[evens = eva, odds = avery!]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Éva IllésházyThe Artwork Network is hosting a silent auction to raise funds to benefit the Legal Aid Society of Denver and Amnesty International. The event was advertised as cocktail attire, which has been interpreted by the crowd drifting through the gallery space with a wide degree of latitude. Something about the crowd that wishes to support both the Legal Aid Society of Denver and Amnesty International lends itself to a wide degree of latitude. There are art historians in caftans and the odd hipster in skinny jeans and thick glasses and a beard. There are ex-hippies gone respectable shined up in houndstooth sport coats with suede patches on the elbows. There are glorious women with halos of frizzy gray hair sparked around their heads like newborn nucleii in maxi dresses with seventeen long chain necklaces slung around their necks and arms full of turquoise cuff bracelets they will be happy to tell you they purchased from the artisan himself,
and there are rather a lot of lawyers in the room. They are easy to spot. They are the ones for whom cocktail attire means cocktail attire. One of them is crisp in black and white. A white brocade skirt beneath a black lace bodice, sleeveless. Dark hair loose down her back, a small clutch tucked beneath one arm, speaking quietly with a rather dumpy looking middle-aged man in a rumpled suit who also happens to be the city editor of the Denver Post. They are in front of an oil painting with the crisp, lines, bright swathes and deep curving shadows of an Edward Hopper. A woman lazing in a clawfoot bathrub on a sunny day, the light coming in through open shadows, all the rest of the room enshadowed.
Avery ChaseIn Denver, dress codes are relatively fluid. Bankers hire people who show up in jeans, at times. So the variety of sartorial choices in the room is understood as both a product of the local culture as well as the culture of the sort of people who are involved in things like LASD and AI.
There are hipsters. Professors. Hippies turned professional. Women in those dresses, with those beads, those bangles. There are many lawyers. There are also a few representatives from the moneyed elite, the ones who do not even pretend to be poor, to be of the earthly plane, who 'work' for their wealth in ways that are not understood by the vast majority of salaried folk, just as they do not understand what 'work' means to the vast majority of salaried folk. A smattering of them, philanthropists from the old school of old money rather than the sort who stamp their feet and howl about how they're job creators and no one deserves their help. These are the classic sort of rich folk.
One of them glows. She is here on her own, apologizing occasionally for her father's absence, as he was called away to Boston or Charleston or Toronto or some other such place, because usually the invitations go to him. Usually she is at events such as this on his arm, and people are heartbroken and touched and adoring of them, this beautiful silver-haired man escorted by his beautiful golden-haired daughter,
whose mother was tragically lost. Whose father never remarried. They are lovely and their story is dramatic but restrained in way that makes it all the more endearing.
But Avery alone, her long hair bound smoothly up behind her crown. She is laughing and enjoying herself, and people drift in and out of her immediate space, drawn to her and repelled by her, both for reasons they can't fathom. She holds a martini glass filled with some palepink liquid, garnished with a twist of lime. She is dressed in a black, white, and red dress of striking geometric design, wearing no jewelry but a pair of diamonds in her ears, holding a little red clutch. She is hard to miss.
Then again, to something like her, a woman who is not a woman at all, so is Eva.
--
They've met before, sort of. They were both at the shenanigans at Forgotten Questions back when the air was warm, when garou and kin alike were playing chicken, riding on each other's shoulders. So she recognizes Eva, and knows who she is, when she sees her. She excuses herself shortly, walking over to the other woman wearing a smile,
hiding, quite well, how insecure Eva makes her.
"Ms. Illeshazy!" she says, delighted. "I had no idea I'd see you here."
Éva Illésházy"Ms. Chase," Éva favors Avery with the gleam of a quiet smile and a certain particularity of regard. A certain weight of her own dark gaze, which lingers for several half-formed interstitial beats longer on the wolf than it would on any mere woman. There is nothing disrespectful about the weight or length of the look. Beneath it is a certain acknowledgment of Avery's presence that Éva herself would not understand to be animal in its nature and immediacy.
It is, however, animal in its nature and immediacy.
"I've not seen you since the meeting of the steering committee for the building co-op. You look lovely. How are you? Oh, and have you met Art Farriday?"
