Elenore Evans

Elenore is supposed to be in the apartment that she's supposed to be sharing with the man who saved her. The man who's had to deal with the weird shifts in her since the day when she lost almost everything. The man who won't tell her the distance and coldness she's fallen to on and off wound him. She knows, though. Knows without about being able to fix it. Most days feel like there's a block of ice in her chest. No, that's not right. Like the flesh has been replaced with a mechanical pump that keeps her alive but is utterly disconnected from emotion. Remembering to breath took most of her energy in the small collection of rooms they could afford mostly on his savings and what he made at the school. She was too literally bankrupt to help.

Except when she did things where she wasn't suppose to be. Like tonight.

To be fair, he's not where he's supposed to be. It had been slow. Going back to work teaching more of the time. Then stringing some nights together because it was a long ride back to the city. Some nights became everything but the weekends. Now, she's pretty sure he'd call before showing up. Like he hasn't kept her alive. Like she doesn't still love him more than anything. And it's a shameful relief. Because she loves him and hurts him and she thinks what she's going to end up doing would only hurt him more. Because he's a hero. Because he's a good man. Because she doesn't care what side she's on anymore.

And her hands are bloody. Literally. Rebuilding the broken body of a man who has been party terrible acts of violence because he has money and resources she no longer does. It's not better that she rebuilds him with a killswitch that she intends to use at some point. It's not better that the worst of what she's done so far has been saving the lives of horrible people. It simply is what she does to make sure the next time she bothers with a grocery run, it won't be on his card, and that she can cover rent and utilities for the apartment she isn't sharing with the man she still loves. So he won't be blamed for what she's going to do.

I'm of the belief that when a person finds themselves thinking outright villain cliches, that that person is obligated to take some time to sort out their head. At least then if the person chooses to act on it, they know they've attempted logic or might have some actual reason for their actions. And a written record other people can learn from, assuming anyone or anything actually survives.
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The lab smells wrong. It's not the cleaning agents, she knows because she had them changed three times before settling back on her old formula. Elenore has also had all the air filtration checked three different times on slight concerns. The smell shifted a little, but it still wasn't right. Three different experiments didn't make things any better. They've changed the floor polish. Then they stopped using any at all. Even the glassware and heating elements have been changed and nothing quite does it. Elenore still refuses to admit she knows exactly what it is.

The combination of metal, plastic, and glass just doesn't have the organic smell of the lab that had been her life's work until she took it apart to help fuel the new company. There was nothing living there. She keeps it too clean and dead. It comforts the investors and employees who had heard a few too many rumors or seen a few too many of her accomplishments for comfort. After all, her kinds of genius rarely comes without insanity or a superhero costume, and no one she's elected to deal with wants to work for someone with too much of either.

Which doesn't stop the lab from smelling wrong. Or the tools from being in the wrong place. People are constantly moving things as they clean or borrow or attempt to run the few small experiments she claims to still be working on so no one gets worried. It's less of a problem when she works in other people's labs. They're allowed to dictate their own domains even if she is the boss, but her lab should be hers. That is her goal for the day, regardless of the meetings she'll have to make at some point. It starts with banishing everyone. It ends with nothing really having changed. She isn't ready to move on and forgive herself or her work for failing. She's only ready to try.

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1: Kitchen Counter, Couch, or on top of the dryer? Counter, if he's taller. Couch otherwise.

2: Your last sexual encounter: Good or Bad and why: It was sufficient.

3: A fictional person that you think would be good in bed: Hercules, Kevin Sorbo or Dwayne Johnson versions.

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Whatever front Elenore puts on, whatever she's wrapped around herself like a shell, until she believed it was so much a part of her she would die without it, part of her is better. Part of her figured out not only how to find the contractors to modify and build the inorganic components of her lab, but also learned how to make them feel debt to her that is so great they never spoke of the specs even under intense pressure. She's worked with half a dozen plus lab assistants before ever hiring a friend. Their fingerprints are all over her lab, small tweaks she never would have thought of without them. At some point, she magnified her own isolation. At some point, she broke too much. Sometimes of the cost of being razor sharp is to become incredibly brittle.

When she watches Alexander, she beings to remember. He surrounds himself with the best he can find, and there was a time when her assistants qualified. Brilliant kids who needed jobs and someone who didn't take their shit. Each leaving with a better understanding of their field and a decent severance package. More than that if she was willing to pay more attention to their emotional interactions. Whatever progress she's making, she's not ready to get there. This is a big enough step to admit that people could help. She's no where near ready to trust the people who should owe her some kind of emotional connection.

After all, that's part of why she's marrying Alexander.

But she starts making phone calls. The same awareness of her community of scientists that allowed her to make the beginnings of her fortune in investments lets her know a number of brilliant minds are unhappily employed. For some, it's the offer of a bump in pay they could never get in academics. For others, it's the degree of autonomy and respect for what they do. By the end of the first day, she's getting phone calls from people she would have never guessed wanted to escape to the right kind of private sector.

Two days, and she has to let people down with more tact than she knew she possessed. Everything necessary to shift from a one woman fixer to a more complicated and less mercenary set of associated labs was already underway, but too much too fast would put everything to risk. Her goal isn't to get into manufacture or production, but sheer innovation and invention to be farmed out to other companies that absorb the other eventual costs. Too many people, and it could be misconstrued. For once in her life, Nore doesn't want to burn any bridges.

1. He imposes a routine on her life. She eats at least twice a day and sleeps at least six hours.

2. She fights it with more passive than aggressive tendencies. Sleeping in, working late into the night. He wait. Patient, calm. Never angry at her rebellion.

3. Eventually, she stops. Because it doesn't annoy him. Because she doesn't want to aggravate him.
 
4. It surprises her when they can actually manage to cook in the same kitchen at the same time. Splitting tasks and talents on food that doesn't throw her.
 
