(no subject)

[aeneia]

title:
characters: lakshmi bai & rustin cohle, their assorted casts
summary: just a elaborate reworking of the events of true detective but in the future of the order 1886 universe. a immortal battle queen bothers small town detective.
notes: a cross-over that no one wanted and no one asked for
warnings: Gothic, of the Southern and Victorian kind. vampires, murders and cults, oh my.
music: weren't we always a battlefield? //

--

i . the long bright dark / one for a sorrow

--

INTERVIEW, RANI LAKSHMI BAI, 2012

"And how then, do you recall your time here, in Louisiana, Your, uh, Majesty?"

"Well, on the most part."

"On the most part? It being not so well, is that how you met Cohle?"

"I suppose you could look it at that way. But I do not blame a place for the actions of those that live in it. Nor do I blame many for the few. Short sighted, after all."

"So when you met him..."

"When I met him, I had asked for assistance. I asked for someone who had an eye for details, that would not be deterred by the unknown. They selected him out of the officers available at the time."

"Why didn't you go to -"

"Pest Control? Isn't that what they call it here. The HBDRA?"

"Yeah. They're the kind of folks that usually handle this sort of thing, isn't it?"

"Yes, if we were dealing with a Half Breed, but we were not, as yet, dealing with something of that kind. Then, I was looking at no more than... just a man who attacked me. Nor was he a Half Breed, I know them, better then most, even before they take form, you can feel it on them. But they are not the only ones who have wanted to hurt me, hunt me in turn, so it was not strange to be attacked, and then to the accords I agree upon, go to the local men and women in charge of keeping the peace."

"So routine for a usual office, nothing more on the surface?"

"Didn't seem so, at the time, no."

--

january 5th, 1995

"And your name - ?" The pen was smooth as it moved in his hand along the paper. Scribbling details - height, eye colour, inconsequential marks that make up the woman that sits across from the man. The small desk in the room of many that made up this nowhere office in a back corner of America.

"Lakshmi Bai." A pause, her lips press together and her eyes slide up over the walls. "L - a - k - s - h - m - i. B - a - i." Calmly stated without pause, she doesn't look at him to even know if he needs the spelling. There is enough in this room to take up her attention it seemed. A steady gaze, and he was used to the murmur behind him, Tax Man. But this was different. People were people milling for no good reason, people staring, rocking with it, as much as she was staring at them. She met their gaze evenly and dismissively, watched out of the corner of his eye.

"Right." His hand moved across the top of the page, moving in an even scrawl as he went, next question. "And you said - this man, that attacked you - "

"Was attempting to steal from me, is perhaps the best term for it." Her voice didn't rise or fall much, just even explanations. Small mercies, he supposed.

"- This thief." He begins, again, hovering on the description.

"He sought to steal my blood from me."

It was heard, even if it wasn't said when his hand stopped on the paper: What the shit? "How? He tried to cut you, what?" Robbery, assault. Where did that kind of accusation even fall?

"Yes, but he wasn't seeking to harm me exactly in that sense, or kill me. He's part of a cult, might be the easiest to say, from how he was talking. Desperate men looking for an answer that they believe me to be, that sort of thing." Her sigh is deeper, longer - tired, if he had to put a word to it. She'd dealt with it before.

"Right." Crazy then, some kind of new crazy. This whole damn town bred it like flies on road kill. Either her or the guy that jumped her, hard to say.

It was then that she turned back to him. To look at him, finally, properly. Pin him down with a straight stare that did a marvellous job of telling him absolutely nothing important but not particularly useful in deterring him. "It is common, as the years go on." She leaned back in the chair and the material of her sari, pretty sure that was what it was, shifted with it. Light cotton, woven in something more colour than this corner of the south knew what to do with outside of Mardi Gras beads. "Did you need any other of my details?"

A look down at the page, next line on the forms. "Yeah - yeah. Your date of birth?"

Her smile was slight, but it was hard to miss, tucked in and flickered. South Asian, he could tell that much. Everything else - any age seemed off in a detail, an accent was a little bit of everything. "19th of the 11th, by your calendar." Another little pause - she was laughing, had to be, that little draw in of breath that said she was soothing it from working up in her throat. "1828."

His hand jerked, not by much, but the first number of the year twitched at the end. "Pardon?"

