T.R. Lansing (darkertides) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-07-28 19:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [07] july, tr lansing |
Who: Solo between T. Robert Lansing and his personal assistant (if anyone is interested in taking up this role or helping me cast an NPC, let me know).
Where: Lansing's office at the Capitol
What: Discovery time.
When: Overdue, imho! But no, really, backdated to Monday. Someone had to compile some paperwork.
“Hawkins is a common surname,” Robert said, a deadpan response after looking through the papers in the folder on his desk. A stall, rather than an outright denial. While he was more than capable of turning a blind eye to certain things for a considerable amount of time, outright denial has never been his strong suit. Given how busy they'd been, a part of him is genuinely impressed with his personal assistant for bringing this to his attention. Part of him is a little disappointed that it hadn't been done sooner, but it was the sort of thing that could easily have been sat on. Buried. Overlooked, as Robert had chosen to overlook it, himself. So the extra effort was admirable. Thorough, really, which was remarkable given the difficulties of obtaining birth records and transcripts these days. The report had taken a lot more work than just calling the prison and having some documents faxed over. He definitely appreciated that.
Still, it isn't exactly the fire and brimstone response that his assistant wanted, and the resulting irritation is understandable. “Not that common. Not when paired with Adelaide. Face it. She lied to you.”
“No, she didn't,” Robert countered, mouth twisting into a self-deprecating smirk as he scans the report again. His eyes don't move from the paperwork, pouring over the words as the mystery of his wife gets shaded in little by little. Answers to questions he'd never bothered to form. “I never asked about her family.”
“Oh, don't be so literal. She hid it from you, and that's the same damn thing.”
“Mm,” Robert agreed. That was true enough. She had hid it from him. That fact was obvious, drawing attention like a gaping, bloody hole where a tooth should have been. He prodded it over and over, fixating on the wrongness of it. She had hid this from him. How? Why? The pain of it bordered on maddening. White hot betrayal enervated him, making him hyper aware of his surroundings. He could feel his assistant's eyes on him. Could almost hear both heartbeats in the room... see the air being disrupted by the work of two sets of lungs. She'd hid this from him since the beginning. The cruelty was staggering. How? Why? What did it mean?
“Rob?” The voice was cautious, almost friendly in its use of his preferred name with a twist of diminutive. His brothers had called him Rob. Friends – if he had them – might call him Rob. (My wife calls me Thomas. I never corrected her. I never told her that I hate it, why I hate it...) Were they even friends? “Look, it doesn't mean she's involved in anything... but chances are Rafferty knows. Maybe she was just hoping to blackmail Adelaide. I don't know. But now we can't move against Rafferty directly without her dragging you down, too.”
More truth. He was just facing a mountain of truth today. Demi Rafferty was a problem he'd been prepared to handle. The prostitute-turned-resident-headache wasn't exactly subtle about her history, apparently preferring to take active part in the rumor mill instead of quelling it. Monumentally stupid behavior for a planted spy, but if she knew something devastating, herself, why would she need to worry? Adelaide had said nothing of blackmail, but bringing it up would have required bringing up the brother, so naturally, she'd kept quiet.
God, her expression hadn't so much as wavered. Pain, amazement and a sick sort of pride welled up within him, warring for top billing in his mind.
Perhaps he had underestimated her, after all. Just a little. “Did you make any copies of this?” He asked, finally looking up. Eyes dry but not without a touch of mania. His world – not particularly stable to begin with – had just been tipped.
“What? No. Of course, not. But I was thinking maybe we can get out in front of this train, if we bring this to Olinger--”
“If we bring this to Olinger, he won't believe I wasn't complicit,” Robert pointed out, already doing the calculations. Cold logic working like a salve to his burning nerves. There was no way the mayor would accept ignorance as an excuse in this matter. Not from him. He was the man who knew everything, so how the hell could he have not known something so pivotal about the woman he'd married? “Getting ahead of the train isn't an option. Catching up with it is. We have to scrub it.”
“What?”
“Scrub her record of everything that connects her to him legally. Destroy this paper trail. She hasn't been stupid about this, if she kept it from me. We can manufacture documents. Alter her birth date. Change her maiden name to Grant. If there's no legal proof that she's related to him, they can't use it against her.”
