( closed ) YOU DON’T STAND A CHANCE,

[strangel]

WHO: Helena & D’Artagnan
WHAT: rifters being problems
WHEN: early Bloomingtide
WHERE: shady bar in Lowtown
NOTES: violence and Helena

Cosima drinks wine. Sarah drinks whiskey. Helena isn’t sure what she drinks yet. She wonders, sometimes, if all the different sisters have all different favourites. If their tongues work as differently as their brains and their souls seem to. She remembers sometimes seeing posters and advertisements with wine pictured in them, how it always seemed very classy and very refined.

Helena has a jug of wine in front of her that she’s trying to drink, trying to think how people drink wine. Very classy, she thinks. She tries to sit up straighter, a little too much, so her back arches and she rests both hands on the bar. Fancy ladies have good posture, like Cosima. A gulp of wine, and the cup is set back down, and she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Hey.”

She ignores the voice, as it repeats more insistently, and then there’s a hand grabbing her shoulder. “Hey.”

Helena turns to face the source, eyebrow raised.

“I’m trying to talk to you. One of those rifters, aren’t you?”

She looks at him blankly, and doesn’t reply. A shrug, and she turns away. From there, it escalates predictably poorly. He grabs her shoulder, pulls her around forcefully, and tips her cup of wine over her head. She rolls her shoulders, very calm, curls her fingers about the back of his neck, and smashes his face into the bar.

And then a couple of his friends join in; Helena escalates.

Comments

[mousquetaire]

It starts bad, and gets worse quickly. There's a moment near the start of it all when d'Artagnan attempts to step in, to stop it from escalating. He's used to having enough authority to do that. People listen to Musketeers, for the most part. Even people who don't like them very much. Here, though, he's just another rifter.

That means the demand that they stand down results, not in anyone standing back to obey, but in a meaty fist clocking the edge of his jaw and sending him sprawling against the bar.

He rights himself just as Helens slams one of his friends' faces into that same bar, right beside him.

Dear God.

"We're not here to get involved in -" he attempts, but breaks off when that same fist makes another go at him. This time he swivels to dodge it, and then grabs the outstretched wrist. He uses it to throw the man forward, getting him tangled with the legs of a bar stool in the same moment. Both crash to the ground, while d'Artagnan stands over them, wincing. There's more of them coming, but in the brief pause that follows, he says:

"- in a fight. Well, this just keeps getting better. Helena, are you all right?"

[strangel]

"Hello, Musketeer."

There is a rasp to her voice, as she looks at D'Artagnan. Easier to link the voice with the behaviour in the Sunless Lands when they were all trapped, and the niceness on the network, now. It all clicks together easily, with the certainty that she was remembering the right person. It's rare that people come to her side in a fight. Almost never, in fact, a strange thing that sets this place apart from home, that makes every time Sarah helps her so important, made Sarah defending her from the Coupe woman so precious. She speaks with bead of wine rolling down her cheek, hair now stained and messy, "I am very good. Thank you."

As another comes running at them with a yell, she leans past D'Artagnan to grasp a bottle, green glass filled with a dark liquid that sloshes in it as she pulls her arm back, using the bottle to strike a man about to grab her from behind in the face, following the momentum of the movement through so that her arm comes back and she smashes it down on the top of his head, making the glass shatter. Her breathing is quicker, though if the wildness of her expression is anything to go by, its exhilaration rather than fear or exertion.

"You fight like little lambs," she advises one of the men pushing himself up from the floor, before adding a helping bleating sound. "I think you destined to be strung up and roasted."

[mousquetaire]

She does seem good. This is d'Artagnan's memory of her from the snow; she'd never seemed beaten even for a moment. They'd been surrounded by monsters and not men, then. It hadn't mattered to this woman. All things considered, these ruffians really don't know what they're dealing with. It's almost cruel.

He'll feel bad about it when they stop trying to hit him. He dodges another punch before drawing his sword, which is the first thing that makes any of them seem to think twice. he holds it out in warning.

"I'd listen to her," he advises, raising one eyebrow. "She doesn't sound like she's joking. For God's sake!"

The last part is the result of yet another thug getting tired of the delay, and aiming for him. D'Artagnan fends him off with his sword, then turns, pivots, and kicks the man's backside into the side of the bar. They're going to get thrown out of this place any minute. Looking up, he finds Helena's wild blonde curls amidst the trouble.

