Something Wicked This Way Comes

[Fenris]

She wasnt't angry at Faith. Really, she wasn't. Despite her having every right to, didn't she? With how dismissive she was being. Ivy took the moment Faith took to drink to take a drink herself; she was dangerously close to losing her good mood. Once again she found herself considering giving up and wandering off; there were a million things more interesting she could be doing, and if Faith wasn't going to even react then what was the point?

Probably if the circumstances were different, that's what she would have done. Sometimes you just had to take the L to avoid making yourself miserable. But this particular case was, unfortunately, a bit too personal for her to let go of.

"Fine," she said, her voice giving nothing away, her expression back to its normal smile. "I get it. You want the details. Understandably."

"You got... most of the important bits. Myles was teasing him a little, but, like, about as gently as possible. Honest." She raised her free hand in the universal gesture of "I swear". "It was basically nothing. Myles got bored, tried to leave, got a few nasty bruises for his trouble."

Her smile soured a little before she recovered again. Her voice stayed steady, at least for the moment.

"... And some cash thrown in his face. Not very subtle. Y'know?"

[Frozen Smoke]

"Huh."

Faith's face shifted a few times as Ivy spoke, from a look of suspicion, to one of consideration, to one of humorous disbelief, before finally settling on simple surprise as she realised Ivy wasn't messing with her. The pause was too long for that, Ivy liked to be quick with her gotchas.

That didn't sound like Julien. Or, well, not the Julien she knew at least. The only way she could see Julien throwing money at someone was if a waiter forgot their tip. He'd always seemed by the books, really, even given his little scuffle with Lorenzo. Too much so, really, he never seemed to want to stand up for himself. Yet here he was getting down and dirty dunking on Myles.

Allegedly.

"I see."

She said, trying to keep the pause from dragging out too long, but needing more time to process this particular new piece of information. Myles never seemed that poor, but she knew Ivy considered him poor, but she considered basically everyone who didn't live in a mansion poor. Ivy called her poor sometimes, and she didn't feel it. Sure, she didn't have the 3 cars and shit, but she got by well enough.

She curled up her bottom lip a little, biting into it softly as she tried to spur herself to think harder about what to say in response to that. Julien was a friend, but Myles was Ivy's best friend, basically, so....

"That's not great."

[Fenris]

What had she even expected?

How had she gotten here? She hadn't wanted to talk about this. Why was she talking about this? She had another thing to talk about. But it wasn't important.

This was important.

Her hands were shaking.

"That's not... great?"

"Is that all you have to say?"

Why would Faith care?

Someone was supposed to care.

[Frozen Smoke]

Ivy was upset, that was pretty clear. Her voice was breaking a little as she spoke, little high pitched moments of shrill mixed in with her normally song-like way of speaking, like a record scratching slightly. Her hands were shaking too, the red fluid - what little of it was left - swishing around in the glass visibly.

"I'm sorry?" she tried to apologise, but it came out more like a question. She was sorry, she supposed. Sorry that it had happened. But it wasn't like her apology meant anything. She hadn't been involved in it, she hadn't caused it to happen. Julien wasn't her pet in the same way Ivy seemed to treat Myles - His actions weren't her responsibility.

She wasn't sure what Ivy wanted.

Faith drank a little more from the glass that had found it's way back into her hand, and then nestled in her lap as she sat. She was about to put it back, but there was only a little left when she began to take it away from her lips, so she tilted her head back and drained it. The empty vessel was placed back on the table gently, acutely aware that slamming the glass down defiantly wasn't the best of ideas here.

She threw her hands up a little, bending at the elbow and letting her palms face the sky in a display of her irreverence to Ivy's personal pet's pity party after some thrown hands and thrown coins that she was, for some reason, supposed to be responsible for.

"I'm not sure what else I can say..."

[Fenris]

She wasn't angry at Faith. She wasn't a moment ago. She still shouldn't be. But she was. Enough that her thoughts were clouded.

What had she expected? Faith didn't like Myles. She knew that. Faith and Julien were best friends. Would she defend Julien against Myles, if the situation was reversed?

No, obviously not. But the situation wouldn't be reversed, because Myles wasn't a fucking psycho.

This was stupid. She should go. Her good mood had evaporated, and drinking the last drops of her glass of wine didn't fix anything, or do anything at all but burn her throat. She should get up, and leave. She should find Myles, if he hadn't fallen into bed with anyone yet. It was fine.

She couldn't stand him being hurt. She just couldn't. This was the first chance she'd gotten to confront it. And Faith didn't care.

"There's plenty you could say." Her voice had turned to ice, in a moment.

"You don't care about what your friends do much, do you."

