[ his dripping doubt gets a simple one-shoulder shrug from marta, like saying any more may just incriminate her. but at his befuddled helplessness she can't help but roll her eyes and laugh a little, settling her own sticks down to reach for his hands. ]
Like this.
[ she guides his hands through the motions of bundling the sticks at a single focuspoint in the center, using the various sizes to create what is essentially a stick person drawing come to life. it's a bit of a funny sight, small hands instructing much larger ones with a deftness that speaks of years of practice and tradition, but by the end of it, kovacs is left with enough of a framework that she trusts he'll be able to build upon just fine on his own. ]
You wind the thread around these points of intersection. See?
[ it's probably a fairly easy enough task, but it helps to get a proper visual of what exactly she has in mind so that he doesn't make some mess of threads and sticks, which'll more than likely not look like any kind of doll that's being visualized. he isn't really much in the way of artistry, after all.
he peers up at her briefly when she brings her hands over his, as she guides him through the motions of arranging the sticks rather than simply doing it for him or instructing him vocally. the way she moves, motioning his fingers with hers, he can feel the way she takes care in the craft, the way it almost mimics that way she's come to stitch him up, an art in both the science of mending and the magic of creation. it's just a slight detail, but just by the touch of her fingertips on his own, it's almost like he learns just a little bit more about her. ]
Right. [ he seems to capture enough of the detail to get the idea, nodding his head as he stares down at what she's gotten him far enough on. ] Already looks just like me.
[ he supposes he can handle the rest, holding what he has steady as he begins to pull the thread around it. ]
Y'know ā [ he mutters, trying to be attentive to his work while balancing a cigar in the corner of his mouth. ] If you were gonna light that cigar of yours, you could grab my lighter. I'd be a gentleman about it but my hands are full now. [ he peers up at her, giving a shrug with a half-smirk as well as he can with his lips occupied. ] Or if you don't mind germs, you can get yourself a few puffs out of mine.
[ she's content to watch him work, her own doll already mostly done save for a few more stabilizing rounds of thread, but at his offer she's left to eye the cigar bobbing from that half-smirk of his with a contemplative hum. ]
How bad can your cooties be?
[ the cigar in her own hand is still perfectly fine, and should be lit soon anyway after she'd just clipped it, but something about his casual offer has her considering an option she would not have otherwise even imagined. she plucks the corona from his lips, politely turning her head aside to take a few puffs.
she watches the cloud of smoke dissipate into the artificial winter air when a sudden thought strikes her — a recollection of a late morning wandering back to her room, rubbing exhaustion out of her eyes to make out the neat scrawl of a hidden poet. ]
I liked the poem, by the way. [ she looks back to watch any careful shift of his expression. it's a little easier now, seated as they are, close as they are, his head bowed just so in concentration. ] It was beautiful.
[ though he's earnest in his offer, he doesn't expect her to actually follow through on accepting it, since he just imagines she wouldn't want to take something that's been in his mouth to put into her own. but his brow raises when she takes the cigar from his lips, the lack of it allowing him to curl his lips in for a moment to relax them again. for a moment, he directs his eyes in looking at her, in how she takes in the smoke, thinking of what the scent of it means to her, how it might be transporting her to a moment of the past with a simple whiff.
turning his head down again to his honest attempt at putting together a decent doll, he gets caught up in the wrap of the string, tightening it as he aligns the sticks just right to where he wants them. it'd be easy to not care about the effort, and mostly he wouldn't, but it gives him something to do with his hands, and he likes doing things right if he's going to bother doing it.
mostly, he can keep a straight face, especially in something of an interrogation, but with his focus on the doll, he doesn't expect her to bring up the poem, his fingers momentarily stilling as she catches him off track with the compliment.
the stillness is brief, moving his hands calmly as if nothing had disturbed him at all, even if there's the slightest hint of a tighter knit between his brows, his eyes not looking up to her. ] What poem? Something you read in your books?
[ she had been watching him the whole time, so there was no way she could have missed the pause, the tension in his brows. she makes a soft, acknowledging sound in the back of her throat, knowing but not accusatory. ]
In something more precious.
