and let it burn down his throat and into his belly. It went well with the pipe between his lips, bowl lazily smoking as he pulled on it. A stream of white smoke wafted from his nostrils and rose towards the window he was staring out of. Seemed to billow outside and join the distant wisp on the far hill...

All that remained of Jessye. Still smoking, just barely. Breaks later, when all had said their words and paid their respects. Tomorrow they would return and collect what remained of her. He knew the oil-soaked rags would do their job, as well as the good kindling they'd paid good coin for. Well... would have. Nader had been magnanimous enough to pay for the funeral expenses. Kasoria didn't dispute him. Not because he appreciated the cunt, but because he would allow anger or bitterness to further poison the mood of the trial.

He sighed. That was Jessye talking. Always conciliatory, never weak. Understanding, not condoning. Strong, not domineering. Everything he could want in a mother for his son.

Fuck knows you weren't fit to be a father.

Cursing softly he reached for the bottle... and cursed a good deal louder.

Shite.

He stalked out his door and tossed the empty bottle into the trash barrel as he went. He had no intent to get rat-arsed that day, but after what Martyn said to him after... well... he'd decided to avail himself of his duties for the rest of the trial and take some personal time. Meaning he intended to drink until his mood had lightened up from pitch-fucking-black. The walk from the cottage to the town helped sober him somewhat. He licked his lips, anticipating another bottle of Wimmerson's, maybe Hildrathi Reserve? Maybe the nearest tavern had something-

"For fuck's sake! Watch where the fuck you're going."

Kasoria stopped dead. No way was he that drunk... right? He blinked and shook his head. No mistaking that voice, though. He'd heard it in his dreams more than the waking world as of late, but... it was an old memory to him. As such it sunk deep in his mind and when his body conjured those flashes and images back to him...

Then he heard it again. Another string of oaths and curses that would make a Lurker blanche... and the faint whiff of Ambrosia on the air from where it had come from. Booze forgotten, Kasoria narrowed his eyes and slid rather than walked over to the side street. Amazing how quickly those old habits came back to him. Sticking to walls, crowds, clutches of folks, eaves and cover. Anything to hide him while he watched-

-then saw her. Buried under filth and rags and anger, but still her. And, paranoid and untrusting bastard he was, his first thought was-

Why here?

Maxine shuffled off and Kasoria followed. He made a swift inventory of his assets as he did, for he did not believe that she of all folk would be here by chance. But if her goal was to spy or kill, why this level of charade? She looked less like a scratcher and more a derelict, playing the part on a stage that made no sense. It seemed to raw, too genuine to his eyes.

You told her the past was buried, he reminded himself as he turned into the alley. Maybe she's taking you up on-

Then she whirled around, fists up. Fast and violent enough that he'd drawn a blade and snapped into combat stance before he'd realized he was doing it. Knees bent, one arm forward, other cocked back and filled with that deadly little karambit of his. His Sparks hissed and sizzled under his skin and they were but a thought away, waiting to deploy either a Shield before him or Transmute the cobbles and brick and wood to-

"It's you..."

Her fists did not lower, but her face... Fates... Kasoria's own hard mask faltered for a moment as he stepped out of the shadows and into the afternoon glare. Black eyes like a child's notion of a demon's stared at her in something close to shock. Looking her up and down and smelling the trials of dirt and sweat and booze and whatever she could snort or smoke or pound into her veins. Her dream self had... omitted, such conditions. Now he saw it waking and undeniable.

The karambit slid back into its sheath, and he took another, risky step forwards. Eyes alive not with the coldness she so remembered. No... worse. Pity.

"... the fuck happened to you, girl?"

Wealth Ledger

-2WPs for season's worth of basic alcohol (ale and whiskey)

[Max]

Maxine’s bloodshot eyes stared at the onyx gaze fixed on her. His shadow falling upon her shrunk her to the last arc she felt it’s darkness. The figure, somehow slightly smaller is stature but features no less raggedy, still emanated with that same, idiosyncratic, commanding presence of an Etzori boogeyman even after all this time.

Ambrosia smoke idly drifted up from the end of the lit joint forgotten between her lips. The shadow took a step forward into the light and her entire body tensed. One had to lack a certain level of humanity to boast the infamy Kasoria earned. It was evident in her dreams, and the warping of the magic on his appearance was even more striking in the flesh.

Slowly her hands lowered before her. There was a saying between them, something she’d said only to him during her short time surviving Etzos.

Until that trial.

That trial is finally here.

“…the fuck happened to you, girl?”

Maxine blinked at the question, stunned first at the sound of his voice actually reaching her ears. His inquiry was met with silence. Then, slowly as she digested the question he was asking, her features slipped…

Into complete, nearly insane laughter.

The Rusalka threw her head back, the joint bouncing on her bottom lip with the initial reaction. The laughter grew more intense, maniacal as she doubled over and rested her palms on her knees to keep her from dropping. It was a full bit before she recovered and straightened up. One of her hands wiped the involuntary watering at her eyes from the fit.

Where would I even begin?

A look of distrust shadowed her expression. Max took a long, intentional draw on her Ambrosia while she studied her old mentor as though hunting for imperfections in a statue. One slow, deliberate step at a time she approached him with caution. The Ambrosia held in her lungs was purged gradually through her nose in a plume of smoke.

Maxine reached a hand out toward him as though she were dealing with a coiled snake. Her fingers first dared to touch the fabric of his shirt, then wrapped around his arm underneath as though testing whether it was solid. Her brow furrowed and she fought hope away. She toggled her sense of smell on into a greatly enhanced state and inhaled deeply. For a brief moment her eyes closed.

Whiskey. Burning flesh. Pipe.

When her eyes flashed open again she pulled Kasoria into a tight embrace, the sort his stiff frame would’ve never permitted in her childhood. Her fingers curled to fists around the fabric of his shirt behind his back and she buried her head against his shoulder.

This was not another trick by the Immortals. No one was wearing the appearance of her mentor, and she was confident this was not a dream.

He was here.

The slip lasted only a brief moment before she remembered herself. She sucked in a stiff inhale, stifling the lapse in her invincible exterior again. The Rusalka stepped away from him and shook it away. The list of people who could elicit any real vulnerability from her with their mere presence was short. Most of them were dead. This surprise she didn’t prepare for.

“So much for retirement?” She asked him, raising a brow.

She knew the scent of a burning body well enough to catch its lingering on him…and him well enough to know that whoever’s corpse burned was no usual, inconsequential mark. Max frowned.

