Castle of Lies [Alastair, Claudia] [Duvalier Gala]

It was only when the Castello Aragonese came into view on the horizon, lights illuminating the imposing island fortress like a beacon against the night sky, that Alastair was awoken from his slumber. The past few days had been something of a blur, from the fighting in Africa to travelling across the world and back, and now he was being forced into another direct confrontation. Likely this was Claudia's intention, the timing of this Gala could hardly have been any better if she wanted to catch him on the backfoot and yet she would know that making herself available to him was an opportunity that he could not pass up. The notion was also not lost upon him that she had made a point of gathering many senior individuals from both the Vandenreich and the Gotei into one location under the guise of philanthropy. It was a perfect stage to sow more chaos if ever there was one, so he would have to strike whilst the proverbial iron was still hot.

The evening festivities were already well underway when the helicopter touched down, his arrival having been delayed by over a day due to prior commitments in the City of Lights, but, given the difference in time zones, Alastair was thankful that he was not arriving along with the masses. He wore his formal dress uniform, white and black decorated with gold and red, whilst the Carrington Blade was sheathed at his hip. For tonight, at least, he hoped that it would only serve a ceremonial purpose but it never hurt to come prepared. It was hardly like he was disarmed even without it, but perhaps a soldier might be forgiven for the comfort that the familiar weight of his weapon might provide him.

Making his way inside, as the transport headed off back to the mainland to await his summons to return, Alastair made sure to send word via one of the countless attendants that he had arrived. Though he was far from naive enough to believe that all of this was for him, he knew that it would be inevitable that Claudia would want to speak with him eventually. Whether she did so publicly in one of the many lavish function rooms or summoned him to a private study, he left the choice to her. He was already in the belly of the beast, after all, so extending her that courtesy was the least he could do.

It had almost been disappointing to Claudia when Alastair had been delayed in his appearance to this gala. After all, he'd been one of those few guests she actively looked forward to speaking with, and perhaps the only one that she thought might give her any conversation worth really engaging with. With a smile that seemed perhaps too genuine for a woman such as herself, Claudia approached Alastair with two glasses of wine, holding one out for him to take.

"How lovely to see you again, Mr. Eisfluch. When I heard you had arrived, I naturally had a bottle from my personal collection opened to celebrate. I've not forgotten our conversation on wine, you know."

She hadn't forgotten much of anything about the conversation they'd had at the Duvalier penthouse that day, and though that home was now swallowed up by the Earth, Claudia wasn't much bothered by the loss of the place.

"Shall we move to somewhere quieter? The stars are lovely at this time of night, and the terrace sees few guests."

Claudia was, to put it plainly, just as striking as when Alastair had first laid eyes upon her. He was a guest in her home once more, but this time armed with far more information and an air of caution that even an innocent gesture could not easily dissipate. Unlike most every person in this castle tonight, he knew a fraction of her truth. Details pieced together from the myriad of documents and dealings that Eliane had brought to his doorstep, coupled with the secrets that Arlette had spoken of.

“The pleasure is mine, Lady Duvalier. I often recall our first meeting too, though I admit I have not grown any more familiar with good wines yet.”

The pleasantries still came easy to Alastair, though his tone carried more sincerity than it ever had before. As much as she would like to distract him with sweet nothings, he had to get his point across eventually. It would define their relationship, which he believed to already be well beyond strained, so the opportunity to speak privately was more than welcome.

“I will gladly escort you to the terrace. A few moments of isolation would be a welcome reprieve before we find ourselves lost in this sea of socialising.”

"Well, you hardly need to worry about that. I would be all too happy to assist you in growing more familiar, for how else might I treat a friend?"

Of course, Claudia knew all too well the truth of this little discourse of theirs, perhaps better than Alastair did. She kept herself well-appraised of the world, and she certainly was under no illusions as to what her 'daughters' would likely have said in their time at the City of Lights. The genuine smile, the light behind her eyes, seemed more akin to a snake which had found a nest full of vulnerable prey, rather than the expression of a philanthropist glad to offer kindness.