[ she turns her attention back out towards the woods, tracing the dark outline of dead branches poking through the layers of snow. before the silence can grow too settled, too comfortable, she takes another few puffs and speaks up again. ]
But the smallest will find that it needs nothing than to curl with another, [ she recites in a quiet, almost reverent tone, each syllable as carefully cradled on her tongue as they were crafted. she lifts her free hand out in front of her, palm forward, pinky cocked, pushing past the fading cloud of smoke. ] A Dear Friend.
[ you aren't meant to inhale a cigar when you smoke it, but you always carry the smell of it anyway. when marta drops her hand back to her knee and stares out into the artificial horizon, she knows the smoke and ash clinging to her hair and clothes is as real as the ones that lingered around her uncles during those evenings hanging out on the porch, enjoying the day's heat settle into something more comfortable, more palatable. feeling homesick for cuba isn't uncommon, but it hits a little different knowing it's so much more than a plane ride away now.
not that it was ever that easy to go back to begin with... ]
You said before here, you were solving a murder. [ there's something distant in her tone, as far away as the gaze in her eyes. she won't press him too much about the poem, not now, when his edges still feel so raw and frayed like the ends of the thread he so meticulously winds around their sticks. ] Are you a detective?
[ she recites to him lines from the collection of words he'd wrote to her, listening to them with familiarity but feeling them carry a lot differently when spoken aloud, when spoken by her. if asked his intentions, his meaning, when he'd wrote the poem, he wouldn't have an answer, because he usually never does. when he writes words like that, it's just from a moment, from a sliver of a feeling, and in the days following christmas, when he'd been trying to cope with what he'd just recently lost, he'd let himself dwell in what remained.
in the late hours of christmas, he'd sunk into whatever he had, in the alcohol, in the drugs, everything to just lose himself into the past, hardly caring what would be left of him, but he'd woken up to marta there, reeled out of the nightmares by her voice.
it'd have been easy to go back to what he was used to, to going on alone, to shutting it all out, but she'd kept him from it, from falling in to old habits, just by offering him a story ā a small gesture, but enough. enough to convince him of what he needs right now.
a friend.
but to say it out loud, to explain any of that to her, he's not sure if he even could. so when she breathes in the smoke and redirects with a different question, he exhales a slow breathe, not even aware he was holding it, his fingers moving to continue tying threads around the doll. ]
Not really. Just hired like one. [ his voice speaks casually, as if never deferred for a moment by the subject of the poem. ] I have a certain skill that proves useful for figuring things out ā Envoy intuition.
[ sitting as close as they are, she can tell the exact moment he lets out that breath. feeling his body lose some of that tension, like a house of cards toppling with the wind.
she doesn't glance back at him save for a lingering look at the meticulous way he winds his thread, fingers precise in a way that speaks of a deftness that has absolutely nothing to do with doll-making, but a skill reworked to something more delicate anyway. with care.
her lips fold over the rounded end of the cigar, made damp by the heat of their mouths. each puff a cloud of smoke, a wistful thought. blanc had had intuition too. almost eerie, like a superpower. in the end he had trusted in his, and it had saved her. if only she'd trusted in her own from the start. ]
I don't think I know that word the way you mean it. [ she looks at him finally, licking the earthy taste from her lips. ] Envoy.
[ even in her attempt to mimic his tone, it still lacks the weight that his hand, speaking of a context she isn't yet privy to. ]
[ even when he'd woken from his imprisoned sleep some two hundred and fifty years after his time, the legend of the envoys had remained prominent enough in history for the world to have an idea of what it was. of course, in that time, it was the victors of the war against the envoys that had a say in telling their stories, biases that often came with the label of "terrorist".
it's rare for him to use his own words to describe who he was, who he is, and he pauses the turn of his fingers briefly to consider it. ]
The Envoys were a group of people who once tried to protect the world from greed ā freedom fighters opposing the rich and powerful from steering the future of humanity. [ before they lost. he spins the threads tighter around his doll's arms, securing it as he ties it. ] We trained to condition our minds to have a better awareness of details, have improved analysis of the things around us, of people. It'd make us smarter, faster, stronger. Helps me to see the things others usually don't.
[ he suddenly frowns down at his doll, slightly lopsided but a decent replica of what marta had instructed him towards. holding it up to show her, he turns to look at her with pursed lips. ]
Not that it helped me with this guy. Shit really does look like voodoo.
