Title: Kaffee and Conversation

Author: Arsenic

Disclaimers: Ms. Jardine and Duncan are the property of R/P/D

Warnings: There is the barest, smallest hint that sometime in the future of this story, this could become a slash situation. If you like that idea, feel free to use your imagination, if you hate it, well, do the same. Oh, and there are two whole swear words.

Notes: <: strong black coffee with whipped cream on top, served with a small liqueur glass of rum. *: the premiere hotel in Vienna founded in 1840. **: a blend of coffee and hot milk. ***: famous dessert created by the founder of the Sacher hotel and available all over Vienna, it consists of chocolate torte with a layer of apricot jam beneath the chocolate coating. //...// denotes a characters thoughts.

Thanks: To Pegasus for the lyrics. To Amanda for letting me do the wheel even though I was out of the country and not sure if I would be able to actually complete it. To Dana for being understanding about her lyrics and convincing me to participate. To Tianyu, for the challenge...um, does this meet it? *snicker*

Dedication: For Skindy, because cuddling isn't as easy as it looks and Vienna is lonely without you.

Vienna, 2083

The one time pianist Claudia Jardine, now going by the name Maura Byrne, slipped into the Frauenhuber coffeehouse and waited to be seated. Once at a window table she barely glanced at the menu before taking a chance to survey the room, recreating sketches of how things must have been when Mozart had played for its patrons.

She answered with an offhand mutter of "PharisEer<" when asked what she wanted in German. Still preoccupied with her surroundings, she only looked up after a laugh floating down from the waitress caught her attention.

"Did I say something funny?" She inquired in German.

"Sorry, it's just that I pegged you as an American as surely as anyone who has ever come in here."

Maura smiled, semi-charmed in spite of her initial wish to be left alone. "You were right."

"We don't get that many Americans who speak the language."

"Don't be too impressed, any music major worth her weight in silver knows at least one language besides her own."

"Music major?" The waitress subconsciously moved closer to the table, her eyes opening fractionally wider. Maura noted, with an underlying interest that she didn't care to explore, the perfection of their dark grey shade. She opened her mouth to answer and shut it, nodding casually instead. Her preference for grey eyes wasn't that great, and she hadn't come here to talk, even if someone was willing to listen. The novelty of that had faded after fifty years or so. The waitress took the hint in Maura's silence and went to go put the order in.

Maura had arrived in Vienna two days before and spent her first two days catching up on sleep and learning about the public transportation system. She had come here, this time, after cutting her third career as a pianist short. It wasn't that people had stopped listening, or adoring. Or that she had ceased to like either sensation, even if they weren't quite the thrill they had been for the first thirty years or so in the profession. It was that she had stopped listening, let alone adoring. So she had performed a test. She had played her favorite piece, Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, best known as the Pathetique. Upon finishing she had tried complimenting herself about one non-technical aspect of the work. Coming up dry, she had made up her mind that it was time to quit, at least for awhile. Time to find that compliment.

At first she had thought it might be the maturation of her fighting skills affecting her playing. She had finally given in to Duncan's pleading that she learn some form of defense almost thirty years after first death, close to the time she had killed the pianist known by the public as Claudia Jardine. Until around fifteen years ago, however, her ability had been beneath mention. At that time that she realized she had begun to enjoy new experiences even more than playing, something she had previously thought impossible. Then again, she would have once told you that living forever was impossible.

Still, even having reached this revelation and stepped up her training, her music had retained its depth and inspiration. Then, no more than five months earlier, the change had occurred. She had no longer experienced the urge to get up in the middle of the night and play. Or rush home from dinner parties with friends to work on a Lizst she hadn't thought of in years. Or even just listen to the reverberations of a single scale echo in an empty concert hall. The story told in eighty-eight black and white pieces had become redundant to her.

So, she made arrangements for a plane crash, new name and background, and set off to the "city of music" in hopes of finding new inspiration within. Failing that, she was looking forward to wandering in cathedrals, sitting for an evening of Mozart in the same opera house where it had originally played, hiking through the woods surrounding the city, and splurging on Viennese chocolate. Most of all, having time to answer only to herself rather than agents and journalists and fans seemed a luxury beyond all the rest.

Having reminded herself off all this, she didn't question her motives in having dismissed the attractive waitress moments earlier. She glanced up to watch the girl in question move around the tables. She was young, twenty-five at most. Maura would have bet that she stood five foot four, if that. Her features were equally tiny making her appear well proportioned. She wore thick brown hair in a braid that fell to her shoulderblades, blowing a single errant strand out of her face as she maneuvered with a tray through the crowded space. Maura couldn't help but admire the energy she seemed to keep up in the face of obnoxious tourists and less-than-patient co-workers.

