OOM: Who is the lamb and who is the knife?

[sunbaked_baker]

(From here.)

Rae was getting anxious.

Well, more anxious. She was sure midday had passed by now, even without the reassurance of windows to confirm it, but there was still no word on when SOF intended to let her go.

Depending on how unusual the situation was - which she imagined was pretty unusual, even for SOF - Sunshine supposed maybe even SOF didn't know when they were going to let her go. Theo had taken her recording device to make a copy of the recording of that morning's meeting, but that had been about an hour previous, and he hadn't been back. Rae wasn't sure how long SOF would take to copy it, or even if SOF would have technology that could interface with the little recording device, and her imagination was having a field day coming up with potential reasons for the delay. The ones that came to her were usually reasons that would just cause additional complications for her, of course. They were the easiest to imagine.

At least the painkillers were helping - she could still feel the deep, searing pain in her burned hands and neck, and her throat would likely be scratchy and sore for days, but the painkillers made the pain not matter as much. It didn't take up as much of her awareness as it had. Which, given that she had nothing else to focus on and couldn't do much with her hands to keep them occupied, just gave her imagination more room to work with her fears.

She had grown almost used to the comings and goings of the SOF infirmary staff, so Rae was startled when she noticed the person then stepping towards her narrow infirmary bed was wearing a business suit. It was Director Misra.

They may not have made him change into a gown (though this was a different suit than he'd worn at their meeting), but the infirmary staff had definitely gotten him with the burn ointment. The left side of his face was shiny with it in places, and he walked stiffly, which suggested there were bandages where she couldn't see. Sunshine knew how that was.

"Miss Seddon," he said as he approached her bedside, offering a slight, polite smile. "How are you feeling?"

Halfheartedly pan-seared, but still mostly raw, thanks.

"Better," she says instead, her voice hoarse and her own smile slight and short-lived. Too much movement, including facial movement, pulled at the burns on her neck, making her faintly lightheaded with pain. "You? I... didn't see what happened to you, in the confusion."

And the light, and the pain, and the burning.

Director Misra's smile was so wry it was almost a grimace. Or perhaps it was. Rae had seen him impact the back wall of his office. "I just received a reminder that I have not been a field agent in far too long. One should always wait until one has the suspect before one does something so foolish as to claim, 'We've got you now!'"

Rae chuckled despite herself, though it hurt.

"It was a sharp reminder, but I will recover," Misra assured her. He was still smiling faintly, but that shrewd look in his eyes that Rae had noticed during their meeting was back again. "As will you, I think. But I'm sure your concern about me wasn't the question occupying your thoughts in the last few hours."

Nor yours, she didn't reply.

"Been trying not to have too many thoughts, to be honest," she said scratchily, likewise wry. Sucks, don't it? Fear and imagination and time to think are volatile ingredients.

"You're wondering where we go from here."

"Yes." And so are you. Rae could feel the weight of his attention, see his own concerns flickering in his shadows, about how she knew his secret, what she intended to do with the knowledge, the need to know what he needed to do to keep his secret. Her heart went out to him, but she could not relax just yet.

"I'm... concerned with where things go from here," she said carefully, measuring her words as she watched him watching her. She had to take a sip of her tea to soothe a growing itch in her poor throat from all the talking, before she could go on. "Because generally a powerful government agency has more say in that than would any one individual would." Either of us. Both of us. "And sometimes an individual's life and livelihood don't matter so much to even well-intentioned government agencies, even if it's ultimately to their mutual benefit that they should."

Rae knew she had to walk a very fine line. She needed Misra to know that she could be considered an ally, and wouldn't expose him, but she also needed his help in return, not to expose her, or damage her situation irreparably. Rae needed him to see the need for enlightened self-interest, not just self-interest. She needed him to know that she wanted to work to their mutual benefit. She once talked a starving vampire into helping her and allowing himself to be helped by her - surely this could not be much worse?

"You expect SOF to pretend nothing happened this morning?" he asked, dry. "Sweep it under the rug? I don't know if even I could swing that convincingly, even if I were in favor of it."

"Not like nothing happened, no," Rae amends, trying to keep her throat from straining. "Things have changed, absolutely. But I would still like to continue to... help SOF in their efforts."

"With no oversight, no backup, no accountability?"

"Without my hands being tied, Director Misra," Rae said, the words cracked in her poor throat. "My help is effective - Theo has more concrete numbers, I'm sure - but my help, it's not... it's not by the book. Not by SOF's rules. It wouldn't work. There is no guide, no rulebook for what I do. And I don't like to think of the people who'd die in the meantime while SOF organized a committee and deliberated over trying to write one, argued over what should go in and what should be left out, a rule book which would ultimately not be effective because of some fundamental misunderstanding due to the fact that they're not me, not out there doing what I do."