[ she eyes the doll held up before her with a half-smile, something quiet and smothered ā like a secret. ]
You know I've heard people say art is a science. I guess they were wrong.
[ with that gentle jab she takes the doll from him, before he can think to correct any of it, and reaches for her own left waiting by her feet. the cigar gets handed back to kovacs so she can begin her work. his doll, with its tilted spine and too-long left arm, is balanced over her knee while she begins pulling the sticks of her own. ]
...What happened to them, the Envoys? [ she lifts her eyes, curious but not searching. voice just quiet enough that he can pretend not to have heard if it would be easier. ] You said "were."
[ with her reaction to the doll, he raises a brow with a hint of faux offensive as if to voice a silent ouch at her brutal honesty, but when his lips lift into something of a subtle smile, it's evident enough that he's more endeared by the commentary than bothered.
taking the cigar back from her, he brings it back up to his own mouth, taking a series of puffs to let the smoke envelop him again, sharing in the heat that burned past her own lips.
in light of her question, he knows there's the simple answer and the more complex one, or even the absence of one entirely since it seems asked more in casualness than anything invasive. but as his eyes watch the working of her fingers, more skilled at the craft than he had been, even with its small imperfections, he decides there's no harm in providing her with something. ]
They ... were all killed. [ he speaks it quietly, though he doesn't draw his eyes away, as if he were simply willing himself to talk of it more calmly than the subject would suggest. ] If it were a regular fight, they'd have had a chance, but ā a virus was implanted in their heads. Made them all turn on each other. No Envoy intuition could fight against that.
[ he sighs, breathing the smoke coming off the burnt end of the cigar. ] I was the only one who didn't get caught. [ the last envoy. ]
[ that first night on the station, she had taken an offhanded comment of his and turned it into something else. from surviving this shit to surviving, period, meant to be as optimistic as it is realistic, yet she hadn't stopped to think that maybe
for some people
surviving is all they've ever done.
once you've done something for long enough, doesn't the spirit get tired?
marta watches kovacs' eyes train themselves on the slow work of her hands, and thinks (not for the first time) how old the light in his eyes look. distant, like they aren't quite made to fit the hazel they're encased in. ]
I'm sorry.
[ words often left to the role of empty platitudes, but she always tries to make them more than that, inject an empathic sincerity there that speaks to a quietly breaking heart. sorry he'd been left alone. sorry that he thinks he still is.
she finally finishes her work, holding her doll up right alongside his. where hers had once been perfectly made, it now bears a tilted spine, a too-long right arm ā the mirror image to her own. she sets both down upright on a mound of snow right before them, the shorter of their arms just barely touching. so that, if you squint, together the dolls look less like people and more like a single, lonely star.
she sits herself back, breathing in deep the lingering smoke. ]
[ he doesn't say it with the intent to earn her pity, but he can feel in her words that she isn't seeking to give it that kind of weight. it reminds him that it isn't the first he's shared a few fragmented words from his past to be met with her apology, and he realizes maybe he should be the one saying sorry, to put these tragic tales on her shoulders. he only wishes he had happier tales to share.
but his eyes watch her set the doll down, aligning them together, and it's in their parallel arrangement that he begins to notice the mirrored detail, the shift from the sample she'd presented for him to try to model after. this time, it's in the reverse, where hers bears similar flaws to the ones he'd accidentally crafted, and he knows there's purpose in her adjustment.
now, it's almost as if they were made to fit together somehow.
rather than draw attention to it, he merely looks at her with a quiet and pensive gaze, but bearing no hardened edges, like he isn't sure whether to be touched or concerned by her efforts.
when she asks about the lighter, he reaches back into his pocket, cigar held in his other hand, letting the smoke flow in the other direction. with the lighter between them, he clicks at the wheel, letting the flame spark before he lifts his eyes to her again.
he considers for a moment before he asks, ] Together?
[ somehow she manages not to buckle under the weight of his stare, curling in only as much as the artificial chill around them prompts her. but there is no making herself small here, no shrinking in to hide under his unspoken inquiry. (but if she still works hard to avoid his eye? well, not all habits can be so easily broken.)
he brings the flame up, and for a second it looks fragile, ready to wisp away with the cold. together? he asks, and she watches the flame hold strong. ]
Together.
[ once more her hand encircles his, but this time he's the one to guide her, destruction feeling at home at his fingertips. ]
To ends and beginnings.
