Eli Pride is Elizabeth Bennet (hybristic) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-02-06 20:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | elizabeth bennet, hatter, viola |
Who: Eli, Julian and Preston
What: Julian waves his gun around
Where: Reliquary
When: After the EIT meeting
Warnings: None
Eli waited until he cleared the tennis courts to react. He made it all the way to the first wooden lamppost, and then he drove his fist into it with a frustrated groan of pain when the wood didn’t give for his knuckles. The evening could not have possibly gone worse, and he had little hope anyone would take them seriously given what had happened. No, worse than that, they hadn’t even managed to safely conduct a meet. How would anyone trust them to combat anyone with an ability? He wouldn’t, had he attended. He considered quitting, really and truly, for the first time since he’d become involved in EIT. What were they thinking? It wasn’t as if they had any means at their disposal to do what they did. No masks or bulletproof suits and cape, no money for equipment. It was, he was certain, better to throw in the towel. Perhaps he could explain to the Gardens that he would rather teach, give up the shop and EIT and grasp at a normal life like a man grasping at straws. The Bluetooth in his ear had been silent since he’d asked Rescue to trail Warren, the call disconnected immediately after the request.
The gentle bluetooth ring was a short precursor to Rescue’s urbane digital voice, and it did an excellent job of concealing Preston’s agitation. The first shock was that Blake was there, the second, that he wasn’t there to antagonize Eli. The third was when the tall curly-haired kid had freaked out enough to grab the gun and started waving it around. Preston’s angle hadn’t been good, and he still thought he might be able to taste his heart in the back of his throat. “May I ask what the hell happened?”
“You may,” Eli said, pulling splinters from his knuckles as he walked. “Or you may say I told you so. Either would suffice.” He sounded angry, agitated, frustrated. But he didn’t sound scared, whatever else he was. “You didn’t call the authorities?” he asked.
“No. Should I have?” The digital voice didn’t sound like anything, just the knowing, intelligent words that didn’t quite even out in tone. Preston, on the other hand, could hear his own voice, and even to him he sounded high and strange.
Eli’s step slowed slightly, the sound of feet on sidewalk less hurried. “If he’d shot that man, we would have been responsible for that injury, and I am fairly certain there are laws about holding meetings and the like.” The he went unnamed, and he continued on without clarification. “He’s harmless. I’d trust him with my life.”
The disbelief made it through the computer voice. “Are you serious? He pulled a gun out of your shirt without you stopping him, and I don’t think you or that friend of yours would have been able to take it away from him without someone getting shot. And if that had happened,” he said, forcefully, “that would have been on him, however he is, not you.”
“There had to be a reason,” Eli replied, immediate and certain in Julian’s defense. “Until I ask him, I’m not going to judge him. He seemed to feel the other man was a threat, and for all we know he was. Who’s to say he wasn’t there to harm us all?” He signed. “Julian certainly thought he wasn’t safe.”
“Julian? Julian what? Do you know him?” The keyboard tapped as he tried to find some sign of Julian’s description in the city, crime or other.
“Yes, I know him. I said I’d trust him with my life, didn’t I?” Eli rubbed his face, the Bluetooth registering the cessasation of movement entirely as he stopped walking. “I suppose you could call me his-” He paused, looking for a word and failing. “He’s my friend.”
The tapping stopped. “What he did didn’t look very friendly.” A breath. “It looked to me like was willing to put a bullet in you if he had to. Or let you take one for him.”
“He was frightened.” Eli sighed, and he turned toward Reliquary, hoping Julian would return there eventually. “I don’t know why, but he was. Julian lives under my roof. He eats my food, helps take care of someone I care about, works with me. He is harmless. Something like a precocious child in an adult’s body with amazing moments of clarity.” He sighed again. “He wouldn’t have reacted like he did without reason. Perhaps not a reason that makes sense to you or I, but a reason all the same.”
“That’s so reassuring.” Rescue, Preston, wasn’t tapping the keyboard anymore. Sure. The guy was working for Eli. Of course he was. “So if he shoots you, we’ll know he had a reason that makes sense to him. Great.”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that tonight was a bloody failure. I just pissed away any progress we’d made in the span of an hour. Drake is, I’m certain, livid. We’ll garner no assistance based on this meeting, and word of mouth with probably do us no favors.” Eli took a deep breath, a frustrated one. “I never asked to lead up an organization. I’m supposed to go into buildings and do investigative work.”
