Touch the Moonlit Sky

[Ryn]

Over the next couple of days Katarina doesn't see much of Ryn. Not that the deva keeping her distance from anybody is much of a surprise but Katarina is usually one of - if not the only - exception. Instead she has the constant feeling she's being followed, not in the sense that she necessarily feels the presence of somebody nearby or something dancing in the corner of her eyes, easy though it is to jump at shadows in the starkly-lit concrete monstrosity that is the House. It's almost more like that pervasive feeling she'd had that time a too enthusiastic fan had kept showing up where she was a little too often to be coincidence and some of the fan-mail she'd gotten was tinged with praise that probably crossed the border into obsession. It's a thoroughly unpleasant feeling that doesn't go away whether she's alone or surrounded by people and worse, there doesn't seem to be a reason to feel this preyed upon.

At least not one that Katarina's aware of. Ryn spends most of her time following her around. Not even close enough to watch her directly most of the time but just close enough she can pick out the pop-stars heartbeat and hear her voice, listening for any instances of the Voice or insight into how and when she uses it. If Katarina seems skittish she puts it down to her blaming herself for what happened at the beach and the talking to she probably received while Ryn was healing a broken ankle. At night she spends her time on the outside of the building. Katarina had seemed upset the last time Ryn had trespassed into her place in the Angel-City so this was the obvious solution. It had taken her a couple of hours of scaling down the facade of the House from the roof to find a good spot. The geometric shapes of concrete create many nooks and crannies for someone of Ryn's size and she charts them thoroughly during the night, when few humans are on the street below and fewer still bother to look up.

Eventually she's found one that suits her purpose. A floor up and in a protruding corner that lets her keep an eye on the gap in the concrete of Katarina's window, close enough she can hear her in her rooms if she focuses and mostly hidden from sight from below. Even if someone bothered to look up they'd see nothing but a shape in the shadows, a dozen stories up. It's the kind of thing that humans dismiss if it even registers at all and that makes Ryn wonder how they ever survived long enough to rule the world in the first place.

Only once during her watch does she feel the itch of someone's attention actually settle on her proper but it's one that sets her teeth on edge and makes her tense like a little gargoyle on her perch. Down below is a lone figure standing in the bright island of a streetlight. They're wearing a long jacket and a wide-brimmed hat, not something that necessarily stands out in a place that gets as much rain as Delaware if it wasn't for the fact that they're staring straight up at Ryn. And as her gaze settles on the figure they reach up and tilt their hat back to reveal a face that no longer looks quite human. Beady eyes surrounded by angry red skin, stretched thin as if something was pushing against it from beneath, scabbed lips from fingernails tearing away at them. A small rivulet of drool running down to it's chin. Ryn recognizes the asura that slipped her grasp looking back at her from otherwise empty eyes, burrowed into a human it has hollowed out. "Found you..." it whispers into the night.

Did it spot her before tonight? Has it deduced what window she's been watching? Can she scale down fast enough to catch it right here? Can she kill it fast enough to not leave a scene? She doesn't move a muscle. Not as much as a twitch of her eyes to check on Katarina's window. It's not here for Ryn. It knows it can't beat her in a straight-up fight. It wants her to know that it knows. Where she is. That maybe there are ones it can touch if it can't touch her. Has it found other asura to help it? Is it simply distracting her? No. She would have heard. Don't give it anything. Somewhere behind her, muffled by thick concrete, Katarina makes a noise in her sleep and Ryn's eyes betray her for just a moment. When she looks back down to the street the asura and the hollow human shell it's riding is gone.

Afterwards her watch grows more restless. She frequently leaves her perch at night to move around the perimeter of the House, leaping to adjoining rooftops and scouring the area for any signs of the asura but it doesn't show itself again. And it's not that she grows careless, but her focus has shifted just enough for Katarina to catch on to her hovering around her periphery. At least it doesn't take a genius to make an educated guess as to who it is when she starts catching movement in the shadows and in the corner of her eyes.

