Lachlan Kelly (viridi_motus) wrote in theunboundic, @ 2019-12-12 10:17:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ! time: june 26 - july 2, lachlan kelly, reagan shrike |
Who: Reagan & Lachlan
What: Discussing what happened to Luke, Resistance things
Where: Reagan's place
When: Tuesday, very early
Did you hear about what happened? At the Palace? I would have written you yesterday but I had to go and see for mys the shop was terribly busy.
It’s bad, Lachlan.
***
[Reagan’s message goes unseen, appearing in Lachlan’s journal not long after he sends a hurried message to Swallowtail, and he slips from his room like a shadow in the retreating night]
The majority of Lachlan’s previous day had been spent suppressing the urge to seek out Reagan’s company. Ever since Viola had written to let him know how upset their friend was, he had wanted to see her, to talk about what had happened to Luke. He had absolutely no intention of trying to calm Reagan down. Aside from knowing that it would be an entirely doomed endeavour, trying would feel akin to implying what Adler had done was not really so bad. They had every right to be furious, but they also had jobs that wouldn’t allow them to cast aside their responsibilities for the pursuit of vengeance. Doing so would only expose them. They had to bide their time (barely) and be sure they weren’t seen having any exchange that could arouse suspicion later on.
If Lachlan had spent the night alone, he would have sought Reagan out over the fleeting comfort of sleep. As it was, Viola had managed to sneak away, and gods was he glad that she had. Not only for the selfish pleasure of her company, but for the gift, the treasure, that she had given him. Unwilling to leave the precious pills in his room unguarded, Lachlan had folded the Ellevra up in a handkerchief and tucked them deep into his pocket after Viola had left in the hour before the breaking dawn.
Practised as he was at avoiding notice when it was not wanted, Lachlan took the shortest, safest path he knew to Reagan’s home, avoiding milk delivery routes and anyone else he suspected might be up at such an early hour. When he passed by the glass shopfront window to Gerrick’s, he saw no telltale glow coming from under the closed door to Reagan’s private office. So she wasn’t yet at work, but Lachlan was sure she wasn’t sleeping. And if he was mistaken and happened to wake Reagan, he was prepared for the sharp side of her tongue - his hide had long since been toughened against the worst she had to say.
After ascending the stairs to Reagan’s home, Lachlan paused outside her door for one moment before knocking softly, the familiar rat-at-tat-tat they used to signal to each other just who had come calling.
***
Reagan had long since become accustomed to Lachlan showing up at her place of residence at odd hours. Living in Castyll, in the midst of the fighting, she had actually come to expect it, but it felt juxtaposed now to hear the familiar rat-a-tat of his call against her door. Wrapped in a black robe embossed with shimmering serpents of gold and emerald, she looked far from presentable; her hair was haphazardly knotted atop her head, and in the cuff of one flowing sleeve a multitude of pins gleamed, pinching the fabric so that her wrist showed. She looked tired but alert, her eyes sharp above piscine crescents.
“You don’t write first?” She stepped aside for him anyway, tugging him inside by an elbow. Her grip firmly squeezed, wordlessly conveying her gratitude that he had come despite her scolding. Inside, two dress forms had been dragged up from the shop to provide eerie silhouettes in the loft. One was adorned in a shimmering ensemble of pearls and sequins in varying blush and nude hues with a towering, conical hat to match (“I’m going as a glass of champagne,” the customer had boasted, to which Reagan had replied with she hoped had been a convincingly impressed humming sound). The other was draped in the vestiges of a (notably large) exotic dancing girl, replete with seafoam fabrics in varying shades and a hip scarf dripping with chiming metallic coins. The ceramic mug on the table had only a portion of black coffee left in it, only lending to the impression that Reagan had been awake for some time (or perhaps had never even slept at all).
Letting the door click behind them, she bustled past her friend’s imposing figure to start clamoring through the cabinets for another cup. They were past pretense or formality, yet she still filled it with steaming coffee from the pot, freshly made, and carried that back with her as well to pour more for herself as she thrust the mug at him with an air of impatience. “You heard.” It wasn’t a question. Straight down to business. She began shoveling spoons of sugar into the inky blackness of the potent coffee she’d brewed for herself. The dervish of her restless energy was tangible, an electric tang in the air.
