aterat | A Winter's Ball

Entry tags:

A Winter's Ball

Who; Everyone!
What; The Ball promised by Halcyn!
Where; A newly (and quite abruptly) renovated ballroom in the Noble District
When; December 15th, evening
Warnings; None as of yet, though there is some mischief afoot for those looking for it

The morning of the 15th, the day of the Ball, opens with a letter under every door, reminding the residents that today is the day, that the Ball to celebrate and be merry is upon you. It also includes a small golden ticket that all attendees are asked to present at the doors to be allowed into the hall in the Noble District. It bids the attendees to enjoy themselves, forget their worries for a time, and is each personally signed by Halcyn.

Arrival | Under the Mistletoe;

The chill in the air at the change of seasons makes for a cold journey to the Noble district, though the streets are well-lit (an improvement in the otherwise dilapidated quarter in the first place) and at the end of the street indicated in the invitation letter, stands a beautifully restored building wreathed in white lights and adorned with wreaths and holly. All roads and citizen paths have lead to the ballroom today, and it is a beacon of civilization in the otherwise unused quarter. A guardsman is checking tickets at the door, and allowing admittance to the foyer of the ballroom.

The foyer is also decorated in trees adorned with shining lights. There are people flitting about with trays of champagne and people are greeting each other, gathering in groups and generally enjoying one another's company. Six archways lead further into the ballroom, and into what seems to be a seating area with round tables atop which glittering floral arrangements sit and to which servers bring meals for those who have a seat. At the top of each of the six arches hang six bundles of mistletoe.

Some are able to pass beneath the bundles with no issue, but others may find their way blocked by an unseen wall, unable to escape the arch until someone joins them, and a kiss is exchanged. It could be innocuous, even a cheek would suffice, but who's to know that without experimentation?

Try the Grey Stuff, It's Delicious

In the dining hall, meals are limited, but there are options for various palettes and even a vegetarian option. There is wine and champagne, and also non-alcoholic options of you're less inclined to partake. The music from the main ballroom, accessible through a set of ornate double doors, is muted here, providing a sense of ambiance but not overpowering the conversations that may occur at the tables scattered about the room.

The desert is the same for all who try it, though, and fluffy (is oddly colored) meringue that is simply to die for, but it seems to have some strange side effects. As the night progresses for those who've eaten the strange confectionary, they will begin to feel more and more happy and carefree, but also much more open. Those who are reserved about their feelings or their thoughts, even their histories, will feel less inclined to be so withdrawn. That couldn't possibly make anything awkward, could it?

Shall We Dance the Night Away?

The main even by far is the grand ballroom. A 15 piece orchestra sits atop a small stage to the north of the dance floor, their music varying between melancholic, haunting, warm, and uplifting, and the citizens are quite enjoying the time to let loose and dance the night away with their partners.

Spiral staircases lead to the balconies on the second floor overlooking the dance floor below, affording tired dancers chairs and refreshments with which to rest in order to return to the floor below. The music here, due to acoustics, is muted which affords a more intimate place to converse.

Even more intimate are the outdoor balconies accessed from either side of the second floor. Here, small sconces have been lit to afford a romantic glow to the area, but the light is dim enough to enjoy the glittering starlight above. The flames also give the area some warmth, warding away the chill in the night air and allow guests to enjoy the solitude of the area without freezing. The music out here is a pleasant background hum, making the setting even more romantic and ethereal.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"He should certainly be afraid of this one." He replied with a smirk of his own. "And I have no pride lost in saying I will gladly hide behind you. You're more than capable." His smile was as much due to his successful joke delivery as it was just enjoying her presence. He was not going to focus on the implications of that.

Instead, he took a spoonful of the meringue, looking at it and its unappetizing color for just a moment, before just going for it and taking the bite. His eyebrows rose at the taste. It was actually pretty good, sweet with a hint of...mint? "It's not too bad. Give it a go."

"The Baba Yaga is always more terrifying than the wolves." And she supposed when it came down to it she was a witch of sorts. She gave a genuine chuckle at his admission that he would hide behind her. "You remind me of Doug," there was a strange fondness in her voice at that admission, though she chose to not elaborate any further. At least for now, perhaps that would change after a few bites of this meringue.

