(no subject)
Lunch: still not delicious. The food certainly leaves something to be desired, although -- to be fair -- we are feeding criminals, here. It needn't be four star fare. Not in /America/. Some other countries have crazy ideas about prisons. Too bad they aren't infiltrating there. At this prison, Tara Sheath sits at a slight remove from the others at lunch. It doesn't appear to be any intention slight on the part of the other prisoners: she chooses a place to sit with some space, and takes it.
Illyana scouts out who's sitting where while she's getting her food, so when she has it in her hands, her path can be mostly casual and meandering to end up across from Tara, but off-set slightly. She sets her food down, sits, and then only gives a nod of generalized greeting, without a smile.
Tara's glance slides hard and fast to Illyana. She is belated in returning her nod, but does so with a sharp upward jerk of her chin. Her fingers slide over the utensils to stab at watery, limp green beans. The metal hardly melts under her touch, but it does look a little more ... aged than Illyana's silverware.
"I'd kill for some real food," Illyana remarks, more accented than usual. She shovels some in anyway, swallowing without much chewing or tasting. She doesn't look at Tara, but seems to be conversing somewhat generally.
Tara snorts. "You've only been in here, what--?" She pauses, giving Illyana a sidelong look. "Wait a few months. Maybe you really will."
"Maybe," Illyana says. "Have you?" She continues eating, eyes staying on the movement of her fork.
Her lips thin. Tara says, "No," and her gaze returns to her food. Soggy green beans from a can, mm-mm.
"'Spose the sensational crimes get all the media and the fancy lawyers," Illyana says, after a pause serving as acknowledgement for the answer.
"Being a mutation isn't sensational enough for you?" Tara asks with another sidelong glance at Illyana. Sidelong seems her style.
It's Illyana's turn to snort. "Didn't get /me/ any fancy lawyer."
"Maybe you'll get lucky," says Tara with a thin smile and a sharp stab at her beans. Die, beans, die!
Illyana looks over at Tara properly for the first time, fork pausing in its motion. "I like to make my luck. Don't you?"
"How do you plan on doing that?" Tara asks, rather dry about it.
Illyana shrugs, one shouldered. Her eyes go back to her food. "Where'd you get yours? Lawyer," she appends after a beat, to clarify.
"Where'd you get yours?" Tara counters, a little aggressive about it.
"Public defender," Illyana answers and looks up to raise her eyebrows in comment on the aggression.
"And that's why we are all here, isn't it," Tara says as she gives Illyana a narrow look. The metal darkens beneath her hand.
Illyana's eyes light on the metal. "Got a problem?" she asks, tone making it a challenge about Tara's attitude, not a remark on her control.
"You ask a lot of questions," Tara retorts.
"That's a crime now?" Illyana's tone is even, but her hand tightens on her fork, tension sliding up to the surface.
Lifting her chin, Tara takes an even, calm bite of bad beans. What else is on her tray? I don't know. "So what is it, informer? Narc? Snitch? They tell you that you'd get out early if you reported on all the dirty muties?"
Illyana isn't eating, and she doesn't relax her fingers. "I /am/ a dirty mutie. Like hell I'd report to anyone."
Tara scoffs, deeply skeptical. She eats her ... meatloaf.
Illyana holds up a hand, fingers spread, a general gesture of doing something. "You want proof?"
"Doesn't make a difference," Tara says with a sharp jerk of her head. "You wouldn't be the first mutant to turn against your own."
Illyana's lips twist like she's thinking of spitting, but she refrains from actually doing it. "Traitors," she says, of such hypothetical people.
"Uh huh," Tara says with a long, drawn-out sarcasm.
"Looks like you made up your mind," Illyana says, sarcasm less drawn-out but no less present. She starts in on her meatloaf, but in silence now.
"You try and talk okay, but your walk is all wrong," says Tara with a stir of her fork through the ketchup on her tray. "People don't like it when you work with the cops."
"Oh, my /walk/." Illyana snorts. She keeps eating.
Tara's jaw sets at that retort, and she splits her attention back to her food. It is really bad food.