OOC: commentary on Leah/Rossi post-Magneto scene (Part 1 of 2)
LJ entry: Realizations
Originally posted: December 18, 2005
Written: December 26, 2005
What Has Come Before: Leah, extorted yet not entirely unwilling public representative of the Friends of Humanity, comes home from Christmas shopping to find Magneto waiting for her in her living room. He has a message for the mutant population that he wants her (as a controversial figure sure to bring attention to the story) to put in the media for him. She does. Then she calls the cops. And Rossi, to whom she confessed her love only a few days before and who had sent her flowers that (after going a little astray with a lost delivery boy) arrived before the cops did.
This scene is the dramatic pivot of Leah's FoH arc. I hadn't planned it as such, when I sat down with Tom and a couple other players to discuss story ideas weeks and weeks ago, but I'm rarely slow to leap upon an opportunity when it shows up. Magneto wants to send a message through a reporter? Oooh, pick me, pick, me! (I wanted rp with xmm_magneto because it had been a while and I adore scenes with that player.) Hey, xmm_rossi's online - let's have a quick follow-up scene!
Four hours later, into the wee hours of the morning, I felt like I'd finally gotten somewhere with my character. She couldn't yet ask for help to get out of the hole she'd found herself in . . . but she was ready to ask. When Tom delivers chastising punishment, at the hands and fists of her protector, Nathan, she is ready then to turn her face away from hatred and plan for escape. For the future. Which is not to say that she will suddenly stop being a bigot because no, it usually doesn't work like that, but she's getting out of the Friends' employ and philosophical sway. She'll try to make things right, without betraying her core principles. She'll try to have a future: with her job, with her family and friends (threatened by Tom's reprisals), and with Chris Rossi.
First, however, she needs to confront some personal demons. I needed to push her all the way to the rocky bottom before I could start drawing her back up the slope to light. My profound, humble thanks to Rossi's player for giving me that space in which to work, and for the support and trust with it.
The lights are still flashing outside in the street, police blue and red splashing hasty, alarming fingerpaint across the neighborhood walls. Inside, relative quiet: police tape there is none, though forensics still crawls in eager, hungry hunt across the third floor. A pause for question, the flash of a badge, and the bang of a door hurtle Det. Rossi up the stairs in haste; another bang at the landing closes the door behind him. Leather flares behind him, no angel's wings, sculpting the draft of his passage. "/Canto/? --Chris Rossi," he introduces with a passing flash of badge, interrupting lines of officialdom. "Homicide. --Leah? What the fuck?"
Massive gratitude for the setting, too: I'd been planning on putting a lot of the same detail into my pose, but he saved me the work. Hurray! He sets up the cops, the crime scene, the location, but leaves it to me to say what my character is doing, even where she is. I love that. I never feel trapped or pushed around with this player; we have a good sense of each other's boundaries, even as we do all kinds of mean things to our characters.
The Brown Leather Coat of Justice! Rossi is a fallen angel, a tarnished Lucifer - Light-bringer, Light-bearer. He lost his faith, while Leah's only slipped away through the cracked vessel of cynical adulthood. We use a lot of religious language in our scenes, for them. Me, I'm not religious at all, I dislike organized religion (I say, as I watch a rerun of Mysteries of the Bible for the umpteenth time), but I can fake it with a little Googling and a lot of vagueness. Mostly, I leave it to Rossi's player, who writes better than I do, anyway. I never get into his level of detail or word-smithing. I used to, once upon a time. Then I got old.
"That's what I've been saying for the past hour," Leah carols with false, brittle brightness from the dining table, where she sits in the company of her laptop, a bouquet of flowers, and a furiously scribbling detective. She glances at him. "Are we done, Pat? I still haven't even taken my coat off--"
There's Leah, with her mica-bright facade in place. The laptop is there because she'd been writing up and then sending in a story about Magneto's visit to the New York Times. The flowers are there because they finally found her, in the hands of a sheepish college student who didn't know Salem Center at all well for the delivery. The detective is there because the NYPD is naturally curious about the visit of the most wanted mutant terrorist in the world to one Leah Canto.
She knows a lot of cops, through her family and her work, but not this one in particular, I think. She's just in forced familiarity with him to feel a little more in control of the situation, which is so very much not in her control. She came home to find Magneto, Toxin, and Toad chilling in her apartment. How is that control? It's not. In the larger sense, she hasn't been in control of her situation ever since Lydia and the Friends kidnapped her to be their spokesperson. She's floundering, drowning, so she'll grab on to a bit of power-play here: "Pat." Detective Pat. I don't know who he is; I made him up on the spot.
"--/Magneto/?" jostles Rossi, bumping his baritone through Leah's, even as he forces his way through the crowded door. "Yeah, chill. I'm not touching anything. --Old Pez Head came by to visit you? What the hell, Canto. You okay?"
Crime scenes are busy places. I'm glad the player illustrated that with Rossi's voice pushing through Leah's, matching his body's progress through the crowd. Figure a pair of detectives working the scene, some uniformed officers assisting and guarding, lab techs collecting samples and taking photographs . . . the apartment is quite full. Warm. Uncomfortable. Unhappy. Leah wants them out. It's a violation. It's horrifying, just as bad as the Brotherhood's break-in earlier - worse, maybe, because she does come from a police family and is familiar with the personnel and rituals involved. But she never thought it'd happen to her. In her own home! (She's very much a homebody. Having a personal, private retreat is vital for her, especially in these troubled times.)
The detective, whippet-lean and dark with the blessing of Ireland's black blood, sighs and waves a hand. Leah jolts out of her chair like a shot and flings herself at Rossi. To hell with the crowd, and the coat still dragging long and brown over her rumpled brown pantsuit: she squeezes /her/ detective and burrows her head into his shoulder. Pat bites down on a chuckle and assiduously bends to studying his notes, seeing no evil.
I was going to have Pat be your stereotypical doughy, pasty Irish cop, but whimsy nudged me down a different path, for the sake of Rossi's PB, Law & Order's Mike Logan, who's black Irish himself. Pat lets her go, and Leah is on Rossi like a tick on a dog. I don't think she would've been that demonstrative, in front of a good dozen of New York's finest, even a month ago. The FoH thing has really worn on her: rubbed her down to the raw, vulnerable nub. She's moodier now. Huge mood swings inflicted on everyone around her. Violence. Black retreats from the world with a bottle of whiskey.
She's still in her clothes from the day and the shopping. Brown, Richard Culter's color from The Lymond Chronicles by Dame Dorothy Dunnett. It suits her: quiet, dependable, boring, unimaginative. I use brown on her a lot for that reason and because it complements her coloring. I like my characters to look good! She might be plain in appearance, but dammit, she can dress herself.
I did the head-burrowing thing as a call-back to when she'd done it to him in an earlier scene, when he yelled at her about the whole "you're involved with the FoH?!" thing he had. It's a child's gesture of hiding, vulnerability, trust. Cowering, hoping for protection. She really, really wants some of that right now, plzkthx. Leah is fundamentally a submissive, passive person. She wants to be dominated, and she wants to be controlled. She dresses it up consciously in desire, in this need for reassurance, even in aggression; but she is what she is: weak, shallow, and made afraid by a complex, unforgiving, incomprehensible world.
