[A beat, the glass in her hand-- and then she knocks back the entire contents of it before she takes the seat, straight forward enough, and sets the glass down near the bottle. The pistol at the small of her back sits certain, bumping against the back of the chair with a faint click and hiss of the brushed metal and composite fiber.]
You can relax. I'm not gonna waste a perfectly good bottle of booze on poisoning you with it.
[Because that's exactly the kind of thing you should tell someone to put their mind at ease. She settled in the chair - pins the pistol, hooks her elbow over the edge of the chair back and raises her chin by a series of degrees to him. In theory, it's more casual posture than leaning across the table toward him might by. In reality, there's something of a wolfish danger to it: like an animal settling back on its heels, readying itself to spring.]
So let's not bullshit each other, Attano. I'm here to make you a deal.
[ He settles back as she does. One leg kicked out under the table and the other curling back under, tapping slightly, bobbing his leg with the action. Might be nerves might be habit but where she takes the drink, gives him the confidence to take a longer mouthful. Not that he doesn't trust her. It's just that he doesn't trust her when it comes to him. ]
Quality only increases the likelihood in my experience.
[ A dismissive shrug, he's got a lot of stories to that end and undoubtedly she wanted to hear none of them. The glass settled back against the table, turns it slowly between thumb and forefinger. This all tastes bitterly of something he isn't sure he wants, but she's got him here. Doesn't respond, she'd make the offer whether he said he wanted to listen or not, learned that much so far. Swallows on the taste of it, and waited for whatever she felt like saying. ]
[It was bare minimum drinkable by pretty much any standard, good only by merit of being on some backwater planet without access to any supply lines. A step up from toilet bowl wine, sure, but it's not like she's peddling anything fancy here and pointing it out - the stark simplicity of it - is as close to a cut as she's likely going to get tonight. Here, anyway. In the swaddled, well-worn and comfortable air of the rover, the track lights lending a low burn of yellow and gold to the rims of jars and the emptiness of her cup, it almost feels like something that could wound.
She's itching to pour herself another drink but she stays her hand, fingers instead idle near the collar of her jacket - tracing the lapel with an easy going angle of her thumbnail that belies the sharp angles of her consonants and the twitch of a curl at her lip.]
Attano, I don't like you and you don't like me. [An oversimplification at best; in the breast pocket of her jacket is a charm carved from bone, no longer than her first finger.] But I think we both know we have some similar interests.
[Her hand strays then, wandering to one of Jasper's jars on the table. Shepard's careful not to move it - in fact barely touches it, her thumb tapping along the table directly beside it. She's not gentle - not for anyone and not for Corvo especially -, but she's gentle with this, touch exceedingly light.] Jasper's not going to get out of your way and there's nothing I can do to make you stop, but you know that - don't you? [Knows he's dangerous. Knows there's something wrong in him; he'd apologized to her on the Neheda all those months ago. Was still apologizing, maybe. She lifts her eyes from the jar, hand stilling. Breath stilling. Somewhere in the rover and sounding farther away than it should, the roomba makes a small cheerful noise.] So it sounds to me like I've got two options. One, I make sure you don't come back from something. Or two, we work together and you tell me when it looks like shit's about to hit the fan.
[ There's a lot of things he could say, right then. But the one he wants to most isn't to anything she asked. It's to correct her. She has him wrong, she has him exactly right. It's all off by degrees. A dance where they stepped at the wrong time, maybe. But who is he to deny them their favourite steps that way as to do something like correct her?
She is stubborn and he is wilful and he does nothing but look across the space across them, the measured half turns between his fingers of the glass. The swallow of the whiskey and he moves his leg then, chair pushed out at the angle to brace his ankle on the opposite knee, fingers curling over the curve of his boot and drummed his fingers in slow consideration. He'd might have wanted to have this conversation months ago, on the Nehada when it was all too raw and Aeryn had listened to the worst of the things he had to say. He supposes he still does, it's just none of this is as he expected but she liked doing that to him. Competition they inadvertently entered. ]
I did not know you played politic. [ His fingers curled around the soft blue head of Firn, asleep and rising and falling with slow breath, such a tiny fragile body. An absent made gesture, he would never dream of looking away from her when she was speaking to him like this. ] You would hear nothing I had to say before, why now?
[A ghost of disgust passes over her face, there and gone again over 'politic.' She is-- playing at it with no real grace or cunning, but there's something hard and certain in her expression when the flicker of annoyance passes that suggests she's at least genuine (though was that even doubtful? there's nothing really uncertain about a pointed death threat matched with an ultimatum).
She draws her hand back from near the jar, setting it instead across her thigh under the edge of the table - hidden from view, but her pistol isn't exactly in a place to be convenient, so there's very little threat to it. Maybe no one's ever told him not to look a gift horse in the mouth.]
[ And there is another difference between them he supposed. This is not new to him, it is not pleasant but there's a familiarity that doesn't make him baulk as hard as it seems to her. Firn purrs low in that whirring sound they all seem to make and Wade's own pet butting against his wrist looking for food probably, if he had to guess, they always were. Open little mouths, beady dark eyes. Hungry, hungry and finally he breaks from her gaze to look down at it. Sighing weary and pretends it because of its needy little sounds -- not for the weight between these words. ]
I think you know it makes all the difference, because you still might decide to leave me behind at an inopportune moment. [ Glances up heavy under his brows, hair still somehow managing to fall in his face, then back down again. ] Besides, you're being vague. Tell what you what, exactly? Tell you when I think I am going to go mad? Or when I am going to decide that no one is worth their life, and remove them from my path? What exactly is it that I am supposed to be saying to you that doesn't just damn me further in your eyes?