A hook of inquiry sketches itself into the kinswoman's dark brows, as she cuts a glance between Avery and the man beside her, in his rumpled suit. "City Editor for the Denver Post. Art, this is -
"Avery Chase," the man interrupts, reaching out an ink-stained hand to offer Avery, along with a business card. "Ms. Chase, we've never officially met, but the Society Pages are part of my purview, so I feel as if we are already acquainted. In fact, if you aren't averse to a bit of publicity, I do have a feature story idea to pitch to you sometime when we're not both off the clock.
"For now, though. You'll have to excuse me. Judge Hemming has a cigar with my name written all over it, dying to be smoked."
Avery ChaseAvery flicks her eyelashes in a blink, then gives a soft laugh. "Thank you! I love your dress," which is the truth. "Truthfully, I hardly remember the steering committee meeting. After my poor notes, my father started sending his assistant instead when he couldn't attend."
None of which is the truth. She knows what building Eva is talking about. The steering committee is a very nice way, she thinks, of describing a warmoot. But she lies with surprising ease, for someone whose entire bearing depends on honesty. There is a higher ideal, though: the Veil. The lie they all live. One must wonder how she reconciles herself with that.
Her attention turns to Art Farriday, and she offers him her hand to shake. Perhaps he's surprised at the firmity of her grip, and the intimidation he feels, given that she apparently is the sort of woman who can't be bothered to take decent notes during a boring co-op meeting. She smiles broadly at him, though. "Mr. Farriday. I'm so happy to meet you." She takes his card, looking at it like a gift, as he goes on. "Of course," she tells him easily. "I'll give this to my steward," people like her don't have assistants, they have house managers and stewards and proxies and people who do all the mundane business of life for them, "and we'll set something up."
After he excuses himself, Avery tucks the card into her little clutch, giving Eva a tiny smile that makes her look... well. Younger than she is. About as young as she feels. "Do you," she says, sotto voce, "want to get out of here and have some scotch? If I don't get out of these shoes I'm going to throw them at someone."
Éva Illésházy"That sounds brilliant." Éva laughs, the expression spare but no less genuine for it, glancing down rather wryly at Avery's shoes. "The wine is atrocious. I think they iced the red and microwaved the white, and if I stay much longer I might actually end up on a steering committee of some sort or other.
"Which is the last thing I want from this evening."
The win is atrocious enough that the Shadow Lord does not even have a glass in hand to surrender to a passing waiter, or set discretely aside on a pillar that may or may not be part of the art on auction tonight. The truth is, no one in the room is entirely sure.
Avery will find a spare waiter easily enough; how can that brilliant warmth be resisted?
"Barrel 44's not far, just down the street. They have a forty-plus-page menu of whiskeys and scotches and bourbons, not to mention chairs, so you're bound to find something you like."
--
It is winter; they both have wraps to be retrieved - though Éva's is a quite lawyerly thing - a long peacoat, in fine dark wool - from the makeshift cloak room. Tips to be left. Strangers and friends and perhaps even the odd enemy to say farewell to on the way out the door. Perhaps even bids to finalize, but soon enough the sidewalk, where the bustle is dying down. Too late for dinner traffic, too early for the late night crowd, though a number of the galleries and even the small boutiques are still open to catch what extra business they can on a Saturday night.
Barrel 44 is just down the street. They have a sandwich board propped open in front of the door, which reads:
SOUP OF THE DAY: WHISKEY
COFFEE OF THE DAY: WHISKEY
TEA OF THE DAY: WHISKEY
DRINK OF THE DAY: WHISKEY
JUICE OF THE DAY: WHISKEY
and the sort of close, quiet atmosphere inside that feels like it should be smoke-filled as a speakeasy, even though the air is clear.
Avery Chase"I wasn't going to mention the wine," Avery confesses, she of the martini glass, who eschewed the wine entirely. "I think it came in boxes."
She sets her cocktail aside rather than downing it, handing it off to a waiter's tray as they pass. She nods to Eva's suggestion, and sneakily, stealthily as two women of their respective appearances and purity can,
walk right out of the gallery.
--
She is not too fancy to slip out of her shoes discreetly beneath the table, sighing as she shrugs out of her knee-length white coat. Before they left, she managed to lay down the buyout price on three pieces, scrawling her signature a few times before leaving with Eva,
to come here, to sit back and sigh, leaning back.
"Thank you," she says, still rather formal. "I don't mind those things. I rather like them, in fact. But I much prefer... something like this," she goes on, waving a hand between the two of them. "Smaller numbers."
