Leonid
Territoriality
23:25, November 22, 2065
He faced her without flinching, and she stared at him in apathy.
"I'm not going to fight you," Jane said, quietly, but entirely audibly. Neil smiled lightly, but he didn't relax much.
"Then c'mon; let's go home…" he held out his hand, which she only stared at in contempt. It made him wonder what his hand ever did wrong….
"You can't keep beating people senseless; or sooner or later no one's going to want to play anymore," her scowl darkened, but he continued with little attention, "Besides, you don't want to hurt the nice people, right? Just me…" he winced, but if it was the truth, well… he could handle the truth, "Right?"
He stepped forward again, hoping a second attempt would be successful. He'd been in the ring for a couple of minutes now, and she hadn't attacked him, which had to be a good sign; or so he thought until he found himself inexplicably on the floor.
It was going to be a long ordeal. It had to be, for his plan to work the way it was supposed to. So he controlled it. It was his fight, but he only defended his body, and then only when he had to in order to keep it going… he was fully contented to let her have the undivided aggressive side of it. Not that she seemed to notice…
When it came to it, he knew the safest place was on the ground. If he needed rest, or to strategize the best way not to get pushed out of bounds, that was where he sat. She didn't attack floored opponents. But then, he hadn't expected her to attack him without warning, like she did in the first place. Eventually, he found himself floored, yet again. In this, one of the few times not entirely of his choice, he took the opportunity to move inward from the white edge defining, to his thoughts, his inner goal. He came to rest beside a bare foot, and blinked up dazedly. He smiled, trying to ignore the agonizing-now-don't-even-imagine-tomorrow pain that had been slowly spreading through bruises and scrapes to his already pained core.
But he smiled, managing to push a sentence through his throat and sound closer to cheerful,
"You havin' fun yet?"
Jane felt chilled. All she had wanted him to do was to go away – to give up and leave her alone for a while. As it was, he wasn't leaving and he sure as hell wasn't helping at all….
She kicked him – once, savagely, and the mental repercussion came back instantly as he fell back off balance and stayed there.
It was her fault for not being able to control what she felt when it came; and the decided lack of emotion when she… no, when others needed it had to be somewhat related. Every time, Neil had to be there to make up an excuse or… whatever he typically did. It forced her to feel guilt for every one of her minor indiscretions, for which it was always her fault…
No, she imagined, This one's his damned fault for not leaving me alone.
Shaking none to gently as she fought to control her fury, made the only decision her mind seemed willing to be tricked into.
Neil was anticipating pain. Not that the anticipation made it any less worse, but at least it wasn't totally surprising. Although, that was as far as his reasoning went; he couldn't tell why being surprised would be worse than knowing he was going to hurt.
But he was surprised, as the voices around him picked up again. There was a part of him that was mildly amused that people were still watching.
So things had become a bit slow. He lifted his head, not seeing any part of Jane up close, as he expected, but strangers' boots far off. Slightly unnerved, he glanced over his shoulder as he readjusted himself to sit. From the ring to around the large room, he searched, finding no trace of what he was looking for.
His mind was briefly stalled by the clock.
The indicator read midnight. They had been fighting for just over half an hour. Neil scanned the crowd a last time as the pieces gathered together in his mind.
He had won the match by default; Jane had left and was nowhere to be seen.
---
00:20, November 23, 2065
It was practical to let the on staff medics do their thing; especially since he had already lost Jane. For once, Neil relented himself to proper, 'sane' judgement. It only took a couple of minutes, so he supposed it wasn't a complete waste of time to be regarded as healthy, though injured… But it was simply, "bruised," and nothing permanent. Even if he could have told them that…
Afterward, really just before Gray could catch up with him, he slipped away from the resumed bustle of the establishment. It wouldn't have been to be alone, if only there was someone he'd rather spend time with… who would want to spend time with him, in turn.
And the list was a short one.
Since he didn't know where Jane was, and because anyone else he could think of didn't live under the New York Barrier, he was out of luck.
He took to the shadows, touring the city structure without much thought as to where he was going or how long he took to get there. He was nestled into a bundle of thought that was running circles around him, closing tighter with each circuit. Something was wrong with his life; imperative to fixing it was to know how it came about; to know how it came about, he needed to talk to Jane; to talk to Jane, she had to stop being mad at him; for him to know how to make her stop being mad at him, he needed to know what was wrong… to know what was wrong, he had to…
As for Jane, he doubted she'd have gone home, since that would be far too conspicuous. Although, if she knew it would be considered too conspicuous, she might have figured it'd be the best place to hide… unless she knew he'd think that… and his reasoning fell back to the beginning.
Too many circles, combined with a lack of proper sleep, were making him dizzy.
Across the city, light from the barrier filtered down from above. As he wasn't very high, there were patches of darkness clinging to the buildings and trees around him. The intelligent citizens were asleep, with exceptions in those who had to work during the night.
