XLII: The Capitol - Rose Point Estate.
Icarus Devereux, 17
Applicant #10
His body is almost entirely numb when he wakes.
His eyes are also conveniently glued shut, unlikely, or just so thoroughly crusted over that he can't exactly open them. There's a pounding in his head, nausea turning over in his stomach but not enough to get him to move. It feels like he's eaten through six mouthfuls of cotton and then conveniently forgotten to wash them down, which probably wasn't smart.
You know, if he had actually eaten cotton.
He doesn't remember much and it's hard to get any further in the mush that is his brain to figure it out - all he knows is that unless something very strange happened last night in the space that he doesn't remember, he's asleep on Soran, sort of, and has no plans to move in the immediate future.
He's too warm to be properly comfortable, and there's something digging into his legs, but exhaustion is weighing so heavily on his body that he couldn't be fucked to move even if you've paid him.
Money used to work in the past. Not so much anymore.
Soran's moving, sort of, just occasional shifts that aren't really enough to disturb him, unless they're what woke him up in the first place. He certainly feels tired enough to go back to sleep, so something must have. There's only one distinct thing he can feel above all else, a hand centered in the middle of his spine, fingers occasionally moving back and forth.
"What time is it?" he mumbles, trying to turn a bit to bring some life back into the rest of his body. It doesn't do much.
"Early morning, looks like. Sun's coming up."
Icarus can't see; his eyes won't open, and they're mashed into the crook of Soran's shoulder anyway. He really doesn't want to move. He feels boneless, almost like he doesn't have to. There's no point to it.
"Did you sleep?"
"Sure didn't."
"Why not?"
"It's pretty fucking impossible when you feel the way I do right now, turns out."
He sits up so suddenly that he can practically feel himself tilting about uneasily, and when he cracks opens his eyes everything is a blur, most of all Soran sitting in front of him. What he can tell, vision or not, is that he looks to be in visible pain, and that's probably because Icarus just spent the past however many hours using him as a personal pillow, crying on him and then falling sleeping nearly on top of him.
"God," he manages. "Why did you just let me stay there, then? You're already in enough pain as is."
"Even in sleep you were really determined not to be moved," Soran says, which isn't entirely surprising. Once he's got a hold he's not usually the type to let go without good reason.
But this is a pretty good reason if there ever was one.
He hauls himself to his feet and very nearly throws up at how badly everything spins, then, grabbing onto the counter to keep himself upright.
Soran rolls his head back until it's leaning against the cupboard, eyes narrowed. "Trashed?"
"Feels like it." He presses a hand to his temple but the throbbing only increases tenfold. He should never drink anything, ever. Anyone who even vaguely knows him should lock the liquor up in ways that will never allow him any access to it.
He can still barely see, his arms coming to life with pins and needles, but he leans back down to fit his arms under Soran's, pulling him to his feet with painstaking slowness, inch by inch. He can see the pain all over his face, feel it in the rigidness of his forearms, and watches it when he finally pulls him to his feet, unsteady as they both are.
"You good?"
"Just give me a minute."
Longer than that, by the looks of it. Soran is still looking to the ground, shifting from foot to foot in an attempt to ease some of the pain. His left hand opens and closes repeatedly, brushing against Icarus' arm with every pass.
He eyes it. "Feel any different?"
"Not really, but then again nothing right now feels great."
His doing - his fault. Is there anything he can't fuck up at this point? All he can do now is hold onto him like he did all throughout the night, but now at least he's trying to help. It's leagues better than really focusing on last night, on everything attempting to flood back in. The mess of emotions, the confusion, the pain.
"You should go to sleep," Soran says some few minutes later, finally looking up. His eyes aren't so foggy anymore.
"So should you."
"I need to do something first."
"What?"
"Nothing that you need to worry about. Just go to sleep."
