faderift | Spies vs. House Party (Closed)

Ellie leads them safely through the house, and after that momentary pause to catch breath and assess, out they go. No servants, no lovers entwined in the alcove, but as soon as they're out in the garden the hue and cry from the hall seems to follow. There's no sign that it's after them in particular, but there are shouts of surprise and alarm, and the jangle of armor as boots pound down pathways and the booming voice of a guard calling for all guests to return to the ballroom at once and be prepared to present themselves for inspection.

Yseult makes a faint irritated noise under her breath and steers them deeper into the garden, moving quickly to take advantage of invisibility and stay just narrowly ahead of the spread of the guardsmen taking up positions at the gates and directing anyone spotted among the shrubbery back inside. "There should be-- ah." Tucked back almost out of sight behind a hedge is a gardners' shed, a low structure with a lock that takes roughly fifteen seconds for Yseult to pick, throwing the bolt again from the inside once it's shut behind them.

"This doesn't seem anything to do with us, but we can't risk being caught without invitations or references," she says, lifting her skirt to move deeper into the hut, not that there's far to go. Maybe ten by twenty, with a long workbench along one wall and racks of tools along the other, shelves of implements and pots, drying cuttings hanging from the ceiling. "We'll wait it out and then head over the wall or wander out and play drunk."

Ellie tries not to think of how easily all of this could have gone wrong. It doesn't matter now.

Ellie holds her breath solid as they make their way through the garden, dodging guards, keeping ahead of the searches. Nobody suspects anything. She transfers her grip on Yseult to the back of her shoulder as she picks the lock, and she's lightheaded by the time they get inside.

The first gasp of air is almost too much, and she leans up against the workbench, making herself slow down and take deep, slow breaths of air. She coughs again, clears her throat, making sure to muffle their sounds.

"I prefer the wall," Ellie says. Variables she can control, and she's good at climbing. But she knows that Yseult will want to lay down a trail that seems normal. Noise and misdirection.

Another deep breath and she lays a hand over her heart, shutting her eyes to catch up on air for another few seconds.

"Your makeup's, um. Smudged."

Having watched sideways for a moment as Ellie coughs and catches her breath, Yseult had turned back to studying the room with narrowed eyes. An ashtray on the far corner of the workbench catches her gaze, the low stool beside it. She steps that way, leans around the end of the bench, hunts for a minute among the contents of the nearest crates, and comes up with a sloshing brown jug. She pulls the cork, sniffs, and then lifts it to her mouth, taking a confirming drink before passing it to Ellie.

"Ale," she says, "For your throat." It's not too bad, as far as a hidden shed stash goes, not yet gone sour or stale. "Lucky the gardener's not a whiskey man."

That done, Yseult too leans back against the edge of the work bench, opening the obligatory reticule hung from her wrist to draw out a tiny mirror and check the aforementioned makeup, scraping a nail around the edges of her mouth where the color's smeared wide, blurring away the faint grey drip of one of the kohl lines beneath an eye. Satisfied for now, she returns the mirror to the bag on the benchtop and extends an arm back toward Ellie, hand open for the jug.

Ellie almost laughs aloud as Yseult puts together the pieces of the puzzle and pulls out some rando's hidden hooch. Get you a boss that sees the importance of a drink on the job, apparently.

"Thanks," Ellie says scratchily and takes a mouthful, letting it sit for a moment before she swallows, sighs. "That does feel better."

They're speaking in low voices, though all the commotion is far off, and Ellie listens a moment while Yseult fixes her makeup, and hands back the jug.

"You all right?" she asks, because although Yseult's a professional, that guy had seemed... grabby. Overeager. And to Ellie, anyone would be rattled after having to basically seduce a stranger. Right?

Yseult curls her hand around the base of the jug to take it back, drinks more properly than that first "is this what I think it is" test sip, and then sticks the cork in and sets it on the workbench between them before sinking down onto that stool, skirts smoothed beneath her, twitched out of the way of a splintered shelf.

The question is answered with a quirk of a brow and an eye cast over their surroundings, either misunderstanding or misdirecting. "Less dust and a proper chair would be nice, but it will do. Did you get the pages we need?"

Edited 2023-07-23 14:34 (UTC)

Ellie's eyes remain on Yseult for longer than a blink, the kind of eyes that make it so hard for her to hide what she really is. She doesn't believe that Yseult misunderstands her.

She lets it go for a moment, nods as she takes her notebook from the hidden pockets of her skirts and hands it over, crossing both arms over her stomach.

"Copied over the last page and a half or so, and one for the cipher comparison. At a glance it looks kinda similar to one we've seen 'em use before, so we better double check it."

She says all of this like this isn't what Yseult's taught her, which draws out what they aren't saying, the part that chokes Ellie with discomfort.

"I can't do that." Her voice is quiet. "What you did back there." There is fear behind her teeth, fear of saying no, of not being enough, of changing Yseult's opinion of her, but above all Joel taught her to be honest about handicaps. You can't cover each other properly if you don't know what's needed.

She says it simply, firmly, her fingers white-knuckling in on themselves, crumpling the part of the gloves they have stuffed to disguise her missing fingers.

