Ilad, Jean-Paul
The concrete patio is warm, sun-baked after the close of the a day in eighty-degree weather; it is partly shaded and cooled by the lush green of the clustered ferns, but the whisper of the hot water in the tub is likely less tempting than it might be on drearier days. Not to Ilad, though. His towel folded neatly behind him, he sits with his naked shoulders leaned back against the edge of the tub, soaking in the quiet as he occasionally nurses from a bottle of unlikely-colored Gatorade, held in his off hand. His head tips back, soaked dark hair slowly drying in the sunlight, with a long breath drawn through his nose as the extended drape of his body and head bares the damp-gold column of his throat.
Drawn away from his usual shortcut through the field, Jean-Paul's light steps bring him to the patio. He is dressed as he usually is: a close-fitting T-shirt, dark track pants, and sneakers. He is definitely not dressed for a swim, or for the hot tub; the only excuse for his visit is social. His brow furrowed with distant bemusement, he greets, "Welcome home, Ilad."
Ilad lifts his head, blinking as his dark eyes refocus on Jean-Paul. His smile lights his features fleetingly, warming his eyes, and then fading to something more like its ordinary reserve ... if, perhaps, a wearier brand of it. "Thank you," he says. He levers himself up, sitting straighter in his lean against the side of the tub, with an end result that a few more marginal inches of his chest surge above the water's surface. "Your country is very cold, Jean-Paul."
The expression of welcome on Jean-Paul's features returns most strongly in his eyes; only a bare curve touches his lips, soon fading. His gaze lingers where Ilad rises above the water, searching the injuries that he has already been told aren't there. "I can't quite bring myself to call you a fragile desert flower, even in a joke. But assume something else similarly dismissive. And probably witty. Really witty."
"I will take your wit on faith," Ilad assures Jean-Paul with an upward quirk of his eyebrows. He hooks his elbow against the side of the tub and takes another swallow from the dwindling brightly-colored liquid in his gatorade bottle. More relaxed than usual in the worn aftermath of the complaints of his own body, he is settled back against the side of the tub, and all the scar tissue he bears from older injuries is obscured beneath the ripple and foam of the gently churning water. The skin Jean-Paul can see is all clean and whole, richly golden and gleaming wetly in the sunlight. "I had never known such cold, and came to learn swiftly that snow does not burn readily." Shake of his head slight, the sound he makes puffed past his lips is partway to a laugh without voice. "Would you wilt in the desert, my friend?"
Quietly, Jean-Paul laughs: the rush of breath is brief. "Maybe a little." Lapsing quiet, he studies Ilad with a return of that touch of bafflement. His expression is thoughtful through his study. "Glad to see you took Carpenter's chiding to heart, anyway, and returned without another injury for Alden's attention."
Ilad returns Jean-Paul's study with a slight slant to his glance from the tip of his head, answering his hinted baffle with a crinle to his brow. "Yes," he says. "Following orders, I." He takes another swallow from the gatorade bottle and then twists to set it behind him, wiping at his mouth with the back of his damp forearm. "He has had to patch me enough times, poor man. It troubles him, and--" Voice dredged sandy dry, he finishes, "I cannot say I care for it either."
Jean-Paul wets his lips, parted to draw breath to ask a question; he pauses, breath held as his lips shape the first syllable, and then he frowns with a brief shake of his head. "No," he finally says, and then starts again: "So is it really Ponting?"
Ilad's answer comes at a slight delay, a focused attention on Jean-Paul's features for that hesitation; it is a force of long habit that comes with a hint of query in his dark eyes. He nods once. "If he is a decoy, he is a very convincing one. My first mission, it was to track that man," he says. His eyebrows twitch up high. "So now we have him. Wounded, but alive."
"Not a disguise?" Jean-Paul asks. He sails on past the unspoken query and does not answer to or repeat his hesitation. "Not a shapeshifter? Not a -- duplicate, an alternate reality clone, a--." He stalls, briefly running out of bizarre improbabilities.
"I cannot say," Ilad says. He inclines his head slightly to Jean-Paul, a faint quirk of his lips acknowledging all those avenues of the bizarre. "I suspect that some will be up to the telepaths to determine, hm? He is Hugh Ponting as near as I can determine, with eye and ear." He touches his fingertip to the corner of his eye, and then to his ear, before letting it fall to drift loosely in the rolling heat.
