simplestgift: (Turn away.)
Archie Kennedy ([personal profile] simplestgift) wrote in [community profile] lucetilogs2012-12-01 11:05 am

Comfort and Joy

Who: Come one, come all! ...So long as you're appropriately dressed.
What: Luceti's second annual Christmas ball, old-world style.
When: December 1st, beginning around five in the afternoon and ending when the last person leaves.
Where: The Battle Dome.
Summary: Earth's eighteenth-century peeps are throwing one hell of a party. Again.
Rating: Well, considering no one is serving water? Probably PG-13 for alcohol consumption and the results thereof (there's coffee and hot chocolate!).

Upon stepping into the program at the Battle Dome, snow crunches beneath your feet. Great flakes of it drift silently from the dark sky above. And ahead...





The chill in the air is penetrated by the promise of warmth and light within the castle. As you approach, the music and festivities from inside reach your ears--tambourines and laughter and the clink of china dishes.

The doors open to a host of candles and a warm, old-world smell and feel. The scent of food and spices hangs in the air—mulled wine, wassail, evergreen boughs, fresh bread and roast meat--and you're only in the entryway.

Inside the dining room, cream brocades, simple but elegant, are draped over the walls. Traditional red rugs have been thrown over the floor. The single long feast table is impeccably dressed with light linen cloths and set with fine china and crystal.

The tables are lit with candles and chandeliers, giving the room a golden glow. On the tables, boughs of evergreen and holly surround the candles, and mistletoe has been hung discreetly here and there. In one corner, by a large and beautifully decorated fir tree (Buffy’s insistence), musicians are set up to play.

Things will begin with a grand dinner late in the afternoon, with a light supper (mostly consisting of cold meats, bread, and other lighter fare) at around nine o’clock. The selection of food on the tables is enormous. Most of it is meat-based and some of it is simply meat. Roast beef with mushrooms, goose in giblet gravy, herbed chicken, baked salmon, and a whole pig are among the choices. There is some hope for vegetarians, though, with spinach mixed with bread crumbs and cheese on small toasts, turnips (or rutabagas if you speak American), onions, carrots, parsnips, mashed potatoes, asparagus in breadcrumbs, and savory onion and wild mushroom pies. There is hot fresh bread and rolls with butter and heaps upon heaps of small mince pies filled with fruit, molasses, and yes, a little minced lamb. Moreover, there are fresh winter fruits like oranges and mikans and many different desserts, such as Christmas pudding, a rum chocolate dessert, and spotted dog with custard. Sit and help yourself.

Among the drinks throughout the evening are wassail, tea, hot chocolate (less sweet and much more intense than most modern characters would be used to, made with cinnamon, vanilla, and a hint of cayenne pepper), coffee, brandy, wine both mulled and plain, port, sherry, and gallons of rum punch. Even though the food is fantastic, the conversation is the point of the game, and who knows who they will wind up sitting beside. At the center of each table is placed a pineapple as a sign of welcome and wishes of prosperity.

In the ballroom, there is dancing light as the music itself, with Archie Kennedy and Elizabeth Swann teaching the steps of each dance before striking up the music and letting everyone go to town with it. They are poised and elegant but relaxed and seeming to glide as they demonstrate the motions with an effortlessness that comes with years of practice. They were both raised on these dances and this sort of social function and seem completely at home here. The dancing begins after dinner with the minuets and continues after a light supper with some informal English country dances. Anyone unused to dancing like this may find that it’s harder than it looks, but when one gets used to it, it feels very graceful, beautiful, and…fun! In fact, it's perfectly acceptable to goof off during these dances, as long as you're charming enough that people aren't irritated with you when you mess everyone up. The activity will only end when there are too few dancers left to continue, and will continue all night if possible. As dancers pass each other or move hand-in-hand, eye contact can be made, quiet words exchanged, subtle (or not) messages passed as they spin through the room, or perhaps the room spins while they remain still.