He wants to ask, probably should. He's also not in the mood to get into it right now, and knowing the both of them - sleep-deprived, slightly numb, in a general state of terrible, that's what will happen if he pushes. There's enough shit going on in the world right now, and Soran's become a constant in it, a weird, abnormal thing to rely on.
Soran looks up at him, too. "It's fine. Don't worry about it. I'll come back, if you want me to, just—"
"I do, yeah," he says quietly, without missing a beat. They've been in plenty of dangerous territories but this feels like a different kind. He doesn't just want him to come back - he needs him to, he thinks, like a constant should.
There's something different in Soran's eyes, too, a question without an answer. Icarus would give him one if he had it.
He nods, short and sharp. Finally something that doesn't look like it hurts. "I won't be long."
He lets go but not before Icarus gets one last hold on him, a looser embrace this time. He wraps his arms around him, allowing himself only one little squeeze lower down where he knows not so much pain lies. It's easier in this position. Everything goes dark when he buries his face back in Soran's shoulder for just a second, and in the dark there's nothing overwhelming. It's just simple.
"Thank you," he whispers. He's still falling apart, he suspects, but it's slower than it would be without him.
Oh, how the tables have turned.
When he lets go it's not easy. Soran ambles out of the room in a sleepless stupor, one hand pressed to his side as if he's warding off pain that hasn't even blossomed yet. Icarus turns to grab the curtains to the wide bay window looking out over the back of the property. He gets a good look before he pulls them shut - miles of perfectly manicured grass and towering trees further back, a massive expanse of gardens and twisting stone pathways even closer. It's beautiful, he'll say that much. He also doesn't have the energy required for beautiful right now.
With the curtains shut the room gets taken back by the darkness, and it really is easier. There are clothes around here certainly, something to change into. Pandora even said so.
He's so drained, though, that he doesn't even care. His face is tender to the touch, swollen from all the crying, and his head hurts bad enough that all he wants to do is lay here for the next twelve hours and forget everything that's happened. He pulls all the blankets back and crawls in, tugging them right back up and nearly over his head before he's content.
It won't take long, he knows. It's too dark to fight it.
And that's a good thing, right about now.
Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17
Neither of them sleep a wink.
She knows this because she spends most of her time cocooned under the blankets, silently hoping they'll smother her if she stops paying attention. The other one percent she spends peeking out from them at Tarquin to see if he's gone under, but every time she checks he's in the same position on the same chaise lounge in the corner of the room, staring emptily at the ceiling.
And neither of them say a word about it, either.
When she finally meanders her way into the bathroom just after six she doesn't even bother flicking the light on - she can see the horror that is her face even without it, and presses her fingers to the puffiness under her eyes, willing it to go away.
It doesn't, but she didn't really expect it to.
Tarquin is folding the blanket back over the end of the chaise when she gets back, although it's not like he really used it. Even the bed looks hardly disturbed, just a few faint wrinkles where she was laying and nothing else among them.
Tarquin looks at her. She stares back.
"Breakfast?" he asks eventually, so off they go.
Neither of them really know where to go - no one gave them any explicit instructions. Evander no doubt would have taken the time, or Pandora herself, if yesterday hadn't gone the way it did.
She won't lie about the pit of her stomach being empty, but it's not with hunger. She's not even sure if she can eat right now with how sick she feels, but it looks like it's given Tarquin some ounce of purpose in their otherwise very devoid of anything days. In an odd twist of fate she doesn't really want to be alone right now, either, so even if they're silent following him around in the search of food seems better than sitting in her room by herself.
Or his room. She's not sure which of theirs it is, but they'll probably find out soon.
They both look terrible. It's evident in the eyes of the few people they pass, all workers by the looks of it. Tarquin eventually stops one to get directions to any sort of food and she directs them with a nervous little gesture before she skitters off even quicker than she appears. Downstairs they head, down stairs three times as wide as she is tall, and then around the corner, through a dining room the size of her entire house.
