Work Text:
Vermouth isn't wearing her own face today, but it is nevertheless a pretty one. Designed to capture the attention of the eldest son of the host of the party. The dark blue dress on her accentuate her curves at all the right places, and when she laughs she tilts her head back at a calculated angle, and notices the man's gaze lingers just below her pearl necklace. He's talking about his recent business ventures, probably intending to impress. It's boring as hell, Vermouth thinks.
The whole party's boring.
But she feigns just enough interest perfectly, looking about half as impressed as he probably wishes her to be. Never give them the full thing, it keeps them wanting. Keeps them dancing to her tunes. A long time ago she thought this was an art form, the pinnacle of performance. At this point she's been doing this for so long - decades, really - that she can't find enthusiasm to it anymore.
She picks up a glass of champagne from one of the attendants roaming the garden, internally judging the host's choice. It's screaming "trying too hard to look rich", she thinks. She takes a sip and smiles sweetly. If she were Bourbon she'd be paying more attention to what the man's saying about his latest business ventures, always so ready to collect information. He's of the opinion that there is no wasted information, and even rumors and gossips come handy in piecing together a clearer picture. He might very well be right. Vermouth, on the other hand, is firmly in the camp of never volunteering to do more work than she has to. When she can get away with it, she doesn't even do the work that she should be doing. Gin hates when she's like that, so that's certainly a bonus.
The band switches to a new song, and the man invites Vermouth for a dance. She accepts it, and as he whirls her around on the dancefloor, she discreetly switches out a keycard in his pocket for a fake one. And just as they spin past another pair of dancers - actually Bourbon and Kir - Vermouth easily slips the real keycard to Kir. Then she watches as the pair of them discreetly move towards the direction of the stairs.
Her part of the job's done now, and she just needs to make an excuse to get away in about 15 minutes, by then which hopefully Bourbon and Kir would've completed their part of the task. She'll claim she need to reapply her makeup and leave, which should just be in time for the petty thief she's arranged previously to make the move after her departure. She's arranged for the thief to get close to the man, makes an attempt to steal the man's wallet, but leave without taking anything. The thief has no idea about the organization or Vermouth's existence, she's handled this all through a third-party who manipulated the thief into this, thinking the whole thing as some kind of dare. If the man indeed realizes later that his keycard had been swapped for a fake, then this is where his suspicion would land. Someone who can't point a finger to Vermouth or the organization.
She makes her way to the exit, graceful as always as she takes her leave. On the way out she sheds the dark blue dress, revealing a leaner fit underneath, and throws away the wig and her face mask. Entering a dark alley and coming out at the other end with a completely different face.
The moment she gets back into her home, the moment the front door shuts behind her, she feels a wave of exhaustion. Although what she's done today was barely physically challenging, and she's certainly had longer days than this. Still, she feels tired - tired of it all. Tired of her work as Vermouth and all the killings and poisonings and thefts and other crimes, tired of Chris Vineyard's acting.
Tiring of the life of crime isn't really from a sudden burst of conscience on her part, and in general she still feels as apathetic to other's lives and sufferings as before, it not more. She just finds it hard to care - not about other people, and not about the organization's profits' either, if she were to be honest.
A caged bird in a fancy, luxurious golden cage is still caged. That's what the organization and The Boss are to her. To a degree, she supposes she does care somewhat about the organization making profits, but only to the extent of maintaining the comfortable lifestyle that she's accustomed to. But other than that she finds it hard to care, about whatever goals the organization has now, all the grand plans of The Boss's.
She was once involved in such a plan, she was once the test subject of the scientific experiment pertaining to the organization's goal. Except "was" isn't quite accurate - some things may have happened in the past, but she still has to live with the aftereffects of that now. Will have to live with it for the rest of her life.
She's always tired these days, except when she's out and about she can manage to suppress it, occasionally even fooling herself. On the occasions she sees Yukiko, the other woman's chattiness and bright enthusiasm manage to light something in her. Just a little. Makes her feel less like a dead woman walking. Not enough, barely enough, but it's something, she supposes.
Vermouth walks over to the mirror in her living room, examining herself in front of it. She's gotten rid of the face mask for disguise earlier this evening, and the dark blue dress as well. Temporary identities, just for one night. Easy to discard and easy to move on from. She grimaces at her face in the mirror, a perfectly youthful and beautiful face frozen at the age she first took the Hell Angel's precious pill. It's a widely adored face, she knows.