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina's daily routine, at least in public, was likely one of the circles of Hell so far as Ryn was concerned. Lots of sitting at a desk, sorting through paperwork -- including, she might be able to tell, a significant chunk of Ryn's, filling out the reports for her. She regularly visited the medical bay for tests and treatment; went to the gym to do laps; went to the firing range to practice with the pistol; went to the motor pool to work on her car. Mundane tasks, repeated over and over and over again, like a bear pacing in a cage.

As Ryn watched -- and really watched for the first time -- she could see how the Voice had settled into Katarina's life. Small, little things -- a passing agent, told to bring her coffee, or deliver paperwork to another office, or to change a radio station, or to pass her a particular spanner. The reverb in the voice, the eyes glazing over, the instant obedience. It wasn't as if she was ordering anyone to do anything totally against their wills or the like -- no one dancing for her amusement or fighting over her; no one lured to their deaths. Heck, Katarina had given Ryn more invasive orders when they were practicing together; this was nothing, really. But it sure was frequent; much more then when she had first arrived. It wasn't entirely clear that it was all intentional, either -- it could well have just been her asking for favors, or for assistance, and not realizing that she was having that sort of effect on the human members of the society. She was clearly used to people somewhat existing in her orbit -- something that had happened when she had signed a record deal, perhaps; used to her agent and recording studio staff and international handler bending over backwards to help her out. Had she always had some of the Voice, just subtler than this? Was there any real difference between a diva and a Siren? One way or the other, she was certainly placing herself on a different level than the mundane staff, be it intentional or not.

In private, peering through the thin cracks in what passed for a window in her less-than-welcoming chambers, Katarina came more to life. Listening to music and singing along, quietly, moving her body to the music in ways that fascinated (and confused?) Ryn; watching some terrible television -- remnants of her life outside the concrete walls of the society. But there was also more obsessive behavior here, too. Each morning, she'd break down and clean her pistol, her hands flying over the weapon with familiarity beyond what one would expect from a new recruit or a 'brain-dead pop star'. And in the evenings, lying on her bed, Katarina winced as she used a pair of tweezers to remove a handful of glistening, aquamarine scales from the small of her back, leaving the red, angry skin underneath. She'd place the scales in her dresser drawer, locking it away, and would rub a variety of goops and creams on her irritated back -- some she had picked up from the medical bay; others that the Wyldclay had handed her in strange jars with unfamiliar writing on it. And she'd soak it in the tub, wincing as the hot water ran against her irritated flesh, but knowing that the water somehow made things feel better and safer.

And such was the life of Katarina Kane; day in and day out; a new, settled routine. At least until Ryn started slipping up. It took a day or so for her to quite figure out what was going on -- and Ryn's first notion that Katarina might have figured out she was being watched was a slight increase in her speed; being five minutes early to her appointments and the like.

[Ryn]

Routine doesn't inherently bore Ryn. She's done the same things over and over for ages and she never tire of running beneath the stars, be it in the steppe or across rooftops. Unchanging. But that's doing something she enjoys and very little of what Katarina does each day seems enjoyable. Maybe to Katarina, though she doubts it. She does feel bad about her working on Ryn's paper-words but she does in an hour what would take Ryn a whole day. Or a week accounting for time spend avoiding it. She does enjoy watching Katarina dance and sing, sometimes enough that she has to avert her eyes out of a mixture of wanting to be noticed by Katarina and dreading the very idea of it. It makes very little sense to her and yet her thoughts keep circling back to it.

Part of her winces at the tearing out scales from skin, sedation-muddled images of a combat medic with forceps and scalpel 'cleaning' foreign fibers from presumed wounds on her back, strand by strand falling to the floor and dissolving into wisps of shadow. Katarina is stripping herself of her truth and it hurts Ryn to watch.

She hears the casual commands and slowly comes to understand the Wyldclay's worries. It's not the act itself, at least not in Ryn's eyes, she's gotten people to do things for her (that usually being to leave her alone). She sees no inherent difference between doing it with spoken song or stoic intimidation. But she doesn't notice and Ryn is a strong believer in doing things with purpose, because you mean to. This is... it's clumsy. A Siren's Song sung human-clumsy and that's probably bad.

