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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Roper follows up on Sophie Hagstrom to find out if she's truly nothing but a simple toyseller, and how deep a game Kaela's been playing. 8k-ish words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
The Hero's Welcome is aptly named — if you're an Alliance hero, that is. For all that Dalaran is a neutral location on paper, in practice there are lines drawn throughout the city state, some starker than others. The ratio of Alliance races to Horde in this place is completely 1 to 0.
So it is not particularly unusual when a human man, dressed in fine, black leathers with a hood drawn over his face, enters. If there's a bit of a chill when he walks through from the outside, well, it is the start of autumn, even in temperature controlled Dalaran. Perhaps it's nothing more than the wind.
His body language of this stranger has a bit of a graceful glide to it, enough softened elegance to think that he very well might be a nobleman. And the manner in which he sets his hands on the bar counter does nothing to dissuade this opinion of him, this light little touch as though his hands are delicate things, and indeed, they are small and well formed fingers in expensively tailored cloth gloves. He asks the bartender a few questions, or perhaps engages him in some small talk, before he secures a drink — expensive, top shelf liquor in a tumbler glass with a large icecube in the center — and turns to look at the room as though for the first time.
It's a relatively peaceful afternoon, though the common room is not unoccupied. A draenei couple sit in quiet conversation at one table, a gnome with an open drawing book enjoys an afternoon snack at another, and a brown-haired human woman sits in a corner with a book, a cup of tea slowly cooling on her table. The draenei glance at the man when he enters, but quickly return to their own conversation. The gnome and the woman take no notice.
The hooded man sits near the corner table at another, not directly next to her, settling in with a comfortable ease that seems to emphasize his smaller size, his soft mannerisms. He waits a beat or two before he clears his throat slightly, a polite little sound, as he leans forward towards the woman.
"I do beg your pardon for interrupting you in your repose, as I expect you must be taking a moment to yourself, well earned I'm sure, but if you would grant me a few moments of your time, I would be most obliged." He reaches out a gloved hand. "Tibault Beringer, of the Elwynn Beringers, you may have heard of us?" His accent supports the assertion of his origins, a light tenor with a neutral Stormwind kingdom accent, the faintest of lisps on the sibilants, as though at some point he'd made attempts to correct it and achieved partial success at least.
The woman jumps a little and looks up, dropping her book (The Truest Knight) on the table. It falls closed, losing her place, and she gives a little sigh before turning her attention to the newcomer. She reaches out one hand to take his with a nervous smile.
"I… may have? It's hard to say," the woman says in her own light, urban Stormwind accent. She brushes her hair back behind her ear with her free hand and adds, "I'm Sophie. Sophie Hagstrom, not of any house in particular."
"Yes, I — I hope you'll forgive the imposition," Tibault says with a bit of a tittering laugh. He shakes her hand limply. The glove is cold — as if he'd maybe spent quite a lot of time on a gryphon in high altitude, very recently? "I did know so, I came here to — well, to — to inquire a little of your selling stock. We've had, well, I don't know if you've spoken much of it with the to do of that horrible incident recently — I speak of the Wrathgate campaing," he says, lowering his voice as though to mention it too loudly is unseemly. "Quite a few reasons some are looking for distractions, erm, for the little ones. Toys. The investment is, that is my great-aunt believes, this is the right time for it, and well, Dalaran has proven a little more reluctant to work with me than I expected, but I heard your name and, well." Here he is.
As he speaks, he crosses his legs at the ankles, huddling a little more in his cloak. There's a chill in the air around him. Maybe he came in very recently from the cold and still feels it?
Sophie shivers and glances at the door, as if it might be to blame for the sudden draft. Then she shakes her head and says, "Yes, of course, I do a lot of business with Wonderworks here. Did they really turn you away? Whyever would they do that?"
"It's the size of the investment I'm hoping to make that seems to be of, erm, some manner of disinterest. I'm afraid we're not quite at the volume we once were, I'm looking for something a little smaller than to be counted in crates. Boxes, more like." Tibault makes that slightly nervous titter of a laugh, spreading his hands out on the table in a soft gesture of helplessness. "I thought to maybe scoop up your inventory you might have now. I, well, I did hear that you were recently forced to end a bit of an intended circuit short, some horrible business to do with, oh where was it? Wintergarde? Westguard? I'm sorry — all of these names here do something to one's memory, resisting the retention of them." He gives a self-conscious little shrug, the lisp more pronounced, as if embarrassed at his failing of memory.
