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nina

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He's limping when he catches sight of her.

Limping and wearing a grin, which he knows is the sort of thing most people think of as incongruous, but he's only just been in a fight and these days, like so many other things, the fight has gone well for him. Of course, even when he'd had the hell beaten out of him, he'd considered that going in his favour because there are few things in this world Mad Sweeney loves more than a good fight. Win or lose.

These days, though, he's winning. And that applies to more than just the fights he finds himself in. He's winning games and bets, the simple act of just being. Things are going his way after a long fucking time of them going the very opposite of his way and one of the people he has to thank for that is walking in his direction right this very moment.

"Never did send you a fruit basket," he says when he's close enough. He can't remember if he'd offered, joking or otherwise. That had been a strange fucking day, between drowning and his coin, so he thinks he can be forgiven for not remembering every last detail of their conversation.

Still, he should've sent something.

She's pregnant, he remembers that, he knows he ought not to smoke around her and so he doesn't immediately reach for his case. Instead a gold coin appears between his fingers and he begins to dance it across his knuckles, something to do with his hands so he doesn't keep going for his smokes.

"Forgive me?" he asks. "And let me make it up t'you."

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She was hard to miss, wearing something sweeping and blood red under her black coat. Nina rolled her eyes when she saw Sweeney striding up to her - as much as he could with that limp - but she smiled all the same. Oh, she had an eye for trouble, didn't she? Inej would never approve, but there was something rather rakishly handsome about him.

"You're charming, so I'll forgive you. And you look like you've been thoroughly enjoying yourself. I'm almost jealous."

When he mentioned making up his lack of a gift, her green eyes gleamed and she lifted an eyebrow."And how, exactly, do you propose to make up your indiscretion, sir?"

"Oh, I hadn't gotten that far," he admits. "Can't offer you a smoke or a drink or a fight. The little parasite does take away most of the fun things in life, don't it?"

He says it all fondly enough. Mad Sweeney's experience with children is greater than anyone might expect of him, but it's hard not to have at least a little bit of experience with most things when one has lived as long as he has. And he likes kids. They carry less bullshit than adults and their belief in him is always stronger. Greater. Doesn't mean he lets them leave him offerings, but there's still a buoyancy that comes to him when he spends time around them.

"So what else is it you like?" he asks. "And we'll see what we can do."

Nina gave him a coy look. "Oh, I can think of things that are still fun to do."

She'd stop flirting when she was dead in the grave. Maybe. Besides, Sweeney broke the mold of her apparent type and that delighted her. And he reminded her of the Wandering Isle, and despite all that had happened, she still had fond memories of the place.

"Do you like dancing?"

Much as he'd hate to admit it aloud, Sweeney can remember exactly the last time he'd danced with someone. He remembers the way her hair felt under his fingers and the smooth curve of her skin and the light in her eyes.

And he remembers her death, too, not so many months after that final dance. Too young for it, but still old enough that no one had been terribly surprised. He hasn't danced much since then.

Still, he smiles, and says, "Been known to take a turn or two when it tickles me. Gonna heal my leg and take me for a spin?"

"I was just about to ask if you wanted me to fix it," she said with a wry smile. "Or if you wanted to keep it that way. I hope the fight was worth it, at least."

She knew plenty of people that preferred to heal on their own time, to take the pain as it came. Some saw it as a badge of accomplishment. Nina tended not to insist after the first time or two, especially with people like Kaz that were wary of her power, whether they said it out loud or not.

"The fight is always worth it, love," he answers with a grin, then shifts to his uninjured leg so he can rotate his ankle experimentally. "And I'm a big fan of relishing the pain, but I can't take a woman dancing if I can't dance now, can I?"

If he's going to dance again, he thinks Nina will make a hell of a partner. And she's got the kind of nature that one can't help but be drawn into, the sort of person he needs to be around right now.

His luck has changed, but with it has come the sorts of feelings he'd thought he'd left behind long ago.

"I'm on my way to a ceilidh. I thought it'd be fun. Here now, let me take a look and we'll get you standing straight again."

Nina stopped and nudged Sweeney toward a wall. It would be easier to work if they weren't walking. "Do you want me to see to the rest of your hurts as well? Or just the leg?"

As she asked, she curled her fingers, finding the damage in his leg. Bruising for the most part, no breaks that she could find. Healing might not have been her forte, but with all the practice she'd gotten in Ketterdam and here in Darrow, she was becoming rather adept. She could soothe away deep bruising and the pain; he might yet have surface bruising, but he'd be able to keep up with her.

