People you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley

[+ZincAboutIt]

19 hours ago, Voidus said:

“You're looking good today." She commented, wishing that there was some professional way for her to rub at her temples and ease her headache. "Slept well?"

Lita felt a little shiver run down her neck and smiled as she poured tea first for Laurelai, then for herself.

“Something like that, yes,” she said, turning around to fetch a small pot of sugar and a tiny pitcher of cream. She set these before Laurelai, feeling a small twinge of guilt at the woman’s obvious headache. Perhaps the kettle had been the wrong choice. “I take it you haven’t?”

Lita set the kettle on a little stand near the fireplace and returned the poker to the flames, then slid into her chair.

”Please do begin.” She nodded at Laurelai to begin drinking, then opened a drawer in her desk to remove a file. 

“I’ve received nearly the entire picture of our well-dressed gentleman,” Lita went on, stopping to pour a splash of cream into her tea. It swirled in the cup, mixing lazily, until Lita gave it a whirl with a spoon. “There’s one final piece to set in place, and I thought you might wish to accompany me. Tell me,” she sipped the tea, still piping hot, “have you visited the Department of Records yet?”

[Voidus]

"I take it you haven't?" Lita replied to Laurelai's question. Her energy had dimmed slightly but it still felt insufferable for someone to be that bright this morning.

Laurelai gave a small shake of her head but didn't elaborate further, she wasn't truly sure what had caused her to have slept so poorly. Perhaps just some unseasonable warmth that she wasn't accustomed to, perhaps some forgotten nightmare. Whatever it was felt like it was going to drag her down all day if she let it, so rather than feel annoyed at Lita for her better fortune, Laurelai attempted to simply accept some of the light and warmth the other woman radiated and hope it lifted her day to something a little better.

"Thanks." She said, smile a little more genuine this time as she accepted the tea. Sugar felt like a bit much but she did add a splash of cream to cup before taking a cautious sip.

Blessedly the liquid did not scald her mouth, and almost instantly she felt some of the edge taken off of her headache. It wasn't a miraculous healing and did very little for the tension she couldn't seem to shake the feeling of, but it did help. It let her mind sharpen enough to actually catch Lita's next words as she explained their next steps before asking Laurelai about the department of records.

"Heard of it." She replied truthfully. "But I haven't yet had a chance to drop by, though I'd hoped to once the immediate problem was solved. It does seem a useful place for one to try to orient herself here."

She had considered visiting the department, they were responsible for much of the information that she'd gleaned so far to help her understand the Alleys and what happened there. But when the options were a library of records or the actual research department that created the things described in those records it was easy to guess which way curiosity would lead. She doubted any of the departments in the Alleys could truly be considered 'boring' by her normal standards, but going to something as mundane as a records room when visiting a magical secret society had seemed... wasteful.

"Has something interesting happened there?" She asked with a wry smile. "Or are we on another fact-finding mission?"

But from what she'd read about the Department of Records they only recorded events and experiments that had to do with the Alleys themselves. Information about the wider city was much more in keeping with Lita's department. What information on the well-dressed man could Records have that Lita didn't?

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

“Has something interesting happened there?" She asked with a wry smile. "Or are we on another fact-finding mission?"

Lita raised an eyebrow at that. “I didn’t realize you were so eager for ‘interesting’ work. I do apologize if spycraft isn’t shaping up to be everything the cinema promised.” She took another sip of tea, then gave Laurelai a sharp smile. “But don’t worry, R&D are always looking for assistants. I’m sure I could put in a good word if you’d like a transfer.”

She winked, then flipped open the file. 
“It appears,” Lita ran her finger down the dossier before stopping at a picture of a shapely dressed man in his middle years, “that we are looking for one Ronald Darsen. Forger - mundane of course - embezzler, con artist, tax evader, and purchaser of radically expensive suits. As one would be, with all that dirty money. One has to look clean, after all, and doesn’t he just.” Lita tapped her tongue against the back of her teeth once, then took another sip of tea. “But perhaps the most interesting thing about dear Mister Darsen is that he works for us, that is to say, the DA.”

Lita stopped to allow that to sink in, then continued. “Occasionally one department will find itself at cross purposes to another, almost always by accident. I initially thought this the case. So imagine my surprise when I could find no record whatsoever of his Department - or any Department - that authorized his foray into Einladung Hospital.”

She paused again, this time to unlock a tiny drawer in the desk and pull out a single sheet of paper. “Mail just seems to appear around here - so convenient. So quick. You never see the messengers, or if you do, you forget almost immediately. Most people don’t even think they can talk. But I assure you, a Stranger will talk if you apply the right leverage - that leverage being a Senior R&D member with pliers wrapped around your linchpin spike.”

Her smile sharpened. “It is convenient to have friends in high places. Even here, it largely comes down to who you know. Which brings me to our ‘interesting’ fact. The Stranger who delivered a missive to Ronald Darsen cannot actually remember where he got it, or why. He could only tell us that he was sent by Department Head Allie of DASU. A Department which I have never heard of, and neither has the oldest person I could find - who happens to be a tidy 2,500 years old. So, either someone is playing silly buggers with all of us, including a nigh-invisible hemalurgic servant - or something else is happening. And the only place that has older records than I do is the Records Department. So if this ‘Allie’ exists, that will be the place to find them. And if they do not, then I believe Ronald Darsen will have a rather interesting afternoon.” Lita grinned mirthlessly.

“And I do mean interesting.” 

 @Voidus

[Voidus]

“But don’t worry, R&D are always looking for assistants. I’m sure I could put in a good word if you’d like a transfer.” Lita said with a sharp smile.

A jolt of anxiety hit her stomach as Laurelai met Lita's gaze. Her spine straightened as she felt herself instinctively make use of her full height and came very close to fixing her new boss with an icy stare of retaliation at the barb. Surely Lita knew that Laurelai hadn't actually meant...

Lita winked before continuing on.

God damnit Lita. Laurelai growled internally as she forced her posture to soften slightly. I am far too exhausted to deal with that Rusting wicked sense of humour right now.

“But perhaps the most interesting thing about dear Mister Darsen" Lita continued as Laurelai firmly pushed her attention back to the conversation. "is that he works for us, that is to say, the DA.”

Laurelai stiffened at that, she pulled her cup away from parched, waiting lips and placed it back on the table to stare more fully at Lita as she absorbed the impact of that sentence. Someone else in the DA was also investigating the hospital? But rather than approach the mistress of spies and information they'd either got the accountant to do it for them or else Mister Darsen himself was the one initiating the investigation.

Lita quickly dismissed the idea of this being a formal investigation by one of the other departments before pulling out a sheet of paper and idly mentioning how she had acquired it. Laurelai was quite sure that the story was designed to intimidate her a little and test her response to such blatant discussion of violence. She was equally sure that it was quite effective as her face grew even paler than usual for a moment and she took another sip of tea to warm herself.

"So we're preparing for fact finding and an interesting afternoon potentially?" Laurelai said, her eagerness at finding more answers quickly stamping out her momentary distaste at how some of them had been acquired. "Why Lita you do know how to spoil a girl."