"Not too bad hmm..." she looked down at it then over at him. "If we are poisoned I will hold you responsible." But with that she did take a delicate and hesitant bite of the meringue. He was right, it honestly wasn't bad. It was fluffy, sweet, and hers had a tangy hint of lemon. "Mmmm," she grabbed another larger spoonful and this time took a much less delicate bite.

"Are you telling me now you've got a walking house?" He smiled as he took another spoonful of the dessert. "Seems sort of superfluous, what with your being able to teleport and all."

His smile turned to a laugh at her remark. He didn't know Illyana well, but from what he could tell, he was going to have to stay on his toes around her. That alone excited him. She was full of surprises, had a self-loathing that kept her at a distance, but she continued to try. Whatever she might think of herself, she wasn't a bad person. Bad people didn't care what others thought of them. Well, some of them did, but she certainly wasn't a narcissist. "It's good yeah? At least it'll be a sweet death."

"Of course. A walking house is the perfect location to store the bodies of the souls I capture," she replied with a perfectly serious face. Teasing him was both easy and endlessly amusing.

"Don't they say third time is the charm? Then the third death should be the most pleasant." Could she actually say she had died three times? It was such a complicated subject that she actually wasn't even certain herself any longer. "At the very least the most sweet."

"Don't you have a handy pocket dimension to toss the lot into when you've finished with them?" He was beginning to get a feel for her teasing and that fact alone was a comfort.

He chuckles at that, though there's an uneasy edge to it. Sometimes it was difficult to tell whether or not she was kidding. "Normally they mean you succeed the third time round. I can't imagine dying prematurely would ever be pleasant."

"Do you think we do not have houses in Limbo? Where do you think demons live?" She shook her head and tried to cover up her half smirk by taking another bite of the meringue. "Besides, a house with a throne of skulls that travels with me is much more intimidating."

For a second her expression darkened and she just looked at the last remaining bites of her treat. Usually she would say nothing about the darkest parts of her past, especially in regards to her family, but something compelled her to speak. "Mikhail was responsible for my death as a child. Or perhaps you could say in an ironic twist that we both were responsible." She shrugged. "Mikhail was my eldest brother. A hero of the Soviet Space Program who found himself taken to another dimension. Whatever he saw there caused him to break mentally." She tilted her head and looked thoughtful for a moment. "My family has a habit of finding it's way into alternate dimensions. Perhaps that is our true mutant ability."

"You know, I've never given it much thought, love. I've never sat and pondered the living arrangements in Hell." He chuckled, though, taking another spoonful of the dessert. "But let me guess, you left your walking house in your other bag when you came here, yeah?"

Joking aside, though, he listened intently to her story, frowning as she continued. Three months ago, he would have said she was crazy, but with all the other fantastic things going on around them, he couldn't discredit everything she said as fact. Besides, it was clear her tale was an uncomfortable one to tell and he wasn't going to belittle it by not believing it. On top of that, he'd seen her with hooves and a tail. After that, someone seems a lot more honest regardless of what she was saying, plus, they were all in an alternate dimension right now.

"He never got across what it was he saw there?" He didn't know what to say about her death. Until very recently, he'd believed it was pretty damned permanent aside from residual hauntings. "And...what did that have to do with you?"

"A hell," she corrected with a smirk. It was an important distinction. "My walking house is still in Limbo. Perhaps I will show you someday." There was no hiding the widening smirk on her face at that offer. Truthfully she could never imagine actually allowing him into Limbo for a lot of reasons.

"Death. He found love there but he attempted to harness the powers of the void and caused an explosion that killed her and many others. I do not think he ever recovered from that." She bit down on her lip and looked down after he asked his question of her. "It is a complicated story. I found him in the past and he told me about the legacy virus, a fatal virus that targeted mutants. He told me the virus would take my life but said with my help he could find a cure." Usually she would have stopped here. No, she would never have even gotten this far. Yet, for some reason, she felt herself inclined to offer more. "I found out later that his goal was only to save himself. His experiments failed and he infected me with the virus which lead to my death eventually."

