His immediate response to her question post-monologue was hesitation and that was quite uncharacteristic of him. It seemed like he was giving what he was going to say next a great deal of thought, almost as if it was important or significant to him in some way. It was a relatively substantial stretch of time, which in reality only spanned a few dozen seconds, before words were finally spoken from his side. "I would like to hear what your spontaneous questions are. But before you go ahead with that, I do have a sixth question. More of a request, but that's only if you want to get hung up on technicalities." Ever the rebel, he was breaking the rules of this little exercise like he'd broken so many other things, although this was surely a harmless infraction when put alongside the others.
"Could you do that again?" It was obvious what he meant from the way he was looking at her, and the way he'd reacted to the small gesture of her reaching out. But the way he'd asked revealed that he felt a sense of shame about this. There could have been multiple reasons for it, the simplest of which was the fact that her people were by all accounts considered freaks by his own people. So to ask for a repeat, even if only restrained to a small gesture of affection, might have felt like quite the betrayal of long established prejudice.
Or, it could have simply been the fact that he was asking for it, because that alone revealed more about him than any of the five questions might have. To want affection was one thing, and it was even natural, but to ask for it was another. Especially to people who had been deprived of it in significant ways and early on. To that sort of person, it would seem like an almost insurmountable thing to do, and almost inappropriate. And that was a potent blend of insecurity to have.
She squinted her eyes slightly and briefly turned her gaze to the window while she thoughtfully circled the rim of her water glass with her right index finger. She ended her silent contemplation after a few minutes with a flamboyant wink, which she used to show off her long eyelashes and smile slightly.
"Of course I can, Mister Doe, but rare moments like this should not be repeated on request - it would lose the magic of the moment. You will have a more intense memory of that first caress than if I repeat it once or twice now. I will repeat my gesture when the time is right again."
With an exception for her apparent amusement, the expression on her face was mysterious, giving little away and giving her companion no opportunity to read her next steps or thoughts from her eyes.
Her response left him pleasantly surprised and even a little impressed at the grace behind her explanation. This meant he was only just barely able to suppress the laughter he couldn't help but reply with, exhaling sharply in amusement but obviously appreciative of the gesture and sentiment rather than mocking it. "You're sharp, I like you." He had to concede this, because even if it might not have been definitive before, it was now.
While he could have tried to discern what her next move was going to be or what she might be thinking in the moment, he decided not to. It felt more interesting this way, and the smirk which wouldn't so readily depart from his features revealed what his choice was on the matter.
The amused expression never left her face. She stopped circling her index finger on the rim of her crystal glass of cold water and sipped lightly from it in an attempt to ease her discomfort.
"I believe that if you did not consider me as a very intelligent woman, we would not only be talking here, but we would probably still be mortal foes."
She took a slow step toward the coffee table in the living area of their suite and wiped the bottom of her glass on the sleeve of her bathrobe before setting it down on the tabletop.
"Now you will have time to think about the questions you want to ask me - if you want to ask them. I am going to change into something more appropriate than a bathrobe, I am guessing an apartment like this has some spare sleepwear."
With those words, she gradually opened the storage compartments and closets in their suite before finding a drawer with proprietary guest clothing and grabbing a pair of crimson pajamas. Then it was only a matter of eleven minutes in the bathroom before she was changed and sufficiently groomed before returning to her companion. She was not dressed in any provocative way - quite the contrary - her red silk pyjamas only revealed her bare feet, hands and head. Her now dry black hair was loose down to her shoulder blades and her face was now free of any makeup. Now she looked quite ordinary, almost interchangeable with an ordinary human. There was still her unmistakable, alien aura of supernatural calmness about her, but the expression on her face without any makeup had lost most of its dangerousness.
Fiorella walked slowly to the coffee table and picked up her glass of icy water.
"Bene - Do you have any questions in mind, Mister Doe?"
By the time she came back into the main room, he had apparently gone ahead and made himself comfy on the rather spacious couch which dominated its center, laying down and looking up at the ceiling before turning his head to face her. Her choice for sleepwear wasn't a huge surprise, although he did find it amusing that she seemed so unassuming at the moment and not at all like like the descendant of some far-flung drug empire. "Questions in my mind? Not much aside for the fact that I'd like some of the bed's pillows and a spare blanket. It was you supposed to be asking five questions anyway, that was the nature of the exercise." It was possible she might have forgotten about that little exchange, so the reminder was put forward politely.
With a light sigh of exertion he pushed himself back up into a seated position and adjusted his hair a little. From the look in his eyes he must have started to feel tired and with the temperature beginning to drop sharply now that the sun had long since set, the need to rest and be comfortable really set in.
With a slightly surprised look, she sipped from her ice water and beckoned her companion with an amused expression with her left hand.
"I am sure there will be a pillow and a blanket for you on that double bed, however, that will not be necessary under certain, understandable conditions."
She took slow steps towards him and surveyed the sofa bed on which her companion had decided to spend the night.
"Of course you may sleep here if you insist, I appreciate the gentlemanly gesture, but as our driver you should sleep comfortable this night. I do not underestimate the risk of microsleep - and neither should you."
As is usual with her, she paused mysteriously for long seconds before continuing, gesturing with her free hand in an elegant gesture towards the double bed.
"I consider you to be a man who has no trouble showing good, tactful manners. If you can demonstrate them under impromptu conditions, as you are now, you can sleep on any half of the bed - next to me. I realise that this somewhat contradicts the principles of decorum, but I should have asked for separate beds or rooms earlier and there is no reason for you to feel discomfort about it. That is my offer and my conditions."
She spoke her words without any hint of shame or embarrassment on her face. She slowly slung her free hand along her body and took a sip from her glass of water as she waited for his reply.
