Luis chuckles, rolling up his sleeves after he sets the dishes down on the counter.
"When you said 'cleanup duty' I thought you were going to make me wash them by hand," he jokes, taking a spot at the sink to rinse off any dishes that aren't mostly clean, and pass them to Leon.
"What? Nah, you're not being punished or anything. Just wanted an excuse to get you all to myself for a minute."
He takes the plates as they're handed to him, loading them into the dishwasher.
"How's she doing? After... all of that." She didn't throw up this time, which is good, but that's kind of all that can really be said for silver linings. "She seemed, uh. More awake, at least. I talked to her a little, but mostly about the house."
In general, but also with her in specific. Leon gets the impression Luis is even closer to her than he is, and while he doesn’t want to be too nosy, well. Given the circumstances…
“It was good seeing her out and about with the others,” he says. “But. You don’t think the timing of the rituals and her recovering are related, do you?”
He looks at Luis expectantly. They’re two for two on those coming one after the other, but that’s not enough evidence on its own, right? At least that’s what Leon expects a scientist would tell him. Or what he hopes.
Instead of answering immediately, Luis squirms under Leon's question. It's so much worse when it's innocently asked - he almost misses Leon manhandling him for answers.
"I'm going to trust you with a secret, alright Sancho?"
Leon does not like that hesitation, and his expectant look grows a little more desperate with Luis's discomfort. At the question, he nods, swallowing.
"Keeping secrets is in my job description," he says, going quiet for a moment as he glances at the doors and listens for any sounds of breathing or footsteps that would indicate they've got an eavesdropper. Finding none, he continues. "Lay it on me."
Luis pushes his hair back from his face, taking a deep breath. When he speaks, his voice is quiet enough that there's a high chance an eavesdropper at the door wouldn't hear anyway.
"Whatever is going on with Pratibha, she's connected to the house. So, you've hit the nail on the head." He picks up a clean fork that had been set out on the counter but not used, and begins to spin it between his fingers like he does his lighter.
"She can feel what happens to, or in it, although not to the point that it hurts her. And it's how she can provide us with whatever we ask for - like my guitar."
The implications of this hit Leon such that it feels like it's both all at once and incredibly slowly, from his perspective - a looming wall of extremely bad things happening to a teenage girl crashing over him like a tidal wave. Not that he'd been blissfully unaware before, but the extent of it...
Considering his options for a moment, he turns the dishwasher on to give their conversation a little more cover.
"Shit. So, she's the house's 'favorite'." He doesn't actually do airquotes, but their presence is extremely audible in his voice, which he lowers to match Luis's. "Which means when it gets impatient, she starts to get sick. So if we take too long to start going after each other..."
"She said her connection was why she threw up when señor Wright, ah." ...Ah, indeed.
"The bond is not as strong in the other direction. But she asked me not to bring it up, so that no one else got an idea about trying to hurt her anyway." And the fact that he's trusting Leon S(hoot first ask questions later) Kennedy shows how he feels about him.
"She did say something else, though - tonight, when I spoke to her earlier."
Leon grimaces, not wanting to imagine what that felt like for her, exactly.
"I could see that being a problem if someone felt desperate enough, yeah," he says, folding his arms and leaning against the counter. "I won't tell anyone else. Anyway. What else did she say?"
"That when the house gets stronger, she does too. She even said explicitly, that without a ritual having just occurred the house wouldn't have allowed her the freedom to say that much."
Leon has a better chance than anyone else here of being able to spot the telltale signs of Luis' big brain working, even if he doesn't have enough information to have an Idea yet.
"...Huh. So - specifically, stronger in ways that can let her push back against the house's control over her. Probably not enough to hurt it directly, but..." If she can tell them more about what's going on directly after the rituals, then...
Well. Best case scenario there won't be another ritual, but then what happens to her? The clock is already ticking, as far as that goes. Leon frowns thoughtfully, no former wunderkind like Luis, but not a total idiot himself. There's got to be some way to leverage that knowledge beyond just being able to get straighter answers out of her.
"She tried to escape her own series of rituals. With her- dear friend."
She's everything to me, Pratibha had said. And, well, Luis is familiar enough with all kinds of underground scenes to guess without her saying it. But, despite Leon not reacting poorly to Luis' irresistible charm (or, not reacting poorly to the part that could be construed as flirting - Leon had reacted plenty badly to other things about Luis that he hadn't found out til later was also because Leon knew about the Umbrella in the room), it's not his relationship to reveal even if Leon's feelings on same-sex relationships had somehow come up in conversation.
...All that to say, that fraction of a second pause did some heavy lifting.
"If we have another ritual, I intend to ask her how."