[ she says it like a prayer, just as the first spark catches and pulls, till eventually both dolls become engulfed in the fire, soon indistinguishable where one begins and one ends.
she squeezes his hand before pulling back, curling in around her knees to watch the fire grow. ]
[ her fingers meet his again, and it's in this that it becomes more obvious that the air isn't actually as cold as it falsely pretends to be, feeling her skin warm on his, either naturally or by way of the flame lit near their hands working to add a heat that hadn't been there before.
to ends and beginnings.
he leads her and the flame to the dolls symbolic of their pasts, appropriate to be doing so hand in hand to bid farewell to yesterday as the threaded sticks upon the rock seem to gaze into tomorrow. when they light with a brighter fire, kovacs can't help but find himself amused by the tragic poetry of it, of burning his past, knowing that this new day spells something else for him ā it'll be the loss of a memory as a result of his deal with the orb.
has he lost it already? impossible to tell, of course, since he wouldn't remember the lost detail anyway. but he had presumed he'd go into it alone, that losing his memories would simply be a mirror image of those sticks becoming ash, watching himself fall into nothing but dust as he gradually losing fragments of himself piece by piece.
it'd be easier, to close himself off, to go on by himself, but he's never liked loneliness, despite what grimaced looks might often suggest. and when marta squeezes at his hand, he looks again to her for a moment and finds himself foolishly hoping that, even if he's fated to lose everything, doomed now to fade into nothing, someone might remember him as he is before it's all gone.
turning to the fire, he sighs a soft breath, taking a puff from the cigar before he holds it to her once more. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Like this.
[ she guides his hands through the motions of bundling the sticks at a single focuspoint in the center, using the various sizes to create what is essentially a stick person drawing come to life. it's a bit of a funny sight, small hands instructing much larger ones with a deftness that speaks of years of practice and tradition, but by the end of it, kovacs is left with enough of a framework that she trusts he'll be able to build upon just fine on his own. ]
You wind the thread around these points of intersection. See?
no subject
he peers up at her briefly when she brings her hands over his, as she guides him through the motions of arranging the sticks rather than simply doing it for him or instructing him vocally. the way she moves, motioning his fingers with hers, he can feel the way she takes care in the craft, the way it almost mimics that way she's come to stitch him up, an art in both the science of mending and the magic of creation. it's just a slight detail, but just by the touch of her fingertips on his own, it's almost like he learns just a little bit more about her. ]
Right. [ he seems to capture enough of the detail to get the idea, nodding his head as he stares down at what she's gotten him far enough on. ] Already looks just like me.
[ he supposes he can handle the rest, holding what he has steady as he begins to pull the thread around it. ]
Y'know ā [ he mutters, trying to be attentive to his work while balancing a cigar in the corner of his mouth. ] If you were gonna light that cigar of yours, you could grab my lighter. I'd be a gentleman about it but my hands are full now. [ he peers up at her, giving a shrug with a half-smirk as well as he can with his lips occupied. ] Or if you don't mind germs, you can get yourself a few puffs out of mine.
no subject
How bad can your cooties be?
[ the cigar in her own hand is still perfectly fine, and should be lit soon anyway after she'd just clipped it, but something about his casual offer has her considering an option she would not have otherwise even imagined. she plucks the corona from his lips, politely turning her head aside to take a few puffs.
she watches the cloud of smoke dissipate into the artificial winter air when a sudden thought strikes her — a recollection of a late morning wandering back to her room, rubbing exhaustion out of her eyes to make out the neat scrawl of a hidden poet. ]
I liked the poem, by the way. [ she looks back to watch any careful shift of his expression. it's a little easier now, seated as they are, close as they are, his head bowed just so in concentration. ] It was beautiful.
no subject
turning his head down again to his honest attempt at putting together a decent doll, he gets caught up in the wrap of the string, tightening it as he aligns the sticks just right to where he wants them. it'd be easy to not care about the effort, and mostly he wouldn't, but it gives him something to do with his hands, and he likes doing things right if he's going to bother doing it.
mostly, he can keep a straight face, especially in something of an interrogation, but with his focus on the doll, he doesn't expect her to bring up the poem, his fingers momentarily stilling as she catches him off track with the compliment.
the stillness is brief, moving his hands calmly as if nothing had disturbed him at all, even if there's the slightest hint of a tighter knit between his brows, his eyes not looking up to her. ] What poem? Something you read in your books?
no subject
In something more precious.
