( semi-open ) they can take my breath

[regives]

Who: Leanne (regives) & various
What: Your girl's a fugitive on the run.
When: The first of October and the days following!
Where: All around Olympia.
Warning(s): None... for now.


a.)

[ A situation going from bad to worse should be relatively familiar to Leanne, but that doesn't save her from the overwhelming amount of surprise that hits her when news of the explosion finally surfaces. She of course experiences concern for who may be close to the blast, and then is immediately taken aback when the announcement that included her name also rings through.

Undoubtedly there's an explanation that needs to be made. But given her wavering trust there's no way for her to turn herself in, especially when she's being accused for a crime she didn't commit.

Though her luck continues to be a distant thing as the podcast is made when she's trying to make herself back to her apartment. Taking the back streets in hopes of avoiding those who are fully prepared to round up those accused without hesitation, she knows a little silver is enough to motivate anybody. So when she's peering around the next corner and makes blatant eye contact with another person she immediately shrinks back. Way to go, girl, hopefully they didn't notice? But if they did... maybe if she acts normal then they could go on their way without there being an unnecessary bump in the road.

Or not. She's a little glad she left the house with better shoes to run in today. ]

b.)

[ So are you trying to help her get from point A to point B without getting noticed? Great, you're a pal, and Leanne's got the greatest idea known to man: by acting like your terribly non-suspicious girlfriend! With an oversize jacket on her shoulders with the hood pulled up on top of her head she's pretty much the definition of ominous. And while she wouldn't say that she is some sort of award winning actress she does at least try to make the plan of her pretending to be your sick significant other work somehow.

Leanne keeps a hand firmly around the other person's arm. Holding onto them tightly as a heavy weight of anxiety rests on her shoulders. ]

I'm kinda surprised that this is working. [ Oh! Someone's looking, she pretends to cough. ] But I'm glad... sorry for dragging you into this.

( closed starters will be in the comment section below! her plotting comment is here but feel free to pm or pp me through vongaribaldi. )

Comments

[ofobedience]

[He means to tell her that he's more than a little surprised himself, that it's far from what he'd been expecting, and his lips begin to shape the words right up until the point she says she's thinking of staying in Wyver. Abruptly, then, they die away, catch in his throat like soft flesh against barbed wire, and there's a sinking kind of sensation in him that annoys as much as it disturbs.

He supposes he shouldn't be surprised, not really. She'd chosen to run, to keep hiding rather than turning herself in, and that won't make things easy should she choose to return to Olympia now. But...but--]

But why remain here, when you could come back? They'd pardon you too, I'm sure, if you agreed to the same terms as I did.

[regives]

[ His reaction is unexpected, though a part of her understands at the same time.

They've been through a lot together. This all started with them parenting up, and she was the one to suggest they leave together, and now... ]

They probably would, and honestly it'd be easier for me to just start again there than stay and adjust here but... [ There's a short pause, she's obviously choosing her words carefully in an attempt to express her decision in a way it would make sense from an outsider's perspective. ] I like it here. [ She says that much with a smile, albeit brief. ] And there's something in my gut telling me that there's more I need to learn, about Wyver and Olympia, before I just choose which side I'm on.

[ofobedience]

[He's unaccustomed to it-- people displaying even the smallest signs of wanting to subject themselves to his company, and yet she'd asked him to dance that first time they met despite his surly attitude, had expressed concern for him when they'd first become fugitives regardless of having her own safety to worry about. Small things, perhaps, normal things, but they stand out sharp when one has only ever known duty and disdain.

There's that sick sinking feeling in him, a bright point of pain behind the ribs and it irritates him, has his own self-hatred flashing hot behind his eyes because he shouldn't care what she chooses to do with herself, and yet he finds that he does. She likes it here, she says, and it's just one more thing he can't comprehend because to him this place is abhorrent and strange (frightening), what with the way nature encroaches so clearly on something that's supposed to be man-made. It's a world away from the concrete world of no natural light that he'd always known and so it only makes him feel unsettled and small and afraid.

He turns away from her. Tries to view their surroundings with her eyes. Can't.]

I see.

[His voice is cool and clipped, devoid of discernible feeling. He doesn't see at all.]

