[Javert is not laughing. He watches her fit with a bland face, his brow creeping further up his forehead. When he speaks again, his voice is remarkably sedate and quiet.]
Blame my newly-acquired slang lexicon. Now, then. How many times has it been for you? Everything accounted for?
[He has his own count, but he wants to ensure that it is correct. He slides the plant closer to her.]
I'm pretty sure it is... let's see. The... one in the dream didn't count, I don't think. But I did get eaten by that tree last year... and then the blob....
[Peace counted off on her fingers.] But everything seems to be accounted for as far as I can tell, Maybe twice?
Huh. Now I'm not sure. I think it was only twice. And I can't remember if I ate or not last.
[She smiled up at him sheepishly as she took the cute little succulent.]
[Javert's face compresses to a flat, grim expression. Mental note: procure meals from the soup kitchen, send her off with a decent meal before the night is finished. He drums his black claws against the desk.]
My doors are open for you should you require the protection. [His face screws up, as if it causes him physical pain to concede on a matter.] Include Jongdae and the vampire Totty with that offer if it pleases you.
Well, yeah. Dying isn't, like, what I wake up in the morning to do. You know?
[Peace stands up and crosses her desk, leaning against the wood top and giving him a long, searching look.]
And of course Jongdae is included. Totty can take care of himself, though. What about you, boss? You've been doing a lot lately, right? Our positions have switched!
[As swiftly as his face bunched, it leans out, falling loose and limp. Javert's eyes glaze a little, recalling the past few months' worth of happenings. November, when he received his coat-and-mantle promotion from Madame Fog. December, when an oddball family full of lost orphans and manchild adults invited him to their Nattensfest celebration as if he stood a chance to become one of their own. January, when the domestic façade began to crumble, that godforsaken Defiance house now empty of children and full of dubiously-principled men and an arsenal of weaponry.
Lake Dala. The Iskall Resort. Death, fire, the hunt, destruction. Javert's list of the dead from that incident still rests leaden and heavy in his pocket journal. Harley Quinn's scarred Nephilim body.
He returns to himself, the glaze in his eyes receding.]
You of all people know I keep myself busy, mademoiselle, [he says, with a forced flavor of amusement.] The work doesn't rest when I risk a respite. Here, I want you to have something.
[From his pocket he draws out a talisman etched with a symbol emblematic of Mana and tosses it onto the desk beside the purple succulent.]
[Peace watches him retreat into his head, expression curious and searching. When he comes back from his reverie, she still looks a little concerned. Moreso when he tosses the talisman.]
Sure, but.. What is that?
[Her next dry joke has all shades of Javert in them; as though he has finally influenced her a little bit.]
Pretty sure that vampires don't do the whole "last will and testament" part of living.
[Javert snorts derisively, bringing the 'life' back to his face. In a manner of speaking, for a corpselike vampire.]
It is a talisman, [he says wryly, stating the obvious.] You'll make better use out of this than me.
[He idly pricks his fingers on the succulent's pointed tips, brushing over them with a ghostly touch. It is Javert's habit to keep his hands busy under his strange anxieties.]
When you find yourself captive, or in an inescapable bind, you put this on. Around your neck, not in your pocket or elsewhere. It will put you to sleep, and when you wake, you will be... [his frown deepens with revulsion.] Elsewhere. Wherever it chooses to take you. I don't know where.
That's mysterious. I'm sure I'll be okay, though, Boss. I don't...
[She shuddered, the events of the earlier summer still sometimes came back. She knows he's trying though and offers her hand instead. The movement reveals the black line of opal where her forearm had been hacked off under her sleeve.]
Well, I won't get myself in that kind of situation again, but I'll keep it in my pockets just in case. [She pauses, brows furrowing.] I'm glad we get to talk like this, though. Just saying.
[Javert tucks his perturbed pang beneath a veneer of forced lightness. It is all the more difficult to hold, when his eyes wander up from her extended hand and glimpse the black opals encircling her arm. A shadow flits across his face, and he tears his gaze away from her arm and back to Peace's face.
