goneawayworld | 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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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?"

"I was intended to. It was a warning: 'we exist, we are more powerful than you can imagine, and if you hunt us, we will hunt you.' Wisdom would have been leaving off the search, which I very much did not."

He pauses to carefully watch Dan extinguish the cigarette, as much because his own nerves are starting to jump as genuine fear of carelessness. Alas, nicotine does nothing for a kindred.

"And no, I've never recovered the memories. I have my notes, and some recordings - enough to reassemble the narrative - but what I learned there, what I saw - gone. I can take an educated guess at what they were, but I don't think I'll ever really know."

He hates that more than he can say. To know that he knows, but not know how or why he knows, not be able to explain to others because he has no proof, not even his own eyewitness - whoever was behind it couldn't have conceived of a more perfect irritation.

Dan figures that if Beckett wanted him to ask what Beckett's educated guess was, Beckett would have volunteered that information. He starts to shuffle the cards again, pensive if just a little put out that he's out of wine.

He tries to imagine how that must feel for Beckett, to essentially have a memory planted and chunks of his past sealed away, and can't imagine the willpower and caution necessary to not go try and solve that mystery. Dan knows he'd make the fool decision to go back and look for it, because Dan knows that for someone as chronically anxious and paranoid as he is, there's no threat to his life or constitution that scares him. In cases like this, that wouldn't be a virtue.

"How did your colleague's clan take it?" He deals their hands again.

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

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