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Ninette is an elusive creature, rarely socializing before or after her set. She's prone to disappearing once her show is done. While she's up on stage, though, she is a nightingale, with equal parts sensuality and tragedy to make her appealing, not to mention easy on the eyes. Tonight, she's actually here even though she's not about to go on or get off. She's in a strapless gown of sapphire blue with white gloves ending just above her elbow. Her golden hair is in pristine waves and her makeup flawless. She stands by the bar, still and patient as a glacier until the bartender has a moment for her.
*
Lucian may be considered a far from elusive creature. It so often seems when people need him, he can be found exactly where he should, manning the bar at LUX. Of course the bartender likes to saunter his way around the grounds and stare out at the city landscape picked out in stars and bulbs. He enjoys a good tipple. He rarely plays the piano center stage. And, apparently, tonight is the night to look at a newspaper while another person worries about the bar and he eases his way into lounging indolently at a horseshoe booth. His martini stands by itself, and he thumbs through the news. The fact his dress shoe is planted against the interior and his knee is bent lazily, ignoring the fact the lovely suit he wears is being totally mistreated by the behaviour.
*
Ninette finally gets the barman's attention, and she orders a martini, made with Holland gin, dry. Once the drink is received, she moves away from the bar. Too many people. She's used to the stares she attracts, and she can feel eyes upon her back as she leaves the throng. She casts a glance back over her shoulder. Let any of the dogs think he was the one she took note of. It's good for business. Speaking of which, her course brings her by Lucian's table. She pauses, ever deferential as she inclines her head and says, "Monsieur." It's not quite a greeting, more of an acknowledgment.
*
The barman is, in fact, a woman. Easy mistake with the sliced-short haircut she wears and the fact her pants are practically painted on, but not when she turns around. Olive skin and angled brown eyes fit a face altogether too feminine. Still, she can manage a gin-based martini with minimal fuss and slides it across to Ninette.
Lucian is the one person in the place aside from the bartender who probably doesn't stare because he apparently values reading the Times more than his clientele. Chances are fair to partly sunny he might be lounging before musicians show up a little later in the evening. If they show up, thanks to the hell at the World's Fair that just detonated plans. His fingers pinch the edges and shut the fold, allowing him to peer around the news print paragraphs at the woman. "Madame," he replies, French pitch perfect. "I met a lady in the meads, full beautiful; a faery's child. Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild." The quotation rolls off in elegant stead, though it isn't quite Paris he manages, somewhere a touch more southerly. "To what do I owe the pleasure tonight?"
*
A small smile appears on Ninette's cherry red lips. It's not easy to charm her, but pitch perfect French is a hell of a start. Poetry doesn't hurt, either. She continues speaking her native tongue, relieved to be rid of English for the moment. Inclining her head just so, she replies, "In light of today's tragedy, I did not feel like being alone." The smile fades, and she lowers her gaze. "The assassin. I met him once."
*
"Keats may be an English poet but the man felt the passionate stirrings of tragedy and despair as only someone traveled across the length and breadth of a continent in turmoil." Lucian curves a knowing grin, the shadows still falling across the sharp, carved lines of his face. A beautiful woman might know the impact of their power. The rare confluences that cause a man to be more than handsome can be legendary in their impact, and the wandering glimmer of emerald shadows off the polar-lights curtain of glass suffuses the hollow otherwise dipped in umbral shadows. He raises his chin just so, and every aspect of those high cheekbones and burning summer-blue eyes becomes too perfect. It's an awful curse, being the mold from which everything else was cast.
"Yes. Special editions coming wet off the presses with ink and all manner of broken truths." He folds the newspaper in a rustling of moth's wings and lays it upon the table. "Company may be one of those rare lights in the dark. If you will entertain the notion?" He slides his spotless shoes from the immaculate booth, feet tucked under the table. A torquing of his position has him upright with unfathomable ease.
*
Ninette's breath catches when the shadows hit Lucian just so. She may be getting quite the reputation for being an ice queen, but she's not impervious to beauty. It causes such sweet pain to look upon. Her gaze goes to the paper as its laid down, then back to Lucian's face. "Of course, monsieur," she says, and she steps up to the booth proper, elegant as an aristocrat as she slides into the booth beside him. Her little white clutch is set beside her, and she places her martini glass on the table, still untouched. "He tried to rob me," she mentions with a nod toward the paper. "I deterred him."
*
The paper is the Times, smashed with the title "ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT, WORLD'S FAIR" in bleeding ink like everything else around the city. He slides his long fingers across the linen napkin, black stains rendered grey then naught by the gesture. Not even darkness will be allowed to stick to Lucian. A tiny reminder to the world of himself and his identity. It gives cover to allow the mellow sprinkles of surprise to register and fade away. "This man here?" A photograph from the war shows a certain Mr. Buchanan smiling at the camera, bold as day. A sketch beside it registers what he is suspected to look like now. "I can hardly imagine why he would resort to petty thievery. What on Earth would compel him?"
