So Ceraskia remained just a name. A file, neatly typed, headed off with her senshi and civilian names. Under that file were the found details of her magic, her accomplishments, medals earned, her address, and other likewise pertinent information. He could ask Stroud about the demure young lady who lived sandwiched between Stroud and Aelius. Whose shoes were ruined by Tiberius and his unique greetings. The girl who dressed in careful neutrals with hands ever guarded against the world.
But he did not. Benign neglect, he decided, even as he reached for the buzzer as Eion Risk. It thrummed like a heartbeat.
What better way to know someone than through his troubles? Since returning, Delphine had none. Apartment kept pristine, it gave no want for renovations. She kept up with her energy quota abruptly. She had studies ahead of her, brilliant as they were in Destiny City splendor, and a superior that looked upon her favorably. A super senshi with no fledgling subordinates, Ceraskia was free to act and enact her own missions. She was bade no rooting responsibilities.
Eion set his thin jaw as he waited.
It had been a busy few couple of months since Ceraskia had returned, and while Delphine had managed to get to know some of her newer team members, there were others who’d proven more difficult to cross paths with. Aelius was easy, he lived in the apartment above her, and from time to time she was put in charge of his leash for evening patrols and energy gathering. Tiberius, likewise, seemed all too unavoidable despite her best efforts (she had not forgotten the incident with the shoes.). Eion, or rather, Faustite was still a relative unknown. The basics she knew, and word of mouth, but their interactions had been quite limited since their initial meeting.
So it wasn't his thin features and dark eyes she expected to see when she answered her door, and the surprise of it showed in the lift of silvery brows and subtle twitch of full lips as she stepped back to beckon him into her apartment.
“Eion.” A small hand made gesture towards the white couch, inviting him to sit down if he wanted. “It’s nice to see you again. To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”
While he made himself comfortable, or didn’t, she stroud towards the kitchen and picked the silvery kettle off the stove top. “Would you like some tea?”
She met him well, in that muted, dreary way that the well-restrained had about them. Delphine looked exquisitely breakable with her bird bones and fine-painted features and hair so pale that color may kill her. Eion wondered if she was a bauble kept on Stroud's mantlepiece — a trophy won and kept until dust became her. He bade her a short nod as he swept past her.
But Eion was never the type to seat himself and still. He reached the couch, still pristine despite Tibby's concentrated efforts, and walked toward its arm where fingers found the studious embroidery. White stitching lapped over white where they formed subtle swells against the base fabric. Filigree, all of it, with no more than brass riveting to hold it all together. He was reminded, then, of himself.
"Personal business" was his first response, equally muted and dreary. "I need to kill someone. An old acquaintance." Nails dug under some of the decorative stitching, worming and pulling like jackal's teeth. "He spoiled my better judgment. He needs to die -- but he's a hard catch."
He left the couch then, fingers slipping easily out of the threading, and paced toward her mantle. What did Delphine keep where she belonged? Curiosity bade his dark eyes in its direction. "Black tea, please. It sharpens details."
Her hand paused on the faucet, dark eyes flicking over to where he stood beside her couch, and for a brief moment she wondered if he was jesting with her, or teasing. Some cruel play to serve his own whims. That didn’t seem like him, though. EVen with as little as she knew about him, nothing she’d heard or seen suggested he played the part of a trickster.
With lips pursed she filled the kettle and set it on the stove, flicking on the burner beneath it before drying her hands on the towel that hung from the oven door. It gave her time to consider his declaration, digesting it.
Stepping up to the wrap around counter that divided them, Delphine lay her hands lightly on the granite, fingertips smoothing over the cool surface before settling. “Am I permitted to inquire over the details of this spoiled judgement?” Mostly for curiosity’s sake, but if it was a petty dispute the dancer wasn’t entirely sure she wanted any part of that.