Just as Maura was thinking that, the girl seemed to sense herself being watched and turned to catch Maura in the act. The waitress smiled with reserve at first, reverting to a more natural looking grin when Maura smiled softly back. The girl headed for the kitchen and returned in less time than Maura would have thought possible with the drink she had ordered.

"Thanks." Maura pulled the coffee tray to herself and began to prepare her drink the way she liked. Without realizing she was going to, she spoke. "Listen, I'm sorry about earlier - you could call it something of a mid-life crisis."

The waitress shrugged. "That's okay. If that was the worst someone had ever treated me in here, I'd be living in a fantasy universe." She gave a dry smile that had Maura smiling in reciprocation.

"Yeah, I had friends who did the waitress thing." All musicians did, it was only through the good graces of Duncan that she had avoided such jobs herself.

Another shrug. "There are worse things. And definitely worse places."

It was only then that Maura heard the slight difference of pronunciation in the waitress's German. "I can't place your accent."

"Russia." The waitress looked over her shoulder at the man motioning impatiently for her to come. "Enjoy your coffee." With a quick smile she headed off in his direction leaving Maura curious as to the rest of that story. She sipped at her coffee and read a book she had brought along. Once in awhile, she glanced up and enjoyed watching the small girl float from table to table. Eventually the waitress made it back to Maura's.

"How's everything?"

"Wonderful." Impetuously, Maura grabbed the girl's hand as she turned to go. "What time are you off?" She figured she was probably as confused at her motivations as the girl would be, but if there was one thing a musician could usually count on, it was her instincts. Maura's were screaming at her not to dismiss the tiny girl as another face in the crowd. Besides, self-reflection could be a fantastic release, but nobody had ever denied that it was lonely as well.

"I'm sorry?" The waitress looked at Maura like she had suggested going for a swim in the Danube in mid-January.

"Of work. You do go home, yes?" She didn't let go of the hand.

"Oh. Um..." The girl shifted her wait from one foot to the next.

"I just want to know how it is that you got to Vienna from Russia, and why you lit up like an over-decorated Christmas tree when I said I was a music major."

The girl hesitated for a second more before smiling. "I get off in two hours."

Maura let go of her hand. "Meet me on KErntner-Stra&e at the top of the stairs going down to the schnellbahn at Stephansplatz."

The girl nodded and began heading off. She turned suddenly. "I'm Anya. Anya Arntzen."

"Maura Byrne. Pleased to meet you." She watched as Anya disappeared into the kitchen. She lingered for about an hour before paying her bill, leaving a large tip, and stepping out to go wander Stephansdom for another hour.

"So," Anya was nearly on top of Maura before she saw her coming from the crowd. "Where are we going?"

"My hotel."

"And that would be?"

Maura affected a mischievous look. "You'll see when we get there."

"I sure as hell hope you aren't planning to kill me and eat me, because I have to go along now out of sheer curiosity." The two women walked briskly against the cold mid-winter air. In less than ten minutes they were crossing the street from the Opera House, having arrived at their destination. Anya halted upon seeing were Maura was headed. Maura looked back with an expression of mild confusion as to why her companion had stopped.

"You're kidding, right?" Anya looked pointedly at the building in front of them. "You are not staying at the Sacher*."

Maura fidgeted. She didn't like discussing money, never had, even when it hadn't been her own. "If you want, we can go somewhere else."

"I'm going to let you in on a little secret, I probably can't afford any place someone like you is going to be willing to eat." She sounded belligerent, but Maura knew the color of embarrassment on someone's skin.

"Someone like me, huh?" Maura shook her head and gave a gently derisive laugh. "At one point, I think you would have been right in making that assumption." The girl could have no conception of how long ago that had been. "For arguments sake, let's say you still are. You come in there with me, allow me to have a dining companion, and I will pick up the check for both of us."

Anya rocked on her feet as if contemplating flight. "That's all you want? Dinner?"

Maura opened her mouth to ask what the hell else she could want and shut it. After some thought, she opened it again. "I don't need to pay someone for that. And if I did, I would have too much respect for you to offer." She kept her voice soft and hoped the girl would take her word for it.

Anya cocked her head thoughtfully, nodded after a moment, and, having made her decision, practically skipped up to meet Maura. She laughed shortly. "I've never actually been inside before."

Maura gave a somewhat rueful smile. "Their service is the best in the world. Vienna is beautiful at maintaining an air of the old-fashioned." She didn't think she could explain how reassuring that was to her at this point.

The two women were seated almost immediately. Maura ordered a wine, poured some for each of them and settled back into the chair. Anya drummed her fingers on the table too rapidly, glanced around, and beat Maura to asking the first question.

"You said you were a music student? Where? In what?"