"Now who in the hell is having a ceilidh in Darrow?" he asks curiously.

It's an odd thing, having her heal him. For a moment it feels like his body isn't his own, like it's something to be toyed with and, to be fucking honest, that's not a feeling he dislikes.

"Just the leg's fine, darling," he answers. "A man of my advanced age has far too many hurts to worry about you havin' to heal 'em all." Besides, the scars leftover from letting Spike bite him are things he wants to keep. He likes how they feel, the sting of the scab where he'd been bled not all that long ago.

"I haven't the slightest - some group of natives and non-natives. That's why I'm going, I want to see if it's any good." Nina loved an excuse to have fun, to dance. It reminded her of simpler times and it let her forget her cares for a while. That, and she just-- she loved it.

She smiled and rolled her eyes at Sweeney's mention of his advanced age. "I can't really heal deep or old hurts," she admitted. "You'd need a real Healer to do that, not a Heartrender."

When she finished, she looked up at him. "How's that feel? Think you can keep up?"

Edited 2018-10-26 21:47 (UTC)

"I'm not dead yet," he answers with a grin, then offers his arm to Nina. "So why don't we find out?"

It's a funny thing, the little shiver of something he feels when he offers to let her take his arm. His thoughts are on Spike, on the fact that he's been letting the vampire bite him with some regularity, but that's all it's been. Fucking and biting and some sort of feeling he's been enjoying and panicking over in fits and starts, but certainly no promises. Nothing that means he ought to feel guilty for flirting with the very pretty young woman who'd saved his life.

He's not meant to get attached. It just ends poorly. He's trying to deny he's letting himself get attached now. To any of them.

Nina smiled at Sweeney and took his arm. "A rogue and a gentleman, I like it."

Maybe she was young, but she'd learned long ago already that moments were all she had. If Darrow was a reprieve, she was going to enjoy it.

The ceilidh had set up in the park, under a pavilion. Someone had put up a low stage for the music acts, and on one side were long tables with food and drink. People were mingling and dancing, like she had imagined. Nina decided that she liked the sound of the music as they got closer: it reminded her of home. While one band was on stage, it seemed there were others ready to go.

She shed her coat, revealing the dress underneath, and tossed it over the nearest chair. She certainly didn't plan to dance in the coat, and she wasn't worried about getting chilly. Already her heart kicked up as she all but pulled Sweeney toward the wood floor.

Mad Sweeney's not sure about the music, but he can overlook that for the dress she's wearing, an eyebrow arching at the sight of it. She doesn't dress like anyone else in this bloody city and, as always, he's drawn to the different people in this world. The ones he's never known anything quite like before. In a life as long as his, it's hard to be surprised by just about anyone, but there are those here and there who manage it.

"Christ's blood, lass, now I feel underdressed," he says, but he doesn't resist as she pulls him toward the dance floor. He's an Irishman, underneath it all, and he figures he can dance to just about anything.

They must look quite the sight, he realizes, between her dress and his height. People glance at them, but he takes her hand and ignores everyone else.

Nina smiles brilliantly. "It's just a dress," she says, a laugh on the edge of her voice. She doesn't care if people look at them: let them. She's here to enjoy herself and she plans to do just that. She's tall for a woman, but Sweeney still towers over her by at least a foot, possibly more.

Folk dancing is something she learned as a little girl, something she kept up with as she grew up as she learned courtly and ballroom dances. Waltzes are lovely and all, but she could never pass up a good reel or quick polka.

"How long's it been since you careened around a dance floor?"

"A very long time ago," he answers and it's vague because he's not sure he wants to ruin the mood by remembering the last time he'd danced with a woman. He's not counting clubs where he'd occasionally gone -- more often than not, to get access to drugs or pick up someone looking to climb a man like him -- because there's nothing close to real dancing in the crush of bodies writhing together to music that's barely more than a pumping bass beat.

"More often than not, I get on a dance floor and I'm startin' a fight, not a fuckin' polka," he says. But his voice is light. He's enjoying himself, even if he won't come out and say it. "Most people see me as a challenge, not a dance partner."

"Only one or the other?" she asks with a coy smile. "Most people are terribly lacking in imagination, then."

Nina spins happily and meets Sweeney again, happy and lightly flushed. "Last year there was a folk band of some kind or another at the fall festival and I danced til I couldn't feel my feet anymore. It was glorious."

She'd even worn flowers in her hair, like the unmarried girls in Ravka did.

