Lonesome

[holiday_pirner]

A door closed in an empty hallway, and the sound of locks clicking shut drifted through the deserted corridor. Holly stuck her keys in her hoodie pocket and made for the stairs. It was a clear night, and she crossed the street to the small park. She could see the park from her apartment, and she turned to look at the window now. The light from her living room shone like a beacon.

The brunette took a seat on one of the swings, her legs dangling idly as she surveyed her surroundings. Alone.

Her fingers gripped the cool metal of the chains, dragging the toe of one sneaker through the wood chips that lined the play area. There was nothing fun about face-planting into that stuff.

"Hey, Rhys?"

Holly waited a few moments, pushing herself back and forth with her feet. She was tired of being cooped up, and feeling punchy. Nothing.

"Ow!," she cried, hoping she was a convincing enough actress. "I cut my finger really bad. It's bleeding..." The brunette clutched her hand and waited some more.

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[birthright_npc]

The sound from the shadows might have been a chuckle, but it came out sounding like the recording of a chuckle. He'd been standing in a small group of scrubby trees, out of reach of the lights surrounding the park. A half-smoked cigarette burned in his left hand.

"You're not supposed to know I'm here, remember?"

Rhys moved to stand near the swings. He was still wearing the coat from that afternoon. The crossbow was hidden beneath it. He wore a wristwatch that used military time. His boots were freshly polished, and they glinted dully in the glare from the sodium lights.

"Couldn't sleep?"

[holiday_pirner]

He was so square. Her eyebrows shot up, and she suppressed a laugh. "It's not even 10 o' clock. Who goes to bed at 10?" Holly looked up at the night sky, cloudless and denim blue.

"Tell me something." The brunette looked him square in the face. "Exactly how much is my grandmother paying you for this?"

[birthright_npc]

Rhys tilted his head at her, a mildly curious expression crossing his squarish face. His eyes focused on the street beyond the park for a moment, then returned to look at her. The cigarette found a home in his mouth, and he puffed on it.

"The terms Mrs. Pirner and I came to are none of your concern," he said calmly. So she'd either figured it out or she'd spoken to her Council friend about him, and she'd inquired on the girl's behalf. It made no difference to him. If she thought she could offend him, she'd have to work harder than that.

"I was surprised she didn't go in-house, but she must have felt an unaffiliated party would be less personally invested. Sometimes that's best."

[holiday_pirner]

Holly nearly fell off the swing. She couldn't help it, she laughed now. "Oh, my god. Was it really that easy?"

The brunette tilted her head back, calming down enough to speak normally. "Yeah, I didn't even know for sure it was her until now. Ooh, that must suck, to be tricked by a 'civilian'."

She had needed a laugh. "And you saved me the money of having to call long distance. Thanks for that."

[birthright_npc]

"Mmm. I'm glad I amuse you. Besides, robots don't know how to lie, remember?"

He said it without rancor, stepped closer so he could see her bruises. "I see your lip didn't swell up as much as it could have. How did you explain your face to your Watcher acquaintance? She must have been delighted."

One set of battered knuckles rubbed at his close-shaven jaw, and then that hand tucked itself into a pocket. He didn't attempt to take up the swing next to her. "No partying tonight?"

[holiday_pirner]

"I told her it was a new look I've seen in all the fashion magazines, and wanted to try it for myself." She twisted in the swing, watching the chains entwine themselves.

"Partying isn't all I do." Holly brushed the hair out of her eyes, kicking some wood chips toward him. She watched as they landed on his spit-shined boots. There. Better.

"I cook. I do a really good curry, actually. I read, a lot." The brunette realized she was telling all these things to the wrong person, and went quiet.

[birthright_npc]

"It's just as well you're not out tonight. Saves me from having to try and fit into a club atmosphere. Weapons are difficult to explain to a bouncer."

Rhys studied the wood chips that had landed on the toes of his boots, reached down and flicked them off so that they joined their fellows. The smoke was down to the filter, and he took a final drag before dropping it to the ground and putting it out.

"What do you read?"