She hates it, just like she hates the rest of the body, forever frozen and never aging. Never any changes unless she actively puts on a disguise to hide it. Unchanging. Frozen. A frame frozen in time.
A prison of Hell Angel's making, a trap Miyano Elena laid out for her that young Vermouth willingly walked into at that time. She had been young - truly young, not just on the surface - young enough the promise of staying forever young had its appeal. Not just because how everyone's always told her how beautiful she was, but also because the way she grew up hearing her family obsessing over the concept.
If there's a cut on her skin, or bruises of any kind, it heals quickly, and very soon the skin's as good as new. It's part of the effect of the drug, Vermouth knows. She can take out a knife and leave a mark on her cheek right now and tomorrow when she wakes up there will be nothing. There was one time she tried, drunkenly, to ruin Miyano Elena's greatest piece of work, her most successful achievement, by cutting herself with a knife.
None of that ever lasts.
Funny thing is, it's when Vermouth is focused on thinking about Miyano Elena that she feels most alive. In a way, she's always thinking about her, because even catching a glimpse of her real face in the mirror reminds her of Elena in the back of her mind. Of Elena making her this way. But it's when she really focuses on the thought (usually when she has nothing else to occupy her mind with) of her that brings out the hatred in Vermouth. Rising from the depth of her body, a burning anger that hasn't yet quite faded even after all these years.
It's these moments that she finally feels something, something other than boredom, something a change from her daily dispassionate thoughts. Vermouth's fond enough of Yukiko but that feeling is mild, and this is something different. This anger, this hatred, with such strong intensity even after Elena's death. It helps that she has Sherry - the newer one, Elena's daughter, aka Miyano Shiho and now also Haibara Ai - to transfer this intensity to. To focus on. When Sherry escaped from the organization Vermouth was furious - how dare Sherry, someone raised in the organization, get to break free while Vermouth is still trapped here? The audacity of her to get away, to leave The Boss's grasp and start a new life, to become a better person instead of being trapped in one's past full of blood in one's hands. People like Sherry, who grew up in the organization, shouldn't get to leave - that's just wrong. They are monsters who belong here in this hell, together.
But despite her fury, it's also the most interesting that's happened to Vermouth in years. She feels as if she's suddenly had a purpose in life again, the purpose of hunting Sherry down and killing her. And to think she now finally has a legitimate reason to kill her, to think that this execution is finally sanctioned by The Boss, as Sherry was branded traitor. For years Vermouth couldn't touch her, because she's instrumental to the research progress The Boss so dearly desires. But now she's fair game.
Miyano Shiho. The family of Miyano Elena, the family that Miyano Elena chose over Vermouth. The family that Elena turned down Vermouth for. The family who continued Elena's terrible research. Vermouth wants her dead, but she doesn't want it too soon - because when that happens the whole family would be dead, and she would have nothing left to hate enough to feel alive, nothing left to pursue, the last traces of Elena's in this world gone.
Well, one of the last traces, Vermouth thinks darkly. Not the last.
Because there will still be Vermouth herself, the living proof of Hell Angel's greatest achievement as a scientist. Vermouth being alive is the best proof of what Hell Angel has accomplished, scientifically. Remembering that makes her angry, too, and bitter. She cannot stop being reminded of Elena. Her perfect skin, her perfect face, her eternal youth - everything reminds her of Elena. It's depressing.
When she takes of the disguise of the day and discards whatever identity she was using that day, when all masks come off, it's only herself in her own body and no one else.
You can get out of this party dress but you can't get out of this skin.
She once thought she's trapped inside this organization by The Boss and that's the worst thing ever, the limitations he placed on her freedom. How naive she was. Back then she at least wasn't trapped within herself yet, feeling like she couldn't even get away from this perfect prison that's her own skin.
She was young, then. Very young and very foolish.
She hadn't yet known what it was really liked to be trapped.
She thinks about Elena, and the intense anger morphs into something closer to bitterness. Calmer, but more painful. She thinks about Elena in her white lab coat, her pale blonde hair falling on them. Metal-framed glasses and piercing eyes. Guarded and distant and frostily polite. She thinks about her hand, her fingers, the way she held Vermouth's wrist, taking her pulse. All the times she's placed a hand on Vermouth's chest, feeling her heartbeat. All the times she studied her up close. Her fingers were always cold, almost icy. Cool touch against Vermouth's heated skin.
Vermouth remembers it as if it was just yesterday.
She lets herself collapse back onto the sofa, then closes her eyes. Tomorrow, she decides, she'll come up with a new plan to hunt down Sherry.