IC Inbox, TLV

[tothefly]

[There is no message, only a beep.]

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[ukan]

Hey, there's a body in an unoccupied cabin that needs either moving or disposing of.

[He doesn't offer any images to explain this.]

[tothefly]

Is it still in one piece?

[Practical concerns first. There's gonna be more questions to follow, but she's not one to let lecturing get in the way of resolving an immediate issue.]

[ukan]

Yeah. Mostly. He bled out. How far are you?

[tothefly]

One floor away from you, assuming you're still with it. Two minutes.

[She'll knock on the door when she gets there, a quiet noise meant to not attract unwanted attention.]

[ukan]

When Lark answers the door, he's cleaned the blood from around his mouth but it's the only concession he makes. His shirt is torn from changing forms in it, and one sleeve is blood soaked from having fallen too near the mess.

He opens it enough to let her in, and closes it quietly when she's stepped inside. He doubts there's anything to explain about the resurrection process, and he doesn't want to volunteer information about the murder, so he watches her instead.

[tothefly]

She steps inside on silent feet, moving carefully to avoid blood on her shoes as she tries to get a better look at the corpse on the floor. He's mangled, sure, but she can still recognize the profile of his face as she comes around his side. Alfie. Not that he didn't likely deserve it, but that doesn't matter and isn't what she's here to judge.

Squatting on her toes, she inspects the corpse, then turns to her inmate, eyeing him as well. Her face is closed, almost alien but not quite, and she certainly doesn't seem surprised or distressed regarding her proximity to a corpse, or at all worried she'll join him. "Going to tell me what happened?" Her voice maintains that neutrality.

[ukan]

He's glad now that he decided not to clean up the room like he had with T'Pol. He could have tried to manipulate the situation, to make it look like something it isn't, but the chance to see Natasha managing it is worth more than that.

"He may want to keep his privacy about some of this. I can tell you that we had an agreement, and he came here willingly, knowing he would end up dead afterward."

[tothefly]

It says something, that he left everything as is, more or less. The telltale smears around his cheeks and just below his jaw leave hints as to what's changed, but she can't necessarily blame him for that. Everything else, though...the state of the room, the corpse, plus what he'd mentioned in their first conversation, it all makes this feel like a test.

That's fine. She's always been good at tests.

"You had an agreement. That you'd call him, and he'd let you rip him apart." Her voice is still measured and neutral as she looks him over, checking for any wounds. Maybe the shift back healed him, but maybe not. "Without fighting back?"

[ukan]

Lark is bloodstained and he has a small bruise under his shirt where Alfie kicked him. But other than that, he's in excellent condition. He watches her eyes, and wonders what she takes from it, so he clarifies one point: "He was going to kill himself after I broke a bone or something. I felt it wasn't in keeping with the agreement, so I saved him a step."

And made his death a hundred times worse, more painful, slower than it needed to be.

[tothefly]

"He was going to cheat." Fair. He shouldn't have said anything about his plan, from the looks of things. It would have saved him a hell of a lot of pointless pain. She stands, finally, facing Lark with one hand on her hip, the full force of her attentions turned his direction.

"You could have done the same. Not shown me any of this. I never had to know." The question is, why? Trying to make her flinch? Seeing if she was one of those soft wardens he'd mentioned? "Now that I do, there have to be consequences." The words are measured, and she watches to see what he makes of them.

[ukan]

"There should be." He agrees, but in a tone that implies he doubts there will be. It's very true no one had to know about this, least of all the person directly responsible for him. But few people are Natasha Romanoff, few people are as difficult to read or predict. He needs a handle on that.

"What counts as a consequence to you?"

[tothefly]

That tone is well-deserved. How do you punish someone in a place like this, where death has no meaning save mild inconvenience? Where someone would rather just kill themselves than deal with a broken leg? There's ways, but she'd rather not go straight to torture, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

"First, you're going to help me get him to the infirmary," she answers after a moment. "Then, you're getting cleaned up and going into Zero until I talk to his warden and see what he'd like done. Personally, I think Alfie got what he deserved, but it's not all up to me." She lifts an eyebrow. "Is he likely to come after you once he's up and around again?"

[ukan]

"I don't know if he'll come after me for this. I don't think he will, but he didn't count on me going this hard." Lark smiles slightly (I think he got what he deserved) and nods. "Zero, because I'm a threat? Or because you think Alfie might be?"

[tothefly]

"Because it's what should happen next." Her face has been neutral until now, but as he asks which one of them is the threat, it goes cold and still. Her eyes are empty as she meets his. It's not even the face of a warm-blooded predator, it's the face of a shark. If he's going to be testing her, he should at least have an idea of what he's testing.

"If I thought you were a threat, you'd be dead."

[ukan]

The shiver it sends through him is not precisely one of fear--it's deeper than that, more primal. More satisfying.

"You're the boss," he says after a lengthy pause, and he means it: he'll go where she says, stay there however long she says. This time.

[tothefly]

"Glad you understand," she says, and while her face doesn't exactly warm up, it does relax back into that slightly more animated neutrality. She doesn't expect it to always be this easy. In fact, she's just got a feeling this is only the first fight in an uphill battle. But for now, it's enough.

"Let's get him up and out, then." And then get him to Zero, before she has to call Max and explain.