Sofia listens without interrupting. That’s the only concession she makes: silence. Everything else about her stays pointed—posture too straight, expression too controlled, eyes too awake. She picks up her glass, doesn't drink—just holds it, looking at him over the rim.
"You didn't answer my question," she says.
Not aggressive. Just noting it. Filing it away.
She sets the glass down and looks at the table between them, thinking. When she speaks again her voice is measured, and the mannerly Sofia is all the way back now, precise and contained and more dangerous for it.
"You're right that loud gets people killed." She adjusts the stem of her glass slightly, a small, controlled movement. "I know that. I've watched this city eat itself over things people should have left alone."
She looks up at him.
"But you just told me Gotham could burn." Her voice stays even. "And you want me to trust that you're handling it quietly." A pause, deliberate. "With no backup. No one who knows what you're doing. And a map I gave you six days ago."
She folds her hands on the table. The ruined napkin sits just outside her careful posture like evidence of who she'd been an hour ago.
"A gentle touch," she repeats. "Fine. I can be gentle." Her eyes don't move from his face. "But I need to know you're not walking into something you can't walk out of. Not because I care what happens to you, Logan—" a beat, "—but because if you fail, that's my city."
He did not answer her question. Nor does he intend to unless pushed. Not when he knows she won't like the answer. Wouldn't like any answer he might give.
The shift is impossible to miss. Highlighting how much of what she presents is simply a tool to get what she wants. He can't begrudge her that. Doesn't he do the same with his mannerisms? How often does he glare or stay silent or arch an eyebrow to apply unspoken pressure to his companion? Too often to count.
There's no point using any of that on Sofia. She'd see right through it, he could tell from the start.
"There are only two people who have walked into the heart of this danger and survived. I am one of them. If I can find these objects, I can make sure they're destroyed or contained safely."
He tilts his head, gaze still locked on hers. "But there is no one else who can help. There is no backup. There is me, or no one."
"I can provide you with details, delayed so you cannot interfere but not so much that you are blindsided. As a courtesy. You can help as you wish, if you wish, or not at all. Gotham is not my city, but I don't wish for its destruction."
Sofia holds her composure like it’s something she can spend, and she doesn’t spend it yet. Two people survived. One of them sitting in front of her. The other one unspoken. She notes the shape of that omission and files it away beside all the rest.
“There is me, or no one,” Sofia repeats, and the words come out soft with disbelief—then sharpen into something uglier. “Ego with nicer lighting, then.”
She lifts her glass and finally drinks, a small, precise sip. When she sets it down, it’s perfectly centered. Controlled. Mannerly. A knife laid neatly on a napkin.She picks up her wine glass. Drinks. Sets it down.
"Delayed details," she says. The words come out flat, but she's thinking behind them, working the shape of what he's offering. "So I can't get in the way, but I'm not blindsided when your 'clean' turns into something I have to explain to the GCPD."
Her fingers rest against the stem of the glass without gripping it.
"Fine," she says. Not capitulation, assessment. "That's workable."
She looks at him directly.
Her gaze stays on him, unblinking. “You don’t get to call it a courtesy when it’s a leash.”
A pause—then her voice turns practical, almost bored.
“Fine,” Sofia says again. “You want quiet with structure? Here’s structure.”
She ticks it off with her fingers, counting like an accountant tallying a debt.
“First: you give me a twenty-four hour window and a neighborhood. Not an address. A neighborhood. So I can keep my people away and keep yours from getting lost.” “Second: if you’re compromised, you send one word, which we ca agree on, and you leave. I don’t care what you’re holding. You leave.”
“Third: if I hear about a ‘piece of art’ moving through the wrong hands, I act. Not to interfere. To contain the fallout. If I find out you've let something detonate in my city because you were too proud to ask for help in time, the details you give me become something else entirely."
She doesn't name what. Doesn't need to. Sofia’s mouth puckers, slightly.
“And in return,” she says, “you get what you actually came for: the living map. Judges, cops, flooded streets, whose warehouse is really whose, which corners are watched and which ones are hungry.”
