[OTA] The Price You Pay | Jordan's Challenge to Seven of Spades

[heartsthespades]

It wasn’t a pretty fight. Of course, there were no pretty fights, not really. When Jordan had challenged in fencing when he’d been fifteen, that had been a pretty challenge, more like dancing than a battle. But this was different

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[a_sudden_change]

She hadn't entirely known what to expect out of one of these things. Certainly, she'd heard the stories, of course. There were plenty of stories among the servants. But seeing the real thing...

...well, that was something different. Then again, one might also call it a gang initiation. Get blood on your hands and become one of us. Then another again, sometimes the Agency felt that way too.

So her face is kept carefully blank as she approaches Jordan with the first aid kit someone had told her to be there with. "Let me help with that," she says, showing him the box with the red cross on it, "it's what they've got me here for."

[heartsthespades]

Its not entirely wrong to think of it like a gang initiation, really. Of course, Jordan hadn't been required to kill Maddox - there would be those who disapproved - but it made things cleaner in the end. No counter, no watching out for a new Six or Four or whatever Maddox would have fallen to with an eye out for revenge.

He was just done.

He gives Diane a faint smile and shrugs out of his shirt with a wince. The dead man had caught him in the left shoulder, too high up to be fatal, but still uncomfortable. "Always the fun job, I've heard," he says. "You do a lot of this?" He hasn't gone to many Spade challenges, after all, and Amy and Ethan tended to be occasionally stupid about getting their wounds seen to when they could stalk out of challenge arenas with pride.

[a_sudden_change]

She shakes her head slightly, "this is the first one I've seen, actually. Not been here that long. Dad was both a boyscout and in the military though. Knowing first aid was a requirement in our house." She smiles a bit and starts to work cleaning the wound before she puts gauze and tape over it.

"Hoping I don't have to make it a habit," and that gets him a wry look and a raised eyebrow.

And considering how most people around here knew her as the girl who smiled too much, the look might be a little incongruous.

[heartsthespades]

"They tend to frown on too much death, actually," Jordan says as he turns and stills so that she can clean him up before they send him to the doctor. Whichever one was around for this, at least; Hadyn had said something about Caleb James having gone off-Deck for something, and Abby Benson had just plain left.

He didn't think the Spades currently had a doctor in residence.

"I'll probably get scolded."

[acethatmatters]

Pity, Julien thought. Maddox might have been useful. One day. Once some of the arrogance was beat out of him. But then, if he were also going to let Jordan kill him he was hardly useful at all.

Jordan, on the other hand. Might be. Unfortunate that the King is now his cousin and he'd never particularly been interested in listening to what Julien had to say, anyway. Not like Hadyn.

But at some point afterward, he will still step around the rapidly cooling body of Maddox and move to give the newest Seven his congratulations. "That was well done, Jordan."

[heartsthespades]

Julien had never been particularly interested in Jordan, as far as the now Seven could tell. Of course, Jordan had never really had the hero worship for the Ace that Hadyn had. He'd just always seen Julien as a man. A dangerous one, but then all of his mother's best students were dangerous. It's how Laureline Novak trained them.

Jordan glances up from where he's wrapping his own arm, giving Julien a calm look that belies anything simmering beneath the surface. "Thank you, my lord," he says. The comment surprises him somewhat, honestly. He expected that he and Julien would mostly go back to ignoring each other except when they couldn't avoid it.

[acethatmatters]

Once upon a time, Jordan was a both a child and yes, he didn't have the same hero worship for Julien that his brother had had. That and Julien was not yet Ace and by the time he was well...Jordan was a Heart.

So their relationship, such as it was, was cemented.

But this coming back to the Suit of his birth...this could be a change. Might be worth exploring, anyway. Certainly worth not keeping ties severed.

"Though," he says, leaning closer, for Jordan's ears only. "You may wish to keep the body count low, mm?" The public one, anyway. Unless he planned on following Victor's path up the ranks, of course.

[heartsthespades]

They'd have to see where that went. Jordan wasn't unwilling, even if the reason Clive had encouraged this was because he wanted an Ace he could trust - even if that Ace was a Seven and had no intention of killing the current one to get a job he wasn't particularly sure he wanted.

He inclines his head, though, when Julien speaks to him, tying off the bandage with ruthless efficiency. "I don't have any intention of stabbing my way up higher." He's not entirely sure he's even planning to go much higher, anyway.