“That's insane!” Was it, though? Was it really any more insane than being married to a blood relative of the Mayor's personal boogeyman? On the sanity spectrum, where exactly did not knowing his wife's family ties lie? Still, the concerns were valid. “If you do that, you will be complicit. No offense, Rob, but I don't want to be arrested as your wife's accomplice. And I don't think you do, either. Think of your kid...”
“I am,” Robert tossed back. If Adelaide's ties were ever brought to the mayor, then she would likely be arrested as a spy. That was the likeliest outcome. Perhaps she'd be found innocent of any criminal intent, and would just be used as leverage against the Dog King. A best case scenario that seemed fairly bleak to him. Given Robert's own knowledge of Olinger's dealings, there was a slim chance he could come to an understanding with the mayor through a very convincing plea to regain trust, if not through blackmail of his own... but it was much more likely that Olinger would have him arrested and executed as a threat. That would be what Robert would advise, if he were outside of the situation. Excise the security problem as quickly and quietly as possible. If Olinger ever got it into his head that Robert was on the wrong side, he'd expect no less. He simply knew too much, as did his assistant. If this ship sank, they'd both be going down with it, and it wasn't difficult to make people disappear when the world was wrought with terrors.
That left his son without parents, in the custody of the Capitol. It was doubtful that Olinger would harbor ill will towards a baby, but Charles would probably be adopted out. Archer Avery, perhaps... a single workaholic in a questionable living situation with a decidedly unprofessional male roommate. Or one of his wife's female friends? (And how many of them were also complicit in this? How many of them knew?) The Mayor himself...?
None of the options were particularly heartening, so – for his son – Robert had exactly one choice at the moment: Keep the damn ship afloat.
“We need time to untangle this, find out exactly who's connected, who knows, and how involved she is with their organization. So we scrub her record. Make her irreproachable. Legally, she's been a Lansing since we've arrived in Austin. Nobody has had cause to look into her history, so we should be able to alter it unnoticed. That this James Hawkins has a sister close to her age is unfortunate, but it needn't be more than coincidence.”
“So... you want me to say that Adelaide is a common a name?”
“Yes.” Robert doesn't mind the skepticism there. One of the reasons he likes his assistant is that willingness to question, even argue when it was necessary. A week ago, this was a person who was second only to his wife and son in his estimated value. Now, he was no longer sure how the hierarchy was arranged. Everything was spinning now that he could no longer trust his wife. “For our purposes, it is.”
“Gotcha. I'm on it. But what are you going to do about it?”
Good question. Straight to the point and perfectly executed. What the hell was he going to do about this? She hadn't told him. Keeping that in mind, what else didn't he know? How complicit was she? Could this all be a coincidence? Hard to believe, but the alternative was that this was the reason she'd been so willing to move south out of Boston. Then there was the deception, itself. Had it been born out of a misguided desire to protect him, or was she actively plotting against him? Dragging him head-first into a war that he hadn't been expecting, selling him out to enemies he hadn't asked for. Why? What did it mean?
It made him feel physically ill that he didn't know. Couldn't even form a proper theory around it.
“Rob? Are you--”
“I'm fine, thank you.” Before it was objected to – he was obviously a very long way from fine – Robert lifted a hand for silence, trying to detach himself enough from the situation to think. Shut down his bias and emotions, try to put his own mask in place. “She doesn't know what I know, and I don't yet know enough. So we proceed with caution. Focus on scrubbing her record. I'll find out everything I can, and decide from there. Cancel today's meetings for me. I have a lot to go over, and I can't have any distractions.”
As much as he wanted to confront her, grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she gave him a timeline of events... he knew better. She'd been so careful. If he came at her directly, she might do any number of ill-advised things. She might flee, taking Charles with her, and that was unacceptable. He was keenly aware that there was more than his marriage at stake. If she'd been feeding information to a gang of murderers, if she was the mole, then she needed to be dealt with. Just... not necessarily by the authorities. He could handle it himself, off the record, out of the public eye. For the family's sake.
He was a family man, after all.