Blood and Water, [Izzie, Sally]

[Aras]

Continued from 'What Began as a Dull Evening'...


Aras was one not normally known to frown, but now her lips were tightly pressed together in a thin, tense line. What Isabelle had asked frightened her. Why would Dice want to hurt them? You’d think the dolt would be happy just to have gotten away from Siras with his skin, but he was shooting officers at every chance he got! If his drive for revenge against those who had imprisoned him was being generalized to retribution against all Insurgi, Dicen was more dangerous than Aras had supposed. But Dice did like his bombs best, Izzie was quite right about that. At the age of 12, Aras could not have suspected that Dicen’s little chemistry projects in the basement would culminate in a lethal explosion in the Great Oak…or against the labs he’d helped to build. Dice didn’t used to be like this. He must have been influenced. Aras saw only two possible perpetrators in the case of her brother’s lunacy; Lex and that drac.

She continued to look downcast even as Sally placed the tray of sweets in front of her. “You’re very generous, Sally.” She picked up a pastry and ate it with tiny, morose bites. “Blood’s thicker than water…” she agreed. So much blood.

It was only when Sally admitted to recognizing the draconian that Aras perked up, propping herself up on the table with her elbows. What did she mean, ‘a grunt for the Four’? “Wait…you mean the Four Fears?” she said in a terrified, conspiratorial whisper. Mentioning the Four in Siras was an offense punishable by imprisonment. Sally was very brave to bring them up in front of two Insurgi, one an officer. “They’re real? I always assumed that terrorist groups always attributed their actions to the Fears, leeched off their infamy. There’s no way four people could cause that much…death and destruction…” she was starting to feel ill. The pastry sat like a lump of glue in her stomach. “No…no, Dice is, he’s…reformed! He tried that terrorist stuff and realized it was wrong. Besides, he’s a small-fry, a novice, a….I mean, what would the Fears want with him? He can’t do anything for them, he WOULDN’T do anything for a bunch of murdering savage criminals like that!” her voice rose in desperation.

Needing something to hang on to, her finger’s curled reflexively around her cousin’s hand. Dice was never an idle soul. He always needed a project, something to occupy his mind. Something to fight for. Of course he hadn’t just gone into hiding quietly. Sally’s reassuring words about the draconian fell on deaf ears. “Please, Sally, I need to know everything. Do you know what he’s called, where he’s from, what he does for the Fears? How did he save your life? I…I won’t hurt him or anything, I swear, I just want my brother back!” It had slipped through her teeth before she could think. For all of her convincing herself that she was better off without him, that he was dead to her, Aras could not stand the thought that he was out there somewhere, being hunted, constantly with a gun trained on his head. If she could find the draconian, she could find Dicen.

She turned to Izzie, her eyes pleading. “You’ll help me, won’t you, cousin? Just imagine, if they ever…if D ever implicated that I…if he got captured they’d torture him and he’d tell them just who let him out of that cage…” she said breathlessly.

She tried to calm down, recollect herself. Sally was speaking again. “Huh? Other fellow? Oh, you mean Lex. Alexei, Dice’s best friend from the academy. He was like my second brother, but after Dicen graduated I didn’t hear much about him anymore, ‘cept that he and D were making bombs together. I think he studied something like chemical engineering, or-“ she cut off abruptly. She seized Isabelle’s wrist and examined the needle mark, her eyes narrowed. “It was Lex,” she said with certainty. “He knew officers visit the café. He wanted to better his chances of getting D out of the Venus Fly.”

[Isabelle]

ooc~ sorry for the delayed response; hopefully school will be a little nicer to me for the next couple of weeks before dumping all over me again.

bic~

Izzie collapsed into her chair, accepting the smoothie Sally offered her with a warm smile. She felt more emotionally exhausted than physically. Not in all her life had she been confronted with this kind of dilemma. Izzie nodded in affirmation of what Sally had to say. Yes, family was more important to her than the Insurgi, but how far would Dice have to go before she was forced to disassociate? He’d already murdered several officers, and the drac he was hanging around seemed to have no qualms with that either.