She lets the silence stretch, then adds, quieter:
“You say you don’t wish for Gotham’s destruction. Great. Prove it.”
There are few people Logan has come across as cynical as Sofia. Everything he offers, even when shared honestly, is twisted into something ugly. She comments on his explanation being egotistical, and he raises an eyebrow. Would she think the same if she knew the price of being one of those two people? Would she understand how little a boast it was for him?
But there's no point trying to explain. She wouldn't understand, and she has no reason to care whether she makes him angry or not. Yet another person who speaks from a place of ignorance and insists on commenting anyway. Disappointing.
He breathes steadily as Sofia works through her thoughts, forcing himself to focus keeping it even so that his annoyance doesn't slip through. For a moment he debates pointing out the folly of threatening royalty, but opts against it. She wouldn't take it as fair warning. No, she'd consider it more ego. So instead he simply watches and listens.
After she's finished, Logan takes a sip of wine as he considers the offer. He mulls on it for a few moments and then nods.
She picks up her glass again, holds it for a moment, then sets it back down.
"Good," she says.
She straightens slightly in her chair, something settling in her posture. Not relaxed, never relaxed, but resolved. Like a decision that's been made and signed.
"One addition." Her voice is quiet, matter-of-fact. "When this is done, whatever done looks like, you tell me what it was. All of it. Not a neighborhood. Not delayed details." She meets his eyes. "Everything. What you found, what you destroyed, what you couldn't."
She smooths the edge of the ruined napkin with one finger, an absent gesture.
"Not because I'll do anything with it. Because I let a stranger into my city and I want to know what walked out." She looks up. "I think that's fair."
A beat. Then something shifts. Not warmth exactly, but a deliberate return to manners, the way she'd worn them before Arkham. She reaches for the menu, opens it with both hands, sets it between them like a truce flag.
"We should actually eat something." Her voice comes out almost conversational. "You've been very patient with the bread situation." She glances up at him over the top of the menu. "Is there anything you don't eat? Allergies. Preferences. Things that remind you of home in a way you'd rather avoid."
Done. Will there be an end? Will he know what it looks like if there is?
Logan considers her final condition for a moment, and then nods. "That's fair."
Perhaps by then she might believe him. She might understand enough not to dismiss the truth. And if she doesn't? Well. It will be too late for her to cause a problem anyway.
He watches Sofia change her mannerisms, again, as she shifts the conversation. It's informative, the way she acts, and when she chooses to switch tactics. Logan has to wonder if he'll be able to understand it all better after a bit of time cooperating with one another. He's not so sure.
"No allergies, no." In truth, he's never had as large an appetite as she's demonstrated, but he's not going to tell her that. "Although the sea bass sounds nice."
Sofia glances down at the menu, finds the sea bass, and nods once like she's filing it away.
"Good choice," she says, and means it this time differently than she had about the restaurant, less performance, more reflex. The Falcone daughter who knew which dishes to recommend at which tables, who understood that a well-chosen meal was its own kind of language.
She flags down the waiter with a slight lift of two fingers. Precise. Unhurried.
"The sea bass," she tells him, "and the lamb. And another bottle--" she glances at what Logan and her had been drinking, "--the same."
The waiter disappears and Sofia sets the menu aside, folding her hands on the table in the ruin of the evening's earlier chaos. The feathers of her coat catch the light. The napkin stays ruined where it is.
"The lamb here is good," she says, almost conversationally. "My father used to bring clients here. Before." A small pause, neither nostalgic nor bitter. "The kitchen hasn't changed."
She picks up her water glass, which she hasn't touched all evening, and drinks from it.
"You should eat something substantial," she adds, matter-of-fact. "Whatever you're walking into this week, it won't improve on an empty stomach."
The menu had been studied the moment it was given to him, and a decision quickly made. It's curious that she feels the desire to comment on it, seemingly taking everything he offers as something to consider.
