Ash Meets Marie (First Revision)

FIRST REVISION, oh boy. I took a look at the scene of Marie and Ash (which has not been posted to this blog, not the original rough draft) pretty thoroughly and changed a lot, added more character to the scene, I feel. Helped to grasp why the two of them just connect.

So, here you go:

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Ash looked back to his fondest memories of her, when he had first met her. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever known. He had no idea why she actually came in to that bar (which he was pretty sure was being kept afloat by his patronage alone), she didn't belong there. It was like putting a ruby in the a puddle of sewage. So out of place that he actually forgot himself and just stared at her. She was not tall by any means, he was certain she wasn't even five feet tall and she could not have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds and that was pushing it. She was mostly swallowed up in a freshly unbuttoned beige-colored coat of NoSoak material and her red hair was tucked down her back and under the it.

A slim, perfect-fit t-shirt covered her torso this only helped to show her chest was not devoid of endowment but she had a more than modest bust. The words upon her shirt were currently too hard to decipher with what little of his brain was not completely drinking her in. Tight jeans ran down right into a pair of beige boots, no doubt they were NoSoak as well. The coat by itself cost more than it would cost to demolish this dive and that was exactly why she boggled him. There was more to her than he could see there, but everything he saw he liked. What he did not like was the risk she took in wearing such an expensive coat in this part of Espher. She bobbed a bit on her heels and scanned the room carefully as if she were here to meet someone.

No doubt an Adonis by means of cosmetic surgery and implants but why would he want to come here? Maybe he had grown up here, in the bottom tier of what was essentially Espher's totem pole in the just-above-The-Cloud list? There was almost no way to discern her age but her brilliant green eyes showed she had been around long enough to know when to be on her guard.

So vibrant was that green that he had dismissed them as implants or augmented with some manner of expensive magic that could be had for the right price. In his head he had been peeling her clothes away and lost in the lurid, beautiful thoughts so intensely that it never registered that she was approaching him.

"It says 'Art is all we have left'." she spoke, shattering his dream-scape with harsh reality. The good thing was that reality was almost better.
His silence prompted her to respond "Saw you eyeballing me when I came in.". Her voice was just as beautiful as the rest of her.
"I-- Shit. I didn't mean to... Fuck, you know... I couldn't help..." he paused, sighing with defeat. "Yea, I admit I was staring. A little."
"Oh-ho, just a little?" She spoke, her smile exposing teeth that were a dazzling white.
"Okay so... maybe a lot. I didn't mean to offend you--"
"Hush. Stop worrying and just relax."
"I... okay." This would have to be the first time he had ever been caught ogling a woman and not been shot a disgusted or angry look. Even before his hair had changed.
"See? Is it that hard to stay calm?"
"Not when you're telling me to." he admitted, flat-out.
She laughed, he smiled involuntarily, and she shook her head. "Why are you sitting in this dirty corner by yourself?"

Why she was interested in him at all was confusing for him. He had to look like a train-wreck. "It's pretty much how I spend all my time off these days."
"Drinking in a dirty corner in a dirty bar just above The Cloud?"
"... Yea, pretty much." he conceded and looked down at his drink. It was much more depressing when said aloud.
"You must be an officer." She said with laser-accurate certainty, raising one brow just a bit.
"I... yeah.," he looked at himself to see if something gave it away but that was not the case, he wore a plain outfit that didn't stand out at all. "That obvious, huh?"
"You have body language a lot of other people don't so you are either a soldier or a an officer of the law. Either way I hear it's pretty much a hell you can't get out of."
"Just where do you hear that?"
"Places."
"Clean bars in clean parts of Espher?"
She smirked "Why haven't you just asked me to sit down already?"

The thought had never even crossed his mind, inviting her to sit down. He was sure she was just wasting time waiting on a boyfriend or fiance. Moving to clear the table (or at least wipe up what he had spilled over the evening) he pushed the empty ash-tray aside only to have her take his hand and guide it right back to the table.

She sat down with a grace he had never seen so close. In fact, this whole situation was surreal to him. She pulled a silver case from her coat pocket and thumbed the latch that held it closed. She pulled a long cigarette from the case and placed it between her immaculate lips. Her eyes flicked upward to look at him expectantly. He stated into them, this close he could tell that they were either complete biological replacements or natural.

In sudden realization he scrambled from pocket to pocket to find his lighter. After a few awkward moments he pulled the thin metal rectangle from his pocket and flicked it open, offering it to her. She leaned in just far enough to place the tip of the cigarette above the lighter. A flame sparked and burned blue, igniting the tobacco as she took her first drag of the cigarette. She exhaled to the side out of courtesy and eyed the three-quarter-full bottle on the table while he put his lighter away.