Sophie's face falls for a moment, but she regains her smile quickly. "Wildervar, yes. It was a bit of a scare, but I… I came out of it safely. Anyway, I was working my way north, so I'd already collected a lot of my main inventory. Handmade Tuskarr toys, if you're interested?" Sophie crosses her arms across her chest, guarding against the sudden, persistent chill. "I'm afraid I don't have anything magical, if that's what you were after."
"Not at all, no, no, no magic is…uh, well. When they break, what's to be done? You know how children can get when their toys break, and there's simply no one around who can fix them. They're left with the remnants, and the maker, well. It's not as though they're going to swoop back in and fix it, will they? They'll abandon the toy and the one with it," Tibault says and for all of the softness of his manner, of his voice, something seems sharper than it should be. His hood remains over his face.
And the cold isn't warming, even this close to the fire.
"So, one does wish for something a bit more durable, a little more reliable, for when things go wrong," Tibault concludes. Maybe there should have been something reassuringly casual about it, a cheerfulness, but it isn't there. It's a little empty.
Sophie looks at him more closely, her expression tightening slightly and the smile faltering.
"Anything can break, if you use it hard enough," she says, and for a moment there's an unusually bleak note in her voice. "But I take your meaning. The Tuskarr toys are rather durable, in that fashion. They're all wood and bone, and not too terribly difficult to repair or even just replace. Would you like to see some? I'll just have to fetch them from my room."
"I'd be very happy to accompany you and get a look at them," Tibault says, rising to a stand and offering an arm out in a gallant fashion, as though to a lady. "I wouldn't want to risk you setting your wares out in a common room such as this, where just anyone might wander in, and I'd hate for you to take another scare so soon after your last ordeal." He sounds as though he's smiling, his tone lightly concerned perhaps.
But there's something now in him that seems to be suggesting another meaning, someone else speaking through Tibault's mouth, though nothing else has changed.
Sophie pales, but she rises and takes his arm with a hand that trembles. "If you insist, Mr. Beringer. It will only take a few minutes."
On the way to the stairs, Sophie waves to one of the barmaids passing by. "Marcella, can you keep my table free? I'm just going to have a brief chat with Mr. Beringer here, and I'd hate to lose my spot."
The blonde barmaid nods agreeably, clearly familiar with Sophie's habits.
'Tibault' sets his other hand over Sophie's, as if steadying her. It conceals the tremble. There's that deepening sense of a smile, something shifting in his body language, the softness giving way to something sharper, harder.
"And please, if you'd be so good, her tab on mine," Tibault says good naturedly to Marcella. "I'll be back to attend to it."
He sets a pace that is slow enough to seem casual, friendly. He leans his head a little closer as the ascend the stairs. "Clever," Roper murmurs, approval in his voice — a different voice, a lowborn Stormwind accent, clear and dark all at once. It's strange how this man seems to be less of a menace than he was a moment before, but now there's something inherently dangerous in him. "You know what I am then. Good, saves us some time. I'm not gonna hurt you though. Just want a chat. And, believe it or not, to see those toys. See, I've run into a toymaker recently, and wondering where some of his works got to."
"Who are you?" Sophie asks a low, shaky voice, letting him lead her on. "What are you after? Cleaning up loose ends? They'll find you. Or is this a ransom? I told you, I'm nobody, I… I have some money, but I can't…" Sophie chokes off on a quiet sob.
Roper pats her hand on his arm, the tempo just off of what should be comforting — instead, it feels more like a slow tapping, mechanical, and thus more like a subdued menace, a reminder that he might not have feelings like sympathy that can be turned to advantage. "Sh, sh, sh." The shushing makes it worse — there's that coldness to it, of someone who distress has become an appetizing scent of dinner cooking on the stove. He turns them around the corner into the hallway above the tavern, looking at the doors of the inn rooms like they're interesting.
"They're not gonna find me. They're not gonna find you either, unless you want them to. One of their head's just decorated this blade right here," Roper says, shifting so that his cloak reveals his left hand runeblade, currently at his waist like an nobleman's sword. The way he's talking it makes it sound like they both know who 'they' are.
His head turns back to her, his hood going up enough that she can see the telltale blue glow of his eyes in the shadow of his hood. "Me? I want to see if you've got Mevlin's toys." His eyes are on her face, watching her the moment the name hits the air.
"If I… what?" Sophie stares up at him in frank bewilderment, like he's speaking another language. "You're really after… toys? Wait… Are you claiming you're not with the people who kidnapped my friends?" Some of her fear fades a little, and she tries to pull her arm away. "Who are you?"