[She reaches then, taking the bottle up and unscrewing the cap. There had been a thought to save the next drink for either when they'd come to an arrangement or she'd made a decision but-- fuck it. She pours herself another glass, rights the bottle and leaves it open and at the ready.]
I don't care if it's something that's only going to screw you up. But if it could hurt the people you're close to, then someone needs to act as a buffer. [Does she have to spell it out for him? She thought he was smarter than that - or maybe that's just the acerbic thing she's telling herself to avoid being upfront with the facts (because the latter feels too much like giving something up and he already has more of that than he deserves).
She takes a swig from the glass; the vodka stings high at the back of her throat, burns when she inhales through her nose - turns the glass slowly in her hand and watches for a moment as the liquid moves along the sides.]
This isn't about you or anything you did. I like Khezek [and Terra was a sweet girl] and if he's gonna get caught up in something, then I want to know about it.
[ he means to be polite, calm, flat even words and perfect calm tone. But she has a habit of undoing those things. Of dragging the worst up and out of him when he intends in every way to be better.
She just undoes that quickly. Even though he knows he has no right to complain, he has a lifetime of penance to give, and that should ought to be enough to hold the sneer, the bitter words. Narrows his gaze across the small space they had backed themselves into. ]
So you can ignore my warnings and explanations all over again because they do not measure up to your expectations?
[She hammers the glass down, a loud bang of (thankfully) reinforced glass on the metal tabletop that makes the animal in Corvo's arms start back, large ears pinning.]
What do you expect? [It's heat under steel, the bite in how blunt it is though her voice hasn't raised and her gaze on him - fixed and sharp and demanding - hasn't wavered.] For me to just trust you? Would you trust you, Corvo?
[ The reaction is instant, Firn makes a worried noise and Wade's pressed his face in close, and protective by habit his hand curls around. Stare at her, all cold and calculating like he's waiting for her to pull the gun in the same second. But when it doesn't his jaw unclenched and the stiff hold of him settled. ]
No. I would have shot me, and left my body for the beasts to eat. [ Flat cold admission. Eyes down again and away. But it's not an answer to whether he trusts himself. Swallows back, watching Firn instead of looking at her -- he can't, cannot bear it right then. He still doesn't know why she hasn't. She has guns, and she has friends, it would have been simple.
The small creature settles with the touch. ] Will you believe me this time if I say I am not in control of it? Of any of it?
If you say that [--and she answers quickly, like it requires no mulling over whatsoever; her expression piercing and her lip twitching at a snarl she's fighting to keep down--], I'd call bullshit. Because sometimes you know exactly what you're doing.
[Using his abilities for stupid games on Ajna; what he'd done to her; pulling Jasper out of the biting cold after the shuttle crash - there was control there, in the action and the application of it. Not always cold, not always cruel, but intent didn't matter, did it? Not here. Not for her. Not for anyone.]
Just because you don't always or because you don't have control of the side effects doesn't mean you shouldn't be responsible for the rest of it.
[ It prickles along the line of his shoulders, pulling up like a wounded animal. Stiffening and going cold and sharp and there's the sound of something, that sounds like a woman's begging voice in the back of his head but he wills her down. Not now, not now, he cannot bear it. She is begging and pleading. ( You'll know what to do, won't you? Corvo? )
The breath is harsh as a gasp when it bursts out of him, all steady recoil and drawing in. He means to say so many things but for all the hours of pain he'd endured, he learned to never think further than surviving the next few minutes. He cannot bear to hear what he's done, what he will do.
He doesn't know what he's doing, he hasn't known for months. But he cannot admit that, because to say that is to say it's wrong, it's all wrong but he can't undo it. He's let them all get close and that's a mistake, of that he's sure, and the only other thing he is sure of is that he never wanted to have this conversation with her. ]
[There's more than just an edge of sarcasm there - because if anyone knows, shouldn't it be her? She can taste the flat bitter taste of dark rancid water on the back of her tongue under the bite of the booze; can remember the creeping sensation of black eyes on her and the cold of the mark and the vicious cut of a knife in skin (and she can't breathe; the black tightening like a vice), and the shape of a small girl's hands in her own. Or a boy's. Had they gone out in a dark, blinking void - there and gone -, or had it been an exploding shuttle?
And because it hadn't mattered why she'd done what she had, said what she did on the Neheda - it was still insubordination. Bullshit, maybe, but her opinion doesn't actually mean anything just like she can say she's using PKN7 to prepare a bunch of hopeless cases a hundred times, but that's not going to stop anyone from thinking she's gunning for something bigger. Because she's sitting here, having this conversation, and the question Jasper's always going to be asking is 'Why are you being so nice to me?'
There's a whiff of disappointment there too in how she takes her glass up again, the look she settles on him - like maybe she'd expected or wanted better. Instead what she gets is raising her glass back to her lips and downing the rest of its contents.]
[ It's all vicious accusation where he doesn't know how to do anything else but fight. Looks flat at her and her disappointment, he doesn't have it in him to care.
