Who: Connor and Olive What: A meetup! And an explosive. Where: An alley next to Passages. When: Recently. Warnings/Rating: None.
Let it not be said that Olive was brave. The world had never known another fruit as timid as she, and wished she would have remembered that before volunteering for this informant post. Oh, she'd her reasons at the time - love, you see love. But Vicente was not here, and he was not brought closer with this endeavor. And perhaps he'd begun to fade, that man she had so loved that she would die for him. He was not gone - oh, it was not as dire as that - but he was hard for her to see in her mind's eye now, faded. Other people were eclipsing him with their own vibrancy, and she'd not the heart to flip the switch and turn off the glow they cast. And so she found herself here, afraid, and uncertain why she'd done this thing that was sure to see her dead.
Where was here?
The alley beside Passages was dark and dank, and perhaps it was the dramatic sort of meeting place a woman who had not seen the world would suggest for a rendezvous, but she'd not been thinking when she'd left the message on the voicemail for Dylan and Connor. No, she'd been panicked, you see, and she'd only given the location and begged someone to come. She'd considered hiding in her loft at the studio, but she'd certainly be watched there. This had seemed a good suggestion at the time. She seldom left the studio, and trips to Passages were the exception. They'd think nothing of her embarking on such a journey in overalls and a insignificantly grey undershirt, her hair loose and unremarkably brown.
But instead of entering the hotel, as was her wont, she'd ducked into the alley to wait. She tried to picture herself as any number of damsels awaiting rescue, but even she couldn't suspend reality sufficiently to see herself as a princess, even one from a knockoff, straight to DVD animated movie where everyone looked rather the same in the face. It was cold, and she huddled, and she tried to keep the memory of screams and countless nights locked away and at bay.
Connor came.
He'd received her message late in the day, and left for the address she named as soon as he heard it. He knew, by now, how to find his way to Passages. He had come there a few times now, willingly. There was work to do in his own world, but things in that place beyond the door that he didn't recognize, and was interested in, things that produced a curious ache. Wanting to find someone who was lost? He could understand that feeling, though sympathy, as usual, was a little harder to grasp. He didn't fight the urge to go, and the quiet gentleman in his head didn't insist, so they got along fine.
He knew the risks of being spotted with Olive, but it was very easy for him to blend in. He was practiced at it. To some extent, his whole life had been practice honing that particular skill. He had an uncanny ability to put on a worn black hoodie with an unravelling sleeve and go utterly unnoticed. He knew what body language to mimic to avoid suspicion, how to keep his eyes vague without gluing them to the ground, how to mimic the body language of other people back to them to comfort them subconsciously. Little tricks that came in handy when you needed to get around.
There was no need to look for her. He turned a corner, and she was there. She hadn't seen his face before, but it would be hard to mistake him. He had purpose in his step as he approached her that had been hidden while he was still on the street. This was a quiet part of town, but there was still no use in taking chances.
He didn’t stop walking until he was a few short feet from her, and gave her a thorough once over with his eyes. "You're alright," he said, after the assessment. A statement, not a question, no friendly hello - why bother? He'd come quickly, dropping everything he was doing, because of the tone of her message. Here she stood, though, physically unharmed. So someone had found out she was informing. That was the next most likely cause for a contact to call him, frantic. Someone knew, or she suspected they knew. Or she'd said the wrong thing, and they were suspicious enough to frighten her.
Connor didn't look like much in person, and that was much the point. He was not particularly tall, or well built. He looked like nothing in his worn hoodie, and the jeans with the slowly dissolving cuffs. His hair was clean, but arranged only with a quick comb of fingers. He looked slapdash. Inconsequential. Only the eyes, so dark they were almost black, said differently. They were penetrating as a needle through the skin, thin as a whisper and quiet going in, only painful a few seconds too late. "What happened?"
She'd no idea what she'd expected him to look like. Like Dylan, perhaps, with his suit and perpetually put together airs. But he was nothing like that, hoodie and hair gone a little long. But the eyes, the eyes did bring back memories, and there he did remind her of Dylan, expression quite haunted and intentionally dead, and she wondered how far someone would need to dig to get beyond that calm still water that clearly hid something very different in the murky shadows. She knew the type, you see. She'd grown up with it, and she'd spent days in a cell staring back at eyes like those. Eyes that had learned not to see. They were dangerous, no matter what anyone thought of it. Men like that could rip your throat out as easy as look at you, and she'd no interest in having her throat ripped out. But then she was feeling raw, and he was reminding her of things he'd no knowledge of. No- Knowledge, he likely had, given his position. It was understanding that she doubted he had.