The kitchen, when they finally find the door tucked away into a corner of the hall, is silent except for the occasional clang of a pot and pan, the smooth sound of running water. There's someone whistling too, a faint tune that she can't put her finger on. Familiar, but not enough.
The man they finally come across looks pretty official, white chef's coat and all. Their presence becomes an alert almost immediately; he turns around still mixing away at something without blinking an eye.
"Oh, I didn't think I would get anymore of you up this early!" he says. "If you'd just give me a minute..."
He trails off and takes the bowl with him, grabbing two plates off of a shelf much too high for her to reach. Every movement seems confident, calculated in an easy-going, experienced sort of way. He knows what he's doing and on top of it doesn't care that they're lurking about watching him.
"He really took that in stride," she murmurs.
"Nice change."
It is, she'll admit it. He's already piling things onto both plates, heaps of browned potatoes and eggs interspersed with various vegetables, links of sausage and crispy bacon. She wasn't hungry before, but things have definitely changed.
"Anything in particular I can get you to drink?" he asks without looking over his shoulder. "I've got orange juice, apple juice, pomegranate, grapefruit - or a smoothie, perhaps?"
"Orange juice is good," Tarquin offers, and she murmurs her agreement. She'd be good with all of the above, really, but the taste of anything besides water right now is practically heaven. She watches him pour orange juice into two rounded glasses while finishing off the plates, presenting two rolled bundles of cutlery.
"Is there anywhere you'd like me to take this?"
"Oh, I can carry it," Tarquin says. "You don't have to do that."
He steps in to grab one of the plates before any protests can be offered up and then grabs the second before she can blink, too, scooping up the cutlery as well. She edges around them both to take the juice into her own hands, quite literally. The chef looks unbothered as can be, watching the two of them like they've lived here forever, like he's used to this.
"If you need anything, you know where to find me," he explains. "I make a mean midnight snack if I do say so myself."
He's definitely Capitol - just the attitude says it, as well as the lip ring and the three piercings he has in each ear. He's not old, per say, but he looks much younger than she'd guess he really is.
"And you are...?"
"Tycho Alinari - my apologies. Working head chef, at least when Althea's not around. If I'm not around, you can ask for her. She makes an even better smoothie than I do."
He's really, freakishly nice. Tarquin even cracks a smile, but this is probably what he's used to. People in Three are more closed off, on edge almost constantly. They're not open and honest like Tycho is. They're the exact opposite, really.
"Did you say someone else was awake?" she asks, not forgetting his previous words. She wouldn't put it past anyone else.
"Miss Langlois, I do believe. She was in the den down the hall last I saw her, though I did send her down there with her food quite a while ago. You may still be able to catch her."
Ria, oddly enough, does want to catch her. There's been something gnawing away at her brain about Emmi, the knowledge that she was presumably alone all of last night and still is right now. If Ria doesn't want to be alone than she can't imagine Emmi does, either, but Soran and Icarus must be off somewhere together and Tarquin stayed in what is probably her room all night.
No one deserves to be alone right now.
Tycho gives them explicit instructions for what turns out to be a five second walk down the hall and to the right, towards what he called the den. The room looks cozier than most of the others in the house, dimly lit and filled with various couches and chairs. Emmi has taken up position right in the middle of them all, eyes fixed on a projection on the far wall. As she looks up it rewinds, brought back by the control clutched in Emmi's hand. It takes no more than a second for her to avert her eyes, even at the prospect of it.
"It's not... it's not anything too bad," Tarquin says, swallowing thickly. "Just one of the news broadcasts."
That doesn't mean she wants to watch it. She has no idea how Emmi still is, time after time, rewinding it back like it matters.
Like something will change.
She doesn't even flinch when Tarquin sits down beside her. She watches him unroll his cutlery, popping a piece of bacon in his mouth. It's like what Tycho was doing, trying to be casual about it. Tarquin may be, but she's not. Everything is wound tight when she sits down on Emmi's side, setting both glasses of juice down on the table in front of them. Emmi's plate is lying there abandoned, half-eaten. At least the glass of juice is empty. Apple, it looks like.