"You don't know who I am, do you?" She was definitely, definitely laughing. "Anything else?" One leg crossed over the other, and the pattern spread on the material in a fall of petals of green on orange.

He was definitely being screwed with. This why it was dumped on his desk? Jesus, he couldn't work out if it should be Marty or not that dealt with this. He sure as hell didn't have the patience for this kind of shit, but like hell Marty would have the tact, any kind of skill at all to deal with - he hoped this wasn't what he was beginning to realise what - who - this was.

"Alright - that makes you - 167 years old?"

A nod, so he continues. "And... India, right?"

"Nationality, yes. I am Indian. City of birth is Varanasi, if you need that too. But I currently reside in Jodhapur."

This was turning into a jigsaw puzzle he didn't know want to see the bigger picture of. "And you ran into him - your attacker - outside..."

"The coffee shop, forgive me the street escapes me. I have to be in a conference this evening and we stopped on the way to Baton Rouge. He must have been following us for awhile. I stepped out the car with my guards - Arjuna and Ram. He set upon me in that moment, it was fairly easy to disarm and subdue him. After that, we called for your services."

"And you worked that out earlier, I take it? The - being followed part." If there was bite to it, he did his best to keep it to himself.

She nodded, blinking slowly and without care. "I did."

"And you did nothing about it? Didn't report it? Stop him before he ah, did something stupid?" Easy, Rust.

"If I stopped everyone that followed me, world governments might just collapse." Comfortable, sure of herself, her words were slowly put. "You are asking me the wrong questions, sir. Start again. I am sure it will come to you."

His writing stopped, his eyes looked up at her as hers fixed on him and his pen tapped once, twice, a third time and he flicked it back around. Tongue against his teeth and her smile like a cat with a mouse in its paws. "Who are you?"

"Better." Her smile was once and full before it dropped and her gaze slid away. Moving past him to the others moving about. "Maharani Lakshmi Bai. Queen of Jhansi. A leader of the Indian Independence War of 1857, who died on the field of Gwalior. The last of the known Black-water drinkers, who once fought against and with the Knights of the Order to overthrow the United India Company and expose the ruler of Vampires through the British Empire. It was I who taught Oppenheimer the words of Krishna and fought my way through both world wars for the defence of those who could not. It was I who hunted down Lord Hastings for over a hundred years. It was I who found and killed him."

Well - shit. For a second, there isn't much to follow on with that, was there? Her sitting there and the air was out of the room, but where it had been full of these heavy, damp summers, she seemed to fill up that space. For the first time since she sat down, he began to notice. The oddness of the movement around him. The glance up wiith a blank look, feigned towards behind them, to the board with the details of Dora Lange. They were being watched.

The second thought was easier. He was going to kill them. Every last one of these sons of bitches. Dumping this - all of this - on him when he had better shit to be doing than playing nice with a political asset that was a footnote on every major event of the modern world. This woman in her bright material and her sharp teeth and the aftertaste of light on metal in her voice. Shit, no wonder fucking everyone was laughing, no wonder why they were staring like a God just walked through the goddamn door. Got something for you to write up, Cohle, yeah, it's gotta be you. "Yeah, see - you just being here, because you're just passing through. That can't be true."

"Can it not?" The question hovered, lilting, that same temper to it. Laughter. She rose then, and he stayed put in his chair. Careful, watching her, the way you watched prey you were tailing. One wrong step and who knows what it might do, especially when she unfolded like a predator. Long limbs that smoothed out, the light material falling back into place. The gold on her brow swayed that little as she moved. It looked old and warn. Dinted a little, and bent back to shape.

"For one thing, I heard you lot went the way of the dodo. Outlived your natural purposes when all those monsters got cleared out and the rest of us got guns and bombs. Ain't nobody knows where that shit you drink came from or went after the Order disintegrated into its own corruption. Every kid past 10 knows that." She needed to stop smiling. He pressed on the point, leaning towards her as she stepped out from around him, shoulders rolling. "Second of all, this place - people like you, don't come here for no reason, you don't stay for no reason. There's nothing for you here."

"Very good." And like some kind of test he didn't remember taking, he seemed to have passed. She stepped on then, past him and around him. That long, long wrap of material hung from her shoulder, hovering a foot above the ground. He flicked from watching it trail, up to the back of her head where her hair was tied up and set on the top of her crown. Walking to reach for the open case file with the pictures of the woman from Erath. The photos strewn in the front of case file, pages of notes behind it. Her fingers were light as they moved through it, flicking with surety that she had every right.