"And what is it that you do, Miss Seddon?"

Rae's already-tense throat closed up, and she felt the cold, prickling rush of fear and adrenaline, followed quickly by the warmth of the sunlight net in her skin wakening in response. But how could she... No, she wouldn't... What could she say?

It was several seconds before she could breathe properly, let alone offer an answer.

"I..." I do what is necessary. I break every law, sir, because society is wrong, because vampire society is wrong. What 'everyone knows' is wrong. It's all wrong and death won't solve death. "You... would've heard Pat or Theo call me 'Sunshine.'"

The question in her broken voice made him nod. "A nickname, I assume. What does that-"

"It's... an accurate nickname," the sunlight web set into her skin and hair was still wanting to waken in response to her fear, and she let it show, a little. A faint, half-imagined brightening in the glare of florescent lights until the moment it was definitely not imaginary. "You know I'm a magic-handler, if an unregistered one. My affinity is for sunlight. It's where I draw my power."

Misra watched the brightening in the light-web, the faint pinpricks of golden light set in an elaborate network through her skin and hair. Where they showed through the redness of burns, Rae could feel it, faint but definite pressure upon already-overwrought nerves.

"I imagine vampires don't like that at all, Miss Seddon," the director said, quietly, understanding. "That is no small thing you bear. I don't suppose you'd want to share where you acquired it?"

"No," Rae answered truthfully, "sir."

"I expected as much," he replied, with some fellow feeling in his tone, though he was not satisfied. "I suspect that ring of yours is similar... And you use them and your affinity to destroy vampires?"

(You don't kill vampires. They are not legally people.)

"I use them to save lives, sir," Rae amended quietly. "When I can."

The director's voice was not angry, but it held a warning edge. "You're not telling me everything, Miss Seddon."

"I hear that's pretty much business as usual around SOF, Director Misra." Her words were perhaps uttered a touch more harshly than she intended, but all this talking and nerve-wracking conversation weren't doing her poor throat or her peace of mind any favors. She wanted to go home, to know that she was free to go home. To know she still had a home to go to.

"Fair." The word was short, bitten-off. His shadows showed he was aware of her remark, and did not appreciate the reminder in it. The reminder that she knew he, too, wasn't telling SOF everything.

She wasn't free yet.

"I think... SOF has inadvertently made it so that sometimes it's important not to tell SOF everything," Rae relented a little, her voice hoarse and broken. She wanted him to know that she did know, but she also understood. "Civilians know it. SOF's own people know it. As an entity, SOF is... well-intentioned, for the most part, but like most large government agencies it's slow to react and slower still to change. If something or someone doesn't fit its preconceived notions of what is okay and what isn't, it can't deal. It wants a rulebook to follow, in a world that's changing faster than its rules can keep up, in a worsening situation that requires more help than SOF's rulebook would allow it to have."

Her help. His help. The help of a good percentage of SOF's staff, whose genetics just happened not to fit SOF's rules. Con's help.

"I can help. Pat and Theo recognized that after I staked that vampire those years ago," it seemed absolute eons ago to her, eons and hundreds of other vampires ago, "but they also knew that SOF's way of doing things would prevent me from helping."

"At worst its rules and regulations would prevent me completely," that sounded so mild compared to the horribly detailed possibilities her imagination could present to her, "at best it would delay or render my help less effective. They remembered... my father's family, or at least who my father's family were, so they knew I probably had something. But they also knew I couldn't... be a SOF, not officially, and not just because of SOF's rules. I'm... I'm a baker. I make cinnamon rolls and pies and bread at my stepfather's coffeeshop. That's who I am, who I was, before... getting mixed up in SOF business. It's who I still need to be, when I'm not out... helping. I've been my mother's daughter a lot longer than I've been my father's, if you get what I'm saying. I'm not a SOF, I've had no SOF training. I've signed no forms. Because I can't be that person all the time or I'd go mad. And that would be just as bad as not doing anything at all, if... if not worse."

She hadn't said any of this aloud to anyone in her world, and the relief of putting it into words was palpable. Rae had to turn away quickly - despite the searing pain in her neck from the pull on her burned skin - as a bout of coughing overcame her. She felt one of the blisters on her neck break and begin seeping. Damn. Once she got the coughing under control, she downed some more of the sub-par iced tea, hoping to quell the lingering itches and twinges in her throat. The director hadn't reacted visibly to her words, and had not spoken while she recovered from her coughing fit. Rae could only hope he understood her meaning. Hope he understood that in a way, yes, she wanted things to go on like they had been. Because she needed that balance, or else it wouldn't work.

And she very much wanted it to work.

