Ivan Press

[Resplendent Dusk] This is the first time they've seen each other since Lausanne. The lean creature smoking the Djarum out behind the ballet theatre is now the rangy, longlimbed monster in white and red, stalking amidst the remains in unmistakable agitation. Anger. His hackles are up. His tail lashes like a cat's. He checks the fomori one by one, ascertains they're dead, finishes one off when it doesn't seem to be getting there fast enough on its own.

Hilary's gratitude seems to fall on deaf ears. Only when he's finished does the Ragabash rise. His knives vanish back into his flesh and fur. He looks at the unconscious young man for a second, and then

he's a young man himself, bloodied, ghastly to look at. He seizes Hilary by the shoulders and gives her a single hard shake. This is the first honest thing he's said to her since Lausanne, the first thing that wasn't some elaborate, smirking mask:

"Why the fuck didn't you run when I told you to?"

[Hilary Durante] This is the first time they've seen each other. This is the first contact they've had, period, since she was dropped off back at her car, with three times the luggage she left with. It doesn't seem to have much bearing on the current conversation.

She doesn't roll her eyes and scoff at him. She shrieks when he grabs her by the shoulder, his hand clamping onto the bloody spot there that is not just the remainder of the fomori she was stabbing at, not just splatter from its wounds, but something deeper its fangs left behind. She shrieks, and her pale face goes stark white, til he realizes she's wounded and lets her go.

Hilary takes a shaken breath. "What... a useless question."

[Resplendent Dusk] That realization sets in instantly. There's that to be said, at least: Ivan is nothing if not alert. If not aware. He lets go almost the instant he grabs her. Something in his face changes - the whitehot fury cooling to something else altogether.

"Christ," he hisses between his teeth. Some black, angry part of him flares: wants briefly, horribly to grab her shoulder again, wrench it, ask her if she liked that since she seems to like pain so much. The very thought of it revolts him, turns his stomach. He searches his pockets and comes up with a healing talen; crushes it between his hands and applies it.

All the while, snapping at her still: "It's not at all useless. It's a very interesting question, and one I'm rather keen to hear the answer on. I mean. Help me understand here, Hilary. Did you think I was making a joke, perhaps? Or putting on some macho show of heroism for you? Did it occur to you that maybe I needed you to run away so I could get away myself. Did it occur to you for one second that I was outmatched and that I, amazingly enough, knew myself well enough to know it?"

The last of that wound has closed. He saw to her before anyone else: before himself, certainly before her stepson. Maybe that means something. Maybe not. He's a fucking Garou. He'd heal in seconds if he hadn't bothered to take on this form for added convenience in chewing her out.

"You almost got me killed. You almost got us all killed. Does that mean anything to you?"

[Hilary Durante] There's nothing in Hilary to indicate she likes this sort of pain. That this time, Ivan crushing a gourd over her frustrates her, takes something away from her. But she does scowl at him for a moment, a look that suggests she's taken aback. She exhales, and bends down as Ivan's ranting at her, and puts a cold hand on Tomas's neck to check for a pulse. There's no sign that she's listened to a word out of his mouth.

"Not," she says flatly, once she gauges that he's alive, "at the moment. Stop bitching at me and heal him, or at very least stop shouting while I call someone."

She's getting her phone out of her pocket then, refusing to look at Ivan.

[Resplendent Dusk] [EMPAFEE]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Resplendent Dusk] A sharp stare; a silence. "Unbelievable," is all he has to say to that.

When he crouches, the motion is fluid, animal. Like Hilary, he puts his hand to the boy's neck; then to his head, searching amidst the blood-matted hair. Whatever he finds there doesn't compel him to instantly pull out another gourd. Instead he grabs the back of Tomas's coat in one hand, a limp leg with the other, and -- with some effort -- heaves the boy onto his shoulders like an injured calf.

"He bumped his head," Ivan says. "He'll be all right by morning. I'm not wasting my talens on him, but I'll take him home and let him recover there. You can ride along or you can follow me."