Which, she might have, didn't mean much to him. But.. the odd thing to watch, was not so much her in that movement, but the others in the room. Men who could talk shit for hours on end, hard men, decent men, cowardly men with the same expression, same unease. In the second where she took them all in, the immediate lowering of their gaze like they were worried something might eat them if they didn't. That little swallowed back fear in their half step away, the direct turn into their desks.

"You are wrong the first, correct on the second. I hadn't planned on staying, not particularly. There is nothing here for me, or, there was not. I have no want to press charges against the man either. No doubt, he fears for his life. They usually do." Her inspection slows, her hands settle to one picture. The antlers, the swirled marking. The pallid death skin. "No, do you know what my purpose is?"

He needs to tell her to leave, to get away from that, those pictures, the case. But her fingers lift up in a care to the photo, to trace not the horror, but the quiet of her closed eyes, the purposefully placed penitent body. "I hunt monsters, Detective, for those that cannot. That is all I have ever done."

He doubted it. Boyhood history lessons he remembered half of, certainly didn't make it sound like it was all she had done. No one did so much, after all, without some of it being less than clean.

"Sometimes, they even wear ugly faces and have bloody fangs and my work is easy. But most of the time, they are a man's grace and a man's smile." She balanced the photo between her fingers, tilting it as she inspected it for details.

For a second there, didn't really sound like she was talking to him.

"You pressing charges?"

"No. Seems rather pointless. He was very easy to subdue, I suspect he grows quite ill from the shake in him. Might I suggest...?" Her face turned back to him, the photo still in her hands. The first test over, apparently, now she just looked contemplative.

"Alright." As non-committal as could be, letting her talk didn't have to be the same as letting her do what she wanted. Even if he suspected - it very much was.

"You release him, with the words that it was all a misunderstanding. Tail him, discreetly, for a week. He ought to lead you to the others before they get the... ah, gumption to attack me again. My conference in Baton Rouge should last no more than a week." She was saying the name wrong, too proper, too clean for this part of the world. "I will come back after that, to see what you have gathered. From there, we may proceed. But I express the want to be there if it requires action. It might be that my expertise are required."

Cohle blinked, once and then twice. "That isn't something - "

" - I will be quite safe in the meantime, I assure you." If that was assurance, the Queen really needed to try again. People shouldn't give those words like threats.

But it wasn't worth saying no over something as minor as this. He could get some others sitting stakeout on it. When she came back - if she came back - they could deal with it then. Chances were he was just a madman, just like she said, desperate. "We'll see to it."

Her finger tapped on that manilla cover, warmed inoffensive yellow against the white clean nail that clicked on the surface. Then she turned, leaning to slide the photo back on the top. A absent habit that tucked all the other as well straight and neat, then closed it with a flick. "Very well. I will return. Should you need to confirm any other details, I am aware of several groups that seek such from me - though there may be others."

It took her second, leaning over the desk to fish a pen and on that same cover, she wrote her name in blocked quick letter and the number that followed the line below. When she finished, the pen was clicked to hide the nib and rolled away back over the desk. She straightened from the waist and gestured to the hulking men that apparently constituted her guards. Arjuna and Ram, apparently. Their neatly wrapped turbans were a matching black to their suits and ties. An easy foot on half the guys in this room, they stood straight-backed with their hands locked in front of them and Lakshmi took her place between them with an ease that spoke familiarity. The little space between she settled to; bigger than both of them within it.

"One last thing?"

He wet his lip, oh please, just leave already, and nodded. "Of course."

"You did not give me your name."

Couldn't she have just read it when she was digging through all his papers? "Rustin Cohle."

"Well met, Detective Cohle, I will see you next week." And with that, she turned and left. The eyes still following her, the eyes still fearful. Like a statue turned to life.

Fuck this. He fished for a cigarette, tapping it against the packet as his tongue worked at a molar in his mouth.

The report was only half filled out. He yanked it in front of him again, looking over the details which was more than anything, away to avoid anything else to do with this. He was busy enough without some jumped up woman insisting on something that wasn't an immediate problem. He could palm it off down the line, get them to do what she wanted. He had more important matters to attend with - Dora Lange and - shit what did she say? Monsters with a man's grace.