Éva Illésházy"Really?" They eschew the bar proper in favor of a leather-wrapped booth, which feels and smells like the old west, or at least the finest facsimile the Sante Fe Arts District has to offer. The booth gives them a degree of privacy; high wooden backs of the benches both shield their conversation from strangers and mute the hum of other conversations down to a quiet, musical murmur. "You seemed quite in your element back there, though I imagine that being on all the time can be rather tiring.
"Bearing the mantle of strangers' and friends' expectations."
--
Éva does not kick off her shoes, though her own may be slightly more sensible than those Avery chose for the evening. Quietly expensive Italian leather pumps, black and white, with a hint of Oxford detailing. Fashionable, yes, but no more than two and a half inches high.
She does, however, relax enough to share with Avery the coil of an ironic smile.
"Can I make a confession?" That ironic twist deepens burnished by a shine of humor in her eyes, leaning forward as if she were about to share a true state secret. "I may well have a box of wine in my fridge at this very moment."
Avery ChaseEva's acumen startles Avery. It unnerves her. It makes her that much more insecure, to tell the truth. She blinks a couple of times, and she gives a tiny smile, nodding once. "It is the element of a part of my self. But not my whole self."
Which does get tiring. Exhausting, even. No one there, for instance, expects her to unleash the sort of violence she is capable of, all fang and fur and claw. In fact, they would never permit it.
--
Her head tips to the side. "Of course," she says, regarding Eva making any kind of confession. She leans forward, tells Avery about a box of wine. And Avery laughs: "As long as it's not red," she answers, grinning.
A waiter stops by, takes their orders. Avery asks for Lagavulin, neat. When he departs, she inhales deeply, exhales, aware of but not acknowledging the slight awkwardness between them. They don't, after all, know each other. Eva is not her tribe. Avery has hardly had any interaction with her.
"How are you children?" she asks, because that is what you do.
Éva Illésházy"White," Éva agrees quietly. No, she would not be so foolish as to refridgerate a red. "A Picpoul de Pinet. I claim that I keep it for cooking, but my mother in law does all the cooking, and the truth is I like to be able to have a glass without opening a bottle.
"Without," quietly confessional, "Rosza necessarily knowing that I've opened a bottle."
--
Éva debates settling for a local small-batch whiskey, but orders a Glenfiddich in the end, instead.
"They're well," the Shadow Lord returns smoothly, because that is indeed what you Do. "I had them on something like house arrest for quite some time given the recent troubles. My daughter in particular is pleased to be allowed back to her madcap schedule of a ridiculous number of lessons, up to and including the riding lessons she conspired with Calden White to finagle out of me.
"It started with a request for real cowboy, and escalated from there.
"Ellie's quite fond of Calden. Fond enough that I offered to lend her out if he ever wants to see a Disney film during first run in the theaters without consequence.
"I also consider him a friend." A brief pause, not precisely weighted, so much as weighing. "If I'm not mistaken, so do you. Perhaps more than friends?"
Avery ChaseAvery cannot, in all honesty, quite sympathize with what it's like to want a glass without letting anyone know you've opened a bottle. She is the ruler of her house, the paragon of her family despite the fact that she is a daughter, despite the fact that her father still lives. She is the wolf, though. No one speaks against her for anything so small. Not even her father. Certainly none of her staff.
Her brow furrows at the mention of faux house arrest, in sympathy for Eva's children. It smooths, with a smile, talking of lessons. Including riding lessons! Thanks to Calden White. And there is a chill behind her smile, not directed at Eva but just an arrest of her charm, a tension she can't (or doesn't want to) name.
Her daughter is fond of Calden. To the point of going to movies together if they like. And he's Eva's friend. And they are the same age. And he's so good with her children.
She knows it's an overreaction that her chest feels like it's caving in. She can't help that, though. She is at least breathing, however... shallowly. Thinly. And she smiles, because you smile, and she blinks a few times, glancing downward, wishing she had her glass of scotch already.
"Yes," she says quietly, taut with an emotion she is embarrassed to have, much less name, or be revealing. "He's... quite dear to me."
