goneawayworld | I'm still the talk of this town, I'm still the roll of their dice.

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dan sagittarius

I'm still the talk of this town, I'm still the roll of their dice.

Who: Dan Sagittarius and Beckett
What: Dan and Beckett bond(?) over poker.
Where: The library.
When: Prior to the attack.
Warnings/Notes: None here yet.

Dan feels a little bad underplaying how good he is at poker to Beckett, but on the other hand, he trusts that people who describe themselves as “decent poker players” are generally people who are well into the upper percentages of adept poker players. After all, if you describe yourself as a good poker player, you’ve already indicated that you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Dan’s a very good poker player, so long as they’re only using one deck at a time, because he’s got a fantastic memory for the cards and a practiced, fluid poker face. He’s financed many a trip back and forth across the continent on hustling poker games.

He still hates the library, though, which is why as he waits in one of the little alcove areas with the recliners he’s preemptively shuffling the deck of cards. Being completely illiterate - old school illiterate, the kind that signs that name with an X and needs a witness - is usually just a background handicap in his line of work, but occasionally there are places or things that throw into stark relief that he’s in a world where he’s intellectually got one arm tied behind his back.

But it’s quiet, and he has a bottle of wine, which the lady at the cafeteria gave him after he flirted with her enough to establish a “connection”. It’s not just in her head, either; Dan’s absolutely willing to get unprofessional with things. Anything to break up the tedium of the rig, which so far has been a corporate nightmare full of schedules and fluorescent lights.

He’s looking forward to an evening with Beckett. As far as he’s concerned, they have at least a few things in common, and there’s always something to be said for someone who mentions chess, poker and dancing in their introduction. That’s someone who has at least some kind of taste for intellectual stimulation by the way of both strategy and expression. That’s someone who can tap into both worlds.

“Beckett,” he says with a grin as he sees his new friend enter. “It’ll be a pleasure to get to know you better, and an even greater pleasure to kick your ass at Texas Hold ‘Em.”

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Beckett won't get any more from Dan than that accurate but indistinct impression. Dan hasn't talked to anyone about Eliora. He hopes he never does. He hopes if he can hold her there in his heart, locked down away from the memory of her death, eventually he'll be able to feel just how much he loved her, as if he could seal her in there where his grief can't touch her anymore.

"I appreciate you giving me the primer on if I ever might need to kill you." Dan smirks. "As for me - well, you've met one mortal human, you've met them all when it comes to how easy it is for us to die. We're pretty fragile for the species that runs the world, for better or worse."

He meets Beckett's sweeteners and raises two more packets, seeing if Beckett will take.

Beckett smirks right back. "I've told you how to kill the kind of vampire I am. Killing me is an entirely different proposition - beings far more powerful than either of us have tried and failed."

Mostly through luck, rescue, or having never been that big a priority in the first place, but it still counts.

"In all seriousness, however, do be careful with open flame. When I'm pushed far enough into fear or rage, I lose any sense of friend or foe - we call it the Beast. Mine is well-disciplined, but the danger is always present."

Beckett meets the bet, and when the next card come, smiles just a little. The queen of hearts, in all her glory.

"Fair enough. Good thing I got no reason to want to kill you, or anyone else lately."

That queen does nothing for Dan, but he still has a two-pair with kings high, which is hardly a hand worth complaining about. He feels confident throwing a sugar packet in, expecting Beckett to either fold or meet him.

"I'm familiar with people having similar impulses, and I'll be considerate. I was actually wondering if you minded me smoking in here, but I can hold off until we're done tonight, or just light it behind a bookcase." Dan's almost done with the wine, and he's not someone who feels comfortable without substances.

"I'm not hungry, wounded, or under more than ordinary stress at the moment, so a cigarette won't bother me. I would appreciate it if you turned away while lighting, however, just as a courtesy."

It won't panic him, but that doesn't mean he likes it. The invention of electric light had come as profound relief every kindred alive to see it.

