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Old City Philadelphia can be hard to get around in around 2 AM. Bars are letting out, people are heading home, and Ubers circulate through the mass of humanity like slow-moving sea predators through schools of fish. An hour later, though? It's much quieter. Sure, drunks still wander, and it isn't quiet quiet yet, but it's not the mass and press of bodies it was earlier.
Out of one of the bougie little bars neatly tucked into a historical stone building comes a tiny femme in black cigarette pants and a burgundy kidskin leather jacket, her hand tucked into the elbow of a taller, muscular butch with brilliant green hair cut into spikes. For a moment, one might be forgiven if they thought Artje was walking with Annikah. Bitch has a type, anyway. But she's flushed pink and has on her prettiest, most casual smile, looking up at the other woman with glittering dark eyes.
Titania was headed home from Bones place and was trying to get better at blending in around humans.
Tonight that led her right into Artje's path. Well she made eye contact. Can't really turn away now. So she puts on her best smile and gives them both a wave.
She is wearing one of her more modern if more revealing outfits. Fitting for around here.
Her laughter is sweet and high, a giggle cording its way through the night air like silver painted across the darkness. The Serpent's ease with the woman briefly mistakable for Annikah seems nothing at all like the way she acts at Elysium -- a soft femme sway, the lean in against tonight's dinner companion -- and her posture stiffens briefly upon spotting Titania. That smile goes brittle for just a moment, then softens once more, and she waves in return. The woman she's with asks, "Do you know her?" as she, too, waves, a bit more awkwardly.
A little shrug is all the answer Artje gives, for now, though their paths continue towards one another.
Titania hands are in her jacket and the hands tighten on air forming nervous fists.
She keeps her path trying to slide into a conversation.
"Good evening Madames. I trust it has been good?"
"Uhhh... " begins the other woman, since Artje didn't actually answer the question. The Daeva presses her hand against the butch's bicep before bringing her hand up to turn the woman's face towards her. "You should go. I'll call you."
The eye contact is brief but it suffices, and Artje's date makes mumbling excuses and extracts herself. Once she starts away, expression confused and mildly hurt, the Toreador turns back to her, face gone china-doll still. "It was."
"My apologies."
A nod of her head.
"It felt more rude to turn away when we had already seen each other."
Her eyebrows arch up just so, perhaps mildly surprised at the response, and her hand makes a small dismissive gesture, the streetlight catching her ring and sending it glittering. Does she practice this stuff?
"Perhaps so," Artje concedes, her stance falling into something close to a ballerina in second position, and her hands spread out to her sides, palms up, as if to say, well?
She smiles. Not how this was planned but. Okay.
Her eyelids close for a moment to collect her thoughts.
"I had wanted to seek you out to." A pause. She getting better but is still all Pride.
"Apologise for my actios and words the night we met."
The Toreador stands there like a dolly on her stand, hands spread out slightly, waiting as Titania closes her eyes and collects her thoughts. Perhaps Visigny said something to her. Perhaps he did not, leaving her to sort this on her own, because she is a capable creature. One can never tell, with the Trio, what happens behind closed doors; their front is unified in any case.
Her hands drift down to her sides, and her head ticks just so to the side. "Indeed?" Artje replies, otherwise still as the grave.
There is a definite twitch at that. This is not one of the options she had planned for. Fuck. Okay. Think. Another pause.
"How would you like to be addressed tonight and going forward?"
She looks down at the ground. Not that it stops her seeing.
Her hip cocks to the side, and she rests her hand on it. Something about the shift of her weight and the fabric against her shows the lines of a corset under the modern dress. "Frau Berenyi-Winthrope is an acceptable place to begin," Artje answers. Titania looks at the ground, and Artje looks at her, quite directly.
Titania nods looking up.
"Then a good evening to you Frau Berenyi-Winthrope."
A tilt of her torso. A bow without it being weird in public.
"And to you, Frau Sanguine." She blinks slowly, her eyes closing and opening, as she tips her head forward in return, remaining otherwise motionless.
Maybe she's allowing Titania lead the conversation. In whatever case, the china doll seems to be precisely answering exactly what's said. It's a little like talking to one-way glass.
Its not at all how she likes to be addressed but she'll take it.
"Can we walk and talk. Or would you prefer me to leave you to your night?"
She definitely doesn't want to leave but doesn't have the most experience with apologies.
It shows.
Her accent is a precise thing, more heavily Austrian right now than its usual pan-European shifting and changing. "I am amenable to this," Artje answers, and she gestures down toward the piers. All of Philadelphia sort of slopes gently down towards the river, especially Old City, and the heels of her boots click on the worn bricks of the sidewalk. "Do you understand the offense given?" One eyebrow lofts just a bit. "The name is a minor count."
Titania follows.
"I understand that I showed you a lack of respect. And was just generally rude. I have forgotten how to interact in a peaceful manner and am doing my best to re learn that skill."
"Not me. Yes, me, but -- " Artje presses her lips into a thin line, her pace neat and measured. She's so precise you could set a watch by her. "Do you know who runs Bellevue?" She looks ahead, watching the emptying streets, and reaches up to smooth her hair with one hand.
"Sora Kan. As per the note that you wrote for them."
Her head inclines slightly, her eyes half-closing and then opening again. "And one of the heads of my Family." (edited)
A slow nod of her head in understanding.
"Ah."
"Indeed." And that is all that Artje says for a long time, her footsteps taking her further and further down towards the river. "The owls have been active of late."
"What actions would you have me take in that regard. I'll admit I am not great at this whole process."
Then a nod which is also half grimace.
