Murder! in Paris (Finished)

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    It was getting fairly late, so there weren't too many individuals perusing the poorly stocked shelves of this particular gas station. There was a bored, middle aged cashier who seemed like he'd much prefer to be at home, passed out in his comfy chair with an alcoholic beverage in one hand and the tv remote in the other, but that was understandable. Who wouldn't? The only other individual in the store had taken a seat in the candy aisle, a young man who'd been staring intently at the sugary goodness in front of him.

    Jack just couldn't decide. Lately, he'd been eating a lot of skittles, gummy worms, bears, and such. But that was only because he liked those sorts of candy. Unfortunately, he was also craving some chocolate at that particular point in time. So which should he get? A chocolate bar or a bag of skittles? The skittles would be less messy, probably, but he hadn't had chocolate in an uncomfortable long while. Decisions, decisions.

    So, you might be wondering what Jack was doing in Paris or what Paris was doing in the Americas, more specifically North America. Or even more specifically, the United States. Well, this was Paris, Tennessee, a relatively small city with one of the more unfortunate crime rates in the country, not the far more renowned City of Lights. It was home of the biggest fish fry, though. So that was cool.

    Anyways, the bell above the door dinged, letting everyone know that someone had entered. Jack didn't bother to look up from his staring match, but he did catch a glimpse of who'd come in when a small family of three passed his aisle and headed toward the beverages. The father looked at him with some suspicion but the young man continued to ignore them. Nothing of interest there.

[Ilyα Cяσw]

Conveniently, Ilya's first flight to America did not end well; the flight itself required an emergency landing, and graciously enough it was in perhaps the most unknown town in this forsaken country: Paris, Tennessee -- or to be precise, Henry county. Fuck, she didn't know airports this small actually existed. It was the most anticlimactic first glance of the United States possible, probably -- maybe. If that in itself and the swelling frustration in the pit of her stomach weren't enough, this misfortune kept her from her destination, New Orleans; drive-thru daiquiris, legal public intoxication, endless festivities and immense tips from tourists (they wouldn't need to know that she was technically 'touring', herself -- but wasn't she always?). 

Gods, the air in Tennessee was palpable, sticking to her pale skin and condensing to something far more maddening than sweat. Donning nothing but a loose tank-top, leather leggings and boots, the sun reddened the bend of her shoulders and apples of her cheeks -- as if the o-zone in that particular part of the world was disintegrated, so the sun was all the more harsh. This was hell, she decided. Hell is a barren and humid place where the greatest spectacles were road-kill and 'state renowned' restaurants specializing in barbecue. 

And of course, as impulsive and impatient as Ilya is, she chose to rent a car and enjoy the views, rather than camp out a day at the airport thanks to a twenty-two hour layover. Another marvelous surprise Ilya hadn't paid thought to in advance was that the steering wheel was on the wrong side. America.

Driving was strange, especially here. Why were the lanes opposite? When was the last time she actually drove a vehicle, anyway? Trains were far more favorable. At least luck shined its goodwill on her and relieved the roads from any other drivers, granting Ilya the comfort to freely swerve -- but Gods, she was thirsty. American candy was reputable, too.

--- 

Evidently service stations didn't have any form of currency exchange for her money, change or otherwise -- so here Ilya was, as ill-tempered as ever, flailing euro bills like a flag of surrender while howling her vexation - from the entire situation, no doubt - at the clerk.

"What do you bloody mean you cannot take it? It's -- it's a drink and bag of crisps for Gods' sakes, this is more than enough! I -- listen, listen here --" A pause to read his subtly-sized name tag, "--Carl, just -- LISTEN, why are you so bloody dogged?" Followed by incoherent grunts and grumbling, as well as aggressive-sounding shouts in bogan Scottish.

Smooth, Ilya. Real smooth.

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    Jack was halfway through a pack of twizzlers when he heard the shouting. A very upset woman was apparently going Braveheart on the poor cashier. The young man would've ignored it and gone back to trying to decide which candy he wanted if the voice hadn't sounded somewhat familiar. He could've sworn that he'd met a young woman who sounded just like that not too long ago. But she'd been, like, across the ocean so what would she be doing somewhere like this?

    Curious, he decided to peek. Jack didn't know her super well, certainly not enough to identify her from behind, so he figured he'd get closer. Approaching the cashier and the woman, he figured out what the problem was. She was apparently trying to pay with monopoly money or something. Ya know, like a crazy person.

    With a shrug, the young man pulled out crumpled twenty. Money didn't mean much to him anyways, so he figured that helping out would be the polite thing to do. Besides, all this yelling was starting to give him a headache.

