Fallen Together (Maryjay)

firejay1

The Phoenix
Original poster
DONATING MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Invitation Status
  1. Look for groups
  2. Looking for partners
Posting Speed
  1. Multiple posts per day
  2. 1-3 posts per day
  3. One post per day
  4. 1-3 posts per week
  5. One post per week
  6. Slow As Molasses
Online Availability
My times are pretty erratic, but I try to avoid being on EST 11pm-9am.
Writing Levels
  1. Intermediate
  2. Adept
  3. Advanced
  4. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
  2. Female
Genres
Fantasy, Modern, Historical Romance.
Max stepped into the nightclub, somehow certain what was going to happen this night. He always knew when he was going to run into her, somehow. Sure enough, there she was, sitting at a table in the corner. She didn't look in a partying mood, so what had brought her to Luxe, he was not certain. Didn't matter, though. He'd been a warrior of God. He wasn't about to fight the big man's plans, and if this wasn't the work of God, he wasn't sure what was.

He slid into the table across from her. "Good to see you again, Agent Hayes." The last time they'd spoken had been only two weeks ago, when she'd tracked him down to a hardware store to make suspicious eyes at his purchase of a basic toolset. He hadn't been on a job, and she still had no evidence, but he couldn't hold her diligence against her. "What brings you here today?"
 
  • Love
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ELIZABETH
Saying Liz had sensed Max before her eyes caught his all too familiar figure would be supernatural and metaphorical sounding. But it would also be the absolute truth. He was a man she knew in every life and every death and the energy he possessed was never unfamiliar to her. Nor was it ever comforting, but she did her best to keep the frown from her face even as she was expecting him.

"Curious?" Liz didn't miss a beat. Answering him with carefully layered hostility was the natural response, reflex at this point. But it was always done with care when she had no evidence to take him in for, and more so when she actually wanted to speak with him. When she needed to speak to him.

The brunette sat with his back straight and her brown eyes trained on him as she brought her drink to her mouth. There was no need for her to rush to her point. "I'm sorry to inform you, Mr. Dupree, that I'm not here to try and get you today. As disappointing as it is." Lack of evidence and the laws their country had around it made it difficult and next to impossible when he was excellent at cleaning up after himself.

"I'm looking into another shady character who possesses similar skills as yourself. I heard he frequents places like this, maybe you've heard of him?" She sipped her drink again and quirked an eyebrow at the man.
 
  • Spicy
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Max waved down a server as Lizzy talked, and got a scotch. "Really? I always take interest in other sculptors and artists in the area, but I'm afraid I don't know them all by heart, and if I'd known this was the favorite haunt of someone else, I never would've dared intrude on someone else's territory." He took a draft of his drink and looked over the club. He'd been telling the truth. He tried to avoid places he knew other contract killers frequented, and he couldn't help her with any faces - good ones like himself knew better than to be physically identifiable - but he could say with confidence that he knew what one might look like, at least at their core.

Being a contract killer was a bit like being in the military. Know where all the exits are, don't drink if you're on the job, and don't trust anyone. The difference, though, was the importance of blending in. He focused on the men who were keeping track of the crowd, even when surrounded by pretty women, who were drinking but not too much, but who looked inconspicuous. No shiny watches, obvious facial blemishes, or noticeable scars and tattoos. There were more than he'd expected. Then again, Luxe wasn't exactly the most reputable of places, and priced cheaply enough to draw some of a middle class crowd. "The question isn't if I've heard of him, but if you have more than just a rumor." He turned his attention back on his companion, smiling and taking another drink.
 

ELIZABETH
"Sculptors and artist...? Funny." Liz repeated softly as if tasting the words on her tongue for the first time. It left a sour taste in her mouth and certainly wasn't the first time she had heard it used to refer to killers. However, it was a more polite and discreet way of calling them. Much too kind for taste, especially when applied to a character like Max Dupree. He adopted the term, genuinely making the dirty work of murder an art style of sorts and it made her hate him more.

Still, she listened to every word he spoke, following his gaze into the club, observing each man that stood in that direction. None of them particularly stood out, but wasn't that what they wanted? To go as unnoticed as possible and to acquire as many clients along the way. The place was crawling with criminals of every kind which made it the perfect place to gather customers. And yet she still couldn't find her guy.

Liz looked back at Max, making a point not to return his smile as she sipped on her own drink. "Nothing on his appearance, not that it would matter. But I do have the names of his victims. Typically, men, they are not particularly nice people but wealthy and do hold some sway within their places of work. I think the artist and particularly a fan of rare poisons over a simple gun. A poison that is a little hard to trace, but I know sellers may frequent this club and so why wouldn't he?" She rested her chin in the palm of her hand and sighed. To admit there were not many other leads she had to go on out loud would be a betrayal of her pride, but she had said enough to know he'd reach that conclusion himself.
 
