Price of Business

[churbooseanon]

Summary: How had he ended up here? Aiden Price had believed in the wrong people, made the wrong choices, and he’d been punished for it. But here and now, before one Malcolm Hargrove and with the chance to reclaim all he had lost before him, there was a decision to be made.

How far would he go, what agreements would he make to set his life right?

Long ago I had this theory that perhaps the ‘wrong people’ the Counselor mentioned believing in back in S13E7 might be a different party altogether and spun out the idea of how things might play out if he had the chance to confront those individuals.

This story thus exists in an AU post the death of Sharkface, with Aiden being taken to the Staff of Charon rather than being left on the Tartarus to his fate. Would take place sometime between Episodes 16 and 18.

Also known as the story that made me love writing Price. He’s so in his head. 

(For the-meta for listening to me build this ridiculous idea.)
 

Price of Business

    The doors hissed lightly as they slid open, a noise which momentarily gave him pause. In an era where such a noise was less a result of function, where doors were meant to move smoothly and quietly, so small a noise as a rush of air or the oil-aided slide of metal against metal may tell a great deal. At least, they might to a man who knows how to read such small oddities in the carefully constructed realities that people built around themselves. The stages they set to best showcase their carefully constructed and jealously guarded self-image. Once he behaved in much the same way in order to heighten the sense of authority one might bestow upon him at a glance, or affect a certain posture to suggest a more self-possessed air than he was capable of managing in a given moment. In the end, he had more than ample experience with reading the pageantry of others, in constructing it, and in knowing just how it can be shifted to his advantage.

    For instance, the noise of the door. As Aiden Price had been led through the winding corridors of the Staff of Charon (clearly in a failed attempt to confuse his sense of location as the parties involved did not know of or care to recall his experience upon ships this size) he had noted that all the doors opened and closed silently. Perhaps there was noise on either side of the door, or small marks upon them which might betray their purpose, but each opened and shut without so much as a breath of air. That this door violated said principal was likely form over function, it was the goal. Which could suggest that the occupant was concerned by the prospect of being approached without warning. It was a slight touch that reinforced the conclusion that Price had come to long ago.

    Malcolm Hargrove was growing nervous in his old age.

    It is a suggestion in a noise that only reinforces the fact that Aiden found himself brought here under said armed guard. He did not possess a firearm, nor would he seek one out. In addition to that, the munitions stores on this vessel were no doubt securely locked down, so even were he to desire to seek out a weapon, none would find itself readily available to him without intense conflict with one of his guards or another member of the crew. In the process of attempting to acquire a weapon he could only betray any cause the might pursue in the very acquisition. Add to this the fact that he had two guards instead of only one spoke further of Hargrove’s concern.

    A moment passed where Aiden allowed himself to entertain the notion that the weapon Hargrove feared was his words. The way he analyzed and framed his arguments based upon the audience it was to be delivered to. More often than not, Aiden had found his eloquence to be a source of power, station, and even his survival. Had he not kept Sharkface from learning his true role in the grand scheme of things? Had he not convinced the mercenaries to make use of him without reporting his role back to their employer? Had he not, over the years, helped to create Project Freelancer and shape the minds of those who passed through it?

    A mind was a terrible thing to waste, but so too were words, and Aiden could not help but be amused at the idea that perhaps Hargrove protected himself from Aiden raising a mutiny against him. As if he possessed a single thing to offer these men, to threaten them with, so that they would serve his ends. They were not the mercenaries, they were not the former UNSC soldier turned war criminal, and they were most decidedly not the members of his team. He had no carrot to tempt with, and no rod to bring to bear.

    Here, in this room, he was as powerless as Hargrove might attempt to render him. Yet the display of force bespoke feared power.

    Strange how fear of a thing made said thing more powerful. Aiden cleared his throat upon entering the room and one of the guards made a low, warning noise. As if his voice had some sport of power to sway men.

    “Sir, the prisoner delivered, as you requested,” one of the guards announced, and Aiden watched as the older man on the far side of the room remained standing there, not turning to look upon them. Instead the man raised a hand.

    It must have been a dismissive gesture, for with it the soldiers saluted briefly and then turned and walked out of the room. Again the door hissed, this time announcing the departures. Did it bring the man across the room comfort, Aiden wondered, or would he stand there for a while concerned that one of his guards stayed at Aiden’s side, waiting to shoot him down? Or was he too caught up in the calculated display of disdain he executed in the refusal to face his guest.

    Aiden let his eyes cast about the room for a bit, taking in each item present quickly. There was no telling when exactly his host would turn around to greet him properly, and once he did Aiden would meet his gaze levelly. Many people seemed to be unnerved by that when addressing one they saw as an inferior. It could be read as defiance or attention, and Aiden found it depended upon what one expected of the individual they were facing. Hargrove likely believed Aiden cowed, humbled, or perhaps a true convert to the cause who had sought and attempted to execute their revenge. As such he would see attentiveness, perhaps obedience, while all he was getting was the same mask Aiden offered anyone who attempted to control him.

