aviary | OPEN | prompt one

[ Rain falls so rarely these days that it's something of an event (lower-case) when it does. Harcivk's basement complex doesn't have windows, obviously but on evenings like these when the clouds have rolled in thickly, he can take his dinner (an energy bar and his ration of water) up to the covered back porch and watch the rain and it's almost like what the family that used to own this house might have imagined their rainy evenings would be like.

The rain used to come down black, wet fallout full of ash. It's still pretty acidic these days, but he sends people off to gather basins of the stuff anyway whenever it comes down, thinking vaguely that he might be able to do something with it eventually. Their signal lights flash off and on in the night now and then as he chews. ]

[ She's not tasked with keeping on eye on Harvick's person, but that doesn't keep Baby Jane from doing it anyway when there's nothing else for her to do. Finding him is easily enough, though he's not in any of his usual haunts this time of night. When she steals up behind him, it's on silent feet, the door barely making a soft click shut behind her.

It's not as though she's sneaking on purpose, Baby Jane just doesn't know how else to operate. It's either slinking about on soft, muted paws or all out — teeth, nails, the lot. She's not a girl raised by wolves, but a girl raised by the Event. Arguably, the later's much more fierce.

She says nothing. ]

[ Harvick's had to learn a lot about paying attention to his surroundings since the Event that he never had reason to bother with before it. Somedays, he marvels that he ever lasted this long or got this far. But here, at the centre of his territory, he sometimes feels safe enough to slip into old bad habits, like ignoring the sound of soft footsteps behind him.

When he does finally, consciously, register the noise, he reminds himself not to let his guard down like that, even as he glances over his shoulder and notes that it's only Baby Jane. ]

What are you doing there, little girl?

[ She not little, not anymore, but she's done nothing to shirk the 'Baby' from off of her name and so things like 'little girl' and 'cutie' remain. If not from Harvick, then from some of his men, though all of them know that — when push comes to shove — Baby Jane is the sharpest (and quickest) knife in the boss's arsenal. In the dark, she stares at him with her pale eyes. Her skin is so far as to be translucent and so Baby Jane generally keeps underground whenever she can. On the rare occasion that she does venture out in the day, it's completely garbed from head to toe to keep the sun's poison off her delicate skin (it's the only thing about her that's weak).

Eventually: ] Working.

[ Protecting you. Watching. ]

[ Harvick never knows exactly what to think about the girl. She's a child; she's dangerous. He should keep her out of harm's way; where exactly is "out of harm's way" these days? He's mostly given up trying to sort it out, lets her do what she wants, and tries to account for her lack of full frontal lobe development where she can't see.

Silently, he crooks a finger at her and then points to the unoccupied spot on the bench. The pattern that used to grace its cushions are mostly gone now, but the padding remains. God bless polyurethane. Even nuclear winter couldn't best that stuff. ]

[ There are times when she doesn't obey. Much like an animal straining against a leash, or perhaps like the adolescent girl she's meant to but oftentimes forgets how to be, Baby Jane sometimes throws a fit or is stubborn and will refuse a command he's given her. (Though, not often.) This, however, isn't one of those times, because after she blinks at Harvick (once, twice) she's sitting, still moving silently from here to there.

Her eyes don't leave him once. ]

Rain's good, [ she says after another long pause. ] Are you happy?

[ He shrugs. The concept of happiness, like the idea that he somehow has found himself raising an adolescent girl (or at least, being present while she raises herself), is a little odd a lot of the time. It seems terribly gauche to admit that he may be happier now than he ever was before the Event. ]

It's a pleasant evening, [ he says, finishing the last bite of his energy bar and tucking the wrapper away in his pocket. ] Won't be any trouble tonight with everyone too turned around by that. [ He points in a vaguely upward direction. ]

Always trouble somewhere, [ Baby Jane says after another long silence, though she finally turns her attention away from Harvick to look at the distant lights that move across the landscape flickering on and off, on and off.