Her grin echoed Lita's own and the icy chill that her eyes had held since leaving her house that morning was taken over by a smouldering hunger for more hidden secrets. The intensity of the emotion almost startled Laurelai herself, who had always been curious, but this felt somehow different. Perhaps her fateful encounter with the DA had only stoked her hunger even as they fed a part of it, but whatever the reason she was more than happy to take the opportunity to satiate the rising need.

[+ZincAboutIt]

"Why Lita you do know how to spoil a girl." Laurelai matched Lita’s smile, and Lita saw in her eyes a flicker of something familiar. A hungry gleam, the keen gaze of a hunter sensing its prey. She reveled in the shared sensation; it was like sharpening one’s teeth in a mirror. 

“A practiced spy needs plenty of skills.” Lita felt the whisper of something as she said it, like breath on the back of her neck, like teeth toying at her ear. She drained the last of her tea, the heat lingering in her mouth. It felt as though something hovered in the air, sharp as broken glass and heady as wine. It waited, an unseen tendril of smoke and shadow curling around the two of them, feeding their hunger, drawing upon it. 

Lita stood, sliding the gold coin off the table and letting it dance between her fingers. “Come,” she said to Laurelai, “let us be about our work. Work before play. We must be well prepared for Mister Darsen. After all, preparation is everything. We just need to find the right thread to pull.”

The coin almost seemed to pulse in her hand, phantom heat simmering through the narrow red scar on her palm. Lita bared her teeth against the slight pain; even still, her lips curled upwards. “I do so enjoy watching a handsome man unravel, don’t you?”

@Voidus

[Voidus]

Was it Laurelai's imagination? Or had the room actually increased in temperature a little as the two women exchanged predatory grins? Either way Mister Darsen was certainly in for an interesting afternoon. Hopefully he appreciated how fortunate he was to have the attention of two such lovely ladies and provided them with the information that they needed. But if not..

As she stood, Laurelai's expression sharpened again, molten hunger cooled and was forged into a blade of desperate need. If they couldn't find what they needed by asking Mister Darsen kindly then she would need to see if pain could unpick what pleasantries could not. Despite only moments ago feeling briefly queasy at the mention of torture, Laurelai was also quite certain that if that was what she needed to do to pull the secrets from this man she was more than willing. She would pull everything he knew from him, leaving broken shell of a body behind as she left to find someone who knew more. More and more and more until she consumed all the secrets there were to know, until she was once again flooded by that omnipotent feeling of-

"And here we are." Lita said, interrupting Laurelai's somewhat sadistic and horrifying thought process.

With a start Laurelai realized that they had already arrived at the Department of Records, though she could barely even remember leaving Lita's office, let alone travelling through the Alleys between there and here. She'd been distracted by thoughts of something. What was it? Some idea or memory that slipped from her grasp faster the more she tried to grab at it.

When Lita opened the door even that faint trace of a memory faded from her as Laurelai looked into the room beyond. Dozens upon dozens of identical desks filled the central space, most waited empty with a single sheet of paper on their surface and a golden pen perfectly positioned to the paper's side. Other desks seated denizens, not so strange to look at as the denizens of R&D but perhaps even more single-mindedly focussed on their task as the room filled with the quiet sounds of paper being turned and the scratching of pen against page.

But while that central space was what immediately drew the eye it was dwarfed by what surrounded it. Enormous shelves that stretched from the floor to an impossibly high ceiling, ranging from simple wall cubbies where rolled sheets of parchment could be kept to steel drawers with manila files to some kind of rack that seemed designed to hold stone tablets of all things. The sheer number of documents in this space must exceed that of every library Laurelai had ever seen or heard of prior to this moment.

I have been lost in the desert, dying of thirst. Laurelai realised. And here is my salvation. My Oasis.

How foolish she had been to think that the toys that the R&D department held had built were the temptation of the Alleys, the power that she could gain. Compared to what was stored in these halls even the most powerful of spikes seemed like little more than a consolation prize. This was the true treasure. This was surely what had called to her and led her to Lita the night of the festival.

"Where do we start?" She asked, her voice cracking slightly as she stared into the room with a desperate, unquenchable thirst.

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

"Where do we start?"

Lita looked over her shoulder at Laurelai, who stood gaping at the endless shelves with awed avarice. She had the stunned, starving look of a street dog that had suddenly found itself in a butcher shop. Lita knew she had better throw her a bone  soon, or she’d bolt for the nearest shelf and start gnawing on the scrolls.

”This way,” Lita said with a small smirk. Interesting enough indeed. If someone looked at Lita the way Laurelai was looking at the nearest filing cabinet, she’d already have her dress halfway off.

She led them past the forest of desks and their scribbling occupants towards a slightly broader, more elevated desk. A slender Singer man in Scholarform looked up as she tapped two fingers on the desktop. He wore a pair of silvery spectacles and had his hair strands braided into a complex tail that fell down the back of his grey robes. Azim had always dressed as an Ardent, which Lita found odd - though she was not sure why. He also had enough spikes in his chest to open a hardware store. Surely that was odder.

“Ms. Attar,” he said softly, his voice slightly rhythmic. Lita had not learned much about the Singer Rhythms, but she was fairly certain this was one of the formal ones. Respect, perhaps? “How may I help you?”

”Azim,” Lita responded, inclining her head slightly. Azim was not technically the Head of the Department of Records, but he was absolutely it’s ruler in all but official title. She hadn’t expected him to be working today, but she appreciated the stroke of luck. Azim had a memory like a Coppermind, which she guessed was technically true, as he was a copper compounder. He basically was the library catalog.

”This,” Lita gestured to her side, “is Laurelai Esserethel, my newest acolyte. Laurelai, this is Azim, Herald of Records.”

Lita winked at Azim, who sighed slightly. “How you don’t cut yourself with that tongue of yours I’ll never know.” His voice had changed slightly, and Lita was sure he was secretly pleased. “Well met, Laurelai Esserethel.” He nodded to Laurelai. “Now, what is this flattery for, Ms. Attar? You only ever compliment me when you need a favor.”

Lita placed a hand on her heart in mock offense, then slipped a single sheet of paper from a pocket and slid it to Azim. “I need to know if there’s anything in the Department on this person. Go back as far as you can. All the way, if possible.”

Azim gave her a long look, then he read the paper. “All… the way. All the way?”

Lita leaned on the desk. “Yes. All the way back.”

@Voidus

[Voidus]

Laurelai was lost staring at the shelves, her interest flittered from one to the other in an endless, glorious loop. There was no signage to help her identify what shelf held what information but that knowledge barely fazed her. Laurelai had picked up many skills and trades to varying levels of proficiency over her life, she was quite used to casting a wide net when it came to research and learning. Perhaps she should simply pick a shelf and see what it held? 

“Well met, Laurelai Esserethel.” A voice nearby said, eventually drawing her attention back at the sound of her name.