It might depend on how much they’ve had to drink.

Those who do not wish to dance have other activities to participate in. In one quiet room, card tables are set up with multiple decks of cards stacked up, and there is even a box or two of dominoes and a handful of dice. The tables themselves are round and made of polished rosewood or mahogany. This area is quietly away from the ballroom, probably as a mercy to the tone-deaf Horatio Hornblower who loves cards but can’t abide music. Here, discreet (or indiscreet) gambling is inevitable. There may be no money here, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to wager.

This being a castle, there are other rooms to explore. Up in the towers are bedrooms, nooks and crannies, and a large private library. Sneaking back to the kitchen between meals for a preview or stolen taste of supper to come is not out of the question, either.

Are you lingering in the dining room, drinking and talking loud and laughing with friends, or will you shyly sit and watch the dancing and games and hope to be invited in? Are you sitting quietly alone and listening to the music as your foot taps on its own, or are you unable to sit still and ready to dance all night if they’ll let you? Are you playing cards with a few new acquaintances, or are you hanging on someone’s arm and helping them cheat? Are you content to enjoy the presence of people, or are you exploring the castle with a special someone?

Whatever you do, have fun.
lorentzian: (pic#4059420)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-02 08:07 am (UTC)(link)
Perhaps she might, in a different moment. She really ought to let go. But she just doesn't want to. This is fun and enjoyable and not yet tainted by reality, and she kind of wants to leave it that way just a little longer. The dreamer in her can't help it. The idealist in her wants to believe it's okay. And the realist has gone to sit down in a dark corner of her mind and mope for a while, utterly ignored.

"Iiiit's almost like you want me to stomp on your feet." Her grin turns a bit mischievous. "Buuut, you know, maybe in a minute or two. I'm still getting over the last one."

Of course, the more time that passes, the more aware she becomes of ... him. Of their closeness. Of the soft light... of the pure romance of the scene. Color appears high in her cheeks when it finally strikes her, and she draws in a breath and darts her glance away. Good lord, Jane. You're dancing on a castle balcony with Loki, of all people, beneath a soft starry sky and to the strains of gentle music...

Oh boy. She is in wayyyyyy over her head. Moreso than usual, even.
complicatedliar: (he's made one for himself)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-02 08:24 am (UTC)(link)
Loki laughs. "Well, if the offending feet are attached to the right person, mine don't seem to mind so much."

He notices the blush, one eyebrow tilting slightly. Nothing he's done, surely, but the notion that her thoughts have taken a particular direction is difficult to ignore. It forces him to consider things in a slightly different light.

But it shouldn't be so strange, should it? He can easily recall picking her up by the lake, admitting that he had missed her, and it hadn't entirely been a lie. There is a traitorous part of himself that does miss that simplicity, and those few days when she didn't look at him like he was a monster. Or even that odd moment, when she'd let him take her hand, and he still hadn't quite figured out why, not when only days before she'd shouted at him and fled.

He still smiles, but it takes on a slightly wry tilt. So will this herald the next bit of fleeing, he wonders. Would it be a relief if it did? Caring about anything is terribly dangerous, it's an invitation to bleed. And some small part of him he hasn't quite killed yet is desperate for it, desperate to care and be cared for in return, and it's so much easier to deal with when people won't let him.

Like when they held hands before, he slowly moves his thumb over hers.
lorentzian: (pic#4059811)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-02 08:58 am (UTC)(link)
"They'll mind when I stab you with my stiletto. And with my track record, it's going to happen."

The humor is easy - something of a deflection from her real feelings. She moves slowly to the music, her eyes locked on his, searching. She, too, is thinking back to those days. Just a few, quiet, oddly blissful days. Spent believing, hoping against hope, wishing for something she couldn't quite name.