    The speed of his gaze did not diminish the value of the looking, of course. A mind could easily be trained to take in and properly retain knowledge at speed, and Aiden had long since learned the skill of it. It was, in a way, what made him so good at drawing people around to his point of view. He was as good, he believed, at noting what minute details could tell him about another person as he was at putting what he learned to use. Luckily the details here were not minute, and his eyes had but to brush over the display that was clearly trophies, to realize their reason. Their value. Their gloating purpose.

    Each symbolized a battle between Charon Industries (and more specifically Malcolm Hargrove) against Project Freelancer. The Brute Shot, a weapon stolen from him and emblematic to The Meta. To have it returned to his presence not only represented his possession, and by extension his honor, restored, but it bespoke the downfall of a mighty warrior through his machinations. The Project Freelancer A.I. storage unit, no doubt Epsilon’s, represented not only the crimes which Freelancer and Director Church had committed, but his corrupting of the Project’s own tool of Agent Washington for the ultimate downfall of The Meta, the remains of the Project, and even Aiden himself. Paired with that was the alien device, an orb, that Aiden had seen referenced in the files possessed by the mercenaries. While he knew little of its meaning to Hargrove himself, or it’s place in the downfall of the Project, it did represent his interest in and power accrued from ancient Alien technologies. The helmet, black and damaged, no doubt belonged once to the fragmented form of Epsilon’s consciousness, the memory Epsilon possessed of Agent Texas. From Aiden’s own experience it had been the will of that fragment in particular which had killed the Meta, drawn Agent Carolina out of hiding, and prompted the chain of events which had led to…

    The magnum. Aiden shuddered to look at it. In the first second that he saw it the form settled in his mind with a generic labelling. It was a weapon, an instrument of violence, destruction, and death. Of course, recently he had acquired many reasons and first hand experiences which had altered his previous unconscious reactions to such things. There was only so many times a gun could be leveled at a rational man by people whose willingness to pull the trigger on a valuable asset was not in question before it left a lasting imprint. Too often he had pushed Locus or Felix or even Terrance far enough to have a chance to study the ‘business-end’ of a gun in unfortunate detail. Perhaps it was luck that he had not lost blood to the rages of any of the three, but perhaps it was design. If Hargrove had known of his presence on the Tartarus, then his survival was likely a deliberate play.

    After all, there was much that Aiden knew that even the records of the Project Freelancer, lacked. Things that Aiden could offer that Hargrove would have a difficult time finding in another source.

    At least, that was what Aiden let himself think to keep himself from losing his cool every last time a weapon was leveled at him.

    This one, though, was a different case entirely. It was not leveled at him, in fact it hung in a suspension field like any other trophy in the room. Hargrove was not close enough to it to threaten with the gun, though if it was loaded the presence itself might be an implied one. No, its placement with the other trophies, and the grappling-attachment told a tale all its own when he truly thought of it. As he looked, he thought of one of the few men in his life he had respected, had trusted, had attempted to work with as equals, and not for the first time he allowed himself a brief moment to mourn the loss of a valuable scientist who had been so close to finding the answer to the survival of humanity before he had been pulled astray by the ghosts that no amount of therapy from Aiden could disperse.

    As he had unfortunately proved with Terrance, it was by no means easy to dispel ghosts that would drive one toward vengeance. Those were the most potent of specters, and their hold was in the form of chains around the throat and puppet lines strung up to play those they possessed like characters in a classic tragedy.

    Here, then, the means by which Leonard Church had been cut from his own strings, and freed into the void that came after. What greater prize could the man who had sought to destroy him possess? Here then, the blade which vanquished his foe and named him victor. A long war waged on, but that battle, a crucial one, won. And here the symbol of it. The victory banner erected where only he might see it.

    At last there was the rustle of fabric and Aiden’s eyes snapped to Hargrove before the man could fully turn around. Something in him found his hands tucking behind his back, his legs spreading just a little. Perhaps it was wrong of him to invoke the specter of Leonard Church in this place, but had Hargrove not begun it? Besides, to Price’s knowledge, the two had never actually met, and so Hargrove may not realize that such a stance was characteristic of his lost enemy.

    “Aiden Price,” Hargrove spoke as he turned, his voice a pronunciation of the name not as a greeting, but a condemnation from a judge which still might be staved off. More than once Aiden had used that same tone upon Freelancers who were problematic, the ones who did not respond as desired to the soft, leading questions he offered. Butch Flowers, for instance, had been a master of the redirect, and more than once Aiden had been forced to use such a tone to bring the man back to the topic at hand.

