revivalproject | Clarice's Event Catch-All

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Clarice's Event Catch-All | OTA

WHO: Clarice and youuuuuuuu
WHERE: Various places around Coruscant
WHAT: Exploring, investigating ... and being a bit of an art snob
WHEN: All through the event!
WARNINGS: None yet, but if anything worthy comes up I'll put it in the comment headers. <3

Starling had scarcely had time to get her bearings on Temba before she woke up on the ship, to the strange message. It hadn't taken much to wake her: she'd slept lightly, and took a speed-run of a shower, not wanting to waste the precious hot water afforded to the crew. She didn't want to step out onto new ground and make the impression of a hot mess, after all. After combing out her damp hair, she put it up in a ponytail to keep it off her neck, then shook out her only set of clothes, judiciously inspecting the cashmere sweater for wrinkles and wishing for an iron. Ah well. It was what it was. She'd been provided with credit, at least. Maybe the first order of business - after breakfast - was to get something new to wear.

A: (In Person) Everything will always be alright - when we go shopping
The amount of options were even more staggering than New York, or Paris, Clarice marveled, as the taxi dropped her off in Coruscant's shopping district. She'd counted her credits on the ship, not wanting to be tacky in counting them in public.

She starts off by window shopping, browsing from store to store to get a feel for the prices and the styles: what people consider high fashion, lowbrow, and somewhere in between. She decides a sturdy outfit, something working-class, would be the best choice for back on Temba, but there was also nothing wrong with spoiling herself a little and having something that would make her look good should a situation call for it. Feel free to find her as she's molesting various pieces of clothing, rubbing it between her fingers to check texture or thread count, or as she's sitting down on a bench to try on a smart-looking yet rugged pair of boots.

B: (Network) And you told me all your plans - how you would never let them go
New as she is, Starling takes her responsibility and her new mission seriously. The mystery of Coruscant and the many people brought to Temba from this place has piqued her interest, and so her first thought as a newcomer is to seek them out. She takes out her comm device - a new, strange thing in itself - and taps on the garish pink icon, thinking a moment before composing her message.

Hello, everyone. My name is Clarice Starling. I only just arrived in Temba the day before we were sent here to Coruscant, and I admit that I have many questions ... particularly for those of you who are familiar with this world. In the interest of helping the Agri, would any of you be willing to sit with me for a brief interview of sorts? I would be more than willing to get you a cup of whatever equivalent to coffee they have here, or light lunch, to thank you for your time.

C: (In Person) A bittersweet, evocative song... that doesn't remind us of Musetta's Waltz
After a long day of investigating and attempting to do what she was brought here to do, Clarice changes into the nicer of the ensembles she's bought for herself: a jewel-green gown with a white shawl to stave off any evening chill. The opera house is advertising a new Bith opera, whatever that might mean, and Clarice shows up to purchase herself a ticket with confidence, sliding into the crowd as though she belongs there. Anyone who hasn't met her yet may just mistake her for a native, even as she purchases a program, hoping to learn a bit more about what she's about to indulge in.

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That didn't really narrow it down, but not even knowing what S.H.I.E.L.D. was definitely changed the landscape, discarding plenty of possibilities for Tony as he realized, "Oh. You don't have any superheroes, either." That there could have been three different Earths that managed to survive the second World War alone without the Invaders seemed vanishingly likely to Tony, so maybe the Agrii were pulling multiple people from wherever Jon, Kyle and Clarice were coming from like they were with the Force people.

Before Clarice had to get too caught up in the hero thing, Tony shook his head to dismiss it, don't worry about it, and explained, "International spy agency. Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage and Logistics Directorate," very primly to hit every consonant, then took a gasping breath for the effort, rolling his eyes. "FBI," he landed on with confidence.

Superheroes was a word she'd heard from a few other people in the last few days, so it didn't surprise her to hear it from anyone else. His dismissal of it may have surprised her slightly, though. Once he'd spit out his mouthful, and given her a slight idea that this unfamiliar spy agency may have dealt specifically with those superheroes she wasn't to worry about, she winked at him.

