Waiting was the hardest part, wasn't it?
The grandmaster's office was enormous and in sharp contrast to the audience chamber, it was lavishly furnished in the western style. Unable to force herself to have a seat in one of the chairs facing the ornately carved desk, she found herself pacing in the empty floor space between the furniture and the door.
For a few minutes, she wondered if she was going to be left there, alone, all night but the last time she looked up Sifu was sitting in his seat, calmly regarded her with a cold stare that immediately triggered her fight or flight response. Against her better judgment, she automatically sat across from him, avoiding his gaze. He barely reacted to her, just a slight shuffle as he rearranged some paper in front of him. A quick glance revealed that it was a file on her and although she couldn't read it upside-down the big, red paragraph at the top was probably not very flattering.
When she was sure that his eyes were on the paper and not her, she risked a look up. The deep creases in his forehead as he frowned made him look even older than normal. There was a hint of weariness in the way his shoulders drooped a mere centimeter from perfect posture.
Without warning, his eyes snapped up and Frost felt herself freeze in place. Although it was just a stern look, she couldn't help but wonder if perhaps he was channeling some of his fa jing.
He remained silent, letting his unvoiced anger hang in the air.
She would have preferred if he had said anything. Even a furious rant about her stupidity would have been less torturous than letting her imagination run wild on what he was thinking.
After what seemed like an eternity in silent purgatory, he finally spoke. Although he spoke calmly, rationally, his voice dripped with a heavy mixture of barely contained fury and disappointment. "Do you have any idea what the consequences of your actions are?"
She recognized the tone. It was the exact tone her father used when she was lectured on skipping the PSATs in order to see the exhibit on neurological diseases at the local university. In fact, as she reflected on it, she was almost positive that he had used the same opening as well. She swallowed the near instinctual urge to tear up in the hopes of reducing her punishment and swallowed audibly. "Yes, I'm well aware of how utterly stupid I was," she said, letting out a little more of her frustration than she meant to.
It took a moment to realize what had occurred, but the sting on the left side of her face was impossible to ignore. He had slapped her, not with the intent to do any permanent damage, she knew he could break her jaw if she wanted, but hard enough that she could feel her teeth ache. She blinked back the automatic tears and indignant reaction and remained silent.
"When I returned her, the clan was mutinous. A few days later and there would have been a civil war." Despite his earlier physical outburst, his words were clipped and even.
She imagined it was like being trapped in a room with an angry viper. She kept still and quiet, trying to keep from provoking another outburst.
"Do you know how many people would have died? Not to mention the fact that you nearly killed us both." He fixed her with a stare that was so frosty it felt like it was burning. "I thought you had managed to kill yourself."
The following silence was expectant.
"I'm sorry?" she said quietly.
The silence continued.
"I won't do it again?"
It was quiet, but she could have sworn that she heard him sigh.
"What do you want me to say?" she asked blankly, knowing full well that he wasn't going to answer.
He was pointedly ignoring her and reading the file again. She watched him dejectedly for a few moments before she realized that his eyes hadn't moved down the page at all.
She could hear the lin kuei on guard duty slowing down as they passed the office and felt a little better knowing that their eavesdropping wasn't going to be in vain. She hadn't taken the time to consider what the other lin kuei would be saying about her return. The brutal rumors had followed her even when she had been in good standing with the clan, no doubt she would be on the lips of every recruit in the morning.
The Grandmaster was still waiting for some sort of response from her, although now he wasn't even pretending to read. A normal man would have probably grown bored with her and thrown her out, but she knew her sifu and his incredible patiences. A lin kuei recruit was taught to patiently wait hours to complete their mission and he could sit there for days until he got what he wanted.
But what does he want? Her earlier apology had been half-assed, but she wasn't sure that he wasn't a tear filled apology. It probably wouldn't hurt, but she had hurt him more than just physically. He'd probably require her to publicly apologize to everyone else, but that wasn't what he wanted now.
With a sigh of her own, she stood up and let the chair screech slightly on the stone floor. Sub-Zero's eyes shot up but his expression was unreadable. "I don't know what you want me to say," she said. "This is just a waste of both of our time." It was an obvious bluff, but she was getting desperate. She spun smartly on her heel and started for the door, walking as slowly as she could without obviously stalling for time.
He let her get all the way to the door and had the handle half-way turned before he spoke. "So you're just going to go back to America?" he said with a hint of bitterness.
"No, but I don't need to spend all night having a staring contest with you," she turned to look over her shoulder at him. "Unless you're going to suddenly tell me what you want from me."
She could have sworn there was a hint of a smile on his lips. "No. Be ready at dawn, you have a lot to do."
