crash

who: brett and eris
where: their new place
when: early evening

Eris had been keeping herself busy for the day. After Ronnie had come by and she'd given her the job, she'd kept up with things. And she was telling herself that she was familiarizing herself with things, that she was learning the place, that she was doing things she ought to be doing, but she knew that was partially bullshit. She was keeping herself busy because it gave her much less time to think about the deadline on the party. Everything was happening fast, now wasn't it. Incredibly fast, even. And tomorrow night, she was going to have to be up to par. Or...herself, or something, she didn't know.

Either way, she'd taken the time to go get some more of her things from the loft, then come back, she'd written and rewritten the names of all their girls down, trying to get everything noted, and she kept trying to write the list with no mistakes. The wastepaper basket in the office was full by now, crumpled sheets in it, and a couple littering the floor. She had a glass of scotch next to her in the office, because if she went into the apartment, she started obsessively putting things away, but everything was already put away. Like her jewelry? That was better organized than it had ever been. Doing it again wasn't going to do her any good whatsoever.

But the names of her girls, that was something she should be able to do. And it was freaking her out on some quiet level that she kept messing it up. There was that, and trying to learn the doors. She'd been up and down the hall about a million times, trying to remember which doors led where, and for some reason, one of the only one she got right every time was that small, empty storage room. The office she got correct more often than the others, but after that it was a bit of a toss up. Picking up her glass as she finished writing her list again, she realized with some annoyance that the ice in it had melted. Which made her wonder how long she'd taken to write it this time. Sighing and leaning back in her chair, rubbing her temples, she told herself to knock it off. That it was fine. It was just easier said than done.

The lift pinged before the doors slid open and Brett walked out, a suit carrier hung over one arm and an envelope in his other hand as he headed over to her. Unlike Eris, he knew his way around with no problems, and he could figure where she'd be. Stopping in front of her, he tossed the envelope down on the desk. "Two tickets - just don't ask me how much they cost. Had to sell some more of those diamonds," he told her with no preamble. The girls were going to have to work their way in on someone's arm - but that was the whole point, wasn't it? he just hoped that they were as good as she seemed to think they were. If the city wrote them off as cheap whores then they were done before they got started.

She didn't look up, but instead looked at the envelope. Setting her drink down again, and her pen, she picked it up and opened it, taking them out. She didn't mention anything about what he'd said about the cost--she'd known they would be expensive. But the point, was they should only have to buy the one set. After that, they should get invited. After things went well--and she was still attempting to tell herself that they would--they'd be set. So long as you don't fuck up. So long as you can actually do this, when you're not at all sure you can. she told herself. Stop it. I can do this. It's easy to step back into the role. I can do this. It was probably unfortunate that her first thought process was a lot stronger than the second. "Thank you for getting the tickets." she told him, opting for that than anything else. Like 'good job' since it was for them, and she was aware she wasn't his boss, and therefore she shouldn't praise him like he was some subservient employee.

He upnodded slightly, not that she would see that. he was very well aware that she wasn't looking at him, and he was trying to be determined not to let it get to him. Not after last time. "And I picked up my tux," he added, also resisting the urge to throw the damn thing over the back of a chair. He felt poked and prodded - the tailor had insisted that he try it on, and then made him wait whilst they made last minute adjustments that apparently were 'vital' - not that he could tell the difference between the first try and the last try, other than he'd wasted two hours of his life he wouldn't get back.

She took a sip of the scotch even if there wasn't any ice in it, and looked up then. "You should hang it in the closet by itself, don't let anything else lie up against it." she told him. She sort of wanted to say more to him, fill in the silence, even if it was wholly unnecessary, but she didn't know what to say. Her insecurities were sort of biting her, and if she slid into the role of Eris, as it were, Brett would get pissy with her. He had last time, after all, and she still wasn't exactly clear on why. That was a bit fuzzy for her. Then she stood, and reached up to take it. "I can take care of it." she said. "I was going there anyway." And she was sure she remembered which door was the one to the apartment. Really.

His eyes followed the glass as she took a drink and put it back down again and when she offered, he held the bag out. "Sure," he said, figuring that that would give him a moment to quietly get rid of the drink. She knew how much he didn't like her drinking. That was, of course, assuming she wasn't going to take the damn thing with her. But he could take care of that as well.

She didn't take the drink with her. There was a part of her that was aware that he wouldn't like it, and while she'd been sipping at it to kind of calm her nerves, she wasn't drinking it fast enough, what with the melted ice. If she'd remembered ice. Now she wasn't sure about that either. One of her major problems was she did this. When she started second guessing herself, she started second guessing everything. It wasn't pretty. She did take the bag, though, and she headed for the door, stopping in it as she looked both ways, almost like she was waiting to cross the street, but really she was trying to gauge where the apartment door was. Obviously not in the direction of the elevator. She had that down.

When she left the drink, he waited until she'd passed him, then quietly picked it up, crossing his arms and cradling it at the crook of his elbow. He turned and watched her for a moment, eventually understanding - or figuring that she was uncertain. He thought about how he would handle it if they were out in public. It was like seeing Lily - another test for him. How he would work things, deal with a situation. He walked up behind her, standing close, his free hand falling gently to her hip as he bend down to whisper in her ear, murmuring more than speaking. "To the right, Princess."

Eris tensed just slightly when he touched her, but it was because she'd been looking at all the doors, ruling them out and hadn't been paying attention to where he was. She relaxed again immediately, especially with his voice in her ear. Part of her was very grateful. She hadn't said anything, but apparently it was obvious, and that just...wasn't good. Another part of her wanted to tell him that she wasn't ever going to learn if he told her every time, and she could do it just fine on her own. But that was her being testy with herself, and wanting a target. Another time, she might have taken the shot, but not today. "...I remembered earlier." she said, tone quiet. But she turned to the right, and she headed towards the door there, making the assumption that it wasn't one of the side ones, it was at the end of the hall. Christ, how fucking easy was that, anyhow? It wasn't like it wasn't a straight bloody shot. Opposite the elevator. It shouldn't be this hard.

He still hadn't come up with some kind of indicator for her that wouldn't be obvious for everyone else. It wasn't like they could use a code - a code she would have to remember. And any code she could work out, others could work out too. They'd have to just keep working at it and hope that it stuck at some point in time.

He followed her down the corridor to the apartment, peeling off to throw the remnants of her drink down the sink in the kitchen, before seeing if she'd managed to find the bedroom or not.

There weren't that many doors in the apartment, and she'd left it open so she'd be able to find it easily. She was more comfortable in the apartment, because it was contained, and while it was going to take her a bit to work out the closet-vs-bathroom issue in the bedroom, she didn't need to look around, feeling confused in order to get herself that far. As luck had it, she picked the right door for the closet first, and she walked in, turning on the light. Then she went to hang up the bag, pushing other things out from it so that it didn't get wrinkled even by chance. It was possible she was taking too much care with it, that really, even if it did have the slightest bit of a wrinkle, it sure as hell wasn't going to make or break anything, but it was a detail she could manage. And right now, Eris was in need of details she could manage.

