Twin report
Good spies. (Eavesdroppers. However they'd like to think of themselves, precious pawns.) They didn't tell me anything I didn't already suspect, but to have the report all the same - concrete data, as much as telepathic and mundane sneaking can be.
All right. So I ratchet up the rhetoric . . . but that might push some benighted mutant's buttons out in the world, directly through my words or indirectly through condensing diffuse pressure, and cause the very conflagration we'd like to avoid, thank you. A fine line, and I have my doubts about how well I can walk it.
Ah, well. I'm just tired in general. It's been a rough few weeks in business, never mind playing the public bigot on top of it. It'll pass, but I wonder. I do wonder sometimes, even now, after everything that's happened, everything that I've - we've - already done. Is it worth it? Will it work?
It's my job, I told them. Meaning: it's my life. No room for doubt, no room for complaint. Just get to it and get it done. Plenty of time to rest when I'm dead, and by then, I hope that the world will be the better for this toil. It has to be.
4/11/2006
Logfile from Shaw of X-Men MUCK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hellfire Clubhouse - Conservatory
Vibrant greenery soaks the air in this large, tall room with the scents, sights, and sounds of growing plants. The dark brick floor forms paths around potted trees and banks of herbs, ferns, and flowers that see regular rotation outside in the formal gardens at the right seasons. The two exterior walls are metal-gridded glass looking onto the rear grounds and those gardens, and provide supplementary natural light that cascades inside to mingle with the regularly placed lamps' harsher illumination. Small wrought-iron chairs and benches of white painting and black cushioning find homes around the room; most of them cluster by the chuckling fountain, rich with multicolored koi and water lilies, at the greenhouse's heart.
A heavy wooden door in one of the brick interior walls leads to the rest of the south wing.
--
Twins stand side by side, and wait. They are close enough that hands brush with each tiny shift of weight and breath: and breath comes deep and slow and regular. Their eyes are open and alert, but their posture is relaxed. After a moment of silence, Bahir crouches, pushing back long hair with quick fingers as he investigates herb beds. He pushes back the buttoned cuffs of a long-sleeved shirt, pale and vibrant in robin's egg blue with ends trailing sloppily untucked over chinos.
Adel laughs at some nothing and squeezes Bahir's shoulder before straightening, turning away. Spring jacket lightweight and tweed (cheeky, that tweed, so staid over the bright neon of a glittery Disney shirt.), he pushes it back, already open, to slide hands into the pockets of tailored denim. Checking his watch, he smirks.
The door to the rest of the wing creaks open a few minutes later, admitting Shaw into the room and, ahead of him as always, the slow storm-front push of his mood and surface thoughts. Unshielded, they dance with fleet lightning latticed around the day's events -- meetings, some long phone call, workout in the gym -- but settle into a brooding concentration as he rounds a prodigious fern's planter and approaches the pawns. He's dressed down, oxblood pullover and jeans, untidy ponytail and scuffed moccasins, and his expression is masked as his mind is not. "Gentlemen," he greets them, and nods, and sits on the edge of the brick-walled pond. His eyes skip between them, then settle on Bahir. "Thank you for coming. What do you have for me?"
"You're welcome," Bahir says, lightly acerbic. He sighs, just slightly, and places hands on his knees to push vertical. He stands, respectful attention, and turns to Shaw. "We have a report." After forming an impression of mood from the unmasked mind, he veils his own perceptions.
Adel does not, but he has courtesy -- or caution -- enough to avoid probing. To Bahir's cheeky reply he offers clarification: "There is nothing unexpected. There is a great deal of fear behind the bill's support: fear of mutants, fear of that which is different, fear of change. The poll numbers are incorrect, but that may be due to the relatively small sample size we've been able to gather from: a city, not a country."
Shaw wraps his hands around his knees and listens with head cocked to one twin and then the other. He doesn't look surprised; he doesn't /feel/ surprised. Cynically resigned, maybe, and he twists his mouth around a rough, "Figures. The human species is primarily motivated by fear, isn't it?" << Makes my job easier, >> eases through his foremind, self-amused. The same spark glints in his gaze on the pair. "Is that a general survey? I know you have different groups you hang out in."
"General." Vocal unison breaks, Bahir taking the lead: "Red state versus blue, right? That's how your politics works? Only one of the bluest has Magneto."