He draws his hand away and allows it to drop into his lap. He straightens into a precarious perch against the edge of the desk.]
I am entitled to offer protections to people under my watch. You're entitled to demand them as my employee when you go out on the field. A duty which I've failed to uphold a number of times too many. [This might come out as a bit of a jest, his brow slanted coyly:] Do you want a security detail, too? A few fine men to keep you out of nasty traps?
Please, I'm so short anyone you'd put around me to keep me safe would just lose me. I'm slippery that way.
[She grins cheekily and takes his hand anyway. Her hands are warm, if one doesn't mind touching the smooth, rock-hard skin.]
I know you worry, and I know I'm just your secretary, but I can also grow twenty feet tall and can lose my temper. If I had a little bit of a better control on that then it wouldn't be too much of a problem. Besides, demanding something of you feels less helpful. You've got enough on your plate thanks to the prison. I don't need to be one more thing to consider, even if I am entitled to it.
[Her grin doesn't fade.]
And maybe I like when you get grumpy at my latest poor choice.
[Like a disappointed dad that didn't want to use her for cultist deeds.]
Oh, come now! Your choices aren't so poor, [Javert huffs, his knuckles rapping against the desk. He hops off, standing up straight and tall and fruitlessly smoothing the curled, tattered hems of his collar.] I would have turned you out by now, sent you packing, otherwise.
[He smiles tersely.]
But I think you don't come out with your twenty-foot berserker quite enough. That might spare you from a good portion of your messes, you know.
[He crosses to the cabinet and pulls out the files from the Iskall Resort affair, gingerly placing them on the desk in front of Peace.]
I need you to place some calls with the Bavan City police about their files on Eriksen. Then, you must keep an ear open for a Doctor Gabriel Morgenstern. I am having him take a look at the creature-scrap samples I scraped out of the mountains. Can you manage?
You would look quite fetching with a polished club, Mademoiselle.
[Javert is unfazed.]
Mana's services would do the trick for your clothes, [he says lightly.] Or have a spare set nearby, sewn for your troll self. No reason you must stay indecent and immodest unless you choose it.
Well, that's a thing you said that I'm going to take as a positive.
[ She sticks her tongue out at him and puts the folder to her side. ]
I don't choose it, but I can't imagine lugging around clothes for someone twenty-foot tall, either. So maybe Mana can do it. I guess I'll check into that. But basically, I only get big when I get super upset, or if I have to and lately I haven't had to do either of those things.
And last time I was huge, I'm pretty sure I ate a whole person and that was... Not great. Buttons actually suck to spit up, if you weren't aware. Maybe I can see if there's another way to eat that isn't... meat-based. I can be like you; a hemotarian.
[It tumbles out a tad more harsh than he means it, a lopsided grimace snagging the corner of his mouth. Javert wrestles with himself inwardly, and for once in his existence he contemplates the tact of what he is about to tell her.]
Thank carefully before you make that bargain, [he cautions.] People have it in their skulls that drinking blood simplifies the feast, that it is gentler. No, I do not think so. Once you have a smell and a taste for the stuff, it... [his grimace darkens, eyes glazing as his focus fixes on a point several feet past Peace's left ear] devours and consumes. It is all you will smell and listen for when you...
[He lapses into a tepid silence, a vivid portrait of heartbeats and coursing blood pulsing above the noise of their conversation.]
But that's still better than flesh and not as sacrosanct as souls. I can just ask someone with a connection to get things from the local blood bank.
Feeding on flesh - even if it's what you and Jack provide - it ruins just talking to people. Because you find yourself thinking about how that person's too gamey and this person is too fat, and that other person is probably fine to eat.
Alternately, blood is fine. I'm not a vampire - no special senses, unless you count being really good at digging holes, or in Altair's case, controlling rocks. I won't think about it unless I have to eat it and even then I can make a quick and easy few swallows. You know?