She stared at the slender finger, taking a little longer than usual to recognize a Singer in Scholarform, perhaps due to the ardent robes, though likely it had more to do with the endless wells of knowledge that kept threatening to steal her focus once more. Giving her head a slight shake she tried to smile and nod politely at the Ardent before Lita's words finally caught up to her mind and her eyes snapped back to her redheaded mentor.

"Herald of Records?" She said, voice lowering habitually in a library. "Is that the same as a department head? Or a Rosharan title?"

Mentally she flicked through every book she'd read on Rosharan history but unfortunately that of the Singers was still frustratingly under recorded. While some of their oral traditions had been transcribed it was far too few for her liking. It had also not been a particular area of focus of hers beyond the tiny handful of times she'd needed to help a Singer patient at the hospital.

"And what does 'All the way' mean?" She pressed, the rising tide of her curiosity pushing past her natural inclination for polite, measured speech. "How far back do these records go?"

Actually that one she could likely guess at herself, legends said that the Alleys predated the city, which had always seemed to be a bit of a contradiction to her. How did one have alleys without a city? But having walked through them now she could believe it. And this room certainly seemed older than anything else she'd seen. But then how much older? What did older even mean in this context? The Alleyverse was separated from most other worlds' time streams, a day here could mean a hundred years on Scadrial and simultaneously only a minute on Earth. So many questions and so few answers, and those answers came far too slowly to satisfy her itch.

Absently she noticed Azim leave, presumably to begin collating the documents that Lita had requested. But she could not simply sit idly about while those were gathered. Surely there had to be something else here, one of these documents must be able to answer her questions.

"Is there an index here?" She said, voice steadily accelerating. "Somewhere to note what's collected where? Or a categorization system at the least. Chronological? Topical would be preferred, easier to find related subjects that way. But then I suppose if citations are listed correctly with some kind of reference number then that would simplify things and assuming this includes historical records as well as experimental then chronological organisation would make sense as well, perhaps some kind of hybrid model or duplication of records across both, or  collations of similar records into volumes."

She felt herself growing dizzy at the thoughts as her mind spiderwebbed into different possibilities, chasing down each string as she came across it into an endless web that she couldn't quite make sense of. But if she just concentrated harder she would understand. No, that wasn't it. Her attention was here, she was focussed correctly even as she felt another migraine begin to build. The problem was the resources she had available, as things stood now this hall of records couldn't serve her needs. She needed something faster, more immediately able to answer her questions as they arrived.

Still stationary at the desk her eyes hunted around the room, looking for something before finally arriving at Lita again. She was the head of a department wasn't she? The leader of all the spies in the Alleys. Surely she must have accumulated a wealth of information from her position. Perhaps not as much as the department of records in quantity but infinitely more easily searchable. She'd answered so many of Laurelai's questions already and helped her find her own answers to several more. And after all, she had been drawn to Lita that night, not to this library. That meant her initial decision, to become an acolyte under the spymistress of the Dark Alleys must have been the correct one and Lita would surely be able to-

Breathe. She heard her own voice say, dimly in the back of her mind. She'd realised that she was getting tunnel vision as she stared into Lita's eyes, hoping to mentally wrest the secrets from them. But perhaps that tunnel vision had less to do with her focus and more to do with impending asphyxiation.

"Sorry." Laurelai said as she drew in fresh air to clear her mind. "I suppose that was my inner scholar coming out a bit."

Laurelai was usually very practised at arranging her expression, whether a deliberately patronising smile to an irritating peer or a polite refusal to somebody in a dance hall. But why was it that as the day went on she was finding it harder and harder to force her face back to some semblance of polite calm? She prayed to whatever gods dwelt in the Alleys that Lita didn't take her stiff smile personally. If she decided that she'd had enough of Laurelai and deposited her back into the city, with no way to answer these questions anymore, then Laurelai was not entirely sure of what she might do in order to seek the answers out for herself. The simplest solution was simply to make sure to do whatever was needed to keep her new employer happy.

[+ZincAboutIt]

Lita watched Azim turn to go, his face pinched slightly. She knew enough to realize her request had him both curious and worried - no one ever requested to go all the way back. 

And what if he finds nothing at all?

The premise had Lita itching to chew on one of her lacquered fingernails, but she stopped herself. If he found nothing, then it meant that she and Laurelai would get their answers from Ronald Darsen. And if he did find something… well, the idea of a secret Department was both fascinating and disturbing. Lita would be a fool to think she’d discovered every secret the Dark Alley had to offer, after all, that’s what had led her here in the first place.

Laurelai had begun speaking, asking about an index of some sort. Lita was about to answer but the blonde kept going, her eyes taking on a faraway cast but somehow sharpening at the same time. There was an echo of something there, at the core of her gaze, something that Lita felt she ought to understand. The blue of her eyes almost seemed to shimmer, like light on water.

”Sorry,” Laurelai said, breaking the trance-like state with a breath. “I suppose that was my inner scholar coming out a bit.”

Lita blinked, tearing her own eyes away from Laurelai’s. She smiled reassuringly at the woman, who was doing her best to rearrange her features back into their typical cool serenity.

Something happened there, Lita thought, cocking her head to the side. There was a sort of perverse pleasure in seeing Laurelai so off her guard. Lita felt that golden thrum in the air again, the liquid shimmer that had run through her body ever since she had woken up. For one moment Lita entertained the thought of taking Laurelai’s chin between her fingers, cracking that porcelain veneer like an eggshell and pulling the fevered desperation out of her inch by inch. 

The things I could offer you, Lita’s mind whispered in a voice not entirely her own. Knowledge, power, that drop in your gut as you plunge over the edge into utter free fall. And damn the cost. Dash yourself against the rocks of your own ravenous need. Your blood and your sanity will drip down into the hungry sea like fine wine.  And I will gladly drink whatever’s left of you, even as you sear my tongue with your fire, my Little Lita.

Snap!

Lita looked down, the odd voice forgotten, at the two halves of the golden pen in her hands. Rusts.

“No need to apologize,” Lita said smoothly, setting the two halves of pen aside. “At least half of spycraft is scholarship. Information is as good as gold, in my opinion. Better, even. Gold weighs down the pockets, which ruins the line of a dress.” Lita winked.

@Voidus

[Voidus]

“No need to apologize,” Lita said smoothly and prompting a surge of relief and gratitude from Laurelai. "At least half of spycraft is scholarship. Information is as good as gold, in my opinion. Better, even. Gold weighs down the pockets, which ruins the line of a dress.”

Laurelai returned Lita's smile a little more genuinely, though as she did so she felt the smallest of blushes creeping up to colour her cheeks with faint warmth. It was nothing but idle banter she knew. From their very first meeting at the winehouse Laurelai knew that Lita enjoyed the game of conversation and played it well, lacing her words with hidden barbs, secrets and traps. But had she always been this... flirtatious?

