timebethine | [Closed Post: Be You and I Behind an Arras Then]

SecUnit has established itself just so at the end of the couch, where it can plug itself into the GameCube and keep an eye on the proceedings, while also having a clear shot to the exit if shit goes south.

Relaying the video feed in increments isn't hard, but it's fiddly; there are a lot of inputs and outputs to monitor simultaneously, and it has to concentrate. Which means it won't be able to spare much attention to interpret human reactions. So it's relieved to see Sagramore and Nightingale, both of whom seem pretty good at reading people (and neither of whom is as annoying as Claudius).

After a minute or two of static, the image resolves on the screen. Wow, that is some terrible resolution.

An awkward group of people sitting around a small tv with a shockingly grainy picture; Nightingale feels oddly as though he's returned to his pre-mansion life. This isn't a part of it he's been missing. He nods politely at SecUnit and takes a seat, raising an eyebrow at the odd assortment of tech.

Sagramore is here because the idea of not having eyes on his husband right now is unthinkable, shading into terrifying -- he is, frankly, too far away. They should be shoulder to shoulder the way they were for the zombies. He's cognizant that he serves no practical purpose either here or in the library with Laertes; he has no magic, he hasn't got Claudius' mind for scheming, and he's only middling in combat. All he's here to do is watch.

He's been worrying at his pendant more or less constantly since he arrived, and he's dying for a drink. While Laertes was still around during their preparations he was projecting an aura of seriousness but confidence, but now he's an obvious wreck; he keeps pacing and returning to the screen and then pacing again.

“Sagramore,” Claudius says, voice even. “We are, if anything, overprepared. If she’s all she says, she’s unlikely to harm anyone she could hand over to the jurisfiction agency for her own advancement … and even that’s not an active threat without a way out. If she’s lying, it’s because she has reasons not to act openly, and she can’t be so powerful that she could dispense with secrecy and still accomplish her aims. Laertes is meeting her in a well-traveled room and, as is evident by how many worried eyes are on him, he’s a well-connected man. Doing anything to him now would be extraordinarily risky.”

What’s unclear, and what Claudius keeps to himself, is whether Aornis is a woman who will take the risk when the reward is promising enough. He’s still trying to assess how much of a gambler Aornis is. So far, it seems that she’s kept herself and been careful, and if she’s done anything to anyone, it’s nothing that can be traced. But a gambling woman would grow bored of so much predictability.

There’s a great deal he’s trying to assess. Frankly, he doesn’t need the distraction of Sagramore’s pacing, but at least his presence proves the point. Laertes isn’t someone she can easily target without giving herself away. And that’s why Claudius is here, to judge how much she’ll give.

On the screen, Aornis says bluntly, "I can't. Let's get that out there," and Murderbot has the fleeting impulse to say Great, then we're done here!

It doesn't, of course, because when has anything ever been that easy, but it's a nice thought.

Claudius doesn't speak, once the two have started talking, intent and focused on the screen. At a remove, he almost understands what Aornis meant, when she asked if she looked like a provocateur. On screen, she doesn't have much presence. But to him, she looks like someone who could slip into a well-to-do party and not to be noticed, then unassumingly speak the right word into the right ear.

There's a slipperiness to her answers. Claudius almost rolls her eyes at that flat I can't, how she set up the question and answered it herself, a sort of false openness that -- in truth -- Claudius could do well to take notes on. It's effective, for all that he's sure Laertes caught it and let it pass. It sounds like being forthright, but it's misdirection, pulling attention away from other questions Laertes should be asking.

The concern, to Claudius, isn't whether she can send them all back to their books at this instant. It's whether she could, whether she would, if she found a way out and to contact the rest of her agency. The substance of his secret agreement with Aornis was to control that flow of information and power, when and if that time ever came.

What Claudius suspects is this indefinite state wasn't meant to drag on this long -- whether Aornis was an jurisfiction agent in truth, or posing as one. If I could, don't you think I would've left by now? I have my own unfinished business at home. There's likely truth to that. Some liars are playful, and like to see how many half-truths they can string between lies. Some liars know they don't have the presence or charm to push a lie too far. So far, he has the sense that Aornis hasn't lied yet.

Sagramore has stopped pacing, but he has replaced it with fidgeting. He twists the chain of his pendant around his fingers over and over.

"...Did he just ask her if she's happy?"

The video fuzzes and freezes for several seconds, during which SecUnit doesn't bother to confirm the obvious. It has no idea what Laertes is getting at there; it's still digesting the bit about "the actors". I mean, wow.

Nightingale still isn't sure what to make of Aornis. He knew he would need to be here, to be a part of whatever this plan turned out to be, but... he also knows that he's the outlier here. If Aornis does have the power to send them all back from whence they came, then he'd say goodbye to this second life with nothing but the mildest regret and a promise of fond remembrance. His primary concern is anything else Aornis might be up to and, if she truly is stuck here, what her frustration and boredom might lead her to.

"If only this was like a more usual interrogation," he muses aloud. "I wish we could call him outside to direct his next steps."

"--are happy here," Laertes continues, as SecUnit switches in the next video clip. (It is of course following the conversation itself in realtime, two or three seconds ahead of the screen, which is slightly disorienting. It doesn't like the way Laertes says hope of returning, or the way its threat assessment module keeps making the module equivalent of small unhappy noises. But none of this is perceptible to the rest of the room.)