Beckett meets his sugar packet, and resists the urge to raise. Dan's caught him out once before, and he does have his pride to think of - although he doesn't see how he could be hiding anything that beats two pair, aces high.

"Absolutely. I'd hate to add extra stress to anyone when," he gestures into the air, as if to say 'the rig'. Has he mentioned he hates the rig? He hates the rig. He doesn't go for a cigarette yet, though.

Dan shows his card, and then laughs upon seeing Beckett's. Dan's hand was good, but the only way he could have won that hand was with a seven or a pair of them.

"You keep playing this well and I'll have to eat my reputation. Alright, a story." Dan taps his lower lip as he thinks.

"Well, I reckon you might could figure my real name isn't Dan Sagittarius. I mean, the Daniel is real, but I have a much blander surname." Which he isn't giving away, but whatever. "It's a stage name, honestly. Usually when I say that, people assume I was a musician or something - which I was, I played piano at a bunch of bars and churches for years to keep gas in the tank - but I actually got it when I was an exotic dancer at The Zodiac.

"The Zodiac's this little gay bar in downtown Austin, everything themed after stars and planets and constellations and stuff. It's not the first place I stripped at, but it's probably my favorite. Cash tips, dependable bouncers, safe equipment, patrons who don't get too drunk but don't mind if you do. I'd get off each night with four hundred, five hundred, and that was after making sure the kitchen got their cut. That was the longest job I ever had in my life, besides hunting. I was there six weeks and a day. There aren't that many spaces that use the pole for men, but I learn fast and they had a soft spot for a pretty face and athletic know-how, so they caught me up quick. The other dancers there were like family."

But not actually family. Dan still cut and run as soon as things felt too cozy.

"Anyway, I wasn't even born in December. My birthday's actually Halloween. But there already was someone using Scorpio as their theme so I just took what I could get, and then I decided I liked it."

"Thank you, it's appreciated." Beckett allows himself to show pleasure at his victory, chuckling a little as he sweeps up his bounty and surrenders his cards for the shuffle.

"Goodness," he says, at the end of Dan's story. "I suppose your line of business means taking work where you find it. Why did you need to leave Austin?"

He's assuming the answer will be typical: a fight, a hunt, an intrigue gone south.

Dan starts to deal again.

"I got involved with a woman there and she wanted to make it something more official, so I figured it'd be best by everyone to move on." Because Dan would rather nuke the good thing he's got going on and burn his new life to the ground than deal with the emotional complexity of a relationship that's lasted a few weeks. That's totally normal behavior. "I'd have gotten bored there anyway soon enough. I get antsy being in one place too long."

He's out of wine, which means it's time to move on to smoking. Mindful of Beckett's request, he makes sure to hide the flame while he lights up.

"The skills I picked up came in handy, though. I got to take a break off waiting tables and washing dishes."

Beckett looks elsewhere when Dan lights up, even though he's turned away; vampires really don't like fire, and he was bluffing a little when he said he wasn't under more than ordinary stress. But he looks back before Dan does, or at least he thinks so.

"Probably for the best," he says, accepting his cards. "This line of work doesn't leave much space for personal attachments."

He's in perfect agreement with Dan. Relationships are burdensome, and slow you down. He'd trusted Anatole, even with all the weight of centuries and madness, and look what that had got him. The whole thing would have been much easier if it hadn't been someone he cared about who'd betrayed him.

Dan’s conscientious to always blow the smoke away from Beckett. The truth is, Dan’s been racked with nerves since he got here, all tight chest and pained stomach and tension headache. Smoking‘s one of the few things that distracts him from it, when alcohol, cocaine, sex and action are so far off.

“It really don’t.” The river starts to unfold with a three of clubs, which does nothing for the mismatched ten and six in Dan’s hand. At least it precludes making the stupid decision to try for a straight.

“And even if it did I don’t know I’d want it. I’ve never really wanted to be with anyone that way for longer than a few days.”