--

Marty looked like he was choking when he found out the news. A slow sort of death as the whispers reached him from the door to the desk. Granted he didn't find out directly from Rust, Marty had eyes, ears and senses that seemed to work well enough to figure out something had happened. It was the kind of news that needed to be kept out of public hands or they'd never get anything done about it or anything else. Which meant, naturally, damn near everyone knew within the minute she finished talking the Major through with her arrangements and had gone on her way. Left the quiet corner of a police station full of startled men.

Which was about when Marty came back - his briefing with that woman from the court house. Transcriber, whatever it was that was so important to talk to Marty and Marty alone for.

Big mistake that was, walking back out to a whirlwind of everything he'd missed. Rust - he already wanted out of it - even if, for some reason, she'd been sent to him. That was another question there, something he couldn't hold still with. One cigarette that become another out of quick fingered agitation.

Didn't get a word out though to explain anything before he and Marty got the whistle through. Closed door meeting, now. Sat down across from Queaseda for the second time sooner than he wanted. One briefing conversation a month was enough for one lifetime. But here he was for the second time in days, with details run over like train over tracks. Damn, if they weren't being railroaded by her and her demands for surveillance.

"Just one question - " Marty's voice ventured, sounded like he didn't even believe the words were coming out of his mouth " - she could ask... damn near anyone. Any department, FBI, CIA, whoever, about this. Why us, why this way?"

"That ain't our problem Marty, she asked, she got it cleared, we don't have much room to question it."

Marty's eyes slide back from him to the Major, sipping at the coffee in his hand, piecing together in second hand words. Unhappy, though, fixed on it. No one liked being told 'shut up, fall in line', after all.

"Marty and I, we're already working a case, you know we can't be focusing on this - " It feels stubborn, coming out of Rust's mouth, maybe a little petulant. He didn't like this, didn't want this.

" - put together a team on it to give it the time it needs if you can't spare it. Her own only request is to keep it small, keep it close, keep it fixed on little details. She said she wanted all of them." Of course she did. Was that why - "just make you got something to give her when she turns up to get this over and done quick. I don't want her in this office more than she has to be."

Turns out, no one liked the dust stuck on their fingers when things better left in stone moved about with the living.

But they weren't given any more orders - briefings to do, teams to organise and Queseda flicked his eyes in order to kick Rust out of the room quickly after that.

--

She wasn't wearing anything verdant when he saw her next. The promised week later. Busy, lent back on the car door of a Wrangler, a black covered planner in her hand. Flicking through pages with a finger she wetted on her tongue and used to leaf through quickly. Unaware in the observation, she kept her head down and he wondered if he could get into the car without her noticing. Yanking at the door handle, just one more noise in the relatively full car park. Could get away with it, it seemed.

The bodyguards weren't there, this time. Just her and the car.

She didn't look up, and he got in Marty's car and shut the door with a snap. Marty turned the keys and it was much better than looking back to see if she noticed or not.

--

Lakshmi sat down across from the Major Queaseda with the old planner in her hands. A series of names and dates she didn't have to worry here at least, of it being read by anyone over her shoulder. The neither elegant nor neat sanskrit letters in a dotted list down the page, records of meetings and introductions, thing to follow up on, questions where in her years, she became muddled at times. She was sure it was all very mysterious to someone else, though it served a plain ordered purpose. The pages seen over in who she needed to talk to before she made her way inside.

The conference in Baton Rouge had left her on edge with impatience to return. It had never been that she minded being weighed down with position or recognised in taking up a public life, when the dust had settled. After all, she had never been a quiet woman, her life belonged ever to many. But she hadn't blamed the others for choosing simpler things. Easier to take the brunt as she worked to undo something that was woven into the shape of the world. In that the years the United India Company, the British Empire, and its Vampiric Lords, had existed, it would take twice as long to undo. Something she would see to, herself - if nothing to be the physical weight of memory in the room when others spoke.

Or in this case, in this slice of middling America, the linolum floor that clicked under her heel, mid tone grey and white walls of the office building. The scuff and mess that creeped up them that printed out a thousand crimes and a hundred misgivings and hopes that were hidden behind chunky machinery and functionally tasteless furniture. Not that this was her final destination as she was lead with down turned eyes and a gesture hand from the woman at the front desk to the Major's office. The down turned eyes that as she was shown the door.