Éva IllésházyÉva has a particular sort of lawyer's particular kind of discretion. She cannot but notice the subtle sort of eclipse that shadows the other woman's radiant charm. The smile that is a smile because one does things like smile in such circumstances. She cannot but notice; and yet: she also does not appear to notice. Éva favors Avery with quiet expression that is human and wry and empathetic, meets her eyes and then glances away. She does not wish she had her Scotch in hand, though were it in hand she would indeed employ it admirably in the moment that follows, sipping it and murmuring something about the quality, inhaling to allow the scent to settle over her palette. Turning the glass, perhaps, to admire the color in the light.
She does quite as well without it. That smile, that flicker of acknowledgment is extended and then her attention is quietly and discretely withdrawn, ceding Avery both space and privacy.
"I've heard quite the same from him." Her eyes are no longer on Avery, but across the room. The supple play of light on the rich finishings. A glance back, dark head tipping rather forward to share a confidence, " - quite some time ago, in fact. He is the soul of discretion, though; and shared your name but recently."
Avery ChaseThey both have their training. The reasons for it, the methods, differ; the outcome is startlingly similar. But Avery struggles this time. This time, this emotion, this drinking companion, and she struggles in part because she did not think it would be a struggle at all, and she is not finding her footing. She does better than most. Avery at her worst is, after all...
still a royal. Still a Silver Fang. Her worst is some people's unattainable, and she is hardly at her worst even now.
--
She's younger than Eva, younger than Calden, but not young enough to blush pink and duck her head when told that the boy she likes told someone about her ohmigawd. She huffs a soft breath of a laugh, lifting her hand to briefly brush at a hair that has fallen over her cheek, pausing when Eva says that Calden is the soul of discretion. He wouldn't even give her name.
Avery blinks, curiosity arresting some of her anxiety. "Discretion?" she repeats back, as a question.
Éva Illésházy"Mmm." Éva hums a note of quiet agreement with the question. Discretion is something of which she approves, clearly. She even rather likes the word itself - the hard consonant followed by all those hushed fricative sibilants. There's a subtle twist of her mouth and a banked light in her dark eyes - humor, rather self-directed, which she allows Avery to glimpse if she wishes to glimpse it - which finds an echo in the brief spike of a wry smile. "I prefer a degree of circumspection in my lives, both personal and professional.
"Perhaps I overvalue it, given the nature of my practice." A brief twist of her shoulders beneath the sleeveless black lace bodice of her dress. She is slender, but there is a certain strength to her born of drive. At her age, it must be drive: her fitness can no longer be an echo of youthful athleticism but a specific and daily choice, a series of specific and daily choices to eat like so and run like so and lift like so.
"I've thought of you - generally, not specifically - as Calden's royal for rather a long time. I don't believe I heard your name until he mentioned it in passing when we saw each other at the stock show.
"To be fair," here the waitress returns, with their two Scotches, both neat, which she sets down rather thoughtfully in front of both women. "I hadn't asked, either."
Avery ChaseAvery does not get the answer, or an answer, that satisfies her moment of curiosity, or confusion, whatever it was. She does not understand why Eva would make a point of the fact that Calden was discreet regarding his relationship with her; she looks thoughtful as Eva explains her appreciation of discretion, thoughtful as Eva explains that maybe, just maybe, being a lawyer has some impact on that.
But Calden's royal makes her laugh, a bright sound, and the smile it brings to her face would have a fair comparison in the sun breaking through momentary clouds. Oh, that amuses her. She is grinning now. "That is delightful," she says, reaching to lift her glass from the table after the waitress has departed. "Calden's royal," she repeats, apparently tickled by this.
After a sip of the burning, biteless liquid that threads fiery and sweet through her veins, she exhales. "I have to admit to being a little intimidated by you," she says, forthright, unabashed.
Éva IllésházyAvery's curiosity goes unanswered, except in the most general of senses. Éva responds without mentioning the marked tension she witnessed at the stock show; without saying anything of Lola Hawkes, or the Uktena's apparent interest in and concern regarding what someone from another generation might call Avery's entanglement with Calden, or any of the rest of it. Avoids the whole subject as artfully and - indeed - quite as truthfully as she can. None of it is her business; she does not wish to involve herself in the private affairs of others.