"What was with all the paper?" Brett asked, following her to the closet, but not into it, leaning against the door instead. He'd noticed all the screwed up bits of paper everywhere, and he figured there was a reason for it.

She didn't turn right away, though immediately she felt weirdly trapped. Even if she wasn't. She was just out of sorts, and it was hitting her in odd ways. "I was trying to write down the names of all the girls." she answered him, being honest instead of coming up with some story, even if she'd had the momentary urge to do that. She and Brett made a point to be honest with each other, she really shouldn't start lying about incredibly stupid things now. Besides, it wasn't like he couldn't go check, now was it. She busied herself with looking through her dresses, moving them apart farther from each other. "And we got a new one today." she added.

He figured that from the amount of paper and the way that a lot of it had been balled up, she'd been getting frustrated with that. But at least she was practising. Hopefully it would stick - he just knew there was little that he could actually do about it other than try and be there to step in if she needed the backup. "New girl? Who's that?" he asked, deciding that that might be an easier topic to go with than dwelling on her difficulties.

"She used to work at Babylon. Her name was Veronica, you would have known her as River." Eris said, still finding little things to fuss with. "She came in today, I guess one of the girls spoke to her, and directed her here. I laid down the ground rules. She asked about the bet." she said, knowing that if she wasn't quite so frazzled at the moment, she would have quite enjoyed seeing how he reacted to that, but she couldn't right now. Which was a pity, she could use the distraction.

River - he remembered River. Now he knew about the bet, he could identify that she'd worked pretty damn hard at trying to win it as well. "She did? How did she take the news?" he asked, also knowing that he'd passed on to some of the other girls that Eris had 'won', at her request. He assumed that she'd told 'River' the news - he could imagine that she'd taken a kind of pleasure in it.

Eris shrugged, then turned back towards the door finally, because really, there wasn't a whole lot else she could fiddle with in there. "She was rather surprised by your involvement at all." she said. "in the business or otherwise. As for how she took it, she was curious. I asked her if she'd try winning if it hadn't been won yet, and she said she didn't know. But she always wondered about you." she told him, moving to walk past him into the bedroom. "I advised her against trying."

Brett gave way without a thought as she headed out. It had never been his intention to block her into the room, it was just a handy place to lean. "Is there anything I should know about what you led her to believe?" he asked, aware that it was unlikely that anyone else would know the whole truth of what was between the two of them. He wanted to keep track of their stories, in case she couldn't, though he imagined that they would all be pretty much on a theme.

She crossed the room, and stood at the foot of the bed, looking around for something to do. She needed her record player. That was what this place was missing. Then she could flip through her records a million times. Start at the beginning, go through, yeah. That was what she needed. But he was talking to her, and she needed to have an answer for him. "I told her I don't share very well." she said, and that was all. Again, at some other point, she would have enjoyed this conversation much much more, but right now she couldn't concentrate on it well enough to.

He followed her across the room, moving to stand behind her again. He preferred standing behind her, when they were close. He was more comfortable that way, where he could slip an arm around her waist, pull her back against him, but he didn't have to feel that close proximity, that vulnerability that rose in him when he looked down into her eyes. "I don't share well either. And she never held my attention anyway." Oh, she'd been pretty enough, but not Brett's type. Not that he could have ever defined his 'type' as such. Just that that girl, wasn't it. She'd been eminently resistible.

She leaned back against him, not resisting it when he did that, and her eyes found a middle distance to focus on. It was a little like she stilled for a few moments, that need to find something to occupy her attention quelled for a second. "Did any of them?" she asked. She could imagine River hadn't held his attention, but when she thought about it, she couldn't imagine any of them really doing so. However, that was because she knew his issues with things, and hell, even after they'd been intimate, sometimes he had a lot of trouble in that area. A specific set of necessary factors involved, as it were, otherwise the deal was off. But that was because of his issues with himself, it wasn't to do with the company. Or, that was the running theory at the moment. So she did wonder, right then, if any of them had held his attention, and he just hadn't been able to go for it, due to other circumstances. She vaguely remembered talking to him about it once, at the loft, when she'd given her theory about him and the girls. What he might want in a woman, things of that nature.

He considered that for a moment, and it made him think about what he would have wanted. He respected her rather more than to just give her the brush off 'no'. So, he thought about it. And then gave her the answer. "No. But then again, that job - your job is to be all about what's on the outside. It's been a long time since that was enough." He'd dated enough women like that in the past. But, after the fire, before the downfall, those years when what he'd been coping with had been about his private life, he'd picked them like that - just a face. Pretty, dumb, and not likely to cause a fuss. He'd dated the innocent types, the ones that wouldn't push. Who he could be seen with without having to give anything more than a few kisses, without having to leave his comfort zone. But those girls, none of them had been his 'type'. He'd wanted women he could walk away from without a second thought, without a backward glance.

Appreciative of the fact that he did think about it before he answered, she listened to what he had to say, and thought about it herself. If nothing else, the conversation was keeping her calmer than she'd been most of the day, so she was alright with staying on it, even if she was aware he might not be in a moment or two. It wasn't like it was his favorite thing to talk about, after all. "Is that what that job was about." she said, in a tone that suggested she didn't think it was. There wasn't amusement to it though, or scorn, just some form of interest. "So none of them really attracted your attention. What would have been enough?" she asked. Since what he said definitely implied that there was something else he'd have been searching for. She was curious what that might have been.

"It wasn't like men went to Babylon for the sparkling wit and conversation," he told her, sarcastically. He always stepped around coming out and calling any of the girls whores. Or even ex-whores. He didn't like that, it didn't sit well with him. Deep inside, he hated that some women had to do that - that they felt they had no alternative but to do that. The idea that for some it could have been choice was something he would never have been able to understand. Even with Eris, she'd based a business on it, and been very successful, but the way Brett viewed it, albeit unconsciously, was from the basis that she'd had no really choice in the first place and her life had developed from there. "And - I don't know what would have been enough. It wasn't like I was looking," he pointed out.

"No, they didn't." Eris agreed. "Of course, that doesn't mean I didn't have some very smart girls. I did. But girls in that line of work are experts at playing dumb--they have to." she told him, still fixing her gaze off across the room, not letting it waver, even if she couldn't have said what she was looking at. "I often thought about sending some of them to school, paying their way for that sort of thing. I think a couple of them would have gone for it, but a lot of them wouldn't have." she said, just sort of talking, even if what she said might not have had the clearest of points. "When was the last time someone really, truly caught your attention before everything happened?" she asked, meaning his stint with the O'Malleys, the business with the force.