"I have, but it was a long time ago. And in hindsight - "

He hesitates, staring at his hand to buy time. Four and a jack, inauspicious.

In hindsight, none of them had been worth it - not Anatole, not de Laurent, not Lucita, not even - it's still nearly impossible even to think her name. As Caine was cursed, so are his children: they shall eat only ashes, and in their arms all love and friendship turns to dust. And he's a child of Caine, no matter what he does or believes. The last century has made that perfectly clear. It tastes, as it must, like ashes on his tongue.

But he's getting maudlin, which Dan certainly does not deserve.

"Well, what's done is done."

Dan listens attentively, both to what Beckett volunteers and what he doesn't. And he does absolutely no judging, because that's a foreign concept idea to him, the notion of somehow being on high and having figured it all out and thus being able to compare oneself to others and find them lacking.

"Very true. Can't change the past, and most times wouldn't want to." Ten of hearts in the river, which gives Dan a pair. No complaints here.

"That's, I guess, our gift for getting older. We get a consolation prize of regrets."

"That's one word for it, certainly." Beckett looks up and flashes a brief smile, intending to reassure the mortal that all was well. Which it very much is, of course. He studies his card, hiding his mouth behind his hand.

No love, so far. Lady Luck was in a mood tonight, apparently.

"I fold," he says abruptly, tossing in his hand. He doesn't pay attention to how the fall. "Which means I owe you a story. Let's see..."

"I was in South Africa, investigating rumours of a Ba'ali cult infesting an apartment block in Johannesburg. Infesting is the right word, because Ba'ali are a particularly nasty species of demon-worshipping vampire cultist, and among their many dreadful tricks is turning living bodies into insect hives - usually human, though animal will do in a pinch. This is, unfortunately, relevant information.

I'd made my way up to the thirtieth floor, finding nothing of particular interest aside from clear evidence of cultist activity and a lot of dead bodies." He spares Dan the gorier details, and the nature of the activity. Slaughter mortals, raise demons, nothing terribly novel. "I found there a balcony with a pool, and something stirring inside it. That thing was as staked kindred, terribly mutilated, whom I attempted to revive - only to find that it had been turned into one such incubator, implanted with things that don't bear speaking of, frankly."

Horrible little amoebic leeches that had clung to his legs, squealing and biting. He'd born holes in his flesh for a week.

"And I wish I could tell you I did something clever and heroic, but I actually fell backwards into the pool, lost my pants, and spent a very anxious few hours huddled on the diving board until the thing lost track of me."

He lies fluently and without a moment's hesitation. The point of this is very much to not mention the others who were with him at the time.

Dan doesn't bother showing his cards, instead taking the card back and the sweeteners from the first buy. He shuffles Beckett's hand back into his deck, then starts to deal again. He's got a three and a jack, both hearts.

"Well, I ain't ever been to South Africa, and that sounds a wretched type of vampire." Dan's dealt a few times with creatures that used other living things as breeding grounds, and it's always distinctly upsetting. It's one thing to kill a person possessed and find them full of blood and organs; it's another to do so and find them full of eggs and larvae.

To tell the truth, he's never even been outside North America, unless the faerie realm counts. He's never had enough identification to want to risk getting on an airplane, and teleporters in his world typically can only manage a few miles at a time.

"That sounds horrible. You must have been sitting in terror for hours." Dan sounds, and is, genuinely sympathetic.

Edited 2020-10-22 04:33 (UTC)

"Long enough," Beckett agrees. "It was blind, though, so I knew it would lose track eventually."

That specific statement is true. But "long enough" had only been a few minutes, as Lucita had been in the next room and heard his very-much-not-high-pitched-thank-you cry of distress. She'd come at the thing with a blowtorch, it had escaped down the pool drain, and then their biggest problem had been where he was going to get new pants at three in the morning.