"Yeah," she said with relish. "Not hard once you've guessed near everything else, though, is it, Tony? How long've you been involved with S.H.I.E.L.D?"

If he had to ask how she knew, he hadn't been minding himself - or estimating her perception - nearly well enough. The fact alone that he knew of such an agency by name or could guess that she had enough clout to belong to it said he knew more than the average citizen. And he said that name with something almost approaching respect, with the exception of that eyeroll. Which made her wonder if he held it in the same dubious, possibly fallen-from-grace regard that she did the Bureau, given her own treatment of her reply.

"Hey, you could have been military, there's a whole..." Tony tried to defend himself in that very challenging guessing game, hand spread to sweep across the myriad of acronyms available to him once he started delving into that well and to distract from the very immediate evidence that Clarice did not compose herself like a soldier. Tony was sure that kind of thing would have made this conversation much more difficult.

Okay, he had really narrowed down the field, and he surrendered to the accusation with his defending hand dropped limply into his lap and a wry smile. It remained as he raised his eyebrows and insisted, "You wound me," for this spurious accusation of S.H.I.E.L.D. involvement. "I try to keep to the fringes, not my scene, but..." Now that he had to think about it that way, how long he had been in this dance, he realized with some surprise, "My whole life. Kind of a family business. They pay better now than they did when I was five, that's a bonus. You didn't tell me why you stopped. "

At that first remark, she gave him a smile that said the 'uh HUNH' which would have cut him deeper with aloud. When he said she'd wounded him, she let herself be charmed, and the smile turned less teasing, more warm.

When he was five, though? Her eyes widened a little in surprise. S.H.I.E.L.D at five. Jedi at infancy. She was wondering if out there in the wide existence there was some agency that recruited people from the womb.

Then it was her turn, the invisible baton passed, and she paused, gracefully steeling herself to share something just as personal. "It wasn't my choice. Not at first. I was tracking a fugitive. One of their victims - the horrible man I mentioned earlier, in fact - wanted them for his own personal, gruesome idea of revenge. So he started pulling a lot of political purse-strings and had me framed as the fugitive's collaborator. Placed a false classified ad that had me tipping him off with details his friends on the inside got from my personal files. They called for my resignation and I gave it to them. I wish I'd told them where to stick my badge, in retrospect."

The opera below was breaking for intermission, the lights rising on the floor.

"Shall we refill our drinks? My treat this time."

Not expecting the intermission to be upon them already, the lights had Tony blinking in bewilderment and peering around at the empty stage and the audience below filtering out into the aisles. That went by fast. Tony bounced up to offer Clarice a helping hand as he said, "He must have been incredibly threatened," eyes narrowed curiously for what Clarice might have done to deserve that kind of manipulation. She had made it sound like this guy had plenty enough under his control to not be so worried about one FBI agent. "He just left you alone after that?" That was definitely not where the sordid tale would have ended for a superhero who got in the wrong person's way.

Time flies with good conversation ... either that, or Coruscant operas are short. Maybe a little bit of both. Clarice is a little amused at his surprise, even if she shares it herself, and accepts his offered hand with a smile.

"I was in the way of his revenge, and that revenge seemed to be the only thing he had left to live for," she said with a graceful shrug, rearranging her shawl afterwards. "He was a pretty terrible man, himself, but I'll spare you the sordid details unless you're really interested. The whole thing is twisted." Fascinating from a psychological point of view, yes, but definitely twisted.

"As for why Mason didn't come after me himself, well. The fugitive he was gunning for got to him first. Mason got the brunt of the punishment he was planning to mete out himself. I only heard about it secondhand, of course, but I'd imagine it wasn't pretty."