Instead, they move on. Avery, amused - smiling, brilliant - repeats Éva's locution with such an unselfconscious delight that the older woman decides - really rather deliberately decides - to allow herself to be charmed. It is like a key turning in a lock, the way the gears begin to tumble home deep inside her mind, but beyond that there are no overt signs. Éva does not grin; merely huffs a quiet breath of laughter as she reaches for her own Scotch, turning it thoughtlessly to and fro, long fingers elegant beneath the rim of the glass, two platinum bangles sliding neat and soundless over the spare architecture of her wrist.
---
"Good," she returns, almost immediately, when Avery confesses to being a little intimidated by her. This is not precisely softened by the elegant arch of her winged brows, but there is a banked humor rather inherent in the expression, if one looks closely. "If you weren't I wouldn't be doing my job properly."
Wry.
"Though I'm always surprised to hear that from your sort," by which she means: wolves, though there are many potential misinterpretations of the remark, "given the degree of paternalism that seems rather inherent in the relationship between us. Which seems both more absurd and more poignant to me, with every year that passes."
Avery Chasegood, Eva says, and Avery's eyebrows flit upward a centimeter or two. They descend again, and deepen a bit, drawing together on her brow as Eva goes on. She does not conceal the fact that she is taken aback. Nor does she pretend that the rest -- wolves and kin, paternalism, absurdity -- does not discomfit her.
Instead, she waits for the other woman to finish, then says, with some clarity: "Ms. Illeshazy, I'm a little surprised to hear you say that you think intimidating me is 'good'. I realize you said that with some humor, but... aren't you even a little curious why that is?" She pauses a moment, her eyebrows lifting not so much in surprise this time as open bewilderment: "Beyond that, it doesn't quite suggest that you're interested in the sort of friendliness that sharing a drink would have otherwise suggested."
She doesn't touch the rest. She doesn't need to delve into it to send the message she's trying to get across: that she's a bit put off. And moreover, a little confused.
Éva IllésházySomewhere between Ms. Illeshazy and I'm a little surprised, Éva's dark eyes sweep back to Avery's face. The touch of humor settled over her features like a familiar, perhaps favorite dress evaporates and thoughtful little stitch makes an impression between her dark brows. The light here is soft; diffused enough that the faint threads of lines framing Éva's eyes and bracketing her mouth are smoothed away by the ambient glow, the depth of the shadows. There is something considered and perhaps a little bit searching.
For the moment, she leave her Scotch on the wooden table, fingers steepled over its bring; knuckles prominent in the sweep of her long-fingered hands. The bracelets catch the light; they slide like water - quite nearly soundlessly - with the supple movements of her hand.
"I beg your pardon," a brief, sharp sigh from the other woman, the sound has all the controlled force of the release of air from behind some pressure valve. "I took the comment as a compliment. Perhaps the sort I might hear from a stranger born to my blood. I did not connect it with the here and now.
"Why do you find me a little bit intimidating?"
Avery ChaseDaughter of Falcon that she is, Avery's eyes have a birdlike quickness and awareness when they flick back to Eva's face. Her lips move in the smallest, tenderest little smile, not because Eva needs the tenderness but because, perhaps, Avery does. Or is merely, herself, a little tender; a little raw.
She tips her head. "I understand," she says quietly, and she does. "It was not meant as a compliment. But nor was it a chastisement." She does not want to correct Eva. That isn't why she said anything at all.
Here's this, too: she doesn't comment on the Shadow Lords. The thought is there: she forgot the tribe she was talking to. But that's not true, because Avery did not forget Eva's tribe. She just didn't want to assume stereotypes. That may in part be Erich's fault; he's hardly what one considers 'typical'.
"Because of Calden," she whispers, and there it is again: the way she really looked and sounded when she told Eva she was intimidated, however much she couched it in forthrightness and openness. However much she pretended it to be worthy of laughter, there's truth to it, and part of that truth is that Avery merely sounds vulnerable, there. Her brow is furrowed, her mouth turned down a bit, as she looks down at her scotch. "Because you are elegant and intelligent and lovely. Because... he has spoken well of you. He is delighted by your children. You are, forgive me, closer in age, and... in many ways, a far more appropriate pairing than he and I."
Her frown has gotten quite deep, and she is unhappy with herself. But she looks up again, right at Eva. "I know it must sound very foolish. I'm not suspicious, or concocting something to be scared of that isn't there. I know that Calden values his friendship with you. I was hoping that spending a little time with you might... "
Avery moves her hand idly, lightly, with grace so easy and evident that it strikes piercingly at the heart in that flutter of fingers,
"...help me rid myself of this difficulty."