The apartment was sparse of personal nick-knacks. There were candles in simplistically elegant holders on the mantle, a round bowl with pale shells beside them. On the coffee table there was a vase with fresh casablanca lilies, a holder for glass coasters, a couple of coffee table books stacked just so to one side. A warm grey throw blanket lay perfectly draped over the back of the couch. It was, at a glance, almost sterile.
As he glazed over grey and drab and uninspiring decorum out of a Home and Garden magazine, Eion worked his jaw mutely. That there were questions bode ill; what team reserved assistance until they passed their own judgment on a teammate's plight? Eion swept coolly from where he stood. If she already boiled a kettle, she was talking too long to pour it.
He hated domesticity now. All the little trinkets meant to accumulate and sit idle on the counters, all the frivolous acts meant to put people at ease, all the predictable colloquialisms and habits and intentions and plays and judgments and ethics. They were each of the Negaverse and he a monster, yet they shared a room together. She offered tea. She asked questions in the way the docile and prudish did, as if vulgar words would bite her tongue. Eion wanted to curse. He wanted to let fly all the s**ts and <******** and c**ts that his lips could form, if only to descend this bone construct.
Eion licked his lips, felt over the hollow of his throat. "Compromising an officer's identity. Familicide. Rape. Is that enough to buy your interest, Delphine?" He looked sharply toward the kitchen.
It's no worse than what Schörl would do. You must think it benign. Thin cords in his shoulders sung their discomfort, their overbearing burdens that he yearned to slough off. Eion stalked past the couch once more, skirting a low coffee table as he walked. Places like these left him itchy and cursed with the taste of old memory. Even the tea would be stale, he wagered.
It was a laundry list of offenses, each one worse than the last, and for a moment there the dancer forgot to breath as she stared across the counter at him with wide eyes and lips half parted. Delphine hadn’t know what she’d expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t this. Not the whole of it. Not a single bullet point listed. She drew her hands from the counter, fingers curling tensely as her hands lowered to her side. The kettle, and the tea driven entirely from her mind until the soft whistle of boiling water called her attention back to it.
She turned as a subtle wash of color rolled across pale features, turning the stove of and lifting the kettle to place it on a cast iron grate on the counter beside the stove. From a cupboard she took out a pair of cups and a pair of saucers, these a dark charcoal that was boarding on black. His tone brought about an almost instinctual urge to apologize for prying, but she bite her tongue, not entirely sure how an apology would even be taken.
Instead she went about the familiar motions of fixing the tea. “A sinner worthy of retribution.” Half turned to bring the tea around the counter, Delphine looked up again. “You’re seeking assistance in this endeavor?”
"Does that surprise you?" The question was confounding; she stood as one in a team, a group coalesced under the Negaverse's greatest monster and mandated to cohabitate to improve relations. They were meant to eat together, spar together, live together, fight together, die together. Schörl was at no point unclear about her expectations for each of them, and Eion assumed that Delphine was treated just the same. Obviously she was not if this question was the first to occur.
Eion sank onto the white couch, though only at its very edge. His spine hunched under the weight of his weariness, and hands pooled between his knees as if they needed boundary. As if they'd fly away if he hadn't sandwiched them between bone. "I want him to die. He'll die. Better not to leave that to chance." Unless you're so affronted by your peers.
"Will you help?" His countenance stony, Eion looked on with expectation laden in his gaze.
Polite hosting demanded she inquire if her guest preferred milk or sugar with his tea, but this was hardly the time for that mundane of a question. Lips pressed together in a tight line she came around the counter and set both cups in their saucers on the coffee table in front of the dark haired young man.
Words and tone were sharply barbed and biting, almost challenging. But the way he sat, with shoulders hunched and hands tucked, spoke to the burden of emotion he was still clearly carrying. She hesitated beside him, torn between simply taking a seat on the chair perpendicular to him, and reaching out to him. It wasn’t a lack of care that stilled her hand an inch above his shoulder, but the knowledge that she didn;t know if he’d accept any comfort from her. He didn’t know her. She didn’t know him. This wasn’t her wheelhouse…
She rolled the inside of her cheek between her teeth before closing that last inch of distance to lay a soft hand on the curve of his shoulder. Her discomfort with casual contact was not his issue, nor should it prevent her from doing what she knew she should.
