Perfect Strangers[M]{Damonique&Natora}

[Damonique]

"The princess," Of course it was the princess, the question hadn't even been worth asking. How could a girl like this be anything but her parents perfect little princess, doted on, loved unconditionally, able to do and say whatever she wanted, secure in the knowledge that mommy and daddy would be right there to clean up whatever messes she made. And she probably didn't appreciate it, which was why she was running away.

Bitterness welled up like bile in his chest just thinking about it, and he had to grip the pen like a lifeline to reign it in, diverting the pain into the cross-hatching to shade the downy feathers under the birds wings. It wasn't worth risking an 'incident', as the white coats called them, over. It wasn't as if this girl even had a clue, it wasn't like it was her fault she was born lucky. As quick as it was there, the feeling subsided, having passed without notice, the girl already barely paying attention to him as she leaned back and shut her eyes, apparently trying to sleep.

Or maybe not, because she opened her mouth again. Jan didn't really know what to say to that, he'd just been trying to make conversation and Jasmine was free to sleep all the way to L.A. if she felt like it, but instead she just had to make one last snide remark to show him who was boss. Jan stopped drawing and glanced over at her, realizing that she hadn't even bothered to open her eyes.

"Fine, I do have one question for you, if you insist, but it's not about your name." Jan answered, unable to keep all of the edge out of his tone, not that he was trying all that hard to begin with, and let that hang for a second to make sure he had her attention for the question that would be bugging him the whole ride on if he didn't get an answer to it.

"What are you running from?" It was simple on it's face, a question that could be answered in a million different ways, or even just with silence. Jan knew running, he'd been doing it every day he wasn't being kept in a cage, and it was plain as day that was what Jasmine was doing. Otherwise, she wouldn't be on the bus. There was just no way a girl like her didn't have options if she wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, even without her parents money.

[Natora]

When he started being gruff at her, Jasmine opened one eye and looked at him with a mixture of confusion and annoyance. Why was he being rude to her? She was making sure the conversation was fully over before she fell asleep on him! What possible reason had he made for getting upset with her? It didn't really matter, she supposed. It was what it was.

Holding back her internal sigh, she opened both her eyes and turned to face him more before he finally asked the question. Already? He was already asking the personal questions? Whatever happened to asking how the weather was in her part of town or what great meal she intended to have at their lunch stop? Either way, he had asked now and she had already implied that she would answer questions he asked. But, choosing to keep her personal reason for travel quiet for now, she smirked as she found a way of skating the question.

"Who said I was running from anything?" she asked with an easy air of triumph. He had obviously made to make her admit to something terrible like running from an abusive family when he thought that they were too kind to her but that wasn't the case. She wasn't running away from anything. She was running to her future. Her dream! But he didn't need to know now. "What are you running from?" she asked as she relaxed back in her chair but kept her eyes open.

[Damonique]

"You did, every second since you sat down, and then again just now. The look on your face, body language. I've gotten pretty good at watching people, it's easy when nobody even notices you, and watching is the closest your allowed to get." Jan answered in a tone that was less bitter and more just as a statement of fact, if a confusingly worded one. His mouth was an expressionless line, the one blue-green eye that was currently peeking out from behind the curtain of blonde hair meeting her agitated expression sidelong.

As he watched her, Jan considered her repetition of his question back to him. There were indeed a million answers to that one. He was running from kindly voices that didn't reach the eyes, sharp stings in the arm, white rooms and nothing to write with, or even so much as a shoelace, and being so drugged up he felt dead inside. He idly walked the pen up and down his nimble fingers as he thought, not having to look, doing the hole routine on instinct. Finally, he pursed his lips, ready to answer.

"What does anyone run from? Things that scare me." Jan answered, back to that raspy almost-whisper he had started with, reaching up to sweep aside his bangs so he could transfix her with both eyes. It wasn't really an answer, in words at least, but the far-off look in his eyes should have said it all. Scary was generally something he was to other people, so whatever scared him, and why, she probably didn't care to know. She'd sleep easier if she didn't with him less than a foot away, that was for sure.

[Natora]

There was a sentence there in his explanation that worried her. As close as one is allowed to get. It sounded ominous, as if there might be a reason that most people only allowed him to get so close. She had heard a story from Canada about a man who went on a bus and decapitated someone. All she could do was hope that he wasn't that sort of crazy.

Thankfully she wasn't allowed to ponder long before he answered her own question. Things he was afraid of? Well that could be a stupidly large assortment of things. She was afraid of only having hundreds of dollars in her bank account and spiders. She had a funny feeling that she was going to face one of those fears quite soon and she was happy to say she didn't notice spiders very often.

