Roxie (Wren) Maheu (ex_theredlig387) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-02-05 01:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | han solo, roxanne |
Who: Wren and Hal
What: Wren goes snap
Where: A bar, Hal's car
When: Thursday evening, during Quinn's comm
Warnings: A little of Wren's client stuff
Thursday night and still nothing.
Wren was back in Rainier, in a bar that was more pool hall than bar, more gambling pit than anything else at all. She’d exhausted all her other options, and she looked like hell when she walked through the door dressed in a rumpled sundress and ballerina flats, her coat lost somewhere along the way.
She was there because her last stop, a man with a video camera and a roomful of boys and and girls, had told her that a man at the bar might be who she was looking for. His name was Steve, the cameraman had told her, and she’d long since exhausted any viable options. It had been almost three days, and her blue-gray eyes looked dull and hopeless as she asked the bartender if Steve was there.
A nod toward the bar table in the back, and Wren was wandering through the press of bodies and cigarette smoke, toward a loud pool game in the corner, one for money.
Hal was lining up a really good shot. He’d done some work and made some money, and he and Charlie had scraped up the rent for the apartment and their garages. Hal had borrowed and gambled the rest, so focused on distracting himself from the rest of his life that it didn’t matter very much what they were going to do the week following. He focused on the cue ball, ignoring the bright colored spots beyond it, sniffing through cigarette smoke and billiards chalk. He struck, sunk the nine he’d been aiming for, and then sunk a ten he hadn’t. Hal swore in two languages and reeled back from the table for his opponent, who was too good to miss a chance like that.
Giving up on the game, his mind already on the next one, Hal leaned on his pool cue and looked up in time to see Wren wander in. She wasn’t in one of her wigs and she didn’t have the sway that said she was working, and he wondered what she was doing there. He didn’t hail or interrupt her progress, but his gaze was steady through the haze of the bar and the press of bodies.
Wren had found the man the bartender had indicated, and she’d found him without seeing Hal in the press of people. Steve was in his 50s, balding and heavyset, and he offered information in exchange for money. Money, which Wren didn’t have. He could have been bluffing, and normally she would have realized that, but she was agitated, worried and bruised over, and she grabbed his arm and begged, only to be shaken off a moment later.
She looked around the bar, looking for a way to meet his price, her gaze catching Hal’s through the smoke, conflicted. She didn’t want to ask him for anything, especially not money. But if Steve left, the information he might have left with him.
Hal broke the gaze, but only to surrender his pool cue and dig into a pocket for a couple rumpled bills, which he dropped onto the felt to pay his way. He looked like his old self these days, a healthy tan coming back above his shirt collar, messed, sweaty hair, winking blue eyes. He slid through the crowd, taking up Wren’s eyes again, until he came up by her side, interested in the conversation but really disliking Steve, who stank. Hal wrinkled his nose.
Steve was refusing to budge on the price, and when Hal had looked away Wren had gone back to trying to convince him. He wanted five hundred dollars for a location, and Wren had been trying to promise him the moon if he made it two-fifty. Two-fifty she could get before the pool tournament was out and he left. He was close to agreeing when Hal approached, asking questions about things that stung and bound, and she looked over at Hal nervously, knowing he wouldn’t approve of the conversation, but not willing to abandon it when she was making ground. And this distance, it was obvious that the dress was dirty and rumpled, and that the bruises on her arms and neck were layered, one atop the other. She smelled of sex, as much as Steve stank of Steve, and she knew that, too.
Hal came to a stop. On his left shoulder was Steve. To his right, at his elbow, was Wren. Behind him was the room, and in front of him was the bar. He looked upright and clean, but also mussed and ignorant. His shirt was worn and plaid and his workboots had grease stains on them. He looked like someone who got off the 10-6 shift and came straight here for a beer, and he smelled of grease and cologne. He looked at Wren, but not for long, and not in an easy way or a simple way; not the way a man looks at just a woman. Then he looked at Steve. He looked at Steve like maybe he could see all the way into his stained, stinking soul. “Location of what?”
