( closed ) when we die, i believe we go to a better place; no where.

[asklepios]

Who: "Vanessza Bernát" and Jason Todd
What: Winning friends and influencing people.
Where: Benny's apartment in Syriac Well.
When: Vaguely nowish.
Notes: JILLI AND I HAVE BEEN REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS, IT'S KIND OF PATHETIC.
Warnings: Threats of medically expert violence, discussion of alarming things, specifics to follow when the thread progresses.

She takes her shoes off outside the apartment.

It means she's quieter when she comes inside, slipping the door open and closed again with so-gentle hands, stocking-feet and carpet and experience, the kind that means she already knows there's someone inside who shouldn't be. She can hear him in the next room (the scrape of the entrance to the crawl space, that's going to be a problem) and she makes a decision without breaking stride, a side-trip into the spare room for syringe, pulling the cap off the needle with her teeth as she keeps moving.

The apartment is too cramped for the sword and he's between her and the crossbow. It wouldn't have been ideal, anyway.

While there are worse ways to be greeted by a woman than her hand on your inner thigh, Jason would be forgiven for preferring some of them to the prick of a syringe through his jeans and a (mostly) French accent floating up with her perfume (Guerlain, Shalimar, he probably saw the bottle while he was going through her things): “An air embolism is not a fool-proof method of killing someone. An artery is almost ideal, but how much air is needed and what it will actually do to your body, these things, they vary. If I don't care for your explanation -- and you will give me an explanation -- then you and I, we will play the odds. Regardless of whether you live or die, it will not be pleasant. Am I understood?”

(She sounds like she's talking to a patient.)

Comments

[goodsoldier]

He doesn't move to look down at Vanessza Bernát/Mélisande Girard because not moving at all seems like a wise decision — for the moment. As she says, air embolisms aren't fool-proof, and not even that quick when they do work, but he'd prefer to avoid it altogether. Not least because air embolism. In his sometimes complex scheme of priorities, however, Vanessza is a person of extreme interest, someone he wishes very pressingly to talk to, and not to attack. He just wishes the talk were happening several minutes from now with him not on a ladder with a needle pressed to his thigh.

"Fair," Jason says, his voice echoing slightly due to his head being inside a crawlspace. He does not sound unduly stressed. "Okay, here it is: someone suggested you could be useful to me and I was gonna just take a look around but I got carried away. In retrospect, this was not necessary and I should've left like twenty minutes ago."

Left unsaid yet strongly implied: but you have so many things???

[asklepios]

The pause on her end in reaction to that doesn't involve any relaxing of her grip, though he can enjoy the exasperated huff of air that it does involve as she correctly interprets that implication. (This is not the scavenger hunt for Baedal's wayward boys, Jason, you've taken a wrong turn.) On the other hand, given the city she's in and what Lucius delicately refers to as her 'sideline' - not to mention who and what she is - it's a wonder this is the first time this has happened, and she could've been dealing with something much worse in both motive and outcome.

It doesn't make him trustworthy, but it does make the need to stab him in the thigh with a syringe slightly less pressing. Which doesn't mean she's immediately letting him down:

“Did you need somebody to teach you restraint?”

That's probably not why.

[goodsoldier]

"Possibly, but since you own a crossbow, a sword, a sniper rifle and a hand gun, I don't think it's going to be you."

Sassing the lady holding a syringe to your thigh artery is not precisely what he meant to do, though that's what just happened anyway; his tone of voice, though, is matter-of-fact and there's a hint of recognition. Jason doesn't have the exact same array of weaponry in his considerably shittier apartment, particularly not the sword, but it's the mindset he thinks he recognizes. It's not that they're weapon nuts, collecting for the sake of feeling badass. They both have these things for reasons, he's pretty sure.

"It was Rex, by the way."

[asklepios]

Rex Lewis. That's interesting, and gives her a few more ideas about the direction this conversation is going to move in - mostly, at least - and after debating it for a while, she caps and pockets the syringe, moving back enough to give him space to come down. On a strictly practical level, it's almost certainly going to be easier to hear him out and deal with him than figure out what to do with a dead body.

She isn't interested in indiscriminately killing anyone. It's sort of counterproductive, from where she's standing.

“Possibly not,” she grants him, removing her gloves now that she's relatively sure this isn't going to devolve into a brawl. (She'd have hated to ruin them.) “I assume you were planning to come back and speak to me. We can do that now.” In a tone that's slightly and run along: “Kitchen.”

It seems like a safe bet that he doesn't need to be told where that is.