Isn't that just like her. He doesn't want to have this conversation. She's making him. Isn't that just like -- ; ]
Did you come here just to make me admit I don't know what I am doing?
[ Slow breath out, because that's the truth of it, isn't it. The glass is discarded like she had poisoned it. Pushed from him to the middle of the table in a slide that extends out from a flick of fingers. It could shatter and break and he could not care. The magic on his hand so bright, bright, bright, in threat and in recoil. Anticipation and it feeds, it's feeding down. There's too many hollows in these words to not stretch out and fill up the spaces. Splashing blue over skin and making little reflections and distortions through the vodka. ]
[The difference is that she says something off by a series of degrees and he does nothing to correct her; he does the same and Shepard is like a dog with its jaw clamped down on his throat - catches the discrepancy and shakes until something tears free. So determined to be solid in this that for once the cold blue light and the prickle of energy on the air, the taste of iron and rot in watering in her mouth from it doesn't find a finger of fear in her, no knot of tension she has to swallow down. No clench in the muscle of her jaw or rabbiting thrill of her pulse. She catches the glass before it slides too far - snaps:]
No. I'm here to make you admit that you know more than you lead on. [Not unaware, not so instinctual, not as automatic as he pretends to be she thinks. Not always. Not like this. Because there are pictures pinned to the rover's fridge and there had been fondness in his voice over the jars littering every available flat surface; carefully cleaned dishes and the muted sting of domesticity in everything from folded clothes to the pair of animals uncertainly perched in his lap. If this was the only evidence she had (it isn't), it would still be enough to convince her; this isn't what not trying looks like.] And you know you can't do whatever this is without backup. You know either something is going to happen to them or you're going to happen. So if you give half a shit about what happens to Khezek and-- [Terra. Who else lived here? Wilson. And-- (that carved bone sits heavy in her flak jacket pocket)] --whoever else, then you'll utilize me.
[And if that isn't a fucking olive branch, she wouldn't know how to extend one. Never mind how her grip tightens on both glasses, bringing her own down to join its mate - knuckles ashy from the stubborn press of her fingers.]
[ He can feel those teeth in his throat and he wants to kick and bite back, sink claws into her chest ( just below beating, beating heart that he hates her for because it's lying in its false consistency ) and wriggle into ribs and those thoughts are wrong, those thoughts are why she is right. Catches himself in them and swallows down all rough. He cannot bare this, he doesn't want to say any of it to anyone. Shows in the furrowing of his brow and the way he looks away too sharp.
Skittish, all hands curled up to hide a shake, takes stock like this is battle and focuses on this. On details, on the things that matter. Shattered, shattered, shattered and the days have been too much.
It's too close and he doesn't know how to speak about it without the fear in the words, in trusting. The betrayal went too deep, that way. ]
How do I know this isn't you just using me and this -- [ takes a slow breath, trying to work out what to say or do. ( Poor Emily! ) ] -- if it is, I swear, I swear I will never forgive you for damning her. I wasn't there and I promised her she would never be alone again. [ Eleven and she'd had her last birthday locked in a dark room with whores and sick twisted men and he's trying to remember here, why it's so hard to not just tip himself out, because he doesn't trust, he can't trust, and if they had any sense, they would never trust him either. Because he will butcher, so many and everything and all of it because he was asked. that's all they had done, hadn't they? The loyalists. A particular man is needed for this sort of work. ] If you mean to just use me and kill me I will make you listen to everyone of her screams, do you understand? I will crawl my way back, and I will -- [ Firn whined, all high concerned noise. ] I will not, I cannot fail her again. I'll have nothing left, it's all for her. All of it.
[ it's madness, it's all she was right about in him, and it's skittering out of him like rats from a sinking ship, trickling and pouring over everything it can reach for. Hungry and teeming, looking for dry land. If there is a filter needed, it's for this. Yes, yes, he was going to happen to them, he knows that. he's already done that. To both of them. Little and young and they were going to fracture and the only consolation was that if not him, this place would with enough time. There was no kindness, here.
Pauses, stops, breaths, babbling cuts itself off at the start and tries to work out the sense of what he truly meant to say, between desperate threats that aren't for her. Out, in, again. ] Forgive me that's -- not for you. [ Fingers loosen, curl around the edge of the table. ]
[Tastes like iron and salt and something rotten, like she's watching him drag himself from (or into) black mud and tar - an ugly, vicious fear unfolding in the lines of him, in the hot flicker of the mark crackling around a closed fist. She stills. She breathes in. She isn't afraid. Not even as it spills out of him - like she's wrenched a knife back and this is what comes sloughing out after it (she's a soldier; regret for that kind of thing comes secondary to the liberation of not being the one on the ground).
There's something about the raw way he stops - inhales - sharpens and then gives that makes her mouth water. And he's talking to her now. She swallows, exhales by degrees and glances down to find her grip on the glasses has gone loose. She lets them go entirely. Reaching for the bottle, Shepard tops off his glass - pours herself another - and the rights the bottle with a small click of glass on metal.
Nauseatingly satisfied, she slides his glass back.]
[ There's nothing for it now, they've reached this point, all brittle bits and pieces all over the folding table and battlefields were cleaner in that way. There were rules to engagement, not the ones they seemed to write in the sand just to destroy all over again and she says that like it's something so easily done, like it's something he understands how to do.
