04-06-2020, 04:27 PM
Dusk dimmed the light to shades of gold and shadow upon the ceiling. Natalie’s pale hair fanned across the pillow, eyes half lidded; content, but not asleep. She was often quiet company, but rarely due to actual peace. Both hands rested idle on the flat of her stomach now. The skin beneath her shirt was still damp from the shower, an endeavour that had started out innocently enough and from which she’d made some small attempt to dress since, abandoned partway. Small steps bridged the distance to reality, and she was in no rush to speed the journey. It was late now anyway.
The power floated a distraction above her chest, the sorts of puzzles she’d worked on with Cayli while they were trapped in the grounds of Jensen’s estate. Occasionally she glanced at what she could see of Jay’s screen, but for now she rejected the cage of her own, though it had buzzed several times. One had had the distinct tone of her grandfather’s office, which rarely heralded good news on even the best of days. She did not need to read it to know what it likely contained, nor to understand that it meant Nikolai Brandon had grown impatient at the liberty taken with his gracious permission for this trip.
That was when she had begun weaving.
It felt like music in her head, strung together as seamless as melody, but she no longer needed the aid of physical sound to smooth her manipulation of it. Even her concentration could split, so that her thoughts wandered as the strands spun and looped to no more end than the dexterous flex of a new muscle. Right now she thought of a purgatory of her own. Of the jagged shards of each recent regret, and what she might build anew upon those bloody ruins. Because if she would not allow Jay to dash himself on the rocks of self-destruction, she could not allow herself to fall to the same luxury.
It was the closest to purpose she had felt in months.
But hope and the future were a dangerous mix, and one she eventually pulled away from. She pushed herself up as the power winked out. Reigned her thoughts, finally, to the present.
“You boasted of such a big brain in there, but guns-blazing-cowboy is the best plan you can come up with?” Her hand snaked up the back of his neck, fingers fanning through the short hair at his nape as she observed the satellite images he studied on his wallet. The tease was warm, but her tone was as arid as desert air. Not that he yet deigned to share the quiet of his thoughts, but she knew him well enough by now. A sly grin pricked her lips as she kissed the cap of his shoulder, still contemplating the map. “Though I’ll admit the hat did look good.”
In more ways than one, Natalie was her father’s daughter. No squeamishness centred her acknowledgement of Zacarías Amengual’s determined fate, nor blinkered her willingness to assist. She was no soldier. But she’d never made claims to the innocence often assumed of her narrow shoulders, and she did not think Jay saw that any longer. Not that it necessarily meant he wasn’t intending to try and protect her from the brunt of this recklessness (and it was most assuredly that), but since it was a courtesy she planned to argue in kind, she would not complain.
She straightened enough not to be a distraction, a purposeful one at least. Her bare legs drew up and folded neatly, still a little tangled in blankets. Burnished hair made a somewhat dishevelled halo, but her expression was serious.
“I spoke to him,” she admitted of Amengual. “And I know he can’t be reasoned with.” The pale shield of her eyes dared him to question the desperation that had made that call, or even wonder at where she grasped the resources. Or when. Stillness captured her for whatever such stupidity had cost her, not least of which being the sting of pride to admit it to him now. But if she didn’t readily offer every facet of her soul, or every secret kept in that place, when she did choose to share it was with unerring honesty. Words were the weapons she wielded most often, usually with success. There was no place for them now; she could not pull the strings to coax him from hiding. And she had no other plan to get them in. No other contingency to get them out, either.
A wrench to admit, actually.
She watched him a moment longer. Grief was a tightness in her chest carefully swallowed, memory too raw to properly look back on. The pink glaze of Cayli’s eyes after that call. The fear of those last few days.
Natalie had admitted, once, to an uncertainty over whether she had caused another’s death, but she’d never contemplated it in such stark terms, even in the middle of a civil war. He wasn’t asking her to do this. She understood that. Jay’s conscience was a harder thing than her own, and she was no kind of saint. He took pains to hide it sometimes, like he suspected she might one day turn away from the horror. But while she had stayed with Cayli’s body at the facility like there was still some comfort she might offer her, she had heard the spray of bullets; knew which hand pulled the trigger, and why. She’d taken that hand soon after. And she was still here.
