[etienne & diana] - the end is super duper fucking nigh
Who: Etienne and Diana
Where:
When: Late in the year BACKLOGGING!!!!!
Ratings and Warnings: PG
He drank more, these days.
Etienne had always been a drinker, even in his youth before the world had opened its rotten core to him. But he had now spent most of the fall dwelling on his ale, and now it was winter and showed no sign of alleviating. It made him sorer, and slower - not that that was much different either. He had spent years one pain, one breath away from mortality.
And he had been undone, in the end, slowly and meticulously, by the mortality of others.
Etienne would call an early end to things tonight, he imagined, leaning across the bar for his final tankard. He would go home in the half-light of dusk and wait, alone, with the dead.
With the days ripe with Belief, Diana's mood darkened. When she thought she could move past the betrayal and death of someone she thought she could trust, the city would have to pile more on her. It was almost humorous that months ago, she would have welcomed the work to bury her thoughts. Odd but unsurprising how a visit from a ghost could change her.
Instead of touching Belief, she chose to let it be on word of the Timekeeper. Those words were likely baseless, she knew, and empty, but she did not want to do too much with it. It was negligence on her part, but there was even more negligence on the king's. If he wouldn't make a move, should the Guard? Yes, but how much could the Guard do? They needed to make sure the Magus reverted Belief back, if not all the way gone, before they could do anything with him. Sooner or later, she would confront the man.
Thus, Diana chose to focus on her other cases, which included tracking down a former colonel. A case hinged on the testimonies of ghosts was tenuous, but it was all she had. She could corner him and extract something more substantial as she went, which is why she found herself in a bar that night, quietly but deftly maneuvering her way around drunkards to stand a few feet away from her target.
"Does the night agree with you tonight, Mr. Morellus?" she asked before turning to the barkeep for wine she wouldn't drink much of that night.
"If night were capable of agreement it would, I wager."
If Etienne cared much about Diana's arrival or her approach or her sudden appearance in a bar he'd never seen the lieutenant in, he gave no external register of it. She was as free to dig herself into any little hole she wished as the rest of them.
He slouched further, disinterested. "Drinking alone?" he asked with a mirthless pity-that-wasn't. Poor thing must have had it hard.
"As alone as you seem to be," Diana responded, raising her glass in his direction. When she was on the chase, her sense of humor came out more.
"There aren't any ghosts visiting me tonight." She glanced at him sideways, watching for his reaction, if any. In which way would he understand her? There were so many.
Oh, so it was to be that, then. She had to think him very foolish, if she seeded her bait so carelessly. Even drunk, he was not a fool.
"And with all the dead in this city," Etienne said neutrally. Which ghosts followed the lieutenant, he wondered, and what did they say to her? "This late in the year nearly everyone feels lonelier."
"Yes," she agreed. "Especially this time of year." Winter came and took her husband four, soon to be five, years ago. That, however, wasn't why she was here, but it made a nice segue.
"Especially lonelier this year due to our esteemed Magus," she continued with an edge of sarcasm. "Having seen ghosts instead of just wishing to."
Well, all right then, Lieutenant Stark.
Etienne swallowed despite himself - if he was betrayed at all it would not be for the reasons Diana assumed he would be.
"Plenty of those at the gallows or the headsman's house, weren't there? Did they come around with their necks still snapped?" Who had killed more in this city besides Justice?
The lieutenant noticed that swallow. It almost surprised her as she expected Etienne to have a better hold over his expression than this. Her own was kept neutral, however, and Diana simply nodded.
"They were all over, and the headsman was visited. They did make a gruesome sight." She had seen the executioner after October 31st, and even from a distance, she could see he had been affected. "I spoke to a fair few. Some of them said the wildest things." Her tone was almost rueful, and she paused before continuing, "Did you speak to any?" Let him think about what she was told for now.
"There wasn't much conversation I could bring to their ears." Etienne shrugged, drinking deep from him glass. "Get out of the way, you say, but they don't want to move. So you walk around them or through them or what else."
(Get out, he had shouted at her, at their son, get out, get out, get out.)
"I've enough headaches dealing with the living," he added. "Fuck the dead."
