Friendly Business
Yesterday, I found myself at a loss about what to do with myself. I read the news about the MRA, and I realize that I should be out there, rallying the troops of activists once again. But... I can't, not yet.
The good days are coming closer together. In fact, maybe the days are mostly good now, when I can keep focused on other things, when I can focus on things that don't remind me. When Magneto doesn't keep popping up. Didn't mind that Shaw appeared. I can apologize, he can apologize. It's ended, there.
I don't know how I feel about the Brotherhood and what I did. I still don't know why I did what I did to the old man. Right? Wrong? Justified? Not?
Like I've known anything with any certainty, where he's concerned. Not since I was twelve, not since he walked out. Thirty years old and I've got abandonment issues with the World's Most Unwanted.
At least Rossi's getting what he's wanted. Here's hoping he finds he still wants it when he gets it.
"There was a small man in my office. Naked." (Magneto)
"Good night." << --Jean. >> (Shaw)
X-Men MUCK - Wednesday, March 08, 2006, 5:20 PM
-----------------------------------------------
The Mustard Seed Clinic
Beyond a barred doorway featuring an intercom for after-hours access and a discreet bronze name plaque bolted to the wall, a short entry hallway with doors to an office and a washroom opens into a large open waiting room. There are no expensive leather couches or tropical fish tanks here, but a work in progress instead: The floor is now partially tiled, and the plastic lawn furniture replaced by restained and reupholstered benches and sofas. An air purifier chugs away in one corner, freshly-patched and -primed white walls are ready for the cans of paint stacked by them, one featuring the beginnings of a graffiti-art mmural. A small box of childrens' toys is set out on one of the rugs, a table with books and magazines for adults beside it. Off to one side, three doors lead to treatment rooms, one of them already furnished and stocked and ready for business. The back wall features two other doors, leading to a large back storage space and the the other, locked and secure, to private spaces upstairs.
[Exits : [O]ut ]
Unassuming from the outside bar for the single, simple brass name plate by the door which is already scrubbed shiny and free of graffiti that continues on either side of it, the interior of the Mustard Seed Clinic is a stark contrast to the mean streets outside. A comfortable mountain of a woman in her late sixties is seated at the reception desk, keeping an equally sharp eye on the computer she's mistrustfully entering patient records into (Can't trust this new technology. Give me a typewriter and a dictaphone any day, honey.) and the young grandson settled in the middle of the waiting room rug, industriously crashing cars into each other and making noises of gunfire and explosions. A collection of faces, brown and white and all shades in between, are settled in the waiting room chairs, and a young pair of health nurses are escorting them into treatment rooms one by one. Dr. Black is seen flitting between them and conferencing all over the place from moment to moment, constantly moving in a whirl of neat brown hair and crisp white lab coat.
The suited, tribly-wearing figure of Sara Evans slinks through the entrance, hips swinging, and each stilleto-clad foot carefully placed in front of the other. Pinstripes contort with each step, and dark eyes shoot either way, taking the other occupants in with a well-sculpted sneer. Lips thin to a prim line as she skirts the child's play area; scarring barely visible beneath the flop of dagger-straight hair and hat's rim. She comes to a clicking halt; metal against tile singing out. "Evans. Here for an appointment," she says, bringing forth a mirthless smile, devoid of warmth. The single visible eye stares at the receptionist, unmoving.
Good pinstripe suit and stilletto heels, walking into a clinic like this? Elsie Matheson, receptionist, grandma, and lifetime resident of Hell's Kitchen gives Sara a level look and laboriously calls up her file. "STD test, honey?" she asks, confident she's got a call girl keeping secrets from her usual doctor. "You'll want to go see Denisha over there, she'll get you set up with a gown-- oh, you're just down for a consultation today."
"Amusingly, you're not far wrong, my darling girl," Sara replies, with a frigid, locked, and entirely unfriendly smile. "I'm here to discuss an infection, anyway." Her mind mutters nothings about mutant infection, Friend infection. Leah Canto. "How late is my -dear- doctor running?" Head tilts, hair shifts, as Sara lets the outer edges of her scarring show. Just for Elsie.
