Liz (
alethiometric) wrote in
bakerstreet2012-11-12 08:18 pm
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Entry tags:
The Promises Meme
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the promises meme• Comment with your character's name and fandom in the subject line. • Select an option or roll RNG for a prompt. • Play! promptsi. family. A promise made in the name of family, whether literal or metaphorical. ii. business. No personal feelings involved. Just a working agreement. iii. romantic. A promise to your lover, something that binds you together. iv. enemy. Looks like you made a deal with the devil. v. too good to be true. A promise with hidden caveats. vi. false. A promise you don't intend to keep. vii. broken. A promise you've betrayed. viii. fulfilled. The time has come to make good on your word. ix. bound. A promise you have to keep, whether by threat, blackmail or magic. x. secret. A pact you can't reveal. xi. forever. You're promising forever after. xii. never. You promise that something will never happen. Ever. |
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But tonight somehow, for some reason, they're standing outside together, alone. Boredom, interest, just plain chance?
Katerina has taken a shine to this one. She offers him something she has never offered one of his like before.]
If you really want to know who I am, I'll tell you. But you must swear to me on whatever you hold dearest that you'll never tell.
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Outside to smoke, to get away from the sycophants and all the people who just wanted to get close to him. He wondered why anyone even cared what he did or where he went any more. He was all grown up now and not some poor brave little soul stuck in the fishbowl of the White House with all his problems on display for the world. Clearly, all those people needed to find better hobbies.
He needed to find better hobbies, too.
He expected the quiet shuffle of people outside to smoke, the polite conversation that's always had but never wanted when you just wanted to enjoy your cancer stick and get back to the party. He didn't expect her. That face he'd seen around, but didn't know, the mysterious one no one seemed to know anything about. The offer earned a curiously arched brow and a jaunty, well-practised smirk that tried to cover how curious he really was. ]
Who gets to decide what that is, 'cause I'm not sure I could tell you what's dearest to me.
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She's been watching him for a long time herself. But not in the way most of the others do: with a mixture of pity and bloodlust, longing for what he has and savoring the details for when it sends his life into one downturn after another. No, her interest is more like that of a scientist observing: intrigued, emotionally uninvested, perfectly willing to let nature take its course. She's been around and watched so much change, and enjoyed every minute of it. Its only once in awhile that the little pieces stand out, shining among the fray.
(She doubts his memory is good enough, but she wandered in and out of society circles in this city a bit when he was a boy, too. But it's better he doesn't know. If he could actually recall it, he might wonder why she hasn't seemed to age a day.)]
No? [She smiles back at him, but it's a knowing sort of smile.] Oh come on now. There must be something.
I'm sure if you reached deep enough inside your heart, you'd be able to find it.
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TJ leaned against the wall, looking off while he took a long drag of his cigarette. It was obvious he wasn't taking the conversation wholly seriously, but he was giving her more attention than the average person chit-chatting with him while he paused in a night of partying for a smoke. Interesting people, truly intriguing people, were hard to come by. ]
Mmm, probably. But I'm not really all that self-reflexive.
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[Her tone is noticeably less frivolous, if just for that moment. She's not only serious, she's deathly so. Cold. Harsh. And more than ever at that point something seems to bleed through from underneath, that makes her seem unusual, that marks her as coming from a world and a viewpoint so unlike anything that would be more expected and common.]
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I guess you've got me there. But, tell me, how many people are willing to just give up their most intimate details to a total stranger?
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[She pulls back from the wall, straightening, standing at her full height as she lifts her chin a bit.]
And, if you come to know me first before finding out the truth, you might well regret it.
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How am I to trust you when I don't know anything about you? For all I know you could be some washed-up sorry excuse of a reporter looking for the least important bit of Hammond gossip. I've been dealing with that for my whole life, so I think you'll excuse my reluctance.
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She doesn't pull back when he leans in, doesn't so much as blink. Her eyes do half-lid though, coy and lazy. It's a very feline expression.]
Do I really seem like the reporter type to you? [She seems relatively unbothered, though.] But it's true, I can't exactly fault you for being squeamish. Once burned, twice shy. I can only assume over time a dozen burns leads to a dozen cases of shyness.
But I never meant to ask you for anything that could be construed as 'gossip'. I only wanted a pledge I can put some faith in. [She smiles, tilts her head, speaks in a knowing and reasonable tone.] Does that seem so tawdry?
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Steve came to mind.