So many little gestures to seize the smallest amount of control, or establish her dominance. Making sure he knows just how much this is her city, and to remind him that he's an outsider. There's a tiny part of him that recognises that perhaps she isn't doing this on purpose, or at all, and that part is discarded quickly. It wouldn't do to underestimate her.
Although he won't he bending to even the smallest amount of pressure, either.
"Eating too heavily isn't advisable for someone who wishes to remain alert," he counters. "I'm sure the sea bass will be very nourishing. I shall enjoy the lamb vicariously through you."
Sofia's mouth curves. A real smile this time, small and dry, the kind that doesn't need an audience.
"Vicariously," she repeats. Like she's deciding whether she finds that funny or annoying. She decides on both.
“How very disciplined of you.” She says, aiming for pleasant, picking up the fresh glass of wine the waiter has just poured. "But the sea bass is light. You'll be fine."
She reaches for her water again, takes a small sip, and sets it down with care. The restaurant’s hush wraps around them; she fits into it perfectly now, as if the earlier mess had been a costume she’s already discarded.
She drinks, sets the glass down with care.
"My father used to say the same thing. Keep the mind sharp, keep the stomach light." She glances at the empty breadbasket (her doing) with something that might be faint amusement at her own expense. "He had a point. I spent a lot of time proving him right."
Her eyes come back to Logan, steady and assessing in the way they've been all evening, but with slightly less edge to it now. The deal is done. The territory is mapped.
"You'll have to tell me what Albion food is like sometime," she says. Casual. Filling the space while they wait. "If it's terrible, you don't have to be diplomatic about it. I've eaten Arkham food. My standards for horror are well established."
That's not the first time she's done that; Picked on his wording. The way he speaks annoys her, but he doesn't know any other way. He makes a note of it.
"I've always preferred lighter meals. No one ever told me it benefits the mind. It was only ever suggested that I eat more, as you just did." Something he doesn't hold against her, saluting her with his wine glass before taking a sip. Perhaps the more personal explanation will appeal to her, even if it makes a point of deviating from her father's way of thinking.
The watchfulness is to be expected, he returns it in kind, after all.
"I wouldn't suggestion Albion's food for anyone outside of Albion. It's not terrible, but there are cultures with more refined cuisine." Albion always had bigger things to focus on than making food taste better.
Logan tilts his head, considering the woman across from him. "Did your father teach you how to run your business?"
Sofia’s smile stays in place, but it goes tight at the corners.
Carmine taught her plenty. He was a stickler for manners, how to hold a fork, how to hold a room, how to make men feel safe. And then he taught her the last lesson by handing her to the city in chains, framing her for his own sins. The family went along with it. Of course they did. Arkham finished the education: trust is a liability; legitimacy is a costume; survival is a skill.
The trial or lack thereof, the newspapers, her father's silence when she needed him to speak. Her cousins' face. How easily they'd let her go.
"He tried," she says aloud. Her voice stays even. "The lessons didn't always land the way he intended."
She adjusts the stem of her glass slightly.
"I learned how to run a business. I also learned what happens when the people running it decide you're more useful as a liability than an asset." She doesn't elaborate. Doesn't need to. "The curriculum was comprehensive." She tilts her head, conversational. “Arkham taught me the rest.”
Her eyes come back to his, steady.
Then, she asks lightly, “Why? Are you trying to figure out what I’m capable of, or what I inherited?”
Sofia has his full attention. Every hesitation, every fluctuation in her voice, every work spoken and every one left unsaid. All of it taken in as Logan watches her explain her education.
Some of it he understands on a personal level. Some of it, he know from watching others in their own trials. It's as informative to him as the fact that she shares this much at all. Not everyone would.
"I'm trying to understand you." Another thoughtful pause before he shares, "Learning about someone like you helps me understand the city. As you mentioned before, I'm new here. I have plenty to learn."
Sofia absorbs that with a slight tilt of her head.
The food will arrive soon and she's aware of it the way she's aware of most things, peripherally, tracking.