Maura took a slow sip of the wine and figured that if she wanted honesty, then being honest was only fair. "I've studied at pretty much every major conservatory in the world, at some point or another. My main study is piano." She leaked self-assurance at the statement. She had tempered most of her youthful egotism, but hadn't rid herself of an immense pride in her talent.

"Every single one?" Anya took a sip and considered the woman across the table from her. "Either you are a compulsive liar, are completely delusional, or you're telling the truth and there is a long, possibly twisted story behind that truth."

Maura knew that as an immortal, honesty was only a virtue as long as you were intelligent about it. Her honesty and sanity would have to go unchampioned at this time. She waved a hand dismissively. "Assume what you like. How did you end up here from Russia?"

It was Anya who took her time sipping the wine now. "I come from a large family - Russian Orthodoxy and all that. I'm the second to youngest, not counting the three that died. Anyway, I've had a lot of time watching my siblings waste their lives in Mother Russia." Anya's mouth twisted at the normally fond nickname for the country. "I just figured I'd be different."

They both sat in silence. Maura had learned while teaching her own students that if you waited, more of any tale was usually forthcoming.

"Vienna's University is cheap, even for foreigners. My uncle taught me German when I was young, so language wasn't a barrier. Plus, I figured, correctly, that you have the benefit of one of the world's greatest cultural centers around you, and a year round tourist industry to support, hence available jobs."

"Housing has got to be expensive."

"A couple of friends of mine decided I had the right idea and came along. We housed together for the first year, then found other people to take as housemates. I have the job at the coffeehouse and a couple of assistant teaching stints in the undergrad department." Anya shrugged in her now-familiar fashion. "I'm surviving." Her silence radiated defensiveness.

"Hadn't any doubts. I..." Maura considered her options for finishing that sentence. //I was lonely?// It was true. Maura had been removed from most of humankind since the few mortal friends that she had managed to maintain had died almost forty years ago. With the exception of the rare student or two she had continued to take on, Duncan and a few of his immortal friends, she hadn't allowed much of anyone to get close. Still, vulnerability was not her favorite front to present to people she had just met. //I found you interesting and attractive?// True again, but obviously not the right line to throw after their conversation in the street. "You showed an interest in me. In someone besides yourself. That isn't a common occurrence these days."

Anya considered this. "No." She watched out of the corner of her eye as the meal was served. "No, I don't suppose it is."

"I should mention that you are the one who accepted my offer."

"Touch1." Anya's fingernails had remained on the table the entire time and now resumed their drumming at a slower pace. "I'm a math student, it's not often I get to speak with someone who doesn't think in terms of calculations and equations." It was that simple, offhand admission that seemed to loose a torrent of generally less personal, but equally entertaining questions and answers between them. The conversation became less charged, if subtly more revealing. Hours flew by in laughter, mock whispers, and tiny, friendly touches. Anya accepted each less warily than the one before it. Maura barely kept from grinning at several forgotten sensations of simple human interaction.

Maura told them to charge dinner to her room and turned to Anya. "Accompany me up." She barely kept herself from wincing at the way the words had come out as an order rather than a request. Too many years of getting her own way, she supposed.

Gray eyes shaded over to a fierce black. "I told you I don't do that."

"And I told you that wasn't what I wanted. You were interested in me because I studied music. I want to play for you." Maura didn't know where that desire had risen up from. She hadn't played in over a month, not since her latest "death." Until now, she had used the piano in her suite as a convenient place for discarded clothing. All she was aware of right now, though, was wanting to see this girl's face while she played.

"Really?" A near palpable excitement replaced the distrust of moments earlier.

"Yeah, really." Maura shook her head at the quicksilver emotions Anya displayed repeatedly and laughed. "C'mon." She got up from the table and waited for Anya to follow. Anya gasped but declined to comment as they got off the elevator at the top floor. Maura sauntered across the hall, unlocked the door, and held out a hand for Anya to precede her. She glided past the woman gawking at the regal suite to the phone.

"Two Melanges** and two Sachertortes.***" Maura looked at her companion for approval and watched as a distracted Anya mouthed an enthusiastic "yum" and closed her eyes in pantomimed ecstasy. Maura thanked the person on the other end and hung up.

"Play, play." Anya had come up to where Maura was standing and began to push her towards the baby grand in the center of the suite.

"Dessert first, then play. Patience." It was said with mock sterness. Maura easily remembered a time when patience had been the virtue she contained the least of - and she hadn't been all that virtuous in any other sense.

Dessert arrived and Maura lingered over it. For the first time she could remember, she was nervous about playing for another. Not that she thought Anya would know the difference between technical perfection and truly brilliant music. Maura would though. She wanted nothing less than that brilliance for Anya. For herself.