“Someone kidnapped my friend,” Wren said in French, her gaze still focused on Steve, who looked like he was ready to leave now that Hal had showed up. Wren realized it, and she moved forward and grabbed Steve’s sleeve, a mirror of her action from a few moments earlier, the desperation thick and uncomfortable in the movement. “Two hundred and fifty,” she promised him. “Just wait, please?”
“Cher,” Hal said, softly, not looking away from Steve’s shifting eyes. “Cet homme, il ne sais pas. Look at ‘is eyes. Il ne sais pas.”
Wren was too desperate for that. Too desperate to believe it, especially after three days of looking, and when Steve scoffed at Hal and agreed on the price, she let go of his sleeve and asked him to wait - no, begged.
Hal hadn’t looked down at Wren yet. He hadn’t lifted a hand either. Nobody noticed, moving around the confrontation, which was a zone of desperation and tense air. Hal got Steve’s gaze and his own sharpened. “She’s not coming.”
Steve looked nervous, pudgy-soft hand mopping at his brow. “Your loss,” he said under his breath, ready to push away from the bar and leave, much to Wren’s dismay. She looked up at Hal, and she tugged on his plaid sleeve sharply. “This is important,” she said, sounding younger than she normally did, raw and scared, like someone afraid of losing a last chance at something invaluable.
“Oui,” Hal said, evenly. “Too important for dis piece of shit.” He said it calmly, disinterested in Steve in almost every way. As soon as he moved toward the back, away from the bar, Hal shifted so his shoulders oriented toward Wren. He met her eyes. “Whatever you’re doin’, dis ain’t de way.”
She would have followed Steve if Hal hadn’t shifted his shoulders and temporarily blocked her path. She wrung her fingers in the sleeve she still had clutched tightly, and she looked up at him. “He might know something,” she said, and her expression said she’d talked to a lot of men just like Steve in the past few days. “It’s worth trying,” she said, making a valiant attempt to remain calm, even while she watched the man from the corner of her eye to ensure he didn’t leave.
“No,” Hal said. He was certain, and would not yield the path to her. “No. He isn’t worth you. He doesn’t know anything.” He said it very slowly, as if this might sink it in deeper, and he lifted one hand that curled around her upper arm--without actually touching her skin. “Allez-vous. I take you home.”
She looked up at him, her eyes watering. “Can I borrow the money?” she asked, her pride taking a hit in the asking, the knowledge that she was likely going to loose whatever friendship she still had with him at the request. She knew men like Hal, like her uncle, you didn’t ask them to give up what they worked so hard for. It was a line she wouldn’t normally cross, and the fact that she did made it clear that she couldn’t walk out of that bar without the information Steve might have.
Hal looked down into her face. His teeth set back under his jaw, and some of the uncertainty and the worry sneaked out from under the dearly bought calm. He looked over his shoulder at Steve. “D’accord,” he said, finally, the short syllable audible enough. He’d find Steve and beat the money back out of him later. Or maybe he’d just accidentally run him over. He hadn’t decided yet.
She held her hand out, palm dirty and wrist marred with ligature marks, and she looked over her shoulder at Steve to make sure he didn’t move. She didn’t meet Hal’s eyes, not even as she waited. “I’ll pay you back with interest,” she promised, the assurance quiet in the crowded bar.
“Can’t we just leave?” At the inevitable negative, Hal dug into his pocket again and came out with a wad of bills he’d been using at the pool tables. “He get what I got, three hundred now, and he come back to me for the rest later.” He palmed the bills and offered his hand out to her, knuckles up.
She took the money with a nod, after the inevitable negative, and she moved away from Hal before he could stop her, winding through people to get to Steve. She held out the three hundred, and she told him he could get the rest from Hal once he gave her the information, and Steve glanced up at Hal over the crowd and whispered that he’d take their deal instead. She looked over her shoulder, and then she looked back at Steve and nodded.
A second later, Steve was walking past Hal with a grin on his face and Wren was trailing, trying to avoid eye contact.
