finalflight | OPEN POST; [ SHERLOCK HOLMES / ACD/GRANADA ]

[ preference means nothing when it's about pride. she will stand because it does not make her feel weak. it does not leave her vulnerable. she can strike and run, if she needs to.

to that end, the devil woman merely stands rooted in place while he vanishes into his room, and still she shifts her fingers minutely around the poker. a throbbing haze has descended over her one eye. her lip hurts. and her magic is still so far from her.

when he emerges again he may find her all but staring into the middle distance with a hard look in her dark eyes. ]

[He returns, and she looks not unlike someone carved from stone, and Holmes merely wonders how far she is from breaking down. Her pride must be made of steel, indeed, to still manage to appear so indignant.

He strides over, carrying a bowl of lukewarm water, a washcloth, and smaller cloth soaked in rudimentary antiseptic. The bowl is sat down on a table nearby, and the dry washcloth soaked in water, then diligently wrung out with deft fingers.

Then, he turns to her, approaches, and gestures at her chin and upwards. He would touch her, normally, but that seems unwise to do so without warning.]

Chin up. I am too tall to do this with your eyes forward.

[ a muscle in her jaw works. she has not met his gaze since she first flung the door, but she doesn't need to in order to watch his quiet, clinical process. biting back a cold reply like, so how better had I sat?

poorly though Sprezzatura Vaux reasons through emotion, she won't risk making another enemy in this sphere so soon.

chin... up. like something her mother would say. even as her face lifts, revealing this close the true extent of damage, her eyes stay low, stay lidded.

she scents of brimstone. she holds the poker, feeling so ready. ]

[Tension in the tick of her jaw. His comment has annoyed her somehow, that much is clear, though he suspects it will take very little.]

I’m going to wipe away excess blood, so I can better clean where your lip has been split.

[Warning enough, he supposes. Holmes lifts the washcloth and slowly, gently, starts with the near vicinity of her lip, where dried blood has wandered farthest. The cloth presses in.

And then, a little lighter, seeking more information and also trying to unwind her tension:]

Might I have your name? You’ve mine already.

[ to her credit, now she does not flinch. ]

Sprezzatura Vaux. You may call me Ms. Vaux.

[She is safe from overfamiliarity; this is Victorian England, after all.]

Ms Vaux. [Her first name, though, how unforgettable.] And what can you tell me about how you find yourself in this… fantastical situation?

[ that's her. unforgettable.

scoffs, those dark eyes still lowered. ]

You will find no satisfying answer. I simply turn corner, and here I am, in stranger streets of stranger city.

[With a name like that, Holmes might wonder if she were Italian in descent, were it not so very clear that… she isn’t.]

And which city are you from?

[Properly now, he’s going to dab the split of her lip, heedless of the fact he just asked her a question.

(This close, and he can see so many details of her face that baffle him, so clearly not makeup or a disguise — he concluded this already, but now there is no room for doubt. The blue skin, the dark eyes, the horns, they are entirely real and oddly alien.)]

[ tilting her head slightly with the pressure at her mouth—not enough to hinder, but enough to get an upward glance at him and his stern, aquiline features.

what sets him apart from the men who beat her? ]

You will not know it; I am sure. Else this would not have... so easily... happened.

[He’s a gentleman, not a ruffian, for one. He’d claim that there is much indeed that sets him apart from those who harmed her.

He meets her gaze. His face is indeed all sharp features and the cool blue-gray gaze of very observant eyes.]

And if you’d indulge me with the name, all the same?

Waterdeep.

[Waterdeep. No, he's not heard of it, and the name is rather fantastical to boot. There are deep and puzzling implications to this, a bottomless well that one could easily drown in, but he will note one thing that keeps him buoyed for now.]

No, the name means nothing. However, you've a distinctly Russian accent for someone so... foreign.

Edited 2025-07-01 14:39 (UTC)

[ a pinch in HER brow ] You are meaning Rashemi.

Edited 2025-07-02 01:44 (UTC)

Not at all. I mean…

[And with that, the excess blood is cleaned. He reaches for the cloth soaked in antiseptic.]

…Russian. As I know it, anyway.

[”This will sting”, he then warns her, in his own rudimentary understanding of the language, his accent quite British. But does she understand, he wonders, as he presses the cloth to her lip next?]

[ automatically, she corrects his pronunciation—brisk and brusque, and flinching, too, having not exactly parsed that he really was warning her.

then, continuing in Rashemi, which has all the hallmarks yet possesses a foreign lilt, those myriad tiny differences, ] "What is this? Cat piss?"

[ she knows what antiseptic is. ]

[Holmes lets loose one of his humphs! at the entirety of her reply. So, she does speak Russian enough to correct his pronunciation, but strange inflections of it he's never heard spoken before, though he is hardly an expert on the language itself.

What does it mean? Well, nothing beyond a strand of similarities between two different places that is either coincidental or otherwise connected.

He's not fluent enough to say this part in Russian, so he opts back to English.]

Come now, you're not some countertop to be scrubbed clean with ammonia. It's just a bit of carbolic acid. Don't flinch — you'll make this more difficult.

[ … ]

And there’s no need to look at me like that when I’m only trying to help you.

[Feel the sting, ma’am.]

[ keeps looking like that ]

Da. Why is that?

Why do I choose to help you, you mean?

I come to you in shape of devil. This was enough for your fellows.

That you do.

[All the places where her skin’s been broken now tended to, Holmes sets the cloth aside. Looks at her rather evenly, his gaze always so assessing, yet not harsh despite the calculation in his blue-grey eyes.]

And yet it would be a grave error to equate me to one of the common ruffians you find while roaming London’s back alleys. Appearances are key in determining the nature of a person, but only if you know how to read what is presented to you. You may look like a devil, but you’ve nothing that hints at immediate danger — only immediate differences, which I suppose is often more than enough reason to ostracize an otherwise lost and fearful woman.

[No, there’s much about her, he thinks, that would give away her nature if anyone bothered to look. She’s not dressed to cause trouble, she did not even have a weapon until she found his fire poker. She would rather hide for hours than confront; she has the look of an academic, oddly enough. She had been so terribly afraid.]

I’m a detective. I care about the truth, and very little else. And the truth of the matter seems to be quite inexplicable at the moment. Will you help me unravel it, though, for your sake and mine?

[ on and on he goes, in that crisp and focused way. Sprezzatura frowning, affronted by the suggestion that it is her who is making a mistake in thinking him like any other man. men are all men.

and she still has the poker. limp in hand as she stares at him in something like clouded non-understanding. so, he sees her as a puzzle, then? well, what then should she fail to occupy him? ]

Your "truth" is that devils exist, and we are never very far away.

[Oh, but she is making a mistake in believing that. Holmes’ pride does not reach the same heights as hers, but he knows that in many ways, he is singular. Whether that’s good or bad often depends on the situation, but beating random women on the street? He’s quite incapable of it, thank you very much.]

And yet it’s evident that you’ve arrived here somehow, regardless. The vehicle which makes that possible remains the main mystery — you’ve really no idea as to how? Not even an inkling of a guess?

[A beat. Also-]

Would you like something to drink, by the way?

[A drink is bracing, and also first aid 101 in this era.]

[ she has inklings... the ugly thought that she has fallen prey to a botched Banishment, something like that? yet that would mean nothing to him. ]

Have you wine?

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real tag

WHY IS SHE SO FUNNY

coping

I don’t think you can call this coping

:SADCAT:

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