So I'll take one annoying issue against the one that means someone's life has to absolutely end.
[There's a breathless pause, the laser focus of his gaze finding Peace's again. He plunders the depths of her four eyes, searching, and he sees laid bare her fiery will with a touch of melancholy hope; not dissimilar to the witch of the lake he met what feels like an eternity ago, in a hazy dream world where she alone shouldered the burdens of the dead.
If anyone can conquer a lust for blood, perhaps she will. But then, where do her sins lie? It isn't the first time he wondered such a dark thing about her, and each time, he draws up relatively minor transgressions beside his own. He concedes to her explanation with a shallow bow of his head.]
Something tells me that you will never stop seeing men as the sum of their flavors, [he says dryly.] It is written for us, we the predators. But may the blood bring you the relief you want. Lord above knows there's plenty to go around.
[Peace grins back at him. It's gruesome, she knows, but being here for a year has at least desensitized her to gruesome. Now it's just hanging on to her moral compass that is the hard part. Remaining human while looking in the mirror at four eyes and hardened skin. ]
I know you're immediately going to deny it, but: you're a really good person, Boss. Like, even when you're being all... stiff and staid, you've never once done wrong by me, and I'm happy to know you. Like, for-real for-real.
[Javert recoils slightly like Peace had delivered him a slap upside the jaw. Along with him, he loses his hold on the stillness of his coat, and it drapes in small curls around his arms and hips.
Insults are simple to take. Compliments prove an insurmountable challenge, especially when he feels they are unmerited.]
Tell that to the town the next time they call for my head, [he murmurs out the corner of his mouth. A dark wrinkle blooms between his eyes. He slips off the desk and firmly back onto his own two feet, and he makes to leave before some insane emotion threatens to grip him.
He pauses in the door frame awkwardly.]
You are... [His weight shifts from one heel to the other. He hisses a sigh.] A good witch, mademoiselle. I do not know why on earth you stay here. It is appreciated.
[A beat, and he cannot resists adding wryly,]
No one is more appreciative than the plants, of course. They would wither without you.
Well, they do like me a lot. But also, you could use a little reminder that everything isn't doom and gloom, Boss.
[She held a hand out.]
Wait right there, Boss!
[Peace ran over, and probably for the first time in a year, gave him a firm hug. Literally; the girl's hard as stone skin does not have much give to it.]
Plants or not, I stay here because I like you and this place.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: [Action]
I'm sorry... I'm sorry..!
[Once the giggling Has Passed, she wipes her eyes and grins up at him.]
I'm gucci. And also you used it the right way. Being absorbed by a malevolent jell-o wasn't great, but you know. Silver linings.
no subject
Blame my newly-acquired slang lexicon. Now, then. How many times has it been for you? Everything accounted for?
[He has his own count, but he wants to ensure that it is correct. He slides the plant closer to her.]
I can arrange a meal for you should you need it.
no subject
[Peace counted off on her fingers.] But everything seems to be accounted for as far as I can tell, Maybe twice?
Huh. Now I'm not sure. I think it was only twice. And I can't remember if I ate or not last.
[She smiled up at him sheepishly as she took the cute little succulent.]
I think I'm OK though.
no subject
[Javert's face compresses to a flat, grim expression. Mental note: procure meals from the soup kitchen, send her off with a decent meal before the night is finished. He drums his black claws against the desk.]
My doors are open for you should you require the protection. [His face screws up, as if it causes him physical pain to concede on a matter.] Include Jongdae and the vampire Totty with that offer if it pleases you.
no subject
[Peace stands up and crosses her desk, leaning against the wood top and giving him a long, searching look.]
And of course Jongdae is included. Totty can take care of himself, though. What about you, boss? You've been doing a lot lately, right? Our positions have switched!
no subject
Lake Dala. The Iskall Resort. Death, fire, the hunt, destruction. Javert's list of the dead from that incident still rests leaden and heavy in his pocket journal. Harley Quinn's scarred Nephilim body.