Long after the last drop of coffee had been drained Maura admitted defeat and went to the piano bench. Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu No. 4 in C-sharp minor seemed to pour into and from her fingers. Maura played through to its finish. Each note fell in its appropriate place, each crescendo thundered, each emotion of the composer came through in Steuben quality clarity. Maura sighed in disappointment. She, the artist, had been absent of the piece's beauty.

"That was...gorgeous." Anya failed miserably at infusing any type of enthusiasm into her voice.

Maura turned to her audience, only having the energy to be slightly indignant. Anya had a point. It had been gorgeous, just not anything more. "That's all?"

"Chopin." She said the name as if it explained everything. Maura motioned for her to fill in the blanks. "I'm just not terribly enraptured of him. I find his beauty...I don't know, perhaps cold is the word I'm looking for."

"Cold?" Maura scooted toward the end of the bench.

"Well, he has all these fantasies and waltzes and nocturnes and mazurkas, but for a romantic composer he can seem terribly...formulaic at times."

"And you find other composers not to be?"

"Of course."

"Do you have a favorite?"

Anya didn't even take time for consideration. "Rachmaninoff."

"Hmm." Maura took the challenge Anya had subconsciously laid out before her and turned again to face the keys. She started to play the only Rachmaninoff that she could remember offhand, Piano Concerto No. 2 in C-minor. It had been a while since she had touched his compositions. After fumbling for the first few minutes she found herself lost in the rolling of her fingers against already warmed ivory. Vibrations ran the length of her body, settling deeply in her lungs and mind until survival became a matter of breathing each note. In, out, in, out. Her fingers flew.

Eventually her fingers stopped of their own will. She couldn't remember having played most of the piece, just the recently lost, once-familiar sensation of being totally rapt in the music. Her music.

"Oh." The sound was so soft, Anya wasn't even sure she had made it at first. Maura turned her direction to acknowledge the reaction and the two women merely stared at each other for an indeterminate length of time. When Anya remembered how her vocal chords worked she managed to string together a whole sentence. "I don't think you are a compulsive liar."

"I'm sorry?" Maura was still slightly dazed.

"I believe you when you say you have studied at all the great conservatories."

"Ah." Definition was slowly returning to her thoughts. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." It came to Anya that it was probably getting late. She glanced at her watch. "Shit."

"What's wrong?"

"It's nearly two in the morning, I have to go."

"Stay." The word came out of Maura's mouth before she could think of a diplomatic way to cushion it. She did wince minutely this time, but was glad that there had been a plaintive note in her tone that hadn't been there for the last "request."

"Fuck you." Anya attempted to cover up the betrayal she felt by getting up to gather her coat.

"Not interested. Not yet, anyway." Maura wasn't fooled by the hasty actions.

"Then what do you want? A pet? There are plenty of shops around. You can probably afford a thoroughbred."

"Shut up for a second, will you?" Maura rubbed her temples. "Look, I came to Vienna because I had lost my...I don't know, faith, intensity, motivation? All of the above and more, I suppose. It's been waning for longer than you could possibly believe. Tonight, here, with you, I gained some part of that back." She paused and when Anya didn't interrupt she went on. "I can't explain what it is with you. There are no clear cut beginnings to show you, and, so far, no dead ends. Maybe that is why I offered. Because all I can see are possibilities at this moment. You remind me that word exists beyond the dictionary. Consider proving me right about you."

Anya rocked, betraying her nerves. "People don't do this. They don't find each other in a coffee shop and end up spending the night together pretending like it means something."

"Pretending?"

"You're saying that you came halfway across the world to find inspiration and I'm what did it for you? Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?"

"I embraced insanity long ago. I'm hardly going to let sanity stand in my way now."

Short fingernails tapped furiously on the sofa's edge. "Just a night?"

Maura was the one to shrug this time. "Let's say the offer is open for as long as you are willing to take me up on it."

"You'll play more Rachmaninoff than Chopin?" Anya fought against the corners of her mouth turning up. She lost.

Maura saw her victory in Anya's hesitant question. "He's my new favorite composer."

Lyrics:

Circle
By: Harry Chapin

Chorus:
All my life's a circle
Sunrise and Sundown
The Moon rolls through the night time
'til the daybreak comes around
All my life's a circle
But I can't tell you why
Season's spinning round again
The years keep rolling by,

(1)
It seems like I've been here before
I can't remember when
And I got this funny feeling
That we'll all be together again
There are no straight lines make up my life
And all the roads there've been
There's no clear cut beginnings
And so far no dead ends(no chorus)

(2)
I've found you a thousand times
I guess you've done the same
But then we lose each other
It's just like a children's game
That's not why I'm here again
The thought runs through my mind
Our love is like a circle
Let's go around one more time.