  • This Gives Me Plot Bunnies
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"Victims?" Max feigned surprise. "You seem to keep forgetting I'm nothing more than a starving artist-type, Agent. But supposing you are talking about a killer and their victims." He leaned forward, putting his chin on one hand and taking a draft of his drink with the other. "Theoretically, of course. You have only men, corrupt men, in positions of power. With a killer who uses primarily poisons, particularly of the rare kind. You haven't told me what other weapons you've seen used or of course, what you have to connect those victims, but you know women supposedly use more poisons among killers. A bit of a stereotype, but I think I heard that on a crime show, once. Personally, I can't understand what the appeal might be. People think guns are the messy ones, but think about it, really. Poisons are slow, have to reach precisely the right person, might have an antidote. You have to get up close and personal, methodical in your planning to make sure it gets to just the right person. And as you've clearly proven, it's not always easy to cover up as an accident, unless all the victims in question already have some sort of medical condition. Specializing in a rare poison means they might have connections in the underworld, and are not afraid to be traced back to a few possible sources. With that narrow a victim pool and killing method, it sounds personal to me. Unprofessional, one might even say. Unless they were doing it all on commission. But it would have to be a very very good commission."

He laughed lightly. "But I don't know. You're the FBI agent. Aren't you all trained as profilers or something? How'd I do?" There was a sort of pleasant buzz in his mind as he looked at her, more than happy to play her little game. There was much, much more he could've said, but he didn't want to rattle on, distract her from hissing at him too long.
 

ELIZABETH
What. A. Know-it-all.

That name was the least intellectual and the most childish, though her brown eyes reflected the words very well as she stared -- glared -- at the "starving artist-type", the phrase did not pass her lips. She pressed her lips a little tightly, stopping herself from spouting immediate sass, but she did nothing to control the way her eyes rolled and her nose snorted. What was worse was that despite how obnoxious and long an answer he gave, he was not wrong. But it was not as if she didn't already know all those things. Well. Most of those things.

Liz was not about to tell Max she didn't even think of the possibility that it could have been personal over a commission. The mere idea of it made her want to gag. No way in Hell was she giving him another thing to be smart about with her.

"Do you want a gold star?" She raised a brow, leaning her head back just slightly. "I could give you a little applaud if you'd like." She raised her hands as if to clap, but instead reached again for her drink. "Too bad you didn't go to school to be an agent yourself. I think you would be quite good at the job. And it pays more than being a starving artist does."

Then again, in that alternate universe it was highly likely she would still hate working with Max Dupree. There was no world he would not be her enemy. They both knew that.

"Also, don't throw the word FBI around here. I don't want anyone to overhear and start avoiding me." A total possibility and not one she was looking forward to.
 
  • Spicy
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Max laughed. "I take it I did a good job, then. Unfortunately, my old adversary, I'm much too old to apply now." He didn't mention that he probably earned a fair bit more than her. He was paid handsomely for the risk he took, and three jobs was often more than what the average FBI agent earned in a year. "And if I might point out, you were the one who brought up that you were searching for... 'a shady character,' was it? But as you wish." He finished his drink in one draft.

"Now. Supposing your quarry does not show up today or, as is more likely, isn't recognizable to you, do you really intend to spend all night in this bar, no backup, on unpaid overtime, fishing for someone you can't even recognize?" He set his chin on his glass for a moment. "We could always play a game if you're bored."
 

ELIZABETH
"You always have to have the last word," Elizabeth said with a little short. Because admitting Max to be right in so many other words was like swallowing poison for her. But she said nothing more on the topic and was happier to carry on the conversation in another direction. Though - happier was too strong a word, she was more content to take the conversation elsewhere besides his skills in profiling and the criminal she was looking for that night.

Elizabeth threw her head back and downed the rest of the contents of her glass. She would need that drink before she thought to herself Max may be right again. Before she had even stepped into the club, she had few leads to follow but she had hoped she would get something there. It was looking less likely with every ticking second passing by. But she still dragged out answering him by raising a hand and flagging down the nearest waiter. "A gin and tonic please." She smiled sweetly.

Once the man was gone, she faced Max once more. "Okay then," Elizabeth leaned forward with her arms folded over the table. "What kind of game are you thinking of? You didn't bring a deck of cards with you by chance?" She teased. One might think from a distance they were actually friends when they were the opposite in every life lived.
 
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Max waited patiently for her answer, he was in no rush. When she got a waiter to come by, he quietly asked for a bottle of vodka and a bone dry martini. The server gave him a look, but well, let's say this was a special occasion. His lives-long enemy had just complimented him, and he'd been having a good go of dancing circles around her anyways. Plus, he'd just gotten an excellent sum from a man who'd "taken a liking to his sculpture of Artemis as an avenging angel" - aka who he'd dispatched a particularly nasty rapist for.

