There was a moment in which the party around him had turned into background noise, in which the people he was watching had lost importance, in which he really didn't care whether or not he was seen or saw anything because he really didn't think he would. He just thought this was any other party and any other scene and so he relaxed against the wall, allowed it all to become background noise even as he felt the nagging sense of boredom start to creep in. He didn't know why he was here in the first place and he wondered why Lady Corivan had bothered to bring him if he was just going to stand against the wall. She mentioned being friendly if he happened to see the two teens, but he doubted he would see them. It almost made him anxious. Perhaps she wanted him to seek them out, though he wouldn't know what they looked like if he tried.

And then a young woman, more of a teen, leaned against the wall beside him and spoke to him. "That's House Corivan's symbol, right? I see her around all the time, but I never really see any of her people nor did I expect any of her people to be here."
She casually pointed to the symbol sewn into his right chest pocket with the strangely curved bottle she was holding. He eyed it curiously and nodded as she took a drink from it.
"Do you want some?" She asked. "What's your name?"

"What? Oh, uh, Ray, guard of house Corivan," he replied nervously as she took another sip from the container.

"Really? Sounds official. Do you recite that every morning? You seem a bit nervous," she said, offering him the bottle now. "It's pop. My dad makes it. He's thinking of mass producing it. It's why we call it pop. What do you think of it? It's not alcoholic."
His face had flushed a bit, not really knowing what to say, and so he took the bottle and took a sip, sure she wouldn't offer something deadly to him that she had drank from herself. He hoped not anyway as he eyed her, though the drink itself was sharp and carbonated and he passed it back to her quickly, coughing a few times.

She laughed into her hand, taking another sip of it after him. "It's a bit strange when you first start drinking it, but it really grows on you after a while. My dad says it's going to be the next big thing. Is that what your Lady Corivan is after?"
He stared at her for a long while. She seemed plain enough, with dark hair pulled into a ponytail and light brown eyes, though he couldn't say she was less than pleasant to look at. "Would you happen to be," he fished for the name a bit in his head, "Miss Hildersen?"
"Well I guess you could call me that, Mr. guard of Corivan Manor," she replied with a smirk, "but I would tell you you're being too formal. Why not just call me Jaune?"

"John? Isn't that a boy's name?" Ray replied, wrinkling his nose.

"Jaune," she corrected with a wide smile, "Though I must admit it's a silly name to give your daughter, don't you think, Ray?"
He eyed her curiously, but merely shrugged, "I don't know much about what it's like to be a noble myself so I couldn't say whether or not it's a strange name."
"I suppose you're right. I suppose I'll likely always be Miss Hildersen," she replied, taking another sip of soda.

"What if you're married?" He replied off-handedly, eyeing the bottle now.

"Well I don't know. There's a lot of weight that comes with marriage, isn't there? What about you? I guess it's easier for someone who gets most of their name from an acquired title," she replied, "and less from a legacy to withhold." There seemed to be a joke somewhere in her words, but Ray couldn't quite get it. "Here, do you want this? I have another."
He looked at the bottle she offered hesitantly, but after a moment he took it, taking another hesitant sip and then another as he started to realize that he liked it.

"You're funny, Ray. So, I gave you that, now tell me what you think of marriage," she laughed.
"I don't think I'm ever getting married," he snorted. "I don't think so anyway."
"Is there anyone you love?" She asked.

"Well," he started slowly before shaking his head quickly. "No one, really. Not really. I don't think I know what love is honestly."
"You do look like the type. I mean the type that doesn't have many friend, but ought to," she replied. "I can't imagine what that's like, not that I have many myself but…I think you deserve friends."

"Friends?" Ray replied with a shrug.
"Everyone deserves friends," she replied before shrugging. "Well, maybe not everyone. How can I know that for certain? But I think you and I do, and that's enough, right?"
"I guess so," Ray replied hesitantly, not knowing what to say. In the end they didn't say much, but they did spend time in each other's company, talking lightly every so often and drinking pop together against the wall. Ray felt conflicted, having imagined meeting her while dancing, but he considered that he liked this much better.
After so many hours of drinking soda he murmured awkwardly, "I need to…go out for a bit. I'll be—"
He shuffled uncomfortably, but she smiled at him. "Go ahead. I'll wait right here for you, alright?"
He nodded, rushing out quickly, but when he returned to find her again he found himself nearly running into Lady Corivan, and she was on her way out. She looked surprised, almost angry, but she shook her head and told him, "Good, I was hoping to find you. Let's go. There's no time to waste."

He felt conflicted, looking in and saying, "But I met one of the people you mentioned and—"
"Good, I'm glad you know what one of them looks like at least. Now let's go," she said, her tone sharp. He was a bit shocked, and almost even angry, but he let her lead him away. She never acted like this before so he thought that it truly must have been urgent.

