A/N: This reasonably quick update comes from the fact that I had a dream that I was flirting with Pavi Largo and it somehow provided inspiration. (Although in said dream, Prince Harry then bought me fish and chips so we won't analyse it too closely.)
Zena's next day of work was entirely devoid of Pavi Largo – a fact she met with relief…and a strange, unwelcome note of disappointment. Okay, maybe 'disappointment' wasn't the word for it. She didn't leave the office at the end of the day in floods of tears over his absence. It was just that every time the elevator pinged and signalled it was on the way up, she would brace herself for some sort of encounter. A flirtation, a wink, a nod, him with a Gentern pressed up against the elevator wall in some ham-handed way to throw something in her face. Or even him completely ignoring her, swanning on by so she could sit and think about what she'd done. But there was nothing.
And yes, truly, she was relieved by that. It'd certainly leave her with less to mull over at the end of the day, debating over how she responded or if she should've done differently. So maybe she wasn't disappointed, maybe that wasn't the word, but after so much building herself up, and building herself up, and steeling herself for an encounter that ultimately then didn't happen, it was bound to feel like an anticlimax.
Still, there remained potential for her day to blow up in her face – because she'd have to go Emote after work, for a second attempt at picking up fabric.
Confirming her sense that every Largo within a hundred mile vicinity had a special knack for making her life difficult, Rotti chose that day to decide she was working overtime, too. There was nothing going on in the office to suggest it was actually needed, so she could only guess that he'd discovered she was working for his son on the side, and wanted to make sure she wouldn't forget which of her two bosses was the real boss. The order came in over the intercom, and there wasn't any agreeing or disagreeing, she let him know that she'd heard it, and she did as she was told. Mostly because she quite liked all of her internal organs remaining internal.
Watching the minutes tick by on the clock was a special kind of hell, and when she finally left the office, all of the businesses on the island would have been well shut for over an hour. So why, when the bus rattled by the fabric store, were all of the lights still on, and the door wedged right open? She pushed the button to get off at the last possible second – and earned a few nasty curses from the driver for her trouble as he swerved to the stop he'd just been about to drive by.
Zena ignored him, head down as she hopped off the bus and scurried her way towards the store, trying not to eat concrete on the wet pavement in her stupid work heels. Maybe they'd be a little more friendly this time, if she was dressed a little more professionally. Or maybe she'd be given a firm middle finger and told to return during proper business hours. At least this time it'd actually be deserved – they were probably only still open because they were waiting for a delivery or something.
She entered, hovering around the doorway as she waited for the worker behind the cash register – an older man, this time, grey-haired and pale-faced – to look up and order her out. When he did look up, though, his face went a shade paler.
"Hi, sorry – are, er, are you open?" she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "I'm Zena, I'm designing for-"
"Mr Largo, of course, of course, madam, we were told to expect you all day but we weren't quite sure when specifically."
As he spoke, the man rounded the counter and approached, shaking her hand with vigour and a touch of clamminess. Zara could only stare dumbly in response, her grip loose as she tried to work out what the hell was going on. He misunderstood the stare.
"A mistake on our end, I'm sure – we should have sought specification, or requested your working hours from- well, it's no trouble. Truly. I really must apologise for the treatment you received last time, training good staff these days…an administrative oversight. It shan't happen again. Please, as the owner, allow me to remedy these most grievous errors personally."
"It's fine," she said awkwardly. "No harm done, right? I'll just…uh…grab what I need to and be out of your hair."
The last thing she wanted was this guy following her around and kissing ass while she looked at every single bolt of fabric.
"Yes, yes, of course. Should you require anything, you need only ask."
The old man shook her hand once again – and then he bowed. Not a full-blown 'closing curtain' bow, just a little one at the neck. But still a bow. Zena regarded him with wide eyes, the rain in her hair and the pain in her feet entirely forgotten.
It was only when she began to walk past the counter towards the aisles upon aisles of fabric that she spotted the huge dark rest stains on the immaculate flooring behind the counter. The sort of stains that one didn't walk away from. She paused and then her eyes widened before they met the gaze of the owner. He met her eye evenly, as though expecting her to ask where the best silk was. Zena cleared her throat, turned her head, and kept walking.
She picked out her fabric as though in a daze – and every time she took out a bundle, it was immediately squirrelled out of her hands and away to the counter by the owner, so she didn't have to endure anything so strenuous as lifting and carrying.
All the fabric she could possibly need, along with thread, buttons, trims and borders, she chose everything she thought she might possibly need until she was forced to wonder how she'd manage to haul it all home. Finally, when she returned to the counter, had everything measured out, cut, and bagged, she tried to bring up the possibility of payment and the man regarded her with pure disbelief.
"Of course not, madam, this is on the house. As a way of an apology."
And a tactic to not end up contributing to the terrible stains on the floor. But in that case…Zena paused, and then returned to the aisles and picked up a few extra selections of fabric. Next time Pavi strong-armed her into attending some sort of function with him, she wouldn't be short on dresses to wear.
It turned out that Emote offered delivery services (or at least, they did to the people whose employers were wont to start shedding blood if unhappy with the service) – and said delivery service had a burly workman at her door with the fabric before Zena even completed the rest of the bus journey home. She'd been tempted to joke that they should have delivered her, too, but she didn't want them thinking they might be killed for not doing so, so she kept her mouth shut as the man hauled the packages to her bedroom and then left with a nod.
"All this so he'll sleep with you?" her mother snorted from the sofa as she watched the process.
Zena ignored it – not having the time, the energy, or the mental bandwidth to sit and explain that as far as Pavi was concerned, the trick was stopping him from fucking you. In any sense of the word.
With the door shut behind her, and her shoes discarded, she kicked the packages aside and sank down onto her bed. She…didn't know how to feel. And because of that, she felt pretty shitty. Someone had just been murdered because they were rude to her. Or because she'd complained about their being rude to her. Although she wasn't going to take the fall from that last part, because they'd put her in a hell of a bind and she wasn't going to take the hit for falling short of the mark when it hadn't even been her fault in the first place. They'd died because they'd chosen the wrong hill to die on, for the sake of feeling superior.
She hadn't thought he'd kill them. But the fear of god – or, well, the Largos – in them, sure, but murder? Was that where he'd been today? Did he do it personally? It wouldn't surprise her. What did surprise her was how little guilt she felt over it. Sure, she knew what she'd said to him at dinner, but they were…they were words. Everybody talked shit. In traffic, stuck in tiresome queues, mid-argument, all of it. Nobody acted on them. But now, perhaps for the first time ever, her words had been acted on. By another, no less. And while she wasn't stupid enough to kid herself that he did it for her honour or some such bullshit (because it was a respect thing – he couldn't have people refusing to serve the people who served him, because that was just as bad as someone refusing to serve him themselves), she couldn't pretend there wasn't something surreal about it. The power.
Power that could easily be turned on her.
But she wasn't as stupid as those assistants had been. Was she?
She cleared her throat, and then coughed a few times after that – mostly to rid herself of the sensation of invisible fingers closing around her throat. Then she changed into comfortable clothes, and turned her desk light on. Wasting time probably counted as stupidity, under circumstances like this.