A faint echo of Shaw's cynicism in dark eyes, Adel shrugs. "Mutant Watch sounds so nice and safe: that's all they want to do. Watch. Just like that bill."
"If we could convince Lensherr to move to Kansas, I'm sure we would have tried it," Shaw tells Bahir. "Solve a lot of problems. --And how long before the watching becomes acting? God, these people just don't /think/." Sighing, he tips his head back and gives the high ceiling a simmering glare. "Trigger the limbic system and stand back while fight-or-flight runs the country."
Of Lensherr, Bahir asks: "Did you say please?"
"As a mass, they /don't/ think. Individuals may, and individuals may even think about implications," Adel says, kind enough to grant them that. "Individually, they may say 'this mutant is okay' or 'my friend's cousin's boyfriend is a mutant and he's fine' -- but as a group?" He shrugs with an impression of supreme unconcern. "Mutants are scary. Mobs do not think."
Shaw tells Bahir, pleasantly, "The last time I saw him? No. Social niceties don't seem to be our mutual cup of tea." Levitating ducks do, to judge by the memory that flashes through his thoughts, chased by lingering annoyance at the mad old man. "You could give it a shot if you want. I've already worn out my welcome with him." He looks up again, but briefly and without the glare. "Nothing we can do about a mob mentality," he muses. "Try to direct it, give it new focus, but stopping it -- impossible, short of more resources than I want to throw at this."
"No social niceties?" Bahir snorts. "Shaaame," he murmurs, word dragged drawling over his tongue. "I haven't really met him." He thumbs at Adel. "He has."
"Briefly." Adel twitches a smile, tugging on the cuff of his jacket and chasing a stray thread. "Of course you can't stop a mob. That is what makes it a mob. But, well -- considering your public stance," he says, hesitant as he glances up and over at Shaw. "You are well-positioned to show them where this bill /could/ lead, those scenarios that people are trying so hard to avoid thinking of."
Shaw grimaces at Bahir -- << Lucky you >> -- and again looks to Adel. Curiously this time, over a prickly mood combining resentment and guilt. "Do you have suggestions for me? I'm winging it, as always," and he flicks out a switchblade smile. "Whatever I can do to help the cause." (But he tries to hide the levels and layers in that referent, plots and plans, his and Emma's, No Pawns Allowed.)
"That was his suggestion -- our," Bahir corrects, thoughtful. "I don't know. You are better with people than I am." Dark eyes flicker toward Adel behind hastily lowered eyelashes; he smiles, but his tone remains even. "Stand up and call for internment camps for all I care."
"You know better than we," Adel agrees, so very, /very/ modest. "But if you shove it in their face, they can't ignore it. They can't not think about it. And maybe they will /consider/."
A ripple of bone-deep disgust answers the 'internment camps,' and the angry subvocalization beginning with 'over my dead body' and ending with a good many Anglo-Saxon epithets. Externally, however, Shaw just narrows his eyes and hooks his hands harder around the lip of the pond's wall. "I can up the outrage," he allows. "That /is/ the idea, eventually, and I seem to play the villain well enough to make it work. Don't you think?"
"Oh," Bahir says, brother Adel finishing, "yes," on a single breath. It is Adel who continues, slow and smiling as he reassures, "You do. How you do it -- when you do it. These are things you better understand."
Shaw shrugs brusquely. "It's my job," he tells them in a flat voice. No ego-stroke, no preening, only desiccated fact ringing all the way down his mien. "It's what I'm being paid to do, so I do it as well as I can. With the help of others, of course, and that's where you come in." He draws in a breath, lets it out slowly, nods. "I'll talk with the White Queen and get her input, but I might as well go ahead and do it. I have a couple bookings coming up, and I think I can be outrageous on at least one of them."
Brow creasing to a frown, Bahir stands silent. He inclines his head, otherwise still.
"Don't believe the things people say about it," Adel says after a moment. "A lot of people are lying about this issue, for one reason or another, and that is just at the street level. I don't trust those polls."
"I never have." Shaw smiles his cynicism. "People will say anything to get a pollster off the phone so they can go back to dinner, if they answer at all. I'm glad to hear you say that, though. You have access to information I don't, obviously. Means I'm not completely wrong."
Twin snorts, mirrored shrugs: Adel dropping his left shoulder to Bahir's left. "Most people aren't thinking about it," Adel says. "And I don't mean they aren't thinking about it, as in the ramifications: it just doesn't effect them, so they don't care. Gas prices, Iran getting nukes, traffic jams: they care about that. They only think about it if they hear about it."
