doku | VISIONS I HAD BURIED UNDERGROUND / RETURNING TO ABUSE US

[As she explains the situation, he starts to dig into the food she's brought him. Krieg gets only one big bite into his burger before he stares at her, wide-eyed, as she details him on specifically what happened to her.

Thankfully, he waits until he pulls off his bite, finishes chewing it, and swallows.]

And I thought I was bad at planning. You can't just do that without a backup plan, Iko. What are you gonna do, huh? Live on the streets? Jesus.

They like me at the Four Seasons, I can stay there while I figure out what to do about the whole living situation.

[She's so nonplussed about it that it makes his concern utterly valid.] A way more important question is what are you going to do when you get out of here? [She's much gentler with this topic.] I mean, your band's kind of ...

[Decimated. Gaige meant a lot to him, so she couldn't help wondering if he could really just go right back to it.]

[Krieg takes a few minutes to make sweet love to this juicy, sinful burger, which gives him a few minutes to mull things over into something coherent instead of angry babbling.

He swallows fully, wiping the corner of his mouth with his thumb.]

I've been thinking about it. I'm...not in this business for politics. I just want to make art. So I've been thinking I'll go solo. Indie. Publish online.

I dunno if I'll make it, but shit. I've got a trailer--bought it for cooking but I never had the wits to do it.

[Another bite. It's slower, thoughtful, and by the time he swallows, he's looking up at her.]

You wanna come?

[She's making her way through the fries as he eats and speaks, she's surprisingly relaxed, for Nariko all of the hard parts are over with. So even if she was a little nervous about what she wanted to bring up, what she wanted to ask -

Well, he gets to it before her anyway.]

Hell, I thought I'd have to beg you to let me come along!

[So that's a definite 'yes'.]

But, I mean, should I be right in there with you or [She holds up a finger.] should I manage you?

[It's an idea she's been toying around with, because she does love music but it's been difficult to come out from under her mother's shadow, and her brief stint with her label has yielded a lot of helpful contacts. Krieg couldn't be in better hands.

The idea of doing both hasn't occurred to her, of course.] You could pay me in food and hugs!

You know how to manage?

[He doesn't think she's lying, she just hasn't talked about her aptitude before. Mostly because they had better, cooler things to talk about, and he knows jack shit about anything, like "having connections."

But what he does know is how she can belt one out.]

Give me your vocals and we'll go 50/50.

[Oh, she has no idea how to do it, per se! There's no experience to speak of, no track record but she knows people and she's always been good at making things happen with a combination of charm and determination. Besides, they can't just expect to gain momentum by putting it out there and letting it sit. She just has to know how to arrange deals with clubs and get them a comfortable amount of exposure!

It's all workable.]

I'll thrown in guitar and dancing, too. [She offers him a fry rather than a hand.]

Deal?

You're making it a steal.

[Maybe not, though. Krieg's real talent is in composing, even when he thinks all he can put out is a far cry from his best work.

To put it lightly.

He takes the fry and pops it into his mouth. Man, he really misses out on things like this with his diet...]

What've you got for savings?

[It's important to actually enjoy the awesome food around you, Krieg. Besides, being in the hospital is one hell of an excuse to eat whatever the fuck all you want. Might as well abuse it to the full extent.]

Enough. [She shrugs, licks salt off of her fingers before grabbing a napkin.] There's the paycheck from them, of course, and then my savings and my inheritance. [A hand wave.]

If anything there's enough to invest a little where it's needed.

[Yeah, yeah, but it's also enjoyable to have a chest you can wash clothes on, no matter the situation.]

We can't bank on living off interest. There might be some legal battle they'll want to wreak, so we need to dedicate it to getting a copyright lawyer.

I'm sure we can book enough live shows to live off of. Food, gas, internet...you think you can live without your phone?

[He's such an adult, and she really has to commend that.]

Nope. [Her phone is her biggest obsession next to her makeup and clothes, the latter of which will have to be given up because unless his trailer is the size of a studio apartment it's not going to be big enough for everything she has. That's fine, though, everyone has to make sacrifices!

But her phone is staying.] But we shouldn't be without one anyway. We'll need a contact number, and a way of getting a hold of someone if we're stranded or something.

[You do a lot of growing up when you sober up from the grips of several drug addictions all at once.]

Then we should get a joint plan to save on money.

[Don't worry, Noriko, this is only to get them started. It'll be a tight squeeze for the two of them anyway, given the spacious accomidations they were given by their labels. Eventually, they'll earn enough money to get a proper tour bus.

One they can call their own. Not some label-mandated bus.]