*
Ninette shakes her head and says, mystified, "He needed money. So he claimed. He tried to snatch my purse and knocked me down, tore my stockings, I could have killed him." Not that the anger lingers in her anywhere. It's long ago frosted over. "What would compel him to kill so many people? And to shoot a hero? I don't understand the way some minds think, monsieur, and at the end of the day I'm glad for it." She finally takes up her martini, taking a small, dainty sip. She's nothing if not small and dainty.
*
"The stockings? What a cad. Imagine the uncouth behaviour to destroy such a thing," says Lucian without a trace of irony, though the hint of mischief lifts the corner of his mouth up. It makes a substantial difference separating smirk from smile. "A testament to his pain and muddled perceptions, though. Have you thought perhaps he selected a target to end his suffering? For someone who commits those sorts of acts usually does so from a position of emotional distress or mental matters." He places his hands on the table, and his own martini finally warrants a speck of attention. Pinching the stem, he raises the glass. "Salut." Then a sip follows, the alcohol something far from a necessity in his line of existence, but done purely for the pleasure of it.
And another finger raised to the one above all. Take that, Dad.
*
Ninette follows suit. "Salut." She samples another drink at a pace that could make that martini last all night. Her brow knits as she thinks about the words. It's more than that, something troubles her. It's not such a mystery; she looks to her boss, looking him in the eye as she says, "I wonder, if I had ended his life that night, would it have been such a sin? These people would still be alive if I had."
*
The liquid gives a quickening to the veins, thoughts spinning at lightspeed with an extra kick. Rubbing thumb and fingers together, Lucian doesn't quite plant his elbow on the table. Leaning his forearm on the edge angles him a little out of true. "Suicide? A good many people would frown on that, neatly as it might have cleaned up the situation. Though you could say another person would have stepped into the void a little later on if this was a calculated thing." He nods to the paper. "Speculation says it's a Communist plot, an Asian plot, an alien plot. Quite a stir. So close to the death of the President, I am surprised we are not on lockdown and finding guillotines set up."
*
Ninette clucks her tongue and says, "It's a terrible time we live in, but they'll say anything is a plot. In this case, they may be right. To shoot Captain America!" Even her exclamations are somehow diminutive and demure. "Even in Paris he's well-regarded." She sighs quietly, sitting poised as a porcelain doll. She blinks slowly as she takes in Lucian's beauty anew. It hurts to look at him, but she likes the pain. "Murder," she says. "I could have ended him, but I didn't want to be a killer."
*
"All generations think they live in the worst of times, the decline of history and an era of despair." Lucian tips his glass lightly, a weapon to point and gesticulate with. "You are correct. Too easy to assume everything is so very clear. This is the fear I have about the reporters sinking their teeth into it. Right now all they have are fragments of information, hearsay, some eyewitness reports. All unreliable as a basis for a conclusion." He doesn't smile when saying these facts, plain as day to him, and let her stare as she likes. The man is vain enough to believe it his due, and it is. "What compels anyone to pick up a weapon and fire it? Easier with a single person, but the crowd attacked by that fire?" Fire he would very much like to see, that goes without saying. "That speaks to deeper planning, not the kind one man does on his own without extraordinary abilities."
*
"All the more reason to have killed him when I had the chance," Ninette says, without particular fervor. It's a philosophical bauble to turn over and look at this way and that. She shakes her head, dismissing the cerebral toy, just like that. "You're asking reason to understand madness. I can't begin to comprehend the deeper evil that lies in the hearts of men." With a small smile, she adds "Only the normal kind."
*
"Have him killed?" Lucian idly circles around that statement. "Have you a hit squad hidden around the corner awaiting activation? I ought to watch what I say." He lifts the martini glass to his lips, allowing that complex balance of flavours to invigorate his palate. It slips down his oesophagus, gathering in his belly, a warming hue eventually evaporating with the intense fire of cells charged to a level that makes no sense to any medical device. "Madness can, I think, be understood. Not easily but madness still operates within a given degree of parameters. Chemical imbalances or disjointed thoughts, they still have rules of some kind, mm? There must be some medical philosopher out there ready for his moment to shine, if only the Bugle would stop saying animated bugs live under Governor's Island and fished up a reporter to give him his fifteen minutes of fame. But, as you say, we cannot begin to comprehend normal evils. Murder and violence apparently not among them."
*
Ninette laughs softly and says, "It was a rare opportunity, the kind that only comes once in a lifetime. I assure you, monsieur, I wouldn't dream of harming so much as a hair on your head." She pauses, then adds with a quirk of her lips, "Unless you tear my stockings." She lifts her glass to him and takes another drink. The warmth in her belly begins to melt the ice within her. She makes a mental note to slow down. Few men are a temptation, but this one? This one is temptation incarnate. "Do you believe it to be chemical? That ultimately men like this Winter Soldier can't top themselves?"
