Guess what? It's my birthday today. So have a slightly-longer-than-normal post to celebrate.
Emotions still welled up within her, but they were all noise – curving lines stretching in sinewy paths in her mind that would never connect.
- 'fadedpearl'
Syndrome brushed his knuckles over his mouth almost unconsciously, not taking his eyes from Parr's back, and then stopped mid-motion as he realised he'd called himself 'Syndrome'.
Damnit.
He'd broken himself of the habit by the simple expedient of losing to the Incredibles – the name was associated with months of immobile pain and slow, excruciating recovery. And Parr had – she had –
She had brought it all back with little more than a whisper and a touch.
It had been unexpected, to say the least. Parr's eyes had cleared somewhat, as though she were viewing him properly for the first time. There was something softly dispassionate about her in that moment, as though she were looking at him as a stranger that she pitied, and not as the man she had professed so vehemently to hate.
Then she had asked again, still a little taught about the shoulders, about Mr. Incredible. Syndrome had prepared himself for some kind of comeback, but she'd beaten him to it with one simple comment.
'It hurts you, I know.'
Whatever he had been planning to say – whatever he could have said – was rudely interrupted when the communications line between his brain and his mouth abruptly went dead. Most of the nerve system of his body seemed to shut down, in fact. There was a heavy, dead sensation at the crux of his ribs, a lead weight trying to collapse his internal organs, and a sickness in the bottom of his gut. That was it. She had officially pushed it too far. He was going to start hurting her soon, and he wasn't sure when he would be able to stop.
By the time this had occurred to him she had closed this distance with wary steps and pressed a small, cold hand into the centre of his chest. Of course she's cold, he thought disjointedly and maniacally. It's not like she's wearing much.
Parr's sheer audacity froze him into immobility. There wasn't rage in him, as such, just a thick sheet of paralysing incredulity layered over the ice-cold malevolence that hadn't quite reached the fore yet. And yet...
Everything about her body language, including her slow and deliberately heavy-handed movements, showed her intentions to be anything but hostile. She was doing something else here, slowly and cautiously, and his suspicions rose again when the hand on his chest exerted a little more pressure.
He darted his eyes back up to Parr's and was shocked at what he saw, incredulity nulling the rising rage. Her eyes were kind and thoughtful, accepting, regretful. Any tension in her body was gone, still and loose.
'It hurts here', she told him, and he felt her fingers flex ever-so-slightly over that cauldron of anger and malicious death settled in his solar plexus. She was right. It did hurt. It was fury and pain and betrayal and years of trying to fight that, and the pH of the mix had eaten away his insides and his heart until he wasn't sure what was left.
Parr moved her hand down to rest over the sickly sensation riding his gut. He jumped; it was a sensitive, vulnerable spot. She could have hurt him so badly if she had chosen to.
'It hurts here, too,' said the girl, and Syndrome found his anger draining. It wasn't leaving him; it was being frightened away. Parr was looking into him, through him, in far too personal a manner and a tingling fear was shivering its way up through his synapses. What was she doing? What did she honestly hope to achieve by this? He was strong, he was the Boss, he was not be messed with or manipulated so well...
... and yet, he found that he was struggling to move. There was tight band of pressure around his chest which began the steady process of catalysing fear into panic.
The problem must have been in his brain, nerves and the communication system therein, because his muscles and joints seemed to be able to operate wonderfully. He barely noticed when Parr pushed him downwards, following the motion to kneel a little above him. The fear-panic conversion rate increased.
Her felt it when she gently took his face though, oh, he felt it. Her eyes scanned his face with a detachment filled with curiosity, seemingly unaware of how every hair on his neck and arms seemed to be trying to stand on end. His breath came out in a silent gasp, shaky and unsound, and his head tipped forward in a desperate attempt to get more of that touch. It was light and cool, true, but it was contact. Real contact, accompanied by the sensation that his brain was full of icicles.
When she brushed her fingers through his hair, he shivered. He couldn't have stopped himself for anything in the world. There was nothing more he could have said to describe how it felt. It was everything to him.
And it hurt. It all hurt.
She said something else but Syndrome didn't listen to the words. He just listened to the sounds made, the way she spoke, the gentleness and compassion at odds with her detached expression, the unfamiliarity of such close inflections.