[goodsoldier]

As soon as the syringe is withdrawn, he peers down at her, and upon ascertaining they are now going to speak, makes a monosyllabic sound of assent. First he shuts the suitcase, then descends, making sure to tuck the ladder back up before covering up the crawlspace as it had been.

With his jeans and t-shirt and leather jacket, Jason looks a little out of place in the tidy, genteel apartment, though it hardly registers to him. He's lived everywhere in all kinds of conditions, and the things he's found here make him fairly sure she has too. The decor of the surroundings aren't necessarily indicative of anything about her, so he ignores them as he joins her in the kitchen, a somewhat hulking young man faintly in need of a shave. He doesn't sit unless she indicates he should do so.

[asklepios]

She doesn't.

He's taller and larger than she is, but the only relevance their size discrepancy has to her ties into assessment and how she'd disable him if need be; there's something very self-contained about her, and a level of confidence and comfort in herself (in her ability) that underscores that calm, measured way she interacts. It's increasingly clear now that she's looking at him as a potential inconvenience, not a potential threat - that kind of arrogance probably isn't unfamiliar, either. She has the decency, at least, not to make a show or fuss of it.

Coat discarded on a stool at the kitchen island, she puts the kettle on, for a bit of incongruous domesticity. Then, “And you are?”

He's already got her name. Several of them, in fact. Turnabout.

[goodsoldier]

He's assigned their physical differences roughly the same importance as the decor of the apartment, it just doesn't stop him from gangling about the place like the ruffian he is. Cleaned up and put in a suit, he would still exude a certain sullen bulkiness no amount of polish could make gentlemanly. He could never be Bruce, and would never try.

"Jason," he says, standing at ease and looking about diffidently, not at anything in particular until he returns his gaze to the woman he had thought of as the doctor. Now he does not use any such specific term. He does not immediately volunteer any more information than she's asked for because (judging by the vague air of distraction and distance) he's thinking about the things he found, and how he doesn't know Rex well enough to trust his judgment. His instinct, based on what he's uncovered, is that this woman is not the kind of personality inclined to work with the Militia. But informants don't have to be willing.

But a woman ready to run, to disappear, who keeps identification from the 1940s...

"Just putting together this fuck the Militia thing," he says after a brief hesitation.

[asklepios]

It's really more of an oversized paws thing than a looming thing, which lends further support to her initial impression of him (...essentially 'ffff boys' and really, Jason, easter is a while away yet); it is, from her admittedly unique perspective, kind of endearing.

“And you need a doctor.” So he wasn't looking for the sniper scope or the crossbow, not in particular, but once he started finding...it's not hard to paint that picture in her head. She's given him an awful lot to think about before she even walked back through that door, she can tell, and she's not without interest in the conclusions that he might be drawing. It's in his best interests to keep her secrets if she comes aboard - quid pro quo - and that doesn't escape her, either.

He probably needs more than just doctors, but there are limits to how much she'd be willing to offer; her kind just don't make for good team players, on the whole. The Nahashi may have more organization than most, but feet on the ground, they still do most of their work alone. It's the nature of the beast.

[goodsoldier]

"Among other things." He doesn't bother to move past the mutual, tacit acknowledgment of her much wider array of skills. "You're set up for this already. And it's a heartwarming cause. But I'm sure we could find something to do for you. If not, I won't impose again."

It is at best an implication he won't be a pain in the ass about her secrets, though obviously not a promise; Jason doesn't see much gain in that. Even if he uncovered some kind of leverage, which is work he has no time to do, what would be the point? Blackmailing for medical care seems like an extravagantly flawed plan.

[asklepios]

He's correct, and in some ways very specifically correct; not everyone who passes through her spare room is so altruistic, but Benevenuta certainly has some preferences about who and what she supports, when she takes the time to do so. It is what she is-- even now, she still finds a space inside herself for idealism, however pragmatic in its application.

There is indeed recognition of a mindset here, on both sides. (He is so young, she thinks, but it's an abstract thought and more admiring than despairing; mortals only have so much time to do the things that matter to them. She can value the choices they make, and hope that they do, too.)

“I'm not uninterested,” she says, after a measured pause, resting her hand flat on the kitchen island between them, considering. “What are you putting together?” In slightly more detail than 'fuck the Militia', she means, as pleasantly visceral as that is.

[goodsoldier]

It is possible he'll spend the rest of his life comparing certain kinds of women to Talia, if only in a fleeting way. First it was the woman on the network with her studied candor. Here and now, it's the deliberate way she moves and speaks, the sense that she is immovable by outside forces. Possibly it was the perfume as well, because the comparison rises and fades like a sense memory, Talia disappearing from his thoughts as easily as she had from his life.

