Beauty in the Sewer

"I am right behind you," he tried to reassure her. Yes, he knew it was strange to be leading from behind, but he really did not want her behind him right now. "Slow. The pipe tips down here. Careful. Now turn toward the right. No, the other right. Yes, now it will begin to slope up."

He followed in silence for some time as they walked, only speaking to give directions until they reached the uppermost pipes. Streetlights gleamed down from the grates, but they were not yet where Ingrid had come down.
 
Directions, ugh. If her life wasn't possibly on the line she would have turned back. Ingrid had a unique dislike for following verbal directions, and she didn't know why. A buried dread of getting them wrong somehow and looking like a fool, maybe.

Streetlights shined from above, and Ingrid was relieved she was at least out of the depths. The main threat was now history, lost behind like...That one time she lost her phone down here. Oof. She should probably get that replaced at some point.
Her mood had picked up considerably when they reached the upper levels. She didn't know this part, but, it was close enough that she could scream if things got dire. They wouldn't. It was good to have the option regardless.

"Thank you again, Claudius. God knows how well I would have done if I didn't have someone to bring me back to reality."
She spoke over her shoulder, having stopped the repeated glances some time into the walk.
 
Claudius slowed, watching her go. A strange pang tugged at his heart. "Will you be leaving so soon?" he asked softly. He did not want to pressure her or impose on her time. She likely wanted nothing more than to get out of here, and he did not blame her. Yet... he did not want to see her go, either.

Then a breeze touched bare patches of his back and he shivered, remembering why he did not want her to stay, at least not right now.

"This is a safer area of town, though they might notice a little when you come out of the street," he added awkwardly.
 
'Will you be leaving so soon?'
Ouch, Claud. Way to make her feel like she just kicked a puppy with steel-toed boots. His soft-spoken tone and all-around gentle nature was disarming. She hated it. She hated both of the two sewer dwellers that made her feel this way.

Ingrid stopped walking the moment he began talking. There wasn't much movement after that from her, not like turning to face him would yield much to see. She was standing in a particularly lit up spot, which made the shadows he hid in more prominent than ever. He was right, there would be some weird looks. If he only he knew those were commonplace to her.

"..Hah. Don't worry 'bout it. I've come down here so many times, and people don't do anything other than stare- Doesn't bother me."
Doesn't bother her anymore.

Ingrid chuckled grimly. With a squeak of her boots, she spun on a heel to face back at where Claudius was standing. In complete contrast to before: she was smiling. A tired one, but a smile.
"I don't wanna take up more of your time. Already had to deal with me last week, and had to deal with me before-- I won't subject you to anymore, heheh."
 
Claudius flinched at her sudden turn, taking a step back involuntarily. He took a moment to regain equilibrium before speaking again. She was so grim! Even when she smiled. For a single moment, he wondered which of them was the sewer monster. No, no, that was foolishness. It was a mask like the children at Halloween. That was all.

"You are not a burden," he said slowly. "I imagine you are tired, and I would not consider it rude if you wish nothing more than return home to rest, but if you desired to stay, I would not... mind."

He shuffled uncertainly as his coat caught on a rough edge of piping and tore a little more, this time almost soundless. Oh dear. That was a nuisance.
 
Ingrid felt a little bad at making him step back. Sudden movements didn't go down with anyone. She really needed to nail it into her skull to not be so...Her.

"Well, I do only get to see you once a week.." Ingrid reasoned aloud, tapping a foot during her internal debate. Home seemed nice right about now. Home would be about 2 degrees warmer. Home didn't have company. Home...Was okay.
"I guess I would like to stick around for a little bit. If you'll have me, I'd prefer it even more if you'd stay for that little bit too."
She figured that was implied--- Ingrid wanted it clear though. She refused to be left alone in these pipes again.

"Are you gonna keep trailing behind me if I do, though?"
 