Éva IllésházyBecause of Calden draws Éva's brows up in an arc of mild startlement that is quickly subsumed by her usual equanmity. The easy, mildly detached steadiness she allows to be warmed only by those flashes of native humor, dry and aware and - if anything - mildly self-deprecating. A supple cant of her head as Avery continues, explaining just how much more appropriate a pairing they might be, which is broken only briefly by the swift ghost of a bemused smile as when Avery inserts her forgive me after noting that they are closer in age.
That graceful little gesture Avery makes with her fingers draws Éva's attention down to the her hands. There she lingers, in the silence after.
Once, Éva opens her mouth to reply.
She thinks better of it; closes her mouth around whatever words remained unsaid in that moment. Swallow them down and inhales and allows the words to be reabsorbed into her body, just so.
Éva is glancing away in that moment, her eyes distant and a bit inward. There is still that note of distance when Éva glances back to Avery; a degree of privacy, a certain, rather cultivated, care.
"I think our lives are far too short," a deep inhale, here. Through her nostrils, deep enough that it lifts her shoulders, draws them back in the shell of the dress she wears. " - for appropriate pairings."
She means it. There is the glimmer of memory in those few worlds, a golden patina of loss, which is banked and quiet, which has mellowed to little more than an old and occasional ache.
"Do you mind if I share a confidence?"
Avery ChaseThere are things Avery doesn't say, either. About the young man who loved her, who she was simply not appropriate for, who left her even when she was. About her own particular brand of her tribe's madness, and how at once she craves solitude and is terrifed about allowing it to consume her, how deep the fear runs of being abandoned, how deep the fear runs that she will force everyone around her to abandon her. These things feed a wound in her soul.
She washes it with clear water. The water is truth; the truth stings, all the same.
What Eva does say, first of all, casts humor into Avery's aching twist of vulnerability. She huffs a soft laugh, because she agrees, and somehow something about that statement comforts her. Strange, the things that make you feel better. Sometimes you never know what it will be.
Avery shakes her head. "Not at all. And I hope you know it will remain in confidence."
Éva IllésházyÉva makes a quiet noise beneath her breath, acknowledging Avery's statement, and something about the inflection of that noise also means, of course, it goes unsaid.
"I did not choose Andraj. And I'm not sure that I could have said, truthfully, that I loved him when he was alive." Oh so frank; almost pitilessly so, particularly with herself. Especially with herself. A spare frame of humor outlined with a spare sort of grief, neither of which is allowed to linger long in either the shape of her mouth or the cast of her eyes. "And yet, since his death, I have been especially careful to keep my personal and family lives quite separate.
"I don't want a lover who knows my children, who adores them. Who might think - wrongly - that he could step in as some substitute for the man they lost because he shares my bed.
"Ellie will never remember her father. But she is old enough that she will always remember Andraj. Andris though - and especially Jozsef - they were so young when he died. Their memories of him are so fragile, so passing.
"What else can I give them, of him?
"What else can I give him, of them?
"So, you see, it would be quite impossible. I welcome friends into their lives, if I trust them. And I trust Calden and I do value his friendship, both for myself and my children. But that's all. And that's all it ever could be, even if you weren't in his life.
"And anyway: you are."
Avery ChaseEva's way is not Avery's way. But Avery knows something about the lines you have to draw in your life. She has been seeing Calden for almost a year now and his interaction with her blood-kin has been at very best, a passing introduction. Her packmate does not enter her thoughts; her packmate will not live where there are kinfolk. They all make lines for themselves, sometimes inexplicable to others, that they cannot cross. Sometimes the people they are closest to are simply the ones who accept those lines, even if they don't understand them.
Someone like Calden isn't even a consideration. 'Personal' and 'family' are different to Eva. And this is how she guards her children, gives them something they cannot otherwise have, because the war took it from them. Because the Wyrm took it from them. Because Th'nak'vis and his pack took Andraj from them.
Avery closes her eyes for a moment, then slowly opens them. "I am glad that you trust Calden," she says quietly, with an earnestness that surprises even her. She is quiet for a little while, then takes a breath and says: "I don't want you to think that I imagine that either of you would... "
It is too distasteful to say. She shakes her head instead.
