@shri.

[artistecon]

The crown jewels of Jhansi aren't high on Fantomex's list of targets. Yes, he's the premier mutant thief in all of Europe, but he prefers art theft to historical theft. That said, exceptions are the spice of life, and these are going on display for the first time in history. They were only recently recovered from a burial site, thought lost to the siege that claimed the kingdom. It made headlines when it was found. There's spice to this attempt. It's worth the effort.

It's worth coming to gloomy, rainy England. The museum they're keeping the jewels in is a refitted church, Gall gothic spirals and sloped stone rooves. It's beautiful, sneaking through the corridors illuminated with stained glass colors. His plan is to take the jewels before the museum opens, so the first tourists can wander in to a resplendent room featuring an empty glass case.

He slips past guards, incapacitating them where he can, trying them up and leaving them in broom closets. The security systems are mostly bypassed by hacking, though he occasionally simply slips by their sensors, moving and dodging through laser sensors and motion detectors. The final room is in a lovely stone chamber, bathed in light. The jewels sit in a large glass case, just as expected, with advanced heat sensing technology meant to keep the jewels in good condition, and close the building down if any tampering is detected.

What he can't understand, though, is why there's a short little woman standing in the center of the room, staring down at the jewels. Another thief? She's not dressed like a guard. She's not dressed like anyone or anything Fantomex has seen before. Some sort of caped crusader? Some hero? Well, he'll find out soon.

He walks out into the light, not caring if she sees him. Why waste an excellent entrance? "Now, now," he says, laying his French accent on thick. "I've heard many thieves are interested in this treasure, but I simply can't let you sneak away with the thing. It's simply too, ah, culturally valuable."

Is he trying to piss her off? Maybe. It's a stab in the dark, but she's clearly not of English descent, and when he was researching the jewels, he learned of Jhansi's particularly fraught history. Angry fighters are sloppy fighters. He'll take the risk.

Comments

[shri]

No guard, nor crusader, nor hero or villain, how she stands with her hands smoothed against the glasses edge - an alarm that should have gone off for the contact is shortly explained on the panel nearby with the large knife sticking out of it ( if she's a thief, she is a shockingly poor one ) - and she smoothes over the glass pane of separation in utmost care - but she does not lift it. She does not remove it, does not lift her head. Fixed like she means to take root.

"It belonged to a little boy, after it was given from his father's family to his new bride."

A pause, a longer one. Gangadhar's fingers would skim them, settle at the end of the long loop of the decadent chains, to her breast bone. Like they existed only to guide the trail of his fingers over her body. Smaller, quieter, to herself, she is only really talking to herself whoever has joined her in this room, right now, is - well inconsequential.

It's wrong, she thinks, looking at it - still not at him. He's a fly on the wall, spying in on something he has no place in. It's wrong, she had been given these on her wedding day with music, with love, with saffron on her skin, milk poured over her body, as was fitting for a royal bride. The loops and loops of gold and rubies that had been made up for the occasion that she had not seen since she had given the last of it to her adopted son. What she wore, now, that gold in her hair, dangling at her ears, was a simpler form of what lay in that box. The only thing she kept when she shed all of herself, and this - this set of gold, rubies, and pearls, was nothing she ever thought to see again for good reason.

Her Damodar ( couldn't call him that, too painful, too much, too - ) had held them so tightly in his hands. Packed off with Kashi and her last trusted General the day before the battle ended. He had held those jewels so tightly to his chest. Did he grow up strong? Proud? Did he give them to his wife like she promised one day he would? She doesn't know, she knows now for all she does know, she will never know that. She hadn't been able to go back, not for years and years. Was it better or worse that he thought her dead? Did he ever suspect? She had taken him from a life of simplicity and love to the forefront of a fight between Empires, and for what?

"Perhaps someone should ask him?"

[artistecon]

"Mon chere..." Fantomex says, now turned away from her. Now that the woman hasn't proven herself a threat, he turns to take some gadget out from under his sleeve, and begin poking at an electrical lock-box. There's a zap of electricity, and then a beeping sound. He has about five minutes to make an escape.