She knows that he won't have them drink the water, that people will get sick if they do. But there are clothes to wash and bodies to clean and things that run on steam. ]

How long until it stops? [ she asks, blinking slowly. Even though Harvick is not her father and hasn't been fatherly to her for a while now, she still is of the opinion that he holds the answers and whatever it is that he tells her, she is ready to accept as not opinion but fact. ]

[ He leans forward, dropping his arm down onto his thigh so that he can try to see out from under the porch roof. Not that there's much to see. The clouds are big and black, but the sky is pretty black too now, and there aren't city lights the way there used to be, to light them up from the underside.

And what the hell does he know about clouds anyway?

He sits back, drapping his arm on the back of the bench, leaning his head against the wall of the house. ]

It could be a few more minutes or it could go on all night. [ Probably wouldn't, though. Short and rare, that was rain these days. He turned his head slightly in her direction and quirked an eyebrow up. ] Why? D'you have somewhere to be?

[ When he turns his head slightly in her direction, she does the same, her motion mirrored perfectly to his, the precision with which she does so uncanny. Her eyes are mostly pupil, ringed barely by the thinnest sliver of ice-blue iris.

Do I have somewhere to be? [ she asks. From somebody else, it probably would have been accompanied by mocking emphasis on that first word 'do', the question sardonic or perhaps a little bitter. But from Baby Jane it's nothing short of earnest. A wet breeze blows — warm and unrefreshing — from the heart of the city. It smells like wet metal and battery acid.

A white tendril of hair is stuck to Baby Jane's cheek but, being as efficient and still as she is, she makes no effort to pull it free with a finger. ]

Edited 2012-01-08 00:02 (UTC)

[ Sometimes Harvick wonders what his father would make of dutiful, sharp little Baby Jane with her eagerness to follow orders (well, some orders) and her lack of internal distractions. If he was able to make a decent tool out of Harvick, it almost doesn't bear thinking about really. And not only because the man is surely dead by now. ]

Not that I can think of, [ he says with a single shoulder shrug, raising his right hand to scratch at the whiskers on his chin. They're getting long. It'll be time to trim them back again soon. ] Unless you wanted to go out there and enjoy the rain. It's not likely to back for another month or two.

[ The very faintest of creases appears between Baby Jane's eyebrows. It makes her look her age, passingly, her face somehow older in its set and the way it fails to crinkle and shift the way a normal girl her age's would. Most of the time it's as if Baby Jane only comes with two settings: upset (no, furious; no, feral) and not at all. But every so often, rare at it is, she seems confused, as if Harvick has managed to ask her a very difficult question.

At first it seems as though she has no intentions of saying anything at all, but: ]

I don't like the smell.

[ Her piece said, she turns back to look out past the edge of the porch at the houses, silent in their neatly bombed-out rows, beyond. ]

[ This rain doesn't quite have the familiar, comforting ozone smell of the rain from his childhood but it doens't come with the sharp, burning smell of the earlier days when it was dangerous to even consider stepping out in the rain. Harvick studies Baby Jane's face and wonders if she even remembers what real rain smells like. ]

That's fine, [ he concededs, easily, looking back out into the night again. ] You can stay here with me and watch. [ He reaches for the bottle balanced on the bench arm beside him, his daily ration, and begins unscrewing the lid. ] Business will be slow for a few days. People always see the rain and think they're saved. And then they drink and get sick for a while. And then they'll come back to us.

[ She doesn't nod (that'd make too much movement) but she does blink more than what's necessary in seeming agreement. Baby Jane may be silent and strange but she's also clever and understands things like pattern and repetition. Being so quiet and observant means her mind easily fixes on these things and snags on variation and deviation easily (they're flaws, ones that she can exploit; that's the key to survival).