"Not that long at all," replies Dr. Black from over Sara's shoulder, paused in her whirl of patients and with a cup of coffee in one hand. "Elsie, tell the girls to hold the fort for a bit, I'm headed out back to get a smoke. Come with?" she asks of her prickly visitor, nodding towards the locked back room and the loading dock behind it. "It's about the only spot short of a treatment room that you can find any privacy here, during the day." Features now only slightly too thin, although her hairstyle and glasses aren't doing much for her, Jean appears run off her feet, but quite content about it.
"I didn't realise you were a smoker, Doctor," says Sara, etching her voice with just a trickle of dark humour. "It'll kill you. Let's talk." One slender hand gestures away. Perhaps Sara Evans is even more pirckly when her life depends upon otherwise.
"Doctors know all the best addictions, and why nobody else should have them," Jean replies, favouring Sara with a brief, black, smirk. Gesturing for her to follow, she's soon through the door, locking it behind them, and then settled on the inside steps of the loading bay, disinclined to head out past the corrugated metal door and into the early March cold, althoug she's careful to sit by a draft that wicks the smoke of her cigarettes outside. Before lighting up, she offers the package over to Sara. "What's on your mind, Ms. Evans?"
Sara takes a cigarette, regarding it with a careful eye, before withdrawing a black, shiny holder from within her suit jacket. She simply looks at Jean, as she places the cigarette within, then brings forth a lighter. "I want," she says, before sparking the cancer stick and taking a long deep drag, "to save my life." Flight. Catching. -Nathan-.
No cigarette holders for Jean. Simply the methodical flick of a cheap plastic lighter and the elegant curl of fingers that bear no trace of nicotine scarring all the same. A controlled addiction, it appears, carefully doled out at the rate of two per day. Puffing away industriously to get the flame burning strong, she inhales, and then inhales again at the other woman's statement. "How can I help?"
Two rings are let loose, quickly caught by the breeze and dragged away. The remaining smoke comes on a gentle outwards breath. "I'm ditching the Friends, and you're a mutant. I can't go to the pigs; the Feds, even. I happen to like not being stiffed, and you've got a history of helping people out." A pause, as the figure slides sideways; another click of heel against floor as she begins to lean. "I know a lot. Then again; figure you know that already."
"You figure right," Jean confirms, not bothering to be ingenuous about it. She sits perfectly still, smoke seeping from her nose, not daring any large or sudden movements as she plots her next move forward. "And I'll help you out. But you have to know I'm going to be a little suspicious, right? Friends of Humanity don't usually leave alive, or even want to. Why the change of heart?"
"Leah Canto, then Nathan," Sara tells her. "They were the final things. The mutilated corpse? That wasn't the guy who killed her-- Tom. I guess--" A moment's pause, another sneer, this time for herself. "--that you were also right. I thought about stuff. I'm a nasty bitch, but I'm not as nasty as them."
"So Tom is still alive?" Jean questions, looking solemn. "If that's the case... we may need to disappear you for a while, Ms. Evans. And do a lot better job of it than I've done with my own little alias here." Drawing on her cigarette again, she wraps her arms around herself and shivers, completely independant of the breeze. "Where do you want to go?"
The woman shakes her head. "I've seen what happens to people who disappear. Abroad, at a bare minimum. I want surgery, as well-- have you -got- any cop contacts?" There's a long pause, as she takes another drag. "I can take out a good half of the Friends in this city. I want amnesty."
"I've got a few." Jean confirms, eyes narrowed as strategy calls itself to the fore. "I've got a man who'd be very happy to know how he can get to the people who murdered a woman that he... loved, I think." Gentle and hesitant, her voice as she mentions Chris Rossi, like someone sharing a secret they're not sure they're entitled to know. "And we can get you surgery. I know a friend out in Anaheim, does some good work, and does it discreetly, too." And also happens to have some, shall we say, Family connections that he's never claimed, but that work well against threats.
"I can give you the man that hid the gun," Sara tells her. "The silent one behind her on the video. Jake Harrison; sometimes goes by Garath." A fleeting of the man rushes through her mind-- house and home. "The only one I can't give you is Tom. You're not the only person who uses contacts, my darling Jean." An idle thought-- reckon this one's a dyke? Sara inhales, then nods, though her own eyes narrow. "Surgery's good. But; who eactly do you mean by -we-?"