"A hell, right." He nodded, frowning at her explanation. "Wait...you're serious? You have a walking house? On chicken legs? Is there actually a throne of bone, too?" Why was he excited to learn that, or at the prospect of seeing it? Wouldn't he have to go to Limbo to see it? That sounded like bad idea for a lot of reasons.

"Christ...you uh...look good for-well, you look good regardless, but definitely for, you know...dying." He frowned. Normally, he would have let it go at that, lapsed into an awkward silence, but somehow he found words this time around. "I mean, I can't imagine what that was like. I used to think my story was a sad one, but...I think I got off easy, actually. It...doesn't define you, you know? You've overcome more than I even thought existed, and sure you've got scars, but we all do. I admire that about you."

"It is a very important distinction," she said with a laugh that was almost a giggle. Almost. She would never admit to it being anything like a giggle. "Of course I am serious." No, she wasn't. There was no moving house. His second question though. "Yes. It is my seat now. Would you like to see that as well?" It was strange that he almost seemed excited about it. What a strange person he was indeed.

"I was a child again when I died." It felt easier to be sinister and vague when things got a bit more emotional. "When I was brought back I was older again. Though lacking in other things." Like a soul. She looked over at him with a look of slight disgust and scrunched her eyebrows up. "You should not admire me. Nobody should." Time to change the subject. "What is your story?"

He nodded. "I...think I follow. Rather like being from one state or another, yeah? Same country, drastically different." His eyebrows rose and the corners of his mouth tilted upward at that giggle. It was hands down a giggle, and it had been painfully brief and adorable. "Why visit a walking house and not take in the furniture?"

"I can't help it, love. You're...strong, and pragmatic. Not a lot of people can make the decisions you've made, and those who can't hold them against you. That can't be easy." He chuckles, though, shaking his head. "My story? Way more boring than yours, I'd wager. My...mum died when I was really young. She, uh, killed herself. My dad never really recovered. He thought if we moved to the States, he could forget, but it just got worse. He drank a lot, blamed his weird kid who hated touching things a lot, and I moved out as soon as I could."

Edited 2021-01-19 07:40 (UTC)

She rolled her eyes at his attempt at understanding and then shook her head. "Close enough I suppose." For just a moment her cheeks turned just the slightest shade of pink before she looked down in an attempt to hide it. "I assumed you would be frightened of the skulls." It was definitely time to go back to making fun of him.

"You do not understand the things I have done." There was a hint of sharpness in her tone. Luckily he had moved on quickly to explaining his own story and that gave her a distraction from her own self-loathing. "If your father ever shows up here perhaps I could leave him in Limbo for you." It was only half a joke. "I am sorry about your mother. No child should be separated from a parent so young."

"Ooh, so you're trying to scare me off." He nodded. It was something he'd noticed about her from the first time they'd met, but he was still trying to work out why. "Which I do understand, but I'm trying to work out why."

"And it doesn't matter, love. Everybody has something they regret. You've had bigger stakes, so it serves to reason you've had to do bigger things." He frowned as she shifted the topic, though. "My father's a sad, lonely man who's angry at the world, but he doesn't deserve getting tossed into Hell," he lifted a hand to stay her comment. "A hell." But he shook his head. "I never knew my mother, and I only ever saw one picture of her. I...know how much he loved her, though. He...has a necklace that belonged to her. He gave it to her. Now, every time he looks at it, he thinks of how she was taken away from him and he blames me for it. I don't know why and he's never said." His expression darkened as he story continued. "He's said how much he blamed me more times than I can count, but never why. He never told me about the necklace, either. I just...touched it once." A beat. "Once was enough."

"I am not trying to scare you off. You just seem easy to frighten," she said with a smirk. He seemed to get thrown off very easily and for some reason she found it relatively amusing.

"There are few things I regret." Very few. Some things she felt somewhat bad about, but she did not regret them. At least not in the way most people would. "Isn't it funny how people try to alleviate their own guilt by finding other targets? It makes you wonder how often he lies awake at night thinking of all the ways he failed only to wake up and decide to redirect the blame to his own son." What a pathetic sounding person. "You do not have to talk about what you saw."