Pulling his chin down in a brief nod, Jean-Paul says, "Fair enough." He rubs at his eyes and then draws his knuckles along his jaw. His gaze turns off to the side: through the training facilities and toward the cells. "I suppose you'll be a part of it as well."
"Perhaps." Ilad shifts, drawing his legs in towards himself; his knees break the surface as he leans forward, folding his arms in a loose cross over them and letting a whisper of air cool down his back. "I do not think Ponting will crack. Working alone, if he broke, it would take-- days, weeks. Alden might ... prove quicker."
Jean-Paul's gaze returns to Ilad as he shifts. "I suppose if anyone could make that guess, you could. Why--." His teeth click shut as he answers his own question, pieces fitting together behind his eyes. He shifts with an uneasy stir, awkward and silent.
Ilad shakes his head and closes his eyes. He presses thumb and forefinger against their lids, drawing a long breath through his teeth, as his other arm remains hooked across his legs in the water. "It is ... not likely to reach that point," he says. "There are uglinesses we need not reach. With the telepaths on staff." His jaw tightens a little, and he lifts his gaze again, looking to Jean-Paul with a quiet kind of gloom in his eyes.
Jean-Paul doesn't exactly look settled by the nonviolent alternative. "Yes. Positively aseptic," he says with light sarcasm and fidgeting shift of weight between his feet. "Always the answer: telepaths."
"Would you prefer the other way?" Ilad asks, voice soft to the prickle of sarcasm. He watches Jean-Paul closely as he speaks, a muted sadness lingering about the edges of his expression. "More honest, less sanitized?" He looks away. "I want what Ponting knows," he says. "But we know his training. He might not crack even so. A man can withstand much, for belief."
"No. It's just a mistake to pretend that because we don't see it, telepath is less--." Breaking off, Jean-Paul searches for the right word. "I don't know. We need to know what Ponting knows. We just can't let ourselves forget the cost because we don't see it. That's all."
"I thought about it on the plane home," Ilad says, with a dry ghost of humor as he adds, "Under about a hundred blankets." He laces his fingers together, letting them drift in the water past his knees. He studies them, rather than looking up; with gaze downcast at a slant and jaw set, he looks more worn than he did with his face held under deliberate composure or else eased by humor or warmth. "I asked myself if I would rather break under torture, or lose all my secrets to a hostile telepath I could not even see."
Studying what he can see of Ilad's expression, Jean-Paul looks somewhat contrite. "Christ. Welcome back, Ilad. Let's hang out and talk about really uncomfortable subjects." That said, he doesn't ... stop. "Alden and I fell victim to Carmen. She had all our secrets and wiped the memory so that we didn't even know."
Ilad smiles despite himself, and finally lifts his gaze to meet Jean-Paul's again. He also unfolds the inward drawn curl of his limbs, stretching his legs out as he settles his back against the edge of the tub. "I cannot even imagine," he says. "To wrap my mind around it. When I ask myself that question, when you tell me what she did to you -- to both of you." His lashes fall over his dark eyes, and there is a moment's pause, his throat working as he swallows. He shakes his head again. "At least if your will /breaks/, it was once yours."
Jean-Paul is quiet as Ilad speaks. His gaze, still thoughtful, is somewhat distant. "The hardest thing to deal with with telepaths, with telepathy, is that you never know. Silent, invisible, intangible: a paranoiac's dream." His lips twitch. "Well."
"Yes," Ilad says. He moistens his lips with a flicker of his tongue, and draws a long breath through his nose of the steam-warmed air, and then adds on a lighter, dryer note, an answering: "Well."
Lifting his hand, Jean-Paul gestures a splay-fingered apology. "I'll leave you be to enjoy the heat."
Ilad cants his head, watching Jean-Paul for a moment longer; his study lingers on his features, eye and mouth, though in seeking to learn what, it is certainly unclear. He says, "It is good to see you." His mouth lifts at the corners but slightly. "Anyway," he adds, "hard topics are good for you."
Jean-Paul smiles a little more easily in free, if wry, expression. "I enjoy them perhaps more than I should. If you'd ever like to discuss topics with no real answer, I'd welcome the company talking in circles. I'll see you around, Ilad."
"Indeed," Ilad says. He lets himself sink back into the shifting hot water, humor reflected in a narrowing of his gaze as he settles in. "See you later, Jean-Paul."
Okay.