"Did you sleep?" Tarquin asks. Emmi blinks a few times, rewinds the projection again. Shakes her head.
They're all in the same boat, the three of them.
"I was hoping there would be something here," she says eventually. "Something that gave it away."
It's just a news broadcast, someone talking to the camera. There are brief flickers of on-footage location passing by in the upper right hand corner, emergency services and flashing lights and barely-there images of homes they all had, once upon a time.
It feels like very long ago.
"I don't think that's how it works," Tarquin says. Emmi almost looks worse than how she feels, really, but that's what happens when your own mind goes after you with no one else around to stop it. No one stopped it.
And here she is, trying to fix something that can't be fixed.
"It's not your thing to fix," she says quietly. It's an echo of Evander's words yesterday, and they feel more hollow coming out of her mouth. Not confident, reassuring. Maybe they should be figuring things out because it matters most to them, because everyone else might forget. Who knows if they're even going to try with everything else that's going on?
Emmi looks worse because she looks well and truly shattered. Ria's almost there, but not yet. She inches closer towards the dip in the couch until they're pressed together at the hip, a weak and awful comfort but the only one she knows how to offer. Tarquin puts a hand out, palm up, and Emmi's closes over his with a shaking motion, the pressure building until both of their hands are shaking, together.
They were other people a few weeks ago and these are the shells that are left, containers that held feelings before.
She's not sure what they hold now.
Soran Faerber, 19
Applicant #8
For how closely he was being followed before, finding anyone is a real pain in the ass.
It takes him nearly twenty minutes to find anyone willing to tell him where the hell Pandora ended up, and when he does the guy leads him out one of the many back-doors and out into the gardens, before he points off vaguely in front of him and then fucks off to god knows where.
That seems pretty typical of this place so far. No one wants to get too close.
And Icarus, in that respect, doesn't count.
It's drizzling faintly on top of everything else by the time he gets there, too, the sun vanishing just as quickly as the man did in the first place. The world really must be against them at this point. It's a slow walk throughout the thickest of the gardens, some of the hedges so tall that they tower above his head, but he sees what he must be headed towards from far away. It's a little house just tucked back amidst the tree, surrounded by flowering bushes and even taller grass. The path leading up to it is well maintained, though, treaded on by feet too numerous for him to count.
He doesn't want to do this, but it's not about him. Nothing ever has been. It's better that way.
He scuffs his feet back and forth a few times on the welcome mat before he knocks, rapid-fire. Best to do it that way before he can convince himself not to. He hears a set of footsteps approaching almost instantly - with how early it is, with the lack of instructions, he's surprised to even get a response.
The door opens, and it's Crynn looking back at him.
"Oh," he says aloud, before he can tell himself not to. "Are you— am I not supposed to be here?"
And God, what the hell is that supposed to mean? Is the lack of sleep getting to his brain that badly, or does he just need more meds? It's hard to tell.
Crynn takes a step back without blinking and a few moments later Pandora appears in his place, eyes comically wide.
"Oh!" she says. It's comical how alike they sound in that moment. "Are you okay? Do you need something? I—"
"Perfectly fine, actually. I just wanted to talk."
"Okay, okay. Do you want to come in?"
He doesn't really, but he's still getting rained on and she steps back so easily he can't help but do it. He doesn't leave the doorway though, closing it behind him but keeping it at his back just in case he needs to run. Not that he can.
It's a nice little place, like the cottage-style resort place they built at the edge of One a few years back for tourists. It's small, but still put together. Crynn can step from one end of the kitchen to the other in a mere second. It's still nothing like what he ever lived in, but it feels more comfortable than the behemoth he spent the night in.
Pandora grabs a mug from the edge of the counter and takes a sip, ignoring the steam wafting up into her face. "So, what do you want to talk about?"