He returns to himself, the glaze in his eyes receding.]
You of all people know I keep myself busy, mademoiselle, [he says, with a forced flavor of amusement.] The work doesn't rest when I risk a respite. Here, I want you to have something.
[From his pocket he draws out a talisman etched with a symbol emblematic of Mana and tosses it onto the desk beside the purple succulent.]
Keep it secret.
no subject
Sure, but.. What is that?
[Her next dry joke has all shades of Javert in them; as though he has finally influenced her a little bit.]
Pretty sure that vampires don't do the whole "last will and testament" part of living.
no subject
It is a talisman, [he says wryly, stating the obvious.] You'll make better use out of this than me.
[He idly pricks his fingers on the succulent's pointed tips, brushing over them with a ghostly touch. It is Javert's habit to keep his hands busy under his strange anxieties.]
When you find yourself captive, or in an inescapable bind, you put this on. Around your neck, not in your pocket or elsewhere. It will put you to sleep, and when you wake, you will be... [his frown deepens with revulsion.] Elsewhere. Wherever it chooses to take you. I don't know where.
no subject
[She shuddered, the events of the earlier summer still sometimes came back. She knows he's trying though and offers her hand instead. The movement reveals the black line of opal where her forearm had been hacked off under her sleeve.]
Well, I won't get myself in that kind of situation again, but I'll keep it in my pockets just in case. [She pauses, brows furrowing.] I'm glad we get to talk like this, though. Just saying.
no subject
[Javert tucks his perturbed pang beneath a veneer of forced lightness. It is all the more difficult to hold, when his eyes wander up from her extended hand and glimpse the black opals encircling her arm. A shadow flits across his face, and he tears his gaze away from her arm and back to Peace's face.
He draws his hand away and allows it to drop into his lap. He straightens into a precarious perch against the edge of the desk.]
I am entitled to offer protections to people under my watch. You're entitled to demand them as my employee when you go out on the field. A duty which I've failed to uphold a number of times too many. [This might come out as a bit of a jest, his brow slanted coyly:] Do you want a security detail, too? A few fine men to keep you out of nasty traps?
no subject
[She grins cheekily and takes his hand anyway. Her hands are warm, if one doesn't mind touching the smooth, rock-hard skin.]
I know you worry, and I know I'm just your secretary, but I can also grow twenty feet tall and can lose my temper. If I had a little bit of a better control on that then it wouldn't be too much of a problem. Besides, demanding something of you feels less helpful. You've got enough on your plate thanks to the prison. I don't need to be one more thing to consider, even if I am entitled to it.
[Her grin doesn't fade.]
And maybe I like when you get grumpy at my latest poor choice.
[Like a disappointed dad that didn't want to use her for cultist deeds.]
no subject
[He smiles tersely.]
But I think you don't come out with your twenty-foot berserker quite enough. That might spare you from a good portion of your messes, you know.
[He crosses to the cabinet and pulls out the files from the Iskall Resort affair, gingerly placing them on the desk in front of Peace.]
I need you to place some calls with the Bavan City police about their files on Eriksen. Then, you must keep an ear open for a Doctor Gabriel Morgenstern. I am having him take a look at the creature-scrap samples I scraped out of the mountains. Can you manage?
no subject
[Peace looks down at her new files and flipped through them.]
No, this won't be any problem. Doctor Morgenstern, got it.
Truly, I won't be able to handle this load of work you've put on me, Boss. I will wither away~
[She put her hand to her forehead in mock weakness.]
But yeah, I'll be fine. I'll have the information to you before you can say 'sacré bleu'
no subject
[A blank pause, where the word hangs in the air like he meant to append it with something more.
Javert's measured stare doesn't change. He presses his lips together.]
Do you need something tailored to a twenty-foot ogre? You didn't tell me so!
no subject
[Peace huffed and her fluffy tail thrashed and bristled against the desk.]
Besides, wouldn't it need magic to work? All my clothing rips when I get bigger. No amount of spandex is going to help with that.
no subject
[Javert is unfazed.]
