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| Scene Title | Clarification |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Logan has some fun at Cardinal's expense during his interrogation. |
| Date | June 9, 2009 |
The Happy Dagger — Basement Tenements
To say that it would be abnormal to hear a scuffle going on outside the door would be a lie. Just a night ago, Eileen got to listen to the sounds of feet scrabbling against concrete as someone was dragged bodily down the hallway, swearing and hissing and spitting, and then the soft, mournful crying from three doors down behind lock and key that responded to nothing. The smack of fists against flesh as a brawl kicked up even before that, or perhaps worse. Something less innocent than flaring tempers.
It's eventful, down here, that's for certain.
It's been a little while since the relatively tame sound of a body falling to the ground, of heavier footsteps as its hauled up and out like a sack of dead meat, followed by the closing of a door has transpired outside of Eileen's door. Moonlight filters in through the high window of her room, as gentle as the voice in her head that quite abruptly sounds.
Talofa lava.
By now, Eloni's greetings that sounds more island resort than any real language are familiar, and it's followed by the opening of her door, leather gloves creaking around the thick fingers working the handle as he peers inside, a head of dreadlocks at odds with the pinstripe suit he wears. "Mr. Logan needs you out here," he explains, and adds, "The healer's not in."
Eloni's reward is the creaking of bedsprings, followed by the faint slap of bare feet connecting with the concrete floor as Eileen swings her legs over the side of the mattress and rises, pulling on an oversized dress shirt tailored to a much larger man rather than a woman of her mousy stature. Framed by a tangle of dark hair and expressive black brows, her gray-green eyes connect with the bouncer's and hold his gaze as she moves across the room and fumbles the garment's lustrous white buttons through the appropriate slits.
Providing medical assistance in Mu-Qian's absence was never part of her arrangement with the Dagger's proprietor, but not only is she in a position where refusing such a request would be a bad idea — to do so would go against her very nature as well. Moonlight illuminates her pale legs, bare below the knee, painting what parts of her body are exposed in radiant shades of silver and incandescent white that make the young woman's angles appear sharper and more severe than they really are.
Her halting limp doesn't help much, either. "What happened?"
The distance the bouncer gives her is almost reverent in severity. Polite, in other settings. He's quick to lead the way, broad back of navy wool and white thread guiding her down the hallway, trusting she'll follow. The telepathic link comes more natural to Eloni, and so it's through her head he speaks.
Intruder bleeding from a knife wound. Got caught where he shouldn't. Mr. Logan doesn't want him dying though.
It's a short journey, coming to a halt at a door already partway opened, and Eloni levers it the rest of the way for the woman, peering inside. A coworker dressed similarly to him lurks towards the back, hands behind his back and gaze cast solemnly on the injured man that's been cast into the middle of the floor to fall where he might, a man not exactly unrecognisable to Eileen. Logan is not far away, perched on the side of a sheetless bed, turning a glowing green gaze, also not an unfamiliar sight, onto Eileen, along with a faint smirk. There's another man, and he likely needs no introductions either.
The floor's seen blood before - chances are, it will again. A slowly growing pool of it spreads beneath the man that's laying on the ground as he breathes very, very carefully. After a knife's been driven between your ribs, you start to develop a greater appreciation for the work your lungs do, Cardinal's found. There's bruising across the side of his face, though he's not looking up even as the door's pulled the rest of the way open, and likely much more hidden by his clothes. Not in a bed like a patient or even chained to a wall like a prisoner, merely left sprawled on the floor like an animal. He might be thought unconscious, were it not for the occasional muttered curse hissed out from blood-flecked lips. He's certainly not moving around too much to invite another injury.
And then you have Teodoro Laudani up against the wall in what appears to be a voluntary sort of reticence, caged up behind inscrutable vigilance and the lazy, feline stack of his tattooed limbs and black garments, his lips wired loosely shut across relaxed teeth, empty hands installed in his pockets. He watches Cardinal on the floor. Doesn't look up when Eileen moves into the room despite that he hears her, her voice concerned and her gait crippled. Breathing evenly through his nose, he counts the minutes until John Logan is done testing him.