That isn't exactly what I am, and since I get very close to my characters in order to play them (IC/OOC bleed, yay!), I felt estranged, even contemptuous of Leah for her nature. I hated her. I didn't want to play her because I would have to feel that weakness inside me, not to mention her hatred for the different and the Other. I have my share of both; acknowledging my shadows isn't always easy for me to do. However, I did it. I've been embracing my flaws, and that has led me (along with a good bit of stubborn fatalism) to embrace Leah. I like her now. I feel immense compassion and sorrow for her, as well as love and immense hope that she can turn her life around and be happy. Never would've thought I'd be able to say that, or even conceive of it, so let's hear it for personal growth and bravery. For Leah and for me!
Answer enough for emotional health; the physical, Rossi gets with a swift glance over her head at another cop. "Christ," he offers, by way of limp-wristed condolence. The arms that close around her are less flimsy, hard and fierce across shoulders and back. "He hurt you? --Never mind. The nutbag's got a thing for the showy. What the fuck did he want?" The question of the night, posited in rhetorical heat.
"An interview," Leah muffles against his coat, then pulls back, shaking her head. She laughs a little, and it's not quite hysterical. Tired, frayed-- "He wanted to give me a statement. An /apology/, if you can believe it."
Magneto didn't hurt her; the cops would've ascertained that first thing (well, maybe second or third thing, after making sure he was gone and securing the scene for investigation). He just wanted to get his word out, and when he'd given a tape-recorded statement for veracity's sake, he left. The tape recorder is in police custody now; some technician in the bowels of One Police Plaza is having a grand old time with it, I'm sure.
Leah got her hug and has her feet back under her. She can talk about the encounter, even laugh at it. Magneto, coming to her, to deliver an explanation for his attack on the Greenwich Apartments and the assurance to the wider mutant community that he's not going to do the same to them just for questioning him or thinking mean thoughts. Man, life is weird. Leah's is, anyway.
"An interview," echoes Det. Rossi, hold loosening slightly around surprise. Baritone skirls higher. "An /apolo--?/ Jesus, Joseph, and Santa Maria. The old queen's finally lost it completely. Apologize to you for /what/?" Bright suspicion slams closed behind Chris's expression, skipped from the busy Pat to the visible terrain of Leah's face. "What'd he do to you?"
Leah shakes her head harder. Freeing herself from him in a jerk of restless energy, she brushes past a CSU tech brushing her coffee table for fingerprints and dumps her coat on the couch. Her gaze slices towards the foyer -- Christmas shopping still slumped there in forlorn plastic bags -- on its way back to his face. Hers slackens, as if the night had turned all the screws holding her smoothly professional expression one-quarter looser. "He didn't do anything," she answers the last first, "and he sure as hell did not apologize to /me/, Rossi. No. Just to the mutants he hurt on 11/9 and any of 'em who're afraid they're gonna get a Hummer through /their/ roofs next."
Okay, so I ought to stop writing about stuff that gets explicated in the very next pose. (I don't proofread these commentaries; it's all brain-dumping without stopping.) Yes, there's Magneto's message, thank you. I've been using "11/9" to refer to the Purity rally because of 9/11, obviously. Leah's a born and bred New Yorker. She knows from terrorist tragedies. She's also a reporter, and that breed loves their shorthand, especially if it's jargonistic to hide meaning from the uninitiated. (A superior sort, journalists, or so I've found with many of them.)
Wording: skirl is one of mine and has been for years, but I will permit Rossi to use it. The correct term is "CSU," for "crime scene unit," not "CSI," whatever Jerry Bruckenheimer would like you to believe. I like the imagery of Leah's expression loosening, but I don't think I captured it quite right in words. I'll try again another time.
Chris pauses. "Considerate of him," he allows, a curious note nudging his accent: black hilarity; puzzled speculation. "I suppose that means the mutant community can sleep a little sounder. Dr. Grey's apartment was, what, a slip of the finger? --You can't stay here." A glance skims the apartment and its busy, agile ants at labor; Det. Rossi crams his hands into his pockets, straight-arming antagonism. "Dust everywhere -- grab your things and crash at my place."
Ye gods and little fishes, this player writes well. I can't even begin to keep up. Such beautiful attention to detail, large and small; the expressions of his expressive character; more with the setting, and perfect, brusque, commanding dialogue. I envy! I worship! (I steal!)
Callused writer's fingers run back through crumpled bronze hair. Leah ghosts a smile. "Can I bring the flowers?" Pat bends his head even lower over his notes, /hearing/ no evil, let alone seeing the cheerful gold-and-red sign stuck in the bouquet next to him that blares "Congratulations on a Sensational Sixtieth Anniversary!" to all and sundry.
Rossi does not have the best of luck with florists. And I'm mean to him: it was either an anniversary card or a "Best Wishes for Your New Baby!" one. However, we've already done the joking about Leah's being pregnant; no need to dip into that well again. Instead, I went morbid because Leah's not likely to have a sixtieth wedding anniversary in her future. Nor is Rossi, for that matter. Instead, there's this bouquet. Ah, well.
She doesn't intend to bring the flowers with her, by the way. It's only her way of drawing attention to them, to thank him for them. She loves flowers; she loves presents. She's not quite young and naive enough to think that Rossi is saying "I love you, too" with them, after her revelation the other day, but she's also not cynical enough to let that disappointment get in the way of her enjoyment of the gift.
I just like her hair. (I usually do, with my characters.) It's bronze: tarnished metallic brown with threads of gold and copper. Her heritage isn't pure Italian; there's some Irish in her a couple generations back, and probably some good old-fashioned WASP here and there, too. The blood marks itself in her hair, her pale-brown eyes, her fair and easily bruised skin; but the spirit in the flesh is quite Italianate, and will smack you upside the head to prove it.
A frown spits towards the flowers, refusing -- disgruntled -- to ease at recognition of his proxy's handiwork. "If you want," Chris grants, making an awl of his glare into Pat's nape. "I got a vase or something downstairs, left over from the -- wait. What the hell. Sensational Sixtieth?"
Leah admits on her way towards the bedroom (she nearly trips over a bag o' forensic goodies, but recovers), "--Thought it weird, myself, but gift horse in the mouth and all that. Hang on." She vanishes into the room.
Awl is cool. Poor Rossi. Done in by another evil florist! (It was an honest mistake; I don't think the florist meant it personally.) Leah's trip is my own weak attempt to add to the setting extension. I rag on myself a bit over that, but I was focusing more on Leah's psychology and the characters' interaction than stagecraft. I give myself a pass for not keeping up with xmm_rossi's magnificence. We were probably coming at the scene from different angles, on different levels, and it isn't as if I sucked in the rp.
The shoulders rise; the fists dig further down. "Sensational Sixtieth," Chris growls to the back curve of Pat's ear. "I didn't ask for a freaking card. Not with the ... what the fuck. --They're nice flowers, though," he tells his fellow cop, defensively.
"You bet they are, man," Pat assures him as he stands and flips his notebook closed for tucking into a pocket's waiting mouth. He gives his fellow detective a grin, a tap of forefingers to brow for salute, and saunters over to the living room to consult with the forensics chief on the site.
Chris sulks.
Ha, ha. The fraternity of cops is a cold and cheerfully cruel one. I ushered Detective Pat offstage with the rest of the NPCs; wasn't in the mood to handle a whole stable of characters at this time of night.
"What about the flowers?" Leah asks. Frowning at him, she hitches an old backpack over her shoulder: NYU T-shirt, flannel shirt, and jeans mark her quick change to more comfortable attire. "Your face is all scrunched, Rossi. The hell? I /like/ the flowers. You just got taken in by a bad florist." She says it kindly, then pauses before finishing, "Again."