"Agents Logan and Velasquez did you a disservice this morning," Director Misra remarked at last. Rae couldn't tell if he had made up his mind regarding her, yet, whether he would trust her or not. "Presenting their evidence while completely disregarding all of the evidence that clearly set you as a person of interest to SOF made their entire effort look very much like they were two subordinates acting on deep-seated resentment towards their supervisor, and all that was left was for me to determine whether you were just another prop in the story they were building, or if you were somehow using them as similar props to construct a scenario serving your own purposes. ...I can see from your face that neither of these possibilities occurred to you. That is somewhat comforting, at least." He almost sounded amused.

"Your forethought," the word sounded like a carefully-chosen word to Rae, sounding faintly ironic, a word whose accuracy Misra doubted, "in recording your meeting with Deputy Executive Jain was fortuitous, Miss Seddon. Much of the evidence Agents Velasquez and Logan were presenting, while most likely legitimate and genuinely concerning, could have been blown out of proportion and would have taken a great deal of time to confirm."

Rae tried to keep from holding her breath as though seeking to keep from knocking over a house of cards. The effort would have only sent her into more coughing, in any case.

"But the mention in that recording of Jain having met, having spoken with your father..." Director Misra looked almost as though he were restraining the urge to pace, or fidget, despite the hidden injuries that were inhibiting his movement. "That is not the kind of detail someone would fabricate if they were making up a story to get their boss in trouble; acknowledging your family background does not at all support the idea of you being a completely random civilian persecuted by a power-hungry SOF executive. And anyone who had looked into Jain's case history to try and dig up dirt on her would know not to try and claim she said such a thing. Which meant it was very likely a legitimate recording, and that suggested something much more sinister than the illegal harassment of an individual civilian, completely innocent or not."

Rae's mouth was dry, but she did not reach for her tea. His reaction troubled her. Had Director Misra known her father's family? What could he tell her about them?

And if she asked, would he tell her? Rae still could see by his shadows that he still hadn't completely made up his mind whether or not he could trust her, yet. By his behavior, he was coming to terms with the fact that she knew his secret, and there was some fellow feeling between them. But still she saw in his shadows the worry about how she had found out, and whether or not he was safe any longer, with some suspicious but apparently well-intentioned stranger knowing his secret.

It was to her benefit that his current agitation was aimed at the Goddess of Pain and not herself. But then, the Goddess' antagonism and hostility did have a way of making allies of people who otherwise would be at odds with one another. Maybe it would work again.

"Jain's sudden arrival confirmed my suspicions from there," Misra continued, "that there was truth what you were saying even if it wasn't exactly as it had been presented, and that she had been informed of your presence and had intuited why you had come."

"Her... reaction when confronted with the connection of her remarks to the Blaise case then spoke for itself," he remarked, very lightly touching two fingertips to one of the more sizable burns on the side of his head and making a slight grimace.

Rae didn't say anything at first, but then, quietly, "Do they know what she is?"

Director Misra sighed, running his hand back through his short, greying hair. "They have some ideas, but she is not being... cooperative."

"I... don't really blame her for that. She is losing a lot, from this morning's happenings," Rae said, looking at him - following the shadows in the lines on his worn face, the warm light filtering through his slow-moving shadows. "She could have taken the accusations without... revealing herself, and probably wouldn't have been found out. But who can say how any of us would react if it were us in a similar situation?"

That same light was in his eyes as Misra glanced sharply at her, proof she had hit a nerve, but she didn't press. Rae just kept eye-contact with him, as calmly as she could manage, as non-threateningly as she could manage. She meant him no harm. Much the opposite.

"I think, ideally," she said, willing her voice not to shake, "no one would ever be put in a situation where they lost the life they had cultivated... because of what they are, or what abilities they have."

Not you, and not me. Not anyone.

"Illegal harassment of a suspicious civilian is one thing, but an Other infiltrated SOF, posing as human-" Misra protested, his tone all SOF executive director in that moment.

"And she was a credit to the force, you said it yourself," Rae replied, sharp enough to break her voice into oddly-toned scratches and half-words, but still she went on. "Yes, she did wrong in this case. What she did to me, and... however she was involved with what happened with... my father's family."

It took all of Rae's willpower to keep from asking what he knew, but now was not the time. Apparently begging to be allowed to keep her life meant begging on behalf of the Goddess of Pain as well. It was surprising how easily the idea came to her, but perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising. Sometimes one had to save vampires in order to save humans.

"Let her be judged for the wrong she did, sir," Rae almost pleaded, "not the 'wrong' society thinks she is."

Director Misra held her gaze, but after a few moments little was left of the SOF director in his look.

"I can't do that, Miss Seddon," he replied, quietly, and it was probably the most unguarded she had seen him. He looked very tired. "The laws and SOF's rules are very specific."

"As an executive director, you would be in a position to know that better than anyone," she reminded him. He had power others didn't. Power to set standards, to effect policy.

"SOF is quite... resistant to change," Misra remarked, almost bitterly. "It changes slowly if it ever does."

