Dramatic Inevitability

And what a turning point it turned out to be. I have to admit, as much as I adore all the RP I'm doing right now, this particular bit gives me a lot of the same rush that novel-writing does. So, two excerpts from the conversation in New Orleans.

The two of them are a study in opposites in nearly every respect. She's dressed as casual as casual gets, and he looks exactly like what he is: a hired thug in an expensive suit and mirrored sunglasses. She finds life and vitality in New Orleans, but he finds exactly the opposite, for many reasons. He wants to relax, but it's just not an option.

Samantha's a smart girl. She's been around him long enough to know what he's like, even when he's at his most alert, his most poised. And she knows that a city street, even this one, even now, isn't call for this sort of sharpness, this sort of attitude. She studies him for a long, long time, perhaps gauging the best way to approach him, or even if she should approach him about it at all.

The words bring Karl up short, and this, thankfully, keeps him from stepping in the steaming exhaust from one of the horse-drawn carriages. He carefully takes a step back, onto the curb, and turns to look at Sam, a kind of thoughtful evaluation in his gaze that has nothing at all to do with protecting her.

Placid eyes, calmer than he's used to seeing them, not crackling with stage-energy, not flashing with impassioned anger, just... calm, brown-green like river water, simply watching his face, watching him come to a decision. It's clear that his words surprise her, drawing that arched eyebrow once again. "Dying? Parts of it, sure. All cities go through cycles, really. New Orleans, I think, tends to celebrate its deaths a little more, recognizes the passings... mourns, then rebuilds."

"I haven't," he replies, dutifully following in her footsteps, finding a bench for them. Mildly annoyed at the fact that there's no wall he can put their backs to, no single entrance he can face, he resigns himself to doing a lot of head-turning.

If he had grown a second head that started spouting Esperanto, she could have hardly been less surprised. Would have been less surprised, in fact. She's seen two-headed Esperanto-spouting creatures before. The less said about that the better. She regards him for a long moment. It's not that she doesn't understand what he just said, it's that /he/ said it. That alone means she needs a moment to recoup. Miss All Up In Arms about environmental issues missed something. "I didn't know that," she admits, and it /costs/ her to admit that. Not because he apparently knows something she doesn't, but because she honestly loves this city. It's like being told that an old family friend has cancer.

The candid admission is disarming, and it takes a lot of the wind out of his bellows. He's silent for a time, listening to the haunting music, which greets his ears like a funeral dirge. He doesn't quite look at Samantha, instead looking around him with eyes that are no longer cataloguing threats and assessing dangers. Instead, they're pinpointing guilt for the spots of disease on the elms, wondering how many heavy metals and waste are sitting in the pools of water on the cobblestone streets, waiting to be washed into the delta with the rain runoff. "When you hired me, I told you I had a college degree. I didn't tell you it was a Masters in Environmental Engineering. I was workin on my thesis when they passed a whole bunch of shit legislation here in the late nineties, and it was big news in class. It's all about reclamation and restoration, finally owning up to the fact that we've spent the last two hundred years fucking this place up. Except that some pencilnecks got the arrogance to think they can turn back the clock and stop the river and the sea from eating this city alive. They can't."

Samantha knows that feeling though, that helplessness. Her hands may not be powerful weapons, but they flex that exact same way whenever she considers the social injustice that still constantly raises its head in this, the supposedly most civilized of nations.

The thunder catches her attention for a second as well, before she flashes him a grin. "I see. So a suit only keeps you from changing disposable diapers? What about cloth ones?" She raises her hand, "Wait, don't tell me. Polluting the ground water with the run off it takes to launder them, not to mention the electricity and detergents in the water..." Okay, so she's ribbing him. A little. It's just nice to find out that she's not the only one with weird little fixations and obsessions.

She is indeed teasing, and he's not going to rise to the bait this time. Instead he considers her offer. It's not really even an offer; they'd have to find someplace to duck into to get out of the rain, and it'll be here before they could walk back to the hotel. And as if on cue to his thoughts, the rain arrives like a crescendo, announcing its presence with the kind of suddenness only a Southern summer storm can. Raindrops the size of gumballs, it seems, in sheets that cut visibility to a few dozen feet.

Samantha's laugh is bright, almost child-like, sounding for all the world like a kid who's just been told that recess is going to be fifteen minutes longer. She has no dignity to speak of, or at least, none that she ever really worries about. As the rain pounds down between the elm trees, she leaps up from the bench, impulsive, as sudden as the arrival of the storm itself. Arms outstretched, her face turned into the torrent, she spins in a circle, laughing as the rain soaks through the rainbow of her hair, soaking the light summer clothes and molding them to her.

There is power in rain, Karl knows, and life. Destructive as the forces of erosion may be, they are still a part of the cycle, and for any toxic by-products the fault lies not with the rain, but with the men who put the toxins in its path. Watching Samantha's rain dance, it occurs to him, and not for the first time, that she really is a force of nature. She is primal in some way, and she exhales life the way a tree exhales oxygen.

It's not so different from the way she dances onstage, really. There's nothing planned to it, very little training. Hell, in this case, the only music is the hiss of the rain, the occasional percussion of thunder. The old chestnut about dancing like nobody's watching applies here. Her movements punctuated by laughter, as the worst of the cloudburst passes, slowing to drizzles, she finally comes back to the bench, collapsing, panting but invigorated. The smile on her face is damn near post-coital, satisified and relaxed.

Karl looks like a drowned rat, and he wasn't even the one dancing. No, not a rat--maybe a wombat, or a badger, or something equally nasty. The stoic way he holds himself, back straight, is really unsuited to how drenched he is, tongues of black hair licking at his forehead and chin dripping. He smiles for a moment, a rare ray of sunlight from him, and replies, "I ain't gotta answer that, do I?" The words are flippant, but there is no judgment behind the pale gray of his eyes.

In another impulsive movement, she reaches up and catches the hair on his forehead under her fingers, pushing it back with a decisive motion so it doesn't drip into his face. It isn't a particular gentle touch, just an automatic, unthinking response to visual stimuli. It's also the first thing she's ever touched him in some manner that wasn't strictly business-related.

There passes, at that moment, a charge between them that rivals the natural light show nature put on for them just minutes before. Karl knows it, and he knows she knows it. It causes him to freeze rigidly for the space of a few heartbeats as expression slips away from his face, as he wonders what the fuck just happened.

I know. I needed another set of characters to fixate on like I need another hole in my head. But... they're just so COOL!