[psl] 2015: Crawl 'til dawn, on our hands and knees

[firewatcher]

The end of the first night of the rest of her terrible garbage life saw Palmer in a situation she never imagined possible: in the first all-night diner she could find, sitting across the table from Vera Volkov, back from the dead.

Or—Liv Lazzari, now, wasn't it.

That was going to take some getting used to. That, and the fact that despite the drastic changes to her appearance, Vera—Liv—still didn't look a day older than when Palmer had seen her last, over twenty years ago. Not worth the price of admission, in Palmer's mind, but it felt a little unfair. Palmers tended to start showing age early, and she herself was no exception.

Palmer leaned on the slightly sticky table with one elbow, absentmindedly stirring her coffee with the other hand and biting back a yawn. "Is every night in hell this eventful?"

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[wolfatyourdoor]

The shift in body language was immediate: from an exhausted slouch to leaning as far forward as she could, her right hand gripping the edge of the table, her left making an accusatory jab.

"Fuck off, Masha." She had switched back to Russian, her voice elevating as she did so. "You know nothing about it. Of course Katya would look into you."

And there it was, all on its own; Maria hadn't even needed to reference the pet name directly. "You've got a lot of fucking nerve, saying that. Maybe it's just what she had to do to keep us safe, хорошо? Don't be so smug."

[firewatcher]

"Maybe, maybe not, how the fuck do I know, Vera? Safe from what? From me? You could have just told me you found someone else, you know."

Palmer slammed her arm down on the table, rattling the cutlery and startling a passing waitress, and leaned in to match Vera's posture, looking her right in the eye. "And maybe I'd be a little less pissed off about the bloodsuckers if I didn't think for two decades that they'd killed you."

She placed her other hand on the table, as if to push herself up to leave, but didn't yet, not breaking eye contact.

[wolfatyourdoor]

"Oh, no you don't." It was a deliberate echo of Palmer's words to her earlier in this too-long night, when she'd made her own last-ditch attempt to pretend all this wasn't happening.

The waitress recovered, then studiously ignored them.

"You don't say that to me like you know what the fuck this has been like. You don't lump her in with the rest of them."

She made a grab for Maria's left wrist—the hand with her wedding band. "And you don't try to play this like I'm the one who moved on. Twenty goddamn years of hell—"

[firewatcher]

"Make up your goddamn mind," Palmer snarled, slapping Vera's hand away. "You never want to see me again, but I'm the one not allowed to move on? If you'd come back, I would have—"

She stopped, looked away, switched back to English. "I don't know. You act like I've been having the time of my life, which isn't something I'd caption 'getting widowed at thirty with two small kids' with. For someone who's literally been stalking me, you really don't seem to get what my life's been like."

After a moment, she settled back down into her seat, but didn't lean back. "What the hell's so great about Kitty Hawk that it makes twenty years of hell worth it?"

[wolfatyourdoor]

She'd seemed ready for that, moving her hand back from the slap with speed that just exceeded natural. Or maybe she really had simply expected the reaction—already prepared to snarl back.

And then Palmer went on, and the tension broke. Vera's shoulders dropped, and she dragged a hand across her face; Palmer wasn't the only one running on too little sleep.

She neither met her eyes nor switched back to English, but her voice was quieter now. "You know, you really don't realize how good you've got it, Palmer. People were always going to die doing this. That was it—that was the life. It's just that you're the only one good enough to be left standing. Katya kept me...safe. But it wasn't about her. I just thought...the least I could do for you was keep you out of it."

Vera let herself collapse back into the booth then, too. "You're welcome for that."

[firewatcher]

Palmer rubbed her temples, switching back to Russian. Might as well get practice in. "Not sure it's a question of 'good enough.' I'm not that old, I still have a chance to go out the old-fashioned Palmer way." Returning on her shield, so to speak. She gave a brief, mirthless chuckle. "The problem with being the last one left standing is that, well—what's the point when you run out of people to protect, you know?"

She did finally relax a little, sitting back in the booth in a slouch. "And, of course, everyone's good work undone by a total idiot that none of us ever saw coming. Good job, all of us."

[wolfatyourdoor]

"Well, you can rest assured that you're never going to run out of monsters.
"So. There's that."

She leaned her elbows against the table and let herself look Palmer in the eyes again, her eyebrows raised. "I wish I had been there to help you slice off his cock and watch him choke on its ashes, and to feed the rest of him a piece at a time to the sun."

