B-Side

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn, as instructed, got the bug-out bag and tracked Katarina down to where she's giving her 'performance'. She's not bothered by the partial nudity, clothes are a practicality more than they are a requirement for her. But the topless man and the attention? That does fill her with a confusing mixture of emotions and a strange kind of hurt. That should have been her dancing with Katarina. She still doesn't really understand this 'image' thing but she does trust the Siren. And she upset her too. By being too... Ryn. Making a spectacle out of things.

But that's the point, isn't it? She'd never really dwelled on 'purpose' like gods do, much less bend to how humans saw her and be warped by worship. Mortals still noticed their work and seen a deterrent. Consequences. Not born from this purpose but fulfilling it none the less. The Fates are probably having a good laugh about that, wherever they are. In the end it means Ryn's acts have a message, whether she intends to or not but to the humans it's useless if they don't know. And in this new and confusing world a man sandwiched between a car and a safe is a passing curiosity to most.

Sitting on a building overlooking the club Katarina is performing her own image-work in she looks at the black book she'd recovered. She could hunt every single monster in it and others would take their place. Katarina had explained this to her in so many words but it only now begins to sink in. Tonight hasn't been a success because it only caused problems and removed one branch of many. Of a tree whose trunk or roots Ryn couldn't possibly reach anymore. Ripping out the cancerous growths still matters, this she will not concede. Justice has been done tonight. But it's no longer enough. She could ask Katarina but she doesn't want to hand this burden to her. She's done enough of that tonight.

It takes her an embarrassingly long time to come up with an idea. If she'd listened better at the Agency, cared to build even a rudimentary understanding of the modern world, maybe she'd gotten there faster. In the end she scrawls a hastily written note on a piece of paper, wraps it and the little black book up in a neat package and makes her way across town to one particular building. She remembers it mainly because it's facade is easy to climb and has plenty of recessed windows, alcoves and general nooks and crannies, but she's dimly aware that it's a hub of paper-words being spread all over town. And, at least compared to much of this town, the air around it smells nicer. Cleaner. It's that scent of truth she dials in on as she breaks in through a window no one would bother to secure because no human would be able to reach it from the outside. The inside has that same annoying sameyness to it the Agency did but more cluttered. And smelling of stale cigarette smoke. It almost makes it easier to find the desk that smells the best to her and place the package in the 'In' box. That concept she's familiar with on account of pointedly ignoring hers back at the Agency. Whoever this desk belongs to seems to be more diligent, judging by the relatively small stack of paper-words already in it.

She leaves as quietly as she came, easily dodging around the walkman-wearing cleaning-person making their way through the building.

By the time she makes it back to their apartment, Katarina is already asleep and Ryn curls up next to her. Unlike before she does occasionally need some sleep these days, though she spends more time than necessary in bed, awake and just enjoying Katarina's quiet breathing.

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina groaned as the unwelcome cold light of day reached her. To properly act smashed and drunk, one must be smashed and drunk, and one must pay for it properly the next morning.

She had expected to spend the entire night in the drunk tank, but her agent had moved quickly to get her out, to try to minimize the damage to her reputation. That was unlikely to work, but hey, that's what he got paid for, after all. And so she was sleeping it off at home -- or trying to, at least, as consciousness unwelcomingly reasserted itself.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Should have been me." Ryn mumbles and gently but firmly pokes Katarina's side. "Dancing with you."

[Katarina Kane]

"You did, remember? Up on the roof..." Katarina grunted into her pillow.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I do remember. No one cared about it the way they did when you danced with that man." It's half question, half accusation and all a confused deva unsure why she's jealous about being in the spotlight. It's the opposite of what she wants and yet it bothers her that she wasn't part of Katarina's plan.

[Katarina Kane]

"Well, in the one case, I helped primed people to not notice with my abilities, and in the other, I recruited some tabloid journalists to splay me across the backpage like the Whore of Babylon," Katarina muttered into the pillow. "I needed one to make an impression and the other not to."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn swings herself over Katarina and sits on her lower back without actually putting any weight on her. Despite being grumpy, Katarina has had a worse night and Ryn runs her hands across her back and shoulders in search of tense muscles to loosen.

"Why is it that men always blame women spilling jars for all that's evil?"

[Katarina Kane]

"The curse of being the 'fair' sex," Katarina grumbled into the pillow, as Ryn started work on her back.

