"You know the old line?" Roman Torchwick began, eyes not drifting from the dust-coated shelves of bottles before him. "'What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?'" He took a sip from his tumbler, eyes daring to dart in the briefest of sideways glances. "…I don't really feel the need to ask you that question." He set the glass down, relishing the familiar burn in his throat. "Intending no disrespect, of course."
"Of course," Vernal replied, sourly, her mouth somewhere between a scowl and a sneer. She had a bottle of beer in her hands, the kind of stuff so cheap that Torchwick would've preferred literal horse-piss. "And yet… here you are."
Roman allowed himself a short chuckle, twisting the whiskey glass with his fingers. It was quite probably the priciest drink that the bar stocked, but that wasn't exactly saying much. "Yet here I am," he parroted in agreement.
They sat slouched in silence for a long minute. Vernal flagged the bartender down for another beer; Torchwick stared into his reflection on the rocks.
"That's a rather pricey drink," Vernal finally said, eyeing the amber being raised to Roman's lips. "You a big spender?"
Roman smiled, indulging the illusion that she didn't know exactly who he was. "I'm an entrepreneur, my fair maiden," he 'explained', pouring all his pretentiousness into the title. "And right now, business is booming."
Vernal raised her bottle by its neck, in wordless toast. "So why drink here?" she asked, once she'd taken her swig. "And don't tell me you dig the local color."
That was a lie even Roman Torchwick couldn't utter. This bar was in the utter ass-end of Vale, one of the few places on the continent he could drink in blessed obscurity. Unfortunately for Torchwick, though, the bar catered primarily to the working poor, ageing hipsters, and men with three ex-wives and as many mortgages. The décor was tired and fading, much like those inside it, dim lighting hiding mud and grime. Not a clean glass or woman to be found. Definitely not Roman's scene.
But ever since "Phase Two" had begun, he hadn't even have the privacy of his own hovel to sip spirits in. Not with her fucking kids running around it like tweens in need of a nanny.
"My regular watering hole…" Roman began, gesturing with his glass for emphasis. "Let's just say I made the mistake of mixing business with pleasure. When work followed me home, well..." he shrugged, "I understand there was some fighting, some property damage. Now suddenly I'm disinvited from the VIP lounge." He took an angrier swig. "Don't shit where you eat, kid. That's some pro bono advice."
Vernal leaned forward on the counter, a crass imitation of a drunken stupor. "Charming," she deadpanned. "Bet you give that to all the pretty girls."
Roman snorted. "No offense, lady, but you really aren't my type," he groused, eyes sweeping from her hiking boots to her pixie cut.
Vernal actually smiled at that, taking a defiant pleasure in his disapproval of her aesthetic. "No, I figure I'm not," she agreed, still smiling as she raised the bottle to her lips. "You prefer quiet girls with bad dye jobs, don't you?"
The game stopped being fun for Torchwick at that point.
"List, kid, I don't know what wannabe punkette band you just quit, but there are some cages you don't stick your hand into. Mine especially."
"Lower your voice," Vernal instructed, coolly. Roman felt the fist he'd unthinkingly clenched loosen, just a little. "How the hell have you survived this long…"
"By being smart enough to play the hand I'm dealt," Torchwick growled. "And knowing when to walk away."
Vernal eyed him wearily. "Heard you used to be quite the card shark," she mused, raising her bottle without breaking his gaze. "What happened?"
Torchwick shrugged, somewhat subdued. "New gig pays better," he explained, returning to his drink.
"Short- or long-term?"
Torchwick took a sip. "That's the million-lien question, isn't it?"
Vernal smiled and patted her chest, pulling out a cigarette from the inside of her vest. "I'm going for a smoke," she explained, her stool scraping on the floor as she stood. "Don't worry, I won't ask you to watch my drink."
Torchwick sighed, cursing the reflection in his whiskey, as he listened to Vernal's footfalls pass him by.
He exited the bar by the back door, after the few minutes it'd taken him to down the last of his liquor.
Vernal was waiting for him, of course, halfway into her second cig, judging by the still-smoldering butt by her feet. Her expression was impressively neutral, betraying neither surprise nor excitement at his arrival. She just kept her eyes forward, watching the raindrops.