"My contacts," Jean replies, echoing Sara's word back to her with a dry twitch of her lips. "Good people, but you'll forgive me if I don't name names just yet. I'm trusting you with my identity here, but I can't trust you with theirs until it's really too late for you to change your mind... but even if you can't give me Tom, the others can help lead to him. Would you be willing to meet here with my police contact? He's got Feds following him around at the moment, but he can lose 'em if he needs to."
Smiling? Maybe she -is- a dyke. Doctor's have messiah complexes. Potential, here. "Makes sense-- Feds? I -really- don't like Feds." Slender lips purse into a pout; vulnerable perhaps beneath that cold, frigid exterior. She nudges herself away from the wall, and sets herself sideways; a hand touching to her hip. "Bring him on."
Tinged with considering lust, that most devilling of emotions, Sara's thoughts aren't nearly as quiet as she might like to think they are. Jean, however, keeps her expression serene and takes another drag of her cigarette, unconsciously elegant. "Unfortunately, the FoH are a terrorist organization. As a result, if you want amnesty, -someone's- going to have to talk to the Feds about it."
"I know, I know," Sara says, releasing the beginnings of an irritated sigh before cutting it off. "So; I'll meet this guy of yours. Is there anything else you want to know beforehand? Anywhere I should or shouldn't go?" She delivers a sharp, cutting glance to the other. "You do realise that this conversation puts me at a horrible risk of mutilation and murder, don't you? Tom's a madman."
"Well, I doubt the FoH has any telepaths in its ranks, so at least you don't have to worry about anyone overhearing what you're planning," Jean crooks a smile, battlefield black humour. "For now, go about your daily routine if you can pull it off, and if you don't think you can trust yourself not to let it show that something's up, then you've got a case of viral gastroenteritis and you're under voluntary quarantine to keep it from spreading. Come by here in two days' time at 1 AM. I'll have him here." Her orders issued, a slightly awkward silence settles as she stares at Sara consideringly. At last, stubbing out her cigarette on the concrete after a final drag, she offers, quietly genuine, that "For what it's worth, for all the risks... you're making the right call, Ms. Evans." And then she rises.
"You -really- don't know them, do you? I heard about this mutant kid that got pulled in; got brainwashed and used to find others," Sara says, "before she got wise and got dead. Could be a rumour." Shrug. Humour fails utterly to take hold, apart from in the blackest depths of her jaded mind. "I can handle that, I reckon. What's his name?" The hand comes from the hip. "I'd better be." The dark humour rides; a thought best left where it is. "Well, Jean; you look too prim to have ever tried a woman. You should. It'd suit you."
"And if there's a telepath you're already screwed, so there's no sense letting healthy fear become paranoia," Jean counsels before stopping, staring at Sara and then staggering back to life and conversation with a chuckle. "I think my boyfriend suits me fine enough as is, Ms. Evans. I'm definitely skewed to the 'straight' side of Kinsey's scale. But I have a couple single friends who are bi. One's even in Anaheim."
"She got extra arms?" asks Sara, with an uptilt of lips that could be called a predatory smile. "More importantly; is she hot?" She steels herself, forcing back the bile of fear. There are -stories- about what happened to Nathan. What happened to that other guy. The one without a face. "I'm not afraid," she lies, "but I quite like being alive. I have a meeting to get to."
"No to the first, yes to the second." Jean replies, lightly although her eyes are serious behind their brown contacts. "I'll write you up an official doctor's note about your case of enteritis. And you -should- be afraid, Sara," she murmurs, finally using the other woman's first name. "Just don't let it paralyze you. Two days, 1 AM. I'll have Rossi here." And with that, she opens the door back into the light and ordered chaos of the clinic, letting Sara precede her.
"Th--" A pause, a bite-back of a snark. "Thank you," says Sara, as she slinks and swerves her way. A pause in her stride. "I've -heard- that name," she hisses, lowly, as mind's eyes twinkles through memory; seeking and searching. Masking the cold knife of fear. "Goodbye, doctor," are her final words to the other woman, though she does turn to bestow a mirthless smile again on the receptionist. "Seems I'm clean. I don't live in a filthy--" The word scathing. "--enough place to catch what I thought I might have." Not bothering to listen to a reply, her frigid smile waxes satisfied, and she stalks away. Homeward bound.