Roper's hand goes over hers, locking her into place on his arm with a strength that is utterly disproportionate to his size. "Ah, ah, ah, isn't it ladies first? I'm a fucking monster, but I've been in a gentleman's skin long enough for that. Who are you?" The way he's asking it makes it seem as though he doesn't entirely think she's who she's said she is either, any more than he's 'Tibault Beringer.'
"I already told you, I'm Sophie," she says, pushing at him with her free arm. "Let go of me."
"Not a good idea. You don't want to run," Roper says, leaning forward closer. "Because if you run, I'm going to chase you. If I chase you, I'm going to catch you. And when I catch you, I'll hurt you, and right now, neither of us want that. But if you run, I'm gonna change my mind." He smiles at her, all teeth, his eyes unblinking in his hood. "Right now, as for who I am — I'm on your side. You see, the ones who took Jenzelle and Bren, they're down to two. But there's still two. And I don't really give a shit why you weren't taken with them, but you might — loose end. Whose loose end do you wanna be, 'Sophie'?"
"They told me to run, Jenzelle and Brendol," Sophie says, her eyes brimming with tears, and guilt written on her face. "They said to get help, so I ran and… I don't know why no one chased me. I don't know why they let me go. I should've stayed and… and… I don't know what I could've done. I've thought, ever since, they'll come after me, too, eventually. And I'll deserve it, because I ran." Something of what Roper says seems to suddenly hit her, and her face brightens with a fragile hope, even as the tears spill over her cheeks. "Did you see my friends? Are they…?”
Roper looks at the tears like an anthropologist inspecting a cultural activity of unknown origin. "Don't know that Bren's ever gonna walk again," he says, dismissively. He doesn't say anything about Jenzelle. "It's funny though. You see, why I want to know about those toys. Mevlin was the kind of guy to put trackers in his toys. Makes a guy wonder if someone got some toys from a place she shouldn't be buying from, and made it easy to find her again just at the right time and place. Might make a girl wonder if she's still findable." He tilts his head, as though looking at how the words land on Sophie.
"Was he a Tuskarr?" Sophie asks in confusion. "Were they working with the Tuskarr? I… I guess I did pick up a lot of things, though, at different trading posts."
Roper makes a little tsk sound. "No, no, you should be asking about Jenzelle. Or afraid at the thought of being tracked. Going to Mevlin?" He shakes his head. "Wrong feint. So close. You were doing so well, too. Really. Great work with the tears. But, that kind of slip…" He pats her hand once without moving it off hers. "You want me to think you don't recognize the name, or that you knew who you were dealing with, and you forgot, you're supposed to care more about them, supposed to be more afraid, rather than clever. I get it. I run into the same fucking problem these days." It's odd, how conversational he is — like he's speaking with a peer. "So. Who gave you the toys, to set it up? Kaela?"
"No one needs to track me, I'm not hiding," Sophie says, rubbing at the tears on her cheek, a touch of anger rising. " I left word at Amberpine, when I decided to come here. And I'm sorry if I don't care enough about people for you. But what is this obsession with the toys? Do you think if I have one you can reverse it somehow? Find Jenzelle? I… I can show you what I've got from the trading posts in Grizzly Hills."
"No, you're not hiding. Which was clever. If you'd hid, that's suspicious," Roper agrees. He gestures with his head to the doors. It's not like he can lead them to where she's staying. "I'm serious about the toys. You'd be too if you'd seen what Mevlin did with them. They didn't stop us from destroying him though. I held him while his head was cut off." He doesn't say anything about Jenzelle. "We're going to fucking destroy them all, you know. If you were looking for the winning side." It's again, oddly conversational, like he's speaking to another person under Sophie. "You help us, we can help you."
"Of course," Sophie says, rubbing more of the tears away, her eyes widening at the description of violence. "If you're really trying to help them, I'll tell you everything I saw." She leads them to the second-to-last door on the hallway, and then hesitates. "I have to get my key. You have to let go of me."
"Just keep staying clever and not running," Roper drawls, as he lifts his hand up, releasing her. "I know what you said you saw in Wildervar. Not very helpful. But, didn't fucking matter. You see," he says, as he leans back casually. It would help if he didn't still radiate an unnatural cold, a reminder of the chill of the grave that he carries wit him. "I found them in Voldrune, in the Grizzly Hills. That's what I do. I told you, not smart to run from me. I always get to what I'm chasing down in the end. Jenzelle and Bren are safe and sound already. I destroyed another one of the ones who took them. I want the rest. You have a way to get to them, then I'm your new friend."
"If I do, then you have it," Sophie says with relief in her voice, pulling out the key and unlocking the door. She pushes the door open behind her, backing into the room without taking her eyes off Roper. She stares at him with red-rimmed eyes, shivers again, and says, "I don't really understand what you think I am. Some kind of evil mastermind or somebody's pawn or whatever. But I'm just a toy seller. I never wanted to be involved in any of this."
