exsiliumlogs | Don't know what you lie for anyway, now there's nothing left to say.

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Don't know what you lie for anyway, now there's nothing left to say.

Date & Time: During the mandatory mission, just after everything's settling down
Location: Back at camp!
Characters: Charlie Cutter + Chloe Frazer
Summary: SO THEY DIDN'T REALLY TALK OUT ALL THOSE ISSUES DID THEY. Should...probably attempt that at some point. Like now, maybe.
Warnings: Discussion of attempted suicide and gross feelings and so on. Best to just keep moving.

Nothing like a little icing on the bad news cake, is there? Chloe's not surprised that on the heels of the worst week of her life (a record previously held by the adventure she'd had in and on the way to Tibet) it's all topped off with a mission of revenge involving poison that will likely kill off god knows how many people thanks to a lack of food or land with which to grow it on. She's always been a stubborn creature, always will be, but damn if she isn't digging in her heels with an extra dose of bitterness this time.

Especially considering that she's spent the entirety of this trip scavenging treasure and supplies for Number One, to replace everything she'd lost.

So at the end of the last day she's busy picking over her spoils in camp, sorting and packing the mess of glinting metal and glass to make sure nothing gets lost on the way home. Funny how organization keeps most other thoughts at bay.

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It's been a long damn trip, or maybe just feels like it. Honestly, Charlie would have been happy to pop in, get a look at the Horde on the horizon, and then take off. That? Would have made for a nice vacation from the bomb wrecked remnant of the island they'd come from. But the battle and the subsequent chemical sabotage of the countryside leaves a bad taste in Charlie's mouth. He's ready to be done with it. There's something cruel about the pleasant-enough weather (what isn't in comparison to near-constant rain?) and the lush open landscape surrounding the Initiative camp. And honestly, he can't help but feel exposed knowing every transport has been pulled back for this. Somewhere out in that mess of tents is Talbot. He's making his way through the camp without any real sense of purpose or direction when he stumbles across Chloe and her small mountain of loot.

For a second, Charlie considers turning tail before she sees him - going somewhere, anywhere, else. If he thinks about it long enough, he can almost feel the phantom weight of Chloe's sidearm at the small of his back right after she-- he gave her the gun back. Of course he gave it back. But that didn't mean he was happy to, and intruding on her space now somehow feels a lot like that.

He does it anyway. Of course he does.

"Well someone's been busy."

She hasn't heard that voice in a while. And honestly, much as she missed it, it's sharp against her ears. Sharp enough for her to wince just slightly at the sound of it. Not because of his tone, or the words themselves, just the unwanted reminder of a very long, very horrid walk home after trying to get the taste of metal off her tongue.

Doesn't matter. She can fake a bit of cheer. Easy enough as long as she keeps her eyes set on the landscape just past Charlie instead.

"Surprised you're empty handed. One trip back in time and you're not chomping at the bit to capture a few souvenirs?" Initial greeting aside, she scoffs and turns back to the little pile.

"You haven't been inhaling any of that poison, have you?"

He carefully picks his way nearer, careful to keep her haul between them. She sounds enough like herself anyway and the fact that she didn't just give him the cold shoulder outright is probably more encouraging than it really should be.

"So not everyone's as resourceful as you are," he says as he crouches down to examine a piece of her collection. "Though I wouldn't say that I was leaving completely empty handed." Charlie pats the satchel at his side and even throws her a quick sideways grin.

What does she think he is - completely insane?

Between the two of them, insanity is an assumption tacked firmly on her own back at this point. But again, that's why she's busying herself with other matters.

And purposefully avoiding that lopsided grin.

"Oh god. Still using that, are you?"

"What's wrong with it?" It's mostly mock offense - because he figures the longer he can dog this path of easy back and forth between them, however manufactured, is time well spent. Or at least time not spent awkwardly contemplating his feet or the horizon line, and is definitely not actively arguing with her. Which, given their recent track record, may actually be some kind of minor miracle.

He's turning the artifact over in his hand - some small dagger, largely ornamental, likely a stray piece found on the battlefield. "I'll have you know that a solid bag's damn handy when I'm running about. My pockets aren't that big, thanks."

"You don't have to tell me that." She says mildly, nodding towards his dirt-stained jeans.

Still, sass aside, his is an impressive find. A find she'll gladly celebrate to keep the conversation light for just a bit longer. "Where'd you scout it out?"

He gives her a sidelong look - everyone's a bloody critic -, one eyebrow cocked and his mouth pressed into a thin smirk. After a moment, he unsheathes the little dagger and lays the flat blade against the carved wooden sheath.