Shaw nods shortly. "I know. Power to the sheeple. Well, we'll /put/ it in their heads, and we'll /make/ them care about it. It can affect them. Imagine even one more Magneto, a powerful mutant who slips through the cracks and decides he wants some revenge on the cold hard world that disdains his amazing gifts. Imagine a mutant Timothy McVeigh." His mind churns for a second with blood and fire and brimstone, then settles again into more placid calculation. "Probably won't touch a 9/11 reference, though. Too soon; too much. But McVeigh might be safe enough."
Side by side, twins turn a blank look on Shaw, but nod. There is silence, then, a tense silence with the suggestion of words bitten back. Finally, Bahir says, "If anything happens -- if a mutant, if Magneto's group -- if they do anything right now, it could be /bad/. People are ready to fear. Too ready."
Shaw accepts that in silence, looking down at the brick floor beyond his feet. << Shit, >> his mind mutters to itself. An impression of added weight, pushing him down, /pressure/-- "And that's a conflagration no one could control," he says quietly. "Our resources aren't infinite; I don't think we can do anything except watch and, if need be, ride out the blood-red tide that follows. /If/ something happens." He looks up, bleak but calm. "Are you hearing that anything might? Anything concrete?"
"No," Bahir says, shrugging. "But then--"
"We do not spend a great deal of time around mutants," Adel says, delicate over light discomfort. "Especially around the sort likely to -- agitate."
A short laugh. "You don't agitate?"
Smiling, Adel says, "Comparatively? No."
"They would agitate to draw attention," says Bahir, soft-voiced. "We do not want that sort of attention."
Pacified, if lingeringly dubious, Shaw tips his head in acquiescence. "Good. I'm glad," and that rings true all the way down, too. "We all play the small games, for fun or boredom or whatever--" << Zenith, Zoe, no, don't think of her, don't-- >> "--but that's a far cry from 'agitation' Brotherhood-style. You /should/ avoid attention. That's your role -- and your protection."
"Yes sir." Bahir's sarcasm is mild, laid over agreement -- even respect.
Adel nods: no sarcasm, but no obvious sign of respect. Eyes narrow at Shaw, thoughtful. "Who keeps track of mutants? Are there databases already?"
Shaw blinks surprise. "Well, the voluntary registrations, yes, of course." A thought of Allison Pellegrini, a taste of cigarette smoke. "But Emma could tell you more about that than I. Why don't you ask her?"
"Of course." Adel smiles, a bare curve. He shifts his gaze on a hint of mistrust.
Bahir's eyes, half-closed, shiver with veiled movement. "We will ask."
The black gaze stays on Adel, watching, pushing. "Good," Shaw repeats and then bends a smile for his pawn. "Or I can ask for you and pass it on. I don't know that we're mingling our courts that much, especially if it--" << bothers you >> "--is going out of your way just to satisfy curiosity."
Sunshine-bright, Adel straightens and turns a smile on Shaw. "Oh, no. I can ask Ms. Frost. I'd just like to have known what you knew on it."
"I'm sure you would," Shaw smiles right back, congenial as a crouching panther, with reciprocal mistrust twitching its tail in his mind. "Still: channels, you know. Makes us monarchs feel needed around here."
Bladed smiles cross and catch at hilts; Adel begins to bear down and twist, so slight, disarming and disingenuous. "Of course."
Bahir's eyes, downcast, slide to the side. He snorts, a faint, soft noise, and Adel rocks back on his heels. "Fragile male egos," Bahir says. "Yes, must make you feel needed." He changes the topic. Unsubtly. Uneasily. "Were they any sectors of the population you wished us to focus on in particular?"
"And female," says Shaw loyally for his Queen's sake. "But hers is a damned sight stronger than mine, so yes. Fragile. Yet, somehow, I manage to get through the day." He banks a thin smile at Bahir, then addresses his question. "At this point, no. I want to cast a wide net before narrowing in. Talk with whoever you like, whenever you like. It's good information; just keep it coming."
Twins, gracious, accede with a tip of the head -- Adel, or a tip of the hand -- Bahir. "Very well," the second says.