"That last part I don't doubt," Roper says, following Sophie in, and it's unfortunate the way he moves feels inherently predatory, a stalking forward. "See, what I think you don't know is that we already knew, long before this, that Jenzelle was a target." He clicks his tongue against his teeth. "And not just me and mine, but Cobalt knew. They had eyes on her, knew that she was there in Wildervar, and knew she was safe while she was in the walls." He inhales deliberately through his teeth. "Which means what looks to you like a good set up for a chance mistake, a simple toy seller out in the wrong place at the wrong time…matches up with convenience that Kaela knew exactly when to strike the moment Jenzelle was out from under that watch. And she didn't kill you because, well, you don't kill an asset that could still be useful."
Roper shuts the door behind him. "So, what I think you are is the bait to get Jenzelle exactly where Kaela wanted her to be. Might have thought you the patsy, but." He shrugs, his hands open, spread wide. "You're too good. Too clever. Kaela would have rung a hundred of your alarm bells. But, I've gotta say, you're good. Really. I'm impressed. You just don't know that Kaela doesn't give a shit who she sets up to fail. And to her, you're expendable. You don't want to be that, do you? Expendable. You're too good for that. Too clever. You don't deserve to let Kaela get away with using you."
Sophie flinches when the door clicks shut, and backs away as far from Roper as she can in the small room. There's signs that someone's been living here for a while, the bed is rumpled, laundry hanging in the small bathroom with its open door. Several cases sit by the wall, likely her stock.
"How could I have possibly known any of that? I'd only met Jenzelle at all the day before, knew her from talking to Brendol on the messenger circuits. She suggested we go out to the settlers, that they might like the toys. You'd know this, if you were telling the truth about her being safe. If you'd talked to her."
"Never said I talked to her. She was with the others. You know how many people came out for her? More than a fucking dozen. Cobalt. The Ebon Blade. The Argent Crusade. That's the real problem for Kaela. We've got the numbers. She's kicking at a hornet nest, and she thinks she's gonna win." Roper stays by the door, looking at the details of the room, the boxes. He inhales deeply, like he's testing the scent of the room, maybe? "That's good work, making her think it was her idea. Just like this was your idea, wasn't it? Coming up here. I didn't make you." He sounds like he's grinning.
"Show me the toys." There's a beat, before he looks at her more fully. "Please."
Sophie reluctantly moves forward, unlatches the cases, opens them. There are a lot of Tuskarr toys in there, but other things too. Some seem like the sort of toys you'd find at a farmer's craft fair, maybe stuff from the local trappers. Sophie gestures to Roper, an open invitation.
"I don't know what you're looking for exactly, but you're welcome to look," Sophie says, stepping back and sitting on the bed and wrapping her arms around herself. "As for the rest, this wasn't a conversation I wanted to have in a common room. And if it wasn't a conversation, they didn't deserve to be involved. I wish I could've been more help, for Jenzelle, but at least she had a lot of friends."
Roper strides forward, turning his head to Sophie at the last. "Some of that's true," he muses aloud. He crouches next to the toys, reaching out a hand to sift through them, looking for something in particular as he picks them up one by one.
"You know," he drawls slightly. "This'll get easier when you actually fucking talk to me. The persona you're wearing's not gonna help you negotiate what you want from me. 'A simple toyseller' can't make details for that. You can drop it any time you want. I'm not gonna turn on you. Hell. At this point," he says as he picks up another toy, bringing it close to his face, rubbing his thumb over it. "I should be thanking you. This has worked out better for me than if I'd fucking masterminded it."
Sophie tenses, drawing her legs in closer. "What do you mean? Why would you want people to get kidnapped by death knights?"
"We'd lost track of Kaela for a bit. See, I've been at this for a while. Almost a year, closing in on her. She thinks she's winning, because so far, things have gone enough to her plan, or so she pretends anyway." Roper has started sorting the toys. He's making two piles as he sorts through them, organized by a maker as he inspects them. "After Mevlin though, we had to wait for her to move. Couldn't see her, like a fucking snow leopard in the snow. Now? Fuck. We've got her down another pawn, and chased her out of a stronghold. She's pissed off the Argent Crusade on this one, too. Sometimes you gotta risk a little to gain something bigger. Funny that you care though." He picks up the toy made by Mevlin, staring at it, as he turns it over and over in his hands.
