Who: Marina & Connor What: A reunion of sorts with lots of business talk. Where: At a small food joint downtown. When: Significantly backdated to before the party. Warnings: Nada.
Even with a psychotically-energized four year old and the developing madness of discovering a fictional voice bouncing around in her head, Marina did not forget about the headache that government intrusion had recently caused her. The initial contact occurred well over a month ago, with unsmiling agents sitting in her cramped living room. Wearing their monochromatic suits and dropping nerve-prickling keywords like accessory to a crime and federal prison, which brought on a kind of grim enthusiasm for assisting them at her earliest convenience. The government was a big fan of blackmail when it suited them.
Marina wasn't anybody, and she wasn't even a criminal in the truest sense of the word. She didn't break any laws in order to better her own life, she just worked for people who did. The fact that the authorities knew this and were still willing to charge her with enough round-about charges that she'd likely spend a good decade in prison and lose custody of the most important person in her life.. well, that was enough to make even Mother Theresa a little bitter. But Marina wasn't a saint, and this latest poker hand of bad luck was just the icing on so much other shit that she had to be bitter about.
So she was in a less than festive mood for today's initial meet-up with her connection. The burger joint was small with a rooftop patio of checkered picnic tables and and huge beach umbrellas that were the only saving grace against the Las Vegas sun. It was too hot outside to make the patio a happening spot at this time, the few late lunchers preferred to congregate within the air conditioned interior downstairs. So Marina waited on the roof alone with her cherry coke and cheese fries, shaded beneath the massive bloom of a purple and white striped umbrella.
In a white linen dress and a mile turquoise beads bunched around her neck, Marina was better dressed for margaritas poolside than cheeseburgers with intelligence agents. She expected this first meeting to be brief, although she admittedly had nothing to base that assumption off of. Marina took a long sip of her cherry coke to combat the heat, and she waited with her sandals tapping impatiently against the rooftop tarmac.
When meeting a contact in public, Connor did not dress the part of a CIA operative, since that would obviously defeat the purpose of meeting at all. So he was there at the burger joint before Marina ever sat down, unrecognizable from the day to day in a dirty gray hooded sweatshirt, brown hair askew. He'd ordered a burger, shake, and fries, and methodically picked his way through each while he waited for the girl.
So far as risk went, meeting with a low level organized crime informant hardly had the risks associated with it than a rendezvous with someone at a higher level. No one was likely to be watching Marina, not yet, not until they had something to suspect. But it never hurt to be careful, and Connor was, perhaps, more careful than most. He knew, firsthand, what a badly prepared agent could do to an informant and their family. He had resolved never to see that happen to one of his contacts, particularly not ones with four year old sons.
The one thing that had given him pause in taking on this particular informant was the name on her file when it came across his desk. That name. It wasn't common, not common enough that he wasn't immediately taken back to long, sweltering hot nights in the desert, alone but no longer afraid at ten years old. Perhaps because of his particular (self-diagnosed) psychological peculiarities, it didn't bother him the way it might bother someone else. His mind cut right to the advantage of a contact who was also a former association. No one knew he was CIA. If they had to meet up to talk business face to face, it could simply be two old acquaintances catching up. For that to happen, there had to be a reconnection. Publicly, just in case. When Connor saw Marina sit down with her cherry coke, he studied her face and knew it. He remembered. He wasn't quite sure why, but that was satisfying, for some reason, that she hadn't changed too much.
Connor got up from where he'd been sitting. "Marina?" he tried, with a smile earnest enough to fool almost anybody. Anybody who didn't know better. "It's Connor."
The large umbrella that speared her table cast a good amount of shade over Marina and her cherry coke. Enough that the heat was kept at bay, and sitting on the roof provided a little bit of a breeze that was welcome to rustle the crimped ruffles of her skirt. She saw him moving toward her long before he spoke, and the subtle familiarity that came with his face kept her in a state of dumbfounded silence for one long moment. She was supposed to be meeting her contact, the government agent.. but this man was a slice taken out of her childhood past. Marina stared at him, and her eyes were just like they'd been during fostered youth. Autumn ochre and lioness hide, trophy gold fringed in sweeping black liner like Cleopatra.
She stared at him and his smile. The coke in her hand dripped condensation on the top of her foot, exposed from the thin leather thong of her sandal. After a long moment, her quiet observation deteriorated into a wide, sterling smile. "Connor?!" Appropriately shocked, she set her drink down on the table's edge and stood to hug him. It might not have been appropriate to snatch somebody up in an embrace after so many years, but the shared years of their childhood had not been particularly warm or special, and for some time they'd seemed like one another's only friend.