"They just don't give up!"

[strangel]

The broken bottle is held in her hand, watching the semi-circle starting to pen them (in a vague sense) near the bar. Some furniture is flung on its side, and some are watching, some are very studiously not watching, a couple of drunker patrons are getting up to help their fellow natives. More look like they want to avoid the fight than want to get involved in it.

Helena thrives in chaos, is instinctual, but she understands carefulness. Assassination cannot be reckless; hurricanes come with calm.

One of the men draws two daggers in response to D'Artagnan drawing the sword, though another of his friends is still down on one knee and wiping blood from his mouth with his knuckles, he too has drawn a blade. One of the men tosses a chair at D'Artagnan, hard, as the one with the two daggers lunges for him as well.

Helena is at the wrong angle, but twists to slash across the dual-wielder's right forearm with the broken bottle, as the other man with the dagger side-tackles her.

On the plus side: it's now very difficult for the dual-wielder to hold his right blade, grip weakened and arm slippery with blood, but they're still brawling, there's furniture flying, and they're definitely not going to be welcome in this bar again.

[mousquetaire]

D'Artagnan gets a chair to the face, which he half deflects, but it still unbalances him. By the time he's scrambled back to his feet and thrown the chair aside, Helena has cut into a man's arm and there's furniture everywhere, and this is all really getting out of hand.

Also, that chair cracked his jaw and he'll have a bruise there tomorrow. He's not amused.

"This needs to stop!" he shouts, and then he's beside by another knife-wielding thug. D'Artagnan bats the blade away with his sword, while drawing his other knife with his left hand, and within a few exchanges his attacker's knife is on the floor and d'Artagnan's is at his neck. A second later, d'Artagnan has kicked him straight into the man fighting Helena.

Who still has a broken bottle.

Finally d'Artagnan can get to her side.

"Perhaps we should try another bar," he suggests, while their two attackers regroup.

[strangel]

His arrival is well-timed. Helena is ready to lunge again, more akin a woman possessed than someone thinking of retreat. She moves as though she were all muscle, closer to a snake than a human, and there is a feral, hungry air to her, as she stamps her foot down hard on one of the men's hands, has her bottle raised to drive it down into his throat—

She turns to look at d'Artagnan, and blinks, lips parted for a second as she tries to parse what he's saying.

"We finish this," she says, but despite her readiness to strike, it's more question than statement.

Death is easy to bring. Death comes every day, takes the hands of those who should join it, and sometimes, she helps it find its target. And yet, all this people, those advices, they say she should do what Sarah would want. Sarah, she thinks, is not wanting violence.

[mousquetaire]

D'Artagnan has been focused on the angry customers, but his eyes snap suddenly to Helena at that question. Finish this? He's no stranger to killing his enemies, certainly, but that doesn't mean he'd do it without cause. Especially when these are no soldiers; they're just drunk and unreasonable. While they might deserve a sore backside for that, they don't deserve to die.

"No," he says, firmly, and lowers his sword a little. He's looking at the men again now. "It's already finished. We're better than that."

He flicks his eyes towards her again, reinforcing that. We're better than that, aren't we Helena? Instead of advancing again, he backs off towards the door. Of course if they're attacked again, he'll do what he has to. If they can calm this down before it gets worse, they should.

[strangel]

We're better than that, he says, and she can't help but wonder— better than what?

It's only a brief consideration, and she's not sure she wants to consider the implications of what they are meant to be better than, when she was simply going to be acting on instinct, on what she has always done.

She sets the bottle down. "We go now."

Both confirmation and instruction, as she steps over the man to move towards the door. She isn't sure she is better than that, but she can agree it is better to go, to leave.

[mousquetaire]

D'Artagnan lets out a breath of relief. Still, his sword stays in his hand until the door swings shut behind them. Only when they're out does he fully drop his guard, and slide the sword back into its scabbard.

Then he turns to Helena, aware of how angry she was. Rightfully angry, though also frighteningly so. He'd seen enough in there to know she has skill. And decent improvisation, too. That bottle might as well have been a blade in her hands.

"Are you all right?" Regardless of her answer, his eyes are checking her over. "Though I think you probably hurt them worse than they hurt either of us."