Hell fucking no. Hal got Steve with a low left thrust punch that bent at his elbow and went straight under his gut, a little to the side so he got under the ribs and knocked the breath out of him without doing permanent damage. He didn’t even wait for the cursing, he just lunged for Wren and started dragging her out.
It took Wren a minute to realize what had just happened, and a second after Hal started dragging, she started fighting him. She hit at his arm, at his chest, at anything she could reach, unmindful of the bruises on her arms or the fact that she wore nothing at all beneath the sundress. She was crying as she hit, and after a second it was just movement and gasps of air with no force behind them. She wanted to stop looking, she did, but she couldn’t, and it was selfish to want to, and she said as much in French, babbled but coherent.
He got her out the door before she started kicking, and she didn't hurt him with her struggles. (He'd deny any bruising from such a little thing, anyway.) He pinned her in a bear hug to keep more damage from being done, and sheltered in the shadows at the edge of the parking lot, grimly weathered struggles and sobs. He only said (very gruffly) that she was worth more than some bastard in a bar.
She looked up at him, her face tear-stained. “I can’t stop looking,” she said. “Friends don’t stop looking.” For all the bravado in the words, she was clutching his arms, as if finally being around someone stronger meant she didn’t have to try so hard to support herself anymore. It was cold, the straps of the sundress offering no protection from the elements, and she dragged in a shaking breath. “You don’t think he knows?”
"Dat sumbitch wouldn't know how to find his behind in de dark," Hal spat contemptuously. "He not worth yo' time. Now, you can't help yo' amie if you're all broke up like dis." He adapted his usual cheerful air with effort. "Come on. We get you clean and warm and den we start lookin' again, oui? C'est bien?" Hal worked out of the plaid overshirt and awkwardly wrapped her torso in it like a burrito.
“Whoever took her is like that,” she said, because she didn’t think someone worth anyone’s time would kidnap someone who looked as young as Quinn did. She didn’t fight the warmth the plaid offered, though, she just reached under the ragged hem of the sundress and tugged her comm out of her garter and tucked it in her ear, too tired and upset to realize she was doing it in front of Hal. She thought about arguing, about saying she needed to stay, but she didn’t. It wasn’t the cleanliness or the warmth that convinced her; it was being able to rely on someone else, even for five minutes. “Can we sit in your car for a few minutes?” she asked.
Hal’s sharp eyes slid to the comm and he frowned at it for a moment over her head. He had seen devices like that, heard the masks and their operatives talking to each other in them, and it implied many things about Wren that Hal had not been aware of. Finally he turned with one wide palm on her back and guided her across the parking lot. The car was a streamlined, rusting ‘81 Camaro, existing paint a rough powder blue. There were musty false fur covers on the seats that Hal had not yet time to remove, implying recent purchase. He started the car to warm the engine and locked the doors once they were inside.
She registered, distantly, that the car was a horrible powder blue that didn’t suit him and that the seats were furry, but that was all she registered. Once she sat down, she hugged her knees to her chest and began rocking, slow, slow, slow, the movement soothing, an old habit. The comm was silent, and she took it out of her ear and held it out to him, like a child holding out something she doesn’t want anymore.
He took it, and he didn’t say anything about whatever she was doing to cope. Instead, he looked away, down at the communicator, turning it over in his hands and idly flicking the almost invisible switch that turned the microphone on and off, running his finger over the place where the GPS fit into the casing. He left it on and the microphone off, and then he stuck it in his ear just in case somebody came down the line with something important. The car was warm and metallic-tasting air was wafting gently from the vents, and after a moment Hal disengaged the parking brake and let the car roll out toward the exit to the lot.
She noticed the car when it moved, the rolling making her jerk her head up and look at him, as if she’d just realized he was there. Her eyes were haunted, and she looked more like a child than she had in a very long time. “The Bat was missing last week,” she said. “They trapped him, and Luke went after him. If he can get taken, then anyone can,” she continued, not talking to him so much as just talking. “And they took Luke, and now Quinn, and we weren’t even doing anything. Luke was Christmas shopping, and Quinn was having a birthday party, and I didn’t notice because I wasn’t paying attention to her.” It was all confused, the words in her head, and they tumbled out that way, too.