He doesn't, but he thinks he can try to work it out as he catches the glass and where he sipped it slow, now he matches her, he takes the drink and tips to empty it in a mouthful. Not enough and where she puts the bottle down he takes it up and it's some small measure of taking back for himself where she's shredded too vulnerable bits of him across the safest place he has. Pulling it all out and he unscrews the lid on the vodka. Flicking it away in an idle gesture and put the bottle to his lips. Stubbornly meeting her eye in it as he in measured swallows of a man drowning, drank whatever was left in it, at least until the gesture meant he couldn't, anymore.
Sterilizing an internal wound maybe, but the infection spread too long for that. But this is how you treat patients, isn't it? Get them so drunk they can't feel when the blade goes in deep, deep, deep.
Eventually, when it's empty, he puts it down, and stands after putting the two small creatures back onto the table. Hand wiping at his mouth, all rough scratch of three day old stubble and the rake back of fingers in his hair. Barely phased for however much it is, but all the same he steadies himself, shifts to go to the messiest of the bunks, where there is a suspiciously large amount of money to dig around underneath it for something.
Another bottle. Another bottle of the same clear liquid that spells out the same thing. Unscrews it too with the crack of a seal being broken as his hand covered the neck of a body, considering it as he walks back. Quick when he's fighting, but like this, worn down like this, he favors one side slightly, and his steps are slower and catching, as if it's just one more pain he's gotten used to existing with. Takes a slower sip before setting it and himself down again across from her once more.
If she ever kills him with anything less than her teeth in his throat and her nails in his chest, he'll be disappointed. ]
This comes from a place called Tyvia, where I am from. [ pauses, elbow braced on the table and his ankles hooking together under the chair. ] It's a frozen wasteland in the summer and a sunless white nightmare in the winter. [ brief look up. ] Ask your questions, if you have any then.
[It's her only bottle, half drunk before she'd even acquired it; she hasn't had the personal pleasure of more than a drink or two in her own time before bringing it here. Watching him drain it dry should be an irritant. But let him, she thinks. Better a tool than a distraction. Attention fixed on him (he's looking at her like there's a challenge in it and she can rise to that all the same), she nurses her own drink with more patience than she's shown all evening. And it tastes less bitter somehow when sipped. But maybe that's just the sweet, gut low satisfaction talking. If nothing else, she knows winning when she sees it.
So she's not going to ask questions when the bottle is emptied, when Corvo moves to stand and then across the rover. This is all just aftermath. There's still liquor in her glass when he returns with the second bottle. But if she has expectations, an invitation isn't one of them; she doesn't have a mental list of questions prepared, can't think to formulate any but one on the fly:]
You've been on Red since you dropped. So how'd you get involved in Blue's kill order mission on Ajna?
[It's blunt, breaking, shows her hand when her track record is to play close to the chest. But screw it; in a way she already has what she came here for - can feel it in how he held the bottle, in the way he settles in the chair. Why keep that she knows a secret?]
[ He supposes theirs is a rather repetitive dance, the back and forth, like the drinks sliding of the table and the way she never, never settles for anything less than asking the things he wants to answer least. All barbed wire on knuckles where they strike high and if he really bothers, he thinks he can taste blood. But even this, is a record all stuck on the same few notes and maybe it's the same back at her, probably, return for the last volley fired where she laughed at him for digging around at her wounds and only found scar tissue instead.
Must be that then, and there is plenty raw around that mission, for things he'll never talk about not for orders but because he'd sworn and the one that has even less to do with his own emotions - except that was not true, was it? He had removed himself in the way that Fiona had of him. He was just a blade, it was not his position to care and the less anyone ever thought he did the better. It let him do the things for them that they could not do themselves. It might be falling on his sword except that was what he had been good at that he does not even stop to think about it. ]
Really, Commander? Why do you think? You know what they call me -- [ pause, swallow, no, she doesn't. He's just another here and no better or worse than than the rest. She has no idea what they call him. ] What my skills are listed as. Why do you think it happened? Terra was blue, at the time. You know his feelings for her, and he wanted to be again with his Shahni. [ Says the name as perfect imitation of how Jasper said it, but other than that, it's flat -- well almost, eyebrow raised, shaking his head at her briefly. It was a mess, a damn mess, but it had done what it needed, though they couldn't breath a word of it. They had spared Terra the worst of the punishment. ] You've spoken to her, you think she capable of such a thing?
[ The simplest, laid bare facts. They were themselves, not very complicated at all. He figures she'll piece the rest together from there without him saying anything. ]
[Which is, more or less, similar to the most likely scenario she'd told herself excepting - maybe - one point that catches her attention like a snag in a jumper, the flash of light off the top of an enemy's helmet.]
She doesn't know.
[It's not a question. Not really. Her hand and the glass in it, liquor only half gone, hovers briefly near the shape of her mouth. But it's not really something she needs answered; she doesn't know Terra well outside of pt - but seeing the girl a few times a day to run her in circles is enough that Shepard knows she's kind. Gentle, even (which isn't a word she has any real fondness for, especially here).
There's an acerbic, frank piece of her that makes her want to say 'Exactly who do you think you're helping by shielding her?' - thinks out every syllable, even. Because what good was it to pretend things were different? To be willfully ignorant? But instead she strains a sip of low, bitter alcohol through her teeth and swallows both down. Taps her forefinger one, twice against the glass.]