[Frozen Smoke]

Faith's face changed from attempting friendly placation to about the opposite of that, her top lip curling up into an instinctive sneer of disgust at that. How dare she. And her of all people.

Faith stood up.

Her world wobbled for a moment, as blood rushed to all sorts of places far too quickly, but she managed to avoid wobbling with it. Or too much, at least, as she waited for own personal earthquake to pass. Her hands went down to the table that separated them and picked up the liquor and her glass. The coke could stay here, she wasn't going to come back for it and there'd be more somewhere else, she was sure.

She was fucking done.

She didn't pay Free.99 to enter this shitty party full of shitty fucking people just to get lectured by Ivy of all people about morality. Because of something she had no control over. And now was supposed to be mind reading her to find some mystical response that Ivy seemed to think would make it all better, like she was going to promise to excise Julien from her life, just because she seemed to want it.

But she couldn't just let Ivy get the last fucking laugh. She wasn't just going to slink off like a kicked dog. Nah, that was what a pussy would do. She was going to make sure she knew what a fucking cowardly little bitch she was being, trying to get at her through her friends, rather than just coming at her straight. She got to be the one to leave the room first, with her tail between her legs, not Faith.

She walked around the table until she stood practically toe-to-toe with Ivy.

She looked down at her.

"What is that supposed to mean, huh?"

[Fenris]

How dramatic. Ivy wished she hadn't drained her glass. Now seemed like a good time to take an idle sip.

She should probably be having some sort of reaction to this. Concern, maybe. Not that she thought Faith would hit her, normally, there were many reasons that would be a terrible idea for her, but she was quite drunk, and she sounded quite angry. Paradoxically Ivy felt her own tension draining. Apparently Faith had emotions after all.

That made it easier. She clearly didn't feel like using those emotions to be productive. Therefore Ivy had no real reason to play fair anymore. Her anger wasn't gone, but rather concentrated to a needle point; the rest of her was free. Her lips curled slightly upward.

If she couldn't have justice, there was always revenge.

"Tell me, darling." Ivy ignored Faith's question entirely. She was being terribly rude.

"Have you spoken to Wyatt recently?"

[Frozen Smoke]

Faith's expression swam a little as she tried to swallow that, everything about it seeming designed to give her indigestion. She wasn't exactly sure what Ivy meant by that, and that was kind of why she'd said it, wasn't it? She didn't doubt Wyatt's capability to fuck up, and she was sure it was with the best intentions, but it would have been nice if at least one of her friends wasn't throwing her on Ivy's shitlist.

She wasn't sure where she found the nerve, though. To just act so smug and self-assured, standing there looking for all the world as if Faith couldn't smear that smug grin across her painted little face. To just shit-talk her friends in front of her, as if she could do it without consequence.

She could probably do something to show her too, just put her knee right in her gut. They were just the right distance apart, and Ivy looked liked she was liable to throw up if she did it hard enough. She ground her left foot into the ground a little as she thought about it, knuckles going a little white as they clenched around the glass in both her hands, obscured only by her arms being held loose by her side.

It would be what she deserved, honestly, and the idea of Ivy being found crying in her own vomit was momentarily therapeutic. She savoured those moments, as she thought about actually, for-real doing it, before reality crept back in. Normally she tried to think back to the chat she and Wyatt had had, after that fight about Sierra, about keeping your shit discrete. That wasn't working too well right now, so she just tried to think about how disappointed Dad would be if she turned up home in the back of a cop car, how embarrassing it would be for him.

She let out a snort of air from her nose, continuing to look down along it at the pink haired bitch.

[Fenris]

It was almost funny, how quickly their positions had reversed. Ivy supposed it was poetic in a way, that she and Faith were so incompatible that even their emotions seemed to move in inverse proportions. Faith was a terrible liar even sober, and as she was now her movements and expressions gave away every thought running through her head. Ivy just watched, more amused than anything else. It was really taking a lot for her to hold back, wasn't it? But she wasn't getting drunker, she looked on the verge of immediate vomit catastrophe already, and she still had the self-control to keep her hands off of her. Which made sense, really. Self-preservation instincts were the last thing to go.

It was a little sad, she supposed, that this was the best she could do. Normally in a circumstance like Myles's she'd get Bret or Wyatt involved, exact a more proper and punishing variety of revenge. Julien was tough, apparently, but a Carter would crack him in half. Easily. But with things being what they were at the moment, she couldn't exactly ask for that. Wyatt would probably jump at the chance, but... she'd never asked, she never would, but she still felt like Bret resented her.

That lump over Wyatt's eye came to mind. Not to mention what he'd said to her, that night. Tyrell had pulled a knife. Who could say Julien wasn't that psychotic?