X-Men MUCK - Wednesday, March 08, 2006, 11:18 PM
------------------------------------------------
Ring, ring. It's a bit late in the day for business, but it's just now that 'Dr. Black' has managed to get her little clinic tucked into bed and the people gone from it. Ring, ring. Rossi's on auto-dial, and Jean's got a call to make. Riiiiiiiing.
The arm that reaches for the phone is bare and groping, tangled with the thin linen of a sheet. An early night, for an early morning; the phone is flipped open by a thumb, its electronic glare brilliant in the darkened room. "Rossi," baritone greets, husky with sleep. Chris rolls in his bed, forearm shielding closed eyes. "What?"
"It's Jean," the self-exile states without preamble. "Come by the clinic at midnight on Friday. I've got a present for you set to come in from the cold at one."
Silence stretches across the line, while Chris smothers a yawn -- and wakes, slowly, inevitably, scarred skin bared to the cool touch of air. Eyes open behind the arm, black dilated to engulf the green. "Jean," he identifies, accent still blurred by drowsiness. And then, rousing: "Friday? Someone coming -- you got one?"
"One came to me." Jean confirms. "A Sara Evans. Joined the Friends because a mutant apparently caused a car accident that killed some of her friends and left her scarred. She came to bitch at me months ago because I'd come across the case as a probable wrongful conviction and the ACLU were poking at it. We talked. She remembered. She wants out and wants to talk."
"How high up?" the baritone asks, harsh with urgency and desperate, ill-tuned eagerness. Rossi rolls up in the bed, raking tousled hair away from eyes; the news drives him to his feet on a surge of restless energy. Trailing the sheet, a wrapped concession to nudity, he measures the width of his room in pacing: head bowed, gaze splintered, all senses fixed on a single name.
"High up enough to know that 'Tom', Prime's second in command, isn't really dead." Jean supplies, regretting the cell phone's lack of a coiled cord to twist and fret between her fingers. Hours since her last cigarette, second of the day and no more allowed herself 'til tomorrow, she plucks at a pen and twiddles it through her fingers as she rests her head against a dusty upstairs wall. "Gave me names for faces in that video."
Breath catches at the other end of the line, rasped across a throat already raw. Chris pauses in his caged prowl; the black head jerks up. "Names," he echoes, numbly. A car passes nearby, its light splashing through the window to paint the lean figure and its scarred, taut skin. "/Names/. Did you get them? Do you have them?"
"The silent one behind her on the video. Jake Harrison, AKA 'Garath'." Jean provides. "It was a fifteen minute talk disguised as a medical consult, I did't have time to debrief her, but she says the only one she can't give me is Tom. Take that as you will. Wants to disappear -- really disappear -- in exchange for everything she knows. Figures Tom will kill her if he ever figures out." There's a pause, and Curie pads over to hop onto Jean's stomach and prod at it with kneading paws as her mistress waits.
In the privacy of his apartment, Chris flares his eyes wide and hot, a fist folding white-knuckled into the frame of his window. "Witness protection," he says curtly. "I'll see what I can do. She wants to turn herself in. She willing to testify? You sure she's not playing some sort of -- never mind. You'd know. What else did she give you?"
"Fifteen minutes, Rossi," Jean reminds, rolling her eyes and absently rubbing at her cat's back. Curie arches agreeably, untroubled by the larger concerns of the human world. Of either genetic constellation. "And this was her talking, not me tweaking. Most of it was spent coordinating a meeting and feeling out the other side. She wants to leave. Still doesn't like mutants, but the Friends are apparently starting to eat their own. Guy named 'Nathan' is dead. There's some link to Leah in her mind."
The cop makes a sound, meaningless -- thwarted rage, frustration vented -- before falling silent again. Eyes stare blank and blind into the window, sightless against their own reflection.
"Friday night." Jean repeats. "Be there for midnight. Lose your Federal puppydogs or bring them along if you think they can handle it, but keep it quiet. Hell's Kitchen is Friends territory and she's the mistress of one of their fight clubs."
"I'll be there," Chris says, savage and bright. His doppelganger in the window cuts a hard, harsh smile. "You'd have to fucking kill me to keep me from being there. --Thanks, Jean. I owe you."
"I keep my promises." With that, and a brief "Good night, Chris," she signs off. Cell phone slipped back into its charger, she scoops up Curie and wanders over to that small corner of the bare loft tentatively made into a home.