[Hilary Durante] She isn't so protective of the boy -- if that's even part of her reason for bending to him in the first place -- that Hilary doesn't get out of Ivan's way. She rolls her eyes when he talks of not wasting talens, and opens her mouth,

and bites back a reply.

On the way to Ivan's car, she has nothing to say to him.

[Resplendent Dusk] Some ballerina somewhere is going to be disappointed tonight. She'll come out of Joffrey Ballet's annual production of the Nutcracker expecting a late, expensive dinner; some late, expensive drinks; late, expensive sex up in some penthouse that overlooks the whole damn city. Ivan won't deliver. She'll feel stood up; it'll be weeks before she lets him touch her again. That's what Ivan is thinking about on the way back to his car, because thinking about that keeps him annoyed, keeps him from thinking of the way Hilary flinched when he grabbed her unthinkingly by the shoulder, keeps him thinking of how close that wound fell to the major arteries of the neck.

She's silent. He's fine with that. It's the Lamborghini, which of course means it's a two-seater, which of course means he more or less dumps Tomas on his stepmother's lap. He's not even polite enough to let it go without a wisecrack: "Play the Pieta for me, will you, darling?" Then he's getting in on the driver's side, pulling the door down, starting the engine.

"Do you need to call your people?" His penthouse is mere moments away from here.

[Hilary Durante] There were no pills waiting on Hilary's nightstand when she arrived back at the estate after leaving Europe, flying back to America on a private jet, driving herself home in a Jaguar. She couldn't numb whatever it was she was feeling with a semi-pleasant floating experience. She couldn't drink herself into a stupor, either. She closed her eyes and told the fetus in her womb over and over, silently, how much she hates it. How she wishes it would just go away. How it's ruined everything.

Hilary's not so insensate to what real humans are supposed to feel that she didn't know it was wrong, that she didn't feel a stab of something like guilt for loathing her own child so much. She knows that's not how mothers usually feel. But she couldn't drug herself into oblivion to get away from that reality, either.

That she's a monster. That she's not really human, after all. Like some ballerina too talented and driven to be insipid, proud enough to refuse to let Ivan Press touch her because he stood her up, smart enough at playing the game to have even a background role in The Nutcracker this season, in Chicago of all places. Whatever else that girl is, she's at least human. She at least feels angry because some spoiled rich-boy jackass stood her up, and not just worn out and annoyed by someone yelling at her.

Feel something, Ivan always seems to be saying. Care. Show me you give a damn.

And she wants to say, I can't. I don't care. I'm tired and you're boring me. Leave me alone.

But even saying that seems exhausting; Hilary keeps silent as the three of them get into the car, and when Ivan puts Tomas into the front seat with her, she knows damn well the boy is too heavy for her to hold on her lap. She shifts aside and puts her back towards the driver's side, laying the passenger seat down a bit. Tomas takes up most of its space; Hilary lounges rather unsafely on her side, propped on one elbow, watching her stepson's face.

It makes them look, though clothed and bloodied, like lovers. Like she's waiting for him to wake up. Like the way she looked that one morning in Meillerie, her hand on his naked chest, her breasts just inches from his face as he opened his eyes and found her staring at him, so drowsy with something like affection or growing lust or adoration

which is one of the last times he saw her, before this.

"I will when we arrive," she says simply.

[Resplendent Dusk] Meillerie. Lausanne. It all seems a million miles away now. A million years ago. Another life. He can barely remember what it was like to wake up to her day after day. To spend hours strolling streets that were laid down hundreds of years ago; to buy things ninety-nine percent of the world couldn't afford; to exist in a city where he didn't understand what anyone was saying, and where no one knew who he was.

He can barely remember that suite they had now. Or that little room overlooking the lake, on the opposite shore. The color of her skin in the morning. The way she felt, letting him into her body, drawing him into her arms, sighing in his ear, yes, yes, always yes.

He wonders if it's his imagination that even in those few days they were apart, she's grown larger. More gravid with another man's child -- or perhaps his own. It hardly matters; in either case, it divides him from her, though he may or may not acknowledge that to himself.