"See, me, I'm dead. I knew that I'd find them. This isn't the first time I've found someone she tried to take. Looks good if I get them back alive, but, hell. Even when I was alive, don't know that I'd have cared beyond the mission objective. You though. Care just enough to make it hurt, but not enough to not stop it from happening. If you're worried I'll judge you, I'm not gonna." He stands, holding Mevlin's toy. "This is the one."
Sophie leans forward a little, peering at the toy. "Oh, that thing? A death knight made it? Or was he… what'd you call it, a patsy of this Kaela? And here I'd been keeping it for sentiment. Fuck."
"Death knight. Into making toys with secrets. Part of her squad. That's her goal, you know, what you set Jenzelle up for. She wants to kill her and raise her up into one of us, condemn her to an eternity of torment, serve the Lich King." Roper is inspecting the toy so closely that if he could, he'd be burning a hole through it, fingers stroking looking for secret compartments, hidden joints for something extra.
"Bren, though. He was pretty expendable. It's why he's so badly damaged. Didn't need to protect those goods. Fuck, he might've just been a snack, some easy torture of the living while they bided their time for the last piece Kaela wanted. Probably got him out of there just in time to keep his life. But, with Jenzelle back, she's back to square one. So, you see, she might want to find another way to get the priestess back out. Something like a friend concerned for her well being, who might be willing to lead Kaela to her." Roper's smile is a bare hint in the shadows of his hood.
Sophie looks away through the description, with a faint ache of pain and guilt. Then she says, "That would've been me, too. If they hadn't let me go, I would've been nothing to them. But then, maybe that answers one question at least. Maybe they wanted me to raise the alarm, to lure in the rest of the people she wanted for the squad. If that's true, then you're right, she was using me. I'll… I'll keep away from Jenzelle for now, just in case."
She turns back to Roper and the toy. "Do you see a tracker? Either way, you can keep it. Even if they could find me here the normal way, I don't know if I could sleep with it here anymore."
"That's the problem isn't it. Them finding you." Roper holds the toy as ice coats along his arm. He crushes it in his grasp, destroying it into splinters. "And that's where your options are. See, you could stay put, a known entity of an asset, and eventually Kaela's gotta check in on you. And if you did, that means that if one of us was with you, we'd get fucking Kaela. Maybe even if you were good enough to play it both ways, you could find out what she's doing next, feed us the information. The way you're holding onto that persona, I'd be willing to bet on you pulling it off. Could be a way to get this off your ledger. Be bait to pay off being bait." Roper opens his fist to look at the remains of the toy he's crushed in his single hand. "But even if you don't agree, one of us might have to be watching you anyway. Something you might wanna know about us. We don't ever have to fucking sleep."
Sophie stares at the crushed toy, like it's done something interesting and maybe a little terrifying. Then she trembles a little and shakes her head.
"I wouldn't think a Scourge death knight could just… waltz right in here. But then, you did," Sophie says, raising her eyes to his. "I think you're still pretending there's more to me than there really is, for all this'd be simpler if I were some sort of secret agent. I don't think this Kaela is likely to come 'check on me', but I suppose I'd appreciate the eyes if she did. That's…you're… Ebon Blade?"
Roper slowly crushes more and more of the remains of the toy, like he's looking for something in the wood by virtue of destroying it. He gives her a crooked smile, his eyes unblinking. "That's the toy seller getting in your way again. I never said she was the Scourge. The toy seller had no reason to think she wasn't Ebon Blade. Fuck, half the time, Kaela wears the tabard. So close, but that's always the problem when you know more than what you're pretending to."
Roper lets the pieces slowly fall to the floor, drifting down. "Look. The problem with eyes is we've gotta believe there's a good reason, or it's a waste our time. So. You've got options. If you're more than a toy seller, but you're on our side, working with us, and we're working with you, then you've got eyes and our blades on your side. But, if I leave here still thinking you're more, and you insist you're not, then maybe I stick around long enough to watch you work with Kaela, and I let whatever happens to you happen.
"Or I walk away, and I believe you're just an innocent toy seller that Kaela's got no reason to look in on, and you're on your fucking own. And if you are who I think you are, she will come for you. I'm offering you a way out of this, out of Kaela's grip. She's outmatched. There's still time to work on the side of good guys." He gives a faint ha. "Well. The better guys. I'm not exactly an angel."
"Why would the Ebon Blade target a priest?" Sophie asks, shrugging. "You're supposed to be on our side. I may be a simple trader, but I'm not that simple. If I thought the Ebon Blade had gone rogue and were attacking priests in the forest, I would've reported that, and you would've had a whole different problem than the one you're having now. And if they're not Ebon Blade, they're Scourge, because who else is there?"
