I don't need you or your brand new Benz --

[slightlyoffchilt]

WHO: Karla Sofen and Frederick Chilton.
WHERE: Karla’s annexed office.
WHEN: July 12th, 2014. Afternoon.
WHAT: Chilton and Karla’s professional relationship culminates in a splash of the titans, so to speak.
WARNINGS: Two jerks. One jerk gets manhandled.



For the first time since their mandated sessions had begun, Chilton felt confident upon entry. More than confident, he enjoyed a swelling smugness rising from his abdomen. His stride to Karla's office was more of a swagger; here he was, armed with the informational loaded pistol that he had bargained with Norman Osborn for. The price was, predictably, steep -- but far from impossible, and the factoids gained were deeply valuable.

She was located in one of the annexes associated with the hospital facility, and it would take Chilton ten minutes from his office, assuming he took the scenic route around the hospital's light blue tiles and through the palm tree prone courtyard. Along the way, he licked at his teeth, as if tasting the words he had calculated for impact.

Karla killed her psychiatrist.

As salacious as that notion was, the concept itself wasn't his bullet. It was the context, the implication: he had navigated through her network and took this information from her past. He had invaded her history, her privacy, her conceptual space. Chilton grinned a little to himself, closing his eyes to enjoy the submersion of sunlight storming earthward. He felt he understood the glow of those photons, in that second, even if he envied their slanted immortality. Photons moved at the speed of light, were defined by it, and time was stock still from that perspective -- if a photon held consciousness, it would know itself to be timeless. This was not a fate Chilton enjoyed, and it was made all too apparent some hours before, when Hannibal Lecter had returned to the scene of Heropa.

His Hannibal Lecter, this time around.

It took an hour of repression, of scheming, to compose himself for this shining moment -- Chilton found it nauseatingly coincidental, how Hannibal Lecter could ruin even the most removed of things for Chilton. History had a fondness for rhyming.

Hannibal the cannibal. Chilton closed his eyes, regretting the metaphor that born that rhythmic association. Not now, he chastised. Not when I have her.

He knocked on her office door, his timing impeccable.

Comments

[sofentheblow]

Karla felt herself freezing up, motionless, as he approached. The reaction sprung from the last vestiges of her eroding self-restraint, mostly, but there was something else leaving her motionless, silent, her gaze trained on Chilton until his taunts came from a physical proximity that rendered observation impossible. It was mesmerizing, in its way -- his delivery, more of a performance, the nearly melodic delay in getting to the point an incontestable assertion of power.

He knew something, had made that clear; against that, as long as he delayed, she was backed into a corner. Frustration churned; it was a quick heating process converting it to fury. Lashing out before he was finished was out of the question, unless she wanted to chance losing the intel he dangled in front of her. She was left with the sickening option (not an option, then, which compounded the insult) of freezing. Waiting passively for him to deal his blow. That, at least, allowed her not to do anything she'd regret.

At first it worked.

You killed him.

The color drained from her face. The telepath.

She felt, for a moment, oddly distant, as if someone else were listening to Chilton dispense his revelation. All at once, then, she was all too present, confusion and rage and -- god, fear, at the control that hadn't so much slipped away as evaporated. Over this meeting; over her history, which she'd thought was left to some extent safely at home (and what else might he have access to?); over herself, even, the reactions she'd kept reined in now seemed to pound as insistently as the blood now pounding in her ears. She could feel the cracks forming, spreading, her walls losing their structural integrity.

It was a sort of frantic scramble, wracking her brain for an explanation. How had he discovered -- she’d never told anyone, this didn’t make sense, no one knew about it except --

"Osborn." The realization, clear and sudden. "Piece of shit." The words came out in a murmur; the shrillness in the break at the end, around shit, belied her anger.

She turned her attention back to Chilton. Her expression -- a moment ago a glare, all heat and frustration -- turned to something colder, the look in her eyes almost reptilian, as if someone had flipped a switch.

"Yes." Her voice was low, even; the corners of her mouth quirked into a brief shadow of a smile.

It was over in seconds: a blur of hands grasping lapels, lifting, dragging, pushing, and she'd shoved Chilton against the wall behind her couch. Her fingers dug into his wrists as she pinned them to the uncompromising surface behind him; that she was unquestionably physically stronger didn't mean she was any more interested in leaving the option open to claw at her face.