As the conversation progresses to loss, Nightingale finds himself reaching for Sagramore and enclosing his wrist in a loose but steady grasp. He's not sure himself if he means to comfort or restrain.

SecUnit frowns. "What the hell is she talking about?"

Claudius freezes, the instinct of a prey animal, but the calculating, human part of him thinks this is still to our advantage. The point was to present Aornis with a weakness, Laertes’s fear of fulfilling his fate Elsinore, and see whether she would make moves to exploit it. But this hits upon something that seems far closer to her. Claudius knows that when Laertes speaks of how it must eat at her, being here and unable to answer a sibling’s death, he’s speaking from newly-understood empathy. He knows his hope that someone may visit the mansion after death (like Grantaire, like Enjolras, like Courfeyrac and Combeferre for a day) is genuine.

Aornis could use this. There is no one better to understand the grief of loss and frustrated revenge than Laertes as he is now. Claudius has faith in Laertes’s judgment and still, if he were in Aornis’s place, he’d know how to sway it to his side. And Claudius does want to know, desperately, what she has to say, what she might reveal about her brother and his visit to play on Laertes’s sympathies.

This might be her true motive, to do whatever she must in her brother’s memory. If it’s a weakness in Laertes, it’s a weakness in her, too. It’s something Claudius can use to deal with her, to negotiate a better arrangement.

Does that justify it? Can he sit back and wait for her to manipulate Laertes at his most vulnerable, just to see whether she’s capable? Past all his calculations, he feels the fierce pangs of protectiveness for the man he loves, the desire to deliver him from that room now, and be the one to care for his wounds. He could have, if he was the one to give Laertes the news. He didn’t want to hurt Laertes, the way he’s surely hurting now.

There is, he decides with a sigh, something he should try. This is the ideal time to try it, when her reactions seem the most genuine, when it could still take her by surprise. He waits until she’s started a sentence, after the delay on-screen.

“Aornis¹,” he says sharply.

¹Ping.

Edited 2024-04-01 11:58 (UTC)

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sagramore - 2024-04-01 12:46 (UTC) - Expand

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wickedwit - 2024-04-05 22:06 (UTC) - Expand

In the war room, Claudius largely left any security assessments to SecUnit — if he knows one thing about the individual (and he knows precious little) it’s that SecUnit knows its business. Whether Aornis is a threat to the mansion as a whole, or simply another shady resident in a roster of shady residents, is something for the experts to decide. Claudius can only offer what little discrepancies he’s noticed, what questions he was left with.

He does, however, want to steal a moment alone with Laertes, and as soon as possible.

Laertes makes himself easy to find--he's coming to meet Claudius at the war room, and so they're almost certain to run into each other on the way to somewhere else. "Claudius," says Laertes warmly. "Let's go to the greenhouse, where the sun might yet be felt. It's been such a dreary season, but perhaps we'll find some oranges or lemons in it."

It's a genuine kindness, Claudius thinks, as well as good strategy to get away from the main house with its twisting halls and corners that anyone could be listening behind. The instincts of living in Elsinore die hard, but Claudius finds he would prefer to talk in a glass house where all passersby would be visible, and the only thing likely to be hiding is Crowley in snake form. "I'd like nothing better," he says, as warmly. "Lead the way, my dear."

Laertes takes them through the mansion, rather than across the snow, chattering as he does about his recent studies on electroplating--he's been thinking of learning to make jewelry again, and electroplating might offer a way to add a softer metal's sheen to something made of a stronger metal. That conversation lasts exactly long enough for Laertes to close and latch the door to the greenhouse, at which point he leaves off the ruse and sinks down on a wrought-iron bench beneath the downturned fingers of a Buddha's hand tree. "So," he says. "What didst thou think?"

“She’s quite the skillful equivocator,” Claudius says, taking a moment to admire the twisted shapes of the still-green fruit, the fingers that were most recently flowers. He touches his own fingers to them, like a child’s hand. “But thou wert as skilled in sounding her. I could see thee turn the conversation like a conjured light in thy hand.” And he does dearly want to kiss and congratulate Laertes for it, but first: “I am sorry I did not warn thee all the turns it could take. I should have. When I told thee the fate forewritten for Gertrude, I should’ve told thee all else I knew.”

"So thou knewest."

He nods, slowly, not letting himself escape from it. "I had it from Shen Yuan. Wouldst thou hear what he said to me, or nay?"

Laertes's gaze sharpens. "So he knew--and still he told me fairy tales about lions."

Claudius sighs. A part of him wants to spin this, in one direction or another, to protect his lover's feelings and preserve the peace, to protect himself from potential upsets. He takes a seat on the bench beside Laertes, crossing his legs and linking his hands over them, fidgeting with the band of his engagement ring. "He knows the fairy tales better, for what it's worth. And the artworks inspired by our story. But it's true, he wasn't keen on telling you."

"Did no one in this fucking place think I could bear it?" Laertes snaps, and slams both hands down on his knees.

Claudius flinches, on instinct, then goes very still. (Another instinct -- don't move, don't respond, and perhaps this rage will pass him by.) Deliberately, consciously, he breathes in and lets the breath move through him, reminds himself this man would never strike him, that it's only the sound of flesh being struck taking him somewhere else. From that faraway place, he asks, quiet, "Couldst thou?"

"What choice do I have but to bear it? I cannot save her; I cannot die for her. If her fate is to be changed, I cannot change it." He leans back, slouching in his seat, fisting both hands in his own hair and pulling.