Not being a man of subtlety as he is, any implication to that weighty pause or to Luis's choice of words goes absolutely flying over Leon's head, whether fortunately or unfortunately. Regardless, it's not necessarily the most important part here, and he nods in understanding of the rest of it, at least.
"Right. It's hard to read her profile, but from what I could tell it ends with something like 'I just wanted us to be okay, let us out' or something like that. Looks like that didn't exactly go as planned." He sighs, staring out the kitchen window at the starlit prairie that wasn't there yesterday. "That's probably a good plan. If there's another ritual. Wouldn't want to wind up with another escape attempt where someone just winds up taking her place as the maitre d'. Who knows what would happen to her?"
Or to the rest of them, for that matter. Sounds like a vicious cycle if there ever was one.
"Well, there's that," Luis says. "And besides, when the stakes are this high, we don't have the luxury of repeating, ah, failed experiments."
No offense, Pratibha.
"I'm not sure that the bond goes so far that the house could or would 'punish' her directly to keep us in line, but, well. If we starve the house, then she will get weaker, too."
Like the first ritual, where they could hardly keep her awake.
Leon just nods, solemnly. He gets it. If they can avoid following in her footsteps here, they should.
He breathes out, slowly.
"So no matter what happens, someone dies. Or maybe Pratibha doesn't die, but I don't really want to think about what happens if the house starts to get too desperate." Kind of brings to mind the way a body starts to cannibalize itself when it gets into the deep stages of starvation. Nonessentials go first. "So what do we do? Ideally we could sever the connection safely somehow and get us all out of here, but I'm not good enough at Catholicism to be an exorcist, and I doubt you are either."
Luis huffs a laugh at that, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Do you know, I think my grandfather hoped the padre could convince me to become a priest," he says lightly. "To him, that was the place my mind would be wasted the least."
Luis sighs.
"Maybe he was right. But what a loss to the ladies of the world that would have been, eh?"
Leon snorts, trying to picture Luis in a clerical collar and failing.
"Would've been a different world for sure," he says. "So that plan's out, unless any of the others have been holding out on us when it comes to the ability to banish demons and ghosts."
Shaking his head, he lets his shoulders sag slightly with exhaustion - a narrow but noticeable deviation from his usual military-perfect posture.
"This is almost making me miss when most of my problems were the kind you could just shoot or stab until they went away. At least that was simpler."
“Maybe, but do you think Pratibha would give me a rocket launcher if I asked?”
He’s got a weirdly successful track record with finding those in the eleventh hour. Anyway, the concern isn’t wholly lost on him, and he straightens up again as soon as he hears it, nodding resolutely.
“Yeah. We should probably head in for the night. Rock-Paper-Scissors for who gets the floor this time?”
"Ay, can't you be too tired to do the sleep kickboxing for one night and we can share? The bed is a double," he points out. "It should be big enough for two."
"If I figure out a level of tired where I don't do that other than 'dead', I'll let you know. Until then we take turns. Come on, we can keep arguing about this on the way over."
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nothingbadeverhappensto) wrote2025-05-01 11:19 am
no subject
"When you said 'cleanup duty' I thought you were going to make me wash them by hand," he jokes, taking a spot at the sink to rinse off any dishes that aren't mostly clean, and pass them to Leon.
"...I went to check on Pratibha."
cw: passing emeto mention
He takes the plates as they're handed to him, loading them into the dishwasher.
"How's she doing? After... all of that." She didn't throw up this time, which is good, but that's kind of all that can really be said for silver linings. "She seemed, uh. More awake, at least. I talked to her a little, but mostly about the house."
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"She is better, and thank God for that," he says, loosely rinsing the last of the dishes and then drying his hands.
"That doesn't mean that I'm not still worried, unfortunately."
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In general, but also with her in specific. Leon gets the impression Luis is even closer to her than he is, and while he doesn’t want to be too nosy, well. Given the circumstances…
“It was good seeing her out and about with the others,” he says. “But. You don’t think the timing of the rituals and her recovering are related, do you?”
He looks at Luis expectantly. They’re two for two on those coming one after the other, but that’s not enough evidence on its own, right? At least that’s what Leon expects a scientist would tell him. Or what he hopes.
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"I'm going to trust you with a secret, alright Sancho?"
no subject
"Keeping secrets is in my job description," he says, going quiet for a moment as he glances at the doors and listens for any sounds of breathing or footsteps that would indicate they've got an eavesdropper. Finding none, he continues. "Lay it on me."
no subject
"Whatever is going on with Pratibha, she's connected to the house. So, you've hit the nail on the head." He picks up a clean fork that had been set out on the counter but not used, and begins to spin it between his fingers like he does his lighter.