The good days are coming closer together. In fact, maybe the days are mostly good now, when I can keep focused on other things, when I can focus on things that don't remind me. When Magneto doesn't keep popping up. Didn't mind that Shaw appeared. I can apologize, he can apologize. It's ended, there.
I don't know how I feel about the Brotherhood and what I did. I still don't know why I did what I did to the old man. Right? Wrong? Justified? Not?
Like I've known anything with any certainty, where he's concerned. Not since I was twelve, not since he walked out. Thirty years old and I've got abandonment issues with the World's Most Unwanted.
At least Rossi's getting what he's wanted. Here's hoping he finds he still wants it when he gets it.
"There was a small man in my office. Naked." (Magneto)
"Good night." << --Jean. >> (Shaw)
X-Men MUCK - Wednesday, March 08, 2006, 5:20 PM
-----------------------------------------------
The Mustard Seed Clinic
Beyond a barred doorway featuring an intercom for after-hours access and a discreet bronze name plaque bolted to the wall, a short entry hallway with doors to an office and a washroom opens into a large open waiting room. There are no expensive leather couches or tropical fish tanks here, but a work in progress instead: The floor is now partially tiled, and the plastic lawn furniture replaced by restained and reupholstered benches and sofas. An air purifier chugs away in one corner, freshly-patched and -primed white walls are ready for the cans of paint stacked by them, one featuring the beginnings of a graffiti-art mmural. A small box of childrens' toys is set out on one of the rugs, a table with books and magazines for adults beside it. Off to one side, three doors lead to treatment rooms, one of them already furnished and stocked and ready for business. The back wall features two other doors, leading to a large back storage space and the the other, locked and secure, to private spaces upstairs.
[Exits : [O]ut ]
Unassuming from the outside bar for the single, simple brass name plate by the door which is already scrubbed shiny and free of graffiti that continues on either side of it, the interior of the Mustard Seed Clinic is a stark contrast to the mean streets outside. A comfortable mountain of a woman in her late sixties is seated at the reception desk, keeping an equally sharp eye on the computer she's mistrustfully entering patient records into (Can't trust this new technology. Give me a typewriter and a dictaphone any day, honey.) and the young grandson settled in the middle of the waiting room rug, industriously crashing cars into each other and making noises of gunfire and explosions. A collection of faces, brown and white and all shades in between, are settled in the waiting room chairs, and a young pair of health nurses are escorting them into treatment rooms one by one. Dr. Black is seen flitting between them and conferencing all over the place from moment to moment, constantly moving in a whirl of neat brown hair and crisp white lab coat.
The suited, tribly-wearing figure of Sara Evans slinks through the entrance, hips swinging, and each stilleto-clad foot carefully placed in front of the other. Pinstripes contort with each step, and dark eyes shoot either way, taking the other occupants in with a well-sculpted sneer. Lips thin to a prim line as she skirts the child's play area; scarring barely visible beneath the flop of dagger-straight hair and hat's rim. She comes to a clicking halt; metal against tile singing out. "Evans. Here for an appointment," she says, bringing forth a mirthless smile, devoid of warmth. The single visible eye stares at the receptionist, unmoving.
Good pinstripe suit and stilletto heels, walking into a clinic like this? Elsie Matheson, receptionist, grandma, and lifetime resident of Hell's Kitchen gives Sara a level look and laboriously calls up her file. "STD test, honey?" she asks, confident she's got a call girl keeping secrets from her usual doctor. "You'll want to go see Denisha over there, she'll get you set up with a gown-- oh, you're just down for a consultation today."
"Amusingly, you're not far wrong, my darling girl," Sara replies, with a frigid, locked, and entirely unfriendly smile. "I'm here to discuss an infection, anyway." Her mind mutters nothings about mutant infection, Friend infection. Leah Canto. "How late is my -dear- doctor running?" Head tilts, hair shifts, as Sara lets the outer edges of her scarring show. Just for Elsie.