Leah reenters the room with the timing of a Neil Simon play. Someone was talking about the flowers while she was changing and throwing stuff into a bag? And so we spin light entertainment 'round and 'round, between the shock of Magneto's intrusion behind and, ahead, the confrontation between cop and reporter, man and woman.
A glare splices through the fanned lashes, and sulk turns to glower in short order. "I suck at flowers," Rossi reminds, unlocking an arm to extend it for the backpack. "I didn't ask for a card. I think. I can't reme-- anyway, I suck at flowers. You want to bring them?" he adds, canting a dubious glance at the arrangement before pitching his baritone louder. "Yo. You still need her?"
Various hands flap distracted assurance that she can go, go already (a couple of techs snigger to each other about Homicide lovin', and that renowned Italian heat), and Leah's on her way for the door, anyway, leaving him to hold the backpack. Freed, her arms hugs her ribs, and the flowers stay on the table, the police stay in her space, as she stalks stiffly into the hallway.
Splice is a Rossi word; he uses it a lot, and it suits him. I always conceptualize it as deft and delicately precise cuts. He was trained by Jesuits, after all.
"Italian heat" . . . yes. Well. It's possible that in a phone call with her brother Michael, also on the force, that Leah might have shared a laugh over Rossi's incredulity at the existence of slash fiction out in the world, and her own joking notion of slashing him with Vincent Lazzaro of Mutant Affairs, in a story of burning, forbidden passion. It's furthermore possible that Michael Canto might be sharing that notion with everyone he talks to for a while and, given the nature of the NYPD grapevine, the story might have spread a little further than even Leah would have wanted. It's possible, anyway.
In the meantime, though, she just wants out of her violated, made-strange-by-strangers apartment. Her body language is tense and defensive. She even surrenders the backpack at his request so she can get out of there all the faster, without the argument over who was carrying what ("It's just a backpack! Do I look that feeble to you, Rossi? Fuck you. But if you want to be carrying around my tampons in your manly hands, hey, go for it," etc.) that might have ensued in happier times.
Chris lags, a hitch in his step for a paused glance -- heard that, assholes -- for the technicians' commentary. Green-eyed annoyance stride into the hallway with him, crowding the corridor: Leah, Rossi, and temper makes three. "We'll be down in 210 if you need us. --C'mon," he invites, slinging the backpack over his shoulder. "You need a drink? Because damn, I could use one."
Bye, technicians! Bye, apartment! Exeunt our leads, stage left.
"No," says Leah, muted, staying on her solitary, leading path to his place. Her shoulders hunch, and her voice drops further. "I'd really like a shower and a mind-wipe of this whole fucking evening, though. But you can't help me there."
"/Mind-wipe/," repeats Rossi, protest and revulsion immediate in the sharp-edged echo. The long spine stiffens, shaping to the bump and hiccup of his backpack burden. "Shower's not a problem. Don't know how Jean would feel about being asked for windex treatment."
Leah stops in the stairwell down and cranes a startled look back. "It was a joke, Chris. Jesus."
Perhaps surprisingly, no, Leah doesn't want a drink. She didn't even have a nip between Magneto's departure and the police's arrival. She needed to be clear-headed to get the story in, for one thing, and for another, she had her pride: no appearing drunk in front of the cops. She has a weakness for alcohol, but she's not an addict. She can control herself. This isn't a night for drinking. A shower? Definitely that.
And I can't blame Rossi for his reaction to the mind-wipe comment because, truthfully, Leah was not joking. She says she is because she's covering her ass. Admitting that she'd let a mutant mess with her head? No way. And yet . . . and yet. Her startlement is less for his reaction, though, and more for his casual familiarity with Jean Grey's name. You two buddies now? Is that how it is? Maybe Rossi knows something about the Jean/Mystique story Jason tried to sell her. Hey, maybe that's why he was looking at slash on the Internet! C'mon, admit it. You were, weren't you, Chris? Jean/Mystique: "Shifting the Shape of Love."
The detective drops his head, a tortoise-shell ridge to his shoulders' hitch up. "Not funny," he informs. "Blonde jokes? /Those/ are funny." The door hisses shut behind them; Chris rattles his way down the stairs, the railing a metallic whine under the beringed hand.
"Sexist pig," Leah labels him and sweeps ahead to get the matching portal out again, into his hallway. "You have a piss-poor sense of humor, mister. And taste. We need to send you to sensitivity training."
Rossi gets the upper door, Leah gets the lower one, and neither player troubles to inform the other of such arrangement. It's a small thing, but I love it. I love that trust and companionship. Leah does try to joke now, getting away from her apartment and her mood a bit. Make things light; be nice to the guy (by which we mean "insult and mock him").
"I'm a goddamn riot," Rossi announces over the jangle of keys, plowed out of his inner pocket and turned to a speedy inventory. His stride overtakes hers to arrive a half-second before at the locked door. "You just don't have a proper appreciation of what's funny. And I'm sensitive. I have sensitivity up to my /eyeballs/."
Leah narrows her own eyeballs at him. "Where?"
Chris shows his teeth. "I'm plenty PC." The key jams home. Tumblers rattle. The door opens on a foot's kick, inviting them in to darkness and chill.
In first, Leah fumbles her way to the nearest piece of furniture and gives up the fight against gravity into it. "God," she groans into the dark. "I am in the wrong /business/. What the . . . shit. What is wrong with this picture? Magneto, coming to see me?"
And after the banter, back to the situation at hand. She's still in shock, a bit, over the Brotherhood's visit; she doesn't know why they came to her or, maybe, why they didn't hurt her. She doesn't think well of the Brotherhood, and she did try to get Magneto to kill her in the park not too long ago. (I flinch, remembering that. I'm such a drama h00r. Embarrassing.)
"Can't even /start/ counting the ways," Rossi admits, flicking the light on to bathe the apartment in dull gold and creams. The door snipes shut to his heel's press; the backpack, dropped on a chair, frees him to shrug out of his heavy overcoat. "Want something to drink? Or you want your shower?"
Leah says softly, staring at the coffee table (no fingerprint brushing here!), "They're going to kill me now."
Hate that parenthetical meta. Should've left it out. Don't know what I was doing, calling back to the crime scene upstairs. You win some, you lose some in realtime writing.
Chris pauses in the act of removing his suit coat. Green eyes glance askance. "The Friends?"
A nod bends Leah's head into her hands. One elbow skids off her knee in propping it, and she chokes back a curse, a laugh, a sob at the move.
I do like the elbow thing. It seems correct and realistic to me: the slight betrayal of physical shock and weakness, and the emotional reaction following it. Yay, me. Poor Leah. She's been fighting and fighting not to tell him, or anyone, about her real relationship with the Friends, but once you have Magneto chilling out in a pimp suit in your best armchair, there's not much more wiggle room for evasion, is there? She talks because she needs to and because she doesn't think it matters anymore. She truly thinks she'll be dead in the morning, in the next few days, whenever Tom finds out about this night and does something about it. Dead woman walking: who cares what she says anymore now?
The sounds of rustling fabric sketches the shape of Rossi's undressing: suit coat; tie; the shuffle of shoes. Floorboards creak under Chris's drift around, skirting the sofa and the sofa's long back. "Why?"