“Your attendees had no reason to think Julian’s actions had anything to do with EIT. From what I could tell, all of them except--the tall dark man seemed eager to speak with you.” Preston had no idea why he was encouraging this.
“Come now. You’re always quick to be blunt. There’s no need to make me feel better about things now,” Eli said, slowing as the shop came into view in the distance, almost stopping. “We have no resources. We can’t even buy bloody radios. Perhaps we should quit while we’re ahead. I could be a professor and pretend the Night Terror isn’t killing people in their beds.”
“For how long?” The computer’s voice took all emotion out of the question. It could have been sarcasm, or it could have been an honest question. It might even have been enlightening, sounding the way things sound when someone is just realizing them. But it wasn’t possible to tell.
“Until I’m old and gray and die in my bed,” Eli replied, but there was no force behind it, no strength or conviction. He sighed. “We can’t do this with just two men, and even if the women were interested in helping, none of them are fighters.”
“If you want to fight, and you want more fighters, you’re going to have to reconsider working with the masks. They’re the ones that want to fight.” Preston didn’t have a visual on him anymore, and the phone Eli was using didn’t have GPS he could access.
“They have different goals,” Eli said, because that he was certain of.
“They do right now. But maybe that’s because they don’t know there are others.” He sighed. “If you want help, that’s where you’re going to need to go, at least in this city.”
“What do you know about how they operate? I’ll be quite honest with you, I don’t want anyone in a cowl ordering me around, and Drake won’t care for it, either,” Eli said. He thought the masks were egoists, and he didn’t like the idea of playing nice with them.
“It seems to me that if you want to stick to your goals, you’re either going to be taking orders or giving them. I recall you saying you didn’t like making speeches, as well.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Rescue.”
“Not much more than you. They’re better funded than you, more organized than you, and up against the same people. How much more, or why, or even who or how many, I don’t know.”
“They aren’t up against the same people. I’ve been tracking what they do, Rescue. They concentrate on alley thugs and rapists. That isn’t where I feel the need is. They seldom go after anyone significant. All these named culprits, they make no attempt to do anything there, not that I can see.” Eli shook his head, the sound coming through as movement and air. “Hardly the same thing at all.”
“I can tell you right now that you don’t know everything they do. I also can’t tell you everything they do; but it’s more than that.” After a short pause Preston said, finally, “Say you’re right. The masks are them, and you’re you. Then what are you going to do?”
“I know you respect them, perhaps work for them, who knows. But I’ve seen nothing to impress me, and quite a bit of ego that doesn’t. If I’m mistaken, I’ll be the first to admit it. But the Night Terror has been on their radar for months, and nothing. The Siren as well. The one they call the Penguin, the Joker.” He shook his head again. “I have no idea what I’m going to do. I can shoot as well as anyone, but defense is not my area of expertise. Perhaps working with the masks is the best we can hope for, but it would have to be more than street crimes.”
“Maybe you overestimate them. They might have been looking at all of these people, but made no more progress than you.” Another of his short pauses. “Not that I know.”
“Yes, well, we only look into those things. We don’t deviate by going after drug lords and gangs, and it makes us no better than them. It just makes us different, and we are never going to agree, you and I, and I’ve made a bloody fucking mess of our organization this evening. So, you’ll excuse me if I’m less than open to the wonders of the masks,” Eli said, sounding as frustrated as he felt and walking once more.
Preston could appreciate that. He could also appreciate that drug lords and gangs, when you looked at the sheer amount of damage they did and the number of lives lost, were more of a threat than one or two people, as horrible as they might be. Suddenly he said, “Where are you going?”
It reminded Eli that the computer voice in his ear didn’t know who he was, where he worked, what he called himself. “Can you see me?”
“Not at the moment, no,” Preston admitted, and obviously not liking it.
“Yes, well, we should keep it that way.” It’s clear from his tone, that Eli isn’t feeling particularly trusting tonight, and it comes through in his voice. “Wouldn’t you rather spend time talking to a mask?”
“We’ll talk on some night nobody held a gun to your head,” Preston said, after a pause, longer than his usual. There was a few moments of static, as if he was going to say something, then he disconnected.
Eli shoved his Bluetooth in his pocket angrily a moment, cursing himself for thinking a computer voice in his ear was going to understand something so personal. He pulled out his phone, and he texted Preston. Blake came to an EIT meeting. Make sure he got out alright? He turned the phone off a minute later, walking into Reliquary and not turning on the lights. “Julian? Are you here? I’m quite alone.”