***
Others might have heard admonishment in Reagan’s tone, but Lachlan saw it for the greeting it was, and he allowed himself to be all but dragged through the door without complaint. Ever observant, he took in the shimmering costumes, the almost empty mug. Almost everything except for the less than presentable state he found his friend in. Reagan was Reagan no matter her style of hair or dress, and he knew her well enough to sense her moods without the need to lay eyes on her. He didn’t need to see the shadows under her eyes to know that she was tired, he knew her dedication to her job and her fury over Luke would be enough to keep her more awake than any amount of coffee.
The way Reagan thrust the freshly poured mug of coffee in his direction gave him no choice but to accept, and Lachlan nodded, both as thanks for the drink and as confirmation that he had heard about what happened.
People got nervous when storms approached, they sought cover and tried to avoid the worst of what was to come. Lachlan didn’t flinch from the pent up energy radiating from Reagan though, he just pulled up a chair and sat down, his eyes never leaving hers. His face was turned up to the gathering clouds, and he was running the risk of being struck by lightning, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. “Did he tell you about it himself? Have you seen him since?” The truth had a way of twisting into something unrecognisable as it travelled down the grapevine of village gossip, and the best way to find out what had happened was to get it from the Fox’s mouth, so to speak.
***
She could feel Lachlan’s eyes on her, but she kept her focus downward, staring into her coffee with her lips twisted to the side. After one indecisive moment, she added one more spoonful of sugar for good measure (at least four or five by that point), stirred, and then dropped into the seat beside him, gaze finding his over the rim of her mug as she raised the over-sweetened beverage to her lips.
Elbows propped against the table, she inclined towards him the way houseplants tilted towards the panes of a window. She allowed herself the luxury of a weary sigh. “Yes. And I have.” She winced as the coffee scalded her tongue and set the mug down before her, small hands wrapped around it so that her nails could drum a fidgety meter against the ceramic. “Ciara Byrne wrote to me the morning after it happened.” She could scarcely help the way her eyebrows jolted at the other woman’s name, the petty way she drawled at the syllables of it. She was unapologetic, though, fixing him with a pointed look as she added, “And before you ask, no, I do not know why she did it. She just… told me he was hurt and that I should come by. I thought she might have been lying. He’s always getting hurt.” She rolled her eyes for emphasis. “But she’d written in his journal. And… if something really did happen… I knew she wouldn’t have been writing me, of all people, unless it was an emergency.”
Fingertips still warmed by her mug lifted to press against her bottom lip, her chin cradled in her palm. Her expression faltered from that stern veneer of disgruntled impatience to reveal something softer, subdued emotion that reminisced of a time where, after so many days of war and fighting had ravaged Castyll, she had whispered to him in hissing tones and begged him not to return to the fray. Her reasoning had been surprisingly forthright, given her usual tendencies toward stubborn denial: she had been afraid.
“I didn’t think it would be like that. He just looked… gods Lachlan, he looked so…” She seemed to catch herself, recognizing that she was fading into someplace from which there was no easy return, and she re-fortified herself, sitting up a little straighter, tilting a knuckle against the underside of her nose to aid in her composure. She let the heat from the ceramic against her palm remind her of her anger. “She nearly killed him,” she hushed. “He wouldn’t tell me very much, but I know that. And she took his Gift. It still hasn’t returned, either, as far as I know.” She looked at him, her lips drawn into a tight line, nostrils flared, words stiff and caught in her throat. She did not need to censor herself, not with him. Not ever. There was something so freeing about that, about just being in his presence, that she did not realize how much she’d missed him until now. “Nothing’s been done. From what I’ve heard, Belmont went down to the Palace himself, presumably to settle things and throw some coins on Antoine’s desk. But that’s it. That’s all. We’re apparently only worth the gold pieces that Belmont and Adler can fit in their pockets.”
***
From the way that Reagan stared down into her coffee, it was almost as if she were trying to divine the future in the mug’s murky, sugar-laden depths. If only it were that easy, if only sweet things were coming their way. The potent brew revealed no secrets though, not even so much as a warning as to its scalding temperature. Lachlan paused with the mug to his lips when he saw Reagan wince, and blew softly across the coffee’s surface before taking a cautious sip as tendrils of steam curled upward around his face like unfurling vines. The subsequent grimace that followed had less to do with a burned tongue and more to do with hearing Ciara Byrne’s name.