She took one of the raspberry danishes Sally offered. “Thank you, Sally,” she murmured. She nibbled on the danish while listening. She was interested to hear about this drac. So far, she could safely assume that, whoever he was, he was very close to Dice. Perhaps closer than she or Aras were comfortable with. Sally seemed to be implying that they might be very close.

Izzie felt a little relief that the drac had helped Sally at one point – at least that seemed to indicate he was a good person. Then she went on to say that he was a grunt for the Four. Izzie gagged on a chunk of ice she’d sucked up through the straw of her smoothie, covering her mouth with a hand and coughing until she could speak again. “The Four?” she repeated. It was a word she would have never said if she hadn’t been in the cozy presence of these two in a secluded place. She could lose her badge for acknowledging the Four Fears’ existence in the first place. Her eyebrows pinched together. Pressing the heel of her hand against her forehead, she said, more to herself than anyone in particular, “he’s making himself an enemy of the Insurgi. Why would he do that? Why can’t he just lie low?”

Aras sounded frantic. She wanted to deny it all, just as Izzie did. But Izzie felt that, after being locked in a cage for so long, Dice was entitled to feel angry, even vengeful. But to take it to this extreme had put him in even more jeopardy. “Please, Sally, I need to know everything. Do you know what he’s called, where he’s from, what he does for the Fears? How did he save your life? I…I won’t hurt him or anything, I swear, I just want my brother back!” Izzie squeezed her cousin’s hand back, trying to soothe her fears.

“Don’t be silly. If we find him we’re obligated to turn him in, and you know what they’d do… Right away, he wouldn’t get a trial or anything. It wouldn’t be back to the cage for him. Besides that, I think he’d rather die than go back there. You should have seen his eyes…” She was referring to the moment she’d burned him with the barrel of her gun and simultaneously set him free. “Even today, with a whole pack of ‘Surgs surrounding him, he looked… happy compared to back then. He looks healthy.” She kept replaying the scene from the Venus Fly, and most striking to her was how those two interacted. They moved and gestured and looked at one another in a way she couldn’t quite articulate, but which made her feel as though they were one person. She’d be lying to herself if she assumed they were just friends.

“You’ll help me, won’t you, cousin? Just imagine, if they ever…if D ever implicated that I…if he got captured they’d torture him and he’d tell them just who let him out of that cage…” Izzie couldn’t say no. She chewed her lip, nodding mutely. “We can’t bring him anywhere though, Aras… he’ll be dead the minute he crosses into Siras. I think… I think he’s probably safer with that drac. Right Sally? He looked strong…” She glanced at Sally, unsure what she’d make of all this. Clearly they were one fucked up little family. She felt no obligation to arrest Sally, even though she’d just openly admitted to withholding information about recognized criminals and spoken about the Fears in front of two Insurgi. She appreciated her honesty.

Sally asked about Lex, and Izzie averted her eyes. She’d always wondered about the friendship between Dice and Lex. She felt certain that Lex had been the one to change Dice’s mind about the Insurgi. Suddenly, Aras snatched up her hand to stare at the pinprick, and said with dead certainty, “it was Lex.”

Izzie chewed her lip. “This is so messed up…”

[Sally]

Sally watched the two officers with an attentive expression and listened closely to their reactions regarding Nine and the Dicen boy. It was mostly what she'd expected; the Insurgi were still denying the existence of The Four Fears, a foolish decision, and just speaking about them seemed to put the two Phoenixes on edge. She'd also expected them to press her for more information. Sally felt relieved that she could be honest about most of it, considering that even her knowledge of Nine had it's limits.

"To be honest," she sighed heavily,"What that scaled idiot did for me 's a bit of a tender topic, an' I'd prefer not to go into it. I never caught his name, an' it never occurred to me to ask any more 'bout him, considerin' the situation n' all. But I'll tell ya one thing," she looked between them with a finger raised, "If this Dicen fellow and that drac are close, then there isn't a safer place in all Eterno fer 'im to be."