"How are you not a complete drunken mess right now?" she inquired, laughing in a way that made it impossible for him to be less than cheery.
He grinned and shrugged his shoulders "Maybe it's my form of artistry."
"Oh, I bet. The hangovers must be beautiful to watch."
"Only when I'm smart enough to cut myself off from finishing the entire thing."
"Doesn't look like you're smart tonight, Cherub."
"I'm usually not, no."
"Then you won't mind me helping you finish it?"
As if there were some possibility he could deny this woman anything but his still-beating heart-- and that was just because he was pretty sure blood wouldn't suit her. "Oh ye-yeah, go ahead, it's already paid for."

She reached toward the wall and plucked a glass from a stack recessed in the wall and took the bottle to pour her drink. "Oh, good, that means I don't have to pay anything, right?"
"Wouldn't dream of asking."
She grinned broadly and delicately tapped her finger on her cigarette, sending ashes into the glass tray. "I think you're setting a record, here."
"A record for what?"
"For how long it has ever taken a man to ask me my name."
He had been so caught up in the moment he hadn't even thought of it. "I... err, sorry, what is your name?"
"Marie."
"It's really nice to meet you, Marie."
Marie shook her head and then made an unfurling flourish with her hand just before her chin as she instructed him "'And my name is...'"
"Ash." he said
“Oh, is that short for something?”
“,,, Ashley.”
"Oooh! I bet you got a lot of shit for that in school!" she said, her excitement infectious.
"You have no idea how many times I asked my parents -why- they chose that name. They didn't even bother with a middle name."
She laughed, it was so easy, it seemed, to bring that laughter from her and spread its warmth around. "I like it. It's unusual. Like me. Ashley--"
"Ash, just call me Ash."
"Ash, I really am curious about something but you can't be mad when I ask, all right?"
"I ... guess." he had a feeling which question she wanted to ask.
"What's with the hair?"

He was right and he went on to tell her the truth. Ash had, a few years after puberty, inexplicably had his raven black hair go shock-white. There was no mental trauma in his life outside of dealing with being stuck at the bottom class for the middle tiers. Money was a bit tight in his home but his mother managed to save up enough to take him to a doctor of reasonable standing.

Through testing and examination they had written it off as just some extremely rare genetic fuck-up. What followed for about six years was constant color treatments that never managed to stick. They did, however. slowly manage to darken his hair to something of a deep gray with random streaks of black where some of his hair had actually been successfully treated. He was far ahead of everyone else at the irony of his name and the way his hair had turned out.

“It's like they knew.” Marie said, her smile far too warm for her to be rude.
"I... it's some kind of genetic thing, my mother nearly worked herself to death working odd jobs to get the money for the color treatments and they just didn't really work. Used to be as white as snow." Ash spoke, although it was pretty much a miracle if snow ever fell in any part of Espher, much less being pure white.
"I see... and your name..." she began.
"Yea, I got more hell out of kids for the hair than the name. It was just another place for them to pick at me."
"You could do a scalp replacement, you know. I hear they're pretty well priced now, especially since they've been having to compete with NeuTek's fiber-optic jobs." NeuTek had been transplanting scalps of fiber-optic hair that could adjust color as often as someone desired.
"Eh, everyone already knows me this way, if I change it, it'll just be weird, you know?"
"Aha. So now you're a masochist"
"I live in Espher, don't I?"

She laughed again, taking a drink and smiling at him with blinding cheer. Ashing her cigarette, she looked into his eyes deeply. There was a rush of heat in his cheeks that he hadn't felt since he was in his last relationship... and that was many years past. She crossed her legs and reached across the table, taking his hand which he had no objections to. He was still worried that he was flushed, that he were embarrassed but instead he felt like he had been talking to an angel.