Can I see it? Your phone, I mean. I'll give you the address to the garage it's in.

Yeah, sure!

[She pulls it out of her skirt pocket and quickly unlocks it before she hands it off to him to do as he pleases. Unless they've got a whole suite to themselves any space that's even vaguely small will probably be a tight one between herself and Krieg. He's a large guy and she's smaller but tends to sprawl out a lot and needs a lot of area to herself. Being cramped on a tour bus is going to be an exercise in their friendship as a whole because even family members would justifiably want to murder one another if they lived in a closet.

But Nariko's got faith in them.]

When are you supposed to get out?

Edited 2016-02-19 04:48 (UTC)

Whenever I can pass the balance assessment. I did pretty well today, so maybe tomorrow.

[He writes an e-mail to send back to Noriko's address, detailing the storage unit containing the trailer. After it sends he holds it back out for her to take, then reaches into the few personal effects he's been allowed to hold onto to fetch a key ring, and from it he removes one of the smaller ones, holding it out to her.]

Go ahead and pack it with your necessities. Make a copy of that key for yourself while you're at it.

[There's some shopping he has to do for it to be really that ready, like say, getting a vehicle that can actually tow it, but he'll take care of that when he's out.

Krieg figures the homework he's given Noriko will keep her plenty busy in the meantime.]

[Her phone goes back into her pocket, and she takes the key, staring at it in her palm for a second. There's something oddly grounding about it - they're going to do this. They're both completely free of labels, and they get to make whatever music they want. Her smile, in that moment, is utterly stupid and bright, like looking at a kid whose just been given their very first cell phone after begging for one.]

Oh man.

[They're doing this.]

I don't think I've been this excited since the day I made lead.

[Back when she thought her band could make it all the way to the top, as a family.]

Edited 2016-02-21 02:40 (UTC)

[She looks like he's given her the keys to the world. He wouldn't have it any other way.

Krieg smirks.]

We'll be making things a lot cooler than lead, Iko.

[Especially with the black four-door pickup truck that he shows up in when he finally arrives at the storage garage. He didn't intentionally schedule to arrive when Noriko was around, but hey, he can't argue with the results.]

Hey. [All smiles.] How much of that thing have you claimed as yours already?

[It's actually a pretty nice rig, for something he'd bought on a whim--and it's a good thing that he didn't use it for what he was planning, because it'd been a waste of a perfectly comfy trailer.]

[No, the trailer really isn't that bad at all but it's definitely going to be a tight fit, even after she's cut down everything she's owned to the bare essentials, and even gotten rid of a few dozen or so killer dresses! Still, she can't help being excited the whole time, far more hopeful about what they're going to do and how they'll get to it than she's been in a long while.

When he shows up she grins brightly,] All of it! You're gonna have to live in that thing! [She points to the truck before she gives up, and can't even keep up with her own joke.]

I'm about as packed as you could expect any gorgeous young woman to be.

[He gives her a second take at the declaration, turning his head to glance at the truck behind him before looking back at Noriko with a smirk.]

I probably could, but the back seat isn't big enough to make a bed for me.

[It'd be a better fit for her, but he'd rather sleep on a bed of needles than make her to sleep in the cabin. He heads into the trailer to poke around in the cabinets and fridge to assess how much space she left for him to work with.

He's not planning to bring much, but knowing how much space he has will help him figure out how much he can.]

What'd you do with the stuff you're not bringing?

[The most Krieg will find, food-wise, is some bottled water in the fridge. The cupboards are bare otherwise, because she's really not used to grocery shopping or planning things out long term. Day by day? She's your girl, one that was never a very good cook to begin with, but anything else is kind of out of the question. But if nothing else the entire trailer is incredibly spotless and there's a very vague hint of vanilla all over the place, thin and blessedly underwhelming.]

I sent it all back to a friend in the city, she'll keep all my stuff in her guest room until there's somewhere else to put it.

[Lena's pretty trustworthy so if she has to move or something goes on? Nariko's more than sure she'll at least get a call in advance.] I can't really leave stuff with my parents and I thought about getting a storage unit but, eh.

[She didn't want her dresses and such to get moldy and such, basically.] Did you get everything settled, too?

Good plan.

[Vanilla? Nice. He's gonna steal one of those bottled waters, though, before he sits down and starts taking notes on his phone to list what he should bring.

To her question, he gives her an exhausted sigh.]

No. It's impossible to tell what belongs to me and what belongs to the company. The lawyer already claimed my set, any clothes I wore during shows, and my laptop--which, I might mention, had a ton of WIPs on it.