"When I called the Times to get the story in -- they really did the whole 'stop the presses' thing, too, kinda," Leah interrupts herself to relate on a wheezing chuckle, "the editor thought up the headline on the spot. 'Magneto Speaks to Friends Advocate.' Doesn't that say it all? The biggest, baddest mutant on the planet spoke to the puppet of the big, bad mutant-haters. Ohh, they are not going to be happy with me." She stares across the room; her face is as slack as her slumping body, and wan with tired, uncaring stress. She murmurs, dry-eyed, "Not happy at all."
Exposition. Why am I better with it with Leah than with Shaw? Dammit. I blame the FC vs. OC difference: I've shaped Shaw to be my own, but he didn't start out that way, whereas Leah did. She's my character, not Marvel's.
This is the other side of her (now mostly sublimated) death wish: indifferent fatalism. Stress, depression, surrender. Tom himself could appear in front of her at this moment and aim a gun at her head, and she wouldn't do more than blink and think, vaguely, about how Rossi was going to get the bloodstains out of the upholstery.
"It put you in the spotlight," Chris supposes, dropping a hand on Leah's shoulder. A hip and a leg hook over the sofa back, framing warmth behind her head; his gaze is for that bronzed, tarnished crown, and the chase of light over its strands. "Like you had a choice, anyway. The Friends want to keep you away from Magneto, they should give you some fucking protection."
Leah chokes another sound. "They /did/."
The man's face lapses into repose, stark, remote. "Yeah? And where was it?"
Her answer is thin and lonely: "I don't know." She leans further back and looks up at him. "I missed him. I . . . /miss/ him. But they would've killed him anyway, so it doesn't matter. And I'm gonna get a bullet in the head, too. Maybe I can talk my way around this. Out of this. I don't know," Leah finishes in raw despair.
This was me realizing, "Oh, shit, what about Nathan? Where was he when all this was going on?" Leah's Friends minder/keeper/protector is usually somewhere in her vicinity, but I didn't even think about him when doing the Magneto scene. I think now that he was out of town, seeing his son in Trenton (he and his ex-wife share custody), after Leah insisted on some time alone to get her Christmas shopping done. Maybe she even teased that she was buying his present, so he'd better not be around to spy on her. She does like the guy. He likes her. Because of that, they're obviously both completely doomed. Such are the laws of storytelling.
"Maybe you can put yourself under police protection," says Rossi, folding his hand under Leah's chin, fingers a benediction on the line of her throat. Green eyes glimmer down. "I know some people in the NYPD."
Leah trembles a smile. "Do you? Handy guy."
He's made this offer before. She's turned it down before. She's close to accepting it now. I mean, she had Magneto in her apartment! Magneto! What the hell! (Maybe she should've Maced him instead of Toad. Speaking of death wishes.)
"Connected." The pale smile gleams, bleeding hotter, brighter colors. "It's that Italian blood."
Leah closes her eyes against it. Against him. Against hope. "I . . . No. You -- and Scott-- What, the force protects me from the Friends, and our mutant poodle protects me from Metalhead? Like hell, Rossi. That won't work." She sighs and rolls her head away. "I'm just gonna have to stick it out. Bluff 'em. I can do that."
But no. Her pride, her damnable pride and the stubborn despair underneath it (the conviction that she deserves this coil of trouble, and that is pride, that is hubris, little miss) - she refuses him again. Her eyes close him out even as she says no. She won't look at him; she won't give him that connection. She even moves her head away from his hands. Stubborn and despairing and self-loathing. She's ugly, a monster, disgusting, not worth his and Scott's time. Terribly, terribly human.
She stole "Metalhead" from him. Hee. I prefer "Pezhead," of course, because I have no respect.
The hand settles, timing the pulse that throbs beneath it; fingers trace across Leah's brow, coaxing the hair away from pale skin. "Doing it out of the kindness of your heart," Chris says, reminds with quiet curiosity. "Giving them a voice -- all your own idea, was it? So what the hell would they care? Their fault, anyway. Crappy protection."
He keeps after her anyway, as she knew he would (but she always hopes he won't, can't he leave her alone?). Maybe she wants that, too. Maybe she wants to be pushed into confession because then it doesn't count against her. She could tell Tom the cops forced her to admit things! It'd be okay! (But she knows it wouldn't be. That's a childish defense. She's just so damn tired.)
Leah does believe in giving the Friends a voice in the press. She's fiercely patriotic like that: yay, First Amendment! She's a bigot, herself, and hasn't had much problem arguing their side of things on TV and radio and in the papers. It's been an act, but as I've mentioned before, she's not a good actor (she gets that from me), and so the facade seeped into her, or maybe called out deeper hatred than even she'd expected, out into the light. She hasn't really seen the face of the Friends in a way that would shock her back to level-headed reality. She saw John Grey as their hostage, yes, but becuase he was held in the place she'd been during her own kidnapping, she couldn't think much about it, not clearly. Her mind shied away, refused to consider the implications, refused even to think much about it so she wouldn't have to think about what she went through.
She'll get that necessary shock in the next Tom scene, with his "chastisement" of her. This scene with Rossi prepares her for what she does after she realizes, yes, this is an evil man leading an evil movement and she's been a part of it.
Flatly: "They're extorting me, asshole. And just left me out to dry with the Master of motherfucking Magnetism. Fuck them. /Fuck/ them."
See? She's striking out at them already. In absentia, it's true, and in policed safety, but still! She lashes at them, and she admits what they're doing to make her work for them.
"Fuck them," Chris agrees, mellow-voiced harmony. And then, equally flat: "How long are you going to keep this up, Canto?"
Leah bangs her head back against the cushions. Torment racks her face, her curled-in feet, her fists on her thighs. "I don't /know/. Until someone dies? If it's me -- no," she stops herself and stares blindly at the ceiling's blind blankness back. "I can't sacrifice myself for my family, can I? Doesn't work like that. God'd be pissed. I don't know. I just don't know. Do I turn myself in? Do I fight it out? I do believe in them -- kinda. Some of it. I don't like mutants. I don't like Magneto and his ilk. Jean Grey . . . hell, no." Catty dislike smears a sneer over her mouth. "But there's Scott. Alyssa. Even Warren Worthington, I guess, and his shelters. All this -- /grey/. Dammit. I want black and white!"
That . . . was a bit much of me, but oh, well. Now that the dam has broken on the confession, it really does gush. She's thought about the self-sacrifice thing before; she's rejected it as hubris and a cheat. She doesn't like "mutants" as a monolithic entity, as the Other that haunts her fearful insecurity. She wishes the world were easier. She wants black and white, bad and good, wrong and right.
I love her curled-in feet. Pretty detail.
"/God'll/ be pissed--" snarls Rossi, framing Leah's face with both his hands to drop his own over it. Black hair tumbles, framing the dark, raptor features in shadow. "You let yourself get killed, I'll kick your ass. Black and white -- fuck. If you want black and white, join the army."
"So you do love me," Leah laughs up at him, hollowly.
That's how Rossi expresses affection, sure: with threatened violence, presumably for her own good. How delightfully abusive of him. (I know he doesn't mean it. So does Leah. It just sets off triggers faintly, deeply in her subconscious. Her memories.) She wants to hear that he loves her back. She wants to feel safe and cared for. She lashes out at him a little here, with mockery, because she knows she's not likely to get it except as refracted through his personal prism, as those angry, worried threats.
[Continued in Part 2.]