Julian was there, just like Eli knew he would be. No lights were on, and he still wore the same padded jacket and wild look from the tennis courts. "I can't go on this appointment. I'm too busy with the others." He stepped a little closer, into the exterior light that made it through the front windows. The gun was loose in his hand.
“No more appointments this evening,” Eli said, moving forward with painstaking slowness, left and toward the kitchen. “But if you’ll come along, we can have some of the cake Nana left in the icebox. Milk, too.” He didn’t look at the glint from the gun barrel whenever it moved in Julian’s hand, and he didn’t reach for anything. He just walked toward the kitchen like he always did.
Julian backed away slightly, a lean like a willow in a strong wind. "I'm not hungry." The oddness of the situation was further compounded by the distance between the two, as Eli usually had a sticky-fingered Julian treading on his heels. He made no threat with the gun as he moved backward into the kitchen where he'd come from. "If you're not working, what are you doing here? There's nobody here that isn't working."
Eli registered the strangeness of Julian refusing food, but he walked into the kitchen anyway and opened the freezer, giving Julian enough time to back away if he wished before doing so. “I wanted to talk to you,” he admitted, adding, “and I was hungry. I was nervous before the meeting, and so I had nothing to eat since lunch.” That was true, and he pulled out the leftover cake and put it on the cutting board.
"I can't eat before appointments. I get sick. Then my head spins around, like a top, like that girl in the horror movie." Julian turned his chin without breaking his gaze. "Around." He lifted his arm, the one with the gun, limply, and twisted the muzzle toward his temple. He drew a circle in the air with it. "Around."
Eli moved forward immediately when the gun was turned, forgetting the cake and the plate and the open refrigerator door. “Julian, do hand me the gun,” he said, hands outstretched. “I’m concerned you’ll hurt yourself.” And, after a quick breath, “there is no appointment, so you may eat all the cake you like.”
Julian turned the gun in Eli's direction, grip firm, eyes widening. "Then you would have it and I wouldn't. Right now I have it. It's not my op, but the last man armed wins." He giggled softly to himself. "I'm the last man. Again."
“Julian.” A pause. “I won’t harm you. Empty the cartridge, and let’s have cake, and you can tell me what that man did.”
"That man?" Julian's arm fell a little, and his eyes slightly unfocused. His pale face was briefly illuminated in the headlights of a car slowly passing out front. "He's not a man. He's a monster with a man's face. He tears people and chews on their lives until they bleed to death." The muzzle of the gun started drifting back and forth in front of him.
Eli tried to keep his eyes from tracking the gun. He was frightened. No, he was bloody terrified, but he tried to keep it out of his eyes and out of his body. “I believe you,” he said, blue eyes fixed on Julian. “You worked with him in Musings?” It was a guess, and it was (possibly) a dangerous one, but he wasn’t making any progress.
Julian’s curly head bobbed slowly up and down. “Jordan is rising and coming down toward your location,” he said in a distant voice. “Hurry and catch the train.” His elbow sank slowly down to his side and the gun was eying the floor as Julian looked blankly around for people and things that weren’t there. He was silent for a moment, and apparently calm, but then the soft bell on the door rang in the main cafe.
The door’s familiar scrape against the floor preceded a hesitant but familiar voice. “Eli?”
Eli, who had been watching the gun lower while trying to figure out if catching the train was possibly some sort of military code, froze when he heard the bell jingle. A second later, when he heard Preston’s voice, his head snapped back up and he put both hands out. “That isn’t the man from the tennis courts,” he told Julian. “He’s a friend. I’ll ask him to leave.” He didn’t move as he said it, waiting for some sort of agreement as his heart started pounding in his chest.
The sounds and sudden movement jarred Julian out of his reminiscence, and his knuckles turned white on the gun as he stepped quickly back so that his back was to a wall and he had a line of sight out toward the cafe and Eli as well. “It doesn’t take him long to find where he’s going,” Julian said, sounding panicked, without understanding. Something about leaving got through, however, and he took a quick menacing step toward Eli and jabbed the gun in the air at him to keep him properly in place. “You stay here! It’s dangerous!”
Outside, Preston had just driven from Anton’s nearest lab, where he’d spent the last eight hours prepping for this damn meeting. He was sticky, wrinkled, and worried, and he stumbled into a chair in the dark with a soft curse. The door had been unlocked, which made him more worried still, and he headed toward the voices and lights uncertainly. “Eli?”