Very little conversation fills up the rest of that car trip. He calls his 'people' instead; he has a brief discussion with them in two languages, and if Hilary cares to listen she can piece together that he's telling them to prepare the guest rooms, telling Dmitri to get the first aid paraphernalia ready. Then they're pulling into the garage under his building, through the locked gates into the private penthouse parking. There's his Bugatti, and there's his Ducati, and there's one of the Escalades his servants drive.

He helps Hilary with her stepson again, carrying him awkwardly, with difficulty, to the elevators. "Get my keycard," he tells Hilary. "It's in my pocket. Other pocket -- yes. Slide it through -- "

and up goes the elevator, Ivan leaning his burden against the wall to take some of the strain off himself.

[Hilary Durante] It's probably his imagination. Her coat hangs in such a way that it would have to be his imagination if she seems larger. Fatter, is the way she put it. Not 'the baby is growing' or something like that. There's no way for him to tell, unless he opens her coat and slides his hands in to touch her, the way he did so many times in Switzerland, drawing her up and into his arms and kissing her, feeling her lashes brush his cheek as her eyes closed.

A million miles away. A thousand years ago.

During the drive, Tomas wakes briefly, his eyes opening with struggle. He sees Hilary looking down at him and his hand lifts, then falls in exhaustion. He tries to lift his head, goes green when the car takes a turn, and Ivan -- eyes on the road -- doesn't see her put her finger to Tomas's lips. Quiet.

He sinks back into unconsciousness, perhaps gratefully.


When Ivan opens the passenger door he sees her face again, bloodflecked, and its lost some of the paleness it shot towards when he grabbed and wrenched her wounded shoulder. She's as hard to read as ever, as distant; the way she almost always looks to him. Tomas groans as he's picked up again, and Hilary murmurs to Ivan as they walk towards the elevator: "You may want to have him sedated."

No explanation for that. She gets his keycard out without argument and rolls her eyes as he tells her how to use it, exhaling in irritation as the doors slide open. Tomas is trying to move. It's useless, but he's difficult.

Hilary's jaw clenches, but she says nothing.

[Resplendent Dusk] "That," Ivan replies crisply, and just a little acidly, "was always the plan, believe me."

The elevator comes to a smooth, swift stop. Dmitri and Evgeny are waiting in the foyer, and Ivan rather gratefully lets them take up the burden of the unconscious teenager. "Hit his head," he tells them. "Clean him up and put him to bed. On the off chance that he's bleeding into his skull, I'll check on him later."

He turns to Hilary, then. "I can offer you the other guest suite," he says. "You can get cleaned up. Have a hot meal or a cold drink. Sleep the night here. We can discuss your failure to run tomorrow morning if you'd like. Alternatively, you can just listen: if we're attacked again and you don't run when I tell you to, I'm leaving you behind."

[Hilary Durante] Tomas is taken, and Hilary doesn't even look after him being helped away. Supposedly he'll be put to bed, given something by injection to keep him unconscious for awhile. Maybe Ivan actually will check on him. What a good, loyal, dutiful member of the tribe, that.

Hilary watches Ivan, and just shakes her head slightly, giving a small shrug. "Whatever you like," she says, and starts to walk towards the stairs, taking her phone out.

[Resplendent Dusk] "Perfect, then."

And she's walking away toward the stairs -- that weightless, suspended spiral arcing up to the second floor -- and Ivan lets her go some handful of steps before he calls after her. His tone is very nearly conversational:

"Hilary," he says, "has it even occurred to you that you nearly died tonight? That I nearly died for you tonight?"

[Hilary Durante] The way she walks is, has always been, surreal. So controlled. So efficient, at times, and otherwise so luxurious. So light on her feet, as though she's not quite walking on the hardwood or concrete but on air itself. She walks in a way that suggests that any moment she's going to take a step upward and rise into the air by sheer grace.

She doesn't, though. She turns and looks back at him. There's blood on her face, her shoulder, her coat is torn, her fingertips are soaked in the blood that ran down the inside of her sleeve. There's a long moment where she just watches him. Absorbs him.