"I'd have killed him."

"You could," says Yseult, as she eyes the code Ellie has copied, flipping through the pages in her notebook with an eye to that similarity. "It's not difficult, most men are easy. Most women, too." She casts a look up over the notebook's edge at Ellie then, some faint crinkle at the corners of her eyes and mouth that says she knows exactly what that parting good girl did to her. See how easy it is?

She spends a moment looking at Ellie's face, observing the clenched fists. She sheds—subtly, as if it was imagined to begin with—the faint edge of humor, and her tone settles instead into a normal conversational register.

"Do you understand why killing him wasn't the best option here?" is not a challenge or a criticism, just a question. She might, she might not.

Edited 2023-07-24 21:36 (UTC)

Yseult leans on it, into it, and Ellie can't begrudge her for it. She does this when she's teaching, pushing Ellie into accepting something she already knows to be true, getting her past her preconceptions and praising the parts of her that will ultimately help her stay alive. She thinks on her feet. She does things even when she knows they're difficult. She listens, almost to a fault.

It works, usually. Because Yseult knows how Ellie works, and because Ellie knows that too, and allows herself to be pulled and shaped. They are so often a team, herself and her mentor.

This time, she hits a stark and unyielding wall. Yseult leans on that silken bit of praise to make a point, and Ellie lets herself meet her eyes with something sharp-edged. A glimpse of the vicious, cornered animal that speaks in taunting whispers, drawing a throat close enough to tear it out.

It's easy, yes. But not for her. Not this.

"I understand." It's level, steady. "And I'm glad you handled it."

It's Ellie with the issue, not Yseult.

Yseult observes all this as she usually does: steady, eyes keen but manner impassive--a sheathed blade. She looks Ellie in the eye for a long moment and she lifts a hand, palm out, reassuring. "I'm not going to make you."

She lets that be it for a moment, lets it sink in before she closes the notebook and hands it back, leans her forearms on her knees, hands clasped loosely in the air before them.

"But it's a tool," she says, and there is a bit of that teaching tone back but something gentler, probing instead of pushing, looking for understanding rather than agreement. "What is it about it that bothers you?"

Ellie hadn't thought that Yseult would insist, but the reassurance is still nice to have. She nods, curling her fingers in and crumpling her lovely sleeve, and makes herself stop.

Of course, Yseult has questions.

Questions that bring her up short, and Ellie lifts her head to consider her, an ache of unease in her throat. Not for Yseult, but for the way she puts it, like it's a part of putting on a disguise, like another bit of acting and deception. Another tool.

"I'm not interested in men," she says, which answers the question, but only in part.

"... if I got into that position-" she frowns to herself. It's not vulnerable, not sad, but it is a strange absence.

"It wouldn't end well."

"It's not a matter of personal interest," Yseult replies, and there's a slight bend to her brows, the one that says Ellie is smart enough to've spotted the flaw in her thinking on her own.

But she can recognize a nerve when she's hit one, and she stretches up for the jug of beer, cradles it in a palm while she tugs out the cork. "You should sit down," she suggests, nodding toward a crate to Ellie's right. "We may be here a while." She drinks, and lets Ellie decide whether to do that or not, and then sets the jug back up on the bench.

"Why could it not end well?"

Yeah, Ellie's smart enough to spot that hole a mile away. She just doesn't want to get into why. Turns out there's no way to have a casual conversation about this, and they're stuck here.

At least there's something to drink.

Ellie holds out her hand for the jug, takes a healthy swig of it, hands it back. She picks at the edge of her glove for a moment, ordering the words in her mind. She does sit, though less gracefully.

"I've- killed a lot of people," she says, which is a super strong start, Ellie, great. "I've always meant to, though." She pauses there. There's a lot of details and nuances there that ultimately don't matter.

"There was only one time where I just... snapped."

It's very quiet. She's told this story before, and she doesn't particularly want to get into the details again. Frankly, Yseult doesn't need to know them.

"I was fourteen, and I met a man who turned out to be the worst person alive, and he thought that I was special."

Ellie jogs her foot, biting the inside of her cheek. She's acutely aware of how awful this sounds, but the point of this isn't sympathy, and she doesn't want it to be.

"He tried to corner me, and I killed him. And then I... just kept on hacking him apart. I couldn't stop. Joel had to pull me off of him. I almost hurt him, too."

And by now, Yseult knows precisely how much being in control means to Ellie.

"Not the sort of thing you want to happen on a mission, you know?"

Edited 2023-07-26 05:17 (UTC)

Yseult listens the same way she listens when Ellie gives a mission report, keenly focused and otherwise impassive, not about to interrupt with shows of horror or sympathy. It is awful, and she needs no explanation of how terrifying it must have been, but it's also not an outlandish story and even if it were, pity's clearly not the aim of its telling.

When Ellie's done, Yseult clasps her hands, forearms resting on knees, and agrees: "No, it isn't." She gives that a beat before going on, "But you've years of experience since then. What makes you think you'd still lose control?"