If Ryn wasn't distracted, not just by the asura but the increasingly complicated thoughts and feelings getting tangled around Katarina, Ryn probably would have noticed the routine speeding up and adjusted. As it is she's eventually caught off-guard by five minutes here and there compounding throughout the day and when she steps out the firing range, there the evasive monster is sitting, at the end of a bench in an oblique corner that she normally would have vacated already. But she always shuts her ears to the loud hammering of the guns inside the range, muffled by concrete and foam they might be, and relies on the timing of Katarina's schedule instead. She does not have the decency to look embarrassed to be caught out or even try to scurry off, which she almost certainly could if she wanted to. She simply doesn't have the tools for how to deal with this kind of situation. Flight does not really exist in her vocabulary and fight is certainly out of the question.

[Katarina Kane]

"So. Your ankle feeling better than, Ryn?" Katarina asks, with practiced politeness. "Did you ever have the medics take a look at it, or were you just letting it rest on your own?"

[Ryn]

In response Ryn just lifts her foot and smoothly spins it around with almost maddening range and ease even for someone whose foot hadn't stuck out at a ninety degree angle less than three weeks ago.

"Slept it off." she says and going by her struggles with metaphors and idioms she probably means that literally.

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina rolled her eyes and chuckled. "Yes, yes, you heal very fast, congratulations," she teased. "Gold star."

"You're the one who's been following me then, I take it?"

[Ryn]

Ryn stiffens just a little bit. "You noticed." she says and has the audacity to sound surprised.

[Katarina Kane]

"When someone's tracking you for two days, it's not that hard to figure it out."

Nevermind that Ryn had been following her for longer than two days, but hey, a gold star for Katarina, too. Gold stars all around.

[Ryn]

"Oh. Yes." she says with a smug little smile that disappears as soon as it appeared. "I wanted to see if how worrisome your Voice is."

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina frowned, pursing her lips. "Outside of practice, you mean?"

[Ryn]

Ryn nods. "People do what you ask them to a lot. You don't seem to notice you're making them."

[Katarina Kane]

"I'm polite, I'm friendly, I have a pretty smile, and men like it when I flash it at them," Katarina said, flatly. "It's been that way for a long time."

This was not, it should be noted, a denial.

[Ryn]

Oddly enough, Ryn could get people to do what she wants by flashing a smile as well, but only if the thing she wants them to do is 'go away'. Even Ryn recognizes this as not the same at all.

"Men are stupid." Ryn agrees. "But you don't leave them a choice."

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina huffed, slowly, staring at the wall above Ryn's head for a moment.

"No one gets hurt, right? It's just a moment out of their day..."

[Ryn]

"I don't care about that. But you need to know you're doing it."

[Katarina Kane]

"It's...not like a switch I can turn on or off," Katarina frowned. "It's just something that sort of happens. It's just...part of the register of my voice.

And since we've been practicing, it's become less of something I have to try to do, and more of something I have to try not to do."

[Ryn]

Ryn thinks for a moment, her brow furrowing. She's not sure how to not do something. Sure, she avoids plenty of things but this is different. This is as if she tried to be clumsy like a human or smother the cold fire in her eyes. It's not really an option. But she does control what she does with those things. Maybe this is the same...

"You're trying to be less of yourself and that's impossible. I can run or I can walk or I can sit but I always have one set of legs. You're trying to walk with your hands and when you let your feet touch the ground all they want to do is run." This might be the closest Ryn has gotten to grasping a metaphor and she looks like she just had to do advanced algebra in her head and is hoping she somehow arrived at a solution that makes sense.

[Katarina Kane]

"You're saying...I'm making things worse by holding myself back?" Katarina said, her face scrunching as she tried to navigate the twisted waters of Ryn's tortured metaphor.

[Ryn]

"Yes. Maybe. You need to walk on your legs all the time so they only run when you really want them to."

[Katarina Kane]

"You don't think that's dangerous? They already think I'm a threat; they've made that quite clear..." Katarina frowned.

[Ryn]

Ryn gives the slightest shrug. She doesn't know how to explain it better. She's not even sure if she's right about this to begin with, but it's the only thing that makes sense to her. Katarina is trying to keep something out of her voice that belongs there. Perhaps she is cursed to have her voice always enthrall and coerce, she's fairly certain a siren was once plucked and cast to the sea just for having dared to have sung as beautifully as the muses. The gods of old were, by and large, jerks after all, and a curse would not diminish through line of blood and time. But if that is true then there's little Katarina can do to escape the inevitable.