And when his thumb begins to move over hers - when that small gesture sens a wave of goosebumps rushing across her skin - she comes to a realization. She knows intimately how dangerous he is, the atrocities he's committed, all the things he's done. He is dangerous and possibly insane.

No, not insane. Completely sane, in fact - which actually makes it worse.

But here they are, together - quiet and warm and happy. She can see it in him - that he's pleased in a genuine sort of way. She remembers what his happiness looked like. She remembers it from that week.

In her mind she hears Tony. Tony, berating her over and over and over again that Loki is horrific and evil, a genocidal maniac not to be trusted with even the slightest thing. She hears Pepper, soberly recounting to her the story of Coulson's death. She sees Clint, bloodied, hurt.

But what she realizes is that she can't stay away from him. She has tried, over and over and over. And she feels sick, sometimes, hating herself for granting him even a shred of her feelings. In the end, though.... in the end...

She realizes she meant what she said. That she wants to believe. Believe in him. He isn't evil. That's too simple a label. He's dangerous - in ways too numerous to number - but he isn't evil. And maybe if she keeps believing... maybe...

It's idiotic. It's so idealistic she could scoff at herself. But maybe if she doesn't let go of him, maybe if she keeps believing, maybe...

God. God. What is she even thinking? That she can redeem a murderer? A criminal? A monster? If she condones him - accepts him, even - isn't that tantamount to condoning and accepting his crimes? Isn't that a way of saying, essentially, that she's okay with everything he's ever done and it's all forgivable and that he can just move on from his past so easily?

Then again, she was the one who had asked him to move forward. He can never atone for his past - but he can try to change in the future. And how can she ask him that if she keeps simultaneously existing that he is nothing but a villain through and through?

He can't atone. He can never atone. But maybe he doesn't have to be their enemy. Maybe he can become something.... better. And that should be the goal, shouldn't it? Maybe all these atrocities would stop happening if someone believed in him for once. Maybe he can be held accountable for his actions without chaining him to the label of monster, practically ensuring that he'll continue to be what they all insist he is.

At the very least, her hypocrisy needs to stop. And that is her final realization. That she has been nothing but a hypocrite to him from the very beginning. How can she even claim to have the moral high ground?

God. God. If Tony knew what she was thinking, he would never speak to her again. Ever.

Jane doesn't move away from him, instead sighing very softly through her nose and ducking her head. She isn't precisely sure in what way she cares for him... if it's as a friend, a confidante, a fellow intellectual... or something more.

But she cares. And continuing to fight it is just going to keep making her miserable. So she might as well be honest with herself - and maybe, in so doing, give him something he's never had.

"So." Her voice is soft when she looks back up at him, her expression gentle. "... how long do you think we can stay here before anyone realizes we're missing?"

We can stay like this, for a while.
complicatedliar: (i am done with my graceless heart)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-02 09:11 am (UTC)(link)
"I am impervious to such wounds, I assure you." But just in case, not even a flicker of effort showing on his face, he puts a simple kinetic shield over his feet.

Plagued by his own rather tangled thoughts, the conflicting desire to be left alone and to finally not be alone at all, he remains silent until she speaks. There's something different in her eyes when she looks at him now, and he can't quite place it. People simply don't look at him that way. There's something faintly disturbing about it, something that makes his heart twist uneasily in his chest.

But he smiles, and there's genuine warmth to it, called by her own expression, by the implication that perhaps this once a conversation isn't going to end with one of them fleeing the other in anger or fear. "It's a large castle," he says, and there is an odd note in his voice. "As long as we like, I should think."

She said we.
Edited 2012-12-02 09:46 (UTC)
lorentzian: (pic#4059798)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-03 06:36 am (UTC)(link)
With a small smile, Jane breaks his grip and takes a step back, only to drop another curtsy.

"Then.... how about another dance?"