“Stay where you’re at,” Eli called, his voice loud and with enough warning in it that even a deaf man could hear. “I’ll bring you some coffee in a minute,” he added, and he looked back at Julian and the gun. The menacing step Julian had taken was undeniably threatening, but it was Preston Eli was worried about, not himself.
Eli kept his hands up, easily visible to Julian. “Drake ensured that the man did not follow you, Julian. Drake and I work together. He wouldn’t let the man come here.” Pause. “You’re safe. Preston is my next door neighbor. He wasn’t at the tennis courts. If you put down the gun, I’ll introduce you.”
“There’s always more than one man,” Julian insisted, but looking less sure at Eli’s words. His eyes moved quickly from the door to the cafe and back. “They’re everywhere, watching. You don’t know for sure.”
“Eli?” Preston called, not at all reassured by the strain in Eli’s voice. Footsteps paused outside the door. “Is he with you?”
“Preston, just sit your arse down and wait for the bloody coffee!” Eli yelled, and it was a yell, which he realized as soon as it was out of his mouth. He had looked over his shoulder as he said it, and he looked back at Julian almost immediately. “I know Preston. I’ve known him since high school,” he said, because it was the most reassuring thing he could think of to say. “If he was doing anything other than being an office manager, I would know.”
“Since school,” Julian repeated, somehow absorbing that in a small miracle. His hair seemed to stand even more on end at the shouting and the noise, and he slid a little closer to Eli as if whatever came through the door was just as likely to come for him as Julian. The steps outside stopped, and Preston didn’t say anything else, and in the moments between Julian’s eyes jumped around the room. Suddenly he lunged out for Eli, hooking his upper arm with the hand that wasn’t armed, and pulled him toward the door. “Let’s go see.”
Eli wasn’t expecting the lunge or the grab, and he tensed, muscles preparing to pull away. He didn’t move, didn’t fight it, though he did ask, voice quieter. “I don’t want him to be frightened of the gun, Julian. He isn’t accustomed to them. He’s likely to panic.”
“If he comes too close, it’s okay,” Julian said, smiling a smile that was not very nice, “Here, he’s not scared of you.”Julian thrust the gun at him. “Make him come near if he’s dangerous. I can fix it.” And with that he pulled Eli through the door.
Preston was on the other side of the counter, palms flat against the glass pastry case. His eyes snapped from man to man, confused. He didn’t see the gun yet. “What happened?”
Eli grabbed the gun when it was shoved at him, and he just held it for a split second, surprised, before releasing the magazine without even looking down at it. Julian still had a hold of his arm, and he didn’t try to get free. He just dropped the empty gun on the counter with a clatter. He looked at Preston a moment, thankful that Julian wasn’t waving a gun at the other man, and then he spoke. “Julian and I were merely getting a late snack. Julian, this is Preston. Preston, Julian.” He wanted to tell Preston that he was meant to check on Blake, not come down to the shop, but he suspected bickering wouldn’t sit well with Julian just then.
Preston knew what he was supposed to be doing. He also knew where Blake was, and he had, up until about fifteen minutes ago, known where the man with the butter knife was. But he’d made a decision, and that decision was to find out where Eli was. Eli and the nutcase with the gun. Hard eyes stared over the counter at Julian, and Julian narrowed his eyes back as if he thought Preston would leap over the counter and try to throttle both of them. “A snack. After this meeting of yours, you’re going to have a snack?”
Julian hissed, “Ah ha, see. Meetings and things. You can’t tell, Eli.” He pushed at Eli’s shoulder and reached one long arm over the counter for Preston. It was unclear what, exactly, he was reaching for.
“NO.” Eli’s voice was shock-loud, and he grabbed at Julian’s arm before repeating the word. “No.” He shook his head at Preston, and he nodded jerkily toward the door. Go, his gaze said. “Julian, I texted Preston on the way here and told him I had left the meeting. I can tell.”
Julian, angry at being thwarted, half turned and put his palm against Eli’s chest to shove him out of the way. “I haven’t seen him. You can’t tell.” He shoved, and reached for Preston again, but Preston had the wits to get back out of the way, two steps to one side so the cash register blocked Julian and he was that much closer to the space between pastry case and wall.
Closer, but still out of reach, Preston said, “Eli said there was a meeting. I wasn’t there. Were you?” He wasn’t helping with his suspicious, slightly alarmed look.