"Is that what you did? Walked away from your dead?" It made some sense. The former colonel was surrounded by death. It followed him, and he dealt it; it was his trade. There might have been some understanding if he hadn't broken the law.
"The dead have their own way of giving headaches, too," she said. Her husband didn't give her a headache, so much as an impetus. Live more, he had said, but all she got was photoshopped abs falling down stairs received were signs that she shouldn't try.
"From the city's dead," he clarified. Each person in Tyrol, it seemed, had a hundred demons to run from. (His dead were not as easy to turn from, were they?)
How many headaches the Guard must have had, hounded for justice too late after the fact and too purposeless. There was no love lost between them, Etienne and the Guard, but he did not envy them their recent cleanup jobs across the city.
"Too used to doing it while living, I figure." Was that death? Mindless repetition?
Cita, it was just like more life.
Ah, so he did see his dead loved ones. His encounter didn't seem to be as fulfilling as hers was. Should she count herself lucky? No.
"Perhaps," she said, "but death affords them some new freedoms even if they can't be with the living. Some of them have freer mouths, and some decided they wanted to give more work to the Guard." Her lips twisted into a semblance of a smile. Diana hadn't been the most subtle earlier, but now she was dropping hints like flies.
"Tell me you've had an easier time of it."
Oh Diana he just didn't care anymore.
"I'm lucky to not have to worry about solving crimes. That saved me the worry of being...procedural, didn't it? Shit," he drank, "every dead person's been wronged some way; you must have a lot of complaints. Tell you what, your next round is on me."
Of course, which was the worse headache? But Diana would not hear about his wife, not from him - not from anyone, for there was no one in Tyrol who had known her.
"Did Cita the Other himself come back. To confess his crimes?"
If he didn't care, why couldn't he helpfully follow her to the Guard station?
Diana dodged most of whatever complaints that came directly to the Guards since she had been out looking for specific ghosts and then had been called home. "Sometimes, procedures are what keep you grounded." And sane.
"It saved everyone grief that if his ghost came back, he couldn't do much." A small wry smile formed on her lips. That fake Cita had been a culmination of what was wrong and dangerous in this city. If his ghost had come back and had been seen, Diana believed that the city would be more content to blame each other for him, then to realize the problem and try to fix it. Maybe it was still there and couldn't be seen. Wouldn't that be a riot, for a once thought god to be unseen and unable to do a thing?
She slowly spun the glass in her hand, watching the wine swirl and settle. "If I asked you to help solve a crime, would you?"
lol he said he didn't care not that he was going to be nice about it.
"A pity. I wonder if he'd still have spread lies."
Etienne cranes his neck to look around the pub. It was early enough that the place was nowhere near as rambunctious as it might later be, but they were far from the only guests.
"Is that why you've singled me out amidst all these fine patrons?" There was no mistaking it - she had sought him for a reason. Better that they both knew, openly, how aware of pretenses this conversation had become.
Look, he should adapt a life change and consider being nice for once.
"Hopefully, we'll never have to find out."
What Diana hoped for tonight was that it wouldn't devolve into a huge scene. It wasn't what she expected, but it was what she hoped. Etienne Morellus would not likely make things easy for her, but she could hope. "Yes, it is," she said straightforwardly. She was done with the pretenses if he was. "It'd be best if you agreed to come with me."
Tensing, eyes sharp, she waited for his move.
Too late for a life change, love.
"Is there no better time?" Etienne lifted his glass in demonstration. Where she was tense, he remained as lax and easygoing as possible. "I have been drinking, Lieutenant," he added at a louder volume. "I'd be no help to you tonight."
His hour was running short enough already. He would not have it end tonight.
It was never too late.
"The sooner, the better," she told him. The sooner he could be sentenced to hang or have his head sliced off by Ice, the more she could settle down and feel like more was right in the world. Etienne's case was one of the more straightforward ones. Werewolves, Belief, fake deities... how sad that she was asking for simpler crimes as opposed to none at all. "You'd be more than enough help as you are." Where he had raised his voiced, she kept her volume steady. Though tense, she sounded unfazed. She put her glass down. "Even drunker than a dog, you'd be help."
"Let me be drunker than a dog, then," he said, drinking after he spoke. "If it's no difference to you, Lieutenant."