Sophie looks at him for a moment, and then something softens in her posture. She shifts towards him. "You don't have to win me over, because I'm on your side. I don't think Kaela will come after me, but if she does I'll… well, I suppose I'll probably die. But if I don't, I'll obviously tell you everything I can, whether I have eyes and blades on my side or not. And if I had a way to tell where they were now, I'd give it to you. If there's anything you need to ask that I can answer, I'll answer it."
She hesitates, then adds, "The one that took them was a man. There was another, I saw her, with kind of… short, black hair?" Sophie gestures the length. "Was that Kaela?"
Roper doesn't answer the question, as he finishes crushing the toy, looking at the dust on the floor. "Tsk, tsk." His head moves in a tilt to the side, a little too fast. "No tracker. That narrows it down." He steps closer. He's not that close, but there is something about his body language now that suggests she has his full attention, his eyes unblinking in the shadows. A smile is visible, but those eyes…they're cold.
"I don't doubt for a second that Sophie the Toyseller is on the right side," he tells her. "She's gotta be, like you say. That's the only smart move. Like not trying to pin Kaela on the Ebon Blade. That'd be you kicking the hornet's nest, and that'd be fucking stupid. And you're too smart for that. But you're still asking the wrong questions. Like if I'm Ebon Blade, and who I am now." He shakes his head, still smiling. "That's not what you need to know. You need to know who I was. What I was." He stares at her as he raises up the hand that crushed the toy, making a little gesture with his fingers, a roll of his wrist, a little go on then, it's your turn.
"If there's something you want to tell me, you can just tell me," Sophie says, looking up at him. "But if you want me to ask, then fine. Who were you, then? What were you?"
Roper's smile turns into a flash of a grin, and for a brief second, his eyes match the amusement, but it fades all too quickly, the grin turning too sharp as he leans in closer. "I was a spy," he informs her, and there's the start of a lazy sounding drawl in his voice. "Died in service to the Alliance. But I was good. Really fucking good. That's why I'm here. Because you can say a lot of things about Arseass, but when it come to what he wanted for his army, he wanted the fucking best." He spreads both hands out in a gesture. "So here we are.
"Decision time for you. Because I can't trust anything Sophie says. I need to deal with the real one. And I gotta say, the commitment to the identity…" He claps his hands twice, slowly. "You decide to flip, I've still got connections to my old job. But here's where that goes wrong for you right now. Because if you won't drop Sophie, and I walk out of here, it's gonna come down to a bet:
"How much are you willing to bet on how good that identity you've built is, versus how good I am? Because I'm gonna look. And I know what to look for, 'Sophie.' I can spot a forgery. I know how to trace back how long someone's been around, and how long she hasn't existed. I know how to check to see if she should be dead, where paperwork came from. I know how to ask the right questions. And if I find out that you aren't real, I'm gonna know you were lying to me now, and I'm gonna know whose side the real you was on." He shrugs, but despite the casual nature of it, nothing undercuts the sense of the threat of him in that room, the cold that radiates around him.
"You can look all you want," Sophie says, not breaking eye contact. She's calm, maybe a little too calm for the situation, and her pulse picks up. "If I had someone else inside me to offer up, I would do it. I don't know how else I can say that I'm on your side."
Roper takes a blur of a step to her, much too fast, inhumanly fast, stopping nothing but a bare few inches away from her, so close that she can feel the exhale of his breath, freezing cold, on her face.
"Liar," Roper tells her, his voice echoing and echoing through the silky way he says the word, something between a compliment and an accusation both, a dark certainty in those flaming eyes.
He knows.
"I didn't do anything a friend wouldn't do," Sylvie says, not flinching, and there's a steel in her tone that doesn't quite fit Sophie the toy seller. "What did you want me to do? I could have told the guards they were dead."
Roper's head tilts a little. "That was your choice, wasn't it? Not Sophie's. Interesting. What I want is to deal with the one making the real choices. Don't give a fuck what Sophie would do. I'm not gonna burn you, if you talk to me. I could, if I wanted to," he promises her. His body language shifts, becoming a near perfect mirror of hers, subtle shifts and tucks of his body until he's a strange double, dressed differently, but holding himself in the same way, as though he were sitting just like her. And then, with an eerie mimicry, to the point of so close a mastery that it would fool most people who hadn't spent significant time around her, he adds in 'Sophie's' own voice, "I could make them hear whatever I wanted them to hear."
"I believe you. So believe me. I just need you to leave me alone." Sylvie takes a breath, squaring her shoulders and dropping her side of the mirror. "Tell me what you want to know, and I'll give it to you. If you'll just… leave me alone after."