"I was talking to someone about the past, rather in passing," she stammered. She was still in her twenties, but she'd seen much more than anyone her age should have done, and it gave her a halo of strangely awkward vulnerability. She was very mousy, all greys and browns and fingers that tugged sleeves well past her fingertips. "Nothing specific. I've no intention of giving myself away. I slept after, as you do, you sleep. Well, most people do. I suppose some people might not, though it can't be terribly healthy." She closed her eyes, squeezed them tight. She was stammering. Stammering olives were rather useless things, hard to swallow and all that. "I slept, and I was woken by another shipment. I went to do as you said, to see what was inside, and they came back." She looked up at him then, her brown eyes deep and troubled. "Have you ever been come upon by monsters? It was quite like that. I lied, babbled about my curiosity, and I think they've believed me. But I'm not sure about this. I'm not sure I can do this. I've no interest in becoming a squished olive, you see." But no, that wasn't it at all, was it? "Torture, it's quite torturous," she added, anguish in the frenetic tug upon her own sleeves. "Rather fitting, isn't it?"
Connor listened closely, watching her body language as she spoke. He believed her. He'd believed her before now, but it always helped to see someone in person. It was easier to judge their level of guile when you could watch their hands, and where their eyes fell. Connor was sure, after watching her, that the girl in front of him didn't have a deceptive bone in her body. Before she was even done telling the story, he knew she really shouldn't be doing this kind of work. For her sanity, if not for her physical health, which was just as at risk. One day, something would come along that would be too much for her. Or they would torture her to madness - just as she feared.
"I have," he said, when she asked about monsters. He didn't clarify, or explain, but he had been come upon by monsters, monsters dressed like men, with human faces and a will for death. "You didn't have to look inside," he said. "But I appreciate you doing it, thank you." He was very good at expressing gratitude, because it was something he could feel as well as something he could understand. It was tied in tightly with compassion, a rusty gear inside him that sometimes spun and sometimes didn't. Gratitude, a more muted version of love, was usually able to turn, though it, too, was missing a few teeth. This girl had put her life in immediate risk to look inside a box. It was pure luck that an excuse of curiosity had been enough. It hadn't been for Pandora.
In a minute, he would ask her if she managed to take a look inside the boxes. First, though, her insistence she couldn't do this needed to be addressed. "No one is forcing you to do this," he said. His voice was quieter than most people expected, deep and hoarse for his slim body. "If you don't want to do it, you don't have to. They kept you prisoner. You've already bought your freedom with your information. You want to stop, we put you in witness protection, and you go somewhere safe. But you won't be able to do any more good here, if you do." He watched for her reaction. His face hadn't changed. "I don't want you to be tortured," he offered, as if that was appropriate consolation for her fear. "Or killed, just because you decided to do the right thing. And I'll do everything I can to keep you safe, if you stay." That was his job, and that was part of the reason he'd become an FBI agent in the first place. A careless agent interfacing with an informant had been responsible for getting his family killed. If they'd checked the room for bugs, perhaps his life would have been a very different one.
Olive hadn't been a girl for a terribly long time. Despite her uncertainties with face-to-face contact and strangers newly met, she was hardly fresh from the schoolroom. The scent of chalk did not cling to her hair, and that pervasive scent of institutionalized clean didn't lick at her skin. No, there were the beginnings of lines about her eyes, caused by too much laughter when she was quite young, before life had become death and blood and organized crime, and she'd more freckles across the bridge of her nose than she'd had in youth. No, she was no girl, but perhaps he was right about her lack of suitability for this work, this thing she had embarked upon in the name of a girl's picture of love.
"Aren't you going to ask about what was there?" she asked of the box. His gratitude was discounted with a lifted head and defiant brown eyes that seemed incongruous with the rest of her demeanor. "I don't do this for thanks. It would be a rather terrible thing to embark upon for a thank you and a pat on the head. No one does it for that, do they? We've all scars and pain and monsters guiding us on, because there is a light at the end of the tunnel that we'll all reach one day, us informants. We're not trained or taught. We're sacrificial lambs for a greater cause, and it only matters that we think the cause important enough to undertake. She has come possessed, who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall," she quoted, as if it explained absolutely everything, and perhaps it did.
"My information has purchased me no freedom," she corrected. "Witness protection isn't freedom. It's hiding and waiting, waiting, waiting. I'd rather play my video games in peace, and read books, and live a life in the meantime. I've been hidden away for years, and now I want to experience what everyone else already has. Dances, movies, restaurants and casinos. I just need to work up the courage. Do you dance, Connor?" she asked, her expression fading from serious to something teasing. "I doubt it. I think perhaps you've danced even less than I have." Being killed was cast aside. That was always the endgame, what happened before the credits and the screen went dark. They all died, and she knew torture; it was her nighttime companion.
"I was going to," Connor said. It had seemed rude, however, to ask about what was inside the box before asking after her well-being. “What was in the box?”
She was more right than she knew, about why people got into this sort of work. He saw it every day. He didn't understand the meaning behind the poetry, but the possession sounded about right, so he nodded. The reasons she cited weren't the only ones, though. "Some people don't inform for a cause," he told her. It was true. Some did it for lighter sentences, or to get into witness protection, or to get back at someone. "But some do." She did, clearly.