"Can't disagree with you there," he answers. Most people have lost the ability to really imagine, to dream. There are always exceptions, but Sweeney has been around long enough to watch the light and the pleasure drain from most of the world. He doesn't begrudge people their new gods, because they'll pray at the altar of whatever they want, but he does find them just the slightest bit sad.

Fucking Technical Boy? That's what the world has come to.

"I used to dance," he says, before realizing he's going to. "With a woman I loved. She loved to dance and so I went with her to every party, every dance hall, every night she could fill with music, she would." That had been a long time ago, though. Nearly a hundred years in the past. The last lesson he'd needed in what it cost him to love someone.

Her look softens as he reveals that past. She's grateful when the music slows and she can keep her eyes on him. Nina smooths her hand over Sweeney's shoulder, offering comfort.

"She sounds wonderful," she says, and it feels like a shallow thing for all he's using the past tense. She might just be somewhere far away; she might be dead. She sympathizes with either reality. "I probably would have fallen in love with her, too. I never could resist someone that knows their way around a dance floor."

"She was," he answers. "She's dead now."

He says it bluntly, though he doesn't stop dancing, and he isn't angry with Nina. He had been the one to bring her up, after all, like the fucking idiot he tends to be. Reminiscing about the past never does anyone any good, especially not someone with as much past as he has.

"Almost a hundred years ago," he says. "I think it was 1921. Maybe 22. After this fuckin' long, you start t'lose track."

"But you're alive, and so am I."

She brushes her fingers over his cheek, because she can't change that a woman is dead. But she can try to show Sweeney a fun time, or to help him relive the good memories, at least.

As the set ends, Nina pulls Sweeney to the side of the floor. "I need to catch my breath," she says with an effusive smile. She looks toward the stage as one band breaks down and another starts to set up. "Dare I ask, how old are you?"

She keeps hold of Sweeney's hand as she skirts the edge of the dance floor, heading toward a table set up with drinks - there's a keg behind it, so she's sure some of it is beer.

She had saved his life, but he ought not to allow this, getting attached to her like he already is. He'd paid for that with Hild, all but falling in love with her right off, and he can only imagine he's going to pay for it again and again in this fucking place.

It's already too late in so many instances. He's attached to Rowan, to Zoe after only one meeting, to Greta and Vasquez. To Spike. He's already fucked.

"Somewhere around seven hundred years old," he answers, reaching for one of the cups of beer and offering it to Nina. "Give or take a decade or two. At a certain point you stop counting."

"Saints, I know how to pick 'em," she laughs, shaking her head. She takes the cup and sips it - a bit of beer won't hurt, she thinks. She isn't pounding back drinks at the Crow Club, after all.

"Well, I am the ripe age of not nearly that old." She lifts her cup like a toast before she takes another drink from it. Maybe she should stop calling herself ripe now that she's actually pregnant. Nina stays close to Sweeney, partly because people are milling around but also because she wants to. She bumps against his side and flashes another bright, easy.

"I hope you have another round in you, darling. I think I'm only just getting started."

Edited 2018-11-01 04:48 (UTC)

"Oh, don't worry about that, lass, I've the stamina of a man no more than five hundred," he answers dryly, giving her a teasing smirk before he downs his own glass of beer. He'd realized a little belatedly that he'd given a pregnant woman alcohol, but by the looks of it, she's of the same mind he is. A little bit won't hurt.

Mad Sweeney is fairly certain every good Irish woman of his time drank at least a little while they were with child. His own mother certainly had.

"Though best to keep me away from the beer long term, unless you want to break up a fight at the end of it all." He can't help himself. He drinks and so he fights. Or he fights and so he drinks. Either way, he loves both too much to give them up.

"I won't let you get drunk," she says happily. "And if you get into a fight anyway, I'll get us out of it and out of here. I'm a good wing-woman." She musters a serious look and gives Sweeney a short salute.

"You shan't be arrested on my watch."

She couldn't manage the stern look for long, smiling again when she heard someone with a set of pipes warming up. Oh, that was familiar.

He hadn't cared much for the first band, but the pipes are familiar, and Sweeney glances back toward them with a faraway look. At the St. Patrick's Day celebration, he'd been surrounded by nonsense, little green men in tights, green beer, shamrocks and other bullshit, but there had been uilleann pipes and that had made up for nearly everything else.

"Now that's a sound I can appreciate," he says, looking back to Nina. "Familiar."

He'll never go home, he'd accepted that a very long time ago, but moments like these, he feels close.

