taxonomites | 003. (visual) a list of the qualities a good girl lacks

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003. (visual) a list of the qualities a good girl lacks

"Hello, Taxon."

Leila greets anyone paying attention out there with a small smile, seated as she is on a grassy section in the forest, several paces away from the greenhouse Sol (and now Ambrose) has occupied, though it's not quite in view, thus making her location more difficult to distinguish. She's sleeveless, today, which means much of her white ink clockwork tattoo is exposed; she's proud of it, so she sees no reason not to show it off.

"So," she begins, "I've been wondering a few things: why do you think so many people here come from the same world? It's overwhelmingly dominated by people from Earth, and it seems to primarily be modern-day Earth, at that.

"Many of us seem to speak the same common language- our captors' idea of convenience, possibly? English isn't my first language, but I'm fluent enough in it. The relatively low level of apparent ethnic diversity can be rationalized, but if we're really all abducted by aliens, they certainly seem to have their preferences when it comes to targets, don't they? I don't have any answers here, but I'm certain I'm not the only one still asking questions. Maybe between us some sort of conclusion can be reached, eventually, and with data we can make progress- I'm aware by now I'm not the only scientist present, but if anyone else I have yet to meet happens to fall into the same profession, please introduce yourselves. I'm listening."

She's not going to admit she's the youngest researcher in her group at home and probably here, too, and thus knows the expertise of others is necessary, but she is aware, at least. This is followed by a careful, considering pause; Leila's been very detachedly amiable up to this point, and avoided being too technical, by her own standards, but now her tone changes to something cooler and more controlled, which in her is generally a tough-skinned cover for guardedness.

"Oh. One more thing. These glitches that people experience. How long do they usually last?"

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"Well, thank you."

The tables, they have turned, and even Leila is wryly aware of it; he's the one pulling away from her, and she keeps pushing closer for all sorts of reasons. In fairness, most of them have nothing to do with her own emotional vulnerability, but it's certainly a taste of her own medicine.

She eyes the water, sighs, and says, "I hope this is not as cold as it looks."

In she goes.

The water is exactly as cold as it looks, not that Ambrose seems to be letting that concern him. He dives beneath it the surface as much to clear his head as anything else, and emerges pulling his hands through his hair, finding the bottom with his feet.

Parts of him that Sol gives like breathing are more locked away in Ambrose, and some of that isn't even the situation - some of that is just Ambrose himself, the way that he is and the way that he was before. (Everything is 'before' and the line is drawn in smoke.) He'd be vaguely amused if he realized, but instead he's marking time until her nails sink past his self-control.

All the same, he's joyous in the most raw way when he tells her, "I missed this."

Joie de vivre is something Leila admires enormously in people, and Sol--or Ambrose--expresses it in such a way that it's always clear to her, always fascinating to watch. She studies him with a small smile, dark eyes lit up in as much as they can be, and says, "It suits you."

In a deliberate echo of what he said to her a few moments ago. Leila sinks under the water, hoping getting thoroughly into it will help her adjust to the temperature; when she comes back up she slides her hands through her hair, too, and tips herself easily into a backfloat, eyes closed.

Here, where he can ignore almost all traces of where they are and what that means, Ambrose sinks into the experience like he's willingly drowning in it. In this place, in this time, where there's no one to witness it but Leila - and he half lets himself believe it's a dream over the alternative.

He's a dead man borrowing someone else's lungs with which to breathe, but for a moment or two drifting in the water, he lets himself forget.

(Almost he can hear Django splashing in the shallows. Almost.)

She thinks to herself that if this gives him even a few moments of peace, she'll let this go on longer than she probably should. Her thoughts are swiftly interrupted, though; Leila inhales sharply, at one point, and straightens up in the water--and then she laughs, shaking her head.

"I think," she tells Ambrose, swimming toward him, "I'm not as used to this as I should be. Plant life is now startling me."

(...he's allowed to troll her, she deserves it.)

"It wants to know what you're doing in its space," he declares without opening his eyes where he's floating himself; the fact he didn't notice until she swum over and knows nothing about the wants of anyone but himself right now is irrelevant, of course he's trolling her.

"I'm following around a crazy man who doesn't seem to mind freezing," she says, reaching out to give his hip a gentle little push, "isn't it obvious?"

"There's worse things in the world than a bit of cold," Ambrose says, his tone lighter than the subtext he can't quite escape. Reminders edge around everything he says, whether he intends it or not. He nudges her back, though, opening his eyes.

"No, I think you have an unfair advantage. Men are like furnaces, you have much more body heat. I'm a scientist, I know these things." Her tone has that edge of haughty bossiness it gets sometimes when she's being entirely self-aware about her own tendencies, and therefore is putting it on intentionally.

She nudges him again, harder this time.

...after a thoughtful pause, Ambrose doesn't answer but rather disappears underneath the water - his hand wraps around her ankle from beneath, thin-fingered and not up to what's either his or Sol's usual strength but not without enough force in him to yank.

She yelps, as he must have known she would, and sinks briefly under the water before making a valiant attempt to escape--which, while it doesn't remind her of her interaction with Solomon, probably should. She's noticed before that the adrenaline with him is always high, always like he's caught her the way a hunter would.

