Cammie & Remy A foot in the Door

[x-scorpion.livejournal.com]

Cammie, after a conversation with Jake (will be posted later!), decides to take some of the suggested actions into her own hands. Nothing is ever that easy though...

Cammie could describe herself a lot of ways, but patient wasn't always one of them. Patience was sitting around and waiting for someone to do what you were fully capable of yourself. Whether or not it was a good idea, Cammie didn't care. She might have been past the taking stupid risks because she wanted to die but life without a little risk in it was too damn boring.

Besides, Logan had said it best, people like them should at least do something useful with their talents. Even though she was looking at college and still planned on going she didn't see much of a career option for her in the wide, wide world. And it wasn't like she hadn't killed anyone before, looking back only one death still got any big guilt trip from her and that was likely never going to change.

She didn't dress up; the only dressy clothes she owned were compliments of Adrienne and used to part time in the clothing store. But everything she wore, down to her bandages, was cleaned. The only smell coming off of her was that faintly toxic smell that was always going to be there and she had taken pains to actually buy a breath mint. That was a small consideration for the fact that most people didn't seem to enjoy it when she had motor oil on her breath, though that was fun to torment Kyle with.

Cammie rubbed her hands together and took a breath before opening the door. She wasn't sure how to go about this, but she figured if she wandered around long enough SOMETHING would happen.

Remy looked up from a stack of paperwork. The Cajun looked less like a world-travelling intelligence operative and more like a slightly harassed accountant. He put down his pen and took a sip from the mug at his elbow before straightening up and finally looking at her with his strange red on black eyes. "Cammie Black, oui? Dere something dat Remy can help you wit'?"

“Cool, you know my name,” that saved a possibly awkward introduction. That was something she was never managed to do well. She talked better with her fists, after all, “Jake brought something up and I’m here to follow up on it.” Not because she didn’t trust Jake to do it, but simply it was better to do these things yourself.

"Jake did? Dat's never a good sign." He leaned back in his chair and considered her for a moment before gesturing with the coffee mug. "Go on."

"Yeah, I know. He's really great like that, isn't he?" She said, almost dryly, "Mostly we were talking about my future," funny thing that, a couple of years ago she didn't have one of those. Things changed, "And he had this crazy ass idea, but I figured I'd follow up on it. Given I'm here I think it's sort of apparent what the idea was."

"Leave it to Jake to think a very complicated thing is dis simple." Remy sighed and put down his mug. "Not to sound harsh, petite, but it's not as if we're a jobs program. You have no background in dis world, no training, and unless dere's a keyboarding course in you history, no skills dat we immediately need. So even before we get into all de moral and ethical dimensions of de job, dere's de basic problem dat dere's no need for you specifically."

"Wow, that's harsh?" Cammie said with a shrug, "I didn't say he thought it was this simple, I just said I hate waiting around for people to do things on my behalf. I can type, maybe not three hundred words a minute, but I haven't spent all my time in Nate's office banging my head against a wall. Or if I have they've done a very good job of making me think I'm almost useful. Ask Angelo."

Remy mouth twitched, the hint of a smile. "I'm sure dat M. Espinosa has an opinion of your worth, but it wouldn't necessarily apply. Let's try dis another way. Why woud you want to be here?"

"Now that's the question, isn't it? I thought about it after Jake brought it up, and it sort of falls into line with something Logan said, about people like us - me and him, I mean, not going to lump anyone in that group who doesn't want to be there - about doing the best with what we have. And what I have is really nasty. Enough so that there aren't many ways I can really manage to do anything," Cammie said with a shrug.

"Maybe this will make up for all the crap I've done. Maybe it won't. But I won't be bored off my ass wondering if I'll ever be useful somehow."

"You know dat it not dat easy, neh?" Remy leaned forward, his long fingers steepled in front of his face and resting against his forehead as he spoke. "Cammie, what we do here is mostly very boring, only broken up by de times when it is extremely dangerous. Dis is a world in which saying de wrong thing or just being in de wrong place at de wrong time means a bullet behind de ear before being dumped in a gutter somewhere. Dat is, assuming dat you're not raped, tortured and multilated for days or even weeks first. It also means using good honest people, and sometimes putting dem in de position to have their lives ruined or even get killed because of de bigger picture. Kind of hard to explain to a widow and two kids dat Daddy had to die because his information might lead to stopping part of a bigger threat."

His red on black eyes seemed to have found a new intensity as they locked on her. "On top of all of dat, once dis life has its hooks in you, dere's no getting out. You will have done things and seen things dat have no excuse, and dere's a very good chance dat you end up becoming de very thing dat you started out fighting. Dis isn't 'bout being useful, Cammie. It's about permanently trading any chance at a real life in any capacity away for a job dat you won't ever be remembered for doing if you do it right."

"You know, if you're trying to scare me away from this you could use something that doesn't sound like life on the streets mixed with office work with the occasional James Bond crap thrown in. If it comes down to someone's life to save a lot of people, I'm able to do that. I'm already a killer - both accidentally and on purpose," she said. Though it wasn't like she did it often, or targets were anything but self-defense or accidents, it didn't make someone any less dead. In the end the reasons were semantics. Dead was dead. "So if it manages to do something more than make some sort of difference, I'd actually prefer that."

Might as well do what her Mother made her for, she thought dryly. Only in a different direction. Serve her right.

"So it's total boredom wrapped around a few minutes of actually doing something. That sounds just like anything else, minus what the actually doing something is, of course. I don't expect this to be an action movie. And I don't expect it to be pretty," Cammie said, "I also don't expect my motivations to make sense in context - or think this is easy. Today my goal was just a foot in the door. That's all I was here to do."

Remy shook his head. "Non, you don't understand what dis is, and you too young to understand." He straightened up, and picked up his mug. "Jake gave you de wrong idea, Cammie. You want to make a difference in people's lives, go talk to Nate out at Elpis, ask him to put you in de field more. Dat's dangerous in its own right, and has all de same paperwork." He picked up another file, and opened it, making it obvious that to him, the interview was over.

"Whatever," Cammie said with a shrug. If this one was over, it was over - but her foot was in the door, so the first door was accomplished, "Sorry to have taken up your paperwork time." She'd be back later, or find a back door. She was good at that.