Connor had been strange in a way that was entirely different from the strangeness that came along for the ride with Marina. She'd been foreign and stoic, whereas Connor's style of quiet had been almost creepy to the other children. He'd been very different, and she knew that even the adults had found him a little strange for a time, but Marina had liked that. She didn't like the others at the foster home, so it seemed entirely usual for her like the strange boy. "Whatever are you doing here?" She drew back from the hug to take her seat once again, smiling, and clearly not making the connection that he was the person she was to be meeting this afternoon.
Connor had liked Marina, in the home. In those days, it was more than he could have said for almost anyone, more than he found meaning enough in most human interaction to say. She was nice, and she took notice of him when the other kids skirted around him and avoided eye contact, or giggled in corners. For all his missing pieces, Connor remembered loyalty, and he remembered kindness.
Physical contact, particularly contact so affectionate, was like a foreign country to Connor. That hadn't changed after he was adopted, just as he hit his teens. His adoptive parents had been kind, but he wasn't really there to have affection lavished on him. He was there to ease the way for their biological son, and he'd done that. It had been better than foster care, but not full of hugs. So it took him a moment, even with all his practice at the way people were supposed to behave themselves, to remember to hug her back, such was the surprise at how warm and genuine her embrace was. When he did, it was very tight, but his fingers were ginger, careful. When he drew back, he smiled a little, and he did it without thinking. "I wanted lunch," he said. "Or, if you mean Vegas, I moved here for work."
Connor picked up what remained of his lunch and sat down across from her, plastic dish clattering against the table. "Are you waiting for someone?" he asked. That small smile remained, but something cool and knowing lay behind it. "I was."
It felt like being cheated, having that lonely place be such a significant chapter of their lives. The deprecating children, hateful from abandonment. The stoic adults who always seemed to be separate even when present, like they had no interest in becoming invested with the unfortunate cases that surrounded them. She could not remember ever asking Connor about what had happened to his parents or what kind of life he'd had before the group home. Marina's own childhood had been so wonderfully abstract and soaked in good memories that it felt like debasing something sacred if she spoke of it. Besides, she'd known that nobody would understand. Her parents weren't like the parents of all these other children. They weren't simple minded criminals or violent offenders, they'd been artists in their own right. So she hadn't talked about them when others asked, and she didn't ask about anyone else's missing families in return. It occurred to her now that that was why she'd liked Connor when they were young, he was good at keeping to himself and minding his own business.
It wasn't that unusual to run into Connor in the city. The children's home had been relatively local, and Marina hadn't gotten very far away after finally making it out. It was nice to see him, however. Nice to see how much taller he'd become, all of the subtle, refined details that came with age. The way a soft jaw found solid angles, and awkward posture that always seemed to slightly curve in on itself was now structured by wide shoulders. Maturity was fascinating, and Marina knew that it had been kind to her as well. At least now, she didn't quite so resemble a skinny little boy with a brat's scowl. Condensation dappled the bright, waxed exterior of her cup, and Marina took a long drag from its red straw before raising an eyebrow at his mention of work. "Oh? What is it that you do?" Even her voice was docile these days. Decidedly average, with very little resemblance to the chaotic tour de France obscenities she'd been so fond of screaming with back then.
And then.. an incipient realization. The level of coincidence that was required for him to be her CIA connect seemed astronomical, but perhaps it was somewhat less so than the off chance of just happening to cross paths with him on this roof on this afternoon. Her dark eyes turned serious, multifarious strokes of gold surrounding the black of an iris. When Connor asked if she was meeting someone, she stared at him for a moment longer, obviously losing her grip on such a lighthearted reunion. "... Maybe."
Connor watched realization hit Marina, heard the suspicion creep into her voice, and he knew this couldn't simply be a happy reunion of long lost friends anymore. He regretted losing touch with her, but when he'd known her he had been a boy with a plan, a firm intention the second he came of age. Even after being adopted, he had stayed true to those intentions - he was going to graduate early from high school, find the people who had ordered the murder of his family, and kill them in painful and very elaborate ways. But then they were gone, wisps of smoke blown away in one short gust, and he was left to find a completely new direction for himself. In the wake of that bone deep shock, just piecing together what his life was going to mean took up all his energy, all his thought.