*
"A very good thing. I rather like my hair." The gold strand earns a tweak from his pinched fingers. Lucian eases back against the booth with a sigh. Not so much relief in a physical sense as taking stock of the world. Though the newspaper is folded, he tosses it aside behind him where the easy fling sends it landing into a wastepaper basket by the bar. Think nothing of it, he doesn't. "I assure you, if I choose to tear your stockings, you will be utterly grateful for it." If it's not without its overweening confidence, he at least gives Ninette a smile dry as the gin, and no less warming to his face. "Though possibly still prone to slapping me. I suppose it's a hazard to bear in mind."
He signals the passing waitress, and she will swiftly ghost by to take his empty glass and procure another order, as he or Ninette should prefer. Then off goes the brunette to the solemn woman at the bar.
"Without seeing the man or questioning him, naturally anything I could say smacks of a certain hypocrisy. Given the complaint on the reporter, after all." He at least acknowledges that fault without giving it terribly much stress. "Certainly some humans are reacting to the profound effects of imbalanced chemicals in their systems. A whole body of proof exists for that. Battlefields abound with inexplicable behaviour brought on by gasses, or patients on particular drugs acting without the slightest awareness of what was really going on. You've heard the case of a man who killed his wife and child with a knife, about a year past? He was absolutely certain they were facsimiles made from plants by the Soviets. Stark, raving mad? No. Apparently his medicines clashed and produced such a terrible effect."
*
Ninette shakes her head to the waitress, satisfied with the one drink she nurses slowly. "It's rather frightening, isn't it?" Ninette asks. She gives Lucian another slow blink, placid as a contented kitten. "What it must say of free will." She trails a fingertip along the rim of her glass, drawing out a quiet ringing. "When I met this man, he was barely able to attempt robbery let alone murder. Something must have happened." Her tone is cool, mildly interested though not particularly attached. "What happens now, do you think?"
*
Lucian nods, his mouth shut and ears open on the matter. Let her speak rather than himself, and Ninette proves more than capable of addressing the philosophical aspects of a discussion without his additions for the matter. He murmurs, "Yes, what indeed. There lies the knot to the great puzzle of it all." Nope, she is on her own for leading that bit of the dialogue, even as he gestures for her to continue.
*
Ninette's lips press thin, briefly. It's not her way to lead the conversation. She's usually the one in the position of prompting and listening. Left to wager conversation against uncomfortable silence, she lets her gaze wander the room. The quiet is less strange when she's not looking at him. Men don't tend to like intelligent women, in her experience. Especially women smarter than they are. It leaves her casting for safe topics. Nothing too vapid, nothing too cerebral. "I suppose if we were to speculate we would be no better than the tarnished press."
*
The quiet is something he can endure, thrive within. The silence of a human lifetime, once, to discover whether the piecemeal approach of language actually mattered as much as a gesture. Whimsy is a thing to manage in the elevation of time. Lucian nurtures the incubation of patience through the slowly blinking regard of his serene blue eyes, allowing her to come around in a circle, back to where they started. "Safety in thoughts has never served anyone terribly well, even when they think it does. Do I look like a journalist? No."
*
Ninette lowers her gaze. She should excuse herself. She knows that. Time for an exit strategy. "As I said," she says quietly. "Done is done, monsieur, and what's left is what we do now. Myself, I believe I may have another drink." She lifts her glass to her lips, drinking a little faster than she otherwise would. The sooner it's gone, the sooner she'll have reasons to retreat before she embarrasses herself.
*
Wisdom of these moments comes cheap, and hard to enact. Like the best laws, applying Occam's razor to action gives a clear direction. And still, people stay glued to their seats peering at the television or a book rather than fleeing from the impending wildfire or the suspicious man down the alleyway.
Lucifer turns slightly in the booth and doesn't dare snap his fingers at the bartender. She might fry that gorgeously golden mop of his. But a silent gesture of two fingers is enough for the singer to receive her drink right on time for his too. It comes sailing over easily enough for the pair of them to have their flavourful liquors in style. "Yes. Do we become frightened and angry? Do we change the whole system and never venture outside into crowds? I for one figure I won't change much."
*
Ah, the drink comes to Ninette. Her smile, small as it is, is genuine, and she silently laughs at herself inside. Trapped by social niceties, she's no more capable of leaving as she is of sprouting wings. It's just not within her capacity. She glances sidelong to Lucian again, and it's an effort of will not to sigh. "It would be arrogance to assume anything I change would turn the tide for anyone save myself and, as of yet, I'm doing quite well."