As she was 'escorted' to the terrace outside, despite her air quite transparently being that of the one taking the lead, Claudia looked upward at the stars for a few moments, before turning her attention to Alastair, with the same real smile on her face.

"Ought I ask you as to your personal life, Mr. Eisfluch? I would be quite interested to know how life has treated you of late, but of course I understand if you have other matters to discuss."

To expect an open display of hostility would have been quite the leap, but even still Alastair found himself silently relieved. No small part of him wanted all this to be a series of mistakes and miscalculations, something that made this nigh-imperceptible web of lies dissipate into nothing, but naïveté would do him no good here. He saw that familiar glint in her eye as she scanned their surroundings passively, and it felt different now than it ever had before. It felt dangerous.

A half-smile was the most he could muster in response to her comment on friendship, a slight nod of the head as he bid her lead the way deeper into this maze. He walked at her side and yet remained, ever so slightly, behind. Truthfully, he had no intention of slighting her by appearing to take charge even within her own home. Then, soon enough, they were outside in the evening air again. The wind blowing in off the Mediterranean was mostly shielded from them by the ramparts, but a shiver still threatened to run down his spine until Claudia spoke once more.

“The night is not as young as it once was, yet the stars will shine for a while yet. I have kept well, despite attempts to the contrary, and I find myself here stronger for them. Challenges have been overcome and new ones set, but I have kept to my path. What of yourself? How does Lady Duvalier see herself progressing of late?”

His answer was curt, many might have thought that intentional and yet Alastair was simply not one to linger on his own accomplishments. Of his goals and motivations he might be tempted to speak at length, but his personal life was not one he could easily pad with flavour. Claudia likely knew those details anyway, though. She had been, directly or not, responsible for several of those developments. This was something they both knew now, where before he had been the innocent, but he would give her at least one reprieve before he made to cut through that tension and arrive at the point of it all.

How charming he was, acting in such a calculated way, letting her take charge and speaking so tactfully. Claudia certainly wasn't opposed to letting this little charade continue on for as long as Alastair felt willing to play along, but her eyes had narrowed just a touch, her expression shifting nearly imperceptibly to a more "typical" look for her.

"Ah, tumultuous, of course. All of this business in Africa has kept my attention quite focused, and I imagine I hardly need to tell you about the work of the Duvalier Group across the globe right now. Still, I intend to continue my work. I would never think of pulling my support away from you at the Vandenreich, after all."

That much was true, of course. Claudia rather liked working with them, and quite liked the contacts and resources that came with it. Ah, how she might miss that.

"Of course, there are other difficulties as well, internally and even personally, but they are all matters to be overcome with a bit of hard work."

His gaze wandered upward, into the night sky, as the pair stood together in isolation on this terrace. A glass of wine in one hand, he acknowledged her response with a casual sip and did genuinely try to pick at the individual flavours of the apparently-fine vintage.

“Of course, the Vandenreich remains grateful for the generous international support provided by the Duvalier Group and its subsidiaries. The African catastrophe has served as a suitable incident to pull focus away from these goings on, and I am sorry for all that you have lost, but there have been other developments that I cannot turn a blind eye to regardless the circumstance.”

Alastair wanted to just watch the stars for a while longer with her, to simply be two people adrift in that infinite sea paying no heed to the goings on around them. Claudia would, no doubt, provide some insight or detail that his diligent gaze would overlook whilst perhaps she would find amusement in his dry interpretation of astronomy. But the time for playing those games had passed them by, he had to look past that facade Claudia presented and find the truth of what was buried beneath.

With a deep sigh, enough to puff out a smoky cloud into the air between them, orange eyes slid sideways in their sockets until he was giving her a sideward gaze.

“You sent your bodyguards to eliminate me, to silence Arlette, to sow chaos in the City of Lights. I should have come here with a task force, but I want to believe you can still be reasoned with. Tell me you are a rational woman, Claudia. That you want more than to simply set this world aflame and stand amidst the ashes.”

