2019-06-21 - Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

The softest, most delicate strain of a piano can be heard, from somewhere vaguely off to the left. Chopin's Nocturnes op. 9, number 2. The murmur of conversation is occasionally broken with warm laughter or the clink of china, and the scent of a warm breeze rolling in off the ocean carries with it the silvery whisper of carillon. Most of the guests are dressed in summery shades; pastels and milk bottle hues for the women, neutral tones and greys for the men. The style, were one to pay particular attention, is rather reminiscent of the roaring twenties. Flappers and three piece suits, men with bevel headed canes and hunting hats.

The pair find themselves deposited, of all places, into a hedge that borders an elaborate fountain sculpted out of glass, in the shape of a swan about to take flight. A clutch of partygoers glance over, and one of them frowns. A confused murmur begins to spread throughout the gaggle of women as they witness two people who clearly were not invited to this shindig, literally drop in from.. well, where did they come from?

The man is the first to move, after a good minute's passed where he's likely doing a mental check for anything broken. Seemingly satisfied that he's still in one piece, Ruiz climbs to his feet slowly, and looks down to find himself outfitted in a silver three piece suit, complete with waistcoat and tie. Polished loafers, dark hair styled with some sort of product that gives it a shape beyond its usual curly mess. Leather gloves that button at the wrists. He looks from the partygoers, back to where he saw Luce, complete confusion on his face.

It's the face full of grass that first prompts Luce to move. No matter how well-kept it is, no matter how pleasant the day, blades of grass up your nose tickle. She sneezes and groans, moving to flop herself over onto her back, squinting up into a sunny, puffed-cloud sky. It was storming and dark a minute ago. That isn't right at all. Eventually, she becomes aware of the sounds of a civilized garden party going on nearby, the soft tink of silverware to plates, the burble of a nearby fountain, conversation a murmur in the background.

Wait, what? Luce reaches up to touch her throat, where frosty burns still are present. She swallows and winces. A ring of marks around her neck, and one on her pale cheek, hint at what happened earlier in the day, er, night, at Addington House. Aw, hell. She definitely looks like she was involved in some kind of domestic situation. On the rich green carpet of grass, her only remaining shoe is half-off, showing bright yellow against the green. Aaany minute now she's going to notice that.

When she's finished noticing that they've apparently landed in some kind of garden party. Going by the heavily deco-inspired, simply cut garments and hem lengths, bobs, buns, Marcel waves, and kiss curls on the ladies, it's also somewhere in the mid-1920s.

Luce turns her head just in time to see a pair of really cute black heels with a triple-strap cutout and suede-on-leather texture wander past in the grass. She sits up, finding herself in the illusion of a champagne colored dress draped in black beading and sequin sheath, patterned with diamonds linked with draping swathes of hand-beaded lines and cap sleeves in sheer black. The full length skirt falls with gathers to the floor. Or would, if she were standing. She moves to rise, and, oddly, despite the seeming wardrobe change, she has only the one heel on. Still yellow. "Crap." Luce stands, popping up from behind a low hedge, her blonde hair tamed, braided, and curled, secured with three ribbons into an upsweep that looks short, but isn't. She glances over and spots Ruiz. Who should not be here too.

"Crap, crappity, crap." Luce's mutter should be under her breath, but it isn't. "Sorry." Her mouth says sorry, but her expression says shiiiiiit. "Hi. Just... um. Just go with it. It's fine. If anyone tries to stab you, eat you, or lure you into anywhere alone, just say no."

If Luce has perfected the art of RBF, then Ruiz stands to give her a run for her money. He looks significantly non-plussed by the time the girl gains her feet, and that expression does not waver with the stream of mumbling and tersely-offered life advice she tries to give him. The man, despite a brief moment of what the actual fuck telegraphed plainly across his face, actually seems to take this sharp left turn into La France remarkably well. After precisely four and a half seconds of staring at the little blonde, he reaches out to grasp her arm firmly above the elbow and attempt to steer her away from the fountain and toward the nearest table.

"Excusez-moi," he murmurs to the group of confused onlookers. And, "Desole," which probably constitutes the sum total of his French. Muttered more quietly to Luce, assuming he manages to keep hold of her arm, "We are going to sit down, and you are going to tell me what is going on."

Lucinda reaches up to touch her throat with one gloved hand. Annoyed, she reaches down to tug the gloves off, though that's definitely harder than it looks. They're slippery satin and it's hard to grip anything wearing them. Not that she's really wearing them. This is an illusion. Sort of. Things and rules and reality gets fun on this side of the Veil. She doesn't quite get a chance to tug them off, however, before Ruiz has hold of her arm.

"Uhh. And then run. Just say no, and then run. Or walk briskly, your choice, really." Luce corrects what she said before, pressing red lips together briefly. She looks around, a bit distracted by trying to figure out where they are, exactly. Usually the subconscious has something to do with where they land, unless something else is working the angles, something that lives in the Veil itself. Under her breath, she asks, "How long have you spoken French?" Then she laughs.

Is she having a minor issue dealing with the fact that Ruiz has been pulled into the Veil with her? Yes, a bit.

"Loosen," she mutters, a smile lingering on her lips. Yes, people are staring, though most eventually go back to what they were doing. Garden party and all. She's directed along by the hand on her arm, and a very cranky Mexican leading the way.

Once they've located said table, and a place to sit, the mid-backed chairs decorative a heavily flowered, Luce drops into the seat and probably tangles into some of the beadwork on her dress. "It's ... do you know that line where Hamlet's like, there are more things in heaven and earth? This is that." She swallows, winces again, and closes her eyes briefly to allow the piano to do some work bringing her down off the surge of adrenaline. Do your work, Chopin. Her hands should stop shaking soon.