“Come,” she dared to give him a pat on the shoulder. “Let’s get us both a drink.”

If he’d entertain her, Maxine would lead them through the streets to a little tavern she’d come across since she landed in Westguard. By the time they reached their distinction the afternoon had aged into the evening. He didn’t have to voice his preference. Some of his lessons were still well engrained.

She led them to a table in the back, just outside the brightest part of the candle glow. Her hand gestured toward a chair with a wall directly at its back with the whole tavern proper as it’s view. Max grabbed the chair that sat across from his, dragged it to the side instead, and rotated it so when she sat she was partially seeing out as well. One of her feet rested outside the shelter of the table pointed toward the door.

“I’ll buy,” the Rusalka teased as she eased into her seat. When the tavern wench moseyed over she held up two fingers. “Whiskey. The bottle.” She glanced toward the Old Man. “That’s what you still drink, isn’t it?”

When the bar maid put the cups and opened bottle down between them, Max wasted no time pouring the first round.

“So,” Maxine mused with a sigh. “You or me first?”

[Kasoria]

They'd first met in much the same fashion, all those arcs ago. Only this time, he'd followed her. For an idle moment he wondered if, back then, she would have sniffed him out. Maybe. Possibly. Even then she'd been a keen little street rat. Smart for an opportunity, dumb when it came to seizing it. But knowing when someone foul was on her tail... he'd not put that past her.

For all the good it's done her.

Kasoria's eyebrows shot up as a peal of cackling, crackling, juddering laughter echoed around the alley. The kind of laughter that was far removed from whatever mirth had initially coaxed it. It was more a symptom of damage than humor, and he'd heard it many times in the Oh'Pee. From derelicts, drunks, junkies, and demented who were too lost and in too much pain to cling too tight to reality. No, the comfort of insanity was better for them. Addled by drugs and booze they embraced some shadow world between the waking and the Emea. Somewhere they never needed to take things seriously, until finally their half-blind torment freed them through death.

He swallowed heavily when she made her tentative move towards him. Not because he feared her, but because he knew what she was doing. When she pushed his chest and patted it, he was reminded of a man testing a bridge before stepping on it, or seeing if a clear window in fact had glass inside.

She doesn't know if you're real. She thought you were a vision... or someone else wearing your guise.

Morties. Remember?

He did. He remembered when first he discovered she was Marked, in the Emea. The rage. The hate. The sorrow and the howling anger... he didn't regret how he felt. He regretted how he expressed it. He'd pushed her away and driven her from the one soul that might have cared for her more than a tool or a convenient fuck hole. He opened his mouth to ask how long it had been-

Then there was a rush of movement and damnit he almost fucked headbutted her. But he stopped moving the moment she did... wrapped against his chest. Head under his shoulder. Lean but hard muscle gripping him in a tight embrace. Fates, but even his gnarled soul could feel seasons, arcs of loss and loneliness through the gesture. It didn't last more than a moment... but even then, he managed to rest his hands on her back and her hair, and return it.

“So much for retirement? Come. Let’s get us both a drink.”

Ah, but wasn't that Maxine all over? Vulnerable one moment, sarcastic and untouchable the next. Kasoria let that slide for now, resisting the urge to embrace her again and tell her to stop being stop stupid. Did she really think she'd been the only one of them to miss the other? Then he frowned. Was that true, or was that just the trial speaking? The loss of Jessye, his friend, who could have been more than that, long ago... but no. No, that was fantasy. Jessye was appreciated by him, cared for, but loved? That emotion was so alien and singular he only had it inside him for his son, and those dead souls he mourned at his Lighthouse.

So went the established truth. Yet when he saw her, and was with her...

"I'll nay argue."

He was as good as his word. Let her lead the way to the Lusty Lizard, now complete with it a wooden sign depicting... just that, above the door. The crowd was bustling. Not many taverns open yet, and the town was growing every season. Everyone from laborers and travelers to soldiers and seamstresses were packed around tables and the bar, but there was still one open at the very end. Where it was seemingly understood that only the shady or the chronically unhygienic sat.

Lucky us.

He sat in silence as she ordered, then poured. Nothing to be said for now. But he noticed how she'd let him take the wall seat, and made her own so that she could leap out the moment she saw trouble. She'd remembered. He hid a smile as he took a sip from his drink... then it vanished when she her knock hers back and pour herself another, sharpish.

“So. You or me first?”

"I knew youse were Marked," he said, too tired and agitated to bother with tact. "But yeh didn't mention youse were tryin' t'kill yerself wiv' anythin' yeh can smoke, snort, or neck at the same time."

He looked up into her eyes. Took the anger and indignation he knew would be there, and let it pass right through him. An Immortal had tried to stare him down. He'd made her bleed in return.

"Those two related? An' first n' fuckin' foremost, what're you doin' this far from the Big Smoke, sleepin' rough in Westguard?"

[Max]

When she was under Kasoria’s brutal tutelage, hard lessons were learned and drilled into her until most didn't require thought. They lived in her tissues, fibers, and bones. Predatory inclinations and a deep bias for self preservation was instinct. When he'd finally put a knife in her hand they'd worked the fundamentals as intentionally as that of the mindset of a deadly wielder.

No cut was to ever be purposeless or wasteful. Every strike needed to be deliberate, clean, and efficiently precise. A tongue could be a sharp weapon too. With his line of questioning, the Raggedy Man wasted neither breath or depth. He cut straight to it upon invitation. Her dismissive response to his initial query when they faced one another in the alleyway had not deterred him.

What happened to me?

He wanted to know. Max could feel it radiating from his core, this desire to understand this stark, impossibly dark place he'd found her in now. She couldn't blame his curiosity. She must’ve been unrecognizable compared to the memory he’d held on to her for the arcs he might’ve assumed her dead before the dreams.

As a child she was his determined protégé but not cut so perfectly from his same cloth. The little street urchin would lie, steal, fight, and incapacitate as her survival depended on it. The last time he'd seen her in the waking world she'd been so...disappointing. He'd offered to walk her over one last final line in the sand, and trembling and riddled with unanticipated scruples, she'd refused him and fled. Little Max hadn't had it in her to murder.

Little Max and all her childish innocence and petty morals were dead now.

This was what remained.

