SCENE: The Rapid Siren
ICDATE: The day after "Confidences".
Leila looks up at the clock. "Dammit! Lookit the time." She shuffles all her papers together. "The brat is probably starving."
Kerrigan mms. He's been... well, quiet, all day.
Leila gives him her 40th odd look of the day. "Really, Kerrigan, I almost miss your snide comments."
Kerrigan looks up hearing his name, like a cat. "What?"
Leila shakes her head. "Nay, nothing. Go home. Sleep it off."
Kerrigan nods distantly. He doesn't move.
Leila sighs, and struggles to her feet. She's really gotten big in the past month. "I'm going home, then."
Kerrigan shakes his head a little as if to clear it, and stands along with her.
Leila rubs her back from sitting so long. She casts another wary glance at him.
Kerrigan stretches, by force of habit, and goes to get the door.
Leila goes back to her desk to check something and mutters, "You haven't lost your chivalry in your cloudiness."
Kerrigan opens the door and holds it, the cold air rolling in.
Leila's gaze filters up at him again. He really is out of it. She walks through the door silently.
Kerrigan lets the door swing shut after him.
Leila glances at Kerrigan again out of the corner of her eyes.
Kerrigan jams his hands in his pockets against the cold and heads out of the alley toward Water Row, then stops, turns and goes the other way.
Leila grows impatient. "Dammit, Kerrigan, what the hell is wrong with you?"
Kerrigan spins on his heel. "What d'you mean, wrong with me?"
Leila looks pained by his idiocy. "Aye, what the hell is wrong?"
"Nothing," says the man who keeps complaining that she doesn't talk to him. "I'm fine."
Leila frowns. "Don't give me that crap. Why are you acting like such a... a... bastard?" For lack of a better word.
Kerrigan eyes her. "You don't want to know."
Leila nods. "Aye, I bet I don't. But you'll tell me, at any rate."
Kerrigan stands in the cold mud and rocks on his toes a little, considering. Abruptly, he says, "I talked to your father last night."
Leila's expression hardens. "The bastard is still in town?"
Kerrigan sets his jaw. "Yeah."
Leila lifts her chin. "Did you tell him to go?"
Kerrigan draws a breath. "Yeah, I did."
Leila crosses her arms above her stomach. "And?"
Something flickers in Kerrigan's eyes for a moment. "And what?"
Leila flips her hand. "I would assume something happened to make you act like this."
Kerrigan says breathlessly, "He told me--" He breaks off, looks away.
Leila tries ever so hard to check her impatience and, thus, her temper. "Aye, what?"
Kerrigan sidesteps that question. "Gods, you know you take after the bastard, Leila Fey?"
Leila shoots the question back into his court. "What did he say?"
Kerrigan, cornered, snaps, "He said -- he thought I was in love with you." Then chokes on the last word. O Gods.
Leila knows this is true. Be it she's dense, she's not always so oblivious. But how to manage it! She regards him coolly. "Are you?"
Kerrigan can't look at her. He can hardly even speak. "Yes," comes out as a harsh whisper.
Leila wipes her mouth with her hand. "I see." She looks at him, even if he won't look at her. "What are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing." Still in that painful whispering voice. "What d'you take me for?"
Leila doesn't know how to respond to that. She stands there, her hand dropping from her mouth.
Kerrigan's boot-toe digs into the muddy ground. "I wasn't going to tell you," he says thinly. "I wasn't going to tell him either. He just..."
Leila suddenly looks angry. Infuriated that this should happen at all, let alone at this time. She sets her jaw. "Aye, well, you shouldn't have said anything at all."
Kerrigan snaps, "Dammit, he got in my way and he wouldn't shut up!" That's... sort of true, anyway. "All I said to him was, leave Leila alone. That's friggin' all." More or less.
Leila retorts, "That's not what I meant." She tosses up her hand. "F*ck the goddess! Where do you get off, eh?"
"What the hell does that mean?" If only his voice wouldn't tremble. Kerrigan looks up, trying to glare at her.
From just down the street, around a corner, you hear the scrape of metal on metal, a quick ring of blades, then footsteps and heavy breathing which recede out of earshot.
"It means," she sucks in a breath, "How dare you? How dare you! You know, oh goddess you know! And you have the gall to pull this!"
Kerrigan almost screams, "Dammit, Leila!!" He stops, swallows, and goes on somewhat more quietly, but with equal intensity. "Dammit. I tried. I never said a word to you. I never touched you. I never so much as looked at you to -- I know you love this bastard, and if he ever comes back to you he'll never know and I hope you live happily ever after with him but gods dammit, Leila Fey Burgess! I can't help loving you!"
Leila cuts short her harpy-ness as he screams himself. She looks away when he brings up Garrick, as if that was too much to add to the conversation. She shuts her eyes and whispers savagely, "Damn you to hell."
Kerrigan takes a shaky breath. "You think this isn't hell? I'd like to know what more you can do to me."
Leila turns her side to him. "Damn you." Then louder, "Damn you! I don't need this! Goddess knows I don't. Why the--!" She can't even finish. All her life such adoes have come in packages and just, just when everything looked like it was going to be okay. She wants to spit or stamp her foot. Anything, anything at all. But all she can say is -- "Damn you."
Kerrigan's fists clench in his pockets and he braces his feet, so that he doesn't go over and try to comfort her right there. "Leila, I..."
Leila can't help but to say it. It's a natural response that she couldn't stop if she tried. "Dammit, go away!"
Kerrigan's voice rises again. "Gods, Leila, you had to ask me! You had to know! you couldn't just leave it where it was!"
Leila retorts in such a rage, herself snapping back to face him, "Me? Me! Damn you, Kerrigan! Lying is too good for you, now is it, eh?"
Kerrigan cries, in torment, "Dammit, you stupid bitch, I never lied to you! How could I-- ? But I would've left it alone if you hadn't friggin' asked me!"
Well that just makes Leila fly into a rage. "F*ck you! I won't have you calling me that anymore!" She's breathing so hard and so quickly it hurts. "I hate you!" She's practically shrieking. "You couldn't leave well enough alone! You have to do something to make it worse! To pick at a scab that never healed! Well, hell, you f*cking bastard, I hope you're happy!"
A tile comes toppling down from a rooftop, only to smash at their feet. In the agonized silence that follows, they could almost believe they hear the soft scrape of a boot against a tile, far above.
"Dammit, Leila!!" Kerrigan crying? Gods have mercy. "All I ever wanted to do was make it better!"
Leila is shaking, shivering with rage. "How can you say that after you do this!"
Kerrigan's hand flies up, but it's only to drag his sleeve savagely across his eyes. "What! What have I done? Tell me, Leila! What could I have done different? No, you had-- you had to push, you knew but you had to hear me say it--"
Oh, what a pretty mess this is! Leila rakes a hand through her hair viciously. "Damn you," she repeats again, shaking. And then, "Goddess damn all, just get out of my sight!"
With an effort that's not only visible but almost palpable, Kerrigan keeps from either shouting or striking. "I told you you didn't want to know," he rasps, before turning on his heel and fairly fleeing from the alley and her blazing eyes.