[ she turns her attention back out towards the woods, tracing the dark outline of dead branches poking through the layers of snow. before the silence can grow too settled, too comfortable, she takes another few puffs and speaks up again. ]
But the smallest will find that it needs nothing than to curl with another, [ she recites in a quiet, almost reverent tone, each syllable as carefully cradled on her tongue as they were crafted. she lifts her free hand out in front of her, palm forward, pinky cocked, pushing past the fading cloud of smoke. ] A Dear Friend.
[ you aren't meant to inhale a cigar when you smoke it, but you always carry the smell of it anyway. when marta drops her hand back to her knee and stares out into the artificial horizon, she knows the smoke and ash clinging to her hair and clothes is as real as the ones that lingered around her uncles during those evenings hanging out on the porch, enjoying the day's heat settle into something more comfortable, more palatable. feeling homesick for cuba isn't uncommon, but it hits a little different knowing it's so much more than a plane ride away now.
not that it was ever that easy to go back to begin with... ]
You said before here, you were solving a murder. [ there's something distant in her tone, as far away as the gaze in her eyes. she won't press him too much about the poem, not now, when his edges still feel so raw and frayed like the ends of the thread he so meticulously winds around their sticks. ] Are you a detective?
no subject
in the late hours of christmas, he'd sunk into whatever he had, in the alcohol, in the drugs, everything to just lose himself into the past, hardly caring what would be left of him, but he'd woken up to marta there, reeled out of the nightmares by her voice.
it'd have been easy to go back to what he was used to, to going on alone, to shutting it all out, but she'd kept him from it, from falling in to old habits, just by offering him a story ā a small gesture, but enough. enough to convince him of what he needs right now.
a friend.
but to say it out loud, to explain any of that to her, he's not sure if he even could. so when she breathes in the smoke and redirects with a different question, he exhales a slow breathe, not even aware he was holding it, his fingers moving to continue tying threads around the doll. ]
Not really. Just hired like one. [ his voice speaks casually, as if never deferred for a moment by the subject of the poem. ] I have a certain skill that proves useful for figuring things out ā Envoy intuition.
no subject
she doesn't glance back at him save for a lingering look at the meticulous way he winds his thread, fingers precise in a way that speaks of a deftness that has absolutely nothing to do with doll-making, but a skill reworked to something more delicate anyway. with care.
her lips fold over the rounded end of the cigar, made damp by the heat of their mouths. each puff a cloud of smoke, a wistful thought. blanc had had intuition too. almost eerie, like a superpower. in the end he had trusted in his, and it had saved her. if only she'd trusted in her own from the start. ]
I don't think I know that word the way you mean it. [ she looks at him finally, licking the earthy taste from her lips. ] Envoy.
[ even in her attempt to mimic his tone, it still lacks the weight that his hand, speaking of a context she isn't yet privy to. ]
no subject
it's rare for him to use his own words to describe who he was, who he is, and he pauses the turn of his fingers briefly to consider it. ]
The Envoys were a group of people who once tried to protect the world from greed ā freedom fighters opposing the rich and powerful from steering the future of humanity. [ before they lost. he spins the threads tighter around his doll's arms, securing it as he ties it. ] We trained to condition our minds to have a better awareness of details, have improved analysis of the things around us, of people. It'd make us smarter, faster, stronger. Helps me to see the things others usually don't.
[ he suddenly frowns down at his doll, slightly lopsided but a decent replica of what marta had instructed him towards. holding it up to show her, he turns to look at her with pursed lips. ]
Not that it helped me with this guy. Shit really does look like voodoo.
no subject
You know I've heard people say art is a science. I guess they were wrong.