The Rusalka took a long drink of her rum and slowly set the cup back down. Plenty of people had confronted her about the things she'd done, everything she'd destroyed and those she'd hurt along the way. No one had ever looked her in the face and challenged her over what she was actively doing to herself. Her stoic expression twitched with tightly restrained reaction to his stark observations. She looked at the ash tray instead of his face, tapping the end of her joint into the metal basin.

"First and fucking foremost," the addict took the offered out hastily. "I'm hunting a lead. There's some wannabe politician with business out here. It'll take a little bit of work, but I'd like to find out what it is exactly and...do what I do about it."

It was maybe a cryptic but fair response. She didn't have enough answers or intelligence gathered yet to decide her next course of action. A little more tailing and she hoped she'd have a better idea.

Easy part's over.

Like Sephira, Kasoria's mutations robbed him of the human aspects of his eyes that betrayed emotion so acutely. How men must’ve trembled to be caught in his soulless sights. Unlucky, perhaps for him, her familiarity with his sort of eyes afforded him little camouflage. Even with those black pools she could feel the insufferable pity he had for her even in the most furtive of glances.

She hated him for it.

"You remember that business with Quaros?" she started to explain in the best way she could, the only way she thought she knew how. "That sniveling priest? It was a creative plan you came up with, the sewers and the animals we used to herd him right where we wanted him. You gagged him and dragged him deep into the gutters of the city to a place no one could hear his muffled crying, pleading while you pressed a dagger into a little girl's hand so she could learn to kill a man."

There was no accusing in her voice despite the way she recalled the memory. Just statements of fact.

"I could kill a straw man a thousand different ways, just like you showed me...but we both found out that trial that there was not a drop of blood in me so cold that I wanted to be a murderer. I didn’t like hurting people. I never planned on being this. I can see it in your eyes when you look at me that you didn't see it coming either."

She let the recollection and its honest harshness exist. The Ambrosia moved her to lips, smoke held in her lungs, and the narcotic drifted out her nostrils.

"I'll never forget this," she admitted, sitting back with her joint balanced between her fingers. "That trial I remember something you said to me, right after you handed me that dagger." She gestured between them, expression growing hard as she prepared to quote him. "'This is the life, girl. This the core of it. All the trainin', all the practice, all of it... s'nothin' unless youse can do this. Yer in it all the way, or you're in the way."'

Maxine smiled but it didn't reach her eyes. She took a long drag of Ambrosia and embraced the buzz it lent her, the vividness of the memories now as she reached deep into her fried brain and dredged them to the surface. The smoke wafted from her lips and she shrugged at Kasoria.

"You were right and eventually I could do it," Max admitted. “Started doing it a lot whether I intended to or not, actually. I got out of the way and got into it all the way. You taught me everything you could in the time you had me for. Probably saved my life with it. Trouble is?"

She leaned back against her chair and regret stained her expression as she eyed him.

"You never taught me how to weather it...everything that comes after its done. It does get easier after the first one. The hesitation mostly goes away, the self convincing is easier, and all of that.” Her free hand went to her rum cup. "Never told me about the ghosts that I would carry, the nightmares and sleepless nights, and being so fucking angry at everyone all the fucking time."

She brought the alcohol to her lips like she could drown the truth she spoke. Her ears loathed the honesty as much as she bet his did, but now that someone finally asked, it was answered for the both of them.

There. Glad you asked?

Maxine started drinking alcohol when she was a child here in Etzos, like a lot of deviant children did. Reevi and bug berries were just the same: juvenile thrills for a petty high.

She found Ambrosia after the Scalvoris Element Cultists to outrun the nightmares by staving off sleep. Katomise and it’s gamble between euphoria and rage made her feel powerful and euphoric on a level she couldn’t achieve on her own anymore. Panorium Powder was an intense painkiller with an impossibly high feeling of elation, and on the trials she feared what she was capable of, it incapacitated her perfectly.

"There was something wrong on this little island in Scalvoris, called Faldrass?” Max took a shaky inhale and looked up at the ceiling. Her jaw tightened. "The volcano was going to blow it’s top or something, and people showed to try to fix it to save everyone. I was kinda fucked up, and long story short, I got into some trouble. I picked me, said fuck everyone else, and lost control.”

Why the fuck are you telling him this?

"I fucked up,” Maxine confessed for the first time, hardened expression breaking. "I think I killed a lot of people that trial. Nearly even topped myself. People fucking drowned, and buried, and crushed. People that didn’t deserve it. I didn’t mean to, but it was all me.”

Her lip curled with contempt, grip on her cup tightening though the emotion in her eyes was not anger alone.

"The leash and collar part of my curse vanished after that. Guess I didn’t learn my lesson. Now I have this, something far worse.” She pulled back her sleeve, then her shirt collar. Plain for Kasoria’s eyes, tattoo-like chains encircled her body like shackles.

"I killed what was left that I cared about. There’s nothing but scorched earth behind me. I deserve this.” Maxine folded her arms across her chest, stern words now ice cold. "So if I am trying to kill myself with the shit I do, that’s my fucking business isn’t it?”

Maxine adjusted her jaw and then loosened it by finishing her cup again. She’d never spoken about the business on Faldrass to anyone, not even a heavily abbreviated version. Kasoria was the first. She wished she’d said nothing of it at all. She ashed her half-finished joint in the tray again.

"What about your boy?” she pivoted their conversation away from her life. "What’s he like?” Max exhaled a mirthless laugh through her nose. "He’s not the ashes I smell on you, is he?”

[Kasoria]

He didn't say a word as she laid it all out. There were moments to do so. Pauses and breaks, for a sip or a smoke or just recollecting her wits. Beating bad memories into order so she could plow on with the present. Still he did not speak. He'd wondered and mused for elven arcs. Wondered and fretted in the night.

Grieved. Mourned. Aye. Even him.

Now he could learn the truth and he didn't want his own words to get in the way. He listened with slow blinks of his black eyes, as she spun quite the tale. Kasoria was accustomed to... remarkable sights, by that point in his life. But when her tale encompassed Scalvoris and Immortals and apparently blowing up a volcano like it was an ant hill, even he looked impressed. Yet it had come at a cost... and his skin crawled visibly in front of Maxine when she revealed the Curse put onto her skin by one of those... mutants.

That was the near past. Events that had only just occurred. But she spent most time talking of their past, all that shit that was literally buried in the sewers of Etzos. The more she spoke of it, the more he remembered. Such a pivotal, traumatic event for her. One that shook who she was so hard she fled from him and there and all she knew. For him... Fates, he didn't remember his face. Only his whimpering, and the cold contempt it drew from him, right before he carved his throat out.