Crynn is busying himself with cleaning the kitchen, which already seems spotless. He stares at him a moment longer. "Can I start with asking what his deal is?"
Pandora sighs. "He doesn't have a deal. He lives here."
"So you two are like..."
"You can say the word together."
"Thanks," he says drily. "But what's his deal? I may have never owned a television but I know what happened to Evander - he can hear me perfectly fine, though, and he just doesn't talk."
"That would be because he's an Avox," Pandora says, voice almost nearly as flat. She stares at him over the brim of her mug, clearly waiting for a reaction. He tries and fails to keep his face neutral; his mouth opens and closes a few times to boot, his brain searching for something appropriate to say even though there can't possibly be.
Crynn turns around and raises an eyebrow.
"What?" he asks finally. Crynn makes a noise that still manages to sound amused even though it's slightly distorted, and as terrible as it sounds that suddenly makes an awful lot of sense.
"That's what my mother said too," Pandora says. "To be fair, you're taking it better than she did."
Soran imagines that's a pretty easy benchmark to pass. He doesn't even know the woman but she sounds like a witch from what little he does know, and witches don't tend to take things they heavily dislike well at all. He's definitely not from the Capitol - that's one check, and just so happens to be tongueless as well. It doesn't make him any less of a person, but maybe to her it does.
"What did you want to talk about?" Pandora prompts. "Something I can help with?"
He swallows, shaking away the last of the lingering thoughts. "I want to figure out who did this."
"We all do."
"But the four of them, they shouldn't. It was different when it was only us being targeted, but let them get too far into this part of it and it's a conflict of interest. You're asking for all four of them to be found so far in the deep end that there's no getting them out. Believe me, I saw the beginning of it last night."
"That doesn't mean you can do it alone."
"Why do you think I'm here?" he asks, and Pandora straightens. Finally he's going to her, asking her for something that he can't do on his own. He would if he had the ability, but he doesn't.
"What do you want me to do?"
"How many people knew all the details? About where we were, when we were going to be there, all of it."
Her eyes have gone from troubled to thoughtful very quickly, edged with the smallest bit of confusion. "A lot. All of New Haven, obviously. Your instructors, and Aelia and Ridge. The President and most of his inner circle. And then there were the contractors, the drivers... I'm telling you, it's more than you think."
"Write it all down."
"And then what?"
"We find proof. We cross names off one by one when we know who it wasn't until there's only one left. And there's our person."
It's not an easy task to give someone; that he's aware of it. He's not capable of it, though, and he's not sure he knows anyone else who is. It means grovelling to the one person he never wanted to, but she's here and he knows she wants to help.
Crynn signs something, too quick to catch.
"He wants to know what then," Pandora says. "What happens when we find our person?"
"Well, you won't like my answer." He shrugs, but neither of them blink an eye at it. "Let's just say to be determined."
For some strange reason they both think fine of that, like that's an appropriate answer to their problems. He's not sure what will happen, really. It probably won't be up to him if they ever get to that point.
"Alright," Pandora agrees. "I'll make the list, I'll get someone to get you access to my office and the library, along with all the security log-ins if you need it. On one condition."
"What?"
"You go to sleep first."
"What?" he repeats. It feels like the only word he knows anymore.
"I know you haven't slept," she clarifies. "I can tell. Remember that I brought you here to rest - you're still recovering. I'll make the list so long as you go to sleep. We can start when you wake up."
What a bargain that is, because she knows he'll do it. He's actually going to listen to her to get what he wants. Maybe he'll have to consider that their first step into something resembling a relationship, if nothing else. At least they're meeting in the middle; it's not like he wants to go to sleep. He's not even sure he can close his eyes without worrying, right now. He's exhausted, though. Everything aches worse than it did before due to his night on the bathroom floor.
"Okay," he accepts. "Okay, I'll go. Thanks."
"I can walk you back."
"No need. Already going."