"A long time ago," Brett told her, swallowing back the immediate instinct to lie and say he didn't remember. His tone, though, wasn't one which was encouraging to questions. He didn't want to talk about it. "Why did you choose not to? Send the girls to school - the ones that would have gone for it?" he asked her, hoping to go with the alternative subject.

Eris knew he didn't want to talk about it, but she wanted to know. She was curious. And it was better than being frazzled. So, she kept up both lines the conversation was tracking on. "What was her name?" she asked. But she didn't pause that long for his answer, answering his question as well. There needed to be give and take, after all, now didn't there. "I was still in the process of looking into it. And finding a school near enough by is harder than you'd think. But I had thought about it. I would have wanted a few of them to go to school then get some higher society positions in the city. It's always good to have people who owe you be in high places, after all. Of course, at that point it would have been a total business decision, prudent. Like treating my girls very well was. It doesn't happen all the time, but a lot of people will remember who aided them, even later in life. A fairly high percentage of my girls I know were with me. I suppose we proved that with this little business venture. They know I'll take care of them."

He was unsurprised that her motivations had been less than wholly altruistic. He knew her well enough by now, but he'd never been under any illusions that they would be. She could be a cold, hard bitch when she had to be, and he didn't mind that at all. "When we have the money to spare, we should look into that again," he suggested to her. After all, having people who were powerful and influential in their own right was better than having people who were just hired to be on the arm of those in power. It was all about protecting themselves, at the end of the day. He fell quiet, unsure whether he was actually going to give her the name. He didn't want to think about it. It was tempting simply to ignore it, but a name was a name. If she pushed further, he could stop her. But before that, he could throw her the bone that was a name. "Sadie." He wasn't giving her any more than that. Just a single, standalone name.

She nodded, a single incline of her head when he said the first bit. "It was crossing my mind." she told him. It was just a little scary for her to think about because it was most certainly a Future Plan. And she was still working on the first plan, she didn't know at all that she could pull off, so a future plan was a little much for her. But still. He seemed to think it was a decent idea, so maybe he could think on it for her. She'd wondered if he was going to ignore her question, as well, and was pleased when he didn't. "What was it about her that caught your attention?" she asked. Since that had been what they were really talking about, though Eris made the attempt to mark the name in her mind. Not that she thought she'd ever meet the woman, but still. It was information about Brett Trent, and she liked having that.

As far as Brett was concerned, or as far as he wanted to be concerned, they were talking about education and the future - because he didn't want to be talking about his girlfriends of the past. A past that he would very much like to be over with. Dead and buried. "It was a long. time. ago," he repeated, enunciating each word, his tone dropping slightly. He doubted he could make it any clearer that he didn't want to discuss this without telling her specifically to drop it.

She was silent for a long moment, and then she stepped away from him, looking back at him over her shoulder. "It was." she said. "But if anything should have taught you that whoever you used to be isn't dead, don't you think the most recent events would present overwhelming evidence?" she asked, though it was rhetorical. "I'm curious what you liked in a girl. I'd ask what you like about me, but you don't actually like me all that much." she told him, though she didn't sound offended by the idea. She walked closer to the bathroom door--she knew it was the bathroom door because they'd just left the closet, and she opened it, flipping the light on. "Just because we have had a whole lot of other things to talk about lately doesn't mean that I've lost interest in knowing everything I can about you."

"You think I don't like you?" Brett asked her. He both wanted to know what the answer to that was, and he wanted to avoid questions about his past. It wasn't that he didn't like her. He just wasn't good at this stuff. He liked her - he was definitely there. He wouldn't still be here if he didn't like her. She had him in a way he'd never experienced before. He just had trouble putting all that together. That had nothing to do with her and everything to do with who and how he was.

"You know that's not the point." She walked into the bathroom, but answered him anyhow, since she didn't hear him walk away or anything. "I think you want me, I'm compatible with you, and there's a tolerance level for bullshit that's been built up over time. But I wouldn't say you like me." she answered him. "And that hardly had anything to do with what I was saying. There's that bit where I still want to know everything I can about you, and this specific query interests me. I'd like to know. If you don't want to tell me, and I know you don't, then fine, but just because I know you don't want to doesn't mean I'm going to stop asking. I'm not exactly that meek little thing who's going to walk on eggshells and not at least give an attempt to talk about what's on her mind that a lot of women in this city are."

"I know you're not," Brett told her. That, actually, was one to the things he did like in a woman, though at times it wasn't appreciated. Sometimes - a lot of the time - he didn't want to talk. But he couldn't stand woman who meekly accepted what life had to throw at them, and just agreed with everything, or let it walk all over them. He liked woman who would fight back, and who would keep fighting back. Even against his bullshit. There weren't very many women who would do that, and clearly the end result was that she believed that he didn't really like her.

"So...what did you like about her?" she asked, walking to the bathtub, and she sat on the ledge of it, debating taking a bath. It might help relax her more. She knew she needed to do that, especially because she knew she'd need to sleep tonight, in order to function her best tomorrow. Not the best of thoughts, but one she needed to keep with. She couldn't go someplace she needed to be on top of her game if she was frazzled. "What caught your attention in the first place, if it wasn't just that she was pleasant to look at?"

He sat down on the edge of the bed and started unlacing his shoes, pulling them and placing them under the bed. "Princess - it doesn't matter, it was a long time ago, and no matter what you say, I was a very different person then. Let it go," he told her.

She decided she was going to take a bath, and she turned the water on, not answering him until she had the temperature correct, and she put the stopper in, then she started to look for a bubble bath that she wanted. "What makes it unimportant?" she asked. "Or 'not matter', according to you." she corrected herself, opting for something less perfume scented and more flowery, and she dumped a generous amount into the water. Then she walked to the door, to gaze at him where he sat. "I can understand you just not wanting to get into it more than I can understand why it wouldn't matter."

He met her eyes. "Maybe it's both," he pointed out. "And it doesn't matter because it's the past. And because I don't want to drag up things from the past just to soothe your curiosity. She is an ex. Clearly, it didn't go well. End of story." And he'd learned from that. He wasn't going to make the same mistakes again.

Leaning her shoulder against the doorframe, she watched his eyes, not saying anything as she assessed. She definitely felt calmer now. It was sort of a distant realization, but there. Like she had her footing back. "The past matters." she said. "It still plays into whoever you are now. Whether you want it to or not." She kept looking at him. "Did she break your heart?" she asked, more or less knowing she wasn't going to get an answer to that. But she had to ask. It had occurred earlier, but she'd held off.

He maintained eye contact with her as he didn't answer that question. There was no way in hell he was going to answer that question and he wanted her to know that this was him Not Answering. He wasn't dodging, or changing the subject, he simply wasn't going to answer her. "The past should stay in the past," he said, eventually.