Even with that much information, Tony could imagine the details were not for the faint of heart, making him twist his mouth uncertainly at hearing any more for now. They had made it into the hall by then, and the glittering opera fans milling around them probably weren't there for that kind of story. With that in mind, he pointed a thumb back toward their box and hissed, "Did you catch any of that?" Clarice had been intent on her program and the show occasionally, she might have actually engaged on some level with the presentation while Tony was largely happily ignoring the details. The second half was going to be hard to get through if they didn't bump into another game to play with each other. Something that could help Tony mete out how much of these story was a tragic end to a promising career, or a carefully crafted version for the sake of Clarice's charm.

Starling noticed the change of subject, but with all his talk of military and secret organizations and heroes, Tony probably wasn't one of said faint of heart, and was bringing up the opera so they'd blend in better with the crowd now that they could be overheard. She appreciated his finesse, and nodded slowly, holding her program out to him and pointing to each of the pictures in turn.

Thankfully, the story itself was one that had paralells to her own life here and there that were a little hard to ignore.

"It's a little heavy on the archetypical, but all opera is at the core," she said, moving in close to his side. "The planet the opera takes place on is being beseiged by a formidable army, and only one warrior has ever been able to outsmart their tactics. He's unorthodox, and dangerous, and there are rumors that he may be one of the long-lost Sith. The only problem is, he's one of the home planet's most notorious prisoners of war. They send a Senator in to speak to him, to try and broker some sort of agreement. That number with all the amber lighting, about halfway through the first act? That's when they meet. He's courteous. Not what she expected."

A fond smile turns the corner of her lips, and her touch on the page is almost tender. She's giving herself away, but she misses Hannibal, especially here, in the sort of place he would have loved to go. She doesn't give a good god damn if Tony sees through it.

It was difficult to tell, at first, how much of the explanation was Clarice picking up where they had left off before they entered the auditorium, but the smooth delivery and the images that did seem to tell this story that Clarice was sketching for Tony were very convincing. The warmth in her conclusion must have been real, otherwise an ill-fitting fragment on the equation, so whether she knew all that much about the opera or not, she was definitely telling Tony something. She hadn't been in this situation for very long, despite her adaptability, and Tony was probably not going to be the best to talk about the trauma they all shared now from waking up on this alien planet, so unfathomably far from the people that they thought they would be waking up to. He took Clarice's hand from the page instead, holding gently against her palm rather than linking their fingers like he meant to hold her hand and continued with a barely believable absent detachment while she decided what to do with the gesture, "Is he not as bad as they say, then?" Twisting his free hand in the air to produce how he had to assume an opera like that was going to play out, "His heroic acts reveal his wrongful conviction, but he still dies a tragic, noble death in the end, blah blah, curtains."

"Well, we haven't gotten that far yet," she says, pulling herself up out of it with the touch of his hand on hers - a literal touchstone to reality. "As of the entr'acte, there's the inevitable tearing-apart for the sake of suspense: he believes she's been lying to him, they're afraid he'll manipulate her. He's moved to another prison, a solitary cell somewhere full of pain and torment. We'll probably open the act on a lot of red lights and pain symbols, if that's where they're going." That much she had judged of the opera itself, having glanced at the stage in the last few minutes, and recognized the tropes. Her own story had far less torment and pain and a lot more bureaucratic tape.

"But at least one of them is going to die on stage. It makes it easier. Cleaner. More easy to maintain the illusion of black and white."

That Clarice didn't so readily buy into Tony's hypothesis had him asking, "You think it might be the Senator?," doing his best to look aristocratically scandalized and fanning his face with his free hand for this riskier storytelling. He hoped this proposal of Clarice's wasn't still coming from a personal place, because that meant she either had a bleak outlook for her own future, or had been the dangerous warrior all along and Tony hadn't seen the hint of it. "These people don't like to be reminded that they can die," he continued, tipping his head toward the crowd that Tony had figured out long ago was 85% politicians, and the rest in their sphere.