Oh. She was going to stay? He had not expected that. Why had she agreed to stay? Maybe he should not think too hard on that. Wasn't there a saying about looking gifts in the mouth? Something like that.

"I can... if you would like," he said slowly. "Do you wish to walk somewhere? Or would you prefer to sit and rest somewhere?"
 
"Both. Walk for a small bit, and find somewhere to rest. As long as wandering doesn't have me down there again I should be okay."
It felt like an eternity since it had happened, but Ingrid felt something instantly recognizable tick inside her head: curiosity. Her driving motive for returning no matter how it inconvenienced her, Claudius, or the unnamed dragon she was getting sick of referring to as such. Other reasons had joined the mix and clouded her original motives. It wasn't bad, but a little inconvenient. She briefly thought back to the work she put in on maps of the city's pipelines, and how quickly it was set aside when a small attachment was formed.

Her end goals had changed. That she knew. It never dismissed the planning though.

Ingrid slowly started moving again. Turning her upper body to the side, she looked back at Claudius and jerked her head in a gesture to catch up. Or at least walk faster.
"You mind if I ask you somethin'?"
 
Claudius hesitated a moment then gathered his jacket around him as best he could before stretching his legs to catch up. He was several inches taller than her, and that helped with speed, but where he tended to walk slightly ducked in case of low ceilings, she was perfectly safe to traverse most of the tunnels standing straight.

"You may ask," he replied cautiously. He was curious to hear what questions she might have for him, but was not willing to promise answering.
 
Effortlessly walking through walkways Claudius had to duck under put his height into perspective for her. Ever since she was little, Ingrid was always a little on the short side; having the privilege of not stressing her neck was something she was used to. It failed to help normalize the feeling of being small, to her annoyance. She hated feeling that, too.

"So. Take this how you wanna take it, I guess," Ingrid began the short blur of words that would be the question, directing herself forward in hopes of making it seem less accusing.

"How the hell did you end up down here? Seriously. I've seen people ten times worse than you living across from me. When I think of someone spending most of their time in a sewer, I think of...Like....Overly aggressive drug addicts. Or criminals."
The last two words radiated suspicion, but she kept talking.
"You're nothing like that. You speak too proper. You don't have the usual bitterness about you, on the outside at least. Unless you're a damn good actor to have me fooled-"
Ingrid took a breath to cut up her long-winded question up so it could be somewhat legible.

"You're not what- Or rather, who- I expected you to be, basically. I've only known you for two conversations, and you put everyone 'up there' to shame. What's your deal? Why stay down here?"
 
Claudius blinked at the sudden rush of words and shuffled slightly to the side. There was not much room to spare, though, and he ended up back where he started within a few steps. He did not know how to answer, what to answer, or even if it was safe to answer. From what he'd seen of Ingrid, however, it was likely safer to answer than not to answer. Her tenacity was something to be admired and feared. Slowly and carefully, he chose his answers.

"I do not take the drugs or any other altering substances, and I do not think I am a criminal or undertake criminal activities," he said, his voice even softer than usual. "I do not live Up There because... it is safer. Down Here is safe. I am... not welcome Up There."

He fell silent again, sorting through the questions and what needed to be answered and how to answer them. Being around Ingrid was a mental exercise he was no longer accustomed to, but even while it was beginning to feel stressful, he found it not all that distasteful.

"I do not know how I came to be here," he said at last. It was likely not the answer she wanted, but it was the truth.
 
'No one's welcome up there,' Ingrid's thoughts answered back in disdain. Not towards him: to the Up There they were talking about. The phrasing of some sentences made her wary he was purposefully dancing around responses. The tone of them made her feel even more so. Combining the two? It gave two conflicting impressions. One of well-hidden deceit, or one of sincerity.
He took his time, and yet none of it seemed as nefarious as it could be. The words were Delicate. Careful. Unsure?

"You don't know? That's...Odd. I expected a brooding story of, I dunno, escaping from another country for a crime you didn't commit."
Ingrid clicked her tongue to the tune of madness during her pause to think. Claudius could be bullshitting every single thing she was hearing, but what if he wasn't?