She's in a pair of flimsy pajamas, barefoot. He's slow as hell right now, he'll admit, but she won't catch him at this pace, and she probably wouldn't anyway. They've agreed on something, they're going to work on this. There won't be any more pushing today.
It's still raining, faintly, and he sloshes his way through all of the slowly forming puddles all the way back to the house. Every single person he comes across once inside gives him a once over, damp and dragging his feet, probably purple under the eyes. He feels dead all over again without actually being it, and he's going back to the place he's already considering their room before he even realizes it.
He shouldn't, is the thing. He doesn't know what the fuck they're doing anymore, didn't expect to still be alive in order to do it. One or both of them should have been dead by now, and now that they're both alive for the immediate future it seems all the more confusing.
That doesn't stop him, though, and maybe that's a testament to how exhausted he really is. The room is dark when he gets there and he blunders around for a very long minute, kicking his shoes off somewhere into the middle of the room to be tripped over whenever one of them wakes up. Probably not for a while, then. He ends up only half under whatever sort of blankets exist because his eyes haven't adjusted yet, and he couldn't care less anyway. He doesn't see Icarus, either, but feels him roll closer and a hand nudges blindly against his side a moment later.
"Why are you wet?" he mumbles, confusion evident in the slur of his voice, and he sounds so out of it that it doesn't even feel like a complaint.
He mumbles something that definitely isn't a word, and Icarus responds in much the same way, wrapping that same hand around his wrist. His fingers rest there for a moment, tapping against all the fresh scarring, before he falls still.
Asleep already, it seems, and Soran follows him seconds later.
Crisantha Gardell-Archeron, 31
First Lady of Panem
A patriot of the new Panem - that's what everyone calls Tate Archeron.
That's what he looks like in the papers, the broadcasts, the meetings, the charity galas. He looks like Panem as it was, like he was cut from Seven itself, tall and strong, everything a President should be. Don't get her wrong, Lucerne hadn't been bad either. Too old, definitely, considering she didn't even make it to the end of both terms, but she was good. Reliable.
She wasn't Tate though, is what people say now.
But she sees what they don't.
He's looked frazzled for days now, a slight manic sheen in his eyes that had never, ever been there before. She wouldn't have married him if she had seen that look before, because it's positively terrifying. There's no Seven in him then, no Capitol at all. Right then he looks all the picture of a Career before choosing day rolled around, beating themselves over and over to make sure they got it right.
"Are you really going to do this?" she asks.
Tate doesn't break stride from whatever it is that he's doing. She hasn't asked, recently, because everything she's gotten out of him in the past hour has been useless information to go off of anyway.
He's not telling her everything, just enough to keep her complacently quiet about this whole thing.
"You make it seem like a big deal."
"You're making an official speech in front of representatives of the ten biggest broadcasters in the country - I'd say it is a big deal. Do you even have an outline prepared?"
"Sariah's writing one up, I think. She'll have it done before."
Before, yet still the same morning as said speech. It's not going to be an overly impressive crowd with the room closed off, but it's going to be several dozen prominent reporters and even more cameras, microphones, all shoved into his face asking questions they really don't have answers for.
"Relax, Cris," he says eventually, noting her furrowed brow. "It's fine."
"What are you going to say?"
"Whatever I have to. All the press needs to know is that we're investigating but we have no leads, and that even though we've got a handful of rather tragically dead parents in our hands we don't know why they were targeted specifically, and no one else has anything to fear. Does that sound good enough to you?"
"You know why they were the ones killed."
"I—"
"You know why, Tate," she insists. "Are you insinuating that you're not making an announcement about the five of them tomorrow?"
"There's no reason to."
"Surely them being alive is reason enough?" she asks, voice rising. "No? Then what are you going to do? When are you doing it?"
"Hey, hey," he says easily. He crouches down in front of her, hands braced at the edge of the chair." Relax. They're locked down at Rose Point. No one is going to find out about them and no one needs to. You know what it'll do to the country; one match gets dropped and the whole tinder box goes up. We can't afford that right now."