Quaros. He kept forgetting his name. Because, really, why would he bother remembering it?

And there, old man, is the difference you never noticed.

Now she was here. Crossed oceans and nations and time itself to be across from him. Two broken killers, together again. Around them the tavern whirled and drank and laughed and he knew they were being studied. In that subtle, silent, rustic manner that all strangers were. Maxine's beauty alone would draw plenty of eyes. She wasn't so disheveled and filthy that she could hide her eyes, her hair, her jaw, her lips...

Could use some more meat on her bones, though.

"What about your boy?”

Martyn. The thought of him, the mention from another, was enough to snap him from those dark thoughts. That did not last long.

"What’s he like? He’s not the ashes I smell on you, is he?”

He couldn't hide the twinge of pain on his face, the very possibility of his boy being on that pyre. He'd done that enough for one lifetime. Next funeral he was at, would be his own. But this one hadn't been much better. They'd stood and watch the flames devour the cloth-wrapped corpse. Greedily, eagerly, spurred on by accelerant and fresh kindling. Kasoria was grateful for that: it meant the flames were fierce enough that his son didn't see the fabric burned away and his mother's skin melted off, her fat and muscle turned to bubbling slurry, her wizened, blackened organs cooked and bursting.

But the boy saw enough. Enough to fi him rigid in the dawn light. Sill standing, staring, weeping silently even after everyone had filed away after saying some words to the flames. Just him, Kasoria... and Nader.

The stubborn bastard had lingered just to spite Kasoria, he was sure. Then he saw him walk up and rest a hand on the boy's shoulder. He flinched, jerked, ready to throw it off-

-until he realized it wasn't his father.

"I have duties to attend, Martyn. But I can stay for a little longer."

"N... No, sir. Won't be necessary."

A friendly pat, a warm smile that Kasoria had never seen before, and the Flightmaster walked away. Pausing only to stop next to him and of course he glared, and of course he curled his lip, and of course he-

"I'm sorry for your grief."

Kasoria was so stunned he didn't even reply before the man started walking again. Then it was just the two of them. Dew and chill of night clinging to them no longer. Burned away by the heat of the pyre. It was falling in on itself now. The fuel load burning up and leaving nothing behind but rickety, unstable charcoal. There was a muffled crunch and the base of it fell inward, sending a brief shower of sparks into the blue sky. Martyn flinched. Hand clenched to fists...

"He's nothin' like me," Kasoria said, still remembering as he stared into the light of the candle at their table. "An' he hates me, a' course. Thought we could catch up, y'ken? Make up fer lost time. But... he found out about me. After the Crescent Arena, well... word got out. Fightin' a fuckin' Morty wiv' half the city watchin'... can't really hide that. Word got out. Word came here. An' all the stories from the past... and he heard them all. I tried t'talk to him. Been tryin' for a solid fuckin' arc now, and..."

His boy turned and planted a punch on him without even pausing. The moment he felt his hand on his shoulder, and knew who it was. He whirled and cocked his fist and Kasoria saw it coming. But he didn't move. Barely even tightened his jaw.

Rung his bell, though. Snapped his head around and, almost, made him step back.

"You should have helped me," the boy hissed, tears still streaming, voice so tight and angry it came through his teeth. "That night I came for you, you-you didn't even try! Didn't even try to-to-"

"She was cold, son. She was stiff an' blue an' her breath an' blood had stopped movin'." He tried to be gentle as he could. He really had. But how soft, how gentle, how acceptable, could anyone make the death of a mother? "She was gone a'fore youse got home. She went sleepin'. No pain-"

With a choked, furious sob like an angry boy the boy lashed out again-

SLAP

-this time Kasoria caught the blow. His wrist juddered with pain and his palm tingled. But the fist stopped dead in the air. Behind it, never breaking the look with his sn, his eyes were still as open as before. No gram of anger shone in them. Just the same breed of sadness.

"She wouldn' want us fightin', son."

Martyn tore his hand away, breathing heavy, hate and grief warring, congealing into something terrible inside him. Kasoria took all of it. Didn't fight back. Didn't bark or snap. That wouldn't work. That was the old man he knew, with animal brutality always bubbling under the surface, even if he couldn't place it. The monster wearing the skin of a man. Now he had to show him he was but a man, and one that cared for him, worried over, loved him-

"Don't ever speak of her again. And don't call me 'son'."

Kasoria sighed and downed what was left of his drink. Fuck moderation. An arc of work. An arc of efforts. Trying to speak to his son. Writing letters. Finding excuses to see him, beyond checking on Jessye and her worsening health. Petitioning Nader for training sessions with him. Even trying to find out where he drank with his friends so he could just "happen" across him one night. All of that, all ending in that pyre.

"It ain't goin' well," he said, summarizing that whole turd of four fucking cycles.

He was silent again. They both were. Nursing their drinks and their smokes and looking hideously out of place in so raucous a venue. But there was an unspoken barrier of space around them. Partially caused by Kasoria's mutation, buffeting approaching people away. Partially the smell. Partially the sheer common sense the Fates gave sea slugs to just stay away from these clearly dangerous people. He poured them a fresh glass and packed his pipe and for all the world it might have been just them in that tavern.

"Youse weren't like me. That was why yeh couldn't do it." He snorted a laugh without a trace of mirth. "I shoulda' seen it. From the get go. Youse didn't wanna be a scratcher, youse jus' wanted to know how t'fight, how t'defend yerself. Never be prey, but not be a predator. But me... I was lonely... I missed me boy. I thought I could... have what I was missin', wiv' you..."

He forced himself to look up at her. Wouldn't be so craven as to avoid the disgusted, horrified look in her eyes. That said all those lessons, all the fleeting affection and regard... it was all because he couldn't have that with his son. She was just a stand in, a replacement, a training dummy for something he couldn't have. No wonder he was so brutal to her. No wonder he turned on her the moment she-

"I wuz wrong. Cuz I ended up carin'. Believe dat or don't, s'up t'you. I killed my way through the cunts Vorund sent after yeh, when yeh ran. Nearly died in the street, scragging the last one. Almost killed Vorund a week later, my oath be fuckin' damned... but I didn't, cuz I worked out he thought youse were dead already. Long as he thought I thought that, too... youse were safe. He'd not send anyone else." He shook his head, forced to see all the mistakes of his past at once and wonder how he could have been so stupid. "I should never have taken yeh down into that tunnel that trial. Shoulda' sent yeh runnin' wiv' what I taught yeh. But instead-"

He knocked back the glass. Let it burn. Let it muddle his mind just enough to give his tongue the looseness he needed.