Probably, his tally is off. Each one feels more like six. Six plus six plus six. He doesn't say another fucking word.
Eileen's attention is drawn to Logan first, or perhaps more accurately: to the two pinpricks of green light emanating from his face's center. Next, it settles on the man on the floor, and the corners of her mouth grow tight with some vague emotion too remote to read with any real degree of accuracy. As far as poker faces go, hers could use some improvement, but she's doing an admirable job of keeping her surprise from bleeding through onto her features like the sticky liquid seeping from Cardinal's wounds, saturating the fibers of his clothes.
By the time she even thinks about pursuing the other faces in the room, she's already crouched beside the injured man and has placed one small hand on his shoulder. Her grip tightens when she finally spies the Dagger's newest hire, then becomes abruptly slack. Of all the people she expected to find in the heart of John Logan's den, Cardinal was close to the bottom of the list — Teodoro is at the apex's absolute opposite.
"What have you done?" Difficult to say who she's directing the question at. In some form or another, all the men in the room fit the bill.
Two of them have no answer. They know well enough that Logan prefers them to be silent presences, shadows with fists, and they exchange a glance over woman and injured man, Eloni coming to shut the door and stand in front of it, gloved hands held relaxed at his sides.
Logan remains where he is, legs crossed with an elbow against one knee. There's no knife in sight, now, and the barest traces of spilled blood smear the side of one hand. "Got carried away," he says, voice dull. No real gloat in his tone, nothing mocking, if some smugness unable to be scrubbed out completely. His eyes that only seem brighter in the relative darkness and fixed on the shapes of Eileen and Cardinal, although— of course— he keeps Ghost in his periphery. That's almost as important.
That's a familiar voice. The edges of Cardinal's vision have started to fade a little from blood loss, but he lifts his head, forcing himself to focus at the slender young woman that's just walked in. Oh, look, it's Eileen! He found her! Somehow, this strikes him as funny, and he can't help but laugh… well, chuckle, anyway, shoulders shaking as his head falls forward to thump against the floor. "Mission accomplished," he whispers to the flooring.
Either a stupid thing to say or an intelligent one, even if it was done with meaningless subtlety and directed at the floor. Name and purpose— the two-part query hangs over Richard's blood-sodden frame like an early pall. Brilliantly sharp, Ghost cuts his gaze over at his employer and there's the faintest intimation of a brow lifted before his gaze straightens out. Focuses, without overt difficulty, on the elfin pale of Eileen's face.
Somehow, he always ends up in these situations with her. A bedroom-cum-cell, the floor wet with red, unanswerable questions straining against the fraying tethers of their respective loyalties. He exhales through his teeth, finally, a sigh that Benjamin Fletcher would probably be proud of. It passes for a token of impatience.
"If you want him to live," and Eileen isn't entirely sure she believes Eloni on that particular front, "then you need to take him to see Filatov." As she speaks, brows lowered and jaw staunch, she begins the process of removing Cardinal's shirt and any other articles of clothing that might stymie her attempt to help. Logan's retinue, minus Teodoro, goes ignored for the time being — meaty splotches somewhere in the far corners of her vision are as relevant to situation at hand as the superfluous pieces of furniture in the room or the sound of people moving around upstairs, oblivious to the morass unfolding beneath their feet. "This man needs a doctor, not—"
Whatever she is, presumably. And trained medical personnel isn't it. If she notices anything amiss about the situation as it's been presented to her, she ignores the miasma gathering in the air and sloughs off her presentiment in favour of more trenchant observations like the pallid colour of Cardinal's skin and — now that his shirt is off — the yawning lesion Logan's knife has opened between his ribs. If the Sicilian is standing there, saying nothing, things can't be as dire as they appear. "Jesus Christ, John."
"Oh, don't," Logan rebukes, the sneer in his voice as well as on his face. If he caught what Cardinal said, it's not enough to impact his attention just yet, his focus zeroing in on Eileen for the moment. "I didn't bring you here to complain, and if I could drag him to Filatov's, I would."