Shaw nods back, tighter and shorter as is his wont -- not gracious, just closing business -- and sits back on the wall, legs stretching out (the right with a flinch of pain) in relaxation. "Excellent work," he grants, unstinting. "Is there anything else? Anything I can do for you?"
Quiet, Bahir blinks -- once -- and then says, "I don't think so. Thank you."
Adel smiles, wide and bright. "I've already asked my question, thanks."
<< Bad as Wyngarde, >> Shaw's thoughts tag Adel, and since he's yet even to try his amateur shielding . . . well. He smiles. "All right. How are lessons going?"
Double blink, one-two in succession:
"With Emma?" Adel asks.
"Shielding?" Bahir asks.
Shaw arches his brows in mute reproach: what else?
Shifting uneasily, Bahir leaves it to his brother to answer. He shrugs.
"Why, fascinatingly," Adel says with a radiant scintilla of cheer that rather lacks sincerity. "Would you like to hear about it?"
"Just knowing that you're doing well is enough to keep my heart beating another day," Shaw says gravely. "It's a polite question to ease you out the door and me to bed. You know how it works. But Bahir -- I /would/ like to speak with you alone sometime about the work you're doing. No hurry, though."
Slanting a look at Shaw that borders on a glare, Bahir inclines his head. "Of course," he murmurs, voice a low, rippling murmur that borrows intonation straight from Adel.
"Out the door, hmm?" said worthy asks. "Mind if we stay here for a while, actually? Go on to bed, if you like--" He condescends, yes, but empathy-tweaked, words invite Shaw to share the joke. "--but it is greener here than it is in our apartment."
<< Can never make him happy. >> That, tagged on Bahir now, but Shaw has an internal shrug for it, resignation, on his way to his feet. Shaking out his hands from their bracing clamps, he gives Adel half a second's suspicion, then goes along -- if neutrally. (Better than badgerly, at least, thanks to the tweak.) "As you like. It's a wonderful room, isn't it? I might have all my meetings here in the future."
"Thank you," Bahir says, just contrary enough to brighten noticeably as Shaw deigns allow them stay.
Adel grins, less edged and more natural. "Enjoy your evening, Mr. Shaw."
Shaw breathes a soft sound that might be a chuckle. The look that strikes off Bahir is sardonically knowing (or guessing!), and what Adel gets is a formal half-bow. "By your command, Mr. al-Razi. Good night, boys."
[Log ends.]
All right. So I ratchet up the rhetoric . . . but that might push some benighted mutant's buttons out in the world, directly through my words or indirectly through condensing diffuse pressure, and cause the very conflagration we'd like to avoid, thank you. A fine line, and I have my doubts about how well I can walk it.
Ah, well. I'm just tired in general. It's been a rough few weeks in business, never mind playing the public bigot on top of it. It'll pass, but I wonder. I do wonder sometimes, even now, after everything that's happened, everything that I've - we've - already done. Is it worth it? Will it work?
It's my job, I told them. Meaning: it's my life. No room for doubt, no room for complaint. Just get to it and get it done. Plenty of time to rest when I'm dead, and by then, I hope that the world will be the better for this toil. It has to be.
4/11/2006
Logfile from Shaw of X-Men MUCK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hellfire Clubhouse - Conservatory
Vibrant greenery soaks the air in this large, tall room with the scents, sights, and sounds of growing plants. The dark brick floor forms paths around potted trees and banks of herbs, ferns, and flowers that see regular rotation outside in the formal gardens at the right seasons. The two exterior walls are metal-gridded glass looking onto the rear grounds and those gardens, and provide supplementary natural light that cascades inside to mingle with the regularly placed lamps' harsher illumination. Small wrought-iron chairs and benches of white painting and black cushioning find homes around the room; most of them cluster by the chuckling fountain, rich with multicolored koi and water lilies, at the greenhouse's heart.
A heavy wooden door in one of the brick interior walls leads to the rest of the south wing.
--
Twins stand side by side, and wait. They are close enough that hands brush with each tiny shift of weight and breath: and breath comes deep and slow and regular. Their eyes are open and alert, but their posture is relaxed. After a moment of silence, Bahir crouches, pushing back long hair with quick fingers as he investigates herb beds. He pushes back the buttoned cuffs of a long-sleeved shirt, pale and vibrant in robin's egg blue with ends trailing sloppily untucked over chinos.
