Tereska Wasserbach (tasteofmetal) wrote in we_float, @ 2010-07-08 21:11:00 |
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Current mood: | busy |
Current music: | "Nolita" :: Keren Ann |
Entry tags: | character: bart allen, character: tereska wasserbach, narrative |
"... like using a missile to break someone's knees."
Who: Tereska Wasserbach and Bart Allen
When: Wednesday July 7, evening
Where: The Westin, Seattle
What: Tereska does some risk management
Status: Narrative; complete
Warnings: R for described violence and implicit murder.
i. security
Security cameras made it harder. Maybe.
A smile - a rare expression for her - flickered across Tereska's face as she methodically and carefully blanked the security cameras on Bart's floor. Money made an excellent companion to any effort to remove risks, and she'd bought the information that no one monitored the cameras at this hour; active monitoring waited for when there was more traffic in the hallways.
The cameras went off, and she crouched easily, biting through the doorknob and spitting it out into a bag - no sense in leaving DNA behind. She could eat metal, but it didn't do a lot for her.
There wouldn't be a camera in the room. In case, she had another blank-bomblet ready for it, but what they did on the sly in the love hotels wouldn't play on the top floor of the Westin.
The love hotels didn't supply the snuff trade, after all.
ii. cut loose
Katherine didn't let her loose, these days. Not that Tereska could blame her, nor that it had been all that different when they'd first allied in their unlikely way. She was a senator: she couldn't order hits the way the FBI could and did.
Tereska could respect that. But it did mean that it had been far too long since she'd been let loose. And she would've admitted, had someone asked her, that part of it was the fact that she was defending her primary, whether said primary knew it or not.
Bart had met with Downs. There wasn't any reason at all to assume that meant he was interested in keeping Katherine's secrets any longer. She knew exactly what Downs was, and she distantly regretted not clarifying that to Katherine, but it was too late now. And how Bart had learned, she neither knew nor cared.
It stopped, though.
She stepped into the room in the quiet of 3:30 am in the big city, her footsteps light on the deep pile, and prowled to the bedroom. From what she knew of him, Bart would've had to be inhuman to still be awake when she'd watched the anonymous escort leave.
iii. the past
"Aces, Katherine. Only aces. That's it, that's all." Pretend that the concern - the worry - that underlay that voice wasn't there. Pretend that she didn't know the truth. Pretend that it wouldn't risk everything Katherine wanted if she explained that she, Tereska, had only been able to find an ace who was half-crippled, for Katherine's purpose.
She'd wanted - as badly as she'd wanted anything in a long time - to find the right ace. One that could find aces only, couldn't scent jokers, could give her and Alistair the guidance to assemble Katherine's team without risking Katherine's own safety.
It had worked, for as long as the two of them had never met. Katherine had a lot of reason not to meet Digger; Digger had no need to know Tereska's boss. It had worked.
Thanks to Bart, it no longer worked. Thanks to Bart, and to the curious sense of guilt that twisted in Tereska's stomach when she thought of the risk she'd created. It no longer worked because Digger could confirm Bart's truth without ever trying to wade through the labyrinthine legal protections a senator had around herself.
iv. now
He's there all right: naked and unlovely on the bed, the lights of the city making weird patterns on his skin.
In a way, she's disappointed. Life has a tendency to throw last-minute problems at you when you're least prepared. But easy and perfect is harder to handle, when you're ready for trouble. When you're ready for the escort to be one of several, when you're sure he's sitting up with a drink looking at the city and considering his next move.
To see him asleep there, it removes some of the joy Tereska already feels.
Feels in spite of the guilt.
She looks at him, her face twisting in contempt for the situation in its entirety - her role, Katherine's, everyone even remotely involved in this, and for the moment she considers removing everyone, making her primary totally safe.
It reeks of desperation; she sets the thought aside and looks at him again, but this time, it's considering.
She has time and a bag of tricks. More importantly, this is a soundproof room.
v. never enough
But there's not enough time. There never is. She has to be off the floor by 4 at the very latest, and that will be cutting it dangerously short as it is.
The clock on the table conveniently points out that it's 3:37. The numbers seem accusing.
Not the knife. She tends to get lost in her work, and her hair is too light to hide it if she goes back to her own anonymous room far away from here with the dawn touching the flakes of drying red-brown.
The gun would work - she knows that the room's walls would absorb the sound - but it's so quick. Dimly, Tereska does know that she's burning all her bridges with this. She will either survive and thrive, or she'll be out on the street, looking for a job that meets her requirements.
Not entirely uncommon, but not a prospect she relishes.
There are other options, too many to list off. Even in her head, Tereska skips over them. Though she comes back to wire - it's easy, it's not as easy to get lost in, and it's got the advantage of being more than bloody enough.
vi. bound
His eyes do open - sleepily - at the coldness of the wire as she binds his hands together. His feet are already bound.
She smiles savagely at him, her smile harshening as his eyes widen, and bends to her work.
vii. time
It takes all of her available time; she is on minus minutes when she slips back into the hall as quietly as she came.