She took a long sip from her mug and exhaled.

"From what I understand, I have to agree with miss Isabelle on this one," she said finally, "Turnin' either o' them in would be a death sentence, if only to cover up the existence of the Fears. You two would likely also be dragged in as suspected accomplices, all things considered. This situation is delicate."

Sally's eyes narrowed whenever Lex was mentioned, whoever he was. He sounded like trouble, and if he really was the bastard that put needles in her doorhandles then she wanted a nice chat with the man. Up close and personal, with the barrell of a gun to his head.

But the way Aras seemed to break down concerning her brother really tugged at the old woman's heart strings, and she eventually rested her palm against her forehead in a defeated way.

"'Right, look," she eyed them, "I might be able to track down Scales n' ask 'im to give yer brother a message for you, or maybe ask 'im to ask yer brother to meet you to talk maybe. No promises, very slim chance I'll even find 'im, but I could give it a shot."

Even as she spoke, Sally wondered whether she should even bother trying. Chances were that Nine was busy, and if he wasn't he still might not want to risk his comrade's safety over a family meeting. Then again, what the boys had done last night had been pretty risky...

[Aras]

Aras really didn’t like the way Izzie and Sally kept referring to her brother and the draconian as ‘close’. She was grudging to admit she’d noticed it too, the way that Dice and the drac worked together so synchronously, moving as one, predicting one another’s movements. Aras was not the most monogamous individual, but all of her partners across the years, men and women, had been 100% phoenix. She was quite sure the same could be said of Dice, at least up until he’d turned traitor. She tried not to picture Kleos’s likely reaction to the insinuation – it might tarnish her elation at hearing her son was still alive. Aras was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation, and at ever mention of the Four she cringed as through expecting a whole officer patrol to bust the door down and arrest the lot of them.

“He…wouldn’t get a trial? No, that must be illegal, they have to give him a trial,” Aras said with fading certainty. “We’d get a trial, right, Izz? They wouldn’t just lock us up.” Izzie seemed to be suggesting that being locked up was no longer an option for Dice. Aras had never been through the Insurgi legal system, never having done anything to attract the attention of law enforcement, and it was pretty obvious that she didn’t have any idea how it all worked. Then again, there were many techniques employed by the Insurgi which weren’t exactly public knowledge; their various ‘fail safes’, right down to their interrogation rooms and their firing squads.

She considered Izzie’s assessment of how Dice had looked that night. “He did seem happy, didn’t he?” Even though at the time he was surrounded by furious Insurgi officers wielding guns. Happier than he’d ever looked in that cage, even when she’d brought him marbles. She was being irrational, she had to calm down and face the facts: if she tracked Dice down it would mean his death sentence and her and Isabelle’s arrest warrant. If he remained free, it could mean the death of countless more officers. But at least he seemed happy. “Okay, okay! So we can’t track him down, I get it,” she said testily. She was frustrated with Dice, she didn’t want to get snippy with Izzie and Sally.

At Sally’s offer, Aras sat up a little straighter, staring at her and trying to gauge her sincerity. “Really? You would do that?” she asked uncertainly, a small smile rising to her cheeks. “There’s no way he’ll agree to meet with me. He destroyed his phone just so I couldn’t call him anymore. That draconian told me I wouldn’t try to contact him anymore if I knew what was good for me. But please, please could you try to get in contact with him?” She paused, trying to decide what she needed Sally to convey for her. “I just need to know he’s safe and happy and that he has no plans of coming back to Siras. Tell that drac that he had damn well better take care of my big brother. And…tell Dice I love him.”

Aras wrung her hands nervously, and happened to catch sight of her watch. “Oh my god, I’ve got to get home, Claire is going to kill me for being out so long! Please say you’ll try to find that drac, Sally?”