There was no particular venom in that description—only a matter-of-fact blend of brutal practicality and simple exhaustion.

[firewatcher]

"This, this I missed." Palmer smiled wanly. "Appreciate the sentiment. If only I hadn't been pressed for time, it would have been a lot more satisfying."

The smile turned to a toothy grin. "You know, I told him I might let him live if he knew who killed the Volkovs? Of course, he tried to feed me an obvious lie. Not that he was getting out of there anyway, but you'd think he'd have tried just a little harder."

[wolfatyourdoor]

Vera's smile was slow, crooked, a little vicious. (Or maybe this had always been her smile, and the passage of time had only distilled those qualities in it.)

She was midway to what might have even been a full grin of her own when Palmer mentioned Volkovs. And then her face froze in something less like a smile than it was a wince.

"—Oh?" Relaxing a bit (likely some inner self-reassuring dialogue, there), she went on. "What was it? Had to have been really something for you to be joking about it."

[firewatcher]

"Well, for one thing, it included Danielle Remington," Palmer said, rolling her eyes—although she paused for a second at Vera's wince. Well, it wasn't as if she herself liked talking about the way her own parents went out. "Which automatically rendered the entire thing bullshit, honestly. For one thing, I still have a copy of her patrol log from that night."

She shrugged. "Didn't expect to be getting some surprise answers to some of my outstanding questions within the next twenty-four hours. Like why I was never able to find the medallion, for one thing." Palmer jerked a thumb at the necklace in question, still around Vera's neck.

[wolfatyourdoor]

Vera scoffed. "I still can't fucking believe that—" She paused; switched again to Russian. "—That you trust a leech like her to follow orders. Much less follow them enough to keep a trustworthy patrol log. As if anyone's fucking report of that night would have had anything about it, anyway." There was a hardness to the words—a mix of bitterness and certainty.

Her fingers went to the medallion when Palmer gestured to it, a motion that had the convenient double effect of holding close and concealing, and she dropped her gaze to the table.

"And the necklace... yeah, it'd have been smarter to leave it behind. I don't know, maybe I just wanted her to see me wear it..."

She looked up. "But this is shit to talk about, so let's fucking not."

[firewatcher]

"Well, I wouldn't say trustworthy so much as predictable. They're really different things." For one thing, one had a lot more sentimentality to it—the kind Palmer really didn't let herself budget for these days. "But—"

She looked like she wanted to press on that a bit more, but, after giving Vera one long, curious look, instead took another sip of coffee. "Sure. I'm sure it is. Let's change the subject. What's a good topic? People we mutually hate? There must be a lot of overlap. How do you feel about Augustus Cole? The priesty one."

[wolfatyourdoor]

She met Palmer's gaze evenly, eyes slightly narrowed, daring her to pick a fight. (Sure, Maria, give the woman who survived her family's massacre a hard time. It's a real good look.)

"What, the king's—" (she provided air quotes) "—brother's spawn? The whole lineage is revolting, except maybe Mercy, who's instead got the mistaken impression that acting like a mouse makes them any less a monster than the rest. What about him? Did he try to impress you with the leech take on witch shit?"

[ link for STs: here; note image title/description below for explanation ]

[firewatcher]

"Nah, never actually had the misfortune of meeting the guy," Palmer said. "I think the rest of them I've at least seen; color me unimpressed, though you could probably guess that. My official position on Mercy Cole is that anyone trying that hard to appear that harmless and above-board is seriously overcompensating for something terrible. But—I digress."

She gestured with her coffee cup. "Anyway, one hears things. And what I'm hearing—" She switched into Russian: "Is that Augustus Cole has a long trail of bodies behind him."

[wolfatyourdoor]

Vera's brows lifted skeptically.

"Don't they all? There's a reason we always said they were the ones that mattered most to kill."

She paused, then recrossed her legs and leaned in on an elbow, but kept her focus out the window at the sunrise, deliberately casual. The volume of her voice dropped very slightly. "So what makes him special--how many bodies does it take to shock even you? ...And what kind of source do you have on this? Not your... family... or they'd have told us by now." At this last, she glanced back over her shoulder at Palmer. Little need to guess who she meant by "us."