"Did he tell you the shrink was a telepath?" She began, smoothly -- almost pleasantly. Her current steadiness of affect could have been an insult to Chilton, to his criticisms of her temper, but for the violent context. It was a mock-restraint she displayed, the luxury of her even tone paid for in the expenditure of physical brutality.

"Did he tell you he broke into my mind? The last thing my prior psychologist told me before i broke his psychic hold was to choke the life out of myself, did he tell you that?" A pause. "Well. It's still very impressive, you discovering this. I wonder, are you pleased with yourself, right now? It must be so gratifying."

She leaned forward, herself, crushing him further against the wall, to speak against his cheek -- direct revenge for his gesture. "How do you feel?"

[slightlyoffchilt]

Her force took him by shock -- not merely surprise, but palpable shock. Her hands on his clothing, against his skin, her rage spoken through balled fists and muscles. He felt the pain immediately, when he was slammed against the wall. His spine moaned in protest, electrical impulses screeching up his vertebrae. Chilton gasped, only to find his lungs reluctant.

He was kept breathless.

Without speech, he was forced to listen. Her words, like anvils, pummeled against his ears. She had him pinned, exposed to her fury and logic, her agony unleashed. And when Karla leaned closer, when she spoke that patronizing query against his cheek, Chilton could not do anything to repress the shiver down his whimpering spine.

What she accused her murdered therapist of committing, well, had he not performed something on par with Abel Gideon? Not a literal death, of course, Gideon was too valuable to Chilton (or was, at the time of the crime) -- but a death of identity. Chilton had murdered the true Abel Gideon and imposed his own expectations onto the patient, hoping to forge the mass murderer into a serial killer. He wasn't a telepath, but he could psychic drive with the best of them -- and the parallel was appreciated, even during this height of peril.

How did he feel?

Chilton closed his eyes.

"I am pleased with myself," he whispered, his ego undeterred. "I marvel at you like this, raw and real, Karla, finally real to me. To yourself."

Chilton shot open his gaze, very aware of the pounding within his chest. Adrenaline treated his heartbeat.

"I knew I could help you."

[sofentheblow]

"Shut up." The reply, spat out on the heels of help you.

Karla met his stare. She would, later, give closer thought to the degree of arrogance Chilton's words betrayed. He had -- helpless in the face of greater strength and (apparently) unchained rage -- seen fit to offer up condescending appreciation. To declare her finally real, to claim credit, to position himself as a savior. As if she didn't know herself. As if she were afraid of self-examination; as if she hadn't spent her entire adult life digging through her own psychological makeup, retraining herself, covering weaknesses.

Her own body trapped his against the wall; she could feel his heartbeat. Later, too, she'd decide, he didn't lack the capacity to assess the situation, to feel the proper fear. It was his priorities that were the question.

For now, though, analysis took a back seat. Karla narrowed her eyes.

She noticed the swelling of photons -- a heated, thrumming thing in her veins, mounting along with her anger. He had provoked her reaction. The knowledge that she had failed -- was presently failing -- to maintain control did nothing to mitigate her growing hatred for him.

"Insufferable prick." Her lips curled around a snarl.

Her fingers tightened around Chilton's wrists. She thought to continue until she felt his bones pop and shatter in her grip; all at once, though, she stopped. Sliding his arms above his head, she transferred both of his hands to one of hers. Her free arm now rested on his shoulder.

"In your prying, did you happen to learn anything about this?" Karla's hand, in front of his face, faded out of solidity. "The ability to turn intangible. It's generally a defensive advantage but it has its... offensive benefits too." Still propped casually against his shoulder, she leaned forward a few inches. Her phased fingers slipped inside his skull. He wouldn't feel it, of course. Not physically.

"Now." She smiled. "If I'm guessing right, my fingers are presently inside your frontal lobe. Shall we see what goes first if I solidify them? Of course--" Shaking her head, she let out soft laugh. A parody of self-deprecation. "I never paid the best attention in neuroanatomy. Maybe I'll just keep going until you lose the ability to speak."

