Returns and Confrontations
The bitch - but who has the upper hand, now? Who had who on their knees?
She exposed us all - she has to pay for that, and she has to understand why she's paying for it. She has to understand why she's being made to submit.
I don't hate her, my White Queen - and I can't let myself fear her. No, this isn't hate - this is goodwill, and a certain measure of care. This is to protect her. -Protect- her - from herself, from the government, and from me. If she were to do something like this again... it would not end well.
[HFC] Hellfire Clubhouse - Emma's Office [HFC]
Tonight, the Hellfire Clubhouse is quiet, welcoming its master home with restraint and dignity. Its mistress. similarly too, is quiet and restrained, sequestered away for the past few days within its hall, and now, more narrowly, within her quarters. Up the stairs, a Clubhouse servant climbs with a tray of covered dishes.
Restraint and dignity are ill-fitting accompaniments to Shaw's mood - they shrink as his car crunches gravel outside, they quail as he stalks - footfalls heavy - across the foyer. They flee entirely as the Black King ascends, sweeping up the stairs and past the servant with a solidity of purpose that comes close to knocking the waiter aside. He's dressed in black - it befits his color - with bold, white pinstripes and a gold power tie - and his mood is equally dark, his mind stormy and audible as he walks a roseline towards the White Queen's room.
Oh, dear. Bad timing. The little mouse of a maid stumbles aside, them turns and scurries away. Whenever Black and White collide when even one is in such an obviously foul mood, it is better to be far, far away. Inside her office, Emma's head lifts at the approaching maelstrom, and a swift, light telepathic touch gives up its identity. Her face blanches and she rises, fingers steepled on her desk, waiting.
Restraint makes a curtain call: Shaw's hand - huge, meaty - closes on the door's handle, and there is a twist. The door pushes open, and the Black King is revealed, framed for a moment in the threshold. He should be in London, and Germany after that; it seems he has come home early. "Emma," he says, in a bass voice that rumbles roughly. It's not a greeting - more an acknowledgement, heading towards accusation.
"Sebastian," Emma purrs in greeting, pulling cool composure about her tightly. "You're home early. You should have called. We could have had party to welcome you home properly."
Shaw takes a step inside, and with careful, controlled movements shuts the door behind him. There is a dull thud as it closes, echoes quickly lost to the room. His mind boils - he's been working himself up, first on the airplane, then in furious screaming with Percy in the car. It's control in his tone, though, as he responds: "I hear they've started the party already, Emma. You're right; had I called, you could have asked Prince Prospero to hold his masquerade ball."
Emma's chin lifts to look down the length of her nose at him in disdain. "Tch. I suppose you've spared us a great deal of fuss. I /suppose/ I should thank you?" Her eyes narrow on his. "Is that what you want?"
Shaw's smile is sanguine, and he steps forward again - one pace closer. "I guess," he says, "I'm interested in an explanation, Emma." There is a beat. "An explanation and an apology - because I'm a little..." Anger bursts in his mind like fireworks, a sudden surge of fury. "Upset."
She sneers, and looks away. "That's not what you want from me." Her fingers shift sideways, betraying nervous tension as they shuffle through a stack of papers. "You do not want to hear that I had no options, and that I chose to play for time and what I could manage to salvage. You want to hear that I've /failed/ and that I'm /weak/." She glances back up at him. "That I'm vulnerable."
"You have failed," Shaw says. "You are weak." A third pace inside the room. "You got caught - you were grabbed - and you handed over what they wanted. Now..." The Black King's voice becomes patronizing, almost instructive. "Now you have nothing to trade. You cut a deal - Wide Awake for them, freedom for you. When they come for you tomorrow, Emma - what deal will you cut then?" A pause - that question hanging - and then, "Our Club thrives on the acquisition of power. When we give some up, it is to trade it for more power." A beat, and then savage emphasis: "We do not trade it for merely getting by."
"Spare me your /lecture/, Sebastian," she snarls, leaning forward and transferring her weight to white-knuckled fingers. "I saved more than my /own/ freedom by dealing. Where else do you think the investigation would have gone? What other ties would they have found?"
Now a fourth broad step brings Shaw before the desk, dark and tall and looming - and he becomes the larger, angrier mirror to his Queen as knuckles curl and flex upon the desktop. "What other ties, you mean, have you been careless enough with that they might catch wind of?" Low voice - dangerous - and mental images full of flames and violence - Emma Frost, tied to a stake with books burning in bonfire all around. There's a chilling certainty in Shaw's mind to the way the heat pops and crackles, to how vellum shrivels and skin begins to scorch.