He leaned over a railing, staring into the darkness below the walkway. Resisting the compulsion to find something to drop, or, similarly, spit into the pit, he looked up to stare at the roots of the tree adjacent to his walkway… as well as the barely distinctive gray-clothed figure huddled in its roots.
Isn't that luck, Neil barely blinked at the recognition, instead trying to decide if it'd be better to run and hide or… well… stay.
Of course, his curiosity had to intervene.
"How the heck did you get over there?" Jane didn't move, so he assumed she knew he was there before he'd seen her.
"Guess," sweet sourness that he'd begun to expect recently; but he examined the railing, and the tree's support structure thinly wired to it with grown over steel beams.
He clambered over the railing, grimacing at the depth below, and inched along the metal until coming to the intersection of tree-wire and handrail. The trickiest part was getting up onto the tree's supports, as they were almost twice higher than he was tall, but he managed it with small difficulty. Once there, he just had to ignore the sense of vertigo and crawl across to the damn tree itself. Simple stuff… until he found that the way down was higher on this side.
"How di'jou get down?"
"I jumped,"
Instructional enough; so did he, and he had to scramble not to fall off the sloped surface of makeshift ground. Nevertheless, he chirped, "Hi," once he wasn't in explicit danger of plummeting to an early demise. She refused to answer him; didn't even look at him as he sat on the other side of her root.
"Are you okay?" It was a stupid question; a bluntly roundabout way of asking what he really wanted to know. But it broke through the silence, even if it started with her staring at him like he was a moron.
"What do you think?"
"I think I like it better when your calmer like this," although he may have liked it better like this, he much preferred her happy and calm. Or even better: happy, in the 'I want to boulder that skyscraper for the hell of it,' mentality that so supplemented his love of borderline, sometimes outright rascality.
"When I'm not trying to kill you, you mean," Jane scoffed, and Neil forced a weak smile.
"You wouldn't kill me," so it was more of a nervous blurt than a carefully measured retort… he hoped that she wouldn't catch that but rather take it as something good.
"How do you know?" she felt angry again, but it was so far away – like a reflection or projection of someone else's emotion. For herself, she couldn't feel a damned thing.
"Well… I trust you."
"What does that have to do with it?"
"It… uh," he needed leverage. Proof. Hypnotic suggestion. Anything, "sounded good at the time."
…Maybe something an itsy bit stronger…
She stopped listening, or pretended to. She could still hear him as he sighed, and could almost hear his thought process as it sped back and forth with his eyes; as he fidgeted and tried to take visual cues from anything that managed to catch his attention for more than a second.
His gaze came to rest on the branches above them, and the needles… evergreen; he fought to remember what that meant.
Tree. He couldn't figure out what his mind wanted out of that. He needed a clue, so he could get back to Jane… Wait… Jane, tree… She likes trees, doesn't she?
"You wanna go back to Montreal next week?"
"No," she shook her head, and he bit his tongue. Worth a try, at least…
"Look," she sighed at length, breaking his concentrated effort of picking at the dirt between his feet, "I'm sorry – I've had a lot to deal with recently, and every time I turn around you're right there, and always end up in my way.
"And," she continued, cutting him off. She held out her trembling hand pronate, to emphasize her point, "It's gotten that bad."
"What can…" her hand retreated as he reached for it, but it didn't stall him long, "How can I help?"
"You can't," she snapped.
"Yeah, whatever…" Disgust could go both ways. He pulled himself together, using the tree's trunk to help him stand. To his surprise, so did she.
"Why would you'd care, anyway?" Oh, she was good at that… especially to the unsuspecting.
"You want to know why I'd care?" Luckily for him, he'd had enough exposure to know ways around it, and quick thinking was a bonus. He took her arm carefully in one hand, raising it in display despite the irked glare she planted on him. He smiled; granted, it was at his own 'cleverness,' but it could have helped…
"This here," he gently pinched a patch of skin, "This is mine."
"Under here," he let go of her arm, crouching slightly to reach behind her leg, and tapped behind her knee, "That's mine."
"And this right here," he pulled himself up by her shoulder, and traced an area between it and her neck, "is mine."
"And here," he placed his fingers to her bottom lip and fought back a smile. Moments passed, and Jane's barely detained impatience didn't.
"Let me guess," she grumbled, "Yours?"
"If you say so," his smile broke for a split-second, and he kissed her to mark his newfound territory – and he was pleased that she wasn't… well, not completely unresponsive to the gesture.
"Not funny," she mumbled, much to his amusement and sometime after the fact…
"Liar," he caught her; she knew it. The game was his… for a little time longer.
If it lasted past when he could get some decent sleep, it would be even better. So Neil's sight wandered back across the gap, and so did his tired mind.
"So how do we get back over there?"
"How should I know?"
Unfortunately for him, his mind didn't make it back.
"You wanna sleep here tonight?"
"Yeah, sure…"
And Jane was as drowsy and exhausted as he was.
