Logs:Fool Me Twice

Fool Me Twice
Dramatis Personae Damien, Matt
In Absentia Lucien	2024-11-11 "Have you time for one more game?"
Location <NYC> Washington Square Park - Greenwich Village
Behind a majestic white marble arch, a smaller cousin of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, this beautiful green space is a popular destination for the young, the hip, and the artistic. A huge circular wading fountain is the centerpiece, ringed by benches, playgrounds, dog runs, gaming tables, and lush green lawns. In fair weather, the park is almost always crowded with tourists, students, chess enthusiasts, and local families come to tire out their children and dogs. The sun is setting, the night edging from mild into chilly. It's not raining -- not at the moment, at least, though it's been raining quite recently and will, judging by the very distant overture rumblings of thunder, likely rain again soon. Several of the stone chess seats are sopping wet, several others more or less dry by dint of having been occupied for a time now. At one of the chess boards, a portly old man in bright yellow poncho is contemplating the end game very seriously, and moves his bishop to capture a black knight after a long deliberation. Opposite him, Damien takes no time at all in his countermove, a rook swooping in to take the bishop. He isn't very much watching the board but the man in front of him -- in contrast to his more sensibly-dressed opponent he's looking quite overdressed for a park chess game, in a royal purple frock coat with ornate gold braid trim over a translucent white shirt, its tall collar cinched with gold silk, a black velvet waistcoat with a gold-chained watch that ticks in the rhythm of a heartbeat tucked into its watch pocket, a black leather belt studded with strangely colored jewels, and tight gold leather trousers tucked into thigh-high black boots. There's an elegant walking stick propped up against the side of the table, crafted of some fine dark wood topped with a brass armillary sphere encased in glass in such a way that must surely render it nonfunctional. His opponent, this time, only regards the board a short while before, with some resignation, tipping over his King. Damien's eyes have gone a little wider; the pools of shadow around this stretch of park seem a little deeper. "An excellent game," he is congratulating his opponent, who is looking somewhat performatively grumpy about it even while promising to see him again next week. The other man is getting up as Damien starts to collect the pieces (quite elegantly carved in gold-flecked black and white stone) into a soft velvet bag. Matt is perhaps somewhat underdressed for the weather, but doesn't seem much bothered by the cold in just a dark red tee with a black snake coiled around the negative space of a heart, old, beaten-up jeans, and black canvas sneakers. He'd been chatting amiably with someone on a bench further along the walkway, but he's ambling back toward the arch now. He might have missed Damien altogether, if he'd continued on his way. But Damien's opponent intercepts him to deliver some low admonishment before continuing on his way. Matt does not. He pivots further, studying the man for a moment in an expression of perplexed intrigue, then strolls up to his table. "Have you time for one more game?" Damien stops, halfway through tucking his pieces away. His head tilts, dark eyes locked on Matt's. His long fingers roll slowly against the velvet bag he holds; from inside there's a soft clack of stone on stone. "I'm never short on time." A wolfish smile has curled his lips, his gaze steady on Matt. "But I play here for forfeits, and I'm not sure you've anything worthwhile to wager." "Mm." Matt tilts his head very slightly, like he's genuinely considering this. "I'm not so very sure, either. But that depends rather a lot on what you consider 'worthwhile', doesn't it?" He isn't smiling, not quite. "And what I want isn't the sort of thing one can win in a game of chess, if it can be won at all." "Oh, you can win anything in a game of chess, with the right opponent." Did Damien actually reach back into his bag? His hand didn't seem to shift all that much, but he's produced a bishop piece from within it, now dancing nimbly between his fingers. "Last I saw you, you were looking for a brother you had --" The Bishop ceases its twirling for a heartbeat, then begins to twirl again, the other direction. "-- lost. I do hope you haven't misplaced any further kin." Matt laughs, bright and brittle. "I suppose 'misplaced' is one way to put it! But no, I would say my family lost me." He lays the tips of his fingers delicately on his chest. "I've come by some...difficult truths since last we met--alas, much too late. It's all terribly tragic, but." He turns one hand up, his smile going thin but not gone. "So