"The ones you were so careless to establish in the first place. If they saw beneath the sham of my Hellions, how much investigating would it take to undo Hellfire's facade?" It's a simple twist of her powers to make /him/ feel the heat of his own mind licking at the soles of his shoes.
Shaw recoils in a roar at that sudden sense of fire - a wordless shout, really, as his knuckles ball to tight fists. "Bitch," he hisses, and it's accompanied by a mental slap - nothing so elegant or refined as Shaw's imagination, just the sudden furious rush of a desire to hit Emma, clamped down upon as soon as it arises. He settles back, and now he leans forward - across the desk - to stare eye to eye at the White Queen. "You have," he says slowly, "endangered the club." His voice is hawser-taut. "You're compromised."
Emma flinches and retreats, catching herself /almost/ immediately. "I have done nothing of the sort. The investigation," she says, clipping the words and holding herself very, very still, spine straight and eyes fixed. "There is a leak. /Somewhere/. And I do intend to find it. I /was/ compromised. I dealt with it. But," and now she lowers herself to eye level again, a handswidth between their face. "If it continues to be a problem, if this... /incident/ is exploited and I am brought down, I warn you, Sebastian Shaw, I will bring everything down with me."
Shaw's lips twitch to a macabre smile. "Is that so?" he asks. "You'll..." A little, patronizing chuckle, mocking and derisive. "You'll bring everything down with you." A pause. "The club survives because it is composed of winners, Emma. If this... incident..." Here, a savage tone, full of pride and prejudice. "...is exploited, you won't be a winner anymore, and the club will move on. You'll bring the ruin only of the snowflake palace you built yourself." A hand raises from the table, now, as Shaw supports himself on one knuckled fist. It reaches out - aiming to cup Emma's chin, hold her face in the rough embrace of a calloused hand. "But come now, Emma. I'm not your enemy. When you're down..." The smile just spreads, Cheshire Cat. "The Black King is here to give you a hand."
Her chin trembles against his touch, telling of gritted teeth and tension. "You've always underestimated me, Sebastian," she murmurs softly with poisoned sweetness. "Enough snowflakes can cause an avalanche that sweeps away everything in its path." She stops, and simply watches his face for a moment before replying, "And what is hidden in the other one?"
"Always?" Sebastian says, shaking his head. "No, Emma - not always. Just once." His mind floods with images of a darkened hole, of fear and paranoia - of confusion and anger that gives way to a sudden burst of blood of violence and a swift descent to madness in a tattered Pittsburgh penthouse. His fingers tighten unconsciously on Emma's chin, and charged as he is that grip is a sudden painful pressure. "Just once," he repeats, and then black eyes bore. "I am..." His smile twists. "...your white prince, Emma, on a white charger, riding to save you." All his mind whispers is 'Black, black, black.' "I'm going to take steps to disentangle you from the government." His grip has relaxed again, now. "Wouldn't you like that?"
Emma pulls against the grip, and when it loosens, she straightens and steps back, eying him sourly. "How do you propose to do that." A pause, and then a sneered, "my /hero/."
Shaw's fingers curl, but his hand returns to the desk. "Why, my Queen," he says mildly, "don't you trust me?" A dark look, full of saturnine humor. "Your unfortunate connection to the government rests importantly on your involvement with Wide Awake," he says. "They know who you are, they know what you are, and they know why it is your companies which have the contracts. You are compelled to be their patsy in this - but if you are no longer able to complete the projects they need?" There is a shrug. "The government will be forced to turn to outside contractors - contractors they are not blackmailing - to complete Wide Awake on their timetable."
"You're a little late, /darling/. Unless you propose to claim a fuel shortage for the /delivery/ trucks," Emma dismisses.
"I propose to hand the delivery schedule to our friend the King of Spain," Shaw says evenly. "I'm sure he'll arrange a fuel shortage - or something similarly dramatic." His lips twitch. "He does so have a flair for theatrics."
"I'm no longer welcome in his court," Emma growls, shifting her weight to one hip and folding her arms in front of her.