"But it never does." Eris told him. She pushed her shoulder off of the doorframe, and walked over, but it was to turn her back to him, so he could get the zipper on her dress. Which, technically, she could have gotten herself, it was low enough cut in the back that it wouldn't have been too awkward for her. However, she wanted him to do it, or see if he would, or if he was going to go be pissy. Though this conversation had a different feel to it than their others had. Maybe it was the lack of lashing out at her because they were on a topic he didn't like. Now he was just not answering, but he wasn't going about it in the same way as before.

"There's no skeletons surrounding this one," he assured her, knowing that wasn't really why she wanted to know.  She wanted to know simply because she wanted to know. If it had been at all important, he would have told her. It wasn't. he reached up and slid the zipper down on her dress, peeling the pieces of material back to reveal the milky white skin of her back.

"Maybe I'm not looking for skeletons." Eris said. Her tone was mildly quieter, though it was due to the fact that she was letting her thoughts drift over everything. Really, she wasn't. She was honest when she said she wanted to know about him. There was only so much one could learn without getting questions answered directly from him. She looked back over her shoulder at him, quiet for another long moment. "Are you aware that when you saved people from the fire, that they were DiGiovanni?" It had been a long time ago, and possibly before things had gotten quite so over the top with the family. Though her mind had got there because she was thinking about his past, and the fire, and the girl, and the medal, which she wondered where he was going to put it. She didn't figure that he'd get rid of it now, just because he was moving house.

"At the time? Or afterwards?" he asked her. She'd had his file, she'd gone looking into his past. He wasn't surprised that she knew about that. He'd told her about the fire, but not about the people, but if she had his service record, she'd know.

"After." Eris said. "If I had to guess, I would say you wouldn't be the type who would have stopped to get people's names before you saved them. You just would have done it, regardless of who they were." She really couldn't see him not going through with saving someone, even if he knew they were shady. Or, back then, anyways. Now? She wasn't sure. She leaned in that direction, that he'd still do it, but she couldn't bank on that one hundred percent.

"Yeah - I knew afterwards," he confirmed, though as usual for him, he didn't offer up any more detail. He'd known they were DiGiovanni once he'd gotten out of hospital. Looking back on it, he had to wonder if some of the treatment he'd gotten was more because of a word from that family than a nod from the city. Knowing now what he knew about the Commissioner, it was possible that they were all just one and the same. At the time, it had never occurred to him. He was too busy telling the family to go fuck themselves with their offers of 'gratitude'.

"Did they ever try to thank you?" she asked, mind going along the same lines. "I can't imagine they let that pass without something resembling compensation." she said. She also stepped back from him again, and let her dress drop to the floor. She left it there as she headed towards the bathroom again.

"They tried. I don't take 'gifts'," he told her, unthinkingly using the present tense. He didn't even notice the slip - normally he very firmly talked about the past as the past. Apparently, though, not right here.

She looked back at him, nodding a moment, then she walked into the bathroom, and shut the water off. Getting the rest of her clothes off, she slipped down into the water, mind still ticking over everything. "What did they try to give you?" she asked, though she wasn't sure if they were continuing the conversation or not.

He stood and walked over to the bathroom door. He could have kept talking from the bed, but he didn't like to. Especially not about this. For all he said that he didn't like talking about the past, this was a slightly more comfortable topic than his former love life, or lack thereof. Leaning against the door, he looked down at her in the bath. "Money? A job? Anything I wanted?" he suggested to her. "One point I was told to name it and it'd happen. So I did - I told him to left me the fuck alone. And you know what? It worked - never saw the guy again."

She ticked her gaze over to him when he came into view, as she relaxed back beneath the nicely scented bubbles. "You never saw him again, it doesn't mean nothing happened." she said. "Doesn't surprise me, though. It's very....you." she landed on. "You were never tempted, even later, when everything crashed down around your ears, to call in that favor?" she asked.

"What? Sell myself from one devil to the other?" he asked her. "It wouldn't have made a difference - I still would have been owned by someone. I never bought that what I was being offered was a gift - gifts like that come with strings attached. I'd prefer strings that I can see, if I have to have them. Anyway, years had past - if I'd have gone to the DiGios then it would have been cap in hand and they would have fucking known it. No thank you. Not gonna happen."

Eris kept her gaze on him for a long moment, and then smiled. It was an amused sort of smirk, and she shook her head a little, but she was clearly approving of what he'd said. "You know I think everyone else in the world that wasn't you would have taken something in the first place, and if they hadn't, when things went to hell, they would have been looking to cash it in then." she said. "Everyone but you." She shifted in the water slightly, sitting up as she reached out to light some of the candles she'd lined the side of the tub with. "You're unique, Trent."

"You're the one that said nothing in life comes free. And I got paid for what I did - it was part of my job. Any 'thank you's would have been extra. If took 'em and maybe it wouldn't have come straight away, but sooner or later, the Don would have been looking for his return. I'm nobody's investment," he told her, switching off the bathroom light as she lit the candles, for no other reason than to watch the play of the light across the bath and across her.

She didn't mind that he turned the light off, and she sat back in the tub again, relaxing. She kept looking at him, mind ticking over things. Him. Everything else. "You don't regret anything, do you." she said. "Not really. If you had to go back and do things differently, there isn't a whole lot you would change." It was a statement, but there was a light tone of questioning to it, so that he confirm or deny things.

"Course there's things I'd change," Brett countered. "If I could live a life where I wasn't like this, where things hadn't happened the way they did. Sure. But they did happen that way - and there's no point going through the rest of my life wishing that they didn't." No, instead, he would just go through the rest of his life being a miserable and isolating bastard as a result. He simply didn't see it that way though. Life was what it was, and he was what it had made him. There as no choice there.

"What would you change?" she asked. "Or, if you could choose where your life did end up, where would you want it to be?" she continued, twisting a lock of her hair around one of her fingertips, then releasing it as she watched him. She sat forward, and crooked her finger at him, in the universal 'come closer' gesture, though she wasn't at all sure he'd comply. Which was partially why she didn't verbally ask him to. That and she didn't want to say anything that wasn't the subject at hand.

"Don't live in a dreamworld Princess - it's not worth dwelling on," Brett told her, not going over. He didn't do very well, being summoned. Especially not when they were on topics like this, so he stayed just where he was.

Disappointed, but not surprised, she sat back again. "You don't believe in dreams?" she asked. "None at all, just...go forth with the hand you're dealt, and never consider anything else, ever?" She paused. "Or do you just not want to talk to me about it? There's got to be some part of you that thinks beyond this. You're smarter than that, even if I know you've had to play dumb for years now. You haven't learned anything from me, have you."

"Dreams of the future are different from dreams of the past," Brett told her, though for years he'd never even had dreams of the future. They'd started to filter back in again now though, vague feelings of hope that maybe the rest of his life wasn't one long dark tunnel. He didn't like to focus too much on that though - everything still felt so fragile. But the past - fantasising about the past was pointless.