Carefully and keenly, he listened. And a few seconds after she'd paused to wait for his answer, he nodded his head and slowly rose to his feet. "Alright. And thank you." Evidently he wasn't going to insist on trying to spend the night on the couch, not when it was starting to feel genuinely cold despite the heating. With that concluded, he walked past her and towards the righthand side of the bed, giving her the unobstructed window view. "If you wake up feeling frigid, we can swap places since my side is closer to the heater." He mentioned upon sitting down and slowly settling onto his half, understanding that her tolerance for cold weather was probably much lower than his. Their typical environments were almost entirely inverted in that sense.
With his boots left on the carpeted floor, he directed his attention upwards and at the view skylight offered of the night sky and its grungy moon. That sense of melancholy very nearly returned while he was doing this, but at least for the moment he was managing to keep it at bay and occupy his mind on other things. "Two hundred and fifty million people, and all of them yearning to be free. What a sight it'll be when the day comes for all those cages to be flung open." He could almost see it, a vivid picture in the back of his mind as the House went up in flames. Like a trail of scars from Colorado to Texas, each and every single one a harsh lesson that should have been taught centuries prior.
At the coffee table, she refilled her glass with more ice water and with slow, barefoot steps walked to the left side of the bed and set her glass down on the nightstand before slowly slipping under the covers and lying on her back. Her loosely spread long hair the color of raven wings looked as if a rift had suddenly opened up around her head into utter nothingness. She propped her head up with her right hand and turned her gaze to her companion, the youthful gleam in her eyes reminiscent of two stars in the sky in the now darkened apartment.
"Tumultuous revolutions always bury their own children, Mister Doe, two hundred and fifty million people will drown this world in blood, guilty and innocent, of your people and of your enemies. You will give them a new future, but at the cost of more wrongs and scars on their souls."
She rolled onto her other side so she could see out the window and propped her head up with her left hand to make it more comfortable to look out the window at the night city below their apartment windows.
"I am not telling you to do nothing - it does not concern me after all - yet hatred will only bring the broad masses together for a limited time. After a certain time, old conflicts will resurface and new, fresher and more acute tensions will arise during the revolution."
"Democracy needs time to settle in the people, to make them accept it as their own and realize the weight of responsibility on their own shoulders. Such is the history of the human species, the psychology of the masses. Have you thought about that?"
The tone of her voice was softer than usual and she spoke quietly, almost dreamily.
Since there was wisdom to these words, even if he disagreed with pieces of it, he took her question seriously and responded in kind. "You know, it wasn't my idea to call myself Cobra and create the sort of image that the name now has. It was suggested to me years ago, by the Squadron Commander at the time. He told me we needed more than just lots of ammunition to achieve what we all hoped for, that people needed to strive for some sort of common ground, because the trick to truly winning is actually learning how to keep it that way. So when I took the name, when I'd put that helmet on and strapped myself in, I was trying to lead by example. To be some kind of symbol, for both the people in our way and for our own people who were struggling. Obviously to terrify the former and inspire the latter. Hate's a natural reaction when we're talking about the bigshot corporates and heads of the government who've been putting our people in cages for centuries. But hate isn't what's holding all of this together. No, that accolade belongs to a simple notion. The fact we want to be left alone and the dream that is the LFR." Even if the tone that delivered that bit of explanation was calm and full of patience, it was easy to tell that he was passionate about the mission given his personal stake in it.
"The short answer is that yes, I've thought about it. I've always thought about it. We want to create something that'll last. But seeing as how just about everyone wants to stop us from doing it, absolute violence is often the only tool we have. That and you'll find that waging a war to emancipate two hundred and fifty million people is nothing but weight and responsibility." She could get the sense that there was nowhere else he'd rather be and nothing else he'd rather do. It was important for a man to find his calling in life, as savage as it might turn out to be, and he'd found his perhaps a long time ago. "Hate destroys but it doesn't create or preserve. I'm not a fool, I know when to be ruthless and uncompromising and I know when an even hand is more useful. But nobody ever tolerates being another man's slave for very long, if at all. Something for you to think about when you go back home to your "household servants" with professional backgrounds and who once had lives of their own that you cannibalized." It almost seemed like the polite retort came from nowhere, but in truth it wasn't intended to be offensive or even a counter of any kind. This was an exchange of what mistakes both of them should avoid. And he was perhaps the most "educated" on what the prolonged consequences of enslaving people truly was.
She rolled from the window back onto her back, curled her gaze up at him, and puckered her lips slightly in a feigned annoyance.
"You are right, but if we are talking about my house servants - they already have their own lives and their own place in the clan, even if it does not mean the highest circles. To rebel against the clan would mean that they would lose their lives again, their relationships, their extended family, their self-fulfilment in their crafts and possibly their future."
"Pretty soon my clan figured out that the best way to protect themselves from a rebellion was to give their lives meaning, dignity, and a future. They have their obligations, as each of us has to the clan, but they also have their inalienable rights - such as privacy, time off for their hobbies, and of course, rewards for their contributions to the clan. They are almost like us and their children will be like us."
She shrugged theatrically and chuckled softly. She rolled onto her side towards him and propped her head up with her right hand.
"But it is not a gesture of pure altruism - it is a calculation. No one of sane judgement wants to feel unsafe around her house just because her servants might want to take revenge. I am not going to give up the ability to wear light summer clothes to walk in the countryside without having to carry a gun or swim in a lake or pool just to have to keep an eye out for someone standing on the shore, bent on revenge."
"My clan has no prisoners - and therefore none of us need to be their wardens. It is a situation beneficial for both sides - or as you would say in Liberty - a win-win scenario. We leave the actual slavery to the mindless, soulless automatons."