Shaw smiles, low and feral, and he straightens finally from his position leaning over the desk. There's some casual about his attitude as hands are thrust in pockets, and he positively starts to stroll - around the desk, heading towards Emma. "Yes," he says, bass voice rich and timbred. "Yet another bridge you've burned, my dear little Queen." The diminuitive is not unintentional, and it receives a mental underline. "I, however, am an arms dealer." He stops directly in front of Emma. "I trade in war - and in this War in Terror, if I alienated the terrorists I'd lose half my customers, wouldn't I?"
Emma watches his approach warily, only her head and eyes moving to accomplish it. "Your /point/, Sebastian?"
"I'll make the call." There's a minute creaking as Shaw leans against the desk - on Emma's side, now, intruding dangerously on her personal space. "I do hope, dear Emma, that you're quite content with that." Something sacchrine in his tone, but in his mind that sugar is laced with strychnine.
"Whatever will make you feel /useful/, darling," she simps in reply, leaning forward to blow a sneering kiss in his direction.
Hands are removed from pockets, and Shaw folds them in each other, cracking knuckles with an audible popping. "It's good to see you haven't lost civility." His mind replaces that with some sentiment similar to 'proper submissiveness', with intimations of misogyny laced through the thought. "There's more, Emma - temporary measures, for the good of the Club while we get through this present crisis." His tone is even again, but he's watching her like a hawk, and there's a sense of anticipation and perhaps even anxiety at his next demand.
"Crisis?" Emma echoes as she turns to face him directly, her heartrate quickening in response to the uncharacteristic emotion seeping from the Black King. "You are overstating the situation a bit, don't you think? I've /handled/ it."
Shaw straightens, up off the desk now, and his eyes flash black anger. "Handled it?" His voice is raised, and it's a tiny shaking of the man's frame that indicates control is all that's keeping him from shouting. "You were arrested as a -terrorist-, Emma!" A beat. "And now? Now your arrogance has Roger Lowe pinning yellow stars on my breast!"
"Then put your attention on /Lowe/ and stop trying to throw your weight around here like some damn play yard /bully/," Emma retorts, a hand flying out in a gesture that indicates the club in general, and her office in particular before dropping to mirror the other in curling in a fist at her side. "If I /hadn't/ given him the plans, he would have shaken us /all/ down for them, and left most of us rotting in a federal /prison/. So /stop/ posturing and focus on what I /did/ manage to salvage. Us /free/ and with inside information."
Shaw's hand lashes out for Emma's wrist, his fingers iron and his grip a vise. "You put /me/ in danger, Emma." The Black King's voice is hard, angry, and he is just squeezing harder and harder. "I am Ernst Rohm, and you just outed me." A long beat, and there's a very audible mental struggle in Shaw's mind as he controls an impulse towards violence. Reason wins. "I'm going to take steps," he says through gritted teeth, "to keep that wound from opening further."
Emma's expression darkens at the contact and she pulls against his grip. "Your /secret/ is safe as long as /I/ am, and as long as /Lowe/ has his toy and is in /power/," she grinds out, yanking hard, then stilling to dangerous tension, her tone pitched low and wrapped black velvet. "/Lowe/ is your threat, not /me/. Unless, of course, you don't release me."
Shaw's smile spreads and his hand tightens. "Don't threaten me, Emma," he says, and he tugs - sharply - in an effort to draw the woman closer. "It's not becoming." He takes a breath, tight and ragged, and then says, "For the duration of this crisis..." Mental glee heightens at those words. "...I'd like your Rook to coordinate her efforts with Harper. I'd like your Knight to keep Linden apprised of his activities." He's building, and the shape of his words is visible, full-formed in his mind. "Your new Bishop can keep Percy in the loop on his projects - and you, Emma..." A beat. "You can submit to me."
Emma is jerked closer, but instead of a grimace of pain at the discomfort, there's a sneer that deepens at his words. She moves even closer in, pressing against him as she rises up on tiptoe to place her lips near his ear, breath warm and tickling on his jaw. "Do you /really/ want to discuss who will bend knee to whom?" Telepathic force drives all the sensations associated with a heavy blow to the back of his knees into his mind.
Shaw's knees buckle - he starts to crumple, and it's only a tossed-out grip with his free hand that saves him from dropping entirely. Those fingers find the aluminum of Emma's desk, and there's an audible crunch as his grip twists and bends the metal in instinctual tightening. His hand on Emma's wrist turns, trying to twist her forearm in a painful manipulation of her elbow as he spits, "Don't think about it, cunt." The word is pregnant in his mind with fury, angry misogyny and abuse.