With a mental shrug Laurelai dismissed the thought, perhaps it was simply owing to whatever had brought her into such a good mood tonight. It was hardly the most extreme personality shift that Laurelai had seen, given her work in the cognitive ward. Thankfully the warmth in her cheeks also helped distract Laurelai long enough that she regained control of her mental faculties and her mouth, letting neither run away quite so far as they just had. But that was certain to be a temporary measure, a little sensory distraction might be a welcome reprieve but it was no cure for her mood.

Perhaps some other calming techniques? She thought to herself, mental voice much less snide this time. It's not like we're short on those, every culture in the cosmere and beyond seems to have their own version.

As Laurelai settled into a regular breathing pattern she recalled a technique from a magical world outside of the cosmere. They separated their techniques by gender on that world for some reason that always seemed incredibly silly to her, but perhaps simply being the traditionalist that she was she opted for the women's visualization.

A gentle river that carries you along downstream. To fight against the inexorable tide is utter foolishness, but if you allow it to carry you then you can direct the flow. She recalled. Almost immediately she felt her lingering tension begin to subside by another degree. The thought of drifting along, allowing herself to simply be carried and gently direct herself to wherever she needed to go. To allow the gentle droplets of rain to carry her mind down to what she sought and-

Rain? Her mind interrupted again, breaking the reverie with a snap. It left her feeling somehow better and worse at the same time. More relaxed perhaps, but also... hungrier. She felt her eyes scan the shelves again before she dragged them back to Lita.

"Well." She said, a smile still on her lips though the actual mirth had long faded now. "We can't have that. If I wasted their efforts by filling my dresses with pockets of gold I'd have half the tailors in the city out for my head."

Conversation was a little easier again, now that she was at least not so tense that she was snapping at everyone. And Laurelai could very easily fall into the comfortable patterns of back and forth banter, even if it was a little subpar from her usual standards. But banter wasn't what she needed now, the clever wordplay and verbal fencing might give her some amusement but they wouldn't scratch the itch she felt. They wouldn't satisfy this hunger.

"Lita." Laurelai said cautiously. "We've spoken of these... flashes. The ones that some people have been having. Memories that aren't real, deja vu..."

Laurelai hated the need that began to creep into her tone, but her desperation for answers was only growing stronger. She simply didn't have the time for this careful game of secrets and half-answers that they'd been playing. Something had drawn her to Lita that first night, and Lita to her in return. If Laurelai was feeling these flashes of... something then surely Lita was too, and that meant that she had information still to give. And if Laurelai needed to toss subtlety and propriety to the wind to get that information then that is precisely what she would do.

"What do you see in them?" She asked finally. "What can you remember?"

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Lita continued to watch Laurelai struggle with her expression, her eyes growing a bit distant, then closing altogether as she breathed rhythmically. She didn’t miss the light flush of color high on the blonde’s cheeks, a heat that whispered its own echo down Lita’s neck, tracing a molten line over the ladder of her rib cage and ending in a low, throbbing ache. Lita felt her fingers move to the little pocket of her dress, drawing out the golden coin and running her thumb across its surface. She wanted to melt it in her palm and drink it like wine. She wanted to forge it into a spike and bury it deep inside her heart.

“Lita." Laurelai said, her voice cautious, careful. "We've spoken of these... flashes. The ones that some people have been having. Memories that aren't real, deja vu..." She stopped, face pensive, and Lita was about to speak when Laurelai continued. “What do you see in them? What can you remember?"

Lita felt, more than heard, the world crack ever so slightly around her, and for a moment the bottom dropped out of her gut and everything was darkness and free fall. Then she was back in her body, green eyes flicking upwards like twin serpents, keen and coiled, tasting the air. She met Laurelai’s stare, and she was gazing into a sheet of ice, flawless aside from a single fissure that sliced through both of those frozen eyes. Such a slender crack, but it ran right to the core of her soul. Lita could feel how much she wanted to know, needed to know, the way a moss addict needed the burn on his fingers, the way a starving beggar needed something to eat. The pitiless master of raw need had Laurelai so deeply in its grasp that Lita knew she’d dance naked on broken glass for the answers, if Lita so chose.

”You speak out of turn, Laurelai Esserethel,” Lita said softly, and her voice was the snick of a switchblade against the quiet of the Department of Records. “Your tongue has run away with your head. Your desire for knowledge has leashed you and ridden you into the dirt.”

She leaned forward, fingers still spinning the coin. No, not the coin. The Coin. Her Coin. She could feel something against her fingertips, a raised image, a stamp on each face. Somehow she knew them without looking - a set of scales, perfectly balanced, and a skull with a spike driven through the left eye socket. Anything was attainable, but there was always a price.

“I know that feeling,” Lita whispered. “Food has no taste. Water does nothing to slake your thirst. You can’t sleep, and when you do your dreams turn into nightmares, and then your nightmares torture you so exquisitely that they turn back into dreams, and you awake drenched in your bed, trembling and sick, and there’s nothing you want more than to cut your throat on the knife of your Hunger.”

She was much too close now, and she felt the burn of Tin in her stomach turning up the volume on the world. Too much sight, too much sound, too much sensation on her skin. “You want to know what I remember?” Lita put one finger under Laurelai’s chin, lifting it so that the edge of one crimson nail bit slightly into her porcelain skin. “I remember a Storm. I remember rain like ice cutting into my skin, and wind biting into my gums as I smiled so hard it felt like I would rip my own flesh. I remember a Tin flare so high that I could feel the floor of the alley through the soles of my boots, and I remember lightning behind the figure of a god that people only speak about in stories. But he was real. And he gave me a choice. Power, or Subtlety?”

”Do you know what it is to feel yourself come apart, Laurelai?” Lita could feel herself trembling with the weight of the memory. “That moment when steel hits your blood, and agony arcs through your body like white fire, lighting every nerve until your mind is undone, and the threshold between pain and ecstasy is blurred and blended through your own tears?”

Lita bit her lip hard enough to taste blood; it felt right. It felt like someone else’s teeth on her skin. It felt like a ravenous fever, like black curls against a light blue door. It felt like her own fingernails cutting scratches into the little table where she’d once met a clever shadow. It felt like her name on the tongue of a hungry god.

”Because that is what I remember. It is what is painted on the back of my eyes with every blink. It is in every quiet moment, in every uneasy silence. It haunts me like a revenant. And do not think that you will leave this room until you have paid for that secret to my satisfaction.”

@Voidus

[Voidus]

Even before Lita called her by her full name, Laurelai realized the mistake she had made. The price that she may have to pay due to her irritation-fueled lapse in good judgement. She had to remind herself that however familiar Lita's company might feel sometimes that the two were barely more than acquaintances, and that if she pushed the boundaries of that relationship too far then she could not blame anyone but herself for the fall that was to come.

“I know that feeling,” Lita whispered.

Laurelai's eyes, already fixed on Lita's, contracted in sudden focus. There was an irritated voice in her mind that wanted to snap that Lita couldn't possibly know that feeling, that the woman was far to satisfied and content today to know any burning need for something she couldn't have. But there was another part of her, the hungry part, that silenced the first voice and drunk in Lita's words like a plant in parched desert sands drunk in the first droplets of rain.