Violet raised his head to meet her eyes, gentle pressure on his jaw bringing his face up toward hers. Her eyes were tired and purple, airless and suitably broken. There was pity twined with compassion, a touch of condescending understanding and a shared pain, and she spoke again. She was right. She did understand.
Violet moved even closer then, bringing their foreheads into light contact. Syndrome swallowed and closed his eyes, feeling for the first time in years the sense of someone welcomed into his personal space. Her voice sounded again, low and close, and then she touched her lips to his forehead.
A shudder wracked its way through him then and his arms moved upward, hands desperately digging into her arms, keeping her near to him. Shared warmth, contact, a closeness. They was a ferocity in his grip that frightened him. He was scared that if squeezed any tighter then she'd shatter into a million pieces, and he could not think of anything worse that could possibly happen. Her lips moved against the skin over his skull, seeming like an impossible level of separation. She was speaking the words right into his brain, not into the flesh, the blood or the bone covering it.
He thought he was saying don't leave, stay like this, please, but it must have been all in his head as she didn't respond.
Her hand moved from his head until the were fingers under his chin, keeping his face turned toward hers. Violet had not broken gaze with him.
'You are not a monster,' she said with great levels of solemnity, and he wasn't really sure what to think of that.
She pressed her lips to his for just several seconds that lasted less than a moment, a conclusion to seal the covenant of understanding between them. She brushed her thumb over the line of his cheekbone, mirroring the line hewn by her own scar. It was like a thumbprint to mark ownership, he thought in some wordless and primal way. It as if she was saying yes, I get it, and you're part of that too.
You feel as though you'll drown in the darkness, drown in the blood, and drown willingly.
Abruptly, she'd stood and shattered it all. Gone was the closeness, the joining of understanding and the warmth, what little she had. She stood some distance away, back to him, arms folded across her stomach. Her scars shone under the light, a paradoxical silver glow against the faint flesh tones of her skin.
There was something under his skin, trying to get out. It bubbled and boiled, black and sticky, crawling through his flesh and making his fingertips tingle. He took a step forwards.
"And?" he said softly. Parr made no response. He took another step, and another, bringing himself nearer to the prone figure.
"Well?" he demanded then, gruff harshness forced into his voice. "What now?"
She still said nothing. That thing crawling through his veins made another spirited attempt to escape its prison, surging against his skin until he thought he would explode. Syndrome recognised it as furious, wounded rage.
He lunged forward and grabbed her arm in a cruel grip, spinning her around to face him.
Parr looked up at him with eyes so dead they should have been buried months ago. Her face was flat and expressionless, icy-cold heartlessness having frozen her very skin. She was completely different from mere moments ago, when she had been warm, caring, comfort embodied. This was... a different being, a different person, a different mode of existence. The warmness in her had wisped away into the harsh arctic winter that seemed to blow about her bones.
Syndrome realised he'd taken a step back and had let go of her arm. On her biceps, white fingermarks faded away.
"Do you see?" she said. Her voice, dead and toneless, made it more of a statement than a question. It was the voice of the psychopath on the last step to the edge of the mental catastrophe curve. "This is what he did to me every day. Every day, without fail. And you did it to me, too. Trying to forget about it causes me pain. Actual pain. Migraines. How do you expect me to act like you predict if I'm in so many pieces I don't know where to start looking?"
It wasn't what she said that finally hammered the point home to him, it was her eyes. When muscle breaks, it mends, knits itself, heals harder and becomes tougher. What, he found himself wondering, if that process happened over and over? Every day, in fact? Common biology dictated exhaustion and irreparability of the tissues, but suddenly he thought that that wasn't the end of the process. It was this completely dead look, harder than diamond and with a much more vicious edge.
She was so shattered there was no clear way to put her back together again.
They stood there like that for several highly-charged seconds, a stalemate between his furious, selfish, wounded rage and her corpse aggression. The moment was broken rather efficiently by the sound of the door slamming back.
Neither looked around as Nikolaevsky burst in, both trying to force their point across by sheer force of will, but the Russian's words were enough to break the deadlock.
"They're here. And they're communicating."
A delicate smile took ahold of the bottom half of the Boss' face, a fragile movement in unfamiliar territory, though his eyes remained the same.