“What’s that cat-clawed -” Reagan cut him off before the question even got asked, and Lachlan matched her pointed look with an unwavering stare. He had his reasons for thinking very little of his sister Morrigan’s oldest friend, but he couldn’t recall Reagan ever sounding petty about the bedmate before. Although Reagan rarely had overtly positive things to say about other people, she didn’t tend to take a tone unless someone had been stupid enough to get on her bad side. Just what Byrne had done, and why she had written to Reagan anyway? The answers were like missing pieces to a puzzle and Lachlan listened carefully, eager to get a better picture of just what was going on.
What pulled him up short was the softening of Reagan’s hardened features. He knew that expression well, he had spent a long time staring down into those eyes when she had begged him not to go back to the fighting in Castyll, and he hadn’t been able to give what she had asked for. Now though, he could go some way to making up for that. “Something has been done,” he assured with the kind of certainty that only came from someone who had personal involvement in the matter. Soon enough, and Reagan would be involved too. Together, they would make Belmont pay far more than the pathetic fistfuls of coins that the money-grubbing proprietor of the Palace had scrounged up. The Ellevra would be better than any blood money.
But first, Reagan would need to be filled in on just how a wraith like Adler had managed to nearly kill someone as hardy as Lukas Fox. “He wouldn’t tell you much, fine. What did he tell you? Did he mention anything about that damned creature taking any pills?”
***
Her chin jolted from her palm in surprise at the assurance in his voice, the intensity in his eyes. Eyebrows curled towards one another in unspoken questioning, and she shook her head, frustration expelled from her in a huff. “Really not much. He said that a client had ‘roughed him up,’ confessed it was Adler, and then refused to really tell me much more beyond the fact that he’d lost consciousness sometime during. He kept trying to underplay it. To make it sound like it was just something that ‘happened’.” Her jaw twitched to recall Luke’s flippancy. How much of the blame he had clearly taken on for himself. “But he didn’t mention any kind of… medication beyond what Viola Rosier had given him.”
There was more to it, and she leaned towards him in earnest. “Why? What do you know?”
***
Frustrated huffs of breath seemed to be par for the course for Reagan where Luke was concerned, and while Lachlan had very little patience for the youngest Fox brother, he could understand why she was so bothered by Luke downplaying his assault. What had transpired at the Palace was wrong, plain and simple. No amount of twisting the truth would change that, or shift the blame from Adler’s shoulders. The fact that Luke had even tried only made things worse.
News about the Ellevra alone was worth its weight in gold, let alone possession of the actual pills. Lachlan had divulged the news to Swallowtail, but had no intention of informing their resistance cell as a whole. The less people who knew, the better, but Reagan was one of the very few who had to know. Lachlan didn’t bother trying to extract promises from Reagan to keep her silence. He knew he could trust her, and figured that a need to elicit a promise from someone was instinct’s way of whispering that they shouldn’t be told in the first place.
“Belmont has brought a new drug into town, the very antithesis of Fade. I would stake my life on Adler having popped a pill before going to the Palace. If she had been capable of stripping Gifts away before, Fiona certainly would have found out first hand.” Lachlan’s jaw clenched at the thought. “So, plans for Friday have changed. Everything will proceed as planned, but I need you now. We’re going to take the lot.”
***
A drug. She was staring at him, her mouth having fallen slightly agape as she attempted to process what she was being told. The antithesis of Fade? And of course the Cloves had been hoarding it for themselves, bolstering their own power whilst Aurelle smothered under Fade administrations. And to what end? To add insult to injury, or in this case, injury to insult. Her jaw clicked shut, a muscle in her cheek twitching as she ground her teeth to the point of throbbing.
There was no question that she would join him. There was no question that they had to get their hands on this mysterious, Gift-enhancing drug. But there was one question, and Reagan’s stare was unwavering.
“The Cloves must be going out of their way to keep this quiet. How do you know about it?”
***
Lachlan could not recall the last time he had managed to stun Reagan to the point that her mouth dropped open. They were so often attuned to each other that they could anticipate much of what the other would say or do, which made catching her off guard all the more difficult. This same fact had him anticipating Reagan’s question before it came, knowing that she wouldn’t blindly accept such momentous news without knowing where it came from. Knowing what was coming didn’t make things much easier though, and Lachlan’s jaw clicked shut in an unconscious mirror of Reagan’s action.