The worst he would do? Waste time she could be spending on gang wars and the personal crusade of the Golden Hour to destroy the city.
"I'll buy you that second glass."
"I'd rather you just come with me now." There was no way she could get him to move that wouldn't attract more notice than she wanted. In hindsight, she should have had a couple guards come with her to help. The extra personnel would garner more attention, but she would be more confident in catching her target.
"No, thank you." Her wine would only stay in the glass. Sobriety was her partner tonight. "I don't need another glass. Just you."
"You ask a great deal of me, Lieutenant - all I'm asking for is as far away as that bar." It's the least you can do, he thought sourly. "I've been told I'm a much nicer drunk."
A lie. Why stop now?
"Really? You seem more like a belligerent drunk." And if not belligerent, then unpleasant. He was being unpleasant right now, in Diana's mind.
"Why don't we visit another bar?" Or a room with bars. "I can think of a much nicer one for us." For you, she meant.
If Diana ever expected pleasantry from him, she was bound to be disappointed.
"I don't care for nice bars. I fear they don't suit me. At all." 'Nice' things were rarely tailored to fit him, but he was equally unwilling to accommodate.
If she would be persistent, then he would be truly belligerent. Etienne reached across the table between them for the wine she hadn't bothered to touch. "Waste not."
Oh, she didn't expect pleasantry. It just would have made her life easier, but when was her life that easy?
"When I said nicer, I meant more private." As private as a jail cell could be. "But I can see my offer is wasted on you."
Her fingers tapped the table surface as she watched him take her wine. "Want not," she replied, but she wouldn't stop him from taking it. It might be better if he were drunker. However, it was getting obvious that this was going no where, which she should have expected in the first place. How lovely it was to find a famed colonel having sunk to a lowly assassin. As lovely as it was to find out a fellow lieutenant a petty thief.
Her lips formed a tight smile, and she stood. "I'll see you soon, Mr. Morellus." Diana would assign a couple guards to lie in wait to arrest him when he left that night. With luck, they wouldn't fail. She had enough of being in that bar.
“I trust you will. Lieutenant.” Raising her glass in a mockery of a toast, he drank, eyes following her out of the bar.
He would see her again.
There wasn't much time left.
Where:
When: Late in the year BACKLOGGING!!!!!
Ratings and Warnings: PG
He drank more, these days.
Etienne had always been a drinker, even in his youth before the world had opened its rotten core to him. But he had now spent most of the fall dwelling on his ale, and now it was winter and showed no sign of alleviating. It made him sorer, and slower - not that that was much different either. He had spent years one pain, one breath away from mortality.
And he had been undone, in the end, slowly and meticulously, by the mortality of others.
Etienne would call an early end to things tonight, he imagined, leaning across the bar for his final tankard. He would go home in the half-light of dusk and wait, alone, with the dead.
With the days ripe with Belief, Diana's mood darkened. When she thought she could move past the betrayal and death of someone she thought she could trust, the city would have to pile more on her. It was almost humorous that months ago, she would have welcomed the work to bury her thoughts. Odd but unsurprising how a visit from a ghost could change her.
Instead of touching Belief, she chose to let it be on word of the Timekeeper. Those words were likely baseless, she knew, and empty, but she did not want to do too much with it. It was negligence on her part, but there was even more negligence on the king's. If he wouldn't make a move, should the Guard? Yes, but how much could the Guard do? They needed to make sure the Magus reverted Belief back, if not all the way gone, before they could do anything with him. Sooner or later, she would confront the man.
Thus, Diana chose to focus on her other cases, which included tracking down a former colonel. A case hinged on the testimonies of ghosts was tenuous, but it was all she had. She could corner him and extract something more substantial as she went, which is why she found herself in a bar that night, quietly but deftly maneuvering her way around drunkards to stand a few feet away from her target.
"Does the night agree with you tonight, Mr. Morellus?" she asked before turning to the barkeep for wine she wouldn't drink much of that night.
"If night were capable of agreement it would, I wager."
If Etienne cared much about Diana's arrival or her approach or her sudden appearance in a bar he'd never seen the lieutenant in, he gave no external register of it. She was as free to dig herself into any little hole she wished as the rest of them.
He slouched further, disinterested. "Drinking alone?" he asked with a mirthless pity-that-wasn't. Poor thing must have had it hard.