Restlessly, the pimp gets to his feet, Italian leather shoes creaking as he moves to pace. "But you were worse off and you took care of yourself, didn't you? Now see to him before I decide it's less fuss just to let him bleed out."
The stoic shadow that is Eloni says nothing, but his chin lifts a fraction as if he were— and is— hearing something in the room that other's aren't invited to. His broad shoulders were already a tense horizon of potential strength, and so there is no change in his posture. But he watches Eileen's back as she tends to Cardinal, this time, rather than the room in general.
"Don't go out've your way on my account, John," Richard mutters under his breath as the jacket and shirt are dragged out of the way— they can't be taken off without actually cutting them, given that his hands are cuffed behind his back, but they can be shoved over his arms and moved out of the way in an awkward tangle of leather and cotton fabric, at least. As the bloodied shirt's pulled up and away from the wound, he hisses in a sharp breath, toes curling in his shoes and head falling back as he bites his tongue to keep from audibly exhibiting the pain.
Assumptions are terrible things to make, but rarely can they be categorized as fatal errors. Where Eileen and her hands are concerned, however, the misconception that leads her to take the steps she does next is exactly that. Since she stepped foot in the Dagger, her ability has always been quashed by Logan's presence — that he might make an exception here in the brothel's bowels doesn't cross her mind until her fingers brush against the exposed skin around Cardinal's wound, stained salmon pink with his blood.
Like a piece of timelapse photography sped up, the edges of the knife wound peel back and blossom crimson, ushering forth a fresh deluge that spills down the man's chest in undulating rivulets before spattering dark and wet onto the concrete floor. In the same instant, Eileen jerks back with the force of someone struck square in the middle with a shotgun round, eyes wild, hands thrown up.
That isn't supposed to happen.
Because Logan's eyes don't glow for her. They glow to keep the injured man bleeding on the floor of the cell trapped in a cage of flesh. Logan's gaze tracks over towards Cardinal's injured torso, still and silent, now, in anticipation; a curl at the corner of his mouth in a sort of half-smile when he watches— more blood, more injury, at the mere brush of Eileen's fingers.
He was right. This is fun.
There is no vocalised instruction granted. Eloni moves with surprising speed for a man of his size, and his hands— gloved, that flimsy layer of leather doing its part in making sure his old gunshot wounds don't start weeping with crimson— wrap tight around the pale twigs of Eileen's wrists thrown up in reaction. His knee comes down against the floor, and there's a twist, pain shooting up the girl's arm before her open palm is laid—
Down beside the knife wound in Cardinal's ribs. I am sorry, Eloni says, almost casually, into her head.
Up until now, Cardinal's kept quiet save for the occasional grunt or hiss of discomfort and pain— even the knife failed to get any particularly loud sounds out of him. He's been stabbed before, shot once or twice, faint scars speaking of a hard enough life. As the woman's fingers press against bare skin, however, blood unclotting and flesh peeling away from the wound like time-lapse filming of the healing process threaded in reverse through the camera— then, he cries out, fingers twisting against the cuffs that shackle his wrists fruitlessly, legs kicking upon the floor as he tries to jerk away from Eileen, pushing himself a bit across the floor as fresh, hot blood spills down his abdomen.
There's a wild, animal sort of panic stirring in his gut as he does so, hissing out, "No no no— fuck— I'll kill you, you fucking son of a bitch, I'll— " Then her hands are forced back to his side, and his words are choked off in another agonized cry.
There's a spasm of movement through Ghost's features, an involuntary knot of brow that flattens out, the next instant, into something rigidly thoughtful. He knows that Eloni is coming in even before Eloni is here, and his features harden over as the men turn away from Cardinal and turn on Eileen. He's holding his breath. He doesn't yet turn blue, but it doesn't take the most discerning of perceptions to recognize that he's grown tense, watchful; that Eileen means something different to him than Cardinal does.
