Lena Reilly
Wednesday evening is generally an
off-night for deejays. With the weekend still a few days away, you
really only get the hardcore clubbers who come out--those who either
don’t have jobs to go to the next morning or who just live for the
nightlife because there’s nothing left for them to look forward to. For
many who spin the night away for art and profit, Wednesday is a day to
slack off and make a little extra cash before the bigger paydays of
Friday and Saturday.
For Lena Reilly, it's more than that.
The woman treats any opportunity to surround herself with music as an
experience to live and breath. However she may treat the rest of her
life, when the beat is on she's alive. She's not quite Lena; she's DJ
Halcyon, a little closer to her avatar and a little brighter in her
Resonance. She's more vibrant--more present.
Tracks, a
nightclub that caters to the LGBTQ crowd, happens to be one of her
favorite and least favorite places to work. She loves it because this
is her community. This is her community, and these are her people. And
yet she hates it because she also feels, within her own community, as
if she doesn’t belong. It's the conflict within every Awakened person;
they don’t even belong to the places they should belong to.
Tonight
though, it's less of the hate and more of the love. Or maybe it's just
that she's queued in so strongly to the grooves and beats as she sits
in the DJ booth in a silvery tank top with the big headphones around her
head. Her eyes are shut, but she's not without her senses; they spread
throughout the area, taking in all of the energy both good and bad.
Life is both after all, and while she struggles with her own internal
conflicts the external ebb and flow of positive and negative--yin and
yang, hot and cold--is a tide that she never shies away from.
[And Per+Aware 'cause she's in the groove! Spec: Uncanny Instincts]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Ian
[Awareness - I see you there]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Ian
Wednesday
nights weren't the most popular among the city's club-goers, it was
true. But there were always those who made time to go out, even on a
weeknight. People who had nothing better to do. People who needed a fix
of some kind or another. And of course... those who just fucking loved
to go out, regardless of which day of the week it was. Ian had his own
reasons for being in Tracks that night, and admittedly Lena was only
half of them, but when he'd noticed her name on the events schedule the
decision became an easy one.
Outside the club, he could hear
the pulsing sounds of bass humming through the air. A nostalgic pattern -
he remembered the way Lena put beats together, and though these were
new, they still carried her signature. Truth be told, it was probably
the thing he would always remember most clearly about her. Much as she
would probably remember him for the way he danced. It was how they'd
always known each other, meeting up in places like these.
Once
inside, he made his way up to the DJ booth, slipping through the small
crowd of dancers on his way to the back of the room. He was dressed
tonight in expensive dark jeans and a white t-shirt, with a leather cord
tied around his neck and a couple of bracelets on his wrists. And when
he saw Lena, he looked up at her and gave a playful little salute, as
though to say Hey there, I totally found you.
The
music was alive, and it tempted him into dancing; into falling back into
the crowd and losing himself for a while. But then he wouldn't get to
say hello, so for now he resisted.
Lena Reilly
The
music is currently rolling through a mellow groove, casting a relaxed
atmosphere across the crowd. You can't go all energy, all the
time...especially during the hot summer months when you could get some
dehydration issues. Add in the ecstacy that may well be floating
through the crowds (Lena's no idiot) and she makes sure that there's
plenty of time and opportunity for the dancers to ease the pace down.
It's
more than just that, though...in fact, that's almost (but not quite)
incidental. The fact is that music has its own rise and fall, and you
have to catch that rhythm and ride it the direction that it is meant to
go. That's what separates a wannabe DJ from a real one. When you can
feel the music and know instinctively where to go next...you know you
have something. And so a remix of Haim's "Forever" with ambient
elements thrown in is keeping the crowd moving at a moderate tempo when
Lena's expression suddenly shifts, even with her eyes closed, to a
smile.
She knows that Resonance. Even if it had been a very
long time, she may have remembered, but she doesn't have to rely on it
because she saw him recently, in his coma. And so she's already
stepping back, queuing up a few pre-made remixes with transitions before
she opens her eyes, head orienting to face Ian. She raises a hand to
wave and then reaches out to let him in.
"So you finally decided to come around, eh? Let a girl know when you're coming into town, why don't you?"
Ian
Not
many people came to visit Ian's body while he was unconscious (while
his mind was in that other place.) A few of the other dancers from the
Colorado ballet had checked in on him once. It'd made them feel like
trespassers, seeing him in such a vulnerable state. Ian didn't know that
Lena had visited him as well. He did know that she'd gone into Bastion
to find him and the others, because Grace had told him, but whatever he
felt about that, it wasn't something he was likely to bring up in this
setting.
Lena felt him before he arrived, and she smiled
without needing to see his face. There was a certain impression one got
that way. Like being in a room with a tiger. It could be almost jarring
to look over and see that he was all too human (like the way those
dancers had found it disconcerting to see him in the hospital.)
Lena
looked at him and reached a hand out, inviting him into her booth. The
music was mellow and fun and it made it easy to forget the last month,
even if only for the present moment (because those things lived on under
the skin.) Ian took her hand and stepped up into the booth, giving the
turntables an appraising glance. If he were a different kind of person,
he probably would have hugged her. But Lena already knew that Ian wasn't
the hugging type. Instead he smiled this slow, beautiful smile, and
reached up to touch the back of her shoulder, letting his hand linger
there for a few seconds (a grounding contact, and a brief connection
between their two patterns.)
"I didn't know you were here until Grace told me. Maybe I should have been looking harder."
