the_last_resort | Belloq chose...poorly

[Niko has the passing thought that, if Pas had seen Niko shove Belloq around, he would have killed him right there. It seems like a missed opportunity, but he didn't want that burden to fall on his hound.]

[He doesn't say anything else, just leaves to follow Boone, but even despite his rage a once confident man is fading. It's obvious that Belloq doesn't care, no more than Rascalov or Brevic did. If he ever was Niko's friend, Niko can't tell.]

Belloq swallowed the cognac down in one gulp. Not the best way to appreciate a good drink, perhaps, but he needed the fortification.

"Niko was my friend. I was not pretending, not manipulating him knowing that I would kill him. But I was put in a difficult situation."

Belloq walked down the hallway to his office. He'd escaped legal charges from Niko, and escaped with his life, but there was more to come. Whether it came in the form of vengeful friends of Niko, or the Orions looking for their lost sword, he didn't know.

He didn't see Jade until he was practically on top of her.

Una didn't move the bottle toward him. She wouldn't stop him if he picked it up, but her plan wasn't to get him excessively drunk—and if he did, the effects of the sedative darts in the needle gun might be less predictable. And as angry as she was, she didn't want to kill him. That would have been far, far beside the point and would have defeated her purposes altogether.

She sipped from her own glass, trying to keep the contempt off her face.

"What sort of difficult situation? It must have been very dire to have to resort to such desperate measures." Her tone was so neutral as to be almost kind.

Edited 2015-01-27 13:53 (UTC)

Jade could hear someone walking down the hallway, and it most likely was Belloq. She didn't bother opening her eyes until whoever it was got closer to her, and sure enough, that archeologist was there, surprisingly unharmed.

"So you're back." She didn't get up from the floor yet.

"The Orions?"

Tuco swiped at his nose—a nervous tic of sorts. As loath as he'd be to admit it, when push came to shove, Belloq was apparently capable of making a very compelling argument. Tuco—for all that he was sneaky, conniving and occasionally outrageously brutal—was also a realist. This wasn't home. He couldn't just grab a horse and flee, spitting and cursing. Having already experienced "good treatment" at the hands of Wallace, he wasn't overly keen on the idea of catching Jabba's attention, either.

He pressed his lips together in something that wasn't quite a frown, and stared at the sword. He stared hard, head tilting one way and then the other, looking like he had a pair of his very own animated advisors sat whispering into each ear.

Finally, with a snort: "I like to make friends." He flashed his teeth, meeting Belloq's eyes again. "You need a little help, you come to the right man."

Belloq's glare turns instantly to a charming smile. "Good. The Orions are better to have as friends than enemies."

He ran possessive and avaricious fingers over the sword. It may not technically belong to him, but for now it was in his possession and he was going to enjoy it.

"Now, the smuggler's ship leaves in--"

Belloq was interrupted mid-sentence as the sword twitched, popped, and then Belloq was holding not a diamond sword, but a red beret in his hand. The beret struggled for a few seconds, then went limp, just a bit of red wool draped over his fingers.

Belloq stared at it in horror.

"What?" he rasped. "What is this?"

"I was beholden to some very dangerous people. They wished Niko gone. I did try to convince them otherwise and they agreed that if he came into their fold that they would abandon this plan to kill him. But Niko had no interest in throwing his lot in with them."

He reached for the bottle and poured himself a second glass.

"I did try to protect him."

But not nearly enough. And not at the expense of his own safety.

"I am. For now." He was wary after the reception he'd gotten from others.

"I will ask this bluntly: what are your intentions?"

"Did you." The first crack in her calm, or rather a drop in the temperature, a bit of air going out of the room. "So you're mixed up with them." She didn't really care which them it was. The local staff at the Agency warned her about the gangs, and she was grimly unsurprised that all of this had something to do with them.

"He trusted you," she said. The second crack, a roughness on the word trusted. Then, practically an afterthought: "I trusted you."

And you took advantage of us both, she thought but didn't say. Didn't need to.

Edited 2015-01-28 13:29 (UTC)

"Just curious about our working relationship now," she says as she stands up. "I don't really like working for people that plan to stab me in the back once it's useful."

Tuco was also staring, his face stuck in a rictus grin, eyes wide and owlish. For a moment, he was entirely unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Then, even when he could, his mind still refused to believe it. He wasn't being wilfully stupid, either; he knew he was staring at a Prop. His problem was more that he considered the pests a minor (if not fascinating) nuisance. That they would transform themselves into some priceless relic? He was—

He was laughing. From the sudden twist of his eyebrows, it seemed he'd surprised himself with the harsh, donkey-like bray, and yet that didn't stop him, either. He took a step back, shaking his head, even bringing his hand up to stifle the sound.