[regives]

[ Leanne is nothing other than human, so there's no way for her to look past his glasses or for her to feel the same sinking feeling in his chest. But what helps her realize that something is wrong, that he doesn't approve of her decisions, is that tone of his voice, deprived of any emotion. And while others, even herself, may find that familiar for Giovanni's usual responses the corners of her mouth still tug into a frown, indicating the she's aware.

Not completely, of course, she can't read his mind. ]

If you're going to lie to me, at least look me in the face.

[ Her voice carries a certain level of authority, with it not being a request but a command for him to follow. ]

Why is that you don't want me to stay here?

[ofobedience]

[There's something in that, in the way she speaks to him then with a kind of firm authority, and he finds himself responding to it with a buzz and a thrum of something like relief, mixed in with a quick lick of self-disgust at having elicited her displeasure. There's something else there too, something smaller but darker that lurks in between his bones, the quick little impulse to hurt her, though it's something he's barely conscious of and doesn't fully understand. His own feelings-- they're divorced from him, bright incomprehensible ripples because they fall outside of what he ought to be and everything he's ever been taught and yet they exist all the same.

(Worthless mutt, useless dog)

He turns back to face her, a little guardedly. Grasps after an explanation that satisfies. He doesn't really know, himself. Only knows that something in him quickens and hurts at the thought of it, that he doesn't want it. But he can't say that.]

I don't like it here.

[As if that explains everything.]

[regives]

[ And it doesn't. It only leads to more questions and more assumptions. Leanne waits patiently, however, and isn't disappointed of the answer she receives despite it being so clean cut and short; she wants to understand. Though he isn't persisting in the same way Zephyr does, it's becoming more and more evident with each second that passes that his reasoning isn't as hidden from view as his eyes were.

Her features soften, brows curving as her eyes portray her empathy. Putting his words into consideration, putting him into consideration, she slowly parts her lips: ] Are you worried about me or... do you just not want us to be separated?

[ THIS IS THE POLICE, TELL US HOW YOU FEEL. ]

[ofobedience]

[It makes him angry, almost. A bright flash of something ugly and fierce that wells up inside his chest and threatens to spill out of him because it's true enough, what she says, and the overt pointing out of his own weakness quite expectedly burns. It burns, but there's only a moment where that anger is pointed in her direction, only a moment where he wants to reach out and crush her slender neck between his palms. Just a moment, and then it all turns inwards, transmutes back into the self-hatred that he knows so very well. He should neither want nor need her company in any sustained way but here she is telling him he can no longer have it and it cuts him down to the bone.]

Just come back with me, will you? Or at least consider it. This place...I can't stay here.

[Which is as good as a yes, to one or the other or both of her questions.]

[regives]

[ Selfishly she thinks why it's so difficult to adjust to a life in Wyver, but then she remembers her own struggles and the fact that how she perceives the world is different in how Giovanni does. If he is not comfortable here he should find a place to call home, and apparently that is Olympia—though unfortunately she can't say the same. She decided a long time ago to make her decisions based on what she chose, not someone else, and while she may be influenced by others she ultimately is in control of her own life. ]

I'm staying here. [ And though she speaks with confidence in the back of her mind her tone wavers, as if the emotional turmoil may actually bring tears in her eyes. A part of her feels as if she's disappointing him, betraying him, and that's the last thing she ever wants him to feel. That she's leaving him. ] But if I don't like it here—.... just give me time to think about it. If anything I can come visit whenever you want.

[ofobedience]

[Quite unlike him then, who even now feels no sense of control over his own life, can't even conceive of such a thing and in a way that is reflected in his 'choice' here-- less a choice, and more a compulsion born of the need to be controlled, to be held down and held in and locked tight into something larger than himself. He won't find that here, there's too much potential for freedom and that frightens him as much as it ever did back there. Olympia promises structure and rules and even a grip on the leash now he's under the watchful eye of the law, and he sinks into it with the same lack of resistance he always presented, down in the brutal depths of the Below.

But that means he's presented with this, the inevitable separation, and something opens in him, wide as a wound and just as raw and quickly, he turns away again. There's a visible tension in the sharp lines of his back and shoulders that makes a lie of his cool, smooth words.]

As you like it, then. I suppose that's all there is to say about that.