Exit Strategies
Tuesday, 23 Sep 2014
Caroline's townhouse
Natchez MS
Afternoon
Irina's arrival back in Natchez came as something of a surprise, and it is the very next day after she's gotten the information that Caroline sends 'round a hand-delivered letter. The invitation to tea is sent on lovely stationary, an ingrained Southern habit that the young woman rarely employs. Although she's kept Irina in the loop when it comes to her son Chance (14 month old now), the news that she's exchanged has been very limited.
As the light above the door blinks to alert her that Irina's at the front door, Caroline answers it personally. She looks....weary. On edge. But the small smile that plays about her lips is welcoming. "It's good to see you, Irina," she murmurs, gesturing the other woman inside. A brief, cautious look out the front door happens as the other woman steps in, and then Caroline shuts the door. "Welcome back to Natchez."
"Hello, Caroline," Irina said with a warm smile. "It's good to be back."
Irina stepped inside and watched Caroline, immediately picking up on her unease and fatigue. She kept her questions to herself, however. The answers might well reveal themselves in the course of normal conversation. As for those that weren't so apparent ... well, there were ways she could find out. Of course, she hoped she wouldn't completely botch the visit: she was woefully out of practice with social niceties. Her usual dealings with people tended to be businesslike or fatal, depending on their mortal state.
"How have you and your family been?"
"Just fine, thank you so much," Caroline replied mildly. She gestured for Irina to follow her into the dining room, where a full-on tray of iced tea and cakes sat already waiting. "Chance is walkin' now, and he's just a handful and a half," she tells the other woman as they move. "Mason's taken him to the park so that we could visit. Mama is visitin' cousins in Atlanta just now, and Zadie and Grandmama...." She trailed off, and glanced at Irina. "Well, business keeps on movin', doesn't it?"
Settling herself into one of the chairs at the table, Caroline clasped her hands together. "I have to admit that havin' y'all back here worries me a touch, though, Irina. What brings y'all back to this neck of the woods?" Might as well get right on to the point once the niceties are observed, right?
"Duty. Friendship. Unfinished business." No point in sugarcoating it. "I hated the manner of my departure. Given the circumstances, I wasn't able to come back to set things right until now."
Blue-grey eyes study Irina's face as she speaks, and there's a hardness to Caroline's gaze that wasn't there two years ago. Her features are softer but the lines that bracket her eyes have grown a bit deeper. She looks, perhaps, a little more like Cecilia Hardin in the way she assesses. "I don't think, after this long away, Irina, that there is any settin' right what happened," she observed quietly. Despite her deafness, Caroline has never been one to raise her voice. "I'm more inclined to think that it's Renny's unfinished business and not your own that's brought you back."
You have no idea, Caroline. Irina had her own motives for returning to Natchez but it would do no good to tell Caroline what they were.
"Perhaps not," Irina said. "But owning my mistakes and trying to make things right anyway is the worthier effort."
Tilting her head, Caroline considered as she takes a sip of her own tea. And then she asked finally, "What exactly is it that you think you need to make right?"
"The status of my employment for one. I left the Franklin Agency somewhat irregularly. If it's closed down, I'd like to open it again. I would also like to establish a consulting relationship with Sheriff Mayfield. I haven't given up my PI status. That skill set is still active."
Caroline could have played the polite Southern inquisition for a long while, but if there is one thing that has remained true, she would rather get right to the point instead of playing political games. "Irina, this town's politics haven't gotten better since you left." She paused. "And if anything, they're about to get worse. If there were somethin' I needed to know, would you tell me?"
"Yes." Short, sweet, to the point. If Irina's absence had changed anything, it might have been the way she spoke. There were other changes, some subtler than others: the way Irina moved, the way she observed things. She was thinner but a little more muscular--honed, rather than bulked. There was a stillness about her, a quality more in keeping with vigilance and being prepared than a mere lack of fidgeting. "I protect my friends whenever possible, Caroline. It's one of the reasons I came back."
There was a long moment of silence as Caroline considered the words. It was as if she wanted to tell Irina something but she couldn't find the right words. She glanced briefly at the clock and then met Irina's eyes. "I need to ask some things of you, and there's little time. Your loyalties, however, are to Renny. And that makes me ... wary." She bit her lip. "But you may be the only chance I have at this. You had my back and Zadie's the last time, Irina... can I trust you to have it this time?"
"Yes." Irina didn't bat an eye. "Ask."
"The time has come to allow Evangeline to turn me," Caroline said bluntly. "If I don't, she's going to ... God, I don't even know. Make me drain Chance at Court as punishment or something equally horrific. Mason and I are both bound, but... the bond is... beginning to slip. Neither of us have fed in over two months." Which would explain the way her expression seems drawn. It is a kind of starvation. She met Irina's eyes and let her see the desperation that is becoming nearly feral in its ferocity. "She has us all. Mason's .... more dangerous when he's edgy. I'm... I can't let Evangeline have my son, Irina. And I'm ..."
The struggle to force the words out beyond the bond to her Regnant is obvious in the way sweat beads her forehead. "If Cord won't turn me, I'm going to ask him to turn Mason and I'm going to let her turn me, and then I'm going to turn Grandmama myself." It was perhaps a tactical error on the part of Evangeline to allow her slaves to become this desperate. "I need you to get Chance out of town and take him to Atlanta, to my Mama."
And there it was. Irina had wondered what Caroline would do if Mason had managed to give her a child, knowing full well that any child of theirs would be Ghouled in utero, unless ...
"Is Chance Bonded?"