[slightlyoffchilt]

His jaw dropped, quavered. Cognitive reasoning informed him that Karla's fingers were inside of him -- inside of his brain -- though he couldn't feel it, he couldn't sense it with tactile nuance. Had this happened before the City, before Heropa, he would have thought he was suffering a delusional breakdown. But this was real, this was actual --

-- this was a humiliating death, smiling back at him.

"Please," he whispered, hoping to God that such would not be his last words. "Karla, please." His legs quivered involuntarily. "Don't."

Chilton's soft voice, usually amplified by the slick sneer of a superiority complex, was thin, dry, granular. He knew he needed a stronger argument.

"-- Think about. How many psychics lives here. How many magic users I administer. Therapy. To. They would know, they would all know how to look at you. They would all see you like I see you now. You cannot reconfigure yourself again from that."

Bones pressed into a wall, a shadow of vicious flesh taunting his brain. A stripping of control. Chilton couldn't hear his own heartbeat.

[sofentheblow]

There was a fraction of a moment -- a millisecond -- where Karla almost paused. Then the whisper of hesitation was gone, lost among Chilton’s scraping arguments. Her nails dug ridges in the skin where she gripped his wrists.

“Oh, I thought you’d have appreciated the symbolism.” He’d invaded her past; hadn’t he wanted to get into her head? The literal reverse-turn felt only appropriate. Her shoulders sank, a mocking sigh. “How disappointing.”

“You are right. Unfortunately.” She withdrew her hand, allowing it to solidify in front of his face; for a long moment she was still. Her expression, no longer masked under a taunting smile, had turned to a chilling calm. The eye of a hurricane, the storm itself flickering threats in her own eyes.

Her hand, now free and very much solid, caressed Chilton’s throat. Tightened.

“You’re entirely right. Leaving you alive would be careless, wouldn’t it? We’ve come too far here--” (A taunting we) “--to leave those kinds of loose ends open. I suppose the more... poetic thing to do would be to sever one of your limbs and strangle you.” Did he know the hows of the incident as well as the basic outcome? “Since that’s the performance you seem so interested in.”

[slightlyoffchilt]

The symbolism.

In any other position, he would have sneered. He did, of course, appreciate the effort abstractly -- and certainly would have palpably, were her vitriolic attention primed against some other man's brain. But he was pressed against a wall, his wrists clamped by her fingers, and his survival coasted on her evaporated sense of mercy.

-- Her fingers now around his throat.

If she was the hurricane, he was the receiving inland.

"You're angry," he whispered, his voice already eroded into a hoarse whisper. "Because you feel that I have invaded you. And yes, I have, but only because it was necessary." Chilton lifted up his chin, a show to expose his already imprisoned throat to her. Empty gestures.

"Who else has cared enough to meet that necessity with such thorough detail?"

[sofentheblow]

Cared. Ugh. From the guy who’d just taunted her with the information he’d so caringly dug up. Even his attempts at the pathetic beg managed to be insulting. Her eyes narrowed.

“You aren’t making this better for yourself.”

He wasn’t, and yet. Karla’s frustration was still present, but she felt the momentum of rage halting. She frowned, staring more through Chilton than at him. As if he were hardly there. This was -- no, not new, it was old: a gentle tug, behind the anger. Familiar. How long had it been since she’d noticed it? Years. Before she’d tried and failed for the last time playing at hero.

Her mouth pulled into a sneer, prompted seemingly by nothing. This didn’t happen anymore.

Not now. Her thoughts swirled, threatened to overwhelm her. It felt almost possible that she’d be stuck here indeterminately, frozen, her hand around this man’s throat. Not now.

She’d gone too far -- to let him live, obviously, without facing retribution herself, but the implications extended further. All the smokescreens -- behaviors she’d developed, deployed, designed to imply she possessed weak spots other than her own -- to relent now could imply she’d done just that. Draw attention to it. This thing, badgering her uninvited, wasn’t a suggestion of a simple act of mercy; it was an invitation to tactically self-destruct.

He’d have what he wanted in the first place, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he get into her mind, that way?

This is not you doing this, Karla, stop messing around, just snap his neck, you can be done with it, you can --

She knew. She knew this pattern well enough to recognize what bargaining with herself meant, in terms of what would come next.

He had to be removed, before he said something else that’d push her to do something final.