"-I tried t'be somethin' I wuzn't ready t'be. An' youse suffered fer it."

Silence again. Unbroken and awkward, but endured. He'd waited eleven arcs to hear from her, and to speak his mind. He stank of the ashes of one who he never said enough to, over the years. She died without hearing any of it. He wouldn't prolong that failing, not totrial. It stretched on... and on... and he opened his mouth to ask, wait a bloody moment, did you say a "wannabe politic"-

"Good evening, Mark Kasoria."

A young, slightly tipsy voice brought both of them looking around sharply. Dark eyes and hair longer than regulation looked back at them. Somewhat sheepishly, actually. As if both of them glaring his way at once was like being physically struck. Boy rallied gamely, though. Managed to clear his throat and stand at ease, nodding to his teacher.

"I'm Qualen, sir, I'm in-"

"I know who y'are, boy. Watch'er want?"

Fuck. Wrong answer.

It would have been better to tell the boy to fuck off and go back to his mates, but now he'd given the bloody fool a window. And he could tell exactly what thoughts (or what body part) had driven him across the tavern to interrupt their chat. Working a smile he thought rakish onto his face, he turned to Maxine and gave a toast to the air between them.

"I saw you entertaining a young lady, one I haven't seen around before, and I thought to-"

"Well now yeh've introduced yerself, so youse can bugger back off, can't yeh?"

Qualen sober would have taken the growl and the heated look and been suitably cowed. Tail tucked, feet swift, as expected. But this Qualen had an ale or three in him, had the confidence and strength of a man well-trained and motivated by his calling (and Kasoria should fuck know, he was training him). With supreme effort, and controlling his bowels the whole time, he managed to tear his gaze from the black-eyed terror of the recruit classes... and looked at Maxine.

"I thought I could buy the lady a drink?"

Across from her, Kasoria sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, brow furrowing like crumpled brown paper.

"Fuck's sake, boy..."

[Max]

Her question had been painfully blunt and she noted the way her last one seemed to wound him. He spoke of his son in the present tense so he was alive. Still, whoever laid dead and burned and lingered on his clothes and hair like a pungent perfume? Well, they had mattered to Kasoria. He mourned them.

Maxine wondered how much of his life the Old Man had spent mourning those he'd lost. She never expected him to waste too much time over something so frivolous as emotions related to grief beyond the initial event and an anniversary or two. She'd always seen him as too strong, too impossibly unshakeable.

Both of them were peering behind the other's veil to-trial.

A sardonic laugh exhaled through her nose along with more smoke when he mentioned Martyn's hatred for his father. That would be his reward, wouldn't it? After all the adversity, heartbreak, blood, and impossible odds he'd battled he would be blessed with a boy who couldn't stand the sight of him. One that listened to the tales not so unlike some Maxine had witnessed firsthand and loathed everything that he was.

Maybe her dark mirth really rested in the grim fairness of it all. While she had suffered, he did not ride off into the sunset of fatherhood and retirement as she had thought.

When the brief silence of smoke and drink ended he too turned his thoughts back to the past. Back to her. She sighed as he too voiced what had been the obvious truth. There had been a time she would've resisted his words, would've stood there in front of him with lip stiff, hands in little fists at her sides, and chin raised to defend herself from his assessment of her.

She wasn't like Kasoria then. And now, touched by Immortals who sought to empower and punish her, she certainly wasn't more like him now. The killing and the capacity for cruelty did not change anything. They were two very different sides of a similar coin. She imagined that if he knew...really knew...he would see her as another adversary to humanity that must be scratched. It was only with him here right in front of her that she started to realize that his rejection was something a forgotten part of her still feared.

Maxine scoffed when he finally admitted what she'd really been all that time. Part of her had to have always known it even if she didn't know about Martyn. People like them, that held an empty, cold space inside their souls, sought ways to fill the void. It didn't keep her eyes from growing dark as she looked at him, then looked away and out toward the collection of Westguard townies gathered in their watering hole.

Her stoic expression was disrupted when he spoke about caring for her and the vendetta he acted on in her absence to protect her. The hardened mask slipped and the vulnerability was exposed again, eyes softening and cheeks rising with an involuntary twitch she hid as quickly as it all came.

"-I tried t'be somethin' I wuzn't ready t'be. An' youse suffered fer it."

Her foot bounced beneath the table. She brought the joint to her lips and greedily sucked the narcotic into her lungs. It did nothing to asphyxiate what lurked inside. The water never dared come to her eyes but she felt the threat of it. She finished the drug and mashed the worthless end of the finished joint into the ash tray. This exhale of smoke from her lungs was a shaky, uneven plume.


Maxine was still warring over whether she was going to tell Kasoria to go fuck himself or not when the stranger approached them. Beneath the table, the Rusalka had already quietly and swiftly put a knife in her hand. Before it dawned on her that the stranger was acquainted with the Old Man, she had to realize that someone had called the bloody Etzori menace Mark. The storm of emotions raging inside the Rusalka settled for just one now: deep amusement.

Cozied right back up with the military, have we?

"Qualen, is it?" Maxine appraised him, noting the smell of ale flushing the man's cheeks and glazing his eyes. "It's been a long time since I've been back to this part of the world, and I've missed Etzori hospitality. Isn't that right, Mark Kasoria?" She smiled at the soldier while she imagined Kasoria fuming silently beside her. "He always liked his whiskey but rum is more of my poison." She shrugged and tilted her head at the man, biting her lip. "Why don't you buy two? One for you and one for me, and join us?" She patted on the table in front of the chair that would've seated a man's back precariously to the rest of the drunken tavern. "He doesn't mind, do you, soldier?"

If Qualen had half a brain he wouldn't give the Old Man the chance to refuse the offer. The tavern was busy enough he would have to shove his way to the front to get attention from the bar keep. Max turned toward Kasoria and rolled her eyes.

"Despite everything you said, you made it very clear when I was little that you weren't my father," she started with a finger raised. "So don't act like some idiot buying me a drink should get a reaction from you now. I'm broke. If some sap wants to spend his coin, I'm not gonna stop him."

Max glanced toward the man and pressed her lips into a line. She folded her arms and raised a brow at Kasoria.