Mind you, he could have concealed that. Didn't. No less absurd or eerie, there is then a subtle settling when Eileen comes to no greater harm than finger-sized bruises barring her wrists as she struggles against her strings. He drags a thumb down his jaw, closes and opens both of his very pale eyes. "You just want blood?" he inquires after Logan. Idleness permeates his voice.
Eileen's voice joins Cardinal's with less anguish, more mounting horror. She bucks back into the barrel that is Eloni's chest, thrashing against him with all the frenetic futility of an animal with a wire snare looped around its neck. Her hand may as well be embedded in concrete; no amount of kicking and screaming or twisting and squirming will wrench her wrist from his cast iron grip.
Not that it stops her from trying. Each shuddering breath sucked down into her lungs fuels more shrill ululating, and somewhere in there is Teo's name, bitten off in between wailed entreaties that double as burbling accusations. Why are you just standing there? How can you do this? Please, help him!
"Never just blood," is Logan's response, cut across the room to Ghost. The other one, the henchmen, he's moving in the likelihood of keeping Cardinal still, but his boss is there first, moving to crouch down on the other side of where Eloni and Eileen are gathered together. He spares a glance towards her, and there's no sympathy or apology there, just checking really, before a hand goes out to flatten high on Cardinal's chest, surprising strength behind it as blood feels warm beneath his palm. His other hand gets a secure grip on the man's hair, angling him to stare up into glowing green eyes.
"Now," he says, and he can't even pretend to be conversational, voice wavering in that excitability that gives him a little more life than anything sex, money, simple pleasures can bring. Everyone has a vice. Power is Logan's. "I suggest you tell me everything before she kills you. Quickly. You mentioned Linderman, and I know you're the one who spoke to Satoru."
Those fingers curl into Cardinal's hair and jerk his head back, his gaze forced up to those luminous green eyes… and there's a darkness there that has nothing to do with his powers, mingling with the primal desperation of the animal hindbrain trying to thrash for freedom. He's trembling under Logan's hands, in pain, in fear perhaps, but in response to those words… he spits blood up at the pimp's face.
"You'll— kill me anyway, John," he manages to cough out, red-stained lips curling in a trembling smirk, "Do it. I die… you die… Arthur loses… one— nnh— final fuck you to all of you bastards…"
That wasn't a name that the ghost had honestly expected from the little red bird's bill, but it draws his attention from Eileen's squeals of horror complicated by the palpitating flux of breathy panic. His eyes blink wider now, averted deliberately from the thrashing female's knot of blurring fingers and feet, the mainstay of his gaze riveted to Cardinal like nails in his face. He scrolls his memory for any recollection of links, interpersonal or business, between the English sociopath and the Petrelli dynasty's tyrant. Can't find anything, or else he's—
—distracted. "Should seek clarification," he interjects awkwardly, his fingers opening before closing, either a jack-knifed grasp at empty air or the formation of a fist. Both. Either. Neither. Ghost rots on his feet, remains doing precisely what Eileen so shrilly accuses him of. He stands there. "Arthur loses what?"
It makes him flinch, the graceless spray of red, and fingers only tighten in Cardinal's hair as Logan beats back the urge to strike him in retaliation. Really, there's more than enough punishment being inflicted. The hand at Cardinal's chest drifts up, and he uses the cuff of his black jacket to wipe along his face with as much deliberate dignity as he can muster.
Arthur loses what. Ghost gets a flicker of a glance, and it's tempting to ask, who the fuck is Arthur, but it seems as though his newest employee has a clue. "I won't kill you," he promises, with inappropriate saccharine in his tone, beneath the shrill protests of Eileen less than a foot away from him. The lie is about as apparent as the fist in Cardinal's hair and the cold shoulder he's given Eileen. "I also think you're very sadly mistaken."