"The first time I left Ravka, it was to visit the Wandering Isle. They had music like that, and accents like yours. I went all over after that, towed along by Zoya. But returning there was always wonderful. And one of the worst moments of my life happened there. It changed everything."

She doesn't regret it, not a single decision, because there is nothing else she could have done. Nothing else that would have been better. She looks up at Sweeney.

"I've been away from home for a long time, too."

He's centuries on her, but she can still sympathize.

"The Wandering Isle," he echoes, giving a snort of laughter. "Yeah, sounds like somethin' Ireland'd be called." It's not the same place, he knows it isn't, because even with all his years, he doesn't recognize the other places she speaks of, but it's probably close enough. All these different worlds, all the possibilities, at least some of them have to look the same.

"You miss it, lass?" he asks. Not everyone misses home. He doesn't even always miss it. There are days when he knows he wouldn't have died there, but he wouldn't have been the man he is now either. A Mad Sweeney who stays in Ireland is a Mad Sweeney with very different problems.

"With everything in me," she says with a small, far-away smile. "It's still recovering from a civil war and I want to help make it better than it was."

Living outside of Ravka had opened her eyes, sometimes reluctantly, to some of its problems, but she still loved her country.

"I thought I'd die before I ever got back, but it felt so close. But instead, I'm here. Things like this remind me of what I miss."

Mad Sweeney knows he'll die before he ever sees Ireland again. Of course, he had never expected to see a place like Darrow either, and his life has been turned upside down more than once since his arrival. Still, he feels it in his bones. Ireland is beyond his reach and always will be. If he ever leaves this place, it'll be straight back to America for him.

"Instead we're all fuckin' here," he agrees with a low laugh. "Did you attend the St. Patrick's Day celebration? With the pipes and the fuckin' little green men goin' around pinching anyone not wearin' green? That was a bastardization of it, but that's my day."

"You're a far more handsome reality, my dear. I was tempted to do some wickedness to the little green ones but I thought it might not be worth the risk," she says as she wrinkles her nose. "If you're very nice, I might let you get away with pinching me."

She smiles and shakes her head, remembering the better parts of the day. "But I liked the music, and I think I liked the sentiment of the day in general... is it like that where you come from? Sans the little green mischief-makers, I assume."

"It's an exaggeration," he answers. "But it's not wrong either."

Ireland has changed, of course, since he's last seen it. The cities are more modern, there are cars and highways and bridges. People in suits, screaming into cell phones, carrying their too expensive brief cases before returning to miserable offices and cold homes. Media and Technical Boy are there just as easily as they're in America.

But there are still people who believe in those like him. And industry can't touch all corners of Ireland.

"There are still fairy raths," he says. "Places no smart Irish man or woman will try to change. There are still legends and beauty."

"There are places like that in Ravka, the Wandering Isle," she says, almost wistfully. "It's amazing how many of them are associated with grisha."

Not that she thinks Sweeney is one: he's something else altogether, but the idea still makes her think of home. Of cautionary fairy tales and folklore that she'd eaten up when she was younger. It felt like a lifetime ago, but it was less than a decade.

"We have our saints, and I wonder if it's the same thing. Special places, prayers, relics."

"Grisha," he echoes, trying to word out. It isn't the first time she's said it to him, she'd used it to describe herself before, but he hadn't pressed for details. Seems to be the thing that means she can heal him like she has, the thing that makes her kiss so exceptional, and that is enough of an explanation for him.

Or it had been. He's curious now.

"It's what you are," he says. "A grisha."

Nina smiles brightly. "I am. There's different grisha orders: I'm a Corporalki, if we're getting specific. And a Heartrender, if we're getting more specific than that. There are Squallers, who can control air, and Tidemakers who control water. Inferni, Alkemi, Durasts, Healers. Every type in every order has its own... specialty. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason behind why one person is a Healer and another is a Heartrender. Maybe it's something to do with personality, but..."

She shrugs, and she felt a bit of a blush on her cheeks. She realizes she just gave Sweeney a rush of information, but she so rarely talks about that part of herself. Not to people that don't already know, and that circle is relatively small in Darrow. She's used to protecting herself.

"Heartrender, but you healed me," he says. "So also a Healer."

None of it is in the realm of his knowledge and he's goddamn old, older than most, and he knows there are people who'd wear that age with a little more pride than he does. People who wouldn't like admitting they don't know something. Sweeney doesn't give a shit, though, because when he doesn't know something, it means it's a new thing. Something he's never encountered before. The sort of thing that's interesting to him because he hasn't seen it already.

