Admission

Participants:

avi_icon.gif francois_icon.gif lucille_icon.gif nathalie_icon.gif

Scene Title Admission
Synopsis Nathalie and Lucille entreat Avi and Francois for permission to investigate Sharrow's presence in Providence.
Date June 15, 2019

The Bastion
Avi's Office

June 15th
10:12 am


Nathalie can't sit, even though there are definitely enough chairs in this office to accommodate her. Instead, she's pacing as she and Lucille wait for their bosses to arrive. She travels from one end of the room to the other and back again, over and over like she's trying to wear a trench in the floor. But everyone involved here knows she's got more than one worry on her mind. She's trying to focus on one at a time, but it's hard not to let everything press in on her at once.

Pacing helps.

Probably.

Eight fucking years!” Avi can be heard shouting from down the hall. “No, they didn't hand out fucking merit badges in the Ferrymen. It's been eight fucking years since I've seen her but she knows who the fuck I am! Did you guys hang Director Hickson? I fucking worked with— hello? Hello?

And as Avi comes into the doorway of his office he's shouting “Cocksuckers!” at the top of his lungs and nearly throws his phone at the floor. But there's Nathalie. He stops.

“Sorry,” comes a bit belatedly from Avi. “DoD bickering over the fucking Tlanuwa. It's like now that they know Hana isn't around they think they can try and fuck with us. I swear to Christ.” He instead slaps his phone down angrily on his desk but doesn't make a move to sit in it. Instead, he just leans around it and pulls out a drawer and retrieved a bottle of whiskey and two glasses from it.

He pours one for himself, and one for whoever’s the fastest draw.

“Ok so what's up? I know you called, texted, and emailed me but I haven't read any of it.” Because of course Avi hasn't.

Leaning against the wall and pretty close to the god damn door Lucille's eyes widen as the door comes flying at her face and her hand reaches out to catch it fingers curling around the edge. "Goddamn it Avi." Using the frame as leverage to pull herself out and to the side of it before letting go, she's shaking her head. More at her ill placed leaning, Avi doesn't just open doors obviously.

Gray blue eyes peer over at Nathalie, she knows why they're here. There's a small nod of encouragement from the taller woman and she holds up two fingers with a tilt of her head. "Add two more glasses to that." Yes, pour more of your whiskey out please. They were missing one. Luce isn't about to talk over Nat about why they are here, waiting in his office.

She will comment on their fancy ass jet woes, "They want to take it?" Luce had never gotten to ask Adel about learning how to pilot that thing.

"It's a little early, isn't it?" says Francois Allegre, who is known sometimes to say ridiculous things like proposing not all meetings have to be whiskey meetings.

He hopes it isn't a whiskey meeting, anyway.

Walks into the office, anyway, with enough seconds of delay to imply he was not accompanying Avi into the room, instead headed downstairs from his own corner of the Bastion. Not so late of a delay, though, that he didn't pick up on the echoing conversation, and so there is some purpose and intent as he swans by the two women to approach the desk and drag a chair aside to find a neutral position as he says, "And I swear, Epstein, if you do not forward on these calls like I have asked you to, I will locate Gitelman just for the favour of doing it for you. You have hung up on or been hung up on by every single agency the United States has to offer, except maybe Agriculture.

"And then it is only a matter of time." One last European hand flourish as he sits down, he turns towards the two women in the room, and flashes them an only somewhat apologetic smile. Offloads the floor by way of; "You wished to speak to us."

"What's the point of having any of those things if you're not going to read them, Avi?" Nathalie asks, her hands moving to her hips. When Francois comes in, she looks to him for backup and gestures toward Avi as a whole. And she lets out a sigh. She doesn't go for the whiskey herself, perhaps needing a clear mind for this particular meeting. Which might be worse than if it was a whiskey meeting.

"Sharrow is in Providence. Luce and I would like permission to go see what he's up to there." Her hands find the back of a chair, which is at least suggesting that she might sit at some point. "Eileen is there, obviously, and I'm worried. Given what Yvette tried to do to me, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume they have something planned for her, too." She looks over at Lucille, likely for support or maybe for her to figure out how to make this sound like a good idea. "We'll go with the excuse that we're visiting your dad and Pippa."

But before he gets to work, Avi has other matters on his mind. The look he levels on Lucille is a flat one. “I only have two glasses,” is the truth, and he meant what he said about the fastest draw gets the second glass. As he pours one and then another, Avi levels a look at Francois. “It sounds like a whiskey meeting, doesn't it?” Maybe he did read those messages after all.

“Charles Sharrow is a fucking murderous ghost. That spook I put a knife in a couple years back — the one that was going after Sibyl — was the same guy I fucking hired to go after Sharrow during Operation Apollo. He turned a federal fucking agent against his own country and faked three fucking deaths.” Avi picks up his glass, leaving the third open fair.

“No.” Is Avi’s knee-jerk response, which is usually how this goes. He has his first reaction, Francois another, and either they're immediately in agreement or they find somewhere to settle in the middle. “No for a dozen reasons, because this kind of info-gathering could get us fucking killed when it doesn't have to. No, we can't go sticking our necks out on this, especially you.” Avi motions with his glass to Nathalie. “Old salty fucking Vanguard get whiff one that you're the Second Coming of Herr Geist Furhrer and it's going to be a fucking disaster.”