[ He gives up on the glass, on the civilized nature, she has him where she wants him with his back to the wall all snarling and vicious, because that's all she left him. Because he is expecting that response, because Wade had been furious with him, hadn't reconciled with him until he had explained -- about Emily, about his own desperation to do anything they required to have her back and safe again. Would never risk being asked to do something and not doing it.
He'd lost his honour, what did he care and she seems like she spat on what most would consider good manners at the best of times so he swigs ugly from the bottle like, maybe, if he didn't know better, he could get drunk still. Shakes his head like a wet dog at her. ]
She does, at least most of it. [ clears his throat when it comes out a croaking whisper from the worst of the drink and then speaks again a little more clearly. ] Some of it's gag ordered, but she walked out when Wade and I were... cleaning up.
[ Makes a gesture, absent of him looking at it, around the rover. ]
[Well. At least there's that - the knowledge that if she didn't do what she was required, someone else would have to. She hopes it's something that's stuck for the girl. Better to do things like that yourself. At least there's a kind of security in that - knowing you did whatever you could.
She sets the glass down on the table between them. It's empty now, though she doesn't gesture for him to top her off with the bottle he's drinking from. She can feel the loose hum of the drink in the back of her throat, in the set of her shoulders and the idea of getting buzzed in Corvo Attano's company isn't exactly appealing. There are better people, better places to get some real drinking done.
(Which, hell, she might look in to that.)]
Good.
[How cruel is that? To approve of those circumstances? When he says 'cleaning up', he means dealing with Jasper's corpse. But it isn't like the boy's dead now, so as far as she's concerned it's settled. Any potential hurt over it doesn't exactly have grounds to exist anymore.]
And they let her get away with that? The officers?
[ It hadn't been pretty, the worst sort of argument, the one of brutal truths and unpleasant realities. They'd been the ones to make her understand just what she was facing by refusing orders, any orders. Showed her just that -- if she didn't someone would, and it would stain. Closes his eyes and this rover's layout is close enough that he can lay it out all over again.
Suspects Terra still can too. ]
She was moved teams, if that's what you mean. Consider unfit for Blue requirements. It's not a surprise, really, and probably was for the best. [ He swallows on another mouthful of vodka, his hands itching all over again with the memory that was burned into them. Another layer of blood, as bad as hers now, for what it meant. ] The rest is... ordered. Most especially against Terra, she's never allowed to know what influence we had in what happened to her. [ She had to live with her choices, and they had to as well. ]
[From everything she knows of the CDC and its officers, being bumped from one team to the other sounds like the most mild form of disciplinary action there is. Could it even really be called as much? Terra wasn't losing anything be being moved over from Blue - less demotion and more lateral transfer. It gives her pause, prompts a narrow look in Attano's direction. 'The rest', meaning there's more to the deal. If she had to hazard a guess, someone made a deal or a trade to get Terra off the proverbial hook. What had been offered? How big a price tag was it? The officers, Mother ship especially in her mind, aren't exactly known for their flexibility, any keenness to compromise.
But whatever it is isn't something she's going to pry out of him thanks to the gag order, so she doesn't bother asking after it. Instead she shifts back in her chair, studies him for a long moment. Drums her fingers against the metal table top. When she breaks the silence, its because she isn't interested in leaving it long enough to start filling it with questions of his own.]
Right. Well. I should go.
[And she catches the back of the chair, levering herself up and out of it without any fanfare. She got what she came for.]
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no subject
You can relax. I'm not gonna waste a perfectly good bottle of booze on poisoning you with it.
[Because that's exactly the kind of thing you should tell someone to put their mind at ease. She settled in the chair - pins the pistol, hooks her elbow over the edge of the chair back and raises her chin by a series of degrees to him. In theory, it's more casual posture than leaning across the table toward him might by. In reality, there's something of a wolfish danger to it: like an animal settling back on its heels, readying itself to spring.]
So let's not bullshit each other, Attano. I'm here to make you a deal.
no subject
Quality only increases the likelihood in my experience.
[ A dismissive shrug, he's got a lot of stories to that end and undoubtedly she wanted to hear none of them. The glass settled back against the table, turns it slowly between thumb and forefinger. This all tastes bitterly of something he isn't sure he wants, but she's got him here. Doesn't respond, she'd make the offer whether he said he wanted to listen or not, learned that much so far. Swallows on the taste of it, and waited for whatever she felt like saying. ]
no subject
[It was bare minimum drinkable by pretty much any standard, good only by merit of being on some backwater planet without access to any supply lines. A step up from toilet bowl wine, sure, but it's not like she's peddling anything fancy here and pointing it out - the stark simplicity of it - is as close to a cut as she's likely going to get tonight. Here, anyway. In the swaddled, well-worn and comfortable air of the rover, the track lights lending a low burn of yellow and gold to the rims of jars and the emptiness of her cup, it almost feels like something that could wound.
She's itching to pour herself another drink but she stays her hand, fingers instead idle near the collar of her jacket - tracing the lapel with an easy going angle of her thumbnail that belies the sharp angles of her consonants and the twitch of a curl at her lip.]
Attano, I don't like you and you don't like me. [An oversimplification at best; in the breast pocket of her jacket is a charm carved from bone, no longer than her first finger.] But I think we both know we have some similar interests.