It would be a lie to say Lafayette's offer of wine and dinner in moments like this, wasn't tempting. Dealing with the true monster if this modern day, bureaucracy.

But - duty wasn't the only reason she was here, she wanted to worked. To say otherwise would be a lie. She saw the way the rich dressed their buildings. A bitter laugh in her throat that said this room, its worked in corners, its busied corridors had more in common with the palaces they echoed than their sterile empty rooms ever did. No, here, here was a different sort of home, that narrowed focus. She wanted to find the source of this most recent attack, to work at it, to pry it apart until she knew what she was dealing with it. Sitting down, it was first in her mind, first in her mouth. Her leg crossed over the other, her loose foot dangled as she tapped it in the air.

Whatever her impatience of course, it didn't matter, she had business to attend too.

"Major." She let the word hang as the man move towards his desk after carefully setting the cup of coffee in front of her - she had asked for tea, but apparently that was hard to come by. She did him one courtesy, in so much as she let him sit down before going on. "I understand that you have concerns about my presence amongst your men. I unsettle them. It is usual. I do not blame you for not wanting me to linger too long in your work."

He looked like he was going to protest, and her hand lifted, cutting it off. His teeth shut up against themselves. Good man.

"I know you mean no offence, and I know you wish I would take it to someone else. But I am some what bound by who I involve. To act on my own, as is my preference, would flout several international laws I have agreed upon quite some time ago." Versailles, Galahad with his hand on her knee under the table to keep her in her seat as she clenched her teeth on. A dusty memory she pulls from the shelf to put back. It's a twist quite on those so long ago set down words but, the merit is still there. Held momentarily before the door to those rooms is closed again. "Admittedly, when you called with what you had reported so far - I was expecting to hear from Detective Cohle."

He nodded, slowly, still looking to scared to speak for a moment, but a moment of empty air again, and he dared it. "Detective Cohle and Detective Hart. They're... what you said. Detail orientated, good at moving amongst people. Like you requested."

The firm little niggle, what she asked, the compliance to her wishes was being offered up. By the letter if not the merit. It should be what she wanted - but to that she rather preferred Cohle and the offering of being there herself, she found from the one brief conversation. The refusal to give, unless it mattered. To push on his point without fear of what she might do. It'd been... awhile. Had to have been, for so little to be so intriguing.

"So where are they?"

"They're working their own case..."

"An important one, I take it?" Her foot stilled in it's twitch, back and forth. The black heel coming loose from her heel to hang by her toes. A curiosity feigned only in how mild she asks. The woman in the photos, the woman on his desk, the woman in the newspapers.

He nodded, slow, watching her but not watching her. "The woman they called in outside of Erath - " she nodded, like she was allowing him to go on. " - I am sure you have seen the papers, nothing we named it, of course, we aren't interested in that sensationalist bullsh- coverage. It impedes our work."

Puts more pressure, when the people want to know who has allowed such suffering in their life and you cannot ignore it. Her face tilted up. "The Occult Ritual Murder? Was it true she was found with horns placed on her hair?"

"Yeah - they pulled her records and found that, she's a pros-" he cleared his throat, shifting on his language. "a night worker. If you understand..."

"I do. A woman abandoned by society to the cruelty of those who take advantage of such things. I am very familiar, if you recall."

Outside of the room and its blinds, the keys clicked on typewriters, voices answered phones. In the office, the silence was louder.

"... Yes. But as yet they're not yet aware of any of her last movements, we've only learned her name and priors."

Lakshmi was quiet, her fingers tapping against her leg. The woman of Erath. It didn't matter who she was now, that was the part that sat so ugly, so unforgivable inside of Lakshmi's throat like a sheltered flame holding out past any point. A woman who had her whole world inside of her, hopes and dreams and goals, eaten up in the teeth of something foul and now - now nothing else would be remembered. The same song, but a different verse.

"Troubling, to have such things occur, so close, isn't it?" It's mused, perhaps in memory. But her eyes didn't leave his face.

"Of course - for any community." His hands gestured, the words were the rehearsed, noncomittal.

"I do not mean as a person, Major, I mean your position. For a leader, for any leader, to look over so much, to feel so in tune, I presume, then to find out that this has happened?" Her head shook, her eyes lowered, the ugliness of it all sat in her tongue. "I would rip everything apart to know who had hurt those who looked to me for solace against such a thing."