Well, that and burning down the building. There'd been nothing in there but corpses and corpse-hives, and evidence of attempts to raise something that very much should not be raised.

"And yes, the Ba'ali are a truly wretched lot. No sane Kindred gives them succor."

First card in the river is the king of hearts, and Dan considers if it might be wise to bank on a flush.

"I take it the Ba'ali - that's how you say it?" It isn't, the way Dan pronounces it, but he's never had a way with words and that gravelly voice tends to strip most sounds of their beauty. "I take it that making hives of people is their pleasure, as opposed to a necessity. Nasty either way, but inexcusable for the latter."

He decides to hope for the flush and tosses a sugar packet in.

"Both, actually. An act of worship for their particular cult. I'm willing to go into detail, but you'll need a strong stomach."

Not too much - the connections between Saulot, Tremere, and Ba'ali are unlikely to be of interest - but Beckett does have a morbid urge to continue, one he doesn't quite understand. Maybe because Dan had gotten too close, and this is bound to scare him off; maybe because it's been a long time since he could talk freely about the horrors he's seen as horrors, and not intellectual curiosities, or business-as-usual.

Neither of those possibilities give him particular pleasure.

"I hunt monsters for a living. I'm pretty sure whatever you're about to tell me, I've seen similar." Or lived similar. When he was nineteen, his seven year-old sister choked to death on her own teeth. He wasn't that much older when the blood curse on his family dissolved his little brother's bones while his little brother was still alive.

Another hearts card. A sweetener.

"I just hope I don't even get completely numb to it."

"Well, the more coherent of the Ba'ali claim that they're doing us all a favor. According to them, evil powers sleep in the earth, bound by ancient spells. Their orgies of violence and degradation aren't random, but performed purposely at chosen locations in order to glut those entities with death and suffering, thus ensuring they don't rise in hunger and consume the world."

Beckett's got two mismatched jacks, and little hope now of anything decent. But you never know; there's one jack left in the deck, and it could come up anytime. In the spirit of hope, he meets the bet.

"Mind you, there very probably are ancient entities sleeping in the earth of my world. However, Ba'ali tactics are far more likely to wake those creatures than soothe them to sleep - like the smell of frying bacon to a sleeping mortal, I think that's an appropriate metaphor?"

"I reckon that makes sense if you believe in it, but I ain't a fan of the idea of evil ancient gods. In my experience, it's all been an excuse to mistreat folks and conveniently justify your actions."

It's not that Dan's against religion, or even against fire-and-brimstone religion. He was raised quite religious, but the tenants his parents preached were good Samaritanship, integrity, community, mindfulness, even despite the conservative attitudes around bodily autonomy and education. Dan drifted away from the parts of those teachings that didn't sit well with him, but he likes to think he kept the parts that hold him together.

"It is. It makes sense. Am I right on thinking that most of this comes down to faith?"

"Well, yes and no." Beckett has to think for a moment. How to explain it, and how to explain it without naming names? "There is a kernal of truth to their beliefs - to all the different beliefs that unite the kindred. I've spend three hundred years trying to find out what it is, and there are days I feel no closer then when I began. But I've seen and experienced and learned things which lead me to believe that there truly are - things - hidden in the dark corners of the world, and of the world's memories. Things perhaps best left alone and forgotten."

Even by him.

"Win this hand, and I may tell you about one."

Dan listens attentively. There's something deep here, something about how this relates to Beckett's way of interacting with the world.

"I think that's a wise conclusion. Not everything needs to be dug up, and sometimes you gotta respect a thing's wishes to stay in secret." Dan has a tendency to tap the filter end of his cigarette against his bottom lip when he's thinking something over. "It sounds like you might could have learned it the hard way."

Last card in the river is the two of hearts, completing Dan's flush, although he does his best not to let any of that cross his face. He puts two sweeteners in.

Well, Beckett doesn't have nothing, but his odds aren't the best. He's suddenly uninterested in winning, however, as he idly pushes forward a sugar packet.