"So what part about asking you if you could choose where your life did end up, where you would want it to be is talking about the past?" she asked. "I maintain you haven't learned anything from me. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe not. Guess we'll never know." she said, sighing a little, and she finally did take her eyes off of him, turning them towards the candles, instead.

When she looked away from him, he finally moved to sit on the edge of the bath. "The part where you used the past tense in the question. My life will end up where it ends, but where it 'did' end up? That involves things happening differently in the past. Certain avenues are closed off now. Things that can't be changed - and we're not just talking about things that need you to call in favours and find things that can't be found." His scars were never going away. No doctor in the world was good enough to achieve that. And he would always be broken because of it. "So - what am I meant to have learned from you?" he asked her.

Sure, now he came over. She didn't do what she'd been going to in the first place, though, and she kept her attention on the candles, brushing her fingertips through the flame briefly, before she stopped. It occurred to her that it was possible that she shouldn't do anything like that, what with his specific past. "I accept the assessment." she told him, with his explanation as for why he'd taken her question as it was. She skipped the last part, though, not answering his question.

He waited. He'd asked a question that she hadn't answered, so he waited, watching her, not her hands. He hadn't been left with a fear of fire. He knew some of the people after that night had been, but he hadn't. Maybe he'd been too busy being crushed by the reality of his future to really be anything but angry at the fire that had caused it.

She let the silence stretch out. She was't sure if he was waiting for her to answer or not, but she didn't intend to. And, she didn't intend to change the subject, either. He seemed reticent to humor her, which really wasn't at all unexpected, and her mind was drifting again. Partially to the scotch in the office. Her attention was apparently only divertable in specific ways, or at least, by him. But she was drifting back towards where she'd been when he got in today again, and she didn't strive to keep herself from that. She also didn't look back at him again, not knowing if he was watching her or not.

"What should I have learned from you?" he asked her again, when she didn't answer. At least when he didn't answer her questions, he made it obvious. She didn't - but then, she was a lot more of a subtle person than he was.

"Doesn't really matter, does it?" she asked, tone light. Distant. She looked back around, but not at him, she was looking for her robe. Spotting it hung up on some hooks set into the wall opposite the bath, she pushed herself up, then climbed out to get it, shrugging it onto her shoulders and loosely tying it around her waist, not all that mindful of the way it clung to her, considering she'd forgone a towel. Then she started to head for the door, mind on getting that drink.

He watched her walk out, not impressed by having his own answers turned back on him like that. He waited until she'd left the room, then he stalked after her. "Is this because I wouldn't tell you about my damn ex?" he shot at her back. "Just some girl in the hazy past who, last thing I heard, had left the city? Or maybe she came back - I don't know. She's nothing, nobody enough to stand out. You wanna know if she broke my heart? or if I broke hers? or if I even have a damn fucking heart at all? Is that it?"

"You have a heart." Eris said, not stopping, really, and her tone hadn't changed. She also didn't look back at him. "If you didn't, you wouldn't be nearly so pissed off as you are about these things, and it would be nothing for you to recount the tale in general. In fact, it'd be nothing for you to give up details about your life, because you wouldn't give a damn about what it had been or what you lost. You say it doesn't matter, but that's not true. If it didn't, you wouldn't care enough to keep it buried." she said. What she didn't answer was what it was about, or whether he was right on that score. She wasn't quite sure what the answer was. It had something to do with things, but wasn't the whole answer. She just didn't know if she could pinpoint what that was and wasn't feeling especially inclined to figure it out. "But you're off the hook--or hadn't you noticed?"

He'd noticed - he simply hadn't liked the terms that went with it. "I'm off the hook in return for you not answering my questions either. Not even ones about subjects you brought up in the first place. Doesn't feel like you letting me off the hook - it feels like you trying to teach me some kind of a lesson." he followed her, keeping an equal distance, slowing if she did, stopping if she did, not getting any closer, but not letting her get away either.

"Funny, you getting pissed off about me not answering one of your questions, and yet you've ignored most of mine today but I'm not allowed to get pissed in return. So how about you call it even, Trent. There's no lesson, I just--" she stopped there, stopping walking for a second, but then she just kept going, heading first towards the kitchen, but then she veered, and took a roundabout path to the front door--though it was much less by design and more she wasn't focused enough to pay attention to where she was heading. "You get your way. Rejoice. Stop being a bitch about it."

"She was funny," he told her, stopping and watching her. "And knew her own mind - ambitious, determined she was going places. She had an ability to walk into a room and people would look. Like she owned the place, like things started just because she'd arrived. And like she didn't even notice. That's what I liked about her." He didn't want to 'win' on those terms. He hadn't really intended to 'win' at all - he just didn't like her asking questions he found difficult to answer. of course, he always found everything easier when it involved some kind of a fight. And, in a way, that's what this felt like - just a pretty quiet one.

Eris didn't stop immediately. She slowed, and by the time he was done speaking, she had stopped. She was a few feet from the door, and she kept her back to him. She didn't say anything at first, truly not at all sure she was even going to say anything at all, or just continue on her course. "Did you have her attention?" she asked, eventually, and her tone was off, though not in any clear sort of manner. It just wasn't quite up to scratch.

"Oh yeah, I had her attention," Brett said in a tone that would almost have sounded amused, if it wasn't for the total lack of humour there. "We dated for a while. Quite a long while, actually," he admitted. He'd taken things slowly, wanting to be cautious, to be sure of things. Hoping that it'd make a difference.

She took a few more steps towards the door, letting her fingertips rest on the knob. "How long?" she asked. "Did she love you?" She knew the logical question was to ask if he'd loved her, but with Eris, a lot of times it was the other pieces of the puzzle that made things fit together. And in this case, she wanted to know if he'd believed he was loved. That would tell her more than the other way around.

"A few months. And I don't know." She'd said he had. Then again, he'd said he loved her. These days, well these days he wasn't sure he knew what love was. Or even if it existed. He'd lost faith in the whole thing. She'd been the last person, the final cause of that, though she hadn't been the start of it.

Leaning forward, she rested her forehead against the door, and let her eyes fall shut. She listened, though there wasn't much to hear. Him breathing, that was about all. The wind outside, but that was fainter. "Did you know then?" she asked. Because she was aware his answer might change. What he knew then versus what he knew now could be wildly different.

"Let's just say I believed she did," Brett suggested to her in a tone that betrayed the fact that he no longer held that belief. "Maybe she even thought she did." But it hadn't been real, if she'd been in love, she'd been in love with the idea of him. And the reality hadn't measured up.

"What happened?" she asked. She was aware of water running down her skin, the fact that she was getting cold where she stood. The ends of her hair were damp, and she could see them curling a little. She drew in breaths one at a time, and listened, and she kept reaching for that calmer place she wanted to be at. At the moment she felt like she was still on the edge of it, like she wasn't out of the woods yet. It wasn't a good feeling.