"It is a difficulty contained within my own mind, my own fears. I suppose if I were to ask you for anything, I would beg imposition on your patience. Your understanding that... I am not entirely as free from such insecurities as I would like to be."
Éva IllésházyThere is a spike of wry humor concealed somewhere deep inside her when Avery assures her that she does not want Éva to think that she imagines that either of them would -
- that distastful word, and the refusal to say it. Éva conceals that irony; does so quitely and quiet carefully, papering over it with a reassuring half-smile, which is the best sort of lie because it is also entirely true. Éva does not think that; and does wish to reassure Avery on that point.
Then that irony rather evaporates. Evaporates entirely in the face of Avery's sincerity; her confession. That she knows her fears; where they live, in her mind. That she is not entirely as free from her insecurities as she would like to me.
This sharp clarity of her gaze, brief and bright: compassion, respect, awareness of the strength it takes to know and face your weakness. To stare them down.
"You have my patience. And if you ever require anything else, you need only ask."
--
The conversation cuts away, thereafter. From the personal to the passing. The art at the auction; the quality of the Scotch. The atmosphere of the bar. After just one drink, Éva thanks Avery for the company, and excuses herself. She has children at home, after all.
Avery ChaseIf Calden were here he might be telling Eva with his eyes, some telepathic impulse: do you see?
But any number of people might feel the same way. Why Avery is respected. Why Avery is listened to, given leadership and authority, and just at the same time seen as one to protect, one to stand in front of, one to die for. Calden has come closest to seeing the way she stares down her weaknesses. Eva now, too, sees how she does not hide from them, lie about them, even to herself. She reaches down, pulls them up out of the muck, so that she can fight them instead of being drowned by them.
At the moment, she is a bit overwhelmed by Eva's response. How unequivocal it is, how firm: she has it. And all Avery must do is ask. She smiles, exhaling sharply in something not humor but relief, gladness, appreciation. She reaches for her drink, lifts it to Eva's, and though she does not say it, the toast is for Ms. Illeshazy herself.
They drink.
--
Avery, it turns out, does not hold her liquor in this form as well as Eva does. She is not exactly giddy or flush-cheeked, but even one glass of scotch clearly has an affect on her. She just smiles so openly, so freely, tells some ridiculous story about one of the artists and an invitation they sent. Three hundred hand-made invitations. She found out at the opening of the artist's show and insisted on buying a few pieces just to reward the effort. That sort of dedication, she tells Eva, admiring it even though it was perhaps a bit foolish. She hates to see effort wasted.
Eva excuses herself. Avery insists on picking up the check, as she is the one who invited Eva out, after all. She secretly hopes to meet Eva's children one day. She doesn't say this. She stays behind a few minutes after Eva leaves, to pay and to slip her feet demurely back into her heels, but she cannot quite get the smile off her face.
Avery ChaseIf Calden were here he might be telling Eva with his eyes, some telepathic impulse: do you see?
But any number of people might feel the same way. Why Avery is respected. Why Avery is listened to, given leadership and authority, and just at the same time seen as one to protect, one to stand in front of, one to die for. Calden has come closest to seeing the way she stares down her weaknesses. Eva now, too, sees how she does not hide from them, lie about them, even to herself. She reaches down, pulls them up out of the muck, so that she can fight them instead of being drowned by them.
At the moment, she is a bit overwhelmed by Eva's response. How unequivocal it is, how firm: she has it. And all Avery must do is ask. She smiles, exhaling sharply in something not humor but relief, gladness, appreciation. She reaches for her drink, lifts it to Eva's, and though she does not say it, the toast is for Ms. Illeshazy herself.
They drink.
--
Avery, it turns out, does not hold her liquor in this form as well as Eva does. She is not exactly giddy or flush-cheeked, but even one glass of scotch clearly has an affect on her. She just smiles so openly, so freely, tells some ridiculous story about one of the artists and an invitation they sent. Three hundred hand-made invitations. She found out at the opening of the artist's show and insisted on buying a few pieces just to reward the effort. That sort of dedication, she tells Eva, admiring it even though it was perhaps a bit foolish. She hates to see effort wasted.
Eva excuses herself. Avery insists on picking up the check, as she is the one who invited Eva out, after all. She secretly hopes to meet Eva's children one day. She doesn't say this. She stays behind a few minutes after Eva leaves, to pay and to slip her feet demurely back into her heels, but she cannot quite get the smile off her face.
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