"Not that long at all," replies Dr. Black from over Sara's shoulder, paused in her whirl of patients and with a cup of coffee in one hand. "Elsie, tell the girls to hold the fort for a bit, I'm headed out back to get a smoke. Come with?" she asks of her prickly visitor, nodding towards the locked back room and the loading dock behind it. "It's about the only spot short of a treatment room that you can find any privacy here, during the day." Features now only slightly too thin, although her hairstyle and glasses aren't doing much for her, Jean appears run off her feet, but quite content about it.
"I didn't realise you were a smoker, Doctor," says Sara, etching her voice with just a trickle of dark humour. "It'll kill you. Let's talk." One slender hand gestures away. Perhaps Sara Evans is even more pirckly when her life depends upon otherwise.
"Doctors know all the best addictions, and why nobody else should have them," Jean replies, favouring Sara with a brief, black, smirk. Gesturing for her to follow, she's soon through the door, locking it behind them, and then settled on the inside steps of the loading bay, disinclined to head out past the corrugated metal door and into the early March cold, althoug she's careful to sit by a draft that wicks the smoke of her cigarettes outside. Before lighting up, she offers the package over to Sara. "What's on your mind, Ms. Evans?"
Sara takes a cigarette, regarding it with a careful eye, before withdrawing a black, shiny holder from within her suit jacket. She simply looks at Jean, as she places the cigarette within, then brings forth a lighter. "I want," she says, before sparking the cancer stick and taking a long deep drag, "to save my life." Flight. Catching. -Nathan-.
No cigarette holders for Jean. Simply the methodical flick of a cheap plastic lighter and the elegant curl of fingers that bear no trace of nicotine scarring all the same. A controlled addiction, it appears, carefully doled out at the rate of two per day. Puffing away industriously to get the flame burning strong, she inhales, and then inhales again at the other woman's statement. "How can I help?"
Two rings are let loose, quickly caught by the breeze and dragged away. The remaining smoke comes on a gentle outwards breath. "I'm ditching the Friends, and you're a mutant. I can't go to the pigs; the Feds, even. I happen to like not being stiffed, and you've got a history of helping people out." A pause, as the figure slides sideways; another click of heel against floor as she begins to lean. "I know a lot. Then again; figure you know that already."
"You figure right," Jean confirms, not bothering to be ingenuous about it. She sits perfectly still, smoke seeping from her nose, not daring any large or sudden movements as she plots her next move forward. "And I'll help you out. But you have to know I'm going to be a little suspicious, right? Friends of Humanity don't usually leave alive, or even want to. Why the change of heart?"
"Leah Canto, then Nathan," Sara tells her. "They were the final things. The mutilated corpse? That wasn't the guy who killed her-- Tom. I guess--" A moment's pause, another sneer, this time for herself. "--that you were also right. I thought about stuff. I'm a nasty bitch, but I'm not as nasty as them."
"So Tom is still alive?" Jean questions, looking solemn. "If that's the case... we may need to disappear you for a while, Ms. Evans. And do a lot better job of it than I've done with my own little alias here." Drawing on her cigarette again, she wraps her arms around herself and shivers, completely independant of the breeze. "Where do you want to go?"
The woman shakes her head. "I've seen what happens to people who disappear. Abroad, at a bare minimum. I want surgery, as well-- have you -got- any cop contacts?" There's a long pause, as she takes another drag. "I can take out a good half of the Friends in this city. I want amnesty."
"I've got a few." Jean confirms, eyes narrowed as strategy calls itself to the fore. "I've got a man who'd be very happy to know how he can get to the people who murdered a woman that he... loved, I think." Gentle and hesitant, her voice as she mentions Chris Rossi, like someone sharing a secret they're not sure they're entitled to know. "And we can get you surgery. I know a friend out in Anaheim, does some good work, and does it discreetly, too." And also happens to have some, shall we say, Family connections that he's never claimed, but that work well against threats.
"I can give you the man that hid the gun," Sara tells her. "The silent one behind her on the video. Jake Harrison; sometimes goes by Garath." A fleeting of the man rushes through her mind-- house and home. "The only one I can't give you is Tom. You're not the only person who uses contacts, my darling Jean." An idle thought-- reckon this one's a dyke? Sara inhales, then nods, though her own eyes narrow. "Surgery's good. But; who eactly do you mean by -we-?"