From the other side of the heavy door, a rippling flicker of surprise washes against Emma's mind. Bahir inhales sharply, moving from tense stillness into action without taking a single step. Telepathy formed as a blade, he slides a knife of pain against the adamantine gloss of Emma's shields. Gnat, but a distracting one.
Emma hisses against the onslaught, both in the twisting of her arm and Bahir's batting. She turns with the twist and folds under, almost on her knees herself and with her back toward Shaw. << /Bastard/ >>, undercut with pain and fear and anger and the communication expands to all receptive minds in the vicinity, those waiting outside the door, and that which breathes black ire inches from her. Another flash of instinctive pain, slicing indiscriminately through each mind.
Shaw releases Emma's wrist, and with a lightning motion - fueled by strength and speed - a gorilla-arm in natty pinstripes reaches up to wrap around the White Queen's chest and throat, his arm coming as a bar across her throat, squeezing in an effort to choke out breath and life. The flash of pain in his mind has his grip on the desk loosening, and he's slumping entirely against it as he grapples with Emma Frost.
Percy stirs to alertness at Bahir's inhalation, though chemical indicators are faint in the still air and undetectable through the thick door. Worry is already gnawingly awake when the flash of pain strikes his mind. He jerks back in blank surprise -- and fear -- with the faint thunk of his shoulder's impact into the club's wall. Fear dies as soon as it's born, but the rest remains.
Bahir's head lifts and his eyes close against the pain. His body tenses, and then shifts as he moves from standing to sitting. Legs cross, and he curls forward. The touch of his mind on Emma's unfolds from the needle prick of pain to enveloping vertigo that skews sensations. Where a non-telepath would lose all sense of direction, where their balance would shatter, lost -- Emma /Frost/'s world just tips to the side a bit and her footing becomes rather uncertain.
Physical hands claw at his arm while mental ones rake across his mind, raising bloody furrows on the mental plane; his vision darkens and his perceptions collapse in on hi-- And then she's falling, sagging back into him, eyes closed in sudden panic.
Shaw's grip on the table is lost entirely - he's sunk down to the floor, back against the desk, and he's flailing wildly with his free hand as his senses shut down. Closed fist strikes one of Emma's shoulders, her chest - a miss - and then a hammer-blow to the side of her head, his arm still tight around her throat. He has no words, nor sight, just a mindless, bestial howl as his higher functions shut down... and then she's sagging, and his blows stop, and the arm around Emma's throat tightens more. It's an evil voice that speaks - not Mephistopheles' seduction, not Lucifer's intellectual pride, but the sudden sadism of a simpler storybook Satan who frightens from folktales. "I'll kill you," he says in a dark, choked voice. "Submit."
His heat soaks through the intervening layers of clothes, and her legs collapse and sprawl over his. Her fingernails dig into his arm, creating bruised half-circles, but she gasps << yes >> into the encroaching blackness of unconsciousness.
There - the word, spoken mind to mind - and Shaw's grip relaxes and Emma Frost can breathe again. He collapses against the desk, panting, and in a gesture of strange and twisted tenderness both of his arms unfold and then fold around the White Queen, wrapped around her middle in a long-forgotten lover's embrace. The back of the Black King's head tilts back against the desk, his breathing steadying, and he whispers, "Thank you."
The wary watch of Bahir's mind does not relent, for all the distorted tenderness within the heavy walls. However, on the other side of the door, he /does/ breathe a little easier, and leans back.
Fear contained and calm maintained by tight rein held on his personal chemistry, the Black Bishop slants his gaze sideways over the Pawn, taking in the physical signs for all the absence of airborne clues. Voice low and bearing a hint of rasp, Percy starts to ask, "What--?"
Emma chokes and trembles and heaves great breathes into her lungs, leaning against him for support in an equally twisted approximation of intimacy. Moments pass so until her breathing returns to a ragged normal, and she can gather herself enough to push away from him and use the edge of the desk to pull herself upright and push herself in a desperate stumble for the door to her bedroom.
Shaw does not stop Emma - he just watches her, his eyes black, as she stumbles for the door. His smile just spreads, and then his mind and words both mouth: "Come in." There's exhaustion in his voice, but a deep sense of triumph echoing in his thoughts.