"I believe he is quite dead. I believe you know this. Perhaps better than me."

Her body language implies... sadness. Mourning. Loss. His second brain says comfort her. He pulls up his mask, trying to be less... whatever he is. More palatable. He'll have to do this carefully.

He lifts the glass case around the jewel with one hand, and takes her hand with the other. "We have a little time. If you would like..." He gestures to the jewel. Would she like to hold it? Touch it? Take the risk for whatever precautions, electroshock or magnetized nanobots they've placed on the jewel? (He's never entirely selfless, it's true.)

[shri]

She snaps almost immediately the second he goes to touch it. Her hand around his wrist. Not pushing, but stilling and where she barely looked at him, now she does. A sharp upturn of her face, the gold that hangs from her glinting in the lights of the alarm systems counting down the clock.

"Do not touch it. It is not for you, or any man."

The breath is thin, strained, old, but she is, isn't she?

[artistecon]

He turns his hand in his, taking her wrist in return and moving it to his lips. Gently as anything, he kisses the back of her hand, his lips ghosting over her knuckles. "Ma chère madame," and he lets her go, "if it is for you, then take it."

He has a plan, of course. A contingency. But he'll have to move delicately, if he's going to make it work. Luckily, delicacy has never been a problem for Fantomex.

[shri]

His breath is warm on her knuckles. Softer than these hands of her deserve, as she holds them loose and tense all at once, in his. Watching him like she expects his true intentions to crawl of him just like that.

But then her gaze slides away, and drops back to the jewels in the box. Stowed away so safely like they never should have. And take it she does, reaching forward to lift the glass. The shake in her fingers careful, moving it up and off, locking it up. The soft murmur that chokes. My pleasure, my little pleasure. You were not supposed to -

"You should go. They will be here soon. This fight is not yours."

[artistecon]

"Ah, you see, my sweet," he says, letting go of her hand. He'll have to do this very quickly to make it work, and his muscles tense in anticipation. None of it shows on his face, the scant bits of it visible under his mask, pulled up over his mouth as it is.

"You see," he continues, taking a step back. In one swift motion, he grabs the jewels. In another motion, his lips are pressed to hers. It's not a prying kiss, not a passionate one. His lips touch hers, nothing more. "I am a thief. I am apt to take what is not mine."

And then he's off, jewels tucked carefully under his arm, gun blazing in the other hand.

[shri]

It's one red hot feeling, the slant of his mouth against her - instinct that grips to every moment like the last, demands the return of it, that she will not settle for something so brief if he is stealing from her. Her fingers curling up sharply into herself where she almost grips back to him. The pulled in sharp breath that spills back out when he yanks away as quickly - and congratulations to him. That stark unexpected moment where she's simply doing no more than catching up, measuring him, calculating something.

Gone again, and behind them in the same moment, the crash of glass - shattering high and loud. She spines, draws her long knife, and all in one motion, rocks back on her heels, ready to throw herself forward as what she was truly waiting for - comes flying down. He is, right at that second, something she will chase up later, when the hulking, ugly form of a vampire, joins them screaming.

She is, to a point, busy.

[artistecon]

Fantomex is not a hero. He's never been an X-Man, he's never been a defender of the people, human or mutant. He's not interested in putting his heart on the line of responsibility. He has no yearning to make his body a buffer against the horrors of the dark. He's fled the field before; now is not the first time.

He is not responsible for this woman with her dark eyes and whispered secrets. She doesn't fit. Something about her bearing, her choice of words, her very presence, is all incongruous. This, more than anything else, is what has Fantomex turning once he's free of the church. He leaves her, of course he does. Standing to his ground was to no one's advantage, especially his.

And if he's not at an advantage, he's no use to her.

There is no reason not to be selfish and considerate at the same time. Fantomex has three brains in his head; he can multitask. He also has an external, sentient nervous system that transforms into a spaceship. EVA crashes in the window behind the screeching vampire a few minutes later, and Fantomex shoots at the creature from the safety of her purple-pink windows.

[shri]

Oh good Lord, what was that thing?