[holiday_pirner]

She stared at the smoldering cigarette butt, then brought her eyes back up to meet his. "You shouldn't litter in a place where kids play, you know." Holly ignored the other detritus that was scattered haphazardly about them, not to mention random graffiti.

The brunette shrugged, the baggy material of her sweatshirt shifting. "It doesn't matter. Anything that's not boring."

Her next question was unfiltered. "Have you ever killed anyone? Human, I mean."

[birthright_npc]

"I have. It was in war. Everyone kills in war. If you're asking if I enjoyed it, the answer is no."

Rhys had reached his limit of what he allowed himself to smoke for the night, so she didn't pull out his cigarettes again. He studied the chains of the swing she was occupying. They were rusty. The color reminded him of old blood. He scratched the back of his neck.

"Does he kill?"

[holiday_pirner]

"Who's 'he'?"

She waited a tick, then feigned a mask of revelation. "He has done, maybe. But that's what happens, isn't it?" Holly stood up from the swing, the rubber seat hitting the back of her thighs.

"He said he'd try not to." The brunette pulled out a cigarette of her own. The smell of his still lingered in the air, making her crave one.

Her foot crunched over an empty brown paper bag as she knelt to pick up the butt. She began walking toward a trash bin.

[birthright_npc]

"And you think he's trainable."

It wasn't sarcastic. The remark was just there, hanging in the silence of the early night. He watched her pick up the spent smoke, toed a shallow hole in the wood chips.

"It doesn't bother you that he 'may have done'?"

[holiday_pirner]

Holly turned around, an expression of disbelief etched across her features. "He's not a dog!" She folded her arms defensively. "He isn't a solder, either."

She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments. How did she feel? It was hard to put into words. She didn't see him like the one in the alley, bearing down on her.

"No," the brunette admitted out loud. "Or not as much as it should."

[birthright_npc]

"Mmm."

Rhys toed a deeper hole in the wood chips, then filled it up again. They should clean these up and put down concrete. There would be less chance of some child getting them embedded somewhere uncomfortable when they fell down here.

"I'm not trying to dissect your morality," he told her evenly, putting his other hand into his pocket. "I'll leave that for a priest or for your Watcher friend. But if you're going to continue whatever relationship you have with him, there might be certain compromises you have to make."

His watch beeped, signalling the hour had changed. He gave it a glance, tucked that hand out of sight again. "If he's trying to wean himself of the habit of murder, he'll probably fail, at least at first. I can almost guarantee it, because that's what his kind does. Vampires might not be either dogs or soldiers, but they are natural killers."

Someone exited the girl's building across the street, got into a taxi, which disappeared down the street. Rhys' expression had yet to change from one of placid curiosity. "What if it's you he tries to kill?"

[holiday_pirner]

"You're not trying to dissect my morality. Well, that's good, because no one's asked you to." Holly worked on the progress of her cigarette, watching the paper burn a little more with each drag.

"Humans kill all the time. They lie, cheat, steal." She gestured to him with the burning red. "Wage wars. What's the difference, exactly? Oh, they have souls. So they can completely fuck you over, but they'll feel bad about it after."

Holly stopped in her slow walk across the park. "That isn't going to happen."

[birthright_npc]

"You think it hasn't occurred to him? That he hasn't wondered what your blood tastes like?"

There was no sharpness in the questions, and Rhys' hands were still in his pockets. His shoulders went up and down inside the coat, jostling the crossbow. The smell of her burning cigarette made him want another one, but he controlled the urge.

"Humans are bad," he agreed after a short silence. "It's why the prisons are so full, and we get away with things more often than we should. But humans are more adaptive to change. I did. I'm not particularly moral, at least not as someone else might understand it. I have my own code, and that allows me to take lives - or let them be taken - when it's necessary. Do you really think your friend has a choice?"

[holiday_pirner]

She sat on the end of a metal slide, flicking ash and watching the wind carry it away. "I'm fully aware that he has." Holly crossed her legs, her foot jiggling back and forth as she talked.