When they returned to the manor he started to head to bed, but she snapped, "What do you think you're doing? Don't you think you have a job to do?"
"But, usually when we go to—"
"I didn't ask you to give me excuses. I want you to stay right here in the main hall and guard like you're here to do," she hissed at him, moving past him and slamming the door before he could say anything else.

He felt a hard pain in his stomach as he wondered what he had done wrong, and wondered what she had expected from him, and then he felt a wave of anger at her for acting like this toward him tonight. He felt almost rebellious, but he couldn't bring himself to leave where he was told to stay and so he stayed where he was despite feeling tired and a bit nauseous from all the pop he drank. He felt dizzy too, the room spinning, and after a while he sat down with his back against the wall. He reassured himself that he could stay awake even when sitting like this, and so it was a surprise when a noise woke him up. It was a particularly loud noise, but it was particularly foreign to the sounds he was used to hearing from the manor at night, and that was enough to wake him.

He moved to his feet effortlessly and glided toward the sound much like he might hunt a stray mouse in the daytime. The closer he drew the quieter his footsteps became and the lighter his breath. That's why when he reached the door where he knew he heard the sound come from he didn't quite expect a blade to flash down at his back from behind him. His hearing was excellent, however, and so the moment he heard the blade cutting through air he was already moving to the side and so the cut was shallow, but it still stung and still frightened him a good deal. He realized his attacker must have thrown something down the hallway in order to make it sound like they were there rather than where they had been hiding in wait.

The next strike collided with his blade, and this time he was making sure to keep something behind him so if there was another intruder they wouldn't be able to reuse the same trick of a distraction, at least not to easily. He was a bit surprised as the person standing before him was considerably shorter, or maybe younger, though he couldn't quite tell. He could tell that the young man fighting against him was professionally trained, though Ray considered that it wasn't always the best way to learn how to fight. He followed strict patterns, for example, and didn't seem to have a completely natural knack for it to make up for that fact.

Which was fine and good against many untrained people, but not against someone who grew up learning the best ways to kill someone before they killed them, and this boy—just barely a teen—really wanted to kill him. Ray didn't really know why, but it was enough to make his blood boil knowing that this boy was intruding on his home and yet had the audacity to so strongly want him dead.

He set him on a simple enough pattern. It wasn't perfect, but he had learned it well enough in Varrock fighting against the local guards. It was a simple enough sword drill to follow, and it was easy to fall into the pattern. Ray would have scoffed if it didn't give him away, knowing that the young man he was fighting didn't typically fight real opponents. Ray felt a sick satisfaction the moment he suddenly deviated from the pattern, grabbing his hand as the young's man sword thrust forward at a time when Ray was meant to block so that instead his blade was pulled harmlessly past. He then dragged him closer, being the one to thrust instead.
He was sickly pleased the moment he felt his blade sink into the young man's side into his vital organs, but that satisfaction was dimmed by the sudden guilt that hit him in a way he didn't expect. This was practically a boy, after all. Ray suddenly felt his sickness tangibly, but he tried to push that feeling down, trying to justify that he too was this young and he too was threatened with this sort of thing daily, though he never walked right into it.
Only this one didn't know better.
His contemplation was cut short at the sound of a young woman screaming, the sound so full of agony that he would have thought that it was from the boy he still held in a macabre parody of a waltz. He was almost hesitant to release him, prepared for his blade to sink into him the moment his hand was released, but there was something final about how he fell to the floor instead. Ray almost felt as if he was standing to the side, no longer with his body. He had killed plenty of people before, but there was something odd about how the young man just hit the floor. It was so sudden and final, and the screaming was still happening, still ringing in his ear all the while.

And even after it felt like he was still standing by, watching, because the moment he had let him go and he fell Ray hadn't paused. He hadn't paused because a crossbow bolt had hit the wall right by where his head had been, as if the wielder's hands were shaking, or perhaps they were startled by how quickly Ray was darting toward their owner, a beast in human form, the sword soaked in her brother's blood rearing back to be brought forth to sink into her as well. All that was certain was that the bolt had missed.

Only he recognized her. He knew her. He had talked to her for hours on end. And so he paused. He thought he owed her that. He stood over her and her hands were shaking so badly that she was struggling to load another bolt into the crossbow she had leveled at him, at his chest, but she was a trooper and she kept trying to load it.

His blade was poised at the ready however, could have been in her before she took her next breath, but instead it had just…stopped. He didn't move. He simply stared at her. A crossbow bolt hitting him directly in the chest when he was so close would be instantly…fatal.

"M-Miss…M-Miss Hildersen," he croaked out. She was no longer screaming. He had done something wrong. A faux pas. She had asked him to call her…
"You're a monster," she said, and she must have been stuttering, must have been struggling to speak, but he heard it so plainly, so crisp and cold, that maybe she wasn't. "You tricked me into becoming fond of you, and then you killed my mother. You killed my mother, and then you killed my brother."

He could hear the click as she finally managed to snap the crossbow in place and pull it back.