[Her hand strays then, wandering to one of Jasper's jars on the table. Shepard's careful not to move it - in fact barely touches it, her thumb tapping along the table directly beside it. She's not gentle - not for anyone and not for Corvo especially -, but she's gentle with this, touch exceedingly light.] Jasper's not going to get out of your way and there's nothing I can do to make you stop, but you know that - don't you? [Knows he's dangerous. Knows there's something wrong in him; he'd apologized to her on the Neheda all those months ago. Was still apologizing, maybe. She lifts her eyes from the jar, hand stilling. Breath stilling. Somewhere in the rover and sounding farther away than it should, the roomba makes a small cheerful noise.] So it sounds to me like I've got two options. One, I make sure you don't come back from something. Or two, we work together and you tell me when it looks like shit's about to hit the fan.
Your pick.
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She is stubborn and he is wilful and he does nothing but look across the space across them, the measured half turns between his fingers of the glass. The swallow of the whiskey and he moves his leg then, chair pushed out at the angle to brace his ankle on the opposite knee, fingers curling over the curve of his boot and drummed his fingers in slow consideration. He'd might have wanted to have this conversation months ago, on the Nehada when it was all too raw and Aeryn had listened to the worst of the things he had to say. He supposes he still does, it's just none of this is as he expected but she liked doing that to him. Competition they inadvertently entered. ]
I did not know you played politic. [ His fingers curled around the soft blue head of Firn, asleep and rising and falling with slow breath, such a tiny fragile body. An absent made gesture, he would never dream of looking away from her when she was speaking to him like this. ] You would hear nothing I had to say before, why now?
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She draws her hand back from near the jar, setting it instead across her thigh under the edge of the table - hidden from view, but her pistol isn't exactly in a place to be convenient, so there's very little threat to it. Maybe no one's ever told him not to look a gift horse in the mouth.]
What difference does it make?
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I think you know it makes all the difference, because you still might decide to leave me behind at an inopportune moment. [ Glances up heavy under his brows, hair still somehow managing to fall in his face, then back down again. ] Besides, you're being vague. Tell what you what, exactly? Tell you when I think I am going to go mad? Or when I am going to decide that no one is worth their life, and remove them from my path? What exactly is it that I am supposed to be saying to you that doesn't just damn me further in your eyes?
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I don't care if it's something that's only going to screw you up. But if it could hurt the people you're close to, then someone needs to act as a buffer. [Does she have to spell it out for him? She thought he was smarter than that - or maybe that's just the acerbic thing she's telling herself to avoid being upfront with the facts (because the latter feels too much like giving something up and he already has more of that than he deserves).
She takes a swig from the glass; the vodka stings high at the back of her throat, burns when she inhales through her nose - turns the glass slowly in her hand and watches for a moment as the liquid moves along the sides.]
This isn't about you or anything you did. I like Khezek [and Terra was a sweet girl] and if he's gonna get caught up in something, then I want to know about it.
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She just undoes that quickly. Even though he knows he has no right to complain, he has a lifetime of penance to give, and that should ought to be enough to hold the sneer, the bitter words. Narrows his gaze across the small space they had backed themselves into. ]
So you can ignore my warnings and explanations all over again because they do not measure up to your expectations?
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What do you expect? [It's heat under steel, the bite in how blunt it is though her voice hasn't raised and her gaze on him - fixed and sharp and demanding - hasn't wavered.] For me to just trust you? Would you trust you, Corvo?
[Does he?]
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No. I would have shot me, and left my body for the beasts to eat. [ Flat cold admission. Eyes down again and away. But it's not an answer to whether he trusts himself. Swallows back, watching Firn instead of looking at her -- he can't, cannot bear it right then. He still doesn't know why she hasn't. She has guns, and she has friends, it would have been simple.
The small creature settles with the touch. ] Will you believe me this time if I say I am not in control of it? Of any of it?
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[Using his abilities for stupid games on Ajna; what he'd done to her; pulling Jasper out of the biting cold after the shuttle crash - there was control there, in the action and the application of it. Not always cold, not always cruel, but intent didn't matter, did it? Not here. Not for her. Not for anyone.]
Just because you don't always or because you don't have control of the side effects doesn't mean you shouldn't be responsible for the rest of it.
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The breath is harsh as a gasp when it bursts out of him, all steady recoil and drawing in. He means to say so many things but for all the hours of pain he'd endured, he learned to never think further than surviving the next few minutes. He cannot bear to hear what he's done, what he will do.
He doesn't know what he's doing, he hasn't known for months. But he cannot admit that, because to say that is to say it's wrong, it's all wrong but he can't undo it. He's let them all get close and that's a mistake, of that he's sure, and the only other thing he is sure of is that he never wanted to have this conversation with her. ]
You have no idea what you speak.
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[There's more than just an edge of sarcasm there - because if anyone knows, shouldn't it be her? She can taste the flat bitter taste of dark rancid water on the back of her tongue under the bite of the booze; can remember the creeping sensation of black eyes on her and the cold of the mark and the vicious cut of a knife in skin (and she can't breathe; the black tightening like a vice), and the shape of a small girl's hands in her own. Or a boy's. Had they gone out in a dark, blinking void - there and gone -, or had it been an exploding shuttle?