    It was never, though, a way to begin a conversation. Starting by treating one’s conversational partner as an adversary only prompted adversarial behavior. What, then, did Hargrove intend to provoke with such an approach?

    “Malcolm Hargrove,” Aiden greeted right back, voice under his full control. “It has been a while since we last encountered each other, I do believe.”

    “Quite true,” Hargrove agreed, and then he was approaching, as if he had no concern with Aiden’s presence. Perhaps he need not. “I must say, I was not expecting the honor of your presence.”

    A dubious honor in Aiden’s opinion. “I would estimate that it has been approximately four years.”

    Hargrove nodded in agreement as he came to a stop. Instead of standing close to the screen at the far end of the room, he now stood in the middle, regarding Aiden impassively. Time, Aiden thought, had not been kind to the CEO of Charon Industries. Of course he had been long since bald the last time Aiden had met him, but there was a sallow cast to Hargrove’s skin, a sunken darkness beneath his eyes. There were more wrinkles, which was to be expected with time, but they all bespoke fatigue. No, the involvement of the Simulation Soldiers and Aiden’s surviving Agents had not been the best for Hargrove’s health, either physical or mental. In one of his more impressive displays of self control since the Tartarus was taken over, Aiden managed not to smile at the revelation.

    “Indeed,” Hargrove agreed, and with a crooking of his fingers it was clear he intended Aiden to approach. Who was Aiden to reject in the situation? “I have a proposal to offer you.”

    “I surmised as much from my presence,” Aiden informed him coolly, moving easily to the older man’s side. Dr. Church, he thought, would not have beckoned, he would have commanded. Strange how Aiden prefered that in someone that asked him to commit grievous crimes to threats to his life or this soon to be attempt at bribery. “How is it that I might assist you?”

    “From the information provided to me by my mercenaries, I would say that you have already been assisting our efforts to a very serious degree. Your work with one ‘Sharkface’ was particularly exemplary.”

    “And perhaps would have yielded more were it not for his unfortunate encounter with former Agents Carolina and Washington within Armonia before it’s destruction,” Price agreed. “It is a shame, as the man had quite the promise.”

    “Yes,” Hargrove agreed, with a strange readiness and a stranger distance to his voice. After a moment, he returned to the moment, or shook off the thought and regarded Price once more. “As I said, I have a proposal for you. I believe your involvement with more of my hired troops, as well as the… less orthodox individuals under my command.”

    “I was under the impression that the responsibility of Felix and Locus.”

    There was a strange note to his tone, and yet again Price was less than interested in it. The implication was clear. At some point soon Hargrove intended to be free of the mercenaries, and he wanted something to replace them. Perhaps for Aiden to select the most tractable, or most useful in another way.

    “And what do I receive from this exchange,” Aiden asks, ‘“other than my life and perhaps my freedom?”

    Hargrove chuckled. “Yes, your freedom, and your life back.”

    What would you do, if those people were here now? Would you kill’em?

    “I need more than that,” Aiden said after a long moment. The pronunciation seemed to get to the man he stood beside, because Hargrove turned to look at him instead of the starscape beyond the observation window.

    “What do you want then? I am capable of giving you much.”

    Aiden twisted and looked to the trophies behind him. He didn’t need to answer really, because the movement seemed to do all the implication he wanted it to do.

    “Which?”

    “The magnum.”

    That seemed to give Hargrove greater pause than anything which had come before.

    “Why?”

    Aiden turned to fully regard the display, and Hargrove mimicked the motion. “There was a time at which I believed in Leonard Church, in what we were doing. I believed in him and all we were doing. Perhaps our methods were questionably ethical, perhaps by the end we had lost what we aimed for. The changes, of course, were because of him. But to the end, I believed.”

    “So why the weapon that killed him?”

    And here, he thought, was the power of words. If he chose the right ones the weapon would be his in time. Granted to him in this room. If there was a bullet he would have the chance he had gone through all of this to find.

    If it meant getting my life back, I would.

    To think the answer had been crafted long before to placate another man too filled with rage.

    “I believed in the wrong person, and by the time I had come to realize it, the damage was already done.”

    The words must have been the right ones, because he heard a pleased sound behind them. Good. All he needed to do was make sure that until the gun was his they all believed. Because there was no way he believed the answer. Maybe he won’t get his life back, but sometimes you just had to accept what you could do. Take the revenge offered, not what would be best.

    That, of course, was where Hargrove failed. Revenge wasn’t a grand scheme that tore your enemy down piece by piece and left their flaws bare to the world to see. Revenge wasn’t a man in a jail or a name ruined or keeping the pieces of their lives when you’ve won.

    Revenge is standing alive when the other is dead.

    Aiden intended to be the one still standing. Though he would be guilty of a bit of poetry if he could use Leonard’s gun to do it.