Roper drops the mirror in near sync with her, pulling back just enough to not crowd her space, a lopsided smile on his face, briefly genuine. "There you are," he says with satisfaction. "Alright. What I wanna know is how deep this goes, how long Kaela's had an asset working where she can't go, how you set up meets — if there's a dead drop for information, if you've got a way to signal you want a meet — and what the last one was, how much you've skimmed off them of what you know about them of weaknesses and plans, and how much you know about the other target."
Sylvie closes her eyes for a moment, and takes another fortifying breath. Then she opens them and looks back at Roper calmly.
"Just to be clear, I'm more useful unburned," Sylvie says evenly. "And if you hurt me, I'll lie. So. I've only been Kaela's for a few months, but I'm not the only one. I can't give you the others, because we don't exactly have social meet-ups. I just know they exist. I wait to be contacted. She's careful about who sees her in person and where. And I can't guess exactly what her plans are, because I'm not sure she's… all there."
"Yeah, something you should keep in mind about us. None of us are all fucking here," Roper drawls. But he's all business there, at least, no flash of anger at the admission, no sneer of disgust. "You know the others exist because she's mentioned them, or because she's mentioned info that she shouldn't have that you didn't pass her?"
"Because someone was helping before me, and she tries to protect her assets," Sylvie says, resting her hands on her lap. "Because someone was passing me information - where to go, what to do."
"You know about the other target, or were you kept to Jenzelle?"
"Do you mean Brendol?" Sylvie asks. "He was barely a target. More a target of opportunity. Or I suppose you could be talking about Ralaea Westwind. If you knew Jenzelle was a target, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know."
"Bren wasn't a target. He was a fucking problem. It's why he's in worse shape," Roper says. "I mean Westwind. How you much know about her? She's got a shadow, but it isn't you." (edited)
"No, Bren was. It was secondary, but she still wanted him," Sylvie shakes her head. "And one of yours, I take it? Westwind's tail?"
"She wanted Bren for something else," Roper says, dismissively. "But the two she needs for her own weird fucking goals, that's Westwind and Jenzelle." He makes an irritated tsch of a sound. "You see Westwind's tail yourself, or heard about it?"
"If you say so," Sylvie says with a shrug. "And yes, I saw him. He looked like one of your kind."
Roper's makes a rolling sound of disgust. "Fucking paladins, unsubtle as a fucking hammer," he mutters, only audible for how close he still is. "Yeah, that's one of us. So you tailed Westwind. But you got swapped to Jenzelle. You know why?"
"She left Northrend. Jenzelle was still here." Sylvie watches him carefully.
Roper stares back at her, as his left hand taps slowly, just once, on his leg. A sign of Impatience, maybe? He stretches up for a moment before pivoting, and sitting down on the edge of the bed, crossing his arms in a fluid motion. "You know," he says conversationally, with a dark drawl. "We're not all as embarrassing as Westwind's tail. Some of us aren't fucking amateurs." His left hand picks up just tap again, slow, on his right arm. "So. Sophie gets Jenzelle. Secondary priority Bren. Success at location and time, all planned. Sophie getting out, that's planned. Telling the guards, that's the Real One, not planned. It's good as a cover. Favorite of mine. No one ever suspects the person yelling for help for the crime. Coming back, not running, good work. No reason to burn an identity until you know it's already fucked. What's the longest you've gone in between contacts from Kaela?"
Sylvie turns slightly to face him, and waves one hand dismissively. "It's not like she contacts me every day. It's only been a few times overall. Weeks, then?"
"How's she contact you?"
"Once, a message in the Lounge here in Dalaran. That set up the second."
Roper tilts his head up again, enough that his face is more visible in the light. "She contacted you first? To work for her? Where did she get your name?"
"I already had the routes, the business network," Sylvie shifts back slightly when Roper moves. "And I'd found a market for… his. Like the one you broke. That wasn't a trick or anything, you know. He just liked making toys."
"Yeah, I read his headstone. Also wrecked his fucking alarm bats for how he got notice to come kill and torture living things to a slow, agonizing death," Roper says, with no particular emphasis. "When did you realize she wasn't Ebon Blade?"
"He never hurt me," Sylvie says, looking down at her hands for a moment. "I didn't know who she was till I met her in person."
Roper's fingers tap, tap. "You meet any of the others?"
"Like I said, the two who came for them," Sylvie says, turning to watch his fingers. "One now, I guess the other doesn't matter anymore."
"Not their names?"
Sylvie shakes her head.
"You know anything about the headstones?"
"The… what?" Sylvie frowns. "What headstones?"