And because it hadn't mattered why she'd done what she had, said what she did on the Neheda - it was still insubordination. Bullshit, maybe, but her opinion doesn't actually mean anything just like she can say she's using PKN7 to prepare a bunch of hopeless cases a hundred times, but that's not going to stop anyone from thinking she's gunning for something bigger. Because she's sitting here, having this conversation, and the question Jasper's always going to be asking is 'Why are you being so nice to me?'
There's a whiff of disappointment there too in how she takes her glass up again, the look she settles on him - like maybe she'd expected or wanted better. Instead what she gets is raising her glass back to her lips and downing the rest of its contents.]
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Isn't that just like her. He doesn't want to have this conversation. She's making him. Isn't that just like -- ; ]
Did you come here just to make me admit I don't know what I am doing?
[ Slow breath out, because that's the truth of it, isn't it. The glass is discarded like she had poisoned it. Pushed from him to the middle of the table in a slide that extends out from a flick of fingers. It could shatter and break and he could not care. The magic on his hand so bright, bright, bright, in threat and in recoil. Anticipation and it feeds, it's feeding down. There's too many hollows in these words to not stretch out and fill up the spaces. Splashing blue over skin and making little reflections and distortions through the vodka. ]
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No. I'm here to make you admit that you know more than you lead on. [Not unaware, not so instinctual, not as automatic as he pretends to be she thinks. Not always. Not like this. Because there are pictures pinned to the rover's fridge and there had been fondness in his voice over the jars littering every available flat surface; carefully cleaned dishes and the muted sting of domesticity in everything from folded clothes to the pair of animals uncertainly perched in his lap. If this was the only evidence she had (it isn't), it would still be enough to convince her; this isn't what not trying looks like.] And you know you can't do whatever this is without backup. You know either something is going to happen to them or you're going to happen. So if you give half a shit about what happens to Khezek and-- [Terra. Who else lived here? Wilson. And-- (that carved bone sits heavy in her flak jacket pocket)] --whoever else, then you'll utilize me.
[And if that isn't a fucking olive branch, she wouldn't know how to extend one. Never mind how her grip tightens on both glasses, bringing her own down to join its mate - knuckles ashy from the stubborn press of her fingers.]
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Skittish, all hands curled up to hide a shake, takes stock like this is battle and focuses on this. On details, on the things that matter. Shattered, shattered, shattered and the days have been too much.
It's too close and he doesn't know how to speak about it without the fear in the words, in trusting. The betrayal went too deep, that way. ]
How do I know this isn't you just using me and this -- [ takes a slow breath, trying to work out what to say or do. ( Poor Emily! ) ] -- if it is, I swear, I swear I will never forgive you for damning her. I wasn't there and I promised her she would never be alone again. [ Eleven and she'd had her last birthday locked in a dark room with whores and sick twisted men and he's trying to remember here, why it's so hard to not just tip himself out, because he doesn't trust, he can't trust, and if they had any sense, they would never trust him either. Because he will butcher, so many and everything and all of it because he was asked. that's all they had done, hadn't they? The loyalists. A particular man is needed for this sort of work. ] If you mean to just use me and kill me I will make you listen to everyone of her screams, do you understand? I will crawl my way back, and I will -- [ Firn whined, all high concerned noise. ] I will not, I cannot fail her again. I'll have nothing left, it's all for her. All of it.
[ it's madness, it's all she was right about in him, and it's skittering out of him like rats from a sinking ship, trickling and pouring over everything it can reach for. Hungry and teeming, looking for dry land. If there is a filter needed, it's for this. Yes, yes, he was going to happen to them, he knows that. he's already done that. To both of them. Little and young and they were going to fracture and the only consolation was that if not him, this place would with enough time. There was no kindness, here.
Pauses, stops, breaths, babbling cuts itself off at the start and tries to work out the sense of what he truly meant to say, between desperate threats that aren't for her. Out, in, again. ] Forgive me that's -- not for you. [ Fingers loosen, curl around the edge of the table. ]
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There's something about the raw way he stops - inhales - sharpens and then gives that makes her mouth water. And he's talking to her now. She swallows, exhales by degrees and glances down to find her grip on the glasses has gone loose. She lets them go entirely. Reaching for the bottle, Shepard tops off his glass - pours herself another - and the rights the bottle with a small click of glass on metal.
Nauseatingly satisfied, she slides his glass back.]
You're forgiven.
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He doesn't, but he thinks he can try to work it out as he catches the glass and where he sipped it slow, now he matches her, he takes the drink and tips to empty it in a mouthful. Not enough and where she puts the bottle down he takes it up and it's some small measure of taking back for himself where she's shredded too vulnerable bits of him across the safest place he has. Pulling it all out and he unscrews the lid on the vodka. Flicking it away in an idle gesture and put the bottle to his lips. Stubbornly meeting her eye in it as he in measured swallows of a man drowning, drank whatever was left in it, at least until the gesture meant he couldn't, anymore.
Sterilizing an internal wound maybe, but the infection spread too long for that. But this is how you treat patients, isn't it? Get them so drunk they can't feel when the blade goes in deep, deep, deep.
Eventually, when it's empty, he puts it down, and stands after putting the two small creatures back onto the table. Hand wiping at his mouth, all rough scratch of three day old stubble and the rake back of fingers in his hair. Barely phased for however much it is, but all the same he steadies himself, shifts to go to the messiest of the bunks, where there is a suspiciously large amount of money to dig around underneath it for something.