"Yeah. I've been doing some research into them and. Not a fan. Plus the work they are doing with our unlucky enemies likely spreads beyond just us."
A tiny glance aside. "It is not me to whom you have given primary offense, so it is not to me whom you must primarily address any apology or recompense. Perhaps she will be pleased that you pointed out a hole in security. Perhaps they will not be." Her gaze shifts forward again. "That is not for me to say." Her hands come to rest their palms flat on her stomach, smoothing from the bottom of her ribcage down to her belly and then stilling there. "Mmm," she agrees. "One must be very careful indeed when our enemies join forces."
Titania nods again.
"Okay."
Then she looks to Artje.
"Indeed. I have shared what I was able to discover. Its precious little beyond occult knowledge of the owls sadly."
She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "I wonder," she murmurs, "how easy it would be to find out which Gangrel in the city arrived in 2020." How is that related, Artje? She does not say. (edited)
A tilt of her head.
"Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I'll let you get back to your dinner."
Her mouth opening and closing a few times to speak but unable to put it into words.
"Mmm," agrees Artje. "As you like." She stops, turning towards Titania, and adopts that same second-position stance once more. "You have come so far, Frau Sanguine, and I am told your bravery is renowned." That eyebrow lofts, just so, and the corners of her mouth twitch.
"I am making an effort."
A shrug of her shoulders.
"Hmm?"
Her fingers flicker through the air as if dusting away a few tiny specks from something invisible. "Whatever you were about to say, and didn't." Artje's pretty little head tips to the other side like a curious cat.
"I was about to say more superficial words that I am sorry. When they mean nothing without action."
A tilt of her head. Still confused why that makes her brave.
"Ah, well. One must say the words also, and not hesitate on one battle front as one would not in another, is it not so?" Her accent drifts a little more towards French for a moment before sliding back to that crisp and proper Austrian, sharp as a blade.
"One battlefield is far easier than the other. To the point that one often forgets how to fight in one. Only knowing how to fight one way."
A considering tip of her head. She's so still except when she moves deliberately, which makes her smile, small and subtle as it is, all the more visible. "Far be it from me to advise an Elder on how to shore up her defenses," Artje answers.
"I would quite appreciate your advise if you would honor me with it?"
"To be human when one is not is a study, no more or less serious and necessary than ritual or blade. You have begun the work," and she turns her hand upward, a sort of summoning gesture. "You must continue it, and you must regard it as seriously as you regard any other study you undertake, any other ritual or battle you engage. Do less than this, and it will overwhelm you. Too many of our kind see these matters as dismissible, all to their ill fortune."
She nods her head taking a long moment to consider that.
"I understand. I think. It is something I will have to put extra effort into for a while but hopefully. I can remember who I was."
Another one of her slow, purposeful blinks. "If you allow a skill to lapse, to renew it requires extra effort." Artje's hand returns to her stomach, resting there lightly. There is the smallest shift of something in her expression. "There are many ways to lose oneself."
"There are. I lost someone more dear to me than anything. My sire saved me going back in. Now I am here and they are not."
A shrug of the shoulders.
"Time to move on. Make a space for them so I can."
Silence stretches out on the street like a lazy cat on a windowsill, taking up all of the space that it pleases. "And thus the statue," Artje prompts, or perhaps agrees. "I see."
"Practicing humanity sometimes requires practicing grief."
"Yeah."
She says with a shaky voice and hands on the railing.
"Saying goodbye to someone. That i knew for 600 years. Maybe then I can stop being so angry that they died."
A shrug of her shoulders.
"You will never stop being angry that they died." It might be honestly creepy how calm she is when she says all of this. The winter night stirs itself, wind cutting down the old streets and stirring her hair, so Artje smooths it again with one hand. Always perfect. Always pristine."Sometimes you will be angry at the ones who killed them. Sometimes you will be angry at them for leaving you. Sometimes you will not think of them for a long time, and then their sudden absence will carve up from your belly into your heart like a knife as cold as the depths of space. It will take breath you swore you no longer needed from your lungs, and you will realize it is not your breath that you miss, but them, like oxygen."
"In time, if you are terribly lucky, you will learn to cherish your anger, to carry it with you. You will turn that knife into your own weapon, and once it is in your hand, once you truly own it, it is forever yours."
"Do not seek to stop being angry. You will fail, and you will lose some part of yourself in the failure. Say goodbye, and take your anger and pain and the waves of grief which follow as companions. When you know they are there, when they are yours, then you will find space in your unlife for literally anything else." The emphases she places on words are so subtle that anyone with less keen hearing would miss it entirely.
She takes it all in pausing for a long moment.
"Thank you. I would take having space in my Nights for literally anything else. I will take being angry at those that took them. Maybe even them for. For."
A nod.
"Thank you. Very much for your time and advice Frau Berenyi-Winthrope. Can I ask you what a more casual version of my name you would find acceptable?"
"For leaving you."
"Thank you for your apologies, and for receiving my words." She presumes in finishing that sentence, but finish it she does. "I will address you as you ask to be addressed," Artje answers.
A moment later she adds, "Within reason."
"Only in part. But that is a story for another time."
A tilt of her head.
"Can you call me Titania? If not some honorific of Titania would he most appreciated."
An acknowledging nod.
Her head cants to the side again. "It is uncomfortably familiar," Artje answers. "It is only my Jean-Louis and my 'nika who have such familiarity with me."
"Frau Titania." It's as far as she'll come, it seems, the furthest reach of high tide on the sand. "A pleasant evening." She takes a step back, as if to withdraw.
"Thank you. I appreciate it."
A nod as she turns back to watch the water.
"And to you."
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