“They’re keeping it quiet because it hasn’t been approved for sale on the Clovennian market yet,” he replied, because that was easy enough to share at least. “And blind as they are, they’re still aware that any Aurellian who knows the truth will want to get their hands on the drug.” That wasn’t an answer to Reagan’s question though, and Lachlan knew better than to hope she would be satisfied with what he had offered so far.
Silence stretched between them for a long moment before Lachlan gave in part way, waving a hand through the air in a resigned fashion. “I heard about it through Viola.” The truth, short and simple, and as much as he was willing to share. Given how free Reagan had been in regards to Lukas Fox and that dance at Turning, he didn’t think she had any right to complain. Not that that was likely to stop her.
***
She was staring, her brows having hiked well towards the disheveled knot of her hair. “And they’re manufacturing it here?” It seemed to her an exceptionally stupid idea, really… why test a product like that amidst the very population they sought to control with an opposing drug? Why leave it so within reach that at any given moment, one of them could discover and reveal it?
She wasn’t sure she’d ever stop being fascinated by Clove hubris.
But what was even more interesting to her was Lachlan’s nonchalant confession. “Viola Rosier,” she echoed, not quite a question so much as a slow drawl of the woman’s name. She waited expectantly for him to elaborate, but naturally he declined. As certain as Clove overconfidence was Lachlan Kelly’s ability to agitate her, and her eyes narrowed into the expression of one who had not quite heard correctly.
“VIola Rosier,” she said again, just to be sure. “I wasn’t aware that the doctor was in the habit of confiding secrets like that to her staff.” Though, she reminded herself, it was not entirely unlike her to find companionship in unusual places. She’d been hospitable to a Tillan seamstress. But she’d certainly never admitted possession of any secret drugs around her. Not… power-enhancing ones, anyway.
She was looking at him, waiting for him to elaborate.
***
“I didn’t say that,” Lachlan replied with a shake of his head. From what he had gathered from Fiona, Belmont did have a laboratory, but it couldn’t possibly be well equipped enough to manufacture a substance like Ellevra. “They just have it here, shipped in from Belailles.” Whatever the drug’s origins, it didn’t matter. They would get their hands on it, and be one step closer to being free from Faidoux.
Reagan’s vaguely incredulous repetition of Viola’s name was to be expected, and Lachlan unflinchingly returned her stare. “Viola Rosier,” he confirmed, repeating the name for the fourth time in less than a minute before falling back to silence once more. Reagan understandably wanted him to elaborate, and he just as understandably didn’t want to. An irresistible force had met with an immovable object, and the agitated tension in the air was almost visible for how thick it had become. He had never been staff to anyone, and Reagan damn well knew it.
“It isn’t as though she’s in the habit of talking to every scullery maid and stable boy that happens to cross her path,” Lachlan muttered, before waving a hand impatiently through the air. “It doesn’t matter how I know, it just matters that I do. That we do. And that we don’t let precious information go to waste.”
***
“No, just her gardeners,” she returned, brow spiking to emphasize the irony in the observation. He was being avoidant, deliberately so, and in doing so was only stoking the flames of her suspicion. However, his assertion that they had to focus, to take advantage of this (curiously attained) information was effective in that she was at least willing to curb her pushing interrogation for the time being to ask another, more pertinent question.
“Who else knows about this?” she hushed, scrutinizing the familiar features of his face for further signs of withholding. That was an important factor. Were there other Aurellians who had been privy to the same level of intimate secrecy that Lachlan was? Was Swallowtail already aware?
****
Lachlan couldn’t quite remember why he had ever found Reagan’s snark amusing or charming. He was neither amused nor charmed, and while he didn’t squirm under her gaze like others might, his eyes narrowed slightly. No one could get under his calloused skin quite like Reagan Shrike.
It was with deliberately unrecognised relief that he shifted his focus to answering her next question. “Swallowtail,” he answered succinctly, before tilting his head slightly to consider other options. “I can’t see anyone at Belmont trusting anyone outside of that house with this. And Auster hasn’t been here long enough to make any friends. I suppose it’s possible that Llewellyn knows, either from seeing it arrive at Hiraeth or through Beau, but I can’t say for certain.” It would help his cause if their Danu did know about the drug, if only so suspicions could get cast his way when it went missing. “Once it gets approved for sale on the Clove market, everyone will know about it. What’s important is what we do before it gets to that point. Who knows what they plan to do to Fade’s formulation when there’s a risk of a stolen counter for it getting into Aurellian hands.”