"Things... don't change at all if someone doesn't push."

Rae recognized the faint flicker of alarm in his eyes as the same she had seen from Pat and Theo when she had brought up trying to change SOF's attitude towards Others.

('No. Worry about today today. If we make it to tomorrow, then we worry about tomorrow.'
'How many tomorrows will it take, do you think? Fewer than we have left?')

"Someone who pushes like that..." Director Misra ran his fingers back through his short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair again, like trying to get hackles to lay back down, "risks having a whole heap of problems come down on them like a ton of bricks, without any assurance that their pushing would come to anything good."

Rae nodded, breaking eye-contact to look away and smile faintly. She understood that feeling more than she could probably express to him. It was a feeling that had lived nestled in her heart for years now, and was never far. That worry - if I do this, will it do any good? Will it make things worse? Am I risking much more than myself by making this choice? Which will I regret more, acting or failing to act?

(With great big chunks of ceiling falling, one was just as likely to be crushed by running headlong into the wrong place at the wrong time as to have lingered in the wrong place for too long by running more slowly.)

"But, sir, that is... that is what we do, right?" Rae asked, very gently. "What SOF does. Risk everything for the sake of everything. To make things... to make the world better for its people. All of its people."

She glanced at him, but with great trepidation, as though looking at him too directly would break some sort of spell. She knew he still believed in the ideals with which SOF was founded, however far-fetched they might feel, however uncertain he felt regarding his own safety. Rae had heard him that morning.

(As other business this morning has shown, sometimes we do take steps away from prescribed protocol when there is a compelling enough reason. But there must be a compelling reason. A good reason. Something that furthers SOF's guiding mission to fight back against the encroaching dark, to strength the world's recovery efforts, and keep the population safe from Others that would seek to harm them and the future of the world.)

"We do the difficult things, because they are difficult and because there may not be anyone else who can do them, even if doing them puts ourselves at risk. Because the good of the world is more important than any one person. Or any organization's rules, for that matter."

Misra gazed at her for a long moment, and after much internal debate seemed to come to a decision. He shook his head and said: "I cannot promise that any good will come of this."

"We can only ever do our best," Sunshine nodded slightly, understanding. She was very tired, but she felt... better, for seeing some of the turmoil in Misra's shadows clear. He was beginning to feel more sure of her, and she felt she could be sure of him. "No one can ask any more than that."

"If anything, pushing in the way you suggest may merely make things more difficult for you, when it comes to the investigation into Deputy Executive Jain's actions," the director seemed to feel the need to warn her, as though still unsure of her willingness to risk herself. Rae couldn't blame him - how long had he been keeping his own secret so close, not willing to risk scrutiny, for fear of what he might lose?

"That is a risk I'll have to take," she replied.

"You and me both," he muttered, half-turning away and shaking his head again, as though thinking himself mad for having made the decision to do this. He turned to look at her again, and Misra seemed to look at Rae as though really seeing her for the first time today. Not as a SOF director coming for follow-up questions to a person of professional interest. Not as a Part-Blood Other afraid to lose the life of status and purpose he had cultivated and built for himself, facing a stranger whose knowledge could bring it all crashing down around him. But a person seeing another person suffering from recent trauma, burned and thoroughly bruised on top of a worrisome collection of scars, her hair a mess and burned short on one side, her voice broken and her eyes so very tired, and her words speaking of more risks to come, and being willing to meet them.

Risking everything for the sake of everything.

Because the world was more important.

Director Misra turned and his posture straightened, and she felt the distance between them grow again, until he was a SOF director, meeting with a civilian. "Miss Seddon, do continue resting. I will inquire with the infirmary staff as to when we might get you home. There will probably be some prescriptions they'll want to send with you, something for the burns, I suspect. When they give the go-ahead I'll send Agent P- ah, though you'd likely know him as Jesse - to take you home."

"Yes," Rae said, smiling faintly. She didn't quite know how to word her next question. "And... there'll likely be... some time before..."

"I can keep you updated on the investigation's progress, yes. I will contact you when I know more."

Rae nodded, relaxing slightly.

"Thank you, Director Misra," she said.

"Don't thank me yet," he snorted, though not with any scorn. "All I've done is give in to your request to make our lives more difficult. I don't know if I can say it was a pleasure making your acquaintance, Miss Seddon-"

"Likewise," Rae muttered, gingerly touching the burns on her neck.

"-but it certainly has been an experience. And... if you'll allow me to say-"

Her brow crinkled with mild curiosity. "Yes?"

"I feel you are more your father's daughter than you are aware. Perhaps that will be a good thing for all of us."

It was all she could do to stare in mild shock as he smiled faintly, nodded to her, "Miss Seddon," and walked back out of the infirmary room, leaving Sunshine in the relative silence of unasked, unanswered questions.