windfield | iris and delilah

iris and delilah - ii

Iris Huntington might have been arrogant, a control freak, and a self-described bitch, but she wasn’t stupid. She learned from her mistakes - when they were truly her mistakes, and not just the world being stupid - and adapted. So her first robbery might have been a bust, landing her in CIA custody and forcing her to do some quick thinking to escape. But a few weeks later, after ironing out the kinks in her safecracker’s programming and tinkering with the ammo capacity of her guards, she tried again. Coast Star Bank might have been a bit less prestigious, but it was far enough away that the CIA wasn’t watching over it. Coverage of her first attempt had been a curiosity, tucked away in the third pages of newspapers that bothered to cover it.

The Coast Star Robbery, though? Put in the cash, the bonds, the savings, the jewelry and watches, and she had nearly half a million dollars. Now that was something worth reporting on. Front page, a photo of Iris sauntering out of the bank and to her car, flanked by knockout gas and gunfire. One for her trophy room.

She kept going - another few banks and museums, until they started shoring up their security in paranoia. The headquarters of Ford Automobiles during a shareholders meeting, mostly to tell them that their new breakthrough was crap. One day, she’d held an entire movie set hostage, primping and preening in front of the cameras, trying to get the actors to smile. She’d gotten bored and left - but really, that had just been for fun.

But the attention from the public meant attention from the Government, and the day came where her stream of luck ran out. Somehow, they’d found her hideout, nestled away in the Appalachians. Assembly line in an abandoned mineshaft, laboratory and a sprawling apartment on a mountainside, all powered by a series of nearby dams - it might not have been the glamorous retreat a Bond villain would have, but it was close.

And the best part, in Iris’ opinion? A complex-wide speaker system. So while she directed her troops (seventy soldiers strong) from her laboratory, she blasted the Rolling Stones so everybody could hear. Paint It, Black was such a damn good song, and she knew the words by heart.

“Come o~on,” she sing-songed into the microphone, cutting the music out for a moment. “Surrender and I won’t kill you.”

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The thing was, Iris' smile wasn't phony. She wouldn't have even bothered if it was some other idiotic agent, but Kaye? That was actually a surprise, one that she was wholly okay with.

"You've got a nice voice," she said distantly. It was the first time she'd heard it, after all. Not quite what Iris was expecting (she was definitely thinking something straight out of The Big Sleep or Kiss Me Deadly), but it suited her.

"Well, you and your goons came a-knocking on my door, what did you expect?" Iris turned on the heel of her shoe, labcoat nipping at her heels, and all but threw herself into the couch across from her.

Delilah frowned, for a moment forgetting why Iris would say a thing like that. (Though she wasn't skeptical. Iris wasn't a man, who'd say that for all the wrong reasons. Iris was just... baffling.)

But then she had another question to get snippy about, and that gave her a new reason to smirk. "We were kind of expecting to bust up your operation, actually," she replied.

She just snorted with amusement, dangling her feet off the edge of the sofa.

"Well, you fucked that up, that's for sure. And now here you are!" She lazily gesticulated with one hand, rolling her wrist in a circle. "I don't have guests often. Ever, really. So you'll excuse me for not having dinner and a cocktail ready."

She sniffed, not sure whether to dignify the first part of the remark with a reply. It wasn't her fault her coworkers were incompetent and she wasn't trusted enough to have the right information or the leeway to do what she needed with it.

The second part, though, was easy. "Well, it's a good shot you'd have laced it, so I'm alright without."

"Why?" Iris asked. "You're already here, you're not about to escape, so I don't really have anything to gain from drugging you. Besides, you're going to have to drink something eventually. And eat."

Iris jerked her head towards her liquor cabinet. "Pick your poison, Agent."

The obvious answer was that -- well, that's what villains did. Drug people, keep them disoriented. Ransom them?

God, she was going to be ransomed. She hoped her coworkers would actually be willing to shell out for her.

Finally she sighed and said, "Whiskey and water, I guess."

Iris nearly rolled off the couch before catching herself on one leg and nearly springing up onto two feet. "Whiskey it is," she said crossing to the liquor cabinet. She studied it for a moment before picking out the best she had to offer, as well as two glasses.

She crossed over to Deliah's side of the room and set the glasses down beside her before opening the bottle and taking a quick swig.

"See?" She said, pouring into the first glass. "Not poisoned."

"Huh."

Delilah couldn't help but feel surprised by this -- she wasn't sure why, aside from the fact that she couldn't trust Iris, couldn't trust a criminal. She was here in a criminal's lair, accepting a drink of alcohol.

But damn, she needed a drink.

"Fine, alright. Give it here."