"You're going to have to help me, Parr."
It wasn't a request. It was a statement.
"I know," she said in an emotionless voice that was nevertheless charged with more sheer anger than was feasible. Nikolaevsky, breathing heavily from his run, darted his eyes between the two still figures anxiously. There was another moment of motionlessness, before the Boss smiled again and straightened up from hs barely-perceptible predatory crouch.
"Well?" he said mockingly, seeming to thoroughly enjoy the girl's disadvantage in the situation. He extended a hand toward the door. "After you."
Her eyes tracking him for just a moment, she moved away from the Boss and toward Nikolaevsky. Over the girl's shoulder, he saw the Boss nod slightly and so let her pass through the door.
"Boss?" he asked quietly, wary of disturbing the air in the room. It was filled with so much hatred that he was afraid of attracting its attention lest it devour him alive.
"She'll help," his Boss said, in a grim tone infused with malicious delight. "She doesn't have a choice."
"Boss?" said Nikolaevsky again, drawing away a little. The Boss turned to look at him properly, and for the first time Nikolaevsky was truly frightened of the man.
"Yes?"
"Boss, you look..." There was no adequate English word to describe it, so he settled with "... crazy."
There was puzzlement for a moment, and then the strange cruelty left his Boss' face. Nikolaevsky welcomed the change.
The Boss took a deep breath and appeared to focus. "You said they're here? Have you locked the base down?"
Nikolaevsky felt insulted. "Ten minutes before they arrived. Place is deadbolted on every level, all the blast doors. There's no way they're getting through all the titanium reinforcements."
"They're communicating?"
"And willing to negotiate."
"Negotiate? They're faster than I gave them credit for. I'd assumed a military strike would have come first..."
"So had I, sir. The base is on alert. I think that... the girl passed on some financial information to her accomplice, and they used that to work out your influence. They were cautious. Very."
The Boss' face was becoming more familiar terrain, Nikolaevsky was relieved to note. He was able to read the emotional weather once more, and this look was one of involved calculation.
"That's not typical government procedure, Russian or American. I'll wager Special Agent Rick Dicker's personally involved in this... which will be to our immense advantage."
There was a smile on the Boss' face now, but it hung a little crooked, as though it didn't fit right just yet. His eyes gazed off into the middle distance while tracing a couple of fingers over the side of his mouth. Nikolaevsky didn't even bother to ask after the Boss' question.
"They want her back alive and well," continued the Boss thoughtfully. "That's a good bargaining chip for us, especially as she'll have to vouch for the operations here. She understands the need for stability..."
There seemed to be more to that statement than Nikolaevsky was prepared to read into, and time was of the essence.
"They want to speak to you, Boss. Now."
"Video link?"
"Yeah."
The Boss' vision clicked abruptly back to the present time and he cast a quick glance at Nikolaevsky's face.
"Set it up, commander."
"Video? You're going to allow them to see you?"
"That soldier who infiltrated the base has seen me already. There's not much damage left to be dealt..."
Nikolaevsky cast a doubtful gaze at his Boss, making sure the man knew of his concerns. The Boss, that genius of perception, picked up his commander's thoughts immediately. He nodded to show he had acknowledged them.
"Let's go," he said, and Nikolaevsky was relieved to see that his boss looked more normal than he had for twenty-four hours. The girl... she was the problem, the root of all this changing, despite the Boss' declaration of her understanding of stability. She was standing just beyond the doorway and staring down the length of the corridor. Her expression was cold and dead; the face, perhaps, of a suicide looking back. Nikolaevsky stood beside her, wary, whilst the Boss followed him from the room.
"Shall we?" said the Boss pleasantly, and they started to move.
--I--
The HQ room was holding only the bare necessities today, as though it was wartime and Syndrome was preserving resources. Violet supposed that, in a way, he was.
The big room's lighting was minimal at best, throwing dark shadows along the floor and into the corners made between walls, desks and chairs. It was as though darkness was inexorably drawing into their little pool of light, moving in only when not looked at directly. Violet's mental state was doing something very similar. She felt easy with it all.