He swallows, uncomfortable, half meeting her gaze and doing his best to look through her all at once. Behind him, out the window, the winds were doing the best. The winters here were not like Jhansi. Though just as wet, just as sodden, they lacked the frigid bite that came from the mountains and the dry ground. Here, it seemed only to entertain the notion of cold for awhile.

"Well - " He began, and she finished with a raised hand to cut him off.

"Thank you, Major. I have another appointment." It might have been literal centuries, but she never did like the assumed intimacy of freely said names. "I expect you to call me the moment the Detectives return." She legs uncrossed, her shoe hooked back on her foot, and with it, she rose.

"Of course, Madam."

The coffee sat untouched between them.

"Rani. As you are Major, if you please."

He nodded, the blood under his skin beating a retreat to leave a sickly white body behind and she smiled, graciously. "Until then."

Back to the heavy Wrangler - the hulking car good for the kind of work she had in mind for the next few days. That should be all it was, wasn't it? Days. That was what she had promised Arjuna and Ram it would be. Though it wasn't like the two men hadn't known better than to believe that completely when she said it.

Though, doing honest work for the first time in awhile, didn't make the idea of it maybe being weeks, utterly distasteful.

--

"I mean - what the hell is a woman like that doing here? They just let her run around by herself?" Marty pushed himself in his chair in the front seat. Arms snapped straight and then loose. Eyes forward, watching car consume road under on the two hour journey between here and there. But the agitation in him rippled with the mention of her.

Outside of the car, the fields went by, a grey sky of winter that seemed down, that made the distant horizon a fogged point. Drive into it forever, like that.

"Said she had a speech in Baton Rouge, got stopped on passing through. Can't tell you much else, Marty. She wasn't lying about the first bit - can't be all of it, though." Rust's eyes stayed fixed out the passenger's side window, watching his reflection watch Marty. "But either way, she's back now."

"So we're just supposed to be what, her errand boys?" It's grumbled. Marty could object, actually object, actually refuse, it was always theoretically possible. They both know they wouldn't. Probably made him feel better in this moment to act otherwise though. "We're CID, not small fry."

"Her watch dogs, maybe. But not their bite." His thumb pressed against his lower lip, fingers curled in against his hand. "Seems like she wanted to do that bit, herself."

The silence goes on, the fields go by. A tractor is churning up the crops of the beginnings of a harvest. Early in the year for it. Maybe it was rotten, for all he knew about agriculture. Sending dust and cuttings of plants up into the air to disperse further, the mice and snakes that had lived and died in their own private little world under the long stalks sent scurrying out with the disturbance.

"Besides, I think we definitely don't matter very much to her. Things she's done and seen." Dust matter, floating on by. "Not us, I mean - CID, or FBI or the President, for that matter."

"D'you reckon it's true - you know, what they say about 'em?" Marty ventures, with a longer pause. "That they really drank the... holy grail, all that." Fantasies - King Arthur and the Round Table. The Holy Order of Knights. The Half-Breeds and other tales that were somewhere between a fairy tale and the dark hand that crawled out from under the bed. Was it simpler back then? When monsters just turned into monsters. When they had just what she said, fangs and huge hulking bodies.

Marty hit the indicator for the next address on his list of who might have known about Dora. The dirt churned up on the wheels, this far out, tarred or even flatted out enough roads were a carefully rationed substance, apparently, and Rust had to shift to keep himself from knocking his head as the car not designed for this, bumped over rocks and dips down the unpaved track.

Cohle shook his head. "Doubt it. She seemed just like a person to me. Tired, maybe."

"Tired?" Marty ventured, trying to sound like he wasn't asking.

Rust reasoned, he didn't believe nor particularly entertained the notion of ghosts. But the idea, the idea he understood. A vaguely repeated motion, doing the same thing over and over. "Like she'd done it all before, enough times, to find this sort of thing routine."

"Shit."

That was it, really, how else to put it? Shit.

They pulled up at the garage, with questions to ask on Dora Lange, with two men and a toolbox as the required tools for the task.