"Found it out on the battlefield. --Afterward." God knows the last thing he wants Chloe to think is that he was out looking for trouble in the shape of a Mongolian arrow. He turns the blade gently and offers it to her pommel first in case she wants a better look. "It was lying in the grass. Suppose the owner must have lost it without realizing."

Meaning he hadn't scavenged it from a body. Odd, how looting corpses seemed so much more palatable when they were a few hundred or thousand years old. It shouldn't have been different. Same people - still technically ancient history. But somehow it was.

Her touch is surprisingly gentle when she lifts the dagger from his fingers, examining it closely in the torchlight. There's no need to see his expression when he recites the story of how he located it, she can hear the breaks and pauses, knows what he's figuring in his head and how it's all being justified. It's not that she's all that good at figuring people out (though she is when it comes to a good con, to be fair) but that Charlie she knows.

He's the kid that sat about watching heroes on the telly each morning in his pyjamas that somehow grew up, but never really grew out of it, after all.

"Outdone yourself this time, haven't you?" There's the ghost of a smile as she presses it back into his palm. "Mind you don't lose it before we get back."

He can't help but be pleased with himself. It is, after all, a good find (even if it was more luck than skill, but what isn't?). "I don't plan to," he says.

The fire crackles, light bouncing off the knuckles of his hands and catching on the toes of Chloe's boots. The dagger is light in his hands and for a second it's quiet; the urge to say nothing at all is palpable. Then he sheathes the dagger with a soft 'snkt' of the metal against the polished wood as it slides home. The blade fits the sheath like a glove. Someone put painstaking effort into crafting the pair.

"How're you feeling, darling?"

That's a heavy question and they both know it. If the silence before it wasn't bad enough, the silence that follows is far worse. She needs it to consider her response, but the longer she takes, the more aware of it she is.

Sort of kills her ability to diffuse the situation.

"Start with that and you won't much like the answer."

Somehow he manages not to wince. "Fair enough." He turns the dagger over, more to do something with his hands than anything else. And because he can - because it's brand new and he doesn't have to worry about the oil and dirt from his fingers affecting the surface of the wooden sheath.

The silence spools out. Eventually he clears his throat. "Look," he says, mulling over the words like he's fully aware of how thin the ice is here. "I'm sorry for having shouted at you."

He's not sorry about the gun. Or about much of anything else, really. But shit, does he regret that.

She knows. She knew it before, in the catacombs, when they'd hissed at each other with volatile, hushed whispers to keep from waking Victor and Nate, and why she had his name up on the screen before-- well, before she lost her bloody mind, but still. It's not like Harry or Nate, who wound quickly, who want to wound and cut straight to the heart of things just to get another point in their favor. Charlie just never functioned like that. She doubts he ever will.

"Yeah, well," she starts, clearing her throat to keep her voice even."Tough times, right? No harm done."

And it takes her a bit longer than she'd like to force out the rest of it before he has a chance to interrupt and let it slip past.

"I was going to call you, you know. The night of."

Edited 2012-10-22 12:05 (UTC)

'No harm done.' A choked off chuckle rises up unbidden and dies halfway from his mouth. Christ. He does however manage to fight the urge to rub the back of his neck, though he can't quite look at her. The glow of firelight catching off her wrists and the turn of her jacket in his peripherals is more than enough.

Charlie tips his head, mouth working for a beat. His throat isn't tight, or if it is it's from the smoke of the fire.

Because she had a bottle with her, one she had said was for him. Because she was going to call -- and it's hard not to draw some a line between that and their disagreement in the catacombs. Between that and a gun in her mouth. Or on the underside of her jaw. Or however she'd meant to do it. Because he knows it isn't him, but that he sure as hell hasn't been making things much easier. "You should've."

She's holding a gold buckle in her fingertips when he says that, feels it dig into her skin as she presses on it a bit too hard. It comes to the surface of her mind along with the faintest trace of just how much she wanted to reach him, but it's a brief flash of feeling and not all there. Gone, and leaving her heart beating faster than it ought to be.

"Little late to dwell on that, mate." Which is as much a request for them to drop it and move on as she can manage. Doesn't matter if she brought it up, she's done with it now. "Was planning on passing off the good news."

Edited 2012-10-22 12:43 (UTC)

It takes him a moment to really process the shift in gears - half because he doesn't want to, half because he suddenly and desperately wants to talk about anything else and getting what he wants is enough of a surprise that it merits rocking back slightly on his heels and actually looking her in the face.

"Good news?" Color him nine shades of wary.

There was a more graceful way to have this talk. A much more graceful segue that she could've taken, but the whole thing's a fuck-up at this point, so she might as well go with it. And maybe, if she's lucky, that guilt he's holding will soften things a bit. Who knows.