"So you just sorta...Woke up down here one day, then?"
 
He stopped walking and stood shifting his weight, his eyes on the ground. A soft humming sound of distress emanated from him, but he was not fully conscious of making it. Could he tell her? Could he really trust her? Then again, she did not seem particularly attached to anyone or anything Up There, and she had given him no reason not to trust her. Still, years of paranoia did not vanish in two weeks.

Finally, Claudius' eyes met hers. "I am afraid to trust you," he admitted, genuine sadness in his voice. "Trust has harmed me many times. I would like to tell you, but it is an unbelievable story. I have lived it, and I at times question if it is real, or if I am delusional. Yet it is real, and you... your presence and knowledge of me is frightening."

It was a terrifying thing, to admit this petite thing scared him, but he wanted to give her the truth. She had been kind to him, in her own gruff way, in both forms, though she was far more gentle with the dragon than the human. In a strange way, he completely understood and could relate to that.
 
There wasn't a gap between the two this time around: Ingrid halted at the same pace he did. Vision drifted from the path ahead and back to Claudius, and to her surprise, he was looking straight at her. The light was only just enough to make out a few basic features from the ones that were visible.
He spared no effort in concealing himself.

And now, she could safely say it didn't just apply to the clothes. Ingrid remained silent when he told her what he was thinking. The question was only supposed to give her a clue into his past, and now she was getting a price for those clues. He didn't trust her: she expected that, and sympathized with it. He had been hurt and had trust broken, so he was afraid of people. Afraid of her. And it was within every right that he should be.

Her face was neutral while she waited, purposefully void. When he'd said his piece, and a quiet lull fell in the 'room'(pipe), Ingrid stepped around to plant herself in front of him. There she stood, looking up at him with a steely gaze, until a heavy sigh melted it into one of saddened understanding.

"I get it. When something like trust is disregarded so many times, feels like it's just not worth giving anymore. I can stand here all weekend and tell you all the reasons you should, but if I ain't painted myself as trustworthy to you, I don't deserve it.
You...Don't gotta trust me. Or tell me anythin' you don't want to. Me telling you I mean no harm won't do much either, but:
I ain't here to hurt you, Claudius. I'm just an angry dumbass who's gotten herself attached more to the people below than the ones above."

Ingrid's restless, crooked smile shadowed over her face, her head tilting lazily to one side. One of her hands moved to leave her pockets, but as if receiving better judgment, soon put itself back.

"No one'd believe this crazy mug any day of the week anyway."
 
Her words rang out in the quiet, frim, confident, and honest. He swallowed and looked down again, shifting uncertainly. His heart thundered painfully in his chest. Her words stirred something in him. Cautiously, he glanced at her sidelong before speaking.

"I disagree with one statement. You are no 'dumbass.' I cannot see that."

He stepped back slowly, his hands shaking. "I would like to show you something. It is... important and scary. If you never come back, I will understand, but I feel... you should see... should know... this much."

He moved into the beam of amber light filtering down from a street lamp above them and carefully removed his jacket. The tears had snagged in his horns, giving him a bit of pause, but it fell away and he stood bare-chested before her, his deformities on display. Four horns of varying lengths sprouted from his head, two larger in the front, two smaller behind the larger ones. A row of spikes form a row down his spine to mid-back, resembling a cross between vertebrae sprouting from the skin and the spins of a horned dragon. Old scars criss-crossed his body, some of them clearly from violent fights, but others, the disturbing ones, were long, deep surgical scars.
 