"The same thing that always happened - she saw what I looked like," Brett said. The damage had been done by then. He'd already gone through the same thing with other girls, he was already waiting for the look, for that touch, for that suppressed horror, that pity, that telling him it would all be alright, treating him like he was some kind of cripple. All of it. He'd hoped it would have been different, with her. If he got to know her properly first, if he warned her. if anything, it had been worse. He'd ended up making her cry that night. She'd grabbed her things, run out into the night. Things had crumbled from there. And he'd given up. Lesson learned.

She nodded a slight bit, or as much as her position would allow. She said nothing for a few minutes, just thinking. Rolling over what he said in her mind. "And that was it? She just...saw you, and couldn't handle it?" She looked partially back over her shoulder towards him, but not truly at him. Not really, not fully. "What did she do?" And that part, she wasn't sure he would continue with. He may not answer at all there, and if he didn't, she'd just be getting her drink, and...she wasn't sure what. Her anger had dissipated, however, she wasn't pissed anymore. Just in that strange place, emotionally.

Brett didn't answer her. He might be talking, but it was still the case that he didn't want to be discussing this. He didn't want to relive his past, especially not this part of it. He didn't see what this was achieving, except that he was now pandering to her. Not something he normally ever did for people. He didn't entirely know why he was doing it for her now, save for some woolly notion of terms, and winning. But that instinctual reaction was ebbing now, leaving just the reality and pain of the conversation he now found himself in.

Eris didn't ask again. She stayed where she was for a long moment, letting her eyes remain closed, just sort of listening to nothing much. They were high enough up that traffic outside wasn't something to hear, and really? It was just them breathing. Breathing, and the wind outside. Eventually, she looked back at him, and turned around, leaning her back against the door. Her hand was still on the knob, but she hadn't left yet. Even if the idea of a drink was burning in the back of her mind, still. She watched him, a lot of thoughts going through her mind, but she didn't say anything. She wasn't sure how they'd be reacted to, and therefore she didn't really deem it appropriate to share them. I'm not her, you know. I'm never going to be her, I'm never going to react like her, so you can stop being afraid I will. But then, you don't feel about me like you did about her, and never will either. This is different. Everything is always different, in some fashion. It's never going to play out like that again.

He met her eyes, his gaze hardening somewhat. "She left - she went her way, I went mine. That's all," he told her, taking the emotion out of everything. It was the past, and he wanted it to stay there. He didn't want the pain of reliving any of it - he hadn't even wanted the pain of it at the time, which had been why he'd pushed her away as hard as he could, the moment there was any suggestion that he could be hurt. And why, after that, he never put himself in that position again.

"She left on her own? Never wanted to try at all, even if she supposedly loved you? You never even talked about it?" she asked. But she was nearly finished. She heard it when his voice changed, and around now, she was glad he'd answered her to begin with, but she was getting more and more to a place where she needed that drink, and after that she'd figure out where she was. Until then, it was almost like a strange limbo she was in.

"It wouldn't have done any good - I don't want a nursemaid," Brett told her, before turning away and walking over to one of the windows overlooking the street far down below. He'd like the questions to stop now. It was none of her damn business, the arguments, the tears, the days afterwards. Brett had made his choice based on the way the girl had reacted. She hadn't been the person that he had, back then, hoped she'd be. She'd killed part of him, part that was dying in any event, but she'd seen the last of that off. And now Eris was trying to dig up the dead. It was pointless - all she'd find would be a rotting corpse. Never pleasant.

Eris was silent again as she watched him, a flicker of a frown crossing her expression. "Is that what you'd see any effort with you as? Just...someone being a nursemaid?" she asked. Which wasn't a direct question about his past, so maybe it would fly. She wasn't sure. Technically, she wasn't quite sure about what she was doing at the moment, beyond following lines that she wanted to know about, and now there was this. Which to her, looked and felt like an Issue. Something in his head that set up one of the blocks he tripped over all the time.

"Less of the sweeping generalisations, Princess," Brett told her, an edge to his tone, though it was nowhere near as biting as he'd been to her in the past. "Told you before, I don't want people's pity, I don't want to see that disgust in their eyes. There's one of two things there - either she's leaving because she can't stand it. Or she's staying out of some sense of that pity - fucking nursemaid. Whatever that is - it's not real and it's not something I wanted."

"Now who's talking sweeping generalisations?" Eris asked. "Just because someone might not have the best reaction in the world for a second doesn't mean that all they could ever feel towards you was pity. It doesn't wipe out everything else. It's just all you choose to see. You tend to do that, though. You're extremely black and white. It's your way or the highway, and you don't like to take a look at anything from anyone's point of view but your own. What if someone could have a twitch, kneejerk reaction, but that doesn't actually completely erase everything that went beforehand? People aren't perfect--you should know, you sure as hell aren't. But expecting a perfect reaction from someone else and believing that if you don't get it in a one time deal offer, that it's only the way you see it...that's hardly fair, is it?"

"Might have escaped your fucking notice, Princess: but life isn't fucking fair," Brett snapped at her. She hadn't been there - she didn't know what it had been like. The things he'd lived through. She had no idea. On one hand, he'd been hailed as a hero, on the other hand, he was a reminder to everyone around them of their mortality. It had started with the guys - everyone had heard, of course. He'd spent long enough in the hospital, swathed in bandages. He knew which of them had come to visit, and looked awkward until they could leave. And which of them just stayed away. After a while, he'd just barked at them until they didn't come back again, and he figured they'd been probably relieved not to have to. His girlfriend at the time of the fire, god - that's where that side of it had started. They'd not been together long, and she decided that she was going to Be There. She'd all but donned a fucking uniform. He remembered the day that he'd realised that she didn't actually see him as a man anymore, she was just playing martyr, making up stories in her head. He'd ended that one pretty quickly after that, finding out how easy he found it to shatter someone's dreams and illusions. Getting a certain amount of satisfaction from that. Sadie had come several years later, and he'd gotten good at it by then. He'd been particularly cruel to her, left her broken and crying and walked away without a backwards glance, feeling nothing towards her but anger and contempt.

"Oh yes! That's it. I somehow missed that life isn't fair." she snapped, giving him a Look. "That doesn't mean you have to contribute." she continued. "That doesn't mean you have to make it even harder on people around you, or ultimately, yourself. Which I would wager is really what all of this bullshit does. Maybe you think it's easier, but I doubt it actually is." She stopped for a moment, eyes still on him. "How many of them wanted to stay with you, but you decided for them that it was out of pity, so you shoved them out of your life as fast as possible?" she asked, though it was clearly rhetorical. "Something tells me you wouldn't know the actual difference. Between genuine sentiment, and what you've made up in your own head about it. About them. If all you see is pity or loathing, nothing inbetween, nothing that ever slides towards anything but negativity towards you."