Lena Reilly
That's
probably part of why they got along well. Ian's not a hugger and hugs
are pretty much off the table for Lena. Back in New York they would
have been cause for the woman to lose her shit, though the little touch
to her shoulder is perfectly fine; she seems more at ease now with light
contact. How does a woman who loves music and dancing exist in a
nightclub without touching people? Simple: she becomes someone else on
the dance floor.
"Or maybe our friends are terrible at talking
about their friends," she says with an accepting shrug and smile. "Or I
need to start actually being in contact with them. That's not gotten
any better. I'm working on it though, so it may get better. Or at the
very least, I can feel better about saying I'm working on it."
She
gives a real quick glance out to the crowd--nothing big, just checking
to make sure no crisis. It's not her job to care about the welfare of
the clubbers, but she does. While they're on her groove, she considers
them hers, and their welfare is her responsibility. And then she's
looking back at Ian, tilting her head to the side.
"So how are you doing? How's Denver and...well, everything about our people here...treating you?"
Ian
Our people,
she said, and Ian glanced at her with this cool and enigmatic
expression, like there was some part of that sense of family that he
didn't identify with. But that was hardly a surprise, given his nature
and the fact that he wasn't affiliated with the Traditions. (Ian never
used that word: Orphan. He fucking hated it. Even though it was
technically true in more than one way.)
The club looked
different from inside the booth. Up here, a person could be a part of
the pulse but also somewhat outside of it. It had its appeal, the view.
Ian did like to observe things. And the music interested him. The
technology. He walked over to inspect the equipment that Lena was using,
mindful not to disturb anything.
"It isn't New York," he
admitted. "But it has its perks. You know me." His smile returned for a
moment: sharp and slightly devilish. Because yes, Lena knew him well
enough in that respect. Ian found ways to keep himself occupied, wherever he was. Usually, if he wasn't working or training, those ways involved other people (other patterns: Life.)
He'd had a reputation back in New York. That had not changed when he'd moved.
"I
met this kid you should hang out with, if you haven't already. Elijah.
You probably know the locals better than I do, though. What about you?
How's work?" He eyed the moderate-sized crowd like maybe he was
remembering some of the golden days back in New York.
Lena Reilly
It isn't New York,
he says, and she leans back against the wall, her head rolling back and
her eyes rising to stare at the ceiling. There's a faint curving of
her lips, subtle and slightly wry, that comes along with the reaction.
"No.
No, it's not New York at all." Her accent has largely vanished over in
the few years since she left the city, but Lena is a New Yorker by
heart and once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker. Doubly so if you were
born there. It comes with all the glory and pain and excitement and
tragedy that a New Yorker can experience, and nothing else is ever quite
the same. That doesn't mean it isn't good, or even better. But not
the same.
"Yeah, I hear you've been finding the perks." It's
not quite teasing and it's certainly not a barb. It's warm and maybe a
little tinged with envy. "That's good...I'm glad for you."
And
then Ian mentions Elijah, mentions the others in the city, and she
smiles more openly. "I know Elijah, yeah. But you know Kalen so I'm
willing to bet you're more connected to the city at this point than I
am. I've got a really bad habit of hiding in my hotel room over the
last year or so. Long story. But Elijah's a good kid, from what little
I've met him. Eager, in a good way. And a bad way. You know how that
can be with newbies."
Ian
I hear you've been finding the perks.
Ian
might have tried to play innocent there, except the look didn't suit
him at all, and Lena wouldn't have believed him anyway. (He'd been the
one to bring it up, after all.) There was a tinge of envy in Lena's
voice, and Ian's expression softened ever-so-subtly when he heard it. He
didn't know, of course, of the things she'd been through since moving
to Denver. That she'd been infected with another virus entirely; that
she'd been held prisoner and effectively tortured and that she very well
might have died. He didn't have this information to explain why she'd
been so isolated. But he remembered enough about her to know why she
didn't lose herself in other people the way that many Cultists did. One
time, a long time ago, he'd told her that she didn't have to let it
control her.
But what right did he really have to give her
advice? Speaking from a place of privilege (where beautiful people just
fucking fell out of the sky and landed in his bed.)
Eager. That was a good way to describe Elijah.
"He's not boring, I'll give him that."
Ian
regarded Lena quietly for a moment, like maybe he actually wanted to
ask her for that story (the long one.) But there was a time and a place
for that discussion, and this wasn't it.
Instead he said, "Think the club owners will complain if I steal you for a song or two?"
Lena Reilly
There's
a lot that Lena could tell Ian. Not only about the Hydra virus and
what it did to her (physically and emotionally), but about her trials
and tribulations in the city over the past year-plus. Her self-imposed
isolation, her comeback, her second pulling away...it's been a cycle,
much like her own beating Resonance. There may well be a time and a
place for that...
But that's not now. She chuckles a little bit when he says that Elijah isn't boring, and shrugs. "The best people never are."
And
then he asks her if he can steal her away for a couple of songs, and
she smiles. "Not at all." She turns and taps a couple more songs into
the queue--quick moves, all done instinctually. She doesn't think about
her choices, because it's not something that should be rationalized.
And then she gestures with her hand.
"Lead the way."
They'll
dance, and Lena will forget that she's a damaged--yet
recovering--survivor of so much. When she hits the floor, all of that
fades away and she becomes what she was destined to be. There, in the
moment dancing with Ian, she's free.