Either way, his answer left it easy to give him another question about it. He seemed interested in talking so she would oblige for how. Besides, staying awake and keeping him happy might keep him from chopping her head off. "What kinds of things scare you?" she asked.

[Damonique]

Jan expected his intentionally vague reply to be the end of it, but Jasmine seemed to take it as a sort of challenge, turning to face him and ask another question. He considered just putting the whole truth out there right now, that would shut her up, but then he'd have to find himself a new seatmate, and a glance around said that every other choice was either annoying or just plain boring.

"What's the fun in just telling you? Here's a hint though." He answered with a playful smirk, and then flipped all the way back through the sketchbook, nearly to the front, and turned it out so she could see. The art here was much rougher than his later work, and done in pencil. There were no dates to be found, but just from the style it must have been drawn by a kid....a disturbed one, at that.

There were three scenes, one taking up a whole page, and two more on the next. The full-page drawing was of a small person cowering in the corner of the room, knees pulled up again his chest, hands over his eyes. Across the room was a door, half opened, with a huge, faceless figure standing in the doorway, casting a too-long shadow on the floor.

The first scene on the next page was drawn in the first person. It was of a small hand, highly detailed, holding a lit match carefully between two fingers. In front of it was a desk piled with sheets of paper, more matches scattered haphazardly over them. Some of the pages were adorned with rough doodles one couldn't quite make out, drawings within a drawing.

The next drawing below that one was done in a different style and a different medium, felt marker instead of pencil. The lines were thicker and less well-defined, weaving about to and fro, and there was no shading. It was of a room, empty but for a small cot in one corner, across from a dresser with a glass of water and a smaller cup beside it. Between two was a window with bars drawn across it in a heavy hand, the branches of a tree visible through it.

Jan let her look for a few moments, staring at the drawings intently himself, before abruptly taking back the notebook and flipping quickly to an empty page near the back, holding his ink-pen gingerly over the page, and then turning to Jasmine, frowning, mouth half-open as if meaning to say something, but shutting before any words came out. He cleared his throat and looked past her, out the window, for several moments before finally speaking.

"So. Fair is fair, what scares you?" He asked abruptly, cutting off any opportunity to discuss what she had just seen.

[Natora]

Oh he certainly was more interesting than a simple rich boy, that was for sure. Any guy she had had any interest before had only cared about labels and being brief, seeming like a "man". He didn't seem to care if he came across that way. He had enough confidence, or at least portrayed it, to have a decent conversation but it was clear that if someone pulled rank on him, he would back down. Or at least that was how she saw it.

Either way, she humoured him and looked forward at his drawings. The scenes that unfolded in front of her were meticulous and detailed. You could see the improvement that had happened in the bird that he was drawing now but...there was a different feeling in these pictures. It almost made her shiver by the time the third picture came up. They were darker and more...sad than anything. Even though it couldn't speak and was merely pencil strokes on a page, it was very cold.

In the end, she sat back and pulled her sweater around her more as she pulled a knee up against her. If they were sharing information it was only fair as he had stated. "What's the fun in telling you?" she mimicked. She smirked and shook her head. "Spiders. Tell me more later and I'll tell you more," she said to him easily before closing her eyes and leaning her head against the window. She really was tired and wanted to get some sleep on the drive.

[Damonique]

Spiders. Like the princess thing, that was something else he could have just assumed. Lots of people were scared of spiders and snakes, Jan had noticed. He never really had been though. If either of those things bit you, it meant you had done something wrong, not them, invading their space. Animals were simple like that. Wildlife wasn't nearly as scary as the things people could do to each other, but people tended to fear it more than strangers.

He immediately began sketching a spider on the page from memory, legs first, then the body and head. Eight eyes, open mandibles that formed what could almost be seen as a smile. A bit of cross-hatching to enunciate the hair on the back, deep black with white pinpricks to make the eyes as glossy as the real thing. He became so immersed in the work that he didn't even notice Jasmine had fallen asleep on him until he finished the drawing and meant to show it to her.

She had curled herself up in the corner beside the window, as far away from him as possible, thick auburn hair forming a pillow against the glass, breathing steadily and only moving when the bus tires struck a bump or pothole in the road, even then barely stirring. Jan wished he could sleep so easy, but didn't envy her for it. They still had a very long ride ahead of them, and the next transit stop wouldn't be for another three hours.