***
She took a sip of coffee and scalded her bottom lip, hissing frustration as she set her mug back down perhaps a bit harder than she intended. Her eyes remained focused on her friend, but her mind was visibly elsewhere, processing through the new information with the efficiency of a machine. Her head tilted, eyes narrowing at their corners as she clung to the last thing he’d said, repeating it back to him for clarification’s sake. “A counter? To Fade?” She hunched over the table a little further, gesticulating wildly with one hand while the other pressed white knuckles around her mug of over-sweetened coffee.
“Do you know it’s capable of remedying the treatments? Have you tried it yourself?”
Whatever the situation between him and the good Doctor Rosier, he could be sure that she would be pressing that line of questioning at a later date. Now was not the time. Not when something so invaluable hung in the balance. Not when they were on the precipice of a breakthrough.
“What does Swallowtail intend? And what do you need me to do?”
***
Lachlan’s brows drew together slightly in concern when Reagan hissed, but he knew better than to ask if she was okay. Of course she was, she had endured a whole lot worse in her life than a cup of scalding coffee and walked away from it just fine.
“Yes, a counter to Fade,” he confirmed with only a glance at her wildly gesticulating hand, as if she had only tamely waved it through the air. “And yes, I have tried it myself. Only once. I don’t know if the effects vary depending on when the last injection was. It was enough though, that I could repair the peach trees that had been damaged in the storm. When it wore off, I felt for a time like I did when we missed that poisoning, but it was not so severe or long lasting that I would be unwilling to try it again.”
Lachlan had never been one to ask too many questions. He shot first, and tended to trust his instincts rather than demand answers later. And even though this situation was different, and he wanted to know what Swallowtail planned to do, he knew better than to ask. It wasn’t worth the risk of the information getting out somehow, he would be told when he needed to know. “That, I don’t know. I am sure we will find out soon enough. As for you, I think you should take one of the pills when we go to take the rest. We need to do a lot of damage in not a lot of time. Will you do it?” He was sure she would, but he wanted to ask all the same.
***
The more Lachlan explained the effects of this mystery drug, the more eagerly Reagan listened. Finally. A solution to Fade. Something that could even the playing field with the Cloves and even tip the scales in their favor, if they played their hand right. Had the information come to her from any other source, she would have written it off as being too good to be true. But she trusted Lachlan implicitly, and so when he asked if she would join him her response was immediate and earnest. “Of course,” she murmured, her small frown indicative of a frustration that he’d even felt the need to ask.
The opportunity to exact a lot of damage in order to retrieve the medication was only an added bonus, so far as she was concerned; his mention of the storm was a reminder of Luke, of what he’d endured, of what he continued to endure, and her resolve set twofold. “Will there be any opportunity to sample it before we receive orders? I want to be sure I know what to expect.” Her shields were potent but unpredictable on Fade. Unbound, she was a force to be reckoned with, and as such she did not want any unexpected side effects.
***
Lachlan simply stared at Reagan when he watched her smooth brow crease into a(n admittedly small by Shrike Standards) frown. “Would you have preferred I just tell you what you are going to do?” he drawled before he took a slow sip of his coffee. Doing so would be within his rights as leader of their resistance cell, but a smart leader knew the people he worked with. Ordering Reagan about might work, but it was equally (okay, more) likely that doing so would irritate her to the point of refusal. She had the freedom to do so, even if it was out of spite. The gods knew Lachlan had exercised that same freedom before, refusing to act even when the majority of the resistance cell had an opinion contrary to his own.
Whilst Reagan’s desire to try out the drug was understandable, Lachlan didn’t move to hand any of the Ellevra over. “Not yet. The effects last for at least a day, but you are likely to be unwell when it wears off. People will notice if you can’t complete your orders for Carnivale. You can try it Friday, there will be hours for you to practice before we need to do what must be done.” Lachlan sighed internally at the mention of receiving orders, before revealing what he knew was likely to be ill-received. “Swallowtail and I have already discussed what is to be done. As I said, we will be taking the lot. It is no longer well protected at Belmont...it’s at Hiraeth.”
***
“You know better than that,” she scolded, but there was no venom in it. He knew as well as she did that he’d spared them both a lengthy and exhausting argument by asking. However, it didn’t stop her from frowning at him when he denied her early access to the drug, her mug paused halfway to her lips. It was not even the refusal that irked her, but rather the confession that what was to be done with the drugs was already discussed and decided.
