exsiliumlogs | (no subject)

Elza had been trailing Nash on and off for a few days now. While part of it was training, another part of it was simply out of her own curiosity. The weather didn't bother her much. How could it with everything that she had discovered. It weighed heavily on her mind even if she didn't let it distract her, and she found it far easier to ignore her thoughts when her mind was focused on something else.

That something else happened to be Nash.

The gunner continued to move unseen after the Harmonian. Whether he was suspicious or not didn't bother Elza in the slightest. The game of cat and mouse between them, regardless of how unknown it was to Nash, before her curiosity finally got the better of her, and Elza made her presence known as she stepped out of the crowd not far behind Nash.

"Master Clovis."

If he was surprised to hear her voice, his body language didn't show it. He turned around, slowly, easily, so that he could look at her, but kept moving backwards. If this was going to go down the way he thought it might go down, he wanted to find some place without a crowd.

Nash regarded Elza warily, but he spoke with a smile. "You know, that sounds so formal. Most people just call me Nash."

He didn't want to fight her. He was pretty sure that wouldn't be up to him.

The caution was palpable in the air, at least to her, which amused the gunner. She didn't stop her approach, especially considering that for every step she took, Nash was matching it. Really? If he thought that she didn't know his plan, then he was more than a fool than she'd realised. Elza allowed herself to be lead away though, not really caring to whether there were others around or not. All she was interested in was answers, and the Harmonian in front of her was the only one who could give them.

"I'm not 'most people'," Elza answered in return. The smile Nash had on his face was returned with a pleasant one of her own.

If Nash wanted to be unpredictable, he'd have tried throwing a knife at her in the middle of the crowd. Or, he could recite the lines to one of Nadir's plays. "Romeo, Romeo…" No one would see that coming.

But it wouldn't do him any good, either. He did't think he had anything to gain by attacking her, and the missus would get angry if he started with the sonnets. Nash was okay with predictable, just this once. If Elza wanted him to do something else, she'd have to force it. Or at least narrow his options.

"I'm not most people, either. I usually refer to myself as 'handsome', or 'charming.'"

"Charming? I think that you need to work harder on that," Elza said while still closing the distance between them. She always had been a confident woman, and hardly afraid to let it be known what she wanted. That was why she gave a subtle nod over towards the nearby alley just off of the street that they were currently on.

Nash had a choice though: willing or not. It was a choice that she was giving him though, and while she would enjoy forcing his hand, Elza would prefer to remain lowkey. There was only so much leeway she was willing to give in that sense.

"You wouldn't want the handsome part to become something of the past, would you?"

Nash was more vain than he liked to let on, even to himself. Maybe it was that the people he surrounded himself with died young, or didn't die at all. So no, he didn't want the handsome part to become a thing of the past. But that isn't what he said, turning into the alley Elza indicated.

"We really don't have to do this." Not that he expected her to listen. If it was a fight she wanted, she'd get it. But he wanted to make his position clear, for all the good it would do him.

He was right, and she didn't listen to him as the gunner turned to follow Nash into the alleyway. As she was, she had no intention to fight him, but all that could change if his responses became unfavourable. Whether they would or not, the gunner supposed on what mood the Harmonian was in.

She remained a few paces behind, keeping just enough distance to remain out of reach for now, as Elza finally spoke up. "You don't learn well enough from the past," Elza murmured. "That's far enough."

"If I did, I'd get old." He shrugged, putting one hand on his waist and moving the other in a vague circular gesture. He'd stopped walking.

"And I don't want to get old yet."

"Given your age, I'd say that you're already well on your way there... physically at least," she teased until they both finally came to a stop. "The young Silverberg reminded me that you're getting on in age."

Elza was never one to really say what was on her mind. At least not right off the bat.

"I'm thirty seven. I don't think I'll count any years I add on to that while I'm here."

He shrugs, smaller than usual. "If I'm honest, it's longer than I expected to live. The last time I saw you." He doesn't elaborate— he figures she can catch his drift.

"You don't, hmm?" She murmured in return. Of course, Elza didn't care for a response either. Instead she was far more interested with other things.