His grip is not relinquished, though he does acquiesce to her request to loosen it slightly. Slightly. The forced march to the table continues, grass snapping under their feet, and he's surely aware that Luce's hobbling along with one heel. He does not seem to care, and does not slow his pace.

"You do not ask me the questions." That's to her demand to know how long he's spoken French. "I ask the questions." The laughter? The laughter results in a brief moment where it seems he might have some Words for her. But then the moment passes, and instead he pushes her into one of the chairs. Pretty little meridiennes; wrought-iron painted white, and styled with delicate filigree. The cranky Mexican does not seem to care that people are still staring. This is likely more on account of him, than her, and all it takes is a challenge on his part for most of them to return to their own business.

The man pauses a moment, then eases into the chair opposite, slowly. He watches Luce's shaking hands, then her blue, blue eyes. "I know the line. But I need more than that. This is.." He tears his eyes away from her, drinks in the illusion silently for a time. As if by looking hard enough, he might spot the ripples in the veil, the places where the edges are not stitched tight. "Did you do this?"

Luce sets about picking those gloves off, fingers first, after a quiet moment of listening to the soothing piano. She leaves Ruiz to demand or stare as he will in that brief window of time. Deliberate in her easing off of those glove, she drapes them one at a time over the edge of the table. No doubt some gossip has started over at a few of the other tables, and whomever the host is perhaps has decided a little scandal is better for the party than booting the interlopers. By the time Lucinda has removed her gloves, her hands are still again. Maybe Ruiz's attitude has helped. "Yes. I did." Her vibrant blue eyes come up, color amped by eyeshadow in shades of gray. "Maybe. Honestly, the garden party could have been you. Do you secretly watch Downton Abbey or something?"

Luce looks at him for a moment. Not amused? Nope. Okay. "I ... sometimes it happens when I'm in danger. I fall in. You... I don't know. Came with me." Somehow. "It's never..." happened before. All these things, she doesn't say. Some of them she only thinks, but it's not all that hard to read between the lines.

"Okay. Strap in." This is to him or herself, muttered under her breath. Maybe both? "This is us." She puts a hand on the table, palm and fingers flat against the surface. "Okay? Everything that exists in our frame of reference is this hand." She lifts that hand and turns it so her fingers face the clouds above. Her right hand is lifted next. "This is here, where we are now." She holds that hand up, fingers to the sky, then brings her hands together, almost in prayer, though not quite touching. "Normally, these two places sit next to each other, and what lies between them is the Veil." She brings her hands together slowly. "In some places, the veil is thin." Barely a gap shows between her palms. "And in some places, like Gray Harbor," she tips her fingers of the right hand, lacing between spaces made in her left to fit them, "Some of the places are so thin, you can slip right through."

The breeze carries the scent of bougainvillea, castile and cacti cours saleya, mingled with the saltspray from the ocean not too terribly far from where they're seated. If Luce has any familiarity with geography, or recognises the landmarks in the distance and shape of the skyline of the city on the horizon, they would appear to be somewhere on the outskirts of Nice. Near a beach, one presumes.

Ruiz watches the blonde slip her gloves off, one at a time. And then lifts his gaze to her face again. The Downton Abbey crack gets no response, save a slight flare of his nostrils and eventually a flick of his eyes away as he reflexively searches his pants pockets for a pack of cigarettes. And, remarkably, finds one. A lighter, too. The sound of the flint being struck breaks the silence between her words, and he tucks the pack away without offering one to Luce. Remembering, perhaps, her request for a non-smoking room.. whenever that was. Time seems to blur oddly, here.

The smoke is brought to his lips, and he focuses on her hands as she details where they are, where they were, and how they got here. At some point, he looks up to her eyes. And is lost, for a little longer than he ought to be. By the time he thinks to speak, the music's shifted. A cello, and a whistling tune that's eventually joined by a banjo and another voice. Where did they come from? Does it matter? The scent of flowers remains, but the landscape shifts. Subtly at first, like someone smudging ink on a canvas. The other partygoers gradually fade away, the sound of the ocean recedes, and they're left sitting at the little table in a grassy field, with stormclouds on the horizon and the scent of something terrible in the air.

"Veo." He runs his tongue along his lower lip slowly, noting the shift with some uncertainty, then looking back to Luce's blue eyes. "Y cómo caímos? You say it.. happens. When you're in danger. How does it happen? There is something about you, isn't there." He reaches for her face then abruptly, trying to grasp her jaw in his hand - which no longer sports a glove - as if to study her more carefully. In fact, he's no longer dressed in the three piece suit at all. Dusty travel clothes, a wifebeater and a flannel shirt, dirt-streaked jeans. A stetson on his head that only appears the next time Luce looks away, and back again.

There's a long moment after she's spoken that she waits to see what Ruiz will do. Will he lose his mind? Will he flip the table? Will he quietly take it like a boss and just glare at her with those dark, squinty eyes he makes when he is sometime displeased? She is a grown woman in a vintage gown and she will not fidget. The gown throws her a bit off her game, though. Oh, and almost being choked out earlier. That was fun too.

The longer she sits in this breeze, the scents of flowers kicked up and brought to her, the more relaxed her shoulders. She drops her hands to her lap after a moment, the visual representation of the Veil thusly shown to Ruiz. A lock of hair is tugged free from the neat arrangement its found itself in, and drags across her cheek to flutter into her eyes. She reaches up to tuck that behind her ear, watching Ruiz hunt down and light a cigarette. She says nothing about it, but she watches his smoke. There could be judgment in those blue eyes, could be, but she wisely voices nothing in regards to his habit.

The shift in the music certainly has Luce's attention. She straightens a bit, just her gaze flicking around briefly when the landscape itself changes too. "Hm." Hm indeed. She isn't shifting the landscape. She sits up and glances back, just in time for her jaw to be caught. His skin shows even darker against hers, which is quite pale. Her lips part and she manages to stay still, not to pull away. She barely reacts, in fact, which says something about her ability to bounce back from violence. "I was just enjoying that one." The oncoming storm, the darker landscape, make little difference, until they so.

Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a tail, worn jeans flared out over dusty cowboy boots. Her top is a simple grey ribbed tank, nothing under it. She looks back at Ruiz with that expression of hers, the one that gives him absolutely nothing. Some might consider it RBF. It's just her face. "I just fall." She stares right back at him. "I fall through easily. It's like... stepping through a door, but the air just gives and shifts and tilts and you're somewhere else." There are a few heartbeats of her looking back at him before she speaks again.

"You know, there has to be something about you too. Something... I think that if there wasn't, you wouldn't have come with me. I think that if there wasn't, you'd..." She doesn't finish this sentence. She just watches him with those bright blue eyes as roiling, dark clouds blow in overhead. Strands of her honey-blonde hair are tugged free, whipping around her face, blowing across her neck, clinging to the corner of her mouth.

"Happily, if there isn't something about you, you won't remember this long after anyway." Luce reaches up to touch Ruiz's hand. "I think this storm is you."

"Judging by the things she said in that house, there's something about Lex too." Something about all of them, perhaps.

He does not lose his mind, or flip the table. He has, perhaps, been on the knife edge of losing his goddamn shit since the moment the lights went out in Addington House. Since the moment those icy fingers snaked over his skin, around him and inside him, and he bears the same marks of their violence on his throat. The same struggle, along with probably a colourful bruise or two from that dresser being slammed into him full force.

Ruiz says nothing of the change in scenery, or the shift in the music. It unnerves him, that much is clear. Everything, everything about this place unnerves him. But he seems to have the cojones to not let it unsettle him. For now. He listens to Luce speak, and little by little his grip on her jaw gentles. Until it's little more than a gentle touch; index finger, middle, and thumb, rough skin against smooth. Swarthy against terrifically pale. He shifts his gaze away before he's tempted to become lost in her bright eyes again. Eyes like summer skies, when all around them is the dark of an oncoming storm.

"Do you know how to get back?" This, it seems, is his most salient question, in light of what she's told him. He has many others, but he begins with this. His hand drifts eventually from her jaw, and catches on her fair hair. It tangles around his knuckles and whips free as his fingertip traces her throat and collarbone and then is gone. The sky churns angrily, and the foul scent grows stronger. Not rain, but blood. Blood and death, heralded by that whistling tune. Heralded by the darkening horizon, the grass flattened by the fierce wind into a sea of wild rye and deer tongue.

His answer to the accusation, that this storm might be his doing? Confusion. His hand lingers on the table between them, and his hat is blown clear off his head and tumbles away until it's a speck in the distance, and he simply shakes his head slowly. "We have to get home. Luce. Tell me how we get home."

Luce's gaze stays on Ruiz's darker one. She watches him as he processes everything she's just said. He takes it well, but that could be the ability to compartmentalize, to step into the story the person you're interviewing has told you, to seek an internal logic and exploit it until the truth or tenor of the delusion becomes clear. Of course the truth and delusion often go hand in hand here, and in Gray Harbor, to a lesser extent.

The music shifts, and so does the scenery, the slow creak of a windmill that grows up out of the darkness beyond them both, slowly spinning, creaking, and a voice-over murmurs through, and the a clear voice singing a vintage song. Lanterns wink to life around them, and the landscape blacks out almost entirely, stage lights flicking on. Luce is on all black between one blink and the next, her glossy blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Her bright blue eyes practically the only spot of color about her. This is how she's watching him just as his trailing finger slips across her throat and along the delicate line of her collarbone.

The scent that rolls across the grassland ahead of the storm is pungent and strong, but fades off, fades to that rhythmic, regular, slow creaking of the heavy blades of a large wooden structure that's warped a little over time. The scent retreats a bit, doesn't wholly face, and then returns with a light breeze.

Luce's lips part at the question. There is the slightest hesitation before she says, "Yes." She turns that gaze to his, sure and steady despite the hesitation. Sure. And. Steady. "Javier." She reaches over to place her hand over his on the table, closing her eyes. "Breathe." She pauses only briefly before she continues, "We will get home. It might... take some doing. I've never brought someone else before. We travel until we find the right path. Time moves differently here. Space, everything. Sometimes it moves, sometimes you move."

The creaking deepens, becomes heavier, speeds slightly in rotation. "Have you ever read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?" Her tone has taken on that reasonable, assured cadence again. She knows things, is what it says.

Ruiz is a cop. Compartmentalization is his life. His only lifeline to sanity. The things he sees in the course of a day, a week, a month.. wasn't it Luce who'd lectured him about the life expectancy of people in his line of work? The incidence of burnout? Compartmentalization is key. And deluding himself has become, perhaps, an art form.

His shoulders tense, visibly, as the music shifts. The lights wash over his profile; all jagged edges and salt-and-pepper beard, black hair slicked into a glossy wave, and his sturdy frame buttoned into a crisp white shirt and black pants with suspenders that form a T at the back. He looks, for the first time, ill at ease; his dark eyes narrow slightly on Luce's blindingly bright blues, in the shadow of that windmill turning slow. Wafting the scent of wrongness toward them with each swoop of its blades.

She touches his hand, and he flinches. The contact, possibly, or the use of his name. But he does breathe, shallowly. Lips parted, pulled slightly over the edges of his teeth like some viciousness lies in wait beneath his carefully restrained calm. "How will we know, when we find the right path? How many will we take, before we find the one that leads home? Podemos vagar aquí para siempre, y nunca encontrar el camino." His voice grows more agitated toward the end, fingers curled into a fist beneath her far smaller hand.

Silence then between those words and her question, and his reply: "Si," is quieter. Some of the edge smoothed away, perhaps by that tone she takes with him. Perhaps that tone.