"I told you. You're interesting." The world would be a far poorer place if she weren't in it. And now they actually got the chance to talk, to hang out, without the thread of the stupid CIA breathing down their necks.

Iris set the bottle down and scooped up her glass, letting Delilah pour her own drink. She clinked their glasses together before Deliah could stop her and grinned.

"Cheers. So, the lab. Pretty great, isn't it?"

Delilah glanced around, sipping her drink carefully. "It's big and terrifying," she said dryly. She wasn't about to admit that she didn't understand ninety percent of what was around her.

After a pause, she added, "Hell of a place to put it, though."

"Isn't it just?" Iris sipped at her drink, taking a look out the window. The mountains, the forest, the sight before her - it really was incredible. She was going to miss it after she left.

(What? They knew about this place, which meant that it wasn't useful anymore.)

"Want the tour?"

She hadn't actually meant it as a compliment, at least specifically, but it being taken as one put them on a slightly less aggravated course of conversation. Small mercy? Maybe.

"I don't suppose I have anything better to do," Delilah deadpanned.

"You really don't," she said brightly. But why wouldn't she want a tour? Iris' home was awesome.

"Living room," she said, raising her glass with a wide gesticulation. "Don't really have company all that much. Moved the TV into my workshop, that's why it's not here. You can stand up, by the way. Walk around. Stretch your legs."

Trying to resist the urge to sigh, Delilah stood and carried her own glass with her. "It's pretty big, for you not entertaining very often," she remarked.

"So?"

Iris sipped from her drink, moving to stand by the window. It was a good view; she was going to miss it.

"Just because I live alone doesn't mean I can't have the best house in the world."

"I'm not sure it's the best in the entire world," Delilah said, and against her better judgment she teased, "I mean, you haven't seen every house in the world to know, have you?"

Iris laughed at that - actually threw her head back and chortled.

"Statistically speaking, you've got a point," she said. Way to her heart, talk science and math. "But - I built this myself. The odds of another building just happening to confer with my specifications are infinitesimal."

"I guess that makes sense," Delilah admitted. "Especially if your specifications include this specific scenery. There's not a lot of it, overall."

"Might. Might not." She had to keep Delilah at least a little bit in the dark. The location was more than just the view, spectacular as it might have been. Iris' lab needed power, hydroelectric, it needed caves for the assembly line, and a railway for easy access.

Not that she was going to up and tell her this. Why ruin the magic?

"Come on," Iris said, jerking her head towards the doorway into the rest of the building. "Wanna see the lab? Factory? Railway?"

Magic would be a subjective term, in Delilah's opinion, but it wasn't an argument she would bother having, probably. (Although right now she was feeling irritable enough to have a lot of arguments, so who knew.)

"You know, why not," Delilah sighed. "It's all going to be a moot point anyway."

"How do you figure?"

It was an honest question. No knowledge was ever wasted, in Iris' opinion, least of all a first-hand tour of one of the most spectacular sites in the world. She led Delilah out of the living room, towards the rest of the facility.

"This is a hallway. That's it, even I can't make hallways exciting."

"Soon you'll be out of here," she said. "Onto somewhere bigger and better if you have your way. I'm not sure I'm going to make it out of this at all, so what's it matter? Might as well live it up."

She rolled her eyes. She didn't really fear for her life, in any pressing way, but it was an easy thing to be sarcastic about and sarcasm felt like a strong defense.

"I'm sure you could if you tried," she replied cheerfully, "but interesting and safe are two different things."

"See?" Iris flashed her a quick grin. "That's why I like you, Agent. You get it." She reached out and rapped a knuckle against one of the walls. "Sturdy wood. Could've made this out of glass or titanium, but all it needs to do is get me from Point A to Point B."

She gestured towards one of the doors. Elevator, it'd take them down into the factory.

"I'm not going to kill you, didn't I tell you last time? But you're right, I'm going to blow this place to kingdom come soon."

That grin was unsettling, both because it seemed too natural to be shared between them and because, well, it was oddly endearing. She didn't need to be endeared right now, or ever by Iris.

Instead she replied, "I'm not sure I get it. And I wasn't sure the same parameters applied, far as my life goes."

The second part was a lie. She, also in an unsettling way, trusted at least that much about Iris. But it was still the right thing to say, she felt.

"You do," she reiterated. "I don't do what I do - live on a mountainside, rob banks, build robotic soldiers - because it's safe. It's because it's interesting. No reason I couldn't have put, I don't know, a pool of sharks below the floors here to liven things up."

Iris shrugged, pulling the lever to open the doors to the elevator. It was more of a cage on a crank, the sort of things that carried miners down the shaft and into the depths of the Earth. Appropriate, given at this had previously been a mine.

"But the trick is knowing when to be practical - and safe, sure - and when to have fun. In you go."

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