"As alone as you seem to be," Diana responded, raising her glass in his direction. When she was on the chase, her sense of humor came out more.
"There aren't any ghosts visiting me tonight." She glanced at him sideways, watching for his reaction, if any. In which way would he understand her? There were so many.
Oh, so it was to be that, then. She had to think him very foolish, if she seeded her bait so carelessly. Even drunk, he was not a fool.
"And with all the dead in this city," Etienne said neutrally. Which ghosts followed the lieutenant, he wondered, and what did they say to her? "This late in the year nearly everyone feels lonelier."
"Yes," she agreed. "Especially this time of year." Winter came and took her husband four, soon to be five, years ago. That, however, wasn't why she was here, but it made a nice segue.
"Especially lonelier this year due to our esteemed Magus," she continued with an edge of sarcasm. "Having seen ghosts instead of just wishing to."
Well, all right then, Lieutenant Stark.
Etienne swallowed despite himself - if he was betrayed at all it would not be for the reasons Diana assumed he would be.
"Plenty of those at the gallows or the headsman's house, weren't there? Did they come around with their necks still snapped?" Who had killed more in this city besides Justice?
The lieutenant noticed that swallow. It almost surprised her as she expected Etienne to have a better hold over his expression than this. Her own was kept neutral, however, and Diana simply nodded.
"They were all over, and the headsman was visited. They did make a gruesome sight." She had seen the executioner after October 31st, and even from a distance, she could see he had been affected. "I spoke to a fair few. Some of them said the wildest things." Her tone was almost rueful, and she paused before continuing, "Did you speak to any?" Let him think about what she was told for now.
"There wasn't much conversation I could bring to their ears." Etienne shrugged, drinking deep from him glass. "Get out of the way, you say, but they don't want to move. So you walk around them or through them or what else."
(Get out, he had shouted at her, at their son, get out, get out, get out.)
"I've enough headaches dealing with the living," he added. "Fuck the dead."
"Is that what you did? Walked away from your dead?" It made some sense. The former colonel was surrounded by death. It followed him, and he dealt it; it was his trade. There might have been some understanding if he hadn't broken the law.
"The dead have their own way of giving headaches, too," she said. Her husband didn't give her a headache, so much as an impetus. Live more, he had said, but all she got was photoshopped abs falling down stairs received were signs that she shouldn't try.
"From the city's dead," he clarified. Each person in Tyrol, it seemed, had a hundred demons to run from. (His dead were not as easy to turn from, were they?)
How many headaches the Guard must have had, hounded for justice too late after the fact and too purposeless. There was no love lost between them, Etienne and the Guard, but he did not envy them their recent cleanup jobs across the city.
"Too used to doing it while living, I figure." Was that death? Mindless repetition?
Cita, it was just like more life.
Ah, so he did see his dead loved ones. His encounter didn't seem to be as fulfilling as hers was. Should she count herself lucky? No.
"Perhaps," she said, "but death affords them some new freedoms even if they can't be with the living. Some of them have freer mouths, and some decided they wanted to give more work to the Guard." Her lips twisted into a semblance of a smile. Diana hadn't been the most subtle earlier, but now she was dropping hints like flies.
"Tell me you've had an easier time of it."
Oh Diana he just didn't care anymore.
"I'm lucky to not have to worry about solving crimes. That saved me the worry of being...procedural, didn't it? Shit," he drank, "every dead person's been wronged some way; you must have a lot of complaints. Tell you what, your next round is on me."
Of course, which was the worse headache? But Diana would not hear about his wife, not from him - not from anyone, for there was no one in Tyrol who had known her.
"Did Cita the Other himself come back. To confess his crimes?"
If he didn't care, why couldn't he helpfully follow her to the Guard station?
Diana dodged most of whatever complaints that came directly to the Guards since she had been out looking for specific ghosts and then had been called home. "Sometimes, procedures are what keep you grounded." And sane.
"It saved everyone grief that if his ghost came back, he couldn't do much." A small wry smile formed on her lips. That fake Cita had been a culmination of what was wrong and dangerous in this city. If his ghost had come back and had been seen, Diana believed that the city would be more content to blame each other for him, then to realize the problem and try to fix it. Maybe it was still there and couldn't be seen. Wouldn't that be a riot, for a once thought god to be unseen and unable to do a thing?