Adel laughs at some nothing and squeezes Bahir's shoulder before straightening, turning away. Spring jacket lightweight and tweed (cheeky, that tweed, so staid over the bright neon of a glittery Disney shirt.), he pushes it back, already open, to slide hands into the pockets of tailored denim. Checking his watch, he smirks.
The door to the rest of the wing creaks open a few minutes later, admitting Shaw into the room and, ahead of him as always, the slow storm-front push of his mood and surface thoughts. Unshielded, they dance with fleet lightning latticed around the day's events -- meetings, some long phone call, workout in the gym -- but settle into a brooding concentration as he rounds a prodigious fern's planter and approaches the pawns. He's dressed down, oxblood pullover and jeans, untidy ponytail and scuffed moccasins, and his expression is masked as his mind is not. "Gentlemen," he greets them, and nods, and sits on the edge of the brick-walled pond. His eyes skip between them, then settle on Bahir. "Thank you for coming. What do you have for me?"
"You're welcome," Bahir says, lightly acerbic. He sighs, just slightly, and places hands on his knees to push vertical. He stands, respectful attention, and turns to Shaw. "We have a report." After forming an impression of mood from the unmasked mind, he veils his own perceptions.
Adel does not, but he has courtesy -- or caution -- enough to avoid probing. To Bahir's cheeky reply he offers clarification: "There is nothing unexpected. There is a great deal of fear behind the bill's support: fear of mutants, fear of that which is different, fear of change. The poll numbers are incorrect, but that may be due to the relatively small sample size we've been able to gather from: a city, not a country."
Shaw wraps his hands around his knees and listens with head cocked to one twin and then the other. He doesn't look surprised; he doesn't /feel/ surprised. Cynically resigned, maybe, and he twists his mouth around a rough, "Figures. The human species is primarily motivated by fear, isn't it?" << Makes my job easier, >> eases through his foremind, self-amused. The same spark glints in his gaze on the pair. "Is that a general survey? I know you have different groups you hang out in."
"General." Vocal unison breaks, Bahir taking the lead: "Red state versus blue, right? That's how your politics works? Only one of the bluest has Magneto."
A faint echo of Shaw's cynicism in dark eyes, Adel shrugs. "Mutant Watch sounds so nice and safe: that's all they want to do. Watch. Just like that bill."
"If we could convince Lensherr to move to Kansas, I'm sure we would have tried it," Shaw tells Bahir. "Solve a lot of problems. --And how long before the watching becomes acting? God, these people just don't /think/." Sighing, he tips his head back and gives the high ceiling a simmering glare. "Trigger the limbic system and stand back while fight-or-flight runs the country."
Of Lensherr, Bahir asks: "Did you say please?"
"As a mass, they /don't/ think. Individuals may, and individuals may even think about implications," Adel says, kind enough to grant them that. "Individually, they may say 'this mutant is okay' or 'my friend's cousin's boyfriend is a mutant and he's fine' -- but as a group?" He shrugs with an impression of supreme unconcern. "Mutants are scary. Mobs do not think."
Shaw tells Bahir, pleasantly, "The last time I saw him? No. Social niceties don't seem to be our mutual cup of tea." Levitating ducks do, to judge by the memory that flashes through his thoughts, chased by lingering annoyance at the mad old man. "You could give it a shot if you want. I've already worn out my welcome with him." He looks up again, but briefly and without the glare. "Nothing we can do about a mob mentality," he muses. "Try to direct it, give it new focus, but stopping it -- impossible, short of more resources than I want to throw at this."
"No social niceties?" Bahir snorts. "Shaaame," he murmurs, word dragged drawling over his tongue. "I haven't really met him." He thumbs at Adel. "He has."
"Briefly." Adel twitches a smile, tugging on the cuff of his jacket and chasing a stray thread. "Of course you can't stop a mob. That is what makes it a mob. But, well -- considering your public stance," he says, hesitant as he glances up and over at Shaw. "You are well-positioned to show them where this bill /could/ lead, those scenarios that people are trying so hard to avoid thinking of."
Shaw grimaces at Bahir -- << Lucky you >> -- and again looks to Adel. Curiously this time, over a prickly mood combining resentment and guilt. "Do you have suggestions for me? I'm winging it, as always," and he flicks out a switchblade smile. "Whatever I can do to help the cause." (But he tries to hide the levels and layers in that referent, plots and plans, his and Emma's, No Pawns Allowed.)