Luce leaves her hand over Ruiz's, through the shifting shadows and the scent that seems to persist through the set change, through the shift in music too. She presses her fingers in at either side of his wrist, just enough to ground him a little — it could irritate him, she doesn't know him well enough to decide. She quotes, speaking slowly, from memory: "Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next."

She leaves him to think about that for several beats, and when that scent of blood persists, she glances up, and looks around slowly, her gaze skimming the shadows that surround them. Lowly, slowly, the last song fades out, and familiar early 90s anthem slowly filtering in with pared down vocals and electric guitar with a little drumming in the background. It's a calm start, but something about it makes Luce frown slightly. Still, she has some things to say, and so she carries on speaking.

"Time passes differently here. It may seem like days and it's only hours. It may seem like hours and it's only minutes. We'll get home. It's a process." The blonde swallows. "We'll get home. I promise." Though she can't offer him a precise measure of time, she does sound sure of that. "A primer to the Veil: other things live here. It's not just dreams. It's not all safe, but it's not all dangerous, either. Trust your heart and your mind, but don't always believe your eyes."

"If I say run, run, stay close. I think we should move now, calmly." She doesn't say why, but that lingering scent is a clue.

I promise. Those two words set off a tremor in the ground beneath their feet. Subtle, like a shifting of the earth several miles down. The windmill begins to fragment where it turns; the blades break away, wood splintering and cracking along fault lines deep in the fabric of their construction. Shards of it blow away, twist into the angry sky, and with them the lanterns begin to disappear one by one. Bright lights burned into the storm, buffeted by the wind until they form part of the tapestry of stars.

The ground beneath them begins to shudder, and it might be Luce's suggestion that they move now that has Ruiz on his feet. He reaches for the blonde's arm, seeking to draw her up and out of her chair, and tug her along with him. "Ven entonces." His body tenses as the chair he'd been sitting in begins to break apart like the windmill, and he tugs on the girl's arm with conviction. "Vamonos, Luce."

All around them, the world comes apart at the seams, broken things dispersing into a fine dust that begins to settle over a broken street with an exposed watermain, and weeds growing rampant through cracks in the asphalt. A row of ruined hovels sits to either side of them, built out of mud and driftwood. Downed power lines tangle shredded cables through the carcass of a long-dead animal of some kind, and skeletal trees claw toward a sky the colour of rusted steel.

And behind them? An ominous dust cloud that seems to be drawing nearer, bringing with it the sound of some sort of music. Difficult to discern at first, tinny; the sound of a car radio playing a tune with drums and electric guitar and autotune. As the vehicle crests a rise in the road, a sharp report of something is heard. Something that sounds an awful lot like a shotgun blast, fired into the air.

It's when the windmill starts to fracture that Luce's expression shifts. The lanterns winking out caught in the periphery of her vision. She's starting to move when Ruiz's hand closes on her arm, and he pulls her up to her feet, "Yes." She watches her chair begin to fragment too, blowing away like jagged little flower petals on a too-slow spiral that fights against the direction of the breeze. She's pulled along by Ruiz, looking over her shoulder, the tight knot of her hair undisturbed by the buffeting winds trying to splinter everything in its path. "Yes, I said. I'm coming."

Very handsy, this Mexican.

"This one isn't me," Luce murmurs as the scenery shifts, lowly spoken like she thinks maybe this isn't Ruiz either. The scenery almost gives her pause, and she might even stumble a little if not for a hand on her arm and the man pulling her along. This is not her usual experience of the Veil.

She doesn't say that. It seems unwise to say that at this juncture.

"You a fan of first person shooters?" The question seems a little out of place, but a lot of the things she says seem a little out of place. Finally, annoyed, she kicks off her remaining shoe and glances down to see her black on black ensemble has shifted again, this time to ratty worn jeans and a grey tee that was once probably black,, a frowny face emblazoned on it in faded mustardy yellow. One sleeve is ripped. Her jean knees are out, and somewhere in the last thirty seconds she acquired a pair of dusty brown cowboy boots on her feet. Again. "I hate zombie movies." She swallows. "I better not see a zombie." Her tone says I did not sign up for this.

"You should tell me now if you've watched a lot of horror movies."

First person shooters? "No." His tone is such that he seems to think that's a ridiculous question. Handsy he definitely is, and that doesn't seem likely to change any time soon; she's tugged along with him as he peels off the main road and starts jogging toward the side entrance of one of those little mud-and-stick hovels, determined to get out of the line of sight of that approaching car. Laundry has been hung out to dry on lines strung between one house and the next, buffeted slightly by the acrid-smelling breeze. More houses sit behind the first row, and more behind those; and in the distance, the crumbled ruins of a city, some skyscrapers brought to their knees while others seem frozen in death with gaping windows and plantlife growing from ruined orifices.

Ruiz is dressed not unlike he might be on a day off work; slightly ripped tee shirt, jeans tucked into scuffed hiking boots. A leather jacket and baseball cap. He catches sight of the frowny face on Luce's shirt, but doesn't stop to ask. "Te callarás y seguirás?" he grouses with some irritation, shoving her ahead of him toward a chain link fence that's cropped up out of nowhere to apparently block their path. Meanwhile, the sound of the vehicle.. make that vehicles, grows louder. And with them, the radio that's playing from one of them. Voices speaking Russian, doors slamming, people running; asphalt, then gravel underfoot.

There's no question whatsoever that this isn't her, and this isn't him. There's something trying to kill them, and it's fucking determined.

"Really it's kind of pretty," Lucida says, looking toward the ruined city in the distance, like it's a cinematic vista rather than a situation in which danger can find them easily enough. Though she warned him to move, that sometimes things here are dangerous, the blonde seems to be somewhat distracted by the urge to study their location.