I'm tempted to cut my losses--just take the money and run. It's the only thing I know that is actually mine.

[Just in case they needed a reminder of how crap their contracts really were.]

As long as there's some money we can always go clothes shopping, there's nothing those stylists can pull off that I can't, you have the near literal queen of fashion on your side. [Frankly it's all bullshit - the lawyers, how grossly unfair it is, but what else could they expect of the corporate overlords? They don't care about the heart or soul of anything, really, least of all the people that get away.]

If the laptop wasn't bought for you isn't there an argument that it's technically yours, despite whatever you made on it? There might be an argument there.

[She leans against what counts as their new dining table and sighs.] Aside from that, yeah, might be best to just cut and run.

Ha. Like a fashion pauper like me has ever earned the privilege of the queen's audience. [Which is total bullshit, he has a taste in fashion for everything but shirts. Mostly because he rarely has a reason to wear them.]

If only. The contract covered that anything I make, whether or not it actually gets published, belongs to the label. The machine's whatever, you know--would've picked a better one if it were up to me--but I can't even put that stuff on a backup.

[A pause, and then he waves the point aside.]

It's alright. I've started over from scratch before, and I'll do it again.

[He has a seat on the couch perpendicular from the table, giving her a long, curious glance.]

...Why not your parents?

[Now that he thinks about it, neither of them really did talk about their pasts that much, did they? Other in vague metaphors. Was there a reason for it, outside of carefully choosing what to talk about in friendly conversation?]

[... Can she just bomb their studios? Not with anyone in it, of course, but it'd be lovely to take the building itself, which stands far too proudly along the city skyline. Augh. But Krieg doesn't seem to linger so she tries to do the same even if there's a bitter feeling in her throat.

It grows with his question, though for a moment she just looks back at him, her surprise is in the vague widening of her eyes, how her shoulders tense so subconsciously that she doesn't realize it.]

Do you know who they are?

[It's a genuine question, not a hint of arrogance to be found. Her mother, the once renowned operatic force of Europe has spent most of Nariko's life drawn up in politics. She's old money and a senator somewhere or the other. The famous guitarist father went the Kurt Cobain kind of way, and is equally relevant-not-relevant. They were both musical legends in their own right, but so far out of the immediate mainstream that Nariko had to field those who knew and those who didn't.

Frankly, she enjoyed the ignorance, but the music world talks, and there's not much she can do about it.]

[He gives her a thoughtful silence as he genuinely thinks about it. Lunae, Lunae...the only name that comes to mind is hers.

Krieg doesn't know if he used to know about them, burned out with the holes in his memory dug by drugs. If they were in the news during his addiction, it's guaranteed that he can't remember it--can barely remember where he lived, maintaining enough lucidity only to remember that he wasn't, at least, homeless. By the time he cleaned up he was already locked into the contract with the label--which probably contributed to him not reading the fine print--and he was too busy to spend any time reading headlines.

Not that it would have mattered. They signed on as a band, not individuals.

Noriko is rewarded for sitting through this long, introspective silence with a single syllable:]

Nope.

[She doesn't hide her relief very well, it's there with a smile that probably doesn't fit the response she gives him.]

My mom's actually living in another city, and my dad's gone. [Dead, of course, but that's ambiguous sounding enough that it could also come across as he left their family or something.] My little brother is way too young to be in control of anything, and he's off at boarding school for the incredibly classically gifted.

[There. A perfectly neat, lovely explanation! No messy, emotionally painful stories to tell - not today, at least.]

What about you? You're on your own?

[It kind of seems like he is, but she doesn't really mean to pry.]

'Classically gifted.'

[There's something about it that smells like bullshit. He doesn't think she's lying, at least deceptively, but it might just be that he has a distaste for something to be a classic gift. What changes the world if it's comfortable enough to be considered classical?]

Yeah.

[He takes a sip of his water to take pause; even then, there's a moment for him to figure out how to say it--what kind of delivery Noriko would handle best, given that she seems to take his history of addiction to heart.

In the end, he struggles to keep eye contact with her as he explains it.]

My parents were...really, really religious. They didn't really know how to handle the schizophrenia thing, so they kept trying exorcisms. I started using to self-medicate out of desperation--and it made the exorcisms a lot more tolerable. Once they figured out what I was doing, they kicked me out.

I have a sister, too. We talk every so often, but we're kinda distant. My parents had her only to make up for their first failure, and unfortunately, she knows. Left home when she was eighteen.

[Yeah. That's the sugar-coated version.

Another sip...]

...Maybe we should visit her.

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a lil bit of a scene skip

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