[ with that gentle jab she takes the doll from him, before he can think to correct any of it, and reaches for her own left waiting by her feet. the cigar gets handed back to kovacs so she can begin her work. his doll, with its tilted spine and too-long left arm, is balanced over her knee while she begins pulling the sticks of her own. ]
...What happened to them, the Envoys? [ she lifts her eyes, curious but not searching. voice just quiet enough that he can pretend not to have heard if it would be easier. ] You said "were."
no subject
taking the cigar back from her, he brings it back up to his own mouth, taking a series of puffs to let the smoke envelop him again, sharing in the heat that burned past her own lips.
in light of her question, he knows there's the simple answer and the more complex one, or even the absence of one entirely since it seems asked more in casualness than anything invasive. but as his eyes watch the working of her fingers, more skilled at the craft than he had been, even with its small imperfections, he decides there's no harm in providing her with something. ]
They ... were all killed. [ he speaks it quietly, though he doesn't draw his eyes away, as if he were simply willing himself to talk of it more calmly than the subject would suggest. ] If it were a regular fight, they'd have had a chance, but ā a virus was implanted in their heads. Made them all turn on each other. No Envoy intuition could fight against that.
[ he sighs, breathing the smoke coming off the burnt end of the cigar. ] I was the only one who didn't get caught. [ the last envoy. ]
no subject
for some people
surviving is all they've ever done.
once you've done something for long enough, doesn't the spirit get tired?
marta watches kovacs' eyes train themselves on the slow work of her hands, and thinks (not for the first time) how old the light in his eyes look. distant, like they aren't quite made to fit the hazel they're encased in. ]
I'm sorry.
[ words often left to the role of empty platitudes, but she always tries to make them more than that, inject an empathic sincerity there that speaks to a quietly breaking heart. sorry he'd been left alone. sorry that he thinks he still is.
she finally finishes her work, holding her doll up right alongside his. where hers had once been perfectly made, it now bears a tilted spine, a too-long right arm ā the mirror image to her own. she sets both down upright on a mound of snow right before them, the shorter of their arms just barely touching. so that, if you squint, together the dolls look less like people and more like a single, lonely star.
she sits herself back, breathing in deep the lingering smoke. ]
Still have that lighter?
no subject
but his eyes watch her set the doll down, aligning them together, and it's in their parallel arrangement that he begins to notice the mirrored detail, the shift from the sample she'd presented for him to try to model after. this time, it's in the reverse, where hers bears similar flaws to the ones he'd accidentally crafted, and he knows there's purpose in her adjustment.
now, it's almost as if they were made to fit together somehow.
rather than draw attention to it, he merely looks at her with a quiet and pensive gaze, but bearing no hardened edges, like he isn't sure whether to be touched or concerned by her efforts.
when she asks about the lighter, he reaches back into his pocket, cigar held in his other hand, letting the smoke flow in the other direction. with the lighter between them, he clicks at the wheel, letting the flame spark before he lifts his eyes to her again.
he considers for a moment before he asks, ] Together?
no subject
he brings the flame up, and for a second it looks fragile, ready to wisp away with the cold. together? he asks, and she watches the flame hold strong. ]
Together.
[ once more her hand encircles his, but this time he's the one to guide her, destruction feeling at home at his fingertips. ]
To ends and beginnings.
[ she says it like a prayer, just as the first spark catches and pulls, till eventually both dolls become engulfed in the fire, soon indistinguishable where one begins and one ends.
she squeezes his hand before pulling back, curling in around her knees to watch the fire grow. ]
Feliz aƱo nuevo, Kovacs.
no subject
to ends and beginnings.
he leads her and the flame to the dolls symbolic of their pasts, appropriate to be doing so hand in hand to bid farewell to yesterday as the threaded sticks upon the rock seem to gaze into tomorrow. when they light with a brighter fire, kovacs can't help but find himself amused by the tragic poetry of it, of burning his past, knowing that this new day spells something else for him ā it'll be the loss of a memory as a result of his deal with the orb.
has he lost it already? impossible to tell, of course, since he wouldn't remember the lost detail anyway. but he had presumed he'd go into it alone, that losing his memories would simply be a mirror image of those sticks becoming ash, watching himself fall into nothing but dust as he gradually losing fragments of himself piece by piece.
it'd be easier, to close himself off, to go on by himself, but he's never liked loneliness, despite what grimaced looks might often suggest. and when marta squeezes at his hand, he looks again to her for a moment and finds himself foolishly hoping that, even if he's fated to lose everything, doomed now to fade into nothing, someone might remember him as he is before it's all gone.
turning to the fire, he sighs a soft breath, taking a puff from the cigar before he holds it to her once more. ]
Akemashite omedetou, Marta-chan.