It was good that the question was rhetorical, because he had no intentions of answering it. "It was years ago, sweetheart - just fucking drop it," he told her, knowing he'd told her to do just that before, and here they were, still on the subject. The ghosts of girlfriends past. He knew she was probably right - he didn't know what 'genuine sentiment' was. He couldn't tell. He was always looking for the angle, for what they were hiding. Never expecting it to mean anything. He coped better when it didn't mean anything. If it meant nothing, it risked nothing. Nobody got hurt.

"The event that we were discussing was years ago, everything else? You? How you see and deal with things? That's right now, darling, so don't tell me just because technically we got here through round about subjects that it isn't important. Because you still do that. Pretty much universally, probably with everyone. And the only reason I'm probably still here? Is because I'm far too much of a bitch to just let you." she told him. And that was when she decided she was going for that drink, and she figured he'd let her. So she turned, opened the door, and headed out into the hallway, to try and find the office.

The comebacks to that rose to his lips. Several possibilities, each more scathing and crippling than the last, but none of them got said. he could break her, he was sure. Like he had done with all of the rest. She might be a bitch, but she still had her weak points and he knew all of them really damn well. he could break her, break this, send it all crashing and burning. Yet he didn't, he chose not to. And then she'd left, before he could change her mind. He turned back, looking out at the night sky once again, trying not to think about that choice.

Eris found the office on the second try, and she just grabbed the bottle proper. Scotch, not generally her drink of choice, but whatever. It'd be fine for her purposes. She took a pull off of the bottle, sort of blankly staring at nothing in particular, though her eyes fell on the crumpled bits of paper around the wastepaper basket. Before she walked out of the office, she kicked it over, letting the paper scatter beneath the desk for the most part, and she walked over the rest of it, heading back to the apartment. She didn't so much notice that she knew where it was this time, because she'd just left it. She also didn't do anything like stop in the living room as she walked through it, heading back towards the bedroom, planning on getting back into the bath.

He was aware of her walking across the room, but didn't watch her as she did. He was even aware that she was carrying a bottle, but that was hardly surprising. He'd expected her to go for the booze. He just would have preferred it to be a glass.

Heading into the bathroom, she shut the door behind herself, though not with any more force than usual. She considered locking it, but then, she didn't actually figure on him coming in or around, so in the end, she didn't. Instead, she just dropped the robe on the floor, and climbed back into the bathtub, taking the bottle with her. The candles flickered when she moved around, but stayed lit. She took another long drink, and held the bottle in against her chest as she stared at a middle distance, thinking to herself that nowish was around the time when she'd like to go for a walk, but she knew she really couldn't.

He looked round as he heard the sound of the door closing and, after a moment, walked over. She hadn't locked it - he hadn't heard the bolt slide home - but Brett was very certain of privacy. He hated having his own privacy invaded, it made him reluctant to invade the privacy of others without good reason. So, in the end, he headed off, going to the kitchen to get a glass. Fucking bottle.

She wanted her music back. Right now, that was pretty high up on her list. She wanted her music. It would be a hell of a lot nicer, if that was there to break up the silence. She wouldn't have heard him walk towards the door, then away again. She'd let her gaze rest on the shut door, but then away again when he retreated. Taking another long pull on the bottle, she laid back, trying to relax against the back of the tub, let the hot water soak her skin and muscles, but any tranquil sorts of feelings she'd been going for in the first place had evaporated.

On his return with the glass, he paused for a moment or two before opening the door and heading inside. He closed the door behind him, reaching out and taking the bottle from her. He poured her a small measure, then handed her the glass, setting the bottle on the side. "I see and deal with things the way they are. And with the life I've led? You don't get a whole lot of room for 'sentiment' in there - at least, not where it can do you any good."

She tried to keep better hold of the bottle, but her hands were slippery, and he did have the glass, so she took that when he handed it to her. She also just happened to knock it back in one go, before she set the glass on the ledge of the tub with a click. She held it so it didn't fall, eyes on him as he spoke, even if they weren't especially friendly. "I think you see and deal with things the way they were." she said. "Maybe it was once, maybe it was more than that, but you've put a blanket assumption on everything after that. You stopped evolving at some point. I agree that sentiment probably hasn't had much of a place in your life, but what happened to you was before things happened with the O'Malley's, was it not?" she asked, though she wasn't looking for an answer there. "If you cannot start seeing the world in shades of more than black and white, if all you're capable of pulling off is a knee-jerk reaction to whatever comes up, if you can't even entertain the idea of viewing things in ways alternative to what you've decided you want to see--none of this is going to work." she told him. And she meant that on more than one level, though she didn't know if her tone conveyed that or not.

He bit back the sarcastic comment that sprang to mind, and counted that as evidence that she was wrong in her analysis there - her suggestion that it was possible that that was all he could be. If it was, then he wouldn't be here in the first place, because it would already have gone wrong. "Not everything that hits my brain comes out my mouth, Princess," he told her, making no move to top up her now empty glass. "I can keep myself in check when I need to. I do keep myself in check when I need to. And yes, there's been time, but just because I can't hold down some kind of happy, healthy, stable fucking 2.4 kids relationship doesn't mean I can't do anything else. I can do what needs to be done. I spent three years with the O'Malleys not knowing I wasn't entirely broken to them. I can do this," he told her, firmly.

"Keeping yourself in check isn't the problem." Eris told him. "It's not even near the fucking problem. And I'm well aware of the fact that you can do that. This? What we're going for? Is one hell of a lot more than just biting your tongue when someone says something you don't happen to like. And with the O'Malleys, all you had to do was stand around and look pissed, which pretty much works quite well with your personality. But all of this? Not the same thing. And the fact that you can't manage all the fluffy private life bullshit hardly matters in this case either, the point is that you can't because you saw it all like you did. You decided how it was, and no one's going to tell Brett Trent any fucking different. That is the problem. You decide, and that's it. Well, the world isn't as cut and fucking dried as that. And if you can't even manage it for yourself, I'm going to be extremely hard pressed to understand why you could change your stripes for everything else, now, with everything else going on."

His expression clouded over and he picked up the bottle. "Well, I guess we're just going to have to see, aren't we?" he asked, before turning to head out the door. There was nothing else he had to say to her on that - it was always the same conversation, her finding new ways to be sure that they couldn't do this. He couldn't get through whether she had a point, or whether she was just doing it as some kind of masochistic death wish that was still lingering.

Eris let out a frustrated sound, and very nearly threw the glass at the door. He'd taken the bottle, of course. Couldn't possibly let her keep that, even if he was going to stomp off. Blowing out the candles, she got out of the bath, dried off in a fairly halfass manner, then she grabbed her robe and put it on. She took a ribbon from where she kept most of her combs and brushes, and pulled her hair back, not paying much attention to whether or not it was anything more than functional. Then she came out of the bathroom, ignoring him entirely as she went to the closet, shutting herself in there as she got changed into street clothes again.