Shit shit shit. That was out loud, and Teo's not the dull knife in the drawer. The pain's getting to him, making him say too much—
The question from the Ghost that wears another's face is ignored, even as Cardinal's lips peel away from red-stained teeth in a mirthless grin up to Logan. "You… you think we-we'd be h-here without— hrrk— s-sanction, assh-hole? If the— the future plays out like it might…" A flicker of a look to Teo, now, or at least in his direction, before he looks back to Logan, "— you'll s-see more than fu-fucking helos out your window, John…"
This is kind of nice, Ghost is trying to convince himself. At the very least, Richard is randomly confirming various segments of the marketing strategy that he had pitched John Logan, thus inadvertently solidifying their business relationship. It is absurdly convenient, a bit like having opened the stapled papers of a sit-down exam only to discover it was the one that the TA had been practicing on in pencil earlier.
What's worse is Eileen. What's infinitely worse. The points of her fingers, talon-curled and peeling at Eloni as if he were a particularly implacably-rined cheese wheel. He's learned a lot from Hana, though, about how to kill and how to stay alive, how one becomes continuous to the other. The first and last rule of social conduct is to Never let them see you sweat. He doesn't. He keeps that underneath the neat black fold of his collar, and listens to his pulse beat agony out of the scab still healing on his elbow, railroad thunder beneath the shallow slap and scuff of struggling girls and blood hitting concrete.
It isn't his place to speak, but Logan's glance gives him the cue. "Talk about Arthur and Linderman, and you might still have eyes in your head to see the day, Cardinal."
Between Cardinal's ignominious sprawl and the convex shape of Eileen's arching spine, she and Logan's prisoner are very much subjugated to the Englishman's whims. Her screams have tapered off, segued into an ongoing guttural hiss blown out through clenched teeth, harsh and aching, and although a wet sheen clings to her cheeks, the culprit is an oily slick comprised of sweat infused with traces of tears rather than the other way around.
With every moment that passes, she can feel her ability hooking its claws just a little bit deeper into the muscular fissures beneath the palm of her trembling hand — much more of this and Cardinal will lose more than his eyes. Her struggles now consisting of little more than an occasional spasmodic shudder or twitch, she swallows back bile and what tastes like it might be vomit. "Teo— Teodoro… What you said— please. If you do—"
Logan releases his hold on Cardinal's hair, but not without a sharp smack of the man's skull against the concrete floor. It's almost a tap of discipline compared to the way Eileen's power is ravaging his body, splitting apart wounds old and new, inside and out, with delicate, unstoppable claws. "My mother calls me John," he rebukes, dryly. "Linderman, Arthur, Mortimer, your friends— all of them. Talk."
He rests back on his haunches, hands off Cardinal now that it's clear more is weighing him down than the hands of sociopaths. For a man being confirmed to that a terrible future will unfurl, he seems somewhat calm, arms on bent knees and simply watching now. Either the little bird will sing before the poison takes it under, or it will simply drop dead.
It's just a matter of waiting. Flecks of blood that had escaped his sleeve dry on Logan's face as he crouches idly nearby. There is a wondering glance spared between girl and manpower, eyes going up towards Ghost with pointed curiousity.
"Get back t-to me when you have someth-hing to put on th-the table, Laud— ," Cardinal replies in rough derision, cracked and bloodied lips twisting into a snarl— and then there's a wet, flat sound that escapes his lips. Oh, that would be what a lung collapsing sounds like, as the degrading effect of Eileen's corrupt touch delves that wound even deeper through the layers of muscle.
Then his skull cracks into the floor, and this time he doesn't struggle, doesn't claw for the world of light and life— this time, he surrenders willingly to the shadows that reach for him, and he's gone. Mentally, at least.
Thump. Graceless as a sack of shit— which would probably fetch more on the market, at this point, Cardinal's mutilated corpus hits the ground, and Teo's head drops with it, slightly, his brows hiking on his forehead in an expression that looks entirely too quizzical to have a heart in it. 'Well,' it says. 'That's awkward.' "Signor.