"If your legs can only run then I will run with you."

[Katarina Kane]

"While I appreciate the sentiment, Ryn," Katarina frowned, "I'm not sure leaning into...whatever this is gets me out of here any faster. And running away from it...doesn't feel right."

Katarina, apparently, misunderstood just how much Ryn enjoyed running.

[Ryn]

Ryn makes a frustrated grunting sound that sound oddly adorable. How is it that humans so easily employ words to express what they want to say but every time Ryn tries it comes out a confusing mess. It's so simple in her head she sure if only she could lay it out right Katarina would understand. Perhaps not like it, perhaps still deny it but at least understand. Her Voice can speak as much as command if only she'd let go of trying to be a human who can sing like a siren and be a siren who can speak like a human.

"You're afraid to sing, but your songs are beautiful."

[Katarina Kane]

"Well, thank you, Ryn," Katarina said, with a sad smile. "I'm not sure people would agree on the last one, though. That one did hurt people. That one killed people. That's why I'm here, after all; it's a penance. People being afraid of me is entirely justified."

She sighed, sitting down next to Ryn. "The doctor has suggested removing my vocal cords entirely. She thinks that will stop any...further changes. That would also end my career outright. I just thought...if I could do it without hurting people..."

She looked back down at Ryn's ankle. "It's just...so easy to slip into. You're helping me find my Voice, but..."

[Ryn]

Ryn snarls at hearing what the doctor suggested. She was apparently trying to rapidly burn through her privilege of having fingers. But that thought is forgotten when Katarina goes on and gives Ryn the right words. Maybe.

"You can! Without the hurt. Without the orders. But not without the Voice. Not without the scales." Ryn realizes she's probably overplayed her hand. Katarina only ever told her about the rash but in her excitement the words tumble out of her. "Not without stopping to hurt yourself."

[Katarina Kane]

"What is the Voice without commands? That's what it does. It enthralls; it entices; it sends people scrambling. And that's...I mean, that's a feeling, for sure. A dangerous one."

Katrina sighed. "And since I'm...letting it out without thinking about it; as it becomes second nature... I don't know, Ryn. Steering into the skid is dangerous; walk the path wrong and who knows where I end up? All covered in scales and..." she begins, and the trails off, blinking. "Wait...what did you say?"

[Ryn]

"The scales. You tear them out. I can tell it hurts." Ryn does not do anything by half-measures. She may not have meant to let it slip, but now that it's out she's not going to try and pretend she didn't. So she faces it the same way she'd face a charging oxen. No way but through. It's probably a good thing she struggles with metaphors or a lot of her advice would be needlessly blood-soaked.

[Katarina Kane]

"You were watching me," Katarina said, accusingly. "Not just here, in public. Were you in my room?"

[Ryn]

"No!" she bursts out. She'd learned from when she'd been into her old apartment and Katarina hadn't seemed too thrilled with that. "Never inside your room. I was trying to understand! And now I do!" she does a bang-up job explaining herself. Somehow words are even harder when she has upset her friend and the steel-coil around her heart seems to tighten. She feels like she's slipping all over again and anger is the only emotion she has to break her fall. Anger at her failing words, anger at doctors with over-eager scalpels, anger at Katarina hurting, anger at herself for hurting Katarina. "You're hurting yourself! I don't like that!"

[Katarina Kane]

"What did you see? Tell me everything,," Katarina said, turning squarely to look at Ryn. If she was aware she had toggled The Voice, she didn't make it obvious.

[Ryn]

Ryn really doesn't want to keep talking but Katarina's voice grips her and the words that were already bubbling up inside of her spill out. She can feel bigger things threatening to burst forth, deep dark things that feel like they would tear her throat bloody if she tried to speak them out loud but she clings, desperately to the rest of Katarina's words. See. What did she see. When she was following her. The painful words settle heavily inside of her once again and her words reduce to a trickle of words instead of a maelstrom of blood.