"She can feel what happens to, or in it, although not to the point that it hurts her. And it's how she can provide us with whatever we ask for - like my guitar."
no subject
Considering his options for a moment, he turns the dishwasher on to give their conversation a little more cover.
"Shit. So, she's the house's 'favorite'." He doesn't actually do airquotes, but their presence is extremely audible in his voice, which he lowers to match Luis's. "Which means when it gets impatient, she starts to get sick. So if we take too long to start going after each other..."
cw: passing emeto mention
"The bond is not as strong in the other direction. But she asked me not to bring it up, so that no one else got an idea about trying to hurt her anyway." And the fact that he's trusting Leon S(hoot first ask questions later) Kennedy shows how he feels about him.
"She did say something else, though - tonight, when I spoke to her earlier."
no subject
"I could see that being a problem if someone felt desperate enough, yeah," he says, folding his arms and leaning against the counter. "I won't tell anyone else. Anyway. What else did she say?"
no subject
Leon has a better chance than anyone else here of being able to spot the telltale signs of Luis' big brain working, even if he doesn't have enough information to have an Idea yet.
no subject
Well. Best case scenario there won't be another ritual, but then what happens to her? The clock is already ticking, as far as that goes. Leon frowns thoughtfully, no former wunderkind like Luis, but not a total idiot himself. There's got to be some way to leverage that knowledge beyond just being able to get straighter answers out of her.
cw: vague early aughts homophobia
She's everything to me, Pratibha had said. And, well, Luis is familiar enough with all kinds of underground scenes to guess without her saying it. But, despite Leon not reacting poorly to Luis' irresistible charm (or, not reacting poorly to the part that could be construed as flirting - Leon had reacted plenty badly to other things about Luis that he hadn't found out til later was also because Leon knew about the Umbrella in the room), it's not his relationship to reveal even if Leon's feelings on same-sex relationships had somehow come up in conversation.
...All that to say, that fraction of a second pause did some heavy lifting.
"If we have another ritual, I intend to ask her how."
no subject
"Right. It's hard to read her profile, but from what I could tell it ends with something like 'I just wanted us to be okay, let us out' or something like that. Looks like that didn't exactly go as planned." He sighs, staring out the kitchen window at the starlit prairie that wasn't there yesterday. "That's probably a good plan. If there's another ritual. Wouldn't want to wind up with another escape attempt where someone just winds up taking her place as the maitre d'. Who knows what would happen to her?"
Or to the rest of them, for that matter. Sounds like a vicious cycle if there ever was one.
no subject
No offense, Pratibha.
"I'm not sure that the bond goes so far that the house could or would 'punish' her directly to keep us in line, but, well. If we starve the house, then she will get weaker, too."
Like the first ritual, where they could hardly keep her awake.
no subject
He breathes out, slowly.
"So no matter what happens, someone dies. Or maybe Pratibha doesn't die, but I don't really want to think about what happens if the house starts to get too desperate." Kind of brings to mind the way a body starts to cannibalize itself when it gets into the deep stages of starvation. Nonessentials go first. "So what do we do? Ideally we could sever the connection safely somehow and get us all out of here, but I'm not good enough at Catholicism to be an exorcist, and I doubt you are either."
no subject
"Do you know, I think my grandfather hoped the padre could convince me to become a priest," he says lightly. "To him, that was the place my mind would be wasted the least."
Luis sighs.
"Maybe he was right. But what a loss to the ladies of the world that would have been, eh?"
no subject
"Would've been a different world for sure," he says. "So that plan's out, unless any of the others have been holding out on us when it comes to the ability to banish demons and ghosts."
Shaking his head, he lets his shoulders sag slightly with exhaustion - a narrow but noticeable deviation from his usual military-perfect posture.
"This is almost making me miss when most of my problems were the kind you could just shoot or stab until they went away. At least that was simpler."
no subject
It's a joke, but there's a small amount of worry in his eyes as he notices the way Leon's posture drops.
"...It's getting pretty late, eh?"
no subject
He’s got a weirdly successful track record with finding those in the eleventh hour. Anyway, the concern isn’t wholly lost on him, and he straightens up again as soon as he hears it, nodding resolutely.
“Yeah. We should probably head in for the night. Rock-Paper-Scissors for who gets the floor this time?”
no subject
"Ay, can't you be too tired to do the sleep kickboxing for one night and we can share? The bed is a double," he points out. "It should be big enough for two."
no subject
"If I figure out a level of tired where I don't do that other than 'dead', I'll let you know. Until then we take turns. Come on, we can keep arguing about this on the way over."
no subject