    "Jeez. Everyone calm down," Jack said, tossing the money onto the counter. "This should cover her snacks and the candy I've been munching over there. Cool?"

    "Ilya?"

[Ilyα Cяσw]

Ilya shamelessly sank to the ground of the service station, clutching her Mountain Dew and bag of odd-looking candy to her chest like a distressed infant. Flying across the the Atlantic, delaying her ideal landing, and being recognized at a service station in Tennessee -- what? Truly, what are the odds? She cocked her head to gawk at Jack, exposing a dimple-adorned smile of thanks for him purchasing her snacks with fancy American money and heroically ending the argument between her and Carl over there -- but yet, although his face was discernible, she couldn't pin-point a single name to go along with it. Admittedly, Ilya had the memory of an elderly goldfish, and perhaps she could blame her profession and the hundreds of faces she saw in a week; but Gods, here of all places was far-fetched even for her. 

"Ilya, yeah -- that's me," She lulled out, all the while still sitting cross-legged on the floor with the her soda bottle pressed against her cheek in a weary lean. "Thank you for the, ah --" She raised the bottle and candy-bag briefly in concession, "This. Thanks, mate. Mm, and you're--?" She left the sentence open for an answer, patting the space of the floor beside her as an invitation; because nothing says friendship like sitting purposelessly on the dirtied floor of a service station in Tennessee. 

Ilya tucked her hair behind both ears and made a poor attempt at opening the candy bag, sour gummy worms spilling over her lap nonchalantly; and she was mellow and nonreactive about it, plucking each piece of condensed, sugary wholesomeness and dropping it between her jaws.  

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    Jack shrugged, a little hurt that she didn't remember him but not terribly offended. The young man supposed that he probably wasn't the most memorable of individuals, anyways. "Who knows anymore?" A thought came to him that might explain why she didn't recognize him. It was a long shot, but Jack figured that he might as well try.

    "Oh, I might've been wearing this when we met, maybe?" He pulled out the mask he typically wore when up to no good and held it where she could see. "I typically go by Ten, nowsadays." Jack rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, wondering what name he'd given her. He'd had so many that he couldn't even really recall his true name anymore. It was probably written down somewhere, but whatever.

    The young man plopped down on the dirty floor next to the woman. He stuffed some more candy in his mouth before asking the question that had been on his mind since he'd recognized her. "So what're you doing in Paris? Last time I saw you, you were, like," Jack was totally blanking on which country or continent they'd met on. "Totally on the other side of an ocean."

    "Hey," Carl spoke up. "You guys can't just sit there." The small family of three had approached the counter, the mother giving a disdainful look while the child peered at them curiously.

[Ilyα Cяσw]

"Oh, bugger off, Carl," Ilya retorted in vicious frustration, making the mature decision to bite her thumb at the woman -- a vague, European form of flippin' the bird -- before hooking arms with the stranger that was Jack and sliding side-ward, choosing to stay comfortably upon the floor. She had no concern or thought to the concept of personal space, and her temper was still fuming dully. She was a stress ball of steam and quick, faulting words of resistance. 

"Ten -- okay. I'd know if I met a Ten, but -- no, I don't think you were wearin' that odd mask. I know your face; it's just that I hear introductions more often than I'd like," Ilya replies to him as her teeth ground the cavity-filling gelatin of the gummy candies, washing down the sourless sugar that wouldn't dissolve in her mouth. She became consciously aware of their hooked arms and untangled her limb from his with a swift and awkward motion. 

"I, uh -- fuck, I shouldn't be here. The plane decided to implode its own engine before I could make it to where I was goin'. New Orleans, if you were wondering. Gods, this place is hot." Ilya wiped at the sweat of her brow with her forearm and side-eyed Jack -- 'Ten', as he deemed himself. 

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    When she bit her thumb at the woman, Jack couldn't help but raise an eyebrow in disbelief. Did people actually do that? He'd only ever even heard about people biting their thumb at others as an insult from, like, Shakespeare and shit. Carl seemed awfully upset by her dismissal but he didn't seem to think it was worth the trouble to bother them further so he began ringing up the family's stuff as best he could. Ilya hooked her arm in his and, instead of the flinch Jack typically made when people touched him, the young man was instead just a little uncomfortable. The floor wasn't really helping, either.

    "Are you still tending bar?" Jack asked when she mentioned hearing an awful lot of introductions. The young man vaguely recalled having met her in such an environment. Connecting the two, it made sense, he figured. Ilya managed to unhook her arm from his almost as soon as she'd put it there. She was a strange one, the young man thought. Grabbing him one minute, pushing him away the next. He decided not to dwell on it.