"What does he want from you?" She turned her wrist over, flashing him an image of a chain link when her cloak slid down to expose her arm. "Because I can promise you that he's not over here bothering us for me. Morty Bitch made sure I can't even convince anyone I can shovel shit right." She frowned deeply. "I don't know what to call the fucked up relationship you and I have, but she'll destroy that too if I stay too long. It's what she does."

Maxine filled her whiskey cup while she waited for Qualen's return. What should've been sipped was shot back like it was her last, and with it, only now was it beginning to become apparent the alcohol had some effect on her. Her tolerance was remarkably high by now it was no wonder she was slow to refuse anyone's help. She never afforded top shelf but she was anything but a cheap date.

"You're holding out on me. Tell me about this Immortal you fought with an audience. Did you kill them?"

[Kasoria]

On your own head be it, boy.

Kasoria shook his head as the boy shoved his way through the throng with renewed vigor. Dreams of olive skin and midnight hair under his fingers probably dancing before his eyes. Oh, to be young and think you were invincible, and irresistible. Then he looked back to Maxine and could help but smile. Oh, my poor boy. Did you pick the wrong object of inebriated lust...

"No," he said eventually, eyes flickering around out of habit as he spoke. He didn't have to worry about his words being eavesdropped on nowadays. Frankly he wasn't doing anything worth spying on. But he couldn't help keep his wosds terse when it came to... certain events. "Made the cunt bleed, though. That wuz almost worth it. Wuz there when Lisirra vanished, too. But..."

A look fell across his face that was... not his own. Maxine couldn't have missed it. It wasn't just confusion, or the frown of a man trying to recall a memory. I was that strange blankness of someone... compelled, not to remember. As if his memory had been holed, cored out, a chunk of it just ripped out or barred off from easy recollection. Whenever he tried to recall the memory, capture the images before his eyes... he couldn't quite...

A door. Vast and tall as Citadel of Etzos. Something behind it. All in shadow and the blackness of distant stars and dead suns so far away a man could go from babe to dust trying to get there. Something... but what about her? The Plague Queen? I can't...

"Fuckin' Rhakros," he snarled finally, shaking his head free of a fuzzy memory he was happy to blame on being an old bastard. "Lot of weird shite went on there, an' more than a few trials a' nasty. So yeah. S'my claim to fame, if ever I wanted one. In at the death fer two a' those fuckin' mutants."

His black eyes looked at er Curse again, and he raised an empty glass in an empty toast. Managed a smile, though. One as shit-eatingly sincere as those in their bleak world could manage.

"Yer welcome."

"Oh, th-thank you, Mark Kas-"

"Jus' 'Kasoria', boy," he snapped as he took the brandy from him. "Or jus' 'sir, if yeh must. Ain't in fuckin' uniform, am I?"

"No, Ma... ah, sir."

Kasoria fortified himself with a healthy swallow and then noticed the boy was still standing there. Fidgeting with a glass in each hand. Ah. He couldn't sit down. What a shame. Maybe he'd take the hint? If he just sat there and didn't move he would-

"Um... would you mind-"

"Fuck's sake can't you-"

Things happened quickly, and each one was more annoying than the last. Qualen bristled as much as he dared to, opening his mouth to speak again. But before he could some freewheeling wanker with a red nose and redder eyes barreled into him from the back. He was always apologizing as he did but Qualen didn't see him coming. The cups stayed in his hands: the liquid did not. Both cupfuls, red rum and brown whiskey, shot out like fountains and were set to drench them-

THUNK

Kasoria slapped his hand on the table. The Barrier flashed into existence before the sound had started echoing around the table. A small, curved construct hat the liquid splashed against with a sizzle like bacon on a pan. It protected Maxine and him from getting soaked: instead the liquid splattered down onto the table instead. Cursing softly and venomously, Kasoria signaled to the barmaid and she nodded understandingly. New cups and a towel, coming up...

"That was... impressive."

"Aye. T'was."

"You... I mean, I haven't seen you use it in training. Can you always do it that fast?"

"Aye. Drains me, though." Kasoria took the cups and sipped at his own immediately. Fates but if this boy didn't drive him to drink. "Have t'offer plenty a' blood an' souls t'Vri fer the boon."

Qualen stared at him. For a very long time. Sobriety clearly had not done much to aid his critical thinking.

"... you're joking-"

"Of course I fuckin' am, boy! Chrien's Cunt, siddown fer fucksake..."

Qualen did just that, managing a half-hearted, "oh you got me, what fun" kinda of laugh that fooled exactly no-one. Then he was sitting across from Maxine and Kasoria decided to leave her to it, if she was so eager to fleece the kid. Whatever they had left to say to each other could wait... and after what she'd told him, he could only think of one thing.

I'm not your dad, your brother, or even your friend, he thought as he watched the two of them begin the doomed dance. But I care. Do with that what you will, but don't mistake me for some old sap looking do find redemption.

He drank deep. Tasted ether in the whiskey and smelled ashes on his clothes. Closed his eyes for a trill and remembered his son's face. His tears. The fury and the hollow, howling grief next to the wreckage of the woman who bore him.

Not from you.

[Max]

The smile that came to Maxine's face when Kasoria mentioned making an Immortal bleed was maybe childish, but it couldn't be helped. He was still on an imperfect pedestal in her mind. Not even in their conversation to-trial could he have been shaken off it just yet. There was little she wouldn’t give to have a chance to free herself completely from Famula’s grip, and she’d have few qualms about killing her to win that liberation. Kasoria and his war stories still inspired that childish awe in her.

Until he made mention of Lisirra.

Her smile fell ever so slightly as her mind pivoted elsewhere. She didn't know what Kasoria had meant by "vanished", and judging by the odd look that came to his expression shortly after, she wasn't so confident he could describe it in a way she could understand either. What she did know was what it felt like to lose Audrae, one of her matrons who had blessed her and called her daughter. They were not blood but the grief she still felt was raw and unyielding. It was a terrible thing someone of Maxine's spiteful nature would certainly wish upon an enemy.

Not Rey'na. She's been tormented enough.

While Kasoria drifted into his own muddled mind she found herself unwillingly thinking about Lisirra's mortalborn. She recalled taking the young Element to a tavern when they were in Rynmere, drinking while she listened to the inexperienced soldier lament about the complicated relationship she had with her mother. She could never forget the gruesome sight of the insect legs granted by the Immortal to the girl, the way they peeled from her back and skewered men as good as the spear Rey'na wielded in her hands.