[Commentary for X-Men MUCK. Please see the full list for more.]
Originally posted: December 18, 2005
Written: December 26, 2005
What Has Come Before: Leah, extorted yet not entirely unwilling public representative of the Friends of Humanity, comes home from Christmas shopping to find Magneto waiting for her in her living room. He has a message for the mutant population that he wants her (as a controversial figure sure to bring attention to the story) to put in the media for him. She does. Then she calls the cops. And Rossi, to whom she confessed her love only a few days before and who had sent her flowers that (after going a little astray with a lost delivery boy) arrived before the cops did.
This scene is the dramatic pivot of Leah's FoH arc. I hadn't planned it as such, when I sat down with Tom and a couple other players to discuss story ideas weeks and weeks ago, but I'm rarely slow to leap upon an opportunity when it shows up. Magneto wants to send a message through a reporter? Oooh, pick me, pick, me! (I wanted rp with xmm_magneto because it had been a while and I adore scenes with that player.) Hey, xmm_rossi's online - let's have a quick follow-up scene!
Four hours later, into the wee hours of the morning, I felt like I'd finally gotten somewhere with my character. She couldn't yet ask for help to get out of the hole she'd found herself in . . . but she was ready to ask. When Tom delivers chastising punishment, at the hands and fists of her protector, Nathan, she is ready then to turn her face away from hatred and plan for escape. For the future. Which is not to say that she will suddenly stop being a bigot because no, it usually doesn't work like that, but she's getting out of the Friends' employ and philosophical sway. She'll try to make things right, without betraying her core principles. She'll try to have a future: with her job, with her family and friends (threatened by Tom's reprisals), and with Chris Rossi.
First, however, she needs to confront some personal demons. I needed to push her all the way to the rocky bottom before I could start drawing her back up the slope to light. My profound, humble thanks to Rossi's player for giving me that space in which to work, and for the support and trust with it.
The lights are still flashing outside in the street, police blue and red splashing hasty, alarming fingerpaint across the neighborhood walls. Inside, relative quiet: police tape there is none, though forensics still crawls in eager, hungry hunt across the third floor. A pause for question, the flash of a badge, and the bang of a door hurtle Det. Rossi up the stairs in haste; another bang at the landing closes the door behind him. Leather flares behind him, no angel's wings, sculpting the draft of his passage. "/Canto/? --Chris Rossi," he introduces with a passing flash of badge, interrupting lines of officialdom. "Homicide. --Leah? What the fuck?"
Massive gratitude for the setting, too: I'd been planning on putting a lot of the same detail into my pose, but he saved me the work. Hurray! He sets up the cops, the crime scene, the location, but leaves it to me to say what my character is doing, even where she is. I love that. I never feel trapped or pushed around with this player; we have a good sense of each other's boundaries, even as we do all kinds of mean things to our characters.
The Brown Leather Coat of Justice! Rossi is a fallen angel, a tarnished Lucifer - Light-bringer, Light-bearer. He lost his faith, while Leah's only slipped away through the cracked vessel of cynical adulthood. We use a lot of religious language in our scenes, for them. Me, I'm not religious at all, I dislike organized religion (I say, as I watch a rerun of Mysteries of the Bible for the umpteenth time), but I can fake it with a little Googling and a lot of vagueness. Mostly, I leave it to Rossi's player, who writes better than I do, anyway. I never get into his level of detail or word-smithing. I used to, once upon a time. Then I got old.
"That's what I've been saying for the past hour," Leah carols with false, brittle brightness from the dining table, where she sits in the company of her laptop, a bouquet of flowers, and a furiously scribbling detective. She glances at him. "Are we done, Pat? I still haven't even taken my coat off--"
There's Leah, with her mica-bright facade in place. The laptop is there because she'd been writing up and then sending in a story about Magneto's visit to the New York Times. The flowers are there because they finally found her, in the hands of a sheepish college student who didn't know Salem Center at all well for the delivery. The detective is there because the NYPD is naturally curious about the visit of the most wanted mutant terrorist in the world to one Leah Canto.
She knows a lot of cops, through her family and her work, but not this one in particular, I think. She's just in forced familiarity with him to feel a little more in control of the situation, which is so very much not in her control. She came home to find Magneto, Toxin, and Toad chilling in her apartment. How is that control? It's not. In the larger sense, she hasn't been in control of her situation ever since Lydia and the Friends kidnapped her to be their spokesperson. She's floundering, drowning, so she'll grab on to a bit of power-play here: "Pat." Detective Pat. I don't know who he is; I made him up on the spot.
"--/Magneto/?" jostles Rossi, bumping his baritone through Leah's, even as he forces his way through the crowded door. "Yeah, chill. I'm not touching anything. --Old Pez Head came by to visit you? What the hell, Canto. You okay?"
Crime scenes are busy places. I'm glad the player illustrated that with Rossi's voice pushing through Leah's, matching his body's progress through the crowd. Figure a pair of detectives working the scene, some uniformed officers assisting and guarding, lab techs collecting samples and taking photographs . . . the apartment is quite full. Warm. Uncomfortable. Unhappy. Leah wants them out. It's a violation. It's horrifying, just as bad as the Brotherhood's break-in earlier - worse, maybe, because she does come from a police family and is familiar with the personnel and rituals involved. But she never thought it'd happen to her. In her own home! (She's very much a homebody. Having a personal, private retreat is vital for her, especially in these troubled times.)
The detective, whippet-lean and dark with the blessing of Ireland's black blood, sighs and waves a hand. Leah jolts out of her chair like a shot and flings herself at Rossi. To hell with the crowd, and the coat still dragging long and brown over her rumpled brown pantsuit: she squeezes /her/ detective and burrows her head into his shoulder. Pat bites down on a chuckle and assiduously bends to studying his notes, seeing no evil.
I was going to have Pat be your stereotypical doughy, pasty Irish cop, but whimsy nudged me down a different path, for the sake of Rossi's PB, Law & Order's Mike Logan, who's black Irish himself. Pat lets her go, and Leah is on Rossi like a tick on a dog. I don't think she would've been that demonstrative, in front of a good dozen of New York's finest, even a month ago. The FoH thing has really worn on her: rubbed her down to the raw, vulnerable nub. She's moodier now. Huge mood swings inflicted on everyone around her. Violence. Black retreats from the world with a bottle of whiskey.
She's still in her clothes from the day and the shopping. Brown, Richard Culter's color from The Lymond Chronicles by Dame Dorothy Dunnett. It suits her: quiet, dependable, boring, unimaginative. I use brown on her a lot for that reason and because it complements her coloring. I like my characters to look good! She might be plain in appearance, but dammit, she can dress herself.
I did the head-burrowing thing as a call-back to when she'd done it to him in an earlier scene, when he yelled at her about the whole "you're involved with the FoH?!" thing he had. It's a child's gesture of hiding, vulnerability, trust. Cowering, hoping for protection. She really, really wants some of that right now, plzkthx. Leah is fundamentally a submissive, passive person. She wants to be dominated, and she wants to be controlled. She dresses it up consciously in desire, in this need for reassurance, even in aggression; but she is what she is: weak, shallow, and made afraid by a complex, unforgiving, incomprehensible world.