Knocking back half the whiskey in a single swallow, Avi looks over at Lucille next. “As for you.” He jabs a finger in her direction. “Why in the fuck is Ben Ryans and his granddaughter in Providence? I'd heard SESA dragged him back in but… that's fucking ludicrous.”

"We risk our lives pretty often. We're trained to do things like this." Lucille waits before adding, "I think we're lucky she's asking. We are still at a disadvantage regarding intel and that's on all sides of this. We're partially in the dark, the government and SESA are as well." Seeing how Nathalie had a tendency to handle these things on her own and while Wolfhound had her family and was job… Luce understood how personal and distressing this all was for her. "And who's to say Eileen doesn't end up talking or giving away something about Nathalie?" Luce looks towards Nathalie when she says this, it's probably untrue but it's a possibility and the older of the two leans on that. "Then he shows up on our front door." Raising her hand in a half shrugging gesture. "We're being preemptive instead of reactionary."

Eyeing the whiskey, she settles for the tequila she has in her room. Later Lucille'll drink. Most likely a bunch.

Avi-Fucking Avi.

Lucille bows her head and rubs the bridge of her nose, "You're not old enough to be this senile. Pippa is his daughter and Nicole's. You know, Colette's sister meaning Pippa is her niece. Meaning…" Shaking her head as she folds her arms, "He's following leads on Adam. They were partners a long time ago but his memory was wiped, stolen by the Company. The cover is he's retired and Nicole is off trying to settle with Pip." It's convincing enough. "It's 2019 co parenting is really in." Like really in.

"About the pennies from Caspar, Rumor and I got to see a bit of what kind of memories are on these things. If we're to go to Providence. Everyone should probably hear from us about the memories that the Company took from Adam Monroe."

And as usual, Francois' response and reaction is less extreme, less immediately decisive than that of Avi Epstein's.

He says nothing, in fact, but his whole manner has changed. Easy smile has vanished, and his focus has narrowed in on Nathalie alone, even after she says her piece, even while Avi is speaking, and then Lucille is speaking. What binds them is nothing like telepathy — and really, Nathalie has him at a profound disadvantage when it comes to knowing much about each other — but he attempts to read her now. Unease prickles through the air around him, and he glances at the whiskey glass.

He takes it. "Where did you come by the knowledge of Sharrow's whereabouts?" he asks — gently, in contrast to Epstein sitting adjacent. Not because he doesn't want to leap to action — this is restraint. "What do you know already of what he is doing there? Like attracts like?"

Nathalie frowns at Avi's no, but as is also the case, she and Lucille aren't that easy to dissuade. "He already knows about me. Yvette Volken knows, she's got ties to him. Everyone knows; I can't keep acting like I'm a secret. But he also knows that it isn't that easy to draw Kazimir out. But he might be willing to talk to me. That's a piece of leverage we can't ignore. And this isn't the last time it's going to happen." Which she will have to get to later. That's a thought that makes her eye the drinks, but she still doesn't partake.

Instead, she looks over to meet Francois' gaze. There's little doubt that she's nervous about what they're proposing, about how what she is seems to act like a beacon for more than one extremist. But. Fear isn't going to keep her from trying to get them ahead in the game, either.

"One of the kids from the Lighthouse. Clara Winters. She talked to him there. I don't know why he's there or what his plans are, not for sure. But I don't really want to find out when it's too late to do anything about it."

Knowing where you are and having you spoon-fed to him are two totally different things,” Avi says with a shake of his head, eyeing Francois before turning his attention to Lucille. “As for you, I’m not talking about— I’m not talking about the blood relations of your father’s extended dickery, I’m talking about why did he bring a child to Providence which is both off the electrical grid and doesn’t have a fucking hospital? Has he gone fucking senile finally?”

But Avi isn’t done frustratedly asking questions. “And you,” he points two fingers back at Nathalie. “What the fuck do you mean by draw Kazimir out. Because I have inferrences and I don’t much like any fucking one of them.”

"I don't really like it either but it's their cover. Nicole was "fired" and so she and her family are off to settle down. Since dad is "retired" still, he left to go be apart of the family still. It's dangerous but," it was her dad's only option, "Nobody would believe it if Pip was here." The dickery is not noted upon but Lucille does envision her older friend as a bald man. She smiles sweetly.

"They don't know how much control she has," This statement is coupled with a look towards Nathalie, the younger woman had been trying. Lucille had been trying to help (not in the way Nat hated) as much as she can. "He might think he knows her. Thinks he can wrap her around his finger but she's stronger than that." Luce places a hand on her knee to steady herself and looks at the people in the room. "We've been running at this with our eyes closed," she reinstates, "This is a good chance." Trying a tactic she's tried with her parents.

"How can we do this in a way that makes you not shit a brick?"

You can’t.” Avi says in a way that both says this conversation is over and don’t get caught or I will kill you myself in a single breath. It isn’t permission, it’s admission. He can’t control either of these girls, no matter how much he may want to. “Now get the fuck out of my office.”

Then, quicker, “Except you, Allegre.” He holds out his phone.

“I need you to yell at the Secretary of Defense in French.”


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