OPEN | prompt one | RAIN

[wrens]

prompt one | R A I N I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane.

 

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[shivs]

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. ]

[reactive]

[ 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?

[shivs]

[ 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. ]

[reactive]

[ 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.

[shivs]

[ 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. ]

[reactive]

[ 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.

[shivs]

[ 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. ]

[reactive]

[ 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.

[shivs]

[ 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. ]

[reactive]

[ 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. ]

[shivs]

[ 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.

[reactive]

[ 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.

[shivs]

[ It's a bit like watching a small animal fascinate on a dancing beam of light on a wall, the way Baby Jane watches her own hand fill with water only to tip it out to dribble in a large, satisfying plish plosh, only to right her palm and do it all over again. When she asks her question of Harvick, she doesn't turn, doesn't inflect her voice in a different way. It's an inquiry, same as all the others.

And, just like all the others, she'll listen to whatever Harvick tells her. ]

Is that what we want to do?

[reactive]

[ Since she's thoroughly distracted now -- or as distracted as Baby Jane ever really gets -- Harvick takes the opportunity to drain the last of his water, screwing the cap back on the bottle and setting it aside before getting up to join her by the railing. He doesn't reach out to touch the rain, but he folds his arms against his chest and leans on them in a way that means his elbows get splashed every few moments by a drip coming off the porch roof. ]

It's important to be reasonable about killing people, isn't it? Kill too many, and we start looking like just any other gang of lunatics, and people will start coming only when they're absolutely desperate. Reputation matters. For our purposes, for the moment, it's better to be seen as relatively safe.