People came to Harvick in waves, coming and then going again but not without reason or cause. The rain was one of these things that created variation, like a stone dropped into a reservoir of water sending ripples across its surface. ]

More work, [ she says after a while and Baby Jane doesn't mean Harvick so much as herself. When the people came back after a time away they always seemed desperate or angry. Both of these things lead to fights more often than not, and that's when Baby Jane proved most useful.

She seems almost...cheerful at the prospect. ]

[ Harvick's got no illusions that rigid conformity to old social mores and legal rules are things that will make one very dead very quickly these days. He's even heard that in Constantinople, in the old days, there were people who looked forward to physical violence the way that Baby Jane does and were considered to be acting for the greater good.

So perhaps he's just old-fashioned for finding it unsettling. He glances at her out of the corners of his eyes as he takes a sip. He's certainly benefitted from her ease with it and won't hesitate to in the future, so maybe he just needs to find a way to strip that particular concern out of his consciousness, let it go, one more casualty of the fallout. ]

Most likely. They'll come about and act as though it's my fault they drank the stuff. I'd be perfectly happy if they never did.

[ Logically, it makes sense to be allied to a man like Ethan Harvick. He's smart, decisive, focused and — most importantly — knows where the water is. In a world where water isn't the only commodity but certainly the most precious this makes him a very powerful man (arguably one of the richest ones left standing).

Logic, however, isn't what keeps Baby Jane by Harvick's side — silent and obedient and loyal. Nor is it a matter of survival, because if Baby Jane is capable of anything it's most certainly getting by on her own. No, what keeps her here, engaged in a conversation to which she only half contributes, all of her attention — both conscious and subconscious — focused on him sitting beside her, is something much more simple than that. It's naturalistic and organic and almost biological. Like the way a mother hawk imprints on a baby bird.

Baby Jane looks at Harvick again. ] I can do that, [ she says, the tone of her voice lifting every so slightly, making her sound just a hair closer to eager. Though the logistics of making sure nobody ever drinks rainwater again are quite complicated (and, in keeping with Baby Jane's method of problem solving, involve quite a lot of dead bodies), she does not seem daunted by this in the slightest.

She hears the word 'happy' and she responds. It's almost Pavlovian by now when it comes to him. ]

Edited 2012-01-08 04:06 (UTC)

[ And here is how Harvick has learned to deal with Baby Jane: by finding something endearing in all that wildness. She's a child who survived the Event when many adults couldn't even manage the same, when Harvick to this day isn't certain how he managed it, honestly. She can be vicious and troublesome and fantastically literal at times but all of it is part of why she is here now.

She may not be a normal child but then perhaps there are no more normal children, as Harvick knew them. Perhaps there is just Baby Jane and others like her, made to survive in this world they have now. Harvick fancies himself a scientist before most other things, and he'd like to think he can spot evolution when he sees it. ]

Keep in mind that we need customers left standing afterward as well, [ he murmurs into his the lip of his bottle, almost a gentle correction. ]

[ It's not an admonishment and she doesn't take it as such, though her head cants slightly to one side as if he's just said something curious. ] The smart ones will survive, [ is her reply and if there's irony or doublespeak or some kind of broad-sweeping commentary on the World At Large seems to accompany the statement, Baby Jane isn't aware of it.

She turns away again, standing now and moving to the edge of the porch. When she extends an arm out into the rain, it's with her hand face-up and her fingers cupped. The water fills the meager bowl and then streams through the seams in it, wetting her hand and the dead ground below. ] You will always be relevant and when they die, others will come. New faces.

[ She's probably right. That's the upside to this business. Harvick's father's philosophy of business was to sell people what they need. In good times, people will happily spend huge sums buying what they want and pinch every penny for the things they need. But good times never last forever and when the bad times roll around, a person who sells what people need can take them for everything they have, and they'll swear and bargain and curse you, but they'll keep coming too. That's why Harvick's father got into the pharmaceutical business. With water, Harvick likes to think he's done one better.