"Did you.... is it done? Was there anyone else who needed..." she said, slowly, trailing off again.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"There always is." she says, letting the statement hang for a moment.

"But I took the book of names to a truth-seeker. And what they cannot catch in the light will scurry into the shadows." Which is where Ryn resides, but that goes without saying.

[Katarina Kane]

"Where you will be waiting, yes?"

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I trust you and I will give your human-ways a chance to work but I am the One who eats Monsters. That I cannot change. And some monsters are human."

[Katarina Kane]

"And that's..." Katarina trailed off for a moment.

"That's important," Katarina nodded, sitting up quickly and regretting it, groaning from her headache.

"It's...good, that you're there, as a safety net," she said. "It's a little tough to get used to, still, but you're doing good out there. I just wasn't expecting it to be here, so close to home."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Despite Katarina sitting up quickly Ryn manages to move out of the way and into a loose crouch next to her. The wobbling of the mattress doing little to make her look anything less than a steady rock.

"It's in all places mankind gathers. And some they don't. You're always welcome in my shadows but you don't have to join me." she says and the strange fibers spill from her back and billow into a gently moving cloud like a living cloak made from darkness. In the light of day and sitting in bed it's less ominous wreath of night and more like soft, poofy fur. "I don't do what I do for anyone but myself. But you make me want to make the world nicer. For you."

[Katarina Kane]

"I liked the darkness when it was...abstract. And happening over there, to people I didn't know. To see it infiltrate my own world...mmm. I knew Rose was a skeev, but I never would have thought he'd be in to anything more than taking advantage of those who came to him willingly. There are levels to these sorts of things, you know, and I just...wasn't prepared."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"You're upset you didn't know a monster was so close to you?"

[Katarina Kane]

"It raises a lot of questions, doesn't it? If I could have missed that, what else am I missing?"

Katarina sighed. "And where there's one, there's probably more than one. Which raises questions about what I do next."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I only know what I would do. Because there's only a few things I really know how to. I still don't really understand why you need those people to sing...."

[Katarina Kane]

"Just to sing? I suppose I don't. I could stand on the street corner and sing to my heart's content.

But to get other people to hear? That's a whole different ballgame. The world is a big place, and you need a small army to stand out in it. I thought...I thought that I could make this army my own; a place for the other girls to have the power rather than pasty, fat, middle-aged men with money in their eyes and their dicks in their hands. But perhaps I was too naieve. There be monsters, after all."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn is aware enough that the army talk is metaphor but maybe that means some of her expertise might translate?

"Don't fight where they want to fight. Gather your own army. Leave them holding nothing but their genitals. And if they try to drag you back into their foul swamp..." she trails off and grins with her too-sharp teeth from the dark cloud of her own making. She'd never thought about empowering anybody. Humans always seemed so clumsy that it'd almost seem cruel to expect the victimized to fight. But thinking about being denied the ability to unleash her anger makes the fires in her chest feel like they might rip her in half.

[Katarina Kane]

"They control the 'battlefield', though. You have to meet them in their own arena.

And I was going to -- I was going to use the Voice to set them up to do my work for me, but that is out the window now."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I don't know about the battles of clever-words or paper-money, but in the fights I know you have to find what you do best. Not... your talent-skill or ex-er-cise" she sounds out the still kind of strange-sounding concept. "What's in your heart. What comes to you without thought."

"You can make people hear. I know it. The other girls. The ones who only tolerate the dick-holders because they have to. Don't take their rotten army standing in foul-swamp. Raise your own to swim in clean waters. And then if they want to fight they will find not just a great school of fish but a shark too."

[Katarina Kane]

"Mm, you make it sound so simple when you put it that way," Katarina said, with a not-quite-disapproving frown. "I do sometimes wish the world worked like you believe it does -- or, at least, the world out in the light. I know in the darkness it's kill or be killed; it's just a little more....complicated in this part of the world."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I still don't know much." she agrees. "But I do know that to do anything, complicated or simple, you do one thing. And then you do another thing. And you don't stop. People will follow if you offer them better. After that... I don't know. But I don't know what comes next when I leap off a building. I figure it out in the air because even I can't step backwards in time."