“What do you need me to do?”
He waited, expectant that she'd touch his shoulder. Offer condolences. Apologize to him as if she was the one holding the most grievous offenses, as if she might mutate into the man in question in another breath. But none came, to Eion's comfort, though the hand that hovered dutifully as a hummingbird found perch. The muscles of his neck stood in narrow objection to her move. For this, he simply slid from her reach.
Eion straightened slowly and reminded himself that he could rest his spine. Reclining into the couch pillows with teacup in hand, he felt dwarfed. No -- he felt his age. "Do you have cream?" He hoped she simply never had the chance to restock.
He was taken with the brief thought that he could simply rise, take his tea into the kitchen, and check her fridge himself. he could see all that this little bird of a woman ate -- likely fruit and nuts and vegetables to the exclusion of anything vulgar. No, even peaches would be pitted and sliced demurely. Heaven forbid she bite into its flesh. Here, they discussed murder, and yet her proclivities swung so far toward the bell jar that he thought she might herself perish at the first sight of blood. But she made it to his rank, so she must have some tolerance outside her civilian shell.
Eion evaluated his tea, dark as his eyes, hotter than hers, and disregarded the question. It wouldn't matter; they weren't about to share a daytime excursion. He sipped bitter, then spoke. "Your magic breaks groups. If he calls for help -- if he has the chance -- I want you there.
"The plan is simple. He's participating in a small MMA tournament. Maybe fifty people total with spectators. We'll drain the building dry, starseed everyone, and kill him. We'll drain anyone who tries to escape at one of the exit points." Another sip, and he swallowed against his reservations.
The petite girl kicked herself internally for not just get the cream and sugar as she fixed the tea. The lapse left her blushing faintly as she dropped her gaze from his to the lines of grain in the hardwood floor. Lips pursed, she got to her feet to circle back around to the refrigerator to fetch the little contain of cream tucked away in one of the door shelves. On her way back she scooped up the sugar bowl from the courter. Both were set on the coffee table as she reclaimed her seat beside him and murmured a soft, but genuine apology for not having thought to grab it.
But she wouldn’t dwell, not when he was laying out his plan for her. If he cared about the error surely it was second to the mass of emotional baggage and rage he was carrying on his shoulders.
The plan was straightforward. Simple in design, but complex to execute. Draining an entire building full of civilians wouldn't be an easy task, least not in their own. It has he head tilting in thought. “Is General Schörl accompanying as well?” Really, she couldn't imagine why the woman wouldn't.
Shifting to sit on the edge of the couch, Delphine added cream and sugar to her own tea and stirred until it was pale. “Whatever you need me to do, I'm happy to accommodate.”
When she returned with cream, he wordlessly poured some of it into his tea. The white whorled like smoke, cool and whimsical, before he stirred it into a finer, lighter brown. The taste was much smoother then, like a black tea firmly recognized through its bitterness. He sipped deeply.
"She'll help," he assented, eyes closed. His jaw tightened perceptibly. "She says I need the practice. I'll explain the details."
'Whatever you need me to do, I'm happy to accommodate.'
How simple. Straightforward once you heard an explanation that fits your sensibilities. Heliodor would like you. He looked to her, studied her a moment, watched how the delicate geometry of thin, silvery bangs fit across her forehead, how they dropped in wefts. He tried to imagine her with the hair of most corrupts -- ostentatious and unruly like lions in heat. But he couldn't fit so much hair on her tiny body, nor could he envision the ruthlessness that Schörl liked to entertain. So what, then? What was she?
The mantel grew weary of it, no matter what she was. He would see her used. Another sip, and he tasted his own bitterness.
I'm not fifteen anymore, Mother.
beeeeeeeejoux