He laughed at her response to his suggestion. "No cards, Lel." She hated it when he called her that, but that had never stopped him. "I was thinking of something a lot more simple." With her leaning forward as well, their faces were pretty close to each other, but he didn't pull away. What would be the point, really? "You take off your badge for the night, and we play 20 questions. I've asked the waiter for a bottle of vodka. I'll promise to answer truthfully when I answer, as long as you don't record it or hold it against me in a court of law. If one of us doesn't want to answer a question, we either take a shot, or have 5 seconds to present a related set of two truths and a lie. Other person guesses the lie incorrectly, they take a shot, otherwise, the person who refused to answer the initial question takes a shot. How about it?" He wasn't certain why that was where his mind had gone, but he wanted to talk to her today. In their many lives, they'd been so busy chasing or trying to kill each other. They sat and talked at times, sure. But mostly about whatever it was they'd been fighting about in this particular life. He didn't have that many people he could talk to about their first life. People who weren't nutjobs, anyways.
 

ELIZABETH
On reflex, her eyes glared knives into him. She hated that nickname, it was a perversion of her full name, Leliel and he knew that. He knew it and he kept calling her by it anyway. The annoyance it caused did not stop her from seriously considering his proposal of a game. A single brow of hers lifted, unable to hide the genuine curiosity that now plagued her. "Interesting game..." she hummed softly, neither moving forward nor backward. Interesting in the sense that the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she knew the most about Max than anyone else and yet she knew so little about him. Several lives lived together, and she still didn't know something as simple as his favorite food or movies.

For him to make such a proposal was odd in itself, and out of character for every sat down they had. Unless it was something he planned to turn on its head with his signature smug smile after. However, Elizabeth could read the sincerity in his eyes. It would be a wasted opportunity not to use this against him, but they would have several more lives for her to hunt him down.

"Fine," she finally huffed out. She, quite literally, pulled her badge from her coat, pressing its face down on the table and sliding it over. "I'm not tapped or carrying any recording devices either. Fair is fair." For one night, she could play along. Just one. "But I get to ask the first question, Rachmiel."
 
  • Wicked
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Max sat back and steepled his fingers without thinking. She was actually entertaining his little game. He'd learned something new about her already. When she demanded she be allowed to ask the first question, he simply gestured his hand for her to continue, and she asked, "Of all the personal questions I could ask you, what's one you wouldn't want to answer?"

His eyebrows shot up. Now that was an interesting question. Not what he'd expected, but clever. He took a long moment to think about it, finally laughing. "Honestly. I can't think of anything more than something that would definitely get me caught. I might seem quite private to most, but human lives… we've lived so many of them. My history, my tastes, in every life they become more meaningless to me." He shrugged. That was a way they were different. They'd been on opposite sides in every life, but ten lives ended the same way had been enough to make him feel that being reborn was simply some strange whim of God's. He'd never understood the fervor she had in the lives they'd lived. Despite his steadfast devotion, at times he thought she was the zealot. Of different things in each life, but still.

"Now for my question. Why did you join Lucifer?" He'd always wanted to know. Well, he'd wanted to know that of every angel who had fought on the side of the rebels, but he'd never had the chance to ask anyone else. During the war, he'd been too busy fighting from afar. Afterwards, it was just her.
 

ELIZABETH
"That's not much of an answer," Elizabeth hummed. But it still gave her something to chew on. As much as she hated it, it was something she could understand, even relate to. They may have been enemies in every life they lived, but there was also no one that she could relate to as much as Max. Every single time, they were on polar sides, and every single time there was no one else like them. An agitating fact as much as it was comforting. It meant she wasn't alone. Still did nothing to curb her goal to catch him.

But it is Max who catches her off guard with his question. Her immediate response is a laugh. "That was so many lives ago," and she could still remember vivid details of that life, that war. "He had a way with words and compelling nature. He was very much the tempter that he is portrayed as by the humans for centuries. It was for his own selfish desire to fight against Him, but I think we all believed it was for all of us as a whole. Or we could make it that way." She tapped her fingers against the table, wondering if it was necessary to complete the answer.

"I wanted to be free." And now she was stuck in a cycle of life and death. "Now you. I know you say everything becomes more meaningless to you, but do you not have any attachments in this life or the others?" Humans, as they were now, some of them ... grew on you no matter how you pushed them away. Was there any mother any mothers, fathers, siblings, or lovers that made Rachmiel want to stay in that life? Or was he lonely? Maybe she should have asked one of those questions instead.
 