"My contacts," Jean replies, echoing Sara's word back to her with a dry twitch of her lips. "Good people, but you'll forgive me if I don't name names just yet. I'm trusting you with my identity here, but I can't trust you with theirs until it's really too late for you to change your mind... but even if you can't give me Tom, the others can help lead to him. Would you be willing to meet here with my police contact? He's got Feds following him around at the moment, but he can lose 'em if he needs to."
Smiling? Maybe she -is- a dyke. Doctor's have messiah complexes. Potential, here. "Makes sense-- Feds? I -really- don't like Feds." Slender lips purse into a pout; vulnerable perhaps beneath that cold, frigid exterior. She nudges herself away from the wall, and sets herself sideways; a hand touching to her hip. "Bring him on."
Tinged with considering lust, that most devilling of emotions, Sara's thoughts aren't nearly as quiet as she might like to think they are. Jean, however, keeps her expression serene and takes another drag of her cigarette, unconsciously elegant. "Unfortunately, the FoH are a terrorist organization. As a result, if you want amnesty, -someone's- going to have to talk to the Feds about it."
"I know, I know," Sara says, releasing the beginnings of an irritated sigh before cutting it off. "So; I'll meet this guy of yours. Is there anything else you want to know beforehand? Anywhere I should or shouldn't go?" She delivers a sharp, cutting glance to the other. "You do realise that this conversation puts me at a horrible risk of mutilation and murder, don't you? Tom's a madman."
"Well, I doubt the FoH has any telepaths in its ranks, so at least you don't have to worry about anyone overhearing what you're planning," Jean crooks a smile, battlefield black humour. "For now, go about your daily routine if you can pull it off, and if you don't think you can trust yourself not to let it show that something's up, then you've got a case of viral gastroenteritis and you're under voluntary quarantine to keep it from spreading. Come by here in two days' time at 1 AM. I'll have him here." Her orders issued, a slightly awkward silence settles as she stares at Sara consideringly. At last, stubbing out her cigarette on the concrete after a final drag, she offers, quietly genuine, that "For what it's worth, for all the risks... you're making the right call, Ms. Evans." And then she rises.
"You -really- don't know them, do you? I heard about this mutant kid that got pulled in; got brainwashed and used to find others," Sara says, "before she got wise and got dead. Could be a rumour." Shrug. Humour fails utterly to take hold, apart from in the blackest depths of her jaded mind. "I can handle that, I reckon. What's his name?" The hand comes from the hip. "I'd better be." The dark humour rides; a thought best left where it is. "Well, Jean; you look too prim to have ever tried a woman. You should. It'd suit you."
"And if there's a telepath you're already screwed, so there's no sense letting healthy fear become paranoia," Jean counsels before stopping, staring at Sara and then staggering back to life and conversation with a chuckle. "I think my boyfriend suits me fine enough as is, Ms. Evans. I'm definitely skewed to the 'straight' side of Kinsey's scale. But I have a couple single friends who are bi. One's even in Anaheim."
"She got extra arms?" asks Sara, with an uptilt of lips that could be called a predatory smile. "More importantly; is she hot?" She steels herself, forcing back the bile of fear. There are -stories- about what happened to Nathan. What happened to that other guy. The one without a face. "I'm not afraid," she lies, "but I quite like being alive. I have a meeting to get to."
"No to the first, yes to the second." Jean replies, lightly although her eyes are serious behind their brown contacts. "I'll write you up an official doctor's note about your case of enteritis. And you -should- be afraid, Sara," she murmurs, finally using the other woman's first name. "Just don't let it paralyze you. Two days, 1 AM. I'll have Rossi here." And with that, she opens the door back into the light and ordered chaos of the clinic, letting Sara precede her.
"Th--" A pause, a bite-back of a snark. "Thank you," says Sara, as she slinks and swerves her way. A pause in her stride. "I've -heard- that name," she hisses, lowly, as mind's eyes twinkles through memory; seeking and searching. Masking the cold knife of fear. "Goodbye, doctor," are her final words to the other woman, though she does turn to bestow a mirthless smile again on the receptionist. "Seems I'm clean. I don't live in a filthy--" The word scathing. "--enough place to catch what I thought I might have." Not bothering to listen to a reply, her frigid smile waxes satisfied, and she stalks away. Homeward bound.