Whatever thoughts were troubling her before - when that moment came as it always comes, the moment when one of them backs off and leaves and everything becomes a painful tangle all over again - they are gone now. The moment doesn't come - at least, not from her. She's at peace.
complicatedliar: (found the place to rest my head)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-03 06:40 am (UTC)(link)
For a moment there's a spasm of something in his expression when she steps away, so quickly hidden that it might have been imaginary. But then he smiles when she curtsies, and he gives her an elegant bow in return, offering her his hand again. "I should like that very much." His smile goes crooked. "I'm quite greedy in that way."
Edited (I just wanted a different icon) 2012-12-03 06:43 (UTC)
lorentzian: (pic#4059988)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-03 07:02 am (UTC)(link)
If she notices the crack in his mask, she gives no sign. Instead she beams and laughs, stepping close again.

"Just... be gentle, okay? Maybe second time's the charm. Orrrr maybe not. Guess we'll find out."
complicatedliar: (the lost prince)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-03 07:07 am (UTC)(link)
He laughs. "I don't know if I've the knack for such things, but for you I'll try."

No, he doesn't think anyone in their right mind would ever even think that Loki has the capacity to be gentle.

Another quick song starts up, though not as fast as their first dance. This time he has a better idea of what makes her stumble and tries to compensate for it. In this, he really does want to be a good partner; it's more fun that way.

He smiles as they dance.
Edited (grammar fail) 2012-12-03 07:28 (UTC)
lorentzian: (pic#4059939)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-03 08:10 am (UTC)(link)
Given his thoughtfulness, she stumbles quite a bit less this time around. In fact, she's being more careful, watching him more carefully for cues and only stumbling once or twice. But she still laughs, the sound as light and carefree as before.

It's nice like this, isn't it? Just for a moment, with no one here to remind them how opposed they normally stand.
complicatedliar: (boyish smile)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-03 02:57 pm (UTC)(link)
After this quick dance, Loki switches them to another slower one. He grins, but isn't quite so breathless as last time. "I think we did much better this time. I suppose that means we can learn."

He resists the urge to flirt, make implications. Something in him would much rather just let this be, and see if there can be an encounter where there doesn't have to be a winner and a loser. He wants to see if that's even possible, really, what it feels like if it is.
lorentzian: (pic#4059420)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-05 05:33 am (UTC)(link)
"Old dog, new tricks." She makes a face briefly, then breaks out in laughter and one of her bright smiles.

If she knew what, precisely, he was holding back from, she'd be enormously grateful - since, as tempting as that might likely turn out to be, it would also instantly send her fleeing, making awkward, half-hearted excuses all the while. But she doesn't think she could withstand it - something like that, from him. Most of their flirtations so far have been extremely veiled - a touching of hands here and there, perhaps. But nothing verbal, and acknowledging it out loud would most certainly spook her. As it is, this -- this she can at least pretend is innocent, even if she well knows it isn't.

And, still, she doesn't break away, though she does spare a glance for the balcony railing. It was nice, standing there and watching the simulated stars.
complicatedliar: (the saints can't help me now)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-05 05:38 am (UTC)(link)
"I think I'm quite a bit older than you," he said, tone teasing. "Or was that the point, and now I get to be terribly offended that you're calling me old?"

He catches her glance toward the railing, though he says nothing quite yet; there's a dance to finish. As the music draws to a close, he asks, "Did you want to have a break?"

Or is it time for him to politely excuse himself. He doesn't know where her welcome naturally ends.
lorentzian: (pic#4059988)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-05 05:52 am (UTC)(link)
A beat, and then she bursts out laughing again. He's batting a thousand tonight; it's rare she laughs so much. It's rare she has reason to laugh at all, really; she's not entirely given to it in the normal course of her life, so much of which is spent working. "You know what? I am exercising my right to remain silent." Her smile is, again, mischievous.

But when he is polite enough to ask her that question, that smile gentles into something soft. "Yeah, I did. Come on. Want to see something interesting?"