He left the door closed as she shut herself in the closet. Again, his respect for privacy came to the fore, but that didn't stop him from waiting for her in the bedroom on the back of the annoyed sound she'd made. He closed the bedroom door, leaning back against it, still holding the bottle, his arms crossed against his chest as he watched the closet door for her coming out again.

She didn't take that long, having thrown on something simple, just a long black skirt and shirt. Her coat was by the front door, or so she figured, so she didn't need anything like what she had in there. She picked shoes from there, though, low heels, before she was back out into the bedroom. She hadn't been listening for the bedroom door to shut, and so she'd missed that, but hey look. There he was, leaning against the door. She stopped, a good few feet back from him. "Move."

He didn't move, not a muscle. "Tell me how I should be then," he said, bluntly. Since she thought that his way of working wasn't going to cut it, he wanted to know how else he needed to be to make this work.

"Absolutely not." Eris said, crossing her arms. "I would appreciate it, if you would move." she continued, giving him a dark look. And right around now, she was wishing for her rickety fire escape. Which also made her wonder if this place even had one. It had to somewhere, right? That was a requirement of some description? Or something? She didn't know, she didn't remember at all and she'd not looked for one.

"Not until you tell me how I should be - because apparently, according to you, who I am isn't going to work. So tell me - how should I react? Who should I be? What should I do? Help me out here - this is your world. Let me in on the rules. Don't just fucking tell me that I'm gonna fail and then try and walk out of me," he said. He sounded pissed off, but underneath that there were honest questions. He wanted this to work. He'd do all he could to make it work. But if there were things that she could see, that he couldn't, and she wasn't going to tell him... He had enough self awareness to know he had issues, pretty much a whole bunch of them. He just didn't want them to be the reason that this went belly up.

"Why should I?" she asked. "And for a point of clarity, it isn't who you are, it's how you are. There's a difference. And you never listen to me anyway, so give me a good reason I should say anything." she said, and then she sighed, and reached up to tuck loose waves behind her ears. "Just get out of my way."

"Fine," Brett said, pointedly enunciating the word. "Then tell me how I should be. What would work better? Tell me that, then I'll get out of your way. And it's not true - that I never listen to you. I listen. I just might not always do anything with what I hear." But sometimes, he did. Sometimes what she said had a large effect on his life. It was just, at those times, he worked hard to not make that obvious.

"Like you did ten minutes ago when you decided to storm out of the bathroom?" she asked, now actively glaring at him. She did start looking at the windows then, crossing to one in the guise of just looking out of it, but really she was looking to see if there was a fire escape. She didn't think he'd actually do anything like try and chase her. Not tonight. The only time he'd done that was when he was worried about the killer on the loose. "That's part of it, you know. You hear something you don't like and you don't want to listen to it. Or you hear something that's contrary to what you've decided is the truth, and you don't hear that either. You're a man who doesn't deal especially well with being wrong, or even the idea that you might be wrong. Or that you might not know fucking everything. And you're going to be dropped into an entire population who're liars, cheats, whores and sadists, and you're not going to be able to react to them like you do to me." she said. "And you're not going to be able to just stand there and say nothing, when you look like you're just barely containing violent tendencies."

He took her glare, not reacting to it, just holding her eyes. "No - I won't be able to react to them like I do to you," he agreed, seriously. "Because you get something they don't - honesty. Even when I don't like it, or it's hard for me, what you get is honesty. I can lie, you know. I just prefer not to, not to you," he added, stepping aside and opening the door for her.

"Well, your brand of honest sure as hell looks a lot like you throwing a bitchy fit whenever I say something you don't like." she said, but when he opened the door for her, she did turn and walk out, heading directly for the other door. "You have this idea that there's right, and there's wrong, and there's little in between, but everything works on a sliding fucking scale, Brett. You want these absolutes, just like with your fucking ex girlfriends, just it's pity or they can't handle things, and all of it's based on what likely amounted to one split fucking second of recognition of what they saw, which, by the way, isn't even anything people can control unless they were going to be putting some effort into lying to you in the first place, which hell, maybe you'd decide then too. That they were just putting on some brave face, or what the fuck ever. You say it was all them but maybe it was you. You, and your fluffy notions of how things are, or what the fuck ever goes through your head." She grabbed her coat, and pulled it on. "You know what you should have learned from me?" she asked, going way back to what she'd said earlier, though it was less by design and more it just crossed through her mind with the subject. "That the world is full of shit you don't expect to be there. That even if you don't think something's possible, because of whatever it is in your head that's decided it can't be, that it might actually be there anyway. Whether you want it to be there or not. And that goes in all directions. From the sparklingly fucking unmarred to the sickest, most depraved shit you can imagine. It's all. There. You just can't decide it doesn't apply to you."

So, she was leaving - he knew he should be surprised. He hated it, but right now he didn't have the energy to stop her. "I know it applies to me," he said. Maybe once upon a time he hadn't - looking back to the girlfriend years she was referencing, he hadn't then. But when the O'Malleys had come to take their piece, when everything he thought he knew about the force got turned on his head. When his life really hit rock bottom, he learned it then. He knew all about the shit that life contained. He just had issues with things when they hit too close to home. If he could distance himself, even a little, he did better. or, he thought he did. She didn't seem to think so though - so either she wasn't seeing things. Or he wasn't. Brett wasn't entirely sure who was the better judge.

"You do an excellent job of looking like you think you're beyond it, then." she said, not choosing to say 'above' it or 'beneath' it, because she didn't see him doing either. Just that it was something else, something that didn't reach, in either direction. "Have a good night." she said, before turning and leaving, walking out the door and shutting it behind herself. Again, she didn't actually slam it, or anything so dramatic. She just closed it, and started up the hall, planning on just being out. Someplace that was Else. She wasn't sure where she was going or what she was planning on doing, or even when she planned on returning--since she knew herself well enough to know she would. There were the tickets, the party. Everything.

She hit the button for the elevator, and stared at the call button, mind churning over everything, and she had to wonder if she was doing this to crash things before they started. Before they really hit that point of no return, when she walked into a public room and everyone would know full fucking well that Eris was on the scene, nevermind it was a scene she didn't especially want to be a part of again. But she would be. She'd be back from the fuckin dead. She'd really have to be able to do this, to be Eris again. She could do it, she could play the role, be that persona, that was the easy part. But keeping everything straight, that she couldn't, and he said he'd be there but would he? Leaning heavily against the wall, she realized in a really distant state that she was doing something akin to hyperventilating. She covered her face with her hands and leaned heavily against the wall, sliding down it til her knees it her chest, and she tried to get ahold of herself. Tried to make it feel less like the walls were closing in on her, like she was trapped, and everything was spinning.