((ooc: there is only one thing I can listen to while tagging this now))

"Heavens forbid," she said, playing along with his farce as a few heads swiveled in their direction. Tony's remark about politicians not liking to think they could die made her cover her mouth with her hand in mock dismay to hide the smile that bloomed there. "No, no, the whole point of tragedy is that the end still holds seeds of hope. I do have a feeling the poor war criminal is doomed, but as for how and why, part of me doesn't want to dig too deeply. I do still like to be surprised by a good story."

A pause. "It would really be scandalous if she freed him and they ran off together, don't you think? But that doesn't seem much of an operatic theme."

Maybe not, but it did have Tony cocking his head, intrigued in a way that the opera had entirely failed to capture him. Maybe it was his lack of opera engagement, but he asked, "You don't think so? That sounds very grand to me, I could see the flashing lights and cymbal crashes for a tense prison break, that's opera...stuff." He almost forgot the role he was supposed to be playing and smiled very charmingly at the older woman brushing by them that he did not just swear in front of. The smile dropped the moment her back was to them and Tony continued, "More of the beginning of a story than something to throw in at the end, though. The whole war thing is a meetcute. Couple of lovers on the run, that's a much more interesting adventure."

The near-slip with the swear threatened to turn her smile into a grin. "It's a story I'd much rather see, I agree. But it's a little harder to sing in an operatic manner during action scenes. I get the feeling that would be the Broadway musical adaptation." She winks. "Though they'd lose a lot of genre purists in the conversion. Not only that, but when most of the patrons are folks who like the order of things as it is, writing something about turning all that on its ear would probably go over like a lead balloon."

A pause, and a little smile with just enough tell in it to show him that her story is closer to the one not being told on the stage than the one she was recounting. "Mind you, real art happens whether the money's there or not."

Edited (you saw no typo) 2021-04-19 22:37 (UTC)

While Tony was nodding and squinting his eyes like he was definitely paying attention, he absolutely was not fairly early on; there was a fun challenge in pretending to know anything about alien culture, but this was feeling far too down to Earth anymore. Still nodding slightly, Tony waved a hand in front of his face and asked, "Did you notice when I checked out there? Me neither, it was seamless, the next time you try to talk to me about Broadway, I'm giving one of those ostrich-looking fellas over there your number, they look pushy." He looked very serious but for the teasing glint in his eye, then tossed his head to ask, "This is really your thing, huh? Have you been to Broadway? Nothing good ever happens there. I almost lost an arm, and got the worst food poisoning of my life there." Granted, it sounded like Clarice was much less likely to run into a dragon or E.Coli spraying supervillains, but that didn't make the shows any better.

He was a jokester, to be sure, and she knew it came with how much he wanted and/or needed attention. Even so, Tony’s bald-faced admittance that he checked out earned him another one of her bright peals of laughter and a roll of her eyes which may have made that pushy gentlecreature in the crowd a little jealous indeed. She knew there were people in the throng who had their eyes on either of them – they were both good-looking, effervescent people in a scene where such things were cause for note. “It’s alright, I won’t go into detail about the libretto on you. But only because it isn’t in Spanish or Italian.”

A few lights over the entranceways changed color – clearly the Coruscanti way to show intermission was nearing completion. “I’ve never been to Broadway, no, but I can’t say I envy you the experience. Some of the music is alright, but … I can’t say it was ever anything that caught my interest. The opera is … well, let’s just say I got into it because someone I’m close to is a fan.”

"It's those Romantic libretto's that you can't leave alone, really turn you on," Tony laughed in return, looking gleeful that he could tease her about something that was unavoidably nerdy, under any scrutiny. The sharp-eyed lady turning heads in the sleek gown hadn't prepared Tony for that treat. His gaze darted up and around the room's once more shifting tide like he was considering whether he would actually go back into the auditorium with Clarice, or take his chance to escape to a more lively event, but linked his arm with Clarice's again.