"Why do you think I picked up your knife?"

[Resplendent Dusk] Like a work of art, Hilary is easier to appreciate from afar. He can see her in her entirety like this. Her grace; her control. The fine shape of her face and form.

He comes closer, though. He follows her, and if she waits for him, he catches up to her where the gallery opens up into the unrestricted space of his living room. That soaring ceiling. Those vast glass walls -- the hot halogen lighting reflecting back in now with the world dark outside.

Ivan says nothing. He puts his hands on her shoulders -- gently, ironically enough, now that her wounds are entirely healed away -- and he draws her forward to kiss her brow, nuzzle her temple. It's a slow, feral sort of affection. Perhaps that's why he doesn't speak: there's nothing he could say.

Except this, drawing away, quieter now, "Run next time. Please. Okay?"

[Hilary Durante] Even in this form, the smell that fills Ivan's nostrils as he kisses Hilary's brow and nuzzles her is not her perfume, her shampoo, even her purity. All of it is marred, tainted, by the fomori blood and her own blood that all but leaves a taste on his lips. He can smell the thing that was moments away from killing her, that she hurt by sheer luck.

The truth is, she doesn't really remember anything he ranted at her on the street awhile ago. She wasn't listening. She was blocking him out, like she'd ignore a tantrum from a child. She was thinking about what would happen if Tomas was seriously injured and not immediately, instantly cared for. He is, thus far, Dion's only son. Regardless of whether he's trueborn or not, no matter if the thing in her belly is male or trueborn or even Dion's, that matters. It matters, perhaps, even more than she does.

But Tomas is being cleaned up and soothed to sleep by chemicals right now, and she's glad of it. She stiffens slightly as Ivan is kissing her brow, nuzzling her, and then -- naturally -- drawing away. "Goodnight, Ivan," she says, making no promises, and extricating herself from his hands. There's color high in her cheeks, bright red against her pale skin. "I'll tell Antony not to arrive too early tomorrow morning to pick us up. I'm sure my husband will be very grateful to you for protecting us, when he hears of this."

[Resplendent Dusk] Of course she draws away. Of course. He expected as much; is unsurprised.

It still stings. And in response he hardens, grows cold and cynical and formal, the corner of his mouth quirking up in that slow insincere smirk.

"I'm sure he will," he echoes. "Goodnight, Hilary."

[Hilary Durante] Of course he offered her the second guest room. Of course told her to help herself to a hot meal, a cold drink -- use his home as her own. Stay the night,

but not with him.

So she draws away, because already she's too repulsive for him, and Ivan sees resignation as rejection, mistakes hurt for dismissal. It's often this way, and little they can do about it when neither has the skills to sit down and calmly or clearly say what they're feeling. God forbid they acknowledge they feel anything at all, beyond I nearly died for you and why do you think I picked up the knife.

Hilary is, in the end, as blind to Ivan feeling stung as he is to realizing why she's drawing away from him like she is. So she walks away, making a quiet phone call as she ascends the stairs, each step measured and careful. Goodnight.

[Resplendent Dusk]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Resplendent Dusk] All in all, Ivan isn't a master reader of men. He's passingly good. Good enough to know what this starved swan wants to hear, or what that starved swan's damage was. Good enough to know how to get into a pair of panties, in short; not good enough to understand the inner workings of a person just by looking at them.

Usually, anyway. But sometimes he sees Hilary so clearly. Sometimes it seems he's the only one who sees her so clearly. That's part of the hurt, too -- and it is hurt he reads, hurt and not rejection, not refusal -- that he of all people, after all that's happened, is sending her away again. Telling her go away. Stay away from me. You disgust me.

"Hilary."

He hardly raises his voice for that, but there's an echo in this spacious room. He waits for her to turn -- when she does, he follows, closing the distance again. As much as he likes the lake house, as much as that is his den and his retreat, it can't be denied that he looks right here. He looks like he belongs here in this pristine world of warm wood and cool glass, stone, space, style. Even bloodied, there's unmistakable balance to him. Grace. Hauteur. His footsteps are, as always, soundless. Even here, they don't echo.