Just enough irritation creeps in with the repeated dragging, or the shoving toward the fence. "I don't speak Spanish, for the fifteenth time. Je parle français; Io parlo Italiano; я говорю на." Three accents in a row, none of them slightly similar to Ruiz's own. "But I think I know what you said and you better just watch yourself, buddy."

This she says before her boots hit the fence, her hands grab the cross bar, the she's scrambling up and over the chain link. It rattles lightly, but she's headed up when Ruiz's hands land on her ass and he all but shoves her over. There's a squeak from the blonde and over she goes! She just manages to keep her feet. "What the f —"

Pursuers speaking Russian. This is bad. Nobody fucks with Russians. Everybody knows this. "Move your booty, Judy." Ok, now she's on board with the fleeing plan. Luce turns to face the fence while the police captain makes his way over, a little flush rising to her cheeks. "Come on, come on, come on." As soon as Ruiz his the ground, she's grabbing his arm and he'll get to see just how fast a small blonde can run.

Really? Really? Luce's decided to choose this particular moment to admire the scenery? The Mexican is just about to open his mouth and tell her what he thinks of her terrible sense of timing, when she's going up and over the fence. And what had been an attempt to hook his hand under her foot, becomes an ass grab. Purely unintentionally. Clearly. "Mis disculpas," mutters a familiar voice from behind, despite her repeated insistence that he not speak that damnable language.

And then after a jerk of his head to check the distance on their pursuers, he hooks his fingers in the fence and clambers up as well. A little more slowly, but he's still in good shape for his age. Probably, his job doesn't involve an awful lot of this on a daily basis any longer. "Who is Judy?" he feels the need to grunt as he swings a leg over, then the other, and drops down heavily. He doesn't question the flush on Luce's cheeks, but does permit her to haul him along, boots kicking up dust as they set off at a run. "We need weapons. And we need them quickly."

Behind them, they might count three men coming around the side of the first house, and in hot pursuit. All armed.

"You." Luce says, "You are Judy. We're all Judy."

"I don't just have weapons in my pockets." Well, that's not strictly true, but it's true here and now. "Nothing that's going to compete with guns." Why did it have to be guns. "People who report access to firearms are at twice the risk of homicide." Hey, Ruiz! That's you! "There are more than 393 million guns in circulation in the US." Luce glances behind them once, booted feet pounding the strides in a steady rhythm as they run.

"Duck into the next big structure, see what we can find. If nothing, I hope you know how to take a weapon from a person in close quarters." Her feet skitter over a fallen panel of rusted metal and she hops over the ruin of what was once a bench or chair, but has since fallen apart to just uprights and a tangle of vines. Luce is shoving Ruiz around the side of a small structure so they drop out of line of fire before one of the men chasing them decides to see about his weapon's range.

"This is not the time for trivia," grouses the Mexican as they beat feet along the narrow little 'alley' that's formed by the close quarters of ramshackle houses built without any thought of space for a plot of petunias, much less a garden. To their left and right, boarded up house after boarded up house, some spraypainted in bright colours with the same call to arms: принять бой с угнетателями!

Does he know how to take a weapon from someone in close quarters? "Let's hope we don't have to find out." He pauses for a moment after he's shoved behind the little alcove, then something seems to catch his eye. "Come," is all the warning Luce gets before he's pulling her toward a fire escape that's been only half-deployed. He grunts as he manages to tug the ladder down on the second try, and it hits the ground with a skreeeek of metal on asphalt. "You first. I'll cover you." With what, his bare hands? "Go!"

Those men are getting closer. Thirty seconds, perhaps, until they pass by and spot the pair.

Lucinda is pulled to the fire escape with a grunt, but it's not like she can gripe about it given she just shoved Ruiz. Her attention is momentarily taken by the graffiti and she squints, taking a moment to translate that in her head. Of the languages she speaks and the languages she reads, this is among the toughest to noodle. "Yes, decided. We're not getting caught today."

"Veil tetanus had better not translate," she mutters, but despite the grousing, doesn't hesitate to climb. The music faintly in the background helps. Why everything since they entered has a soundtrack is a question for another day. Lucinda's boots scrape the rungs as she pulls herself up, rough, rusted metal easy to grip. Little bits of rust flake off every time she jams her foot up on a new railing, sprinkling Ruiz with dirty and bits of oxidation.

Must be all those high shelves in the library that give her the ability to motor like that up a ladder. She keeps going on the first landing and takes stairs up to the second, bolts securing the fire escape's landing baskets to the building shifting only slightly. A bit of brick dust rains down too. She pauses on the second landing to try the window, but she's not strong enough, or it just doesn't open. She abandons that and heads up the third set of stairs which leaves her another window to try while Ruiz is catching up.

Ruiz does not read Russian, does not speak Russian, and definitely does not want to get killed by Russians. Today, or any day, really. He aims another glance over his shoulder and around the corner of the building as Luce goes up the fire escape, then grasps the railing and hauls himself up with a clang of his boots hitting metal. The flecks of rusted fire escape and building that come down on him are ignored; his head is ducked and his cap pulled closer over his eyes as he scales those stairs like his life depends on it. Which it very well may. Turns out he can haul ass when he needs to.

The men, meanwhile, come in hot on their heels. One of them careens around the corner of the building just as Luce reaches the second landing and Ruiz skids into the first, and takes a shot without hesitating. It rips through the Mexican's jacket, and by the grunt of pain that issues from him, clearly took a piece of him with it. But he doesn't stop moving; his body is used like a shield for the smaller blonde, and he tries to keep himself between her and their attackers. Another Russian draws to a halt at the base of the fire escape and takes aim, but can't find a clear shot; and the third.. well, he had some trouble with that fence back there, and shows up far too late to be of any use.

"The window. Can you get it open?" He's bleeding, a dark, sticky warmth that spreads along the shoulder of his jacket. "We have got to find a way out of here."