[This log continues with Percy and Bahir.]
She exposed us all - she has to pay for that, and she has to understand why she's paying for it. She has to understand why she's being made to submit.
I don't hate her, my White Queen - and I can't let myself fear her. No, this isn't hate - this is goodwill, and a certain measure of care. This is to protect her. -Protect- her - from herself, from the government, and from me. If she were to do something like this again... it would not end well.
[HFC] Hellfire Clubhouse - Emma's Office [HFC]
Tonight, the Hellfire Clubhouse is quiet, welcoming its master home with restraint and dignity. Its mistress. similarly too, is quiet and restrained, sequestered away for the past few days within its hall, and now, more narrowly, within her quarters. Up the stairs, a Clubhouse servant climbs with a tray of covered dishes.
Restraint and dignity are ill-fitting accompaniments to Shaw's mood - they shrink as his car crunches gravel outside, they quail as he stalks - footfalls heavy - across the foyer. They flee entirely as the Black King ascends, sweeping up the stairs and past the servant with a solidity of purpose that comes close to knocking the waiter aside. He's dressed in black - it befits his color - with bold, white pinstripes and a gold power tie - and his mood is equally dark, his mind stormy and audible as he walks a roseline towards the White Queen's room.
Oh, dear. Bad timing. The little mouse of a maid stumbles aside, them turns and scurries away. Whenever Black and White collide when even one is in such an obviously foul mood, it is better to be far, far away. Inside her office, Emma's head lifts at the approaching maelstrom, and a swift, light telepathic touch gives up its identity. Her face blanches and she rises, fingers steepled on her desk, waiting.
Restraint makes a curtain call: Shaw's hand - huge, meaty - closes on the door's handle, and there is a twist. The door pushes open, and the Black King is revealed, framed for a moment in the threshold. He should be in London, and Germany after that; it seems he has come home early. "Emma," he says, in a bass voice that rumbles roughly. It's not a greeting - more an acknowledgement, heading towards accusation.
"Sebastian," Emma purrs in greeting, pulling cool composure about her tightly. "You're home early. You should have called. We could have had party to welcome you home properly."
Shaw takes a step inside, and with careful, controlled movements shuts the door behind him. There is a dull thud as it closes, echoes quickly lost to the room. His mind boils - he's been working himself up, first on the airplane, then in furious screaming with Percy in the car. It's control in his tone, though, as he responds: "I hear they've started the party already, Emma. You're right; had I called, you could have asked Prince Prospero to hold his masquerade ball."
Emma's chin lifts to look down the length of her nose at him in disdain. "Tch. I suppose you've spared us a great deal of fuss. I /suppose/ I should thank you?" Her eyes narrow on his. "Is that what you want?"
Shaw's smile is sanguine, and he steps forward again - one pace closer. "I guess," he says, "I'm interested in an explanation, Emma." There is a beat. "An explanation and an apology - because I'm a little..." Anger bursts in his mind like fireworks, a sudden surge of fury. "Upset."
She sneers, and looks away. "That's not what you want from me." Her fingers shift sideways, betraying nervous tension as they shuffle through a stack of papers. "You do not want to hear that I had no options, and that I chose to play for time and what I could manage to salvage. You want to hear that I've /failed/ and that I'm /weak/." She glances back up at him. "That I'm vulnerable."
"You have failed," Shaw says. "You are weak." A third pace inside the room. "You got caught - you were grabbed - and you handed over what they wanted. Now..." The Black King's voice becomes patronizing, almost instructive. "Now you have nothing to trade. You cut a deal - Wide Awake for them, freedom for you. When they come for you tomorrow, Emma - what deal will you cut then?" A pause - that question hanging - and then, "Our Club thrives on the acquisition of power. When we give some up, it is to trade it for more power." A beat, and then savage emphasis: "We do not trade it for merely getting by."
"Spare me your /lecture/, Sebastian," she snarls, leaning forward and transferring her weight to white-knuckled fingers. "I saved more than my /own/ freedom by dealing. Where else do you think the investigation would have gone? What other ties would they have found?"
Now a fourth broad step brings Shaw before the desk, dark and tall and looming - and he becomes the larger, angrier mirror to his Queen as knuckles curl and flex upon the desktop. "What other ties, you mean, have you been careless enough with that they might catch wind of?" Low voice - dangerous - and mental images full of flames and violence - Emma Frost, tied to a stake with books burning in bonfire all around. There's a chilling certainty in Shaw's mind to the way the heat pops and crackles, to how vellum shrivels and skin begins to scorch.