Because most Verbena are exactly that, after all, even if she's hardly prey.

If she gets away, she's going to escape behind the waterfall.

Once she's dashed behind the waterfall, Ambrose lurks in front of it long enough that she might think he's just going to wait until she has to come out - but the temptation to see what lies behind, besides Leila, is too much and he follows her to the rocks there, shaking out his hair like he's a bone-thin labrador.

He has every intention of hurling her back into the lake, by the way.

Leila, for the record, is sitting just above him on a rock, near enough that she can kick her feet in the water and splash him when he comes back behind the waterfall. She slides down in front of him, eying him warily, as though she is going to try to bolt at any moment, though she is unfortunately backed in against a wall, so good luck with that, miss tactical planning.

At what point his clever plan goes awry, Ambrose isn't- no, that's not true. That's not true at all. He knows exactly the point at which he missteps, and when he drags her up by her waist he...stops, rather than what he'd meant to do, half-startled.

It seems, abruptly, too much.

Ambrose lets go, but he doesn't move back.

She tips her head back, giving him a look that can only be described as 'challenging'--the eyes are the same, even if most of the rest of her features have changed. "Does that mean I win?"

Leila remembers the first time she and Solomon began their four-year descent into great decision-making, fighting, making up, and tangling one another in their shared drama so tightly it could choke, and so she knows she shouldn't do what happens next, but it seems like a good idea. It's casual, impulsive, her nails sliding over the back of his neck when she slips an arm around him.

"Does that mean I should toss you back now?"

(...well, she could try.)

The thought strikes him here: there will never be another opportunity. When this is over, he dies and she dies and they do it aching and apart, hoping and needing the sacrifice to have been worth something. This is all that there is until another lifetime that seems so remote even as he stares at the evidence of it before him, against his body. Ambrose stares at her half grieving and half searching, looking for someone she used to be in her eyes and the way she holds her head-

-but when he presses his fingertips against the sides of her face, he kisses her like he's been kissing her his whole damn life.

(It probably doesn't mean she wins.)

She is startled by this, but--not as much as she might ordinarily be. There are certain steps in this dance that Leila knows by heart, including the heavy hanging cloud of meaning between them before he kisses her, and the fact that he seems even more used to it than Solomon says a lot. She should push him back, stop this before it gets out of hand, but she thinks it was out of hand the moment Ambrose appeared in front of her.

So she wraps her other arm around him, too, and draws it out, pressed in close enough that she can share in the body heat she teased him about earlier. She remembers hearing take everything you can from life while you have it, and she thinks: isn't that how Verbena conduct themselves?

She supposes this is kind of like an offering.

The next step is- not what Ambrose does, which is to stop and to clutch uselessly at her hips, shuddering against her for a moment before he pulls away, the air cold where he was a moment ago.

"I'm sorry."

She touches a hand to his arm, quiet, still damp from the lake water.

"Don't be. Please. I didn't exactly stop you."

"That's not what I'm sorry for," he shrugs her off; it pains him to do it, and feels dishonest not to. Either he tells her now or he- he doesn't know. Ambrose scowls at nothing, trapped in indecision, and very badly regretting that he stopped.

She shakes her head, a little bit frustrated now, and pushes closer. Being right up in his face so quickly after that little incident is probably not the best plan, but no one is making the best possible decisions today, either.

"Then what are you sorry for? You look at me like--I don't even know what. Like you hate me or you want to pin me against the rocks or both at the same time, and I'm beginning to think it's personal. So what is it, Ambrose? I told you I wouldn't ask you any questions, but- you know what, I lied, I want to know this."

"I do," he says, wretched with grief and not hate, "I hate you. I hate you so much I can't see clear for it."

Not a thrillingly good idea, no, not when he's still of just the right angle to shove her backwards against the rock and stay there; he's not strong enough to keep her there if she shoves back, though it wouldn't be advisable with wet rock under their feet like this. He still does it, half instinctive.

"You don't remember and I wish you did. I wish I couldn't see that you don't. Hell's teeth, woman, I can't pick kinfolk out by smell."

There's a quick draw of breath when he pushes her back, a flinch that even Solomon has probably never seen before--but she lets it go with a shaky exhale, staring up at Ambrose with dark wounded-animal eyes. Her hair is wet and tangled around her face, and she's almost trembling with memory suppressed, memories she can't have.

"I don't understand." But she has information, and from information she can form a hypothesis. "What don't I remember? What--"

Leila stops, abrupt, swallowing hard.

"Ambrose, am I her?"

"Not any more," he says bitterly, his eyes on the stone behind her and under his bone-white hands instead of her face and those eyes.

Her breathing is ragged, now, with realization--like it physically hurts, which rapidly transcends 'like' and becomes a reality when the pressure builds at her temples. Leila makes a sound a little like a pained keen, the ghost of it, and touches a hand to her head, eyes closing, and she moves forward, against his shoulder. Her feet feel unsteady beneath her, and she is struggling to push back the flood of what she can't know, not without taking steps first. Unlike the Verbena, she's not granted with this knowledge.

"Then I guess you don't hate me at all, do you?" She hisses when the pressure changes, shifting, and hopes that constitutes progress. "What is this--"

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