She slowly spun the glass in her hand, watching the wine swirl and settle. "If I asked you to help solve a crime, would you?"
lol he said he didn't care not that he was going to be nice about it.
"A pity. I wonder if he'd still have spread lies."
Etienne cranes his neck to look around the pub. It was early enough that the place was nowhere near as rambunctious as it might later be, but they were far from the only guests.
"Is that why you've singled me out amidst all these fine patrons?" There was no mistaking it - she had sought him for a reason. Better that they both knew, openly, how aware of pretenses this conversation had become.
Look, he should adapt a life change and consider being nice for once.
"Hopefully, we'll never have to find out."
What Diana hoped for tonight was that it wouldn't devolve into a huge scene. It wasn't what she expected, but it was what she hoped. Etienne Morellus would not likely make things easy for her, but she could hope. "Yes, it is," she said straightforwardly. She was done with the pretenses if he was. "It'd be best if you agreed to come with me."
Tensing, eyes sharp, she waited for his move.
Too late for a life change, love.
"Is there no better time?" Etienne lifted his glass in demonstration. Where she was tense, he remained as lax and easygoing as possible. "I have been drinking, Lieutenant," he added at a louder volume. "I'd be no help to you tonight."
His hour was running short enough already. He would not have it end tonight.
It was never too late.
"The sooner, the better," she told him. The sooner he could be sentenced to hang or have his head sliced off by Ice, the more she could settle down and feel like more was right in the world. Etienne's case was one of the more straightforward ones. Werewolves, Belief, fake deities... how sad that she was asking for simpler crimes as opposed to none at all. "You'd be more than enough help as you are." Where he had raised his voiced, she kept her volume steady. Though tense, she sounded unfazed. She put her glass down. "Even drunker than a dog, you'd be help."
"Let me be drunker than a dog, then," he said, drinking after he spoke. "If it's no difference to you, Lieutenant."
The worst he would do? Waste time she could be spending on gang wars and the personal crusade of the Golden Hour to destroy the city.
"I'll buy you that second glass."
"I'd rather you just come with me now." There was no way she could get him to move that wouldn't attract more notice than she wanted. In hindsight, she should have had a couple guards come with her to help. The extra personnel would garner more attention, but she would be more confident in catching her target.
"No, thank you." Her wine would only stay in the glass. Sobriety was her partner tonight. "I don't need another glass. Just you."
"You ask a great deal of me, Lieutenant - all I'm asking for is as far away as that bar." It's the least you can do, he thought sourly. "I've been told I'm a much nicer drunk."
A lie. Why stop now?
"Really? You seem more like a belligerent drunk." And if not belligerent, then unpleasant. He was being unpleasant right now, in Diana's mind.
"Why don't we visit another bar?" Or a room with bars. "I can think of a much nicer one for us." For you, she meant.
If Diana ever expected pleasantry from him, she was bound to be disappointed.
"I don't care for nice bars. I fear they don't suit me. At all." 'Nice' things were rarely tailored to fit him, but he was equally unwilling to accommodate.
If she would be persistent, then he would be truly belligerent. Etienne reached across the table between them for the wine she hadn't bothered to touch. "Waste not."
Oh, she didn't expect pleasantry. It just would have made her life easier, but when was her life that easy?
"When I said nicer, I meant more private." As private as a jail cell could be. "But I can see my offer is wasted on you."
Her fingers tapped the table surface as she watched him take her wine. "Want not," she replied, but she wouldn't stop him from taking it. It might be better if he were drunker. However, it was getting obvious that this was going no where, which she should have expected in the first place. How lovely it was to find a famed colonel having sunk to a lowly assassin. As lovely as it was to find out a fellow lieutenant a petty thief.
Her lips formed a tight smile, and she stood. "I'll see you soon, Mr. Morellus." Diana would assign a couple guards to lie in wait to arrest him when he left that night. With luck, they wouldn't fail. She had enough of being in that bar.
“I trust you will. Lieutenant.” Raising her glass in a mockery of a toast, he drank, eyes following her out of the bar.
He would see her again.
There wasn't much time left.