"I'm not often conscious of it, but it's a wonderful gift, isn't it? How much room there is in our hearts for the most surprising parts of the people in our lives. My last girlfriend, she did the whole tea ceremony thing, laying out the table and the mixing and the pouring--still not my thing, but I hated tea before that for--thirty years, then she comes along. You know?" Tony didn't know he had much good to leave in anybody else's heart, or if Clarice was enchanting enough yet to leave him wondering about librettos (probably, he had a long night ahead of him), but he patted his free hand on his chest, very aware of everything he was proud of being parts of people he still loved. "I wouldn't know what I left with anyone else. Do you?"

"Oh, now, Tony, don't make me go getting indecent in public," she laughed back, fanning herself with the document in question in the moment before they linked arms. "I could never show my face at the office if it got back to the steno pool." She said that with an acridity that showed she'd rather die than be one of Those Sort Of Women, the women who stayed where Those Sort of Men thought they belonged and did it happily.

They start back up toward their seats as he's talking about the tea ceremonies, and she gives a soft, charmed hum. She's always thought tea ceremonies seemed so elegant and just ... sacred, special, though she's never had the privilege of witnessing one herself. She's only jealous for a nanosecond, mostly pleased for him that he had spent time with someone who made him happy.

"I can't say for certain, honestly. I think that'd be something that'd be up to them to decide. Any of 'em. But ..." She gives it a moment's earnest thought, anyway, since it's another way of sharing herself. "My time. My honesty. People I'm in good with ... if they need my time or my ear, they get it, and I get their back. I remember what's done and I pay it back, good or ill. If I had to choose what I'd want people to keep from me, it'd be that." A tiny smirk. "Or corrupting certain gourmet food snobs into grudgingly appreciating Hostess Snoballs."

It was difficult to determine a difference in age when their dimensions didn't quite align, and it was easy to rest on hope that some familiar habits meant a person that Tony met on this alien planet could be placed confidently in time. Like Jon before her, Tony realized with sudden clarity that Clarice might not have been of exactly the same generation as Tony, because he raised an eyebrow at the acid in her delivery despite helplessly laughing along with her. That sounded a bit like a joke he would hear from his mom. She was adapting shockingly well to the surprising advancements of Coruscant, if that hypothesis had any merit.

He let out another snort of surprise at her Snoballs, admitting, "I was ready to give you shit for that pageant answer, please, my time, you're an angel, I already got it." He was rolling his eyes, but when they settled back on Clarice he was returning the smirk with appreciation for that very sweet answer. Inspiring more patience and honesty in the people in her life was more noble than an appreciation for opera or tea, and were some revealing values. Tony led her to an actual seat this time, instead of crouching and giggling in the dark together, where he dropped into a casual lounge in his chair with his legs crossed at the knee to bounce a restless foot.

"This is going to sound crazy--listen, as much as any of this is crazy, I don't know what the boundaries are, sweetheart--and I swear it's not because of the Snoballs, although I'm pretty sure they stopped producing those a decade ago because of the formaldehyde content or something, but--what year is it, for you?" he asked before dropping his chin into his hand where he frowned with curiosity.

"One of those boundaries? Don't call me sweetheart just yet." She was secure enough in herself now to be polite about it, and he'd proven himself good, respectable company otherwise. Anyone else, several years ago, would have had her simmering with silent rage about it for weeks while she smiled and let them say whatever they wanted.

She settled into a chair beside him with grace, but also stretched out. Country classy was what she had begun to think of herself as, and she had learned to be quite a social chameleon. Her ankles still crossed demurely but her shoulders slouched into the middle of the chair, studying his own mannerisms with equal interest. "But I suppose that sort've thing is why you're asking. Also, there is no got dam formaldehyde in my Snoballs, I don't know what your world is on about." She gave him what her mother used to call 'the hairy eyeball', but smiled while she did it. "It was 2003. I left the Bureau in 2001. Day of its anniversary, even. That was some real insult to injury, let me tell you what."