"The ones you were so careless to establish in the first place. If they saw beneath the sham of my Hellions, how much investigating would it take to undo Hellfire's facade?" It's a simple twist of her powers to make /him/ feel the heat of his own mind licking at the soles of his shoes.
Shaw recoils in a roar at that sudden sense of fire - a wordless shout, really, as his knuckles ball to tight fists. "Bitch," he hisses, and it's accompanied by a mental slap - nothing so elegant or refined as Shaw's imagination, just the sudden furious rush of a desire to hit Emma, clamped down upon as soon as it arises. He settles back, and now he leans forward - across the desk - to stare eye to eye at the White Queen. "You have," he says slowly, "endangered the club." His voice is hawser-taut. "You're compromised."
Emma flinches and retreats, catching herself /almost/ immediately. "I have done nothing of the sort. The investigation," she says, clipping the words and holding herself very, very still, spine straight and eyes fixed. "There is a leak. /Somewhere/. And I do intend to find it. I /was/ compromised. I dealt with it. But," and now she lowers herself to eye level again, a handswidth between their face. "If it continues to be a problem, if this... /incident/ is exploited and I am brought down, I warn you, Sebastian Shaw, I will bring everything down with me."
Shaw's lips twitch to a macabre smile. "Is that so?" he asks. "You'll..." A little, patronizing chuckle, mocking and derisive. "You'll bring everything down with you." A pause. "The club survives because it is composed of winners, Emma. If this... incident..." Here, a savage tone, full of pride and prejudice. "...is exploited, you won't be a winner anymore, and the club will move on. You'll bring the ruin only of the snowflake palace you built yourself." A hand raises from the table, now, as Shaw supports himself on one knuckled fist. It reaches out - aiming to cup Emma's chin, hold her face in the rough embrace of a calloused hand. "But come now, Emma. I'm not your enemy. When you're down..." The smile just spreads, Cheshire Cat. "The Black King is here to give you a hand."
Her chin trembles against his touch, telling of gritted teeth and tension. "You've always underestimated me, Sebastian," she murmurs softly with poisoned sweetness. "Enough snowflakes can cause an avalanche that sweeps away everything in its path." She stops, and simply watches his face for a moment before replying, "And what is hidden in the other one?"
"Always?" Sebastian says, shaking his head. "No, Emma - not always. Just once." His mind floods with images of a darkened hole, of fear and paranoia - of confusion and anger that gives way to a sudden burst of blood of violence and a swift descent to madness in a tattered Pittsburgh penthouse. His fingers tighten unconsciously on Emma's chin, and charged as he is that grip is a sudden painful pressure. "Just once," he repeats, and then black eyes bore. "I am..." His smile twists. "...your white prince, Emma, on a white charger, riding to save you." All his mind whispers is 'Black, black, black.' "I'm going to take steps to disentangle you from the government." His grip has relaxed again, now. "Wouldn't you like that?"
Emma pulls against the grip, and when it loosens, she straightens and steps back, eying him sourly. "How do you propose to do that." A pause, and then a sneered, "my /hero/."
Shaw's fingers curl, but his hand returns to the desk. "Why, my Queen," he says mildly, "don't you trust me?" A dark look, full of saturnine humor. "Your unfortunate connection to the government rests importantly on your involvement with Wide Awake," he says. "They know who you are, they know what you are, and they know why it is your companies which have the contracts. You are compelled to be their patsy in this - but if you are no longer able to complete the projects they need?" There is a shrug. "The government will be forced to turn to outside contractors - contractors they are not blackmailing - to complete Wide Awake on their timetable."
"You're a little late, /darling/. Unless you propose to claim a fuel shortage for the /delivery/ trucks," Emma dismisses.
"I propose to hand the delivery schedule to our friend the King of Spain," Shaw says evenly. "I'm sure he'll arrange a fuel shortage - or something similarly dramatic." His lips twitch. "He does so have a flair for theatrics."
"I'm no longer welcome in his court," Emma growls, shifting her weight to one hip and folding her arms in front of her.