--

He needed to keep busy, with something, anything. Anything better than the empty dreams of Sophia's laughter. Stakeouts weren't the worst thing when your options were staying at home in an empty room - could have some mercy for the guys that did have a room full of things that mattered to go back too. That he took the position up with a call - yeah, I'll do the night shift on him, you go home. See if he really is up to what she thinks.

Hell, it just something to do.

Sitting in the pick up truck, cigarette held against his mouth. Smoking long and slow as a way that was quintessential to passing the time in this kind of work. In a dingy parking lot just out of the streetlight's reach. A little after ten, the last of the evening shifts coming home, the beginning of the late shifts starting. This guy didn't seem to have much work to be bothered with, his times were irregular in the logged activity, he doubted it was going to change tonight. Figured he was in another dull night sitting in the cab, until dawn rolled around and the next guy showed up.

Famous last words.

There she was - again - like she had a right. It was two hours, two long hours of blessed silence, before the passenger's side door opened and he found himself with company. Hauled her weight up easily, hanging there in the door frame, a solid presence compared to the shadow she'd so silently approached in. Caught him unawares like a knife in the back. Turning to face him with a look. Watchful, always watchful. Her eyes bright in the dark with the light from a passing car on her face. She gave him one second to adjust to her presence before a gift was offered between them.

A bottle of water, a plain simple meal by the smell of it. He didn't even look at it.

"Good evening." Mild, like a walk in the fucking park.

"The fuck do you think this is?" Stiff, jerked, pulling hard against her presence like a cocked gun - how suddenly she could be there, even if she thought she was giving him adjustment. Didn't make it better, didn't make her invited.

"You are doing as you were requested, the least I can do, do you not think, is join you in that task?"

She wasn't fooling him, her mouth set, narrowed hard against her demand that was phrased as a request that was phrased as gratitude. He wasn't having it, his head jerk, up and out, she could leave. "Yeah, if you wanted to say thank you, you coulda just waited. Suits me just fine."

Lakshmi's face tilted in her half light, pulled up, but not gone yet. "Do I look like I wait very well for others to do what I should do myself? I'm keenly aware, Detective Cohle, that there would not be a problem of yours, if I had not been here. Is it too much to wish to clean up my own mess? These problems are ones which I created, it is where my duty lies."

He fell silent, maybe just because he could. Not given those words any credence. But was it too much to ask? Anything else, he might not have forgiven.

But in that long moment where nothing was said and it was nothing else but the flat gaze in the dark, he nodded, relented and let her settle.

He still ignored the food.

The door shut with heavy pull, she settled in with a straight back. A perfectly held posture as to her own bottle of water she reached for out of the bag after she dropped it between her feet. Putting it to her lips as just as she said, she settled in to join him. "Any movement so far?"

"Guy before me said he came in after going to the shops to pick up some basics, and its about the most exciting thing he does every week. Haven't seen him since."

She nodded, swallowing her second mouthful. "Does he have an callers?"

"None so far that we've noticed. What were you expecting?" He shrugged, lifting one shoulder then the other.

"Not sure, as yet. They seldom ever act alone when they last out at me in these ways, however. If this proves to be nothing then I suggest moving on, to his correspondences. Letters, purchase, these sort of things."

"You sound awfully sure about that."

Lakshmi nodded, her eyes still on the door across the street from them. "It is always the same, with them. I have seen it... many times. It was why I suppose institutes like the Order did have their uses if ultimately such things had their own issues. Structure, rules, the determination of those that rose to such a life. The black-water was kept, openly, in the halls of Parliament with never a concern to its security, and those that drank it never had fear of those around them, save for the half-breed."

"And without it?" He look at her, out of the corner of his eye, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel.

Her shoulders lift, at the neckline of her black shirt, her collar bones rise against skin. Surprisingly human indents. "Men seek eternal life in fits of selfishness and desperation without ever asking what it means. They see the years, they do not see the time."

She wasn't looking at him, as she said it and he decided that made sense - her eyes were fixed forward, directed out. Her hands steady in her lap, her mouth a calm line. But her gaze was straight and purposeful as it surveyed the street.

Just like that - the target, the man who mad enough to attack a black-water drinker, emerged from the front door of his apartment. In his hand was a package, large and unwieldy in his grip. She pushed forward in her seat, her fingers held up to Rust to indicate without speaking, don't move, not yet. It didn't seem even conscious an action - just a reaction, commanding, directing.