Shaking her head, Caroline smiled faintly. "No. It doesn't work that way," she said quietly. "The bond causes miscarriage, so my bond had to be broken to allow him to be conceived. She kept me on a different kind of leash." Mason had been bound at that point, to ensure Caroline's compliance. "Chance is in the clear." For now.
"All right." If she was relieved, Irina didn't let it show. She maintained her expression and posture as before. She'd have time to emote later, when it was safe. "Timetable?"
Caroline watched Irina warily. "I don't know. I need.... to work it out. It's hard to think right now, and you showing back up has... offered me a chance I didn't think I'd have. Evangeline's been watching too carefully for me to simply send Chance away with Mama. She has no intention of letting me slip out of her fingers the way Grandmama did. And I can't even TALK to Grandmama about it right now because her bond is still intact." It is a desperate plan hatched only in the past 36 hours, since Irina hit town and made contact.
"Extraction then. Fine. I'll need your daily schedule, a description of your routine and Mason's. If Chance is in preschool, I'll need information on that too. Any meds he's on or has to take regularly, that goes on the list. Would you know how many ghouls Evangeline will have tasked to keep you under surveillance?" Privately, Irina didn't think Caroline did, but it never hurt to ask.
Caroline shook her head. "I don't have a clue, Irina," she said tiredly. "I'm not sure she's got any at all, counting on the threat to Grandmama and Chance to keep both of us in line. Years ago, she proved how long her reach is -- I don't think she really requires that level of monitoring on me. I've never given her any reason to doubt that I will actually allow her to turn me. But I could be wrong about that. I've spent the past 2 and a half years being just the best friend that monster will ever have, just as loyal as they come." That, too, might explain the harder look in Caroline's eyes. Whatever she had to do to make sure Evangeline believed in her, she did -- and those actions may now be haunting her.
"Court's in less than two days. I may be able to take advantage of that." If Caroline's experience had hardened her in unexpected ways, the same could be said of Irina. She observed all the little tells Caroline threw off but another part of her mind was already planning the next move, anticipating the outcomes. "If the extraction goes south and Chance risks falling into enemy hands, do you want me to kill him to save him from them?"
God, it was a hideous thing to ask anyone, much less the child's mother, but Caroline was not the woman Irina once knew and she needed to know where the line was drawn.
Caroline's hand shook as she raised the tea to her lips to sip from the chilled glass. The instinctive 'NO!' did not come immediately, and perhaps that more than any other response might tell Irina just how desperate Caroline has become. Swallowing hard, she admitted, "I can't give you an answer to that. I just... can't." Did she want her son safe? Yes. Did she want him KILLED to keep him that way? Even the thought made her sick to her stomach. "I need to speak with Mason about that one, Irina."
"Fair enough." Irina cut a look over the rim of her glass at Caroline, taking in the other woman's state. "It's a nuclear option and one I won't use unless there is no other choice. Talk to Mason. Decide between you what you want for your boy's soul, Caroline, and I'll do it. That or he and I will die trying. Either way, he'll be free of it."
Setting the glass on the table, for the first time since Irina entered the house Caroline looks... peaceful. "You comin' back here was a sign, sure as I'm sittin' here," she murmured quietly. "I've been prayin' for help for weeks and weeks, Irina."
"God willing, you'll have it." Irina tipped her head to one side and looked at Caroline ... if not narrowly, then searchingly. Then: "Exactly how long have you gone without Vitae?"
A ghoul on starvation rations was a liability and Irina needed to gauge how much of a liability Caroline would be.
Caroline looked away and then back, meeting Irina's eyes. "72 days."
"How are you and Mason holding up?" 72 days. Not the worst, but … "How much longer can you last?"
"The worst of the withdrawal is past... but the craving gets worse every day. Evangaline won't let anyone else give us blood." Caroline's faint smile was grim, and the woman who'd once given the order to have an Army colonel killed to save Mason was suddenly visible in her face. "Once you're past the first 30 days, you're no longer ghouled. And past the first 45, you can actually begin to think again. Big mistake." Because Caroline had a hell of a lot more to lose now, and she was willing to take far more drastic steps than Cici had taken to protect what was hers. "We're rapidly approaching the point where the need will override all else. But you've given me a little bit of hope that I might be able to pull this off."
And there's your timetable, DiSanti. Irina nodded, eyes narrowing in the middle distance, running through the options.
"How tight are you with Cord?" she asked after a moment.
"Still.... close enough," Caroline said slowly. "At least for some things. Why? What are you thinking?"
"He's a Gangrel. He likes you. That's rare. Cultivate him. If push comes to shove, he's a good man to have on your side."
Irina had returned to Natchez with a few ideas of her own. Cord figured in a few of them. Caroline's request for help, while not entirely unexpected, rearranged a few things. Timetable. Some things just got bumped up.
"If I had to make a choice, I'd far rather allow him to turn both me and Mason.... but he won't." Caroline grimaced. "We'd always thought to leave Mason human, bound to me. But I'm not sure Evangaline will allow it. And it may be far more advantageous for Mason to be turned by Cord anyway." She smiled ferally. "Allowing Evangaline to turn me gives me room to turn Grandmama... and that opens the door to a LOT of things. Because Grandmama has more than 50 years of abilities already learned. If she's a vamp, even a young one, we may have an actual chance at freeing Natchez from Evangaline. And quite frankly? It would not hurt my feelin's at all, Irina, to Diablerize that bitch."
It was nearly exactly what Irina had thought of the situation before she'd been forced to leave. She'd had little faith that Eliza and Evangeline would be any better than Cotton and Midnight. They were all too old to suit the reality of the times. Renny's comment about kingmaking drifted up from memory and Irina finally allowed herself an icy little smile. She raised her glass in salute.
"Nor mine."
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