He smiled faintly at her question. Well, at least she seemed like she was lightening, a little. If she'd only called him here to make her feel better, to give her the assurances she needed to stay an informant, then it seemed he might have succeeded. "No," he said. He didn't dance. "You're not the first person to ask, though." Not even recently. It was a popular topic, lately, his propensity for dance.
It was a strange thing, to think of a world in which the only bar to normalcy was courage. He didn't live in that world. As far as he knew, no amount of courage or determination could clear the bar between him and the sort of life other people felt, living, breathing, touching their surroundings with all five senses and understanding them with a whole feeling, an entire self. It bordered on gnostic knowledge. How did they do it? That question would likely chase him to his grave. No amount of perseverance could create understanding of the inherent. He ought to just have it. But he didn't. He'd come from the factory missing parts, and that was all there was to it. When you were defective, you made the best of things. You couldn't fix a piece that was simply gone. There was no wizard who would award him a heart. "Do you dance?"
"Everyone informs for something. Something makes them take that step toward death. We're all dying, every last one of us, every day, but doing this means getting there faster, and that goes against every shred of human nature. Everyone has a reason, Connor, even you, standing there in your hoodie and denim," she said, this haunted girl with unkempt brown hair, insignificant in every way save this one.
As for dancing, it was rather a thing lately. "I'd never thought much on dancing until the studio," she admitted, because she hadn't. Servants children listened to the music of balls and dances. They listened through slats in the floor, through vents, through serving doors and service elevators, but they were never, ever part of that twirl and music. "But everyday, I see graceful swans dancing in front of mirrors, and I wonder what it's like to be them," she admitted, no jealousy in the confession - merely curiosity. Despite her occasionally dreamy turn of phrase, she was desperately grounded in truth. She knew what she was; she'd been it for entirely too long not to. She would never be the swan, but that didn't mean she couldn't take a turn around the floor with her two left feet. And who was to say it would be any less satisfying for its lack of grace?
But yes, the box, the contents of the box. She reached into her pocket, and she pulled out a very small cylinder. It was cool metal, small enough to fit into her palm, and it had a tiny blue light on one end that blinked solidly. It was an explosive, which she'd no knowledge of, but there it was. A miniature grenade, and she'd not grabbed the control for it, unaware that there was one. She held it out, palm open, as if they weren't likely to blow up just there, just then, without any warning.
"And your cause is love," he said. Oh, Connor knew her story. It was the reason she'd been approached, after all. She had an incentive - a cause, as she put it. Hopelessly devoted to a man in the mob, a man who had children, and a wife besides. It reminded him of his mother. He never had the chance to ask her why she stayed with his father when she discovered what he did for a living. The answer to that question died with her. Had it been love? Maybe. Love was a powerful impulse. Even he knew that. What else could drive you to put your children in danger, every day, except for love, and maybe fear?
He smiled, a little. "I wonder what it's like to be other people all the time," he said. It was just about the most honest thing he'd said about himself in a long, long while. He might have had more to say on the matter, but then she opened her hand, revealing a grenade so delicate and small that it might have been mistaken for a tube of lipstick.
Connor looked up at her, then plucked the device from her hand with two fingers tucked inside his hoodie sleeve. He wiped it off on his sweatshirt. "Walk toward the street," he informed her, calm, but commanding. There was no room for argument in his tone, gone metal hard and cold. He slowly set the tube down on the ground, put his arm around hers, and ducked his head, practically pulling her toward the street. "Right now." He couldn't be seen with her, but with his head ducked low and the hoodie pulled over his face, anyone would be hard pressed to recognize him. And there wasn't time to worry about anonymity, just this second, not when the people she’d stolen the grenade from might realize any second that one was missing, and detonate it just to see who had taken it from them.
He needed to get her a safe distance from the grenade, where she wouldn’t be hurt, or seen close by if it went off. Then he would call the explosives team. And then he could begin to worry about where the rest of the grenades were, and what the mob wanted with small, portable explosives.
"I don't love anyone," she said. "Those days have long since gone, left behind and I've nothing to show for it, really," she explained. There was the growing feelings she had for Adam, but she'd not made it this far in life without realizing when someone was soundly in the possession of another human being. He was single now, but it wasn't a true thing. He would get back together with the girl he loved, and he'd come around less and less. If anyone would have been able to win Adam away, it would have been Ainslie, and she'd not been able to, no matter all her soothing words about choosing matrimony.
"I pretend quite often," she said of being other people, but then he was telling her to walk toward the street. Her gaze dropped to the cylinder and its blinking blue light, and she wasn't daft enough to argue. She turned, and she walked. She ducked into Passages and, afraid to wait for whatever would come next, she fished out her key (fumbling twice) and went through her door.