So, no. She couldn't do quite as much to Julien as she'd like. There wasn't much of a point of telling Faith that he was clearly into her, either. In her current state she'd probably forget about it by tomorrow, and then what was even the point?

But Ivy could hurt her. Right here, right now. And if she forgot? All the better.

"You really don't pay attention." She shrugged. "I mean, I thought he'd have told you, but I suppose you aren't as close as I thought."

She didn't think he would have told her, though she would have changed tact if Faith had shown recognition when she'd first brought up the subject. But Faith would have been colder to her from the outset, had she known, Ivy was sure. It was for the best that she wouldn't know, though she was perhaps the one person outside of Myles who it would be safe to tell. She had no particular loyalties to Ivy, of course, but she wouldn't risk hurting Wyatt for a chance of hurting her.

Round and round it went. Everything was so complicated. Of course, she was an expert.

[Frozen Smoke]

Faith took a sharp breath in through her nose, puffing her chest out a little and trying loosen her arms a little, unclenching the fists that had balled beside her as Ivy continued to make the mistake of moving her mouth.

"Shut up."

There was a pause.

Faith tried to think of something to say.

No witty comeback came.

"Get the fuck out of my sight before I slap the shit out of you."

[Fenris]

Ivy just smiled.

"Make me."

[Frozen Smoke]

Faith looked back at her, eyes narrowed, as the invitation came.

The challenge.

One she knew she wasn’t supposed to take. It wasn’t a good idea, as much as it felt like one. Leaving Ivy with the promised slap was only going to come back and bite her worse, in the long run. She needed to just… Walk away.

She moved one foot, turning to the side a little as she broke eye contact with her, starting to move away.

She couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had ever taken Ivy up on a challenge like that, though. If she’d ever had to face a shred of consequence in her life, whilst she piled them upon everyone around her.

Probably not.

She brought her other foot up, as if to walk away, her mouth feeling a little dry. She knew what she was giving up by doing this. That Ivy would know she wouldn’t follow through on what she said she’d do. That she’d think she was a coward. That she could keep doing shit like this, and just skate away.

...

She slammed the heel of her shoes onto Ivy’s foot, twisting a little, before moving as fast as she could in a straight line towards the door - Only taking a brief moment to look at Ivy’s crumbled form holding her foot as she stood in the doorway, before slamming the door behind her, the thick mahogany blocking out the worst of Ivy’s bitching and moaning.

She brushed a few strands of hair that had fallen over her face behind her ear with her left hand as she stood, with her back to the door, adjusting to the brighter lights of the hallway for a moment, before remembering the bottle of whiskey that was still clutched in that hand as it bumped against her shoulder.

She let out a nervous, giddy laugh that was almost involuntary.

She was so fucked.

And it felt great.

She brought the bottle to her lips and took a swig.

((Faith C. Marshal-Mackenzie continued elsewhere))

[Fenris]

Faith wouldn't. She wasn't stupid. Anything that left a mark on Ivy would be her own weapon, a quick and easy means for her to prove that she had been in the right. It hardly mattered what she said; she hadn't been the first to throw hands, which gave her the moral high ground. That was the way of things.

Faith would turn on her heels and leave. And Ivy would go get some more wine and find someone more interesting to spend her time with.

She wasn't wrong. Not entirely.

Ivy opened her mouth, prepared to have the last word as Faith made her way out the door, but the only sound that came out was a high-pitched yelp as a sharp pain shot through the toes of her right foot; she instinctively grabbed it and pulled her leg up into her lap, but moving it made it worse.

In retrospect, ballet flats had been a bad choice. At least Faith hadn't been wearing her boots. The smallest of mercies.

It hurt. It hurt a lot, and she had to bite her lip after the initial shock to prevent any more noises from escaping her. Not that it mattered anymore, since Faith had fled with the sort of speed only cowards possessed, but for her own sake, for her own personal dignity, she kept herself quiet, though she couldn't keep the tears that stung her eyes from falling. And then she moved her foot again, and personal dignity be damned. A sob escaped her. Then, another.

It hurt too much. Something was wrong. She slid off her shoe.

The stocking covering her big toe was soaked in blood.

She put the shoe back on. She couldn't deal with this right now. She just couldn't. She'd have to go home, and she couldn't go home, this was a party, this was the party, she couldn't go home, but fuck, she tried to wobble her way back to her feet and her toe jammed on the inside of her shoe and she almost fell over, gasping in pain.

She slid out of her shoes. It wasn't worth it. She could walk, at least, without them, though she found herself limping and cursed under her breath.

She needed help, and that, she hated more than anything.

Faith would get what was coming to her.

Ivy would make sure of it.

>> Ivy Langley continued in Dare You Enter My Magical Realm?