    Jack gave a slight chuckle as she explained her travel problems. "I'm glad I don't have to deal with planes too much. But this place isn't so bad. Hot and humid, yeah. But I've made pit stops in worse places." He chewed some candy thoughtfully while he thought back to one such place. "So what's in New Orleans?"

    The bell above the door dinged as the small family left.

[Ilyα Cяσw]

"Bar-tending? Aye, when I can. It's what I do, I guess -- I mean, there's nothin' else I actually do, so that statement has no meaning." Ilya was one with a way for unpolished, blundering colloquy. She rested her skull against an empty candy rack, the graveyard of the once-lived milky ways and paydays, wolfish-colored eyes boring into the popcorn texture of the general store's ceiling panels. 

"I mean, I'm not bar-tending right now, obviously -- or else, you know, we'd be in a bar, and not on the floor of a bloody service station. Maybe." She smiled her accustomed goofy, curving grin at the feasible idea of floor-camping in the middle of a pub. She's seen old Scots, whisky personified, take two-day-long naps in a puddle of century aged alcohol, so why did she find the scenario ridiculous? 

Ilya thought out loud with a prudent croon of a hum. "What's not in New Orleans? Mardi Gras, insane creole food and Gods, the history. There's no craft like that remarkable southern witch-craft, Ten." A bright sparkle of spirit shown in the peak of Ilya's eyes; this woman, this utter oaf of a woman gained substantial, visible passion when discussing history with a stranger, and she wasn't finished. "The craft of Europe is so -- so pure and white of magic, I've read, and New Orleans was the pinnacle of curse and hex in its prime, I swear it." She halts her blather to press a petite hand against her chest. "My heart's beatin' like a drum even imagining it. The most culture in this nonsense is what, country music?" 

A single scoff, that grump.

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    Seeing her weird, goofy grin after mentioning being in a bar if she were bar-tending right this second, Jack chewed his candy thoughtfully. Ilya seemed to be thinking of or remembering something amusing right that second and the young man couldn't help but wonder if he seemed quite so weird when he occasionally looked off wistfully into the distance. He figured that he probably did, knowing him like he did.

    "Well, it all sounds so exciting when you put it that way," Jack remarked somewhat dryly. He wasn't a big fan of large gatherings of people. Someone was always getting stabbed. "I wouldn't know anything about the history of Europe's or any other place's magic, to be honest."

    Jack waved one hand around himself, indicating the area but not just the small store, but all of Paris around it. "Little places like this are history. Every city was once this small and an even smaller town and village before that. There's something special to be found when you get away from the big cities on occasion. Places like Paris have a magic all their own. It might seem small, uncultured, or boring, but it's no less potent, I've found."

    The little boy gave them one more glance, his mother one more huff, before the family of three was outside and trying to get on with their night. From behind the counter, Carl the clerk grumbled but he clearly didn't care enough try to make them leave and receive another verbal lashing from Ilya.

[Ilyα Cяσw]

"Mm, no way! No, no, nononono. No," Ilya asserts absurdly, strategically placing a blue and pink worm on the bridge of Jack's nose -- a canny way to object to his or any statement, surely. "There is a colossal difference between the charm and personality of a small town and the literal, musical and artistically proven culture of a city. It's -- it's like, there are hundreds of novels and prose with its theme; the fame of it is well deserved and the culture's longevity is mind-bogglin'." She emphasizes this with the drumming of her chipped-black nails against her temple, and the indication of her 'mind being blown', along with a badly executed sound of a bomb. Woosh. 

"Have you got a name other than a number? I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, cross my heart. It's just strange, you know, calling someone ten." She hauls her gaze from the ceiling to Jack and knits her darkened brows in some sort of reflection. "I think I'd be, mm -- seven? Four seems more accurate; somethin' practical and overlooked like a four." She drafts another bubbling gulp of her drink and snorts a hearty snort that lacked any feminine quality, removing the worm from Jack's nose and nabbing it between her canines. 

"Why are you here, anyway, if you had met me in bloody Europe?"

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    Jack crossed his eyes to frown at the candy worm Ilya had seen fit to put on his face. He flicked it away before turning back to the conversation with Ilya. "Fame is overrated and so is all that other stuff, sometimes." The young man had been to magnificent places she'd likely never even heard of, walked among peoples who didn't even have written language or cities or even towns and yet their cultures were no less rich than many of the stagnant environments he'd trudged through on Earth. But he didn't know how to explain that to a muggle without looking like a crazy person.

    The young man considered telling her Ten was the only name he had, but figured it wouldn't hurt to let her in on the fact that Ten was just a nickname, a shortened version of the full thing. "Ten is just short for Tenebrous Jack, but only my close friends call me Jack anymore. Besides, it doesn't really matter. The knave is worth ten points in Blackjack."