it goes. What could I possibly wager for a family I value above all else?" He drops that hand to brace it on the edge of the table, leaning on it languidly. "I'd stake my life if I ever found an opponent who would take that bet and who could deliver on it, also." "What a strange sort of wager." There's a low delight in Damien's voice, breathless and brimming over with curiosity, that doesn't entirely render this a criticism. "Your life. What would it avail you, then, if they were delivered? What do you imagine it might do to them if your forfeit were collected?" He hasn't seemed to blink in all this exchange yet, hardly seems to move save for the deft play of his fingers. "And what," there's something cooler in his tone, now, something chipping harder edges into his smile, "is a life like yours worth?" "Is it strange? I was very enamored, as a child, with the idea of offering Death a game when he came to collect." There's laughter in Matt's voice, though not in his eyes. "He never did, and it wouldn't have been a proper wager if he had. But I've deadicated much thought to the worth of my life lately. Lives," he pauses minutely, "are like books--pray don't let me get into that, I might never shut up. I fancy mine entertaining if nothing else, and quite a few people are deeply invested in it who have better taste than I." He shrugs. "I love the stories best that have my family in them, but if I'm gone I imagine they would be safe--" He stops mid-sentence, mid-word, blanching visibly even in the twilight, but recovers quickly. "Well, that is one small hitch. Are you, really?" He wonders, abruptly. "Luci's father? I was never sure whether we hallucinated that encounter, in part or in whole." "Yes, but what's the point of the game, then? What's the point of earning them back? It's only selfishness, mmm, trying to -- what, get back in their good graces so that when you exit the world it hurts them all over again? They're doing quite alright already -- you could simply off yourself here and now and they'd be rid of you for good." Damien's lightly amused tone is oddly casual, with this suggestion, and the conversational-banter tone of it continues through to his: "What encounter?" The twirling of his hand has mostly stopped; he holds the bishop lightly, now, between his middle two fingers. "In many civilized cultures, your life would already be forfeit the moment you became a fratricide. I don't even know if this wager is mine to make -- and deprive your brother of his rightful claim." "If I win, the dying might in theory be quite far in the offing." Matt grins, though there's something wan in it. "But even if it isn't, all the stories you tell with those you love are precious, whatever their length. I don't think I deserve them, mind you, but I've learned better than assuming what they want or need, else I'd've offed myself weeks ago. If I can accomplish nothing else, at least I can protect them." He waves his hand as if dispelling a wisp of smoke. "Ah, but that's another story. 'Civilized' is a loaded word, and I don't disagree, per se, but he yielded that claim back to me. Which has also disinclined me to waste myself, as it were." He cants his head and looks Damien over again, more closely. "Huh. Interesting. Am I hallucinating this encounter?" "In theory." The bishop rolls once more over Damien's knuckles, and then he sets it down on the board with a quiet clunk. The thunder rolls, closer this time in its deep rumble. "I suppose what you deserve is a matter best settled between your brother, you, and the Fates." The rain is starting, again, slow pats down against the board though the fat large droplets promise it is likely soon enough to be a downpour. Damien isn't moving, just starting to lay out the board, neat and deliberate. "If you are, I suppose there's little enough harm in bargaining away your life, mmm? I'm sure you've done much worse, in the Dreamlands. Your family, then, or your life." His hands spread over the board, whisk away a pawn of each color. Cup together, flow apart, both clenched fists held out to Matt to pick. "Choose well." --- The park is nearly empty, now -- the chilly downpour has driven most inside, and most of those still out here are hurrying through, heads tucked beneath hoods or umbrellas, hastening from one dry spot to another. There's a loud peal of thunder, a flash of lightning that illuminates two of the few not hastening anywhere. Damien has not bothered with anything like umbrella or raincoat to protect his absurdly frou-frou outfit; he's sitting quite upright on one of the stone benches by the stone chess tables. One hand rests on the spherical head of his walking stick, and he twirls the stick idly beneath his palm. He is not, currently, attending the board in front of him -- by now, no doubt, he knows quite well what the small spread