"You should stop this. He knows things worth hearing. Please?" There's a curl of his mouth around the end of that monosyllable, testier, an arrogant parody of genuine request, his tone stretched thin over the bulwark of something that resembles insistence. Ghost is aware he's pushing a line, doing this, but he weighs out his priorities with a mind that's long since learned to balance objectivity with personal concerns— as Hana had taught him, once. Eileen's bird-boned frame rattles and sobs and sends the scales into lunatic seesaw.
Oh, he's nearly dead. Logan's head tilts on the end of his long neck, and resentfully, in his eyes cast up towards Ghost and his request. Judgmental, spiteful, as if he might just say no to test his own authority.
Then all at once, both eyes fade to dimness, and switch back on like a flash light. The destructive energy siphoning out from Eileen's palm is abruptly cut to nothing, and that familiar queasiness of her active power is blanketed in almost as familiar numbness as Logan's gaze tracks back over to her. "Good work," he offers, and no, he does know better, if the lift at the corner of his mouth is to be of any indication. Eloni hesitates, and then at a voiceless indication, his hands slacken on her arms, getting up out of his crouch, although never far away.
Eileen buckles, pitching forward, and wraps both her arms around her middle, the tips of her fingers clutching at her sides beneath the loose cotton material of her dress shirt. Long curls of greasy black hair act as a veil, shielding her face and the expression she presently wears on it from prying eyes. Relief floods through her body, the worst of her anxiety ebbing away into static background noise that buzzes in her ears and drowns out the sound of blood pounding in them. Her breathing is rickety, unsteady, interspersed with long lapses of relative silence in which she tries to get it back under control and scrape some composure off the bottom of the proverbial barrel.
It isn't exactly working.
Blue eyes meet green from across the concrete. Ghost folds up his hands at his sides, repressing the urge to go through the lining of his jacket in search of cigarettes that he knows with crystal clarity that he does not have. "I think he was right.
"You should get a real estate agent soon. Now," he says, irrelevantly and therefore irreverently, canting his brow upward. He moves toward the boneless heap of the man on the floor, hazards a glance at Eileen when no one, especially not the woman herself, is looking at him. Shading the air in front of him with a small breath, he squints down at the roof of the shadowmorph's tousled skull. Dips delicately into the polluted river of Cardinal's mind, checking for either dream-addled darkness or the presence of subterfuge lent credence by sincere suffering. Both. Either. "What are you going to do with her?"
For a few more moments, Logan remains crouched in a gargoyle's posture beside Cardinal's bleeding self, albeit one dressed in pointed shoes and shining leather. It's already starting to smell like iron and salt in here, and with only minor awkwardness from one leg, he gets to his feet. Observes his hands and wipes his palms together of flaky feeling dried blood. "We'll see," he mutters, then looks towards Ghost, then down towards Eileen. "I'll escort her back to her room, shall I?"
His shoes leave bloodied footsteps as he picks his way around Cardinal, looking back at his security, outside of Teo's scope of address. "Keep an eye on him," before glancing towards Ghost, "we'll clean up later."
Bloodied fingers go down to snag Eileen's arm, to get her to her feet and direct her out. His grip is almost as strong as Eloni's, more skeletal, sharper. There's no fear in the potential of skin against skin, aside from her shirt sleeve.
It happens with such alacrity that Eileen doesn't even realize what she's doing until she hears the crack of her open palm connect with Logan's mouth. A moment later, her hand comes away stinging and she glowers up at him from behind her hair with fury swimming in the deep, tear-hazy pools of her pale eyes, more gray than they are green in the basement's muted light. To Logan, the look on her face is undoubtedly a familiar one, because it's what he sees every time he stops to examine his own reflection in the mirror.
No remorse. Zero. Zilch. None.
"Fuck you," she hisses in a thick voice slurred by rage. Her pointed gaze lily-hops over to Teo a moment later. "And fuck you, too."
There's no dissembling there that the Ghost's power can feel; the shadowman's mind plunged into the shallow stillness of unconsciousness, not even any dreams to disturb Lethe at the moment. Cardinal will likely stir again before too long, but may not last in that state from the looks of him, and the amount of blood that covers the front of his body and stains the floor beneath him. Tattoos standing out in stark relief against night-pale skin, mottled with crimson now where the unnatural degredation of tissue spread from the wound dug into his side, the pale of bone visible from certain angles. He breaths shallowly and irregularly, wet and raspy exhalations that seem laboured even lost to the waking world.