She was leaning against a wall with her bare arms folded across her exposed stomach. Nikolaevsky was standing scant inches from one of her arms, gun drawn but with the safety on. He wasn't taking chances, in any sense. Another guard stood on her other side, long-barrelled rifle held in a loose grip that could nevertheless be tightened in an instant. She had noticed the captain's stripes on the man's right shoulder and breastplate: this man was one step lower on Syndrome's hierarchical guard structure than Nikolaevsky. He was not to be messed with. Nikolaevsky had evidently seen fit to post a captain to keep her in check as well as himself, which spoke volumes of the higher ranks' training and his caution for Violet herself.
In fact, now that she came to think about it, most of the soldiers in the HQ room with them were a higher level. There seemed to be six ranks in the base, and in the Russian style; the lowest being a private, grading up to corporal, sergeant, master sergeant, lieutenant, captain, and then Commander – a rank she had only seen Nikolaevsky possess. None of the twenty or so soldiers with them now were below Lieutenant rank, although she would happily stake her life on the fact that these twenty soldiers did not comprise of all of Syndrome's officers. Just the best, the brightest, the ones who could be relied on to act intuitively with information at hand and make efficient decisions with only seconds of their need being called.
Whatever the outcome of this little dialogue, Syndrome was taking no chances with the security of his base. Violet could see that each officer held a recoilless rifle in a firm grip and had a small radio clipped to their belt; defence and communication to mobile soldier units. Efficient.
The officers' armour was nothing like Nikolaevsky's heavy plate, which must have been custom-made for the massive man. Instead, their armour was very similar to that of the soldiers' (at least in terms of its efficiency) to Violet's experienced eye – dark charcoal or black kevlar plating, the only differences being in the gold or silver rank stripes on shoulders and chests. Syndrome was determined to keep loss of lives to a minimum in the case of actual battle.
Syndrome himself looked at ease. Almost ridiculously so. Violet could still feel the warmth of his head in the palms of her hands, the way the bone structure of his face moulded to her fingers, how he had shivered when she touched him out of kindness. He should not have been like this. His movement were easy and loose, over-calculated to be carefree and warm. There wasn't even a glimpse of the icy malice in his eyes. It was all gone, put away somewhere else, a box separate to the main, and he had overcompensated. That very quality showed her where the cracks were and she filed that away for future reference.
He had changed shirt for this conversation, from the light blue back into the white. Violet found herself defining his moods by the colours he wore. White was for business.
This did not feel like a business arrangement, however. They were all standing in an area of the room beside the giant staircase, facing one of the smaller panel screens attached to the wall. The desks and chairs had been cleared out from this area and put God-knew-where, clearing space for the twenty-odd people. Syndrome himself was surrounded by a wide circle of space with the officers hanging back, presumably to keep out of line of sight of the screen which Violet thought would act as a two-way visual communicator. At the moment, it was dead and blank. The little space they had was flooded in light, in sharp contrast to the darkness elsewhere in the room.
The screen itself was about six feet by four, chosen possibly for the fact it looked out onto the side of the staircase (which would look like a wall to a viewer) and thus would afford a much more private view than the wallscreen, which looked out over the entire HQ. Violet understood the reasoning; it wasn't worth giving the enemy a look at the schematics of the control room, and the scope of its operations.
"Open," said Syndrome, and Violet brought her awareness back to the present with a sharp tug. The screen flashed white for a moment, before snapping alive.
"Gentlemen," said Syndrome warmly, arms spread. "And to what do I owe this pleasure?"
Violet noted immediately that there were only two men on screen, and her expectations of the conversation changed rapidly.
It was Dicker and Zharov.
They were sitting on what looked like upturned crates with the dull olive green interior of a Russian military helicopter all around them. Both looked grim-faced and set, ready to bargain hard and to Hell with all that diplomatic nonsense. Violet herself would have been outside their line of sight, so she took a moment to regard them.
Zharov looked grim and a touch angry. He was dressed in the a shirt identical to the one he'd worn when she had first met him, olive shirt rolled to the elbows. He still seemed over-thin despite the ropes of muscle evident on his forearms, and the harsh perception of the camera they used picked up the very slight grey threads in his sandy-brown hair. He was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his gaze focused unblinkingly on the camera in front of him.