Tearing Rey'na's spark from her soul and destroying parts of who she was in the process, was one of the worst things Maxine had ever done. Sephira had come to blows with her over it, though she eventually learned to accept it. She suspected that while Kura wasn't thrilled by it that the Alberach's pragmatic mind might understand it. Even Faith and Rey'na herself had seemed to forgive her for it. To this trial Maxine would never do the same for herself, and a piece of her wanted to go to Rey'na wherever she was, for she would understand her anguish if she could still feel that emotion at all after the spark removal.

Max snapped back when she felt Kasoria's eyes back on her, and she raised her cup to join his toast. Then she drowned the errant memories of sins and strangers with the alcohol. By then Qualen's irritating presence had returned. She forgave it when she spied the drinks in his hands. While he stuttered and nervously twitched in his conversation with Kasoria, Max filled her cup again. The warmth of alcohol in her system settled her in her seat but she wished it would do more to settle her journeying mind.

Maxine's eyes snapped up when she felt an incoming presence and the corresponding collision. Her lip curled, hand raising in hopes of protecting at least her face from the liquor shower she anticipated. It never came. Her face must've looked as dumb as Qualen's when she found the alcohol suspended in the air. She bristled and watched as the liquid was expertly returned into the cups. The Rusalka ignored the jests at Qualen's gullible expense. She became acutely aware of the gloves on her hands. Despite the mages she tolerated and came to care for over time, there was a reason a Mantis Ashcloak had fallen so comfortably upon her shoulders in Rynmere.

This isn't fucking news to you. Relax.

It was easier said than done. When Kasoria's profanities turned to disparage Chrien, her jaw tightened. Her hands slipped under the table and the fist she made was so tight she could feel her nails digging into her palms. Stillness and silence was the best she could do. One glance and he would recognize it: that stupid, unflappable loyalty she bore as much like a cross as she did armor. To openly defend it was dangerous here.

"So, uh," Qualen shifted uncomfortably in his chair with a nervous grin. "How do you two know each other so well?" He was testing, hunting for reassurance he had a fair chance and wasn't intruding. He hoped that the difference between the ages of the woman and Kasoria had been enough to assume his forwardness was safe. After the demonstration of magic, it couldn't hurt to be extra sure. He swallowed and quickly took a drink.

"Who says we do?" Max finally answered as she traded her whiskey cup for the rum given to her by the soldier. She took a long drink and noisily put it back down on the table. "Like I said. Been a long time since I've been back. People change."

More tense silence.

"Right," Qualen nodded. "Well this is...awkward." He cleared his throat and looked to Kasoria. "Ma--I mean, Kasoria. I meant no disrespect."
"Don't grovel to him." Max took another drink. "You want him to see you as a man, don't you? Isn't that why you came over here offering to buy a drink for a woman already in his company with this audience?
"I'm not groveling."
"Then why are you looking at the table instead of the man in his eyes?"
"I--who are you to speak to me like this?"
"At a glance and from experience, I'm the only woman in here that's not for sale. Check the time. All the good and honest women are still occupied."
"So what are you doing in a tavern so early then?"
"I'm not good and I'm not very honest."

Max shrugged and finished the rum. Her original plan to bother Kasoria with Qualen's presence had soured with talk of Lisirra, magic, blasphemy, and memories of ghosts she longed to forget. If the harmless soldier got much more irritating she wondered what Kasoria might do if she got fed up and struck him. She was half tempted to, just for something to do...or maybe just to intentionally ruin the reunion and any good that might come of it before Famula does. Wouldn't that be nice? To have control over at least the disintegration of the only meaningful relationship she had left with anyone alive?

"Leave with me," Qualen commanded suddenly, glazed and drunken eyes lusty. "Right now.”

Maxine winced. A new, familiar note of self hatred filled her as she felt her legs straightening against the floor to lift her from the chair. Qualen, drunk and evidently won over by harsh bluntness he was unaccustomed to, grinned broadly at the apparent lack of protest. He finished his drink and rapidly rose to his feet.

"Aren’t you going to tip the bar keep?” Max couldn’t deny the command, but she could stall it. She actively avoided Kasoria’s gaze. Qualen tapped his chin for a moment before his elated mood won him over.

"I’ll be right back to escort you,” the soldier agreed. "Stay here.”

Another order. Max closed her eyes in a tight grimace as she heard the man move toward the bar. Her hands gripped the edge of the table. Unencumbered feet refused to move from their place on the floor where she stood. She fought the righteous urge to curse aloud. The Rusalka resigned to meet Kasoria’s gaze instead.

"It’s good that he’s nothing like you, your boy I mean,” Maxine said with a slow, veracious nod of her head. "If he wasn’t as clever and lethal a predator as you, he’d disappoint you. If he was, you’d probably hate him. I would know I think.”

She silently asked her own feet if they would disobey their Immortal shackles. They refused. She flashed Kasoria another smile that didn’t meet her eyes.

"Besides, what father would want a life like yours or mine for their son? Maybe he actually got it right, has a fucking chance.”

Every mortal and Immortal sure as shit knows I got it so fucking wrong.

Max could hear Qualen’s joyful whistle and bouncing return to the table. It was too bad he was a man of his word. The Rusalka could’ve used another drunken idiot bumping into the man right about then, causing just enough havoc that the effect of the curse wore off. No quarter from Famula.

"Follow me,” the intoxicated gentleman offered his arm. Max loathed herself to take it. Her feet were moving along with Qualen’s and toward the door without her say. She accepted it, as she’d been forced and conditioned to accept it so many times before.

"After you,” Max played the false role of willing participant, verbalizing it to soothe herself as much as anyone else. She gently touched Kasoria’s shoulder as she passed him. "Thought you were dead when I went by the house once. I’m glad you’re not.”

And out toward the door with Qualen she went, but not before flashing a wink at Kasoria over her shoulder and swiping something like a flash of coin from her drunken escort’s pocket.

[Kasoria]

"Thought you were dead when I went by the house once. I’m glad you’re not.”

He knew what she was referring to. Not the neat, tidy, clean little cottage on the outskirts of Westguard. She meant the nondescript row house back in Etzos... Fates... "back home", he almost thought. With the paint peeling on the walls and the tiny backyard with the much-abused (and repaired) training dummy. She knew well that place She'd lived there, more or less, when their "training" had become so intensive that her rushing off back to the Orphanage wasn't an option anymore.