She leads the way back over to the railing, obviously expecting him to follow. His welcome has been extended.
complicatedliar: (the greatest joke of all)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-05 06:18 am (UTC)(link)
Loki has a feeling this 'right to remain silent' thing is some kind of cultural reference, just from the way she laughs. He smiles crookedly. "I'd no idea such a thing existed. I'll try to remember that."

He laughs softly. "Always." He always wants to see interesting things, anything that will answer a question and make him ask five more, even if only in the space of his own mind. He follows along, trailing behind her and feeling almost bemused. At the railing, he leans next to her again, perhaps a little closer than is polite, but not touching.
lorentzian: (pic#4060026)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-05 06:40 am (UTC)(link)
She glances sideways at him, apparently not minding the closeness. Once he's beside her, she lifts an arm, pointing at the stars.

"See these stars? I was looking at them earlier. Just... trying to find something I recognized. Pretty futile, as it turns out." She pauses, lowering her arm and folding it on the railing. "They're different from the stars outside, too. Which I guess isn't surprising, but... none of it lines up. The stars out there..."

She pauses, and then glances at him with a lift of her brows. "Actually, you've probably already realized the problem I noticed, haven't you? You saw my star chart."

That they don't line up properly, the stars in the enclosure. That they seem, bizarrely, to be fake.
complicatedliar: (boyish smile)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-05 06:44 am (UTC)(link)
He leans in a bit closer just to follow her hand in case she's pointing at something specific. He's not certain for a moment what, but... oh.

Loki laughs. "If I'm to be honest, I hadn't yet noticed, though now that you point it out I do see quite clearly. I wasn't paying close attention to the configuration of the stars before."
lorentzian: (pic#4059811)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-05 07:05 am (UTC)(link)
She does try not to let on that she's pleased he hasn't noticed. She tries - but it's there, a bit, in the way she shifts her shoulders. Frankly, Jane is so used to Loki being several steps ahead that she feels rather proud to have noticed something before he did.

"It is sort of my job." Sheepish and proud all at once. "It's ... almost automatic, whenever I just stop to think. I... used to do that all the time, at home. Sit on my roof and watch the stars."

Her expression - and her tone - have sobered quite a bit into something thoughtful and a little distant.

"For the longest time it's been like ... a reflex, when I need to calm down or get away from it all."
complicatedliar: (the meaning of the word)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-05 07:10 am (UTC)(link)
He smiles crookedly. "I'm afraid I'm more likely to lose myself in a book." That was always his defense, his own world, hiding in a corner of the library and reading. "But I would think that is why you are an... astrophysicist, and I am not."

He was learning the topic now, self-taught, but it was all through physics and numbers, with the stars as nothing more than masses to warp the fabric of space.
lorentzian: (pic#4059420)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-05 07:19 am (UTC)(link)
Her smile returns, faint, and she ducks her head. But her hands find each other, and she twists her fingers together, a sign of her sudden troubled thoughts.

"You know, when I was... when I was a little girl," she looks up, away, out at some vague far distance, "I used to spend so much time just looking at the stars."

She lifts her chin, gaze further away still, unfocused as she slips into memories. "I didn't understand what they meant, obviously. Or basically anything about them. I just knew that -- I wanted to know. So when I was maybe five or six years old, my dad, he -- gave me a telescope. God." She laughs. "I'd sneak out of bed almost every night so I could just... watch the stars. I'd heard about star charts in my reading so I kept trying to draw them, even though I had no idea what I was doing."

Finally, Jane blows out a breath, one that briefly puffs her whole face out.

"I guess you could say I was sort of born for this."
complicatedliar: (the beast you've made of me)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-05 07:21 am (UTC)(link)
He listens, considering the details, building it into his mental catalog of what is Jane. It explains some little idiosyncrasies, to be certain. "I would agree," he says after a moment. "Kind of your father, to give you a telescope. A purpose, I suppose."
lorentzian: (pic#4060005)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-05 07:27 am (UTC)(link)
She swallows, ducking her head. Her discomfort is obvious now, even to her.