Dicker was wearing a heavy coat over his customary suit and looked as worn-down and beaten as ever. His movements were slow and careful, perhaps of a man just starting to fight off arthritis. His voice, when he spoke, was weary and tired.
"Well, the release of my agent would be good start."
Violet saw the corner of Syndrome's mouth twitch upwards almost imperceptibly, for just one moment, and at the same time she felt Nikolaevsky shift position beside her. Violet stayed rock-still and completely impassive.
Syndrome clapped his hands together and smiled broadly, and there seemed nothing forced or unnatural about the gesture. "Ah, yes... Agent Parr? Your stealth operative?"
Dicker's expression didn't change, but Zharov narrowed his eyes. Violet could see that much.
"I carry the demands from the Russian government," said Zharov, in his barely-accented voice. "We wish you to surrender the Agent to American custody, to lower your defences and to prepare for immediate arrest. Your base will be taken over by the Russian government and dismantled."
Syndrome's grin widened just a fraction.
"Ah," he said pleasantly. "You're a familiar face. I believe we captured you at one point a few days ago?"
"Yes," said Zharov expressionlessly.
"Pleased to see you're looking well," said Syndrome good-naturedly. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid I can't acquiesce to your request. Purely business reasons, you understand... nothing personal."
"Then I have been instructed to use deadly force, if necessary, to infiltrate your compound and halt its operations," said Zharov immediately. He had evidently been awaiting such a response, and by the looks of his expression, this latter option would suit his psychological state much more aptly. "We will then forcibly terminate the base's operations and destroy it if deemed necessary."
"And what do the Americans think of all this... brutality?" asked Syndrome, addressing Dicker with an almost obscenely cheerful expression. Dicker leaned forward in his chair slightly.
"We don't care. I want Parr back alive and unharmed. The U.S. government has pledged support of the Russian government in their actions if necessary, but all I really want is Parr back, without bloodshed." Dicker's response was grave and measured, and Violet saw hope in this.
Syndrome spread his hands. "Sounds reasonable. However..." He laced his fingers underneath his chin, a grave and thoughtful look on his features. "You see, there might be a slight problem with your retaliation plans..."
"No. There is not," said Zharov harshly.
Syndrome held up his hands in a placatory gesture. "Do you not wish to discuss terms first, gentlemen?" There was a mocking edge to his voice.
Zharov visibly riled. "No. The last I saw of Parr, she was being shot at by your soldiers. I want to know that she's alive, and I want to know now before we go any further."
Syndrome shrugged. "Fair enough," he said, and he looked over at Nikolaevsky.
It must have been a pre-set signal, Violet thought. Nikolaevsky immediately placed a hand on Violet's shoulder in a slight suggestion for her to move before Nikolaevsky forced her. Violet went with the flow for a moment, allowing herself to be gently propelled forward and into the camera's visual range.
"Agent," she said quietly, and moved her gaze to Zharov. "Kasatka. I'm glad you got back all right."
Seeing their faces on the screen focusing on her was like coming home a little bit. Such familiarity was a long-lost emotion, something she'd ignored in past days while just trying to stay alive. A thin tendril of relief that this might soon be out of her hands snaked treacherously through her, and Violet ruthlessly quashed the impulse. Syndrome was going to be her responsibility in this mess; she knew this intuitively. There was too much going on between them for her to simply relinquish contact – there was too much that needed explaining, that needed finishing.
To her surprise, the expressions of the two men were locked solid, cold and angry. When Zharov spoke, his voice was full of ice, and his gaze was centred somewhere over her left shoulder.
"You are going to burn for what you have done to her," he said a simple, no-nonsense tone.
Violet glanced over her shoulder, and caught Syndrome's flat gaze with a puzzled one of her own. In a moment of near-perfect wordless communication, Syndrome's eyes flicked down her body and back up again. She understood instantly and turned back to the screen. She crossed her arms over her stomach to hide the worst of the scarring over her abdomen, and fixed the two men with a piercing stare.
"We'll discuss that later," she said, her tone a clear warning. How could she have been so stupid? Her top was lying in shreds elsewhere and the two men had never seen any scars on her, barring the one on her face. What were they going to think? "We have a much more serious issue."
