don't go quietly.
Later on in the evening, Pelagia is faced with a predicament: James is not here, and that 'phone' thing he has is ringing. On a whim, she decides to pick it up, figuring that if it's something terribly important and work-related they would have called him there, and frankly she's starting to get annoyed at staying inside so much, which leads to ( Read more... )
It's at about this point that James is coming through the door - he has the results he needed to get from Q, his theory is almost solidified and he's feeling the length of the afternoon pressing down on his shoulders - and about runs out of patience.
The phone is very swiftly removed from her hand- "Excuse me - what? Sorry, old man, now's not a good time. I'll call you back. Bye, Felix."
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She's not particularly startled when he takes the phone -- it's not an object she's meant to be using, for starters, and it's his home -- but she raises her eyebrows at the brusqueness and drops herself into a nearby chair to sprawl.
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He hangs up on poor Felix (who he really will call back later, possibly after he's thought up a good way of not ever having to answer that question, probably he can derail him with whatever the other man was calling here for in the first place), and unbuttons his coat with his back to her. Flatly, "Don't answer my phone."
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Pela tips her head to one side, observing the set of his shoulders.
"All right. I only spoke on it about thirty seconds."
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James thinks well that appears to have been more than enough time, but it may just be that he's irritable. Or maybe not. "Would now be a convenient time to suggest you not bloody follow me, either? While we're talking about my privacy."
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She's glad he can't see the look on her face - genuinely guilty, genuinely regretful. She does file these things away, and she does have research to do on this Felix person and some leads to follow, but- not here. In the Nexus. She'll get someone to read it to her.
"All right."
For all her brattiness, and her tendency to be difficult, she doesn't make excuses for herself like a child or shy away from the topic.
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At first he doesn't answer her; he sheds his coat properly, rubs his hand over his face and keeps his less than friendly comment silent due to her startling ability to pick up languages like music played by ear.
When he turns, he doesn't look pleased but he doesn't look aggressive, either. "My personal affairs are none of your concern and I won't have this conversation twice." It's all he says further on the subject, briskly moving past it. "I was right, though. They didn't want her dead."
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None of her concern. Well, that sets the boundaries up nicely, doesn't it: allies, not friends. She still doesn't understand why he's got that so clearly defined, whether it's personal or simply habitual or both. For two people who are generally very controlled and focused in very different ways, though, their 'relationship' - working as it may ostensibly be - goes up and down a lot.
Pelagia raises her eyebrows, but she refrains from comment, too, mostly because he obviously doesn't want to go into it any more.
And her sister's death takes precedence.
"No?" She leans forward. "What happened?"
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In all fairness, James may not consider his personal affairs to be any of his friends' concern either - but other than that, she's not really wrong about where he's drawing the line. Regardless of whether or not it's obvious exactly why he's drawing it there.
"She was given a sedative. Most likely, they were trying to capture her as a 'live specimen'," he doesn't apologize for his phrasing, but he uses it with a fair amount of obvious distaste on his own behalf. "I thought, this morning, that I wouldn't give you any painkillers because I didn't know how your system would react. Apparently that was a good move and I'm one up on your friends back there; it was probably the sedatives that killed her. Whoever goes to find out why they're not back yet will probably take the body to be autopsied ." He regrets, now, not doing something about that - they really should've.
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She's out of her chair before he can finish that last sentence.
"We have to go get her, I am not letting them take her apart like an animal--" It's probably already gone, but she's not thinking. This is the kneejerk response.
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James catches her around the waist, pulling her back against his chest with a suddenness that matches the speed with which she moved. "We left it too long," he says, quiet and not unkind. "They were preparing to leave, and they wanted her enough to have tried to take her alive. Somebody will have been down there by now."
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Pelagia is tense for a moment when he pulls her in against him, but then she relaxes just enough to press closer, staying near -- close enough it's almost hidden when she shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath that may give him the impression she's fighting frustrated tears. Frustrated by, say, throwing herself headlong into an alien-if-human world that would sooner sell her out to butchers and scientists, where she knows nothing of how to behave, to fit in, and trying to get them to help her save her entire race before they die. The awareness that she went into this with the certainty she would martyr herself for this cause, and the growing reluctance to even let that happen because she doesn't want to be another individual, however peripheral, that dies on the only human she's met who will look at her as a person and not a fucking fairy tale or an experiment. The fact that the people she's trying to save threw her out for trying to access what might be their only shot at survival ( ... )
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When he's more sure that she's not going to hare off out of the flat if he lets go, James loosens his grip. She pressed closer instead of trying to get free of him, though, so he doesn't drop his hands entirely. Just enough to make sure she has room to breathe, while he leans back against the side table behind him to support his weight and hers.
"Not by name, but you mentioned him, yes." The one she had to kill, he recalls.
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She angles her shoulders away from him, but keeps her hips and legs close, so it's mostly for the purposes of conversation. Her eyes, when they meet James', are very earnest, very serious, and while she's always confident to the point of being notable for it, most of that half-entertaining half-aggravating haughtiness is gone.
"Dravidias was killing those girls, seducing them and draining them of their glamour, their dreams and essence, for his own power. It made him very powerful- very resistant to banal things, like those Technocrats. He might have been able to last a few minutes longer than the average kith, around them. But I haven't killed anyone that way; it's disgusting and illegal to ravage someone's psyche, and furthermore we don't get our power from human dreams so much any more, we have other ways. The only place I know of that's completely dreamlike, completely lacking in anything banal, is that Nexus. It's only a theory, but I think that place is essentially seething with armor and energy for Mer ( ... )
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"Is there a way to test this theory aside from throwing yourself in front of this Technocracy?" Sometimes, you really do have to fly by the seat of your pants, and god knows James hurling himself into mortal peril is mostly known as 'Thursdays' - but that's no reason to abandon all caution and preparation to the winds. Get careless and you get sloppy.
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"...well, yes, but I thought I'd try combining the two for expedience." She nudges him lightly with her hip. "'Two birds'?"
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