Because she did nothing but stand her ground, did nothing but throw herself, bodily directly in the way of the creature that was here for her, as much as she was here for it. Like whatever remained of Hasting and his ilk knew that there was nothing but sentimentality keeping her bound to her bones, that, of course, she would be here. A trap that she consciously or unconsciously walked into, didn't matter - it had the same effect. Being here, with her heart beating inside her chest, her body humming on a high with its purpose.

Though that roll forward is all gone, when that thing comes crashing in through the window, shattering the glass further, throwing her and the vampire both in the shockwave. Not a fool - been in too many fire fights to know that she survives those kinds of blasts by staying out in the open. Instead, she heads for the first bit of cover. More than that aims to make sure that she gets there before the Vampire does and pulls the gun from her back to begin to fire in a volley to echo his. Loud and air splitting, trained on it more than she is worried about his would be the attempt to - what - she really has no idea what he thought he was doing.

[artistecon]

Fantomex stays with EVA, shooting at the vampire from on high. He's no slouch when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, of course, but he's not sure if the nanites in his blood inoculate him against vampirism, and it's nothing he's willing to risk for a woman he doesn't know. Still, he'll do the stupid heroic thing. Something about her, the look in her eye, the way she held herself... it's worth preserving.

Of course, Fantomex's luck has never been that good. He's always been a creature of skill, compensating for when situations spin wildly out of hand. The vampire sees him and howls, before jumping onto EVA's prow, trying to scramble into the glassy pink of the cockpit. EVA screams, her voice high-pitched and metallic, and Fantomex continues to fire on the creature as it claws at him, his white suit going pink, and then a darker red.

[shri]

He is an unfortunate, but useful distraction that way. As the creature begins to feast on him, it becomes unaware of her. It gives her the opening she needs. Scrambling her way up to him, over the ship, that loud screaming a echo of something so long dead in her throat. A jump, a swing, as she comes down heavily into its shoulder with her knife. Yanking him back.

The rest is a different sort of intimacy, as it turns back to her and she doesn't step away - never could, never will. The blade ripped down the length of its back and out, as she steps into it to plunge it over and over against into soft belly, chest, feeling it bleed and scream through her like a drug that had no equal. A sense of purpose, of rightness that came with defeating an enemy. Over and over again until it falls against her, dead, and the skin ripples, shrink, an impossible middle place before he becomes human, and the naked corpse of a young man falls at her feet.

She doesn't even look at it.

Instead she turns back, drops immediately, her hands sure to intentions and strong to purpose as she goes to lift him - whatever state he is in - to bring him into her lap. Eyes over him, cupping at the wound to hold the blood in. Remorse, grief, a palatable thing.

"You should have run."

[artistecon]

He has ugly gashes down his front; blood bubbling up in white fabric never looks good. He slumps over on EVA's bay, watching as she tilts slightly enough that the vampire corpse slouches and falls off, onto the museum's stone floor. He waves off the woman's critique. He should have done any fair number of things. That's not his problem.

Fantomex stands with some effort, but it's less than a normal man would have to use in his circumstances. He feels terrible, but he thinks it will all heal without need for surgical intervention.

"I think," he says, stepping back into the clockpit. The glassy pink door stays open, inviting the woman in, "you owe me a drink, chere."

[shri]

It takes her a moment, or rather, once she watches him rise, that she turns away. She was here for a purpose, and it wasn't him - as she turns back to that empty museum, a mess of bullets. A distant ring of an alarm that says that if they don't have company now, they will soon. The sign of the display that proudly writes the history of the jewels that had once occupied the box that was smashed to bits.

Given to the adopted son of the Rani of Jhansi, who was denied the throne -- ;

It didn't matter. Her shoulders roll stiff and back, her head lifting up like it could all slide as water off her skin, as she turns back to him. Whatever crossed over her face, whatever grief and longing and the ache of things that should have been - gone again now.

[artistecon]

Something about this woman continues to tug at Fantomex's mind. He thinks on this as he bleeds on EVA's floors. Luckily, living some kind of symbiotic existence as they do, it's absorbed into her without the need for cleaning. She is, after all, a part of him.