"I spoke with Talbot, Charlie."

"What?"

It's like the word's punched right out of him, half hissed and not really a question at all. The line of his shoulders comes up and his hands shift ineffectually forward as if the more space he takes up, the better equipped he is.

He somehow buckles down the urge to say something completely insane, completely reactionary. Don't fuck this up. "What did he want from you? Why'd he contact you?" He can't quite stop his voice from pitching a little in the dark.

Chloe imagines that a number of people have shrunk back at the sight of Charlie up in arms over the years. His eyes, cold blue and hard beneath that furrowed brow, are certainly imposing enough without all the pounds of muscle and bloody knuckles. But she doesn't budge or flinch, she barely seems to notice, though she knows she treads on ice so thin it barely exists.

"I phoned him up." She sets the buckle down, places a hand over one of his own. "I know you weren't sold on the idea, but the longer we sat on what to do, the less time we had to act. Wasn't the loveliest chat, but he agreed."

He pulls his hand away almost immediately. And the angle of his chin drops and his hand pops up between them like some kind of momentary barrier. Some kind of fail safe to keep him from-- "You phoned him." His voice is flat and steady and belies a certain disconnect with the whole concept. That she called him. That Talbot was in any way malleable to anything she could possibly say-- that she called him.

"What the hell did he agree to?"

Edited 2012-10-22 13:33 (UTC)

She expects it, really. Doesn't mean she can stop herself from pressing her lips into a thin, tired frown when he jerks back, but that's the only reaction he earns with it.

Could be worse.

"We leave him alone, he does the same to us. That's all. Just like we talked about, Charlie." The words are slow, evenly paced. The sort of calm snake charmers and lion tamers use in their day to day lives to keep from getting killed on stage.

Maybe it's how she regulates her voice. Or maybe he's just so sick of arguing. But he can't even be angry - there's a spark of it low in his belly, but instead of blowing up it fizzles miserably. He touches his temple briefly and, shit, his chest feels tight. Because it doesn't fucking matter what he says or how he says it, it just isn't going to take.

Doesn't stop him from trying though. After floundering for a moment he meets her gaze under the press of his fingers against his forehead. "Chloe." Jesus, the urge to shake her is -- but his voice is even, if taut from a certain of kind of desperation. "Chloe, the bastard's a rabid dog without a leash. We didn't-- We didn't bloody talk about this. You talked and I told you that you were losing it."

'Losing it.'

If not for how broken this entire situation is, if not for how broken she was, that phrasing might've been funny. Almost. Chloe doesn't reach for him again, much as she'd like to. It's hard enough to watch him struggle with himself right there with nearly every emotion out on display. Were the tables turned (thank god they're not) she knows she'd feel as if she'd just been put through the shredder, which is embarrassing in its own right.

But as usual, there's no apology for it.

"Fair enough." And she bites down on the urge to say 'because you never let me get that far'.

"But it's done, okay? It's over."

Edited (Jfc iPad, please.) 2012-10-22 14:16 (UTC)

For a moment it seems like he might argue - at least nine different things to say jostle for position to leave his throat first -, but instead the silence inches on for entirely too long and before he can organize any kind of coherent retort, the moment's passed. "All right," he croaks, painfully aware of how hoarse he sounds.

He sits down then - because his legs ache from squatting. Because his back hurts. Because he's just tired.

It's an infectious thing, exhaustion. It started when she'd first arrived and found the other transports already suffering from it. She told herself she could duck down and avoid it-- something she's always excelled at-- and for a while, even with Flynn there, she did.

Then before she could manage any amount of damage control, before she had the chance to even realize what was going on, it was on her, soaking into every last crack of her life, every bit of comfort to find.

And now, sitting in the quiet dark, she's staring into her own miserable reflection without needing to look in the mirror. She couldn't console him if she tried. Not like this.

"At least this mess is almost over." It's not forced optimism. Doesn't even come off as positive, just relief at being done with one problem, ready and waiting for the next.

Christ, if they could be back in that bloody wasteland of a future right this second he'd be all the happier for it. There's something about the cold and dark and the sound of the air hissing across the rolling hills that and out across the flatlands that surround the camp that feels simultaneously exposed and lonely all at once. something like how the distance between them isn't actually significant, but feels oppressive all the same.

He laughs a little - sudden and sharp and probably more unsettled than he'd like to admit. "Shit." He scrubs his hand back over the top of his head. "Might be ready for that broken leg right about now."

Edited 2012-10-22 15:03 (UTC)

Chloe responds with a grin that's not even there.

"Trust me, you're not."

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Don't know what you lie for anyway, now there's nothing left to say.

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