"I saw you work on my paper-words, running and running in circles, taking apart the lead-gun and putting it back together and taking it apart, working to make yourself less clumsy, over and over for days and days. And I saw you relax and dance and sing and be happy just a little bit and then I saw the sky because my face burned as if I'd sat too close to a fire. I saw you tear beautiful scales from your flesh and I saw you hurting and then I saw the sky again because you'd drawn a bath. I saw cars pass by and the rain fall and I saw the moon ride across the nightsky..." she rattles off without taking a breath.

And please release me now before I must tell you of the asura I failed to kill. And of the things in it's nest. And of the inside of my eyelids that made their faces disappear where my claws failed me. Of endless darkness and a sky so wide and of ages long swallowed by history and of lonely plains stretching on forever. I want to tell you of so many things but please make me stop. Make me stop before you hear the truth of me. Ryn's jaw quivers as the taste of her own blood fills her mouth. She would bite off her own tongue if she has to, if it means she does not have to speak the words of what happened to her.

[Katarina Kane]

"They're not...beautiful," Katarina said, mercifully cutting Ryn off. "They're a sign that I'm losing...that I'm losing me to this. You understand that, yes?"

[Ryn]

Ryn does not. She senses no spirits chipping away at her, no asura trying to burrow into her, no rot that has begun to fester in her soul. She shakes her head.

"Nothing of you is lost." she says, grabbing Katarina by both shoulders. She's relieved, confused, there are things inside of her stirred up by Katarina's command but also other emotions she has no idea what to do with. Feelings spilling down her arms and maybe somehow they'll somehow reach Katarina through her hands. "The only one tearing away at yourself is you."

[Katarina Kane]

"And what am I tearing away? I'm trying to tear away the thing that hurt you, Ryn. The thing that caused people to die because of my songs. The thing that has hurt other people, here, without realizing it.

The thing inside of me that wants to keep using this Voice. The thing that wants people sinking into its orbit. The thing that people are afraid of. If I could...tear it out, and go back home...then everyone would be happy, yes?"

[Ryn]

"But you can't." she says and in that moment the diffuse feeling inside of her finally settles into a deep sadness. Katarina is just doing what Ryn does when faced with something she doesn't know how to deal with. Stubborn refusal in the face of the impossible. She's so much more fragile than Ryn and yet...

"You're fighting because you can't imagine giving up." Right then Ryn feels the a kind of fondness for Katarina that truly makes sense to her. A kinship that untangles some of the confusion she always feels when trying to understand why she's so drawn to Katarina.

She let's go of Katarina's shoulders and, a bit awkwardly, wraps her arms around her like someone who's been told what a hug is but is afraid of messing it up somehow. It's almost sweetly hesitant.

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina smiles, despite herself, and pats Ryn on the head. "What would you do, in my shoes, Ryn? I don't know how you ended up here, but...you must have made a choice, somewhere. I can't imagine them managing to keep you here if you didn't want to be."

[Ryn]

Ryn stiffens a little before breaking the hug.

"Soldiers thought they rescued me. Asked me where 'home' was. They didn't understand. My home is gone. Made so small by man there's barely any of it left now. I could have run but where would I go. So I let them take me, first to a camp of the desperate and weak and the men who kept them that way. I broke their fences and then their men. Then the men in the sharp clothes came. Agents." she belatedly remembers the right term. "They knew enough to understand. A little. They said their laws are... less. That they had ways to find monsters, that I could still hunt monsters if I did it for them."

"I could leave. They cannot stop me." she agrees with no small amount of pride in her voice. "But where would I go. I cannot be anything else."

[Katarina Kane]

"Would you have chosen to stay if you had somewhere to go?"

[Ryn]

"No." she says without a moment's hesitation. "But... maybe that doesn't mean it would have been right." She never would have met Katarina for one. "And my home is not like yours."

[Katarina Kane]

"I'm sure your home was lov..." she started, and then paused.

"No, you know what? I'm not sure your home was fine. My home wasn't. And I left to make something for myself. And if that's what you chose to do, that's fine, as well," Katarina said, something clicking into place for her. "You made the best you could with what you had available, yes?"