There's a rattle then a protesting groan from the window on the third landing as Luce pulls on it. She pulls harder and it finally gives, flying up suddenly, just as she's about to give up and head up another flight. Her hands slip and she bumps back into Ruiz, who's huddled up close behind her. An accidental elbow jabs back into his ribs, "Sorry." Not really that sorry. He's on her about a window she's already trying to open before it opens, so. You know. Shit happens.

Without hesitation, she hops through feet first, barely even looking. The interior of the apartment is dim, lit only by the light filtering in through the window. She trips over a pile of linens, clothing, or sundry other soft things but hops free just in time tp keep her feet. Insects of some variety scatter like shiny little pebbles as their home's disturbed. Beetles or... something else. "It's clear in this room, come on." Like he needs to hear that to make the decision that an unknown room is better than gunfire at his back.

"Before they get smart and start covering doors, we decide. Down and out to new cover, or you want to linger to ransack for weapons, and then remind then why you don't fuck with cops and librarians? If this dump follows proper fire safety protocol, there should be a stairwell at the end of the corridor on either side." It's tricky, tricky assigning normal logic to the Veil, because the doorway at either end of the corridor could easily lead to a vat of marshmallow creme too.

She's already pulling open the drawers on a dresser while she waits for him to old-guy his way through the window.

Luce knows the Veil better than he, and likely has some idea of the folly (or not) of relying on real-world logic in here. But Ruiz, clearly, is a little more than just a tired old police captain in a podunk town; the way he moves, the ink, the way this violence doesn't even seem to phase him at all, all suggest some form of military service. The moment he's through the window - which takes a little more finessing, on account of his greater bulk - he drops down into the room, and immediately starts rifling through the bed and under the mattress. His boots crush the shells of those tiny insects that don't move in time, smearing black blood along the filthy tiles as he moves.

"We stay here. Find weapons if we can. Shut that window." The orders, too. The bossiness. Definitely military. A long, rusted knife is pulled out from between mattress and mildewy boxspring and slapped atop the bed with a significant look for Luce. For you, say his eyes. Isn't that kind of him.

Clang, clang, clang up the fire escape go three sets of boots, to the tune of shouting in Russian; plans are concocted to surround them from above and below, but what's far more worrying is the way the air itself begins to shudder as if disturbed by something just below auditory range. In a moment, it becomes clearer: a helicopter, probably still a fair distance out but closing fast.

Luce glances up from her rummaging just in time to see Ruiz pull a knife out from under the mattress. Her brows go up when he looks at her and smacks it down on the bed. In another context, that would definitely get him a face full of mace. She shoves over to the window, slams it shut, turning an old lock into place. Not that it's going to stop three armed guys. She pulls the curtains too, not that that does much either. Lucinda lingers there for a moment, peering through a small crack in the curtain. She presses her fingertips to the glass briefly before she shoves away.

Outside, there's a loud, shocked yell, a rattle of a body falling against a rusted, weakened railing, then a heavy, muffled thump. The sound a body might make after a three story drop. There's a nasty sound below, like wet kindling snapping, then a pained cry cut short.

Lucinda's just grabbing the knife off the bed when the sound of a helicopter becomes obvious. "This never happens to me when I'm in here alone," is what she has to say to Ruiz about that.

"Are you bleeding?" Luce squints and says, "Um. If you die here, you die for real. So, don't." Good time to share that information! Great time. Really, Lucinda. She moves to Ruiz. "I don't need this. You take it. Swap if you find something else." She rubs her hand against the thigh of her dirty jeans and says, "In down, two, maybe two plus to go."

With that, she slips out of the room to move to a different room, moving down the corridor within this unit.

No, it won't stop them. But it might slow them down. And right now, Ruiz is all about buying time. "Vístete," he murmurs to her refusal, not even looking over as his frenzied search continues. She can leave it behind, or she can take it, but he doesn't spend the time to relieve her of the rusty weapon. The bedroom yields nothing, but moments after he disappears into the tiny bathroom, a gun is found inside the toilet tank. They probably don't want to know why someone would keep one there. Though maybe they already do. It might be loaded or it might not be; he doesn't have the time to find out, as the window presently shatters after a couple of tries, and a shot goes off. It ricochets harmlessly off the back wall, but the thump of feet above suggest that the men are planning on hemming them in here.

There's no response to Lucinda's question about whether he's bleeding; shoulder to the bathroom wall, blood smearing the tiles rather tellingly, he watches her stroll off with a frown. "A dónde vas? Luce!" He'll ask her later what she did there. What she did while she was standing at the window earlier, fingertips against the dirty glass, when he felt that shift in the air and faint scent of Glimmer. Right now, he's focused on trying to get a clear shot when he steps out from cover and levels his borrowed gun at the Russian in the window. And fires.

The gun is loaded, and the bullet goes through the man's throat in a spray of blood that seems awfully real. He collapses, even as his remaining buddy manages to bust the door down and start firing with abandon. A round clips the Mexican, but doesn't seem to do much damage; the rest pepper the wall and floor as he dives down the hallway Luce sashayed off for.

There's a moment of silence from the room Lucida chose, maybe a faint rustle unlikely to be heard over the sound of exchanged gunfire, which is loud as hell in an enclosed space like this. The reports are almost deafening, and definitely leave the blonde's ear's ringing. Hands held up to protect her ears, she drops low beside a bed in another room. The gunman isn't even within her eye line for a split second, but she can hear him bust into the unit, spraying bullets down the hall. Plaster and chunks of paint fly off the wall, projectiles slamming through and obliterating everything they touch. Several rounds soar through the room well above her head. Just as Ruiz falls or crawls into the doorway of her momentary hidey hole, she turns those bright blue eyes to him. She sits there breathing hard for a moment, hands clamped over her ears, crouched as small as she can get beside the stacked mattress and box spring.