They didn't seem to take the hint. Dicker leaned forward on his seat, very carefully, and clasped his hands in front of him. His face was grave and serious. "Violet," he said softly. "What did he do to you?"
"Nothing that hasn't been done before," Violet responded steadfastly. "Now will you listen to me?"
Dicker didn't move an inch, and when he spoke, his voice was almost a whisper. "Violet... what did he do to you?"
Violet rolled her eyes and strode forward another few paces to the screen in front of her.
"Agent, there are more important things at risk here! This is not a personal matter! Please, can we focus on the situation at hand?"
It took her a few moments to register the shock in their eyes. She had never raised her voice to either of them in the entire time they had known her. It must have looked like she was cracking, losing control. Violet glared at them a little, feeling the hot burn of guilt under her skin like corrosive acid eating away at her self-control. Her focus held strong and confident for now, but she knew it was getting more and more brittle. She could feel it getting shallower and harder in her fingertips, like a wafer-thin pane of glass shatterable by one tolerably determined push.
Violet was at a disadvantage here but she could still twist it, could alter the footsteps of the dance without disrupting the flow. Syndrome thought only in blacks and whites, one choice or another. He had no perception of the grey areas, a fact that Violet had been continually preying on for the last few days without realising it. He didn't understand a person's concept of self-compromise.
What had he done in this situation? Well, from his perspective, he had placed Violet into a position where she could either betray her beliefs and sell herself out to him or be the cause of a world-wide crash. He thought he was making her protect him, to her chagrin and Dicker's disappointment. When viewed from another angle, however, he had just placed Violet and all of her knowledge about him smack in front of his opponents. She knew his history, his weaknesses, and all of his strengths (which was a weakness in and of itself). Violet knew all of this so, when Dicker opened his mouth to respond, Violet cut straight across him.
"Agent," she said, voice hard and businesslike. "Dig up all the files on that man." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Syndrome. "Start looking through all the business reports for these major companies for the last four years." Violet rattled off a list of names she had seen on Syndrome's HQ screen, mind moving madly, trying to think of loopholes, weaknesses, little-known legislation that would lend the governments an edge. This war wasn't going to fought with weapons, but numbers. "He owns most of them. Take him down, and the world's economy goes down with him. You cannot fight this here. Get lawyers and accountants onto it, find loopholes, inform the companies of the illegalities, invoke government rights. He's too strong."
Violet had talked fast, expecting at any moment to feel herself being dragged away, so she wasn't surprised when hands clamped onto her and started to pull. Dicker recognised her speed and also the blunt fact that two men were trying to drag her away.
"What name are the files under?" he asked, quickly and harshly. He was leaning forward on his makeshift seat, staring at her with an intensity she had never seen before. She understood instantly, then, Dicker's position in the NSA; why he was feared and respected and held in awe. His was the expression of efficient machines building up speed, a slow steady whine of turbines gearing up to a ferocious peak.
Violet smiled mirthlessly, leaning all her weight forwards, holding off being dragged away for just a few more precious seconds. She looked Dicker right in the eye and said, "Syndrome."
The unrelenting hands on her arms and shoulders won out then and she was yanked mercilessly off-balance and into the mercy of her captors, a factor she knew was about as reliable as Syndrome's mental state. She was pulled away, out of the circle of light cast by the single lamp in the ceiling, and God knows where she would have been taken if Dicker hadn't raised a single hand and said, tiredly, "Wait."
Syndrome gave a curt nod and the two lieutenants pulling Violet back paused a moment. Violet took that moment to regain her balance and observed Syndrome again. His mouth was a grim line, his eyes reflecting that anger and malice he had so successfully hidden only seconds before. Violet felt a thin suggestion of satisfaction. It's your game, Syndrome, but it's my rules.
"Is this true?" asked Dicker softly. "Codename Syndrome? Buddy Pine?" Violet saw Syndrome visibly stiffen at the mention of his given name. "Violet says you're untouchable. Is she right?"
Syndrome smiled again, and there was nothing easygoing about it at all. "Exactly right, old man. Take me down, if you can, and the world goes with me."
Dicker pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, closing his eyes to sigh almost imperceptibly. "Bring Violet back. I need to confirm this with her."
Syndrome nodded jerkily and Violet found herself being dragged toward the circle of light, out of the darkness. She twitched her shoulders and her captors released her, allowing her to walk back toward Syndrome without 'aid'.