[so_complicit]

Davin, for his part, almost got there late and is, for once, rather mussed. And it has nothing to do with Avery. Getting out of the Deck for his business trip had been rather awkward. Getting back in had been something of a trial, finding the right spot to cross over, having a few misfires in the process. He certainly had hoped he'd have been back before this.

But you know, he still took his place near the front of the Bernard clan to watch this and ignored any sidelong looks or whispers about his appearance. Showers could wait. This was family.

And something in his expression chills when Maddox falls to the floor, but it won't show in his eyes when he, after Jordan is bandaged up, places a warm hand on the younger man's shoulder for a moment. "Welcome back," he says, quietly.

[heartsthespades]

The Bernards and the Novaks are across the room from each other is some kind of Deck version of the Montagues and the Capulets, even though Jordan cannot imagine a world in which Laureline and Dwayne Novak were ever Romeo and Juliet. But Luka had decided years ago that he didn't like the Bernards, and that meant the rest of them followed in their wake.

It was less than comfortable to be in the middle of, but he's not thinking about it right now as he puts his dagger away, to be more thoroughly cleaned and sharpened later.

"Thank you," he tells Davin just as quietly.

[so_complicit]

If Jordan had described them as the Montagues and the Capulets, Davin might have laughed. Well, not here. But somewhere else, with some scotch and a pool table, perhaps.

"I assume you're not going back to the library here," and Ethan is already seeing to training, if Davin remembered rightly.

[heartsthespades]

"Not exactly." He shrugs his shoulders and then winces when it pulls at his bandages. Liam had the library in hand, in a manner of speaking, but the archives were a mess. Apparently because David had kept an iron grip on them.

Well, he wasn't king anymore.

"Clive's tossing me at Information Management. The Eight in charge of it now's retiring." Also because the woman saw the writing on the wall. She'd been firmly in David's pocket.

[oneirophiliac]

Annie almost never watches challenges that involve blades. Practically covers her ears and sings out tuneless and loud to pretend they don't happen.

When she does watch one, it's always through her fingers. At best.

So she'll wait to congratulate him until after he's cleaned up and changed.

(It's almost a pity. She'd sort of liked Maddox, in spite of his arrogance.)

[heartsthespades]

By the time Annie finds him, he's harnessing his restless post-challenge energy in reorganizing his new office in the Information Management department. Or, well, pointing for the Twos, because he has orders not to over exert his arm until it starts to heal a little bit more. It mostly means he's leaning in a corner with tea, the pot Chives brought steaming on a table next to him.

"Hey," he says. "Want some?"

[oneirophiliac]

"Hi- yeah, that'd be great. Thanks." She fidgets restlessly while he pours, putting in far too much sugar when she's handed the cup. "So, congratulations. Welcome back. Once a Spade, always a Spade, yeah?"

Still the same smile she's always given him.

[heartsthespades]

"Yeah, I guess so." His hand is steady when he picks up his cup again to take a sip, watching the Twos muscle a filing cabinet in place. He still gets a sick feeling, when he thinks about the sound of Maddox hitting the floor and his expression before he died.

So he's trying not to think about it.

"It's good to be home, though."

[cutslikeaspade]

It was probably bad form that Ethan's eyes were bright and just a hint of a smirk rode his expression, watching Maddox Hobbs slither to the floor. Prices to be paid, and when steel entered into the transaction, blood was always the coin of the realm. He loved it.

Nevertheless, he waited aside the arena with a small first aid kit, nodding approval as Jordan veered over. "Congratulations, Spade Seven," he said simply.

[heartsthespades]

Jordan hadn't really given Maddox any opportunity to showcase his more intellectual skillset - theoretically, there had been one, after all - and he's wiping blood off his hands when he nearly runs into Ethan.

"Thank you, Spade Seven," he says, his serious expression lifting into a smirk of his own. "Playing nurse today?"

[cutslikeaspade]

Ethan shrugged. "Figured one of you might need one, so I volunteered." Gesturing with the roll of gauze, he asked, "Want to dress 'em out here or go back inside?" A smirk. "Personally, I think the former'd have a more lasting effect."

[heartsthespades]

"Out here is preferable," Jordan says. "I'm not in the mood to deal with the death glares from the remaining Hobbses right now." Maddox, at least, should have known. But he supposed he couldn't blame his parents.