( 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]

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."