He busied himself drawing for a while, and at one point got up as quietly as possible in order to go to the bathroom in the back of the bus, where he promptly dry-heaved, trying to throw up the contents of his empty stomach for a good ten minutes. Skipping breakfast had definitely been a wise choice. Once he got back to their seat, he opened up his bag and fished around until he found a small, unlabeled bottle and cracked it open. Thee were five little green pills left there, and he gave them a rueful look before forcing himself to break one in half and take it with a swig of water from his weathered old canteen.

After that, he settled back into his seat and drifted off into an uneasy sleep in which he tossed and turned, occasionally mumbling under his breath throughout. Surely that would agitate some people, maybe even wake Jasmine, but it wasn't as if he could help it. Several hours later, when the driver announced their next stop would be twenty minutes, the sound startled him awake and he stood quickly, snapping open wild-looking, bloodshot eyes and looking about in a panic before realizing where and who he was and sat back down, looking around sheepishly at the other confused passengers.

[Natora]

Jasmine was standing on the stage at a graduation ceremony. She had a cap and gown on and was just walking up to a chancellor to shake his hand and receive her diploma. Everything was perfect. She took his hand and shook it before turning out to smile for the picture. But as she looked out at the crowd she knew that something was missing. The crowd...it was nearly full. But there were two empty seats where she was looking. She knew immediately who was supposed to be there and felt a hole in her stomach as it dropped, realising that her parents wouldn't be there.

It was then that the announcement came on and Jan jumped from his seat. Her eyes went wide as she watched him jump as if startled. Sure the sound was surprising but it really had no reason to make someone react so violently. She watched as he came to and realised what was going on around him. As he sat back in his seat, she sat up in hers so she was sitting center again instead of leaning to one side. She took a deep breath, waking herself up a little more before she said, "You okay? Jumped a bit when you woke up."

It was out of character for her, worrying about some random stranger next to her on a bus. But if she were free to believe that the story from Canada was true, she was sure the psycho that beheaded the other person had probably seemed normal enough at first too. Jan didn't seem entirely normal either. He had shown her some very dark drawings in the book he carted around. If that was any indication, she was sure he had probably had some reason to have some sort of trauma in his life.

[Damonique]

Jan looked over to where Jasmine had woken from her slumber, eyes turned down, seemingly more embarrassed than anything else. . He looked around, a few people were still looking at him, uncomprehending and he quickly flicked open his sketchbook to the 'smiling spider' he had finished while she was sleeping, ignoring them entirely and showing it to her with what was almost a smile.

"Sorry if I startled you. I'm just...not used to this." He said, gesturing around at the bus, the people, out the window, everything, and realized that that wasn't much of an explanation at all. But he didn't have the right words to explain it in a way she could understand, if she could even begin to. He decided to come at it from another angle.

"I'm nervous, traveling, I mean. Waking up surrounded by strangers. I'm used to the same place, same people, just.....the same, every day, routine. Never really done anything like this before....never even left Boston in my life until last night. It's taking some getting used to." He tried to explain, more verbal than he'd been, although the halting stutter was still there between words, choosing them carefully. It was all technically the truth, though, he just didn't go into the details. It was a flimsy excuse, but at least it just made him look shy instead of crazy.

"How about you, travel much?" He asked, trying to change the subject before she questioned him further. Truth be told, Jan actually liked Jasmine, and not just because she was nice to look at. She was the absolute definition of a stranger, coming from a life so different from his own that there was no way she'd see the signs unless he spelled them out for her, and the chances of them ever meeting again once they stepped off this bus were slim to none. He could be as open with her as he could with anyone.

[Natora]

When he settled back down, she felt a little better. His explanation was sparse at best but it was an explanation at least. When he showed her the picture of a spider, she gave a half smirk and small chuckle. It was a cute picture. The smile made it so that the otherwise accurate drawing was more entertaining and not scary. If he was trying to make her not scared, that wouldn't be the final thing to help her get oveer her fear. It was still amusing nonetheless.

She almost tuned him out when he started asking her about travel. "It's all the same, travel. No one around is paying any attention to anyone else unless they're sitting beside someone," she said easily. She was still groggy, her eyes half closed as she woke up from what the nap she had had. "Travel is normally fun. I've been on three continents," she shared. When she looked over at him and thought about the evasiveness of her answer, she figured she should practice sharing more. Being in a new city, she will have to figure out how to relate to all sorts of people.

"My family...we go on a vacation every year in the summer. Last year we went around Italy for a month. We got to stay in Venice, Florence. It was a lot of fun. I can't lie, though. I liked the pizza here better," she admitted to him. "Boston is nice and fine but there's a lot of places to go out in the world. Why did you choose now to go and explore?" she asked him, making good conversation, she thought.