"I gave you the guest room," he says, "because I don't want Tomas waking up and wondering why his stepmother is in my bedroom. Contrary to popular belief," a hint of wryness here, "I don't typically keep a vault of controlled and/or illegal substances in my home. We'll be giving him one of Yuliya's sleeping pills, and that's hardly foolproof."

[Hilary Durante] He says her name and there's enough steadiness to it, enough saturation to it, that she responds to it almost as if she has no other choice, no option but to respond somehow. She stops on the stairway and looks to him. With a murmur across the phone and a press of a button she mutes -- or maybe even ends -- the phone call. Watches him as he approaches her, and takes a step down off the stairs when he comes near enough.

It's been so long since they've been at his lake house. Or anywhere, together. It feels that way, at least. Her brow isn't furrowed as he speaks, and she doesn't instantly wrap her arms around him, go to him, exhale as she relaxes her body against his. Trusting. God, she can be so trusting. It feels terrifying and thrilling and a dozen other things when she's like that against him, pliant and warm and -- not like she is now, really.

There is a part of her that wants to ask him what Yuliya's taking. Eszopiclone, Ramelteon, Zolpidem? Triazolam, maybe? It's a bizarre curiosity of hers, which would immediately reveal just how much she knows about prescription sleep aids, which would lead to a discussion on how much she knows about prescription sedatives and possibly a joke about the housewife and her Valium.

"And if he weren't here," Hilary says quietly, "you would have sent me home. Maybe held me in bed, at most." Her jaw flexes slightly and she glances away, then to him, trying to sound reasonable

when they both know how very, very mad she is

"I don't need to be reminded that you don't want to touch me," she says quietly. "It would have been kinder if you'd just finished yelling at me while we waited for Antony to pick us up, and not brought us back here."

[Resplendent Dusk] There's a moment where he's at a loss; uncertain of how to respond to such fatalistic certainty. How to answer these charges without seeming like he's appeasing her. Without injuring her pride, pinging her wariness of his pity. When he does speak, it's as quiet as it was. They're both speaking so quietly -- as though they had to, to prevent shattering some shaky truce. To prevent the world from shaking apart.

"If he weren't here," Ivan says, "I would have kept you with me as long as I could."

A pause.

"If you don't believe me," he says then, "you're free to call Antony and go home, if you feel you'll be more comfortable there. I'll send Tomas along in the morning. But if you do believe me, then go upstairs. Clean up. Eat something and go to bed. I'll come to you after I've let the appropriate parties know what's happened. And I'll stay with you as long as I can."

[Hilary Durante] It was happenstance, all but sheer luck, that Tomas was with Hilary tonight. Bad luck, for him. He's injured now, beholden to someone he's barely been introduced to and yet utterly loathes. Now Ivan is telling her that if Tomas weren't here tonight -- nevermind that she knows on some calculating level that Tomas served, at very least, as a distraction to the creatures that would have otherwise focused their energy on her alone -- he'd keep her. As long as he could.

After yelling at her, of course. After venting... whatever it was he was feeling in the park at her, with whatever choice of words, in whatever tone of voice. Gaia knows she would have probably ignored it, which is not the same as tolerating it. Ignoring it allows her to go to him, be with him, after he's stopped ranting.

Sad, that their truces must be so shaky.

"I can't leave here without Tomás," she says, as though this should be painfully obvious. The Durante family is not like him. The Spaniards and Italians who populate their staff are not like Dmitri and Evgeny and Yuliya.

Otherwise she has no answer. And she goes upstairs then, unmuting her phone to finish the conversation she started before. She's not instantly warmed to him, relenting, trusting. It shouldn't surprise him; she so rarely is. But she goes upstairs, and after while -- he's likely on the phone by then -- his well-trained ears prick to the sound of water turning on, rushing near-silently through his well-insulated pipes.