The irritated voice piped up again as Lita placed a finger under her chin, nail digging just barely into soft skin. But the voice was silenced once again, this time by the thundering of Laurelai's heartbeat in her ears. She was sure that the slight blush she had felt before was nothing compared to what would be visible now. But did she even care?

Laurelai's lips felt suddenly parched but she dared not even move for that lest she interrupt Lita. If she did something to cause this small trickle of information to stop, it might very well drive her mad with frustration. Already her mind felt ready to tear itself in two as she struggled to keep her attention on the words still pouring from Lita's painted lips. Her attention slipped to thoughts of what more she could learn, of what secrets the redhead still held, of what secrets she had hidden in the words already spoken. Too much to think about and time moved too quickly for her to focus on all at once.

She saw the momentary lapse as Lita lost herself in whatever recollections she had, saw a dot of crimson slowly begin to bead on her lips as she pulled Laurelai's attention back, eyes demanding a compensation to be paid for this cornucopia of secrets. It took Laurelai longer than it should to pull herself free from that gaze once again. Immediately she felt her mind turn towards the small parcels of truth that Lita had given her, hungrily they devoured every word and pulled it apart for meaning, context, inflection. She felt that familiar wave of frustration again at her inability to process it faster. After all if Lita began to talk again and Laurelai was still processing her first words then she would never be able to catch up, never be able to know.

"Yes of course." She replied, just barely holding at bay the tremor that wanted to creep into her voice. "I... apologize for being so blunt."

Her sight travelled the lines and curves of Lita's face, searching to pull any fragment of additional understanding she could. The bead of crimson on her lips drew Laurelai's attention again and she absently reached for a handkerchief to offer. Almost she was quick enough to catch it but the droplet fell from Lita's lips and seemed to drift in slow motion towards Laurelai's outstretched hand. As it painted a crimson splash across snow-white skin, the droplet send a jolt of shock through her system and she found herself transfixed by the sight. The signals seemed to take an age to reach her mind, but when they did her first impression was one of overwhelming heat. She wasn't sure why it was that she'd expected it to feel cool, but Lita's blood felt like liquid fire compared to what she had anticipated. Even more striking than the heat however was what came in its wake, the sudden yawning emptiness. Not quite a lack of sensation but something was... missing. Something was supposed to happen but hadn't.

That should have helped us. The voice whispered again, irritation rising to rage. That was supposed to feed it, to sate us.

She wanted to shake the voice free from her head but she was still balanced delicately on Lita's fingertip and couldn't move.

She has more answers Laurelai. The voice continued, insistent with need. She has what we need if you just take it. Beg her, threaten her, steal them, whatever you need to do.

Her tongue darted across her lips to restore moisture to them, lips that began to move to form words. What words precisely, Laurelai was not entirely sure. But neither would she ever know as a soft thud of paper against wood interrupted her thoughts. Azim, the Herald of Records, had returned with a small stack of files which had been laid back onto the desk. Laurelai was partially grateful to the Singer for wakening her from her reverie before she could speak. But as she saw Lita's green eyes drift away from her and towards the files, Laurelai was also briefly inclined to force those files down Azim's throat for interrupting.

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

“Your files, Ms. Attar.”

Azim’s cool, dry voice was blank as new parchment as he set the stack of files on the table. Lita felt some of the heat dissipate from the air, the tension momentarily slackened. She let her eyes slide away from Laurelai’s, resting instead on the stack of files.

”Thank you, Azim,” Lita said, her voice soft, steady - so at odds with the raw heat surging through her blood. “As always, your timing is impeccable.”

”Indeed,” the Singer responded, tone still utterly unreadable. “Will you be taking these records back with you, then?”

Lita felt her lips curve upward ever so slightly, raising a single auburn brow. She looked back at Laurelai, still balanced on the edge of her fingernail. The blonde’s blue eyes were flicking between the stack of papers and Lita’s face with ravenous indecision. The color high on her cheeks had deepened and crept down her neck; Tin allowed Lita to see her pulse where it fluttered in her throat like a caged bird.

The liquid thrum from earlier stirred again, coiling in her core. ”Why, yes we shall.”

Lita released the pressure of her nail from Laurelai’s chin, allowing her finger to trace down the young woman’s neck. 

“Laurelai,” Lita continued, heat lacing her words like poison, “do be a dear and gather those records, will you? It wouldn’t do to get my blood all over them. So terribly inconsiderate.”

”Terribly,” Azim echoed drily before turning and walking back to his desk in the center of the main room.

Lita stood and dragged the back of her left hand across her lip, leaving a smear of blood on the skin. It stung lightly, and Lita grinned into the pain. There was a single droplet of Lita’s blood on Laurelai’s palm, the crimson stark against her pale skin. Lita clicked her tongue and took the handkerchief from the tabletop, pressing it into Laurelai’s hand. Then she wrapped her fingers around Laurelai’s wrist and tugged her forward, up out of the chair.

Laurelai was taller, but Lita felt nothing but power as she looked up into her eyes. Laurelai was helpless with desperation, drowning in it. Lita felt the electric thrill of the realization that she could demand anything at all in return for more information. Secrets of her own, certainly. Knowledge was power, and there were ever so many ways to know a person, weren’t there?

“Come, Laurelai,” she said, tightening her grip on Laurelai’s wrist to just below the point of pain. “Let us go and settle your debt.”

She ran her tongue along the cut in her lip, which had started to bleed again with the force of her smile. Beneath the heat of her fingers, Lita could feel the icy veneer of Laurelai Esserethel begin to melt and crack.

@Voidus

[Voidus]

Just breathe Laurelai. She reminded herself. Slow breaths, let muscles tense and relax. Get rid of the tension.

Laurelai was actually rather proud when she managed to collect the files that Lita gestured to without her cheeks bursting into flame and without using the files to bludgeon Azim to death. It was truly a show of refinement and poise beyond what could be found in even the grandest of Scadrian ballrooms, a display of rationale and calm that would draw the envy of Teoish philosophers.

"Come Laurelai." A cool voice said as a warm hand grabbed her wrist. "Let us go and settle your debt."

The grip was firm, inexorable and felt like white-hot lightning against her skin. If it had been dragging her to her own execution Laurelai wasn't sure that she'd be able to summon even the slightest resistance against it. And indeed, given the nature of the Dark Alleys and those who lurked in them it very well might be dragging her to exactly that. But there was also a chance that Lita was dragging her to her salvation.

Damnation or salvation? Laurelai wondered. Punishment or reward? Pain or pleasure?

The Alleys had truly so many of these to offer, and often it seemed they blurred the lines between them. But it mattered not, Lita's grasp was insistent. It might have felt like Laurelai could, with a little work, pull herself free. The grip was not so tight as to cause pain, after all. But somehow she felt she was as unlikely to succeed in that contest as she would if she tried to hide from those exceptionally observant green eyes.