This is an old game, but one he's played rarely - and he knows, full well, that Dan might not know he's playing it. How badly do you want the truth, my dear ingenue?. De Laurent's eyes had gleamed with what Beckett, in his youth and with another name, had taken for a challenge. Looking back, it had been closer to tears.

De Laurent had put up a fight, as Beckett intends to now. But the last thing his sire had told him as he left his house forever, in the wake of the great betrayal, was that he'd always intended to lose. Seeing how hard Beckett would work - that was the point of the game.

Dan raises an eyebrow and adds the sweeteners to meet Beckett's sugar packet raise, then raps his knuckles on the table to call. He lays out a beautiful red flush.

"If you can't top that, then I get the story."

Beckett shows his hand with a grin perhaps a little more predatory, or pained, then he means to reveal.

"Well. Where to begin?" He drums his fingers on the table, theatrically. "All kindred claim descent from legendary founders, ancient vampires alleged to be the grandchildren of the first vampire, who rose against their creators and slaughtered them, a crime for which the father of kindred cursed them eternally. Or it was at his behest, as he'd grown disgusted by their excess - opinions differ. These founders, according to legend, lie torpid in various hidden tombs throughout the world, subtly influencing their descendants' actions, waiting to wake, rise, and consume the world.

Officially, this is superstition - at least in the sense that two of the three major sects agree that they don't exist, and even if they did, they couldn't possibly be pulling anyone's strings. It's well-known that childer are weaker in the blood than their sires. The idea of the super-powerful common ancestor has a certain sense to it, but if such a being did exist, and did survive to the present day, what of it?

I was in Russia, following the collapse of the Iron Curtain. It wasn't only mortals who'd lost all eyes in Moscow when the revolution came; the kindred, too, had experienced what we came to call the Shadow Curtain. Our limitations are not mortal, but none of our powers or techniques could grant any insight into what was going on in Russia. Periodically someone would emerge with wild claims of ancient vampires enslaving mortal and kindred alike, controlling the land itself, and so on and so forth - things kindred can do, but not at the scale described.

So. The Shadow Curtain fell when the USSR did, and I was on the first flight I could book to Moscow. I met with many local kindred, none of whom could provide me anything useful. They all swore they had been under the control of a single ancient vampire they called Baba Yaga, but were equally certain that none of them had known they were under her control until the curtain fell - and all took that for a sign that she had been destroyed.

Seeing little other choice, I went inward, to the interior. I had a colleague with me, an expert in tracking and scouting, but we made little progress. Eventually he told me to wait at our base camp, and went off alone. He never returned. I did, however, find his remains - along with a message, intended for his clan. A claim that Baba Yaga was real, was one of our legendary ancestors, and furthermore had truly been destroyed.

I believed the claim, and left Russia. You might notice that I don't say why. That's because I don't know. I saw - something - in the tundra, learned something, something that's left me with the absolute certainty that these ancient creatures and their machinations are real and active to this very night. I know it as I know fire burns flesh - but I can't remember where or how or why I came to be so sure. Something has plucked it from my memory, as if it was never there - something that chose to leave a hole, to take the details and leave me the lesson, so that I would know what it had done."

By the time he finishes, his face is haunted.

Dan listens, cigarette burning down in his hand, rapt. His face, when Beckett finishes, a mixture of attentive and sympathetic, and he lets the silence linger for a moment before he responds.

"A respectable thing, that you've kept the lesson even without the context. That's a mark of wisdom, I reckon." He stubs out his cigarette against the napkin on the table, taking care to make sure nothing lights. "Have you tried to find out what memories you had that were lost, or have you wised away from that?"

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vampthropologist - 2020-10-28 02:14 (UTC) - Expand

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hallelujahjunction - 2020-12-05 00:28 (UTC) - Expand

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I'm still the talk of this town, I'm still the roll of their dice.

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cw body horror, death, devil worship, loss of pants

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