EVA tilts again, and he beckons the woman toward them. "Come, now," he says. "I'll hardly ask a third time. If nothing else, EVA boasts the most convenient means of escape. Museum security is a hassle; take it from an expert."

[shri]

She fixes him with a look, slow on her words where they form.

Not that it makes them anymore scathing as she takes a step forward. "Yes, I suppose thieves do have the most convenient forms of escape."

Her steps are clipped and short. Striding with the same flat purpose that she had in taking down the vampire. She drips blood just the same. Soaked in its messy, ugly death, wet on her cheek, her hands as she leaves fingerprints of it in her path as she catches against the walls of this strange ship. But follows she does - an expectation to it even as she was the one he was apparently waiting for. Well, are they leaving or not?

[artistecon]

EVA spins in place, before exiting back through the window she crashed in through. The silvery interface slides over Fantomex's face, and they emerge... not unscathed, but certainly successful.

"I wonder," he drawls, "how a mysterious figure such as yourself likes the French Alps? There is nothing of worth to be seen on this side of the Channel, surely."

[shri]

Her eyes slide over him and - this time truly seems to be looking at him. Not just the mask, or the frustration of his presence into something so private. But him and him alone as she leans back against a wall. Arms settles beside her, the knife still in hand.

"I am partial to Grenoble."

She turns the blade over, and sighs before wiping it on her pant leg in a long stroke. One side, then the other.

[artistecon]

"Grenoble it is," Fantomex says as the ship speeds past the cloud layer. "The Alps can be for our second rendezvous. Otherwise, heaven knows what Mother would think."

The Channel disappears behind them like a shimmering jewel, and France stretches out before them. As they travel, a metallic, feminine voice materializes seemingly from the ship's center. EVA speaks to her new passenger, and she is curious and bubbly in turn. "You can sit down, you know," she says. "Oh! Fantomex didn't ask your name!"

[shri]

Fantomex? That was his name? Which is second to the thought that - is that the ship speaking to me?

She closed her eyes on the world for a moment, and it got quite odd on her. Or maybe it always was - but it used to feel simpler. She fought, she died, she got up: she fought again. That was be all and end all to all issues.

"No, he didn't," and she is not going to give it up, just yet, "and he still has my jewels." Is the drawled back - well, if she can't beat them, join them, apparently.

[artistecon]

"Those jewels are in the custodianship of Oxford's private collection of Indian history and artifacts, but no one fitting your description is in their employee registry," EVA says, continuing on in that blithely excited tone. "Before that, it was in the private ownership collection of Theodore Daniel Rothschild, but you don't fit the description of any of his associates. Rothschild bought it from a military sergeant whose name history didn't record, and before that it was owned by Damodar Rao, whose description you also do not match."

Fantomex listens to all of this, and clicks his tongue at the end of it. "She thinks she's being subtle," he says, "damnably curious for a spaceship."

[shri]

"She is that," it couldn't be drier, and she doesn't sit, still. Her arms crossing loosely over her chest, rising and falling in her even breaths. Her fingers drum, again. "It was given to Damodar by his mother." She won't be saying it plainer than that. Tap, tap, tap, finger against upper arm. A measured stare. Your move, spaceship - or Fantomex, whichever clicked faster to the implication. Empty, open ended, she does nothing directly.

"So I will be taking my jewels back."

[artistecon]

"But-"

"I don't think our guest is in a talkative mood," Fantomex interrupts, and pulls EVA's silvery helm from his eyes. "And no one will be stealing from me before lunch. Grenoble, mon ami." He gestures to the pinkish windows, now slowly turning opaque; a fine spring evening in the South of France glimmers through.

"A bleeding man recently savaged by vampiric forces... deserves wine, I think. Will you join me?'"

[shri]

"He might, a fool might not." Her words are dry, but curious, mirthful. Had he understood? Was that why he stopped her so suddenly. Or maybe he just didn't want to, didn't want to figure it out?

Wiser, she hopes it that. Better than her being right. Better he has no idea. "But either way, I believe I will do just that."