20% Angel, 80% Devil

     [ Public ]

     [Letty is tired.  She's been acting fully recovered from her ordeal in Paris, but ever since then she's been stubbornly dumping as much energy as she can spare into the recovery of the Barge.  She doesn't discuss it, she just does it, and fakes feeling more lively than she actually does as best she can.  What this usually looks like is a woman who is on her feet and behind her eyes, but shorter-tempered than usual, curt, and distant.

     She's always focused, though.  This evening is no exception when the video clicks on and shows her leaning against a counter in her cabin's kitchen, a Corona in one hand, frowning vaguely down into the feed.]

     Honest question: if you've killed before, why?  If you haven't, what could make you?  When do you think it would it be appropriate, I mean.

     I'll go first: I hadn't killed anyone or anything before I came here.  First in that tower, then on board the Barge, I did it for self-defense, or to defend someone else.  Even then, I had a lot of trouble finishing the job if it wasn't like, right in my face, you know?  It was harder than I would've thought to look at something - someone - else, even someone trying to kill me, and know that I'd have to actually put it - them - down.  I did it, because I had to, but even then I didn't want to. Turns out it's not really who I want to be.

     I'm not lecturing.  Where I come from, the circles I run in back home, it's always possible someone from another crew could take a shot at you, or that you might have to take a shot at one of them just to back 'em off.  I've had my friends killed for no damn good reason.  That's the rules we live by, there, but even then... you have to want war, no peace, no forgiveness, no compromise, if you're willing to take out a member of another crew.  You have to want hate, and you have to want heat, or you don't cross that line.  Everyone gets roughed up in one way or another, for one reason or another, that's just what happens, that's how the conversation goes.  But killing someone?

    There's only one message that sends, for me, for where I come from, and you'd better be damn sure before you do it.  Sure, it tells other people not to fuck with you and it's an easy way to state that loud and clear, but it's also... unimaginative.  Use it too often and the people that would've followed you because they respected you start to wonder if that's all you've got, even if they're too afraid to say anything.  It's short-sighted.

    I just... I wanna know what it means for everyone else.



     [ Private : Pounce ]

     I want to talk to Arthas.  Face to face.  Is that something that can happen?



     [ Private : Jean Grey ]

     When you get a moment, I want to run something past you.



     [ Spam : Tim "Roderick" Nelson ]

     [Letty sleeps on it, on the conversations she has and the arrangements she's made; she keeps her energy for herself, and she eats her breakfast alone in her cabin, munching down raw Poptarts and taking her time on her coffee.  She doesn't want to be hungry, or groggy, or off her game for everything she's got in mind today.  So she takes her time, and when she hits the engine room she doesn't try to puzzle out any of the mysteries she hasn't solved yet; she sticks to what she knows, lets the familiar smells and sounds and materials soothe her the way nothing else can.

     By lunch time she's hungry again but she's also ready, so she collects her food, searches out Roderick in the dining hall, and drops her tray down across from him without preamble or warning.  She follows it a moment later, inviting herself to the seat across from him, already picking up her fork.  Her hand is steady, as is her voice, her expression, everything about her.]

    Hello again, you piece of shit.



     [ Spam : Arthas Menethil  ]

     [Her next stop is, with the problematic inmate's self-appointed temporary warden's permission, the impressive double doors just down a few numbers down from the dining hall.  She's got momentum now, and she doesn't hesitate to knock, to let herself in when the doors give way for her.

    She searches him out, calling ahead of herself, cautious but confident:]  Arthas?  Welfare check.  You still got ten fingers and ten toes?



     [ Spam: Sylvanas Windrunner ]

     [This is the one she's worried about, if any of them: she doesn't know when, if ever, she'll get another chance to visit Sylvanas face to face by herself without having anything to fear from her, so she takes it before she loses her nerve.  She doesn't know who's been doing what with the banshee since last they spoke - she's had more important things on her mind - but she's not about to duck out of facing the music.  Not after the past couple weeks she's had.

     She knocks, because there's no need to start off hostile - there will be plenty of that to go around, if Letty is any judge, without throwing fuel on the fire.]  It's Letty.



     [ Spam : Philip Blake ]

     [And this is the one she's most unsure about.  She's shooting in the dark, basically, and well aware of how she's sticking her nose in where she doesn't really have any business being.  It's gut instinct, and a stubborn streak a mile wide, and the spark at the core of her that hates being put off for no reason she understands, that refuses to be dismissed.  Which is why she's tracking him down next, starting with his cabin and going from there if she can't get  response.]

    It's Letty.  And the sooner you stop ignoring me, the sooner I go away, so keep that in mind if you're thinking I'm just gonna give up.



     [ Spam : Jimmy Darmody ]

     [And this she saves for last, because if she's unsure of anything else, that she'll be uncomfortable around Jimmy - that he'll turn her away or come at her in some unanticipated way - is not one of those things.  She genuinely wants to check in on him, and if he's in any kind of mood for company, she suspects he won't mind seeing her. 

    So she brings a half dozen of the car magazines from her cabin, and a bag of Rolos she found in the refrigerator, and heads down to the infirmary to drop down into the chair beside his bed.]

     Hey, man.