"That was his suggestion -- our," Bahir corrects, thoughtful. "I don't know. You are better with people than I am." Dark eyes flicker toward Adel behind hastily lowered eyelashes; he smiles, but his tone remains even. "Stand up and call for internment camps for all I care."
"You know better than we," Adel agrees, so very, /very/ modest. "But if you shove it in their face, they can't ignore it. They can't not think about it. And maybe they will /consider/."
A ripple of bone-deep disgust answers the 'internment camps,' and the angry subvocalization beginning with 'over my dead body' and ending with a good many Anglo-Saxon epithets. Externally, however, Shaw just narrows his eyes and hooks his hands harder around the lip of the pond's wall. "I can up the outrage," he allows. "That /is/ the idea, eventually, and I seem to play the villain well enough to make it work. Don't you think?"
"Oh," Bahir says, brother Adel finishing, "yes," on a single breath. It is Adel who continues, slow and smiling as he reassures, "You do. How you do it -- when you do it. These are things you better understand."
Shaw shrugs brusquely. "It's my job," he tells them in a flat voice. No ego-stroke, no preening, only desiccated fact ringing all the way down his mien. "It's what I'm being paid to do, so I do it as well as I can. With the help of others, of course, and that's where you come in." He draws in a breath, lets it out slowly, nods. "I'll talk with the White Queen and get her input, but I might as well go ahead and do it. I have a couple bookings coming up, and I think I can be outrageous on at least one of them."
Brow creasing to a frown, Bahir stands silent. He inclines his head, otherwise still.
"Don't believe the things people say about it," Adel says after a moment. "A lot of people are lying about this issue, for one reason or another, and that is just at the street level. I don't trust those polls."
"I never have." Shaw smiles his cynicism. "People will say anything to get a pollster off the phone so they can go back to dinner, if they answer at all. I'm glad to hear you say that, though. You have access to information I don't, obviously. Means I'm not completely wrong."
Twin snorts, mirrored shrugs: Adel dropping his left shoulder to Bahir's left. "Most people aren't thinking about it," Adel says. "And I don't mean they aren't thinking about it, as in the ramifications: it just doesn't effect them, so they don't care. Gas prices, Iran getting nukes, traffic jams: they care about that. They only think about it if they hear about it."
Shaw nods shortly. "I know. Power to the sheeple. Well, we'll /put/ it in their heads, and we'll /make/ them care about it. It can affect them. Imagine even one more Magneto, a powerful mutant who slips through the cracks and decides he wants some revenge on the cold hard world that disdains his amazing gifts. Imagine a mutant Timothy McVeigh." His mind churns for a second with blood and fire and brimstone, then settles again into more placid calculation. "Probably won't touch a 9/11 reference, though. Too soon; too much. But McVeigh might be safe enough."
Side by side, twins turn a blank look on Shaw, but nod. There is silence, then, a tense silence with the suggestion of words bitten back. Finally, Bahir says, "If anything happens -- if a mutant, if Magneto's group -- if they do anything right now, it could be /bad/. People are ready to fear. Too ready."
Shaw accepts that in silence, looking down at the brick floor beyond his feet. << Shit, >> his mind mutters to itself. An impression of added weight, pushing him down, /pressure/-- "And that's a conflagration no one could control," he says quietly. "Our resources aren't infinite; I don't think we can do anything except watch and, if need be, ride out the blood-red tide that follows. /If/ something happens." He looks up, bleak but calm. "Are you hearing that anything might? Anything concrete?"
"No," Bahir says, shrugging. "But then--"
"We do not spend a great deal of time around mutants," Adel says, delicate over light discomfort. "Especially around the sort likely to -- agitate."
A short laugh. "You don't agitate?"
Smiling, Adel says, "Comparatively? No."
"They would agitate to draw attention," says Bahir, soft-voiced. "We do not want that sort of attention."
Pacified, if lingeringly dubious, Shaw tips his head in acquiescence. "Good. I'm glad," and that rings true all the way down, too. "We all play the small games, for fun or boredom or whatever--" << Zenith, Zoe, no, don't think of her, don't-- >> "--but that's a far cry from 'agitation' Brotherhood-style. You /should/ avoid attention. That's your role -- and your protection."
"Yes sir." Bahir's sarcasm is mild, laid over agreement -- even respect.
Adel nods: no sarcasm, but no obvious sign of respect. Eyes narrow at Shaw, thoughtful. "Who keeps track of mutants? Are there databases already?"
