Week 88/9: Support.

Coraline was just buzzed to receive the CEO's message, she could do with some more retirement money. Who couldn't? Money makes things go more smoothly and Coraline was all about facilitation. Now Silvia, she was all about stealth but... lacked certain social camouflage. Wear a classy suit and a lot would be forgiven, high society wise. Oh, that thought brought back a few memories.

Still, Coraline was pleased with her purchases, a dress for herself and suit for Silvia. Three piece, dark green jacket & pants, light green shirt and rose red tie. A colour inversion of the dress she had given Silvia for the teams evening at the Definite Article. This one, however, was a single use piece. The height of fashion, these outfits gradually deteriorated over a set amount of time, revealing new patterns, colours and shapes before finally disintegrating. Coraline had had a stealth catsuit built under Silvia's suit, since they didn't know how long the mission should take.

Hello sweetie,
So I realise its been a while but I have a suit for you for the mission. You will look stunning in it and I hope you like to boot. I'd also like to get together afterwards, maybe over coffee?
Get back to me,
Coraline.

***

Coraline had evidently had time to change on the way back, as she was now wearing a casual sky blue summer dress and was Silvia sized. After dropping everything from the mission off in the room, or with the CEO, Coraline quickly changed her face, staring into her PDA for a few seconds. Then she casually linked arms with Silvia, as if she had done nothing more unusual than brush her hair.

"So, you never did give me an answer about getting together for coffee?" The cyberneticist grinned, gently teasing Silvia.

Silvia had also apparently found a moment to change, as she was wearing the same clothes she had been to the briefing in. Which not only looked filthy, but smelled worse. She let Coraline take her arm - not that she could do much about it - and looked at the other Agent with a rather apprehensive expression.

"Ah...no. I suppose I didn't." She hesitated for a moment, thinking. She still wasn't exactly in the mood for talking and she had an investigation to get back to...but on the other hand, Coraline had been so helpful with providing all the clothes and had been essential to the mission. And she always found it difficult to say no to Coraline. "I...ok. Coffee would be...fine."

Coraline avoided wrinkling her nose as the smell of Silvia's clothes hit her full in the face.[L&A passed by 5]. She opened her mouth to suggest stopping of at a sauna or boutique or 6768... and quickly closed her mouth. "Excellent but... ah, I've heard such good things about this one place." The shapeshifter filled the air with words talking about the craze of single use clothing and how it has the staying power to be a staple of high fashion, distracting Silvia as she gently steered the explorer to her van and drove to a spa. They'd be given coffee afterwards.

Slightly dazed by the sudden onslaught of fashion talk, Silvia was content to let Coraline guide her and drive her. When the van stopped, though, she frowned, her internal maps letting her know where she had arrived.

"Uh...Coraline? This is...a spa? I thought we were going for coffee?"

Coraline smiled tightly and patted Silvia comfortingly on the arm. "Its time. And it won't take long and then the coffee is complimentary." The cyberneticist smiled more genuinely at the thought. "Come on," she said, hopping out of the van.

"Okay..." Silvia said, cautiously climbing out of the van. "But I...this wasn't quite what I...and it'll be a waste anyway. I'm going back out into the swamps after this." Regardless, she started following Coraline.

"Literally never. But I do get it." Coraline's face set with a grim determination before smiling again at Silvia. "You'll feel better. Promise" Once again she took Silvia by the arm and gently steered her inside the spa.

--

Twenty minutes later the two had cleaned, been ex-foliated and massaged. Coraline distracted Silvia with more talk about fashion, cars and smeakered speculation about why the CEO was interested in Charles Palmer. It was pretty obvious she was putting something off. Now they were seated in amazingly soft bean bag chairs, drinking the promised coffee at a small table. "So, um, we should talk about Hugo, right?" Coraline looked up at Silvia, hoping to meet the other agent's eyes with a slightly awkward smile on her face.

Over the course of the spa treatment, Silvia had visibly relaxed somewhat - she was never entirely at ease, but some of the tension had left her body, at least, and she had been responding to Coraline's chatter as much as she ever did.

At Coraline's statement, however, she immediately looked away at the floor, avoiding Coraline's gaze, and her body immediately tensed again, all of her barriers visibly coming back up. "Uh...we...I'd rather not. Sorry."

Coraline sighed and after a moment, opened her mouth to speak. ".... That's not exactly an option Silvia. We need to talk about it, otherwise we're unlikely to speak again." Coraline looked away and spoke more quietly, "I don't know about you but thats not what I want." The cyberneticist's eyes rose to meet Silvia's, an expression of.. concerned sympathy on her face.

For a moment, Coraline's gaze met Silvia's, and then the cartographer looked down at the table, hastily breaking the eye contact. "I'm coping. I just...need some time to deal with it. I'll be fine. I've had breakups before. I'll get over it. It was all probably for the best anyway." Her voice was quiet, but didn't seem to be wavering at all, and her body language was defensive, arms placed between her and Coraline and shoulders drawn in.

"Okay." Coraline bit her lip and reached across the table and, if the tracker let her, took one of Silvia's hands in her own. The plague doctor squeezed it but did not break contact. "It still sucks though, even when its amicable." Coraline had never sounded quite so sincere. "There are... a few other things you should hear, if you think you're up to it. I mean you should hear them anyway." She inclined her head slightly, hoping the non-verbal communication was helping.

For a moment, it felt like Silvia was about to pull her hand away, but then she allowed Coraline to take it, though she could feel the tension still in every Agent muscle. At the plague doctor's first statement, Silvia nodded, a quick, sharp jerk of the head. At her follow-up statement, she raised her head so that she could see Coraline properly and pulled her hand away.

"...Go on," she said, in the tone of someone preparing themselves for bad news.