That isn't exactly what I am, and since I get very close to my characters in order to play them (IC/OOC bleed, yay!), I felt estranged, even contemptuous of Leah for her nature. I hated her. I didn't want to play her because I would have to feel that weakness inside me, not to mention her hatred for the different and the Other. I have my share of both; acknowledging my shadows isn't always easy for me to do. However, I did it. I've been embracing my flaws, and that has led me (along with a good bit of stubborn fatalism) to embrace Leah. I like her now. I feel immense compassion and sorrow for her, as well as love and immense hope that she can turn her life around and be happy. Never would've thought I'd be able to say that, or even conceive of it, so let's hear it for personal growth and bravery. For Leah and for me!
Answer enough for emotional health; the physical, Rossi gets with a swift glance over her head at another cop. "Christ," he offers, by way of limp-wristed condolence. The arms that close around her are less flimsy, hard and fierce across shoulders and back. "He hurt you? --Never mind. The nutbag's got a thing for the showy. What the fuck did he want?" The question of the night, posited in rhetorical heat.
"An interview," Leah muffles against his coat, then pulls back, shaking her head. She laughs a little, and it's not quite hysterical. Tired, frayed-- "He wanted to give me a statement. An /apology/, if you can believe it."
Magneto didn't hurt her; the cops would've ascertained that first thing (well, maybe second or third thing, after making sure he was gone and securing the scene for investigation). He just wanted to get his word out, and when he'd given a tape-recorded statement for veracity's sake, he left. The tape recorder is in police custody now; some technician in the bowels of One Police Plaza is having a grand old time with it, I'm sure.
Leah got her hug and has her feet back under her. She can talk about the encounter, even laugh at it. Magneto, coming to her, to deliver an explanation for his attack on the Greenwich Apartments and the assurance to the wider mutant community that he's not going to do the same to them just for questioning him or thinking mean thoughts. Man, life is weird. Leah's is, anyway.
"An interview," echoes Det. Rossi, hold loosening slightly around surprise. Baritone skirls higher. "An /apolo--?/ Jesus, Joseph, and Santa Maria. The old queen's finally lost it completely. Apologize to you for /what/?" Bright suspicion slams closed behind Chris's expression, skipped from the busy Pat to the visible terrain of Leah's face. "What'd he do to you?"
Leah shakes her head harder. Freeing herself from him in a jerk of restless energy, she brushes past a CSU tech brushing her coffee table for fingerprints and dumps her coat on the couch. Her gaze slices towards the foyer -- Christmas shopping still slumped there in forlorn plastic bags -- on its way back to his face. Hers slackens, as if the night had turned all the screws holding her smoothly professional expression one-quarter looser. "He didn't do anything," she answers the last first, "and he sure as hell did not apologize to /me/, Rossi. No. Just to the mutants he hurt on 11/9 and any of 'em who're afraid they're gonna get a Hummer through /their/ roofs next."
Okay, so I ought to stop writing about stuff that gets explicated in the very next pose. (I don't proofread these commentaries; it's all brain-dumping without stopping.) Yes, there's Magneto's message, thank you. I've been using "11/9" to refer to the Purity rally because of 9/11, obviously. Leah's a born and bred New Yorker. She knows from terrorist tragedies. She's also a reporter, and that breed loves their shorthand, especially if it's jargonistic to hide meaning from the uninitiated. (A superior sort, journalists, or so I've found with many of them.)
Wording: skirl is one of mine and has been for years, but I will permit Rossi to use it. The correct term is "CSU," for "crime scene unit," not "CSI," whatever Jerry Bruckenheimer would like you to believe. I like the imagery of Leah's expression loosening, but I don't think I captured it quite right in words. I'll try again another time.
Chris pauses. "Considerate of him," he allows, a curious note nudging his accent: black hilarity; puzzled speculation. "I suppose that means the mutant community can sleep a little sounder. Dr. Grey's apartment was, what, a slip of the finger? --You can't stay here." A glance skims the apartment and its busy, agile ants at labor; Det. Rossi crams his hands into his pockets, straight-arming antagonism. "Dust everywhere -- grab your things and crash at my place."
Ye gods and little fishes, this player writes well. I can't even begin to keep up. Such beautiful attention to detail, large and small; the expressions of his expressive character; more with the setting, and perfect, brusque, commanding dialogue. I envy! I worship! (I steal!)
Callused writer's fingers run back through crumpled bronze hair. Leah ghosts a smile. "Can I bring the flowers?" Pat bends his head even lower over his notes, /hearing/ no evil, let alone seeing the cheerful gold-and-red sign stuck in the bouquet next to him that blares "Congratulations on a Sensational Sixtieth Anniversary!" to all and sundry.
Rossi does not have the best of luck with florists. And I'm mean to him: it was either an anniversary card or a "Best Wishes for Your New Baby!" one. However, we've already done the joking about Leah's being pregnant; no need to dip into that well again. Instead, I went morbid because Leah's not likely to have a sixtieth wedding anniversary in her future. Nor is Rossi, for that matter. Instead, there's this bouquet. Ah, well.
She doesn't intend to bring the flowers with her, by the way. It's only her way of drawing attention to them, to thank him for them. She loves flowers; she loves presents. She's not quite young and naive enough to think that Rossi is saying "I love you, too" with them, after her revelation the other day, but she's also not cynical enough to let that disappointment get in the way of her enjoyment of the gift.
I just like her hair. (I usually do, with my characters.) It's bronze: tarnished metallic brown with threads of gold and copper. Her heritage isn't pure Italian; there's some Irish in her a couple generations back, and probably some good old-fashioned WASP here and there, too. The blood marks itself in her hair, her pale-brown eyes, her fair and easily bruised skin; but the spirit in the flesh is quite Italianate, and will smack you upside the head to prove it.
A frown spits towards the flowers, refusing -- disgruntled -- to ease at recognition of his proxy's handiwork. "If you want," Chris grants, making an awl of his glare into Pat's nape. "I got a vase or something downstairs, left over from the -- wait. What the hell. Sensational Sixtieth?"
Leah admits on her way towards the bedroom (she nearly trips over a bag o' forensic goodies, but recovers), "--Thought it weird, myself, but gift horse in the mouth and all that. Hang on." She vanishes into the room.
Awl is cool. Poor Rossi. Done in by another evil florist! (It was an honest mistake; I don't think the florist meant it personally.) Leah's trip is my own weak attempt to add to the setting extension. I rag on myself a bit over that, but I was focusing more on Leah's psychology and the characters' interaction than stagecraft. I give myself a pass for not keeping up with xmm_rossi's magnificence. We were probably coming at the scene from different angles, on different levels, and it isn't as if I sucked in the rp.
The shoulders rise; the fists dig further down. "Sensational Sixtieth," Chris growls to the back curve of Pat's ear. "I didn't ask for a freaking card. Not with the ... what the fuck. --They're nice flowers, though," he tells his fellow cop, defensively.
"You bet they are, man," Pat assures him as he stands and flips his notebook closed for tucking into a pocket's waiting mouth. He gives his fellow detective a grin, a tap of forefingers to brow for salute, and saunters over to the living room to consult with the forensics chief on the site.
Chris sulks.
Ha, ha. The fraternity of cops is a cold and cheerfully cruel one. I ushered Detective Pat offstage with the rest of the NPCs; wasn't in the mood to handle a whole stable of characters at this time of night.
"What about the flowers?" Leah asks. Frowning at him, she hitches an old backpack over her shoulder: NYU T-shirt, flannel shirt, and jeans mark her quick change to more comfortable attire. "Your face is all scrunched, Rossi. The hell? I /like/ the flowers. You just got taken in by a bad florist." She says it kindly, then pauses before finishing, "Again."