Hal listened, slowly easing the car out of the lot. The shocks were squeaky but Hal was confident and calm. He was fairly sure the Brandon kid’s kidnappers were locked up tight, so unless there was some criminal organization he wasn’t privy to, there wasn’t one “they” but multiple parties. “Nobody expects bad t’ings like dat to happen,” he said reassuringly, watching the road.
That didn’t reassure her, and she just turned her cheek and looked out the car window into the dark night, eyes unseeing as the lights passed. She didn’t know where he was driving to, but she couldn’t go home, couldn’t stay in that dark apartment and wait. It was better not to care, she thought. This felt too much like her mother dying, this gut punch that she couldn’t do anything to make better. She longed for numbness, and she closed her eyes.
No, Hal wasn’t great at reassurance. The car drove on through the dark. He didn’t take them anywhere special, moving from stoplight to stoplight, cruising slowly through crowds spilling off the sidewalks in front of clubs, finding a coastal road and moving along it for a while before turning inexplicably inland and following the river toward the forests at the foot of the mountains in the distance. The car had a full tank and a radio that was more static than music, but they still heard strips and stretches of old rock interspersed with an obscure classical station that interfered the farther south they went. Hal didn’t say anything, he just drove, circling Seattle in long, lazy loops.
She fell asleep a few minutes in, exhausted. She trusted him to tell her if something came across the comms (never thinking he might not), and she turned a little in the seat, her head lolling onto his shoulder.
He let her sleep. He listened to the comm, though no one had anything to say, and he wondered how anyone could listen to so much silence and not go fucking crazy. So he left the thing in his ear and listened to the radio instead, daydreaming of things he would do with the car and glancing occasionally down at Wren to make sure she was still asleep. When the voices came, they were a surprised, panicked squeaks and immediate replies. He didn’t volunteer his voice, or Wren’s, realizing that there were people closer responding.
Dawn was arriving by the time he stopped for gas and slowly put a hand under her elbow to lift her upright as he slid out the driver’s side.
She made a sleepy sound, but she didn’t wake. She just curled up the other way, side against the back of the seat and a sigh as she settled back. She registered, somehow, the lack of movement after a moment, though, and she started and looked out the window at the coming brightness with confusion, looking back at him a second later and rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Where are we?” she asked, not recognizing the place and then looking for the comm she expected to still find in her ear.
He still had it in his. “Not too far from where we were before,” he told her, setting her upright on the seat and patting her elbow under the plaid. He turned away then, musty fuzzy smell rising from the old seat covers, and left the car for the gas pump. “We makin’ a short stop. You want anythin’ from inside?” He left the door open as he stood.
“But it’s morning,” she said, as if that made what he said patently untrue. She crawled to the driver’s seat, and she knelt on it and craned her head to look at him at the gas pump. “Did they find her? Is Luke okay?” she asked, not answering his question about wanting anything, so much hope in her voice that it almost hurt.
“Dey found her. Dey goin’ to get her right now. We gon’ get some gas, den head out, oui?” He patted her cheek, because it was so near, and then he stepped back and patted the door frame. “Stay here.” He moved off toward the convenience store to pay, taking the comm with him.
She believed him. She didn’t ask questions, didn’t demand anything - she just believed him. It was still dark enough outside that it couldn’t be called morning, and she crawled back onto the passenger’s seat and cried. Quinn was okay. She was sure Luke had found her, because Luke wouldn’t have stopped looking, not like her. Not like her. She rubbed one of the ligature marks on her wrist, and she took in a shaky breath. “I’d like to go home,” she said to no one at all. She’d repeat it when he came back.
He sat down in the driver’s seat again while the gas pump belched and his money ticked away. He got her a bottled sports drink that had some obscure vitamins he figured she needed, and also some water and a package of bland crackers. In the little sack he’d thrown in some cookies and cakes and he set those on the seat in case she felt like it. He cracked his own water and looked at her sideways with that bothered frown. “How long you been out?”