"I didn't know you two knew each other," Ghost tells Eileen, deadpan in a distracted, unchoreographed sort of way. Teo is reverberating back into his mind's ear, strident, aghast.
You're supposed to save them.
He fetches a final glance down at Cardinal's corpus, clinically considering the efficacy that contributing a screaming nightmare toward the desirable, eventual outcome of waking the shadowmorph up. Fedor Ibragimov is not an enemy he particularly relishes engaging. Especially not over a decision— unrecognizable even as a specific act of heroism— as uninspired, in his perception, as the one that brought Richard here. He isn't surprised that Logan's mouth is suddenly welling with blood, and he forgets to give the blight of color and commitment of loyalty the proper recognition.
His boot grates back toward Logan a moment belated, though the reach of his hands is dexterous and seemingly conceived out of an informed effort to help. "Need some help with that?"
It won't be the first time, nor will it be the last, that Logan is slapped so harshly. So he probably doesn't have a right to the shock that makes green eyes go wide after the fact, a hand still clenched on Eileen's arm neglectfully, although his encircling fingers go rigid with tension.
He touches the tip of his tongue against the corner of his mouth, then brings up his other hand, fingertips coming away rosy with blood of his own when he inspects it. Teo doesn't have to move in too close to help - Eileen is quite abruptly sent stumbling into his chest after a brutal shove in his direction, her arm coming away bruised beneath the shirt sleeve. "Get her back in her room," Logan says, words coming out carefully patient. "Lock the door, and do us a favour and shoot her if it starts to hurt."
Eileen's reaction upon colliding with Teo is much tamer than the one inspired by Logan's touch. One hand finds his chest, fingers splayed in much the same manner they'd spread across Cardinal's, while the other locks onto his forearm and squeezes tight, the fabric of his shirt clenched between her fingers and a pronounced ridge of knuckles. Her anger does not prevent the young woman from steadying herself against someone who, until just a few minutes ago, was a person she considered a dear friend — but make no mistake: if she thought she could get away with striking Teodoro before he caught her arm in mid-swing, she'd be aiming for his nose.
"You said I could come and go as I pleased," which obviously isn't the case anymore, and Eileen can't say with any real honesty that Logan's change of heart comes as a surprise. She'd at least seen this coming, even if the circumstances surrounding it had been murky. "The deal's off."
Catching Eileen when she's shoved is easy, catching up an armload of pinestraw, mopstring, and blinds slats. She's smaller now than she was then, but the circumstances of this collision are still eerily familiar. He hefts her along, gentle as he can.
Places his boots carefully on the floor and starts toward her own special accomodations, tilting the center of her balance against the fulcrum of an arm hooked around her belly, her sleeve gripped in a snarl of fingers. "Calm the fuck down," Ghost whispers. Restrained to the bottom of his throat, his voice comes emerges like a rasp skewing down the slope of her cheek. He twists away, strains his ears for any clue, however figmentary, of what the Hell this 'deal' was.
"Yes, it is," Logan agrees, a sneer showing a slice of white teeth, following them both out of the room but not down the corridor, his shoulder coming to rest against the door frame. Ghost at least gets the courtesy of Logan keeping that biochemical stranglehold around Eileen's power for as long as he can watch them down the corridor. After that, well— it's up to Teo and his skills at shoving and door slamming.
The deal is not vocalised, not in this hallway, anyway. Logan looks back into the room and Cardinal's crumpled form, his own temper that had flared hotly at Eileen's snake-speed strike to his face soothing itself. Likely the two men shadowing Cardinal might be waiting further order. Get the healer. Finish him off. Some creative option C.
Instead, Logan pushes his weight off the wall to get changed out of blood-smeared clothes. It's okay, though, they're used to that.