Whatever just happened, and Luce did, and she definitely did something — Ruiz's glimmer detection pings again — the guy who busted down the door and started spraying everywhere with reckless gunfire chokes, both hands tighten on his gun, a spill of red waterfalls down his body from a spontaneous wound at his throat. The weapon thumps to the ground, washed with hot red. The gunman drops to his knees, and falls hard against the wall clawing at a wound that shouldn't be there, that he can't begin to stop bleeding. The series of small thumps ends in a gurgling, gagging choking sound that goes on for long enough to make it really uncomfortable to hear.

Luckily, there's that one last gunman about to round out into the hall and see it. Maybe it'll rattle him enough to give Ruiz a free shot at him too. Lucinda's of no use just now.

The swarthy Mexican Luce's chosen to drag along with her on this little misadventure seems to be no stranger to gunfire in close quarters. The way he maneuvers that firearm, one-handing it around the corner to pop off a few shots at the dark shape that barrels in to pursue them.. things seem to move in slow motion, and maybe it's the Veil itself that gives the perception of time drawn out like light refracted through deep water. The sharp crack of a round bursting from the chamber, and another, and another; someone's hit, but it's not immediately apparent who. Ruiz has tumbled to the floor, still-smoking gun raised to the hallway, body blocking the tiny blonde huddled by that filthy mattress. There's a hole chewed through one side, where a family of rats - or worse - has probably taken up residence.

And then it's over. One man lies in a river of his own blood, which creeps down the hall in slow-moving fingers seeking the path of least resistance. One man is slumped over a window with a hole through his throat, and the one who had thought to pin them from the side looks to have been hit in the gut. Badly enough to drop him to his knees, his eyes vacant as he tries to speak - and is shot twice more in the head. He topples forward, and there's a scuffle of movement from the cop.

Arms around the blonde, dark eyes seeking blue, lost in them for what feels like an eternity. His hands fist in her shirt, and he draws her to him, tearing his gaze away eventually to glance over his shoulder.

And he finds himself gazing into the shadows of a boxcar. Sunlight leaks through a grate near the top, and the rhythmic ka-thunk, ka-thunk of wheels on track is a steady noise in the background. The interior is stacked cheek by jowl with crates and barrels and spools of wire, and the pair are huddled atop a 'bed' of sweet-smelling hay. Dust motes hang motionless in the shaft of light that slants in through that grate, no other sound save for the movement of the train.

Luce's fingers press against her ears, barely dulling the sound of the gunfire. She may not have seen what happened in the hallway, but she felt it. That's the thing about some abilities — you have to be able to sense the life flowing through something to screw around with it. You have to be able to sense the injury or the vital structures to heal them or pull them apart. Lucinda is shielded physically from a lot of what just happened, but she killed at least one man, possibly two, depending on whether or not the guy with the broken legs gets medical treatment. If they were even real. And maybe they weren't. Probably they weren't, but they could have been.

They could have been.

She's drawn bodily out of her crouch, half falling against Ruiz as he grabs hold of her by her shirt. She leans into him shaking faintly, before the scene shifts. When it does, she doesn't see it, her face turned into his shoulder, the one that isn't smeared with blood. The setting might change, their clothing might change, but the damage doesn't disappear with that. Lucinda's ragged breathing slows, but doesn't quite calm, after a moment, the gentle side-to-side motion and rhythm of the passing track eventually helping that too. Or maybe it's that her backup didn't abandon her. Could be that he's thrown himself between her and active gunfire multiple times.

Her hands finally come down from her ears, and one hand lands on Ruiz's other shoulder, smearing through the blood soaked there, sliding up to the side of his neck before she realizes her skin is wet. She glances down at the smear of bright red blood along her wrist and forearm, and looks up at the cop. "Javier, how many times did you get shot?" So much for a more pleasant setting. It is more pleasant, except for the bleeding and what has to be some pretty significant pain.

"Show me."

Or they could have been real people, just like them. Trapped somehow in the Veil and clamouring to get out. Twisted by this place and the corruption of the Dark Men, or simply having forgotten why they came and where they were going. Time and memory are funny things; especially here.

Silence from the man for a good long while. Ka-thunk, ka-thunk. Ka-thunk, ka-thunk. His larger body is jostled against Luce's, and at some point it's no longer her leaning against him, and him supporting her weight; at some point, he slumps forward, and she's either going to have to catch him or let him go down. He's attired this time in a white button-down shirt tucked into dark pants. Suit jacket and tie, and a bloom of red that spreads across the white of his shirt at his shoulder where Luce's fingers drifted and smeared it along his throat. Another darkening his left lower ribs, and a smaller wound in his thigh where it looks like he was grazed.

He pants, vision swimming as the surge of adrenaline fades and the pain catches up with him. And oh, does it catch up. His teeth grit, and he hisses out, "Make sure we're alone." There's no sign of the gun he had only moments ago.

Luce tries to catch him when he starts to go over, but she just isn't strong enough. The bloom of blood across crisp white formalwear is shocking. That it's coming from more than one wound, spreading so quickly in these new clothes, has the blonde going pale. She reaches up to wipe her hand across her mouth, turning it before she smears blood anywhere on her skin other than the wrist that's already stained. She takes a long, ragged breath. "Why are you bleeding so much." She starts to sweat a little. "Maybe don't get shot next time."

This time Ruiz may not sense the glimmery tingle, but he definitely feels a sharp sting, a slight itch, and then the would under his ribs ceases to be. The blood remains on his shirt, though. And the shoulder pain doesn't lessen. Not a lick.