5. He switches to ground meats. Takes knives and vegetables out of her hands when she starts to drift. They both find she does better when they talk.

6. It's strange for them both to have someone they can be entirely honest with. Conversations tend to flow and drift in odd directions. There's rarely hesitation or pause.

7. He finds an unexpected degree of emotion comes with sharing the details of his life with someone. She mattered before, but this is different. Intimacy like he hadn't expected.

8. She wonders sometimes if it's really him, specifically, or if it's just having someone who's there, day in and day out. Did she just need not to be alone?

9. When she sleeps restlessly, he always wakes to whisper soft assurances until she settles.

10. He leaves the seat up on the toilet, and she ends up in the bowl.

11. He is not amused to find she used tye-dyed duct tape to keep them all in place. Even the ones in his apartment.

12. She doesn't seem phased when all her white underwear ends up dyed the same colors. In truth, she likes him a little better for his humor.

13. When she's tired, she forgets to say anything half the time, fingers and hands moving like they would if she she was communicating with her super computer through commands and not another human being. He's not sure if it's cute or something that makes him ache for her.

14. They argue over which kind of sheets to use. She insists on t-shirt knits, and he prefers cotton with obscene thread counts. With two beds, they both win some of the time.

15. Her taste in movies baffles him. The one with adventure, he gets, but the scifi and cheesy horror seems a little too much like bringing work home.

16. She finds out he has bad days, too. He's curt and cold and distant, unwilling to be touched. She finds she has more patience for him than she expected. She waits it out, and by the middle of the night he's curled around her, tired and beaten down, but back.

17. The patterns of his tattoos make their way into her schematics. Subtly, in ways no one else is likely to notice. She doesn't half the time.

18. Too many hours going in and out of clubs and other venues means he sometimes hums Miley songs without thinking. She teases him about it with considerable affection.

19. They both agree on how to tip. Far too much if the work is even halfway decent. The local delivery people have memorized their names.

20. They don't develop a rhythm, exactly. They're both a little too erratic. But it gets easier.

21. He knows what she looks like when she's in love. The look isn't on her face, and she's not sure it's a good or a bad thing. She does, clearly, like him. That's something.

22. He touches her lightly when they're in the same room. Not the possessive claiming when she hadn't said yes, but a gentle reassurance to them both.

23. She makes him laugh.

24. He tells her about some of the things he's done that weigh on him. Not quite shame. Not quite regret, but he's unable to deny they were not small. She doesn't judge him.

25. She finds she doesn't miss love.

The entire flight home is a reminder of exactly why she avoids public flights for business. Too many people, too close in an enclosed space with recycled air, and it doesn't even matter that she's in first class because it all rubs her already frayed nerves raw. Everyone becomes their diagnosis. Everything she's exposed to throbs in her head. It gives her too much time to think about whether or not she wants to call anyone to tell them she's coming home. Every time Elenore gets close to thinking of calling someone, she comes up with the fact there's a discussion of some emotion she'll have to confront that she has no patience for.

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Alexander catches Nore in the act of covering the red puffiness that wouldn't quite go away after even an hour after hanging up on Matthew. She doesn't think of him as a gentle man, and she knows he knows why, so she's caught by surprise when he he brushes his fingers lightly over her cheek. It makes her think of the things the old Vor, Grigori had told her, and she feels almost guilty letting herself take comfort in the touch. Would it be so wrong if he cared too much for her? Maybe he was actually capable of love, and maybe it would help her too. The fantasy lasts all of a moment before she kills it with bloody visions of the reality.

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Everything is very professional on the way to the airport. It's cold and practical, and she's somewhat comforted by that fact. Distance in a metaphorical sense to prepare for the literal. Half an hour into the transcontinental flight, the armed, tattooed men melt into the back of the jet providing the illusion of privacy as he produces and eggshell blue box. The anxiety in her chest is not exactly what either would have imagined at that moment.

"I know we said a simple band, but some things are just right," Alexander says it in a soft voice that doesn't quite travel beyond a murmur to the back before opening the box.

Her gasp isn't quite so soft. The ring is platinum wreath with diamond leaves, all that would lie close to the skin and not get in the way. It's a ring she might have picked for herself, and worth more than he'd promised to spend by ten times, at least. She holds her hands out rather than answering. He slips it on her finger, waiting fro a response.

"It's beautiful, Alec, truly beautiful."

His answering smile is real enough, and so is the heat of the kiss he presses to her lips while his men watch without watching. The show is perfect to ensure her protection on the visit. She is a wife to be, not one of the many disposable girlfriends. Weight that protects her from becoming an asset to be stolen and sold. The ring also gives Alexander influence with men who draw out his name turning it into Aleck-sander as a reminder he was born to a lower cast and another country. Tattoos earned in his work meaning only so much to the older generation. The ring is, in it's most honest nature, a tool.

And yet, the offer is real.

He asked her after he found out she had been assaulted and almost died. The vivid visceral need to protect her and kill the person who had harmed her hadn't been hampered by conscience or affection for the woman who hurt her, and it had been a balm that hadn't been matched when strong men admitted they weren't sure they should offer that to her out of respect. In being reminded of how fragile her state and mind actually are, she had craved the protections she always built around herself. Simple animal things like her rats. And if she could never say that because of how absurd it was for a woman who had spent so much to be recognized as strong and dangerous in her own right, she didn't blame herself for the moment of weakness.

That moment hadn't been enough for an actual yes. She had said, instead, that if she could help prevent this latest would be end of the world, she'd wear his ring and go with him back to the bosses. She take her own clients in the city, but help him convince the other Vor that he was more than where he was born while being protected by the ring. After, when they came back, then she would answer the question.