Instead Laurelai became intoxicated on a heady feeling of powerlessness, to know that she had no choice in the matter. She could only wait to see what fate had in store for her and pray to whatever gods might listen. That sensation of drifting without resistance was almost enough to carry her all the way back to Lita's office. But even this immensely distracting situation was not, it seemed, enough to fully focus her mind on the here and now.

Instead she recalled what Lita had said, the morsels of information that she had made a great show of divulging. She had mentioned many thing. A storm, a choice, and a god. Laurelai struggled to try to connect those threads to herself, tried to think of some connection that made sense beyond the two coins. But there was nothing, no whisper of echoed remembrance from Laurelai's own mind. But it was also impossible to imagine that the coins could simply be a coincidence.

"I don't remember a storm." Laurelai said as they arrived at the door, shaky voice cutting through the quiet of the Alleys. "But I remember rain. Quiet and gentle and dangerous as all the Alleys."

They were through the door before she could even process it, and somehow Laurelai found her hand was her own again as she stood face to face with Lita. Laurelai's breathing was ragged and her heart raced so fast it was a miracle it hadn't burst already. Radiant heat threatened to climb from her chest, up her neck and to her cheeks but it warred with the strange memory of coolness that Laurelai was struggling to hold onto.

"I remember whispers and promises." Laurelai said, so close now that she could count each lash. "Promises to break my mind and fill it with secrets."

Laurelai let her eyelids flutter closed and almost she could hear those whispers still, promising that if only she could find their source she could have everything that she wanted again.

"I remember a need so strong that I would gladly have died of thirst rather than risk leaving it unsated." Laurelai's voice moved faster as the memories came quicker. "I remember a pool, a cave, a plant that glows, a woman with..."

She opened her eyes again to meet Lita's. Green eyes, the exact green eyes that she had just been remembering. Was she going mad? Her current reality and the hazy memories seemed to blur together, all tied with that same desperate need to do... something. Something that she couldn't remember even now. She would scream in frustration but knew already that it would bring no catharsis. Her tension rose with every breath, and as her breathing accelerated so had her slide into insanity.

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

They took the long way back to Lita’s office, ostensibly because Laurelai was in no shape to Alleytravel. But in truth, Lita simply enjoyed towing Laurelai alongside her. She watched the blonde drift like a kite, blue eyes fixed on a point far away, fevered and drunken.

Lita kept her hand on Laurelai’s wrist as they walked, feeling the staccato beat of her pulse against the tips of her fingers. Tin burned comfortably in her stomach, and as Lita neared the door of her office she allowed herself to revel in the feeling. She could almost taste the need in the air, could almost hear Laurelai slowly fracture. Lita grinned, and it was sharp, and cruel, and beautiful. 

“I don't remember a storm." Laurelai said, speaking at last as they stood before the door. "But I remember rain. Quiet and gentle and dangerous as all the Alleys."

Lita unlocked the door, and Laurelai’s words dripped in through her ears, collecting until they fell like fat drops of ink into the water of her memory.

Rain, rain falling hundreds of feet below the earth. The smell of wet stone, the crunch of powdery dust beneath her feet. And the reflection of blue light off the walls of a narrow grotto.

Lita closed the door, sliding the lock with more force than strictly necessary as the strange phantom memory began to move out of the shadow of her mind. She dropped Laurelai’s hand, turning to look at her, and though Laurelai’s eyes were fixed on her face Lita knew that she wasn’t truly seeing her - she was seeing something else. 

And Lita could see it too. Laurelai continued to speak, her words conjuring more than a vague imagining in Lita’s mind. She was there. She heard that whispered beckoning, the screaming danger warring with a powerful urge to step forward, to reach out. To take and be taken in return. An urge stronger even than hunger - a deep and rending thirst.

Laurelai’s breath was coming ragged now, her eyes closed but flicking back and forth beneath her eyelids as though she were in a dream. Or a nightmare.

Lita moved closer, the slightest hint of unease seeming only to amplify the searing heat of her mood. Here was a secret to tease out expertly, a loose thread that had so willingly laid itself in Lita’s hand. If she pulled slowly and carefully enough, could Lita follow it back to its source? These aberrant memories, the flashes of deja vu, the secret department - it was all connected, she could feel it. The lure of that secret stoked the familiar heat of anticipation. Lita wanted to taste it. She needed Laurelai to keep talking.

“Do you know the first rule of interrogation, Laurelai?” Lita brushed a stray lock of silvery-blonde hair back behind Laurelai’s ear, letting her finger trace down the back and along the edge of Laurelai’s jaw. “After all, not everyone is so generous with their secrets as I am.”

”Sometimes,” Lita continued, moving behind Laurelai now, sweeping her long curtain of hair over her opposite shoulder to expose the pale, graceful expanse of her neck, “you will need to be extra persuasive.”

Lita was grateful for the height of her heels, which made them nearly on equal footing. Her mouth reached just perfectly to the hollow curve behind Laurelai’s ear.

”The first rule,” Lita whispered, “is to learn what someone wants. And only when they have given you all the information you require do you let them have it.”

Lita allowed her lips to just barely graze the curve of Laurelai’s neck where it met her shoulder, her skin intoxicatingly soft to Lita’s tin-enhanced senses. Lita felt herself falling into the sensation and pulled back on the reigns of her own wants. A novice rushed a job; an expert took her time. Laurelai was a thread worth winding around each one of her fingers until she finally snapped.

”Let us have a practical lesson, you and I,” Lita said, sliding back into Laurelai’s field of vision. The young woman’s eyes were half-lidded and dark with yearning. Lita leaned forward until only the barest fraction of an inch separated them. “Tell me everything you see in your memories, Laurelai, and then I’ll give you exactly what you want.”

@Voidus

[Voidus]

“Tell me everything you see in your memories, Laurelai, and then I’ll give you exactly what you want.”

The words were honeyed ambrosia to Laurelai in this moment. The jumble of memory, sensations and hunger were all tangled in a colossal ball of tension, she had no way to pick one thread to pull out without unravelling the entire thing. But that didn't matter now, she didn't need to carefully untangle her own wants anymore, all she had to do was remember and leave the rest to Lita.

She let out one slow, shaky breath before her eyes opened again, no longer seeing the room, no longer seeing Lita. Distantly she could still feel the gentle glide of skin against skin but she could focus now and simply let that sensation wash over her.

"A cave." She said, voice a little hoarse but strangely calm. "Under the city, there was a tunnel with strange glowing plants that drank Stormlight. Then darkness, and a sound from up ahead. Water falling, whispering. A beautiful pool that could tell you all the worlds secrets. Someone..."

Her voice faltering for the first time, the vision swam for a moment before she regained focus.

"You." Laurelai corrected. "Were there too, and you walked to the pool but it was whispering to me and telling me to take it instead. So I.. I reached out and pulled you away, and then the pool whispered more. Told me everything, everything there was to know."

And then her mind had cracked, been emptied and then refilled in an instant. Then she had finally had everything that she ever wanted, gentle droplets bringing her more and more knowledge and secrets to sate the gnawing pit in her chest. Everything else faded, and all that was left was the pool. Food was a distant thought, friendship she'd surely never had, sleep a distant memory. Even breathing seemed unimportant.