    Turning away to chew on some more candy, Jack mostly just expected Ilya to laugh at the complete silliness that was his name. He didn't mind so much, though he did miss Jackson Fletcher a little bit. The young man had carried the name for so long it felt, after all. Jack was used to it, though. He couldn't even rightly recall the name he'd been born with, anymore, and it was the only true name he'd ever know. The one he presently carried fit him as much as any other and it would do for now.

    "The states are my home and I spend a significant amount of my time here even though work carries me around the globe. Where is home for you?"

[Ilyα Cяσw]

Ilya hunched considerably against the rack in distinguishable disappointment at Jack's opinion of history and culture being overrated -- it was a solid fist to the gut of her being; her love, her avidity, her sense of zeal and dedication -- Ilya's home was history, her culture, her hearth, and the voracious growth of knowledge was what guided her from the depths of a small town in Scotland. She was wholly aware that Jack did not know this, but that did not help hiding such visible discouragement.

"History, 'Tenebrous Jack', is what is and always will be left of us when we are long gone. What you say is 'overrated' is the epitomized being of every life to ever live and fall. That doesn't mean the less-known places don't have their own history and value." Ilya spoke quietly with delicate words as her eyes fell to the tiled floors of the store and she would smile once more -- something more quaint and solemn. She was mindful that she was trying to be sentimental with an unfamiliar person in the core of a service station, and that in itself brought her lips to a smile; it became all the more tender as he informed her of his full name and a brief, clever clarification of it. 

"I like the name Jack if you don't mind."

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    Ilya seemed kind of bothered by what he'd said so Jack put one hand on her shoulder, furrowed his brow into his most apologetic expression and said "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. History is important, but it's not always the things that go down in the books that matter the most, is all I was trying to say." The young man wasn't entirely sure why he was bothering. Just a sucker for dimples, he guessed.

    "Mmkay. You can call me Jack, then," The young man told her when Ilya expressed her preference for the name Jack. She seemed to have cheered up a little bit, smiling again, which made him feel more relieved than he would care to admit. Jack didn't like to think of himself as the kind of person who hurt others' feelings needlessly.

    Jack poked her in the ribs, chewing a twizzler. "You didn't say where you're from. And how'd you end up in Berlin?"

[Ilyα Cяσw]

"History is the books, you dingus," Ilya says lightheartedly, bickering. She mentally agreed to disagree with that sentiment, considering she was biased by her own deeply rooted passions. She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth at his repeated question and smiled obtusely in the direction of the hand on her shoulder. "It's fine, really. I very quickly and easily put myself in a position to become defensive, I think." She snorts once more at her own frail flaws and returns to contemplating the question; it wasn't a difficult inquiry in the slightest, where home was for her, but there was no answer. She felt bizarre in that sense. 

"Er -- no home, really. I go where I please and find the cheapest motel or tavern to provide a space that I would barely be in, ironically. Berlin was a place that pleased me. It's a lovely city." Ilya pursed her lips as her thoughts objected to her last statement; Berlin was a lovely city in its entirety, but what she traveled there for was a boundless miss. She wasn't fond of the pluralism of languages and dialects she could not keep up with, but she digressed. She was there no longer.

Another gummy worm was plunked into her mouth, one side dangling loosely over her bottom lip like a cowboy with a single piece of wheat -- and Ilya was strangely nonchalant about it. "Born somewhere in Scotland, if you're curious," She murmurs in amusement, hastily following with incomprehensible and exaggerated Scot jargon, "A jus' twa dunderheed bonnie burds sat craikin' in tae wee barras, mate --" A pause and a peep of laughter, "--In Scotland you are raised to learn garbage-gibberish and English, apparently. Whereabouts are you from in America?" 

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    Glad she didn't seem too terribly offended, Jack awkwardly removed his hand from her shoulder in favor of opening up another bag of candy. The sugar helped him forget the fact that he'd just willingly touched another person. The young man would probably have nightmares about it later, but whatever. Right now he was just trying to stave off another sugar crash.

    "Sounds a lot like the way I live," Jack commented when she told him about her traveling and holing up in cheap motels. It wasn't entirely the same, considering he typically teleported into a literal hole in the ground to sleep like vampire from the old movies. But besides that, he was rarely in the same country for long, only showing up in the states so much because it was practically just a bunch of different countries masquerading as just one.

    The young man scratched his chin, thinking. "I'm not really from anywhere, I think. My family moved a lot even before I left."

    Anyways, gunshots could be heard outside, accompanied by screaming that ended rather abruptly. Jack turned his head lazily toward the door, wondering who could be making such ruckus during such a lazy time of day. Carl looked awfully scared though and started dialing emergency services.