The Anglerfish

Wilbur smoked.

He had indulged in cigarettes before, back when he could call himself a revolutionary, but this was a different sort of dependence. His lungs had tasted brittler atmospheres in the years he'd weathered from then to now, from the bitter ash of burning homes to the dank, oily steam of the place with poison for a name. They had suffered along with him, keeping him going even as he fed them flavor after flavor of toxic, unlivable air.

He'd used cigarettes then for the same reason he drank, or scratched at old wounds, or clawed at his skin until his nails stained red. It was dependence. Trying desperately to drown his senses enough that he could truly trust himself ("just until after the war," he'd promised, "until we've won." and then they never did.). The only confidence he could afford was bought with off-color bottles and soot-blackened fingertips, and by God did he need confidence -- just as much as his friends needed a leader.

The air in Las Nevadas is clear. It's cold and crisp and hangs in his throat longer than it should. He doesn't like it. Feels too much like a trap, like the pleasant tang in the air before a storm.

So he smokes, and it tastes like home.

He needs this, he thinks, staring off at the halcyon array of blinking lights below him. They're dimmer against the blossoming twilight, deceptively inviting as the country itself -- it was an anglerfish, this place, drawing in the unlucky, and Wilbur stood right at the great beast's stomach, ready and waiting.

Avery lingers in the balcony doorway for a time that suggests that she thinks he doesn't know she's there. He allows the delusion to persist, and it does, for an uncomfortable minute or so. Finally, though, he hears the tip-tap of a pencil striking against her clipboard and turns to watch her approach.

"How the hell did you get up here?" she asks, betraying no actual surprise.

He gives a lopsided grin, shrugging coyly. "Aren't you head of security or something? I'd expect you're supposed to know these things."

"That's why I asked you," comes her reply; she comes to a stop just behind him and stares like she's counting the particles in a snowglobe. "Big Q's got me doing nightly rounds looking for breach points. Whatever that means. It's open air; anyone could get in if they wanted to."

"Anyone with the power of flight, you mean." He's half-joking. She shakes her head, slowly placing a hand on the railing as if distrustful of its integrity. 

"Anyone who knows how to launch projectiles at speed through the air," she clarifies, knowing full well he understood what he was getting at. "Which is, apparently, most people. I'd expect /you/ to know this, given your history."

He's unsure if she's referring to the general knowledge of TNT he's demonstrated throughout his stay or the more prominent incident where he spiraled into a months-long fit of paranoia and blew up his whole nation. He's also unsure which one he'd actually prefer to be talking about right now. "Fair play," he puts up his hands in mock surrender, chuckling quietly under his breath. "I suppose I am a bit of a genius when it comes to these sorts of things."

"Of course. Unless you ask Tommy."

The remark is crueler than she'd intended, and she /had/ intended it to be cruel. His face hardens, glasses forming the only real barrier between her and a gaze that cut like netherite. "You've been talking to Tommy, hm?" His voice is low, and it's not a question. 

She picks up on his aggression, one ear twitching. They both know she's struck a nerve, but she proceeds with the countenance of a sniffer dog trekking through a minefield. "Briefly, this morning. He came to visit. Didn't want to stay long; seemed real busy." A deep, weary sigh, letting her eyes linger on the street lights as they flicker on one by one. "Poor kid."

"Tommy doesn't need your pity," says Wilbur, a bit of venom in his throat. He swallows it down, lets it pool in his clenched jaw, takes a deep drag from his cigarette before he allows himself to speak again. "What did he want?"

Avery shakes her head. "It's not my business to tell. He just wanted to talk to someone." A pause, perhaps deliberate. "It wasn't you. Probably Foolish, or even Big Q. Else he'd've stayed longer, I'm sure."

Wilbur isn't sure what sets him off. Maybe it's the irreverence with which she speaks, or the tiny glances at his expression as his anger gathered like stormclouds in his head, or the knowing rhythm of her fingers as they drum against the railing. Maybe it's all of it, or maybe it's nothing at all; it doesn't quite matter, because either way he's at her throat and furious before he can comprehend what he's doing.

"Look," he seethes dangerously, smoke trailing from the corners of his mouth. "You'll leave Tommy alone if you know what's good for you. I'm serious. I mean it. Tommy is-" (mine, dear God please I cannot lose the only one I have left) "dealing with enough without nosy troublemakers filling his head with rubbish, got it? You know my 'history?' My 'tragic descent into villainy?' Then you'll know I'm serious when I tell you to back. The fuck. Off."

She's caught off guard by his approach -- hell, they both are -- and several long seconds lope by beneath the dying sun before he's calmed down enough to even register the expression on her face. Shock, sure, but there's also... intrigue. Frustration. A meek attempt to maintain the balanced security officer facade that neither are gullible enough to entertain as true. But, mostly, she just seems disappointed. He's not sure if it's that or the smoke he's just about choked on that's making him feel like he's swallowed coal dust.

They duel silently for a few more moments, puzzling each other out before Avery finally rights her stance; she steps forward, firmly, and Wilbur has to remind himself not to back away in turn as she stoops to gather her fallen clipboard.

"I don't know everything about you, Wilbur Soot," she says as she stands. The pencil is tucked behind one ear, the papers on the board quickly rearranged with little care for the proper order. Then she turns, sparing one final look before she leaves. "I just know enough."

It's when she reaches the door that she pauses, considering something. "Tommy came to ask about installing a planter near the front entrance," she tells him coldly. "That was all." And it was.

The sound of the door shutting behind her is drowned out by the sound of celebratory music blasting through the speakers on the streetlamps below, announcing the start of the night's festivities. Had there been guests, perhaps this would have warranted drunken cheering from passing gamblers, but the city was empty and quiet as a jaunty orchestra began to spill its tune into the empty streets. Wilbur lingers in the distant cacophony; the sun is gone, and the warm wind has become a bitter chill against the folds of his dirty old jacket. As Las Nevadas looms below him, the great anglerfish almost seems to grin at him. 

There's a sour taste on his tongue.

He throws the spent cigarette to the floor of the balcony, his face twisting into alien facsimiles of familiar vices. "Fuck," he mutters harshly, grinding it to ash beneath his shoe. "Fuck."