His expression softened, a ghost of a smile and a subdued sort of happiness coming to his eyes. That was it. Steve changed his life and that was something precious, so very precious to TJ. At length he nodded once. ]
All right. You can have my pledge. But, if your secret is that under all that you're a man, I'm going to be wholly unimpressed with all this drawn out mystery.
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But for some reason, in his own she fancies him to be a man of his word.
At his remark she laughs, a brief and soft if genuinely amused sound. A bit darkly amused, at that. It's the sound of someone who knows a little more than you - maybe more than a little - and is laughing about something you couldn't understand.]
Oh, no. Many things have I been in my day, but male was never one of them.
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Fair enough. Can't blame a lady for being curious.
But since you've been such a good boy, here's my secret...[Standing right in front of him she leans in, not quite whispering into his ear, but almost. Her voice is low, her whole manner dark and powerful, in control of the situation entirely.] I'm not human.
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No? Then what?
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[Not that it's much of a surprise. She doesn't even bother to feign being hurt. If anything her expression only grows more smug, more confident, more wicked.]
Well--
[She shifts her weight so it's more on one foot, upper body leaning forward at an angle, knee bent. So that she's not actually shoving her chest into him her spine twists in a way not everyone would be flexible enough to pull off. One hand goes to press against the wall at his back on either side of him. At first blush it would seem an aggressively flirtatious posture.
Except. Her eyes go from green-gray to green-gold and then just golden, becoming more slitted and feline as they do. Her smile bares fangs now. Fingernails extend into claws that dig into the wall's surface with an audible scrape.]
...How about now?
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...What the hell?!
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Her head tilts idly and she contemplates letting it go a little further, bringing out her tail. She does so miss her tail sometimes...but, no. The further she lets the mask shift the harder it can be to force in back again; she doesn't want to have to spend a week in hiding while she retrains her body how to appear human.]
Ah, there. I'd say that put a few cracks in the jaded mask. Welcome to the waking world. It's full of a few more things than I expect you have imagined.
[There's a grating sound as her claws dig deeper into the wall.]
But after all, seeing is believing. Isn't it?
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She drugged him.
He's hallucinating from withdrawal.
Oh my god, in either case he needed a hospital or something... He pressed back further into the wall, the cigarette fallen forgotten from his hands as he fumbled in his pocket to fish out his phone and call.... Well, Steve came to mind first, but he's in New York. Dougie. He'd ring Dougie. Dougie always helped. ]
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TJ?
[Well. She's had her fun. Time to give him some breathing space. But as she pulls back he tugs out his phone - and like lighting she reaches out to swat it from his grip with one hand. Quick as she can be while still being careful; it would be a cruel mistake to scratch him, now.]
No, no. No calling for help now. Remember: you promised.
[Under the circumstances her scolding tone seems almost mocking.]
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No, you don't understand... I think there's something wrong with me.
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Oh no. It isn't all in your head, never fear. What you're seeing is quite real.
[Amusement aside, she does feel more than a little bad. Even guilty. And guilt is a funny emotion, for her...it doesn't come very natural to predators.
But while his fear was amusing to toy with (like a cat with a mouse) it never occurred to her she would so fully traumatize him. It wasn't at all her intention.]
I'd invite you to touch, if that sense would convince you of the reality, but sadly, that could only end very unfortunately. For you.
[She moves back further, a full arm's length away now. He could run, if he really wanted to. She's safely out of reach.
She lifts up her left arm and gazes at her own claws thoughtfully.]
Deadly venom that can drop any mortal dead within seconds. Almost overkill, really, for a beast that can devour its victims whole. But so very effective.
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Once she moved away and he felt like he could breathe again, the panic started to subside. Okay, she hadn't actually drugged him. He wasn't hallucinating. And she wasn't planning to kill him. Good things, all. Keeping his eyes fixed on her, TJ took a step away and crouched to grope for his phone on the ground. Not in an effort to call anyone, just so he didn't lost the damned thing. ]
That's... disturbing.
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Is it, now? Hm. I imagine it must be.
[Her eyes flick to him, watching, and once she's assured he's not about to do something truly reckless like attack her, they go back to looking at her own claws.
She closes her eyes, lifts her head up, draws a breath and visibly focuses. With a wet and grinding sound the shape of her hands change, claws retracting and disappearing and bones turning back into something significantly less dangerous. Ordinary human fingers.
Her fangs are gone as well, when she opens her eyes, though said eyes are still slightly closer to yellow in color than green.]
"Martya xwar", to the Persians. "Martichora", to the Greeks. "Mantichora", in the Latin.
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Uh, is that supposed to mean something to me?
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Now, what about the word "manticore"?
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