That's why he smiles, watching her catch water in her hands, acting like what she's said is sort of a joke and knowing that it sort of isn't as well. ]

Provided we ensure there are enough people left over to continue the species.

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shivs - 2012-01-08 15:20 (UTC) - Expand

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reactive - 2012-01-08 15:38 (UTC) - Expand

[ Baby Jane has long since come and gone by the time Fetch comes scampering up the back path. Gone is, of course, a relative term since the white shadow never truly gets far from Harvick unless he explicitly tells her to go, but it's far enough gone that the little boy doesn't hesitate once in his wet-footed tromping (Baby Jane frightened Fetch, anyone with eyes could tell, though his boyish pride meant he'd do nothing short but deny it). His shirt has been peeled off and tied around his throat by the sleeves, like a child's cape, and his legs (skinny but undeniably strong for such a small boy) are spattered with mud. Under his arm, wrapped in what could only be assumed was Fetch's head drape, is a bundle of something.

He doesn't stop for breath until he's safe under the awning and dripping rainwater onto the slats of the porch, but when he finally does, he's grinning. ]

Told ya.

[ Harvick has moved on from dinner by the time Fetch comes running up. There's the suggestion that he was making an attempt to read at some point not long ago (a book resting open on his chest; one of the advantages of taking over an old resedential neighbourhood was the ability to amass a large and varied library with very little effort). He's lying on his back on the bench now, though, just listening to the rain.

When Fetch's footsteps come stomping up the stairs, Harvick levers himself up onto his elbows, catching the book with one hand before it slips off his chest to the ground. ]

And what, particularly, did you tell me? [ he asks, raising an eyebrow. ]

[ Fetch goes about unbundling what's tucked beneath his arm, peeling away the layers of sodden cloth to reveal what appears to be an old baking tin — the kind that once upon a time held cookies, though Fetch doesn't really recall what a cookie is. Harvick will recognize it as his water testing it, the one that he helped put together himself (with Harvick's mindful supervision, of course). Despite whatever mindful warnings Harvick's given him in the past, Fetch gives the tin a little shake, making its contents rattle inside. ]

Back before ten, [ he says proudly. ]

[ It would be an outright lie to say that Fetch reminds Harvick of how he was when he was younger. His father's household was not really one for encouraging running around in the mud or scientific exploration or much of anything, really, beyond business acumen. So perhaps it makes more sense to say that Fetch reminds him of what he might have preferred his childhood to be like and isn't that a thing to think given how the world is.

Harvick's slight smile is derailed by a wince when Fetch goes shaking his tin about. ]

You were surprisingly fast. Did you make sure to get them all?

Course I'm fast. [ This comes out even more proudly than his last assertion. Among Harvick's men (and Harvick's children) there isn't anyone faster, save Baby Jane — and Baby Jane is in a league of her own. ] An' course I did. Fifteen around the edge, five south, three west.

[ Fetch recites this carefully, the tripping pace of his speech slowing carefully, like a child whose dutifully memorized the name of all the city-states and their respective despots for class. Being just a boy, he might not understand the significance of each test spot and why even one missing figure might throw off his survey, but what he does understand is that they each mean something to Harvick.

Which is good enough for him. ] Even did 'em in order, jus' like you said. No short cuts or anythin'.

[ Harvick narrows his eyes, watching Fetch's face for any sign that he may be exagerrating or lying, but the boy is as painfully honest as usual. It's a quality Harvick can admire and appreciate as long as he keeps his mouth closed around customers. ]

Well, come on, then, [ he says, closing his book with one hand with little regard for the page he was on (he was barely paying attention and will probably have to restart from the beginning anyway) and pushing himself off the bench with his others. He gets up and goes to the porch door, holding it open so that Fetch can proceed him inside. ] We'll write it down before you forget. [ He smiles a little now to show he's teasing. ]

OPEN | prompt one | RAIN

ALEXANDRIA | post-Event

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