Edited (gosh some of that was a mess. it's better now.) 2021-04-23 15:50 (UTC)

With how readily Clarice had been playing along with him so far, it was hard for Tony to see what threads to pull to get her rattled, so the self-assured request had the immediate effect on him of a challenge that he met with his chin leaned into his hand, propped up on the arm of his seat, where he narrowed his eyes with a distinctly impish curiosity. He didn't quite say, 'We'll see about that', but his smirk, poorly concealed against his knuckles, did a lot of the work for him. She was polite about it now.

Still leaning into his scrutiny, his eyebrows jumped in charmed surprise at the language that revealed more of Clarice's facets hidden with her nerdiness behind that elegant gown. Got damn to tell you what, that didn't usually make it into an opera box. It was almost enough to distract Tony from, "Three?," not sure if he was delighted or horrified. "Beyonce hasn't even gone solo! Of course you don't know any Avengers, I don't know any Avengers! You've never blocked someone trying to sell you diet pills on Facebook!"

His reaction amused the hell out of her, even if she didn't know most of what he was referring to. She could guess from context that they were all very common-place things in his time, regardless of what sort of background anyone had. "Facebook," she chose to focus on with a raise of her eyebrows. "Sounds like something out of George Orwell. Don't you mean 'out of a' Facebook, though? Or is this an internet thing?"

The internet was really still finding its sea legs, at least in terms of FBI usage. Google had just barely come into being. YouTube was still just a glimmer in someone's eye, and God knows no one had even thought of TikTok. With that context in mind, her skepticism of Internet Things was pretty well founded. To Starling, the Internet was still for people with too much free time on their hands or for people who needed to come in and Have A Seat.

That was about all Clarice needed to know to really understand Facebook and it only took her a couple of tries, so as the lights went down in the theatre and the orchestra came crashing back to life, Tony sunk down in his seat with another sly smile and his finger touched to his nose. By the end of this night, she was going to have a very different perception of the internet and what it could be if Tony got his chance to explain social media and the new age of communication to her, but this time as the colours erupted in the alien stage, he turned to watch more attentively than he had while whispering enthusiastically with her at the front of the viewing box. It might have been an inscrutable media, in languages that Tony lagged in comprehending as several of them tangled together in their urgent thrall to the drama, but there was still plenty enough to it that Clarice found familiar and meaningful to her. Occasionally, Tony's gaze would slide to her in the dark instead, watching more curiously than he could really muster for the tragedy being performed, but without much to do with his hands in the dark and in a deep debt from dangerously wakeful nights, he was soon not watching anything at all and dreaming the end of the opera for himself in the secure darkness of the theatre.

She drew parallels in the storyline with her own, clearly, but it diverged considerably, and her face made it plain where, for as long as Tony could stay awake. By the end of the show, she had a few trails down her cheeks, and had surreptitiously glanced over at Tony during a few key points to see how he'd react to the twists and tragedies.

Of course he'd fallen asleep. To be truthful, she was grateful he hadn't seen her cry. She reached for her handkerchief and cleaned herself up before going to find a droid to help her get him to a hovertaxi and back to their shared hotel. People would talk, for certain. She had a feeling he'd approve of that.

By the time they were returned to the hotel and the droid had helped carry Tony to his room, Starling was flagging, herself. However, she still had enough presence of mind and manners to take a piece of the hotel stationery and write him a brief note.

Tony,
I hope you dreamt up a better ending than what happened on stage. Thank you for an unexpectedly wonderful evening.
With wishes to meet again soon,
Clarice

She folded it in half and left it on his bedside table, then paid the droid its credits and showed herself back to her room, satisfied and emptied out in that way that only a good opera in good company can do.

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Clarice's Event Catch-All | OTA

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/creative liberties ahoy!

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this made me LOL when I first saw it in my inbox, you win

really, Clarice is lucky, simpler times

you're not kiddin'. TY for this, it was a delight!