“At Hiraeth?” She hesitated. “That place will be empty, come Friday.How much of it is there to take? And what would Swallowtail have us do with it once it’s acquired?”
Important questions, both. She shifted, poised over her elbows, hanging on his response. She thought of Luke, stripped of his powers and wounded. She thought of all of Glynn, Faded and subdued. They had to give it to their own people, didn’t they?
***
Reagan’s scolding tone cowed many others, but to Lachlan it was like a soothing balm. He knew there was no venom there even when she did show her fangs, and he smiled in turn, a quick flash of his own white teeth before the conversation grew serious once more. Any kind of action against Hiraeth was not something he was going to consider lightly. When he was younger and more reckless, he had burned most of the vineyard to the ground, and he and others were still feeling the effects of that act of defiance.
This time, no one would get hurt who didn’t first deserve it.
Lachlan paused before answering Reagan’s very pertinent questions. Not because he didn’t want her to know, but because they each knew the other so well. He knew what she would think when she was told how much there was, just as he knew she would not be pleased with his reply. “I don’t have exact numbers, but it is almost everything Belmont got. They wouldn’t know moderation if we beat them over the head with it, so I would say a lot. Much of it will go to Swallowtail, who will have it studied or distributed to other cells as he sees fit. The rest will stay here.” He didn’t look away from Reagan’s face as he continued without pause. “We can’t give it to anyone else, however much we might want to. For now, it is only for the Resistance.”
***
Her eyes narrowed, a disbelieving laugh escaping her in a sharp, ironic burst. “Only for the resistance? Lachlan...” She thrust her hand into the air only to let it fall with a slap against the table. “I know I don’t need to tell you that there are people here who could benefit from that medication, but maybe someone should inform Swallowtail. Who knows what they’ll do once they find out that it’s been stolen? Everyone becomes a suspect, and it could be months before we receive another order. That’s months that we’d be leaving them defenseless.”
First the bombing, then the poisoning… she’d gone along with every order, albeit reluctantly, because it was for something better. The sense of wrongness had rankled then, too. But this… was she too close to it, now? Had her time back in her home town softened her so much? Her eyes were pointed and fixed on his; her frustration was not with him, of course, but surely she was not alone in feeling like this?
“Glynn is more than just Swallowtail’s collateral damage,” she murmured slowly, measuring every word carefully as she searched his face. They had never pulled punches with one another before. She expected no different now. “Do you agree with this?”
***
Lachlan didn’t drop his gaze when Reagan spoke of those who could benefit from Ellevra. She was right, as she so often was, in saying she didn’t need to tell him about those people. How many times had he thought of Morrigan and how her life might be improved by those small white pills? It was impossible to say, but his resolve hadn’t wavered despite his wondering. “It isn’t medication, Reagan,” he countered doggedly. “They have not made it for the purpose you intend, it won’t do what you want. How will it be a defense when it lasts a day or two at most? We give it all away to the people here, and we will be back to square one before the week is out. No, we will all be worse off. The resistance won’t have any way to study the drug, its fighters will still be hampered by Fade, and everyone we tried to help in Glynn will be sick from the side effects.”
He set his coffee mug down, feeling frustrated but understanding that her own frustrations were not focussed on him. At least not entirely. “I agree with what we must do, not the ‘this’ that you speak of. Swallowtail does not see Glynn as collateral damage and nor do I. I understand that you want to help them, Reagan. I do too. This is how we do it. We have to think of what is best for the long term, not the short term relief that would come at great expense. Do you see this?”
***
“I didn’t say to give it all away,” she countered, agitated that he would assume she was so reckless, so short-sighted. “But you’re telling me that you’re one of a very select few who even knows this stuff exists. Blame will immediately fall to you, since you refuse to temper yourself or your Gods-blasted opinions. You know that, don’t you?” There was a fragile undercurrent of real anger threatening at her voice, fueled by fear and a welled sense of panic that felt, unsurprisingly, like the first vestiges of a forcefield building itself in her core. “We’ll have to divert it somehow, which leaves everyone else to be interrogated and suspected. And you’d leave them to what, fend for themselves, Bound and at their mercy? Surely we can afford to distribute some-”
His assertion that Swallowtail did not view their humble town as anything more than a means to an end earned a skeptical narrowing of her eyes. “I have gone along with every order, Lachlan,” she reminded. “Every one. This isn’t right. I’ve seen what that drug can do to Unbound gifts. If we take it all, if we leave them with nothing, we’re subjecting them to that. Do you see that?”