"He was an astrophysicist, too," she says, very quietly. "He taught at a university for most of my life. I'd be lying if I said I didn't start learning astronomy in part just to make him .... happy, I guess. Proud."

She reels herself in there, shutting her eyes, and sighs, a much less dramatic affair this time. Why is it still so hard to talk about him after all this time? Just thinking about him doesn't hurt, so much. Is it the company? Is it her? Lost in her thoughts, she forgets to continue.
complicatedliar: (calm)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-05 07:36 am (UTC)(link)
"I understand that urge," Loki says quietly, before adding a bit more firmly. "If that was his passion as well, I'd think he would be quite proud."

Idly he traces a little figure on the railing with one finger. "People like to share their passions."

Something about this is obviously painful for her, and he wonders at what. Somehow he doubts her situation is like his, where he had a father he was destined to never please, and one who wasn't his real father at that.
lorentzian: (pic#4059942)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-05 07:45 am (UTC)(link)
She turns, then, facing back towards the castle and leaning on the railing in much the same position she'd been in when he'd first arrived. She tilts her head back, pointedly not looking at him, keeping her eyes on the stars.

"I'm pretty sure he was." Her voice is so gentle. "I don't think I ever heard him more proud than the day I told him I got into my Ph.D program."

Her arms come forward. She tells herself it's the chill, at first - that's why she's gently hugging herself, chin down in a vaguely defensive position. But, alas, she can't fool herself for long. It is so obviously a guarded posture that she sighs exasperatedly and stands straight.

"He died," she says finally, her voice clipped and clinical, "a couple of years ago." It's easier after that, once it's out there -- and she relaxes, marginally. She finds herself tilting her head just so, her eyes seeking his. Why is she telling him this? Loki, of all people, who could so easily use the information to hurt her? To manipulate her? Why is he the very first person in Luceti to find out she's an orphan with no family to her name?

But it doesn't feel wrong. After a moment, she sighs through her nose and turns to face the railing again, steeling herself for whatever sort of commentary he might offer.
complicatedliar: (head tilt)

[personal profile] complicatedliar 2012-12-05 07:50 am (UTC)(link)
There is much he could say, selfish or cruel or even petty, had he a reason to do so. Maybe some other time, fresh from them battering against each other, he might have done it to score a point, send her running away. And perhaps he would, in the future, though he thought this was a weapon of last resort.

But still he wants to know, if they can have a meeting with no scores drawn. It's been a relaxing night. He doesn't wish to disturb that fragile, temporary peace he's built around himself, only for this night.

All he says is this. "I am sorry. It sounds as if you miss him."

He wonders what that feels like. Not the angry, bitter way he feels about Odin, where he wishes the man dead and not dead, where he wishes he could beat him so thoroughly that for once he'd acknowledge Loki was, if not a worthy son, at least a worthy opponent.

The only person he ever misses, in quite, private moments, is Frigga. And he's under no illusions of what she must think of him now.
lorentzian: (pic#4059810)

[personal profile] lorentzian 2012-12-05 07:56 am (UTC)(link)
It is both the single best and worst thing he could have said. What it does is break her a little - break her steel, her spine. They share at least one trait in common - they are both people who hate to be weak or vulnerable, in their own why. It is why Jane so rarely confides in others. Generally, it is a mark of great trust if she does so. With Loki, she's not quite sure what it is.

But she makes what is possibly the awful mistake of leaning against him, needing physical comfort when he is the only person present. All she does is lean - she does not otherwise reach out.

"Every day." Her voice is a little rough, but there are no tears in it. "Every day. He was..."

... that might be too far. Is it? He already knows what haunts her. He knows more about her than easily anyone else in the village, save perhaps Tony. And even Tony hasn't gotten this close. Why not go for broke?

She sounds tired.

"... the only family I had."

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