"I work for some people who sent me to talk to you today," he said, with the same small smile, but with something more knowing behind it, older, steady, cool. He liked Marina. He didn't care about what she might have done. He had no interest in judging what she did to feed her daughter. He had no interest in any crime until it came into conflict with other people's lives and happiness. "Sorry," he added, a little belatedly. "If it's any consolation...I wish I wasn't." It would have been so nice to meet her like this. Organically, stumbling across each other by chance, finding each other in the white hot desert heat again. But that wasn't how life worked.
Marina had long ago stopped believing that life was like the movies. Long before the father of her child had run off like a fucking coward and left her scrambling for the money to pay for her prenatal care. A nickle and dime ramen noodle budget was even less thrilling when there were pregnancy cravings for salted caramel and steak au poivre. But even before that had happened, Marina's life had ceased in resembling anything remotely cinematic or Disney-esque. The fact that she'd thought, for a warm and fleeting moment, that this was all some happy coincidence was just cause for eye rolling.
She folded the pale linen of her dress over a svelte, dark knee as it formed a crossroad with the other. "I understand," she said in abrupt dismissal of his consolation. That wouldn't be necessary, she'd already gotten a taste of how the government worked. They charged into her apartment on a Sunday afternoon, scared the hell out of her kid, and started making demands like Marina didn't have a goddamn say in the whole matter.. which, admittedly, she didn't. "I get it," she reiterated with the soda straw pierced between her teeth. Effervescent, gold eyes watched him thoughtfully from beneath the dark wings of eyeliner, contemplative for a moment before she drew the cup away from her mouth. "So how does this work? We meet up every couple of weeks or something?"
Connor wasn't good at feeling the things that people were supposed to feel. There were holes there like chunks of his brain were missing that he needed for that sort of thing, grasping in the dark for something that was supposed to be there, but wasn't. It had forced him to become a studier and emulator of human behavior. And he was good at that, making the faces and saying the right things, even if he still carried a quiet that some people found unsettling.
He knew enough to see when Marina stopped liking him so much, switched him from the category of old friend to representative of an institution she disliked in her head. He didn't address it, but he didn't like it. It seemed irrelevant to articulate it, though. It made him sorry, and while expression remained the same, something behind his eyes shuttered. "Something like that," he said. "If there's an emergency, or you hear something, you can call me." He pulled an object from his pocket - a burner. He slid it across the table. "Use that. You'll get a new one each month." He slid his fingers from the surface of the phone, and he tapped the table, looking at her hands on the soda cup, her fingernails, the whorls of her knuckles. "No one is going to take your son," he said, abruptly, as if that made sense in the stream of instructions. He looked up, and met her eyes. He'd made a decision while he was talking, though it was impossible to tell what, or why.
Marina had obviously decided that her main interest in this meeting now rested in when it was over. He'd gotten warmth from her a few minutes ago, sweet nostalgia that shouldn't have been capable of bringing about good memories(considering that the source was a group home) but managed to supply her with a genuine smile anyway. It wasn't even as simple as saying that Connor was from her past and therefore signified good memories, because that was clearly not the case for the two of them. The only explanation was that he was the good memory.
She took the burner phone without analyzing it all that closely. Marina had seen some of those CIA television shows, she'd considered it a form of unenthusiastic research while she drank herbal tea before bed, and it seemed like there were all kinds of weird, untraceable gadgets being passed around. The instructions he gave her were simple enough, and that earned him a simple answer in return. "Alright."
But when he mentioned Nathan, even if not by name, that made something in Marina change. She looked up at him with her lioness eyes gashed wide in telltale worry. Marina had expressive features, known to explode into beautiful rage or collapse easily into the kind of Shakespearean tragedy that made tears look like she was the only witness to the fall of heaven. The bitter, disinterested woman from moments earlier was gone, lost to a sparrow's fragility. She stared at him, desperate to trust him, but obviously battling with whether or not she could. "How do you know that?" Because Marina needed to know that losing Nathan wasn't a possibility so she could sleep at night.
Connor watched her expression crumple, but whatever that made him think, or feel, or if it made him feel anything at all, it wasn't visible in his intractable expression. He was the opposite of Marina - cool, impossible to read, empty as a hollow vessel. But the resolve in his words didn't waver an inch. "I know," he repeated, "I won't let them."
In his stint for the FBI Connor had done some things he shouldn't have. Evidence had gone missing or mysteriously turned up, witnesses had recanted or come out of the woodwork. He knew how to get things done, and he had never been afraid to do it. People who did bad things should be punished, even if someone had to do bad things to get them behind bars. Conversely, good people should be left alone. Connor believed that Marina was good, fundamentally, so he wouldn't allow them to take her son. He wasn't going to see her hurt for cooperating, and he wasn't going to see another kid in foster care. He believed he could keep that from happening, and, truthfully, that was all that mattered to him.