In a blink she was back in Lita's office, the floor underneath her was polished wood instead of rough stone. And the air was warm and so gentle it felt like it melted into her skin, rather than cool and refreshing. But her mind was the same, still a jumbled mess trying to make sense of the information, still struggling and moving so glacially slowly. The light around her periphery still grew darker and darker and the gnawing in her chest was now being replaced with another burning sensation, another need but whatever it was was far less important than the pool was, she could safely ignore it, even if it seemed to be causing the world to slowly constrict tighter and tighter around her until all she could see was a pair of green eyes holding her in their gaze.

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Lita saw the cave, the memory painting itself over her eyes almost before Laurelai spoke. She saw the tunnel, the strange glowing plants, the sheer drop into endless darkness. They had followed her hearing - tin had let her pick up the faintest echo of falling water.

“ — and you walked to the pool but it was whispering to me and telling me to take it instead. So I.. I reached out and pulled you away, and then the pool whispered more. Told me everything, everything there was to know."

No, Lita’s mind murmured. No, that isn’t right. She had stepped in first; she had nearly fallen in, her foot sliding backwards into the pool to balance herself, and the water had poured down over her head in terrible, glorious rivulets. Time stopped, the world itself stopped what it was doing and slid through the cracks between Lita’s atoms, flooding her with all that she could ever wish to know.

The memory folded and shifted, and then Lita saw Laurelai’s pale face tilted upward in rapture, almost worship, as that same cool blue water trickled over her cheeks like tears. Then it faded, and Lita caught the moment when Laurelai resurfaced from her reverie.

The implications of this, a shared phantom memory of the same event, were not lost on Lita. So many new threads to follow, so many complex knots to pull and untangle and slice. New secrets to hunt. But just now, Lita felt her hunger focus on much closer prey. A loose thread that Lita had already begun to unravel. It was time to pull a little harder, now.

”Thank you, Laurelai,” Lita said, voice soft as smoke, hot as fire. “And for your reward…”

Lita let one hand trail down the plane of Laurelai’s abdomen, fingertips pressing into skin through soft silk. She stoked her tin to climb a bit higher, letting her catch the racing beat of Laurelai’s pulse where it fluttered against the thin, soft skin of her neck. Lita wanted to lean forward, to close the distance and feel that softness, that urgent thrum, against her mouth.

And so she did.

@Voidus

[Voidus]

Her body barely even felt like her own as Laurelai straightened the neckline of her Havah, using the mirror in Lita's office to confirm that her former disheveled appearance had been returned to a properly calm demeanor and dress. Neither clothing nor her mind were twisted about themselves any longer, and she was able to regain a measure of control over herself and her surroundings. Enough to finally quash that incessant urge that had been digging at her mind for days.

The quiet calm however, would be wasted if she simply sat here adjusting her appearance. Not for the first time in her life she wished there were a quicker way to make herself presentable after waking or... other activities. But now there was another problem to deal with, her mind was clear enough to actually focus now, which meant she could pay attention to an entire file and work her way through an investigation rather than just trying to devour every piece of knowledge she could. So now she would need to systematically work through all that they could, her own knowledge, what she had gleaned from Forging herself and the files from the department of Records.

"Do you mind if I write down what you said?" Laurelai asked Lita.

She looked up to address her, and ten almost immediately looked away again with a warm pink colouring her face. Rusts what had Laurelai been thinking? This had been such a terrible idea. She was going to need to look Lita in the face every day for as long as she worked here, and every time she was going to remember this. Laurelai wasn't entirely sure what had been happening to her, though it seemed the pool in her flashes of memory had something to do with it. But whatever it was had certainly wound her so tightly that she'd abandoned any semblance of rational planning.

"About the memories." She clamored, trying to cover her embarrassment. "Just to help piece everything together it would help if I could lay things out."

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

The room was quiet as Lita sat at her desk and lazily re-plaited her hair, watching Laurelai fidget and fuss with the buttons of her Havah. The heat in her blood had waned, the incessant voice urging her take, to claim, to unravel, had fallen silent. But the echo of that golden thrill still simmered pleasantly beneath the surface. 

“Do you mind if I write down what you said?”

Lita quirked a single auburn brow at Laurelai’s question, but it seemed that the blonde had already realized how it had sounded.

”About the memories.”

Lita let a little smile spread over her lips. “You may write down whatever you like. I daresay you’ll have a sudden increased interest in research should you write down everything I said. The Department of Records could use a bit of livening up.”

She tied off her braid and stood, and if perhaps her steps over to the bar were a bit wobbly and tremulous, well. What of it? Laurelai had a right to take note of her own skill just as much as Lita herself. Lita poured two small glasses of deep, ruby port, setting one on Laurelai’s side of the desk and sipping her own. Then she tapped the file.

”I realize I emphasized work before play earlier today, and I have quite perjured myself. But we have played…” Lita allowed one slow look over her newest acolyte, “and so now must work. The fate of Mr. Darsen rests entirely on what we might discover in this record. His interrogation is unlikely to be as pleasant as ours. Now we shall see exactly to what degree it will be unpleasant.”

@Voidus

[Voidus]

Laurelai gratefully took the glass both to have something to hide behind and to help steady her nerves. And perhaps the flush in her cheeks could be mistaken for one of light inebriation rather than embarrassment. Of course it certainly didn't hurt that it was absolutely delicious, sweet on the tongue and warm as it went down. A different warm burning sensation to replace the one she had been feeling earlier.

She gave a wry smile at Lita's suggestion that she liven up the department of Records with a salacious transcription. The place had certainly seemed like it could do with a little levity, though Laurelai was also sure that she would be very irritated herself if she'd been studying there and someone tried to bring that levity to a place of study.

”I realize I emphasized work before play earlier today, and I have quite perjured myself. But we have played…” Lita said, giving Laurelai a look that sent the blush in her cheeks all the way down her neck again

Focus Laurelai. The voice in the back of her head reminded her. No time to get distracted again. You're finally feeling clearer again don't go and waste that effort.

Laurelai managed to pull her focus back just in time to catch the rest of what Lita said, grateful that the momentary embarrassment had been neither as long lived nor as powerful as the earlier stress that had been pulling her slowly in the direction of complete madness. This was simply a light distraction, and she was more than accustomed to having to work through those. With practiced movements she pulled paper and pen and set to writing, noting all the major points that they had covered, with small lines and succinct explanations linking each.

"Well I hope for Mr. Darsen's sake that we are able to find something fruitful." Laurelai said, one hand pulling over a section of the file to open and read as she writes with the other. "And for my own as well. If we're forced to stay here all night I can't promise I can resist depleting your stores of fine port."

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Lita slid open a drawer in her desk and removed a file of her own, settling down to read opposite Laurelai. As she did so, she waved an errant hand.

”Port is for drinking, preferably with fine company and definitely during the small hours of night. It is not so terrible a fate to consider.”