X-Men MUCK - Wednesday, March 08, 2006, 11:18 PM
------------------------------------------------
Ring, ring. It's a bit late in the day for business, but it's just now that 'Dr. Black' has managed to get her little clinic tucked into bed and the people gone from it. Ring, ring. Rossi's on auto-dial, and Jean's got a call to make. Riiiiiiiing.
The arm that reaches for the phone is bare and groping, tangled with the thin linen of a sheet. An early night, for an early morning; the phone is flipped open by a thumb, its electronic glare brilliant in the darkened room. "Rossi," baritone greets, husky with sleep. Chris rolls in his bed, forearm shielding closed eyes. "What?"
"It's Jean," the self-exile states without preamble. "Come by the clinic at midnight on Friday. I've got a present for you set to come in from the cold at one."
Silence stretches across the line, while Chris smothers a yawn -- and wakes, slowly, inevitably, scarred skin bared to the cool touch of air. Eyes open behind the arm, black dilated to engulf the green. "Jean," he identifies, accent still blurred by drowsiness. And then, rousing: "Friday? Someone coming -- you got one?"
"One came to me." Jean confirms. "A Sara Evans. Joined the Friends because a mutant apparently caused a car accident that killed some of her friends and left her scarred. She came to bitch at me months ago because I'd come across the case as a probable wrongful conviction and the ACLU were poking at it. We talked. She remembered. She wants out and wants to talk."
"How high up?" the baritone asks, harsh with urgency and desperate, ill-tuned eagerness. Rossi rolls up in the bed, raking tousled hair away from eyes; the news drives him to his feet on a surge of restless energy. Trailing the sheet, a wrapped concession to nudity, he measures the width of his room in pacing: head bowed, gaze splintered, all senses fixed on a single name.
"High up enough to know that 'Tom', Prime's second in command, isn't really dead." Jean supplies, regretting the cell phone's lack of a coiled cord to twist and fret between her fingers. Hours since her last cigarette, second of the day and no more allowed herself 'til tomorrow, she plucks at a pen and twiddles it through her fingers as she rests her head against a dusty upstairs wall. "Gave me names for faces in that video."
Breath catches at the other end of the line, rasped across a throat already raw. Chris pauses in his caged prowl; the black head jerks up. "Names," he echoes, numbly. A car passes nearby, its light splashing through the window to paint the lean figure and its scarred, taut skin. "/Names/. Did you get them? Do you have them?"
"The silent one behind her on the video. Jake Harrison, AKA 'Garath'." Jean provides. "It was a fifteen minute talk disguised as a medical consult, I did't have time to debrief her, but she says the only one she can't give me is Tom. Take that as you will. Wants to disappear -- really disappear -- in exchange for everything she knows. Figures Tom will kill her if he ever figures out." There's a pause, and Curie pads over to hop onto Jean's stomach and prod at it with kneading paws as her mistress waits.
In the privacy of his apartment, Chris flares his eyes wide and hot, a fist folding white-knuckled into the frame of his window. "Witness protection," he says curtly. "I'll see what I can do. She wants to turn herself in. She willing to testify? You sure she's not playing some sort of -- never mind. You'd know. What else did she give you?"
"Fifteen minutes, Rossi," Jean reminds, rolling her eyes and absently rubbing at her cat's back. Curie arches agreeably, untroubled by the larger concerns of the human world. Of either genetic constellation. "And this was her talking, not me tweaking. Most of it was spent coordinating a meeting and feeling out the other side. She wants to leave. Still doesn't like mutants, but the Friends are apparently starting to eat their own. Guy named 'Nathan' is dead. There's some link to Leah in her mind."
The cop makes a sound, meaningless -- thwarted rage, frustration vented -- before falling silent again. Eyes stare blank and blind into the window, sightless against their own reflection.
"Friday night." Jean repeats. "Be there for midnight. Lose your Federal puppydogs or bring them along if you think they can handle it, but keep it quiet. Hell's Kitchen is Friends territory and she's the mistress of one of their fight clubs."
"I'll be there," Chris says, savage and bright. His doppelganger in the window cuts a hard, harsh smile. "You'd have to fucking kill me to keep me from being there. --Thanks, Jean. I owe you."
"I keep my promises." With that, and a brief "Good night, Chris," she signs off. Cell phone slipped back into its charger, she scoops up Curie and wanders over to that small corner of the bare loft tentatively made into a home.