“Brandon won’t thank us for dispatching one of his allies without orders. Unless we give him a reason.” Her tone implied they were probably in enough trouble, but there was a morbid fleck of amusement all the same. Political ramifications could wait; sometimes it was more expedient to ask forgiveness rather than permission, and it seemed but a paltry drop in an ocean of concern. But considering how ironically it mirrored the seed for all this conflict it was an obvious thing to point out. Perhaps Jay really was unaware, but they were already on the thin end of Brandon’s patience. Such was the way her mind worked.
The power floated a distraction above her chest, the sorts of puzzles she’d worked on with Cayli while they were trapped in the grounds of Jensen’s estate. Occasionally she glanced at what she could see of Jay’s screen, but for now she rejected the cage of her own, though it had buzzed several times. One had had the distinct tone of her grandfather’s office, which rarely heralded good news on even the best of days. She did not need to read it to know what it likely contained, nor to understand that it meant Nikolai Brandon had grown impatient at the liberty taken with his gracious permission for this trip.
That was when she had begun weaving.
It felt like music in her head, strung together as seamless as melody, but she no longer needed the aid of physical sound to smooth her manipulation of it. Even her concentration could split, so that her thoughts wandered as the strands spun and looped to no more end than the dexterous flex of a new muscle. Right now she thought of a purgatory of her own. Of the jagged shards of each recent regret, and what she might build anew upon those bloody ruins. Because if she would not allow Jay to dash himself on the rocks of self-destruction, she could not allow herself to fall to the same luxury.
It was the closest to purpose she had felt in months.
But hope and the future were a dangerous mix, and one she eventually pulled away from. She pushed herself up as the power winked out. Reigned her thoughts, finally, to the present.
“You boasted of such a big brain in there, but guns-blazing-cowboy is the best plan you can come up with?” Her hand snaked up the back of his neck, fingers fanning through the short hair at his nape as she observed the satellite images he studied on his wallet. The tease was warm, but her tone was as arid as desert air. Not that he yet deigned to share the quiet of his thoughts, but she knew him well enough by now. A sly grin pricked her lips as she kissed the cap of his shoulder, still contemplating the map. “Though I’ll admit the hat did look good.”
In more ways than one, Natalie was her father’s daughter. No squeamishness centred her acknowledgement of Zacarías Amengual’s determined fate, nor blinkered her willingness to assist. She was no soldier. But she’d never made claims to the innocence often assumed of her narrow shoulders, and she did not think Jay saw that any longer. Not that it necessarily meant he wasn’t intending to try and protect her from the brunt of this recklessness (and it was most assuredly that), but since it was a courtesy she planned to argue in kind, she would not complain.
She straightened enough not to be a distraction, a purposeful one at least. Her bare legs drew up and folded neatly, still a little tangled in blankets. Burnished hair made a somewhat dishevelled halo, but her expression was serious.
“I spoke to him,” she admitted of Amengual. “And I know he can’t be reasoned with.” The pale shield of her eyes dared him to question the desperation that had made that call, or even wonder at where she grasped the resources. Or when. Stillness captured her for whatever such stupidity had cost her, not least of which being the sting of pride to admit it to him now. But if she didn’t readily offer every facet of her soul, or every secret kept in that place, when she did choose to share it was with unerring honesty. Words were the weapons she wielded most often, usually with success. There was no place for them now; she could not pull the strings to coax him from hiding. And she had no other plan to get them in. No other contingency to get them out, either.
A wrench to admit, actually.
She watched him a moment longer. Grief was a tightness in her chest carefully swallowed, memory too raw to properly look back on. The pink glaze of Cayli’s eyes after that call. The fear of those last few days.
Natalie had admitted, once, to an uncertainty over whether she had caused another’s death, but she’d never contemplated it in such stark terms, even in the middle of a civil war. He wasn’t asking her to do this. She understood that. Jay’s conscience was a harder thing than her own, and she was no kind of saint. He took pains to hide it sometimes, like he suspected she might one day turn away from the horror. But while she had stayed with Cayli’s body at the facility like there was still some comfort she might offer her, she had heard the spray of bullets; knew which hand pulled the trigger, and why. She’d taken that hand soon after. And she was still here.
“Brandon won’t thank us for dispatching one of his allies without orders. Unless we give him a reason.” Her tone implied they were probably in enough trouble, but there was a morbid fleck of amusement all the same. Political ramifications could wait; sometimes it was more expedient to ask forgiveness rather than permission, and it seemed but a paltry drop in an ocean of concern. But considering how ironically it mirrored the seed for all this conflict it was an obvious thing to point out. Perhaps Jay really was unaware, but they were already on the thin end of Brandon’s patience. Such was the way her mind worked.