"You shouldn't smoke, kid," Torchwick preached, even as he withdrew a cigar of his own. He reached for his lighter, before cursing himself yet again. That stupid brat with her stupid thieving hands.
"Why's that?" Vernal asked, disinterestedly, even as she strolled towards him. She whipped out a lighter considerably cheaper than Torchwick's usual, enkindling his cigar.
Torchwick savored the first puff. "You'll live longer," he replied, with a morbid grin.
Vernal raised her eyebrows, distantly amused at his gallows humor.
They smoked in silence for a minute. It was drizzling, not enough to get them wet, but the nearby lights all took on a spectral aura of their own. There was a small overhang keeping the two outlaws dry, raindrops ricocheting off a colored canvas.
"So what do you want, kid?" Torchwick finally asked, letting the resignation creep into his voice.
Vernal took a decadent drag. "Same thing you do…" she began.
"- I rather doubt that," Torchwick interrupted.
"...to keep things from changing."
Roman shook his head, disappointed in her answer. "World's always changing, kid. Can't keep the wheel from spinning."
Vernal watched him closely, eyeing every twitch and tell. "Of course we can't," she agreed. "But like I said, we want the same things you do. We want a comfortable stalemate."
"Stalemate?" Torchwick repeated the word, as if hearing it for the first time.
A flash of annoyance marred Vernal's face. "Don't play dumb, Torchwick. You want Vale and those meddlers at Beacon taken down a few pegs? I don't blame you." Her expression darkened. "But what do you think the end-game is for you? You have to know Cinder and her associates don't have a neat little farewell party planned for you."
The suspicion on Torchwick's face deepened. "Future problems," he dismissed, chomping down on his cigar. "Don't you worry your pretty head o'er Lil' Ol' Roman."
Cinereous grains fell from Vernal's cigarette. "So have some present solutions," she growled, a parent losing patience with a child. "I can make you an offer."
"I don't doubt it," Torchwick replied, tapping off his own ashes. "But you don't know the kind of carrots and sticks I'm working with."
"Beacon Academy," Vernal began. "Mountain Glenn. Taurus."
"We listing random words, now?" Torchwick snarked in reply.
"You're arranging the pieces. We want to know how they fit together. To what end."
Torchwick let out a forced laugh. "Hate to say, lady, but the non-disclosure clause was pretty damn binding. And I don't like my odds on the lam with them sniffing for blood.
"What if I could fix those odds?" Vernal offered. "Slip an ace up your sleeve?"
Roman sighed. "I don't double-cross kid. First - it's bad for business. Second - it's bad for my health, which I happen to be rather attached to."
He undercut that slightly by taking another carcinogenic inhale of his cigar.
"They've been hunting us for years."
Vernal let her words hang in the air for a long moment, nothing but the sounds of raindrops.
"'Scuse me?"
"Cinder Fall, and her associates. People much more powerful than that schoolgirl," Vernal explained. "They've been trying to find us for almost a decade. The people I'm here for. But we live in the forests between cities, and they've never gotten a whiff of our scent."
"Sounds charmingly rustic," Torchwick mused, even as his mind was racing.
"It's not the Atlas CBD," Vernal admitted. "But if I ever wanted to vanish off the face of the world…" Her eyes softened for just a second, Torchwick saw, unbidden memories resurfacing. "We're not looking to interfere with your plans," she continued, inadvertently reverting to the plural pronoun. "But we need to know."
"You can't stop them," Roman said, with an absolute certainty he almost never felt.
"Don't need to," Vernal clarified, fanning embers with her breath. "Just need to stay one step ahead of them."
She finished her cigarette with one final drag, flicking the butt to the ground. "Nice chatting with you, Roman," she began to conclude. "Say hi to Neo for me."
Roman managed to keep his temper in check, but only just.
"Anyways, you should give this place another chance," she continued, stretching her arms languorously overhead. "There's a local band next Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it..."
Torchwick stared at the waxing embers of his cigar. "Not much for the indie scene, kid," he began, "but maybe I'll check it out."
The door to the bar swung open and closed, leaving Roman once again alone with his thoughts.
There were a thousand and one angles to this little parlor game of theirs. He just needed to figure out which one was going to end up sticking out of his back.