***
“Who is going to cast blame in my direction?” Lachlan was never dismissive of Reagan or her opinions, he was fully aware of their worth, but he had no fear of being blamed and wasn’t about to waste their time with a long-winded argument. “Viola is the only one who knows I have knowledge of this drug, to cast blame on me will be to cast it on herself too, and she won’t wish to explain how I know of this in the first place.” He had no desire to explain either, or to drag Viola’s name through the mud by getting implicated in the theft.
Certain other people were perfectly acceptable sacrifices to the cause though, despite what Reagan asserted. Not all were innocent, and not all deserved their protection. “We have been Bound and at their mercy since the day they usurped our homeland. How do you think it would look, if they found someone seemingly Unbound? We would not be helping if we distributed it to some, we would be condemning them. And if they let slip where they got the drugs? We would be condemning ourselves too. So no. I wish it were otherwise, but we absolutely cannot afford to give any away. Not yet, at any rate.”
Lachlan needed no reminder that Reagan had gone along with every order. She had been at his side the whole time, fighting for what was right. And he didn’t see their argument as a sign their interwoven paths were diverging. It was just that they had not yet come together again in agreeance of what the next right step might be.
“None of this is right!” he burst out, angry at the state of the world but not at her. “None of it is. But they have had nothing since the moment those damned needles first pricked their skin, this won’t change that. You say we should distribute some, that we don’t need to give it all away. How do you plan to protect everyone, while only giving the pills out to some? You can’t. That is what I see. And unless this is kept between Swallowtail and the resistance for now, that bitter truth will be the reality for all Aurellians, forever, until they remove all traces of us from this earth.”
***
His raising his voice did not upset her. They were both creatures of passion, and it was not the first nor the last time that conversation would turn heated between them. Rather it was both the truth and blind objection in his argument that set her on edge, that saw her own hands fly into wild gesticulation about her head, that saw her aggression pour itself out over the table. “The Fade and the needles will hardly be the worst of their troubles if the Cloves decide to take matters to hand and double down on the threat! You say ‘for now’, but how long is that? There are consequences, Lachlan, and the resistance are not the ones who they will fall to.” Her head reared and her eyes narrowed. “And since when do you have such trust in Cloves that you would trust that Viola Rosier so implicitly?”
She snorted and slapped her palms down in frustration. “That is already their goal. They’ve made that perfectly clear with their invention of this drug.” She fell silent then, jaw working some of her cheek between her teeth, her eyes never wavering from their intent scrutiny of his face. It seemed a long time before she exhaled, a huffy, impatient sound that accompanied a brief flare of violet light around her. “I will do what you need me to do. But you will not convince me that this is for Glynn’s better good.”
***
Everything they did was under the shadow of an 'if'. If the Cloves decided to double down on their threat, things would get so much worse. If they let their hearts soften and they shared too much, the Cloves would find that weakness and thrust in their knives, twisting until they killed all the good that was left in the world. Lachlan had weighed up all the risks, and had made his decision. He would not be swayed, but there was an emptiness in him that came with knowing he was not in harmony with his most trusted, closest friend.
Reagan’s eyes narrowed, but Lachlan’s remained open and fixed on her as his head tilted slightly to the side. “It is not a matter of trusting Viola.” Even though he did, things went far deeper than that. Lachlan knew his enemy well, it was why he was so vehemently opposed to the Clove takeover. “It is a matter of knowing that self preservation wins out. Even if she doubts me, even if she thinks I might be to blame, she won’t let it be known that I found out about the drugs through her. Doing so would be her ruin. It would be bad enough if she was discovered having any sort of involvement with a gardener. But someone with possible ties to the resistance? There would be no coming back from that sort of disgrace.” Viola had too much potential to throw her life away like that, he and the rest of the resistance were safe.
His gaze broke away when Reagan slapped her hands down onto the table, and they stayed fixed on her fingers as she spoke. After the flare of violet light faded, he looked up, reached out and took her hand. She could have likely blasted his fingers off if she really wanted too, but he didn’t hesitate for even a moment. “That is all I ask. I swear on my life and the gods that you will not regret this.”
***