Roper shrugs, a eh, worth a shot gesture. "Well." He exhales a ha of a laugh. "You're pretty fucked, aren't you?" He leans back a little more, looking at Sylvie. "You're not SI:7. In fact, you're not enough with anyone. Didn't anyone ever warn you that independent agents have a life expectancy somewhere around a fashion trend in Silvermoon?" His voice is a drawl. "But I'm guessing you know that. You fucked up somewhere. Can't go to SI:7, but you weren't trained by them. Stormwind is a problem for you. You built your own identity, but you've done it before. You must have worked in trade before, maybe professional. The spycraft though. Too much on your own. You've got no one and nothing to back you. So, a death knight makes you a proposition, you take it. You're already fucked, but now someone is paying you, and powerful enough that what are you gonna do? Say no? Hope the crazy bitch doesn't kill you?
"No, you take the deal. It's just spying. You're not an assassin, not a murderer. But then, you get in deeper. It's your face that might be the last thing someone remembers of the living. Your hand that put the fucking noose around their neck." His voice gets a scrape to it, a rasp. "But what are you gonna do? Storm the fucking castle yourself? Shit, if you could do that, you wouldn't have taken the fucking job. So, you give a warning. And when death comes to call again, you flip enough to clear the ledger, but. You're still fucked. Can't go to Stormwind. Can't be seen by SI:7. You're on your own, just a mouse scurrying between the fucking crazies hoping they'll leave you alone."
Roper studies Sylvie with a lazy grin. "I miss anything?"
Sylvie stares at him, all the expression wiped off her face. "Well, I gave you what you wanted. Will you leave me alone? Marcella is going to start wondering what's happened to Sophie and Mr. Beringer soon."
A click of his tongue against his teeth. "Gotta be something big enough," Roper says, his eyes so intensely focused on Sylvie's face that it's almost as if he's looking through her skin into her skull. "Shaw's a reasonable man, but he's got his limits. Treason, for one." He shakes his head as he reaches out a gloved hand, stroking around the air of Sylvie like he can feel some invisible barrier there. "What a fucking shame. It's like you were born for it. Ordinary looking. No identifying marks. Lie as easily as you breathe. But you weren't born with the right amount of soul. Too little to not do whatever it was. Too much to not have the emptiness to kill whoever it is still out there that knows what you did." He shrugs, and rises up in an agile stand, looking down at her, the shadows in his hood strange and too dark for the room.
"I'll give you three weeks. Kaela contact you in that, you make a dead drop. There's a bit of water near the fighting ring in the sewers. Drop a copper coin in the water, right at the post on the right hand, like you're making a fucking wish, and you'll get a tail close enough to be in screaming distance if Kaela goes after you in a public place. And don't — " He tilts his head. "Don't ever fucking assume we won't. None of us have a full deck of cards, and we can kill you faster than you could ever imagine, and take a one way gate out of here that no living can follow."
He shrugs himself into Tibault's skin, as he reaches out a left hand of shadow, and pulls a crate of toys to him. "I'll leave you to Marcella. Don't burn Tibault. You don't want to have to have me come back next time." He finally pauses, holding a crate of toys in one hand, as he rolls his right wrist, a bag of coins of some sort hitting the ground with a distinct sound at the exact end of his sentence.
"And after three weeks?" Sylvie asks, not rising from her seat yet.
"Then I guess we find out if you're getting more of a soul. Or less of one," Roper drawls, as Tibault walks softly to the door. He turns his head over his shoulder. "Oh, but, 'Sophie'?"
Sophie watches him with wide, innocent eyes, and nervously straightens her skirts as she hastily rises. "Yes, Mr. Beringer?"
"You wanted to know who I am. I'm Roper Sunstrike of the Ebon Blade, ally to Cobalt Company, ally to the Argent Crusade, ally to SI:7, ally to the tuskarrs, ally to the Consortium, ally to the Red Dragonflight, husband of Syarra Sunstrike — hand of the Crimson Coterie, with dozens of mercenaries of the Horde at her command. There is fucking no where you could ever run that I would not be able to find you. I'm everywhere." He raises up a hand casually, giving it a little wave. "See ya around, 'Sophie.'" He doesn't wait for her reply as he opens the door and strides out of it, closing it behind him.
She waits for a moment, maybe waiting to see if he'll come back, and then lets out a long sigh of relief. She collects the bag of coins, tucking it neatly into her own satchel, and sets about tidying up her remaining case of toys. That done, she rocks back onto her heels and stands, wiping her palms on her skirt.
Sophie glances once more at the closed door and says, "Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Beringer." Then Sylvie adds, with a tight smile, "And not if I see you first."