The words carried an echo of her earlier hunger, but it was faint and cool, more affectation than seduction. Repartee for its own sake - simple, pleasant. She had meant her earlier statement; it was time to get to work, and she quickly lost herself in the web of secrets and whispers surrounding the strange goings-on in the city. Her city. 

She added thread after thread to the growing pile in her hands, so many now, all overlapping and crossing and weaving through one another. Some led off into nothing. And some, she knew, were even tied to her own wrists. Something was playing an entirely different kind of game with them all - even the Dark Alley. 

Her eyes fell to the slender, silver blade that still lay atop the desk, it’s wicked edge catching the ember light glowing in the fireplace. Its presence might have felt reassuring, if it didn’t come with its own list of questions. Still, she could use every weapon at her disposal. And she would likely have to, if her opponent was something - or someone - that could move the entire Dark Alley like a game piece.

Lita took another sip of port, savoring the sweetness, and continued to read.

@Voidus

[Voidus]

Some time later

Laurelai collapsed into the chair of Lita's office. It had been a long day, filled with... many interesting events that she had not anticipated when she first woke up that morning. Reading through the reports had yielded only a little information, the more detailed had been retrieved from the interrogation. For a moment her mind flashed back to that room, of Lita standing over him wearing a smile that could have been either cruel or seductive depending on how someone looked at it...

She shook her head to dismiss the thought. This was no time for distractions, she needed to focus on what they'd learned, not the way Lita had looked when she...

"So." Laurelai said, breaking herself free from a mental loop. "That was certainly... informative. I'm learning quite a bit about interrogations today it seems. Though that one was quite different."

She gave a brief grin at that, testing the waters. She had hoped that the earlier 'interrogation' would help her think more clearly, and it had, but she was still unsure if it would change anything. How did Lita handle that kind of interaction? Would she try to tuck Laurelai away somewhere unseen now that she'd had her fun? Keep her around as a new favourite? Or could she seperate work matters from personal?

So many questions to answer, but more pressing were those that had arisen from the interrogation.

"A hidden department in the DA." Laurelai continued, smile turning into a concerned frown. "What do you make of it?"

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Lita looked up from the open dossier, her mind taking a moment to register Laurelai’s words before she gave a small smile. 

“Yes, rather different. The underlying theory is the same. The practical application is where any number of deviations can occur.”

She marked her page and closed the file, letting out a small sigh. “As for the hidden department… I’m not entirely surprised. There have been odd reports from the entire city for weeks now, and I’ve had a few from within the DA as well. Up till now I’ve dismissed it largely as simple mental fracture among denizens. It’s not uncommon -playing around with too much hemalurgy will do that. But this is too coincidental to ignore. Now if only that rusting girl would get back to me…”

She frowned, tapping the end of a pen against the tabletop for a moment. 

“I will have to think on what to do about this. And I should like you to think on it too.”

She flicked green eyes upward, meeting Laurelai’s.

”And I should also like it if you told me the truth about that cavern with the waterfall. Because I remember it as well, and I definitely went under it first.”

@Voidus

[Voidus]

Laurelai raised a curious brow at the mention of 'that rusting girl' but did not push the question. Doubtless Lita would tell her the things that she needed to know and keep that which she did not. At the end of the day, despite what had happened earlier that day, they were coworkers, not friends. Lita was her boss, not her confidant.

A piercing pain struck her temple and she almost missed Lita's final request, Laurelai needed to blink and look back to the redhead, suppressing a wince, to make sense of the words that she had heard but not quite processed.

"The cavern?" Laurelai asked, trying to jog her own, foggy memories. "It was... you went..."

Like a dam bursting they flooded into her again, a wash of perfect calming blue droplets giving her clarity. She remembered saying something to Lita, a warning, right before... right before she slipped on a lip in the stone and stepped into the pool, Laurelai had watched horrified as the redhead had moved under the waters only to be carried to the other side by momentum.

The piercing headache returned and Laurelai felt that crystal clarity fracture into pieces. Laurelai had been bold, not horrified, and she had grabbed Lita back out of the waters. No, Laurelai had been jealous and pushed Lita out of the way to take her place. Or had it been haughty and she'd chuckled as Lita tripped her way through the pool? Laurelai had been angry. Sad. Alone. Scared. Obstinate. Proud. Meek. Overconfident.

"You went in and then... I went.. no, there alone? Fighting?" Laurelai murmured, trying to answer the question and sort through a cascade of memories that assaulted her simultaneously. Her eyes shut as even the dim office light felt suddenly piercingly bright. "Tripped... stepped... pushed..."

The pain reached a peak, piercing through the entire core of her being, some aching hole where something was supposed to be but wasn't. Something fundamentally important that she'd lost. But after reaching that white-hot peak, the pain began to slowly subside again, taking the memories with it.

"I... apologize." Laurelai said, realizing she'd been hunched over and straightening immediately. Opening her eyes to look Lita in the face even as the light still burned a hole in her brain. "It seems my memories aren't entirely clear still, perhaps some difference in how quickly they return?"

Even as she apologized, Laurelai felt that pain in her head be replaced with twin aching needs. One, the cause of the headache, that she still wasn't sure about, and the other... that pool. If she just found that pool again she would have everything she needed. She would have all the answers at last.

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Lita was not ready for the panic that seized her at the sight of Laurelai hunched forward in pain. It reached out with icy fingers and gripped her heart, squeezing hard, and she was out of her chair before she knew what was happening, reaching across the desk.

This was Laurelai, her friend, her closest ally, her confidant and comforter. What was she doing sitting opposite and unfamiliar? Why wasn’t she already at her side, checking to make sure she was alright? She felt a moment of deep confusion at their encounter earlier in the day - she had never felt that way toward Laurelai before, had she? 

Lita blinked, and the world slid like quicksilver beneath her feet in a moment of brutal vertigo. Lita was the Head of the Department of Counter Intelligence. No, she was just an agent, just a spy - a denizen with tin and brass and pewter and - 

No, not pewter. Copper. Copper of course, Mac had given her copper to remember, a perfectly logical spike. What would she do with pewter? Copper is…

Copper. A copper ring she hadn’t seen all day. Some creeping horror lurked behind Lita’s conscious mind and breathed cold dread down her neck as total nightmare overtook her for a moment. Laurelai was not wearing her copper ring. Her Laurelai. The real one. The one who was inside that ring.

“I…apologize,” Laurelai said.

Lita stopped, hand outstretched for Laurelai’s fingers, and blinked. What was she doing? What had she been so worried over that she was leaning halfway across the desk like a fool, simply due to an acolyte’s slight headache?

”Please,” Lita said, her voice eerily steady and soft in her own ears, juxtaposed wildly with her racing heart. “You have no need to apologize. Dealing with memory is a delicate and finicky art even for those experienced in the field. Take your time.”

She sat again, hoping Laurelai had not caught her own odd behavior, and rubbed at one temple. Her eyes kept straying to Laurelai’s hand - though what she was looking for, Lita could not say. After all, her hand was bare. There was nothing to see.

@Voidus