Leah reenters the room with the timing of a Neil Simon play. Someone was talking about the flowers while she was changing and throwing stuff into a bag? And so we spin light entertainment 'round and 'round, between the shock of Magneto's intrusion behind and, ahead, the confrontation between cop and reporter, man and woman.
A glare splices through the fanned lashes, and sulk turns to glower in short order. "I suck at flowers," Rossi reminds, unlocking an arm to extend it for the backpack. "I didn't ask for a card. I think. I can't reme-- anyway, I suck at flowers. You want to bring them?" he adds, canting a dubious glance at the arrangement before pitching his baritone louder. "Yo. You still need her?"
Various hands flap distracted assurance that she can go, go already (a couple of techs snigger to each other about Homicide lovin', and that renowned Italian heat), and Leah's on her way for the door, anyway, leaving him to hold the backpack. Freed, her arms hugs her ribs, and the flowers stay on the table, the police stay in her space, as she stalks stiffly into the hallway.
Splice is a Rossi word; he uses it a lot, and it suits him. I always conceptualize it as deft and delicately precise cuts. He was trained by Jesuits, after all.
"Italian heat" . . . yes. Well. It's possible that in a phone call with her brother Michael, also on the force, that Leah might have shared a laugh over Rossi's incredulity at the existence of slash fiction out in the world, and her own joking notion of slashing him with Vincent Lazzaro of Mutant Affairs, in a story of burning, forbidden passion. It's furthermore possible that Michael Canto might be sharing that notion with everyone he talks to for a while and, given the nature of the NYPD grapevine, the story might have spread a little further than even Leah would have wanted. It's possible, anyway.
In the meantime, though, she just wants out of her violated, made-strange-by-strangers apartment. Her body language is tense and defensive. She even surrenders the backpack at his request so she can get out of there all the faster, without the argument over who was carrying what ("It's just a backpack! Do I look that feeble to you, Rossi? Fuck you. But if you want to be carrying around my tampons in your manly hands, hey, go for it," etc.) that might have ensued in happier times.
Chris lags, a hitch in his step for a paused glance -- heard that, assholes -- for the technicians' commentary. Green-eyed annoyance stride into the hallway with him, crowding the corridor: Leah, Rossi, and temper makes three. "We'll be down in 210 if you need us. --C'mon," he invites, slinging the backpack over his shoulder. "You need a drink? Because damn, I could use one."
Bye, technicians! Bye, apartment! Exeunt our leads, stage left.
"No," says Leah, muted, staying on her solitary, leading path to his place. Her shoulders hunch, and her voice drops further. "I'd really like a shower and a mind-wipe of this whole fucking evening, though. But you can't help me there."
"/Mind-wipe/," repeats Rossi, protest and revulsion immediate in the sharp-edged echo. The long spine stiffens, shaping to the bump and hiccup of his backpack burden. "Shower's not a problem. Don't know how Jean would feel about being asked for windex treatment."
Leah stops in the stairwell down and cranes a startled look back. "It was a joke, Chris. Jesus."
Perhaps surprisingly, no, Leah doesn't want a drink. She didn't even have a nip between Magneto's departure and the police's arrival. She needed to be clear-headed to get the story in, for one thing, and for another, she had her pride: no appearing drunk in front of the cops. She has a weakness for alcohol, but she's not an addict. She can control herself. This isn't a night for drinking. A shower? Definitely that.
And I can't blame Rossi for his reaction to the mind-wipe comment because, truthfully, Leah was not joking. She says she is because she's covering her ass. Admitting that she'd let a mutant mess with her head? No way. And yet . . . and yet. Her startlement is less for his reaction, though, and more for his casual familiarity with Jean Grey's name. You two buddies now? Is that how it is? Maybe Rossi knows something about the Jean/Mystique story Jason tried to sell her. Hey, maybe that's why he was looking at slash on the Internet! C'mon, admit it. You were, weren't you, Chris? Jean/Mystique: "Shifting the Shape of Love."
The detective drops his head, a tortoise-shell ridge to his shoulders' hitch up. "Not funny," he informs. "Blonde jokes? /Those/ are funny." The door hisses shut behind them; Chris rattles his way down the stairs, the railing a metallic whine under the beringed hand.
"Sexist pig," Leah labels him and sweeps ahead to get the matching portal out again, into his hallway. "You have a piss-poor sense of humor, mister. And taste. We need to send you to sensitivity training."
Rossi gets the upper door, Leah gets the lower one, and neither player troubles to inform the other of such arrangement. It's a small thing, but I love it. I love that trust and companionship. Leah does try to joke now, getting away from her apartment and her mood a bit. Make things light; be nice to the guy (by which we mean "insult and mock him").
"I'm a goddamn riot," Rossi announces over the jangle of keys, plowed out of his inner pocket and turned to a speedy inventory. His stride overtakes hers to arrive a half-second before at the locked door. "You just don't have a proper appreciation of what's funny. And I'm sensitive. I have sensitivity up to my /eyeballs/."
Leah narrows her own eyeballs at him. "Where?"
Chris shows his teeth. "I'm plenty PC." The key jams home. Tumblers rattle. The door opens on a foot's kick, inviting them in to darkness and chill.
In first, Leah fumbles her way to the nearest piece of furniture and gives up the fight against gravity into it. "God," she groans into the dark. "I am in the wrong /business/. What the . . . shit. What is wrong with this picture? Magneto, coming to see me?"
And after the banter, back to the situation at hand. She's still in shock, a bit, over the Brotherhood's visit; she doesn't know why they came to her or, maybe, why they didn't hurt her. She doesn't think well of the Brotherhood, and she did try to get Magneto to kill her in the park not too long ago. (I flinch, remembering that. I'm such a drama h00r. Embarrassing.)
"Can't even /start/ counting the ways," Rossi admits, flicking the light on to bathe the apartment in dull gold and creams. The door snipes shut to his heel's press; the backpack, dropped on a chair, frees him to shrug out of his heavy overcoat. "Want something to drink? Or you want your shower?"
Leah says softly, staring at the coffee table (no fingerprint brushing here!), "They're going to kill me now."
Hate that parenthetical meta. Should've left it out. Don't know what I was doing, calling back to the crime scene upstairs. You win some, you lose some in realtime writing.
Chris pauses in the act of removing his suit coat. Green eyes glance askance. "The Friends?"
A nod bends Leah's head into her hands. One elbow skids off her knee in propping it, and she chokes back a curse, a laugh, a sob at the move.
I do like the elbow thing. It seems correct and realistic to me: the slight betrayal of physical shock and weakness, and the emotional reaction following it. Yay, me. Poor Leah. She's been fighting and fighting not to tell him, or anyone, about her real relationship with the Friends, but once you have Magneto chilling out in a pimp suit in your best armchair, there's not much more wiggle room for evasion, is there? She talks because she needs to and because she doesn't think it matters anymore. She truly thinks she'll be dead in the morning, in the next few days, whenever Tom finds out about this night and does something about it. Dead woman walking: who cares what she says anymore now?
The sounds of rustling fabric sketches the shape of Rossi's undressing: suit coat; tie; the shuffle of shoes. Floorboards creak under Chris's drift around, skirting the sofa and the sofa's long back. "Why?"