She slept in his bed, while he took his comfy chair. He treated her wounds. Gave her what wisdom he could.

He'd cared. The fucking idiot.

Kasoria watched her leave and mourned... and remembered. The Curse. She had to obey anyone who gave her an order. No matter what it was. He'd thought it was the booze propelling her so sharply and directly when Qualen had snapped his brazen lines. Wouldn't have been the first time a girl in her prime decided to ditch an old timer and go plumb the depths of a bedroom for a night. But no... when she said those last words... they were rushed. She didn't want to go. She had no choice.

He mourned for a moment, and hated for the rest of it. Fucking Immortals. Slavery and compulsion, essentially the same thing. She hadn't bowed low enough, scraped hard enough, and one of them had on a fucking whim damned her to be the plaything of anyone who crossed her path. Decades of curdled rage flushed through him, like magma gushing through a long-dormant volcano. He squeezed the ceramic cup until it squeaked in his hand and a crack appeared on the side.

It's never enough for them. Always some new indignity to think up. Some new amusement for them, an atrocity for us. And they don't care.

Then he saw The Dip. He'd never had the nimbleness of hand for a pickpocket, but he'd seen it done before... and yes, fine, been the victim more than once. He managed a breathy laugh as she plucked a purse from Qualen's pocket even as the boy was whispered grand and lurid words into her ear. He didn't glance down, didn't frown... didn't notice. And damn her if she didn't wink at him as she went out the door.

Telling you she's fine. She's Cursed, and that's a cunt. But she's a grown woman and she's dealing with it. She doesn't need you racing out and being something you ain't... again!

Besides, he reminded himself, concern for Maxine's wellbeing was, at best, half the equation. Any chance to stymie the designs of a fucking Morty was one he'd take. Even an indirect, distantly related design. But it was the same thing. Famula had cursed someone that mattered to him. Worked his will over her and stole her own, because... because he could. Which was always what it boiled down to.

So he was no hero, and she was no damsel.

Kasoria drained the cup until not a drop remained, then put it back on the table-

-upside down. A timeless Etzori cultural tic that meant one thing only.

No more. Down to business.

"Fuck."

++++++++++

Qualen could not believe his luck. This girl was so far removed from the usual country girls he flirted with it wasn't even funny. She wasn't Etzori, he was sure of it. Too... exotic. He features to bright and sharp and rich. The scent of her... well, frankly that could have used improvement, but her body was... definitely enough for him to work with. He didn't like talking to her much, though. Something... he couldn't name, had him recoil in his guts from wanting to learn about her, question her, trust whatever she had to say. But his addled mind quickly skipped over those details.

She was warm and soft and lithe against his side and she was doing whatever he asked.

He didn't wait until they got to his place. Booze and lust and Saun heat was boiling his blood and they were halfway there before he pulled her into an alley. She didn't complain. It was almost like she couldn't. Finally, after a few... pleasurable moments, he crossed a line he'd promised himself he'd leave for when they were alone. But they were, technically. Just not indoors.

He told her to get to her knees. She did as she was told. Qualen smiled and-

"Dat's enough, boy."

A voice like gravel being ground by hammers growled at him from behind. He knew who it was before he turned around. Fates, but the evil little bastard looked so much work, swaddled in shadows and staring at him with those inhuman eyes. But drink and desire fortified him. They weren't in uniform. He wasn't Mark Kasoria, or teacher, or instructor. He was just an ugly old man with a foul attitude and he was doing nothing wrong.

"Ma... Kasoria, the fuck're youse-"

"Y'know that redhead from yer group? Allyn?"

Qualen frowned but did not blush. Allyn wasn't one he pursued; they'd been friends since before they could walk. There had been some aborted attempt when they were younger but... it didn't feel right. It was just... she was just his friend. He protected her when some of the bigger, male classmates tried to make sport of her being a woman. A few bits with him "reminding" them otherwise, and they never did again.

"Y-Yeah, b-but she's like-"

"Like yer sister, aye. An' this one is like a daughter t'me. She ain't-"

Kasoria seemed to look around Qualen for a moment, just to lock eyes with Maxine and bite out:

"-just to be fuckin' clear-"

He straightened back up, focused on Qualen.

"-but I care for her the like. So nah, I don't fink tonight is yer night, boy."

Qualen screwed up all his courage, hands balling into fists. He had done nothing wrong, and no matter what the history with these two-

"She chose to be here with me. I didn't force her-"

Kasoria didn't even raise a finger. He just cocked his head to one side and Qualen’s tongue wouldn't move anymore. Bravado swiftly turned to panic and as he looked over to Kasoria, he saw the man flex his hands... and blue light glow briefly in his palms... before vanishing again.

"I'm yer teacher, boy. Means yeh get a chance wi' me. But youse only get the one. An' now it's gone.."

Kasoria drifted closer to him like a wraith. He backed away until he backed into a wall and yet there was no assault forthcoming. Nothing to defend against. Just those black, solemn eyes, boring into him. There was none of the watchful animation he'd become used to on the training yard. Where the grizzled, growling little man was tough as teak but, ultimately, not an avatar of death. Just pain, and the lessons it could bring. But this... all life and mercy was stripped from his teacher now.

Out of uniform. Out of the yard. That works both ways.

"S'more goin' on that youse can see, recruit. Take my word fer it."

What remained of Qualen's courage was summoned by being so... easily handled, in front of a woman. "Trust the Raggedy Man?"

The freezing silence that followed told him that was the wrong thing to say. Kasoria's gaze slid from solemn to reptilian in an instant. Skin tightened on his skull. His gaze narrowed and Qualen could feel, feel the malice pouring off him like smoke from a fire. But...

"... ain't him anymore, boy. Go home."

Qualen took one last look at his woman, weighed his options... and bolted. Once his pounding feet were naught but echoes, Kasoria's shoulders slumped and he sighed. His back to Maxine, he raised one finger and said curtly, "Not a word. Not a fuckin' word. We're goin' t'my place, an' yer sleepin' it off. We both fuckin' are."

He turned around and walked right past her. But before he did, he managed to mutter.

"I'm not tellin'. I'm suggestin'. Its warm an' has food an' booze. Follow me if yeh want."

Boots cracked and snapped on the cobbles and Kasoria did not slow down. If she wanted to come, she would. But he'd never been one to slow for her sake. Then again, she'd always found a way to keep up.