[Katarina Kane]

"Mmm. Well, one step at a time is probably a decent way to go about things, even if 'throwing off the shackles of the world' isn't exactly an ideal place to start. First step is to continue to figure out how to dig ourselves out of this hole."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"This is not enough?" Ryn asks, holding up the newspaper gossip rag. From anybody else one might suspect a passive-aggressive undercurrent, no matter how well hidden, but Ryn doesn't really do that.

[Katarina Kane]

"Well, there are three problems with that.

First of all, Rose was a known person, who was killed in a very conspicuous way. The investigation won't just stop, and, well, it may well lead to you or me. We were supposed to be there, after all. We can't be assured we're out of suspicion," she said, counting off on one finger. "And ever if I voice-control one detective, there are always more where that came from."

"Secondly, this will disrupt the label something awful, and that might delay my projects," she said -- a particularly callous thing to say about someone who just died, but hey, whatcha gonna do. "Plenty of people have gotten lost during a label reshuffle, and that could be a significant issue."

"And thirdly -- well, you saw how Lucie and Piper weren't in love with my image before. And now I have my tits out in the tabloids."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn furrows her brow and really thinks. Her approach to problem solving isn't going to cut it here because complications like that she tends to ignore until they go away. Or become problems big enough to punch.

"We say... that we heard about things. What he did. Rumor-words. Left because of it. Drank because it upset you. Someone from the name-book also heard. Made a threat-example of him." she manages a level of intrigue that seems downright convoluted to her. "The music-label... take point. Say it needs to change. Be better. Say you want to make it a place for other girls to avoid the rotten. Together with them. Be angry. Be... not-apologizing. Tell the twin-couple no more innocent-victim, you'll walk your own path. Not let that kind of rot make you small."

[Katarina Kane]

"That works as well as any for a cover story, though it raises the questions of how we heard about it. And I'm afraid 'young girl forced to favor powerful man' isn't a particularly interesting story to most in power.

You may be on to something with having the label take point, though most involved would rather this all go away very quietly..." she mused.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I'm your bodyguard. I investigated. I made you leave?" Ryn shrugs. She's no good with spinning fake narratives or alibis so she's fine letting Katarina take point. Besides, the other half of her suggestion seems to be actually good which to her is more than expected, really.

"Long ago the stories they told thought the Furies to be... champions of a cause. Vengeful for the sake of humans. Or justice. Never liked how mortal-fixed they saw me but I don't hate it. Especially now I'm fond of at least one mortal."

[Katarina Kane]

"Oh? Should I be jealous?" Katarina teased. "Who knows, you might get addicted to us mortals."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"It's you!" Ryn glares and definitely does not pout before she has a chance to catch on to what Katarina is actually saying. Something about the gleam in Katarina's eyes intensifying at Ryn walking into her 'trap' tells her she was just outmaneuvered somehow.

"But you know that." she huffs.

[Katarina Kane]

"Well, as long as it's me and you versus the world, I like our odds of coming out on top.

And if you'll forgive me my...squeamishness, I'll forgive you your...brutality."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Your heart is soft. Nothing to forgive in that." Ryn says with a rare smile that reaches her eyes.

[Katarina Kane]

"Your sisters seem to be thinking I'm making you the same," Katarina pointed out.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

And just like that Ryn's eyes turn cold, glinting with the memory of otherwordly flame. Her brow furrows upwards in what's probably the closest to being worried or uncertain Katarina has ever seen her outside their drive to the desert. And she'd worn a blindfold then.

"What? How..." she sputters as her head tries to work it's way through the various layers in such a simple sentence. How would Katarina know of her sisters? It explains the strange feeling she'd had at the party. She said sisters so it was both. When her curse was broken it must have shattered theirs as well. But they talked to Katarina? And avoided her. A threat?

[Katarina Kane]

"Your sisters? Arsenic and Old Lace, or whatever they called themselves? They were at the party last night, as well. We had more pressing things to worry about."

Katarina did not Get It.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn can't help but twitch in a single amused snort at those names. Rhea would be furious at being called Arsenic. Granted, she was furious at most things.

"Mei and Rhea. They must have been freed when the Morrigan lifted my curse." she frowns. "Were they mad?" Stupid question. "Was Mei mad?"

[Katarina Kane]

"Yes, mostly. And a little confused when I brushed them off."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Then they're definitely mad now. What did they want from you?"

[Katarina Kane]

"I think they just wanted someone to acknowledge how important they were. They were angry and shouting and very demonstrative. I told them to go audition on another floor."