It was... unsatisfactory, in some ways, but made perfect sense in others. It was the best answer he was ever going to get. A selfish reason, pushing the responsibility onto Lucifer alone, but not entirely a petty one. He'd heard the perspective from humans before, seen it in the way they lived - that yearning for freedom from God. He himself never felt it, but he'd always thought that that yearning itself was also a gift precisely as God had always intended.

He shrugged at her question in turn. "It isn't as though I haven't had any. When my grandmother was alive, I would say I cared about her. You know how it is, every time we restart." He gestured at her, because she was the only person he was certain did know precisely what he was talking about. "The memories are still a jumble, and you're not smart enough to know not to say anything about it. My parents were scared, but my grandmother accepted it as best she could, without judgment or fear. I liked that. It was peaceful, and it hurt when she began to slowly lose her mind." His grandmother's dementia wasn't anything a federal agent would have trouble finding out. "But there's a kind of barrier I always felt those memories put between me and everyone else. In each life there's only been one or two people I'd say loved me, and in the end, knowing how temporary and fragile they were compared to us.... It only seemed natural when they die. Right, almost. I don't think it ever hurt me when they died, because any connection I ever had to them was colored by how temporary I felt they were. So when it's my time to die, I rarely have any connections left to speak of." He knew he was rambling, but he'd thought about this for a long time.

He sipped his drink, forgetting for a second, the rules of the game, and finally came up with, "And what about you? What makes you care so much, considering everything we've been through and everything we... were?"
 

ELIZABETH
Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was because she truly was the only in that bar that could understand his words, or maybe it was a combination of the two. But there was a twinge of sympathy? A moment of companionship? Whatever it was, his answer caused a little reaction in her chest. Brief and uncomfortable, but she felt it and instead of frowning at herself for it, she drank from her glass. If she was going to feel even a little positive thing about Max it would be because she was consumed by alcohol.

"I think that counts as two questions." Elizabeths noted, arms crossing over her chest, her lips quirking into a little smirk. "I suppose you can chalk it up to Him giving me a big heart some lives." A jest. Though at times it felt true.

"Honestly, I don't know." And that felt as if it was the truest answer she gave yet. But admitting to it felt almost human and rather weak. And she hated it. "I'm sorry it isn't the most satisfactory answer all things considered. Especially after you gave me a very lengthy response to my last question. I could say perhaps it is part of the little freedoms I have every life when freedom is all I seek. They are as much comfort as they are a pain for me, but either way means I have grown attached. Maybe it is a punishment. An extra punishment."

She had to think of another question to move on. Elizabeth squinted he eyes at him and asked. "What is your favorite color?"
 
Max watched her seriously. Even though "I don't know" didn't seem to quite fit the rules of the game, there was something very sincere about it. That sense of desperation that creeped into the way she described her attachments, as if clinging to what little she could get of her heart's desire was the best she could do.

He smiled at her question, though. He'd sort of been expecting something silly like that at some point. They'd started off so heavy. "Green. Which life was your favorite out of the ones you've lived?" He shot back.
 

ELIZABETH
“That’s all I get from that one? No specific shade?” Not that the specifics of something as simple as that question mattered. But his question that followed was locked and loaded, shot immediately before she could think of something meanly mocking to add. She wouldn’t be Leliel without her biting remarks.

“Nima Farooz.” It was better to recall them by names than by numbers. After a while, the order of most of them tended to blend. Some passed by faster than others. “Was it the 90s? Oddly enough, I worked for the government then too as a foreign service worker. But it meant I traveled often, far and wide. More than I had in any life before that despite all the different places I had been born before. Humans and their homes change so much in short periods of time. I think I may have been sort of happy then, or whatever is closest to happy. Well, of course, until I met you again.” And the cycle of fate repeated itself. Even being aware of it did not make her want to hurt him less.

“Were their any skills from your previous lives that you still have mastered?”
 
"Our deal didn't specify how much detail we needed to go into." Max said, a glint in his eye. He liked her answer. It felt very much like her. He remembered Nima, too, though only faintly, because she hadn't lasted long after they met. He'd been part of a group on the opposing side of a conflict and had already been embroiled in a number of violent attacks by the time they'd first met in that life. It hadn't taken long for both of them to die after they met. He rather suspected that this life would be one of the ones that lasted longer, since it was more an individual game of cat and mouse. The more global ones usually ended earlier.

"Carpentry." He stretched out the word slowly, with pleasure, as if savoring it on his tongue. "It's hard to forget how to put wood together to make something useful. Of course the tools have changed, but the basic principles haven't. That and whittling. Had to remaster that in each life, but I find it calming. And it helped when I took up sculpting in this life." Whatever she thought about his cover job, he did make decent sculptures.

His next question was the one he was most curious about. "Why are you so invested in catching me in this life? You're trying much too hard to be phoning it in for a paycheck."