He didn't need to elaborate any further than he already did, given that she had known of the situation he'd been within before her arrival here. "It's longer than a lot of people get," she said even if the gunner wasn't actually referencing herself. "I take it that you kept yourself well informed until you arrived here?"

He shrugged. "I'm not very useful otherwise."

Nash really had gotten older— he talked more now, fought less. He still practiced. But he'd buried his swords deep in someone else's grave, they no longer whispered him violence. Nash told himself, sometimes, that he was in the business of stopping violence now. Fighting wars with maps and words, ending them before they started. He swallowed this story when he had trouble sleeping, when other feelings twisted his stomach. And it was the truth. But like most of the stories Nash told, it was not the whole of the truth.

"And people like me are only good when they're useful." He tilted his head without moving his eyes. "Do you have questions?"

Elza kept her gaze trained on Nash when he seemed to momentarily lost in thought. She could take a guess as to it could have possibly been. It wasn't easy being faced with anything from your past, after all, and given the connection they'd once shared within and beyond the Guild.

"People like you, huh?" She teased in return at first while keeping her thoughts to herself. "I might, and out of everyone here, you're the only one who could provide it."

"I'm just speaking for myself," he said with a wry half-smile.

"You can try me if you want. There's no protocol for me to follow, now. None of my usual borders." But there were still limits to what he did know The Guild didn't like him much, and they were secretive even by his standards.

His wry half-smile had her showing her amusement in return. While his charms often worked on most, Nash knew well the woman he was dealing with.

"I see that you gained some wisdom with age," she muttered lightly before the gunner considered her position. "There's only one question that I want you to answer: is he still alive?"

"I haven't heard that he died." He paused, to assess things. "And I think I would have."

The confirmation, in its own minimal way, did much to settle the gunner. So, the kid had lived once he'd returned to the Guild? She didn't expect Nash to know what happened to Clive within, as Guild matters rarely reached the world beyond the tower, but just knowing that he was still alive fifteen years later made her exploits all the more worth it.

"Heh, so the kid made it," she muttered before finally half-turning herself away. Giving every indication that Nash could leave if he wanted, Elza glanced down the opposite end of the alleyway. "You must be pretty high up to be privileged to such information, Master Latkje."

Privileged. That was a loaded term. He wasn't privileged at all, not the way he used to be. And when it came to information, he didn't care much what he was allowed to find out. Secrets in his experience, didn't care much either.

"I work directly for the bishop. I can order people around, if I want." He shrugged. "But only certain people."

Oh and didn't she know it, which was the reason to why Elza had said it in the first place. Finding her attention shifting back to the Harmonian, her lips quirked up subtly in satisfaction.

"Somehow I can't say that I'm all that surprised that you do," the gunner murmured. Considering Nash's origins, training, and capabilities, it wasn't all that difficult to consider such an outcome. Perhaps that was why she huffed lightly in amusement before she spoke. "That's quite the change from when we last met. How are you enjoying it?"

"It wasn't my idea." He thought back to that dark night: Lena, old cobble-stone steps, and his freedom. Nash wasn't sure if he'd ever had that.

"But there are worse things. I like to travel, you know." And he did, even if he took a while to figure out it didn't have to be the same thing as running away. "Maybe not this far, but I like to travel." He shook his head, he was always speaking in gestures.

"I don't have any illusions that what I do is good work. But at least it's interesting."

It was rare for anything to ever be on their own terms. Elza knew that better than most people, but much like Nash, one had to learn to adapt or else find themselves on the wrong side of a barrel.

There was an amused breath at the mention of travel. That was something she could understand. "Where's your sense of adventure?" She was teasing, and he would know, but the gunner found some level of comfort in Nash's over-enthusiastic gestures, even if she knew well that he wasn't the man she once knew.

"Good's overrated." There was a shrug accompanying her words before a she sent a glance back in Nash's direction. "So long as you think what you do is the right thing, then what does it matter? It's the right thing for you."

"Such confidence! It must be nice." When the currents got strong, Nash wasn't sure he had the conviction to steer anywhere at all. He wasn't sure if he was right, or even if he was doing the best that he could do.

But he'd gotten used to that.

She glanced at Nash with the other's reply. Of course she had confidence in her own decisions. It didn't matter to her what happened to others so long as what she strove for was completed if things she'd discovered here was anything to go by.