With that, Lucinda crawls a couple of feet away. She turns her back to Ruiz so she's not looking at the blood or his face. Her head rests against the open door of the car for a moment, greenery whizzing by outside. For a moment, it seems like everything's fine, the breeze tugging a few strands of her long hair free of a loose braid. "Hydrogen peroxide can get most of that stain out." She presses the back of her other hand to her lips, and sits there for a long moment. "False alarm," she murmurs to herself, takes a breath, but doesn't glance over at Ruiz. And all his blood.

Luce wears a navy blue dress with a fitted, sleeveless top and flared skirt, vintage inspired, somewhere around the 1940s. Now covered in bits of hay. She's also scraped the hell out of the toes of the heels on her feet, delicate little suede things. They're hell on illusory clothing.

Ka-thunk, ka-thunk. Ka-thunk, ka-thunk.

That's the sound that answers Lucinda in the warm, mottled dark that smells like sweet hay and a variety of foodstuffs: oats and barley and wheat, bags of flour that leave little white clouds occasionally when the boxcar is jarred on its tracks. Barrels of cooking oil and crates upon crates of spices. And 190 pounds of Mexican slumped on his side, bleeding into the hay. The wound in his ribs stops spreading, but his shirt's already been well and truly soaked. There's a hitch in his breathing when he feels that little pull, and he squints up at the blonde as she crawls away. Trails her hungrily with those dark, slanted eyes like he half wonders whether she might just hop out that open door and leave him here to die.

Ka-thunk, ka-thunk. Ka-thunk, ka-thunk. "Have you always." The pain is intense. He tries again, "Have you always been able to.. do these things? When did you know. You were different?" No comment on getting the stains out of his shirt, if it's even on his radar at this point.

Lucinda refuses to look at him. She'll have to, eventually, because someone has to try to stop that bleeding in his shoulder, at least with, well, if there's sugar in here, that could help. She sniffs, and gets to her feet, pushing up from the wall to make her way across to the barrels, beginning to check them. "Sugar helps fight infection. Honey is better, but what can you do in a train car full of oats and... flour."

She falls silent in her searching, glancing over at the question. "Yes. Pretty much always." She swallows and says, "I don't know when I became aware of it, but as long as I can remember, yes. It started out as noticing things, and then vivid dreams. I didn't know it was different than other people until later." She pulls open a crate not very well sealed. "It's so weird in here." She pulls out a five pound bag of sugar in vintage packaging and rips open the top, returning to Ruiz to drop to her knees beside him. She thumps the bag down, reaches over and unbuttons his shirt nearly all the way without asking. "You haven't?"

She carries on like this is all perfectly normal, despite her pallor, his bleeding, the fact that they were being shot at a moment ago and now they're on a train. She pauses, then reaches up to slide her thumbs under the suit jacket, to try to peel that down his arms. "Sorry." She has to jostle his shoulder once or twice to do it. Luce bends over Ruiz, sliding her arms around his neck to try to help him sit up enough that she can get the jacket off, and pull his shirt wide. "Sorry." Two times she's said this word she probably never says otherwise.

The weight of his stare on her is palpable. The sound of his breathing, a soft hitch on the exhale, though he doesn't move. Not an inch. Doesn't speak again until she's spoken to him. "Weird?" In here. She's going to need to qualify that a little. "No lo sé," he murmurs to the question of whether he has, or hasn't always been able to do 'these things'. It's a non-answer to a non-question, since thus far there's no evidence that he can do anything at all, despite having about him a faint, tenuous shine.

He grunts softly as his shirt is unbuttoned and peeled open, jacket worked off slowly on account of how little he seems inclined to move that shoulder. As layers of clothing are peeled away from his body, a piece of ink under his left collarbone becomes semi-legible: semper fi in curling, looping script. It has the trappings of a drunk tattoo probably done on a dare, or as part of a group of young men in a military unit while on leave.

"You can stop apologising." And then, out of absolutely nowhere, as she jostles his shoulder a little in her effort to pull the shirt open wider, "Will you fucking watch it, por el amor de Dios y todo lo que es santo, pendejo cabra!" His voice rasps when he pitches it in that low, hard bark. Loud enough to shudder the air between them, and it's followed by silence punctuated by the sound of him wheezing softly. His dark eyes seek her bright blues, gravitate toward them like they're the only spot of warmth and colour in this whole fucked up place.

And there's regret, and contrition in his own gaze as he tears it away again and she helps him sit up. His knees bend, heels propped against the grating in the floor, and he murmurs again finally, "Stop. Stop apologising."

"I do..." Lucinda replies to his first suggestion she stop apologizing. "What I wish." Then she jostles his shoulder, which may seem like retribution, but it probably isn't. On the heels of all that goddamn Spanish Luce's blue eyes narrow. She looks at Ruiz and finds him looking at her. By the time she has him sitting up, jacket mostly worked down his arms, and leans in again to tug it all the way off, which has her leaning against him. "That sounded like you said something very not nice to me, Javier." There's the slightest suggestion of disapproval in her voice. "You have a very nasty temper, don't you?"

That's probably the voice she uses on people who have excuse for their immense library fines. Assuming she really is, in fact, a librarian of any kind. That is still up in the air. It's not like this misadventure has clarified much of anything except a lot of people in Gray Harbor are hiding things, including every single person who lives at 23 Spruce.

"Would you like to play a little game? Maybe it'll help you relax. If you can guess what book this opens, I'll stop apologizing." No she fucking won't, but it gives him some hope, however brief.

Lucinda clears her throat lightly, thinks for a moment, then closes her eyes. She gives his shoulder a moment's rest, now that he's sitting up, before she does anything else to it, and recites, from memory, the first page of a particular book, one he may or may not have read. She says it slowly, with some animation, and is probably quite good at reading to kids, too. One hand rests against Ruiz's uninjured shoulder, and she sways faintly with the movement of the train car: ka-thunk, ka-thunk. Ka-thunk, ka-thunk. Ka-thunk, ka-thunk.

"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing."