5/4/08 - Polaris
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=NYC= Purgatory - East Village - Manhattan
This not Dante's Purgatory, nor the Catholic. It is neither Heaven nor Hell. There are no fires, and no clouds. There is metal.
This is the purgatory of machines: metal twists around the table's edges and strikes down to meld into the floor, melting and flowing to rise again in the hard lines of railing and bars. There is one window, and it is fogged. The glass is reinforced, and then reinforced again. Warmth comes from lighting, which is ample but finely controlled; during the day, it is almost bright, and at night, the lights fall to a bare industrial gleam that pulses to the beat of music that originates from the raised platform to one side of the dance floor, on which the DJ sits enthroned. Booths and tables ring the walls, dancefloor sunken beneath the level of seats. There are softer chairs of cushions and metal, and couches too. The bar is a long and glossy, glassy thing. Bottles glitter. If it is alcoholic, they have it.
It seems coming into work today was a little optisimstic. Less optimistic than it was the night before! But she moves with the slowness of the heavily injured, careful and deliberate about her movements. Fortunately, there's two of them working the bar tonight, and so she can stay more less in one spot to serve people, unless they order something unusual. Her hair has continued its progression since her imprisionment, and now has a bit of fluff to its length.
Rossi has a bit of fluff. It is sticking to the back of his head, a tiny puff of down from somewhere-or-another that has seen fit to cling (static? Really?) to his short-cropped hair. He is badassery from the front at least, which is good enough to get him through the door -- charm of personality surely, and nothing to do with the badge he flashes pointedly to security -- and carries him through the club to the bar. Off duty? Maybe. He leans his elbows on the counter and calls out an order for a diet coke before recognition sets in, and he narrows his eyes at Lori.
Polaris is more focused on keep her abdominal muscles aaaaaabsolutely still than looking at any patron's face, she she only frowns back at Rossi when she actually brings the order over, putting down a little napkin first. "Hi," she says, slowly.
"I remember you," Rossi says slowly, and sets his foot against the base of the bar, exchanging bills for glass. His eyebrows lower, flattening to a straight and thoughtful line; under them, green eyes study Polaris with professional criticism. "You look like--" What is the appropriate word? Diplomacy is obviously called for. "--shit on a stick."
"Well, at least it's not remembering me from the news," Lori jokes. She makes a movement like she would normally have leaned on the counter but--yeah. Fuck no. She stays straight. "A mugging'll do that to you."
Rossi says with interest, "Mugging?" and squints at Lori. Sideways, at that. His head tilts in a mixture of inquiry and expedient neck-stretching, that ends with a small pop that is or is not audible over the background noise of the club. He winces a bit and straightens. "That sucks. Don't watch the news much anymore," he adds as a parenthetical afterthought. His coke. Right. He lifts it in a hand. "Case files have more meat in them."
"I assume you're in the wrong section to have seen mine," Lori says, with light humor. She makes her careful way to fill another order, just a quick beer, and then returns. "What brings you here?"
"Diet coke," Rossi says amicably enough, lifting his drink in a salute to the bartender. He takes a sip, his eyes watchful over the rim of his glass, then sets it down with an equally agreeable, "and mutant-friendly bar. And I'm pretty sure it pisses off the management for me to be here, which makes my day. You look like you could use a few days of bedrest. They don't have sick leave in this joint?"
"Sick leave needs explanations. Explanations need me to admit it was my own fault. I figured I'd skip it, and stop making my paychecks so short I'm always eating at my girlfriend's." Lori shrugs. Lean--no. No lean. "I dunno, man. Management can be pretty intense when they're pissed."
Rossi grins, a flash of savage white and green that has, for all its cynical edge, a recklessly gleeful quality to it. "Life's been dull lately," he says, and fogs the inside of his glass with an exhalation that is more chuckle than breath. Ice clinks. "I could use a little intense. --Lo... Laura? Lorna? Damned if I can.... Lo-something, wasn't it?"
"Lorna. I'm Polaris here, though." She looks around, her eyes falling on one of the eternal bouncer presences. "Don't you dare toss anything my way if you try to start a fight, though."
Rossi's glance flicks around, picking out the professionals from the civilian bystanders in the room. "Mutant bar," he says, and then chuckles again under his breath: he is in a /mood/, yea verily! "You think in a real fight I'd stand a chance? Barring the badge," he adds conscientiously, his mouth slanting towards humorous speculation.
"I could take you--if half of me wasn't technicolor," Lori adds, for honesty. She bends her knees a little to put herself at the level to grab her water bottle from under the counter, straightening the same way.
"I should probably feel emasculated by that," Rossi muses, rolling the coke in his hand to redistribute the ice cubes in a geometrically pleasing pile against one side of the glass. Laughter glitters under the sweep of lashes, couched deep in the hooded eyes. "It's a good thing I feel secure in my manhood. How about arm wrestling. Think you could take me in arm wrestling?"
"What's the wager?" Lori offers an arm, taking the time she needs to find a position that doesn't put pressure on her bruises. "Maybe I'll let you win so you'll tip well."
This time laughter shivers down Rossi's baritone, softening the roughness of Brooklyn's hard-edged accent. "I'm a cop," he reminds, and plants his elbow on the table, hand open to clasp Lori's. "We never tip well. --So if you could take me, why couldn't you take the muggers?"
Polaris holds her hand above her head, much taller. "Heard of a guy called Sabretooth?"
"Shaggy guy," Rossi answers promptly. "Bad case of halitosis. Needs a better dentist." His hand is callused in the places where a gun hand would be, the spiderwebs of scars across the back and fingers pale against darker skin. "Real sweetheart, I heard. Gotta admit, I've never actually met him. Heard he's back in town. He mugged you?"
"Well. Still got my wallet." The impulse to share battlescars runs strong, and Lori comes closer to hopefully no one much can see in the uncertain light besides Rossi, and lifts the hem of her tank top on some deep, deep bruises.
Rossi's arm drops. He telescopes across the counter with a quiet whistle threaded through his teeth, squinting through shadows and the relative darkness to inspect the bruising. "Holy crap. He nailed you pretty good." There is admiration in the inspection, a cordially congratulatory note that has less to do with survival and more to do with that irrational machismo of scar-trading. "You should've seen how I looked after some asshole threw a Pinto at me. You got away?"
Polaris spreads her arms. "Nah, he ripped my head off, this is my ghost, returning to work for eternity." Her face clouds a little. "Had him down, but didn't kill him."
"With your goods," Rossi clarifies, rewarding smartassery with a New Yorker's twisted grin of appreciation. "Heard he's hard to kill. Should've called us if you had him down," he adds, though with resignation rather than real reproach. "We actually got a real facility for holding him."
"Nearly impossible," Lori says, and then looks away, just a wee bit guilty. Her fingertips pad out a beat on the counter, along with the club's music. "Explanations," she says again. "They're a bitch."
"Which part would be the explanation?" Rossi wants to know, settling back onto his heels with a swift tilt of his eyebrow. "The part where he was after you? Or the part where you got him down?"
Polaris clicks her tongue and points to Rossi on the second. Give the man a prize!
Rossi lifts his finger and then gestures in a circle: a summary of the club and its reputation. "Bartender in a mutant bar," he points out, and hikes his other eyebrow up to join the first before lowering them both, mouth again askew. His baritone burrs with dry humor. "Not like you're keeping this secret identity of yours all that secret. Unless you got some other gig in a purple body suit and a cape you're trying to keep people from finding out about."
"Mm," Lori agrees. She frowns at him, narrow-eyed, for a couple seconds. "You're with the police. I assume it's not your--department, or whatever, but you could probably look up and read the files on the mutant kidnappings if you /wanted/ to, right?"
A hand dips into the recesses of his coat, fishing about for the wallet that earlier produced payment for the drink. This time he thumbs out a business card and flips it across the counter at Lori. Det. Christopher Rossi. Homicide. And next to it, separated by a slash: Mutant Affairs. "Unless the management's got a general beef against /all/ cops," he says obscurely. "I don't take it personally. --You asking of if I can? Or if I have?"
"I'm asking if outing myself is a moot point. It's in the report." Lori places her keys on the counter. They scoooooot back over to her fingers, untouched. "Cops show up and have to ask why my assailant...fell...on a pipe just /there/, and they start thinking of certain people familiar to them."
"I never get tired of that shit," Rossi says, watching the keys play puppy dog to Lori's will with an interested, clinical eye. "I gotta tell you, if it's Creed, they aren't going to be asking a lot of questions. At least," he amends, his crooked half-smile reappearing as he swallows what remains of his drink, "if it was me, I wouldn't be asking a whole shitload of questions. Trying to keep on the down-low may be pretty pointless, but the case files're sealed until the court's done with them."
"I'd show off more, but--" Illyana tilts her head to the crowds. "Well, when he makes good on his threat to hunt me down, I'll be sure to call you guys when I put the pipe through his head this time." She sips from her water bottle, keys jumping back into her pocket. "That has an ominious ring. What about after?"
Rossi shrugs, and an expression of sympathy -- half-hearted at best, admittedly -- slides across his face. "Through his head might be a problem," he says, not by any means discouraging. "After, it probably comes out. That you're a mutant, anyway, and whatever else they got from the guys. Court can put a seal on them if you got a case for it, but you'll need a lawyer for that. Hard to make a case for it," he adds wryly, again gesturing. "Given where you work."
Polaris snorts. "He walked away from it /last/ time, or at least I assume he did." She eyes Rossi. "Most mutants coming here don't scream 'lab rat for understanding Magneto', either, do they?"
"You starting a terrorist cell?" Rossi asks, curious. He taps his glass. Refill?
Polaris goes to get the refill, giving him a dry glance over her shoulder. She sets it down on the same napkin, taking away the empty. "Why would I do that?"
"Understanding Magneto," Rossi says, and: "Bet that one blows a hole or two in nature versus nurture."
Polaris goes still. "The idea that magnetic powers cause meglomania seems hardly to need disproving. Unless you mean something else," she says slowly and at length.
If there's a quizzical mote in Rossi's eye, it's buried behind the tip of his glass and the clink of the ice as he starts on his second drink. Curiosity pokes with a sharp stick. "They got plenty of Magneto's blood on file," he says carefully, "and there've been Feds crawling all over this case since it broke." Two facts, loosely related.
Sharp stick apparently finds an eye. Lori goes pale, as much as one can tell details of coloration in the pulse club lights. "They don't have /mine/," she says, on a release of breath, finally.
"They seized a lot of evidence at the -- thing," Rossi says, making small rings of dampness on his coaster napkin. He does not attend to his artwork. There are other things to look at, when one is feeling one's way.
Very pale. "Jesus." Lori's hand goes up to a metal pendant she's wearing, a starburst with small points of emeralds set into it, and she holds it tightly.
Rossi says nothing. Sometimes silence is a useful tool, though it is not one he often employs. He regards her thoughtfully, a question working its way through disconnected phrases and reactions towards the forebrain. Ice shifts, and clinks again.
"But that's--" Lori holds her pendant. "Got to be an invasion of privacy or something."
The detective rubs his fingertips against the furrow of his brow. "It's a case in progress," he volunteers. "Evidence collected at the scene. It is what it is." The question nudges a little closer, wading through crossed lines and rediscovering roots.
It's Polaris's turn for silence, as her mind clearly races, trying to find a way out of whatever scenario she /thinks/ has just been presented to her. "But--"
Consideration from Rossi, who scratches at the skin under his eye before letting his hands drop to curve around the base of his glass. "It sucks," he says conversationally, his eyelids lowering to hood the green eyes. Intelligence ticks time behind them, racing through conjecture and supposition to -- almost there. Something? "See it happen in a lot of cases. The victim sometimes ends up feeling like she's on trial. Rape, abuse--" Kidnapping and torture. He opens one hand, baring the palm.
Polaris presses fingertips to her eyes. "But they'd have to have a reason to look for that, wouldn't they? I should be safe because no one should hopefully think of it."
An eyebrow rises, and that is all. Rossi drinks his drink.
Her color returning, Lori shoots him a look back. "You did, apparently. What is it, the family resemblance?"
"A little around the nose," Rossi says, with the barest furrow between his brow. Unconscious unkindness. "How many people know?"
"My girlfriend. A bunch of other people from that place. Dr. Xavier." Lori makes as if to count on her fingers, and then goes back to rubbing her pendant. Keeping herself calm.
"You think some of the other people--" Rossi pauses, then regroups to ask more cautiously, "The guys holding you? Or the guys who were in with you?"
"Fellow--" Lori has a little weirdness over getting the word out. "Captives. If it was /them/, I wouldn't be expecting the entire world not to know, for them yelling it to anyone how would listen."
Rossi does not find this incredibly useful. He says instead, "Who else?"
Polaris rubs with the heels of her palms this time. "I don't /know/. Jaime. Before then, I mean. My /mother/. /You/." Sarcasm is building. "What does it matter?"
Rossi shrugs. "Just curious," he says, and then suddenly stills. It is a tiny break, a freezing of face and body as though time has been snipped out of context and put on pause, as though the animator whose hand moves the body has left his desk for a moment's respite. Then: "You're not much like him. Besides the obvious."
Polaris looks away. "Thanks." The comment, though bitter, has a certain sincerity to it. "Though you might be surprised."
"Putting a pole through Sabertooth isn't a personality flaw," Rossi says, and if there is a somewhat strained quality to his roughening voice, it can be explained away by the harsh clearing of his throat. "Seems like a good idea to me. If I could do it, I would." Liar. Sort of. "Does /he/ know?"
"Yes." Lori spends some time after the answer in her own thoughts. "Though he doesn't exactly answer questions when it might actually be /helpful/..."
Rossi's mouth pulls on one side. There is nothing half-hearted about his sympathy now. "You noticed that, too?" He takes refuge in his drink, a prop convenient for buying time. When he sets it down, it is empty of all but the thinnest of dark reflections at the base of the glass. "Shit."
Polaris leans a hip against the counter, pressing hands to her belly to keep the muscles there still. "How do you know him, then?"
A blunt fingertip taps on the business card still on the counter, nudging it off-kilter into a slow, drunken spin. "He used to show up in my apartment from time to time," Rossi says with a twinge of bitterness in the explanation, "after trying to kill me a few times before that. Used to raid my whiskey and my pain killers. He stopped showing up after--" He exhales, then grins crookedly: a singularly humorless expression. "Haven't seen him in a while. Suppose he's laying low."
"Well, he never did really answer his phone," Lori admits. "I saw him after--" she swallows. /That/ time. "I really wanted to know if maybe he could call off fucking Sabretooth if he showed up again."
Rossi's eyes flare, opening wider to glance up at Lori. "Can he?"
"Doubt it. Thought he might have some--management tips, as it were." Lori snorts. "But he's not speaking to me, so--"
"So much for nurture," Rossi says, and looks -- puzzled. Then remotely amused. "I'd say your management method worked just fine. What's the phrase? Lather, rinse, repeat? You could call us next time," he adds mildly enough. "Or ... me."
Polaris's eyes come back to Rossi's face, a little surprised and assessing for sincerity. "Yeah? I might just do that."
There is nothing in Rossi's face that indicates sincerity of one level or another. He is simply Rossi. Rossi, who puts down -- despite his claims otherwise -- a sizable tip and pushes off from the bar, shoving his wallet back in his pocket to trade it for a pen. His card he leaves on the counter, though not without the edited addition of a phone number. "My cell," he says, and squints at her. "Day or night, got it?"
Polaris picks the card up before the money. "Thanks," she says, and then looks up to a call from her fellow 'tender, summoned back to work after a nod goodbye.
Rossi turns and ambles away towards the exits. He has made his presence known; it is enough. And there is still a small feather of down sticking to the back of his head. Oh well. Can't win them all.
=NYC= Purgatory - East Village - Manhattan
This not Dante's Purgatory, nor the Catholic. It is neither Heaven nor Hell. There are no fires, and no clouds. There is metal.
This is the purgatory of machines: metal twists around the table's edges and strikes down to meld into the floor, melting and flowing to rise again in the hard lines of railing and bars. There is one window, and it is fogged. The glass is reinforced, and then reinforced again. Warmth comes from lighting, which is ample but finely controlled; during the day, it is almost bright, and at night, the lights fall to a bare industrial gleam that pulses to the beat of music that originates from the raised platform to one side of the dance floor, on which the DJ sits enthroned. Booths and tables ring the walls, dancefloor sunken beneath the level of seats. There are softer chairs of cushions and metal, and couches too. The bar is a long and glossy, glassy thing. Bottles glitter. If it is alcoholic, they have it.
It seems coming into work today was a little optisimstic. Less optimistic than it was the night before! But she moves with the slowness of the heavily injured, careful and deliberate about her movements. Fortunately, there's two of them working the bar tonight, and so she can stay more less in one spot to serve people, unless they order something unusual. Her hair has continued its progression since her imprisionment, and now has a bit of fluff to its length.
Rossi has a bit of fluff. It is sticking to the back of his head, a tiny puff of down from somewhere-or-another that has seen fit to cling (static? Really?) to his short-cropped hair. He is badassery from the front at least, which is good enough to get him through the door -- charm of personality surely, and nothing to do with the badge he flashes pointedly to security -- and carries him through the club to the bar. Off duty? Maybe. He leans his elbows on the counter and calls out an order for a diet coke before recognition sets in, and he narrows his eyes at Lori.
Polaris is more focused on keep her abdominal muscles aaaaaabsolutely still than looking at any patron's face, she she only frowns back at Rossi when she actually brings the order over, putting down a little napkin first. "Hi," she says, slowly.
"I remember you," Rossi says slowly, and sets his foot against the base of the bar, exchanging bills for glass. His eyebrows lower, flattening to a straight and thoughtful line; under them, green eyes study Polaris with professional criticism. "You look like--" What is the appropriate word? Diplomacy is obviously called for. "--shit on a stick."
"Well, at least it's not remembering me from the news," Lori jokes. She makes a movement like she would normally have leaned on the counter but--yeah. Fuck no. She stays straight. "A mugging'll do that to you."
Rossi says with interest, "Mugging?" and squints at Lori. Sideways, at that. His head tilts in a mixture of inquiry and expedient neck-stretching, that ends with a small pop that is or is not audible over the background noise of the club. He winces a bit and straightens. "That sucks. Don't watch the news much anymore," he adds as a parenthetical afterthought. His coke. Right. He lifts it in a hand. "Case files have more meat in them."
"I assume you're in the wrong section to have seen mine," Lori says, with light humor. She makes her careful way to fill another order, just a quick beer, and then returns. "What brings you here?"
"Diet coke," Rossi says amicably enough, lifting his drink in a salute to the bartender. He takes a sip, his eyes watchful over the rim of his glass, then sets it down with an equally agreeable, "and mutant-friendly bar. And I'm pretty sure it pisses off the management for me to be here, which makes my day. You look like you could use a few days of bedrest. They don't have sick leave in this joint?"
"Sick leave needs explanations. Explanations need me to admit it was my own fault. I figured I'd skip it, and stop making my paychecks so short I'm always eating at my girlfriend's." Lori shrugs. Lean--no. No lean. "I dunno, man. Management can be pretty intense when they're pissed."
Rossi grins, a flash of savage white and green that has, for all its cynical edge, a recklessly gleeful quality to it. "Life's been dull lately," he says, and fogs the inside of his glass with an exhalation that is more chuckle than breath. Ice clinks. "I could use a little intense. --Lo... Laura? Lorna? Damned if I can.... Lo-something, wasn't it?"
"Lorna. I'm Polaris here, though." She looks around, her eyes falling on one of the eternal bouncer presences. "Don't you dare toss anything my way if you try to start a fight, though."
Rossi's glance flicks around, picking out the professionals from the civilian bystanders in the room. "Mutant bar," he says, and then chuckles again under his breath: he is in a /mood/, yea verily! "You think in a real fight I'd stand a chance? Barring the badge," he adds conscientiously, his mouth slanting towards humorous speculation.
"I could take you--if half of me wasn't technicolor," Lori adds, for honesty. She bends her knees a little to put herself at the level to grab her water bottle from under the counter, straightening the same way.
"I should probably feel emasculated by that," Rossi muses, rolling the coke in his hand to redistribute the ice cubes in a geometrically pleasing pile against one side of the glass. Laughter glitters under the sweep of lashes, couched deep in the hooded eyes. "It's a good thing I feel secure in my manhood. How about arm wrestling. Think you could take me in arm wrestling?"
"What's the wager?" Lori offers an arm, taking the time she needs to find a position that doesn't put pressure on her bruises. "Maybe I'll let you win so you'll tip well."
This time laughter shivers down Rossi's baritone, softening the roughness of Brooklyn's hard-edged accent. "I'm a cop," he reminds, and plants his elbow on the table, hand open to clasp Lori's. "We never tip well. --So if you could take me, why couldn't you take the muggers?"
Polaris holds her hand above her head, much taller. "Heard of a guy called Sabretooth?"
"Shaggy guy," Rossi answers promptly. "Bad case of halitosis. Needs a better dentist." His hand is callused in the places where a gun hand would be, the spiderwebs of scars across the back and fingers pale against darker skin. "Real sweetheart, I heard. Gotta admit, I've never actually met him. Heard he's back in town. He mugged you?"
"Well. Still got my wallet." The impulse to share battlescars runs strong, and Lori comes closer to hopefully no one much can see in the uncertain light besides Rossi, and lifts the hem of her tank top on some deep, deep bruises.
Rossi's arm drops. He telescopes across the counter with a quiet whistle threaded through his teeth, squinting through shadows and the relative darkness to inspect the bruising. "Holy crap. He nailed you pretty good." There is admiration in the inspection, a cordially congratulatory note that has less to do with survival and more to do with that irrational machismo of scar-trading. "You should've seen how I looked after some asshole threw a Pinto at me. You got away?"
Polaris spreads her arms. "Nah, he ripped my head off, this is my ghost, returning to work for eternity." Her face clouds a little. "Had him down, but didn't kill him."
"With your goods," Rossi clarifies, rewarding smartassery with a New Yorker's twisted grin of appreciation. "Heard he's hard to kill. Should've called us if you had him down," he adds, though with resignation rather than real reproach. "We actually got a real facility for holding him."
"Nearly impossible," Lori says, and then looks away, just a wee bit guilty. Her fingertips pad out a beat on the counter, along with the club's music. "Explanations," she says again. "They're a bitch."
"Which part would be the explanation?" Rossi wants to know, settling back onto his heels with a swift tilt of his eyebrow. "The part where he was after you? Or the part where you got him down?"
Polaris clicks her tongue and points to Rossi on the second. Give the man a prize!
Rossi lifts his finger and then gestures in a circle: a summary of the club and its reputation. "Bartender in a mutant bar," he points out, and hikes his other eyebrow up to join the first before lowering them both, mouth again askew. His baritone burrs with dry humor. "Not like you're keeping this secret identity of yours all that secret. Unless you got some other gig in a purple body suit and a cape you're trying to keep people from finding out about."
"Mm," Lori agrees. She frowns at him, narrow-eyed, for a couple seconds. "You're with the police. I assume it's not your--department, or whatever, but you could probably look up and read the files on the mutant kidnappings if you /wanted/ to, right?"
A hand dips into the recesses of his coat, fishing about for the wallet that earlier produced payment for the drink. This time he thumbs out a business card and flips it across the counter at Lori. Det. Christopher Rossi. Homicide. And next to it, separated by a slash: Mutant Affairs. "Unless the management's got a general beef against /all/ cops," he says obscurely. "I don't take it personally. --You asking of if I can? Or if I have?"
"I'm asking if outing myself is a moot point. It's in the report." Lori places her keys on the counter. They scoooooot back over to her fingers, untouched. "Cops show up and have to ask why my assailant...fell...on a pipe just /there/, and they start thinking of certain people familiar to them."
"I never get tired of that shit," Rossi says, watching the keys play puppy dog to Lori's will with an interested, clinical eye. "I gotta tell you, if it's Creed, they aren't going to be asking a lot of questions. At least," he amends, his crooked half-smile reappearing as he swallows what remains of his drink, "if it was me, I wouldn't be asking a whole shitload of questions. Trying to keep on the down-low may be pretty pointless, but the case files're sealed until the court's done with them."
"I'd show off more, but--" Illyana tilts her head to the crowds. "Well, when he makes good on his threat to hunt me down, I'll be sure to call you guys when I put the pipe through his head this time." She sips from her water bottle, keys jumping back into her pocket. "That has an ominious ring. What about after?"
Rossi shrugs, and an expression of sympathy -- half-hearted at best, admittedly -- slides across his face. "Through his head might be a problem," he says, not by any means discouraging. "After, it probably comes out. That you're a mutant, anyway, and whatever else they got from the guys. Court can put a seal on them if you got a case for it, but you'll need a lawyer for that. Hard to make a case for it," he adds wryly, again gesturing. "Given where you work."
Polaris snorts. "He walked away from it /last/ time, or at least I assume he did." She eyes Rossi. "Most mutants coming here don't scream 'lab rat for understanding Magneto', either, do they?"
"You starting a terrorist cell?" Rossi asks, curious. He taps his glass. Refill?
Polaris goes to get the refill, giving him a dry glance over her shoulder. She sets it down on the same napkin, taking away the empty. "Why would I do that?"
"Understanding Magneto," Rossi says, and: "Bet that one blows a hole or two in nature versus nurture."
Polaris goes still. "The idea that magnetic powers cause meglomania seems hardly to need disproving. Unless you mean something else," she says slowly and at length.
If there's a quizzical mote in Rossi's eye, it's buried behind the tip of his glass and the clink of the ice as he starts on his second drink. Curiosity pokes with a sharp stick. "They got plenty of Magneto's blood on file," he says carefully, "and there've been Feds crawling all over this case since it broke." Two facts, loosely related.
Sharp stick apparently finds an eye. Lori goes pale, as much as one can tell details of coloration in the pulse club lights. "They don't have /mine/," she says, on a release of breath, finally.
"They seized a lot of evidence at the -- thing," Rossi says, making small rings of dampness on his coaster napkin. He does not attend to his artwork. There are other things to look at, when one is feeling one's way.
Very pale. "Jesus." Lori's hand goes up to a metal pendant she's wearing, a starburst with small points of emeralds set into it, and she holds it tightly.
Rossi says nothing. Sometimes silence is a useful tool, though it is not one he often employs. He regards her thoughtfully, a question working its way through disconnected phrases and reactions towards the forebrain. Ice shifts, and clinks again.
"But that's--" Lori holds her pendant. "Got to be an invasion of privacy or something."
The detective rubs his fingertips against the furrow of his brow. "It's a case in progress," he volunteers. "Evidence collected at the scene. It is what it is." The question nudges a little closer, wading through crossed lines and rediscovering roots.
It's Polaris's turn for silence, as her mind clearly races, trying to find a way out of whatever scenario she /thinks/ has just been presented to her. "But--"
Consideration from Rossi, who scratches at the skin under his eye before letting his hands drop to curve around the base of his glass. "It sucks," he says conversationally, his eyelids lowering to hood the green eyes. Intelligence ticks time behind them, racing through conjecture and supposition to -- almost there. Something? "See it happen in a lot of cases. The victim sometimes ends up feeling like she's on trial. Rape, abuse--" Kidnapping and torture. He opens one hand, baring the palm.
Polaris presses fingertips to her eyes. "But they'd have to have a reason to look for that, wouldn't they? I should be safe because no one should hopefully think of it."
An eyebrow rises, and that is all. Rossi drinks his drink.
Her color returning, Lori shoots him a look back. "You did, apparently. What is it, the family resemblance?"
"A little around the nose," Rossi says, with the barest furrow between his brow. Unconscious unkindness. "How many people know?"
"My girlfriend. A bunch of other people from that place. Dr. Xavier." Lori makes as if to count on her fingers, and then goes back to rubbing her pendant. Keeping herself calm.
"You think some of the other people--" Rossi pauses, then regroups to ask more cautiously, "The guys holding you? Or the guys who were in with you?"
"Fellow--" Lori has a little weirdness over getting the word out. "Captives. If it was /them/, I wouldn't be expecting the entire world not to know, for them yelling it to anyone how would listen."
Rossi does not find this incredibly useful. He says instead, "Who else?"
Polaris rubs with the heels of her palms this time. "I don't /know/. Jaime. Before then, I mean. My /mother/. /You/." Sarcasm is building. "What does it matter?"
Rossi shrugs. "Just curious," he says, and then suddenly stills. It is a tiny break, a freezing of face and body as though time has been snipped out of context and put on pause, as though the animator whose hand moves the body has left his desk for a moment's respite. Then: "You're not much like him. Besides the obvious."
Polaris looks away. "Thanks." The comment, though bitter, has a certain sincerity to it. "Though you might be surprised."
"Putting a pole through Sabertooth isn't a personality flaw," Rossi says, and if there is a somewhat strained quality to his roughening voice, it can be explained away by the harsh clearing of his throat. "Seems like a good idea to me. If I could do it, I would." Liar. Sort of. "Does /he/ know?"
"Yes." Lori spends some time after the answer in her own thoughts. "Though he doesn't exactly answer questions when it might actually be /helpful/..."
Rossi's mouth pulls on one side. There is nothing half-hearted about his sympathy now. "You noticed that, too?" He takes refuge in his drink, a prop convenient for buying time. When he sets it down, it is empty of all but the thinnest of dark reflections at the base of the glass. "Shit."
Polaris leans a hip against the counter, pressing hands to her belly to keep the muscles there still. "How do you know him, then?"
A blunt fingertip taps on the business card still on the counter, nudging it off-kilter into a slow, drunken spin. "He used to show up in my apartment from time to time," Rossi says with a twinge of bitterness in the explanation, "after trying to kill me a few times before that. Used to raid my whiskey and my pain killers. He stopped showing up after--" He exhales, then grins crookedly: a singularly humorless expression. "Haven't seen him in a while. Suppose he's laying low."
"Well, he never did really answer his phone," Lori admits. "I saw him after--" she swallows. /That/ time. "I really wanted to know if maybe he could call off fucking Sabretooth if he showed up again."
Rossi's eyes flare, opening wider to glance up at Lori. "Can he?"
"Doubt it. Thought he might have some--management tips, as it were." Lori snorts. "But he's not speaking to me, so--"
"So much for nurture," Rossi says, and looks -- puzzled. Then remotely amused. "I'd say your management method worked just fine. What's the phrase? Lather, rinse, repeat? You could call us next time," he adds mildly enough. "Or ... me."
Polaris's eyes come back to Rossi's face, a little surprised and assessing for sincerity. "Yeah? I might just do that."
There is nothing in Rossi's face that indicates sincerity of one level or another. He is simply Rossi. Rossi, who puts down -- despite his claims otherwise -- a sizable tip and pushes off from the bar, shoving his wallet back in his pocket to trade it for a pen. His card he leaves on the counter, though not without the edited addition of a phone number. "My cell," he says, and squints at her. "Day or night, got it?"
Polaris picks the card up before the money. "Thanks," she says, and then looks up to a call from her fellow 'tender, summoned back to work after a nod goodbye.
Rossi turns and ambles away towards the exits. He has made his presence known; it is enough. And there is still a small feather of down sticking to the back of his head. Oh well. Can't win them all.