"You can't keep them a secret."
"I have to," he insists.
"How long do you think they'll accept being stuck there?" she asks. "Another week? A month? Eventually someone is going to push back."
Someone always pushes back. Surely Tate and her of all people have learned that lesson, bloody history alongside it. They've seen enough of it to know, been a part of it even more so.
"They are locked down," he says slowly, like she's stupid. He hasn't ever talked to her like that, either. "They are going to stay that way. You read the reports from Witsonee too, about what they told the guards they did. One of them murdered two of those guards within a single minute."
"Your brother killed two people, or are you forgetting? One of them was his District partner, Tate, and she was thirteen."
"And he died for it anyway!" Tate shouts. "And his killer died, too, and no one remembers or gives a damn except me and you. And that was your Aunt's doing. She had all the power in the world to stop the Games and she didn't."
"You know that's not how it works."
"You're right, it's not. And that's why we're not just letting these kids walk away from this - we can't walk away from this. We can't just forgot about what happened like it never did."
Part of her breath catches in her chest at that, maybe due to the conviction in his voice. It's a more vicious passion than the kind that fit into all of his grand speeches, the ones that made him feel like he could do anything, fix the whole word and lead it, too. That voice from before was part of the reason she loved him so much, but this...
She doesn't even know what this is.
"What are you going to do?" she asks quietly. Tate looks at her, unblinking. He turns away for a second to reshuffle the papers he had been rifling through not so long ago, doing nothing with them but making them easier.
"What are you going to do?" she repeats, but now he won't even look up.
He's a terrible, terrible fucking liar. It's one of his only terrible traits, only with whatever this is.
"Nothing," he says evenly, voice blank. "Nothing yet."
"Tate," she says firmly. It feels like scolding a fucking child that she doesn't even have yet. How could she even want to bring a child into this right now when they're still dying anyway?
"You're right, I need to go talk to Sariah." He skirts past her chair with half the papers in his hand. He's not going to talk to Sariah, and they both know it. "Oh, and Cris?"
"What?" she asks flatly, not bothering to turn around.
"You know they're going to be here tomorrow."
"I'm aware."
"And you have no personal feelings about that. Nothing? The two people in this world most directly responsible for murdering your Aunt in cold blood and you have nothing to say about that? They're going to be right here, under our noses. All because they don't trust us."
This time she actually manages a laugh, a bitter sound that only lasts a second or two. "Can't say I blame them. I don't trust us either."
The door slams behind her before the words have even finished echoing, leaving her alone in their shared office. It's late. Not late enough to go to sleep for most people, but she feels as if she could close her eyes and sink under forever. That's what happens when you're faced with a choice, a task that seems wrong and yet all too right.
She pulls her tablet closer, leaving it resting along the arm of the chair. Leighton hasn't gone home, yet. They never do this early. She punches in the direct number and waits no more than a few seconds before they pick up. No doubt they're still sitting downstairs, working on planning some event or other. They've always been the best at that in a way that no one else is, that's why they work for her and not someone else.
"What can I do for you, lovely?" Leighton asks, as if this hasn't broken their stride at all. It probably hasn't.
"I need to get in contact with Rose Point Estate. Preferably someone with some weight."
They hum. "You know, I'm pretty sure the house's phone lines are down. Confidentiality, and all that? Or whatever their excuse was."
"What about Pandora Quinn, then? A personal number?"
"I can do that, probably. Give me two minutes."
The receiver goes quiet, and so she sits back to wait. She needs that number. She needs a drink.
Both things would be ideal, really. Both and then she'll be content.
Both, and then she can blow this shit wide open.
If you're still reading and feel anywhere near obligated to leave me even like, a three word review, I'm not... opposed to that. Otherwise I know it's a very busy time of year for most people so I hope you're all doing well!
Until next time.