"He has a choice, obviously. I'm here, aren't I?"

The brunette met his eye as she tossed the rest of her cigarette. "This conversation is boring me," she declared. "Let's talk about you."

She played with the strings on her hoodie as she watched him carefully. "It must have been difficult, you know, war. I bet you have a lot of scars." Holly wasn't referring solely to physical.

[birthright_npc]

He snorted. He knew an evasion tactic when he saw it. He'd tried therapy when he got out of the army, tried it and found it not to his liking. He wasn't much of a talker, at least not about himself. It was apparently something they had in common.

"It doesn't matter anyway, whether or not he has a choice. If I think he's endangering you, I'll kill him."

He fell silent, studied her with that amphibian stare. He wasn't uncomfortable. He hadn't been uncomfortable in years. "Scars come from being alive, child," he said in a tone that alternated being being gentle and flat. A sympathetic robot. "Things we do, things we see, the things that get done to us."

A spot on his cheek itched, and he scratched at it with his index finger. "And I think I'm not the only one who's all banged up."

[holiday_pirner]

"Do me a big favor, please," she said, leaning back against the slide, palms flat against the metal. "Don't condescend to me." Holly flashed him a smile, but her eyes were cold.

"You think I'm traumatized or something?" The brunette stared at her shoelaces. "I want to hear your theory. Just don't call me 'child' again. It's weird."

[birthright_npc]

"I won't call you child if you won't try to provoke me as if you are one." The robot was back, the sympathy diminishing.

Rhys had put his hand back into his pocket, the itch having subsided. He had given himself an extra-close shave that morning. "Maybe traumatized is the wrong word. But you are troubled. You wonder why you're not like the rest of them, whoever 'them' is. If you're normal."

It wasn't really in his job description to psycho-analyze her, but he'd been watching her for long enough that he'd developed his own ideas. "I watched you in London. You flailed around looking for answers, stabbing about in the dark because you were confused and angry. I think you're still confused and angry. You hide it well, but it's there."

One shoulder lifted in a shrug. "I could be wrong. I'm not a psychiatrist. But from what I understand, your father left you at exactly the wrong moment, and I think deep down you're so furious with him that you can barely breathe."

[holiday_pirner]

"That's reaching," she shot back. "You're bad at this."

Holly stood again, restless. It was hard to stay still. She always thought better when she was moving without purpose. "Maybe I don't want to be like everyone else. Maybe I do things just because. But that's hard for a person like you to imagine, not having a reason or 'orders'."

He thought she was trying to provoke him, but he was wrong. The brunette had already accomplished that by getting him to talk to her in the first place.

"It's a good thing you don't get paid to think."

[birthright_npc]

"Like I said, I'm not a shrink. You asked me for my theory, I gave it to you. If you don't agree with it, that's your issue."

A group of clubgoers rumbled past on the sidewalk, and Rhys' flat stare was directed towards them as they chattered on their way past. He was beginning to need to take a piss. That meant retreat.

"But you might want to think about why you called me over here in the first place. Why you can't stand silence and being alone. If you didn't want to hear another voice, why did you bother?"

[holiday_pirner]

"You should probably go back to your hiding spot now."

Holly grabbed her keys, clutching them in her fist. "No danger tonight. I won't go running through the streets with my neck exposed." Her voice was sarcastic and dismissive.

"In fact, why don't you take the night off? Go have a pint with some mates." The brunette shot him one last parting look before turning back toward her building.

[birthright_npc]

Rhys watched her go, and something shifted in his expression, made it slightly more human. Avoidance. He recognized it, knew it for what it was. He'd practiced it himself, at least until he'd done his own coming to terms.

But it wasn't within his parameters to help her with hers. It wasn't his fault she was running away from things.

His coat swished around his calves as he went to find a convenient place to make water. He had no 'mates' to have a pint with, but if she really was as stiff-necked as she acted, she wouldn't leave the apartment tonight. Living on military time meant it was early to bed, early to rise. That meant it was past his personal curfew.

He would be back tomorrow night. Even if she didn't want him there.