Oh, how forward of him. Claudia supposed he must have gone through something rather testing if he was now willing to be so forthcoming about such a dangerous situation. Most, when confronted with such a direct accusation of wrongdoing, would likely have been taken aback if the accusation was false, or stunned if it proved true. Claudia, however, seemed unfazed by Alastair's words, continuing to watch the stars as she enjoyed her wine. After all, they were something perennially out of reach, one of those few things so fundamentally immutable that she admired them in their own way.

"I am, of course, a rational woman. And you, Alastair, are a rational man. I've no doubt that my daughters have elucidated you on the less savory projects of the Duvalier Group by now. But regardless of how you might think of my ethics, I am not a woman who wastes my time with trivialities. I have simply accepted that I must, as the saying goes, 'break a few eggs.'"

Setting her wineglass down on a nearby stone lantern, Claudia turned to Alastair with a softer gaze, a more subdued smile. And, yet, the piercing nature of her eyes did not change, as if it were simply a fundamental part of her existence that her gaze should seem so cold.

"Since you are such a dear friend, Alastair, I hope you won't mind if I share with you a bit about myself. My competitors often ask where I came from, to have acquired such business acumen. The truth is that I don't know the answer to that question. My earliest memories are in an orphanage in Paris, surrounded by children with whom I had little in common. I would have had no future had I accepted the world as it was, and so I made a career for myself in the only way a young woman from the gutter might. Only after I had spent years in the dirt could I afford to wash myself of that industry, and you may note that I have not returned to it, whether in our open dealings or even those hidden projects of which you are clearly aware."

Leaning against the lantern that held her wineglass, Claudia continued, finding it almost cathartic to speak like this. After all, it was so rare she had an opportunity of this magnitude.

"The previous war that shook the world nearly killed me, you know. I was in France when it became among the most pitched theaters. I built an empire in shipping in the fallout, but the capital I make there is simply a tool. I am quite intent on making a world better than this one, having seen the worst that it has within it, but the price of such a change is not one that even I could pay in entirety. I imagine I will be dragged to hell when the day of my death comes, weighed down by the blood on my hands. That is simply one more price to pay. I, a rational woman, am willing to pay it."

Alastair followed her movements warily as she set down her glass and locked on to him. Not for fear that she might assail him physically, but the ease with which she still spoke put him more on edge than any opponent ever had before. That was what she was now, he supposed - his opponent. Someone that wanted exactly what he did, and yet could hardly be any different in their means.

“Though I cannot imagine what you have been through, suffered in, just to survive those fledgling years. It was enough to fill your heart with a burning need to change the world. That much I can understand.”

Even in the chill of the darkness that surrounded them, Alastair’s warmth won out and sought to clash with Claudia’s coldness. His eyes shone as bright as those stars above them, offering the briefest of glimpses into the fire that was alight within him. These last few years had galvanised his own once-naive ideals, and handed him the power with which to see them carried out.

“But this path of destruction will not bring you true satisfaction, no matter how sweet the catharsis may seem when you pull that trigger. You would simply be restarting a cycle, rather than ending it.”

He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake this foolish stupor from her, but it was buried far deeper than he imagined he could pull her from alone. But that would not stop him from trying. With the stakes as high as they were, nothing would.

“Please, Claudia, It is not too late to stop this. To call off these grand machinations and pull back from the precipice. Your reputation still holds weight, the good you have done is not yet tainted, and the Vandenreich would stand alongside you against any storm that comes.”

"Then you understand, Alastair, why I am so loathe to walk away from everything I have made. To put all my trust in any other but myself. Ah, but then, I suppose even trusting myself has proven too much."

Claudia liked this little back and forth, or rather, she would have. The fact of the matter was that Alastair's presence was more overwhelming than she might have typically expected from someone. It was not nearly enough to give her any true pause, nor to remove the calm smile from her face, but the cold of her gaze undeniably thawed under the heat of Alastair's gaze.

She would not falter. But it did, for a few brief moments, make her wonder about what a different life might have been like.

"What is accomplished if I bring it all to an end? I atone for my crimes, go along to prison? What I have done is for the good of the future. You ask rather much of me, to simply end it all on the hope that good hearts and genuine benevolence will better the world."

Still, she hadn't turned him down. Not quite yet.