The Dreyfus Boy

Participants:

anya_icon.gif teo_icon.gif

Scene Title The Dreyfus Boy
Synopsis Teo comes to ask Anya questions regarding the dead — and receives answers he wasn't quite expecting to hear.
Date December 21, 2009

A Company Medical Facility in Ryazan, Russia


When Teo comes to visit, his conduct is not unalike this time to what it was the other. He is polite, if not obsequiously conciliatory. Hello, zdravstvujtye. Do you want anything to drink? I'm sorry to bother you. But he's going to do it anyway, of course, despite that he's setting off his presence to the best advantage. He had a look at her chart earlier in the day. Managed to parse terms like permanent disfiguration, structural organ damage, after sounding them out to himself and grilling his mind on vocabulary. He hadn't looked at her chart for very long.

She looks smaller in the wan light of the lamp. He imagines she's bored, too. He's sat laid up in hospital for long enough, even if Ghost has as many memories of rattling in and out of the swinging doors of licensed and registered healers in a future that is no longer relevant. Teo wonders if the further services of an Evolved healer could be held over her head to extricate further information, and then is immediately ashamed of himself. She fixed Abby.

As Kozlow had fixed Francois. Restlessly, disconcerted by his own company as much as by that of the Vanguard woman, Teodoro pulls his feet in underneath the stool, then squeaks them out again. "«Did your comrades tell you about Munin?

"«Or their plans for it?»" Finally, the real question comes.

Awake when Teo enters, Anya accepts the offer of water. Doesn't respond to the assurance that he won't bother, because however sincere its delivery may be it's also completely inaccurate; he wouldn't be here if not to bother. She does make an effort to sit up in the hospital bed, at least for the time being, green eye fixed narrowly upon the Sicilian. "«I spoke to Harrison already,»" the Russian remarks; not quite a protest, but there is something of that intonation. "«She knows what I know. It is little.»" Anya doesn't have so much energy to her name that she's going to easily reiterate everything even if this is a cross-interrogation and not just a case of left hand and right hand failing to relay information.

Having half the front of your head peeled off will do that to a woman. The corner of Teo's mouth lifts fractionally, a shift like concession; if this is a cross-interrogation, she'll have none of it, and can't be thought ill for it. "«The library, the files, the other operatives. Zhukovsky's best-kept secret, and none of your business. I heard. We'll have to move on that soon: I don't think Zhukovsky, the Volken girl, or Skoll are going to appreciate your being in the enemy's custody for the past few days.

"«Does the name Robbie Dreyfus mean anything to you?»" The other supposed child supposedly in the company of old Ark's killers and soldiers. "«His father's worried, and we owe him.»" —Little, coincidentally, but it'll either help or harm for Anya to know she isn't the only one who located her sense of honor roughly in the region of human decency.

A sardonic twist of Anya's lips meet Teo's words; she made much that point to Liz as well. "«They will not,»" the woman concurs. "«They are likely watching you, your movements; not even 'soon' will bring surprise over to your side.»" Leaning her folded arms on the bedrail, the Russian woman nods as he continues speaking. "«Yes. Carlisle's son,»" she says, tone quieting with a momentary distraction. Dispelling it, Anya continues more normally. "«He was reported dead, some days ago. Perhaps a week.»"

"«And you may have accidentally bought them the time to move the files,»" Teo folds his tone of voice easily into the rhythm of an inoffensive corollary, refraining from weighting his syllables with resentful accusation or even making unnecessary emphasis over that word— accidentally. She's had a lot on her mind.

Maybe even little Robbie Dreyfus' death, though that's a needle of uncomfortable shock through the Sicilian's spine instead. Disconcerting to think: he'd been watching the child through his father's scolding head only a handful of weeks ago, felt the father-fear resonating gruff in the chamber of Carlisle's skull. His fingers are white on the plane of his lap before he remembers himself, loosens. "«Sounds like what was reported for Faina. Don't suppose it was the same thing?»"

Restraint or no on Teo's part, Anya could get defensive at his statements. She doesn't. "«Unlikely, but possible,»" is her reply. "«Or perhaps he moved them already; Grigori knows well what you want. What is, is.»" Such is the Russian woman's take on the matter. The corner of her mouth that isn't swathed in bandages tugs back as the Sicilian continues, the smile a grim one. "«The same thing?»" she echoes, clearly not following Teo's meaning. "«Their deaths had nothing in common at all.»"

Teo's meaning flattens out, thins, and almost vanishes in the rotation of perspective at that extra soupcon of information. Whatever he meant is discarded, or at least not clarified; he tips his head a few degrees to the left, curious like the cerulean-feathered avian after which a certain oracle has him nicknamed. Their deaths had nothing in common at all. "«Skoll claimed his fiancee was killed by the Vanguard to pressure him into cooperating with the weapons operation.

"«Supposedly out of the ironworks.»" Ironworks is as new a word as Teo's residence in Ryazan is, and the syllables and stresses fit a little strangely in his mouth, still. Abruptly, he doesn't feel too well. "«What happened to them?»" He sits back in his chair, fingers interlaced cold and stiff as chainlink on his lap.

She looks at Teo for a long moment, and the expression in that one good eye might be pity — or perhaps a shade of sorrow. Perhaps a mix of both. "«He is the wolf who swallowed the sun,»" Anya says softly. "«And when you see him in truth — he is perhaps the most loathsome member of the human race ever to walk the earth.»" She turns away, looking towards a blank, white-painted wall; doesn't speak for some time. When she does, it is to address the other subject, leaving Teo to fill in the rest regarding Kozlow. "«The Dreyfus boy — he died when we brought Abigail in, I believe at the hands of your people.»" Which makes it all the more ironic that Teo asks after his welfare now.

Teo —

— hadn't gotten a very good look at the face of the child who'd tried to kill him when he threw tarp over the sum of the corpse's broken parts then dragged the corpse into the dumpster for the Company to take care of. Hadn't even paused to marvel at how light he'd been. Liz had been kind of freaking out, you see, and Teodoro has certain responsibilities

"Oh," he says. He should probably ask other questions about Faina, trying to pull fact out of symbolism, compose a profile out of the impressionistic colors of Anya's depiction, try somehow to verify against existing data deliberately concealed from Orlova herself, but instead he is standing up, scraping his stool back and straightening his clothes in his hands. Fair's fair. Kid had it coming. He wonders if Carlisle knows, yet.

Doubts it. Sometimes your kid winds up a part of somebody else's story, ends before you've even begun to recognize yourself as the villain in your own. Or something. "«Would you excuse me?»"

Her face remains turned towards the wall as Anya nods, rendering the relevance of the expression to some very small value. "«Of course,»" she says aloud for Teo's benefit, listening as his footsteps diminish towards the far end of the room and the door closes in his wake. Leaving her alone — again.


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