Eli knew that wasn’t going to help, because he already knew that Julian was trained to look for things he wasn’t. And if he could sense the suspicion on Preston, Julian certainly could. He stepped between them, trying to block Preston with his body, while facing Julian. “Please, Julian,” he said, trying to catch the young man’s gaze and hold it, thinking that would help him to understand. “I trust him, and I trust you. I don’t want either of you hurt.” His hands were shaking the longer this went on, and he knew a fight would only result in himself or Preston getting hurt - he suspected Julian was trained in that, too.
Julian glared at Preston past Eli, and though Preston didn’t say anything, he made it as obvious as possible that he wasn’t leaving without Eli. The two of them had a juvenile staring contest for a second, and then Julian let the tension go out of his arms and his expression acquired a familiar sulk.
Preston wrapped a hand, not hard, around Eli’s elbow, now just behind him. “Eli. What the hell is going on?”
The familiar sulk was the most welcome thing Eli had ever seen, at least right at that moment, and he took a few steps forward and cupped Julian’s cheek, pulling free of Preston for the moment, and then he ruffled Julian’s hair, his blue eyes harmless as he touched him. “Go on up and get ready for bed, Julian. Preston and I will clean up, and I’ll make sure no one comes in, alright?”
Julian muttered something more about trains and nobody bringing cupcakes, and then he turned around, pulling at the curls at the back of his neck. By the time he had disappeared back up the back stair, Preston was back on the other side of the counter, sitting on one of the tables in the middle of the dark cafe, one palm against his forehead. He didn’t say anything.
Eli waited until Julian was at the top step, and then he turned and walked back to where Preston was. He pulled a chair beside him, and he turned it around and sat, reaching over the back of the chair to reach for Preston’s arm. “He’s like a child, Preston,” he said, voice a whisper. “He was frightened.”
Preston didn’t reach back, and his fingers against his hairline stilled. His gaze was red-rimmed and tired from staring at a computer screen too long, and his flat, unimpressed eyes met Eli’s. “He doesn’t look like a child to me.”
“He doesn’t look like one, no, but he behaves like one,” Eli said, still keeping his voice low. “You should come see him on a day when he isn’t wielding a gun. He and Georgie, they’re the best of friends. I found him on a street corner, dirty and unfed and talking madness. He isn’t like the rest of us, but he deserves better than being out there,” he said surely, that old passion for towns that banded together coming through in his voice.
“You just brought this guy in off the street. After you heard him talking crazy.” Preston said it with such a flat tone that it was obvious what he thought of this, and he lowered his eyelids as if he couldn’t imagine something making him more tired than this. “Do you realize how dangerous that is? What the hell was he going to do to me just a minute ago?”
“Something frightened him,” Eli said, the excuse sounding inadequate to his own ears. “There was a man at the EIT meeting who scared him. I don’t know much about his past, Preston, but I don’t think it was very pretty, and he’s never been violent before.” He let his hand drop from Preston’s arm, and he folded both of his arms along the back of the chair. “He didn’t hurt you, and I’ll speak to him in the morning. He was spooked, and he doesn’t know you.” He rubbed a hand through his inky hair. “I don’t know how to make you understand this, Preston.”
“Even if I did. You’re talking about a grown man, not a child. He’s capable of doing serious damage, even if he doesn’t know it. Isn’t that the kind of person you’re supposed to do something about in this group of yours?” Fatigue and the leftover adrenaline of watching something on a screen, both distant and terrifyingly immediate, made Preston unkind.
Eli tensed. “My group deals with ability-based crimes, Preston. He’s a scared boy. There’s a difference, and I thought you would be understanding of it,” he snapped defensively, looking up as he said it. “Perhaps we shouldn’t discuss EIT,” he finished, shoving the chair away and standing, pacing over to the front window and looking out it, shoulders locked and tense as he looked outside. “After this evening, you’ve hardly anything to worry about, anyway. Did you check on Blake?”
Preston ignored that. “Fine. Then we won’t discuss your meeting, or the gun on the counter, or what you’re doing here at--” he dropped his head to look at his watch, but he’d taken it off to type easier. “--Whatever time it is.” Preston got up too, hunching a little deeper into his coat.
Eli leaned one hand beside the window frame, palm splayed and flat. “Go home, and I’ll meet you there,” he said, glancing up toward the stairs, knowing he couldn’t raise his voice or grab Preston like he wanted to, not when Julian could misconstrue it as some kind of attack.
Preston glanced back, but Eli was looking the other way. “Can’t.” He pushed through the dead air in the room and then the bell chimed his exit. “I have to work. Later.” And with that completely inadequate explanation, he let the door fall shut behind him.