"Shit," he managed eventually, pitch wavering like he'd lost control of his vocal cords. "Tell me—" He stopped and forced himself to stare at the ceiling. With a deep, steadying breath, he tried again. "Tell me the real thing is still in the kuh—"

Belloq flung the beret to the ground, hard. It squeaked and scampered off under the bed.

"Bordel de merde, nique ta mere...!" A string of swearing spat from his mouth as he ran to the safe to rummage through it. There had only been one sword in there when he'd removed it, but he had the hope of the desperate that somehow an extra sword would be in there now, one that he had somehow overlooked.

"Où is it? Where is it?"

"I never wished him ill." And that was also true. Even as he was sealing him in a chamber to die, he never wished him ill. There was never any malice, just the callus arithmetic that, regardless of friendship, of fond feelings, of camaraderie, his own life held more value to him than Niko's.

"Then it sounds as though you have already made a decision. You do not trust me."

"I don't." She crosses her arms. "But I'm glad I found out who you really were before I got hurt, too."

"I'm sure." It wasn't my fault. I was only following orders. I had no choice. I didn't mean to. All the world's great mealymouthed excuses for which Una had very little patience. She stood up, glass in hand, and walked around her desk to stand closer to him—not as a threat, but a kind of sympathetic intimacy. She pulled back at her composure, keeping her tone soft now, almost kindly. "But you know what they say about good intentions, Rene. In the end, what you wished doesn't matter very much to most people. Only what you did."

Maybe it was belated empathy, or maybe it was a little fear bubbling up in the face of Belloq's desperation, but Tuco finally stopped laughing. He was stood there, eyes drawn to spot where the beret had disappeared, his shoulders lowering slowly.

For him, it was a case of nothing lost, nothing gained, he supposed. It was maddening, yes, but he hadn't the same claim to the sword as he did with Carson's gold. He hadn't staked his life on it, or spent the best part of six months tracking it all down. In the end, it felt more like that old, overused adage: If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is.

He scrubbed his hand across the bristles on his chin, both awkward and uncharacteristically silent.

There was no second sword miraculously appearing for him. There was only one treasure which last the Orions saw had been in Belloq's hands and which they expected to be delivered soon. He pulled his hands through his hair.

"If I have nothing to give the Orions when their ship leaves, they will think I stole it from them."

"You never gave me cause."

He opens the door to his office.

"A friendly tip: if you sell artifacts to the Orions, they will pay you very well for them, but never let them control you too closely. That is where I went wrong."

He nodded once, solemnly and recited a passage from Virgil.

"Facilis descensus Averni: Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est."

The descent to hell is easy. Night and day the gates of dark Dis lie open. But to turn one's steps back and to see again the skies of heaven, this is hard work, this is effort.

He chose the downward path long ago.

Una set her glass down and leaned forward, almost as if she were about to kiss him, and slipped her hand into her inner jacket pocket. Her fingers curled around the handle of the needlegun. And instead of kissing him, she tilted her head, brushing lightly against his cheek, and whispered in his ear:

"I don't speak Latin, Rene."

And then with one swift movement, she pulled out the needlegun and fired a dart into the side of his neck.

The sedative would take effect within minutes. It was a Travel Agent special; sometimes, when extracting a guest, you needed to quietly get other people out of the way. Killing wasn't an option, and tasers were too noticeable. The darts, on the other hand, were subtle and quick.

She pocketed the needlegun again and didn't move away. Instead she stayed close, to hold him steady when the drug kicked in.

She leans on the doorframe, but doesn't enter. "So you're blaming the Orions for what happened to Niko?"

At that, Tuco just looked at him, mouth ticked up on one side. The irony was, had Belloq not stressed the dangers of crossing the Orions, (and name-dropped them in the first place) he probably would have offered to help somehow. He'd have almost certainly insisted he was a very capable bodyguard, and that for the right price, he'd put his life on the line.

Now, it felt a little more like he was watching a ship sink in front of him. He couldn't help surmising that it was better for him to row his figurative raft as far away as possible, lest he be dragged down, too.

And so, with a jerk of his head and shoulders, he proceeded by setting his hat back on. "That's too bad," he said, failing to embellish the words with anything more than flat, token sympathy. "Try telling them: No todo lo que brilla es oro." He gave his hand a flourish. "Who knows? Maybe they more forgiving than you think."

Belloq tilted his head into what he thought was going to be a kiss, a slight smile curling his lips. The smile faded to confusion when Una shifted, and instead of a kiss he received a breath of words in his ear.

The confusion didn't hold for long. A sharp, biting sting pricked his neck and his hand flew up to the spot in shock. There was something... He pulled out a tiny dart and examined it in a shaking hand. He was reminded of the poison darts the Hovitos used to kill their enemies.

"What...what is in the needle?" He rasped out in horror. His limbs were beginning to feel weak.

Belloq chose...poorly

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Later

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I so rarely get to use this icon...

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PERFECT

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let me know if this is ok.

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absolutely fine!