Shaw smiles, low and feral, and he straightens finally from his position leaning over the desk. There's some casual about his attitude as hands are thrust in pockets, and he positively starts to stroll - around the desk, heading towards Emma. "Yes," he says, bass voice rich and timbred. "Yet another bridge you've burned, my dear little Queen." The diminuitive is not unintentional, and it receives a mental underline. "I, however, am an arms dealer." He stops directly in front of Emma. "I trade in war - and in this War in Terror, if I alienated the terrorists I'd lose half my customers, wouldn't I?"
Emma watches his approach warily, only her head and eyes moving to accomplish it. "Your /point/, Sebastian?"
"I'll make the call." There's a minute creaking as Shaw leans against the desk - on Emma's side, now, intruding dangerously on her personal space. "I do hope, dear Emma, that you're quite content with that." Something sacchrine in his tone, but in his mind that sugar is laced with strychnine.
"Whatever will make you feel /useful/, darling," she simps in reply, leaning forward to blow a sneering kiss in his direction.
Hands are removed from pockets, and Shaw folds them in each other, cracking knuckles with an audible popping. "It's good to see you haven't lost civility." His mind replaces that with some sentiment similar to 'proper submissiveness', with intimations of misogyny laced through the thought. "There's more, Emma - temporary measures, for the good of the Club while we get through this present crisis." His tone is even again, but he's watching her like a hawk, and there's a sense of anticipation and perhaps even anxiety at his next demand.
"Crisis?" Emma echoes as she turns to face him directly, her heartrate quickening in response to the uncharacteristic emotion seeping from the Black King. "You are overstating the situation a bit, don't you think? I've /handled/ it."
Shaw straightens, up off the desk now, and his eyes flash black anger. "Handled it?" His voice is raised, and it's a tiny shaking of the man's frame that indicates control is all that's keeping him from shouting. "You were arrested as a -terrorist-, Emma!" A beat. "And now? Now your arrogance has Roger Lowe pinning yellow stars on my breast!"
"Then put your attention on /Lowe/ and stop trying to throw your weight around here like some damn play yard /bully/," Emma retorts, a hand flying out in a gesture that indicates the club in general, and her office in particular before dropping to mirror the other in curling in a fist at her side. "If I /hadn't/ given him the plans, he would have shaken us /all/ down for them, and left most of us rotting in a federal /prison/. So /stop/ posturing and focus on what I /did/ manage to salvage. Us /free/ and with inside information."
Shaw's hand lashes out for Emma's wrist, his fingers iron and his grip a vise. "You put /me/ in danger, Emma." The Black King's voice is hard, angry, and he is just squeezing harder and harder. "I am Ernst Rohm, and you just outed me." A long beat, and there's a very audible mental struggle in Shaw's mind as he controls an impulse towards violence. Reason wins. "I'm going to take steps," he says through gritted teeth, "to keep that wound from opening further."
Emma's expression darkens at the contact and she pulls against his grip. "Your /secret/ is safe as long as /I/ am, and as long as /Lowe/ has his toy and is in /power/," she grinds out, yanking hard, then stilling to dangerous tension, her tone pitched low and wrapped black velvet. "/Lowe/ is your threat, not /me/. Unless, of course, you don't release me."
Shaw's smile spreads and his hand tightens. "Don't threaten me, Emma," he says, and he tugs - sharply - in an effort to draw the woman closer. "It's not becoming." He takes a breath, tight and ragged, and then says, "For the duration of this crisis..." Mental glee heightens at those words. "...I'd like your Rook to coordinate her efforts with Harper. I'd like your Knight to keep Linden apprised of his activities." He's building, and the shape of his words is visible, full-formed in his mind. "Your new Bishop can keep Percy in the loop on his projects - and you, Emma..." A beat. "You can submit to me."
Emma is jerked closer, but instead of a grimace of pain at the discomfort, there's a sneer that deepens at his words. She moves even closer in, pressing against him as she rises up on tiptoe to place her lips near his ear, breath warm and tickling on his jaw. "Do you /really/ want to discuss who will bend knee to whom?" Telepathic force drives all the sensations associated with a heavy blow to the back of his knees into his mind.
Shaw's knees buckle - he starts to crumple, and it's only a tossed-out grip with his free hand that saves him from dropping entirely. Those fingers find the aluminum of Emma's desk, and there's an audible crunch as his grip twists and bends the metal in instinctual tightening. His hand on Emma's wrist turns, trying to twist her forearm in a painful manipulation of her elbow as he spits, "Don't think about it, cunt." The word is pregnant in his mind with fury, angry misogyny and abuse.