She greeted Dicker with a nod of her head as soon as she was within range of the camera mounted within the screen. Aside from a few captains around the fringes, Syndrome and herself were the focus of the two men onscreen.
"Is it true?" repeated Dicker gravely, lacing his fingers together in front of his mouth. Violet threw a brief look at Syndrome's grim yet satisfied expression, and nodded again.
"He has... extensive influences. Not just those companies I mentioned. Different sectors, different areas, different levels of funding, but it's all there. He keeps it moving. He keeps it working." Violet took a breath for a moment, and as she spoke her next words she was overcome with a furious sense of impotent anger and injustice that she fought to not show on her face. "We need him. For now, at least. He's too tied in."
She clenched her fists tightly then, loosening them rapidly when she realised the way Zharov was looking at her. She'd never shown such a display of temper lost to him before, mild as it was.
Dicker exhaled heavily and his eyes moved on to Syndrome. "Mr. Pine?" he asked quietly, and Violet felt the tension coming from Syndrome at those words. No, she thought, agreeing with Syndrome on this one. That's not his name, if it ever really belonged to him. Not today, and not ever.
"I take it we will have to... commence negotiations, to phrase it politely. This is out of my hands."
Zharov spoke then. "And what about Violet?" he asked, addressing Syndrome directly. Syndrome turned slightly and fixed Violet with a hard stare. Violet matched it easily, the self-justified rage between them like a palpable aura.
Speaking very deliberately, not removing his harsh stare from Violet's own, he said "We'll discuss that later, gentlemen. Call back when you're ready to negotiate."
The screen blanked out, and there was silence for a second before Nikolaevsky abruptly seized control of the moment. Barking out a string of orders in both English and Russian, the crowd of officers began to disperse. Nikolaevsky gently took hold of one of Violet's arms. There was no malice in his motions, but it still communicated that it could be an option. Violet never broke her gaze from Syndrome, seemingly ignoring the burly Russian.
"You are my bargaining tool," Syndrome said, so softly that only Violet heard him. He approached her slowly then, cruelty evident in his features, and raised her chin with cool fingers. "I'm going to use you to get exactly what I want from the governments and then I'll release you to them. And they'll never know that I would have let you go for nothing." He paused, and said in a mocking half-snarl, "You're worthless now."
It should have at least offended Violet's pride, but it didn't. She resisted Nikolaevsky's attempts to pull her away with a gentle immovability that would not be construed as hostile.
"We're all bought and sold," she said simply. "Some more than others. Some more than once." You sold me, first to Harker and now to those who care about me, all because my father sold you out in the first place. What am I to you?
It was a low blow, and she knew it hit home when he failed to react. You know I'm not yours to spend, she thought with a touch of satisfaction. You know that what you have here is a situation that's been wrong for years.
Violet turned then and allowed Nikolaevsky to cautiously guide her away from Syndrome, toward the staircase, into the darkness and up and away. They had taken a few steps when Syndrome's voice made her pause a moment.
"I have responsibility."
His voice echoed oddly in the emptying room and Violet glanced back, ignoring Nikolaevsky's controlling hand on her upper arm. Syndrome was not crass enough to add a rhetorical Don't I?
Violet didn't nod or shake her head. He knew it to be truth. He was accountable for parts of her, and for the memories that came with it.
"As do you," he added in a desperate attempt at a snarl.
No. That wasn't true. She'd done what she had to do, and there was very little involvement on her part of Syndrome's formation into the wounded, rage-ridden creation he had become. But Syndrome seemed to draw a strange comfort from saying it, a weird karmic balance for damage done. She allowed him that for the courtesy of her freedom and carried on walking. Her back was to him and she didn't see his expression, but she didn't want to know. He was washing his hands of her – not even her death would be satisfactory, he wanted her to suffer for what he thought she had done to him – and although he considered it the ending, she didn't. There was something left undone, some loose end still unravelled.
He knows everything, and he hurts, even if it's not for you.
The thought was a cool whisper into her mind and it stayed in her thoughts even as she left the room behind her.
To be continued. And, for those who are concerned, this isn't the last we've seen of one Buddy Pine...