“I showered this morning,” she said, because she had, though you’d never know it from looking at her. She took the sports drink, vitamins and all, and she tipped it back and swallowed a quarter of the bottle before licking her lips. “She’s really okay?” she asked, looking back at him. “Luke’s okay?”
“Robin went to go get her,” Hal said, watching her face. The pump clicked and he got up to put it away before starting the car again.
Her attention flew to his face when he said Robin, eyes wide and worried and bright with the realization that she’d actually handed him her comm, reality cutting through the haze. She held out her hand, fingers shaking. “You can’t tell. Promise, Hal.”
“Tell what?” he said, obliviously, but smiling a little and bypassing hand to take her opposite shoulder in a one-armed hug. “De girl is Quinn, and the lady in my ear calls for Robin, and he’s goin’ to get her. Don’ worry.” He made sure she couldn’t get to the comm on the other side of his head, though, firmly setting it in place again before rolling up the window fiddling with the heat to get it going again.
She didn’t fight the hug, though she did try to reach for the comm once, halfheartedly. “You can’t tell about the comms,” she said, sitting back and hugging her knees again. “I never use it. I can’t go rescue people like they can. It’s not what I do,” she explained, because she’d felt helpless the past three days. “I don’t know how,” she added, quieter this time, to herself.
“I ain’t sayin’ nothin’. Let dem do de rescuin’,” Hal said, with a hint of irritation at the situation. These people ran around making targets of themselves, what the hell did they think was going to happen? The Bat especially. That had to be the most ridiculous shoot-me get up Hal had ever heard of. “Dey all up an’ ready for it. You can’t take dis kinda t’ing on yo’self like dis. It ain’t healthy.” He shifted and they roared onto the freeway.
“They’re my friends,” she said quietly, but she didn’t wait for a reply, didn’t expect one. Luke had found Quinn, and Quinn would be fine. She closed her eyes again, turning her face toward the window and the slowly rising sun. Everything she’d done in the part four days, it had all been for nothing. All the terrible things. She rubbed her hand along a mark at her neck, and she whispered. “Take me home?”
Hal gave her a quick glance. He didn’t like that look on her face. He didn’t like the state of her, either, and it was obvious he couldn’t trust her to take care of herself properly. How the hell was he going to tell Charlie? “I t’ink it be better if you come back to our place,” he said, carefully.
She was surprised, but she didn’t say it. Quinn was safe, and she liked the thought of curling up on his and Charlie’s couch better than the thought of staying home until someone contacted her and let her go to wherever Quinn was. “Can I bring the kitten?” she asked, thinking about whether it needed to be fed and if she’d given it water. “It was a Christmas present from Luke,” she explained, as of that explained everything entirely.
“We go, we get you set up wit’ Charlie, den I go get yo’ petite chat.” There was some distinct grumbling there at the end, but nothing all that serious. “If it claw me, Ah’m gonna be annoyed at you.” He smiled at her at the tease, meant to reassure, meant to comfort.
“He’s very well behaved,” she said, smiling for the first time all night as she put her cheek on her knee and looked over at him. She nodded, though, agreeing. “Just for a little,” she said. “I haven’t slept very well since it happened.” She hadn’t, either, always waking and thinking she still had the bag over her head, the gun going off at her temple.
“Now is good time to start,” Hal said firmly, turning his attention back on the road and fishing his phone out of his pocket. He put an earpiece in the other ear, and it was two guesses to who he was calling.
“What are you telling him?” she asked, not needing to ask who he was calling either, already reaching for his hand, just in case she didn’t like what he had to say. “Charlie doesn’t want to be bothered with my problems,” she said with quiet certainty.
“Dat we comin’ back to our place and we wanna stay dere,” Hal said, only snorting at her final comment. “You only sayin’ dat because he don’ say not’ing to you.” It was ringing.
“Just for a little while,” she reminded him tiredly, giving up the fight and closing her eyes again.