From the other side of the heavy door, a rippling flicker of surprise washes against Emma's mind. Bahir inhales sharply, moving from tense stillness into action without taking a single step. Telepathy formed as a blade, he slides a knife of pain against the adamantine gloss of Emma's shields. Gnat, but a distracting one.
Emma hisses against the onslaught, both in the twisting of her arm and Bahir's batting. She turns with the twist and folds under, almost on her knees herself and with her back toward Shaw. << /Bastard/ >>, undercut with pain and fear and anger and the communication expands to all receptive minds in the vicinity, those waiting outside the door, and that which breathes black ire inches from her. Another flash of instinctive pain, slicing indiscriminately through each mind.
Shaw releases Emma's wrist, and with a lightning motion - fueled by strength and speed - a gorilla-arm in natty pinstripes reaches up to wrap around the White Queen's chest and throat, his arm coming as a bar across her throat, squeezing in an effort to choke out breath and life. The flash of pain in his mind has his grip on the desk loosening, and he's slumping entirely against it as he grapples with Emma Frost.
Percy stirs to alertness at Bahir's inhalation, though chemical indicators are faint in the still air and undetectable through the thick door. Worry is already gnawingly awake when the flash of pain strikes his mind. He jerks back in blank surprise -- and fear -- with the faint thunk of his shoulder's impact into the club's wall. Fear dies as soon as it's born, but the rest remains.
Bahir's head lifts and his eyes close against the pain. His body tenses, and then shifts as he moves from standing to sitting. Legs cross, and he curls forward. The touch of his mind on Emma's unfolds from the needle prick of pain to enveloping vertigo that skews sensations. Where a non-telepath would lose all sense of direction, where their balance would shatter, lost -- Emma /Frost/'s world just tips to the side a bit and her footing becomes rather uncertain.
Physical hands claw at his arm while mental ones rake across his mind, raising bloody furrows on the mental plane; his vision darkens and his perceptions collapse in on hi-- And then she's falling, sagging back into him, eyes closed in sudden panic.
Shaw's grip on the table is lost entirely - he's sunk down to the floor, back against the desk, and he's flailing wildly with his free hand as his senses shut down. Closed fist strikes one of Emma's shoulders, her chest - a miss - and then a hammer-blow to the side of her head, his arm still tight around her throat. He has no words, nor sight, just a mindless, bestial howl as his higher functions shut down... and then she's sagging, and his blows stop, and the arm around Emma's throat tightens more. It's an evil voice that speaks - not Mephistopheles' seduction, not Lucifer's intellectual pride, but the sudden sadism of a simpler storybook Satan who frightens from folktales. "I'll kill you," he says in a dark, choked voice. "Submit."
His heat soaks through the intervening layers of clothes, and her legs collapse and sprawl over his. Her fingernails dig into his arm, creating bruised half-circles, but she gasps << yes >> into the encroaching blackness of unconsciousness.
There - the word, spoken mind to mind - and Shaw's grip relaxes and Emma Frost can breathe again. He collapses against the desk, panting, and in a gesture of strange and twisted tenderness both of his arms unfold and then fold around the White Queen, wrapped around her middle in a long-forgotten lover's embrace. The back of the Black King's head tilts back against the desk, his breathing steadying, and he whispers, "Thank you."
The wary watch of Bahir's mind does not relent, for all the distorted tenderness within the heavy walls. However, on the other side of the door, he /does/ breathe a little easier, and leans back.
Fear contained and calm maintained by tight rein held on his personal chemistry, the Black Bishop slants his gaze sideways over the Pawn, taking in the physical signs for all the absence of airborne clues. Voice low and bearing a hint of rasp, Percy starts to ask, "What--?"
Emma chokes and trembles and heaves great breathes into her lungs, leaning against him for support in an equally twisted approximation of intimacy. Moments pass so until her breathing returns to a ragged normal, and she can gather herself enough to push away from him and use the edge of the desk to pull herself upright and push herself in a desperate stumble for the door to her bedroom.
Shaw does not stop Emma - he just watches her, his eyes black, as she stumbles for the door. His smile just spreads, and then his mind and words both mouth: "Come in." There's exhaustion in his voice, but a deep sense of triumph echoing in his thoughts.
[This log continues with Percy and Bahir.]