“This is not happening.” She spoke in a hissing mutter, more for her own benefit than the other party’s.

The chance of being seen in the halls made departure from the front too risky; the wall behind her desk, with its broad windows, faced the courtyard. She released her grip on Chilton’s wrists, his neck, and lifted him over her shoulders, the motions almost seamless.

In only a few seconds she’d phased the two of them out, through the solid glass. Living cargo in tow, Karla shot up and out, a couple thousand feet above Heropa on a trajectory toward the coast.

Low-hanging clouds left a mist on her face. She repeated herself. “This is not happening.”

[slightlyoffchilt]

This was most definitely happening.

Chilton wrapped his arms and legs around Karla, as best he could, his whole body trembling with shock and exhaustion and paradoxical adrenaline. They were in the sky, flying, and the bright, frosted air sank its teeth into Chilton's body. This was not the sort of air he felt when his feet had been kissing the ground, this was not that warmer, coastal feeling. The oxygen a couple thousand feet upwards had thinned -- and perhaps someone who wasn't in shock, and consequentially exhausted from his tenth surge of adrenaline, wouldn't have suffered the threat of hyperventilation.

"Don't drop me!"

His first words barreled out of his mouth. The moisture of those low hanging clouds had electrified him out of silence.

Chilton pressed more tightly against Karla, his wild eyes in a staring contest with the earth below them.

"I want to go back!"

It was a childish request. He lingered on the cusp of death, completely at Karla's mercy, his own body flightless and yet soaring against gravity. And still, he implored without a please or thank you.

Adrenaline didn't translate into manners for Frederick Chilton.

"I really want to go back now!"

[sofentheblow]

"...Hate you so much." It wasn't a response to his entreaties. Her speech -- under her breath, into the air -- was closer to a reaction alone. A response to something said by someone on the other end of a comms device. Not to someone present.

Karla considered what would happen to her, the outcome she was flying them both towards. Back to the be arrested or go on the run choice that seemed to present itself to her every time she'd gotten used to not having to make it. Of course. Just as she'd begun to forget how growing comfortable always ended. As if she'd expected to go on playing house with Tony Stark. No repercussions from her life back home. Disgust curled her lips -- not for the violent reaction that had gotten her here, but for having somehow begun to expect things not to go this way. She wasn't good; there was no need to be complacent and stupid, too.

Her chest shook once, a silent burst of humorless laughter.

The ocean sparkled below them, rows of foam lapping against the beach. Calm day. Karla didn't enjoy the irony there.

“I’m sure you’ll be tempted to register this as positive reinforcement for that little show of investment you put on back there.” Her voice was clear, now, intended to cut through the breeze to Chilton's ears as she descended.

"Try to restrain yourself."

Her decision had been a snap one -- it was the first thing to suggest itself as a way to get him removed from her immediate presence while she composed herself, and to startle him out of making it worse in the interim. She'd remember it and cringe, later, having calmed, waiting for the fallout, as she thought of half a dozen less tactically asinine things she could have done instead.

Now, though, a few feet above the gentle waves, not far from shore, she peeled Chilton's clinging form off and dropped him into the water.

[slightlyoffchilt]

"Restrain myself?"

That was the indignant, incredulous cry that bolted from his mouth, like some syllable-bound bullet. She dragged him off her body, and he felt that horrifying weightless glee that human flesh knows, between land and ocean.

"Wait!"

His last word -- Chilton always had to get in the last word, didn't he? -- as she threw him into those serene waves. The shock wasn't the warm, salted water (though that had hurt), nor was it the secondary panic of sharks; rather, it was the explicit evidence of what event had just occurred. Or, rather, the absence of what had occurred.

Karla Sofen had not killed him. Her command of restraint -- was that directed to him, or herself? Because the latter certainly demonstrated unquestionable self-control. The latter listened to him, and his persuasions, and now he was soaking in the Atlantic, his brain still in tact.

As Chilton kicked in the ocean, keeping himself head above water (formal wear was not intended for swimming, and the weight of his cotton slacks reminded him of his remaining predicament), he looked up to watch Karla in the air. Here he was, seabound, oily and versatile and embracing his personal darkness -- and there she was, airborne, fighting for control and personal freedom.

Devouring a gulp of air, he started to swim to the shore.