Re: promenade ; elevator
Baby infantilized her and while she was certainly young and beautiful, even maintaining a sort of coquettishness that faded with age, he was fonder of his nickname than that which others bestowed upon her. "You are more beautiful than you are a baby," the assassin told her, applying the words literally. "Is it so bad to be grown?" Not old, but not a child either. Once, not so long ago, or perhaps it was decades past, he had been a silly sort of young, treating the world like his own personal playground. He knew better now, though he would not call himself old.
Oh, he knew secrets, and he listened attentively as her voice lowered. Secrets were taken to the grave, literally, among his ranks; loyalty above all else. Adoration and love, he knew, were similar but not the same, and it was easier to earn the former. Perhaps some adored him, viewing him as a savior of the people, but love required a closeness he balked at, for with love came pain. Always. "Surely," he said, "there is some man whose heart you've captured and hold in your hand." To be loved was one thing, to love quite another. He wondered if she would be content to own a man's heart without ever relinquishing her own in return. "I do not scoff at love, but I have known women who want more, yes. For some not even the most precious of stones would satisfy them." His tone turned wistful, then. "But I have known, too, those who would gladly turn their back on worldly goods for love. Those who lived and died for it." A moment of silence, of remembrance, before he smiled.
He shook his head, for how could she spoil his evening when he had never intended to be here in the first place? Other obligations, worries, and concerns no longer existed, and he was bound by nothing. "Spoiling my evening? Just the opposite," he assured her, and when the elevator doors slid open to cigar smoke and clinking glasses, he gently led her forward. For a moment he hesitated, remembering his vows; he was not meant to compromise the Brotherhood, but beneath the layers none of this was true, was it? "A secret from those who would do us harm, but those men are far away." Had they been aboard, they would have come looking for him, he was sure of it. "We stand against oppression, you see, and fight for freedom," he explained. A simple way to condense a complicated history, but she did not need to know all the details.