of pieces lingering after the drawn-out battle must look like. His dark eyes have an odd fey light in them, boring steady and increasingly pleased into his opponent as he waits. Matt hasn't bothered shielding himself from the rain, either, and looks considerably more bedraggled for it in his soaked tee and jeans. Maybe it's his posture, skewed heavily to one side, one leg tucked under himself, elbow propped on the table and chin propped on his hand. Maybe it's the increasingly certain prospect of his defeat, little though that's impacted his posture -- he just sits like that. He has been gazing at the board, for all the good that does him, and only a little balefully. "J'adoube," he murmurs, and repositions his King on its square as if that would improve his position. It does not, nor does it make either of the moves left to him any more appealing, but the board does look tidier. He's smiling and straightening as he raises his eyes to his opponent, their bright green strange in the fading dusk and flashing almost uncannily with the next stroke of lightning. "Well played, sir." Without looking back down, he tips over the piece he has just straightened, just so. "Thank you, this was delightful. Do I wake up now? Or expire, or..." He lifts one eyebrow and turns his hand up, the minute gesture elegant and intrigued. Damien's smile curls wide at the tip of the king. He inclines his head graciously, and produces his velvet bag once more to start collecting the pieces, but Matt's words interrupt this task. His fingers press light to his chest in a picture of staggered incredulity. "Expire, and rob me of my prize?" There is a light scoff in his voice. "Quite peculiar manners, if you'd wagered me the shirt off your back would you throw it in the trash upon your defeat?" He's returning now to tucking his chess pieces back into their soft bag. "Your wretched little life is mine," here he sounds fond, wretched bestowed in the same lightly-fawning manner he might call attention to an untrained puppy's misbehavior, "you can expire on my schedule." Matt just stares at Damien for a beat, his expression shifting almost imperceptibly. "I beg your pardon." There's no rising intonation, no real variation in his tone at all, in odd contrast to his usually expressive voice. "I beg your pardon!" This still isn't a question, and comes off more like he's correcting his previous statement but can't quite decide how much outrage is appropriate. "What do you mean 'on your schedule'?" he demands, as though this were the part that has really thrown him. "You were literally just trying to talk me into killing myself." "Goodness but that was the entire game ago," Damien replies with a very do keep up, now kind of breezy condescension. He's rising from the table, plucking out his pocketwatch to check the beating of its heart. "Come along, then, our night is still young." "'Come along' --" Matt splutters, but he's pushing to his feet anyway. "-- where? Betting my life on something doesn't mean -- whatever you're talking about!" He tries to run his hand through his hair, sluicing off a cascade of rainwater. "Gods, if this is a hallucination, my subconscious plays a tight late middlegame." "What exactly do you imagine betting your life on something means?" Damien rests one hand atop another on the head of his walking stick. He spins around on a heel, brows hiking as he looks at Matt. "I admit you seem like you'll do me vanishingly little good alive but I've no idea what it benefits me for you to be dead right now." Something in this cuts through Matt's flailing bafflement, and he goes still. "Well. Death." He sounds tired. "I mostly thought I was having another psychotic break and imagining you. Or maybe the same psychotic break. Or --" He scrubs his face. "What the hell do you want from me? Who the fuck are you?" "I thought it rather straightforward. I'm the person who won the game where you staked your life. Personally, I would have made the interrogation before the wager but --" Damien's hand lifts from the cane, turns up in front of him. There's another crack of lightning, this time illuminating the predatory gleam of his toothy smile. "You murdered my child. What do you imagine I want? Death, I'm afraid, is so very banal." Matt fixes Damien with a look that reads, in the harsh flash, like a glare. But it's steady and pensive even if the set of his shoulders doesn't ease. He's quiet through the rumble of the thunder. "It is, isn't it." He sounds a little distant. "Tabarnak. I don't know if I can imagine what you want, but I'm listening." He lifts a hand and starts to push his hair back, but then just drops it again. "Where are we going, then?" To this, Damien only has a chuckle. The tip of his staff thumps quiet against the wet pavement as he gestures Matt to follow. "To play more chess, of course."