fille_fatale | ( IC CONTACT )

[The black and gold door slides soundlessly open. Jedao sits with his back to one of the walls, slumping a little listlessly, but he scrounges up a grin and nudges a coarse sack at her. Inside are a strange assortment of - not rescues, not trophies. Relics, scraps of places lost to nothing. Golden bracelets like winding vines, dripping with clusters of tiny jade and garnet grapes. A necklace on an almost imperceptibly slender chain, diamonds and sapphires that look like vivid blue eyes at first glance, light glinting in a way that seems to gaze around. There are combs that are also feathers that are also single iridescent pieces of carved, gleaming pearl. A loose handful of bayberries, each composed of hundreds of tiny rubies. An opal ring that seems to contain eerie, beautiful worlds of water and fire all its own. He just - grabbed things, magpie like, with no idea what he would do with them, but the vague sense they shouldn't be trampled into ash. And now they're hers.]

[Magpie like suits her, especially when it benefits her. Selina eyes him from her periphery, but mostly her attention is on the stuff. The jewels. They're all so - so stupidly beautiful. She stopped carrying the locket with her mom's picture after the con she pulled, but Selina used to think it was beautiful, bright silver - even when it got dingy and dirty. It's nothing compared to these, and she puts on just about everything she can - necklages and bracelets and earrings and a tiara, hell yes, thank you very much.

And when she physically can't put anymore on she holds her arms out to admire the way they all twinkle and shine. She could get used to this.

Then she leans over, and punches his arm. Hard, not pulling it, but not trying to do lasting harm, either.]

[He smiles thinly at her delight, smiles a little wider when she punches him.]

Just don't go getting expectations. There probably won't be places like that to loot very often.

That was for telling me Q couldn't do cats.

[It was maybe a little bit for getting lost in the port and making Fives go after him. But she's not about to admit that part.]

I was operating off incomplete data!

[It feels obscurely good to protest, to act as if a small thing matters. Matters enough to speak; but not enough to actually apologize. A mistake but not a regret. What a human thing to have done.]

You almost screwed me out of it.

[Not really, but Selina's just fine with rubbing something in, even if it isn't entirely accurate.]

I woulda had to wait weeks.

Eyefox wept. Not patience.

[The horror!]

What the hell is an eyefox?

It's - you know.

[He makes a vague gesture, with the sort of stymied expression you might get if someone in America was asked who the hell Santa Claus was.]

You seriously don't have any ninefox stories? Even heretics usually have something.

I don't even know what a ninefox is supposed to be. [It's okay, she can turn that expression right back on him, and crank it up to eleven.]

[He glances down at his shadow, which is currently being completely normal and unhelpful.]

It's...a fox with nine tails. With eyes on them. It's a symbol for things.

And those things are...?

[She makes a gesture back at him, the kind reserved for vague talkers.]

Cleverness. Playfulness. Curiosity.

Being a pack of backstabbing spies and assassins.

Thinking in twisty circles. Obsession with information. The more eyes the better.

So there's eyefox, and there's ninefox?

[This is way more confusing than Santa.]

Whatever, I don't actually care. [Besides, the jewelry kinda makes up for it. She twists a ring on her finger, admiring it for a moment.]

What was it like out there?

It's the same fox.

It was like...when like goes through a prism, and it splits into colors? But like I went through a prism, and all the shit I was feeling got turned into monsters and dreams and folk tales that you could see and touch sometimes run around on their own.

It was weird as fuck, but it made sense at the same time? The way dreams and fairy stories make sense by their own rules.

[She hears samefox, and that is now how she'll refer to all his fox stuff.]

That sounds dumb.

[It sounds really uncomfortable, actually: she doesn't like her own dreams most of the time, and having them made real sounds a lot worse.]

It was painful, but useful.

[And beautiful, and ugly. Like people's insides usually are.]

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