Ellie is silent, giving the matter thought, before she makes herself pause, makes herself pull back. Down that way lies a shaking in her fingers, an itch, a ruthless sharp edge.

Yseult isn't asking her to do this, but she's trying to make Ellie interrogate it, question it. It's an effective tactic that Ellie's used quite a bit to break down the hard, messy things that their work requires of them.

It's also extremely fucked up.

"How is it that you don't?"

(She is also just trying to figure out precisely what the problem is and when/how much she needs to be concerned about it. But yes, that too.)

When Ellie turns the questioning back on her Yseult is not precisely surprised, but the tone does prompt some slight wrinkling around narrowing eyes, a faint sense of mild bemusement. What does she mean how?

"You lost control because you felt threatened, and fear and anger at that caused you to lash out. Yes?" The mostly-rhetorical question comes with a lift of brows and chin. "That man back there would have been more dangerous to us and our mission as a corpse to dispose of."

Edited 2023-08-06 00:12 (UTC)

Yseult really doesn't see it the same way. Ellie's lips part, and for a moment she's left truly speechless, because- how can she explain?

"Yeah," she says finally. "I did. But-"

Ellie pauses there again, fumbling through her own thoughts. And maybe it's an indication of things, but she has to close her fingers into a fist so that they won't shake. It's not Yseult, never Yseult, but even talking about it's hard.

"I can tell myself that all I like. It still feels the same."

Yseult resists the urge to say does it matter how it feels? because she can see all the signs that this will not go over well with Ellie and she is, if nothing else, a fanatical believer in practicing what she preaches.

"Is it men in particular? Or that it was unexpected?" she asks, brows angled in question. She explains: "It's important to understand, in case similar situations arise in the future."

It's the right call.

Ellie frowns to herself again, chewing over the thoughts before she puts them into the world, giving them shape.

"I could probably handle it with a woman," she says haltingly. "I wouldn't want to, but I don't think I'd panic either."

It's not the same kind of threatening, somehow.

Again with that want. It pricks at something in Yseult's jaw, but she ignores it, posture static, hands loosely clasped where they dangle from wrists in front of her knees, weight on her forearms. She does angle her head forty-five degrees or so when she asks, with less of a preceding pause for thought this time:

"Do you want to kill people?"

This one is not a rhetorical question.

Wants are a luxury they can't afford with the job that they have, and ultimately it won't stop Ellie from doing what needs to be done. But this question? It's not an angle Ellie was expecting. The frankness of it makes her step back and consider it in total seriousness.

"Specific people? Yeah." It's an ugly, honest answer.

"But I've killed people I didn't want to kill, too. I didn't lose control."

Ellie's proven that to Yseult personally.

"Look, it doesn't matter how I feel," Ellie says, as flatly as she can manage, though Yseult will easily see that it's taking a lot of effort to do so.

"I'm telling you this because I don't want to fuck up a mission by accidentally killing somebody that we need alive."

"And it is good to know that is something I need be concerned about," could be criticism, but Yseult's tone is only matter-of-fact. It is information she needs even if it isn't information she likes. (That there are some specific people Ellie'd like to kill isn't either, really; those people are likely through a rift and who doesn't know a few bastards who deserve the knife?)

"We can avoid sending you on missions likely to require seducing men, but it won't be possible to avoid the occasional unexpected situation like today's. You will need ways to manage them other than killing."

Traveling alongside Joel, Ellie had learned from the beginning to be honest about handicaps, about injuries, about sickness. When someone was depending on you, they needed to be able to compensate and cover. Joel was hard of hearing in his right ear, and Ellie knew to guard that side.

It might be embarrassing to have to explain her weakness to Yseult, but Ellie knows better than to keep it to herself. Things had worked out today, but if Ellie had been alone, it would have been a lot trickier.

She nods slowly, hooks one foot behind her ankle to spare herself the ache of the delicate heeled slippers.

"What do you suggest?" she's got a few ideas already- fast talk, fast hands, judicious use of her powers. It's easier to kill somebody than it is to disable them without a killing blow. It will require more skill in other areas to keep Ellie out of this situation.

Yseult considers her hands a moment. She doesn't often have to discuss methodology or even think much about it, the lessons she was taught long converted to instinct.

"Learn how to deflect, and how to make yourself unattractive in ways that seem unintentional. Reading a man and giving him what he doesn't want so he chooses to withdraw. How to use sleeping draughts. If I'd been better prepared here I'd have drugged the brandy and he would have awoken in an hour disheveled and cursing himself for drinking so much he couldn't remember us."

Ellie sinks into her seat, wrinkling her skirts deplorably before she puts out a hand to smooth them.

"When we get out of here, definitely show me how to make sleeping draughts," she says with a glimmer of a smile.

"And how to put somebody off, actually. I broke a guy's finger once and it only made him worse."

Yseult exhales a soft snort of amusement at this. "Has a man ever expressed an interest without it ending in violence?

Spies vs. House Party (Closed)

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cw: oblique reference to a pedophile, no detail

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............hi

literally was just thinking about this thread lmao

I sensed it somehow

the universe Knew

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk i was just thinking about it but np if it's too dead

<3