She tilted her head slightly "You have questions, don't you, Cherub?"
Ash furrowed bis brow, "I... well, yeah. I have no idea why a woman so beautiful would ever bother to come to this place at all.".
"I came here, Ash, because I remember how it was when I was a child. I was very lucky to get out of there. I also miss the times when people didn't recognize me."
“Recognize you? Are you famous for something?” he was sure it was modeling of some sort.
“I was wondering if you knew, that explains something ”.
Ash frowned, immediately struck by curiosity "I... I'm sorry but I don't... really know who you are?"
"Oh, go up a dozen levels and you'll see something of mine eventually."
"What do you do?"
She simply shrugged off her jacket and pulled her tee-shirt taut to make it perfectly readable... and her chest all the more apparent. "I'm an artist."
"That's a pretty broad term."
"I do a bit of everything. Music, painting, I've written some things, and I've done a fair share of modeling--"
"I feel like an asshole for not knowing who you are-- wait, I know! I've definitely seen you modeling something... I can't remember but... it was an advertisement...” Ash muttered to himself
"Well, I did do an advertisement for Genetic Cosmetics. When I create my art. I go by Anna. I came in here because something told me to do it and it led me to you. There is something about you that just pulls me in and I can't place my finger on it."
"My winning personality?"
She laughed and gripped his hand tightly. "No, but I can see you as a person. Who you are, I know you're a good person and I see that less and less as days go by.”
Ash wondered, immediately, if she were on the run from someone, if perhaps her last work had been too far over the line and had provoked some sort of threat “I don't know what to say.”
"You don't need to say anything, I know how you're feeliing."
“If that is the case then you've got a really good poker-face going on.” he spoke, self loathing perhaps a bit exposed within his own words.

They continued to drink, she smoked a few more cigarettes and conversation had shot all around various topics but every time he was left feeling a bit better about himself. Ash has began to think she were some sort of roaring, inviting flame in the middle of a very cold world.  Something he would be hate to be without. The fact she was so beautiful was secondary.

She laughed almost every time she spoke, she was so enthusiastic that it was strange. She seemed to just love the moment, to be having a great time just... talking. He had not, before his ex-fiancee had cheated on him, felt so happy in quite a long time. It felt so good to be able to escape the world and curl up next to this source of warmth. It had, however, been four or five hours and last call had been announced.

“Would you like to come to my place? Talk some more?” Ash asked, no idea where his sudden confidence had been born.
“I think that would be all right but you sure aren't going to drive.” Marie said, concern in her voice.
Ash laughed “No, no... I call for a cab. I know the driver for this area better than I knew my cousins.”
“Just ride with me.” she said simply.
“That sounds nice.”
“Come with me, I'm parked over here,” she indicated, pointing “It's the red one.”
Ash looked at the car and widened his eyes a few moments. “You drive a Nexus W-X?”
“Yea, I love it, it's like my baby.”
“Classy car... damn. I was never able to ride in one but we sure as hell gave their drivers a lot of tickets. I always loved this damn car. The design just works for me. Price? Not so much.”
She grinned and keyed small device in her hand, the doors opening slowly. “The prices dropped -a lot- when the W-X-Squared was released.”
“How much?”
“Enough for me to afford it, I forget the price but it was about half of the value it was when they were fresh off of the assembly line.”
“The W-X-Squared looked so stupid. The way they changed the front end. It just looked wrong.”
Moving to slip into the driver's seat, Marie turned her head to Ash as he carefully got in. “We have a similar kind of taste.”
“I guess we do.”

The Nexus automobile company was almost always creating the newest, hottest cars that all the rich people could afford. Their ads made no attempt to appeal to less wealthy individuals and they didn't even bother advertising beneath the cloud. Several years previous the Nexus W-X has been the top of the line, it had been the thing of dreams for several people and they had reduced production upon it due to a financial scandal that had blown up during the time. If there were any sharp angles on the car then one would be hard pressed to find them. It was all curves, even the windows and it seemed as if it had been carved from a solid block of metal, it had no seams aside from the doors, hood, and trunk. Even then those has been almost invisible on the machine.  It was definitely one of his favorite cars.

Marie slipped the ID-stick into the ignition port and it confirmed her thumb-print before it brought the car to life.  “You're off duty, right?”
Ash was so absorbed in looking over the car that he took a moment to answer. “Yea, they, well they don't like us doing anything remotely fun in uniform.”
“Good. Now, if you'll put on your seat-belt, I'll show you a few reasons why I love this car.” Marie said with impish delight.

Ash did as he was told, grinning, and buckled in. The car had come to life but it was impossible to feel, it retracted its landing struts and glided out of the parking slot and headed for the skyway. Ash couldn't even feel the turns she made but dampening devices helped a lot with that. As did the alcohol. What would follow would be more traffic violations than he could count (or remember) but it was one of the most exciting nights of his entire life, escaping notice of police forces because he knew their patrol patterns and happily passed along that knowledge.

Riding shotgun in this beautiful car with this beautiful woman and worrying about exactly nothing at all, Ash was free. He was able to shed all the burdens on his shoulders and exist, for that time, purely to enjoy life. No concerns that existed outside the two of them in that car. It was amazing and it was the first time in his he had ever felt this way.
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