[firewatcher]

"It's a lot, and let's just say he's lucky I got this tip instead of some other officer. A bunch of disemboweled bodies stashed together behind some very elaborate traps stretches the idea of normal, even in this city. And my source prefers to remain anonymous." Look, nothing personal. Standard procedure. "Anyway, he's a real problem, considering he keeps generating missing persons reports, but I don't figure there's much of an avenue for recourse 'round here, is there."

It wasn't really a question--Palmer was well aware that what passed for justice in vampire circles wasn't her own kind of law. She raised an eyebrow. "You've been around this block before. Don't know if you've got any ideas on how to handle the situation."

[wolfatyourdoor]

Her brows lifted further, this time suitably impressed.

"Shit. That one I didn't know. Fucking disgusting, the lot of them."

Vera dragged her fingers through her hair and frowned, chewing on her lower lip. "Don't know why I didn't know; seems like the sort of thing Kitty would keep track of..." She was speaking more to herself than Palmer, now. Her coffee was barely touched, but now she brought a flask out from inside her coat, unceremoniously poured in part of its contents, and took a deep drink. "Unless...she does know, and she just thinks it doesn't matter as long as he's been covering his fucking trail? I swear—"

With a rough shake of her head, she cut that sentence off midway, then looked back at Palmer. "Kitty's the one with resources, not me. Not usually. I can find out if she knows; if somehow she actually doesn't, and I can convince her it's a threat to their fancy code of secrecy, then...maybe. Or she could just decide that he's too close to her favorite Cole. And it would help if you weren't going to be coy about how you're getting this shit. You've got way too much reason to want the lot of them properly dead or else at each other's throats for me to try to get you their help with just 'Palmer told me.'"

[firewatcher]

Palmer took all this in—particularly the line about Kitty Hawk's "favorite Cole"—and frowned, looking thoughtful. "I don't want my source to get any kind of heat for this. They told me But—well, you're right, I do have a lot of reason to want to cause trouble. There are probably people who can confirm this independently. I..."

She suddenly looked uncomfortable. "You know I've never believed in ghosts..."

[wolfatyourdoor]

Unusual to see Maria of all people looking uneasy about the supernatural; Vera's frown went thoughtful. And then she passed her the flask, sliding it towards her across the table.

"Yeah, I remember. Kind of funny to me where you drew that line—Bigfoot is still bs, by the way—but go on." Was she already hanging with sin-eaters or something? Christ, it had been less than twenty-four hours; she certainly worked fast if that was the case.

[firewatcher]

Palmer stared at the flask for one long moment, and then took it, pouring a not-insignificant amount into her own coffee, looking grateful.

"Yeah, yeah, but I like the idea of Bigfoot—and anyway, a big furry guy in the mountains is a lot less far-fetched than the lingering presence of the restless dead. Sorta figured that I have enough dead people pissed at me that I'd know if ghosts were real."

She looked down at her coffee, and took a long drink. Much better. "I thought, anyway. I think. Jury's still out. Anyway, the source is, well, ghosts. Or something like ghosts. He's, uh, apparently left some unhappy ones behind. I'd be more skeptical, but when they lead you to concrete evidence..."

[wolfatyourdoor]

"Dead people like me?"

She took another long drink from her mug, nonchalant—at least outwardly—but studying Palmer's face for a reaction. The flask she took back and replaced inside her jacket, before their waitress could get see it and potentially get all judgmental.

[firewatcher]

Palmer's mouth twisted—maybe hiding the instinct to wince visibly. "Hadn't been counting you with the ones that'd want to haunt me, but maybe that was a mistake," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "Since you're not dead and somehow you're managing to haunt me anyway."

[wolfatyourdoor]

"Thanks," she said drily. "It's a talent. And shit, Maria --sorry, Palmer-- we watched enough horror movies as kids--ghosts always hate the living for having what they can't, right?"

She let out a short, sharp laugh, though it wasn't particularly funny.

[firewatcher]

"So they do, I guess," said Palmer, flatly, not laughing at all. It really wasn't funny. "That, or they're just waiting for someone to come along who can do justice for them. Though it's always unclear for the first half. Gotta keep up the suspense."

She drummed her fingers on the table, staring intently down at her coffee. "I—you know—" She shook her head. "Never mind."

...aaand here we go again

[wolfatyourdoor]

Vera smirked. "What, are you offering to rescue me, Lieutenant? Your princess is in another fucking castle."

A pause, and she snorted and leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms. "--Or your prince is."