They both waited, watched, the man went to his old battered Ford, dumping the package in the front seat beside him. Sliding in after, to start the car.

It was then that she turned back to him, sharp in her eyes still - "Do you wish for this? What might be the other end of this."

It was a good question, one that needed a good answer. Instead he reached for the keys of the red pick up truck to kick over the motor.

--

INTERVIEW, RUSTIN COHLE, 2012

"So this was the only thing you had on at the time?"

"No, not exactly. We had a bit of... international issues as it turned out. Like I said, I had a lot of shit going on, my daughter's birthday, the thing with Marty's family, and the other work that got dumped on me."

"Meaning? The heat from the press, that sort of thing?"

"No, not exactly. It's not in there either? Guess they wouldn't put it everywhere outside on the explicitly related records, she didn't like it much. Also had that kind of effect on people. They don't want to remember her. Walks in, tears everything you thought to pieces, then leaves. Like she was never even there to start with. Except all the shit she leaves behind."

"Who - ?"

"The Rani Lakshmi Bai."

--

The truck rumbled heavy a long the road, head lights low as they winded their way out of the more populated streets to open, quieter ones. Her arm was hooked on the arm rest and his drummed on the steering wheel as they drove. He was a strange man, in his way. He did such a job to seem settle and held together. The more he did it, the less he appeared to be able too.

So far, it was routine tailing. Following behind in silence. The cars... made it so strange. It felt so loud, to the silence of crawling and crouching. Slipping her body low and careful. This felt practically brazen. "I was disappointed."

"Yeah?" He didn't sound particularly put off with the notion. She swallowed the laughter again as she leaned into her arm against the window frame.

"I expected the call to come from you, not the Major." Stilted and uncomfortable as that conversation had been.

That was - his fingers stilled. "He called?"

"He did. The first to let me know the surveillance had been established. Secondly, that there was nothing to report. I rather suspect he did not want me to come back." Laughter, again, lilting in her words whether she meant it or not. A great deal of things ruling had learned to swallow - but it seemed, laughter would never be one of them. Always the Peshwa's Chhabali. "It leaves me with only so many conclusions to come to." And subsequently ignore, as she found herself still so fond of doing as the years went on. To give complacency and then completely disregard it.

"Yeah?"

"Incompetency, was my first thought. That simply, your department had not treated it with the due course it needed and as such, I was being pushed off in the hopes I would be... go away and it could be ignored. I assure you, that seldom works."

There was a grunt of a response.

She hoped he didn't always respond like that, they had a great deal of sitting in cars to do. What was she supposed to do if he was so well at fixing himself like stone? She was quite out of practise. "I am still not sure whether I should rule on that or not."

"Seems like you have it a lot of thought." It was non-committal as could be.

"Oh yes, awhile." She hummed with it, fishing for the bottle of water she had brought herself. Unscrewing the cap with a crunch of the plastic seal breaking. Holding the lid in her off hand as she lifted it.

"So what was your next, ah, theory?"

"That your Major had a particular aversion to your interacting with me." Her head tilted, pouring the water into her mouth as she looked out the dark window. Swallowing down before she went on. "Whether that is because of you or me, I am afraid I cannot yet decided."

That - for once, made him seem to pause, seem amused. "Yeah, that's what you reckon?"

"It is but a theory as yet, I am sure being a Detective yourself, you know there is not much more than to prove or disprove it from here."

"So thought you'd just sneak up on me on shift?" It was a dream, apparently, he surely wasn't teasing back.

"In all fairness, I did not know it was you. I requested to be put to work, and it was agreed too, I simply presumed that it was my place to find out when and where the surveillance would be taking place."

The tone was drawled, she didn't like chasing her own tail for information when she had been operating under the full dictation of the law. But she had done it, because being avoided had never stopped her particularly when it mattered. Tailing the last few nights worth of officers hadn't been exactly what she had wanted to spend her time, it was true, but it was practise at least in an old limb. Especially in these modern vehicles.

But this was the first time she had approached so directly. To put herself in the situation beside him. He was taking it well, truth be told. Still digging his feet in, to be granted, as he had a right too - but otherwise was accepting it. Could have been making this painful for them both, and even if she would have accepted that too. Glad all that same, that she didn't have too.

Not that he needed to know it.

Ahead of them, the red lights flashed as they reached a last intersection at the edge of town.