Mana's services would do the trick for your clothes, [he says lightly.] Or have a spare set nearby, sewn for your troll self. No reason you must stay indecent and immodest unless you choose it.
no subject
Well, that's a thing you said that I'm going to take as a positive.
[ She sticks her tongue out at him and puts the folder to her side. ]
I don't choose it, but I can't imagine lugging around clothes for someone twenty-foot tall, either. So maybe Mana can do it. I guess I'll check into that. But basically, I only get big when I get super upset, or if I have to and lately I haven't had to do either of those things.
And last time I was huge, I'm pretty sure I ate a whole person and that was... Not great. Buttons actually suck to spit up, if you weren't aware. Maybe I can see if there's another way to eat that isn't... meat-based. I can be like you; a hemotarian.
no subject
[It tumbles out a tad more harsh than he means it, a lopsided grimace snagging the corner of his mouth. Javert wrestles with himself inwardly, and for once in his existence he contemplates the tact of what he is about to tell her.]
Thank carefully before you make that bargain, [he cautions.] People have it in their skulls that drinking blood simplifies the feast, that it is gentler. No, I do not think so. Once you have a smell and a taste for the stuff, it... [his grimace darkens, eyes glazing as his focus fixes on a point several feet past Peace's left ear] devours and consumes. It is all you will smell and listen for when you...
[He lapses into a tepid silence, a vivid portrait of heartbeats and coursing blood pulsing above the noise of their conversation.]
no subject
Feeding on flesh - even if it's what you and Jack provide - it ruins just talking to people. Because you find yourself thinking about how that person's too gamey and this person is too fat, and that other person is probably fine to eat.
Alternately, blood is fine. I'm not a vampire - no special senses, unless you count being really good at digging holes, or in Altair's case, controlling rocks. I won't think about it unless I have to eat it and even then I can make a quick and easy few swallows. You know?
So I'll take one annoying issue against the one that means someone's life has to absolutely end.
no subject
If anyone can conquer a lust for blood, perhaps she will. But then, where do her sins lie? It isn't the first time he wondered such a dark thing about her, and each time, he draws up relatively minor transgressions beside his own. He concedes to her explanation with a shallow bow of his head.]
Something tells me that you will never stop seeing men as the sum of their flavors, [he says dryly.] It is written for us, we the predators. But may the blood bring you the relief you want. Lord above knows there's plenty to go around.
no subject
About that blood, I mean. At least people are less likely to die if I drink a few pints. Or... make black pudding or something.
CW: Blood Feeding Discussion
[The corner Javert his mouth twitches.]
My reserves, I mean. Provided you do not care about the source. And I know a fellow with the skills to cook up a mean blood pudding.
[He snorts.]
I don't recommend heating the blood too much aside from pudding or sausage. There is little less appetizing than clumpy, clotted sludge.
no subject
I know you're immediately going to deny it, but: you're a really good person, Boss. Like, even when you're being all... stiff and staid, you've never once done wrong by me, and I'm happy to know you. Like, for-real for-real.
no subject
Insults are simple to take. Compliments prove an insurmountable challenge, especially when he feels they are unmerited.]
Tell that to the town the next time they call for my head, [he murmurs out the corner of his mouth. A dark wrinkle blooms between his eyes. He slips off the desk and firmly back onto his own two feet, and he makes to leave before some insane emotion threatens to grip him.
He pauses in the door frame awkwardly.]
You are... [His weight shifts from one heel to the other. He hisses a sigh.] A good witch, mademoiselle. I do not know why on earth you stay here. It is appreciated.
[A beat, and he cannot resists adding wryly,]
No one is more appreciative than the plants, of course. They would wither without you.
no subject
[She held a hand out.]
Wait right there, Boss!
[Peace ran over, and probably for the first time in a year, gave him a firm hug. Literally; the girl's hard as stone skin does not have much give to it.]
Plants or not, I stay here because I like you and this place.
(no subject)