The plague doctor took her hands back, clasped them and stared at them for a moment. "Okay so," Coraline interrupted herself, sighing for just a little too long, stalling for time and fidgeted uncomfortably. "I'm running away with him. Its going to be good for me, I think, to get away from... well. Yes." Coraline paused again and rolled her shoulder, not meeting Silvia's gaze.

"There is more. Hugo has uh, he's had someone ghost write his Oracle memoirs. Its not important who. I... have an advanced copy with me... if you want to read it?" At this point Coraline risked a glance up at Silvia's face. Oh no. Well there was nothing else to do now. "I... also have a few things to give you." Ever the mistress of tactful conversation, Coraline avoided calling them consolation prizes.

"I..." Silvia seemed to be about to say something and then a strange expression passed across her face as she tried to take in what Coraline was saying. Carefully, she ran through everything the other woman had said, mentally examining it from every angle. Then she said, slowly and with a great deal of care, "What exactly do you mean..."running away with him"?"

Coraline... hadn't expected that reaction. Silvia was either taking this better than she'd thought or possibly about to explode. In either case the shapeshifter seemed thrown by her friend's question. Coraline paused, her mouth open before shutting it and tilting her head to the side. A frown formed, belatedly, across her brows. Coraline considered, or maybe processed.

"I'm... leaving Oracle. I... I'll be, staying, with Hugo for..." Coraline trailed off, blinking before resuming her meandering talk. "Well for a while, at least. I guess we haven't actually talked about it." Coraline rubbed her forehead with a hand. "I've been staying with him for a little while now." The fashionista, usually so careful with her expressions and words, gave a weird little half smile. It almost sounded like she was working through these things for the first time as she spoke aloud about them.

Silvia nodded, but it was quite obvious that it wasn't so much a conscious reaction as something for her body to do while she thought through the latest statement. She couldn't remember Coraline ever staying at 6768, and she was fairly sure she would have noticed that. Her face was slowly creasing into a frown and her voice was still strangely level.

"When you say staying with...you don't just mean living with him, do you?"

Coraline took a careful, slow sip of her coffee. Silvia definitely looked to be heading towards meltdown territory. Now, is she going to explode or implode? Already screaming on the inside? Coraline grimaced externally, which probably told Silvia exactly what she wanted to know.

"Silvia, sweetie? Its me. Coraline. You know, clingy, needy, attention seeking," the plague doctor was careful not to call herself what others, the SY mindset, probably thought of her. "Playful. Open. What do you think it means for me to... live with someone?"

Silvia exhaled, slowly. She was visibly withdrawing, her arms pulling tighter to her body, and her face was shifting to an expression somewhere between misery and pain.

"And...how long has this been going on for?" Despite her body language, her voice was still steady.

"Sweetie? Does that matter? I mean," Coraline's own expression softened as she saw how upset Silvia was getting. "Only a week or so. We'd hooked up a couple times before then but..." Coraline trailed off aware that anything else she could say at this point would probably only make things worse.

Coraline paused, her face concerned and sympathetic but with a slight pout, waiting for Silvia's response.

Silvia nodded, almost mechanically, although her face twitched a little at Coraline's final words. She took a visible deep breath, her expression not improving, but not getting any worse either. "O...okay. That...okay. Just...just one more thing. Is...is this why Hugo called it off? Me and him?" Her voice shook a little as she asked the question and she still couldn't meet Coraline's eyes, but she seemed to be getting a little bit more of a handle on things, at least for now.

Coraline only became more concerned by this and began fidget ting with her hair in discomfort. "Sweetie? We've other things to talk about too, less personal but not less important." The shapeshifter tilted her head to the side and took in Silvia's expression. "It can be the last thing about this, though. And I don't know, you would need to ask Hugo. Knowing him though... I can't see how it could be. The two of you have clash," Coraline cleared her throat loudly, interrupting herself with a verbal backspace. "Different views about a lot of things."

Silvia frowned at Coraline's apparent dismissal, but then nodded at Coraline's statement that it was unlikely. "Maybe. I...I don't know. I mean...I never did quite...completely understand him. Okay. Okay." Her body language was just as closed off, but her expression had definitely softened somewhat, even if it still looked hurt. "What...what else was there?"

Coraline smiled weakly, Silvia would probably do well to have something else to talk about. "Okay so. I'm leaving Oracle but I.. still want to help. All the time I was in Taiwan I uh, I never did manage to make contact with the Resistance. Since you had more success there, a lot more success. I... need you to get some things to them." Coraline gripped the table with one of her hands, very slightly cracking its surface, as she breathed out, long and low.

After a moment she rallied, letting go of the table. "I've done some research on magnetic seeker shell/mine the Ai-Jinn hit Taiwan with. Turns out its super susceptible to even weak EMP. So you could use EMP grenades to make a safe path but that wouldn't last long. A better plan would be a magnetic shield. Either an altered Ion shield or a modified stealth suit. Each approach has its own drawbacks and I didn't get around to researching.. either..." Coraline trailed off, clasping her hands in her lap and rocking back and forth for a moment.

"I also have a.. no, I'm sorry I shouldn't..." The plague doctor fell silent, visibly straining to keep her face under control [Pass L&A on the dot]. "I have a prototype cybernetic. It cost a lot to make and it needs a lot of processing power but... it could make a difference. But I need... assurances before I give it to you, to them." The petite plague doctor made significant eye contact with Silvia before forging on. "You would need to bank roll it's production. You couldn't tell anyone where you got it. And they, the Resistance, they mustn't let it fall into the wrong hands. Anyone's."

Coraline bit her lip, fixing Silvia with a stare unlike any she had seen before. "Its a lot, I know.
...
Can you promise me these things?"