Shaw blinks surprise. "Well, the voluntary registrations, yes, of course." A thought of Allison Pellegrini, a taste of cigarette smoke. "But Emma could tell you more about that than I. Why don't you ask her?"
"Of course." Adel smiles, a bare curve. He shifts his gaze on a hint of mistrust.
Bahir's eyes, half-closed, shiver with veiled movement. "We will ask."
The black gaze stays on Adel, watching, pushing. "Good," Shaw repeats and then bends a smile for his pawn. "Or I can ask for you and pass it on. I don't know that we're mingling our courts that much, especially if it--" << bothers you >> "--is going out of your way just to satisfy curiosity."
Sunshine-bright, Adel straightens and turns a smile on Shaw. "Oh, no. I can ask Ms. Frost. I'd just like to have known what you knew on it."
"I'm sure you would," Shaw smiles right back, congenial as a crouching panther, with reciprocal mistrust twitching its tail in his mind. "Still: channels, you know. Makes us monarchs feel needed around here."
Bladed smiles cross and catch at hilts; Adel begins to bear down and twist, so slight, disarming and disingenuous. "Of course."
Bahir's eyes, downcast, slide to the side. He snorts, a faint, soft noise, and Adel rocks back on his heels. "Fragile male egos," Bahir says. "Yes, must make you feel needed." He changes the topic. Unsubtly. Uneasily. "Were they any sectors of the population you wished us to focus on in particular?"
"And female," says Shaw loyally for his Queen's sake. "But hers is a damned sight stronger than mine, so yes. Fragile. Yet, somehow, I manage to get through the day." He banks a thin smile at Bahir, then addresses his question. "At this point, no. I want to cast a wide net before narrowing in. Talk with whoever you like, whenever you like. It's good information; just keep it coming."
Twins, gracious, accede with a tip of the head -- Adel, or a tip of the hand -- Bahir. "Very well," the second says.
Shaw nods back, tighter and shorter as is his wont -- not gracious, just closing business -- and sits back on the wall, legs stretching out (the right with a flinch of pain) in relaxation. "Excellent work," he grants, unstinting. "Is there anything else? Anything I can do for you?"
Quiet, Bahir blinks -- once -- and then says, "I don't think so. Thank you."
Adel smiles, wide and bright. "I've already asked my question, thanks."
<< Bad as Wyngarde, >> Shaw's thoughts tag Adel, and since he's yet even to try his amateur shielding . . . well. He smiles. "All right. How are lessons going?"
Double blink, one-two in succession:
"With Emma?" Adel asks.
"Shielding?" Bahir asks.
Shaw arches his brows in mute reproach: what else?
Shifting uneasily, Bahir leaves it to his brother to answer. He shrugs.
"Why, fascinatingly," Adel says with a radiant scintilla of cheer that rather lacks sincerity. "Would you like to hear about it?"
"Just knowing that you're doing well is enough to keep my heart beating another day," Shaw says gravely. "It's a polite question to ease you out the door and me to bed. You know how it works. But Bahir -- I /would/ like to speak with you alone sometime about the work you're doing. No hurry, though."
Slanting a look at Shaw that borders on a glare, Bahir inclines his head. "Of course," he murmurs, voice a low, rippling murmur that borrows intonation straight from Adel.
"Out the door, hmm?" said worthy asks. "Mind if we stay here for a while, actually? Go on to bed, if you like--" He condescends, yes, but empathy-tweaked, words invite Shaw to share the joke. "--but it is greener here than it is in our apartment."
<< Can never make him happy. >> That, tagged on Bahir now, but Shaw has an internal shrug for it, resignation, on his way to his feet. Shaking out his hands from their bracing clamps, he gives Adel half a second's suspicion, then goes along -- if neutrally. (Better than badgerly, at least, thanks to the tweak.) "As you like. It's a wonderful room, isn't it? I might have all my meetings here in the future."
"Thank you," Bahir says, just contrary enough to brighten noticeably as Shaw deigns allow them stay.
Adel grins, less edged and more natural. "Enjoy your evening, Mr. Shaw."
Shaw breathes a soft sound that might be a chuckle. The look that strikes off Bahir is sardonically knowing (or guessing!), and what Adel gets is a formal half-bow. "By your command, Mr. al-Razi. Good night, boys."
[Log ends.]