Another bottle. Another bottle of the same clear liquid that spells out the same thing. Unscrews it too with the crack of a seal being broken as his hand covered the neck of a body, considering it as he walks back. Quick when he's fighting, but like this, worn down like this, he favors one side slightly, and his steps are slower and catching, as if it's just one more pain he's gotten used to existing with. Takes a slower sip before setting it and himself down again across from her once more.
If she ever kills him with anything less than her teeth in his throat and her nails in his chest, he'll be disappointed. ]
This comes from a place called Tyvia, where I am from. [ pauses, elbow braced on the table and his ankles hooking together under the chair. ] It's a frozen wasteland in the summer and a sunless white nightmare in the winter. [ brief look up. ] Ask your questions, if you have any then.
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So she's not going to ask questions when the bottle is emptied, when Corvo moves to stand and then across the rover. This is all just aftermath. There's still liquor in her glass when he returns with the second bottle. But if she has expectations, an invitation isn't one of them; she doesn't have a mental list of questions prepared, can't think to formulate any but one on the fly:]
You've been on Red since you dropped. So how'd you get involved in Blue's kill order mission on Ajna?
[It's blunt, breaking, shows her hand when her track record is to play close to the chest. But screw it; in a way she already has what she came here for - can feel it in how he held the bottle, in the way he settles in the chair. Why keep that she knows a secret?]
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Must be that then, and there is plenty raw around that mission, for things he'll never talk about not for orders but because he'd sworn and the one that has even less to do with his own emotions - except that was not true, was it? He had removed himself in the way that Fiona had of him. He was just a blade, it was not his position to care and the less anyone ever thought he did the better. It let him do the things for them that they could not do themselves. It might be falling on his sword except that was what he had been good at that he does not even stop to think about it. ]
Really, Commander? Why do you think? You know what they call me -- [ pause, swallow, no, she doesn't. He's just another here and no better or worse than than the rest. She has no idea what they call him. ] What my skills are listed as. Why do you think it happened? Terra was blue, at the time. You know his feelings for her, and he wanted to be again with his Shahni. [ Says the name as perfect imitation of how Jasper said it, but other than that, it's flat -- well almost, eyebrow raised, shaking his head at her briefly. It was a mess, a damn mess, but it had done what it needed, though they couldn't breath a word of it. They had spared Terra the worst of the punishment. ] You've spoken to her, you think she capable of such a thing?
[ The simplest, laid bare facts. They were themselves, not very complicated at all. He figures she'll piece the rest together from there without him saying anything. ]
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She doesn't know.
[It's not a question. Not really. Her hand and the glass in it, liquor only half gone, hovers briefly near the shape of her mouth. But it's not really something she needs answered; she doesn't know Terra well outside of pt - but seeing the girl a few times a day to run her in circles is enough that Shepard knows she's kind. Gentle, even (which isn't a word she has any real fondness for, especially here).
There's an acerbic, frank piece of her that makes her want to say 'Exactly who do you think you're helping by shielding her?' - thinks out every syllable, even. Because what good was it to pretend things were different? To be willfully ignorant? But instead she strains a sip of low, bitter alcohol through her teeth and swallows both down. Taps her forefinger one, twice against the glass.]
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He'd lost his honour, what did he care and she seems like she spat on what most would consider good manners at the best of times so he swigs ugly from the bottle like, maybe, if he didn't know better, he could get drunk still. Shakes his head like a wet dog at her. ]
She does, at least most of it. [ clears his throat when it comes out a croaking whisper from the worst of the drink and then speaks again a little more clearly. ] Some of it's gag ordered, but she walked out when Wade and I were... cleaning up.
[ Makes a gesture, absent of him looking at it, around the rover. ]
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She sets the glass down on the table between them. It's empty now, though she doesn't gesture for him to top her off with the bottle he's drinking from. She can feel the loose hum of the drink in the back of her throat, in the set of her shoulders and the idea of getting buzzed in Corvo Attano's company isn't exactly appealing. There are better people, better places to get some real drinking done.
(Which, hell, she might look in to that.)]
Good.
[How cruel is that? To approve of those circumstances? When he says 'cleaning up', he means dealing with Jasper's corpse. But it isn't like the boy's dead now, so as far as she's concerned it's settled. Any potential hurt over it doesn't exactly have grounds to exist anymore.]
And they let her get away with that? The officers?
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Suspects Terra still can too. ]
She was moved teams, if that's what you mean. Consider unfit for Blue requirements. It's not a surprise, really, and probably was for the best. [ He swallows on another mouthful of vodka, his hands itching all over again with the memory that was burned into them. Another layer of blood, as bad as hers now, for what it meant. ] The rest is... ordered. Most especially against Terra, she's never allowed to know what influence we had in what happened to her. [ She had to live with her choices, and they had to as well. ]
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But whatever it is isn't something she's going to pry out of him thanks to the gag order, so she doesn't bother asking after it. Instead she shifts back in her chair, studies him for a long moment. Drums her fingers against the metal table top. When she breaks the silence, its because she isn't interested in leaving it long enough to start filling it with questions of his own.]
Right. Well. I should go.
[And she catches the back of the chair, levering herself up and out of it without any fanfare. She got what she came for.]
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