"Heh," Elza grunted before glancing away again. "Always the same."

"You need to make up your mind about that. Because I'm not going to." He wasn't sure if people ever really changed, or if they just shifted angles. The way a diamond glinted different colors when held up to different lights.

Mostly, though, he wasn't sure.

"Where's the fun in that?" Elza asked in return. Whether she actually would or not though she hadn't decided, but Nash wouldn't become aware of it even when she did. Instead she turned back to face him before taking a few more steps in towards him. Her movements were more like a saunter as she murmured, "We once shared more than a meal, but it seems that you're afraid of me far more now than you were back then."

Whether he'd answer her veiled question was up to him, but that didn't mean she wasn't curious to know what had caused such distrust throughout the years to him.

"I'm married. I have to be afraid of other women." It was half of it this place— Nash was used to standing on quicksand, but he always knew where he was putting his feet. Even back in those lost days, he knew enough about what he was running from to tell where he was running. But here? There was no Holy Kingdom, no House of Latkje, and as far as he could tell, there never had been. It was all of it unfamiliar. Except the people they kept bringing through who he could sometimes recognize. From his past. Ghosts.

He didn't like it, it reminded him of how much he didn't know. But it was exciting, too, and that was, in a way, just as bad.

But he didn't flinch at her approach.

The answer left her huffing lightly. It was such a cop-out in her opinion, but she was generous enough to let that pass. Well if that was the way he wanted to play it, then she would respect his decision. Obviously the moment they had shared out in that forest was simply that, and now that the gunner was aware of it, she knew well where they both stood.

"Heh, then I best not give you anything to fear so long as you don't cross me," Elza finally offered in return as she stopped a few paces shy of where Nash stood.

Oh, it was definitely a cop out. Nash was more comfortable being slippery than straight. And, well, maybe he was more guarded now than he was fifteen years ago. It was hard to say, he could never see himself from the outside.

Did Elza want him to be confessional? He couldn't tell. Maybe he was rusty.

"What makes you so sure I'd fear you even if I got to crossing?"

Well, apart from the fact that she could probably kill him if she really tried. But that didn't sound as good.

"Did you not say just a moment ago that you have to fear all women?" Elza teased in return. Regarding him with that same playful look, it was difficult to tell when she was being serious or not at times like these. "I think we both know how you'd feel if it truly came to that."

"I'm allowed to contradict myself. I'm contradictory." He waved his hands, a gesture of openness, of surrender.

Nash wasn't going to answer the second part. Because he did know, and so did she. There was nothing to say.

"Is that so? I'll have to keep that in mind for the future then," she said in return. Somehow she didn't think that it was just married life that had changed him that way, but given her situation back in their own world, Elza knew far too well that she'd never discover anything further either.

"So who's the lucky woman?"

He shakes his head. "You don't know her."

And then, after a thoughtful pause. "And lucky is a stretch."

A slender brow rose up at his initial answer. Well, there was no doubt that he was right there, but given the information he'd been seeping out, she couldn't help but find some level of curiosity within.

"Oh? And why might that be?"

"Well, you know what happened to the last Mrs. Latkje, right?" He shuddered inwardly at his own joke. "I'm a catcher, not a catch."

The implication of the joke didn't go over her head at all. She supposed that he had a point there, but the gunner had a feeling that there was a lot more to the story than that. Yet she held enough respect for Nash not to pry, at least not to such depths anyway.

"Well I suppose that I should commend you for able to catch yourself a woman then?" It was a change of topic, but not for her though. While she was known for not caring much for anything beyond her own self-interests, she didn't have an interest of pulling out painful information or memories from those she had nothing against... well so long as a job wasn't involved.

"It's better than being lonely." After a minute, though, he thought better of it. "Marriage doesn't always fix that, though."

She didn't say anything in response. Such a normal life was something that was never meant for her, even if her death had never occurred. Did she care over such a fact? Not really, as Elza knew well that before the betrayal of the Guild's Elders, she had had something far more important than something as simple as a marriage.

"You'd best be careful, otherwise I might start mistaking you as a sentimental old fool, Master Latkje," Elza teased while her expression appear to reflect her amusement.