Confident she'd said the right thing in the moment, Ingrid didn't sway at being informed she needed to see something. He was trembling and terrified, and she was both sure and unsure why. Sure in the sense she knew the concept: showing or telling something important was scary. But, she was unsure of what it actually was. He wasn't going to explain in words, it seemed.
Ingrid could feel a lump form in her throat from concern, her hands flexing and balling into fists to keep them from mirroring Claudius's shaking. Would she recognize him from the name-based watchlist she put together? Would she know him as someone she'd seen in passing, witness or cause of a horrible crime? She heard her heart picking up pace, and mind buzzing with reasonings of panic, creating an orchestra of sudden internal anxiety.

Then, it stopped.
Everything did.
For a second, it seemed every inner working within her had frozen.
What she saw was Claudius. And Claudius was terrifying.

Panic said to scream. Common sense said to run. Fear said to never set foot in the sewer again.
Those reactions were old news. Those reactions were disregarded like trash.
The only sound made was a muffled croak of a gasp: mouth covered by a hand. The only footsteps she took was forward to slowly approach him. And the only thing she wanted to do right now, was stay.

It was impossible to know where to look first. The inhuman horns sprouting from his head, and down his back? Or the disturbingly high amount of scars that decorated his body like a sick art piece? It was nothing short of horrifying.
What could she say? Her eyes tried to plead with him to understand what she wanted to show. She wasn't going to scream, and she wanted to assure him, but words ceased to comply. She wasn't being dramatic: any attempts yielded silent whispers as a result. It was different seeing a humanoid carry these physical traits. Too human and too inhuman at the same time.
Gingerly, Ingrid pressed a writhing hand forward to hold his as a way of communicating how she felt.
She was scared of him.
She wasn't scared of him.
 
He could barely meet her gaze, his deathly white body shivering. The scars stood out pink and red against the paleness, making them look worse than they really were. His horns felt like they weighed him down even more than usual as he finally lifted his gaze to meet hers. He expected disgust, horror, and fear. He got all three, yet only briefly. She didn't run. She stayed. More than that, she was moving toward him?

"You... you did not run?" he whispered, bewildered and trying not to feel hope. "Why?
 
She didn't know. Ingrid knew she knew, but she didn't at the same time. Running and hiding for the next 20 or so years would be the only normal way to take this development. It was a good thing Ingrid prided herself on ignoring normal ways.

The question made her smile thinly, shrugging her shoulders with a soft 'I dunno' hum. She looked close to how she did before when lost deeper down: pale, wide-eyed, and suppressing a lot of loud choice-words and sounds. But she stayed in front of him, and didn't run away.

"..Wouldn't be fair of me to. Not having me gone that easily: gonna have to try harder."
 
He looked at her soberly, feeling vulnerable. She was terrified, absolutely terrified, but he did not blame her. It had taken him nearly a year to finally be able to look in the mirror without shuddering. Quietly, he did his best to pull his jacket back on, but with the preexisting rips, it was difficult, and even when he finally had it settled, the tips of one horn and four of the back spikes poked through.

"I am sorry to have... sprung this on you, especially when we hardly know each other, but I did not want to scare you worse if you should... happen to see," he said regretfully. "I know it is difficult, but... thank you for not screaming. For not running."

There was not much else to say. So he zipped up his jacket and shoved his hands in the pockets. She wasn't running. His heart fluttered fearfully... or perhaps that was hope blossoming in his chest? That was an emotion he'd long forgotten.
 
"To be fair to you: there probably isn't any good time to show all...This."
Ingrid gestured to him. Bit by bit she let herself unwind from the seized up twig of stress she had become, whistling through her teeth. She'd gotten over the initial shock, and now came the inevitable: wondering what the actual fuck happened to him. He couldn't have been born like that- there'd surely be reports. He'd be a scientific anomaly.

"Thank you for showing me. I know it's hella hard for you to show this to someone, and scary to take the risk. But I don't think of you any differently: you're still a cool guy who lives in the sewer. Just more...Prickly."
Ingrid started spiraling back into her usual demeanor, rolling her shoulders to loosen them up.

"I did have more questions to ask, but I think I'll leave most of em on the back burner for now. You've done more than your fair share of answerin'."
 
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