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The woman in the cell looks much the same as she did on the redline broadcasts. Gray coveralls, bare feet. The bones of her face have come forward, and her hair, blond going to gray, is hanging dirty-loose down her back rather than plaited over one shoulder, but otherwise it seems prison has not changed her. Sitting on the metal shelf that extends from the cell wall, the only piece of furniture present, with her elbows on her knees and her back bowed forward, she seems quite human, perhaps even common. But when the outer door slides shut behind Mrs. Bonaventura, the woman raises her head and fixes her with a startling pair of diamond-glint eyes, a blue-gray so crystalline they're difficult to look away from. Mrs. Bonaventura supposes she can see how one might choose to follow those eyes to the ends of the system, past all boundaries of reason.
“They ain't been lettin’ anybody in here. You pay ‘em off or something?”
Though her stare is heavy with intent, her voice lilts and rasps in a casual, almost taunting way. Were she not here with an objective in mind, Mrs. Bonaventura might have been inclined to take insult. Instead, she takes two clicking steps forward in her needlepoint heels and extends a hand through the bars, open palm, thumb wide, cherry red stiletto nails appearing closer to black in the cell's ghastly lighting - she would have preferred one of the interrogation rooms for a first meeting, at least they've got lights in those, but the Ganymede Penitentiary would only bend so far - and says, “Funny you should say that. I've heard an awful lot about you, Captain Settlesdottir.”
The cell is small. The woman on the metal slab could have stretched out an arm and taken Mrs. Bonaventura's hand without even leaning forward, but she rises to her feet and grasps the proffered hand with the grip strength of someone long used to hard physical labor and shakes it once, firmly.
Mrs. Bonaventura notes the drag of callouses on her palms, the blunt-cut nails, slight traces of dirt still clinging beneath them. The back of her right hand is discolored with a strange mottled scar. An acid burn, perhaps.
“You got me at a disadvantage,” says Elliemay Settlesdottir, with a wry lilt in her voice that does not match her very direct stare.
“Mrs. Bonaventura, of the New New Vegas Bonaventuras.” She pauses, purely for effect, not waiting for recognition (after all, Miss Settlesdottir has been isolated for quite some years now). Tilts her head a bit, so that the wide brim of her hat obscures both of their faces from the camera set high in one corner of the room. “But you can call me Boss.”
“That right, Boss,” Captain Settlesdottir says, and her mouth twists in one corner with - perhaps not a full smirk, but the beginnings of one, making the title sound like the punchline to some joke Mrs. Bonaventura is not privy to. (She has yet to release Mrs. Bonaventura's hand.) “I'm set to swing in three days’ time. May I ask what's so pressing that you felt the need to speak to me in person about it?”
Mrs. Bonaventura smiles and lets all of her teeth show. “It seems I arrived at just the right moment for a little chat. You see, I, like most of the rest of the civilized system, have been following the broadcasts covering your trial with rapt attention, and I simply feel that losing you to the noose would be a frankly unconscionable waste of your… shall we say, unique talents and abilities.”
“You fixin’ to cut me a deal?” She laughs, just a huff of breath, and she's standing so close it stirs the sculpted waves of Mrs. Bonaventura's hair. She's of a fairly average height, even bare footed, but she carries herself with the impression of tallness. Only now does she let go of Mrs. Bonaventura's hand. “‘Cause I'm gonna be honest with you, Boss, if the deal ain't sweet? I ain't got a whole lotta anything to lose by sayin’ no.”
“The deal is this, sweetheart: I buy your way out of here. And you come back to Luna with me, under a new name, new life, new start. In my employ, of course.”
Miss Settlesdottir is already shaking her head, a laugh playing at the corner of her mouth. “Been a real mess of cameras on my trial, as you pointed out. Ain't somebody gonna notice that noose swingin’ empty three days hence?”
“Don't you worry your pretty head about that,” says Mrs. Bonaventura breezily, flapping a hand. “You take this deal and I'll sort all that for you. The noose won't be empty. Everyone will think you're dead, and you'll be a ghost. My ghost.”
She's losing her. The damned woman has a gravitational presence about her, and as her gaze falls away, Mrs. Bonaventura can feel the loss of her full attention like the removal of a physical weight. Well. She can exert gravity herself. She lets the diaphanous robe of joviality she’s been wearing slip from her shoulders, reaches out a hand and seizes Elliemay Settlesdottir by the lapel of her coveralls, hauls her hard against the cell bars so that their bodies almost touch. Hisses down into her face, “You strike me as a smart woman. Surely you understand that being alive gives you quite a few more options than being dead.”
Miss Settlesdottir makes no sound of pain or surprise as she hits the bars, and Mrs. Bonaventura can feel real strength in the body on the other side of the barrier - not the showy, empty sort some of her men like to cultivate, but solid muscle, built over long years of shoveling dirt, of harvesting vegetables, of lifting bags of fertilizer. Her toes curl a little in the pointed ends of her stilettos. She's not generally inclined towards women, but she's been known to make exceptions, under the right (extraordinary) circumstances. And these circumstances are turning out to be quite extraordinary indeed.
The good captain's eyes really are singular.
“I got a condition.”
It's Mrs. Bonaventura's turn to laugh. “Oh? You think you're in any position to bargain with -”
“My men. My inner command. You get them out too.”
That flummoxes her for a moment. The blasted woman seems to zero in on her hesitation at once.
“New New Vegas. That's Lunar Mob, right?”
She curls her lip. “Inelegant. But correct.”
“So you'll understand me when I say I ain't leavin’ ‘em behind to die. Those people are my family, an’ family's important to me, as I'm sure it is to you.”
How does anyone look away from those eyes! Damn her, she's barely raising her chin, and still it feels like their eyelines are level. Mrs. Bonaventura is going to have to dig out her tallest heels. “You really expect me to perform miracles for you, Captain?”
“Please,” she says, and catches Mrs. Bonaventura's wrist just as she begins to let go of her lapel, holding her fast. “Elliemay will do just fine.”