"A network. They're all out there, waiting to be connected. Waiting for support, to pool resources and information. To coordinate." Jason pauses to consider his pitch. "We can't destroy them. Five hundred years of growth and integration? That's too much to take down." He has no idea what five hundred years means to her. "But we could cripple them, if we learn enough, if we're fast enough, if we can time it right..."

His gaze abruptly refocuses on her, aware he's dreaming big before they've taken a single step. Pragmatic goals reassert themselves. "Or we can just do whatever we can about the worst of them."

[asklepios]

Her first thought is that they're going to get themselves killed.

Her second thought is that that's almost certainly why he's standing here; that is, after all, the work that she does. She can hear the argument in her head already (mortals die, it's what they do, getting involved in something like this with them is a bad idea), but just like that she's already rationalizing her side of it. She's just a doctor, she is a doctor, it's an ideal line of work for support.

“It is a heartwarming cause.” Slightly dry, but not insincere; there is a quiet sense of purpose to the way that she speaks, just like the way that she moves, like she doesn't put anything into the world without being absolutely certain it's what she's chosen. God knows she'd cheerfully choose dismantling the Militia.

The thought does cross her mind that Rex hadn't struck her as the for-everyone's-betterment type, but in Baedal, perhaps you don't need to be to come down on this side of the argument. Their options, particularly as new arrivals, aren't ideal.

“What are you working with at the moment?”

[goodsoldier]

He smiles as if he knows what she's thinking, though he doesn't. Her flawless composure means that so much more is going on in her head than she's saying purely by default, but if he doesn't need to imagine being in her position (something he lacks enough context for anyway) to guess the line of thought any sensible person would take. His smile is hard and cynical and young, the first two attributes fairly earned and the last one unavoidable, as he is what he is, which is ambiguously twenty-two.

"Not enough. But that's changing." Jason considers his words for a moment, then says, "It's experience that most of them are lacking." His assessment is not without awareness of the hypocrisy in saying that, but he's thinking specifically of urban warfare-like operations, and even if he knew Hermione had fought a goddamn war, he wouldn't think what she went through is directly analogous. And it is a fishing statement, of course. He doesn't expect Vanessza to bite, but it is as transparent and honest as it is calculated.

[asklepios]

In response, her fleeting smile is reflexive (a reflex that she allows) and aware of the inquiry and its conscious transparency. Though, as come as no surprise to him, she politely declines to answer. Typically.

“That will change, too.” This is a sink or swim thing that he's talking about - they will get good, or they will get dead. There's only so much she'll be able to do for them, as much as some people do seem to have an alarming amount of faith in the godlike powers of the medical profession. (Striving to meet it is exhilirating; failing it exhausts her.)

After a moment, “I accept but do not require payment for what I do,” because she is that kind of idealist, but not so starry-eyed she doesn't grasp that there are many people who can't trust getting something for nothing and feel more comfortable paying her somehow, “and I will do house-calls if I need to. I'd be very grateful if your network could contribute to the cost of my supplies, but I won't make that a condition of my involvement. We can call it a trial basis, for now.”

It is, at least partly, because at this point she'd rather keep Jason where she can see him.

[goodsoldier]

He lets her see that he has to mentally shift around some expenses to calculate what he can give her before he nods. Not many, though, he's just very careful about money now.

"Then thank you," Jason says, shifting his weight slightly before taking out his notepad and a pen. While writing his CiD number down, he thinks vaguely and insanely of having business cards made. Civil Unrest Inc. No. Closing the space between him and the island she stands behind, he offers her the paper rather than putting it on the counter.

[asklepios]

Accepting it with a brief glance at the number written (she'll commit that to memory, later), Benevenuta holds the paper between two fingers and taps it absently on the island before she folds it neatly in half, pinches the edge with her nails and tears along it to trade him back her own CiD number with the pen from her pocket. It's readily available on the cohort network, but even so.

The small smile she offers him, polite but not insincere, is more or less the same expression that appears in a number of photographs from her suitcase, beneath blonde pin curls and a dark red bouffant and long, straight center-parted hair with oversized white-rimmed sunglasses. Unchanged and always changing; immovable. Incongruously with that impression, the expression peels back the weight of experience that she'd let herself wear for the conversation-- all at once she's only Vanessza Bernát, twenty-something Parisien doctor with a bleeding heart and quiet lifestyle.

“I will forward you my new address,” she says, use the goddamn door next time implied with figurative underlining. “There's an apartment at ground level with more space.”

It'll be more convenient, for numerous reasons; she'd been planning the move already, but 'I hate other people knowing where my things are' is sufficient impetus to move it up.