"How does that work?" he asks. "Are you just so impressive you cross all the boundaries?" He's teasing her, but only a little. Mostly he's genuinely curious.

"Heartrenders and Healers are two sides of the same coin, but they're different talents. All Corporalki learn as much healing as they can, but inevitably they show an affinity for one side of the coin or the other. I can heal, and I've gotten better at it from practice: working healing gang members as needed, or friends."

Nina shrugged and a little smile curved her red lips. "Not as impressive as you'd think. Like I said, it's practice that's been forced on me, but it draws on my energy a little. Heartrending, though... You know that glorious feeling you have during a fight? When I'm doing what I'm meant to do, it's just like that all the time."

"That does sound pretty goddamn glorious," Sweeney agrees. There are few things in this world that get his heart up like a good, solid fight. In all his very long life, he's never found a single thing to match the joy of a war, the thrill of bloodshed, the purity of a blood sacrifice.

To feel that way all the time sounds like a goddamn gift. He wonders if that much pleasure could make a person go mad, but thinks it's the sort of madness he'd like to experience himself.

"Sounds like you could do just about anything with a talent like that," he comments.

"Not anything... but a lot," she admits. "Heartrenders are coveted soldiers and we make perfect assassins. When I kill someone, it's a heart attack or a stroke. It's strange but natural causes. In Ketterdam I worked for a gang. It was the safest place to be."

A lot is more than most people can do with the sort of shit she's talking about, but Sweeney lets it go by without comment, smiling down at her. He doesn't know Ketterdam any more than he knows the Wandering Isle, but if it was the sort of place that needed gangs, it's probably more like the world he knows than they might think.

"So which did you like better?" he asks, taking her hand and giving her another spin. "Bein' a soldier or bein' a criminal?"

They're often the same thing, criminals and soldiers, if they're looked at from the right or wrong side.

Nina smiles as she spins and it's easy to fall into step again. "At least as a soldier I thought I was doing something good - there's not really even an illusion of that when you're working in a brothel and helping to put bruisers back together after a brawl. I had nothing against the brothel, mind you. It's just that it wasn't my idea to be there. I don't like being backed into a corner."

Inej made a good argument when she came to recruit her: Kaz is a bastard but he's fair. It was a better offer than she'd ever get from the likes of Pekka Rollins.

"But I needed the protection. I had no way to get home and business to take care of."

Mad Sweeney can't pretend he's never been to a brothel before, but it's a bloody outdated business model, women and men owning other women and men, taking half their fucking pay when they do all the bloody work. He doesn't give a shit if that's how someone wants to put a roof over their head and food on their table, but he doesn't hold with the idea of someone else trying to monitor that.

"Long as they gave you the protection you needed," he says. "Can't imagine whoever owned the brothel did much of that."

He doesn't need to tell her what he's seen. She knows he's old, she knows he's been around for a long bloody time. He's seen plenty.

Nina shrugs one shoulder. She's lived in the Barrel for a year and she survived a civil war before that: she's seen the horrors that people are capable of. Especially respectable men. "The White Rose is better than some of the other brothels in the Barrel. They actually try to protect their people. And the fact that I was attached to the Dregs meant no one bothered me on the street once they knew."

With a deft flick, Nina flips up the sleeves of her dress to reveal her tattoos: a pair of white roses on the inside of one arm and a crow trying to drink out of a cup on the other.

"The Kerch like to catch grisha in indenture contracts. There were so many refugees from the civil war and the rich merchants snatched them up, offering a place to live in exchange for grisha services. Squallers that could protect their ships at sea and give them favorable winds, or Healers to work in their households, or Fabrikators to design and create beautiful things for them."

She shakes her head, disgusted.

"And the refugees, desperate and unable to read Kerch, sign away their lives. The Dregs let me have my freedom and found me a way to earn money, but they still owned my contract. Having a Heartrender was still a status symbol, and an excellent threat."

Edited 2018-11-16 18:07 (UTC)

"This is an improvement then," he says. "This place."

It is for a lot of people, even if they don't all admit it. Sweeney's never been sure if this place is better or worse, not until his coin arrived anyway. He's got that bit of gold in his pocket now and he has it without having had to kill Laura Moon all over again, so that much is an improvement. And for the first time in a long time, there are people he gives a shit about. People who give a shit about him. That's an improvement, too, even if he can't say it.

"No contracts, no one to say you owe them because of some bullshit indenture." He pauses, then says, "That's how I got from Ireland to America. Went with a girl sentenced to transportation who kept believing in me even when her luck was for shit."

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