Marina wanted to find solace in his reassurance, but the strange distant that essentially was Connor didn't exactly lend to that kind of thing. It did not really surprise her that he'd turned up in this line of work, although she could not say why. She knew that he wasn't exactly a cop, but in the separated simplicity that came with basically being a criminal, Marina knew that Connor was on the other side. Even if now they were kind of on the same sideā¦ if there were sides. Honestly, she wasn't entirely sure how this informant thing was supposed to work. All she understood was that she was now working twice as hard for the same amount of money. She easily understood that staying out of jail was its own reward, even if the idea that she could go to jail when she felt like she hadn't even done anything really wrong just infuriated her.
She wanted to blame Connor for that. She thought she could be angry at him for it. Anger should have come easily. Something about becoming a parent, however, it'd softened her. She hadn't been angry in a long, long time. Maybe not since Russ' had left her all barefoot and pregnant with no money and nowhere to go. After Nathan, though, she just couldn't remember being angry. She wasn't even that angry at Russ now that she knew he was back around. Oh, she was going to see to it that he suffered(monetarily if not painfully), but she wasn't mad.
She was scared. Naturally freaking out over the CIA's sudden involvement in her life lately, but for Marina there'd been fear before this whole trouble began. Being a parent was so goddamn terrifying. When she wasn't being paranoid that Nathan was going to get kidnapped or break a bone, she was scared to death of the very real possibility that she was going to fuck him up in some way. The boy was so joyful and normal, but he was only four and she had a lot of time to screw it all up. She was desperately trying to ensure that the kid had a good, average life. He didn't need to grow up hopscotching across Europe like she had, and he didn't need to grow up in a foster home either. When Connor promised that everything was going to be okay for Nathan and herself, Marina took a deep breath. She nodded, wanting to believe him so much that she started to, just a little. "Thank you, Connor."
Connor nodded to her. He didn't know what she was feeling in an empathetic sense, since he wasn't built in such a way that he was capable of putting himself in her shoes. But he could infer, make an educated guess, and he thought he knew all the same. She was scared and any kind of reassurance was a good thing right now.
Connor stood, then. Any pretense of interest in eating his lunch was gone, though he absently picked up his cup. "If you need anything, you'll call me." A statement, not a question. He glanced off across the patio to the street, scanning briefly for watching eyes. "The government expects you to do your civic duty for free," he said. "I don't." From the pocket of his sweatshirt, he produced a pack of colorful stationery with a teddy bear holding a bundle of balloons on the front, the kind one might use for a child's birthday party. He offered it to her. He cut a strange silhouette, standing there in his dirty undercover hoodie, holding a pack of kid's birthday cards. The compensation, obviously, wasn't the exciting stationary. Tucked between the cards were a series of twenties adding up to $300. Not a lot of money, but a start.
Marina knew that her anxiety was blatantly obvious, a glowing marquee with wringing hands and shifty eyes like that of prey caught in an open field. In the time that had passed from their childhood to now, she'd gone from a confident, stoic child to the mess standing before him. She was well put together, certainly. Smooth lines and nice clothes. But she was still, obviously, a fucking mess. There didn't seem to be a point in putting much effort into hiding that. Connor had always been perceptive.
She flipped through the cards when he handed them over, surveying the cash within just long enough to recognize that it was a couple hundred bucks of seemingly unmarked bills. She wasn't sure what to make of that for a moment, and her eyes were skeptical when she glanced back up to his face. He wasn't looking at her, though, he was scanning the street below them. That reminded her that she needed to get going before somebody managed to spot her. Although it didn't look like she was doing anything wrong, Marina knew that she was going to feel safer when she was back home.
A very large part of her wanted to be able to give the money back to him, throw it on the ground, deny she needed it. Pride was weird like that. Before she'd had her son, she definitely would have done just that.. but not now. She slid the cards and the cash into her purse without a word or a thank you. Her voice didn't seem to want to work just then, and she struggled with that for a moment before looking at Connor again. "I'll call you if I need anything," she confirmed softly. Then she gathered her bag and her cherry coke, and she brushed past him with a murmured goodbye. As she made her way down the stairs in leave, she glanced back at him once more. "Wish we could have found eachother again in some way less complicated." A beat, the familiar felinesque edge of her smile. "But it was good to see you." And then she was gone.