"When I called the Times to get the story in -- they really did the whole 'stop the presses' thing, too, kinda," Leah interrupts herself to relate on a wheezing chuckle, "the editor thought up the headline on the spot. 'Magneto Speaks to Friends Advocate.' Doesn't that say it all? The biggest, baddest mutant on the planet spoke to the puppet of the big, bad mutant-haters. Ohh, they are not going to be happy with me." She stares across the room; her face is as slack as her slumping body, and wan with tired, uncaring stress. She murmurs, dry-eyed, "Not happy at all."
Exposition. Why am I better with it with Leah than with Shaw? Dammit. I blame the FC vs. OC difference: I've shaped Shaw to be my own, but he didn't start out that way, whereas Leah did. She's my character, not Marvel's.
This is the other side of her (now mostly sublimated) death wish: indifferent fatalism. Stress, depression, surrender. Tom himself could appear in front of her at this moment and aim a gun at her head, and she wouldn't do more than blink and think, vaguely, about how Rossi was going to get the bloodstains out of the upholstery.
"It put you in the spotlight," Chris supposes, dropping a hand on Leah's shoulder. A hip and a leg hook over the sofa back, framing warmth behind her head; his gaze is for that bronzed, tarnished crown, and the chase of light over its strands. "Like you had a choice, anyway. The Friends want to keep you away from Magneto, they should give you some fucking protection."
Leah chokes another sound. "They /did/."
The man's face lapses into repose, stark, remote. "Yeah? And where was it?"
Her answer is thin and lonely: "I don't know." She leans further back and looks up at him. "I missed him. I . . . /miss/ him. But they would've killed him anyway, so it doesn't matter. And I'm gonna get a bullet in the head, too. Maybe I can talk my way around this. Out of this. I don't know," Leah finishes in raw despair.
This was me realizing, "Oh, shit, what about Nathan? Where was he when all this was going on?" Leah's Friends minder/keeper/protector is usually somewhere in her vicinity, but I didn't even think about him when doing the Magneto scene. I think now that he was out of town, seeing his son in Trenton (he and his ex-wife share custody), after Leah insisted on some time alone to get her Christmas shopping done. Maybe she even teased that she was buying his present, so he'd better not be around to spy on her. She does like the guy. He likes her. Because of that, they're obviously both completely doomed. Such are the laws of storytelling.
"Maybe you can put yourself under police protection," says Rossi, folding his hand under Leah's chin, fingers a benediction on the line of her throat. Green eyes glimmer down. "I know some people in the NYPD."
Leah trembles a smile. "Do you? Handy guy."
He's made this offer before. She's turned it down before. She's close to accepting it now. I mean, she had Magneto in her apartment! Magneto! What the hell! (Maybe she should've Maced him instead of Toad. Speaking of death wishes.)
"Connected." The pale smile gleams, bleeding hotter, brighter colors. "It's that Italian blood."
Leah closes her eyes against it. Against him. Against hope. "I . . . No. You -- and Scott-- What, the force protects me from the Friends, and our mutant poodle protects me from Metalhead? Like hell, Rossi. That won't work." She sighs and rolls her head away. "I'm just gonna have to stick it out. Bluff 'em. I can do that."
But no. Her pride, her damnable pride and the stubborn despair underneath it (the conviction that she deserves this coil of trouble, and that is pride, that is hubris, little miss) - she refuses him again. Her eyes close him out even as she says no. She won't look at him; she won't give him that connection. She even moves her head away from his hands. Stubborn and despairing and self-loathing. She's ugly, a monster, disgusting, not worth his and Scott's time. Terribly, terribly human.
She stole "Metalhead" from him. Hee. I prefer "Pezhead," of course, because I have no respect.
The hand settles, timing the pulse that throbs beneath it; fingers trace across Leah's brow, coaxing the hair away from pale skin. "Doing it out of the kindness of your heart," Chris says, reminds with quiet curiosity. "Giving them a voice -- all your own idea, was it? So what the hell would they care? Their fault, anyway. Crappy protection."
He keeps after her anyway, as she knew he would (but she always hopes he won't, can't he leave her alone?). Maybe she wants that, too. Maybe she wants to be pushed into confession because then it doesn't count against her. She could tell Tom the cops forced her to admit things! It'd be okay! (But she knows it wouldn't be. That's a childish defense. She's just so damn tired.)
Leah does believe in giving the Friends a voice in the press. She's fiercely patriotic like that: yay, First Amendment! She's a bigot, herself, and hasn't had much problem arguing their side of things on TV and radio and in the papers. It's been an act, but as I've mentioned before, she's not a good actor (she gets that from me), and so the facade seeped into her, or maybe called out deeper hatred than even she'd expected, out into the light. She hasn't really seen the face of the Friends in a way that would shock her back to level-headed reality. She saw John Grey as their hostage, yes, but becuase he was held in the place she'd been during her own kidnapping, she couldn't think much about it, not clearly. Her mind shied away, refused to consider the implications, refused even to think much about it so she wouldn't have to think about what she went through.
She'll get that necessary shock in the next Tom scene, with his "chastisement" of her. This scene with Rossi prepares her for what she does after she realizes, yes, this is an evil man leading an evil movement and she's been a part of it.
Flatly: "They're extorting me, asshole. And just left me out to dry with the Master of motherfucking Magnetism. Fuck them. /Fuck/ them."
See? She's striking out at them already. In absentia, it's true, and in policed safety, but still! She lashes at them, and she admits what they're doing to make her work for them.
"Fuck them," Chris agrees, mellow-voiced harmony. And then, equally flat: "How long are you going to keep this up, Canto?"
Leah bangs her head back against the cushions. Torment racks her face, her curled-in feet, her fists on her thighs. "I don't /know/. Until someone dies? If it's me -- no," she stops herself and stares blindly at the ceiling's blind blankness back. "I can't sacrifice myself for my family, can I? Doesn't work like that. God'd be pissed. I don't know. I just don't know. Do I turn myself in? Do I fight it out? I do believe in them -- kinda. Some of it. I don't like mutants. I don't like Magneto and his ilk. Jean Grey . . . hell, no." Catty dislike smears a sneer over her mouth. "But there's Scott. Alyssa. Even Warren Worthington, I guess, and his shelters. All this -- /grey/. Dammit. I want black and white!"
That . . . was a bit much of me, but oh, well. Now that the dam has broken on the confession, it really does gush. She's thought about the self-sacrifice thing before; she's rejected it as hubris and a cheat. She doesn't like "mutants" as a monolithic entity, as the Other that haunts her fearful insecurity. She wishes the world were easier. She wants black and white, bad and good, wrong and right.
I love her curled-in feet. Pretty detail.
"/God'll/ be pissed--" snarls Rossi, framing Leah's face with both his hands to drop his own over it. Black hair tumbles, framing the dark, raptor features in shadow. "You let yourself get killed, I'll kick your ass. Black and white -- fuck. If you want black and white, join the army."
"So you do love me," Leah laughs up at him, hollowly.
That's how Rossi expresses affection, sure: with threatened violence, presumably for her own good. How delightfully abusive of him. (I know he doesn't mean it. So does Leah. It just sets off triggers faintly, deeply in her subconscious. Her memories.) She wants to hear that he loves her back. She wants to feel safe and cared for. She lashes out at him a little here, with mockery, because she knows she's not likely to get it except as refracted through his personal prism, as those angry, worried threats.
[Continued in Part 2.]
[Commentary for X-Men MUCK. Please see the full list for more.]