"I'm not-" so, maybe he balked at new things a little but that didn't her a reason to call him on it...did it? Maybe it did. Maybe even a small part of him liked when she did it. He decided very quickly that part of him was stupid and had terrible ideas.

"He is." And there's a part of him, larger than he likes to admit, that fears deeper than anything that his father's weakness is inside of him. He shook his head. "It was feelings more than anything. I don't always see when I touch things. Sometimes it's...sounds, smells, but mostly emotions, at least when I'm not focusing."

"Not what?" she smirked and then shook her head. There was no hiding that she took amusement from poking fun at him.

"At least you understand he's pathetic." Illyana was never one to mince words and this made no exception. "Sometimes feeling is worse than seeing."

"Easy to frighten, but I think saying that makes me a liar." He ran a hand back through his hair, which did nothing to keep it combed, as he'd tried to do given the suit.

"I'm starting to get it, yeah." He frowned, looking down briefly. "Yeah, it is. I know...just how much he blames me."

"Everyone's a liar at heart." Whether or not she actually meant that was left up in the air. Which was just intensely amusing to her.

"You also know how misplaced his blame is. Or do you choose to ignore that to lament over your father's disdain for you?"

"I used to. I've been trying not to anymore." He rolled a shoulder in a shrug. "This took a turn."

He took a deep breath, shaking his head. "Look, Illyana. I like you. A lot. I also have lost all mastery of the English language, evidently." He looked down, because a 4 year old would have been smoother.

"It seems as though you should try harder." Her smirk remained until he said the next part. Her expression turned quickly to something mixed with shock and confusion. Discomfort caused her skin to crawl and her desire to teleport away started digging at her. That was always her instinct when things that threatened to make her feel emotions appeared.

Instead though, something compelled her to speak. Words came out and she felt as though she wasn't even aware of why she was saying anything. "You do not know me or the things I have done. I tried to take the soul of a teenage girl who stumbled into Limbo because it was pure and I needed a pure soul." She narrowed her eyes. "I'm not someone to like."

"Yeah? When you were there, alone, and things were more dire than I can probably imagine?" He narrowed his eyes at her, tilting his head to the side curiously. He wasn't sure if he had her pegged or not and his next question was risky, but he was going to ask anyway, for some reason.

"If you needed a pure soul right now, would you take it?"

"No. After my death from the virus Belasco attempted to bring me back. What he brought back was only the Darkchilde and in disgust he banished her. Me." She closed her eyes and looked down. "I had no memories of my past life and no soul. Then a group of young mutants fell into Limbo, among them was a girl with a pure soul. Belasco had sealed his palace away from me and my magic, I needed someone else to get in. I convinced the girl to let me preform a ritual on her." Did it matter that she had no soul and no conscience at the time? To the younger New Mutants it certainly hadn't mattered at all. "I wanted my soul back. I wanted to be whole."

For a few seconds she gave no answer to his question. "No. I remember now what it was like when I was a child. I remember what it felt like to have pieces ripped out one at a time."

"So it sounds like your soul's a decent person." He he smiled, slightly awkward. He knew from things she'd told him before that the soul was important, and that most people took it for granted. He wondered idly if it played that deep a role in one's moral compass. It must, religion focused on it too much for it to be useless.

"Look, Illyana. I'm not saying you're an angel, but you're also not a demon to spite everything Belasco put you through."

"That was why Belasco took me. When he found me my soul was the purest he had ever seen." Finally after a few more seconds she looked up at him. "He brought me back because he loved me. That was what he wanted." There were quite a lot of implications in the statement and the air was heavy when she looked back down. "I do not speak to others about that." Her eyebrows scrunched together and she shook her head.

"I do not know why I am telling you this." She paused and then looked over at him again. "What did you mean by you like me?" There were many ways to like a person after all and she was not exceptionally good with emotions.

"You don't have to talk about it." Though he never really talked to anyone about his father, either, and yet he felt perfectly comfortable doing so with her. "I'm so...sorry that happened to you." It was a lame response, but he didn't know what else to say.

"...I enjoy talking with you, and your commentary makes me smile. You're smart and you're not painfully naïve. I like your fashion sense and your brutal honesty."

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