Someone like me. She thinks about what that means to him. A Falcone, a criminal, a woman who spent ten years in Arkham and came out wearing feathers. A local asset. A liability he's decided to manage carefully.
He's not wrong. She is all of those things.
"The city is its people," she says. "Specifically its grudges." She smooths the tablecloth once, absently. "Gotham doesn't forget anything. It just waits."
She glances toward the door briefly, then back.
"So if you want to understand it, understand that." Her voice is even, instructional. The Falcone daughter who knew how to hold fundraisers, arrest a room. "Whatever you're looking for, someone in this city knows about it. Someone resents it. Someone's been waiting for the right moment."
Her eyes stay on his.
"That's what I am," she says simply. "Useful in that sense."
The city is its people. Logan can understand that. A city is a living, breathing thing made up of complex systems, powerful people, and the favour of the masses. It's a familiar concept. Gotham's people are what he isn't yet familiar with.
Except Logan knows that. Knows there's so much for him to learn. That's why he's here. Making himself known to someone who it would probably be wiser to avoid. Although this isn't all that strange, either. A foreign prince inviting local nobility to his table to extend respect is a time honoured tradition.
Not that he thinks Sofia cares for tradition.
Logan doesn't take his eyes off of her, soaking in every word she has to offer. "And who do you hold a grudge against?"
Sofia’s expression stays composed, but something small tightens around her eyes. The question is almost neat enough to be bait.
She thinks of Carmine first, like she always does. His silence. His pen signing her away. The family nodding along because it was easier to let her rot than risk the empire. She thinks of the city, too, for loving the story more than the truth.
"Who don't I," she says, and it comes out lighter than she intends. She drinks.
The waiter appears with their food, setting the sea bass in front of Logan with quiet efficiency, the lamb in front of her. She waits until he's gone before she continues, cutting into the lamb with the correct knife, perfectly positioned. Old habits from old lessons.
“My grudges aren’t a public service,” Sofia says, tone polite. “And they aren’t free. If you want to know who I hate, you can earn that later. For now, you should be asking who hates you, and how fast they can find you. But..."
She takes a bite. Chews. The restaurant moves quietly around them.
"Gotham itself, sometimes," she adds, and her voice has gone thoughtful rather than bitter. "For being exactly what it is and expecting everyone else to be better."
The lull in the conversation is familiar. Logan doesn't need to take his eyes off of Sofia to know the food is coming. The silence stretching a little too long to be anything but the waiter's return.
It gives him time to consider her answer. She's far from stupid, which means she likely gained enemies from her rise to power. Asking was a long shot, and she gave him more than he was entitled to. Earning further trust is more than understandable.
"I assume everyone has a reason to want me dead or ruined," he tells Sofia as he sips his wine. "Mostly dead. There's always been someone who did, from the moment I was born. I've only given more people better reasons to want the same."
Being in the crosshairs is something he's used to. Just because he's not in the limelight of Albion's throne doesn't mean he's any safer.
He finally takes up his cutlery and starts on his meal. "You have a complicated relationship with this city."
Sofia considers that, turning it over while she eats.
Everyone has a reason to want me dead. She believes him. More than that, she recognizes it. The particular exhaustion of someone who has stopped being surprised by enemies and started simply accounting for them.
She takes another bite of lamb, chews, sets her fork down briefly to reach for her wine.
"Complicated," she says, and something in her voice is almost fond. Almost. "That's one word for it."
She picks her fork back up.
"I was born into this city. Grew up watching my father own it." She cuts another piece, precise and unhurried. "Spent ten years being told I was its worst nightmare. Now I'm back and nobody quite knows what to do with me." She eats. "Including me, some days."
She glances up at him.
"You said everyone's wanted you dead from the moment you were born." Her voice stays conversational, neutral. "Not really a grudge, is it? Sounds like a condition." She tilts her head slightly. "You get used to it, or you don't."
Logan considers correcting her, pointing out that he was quite beloved as a child. Except by all his father's enemies, by those who hated monarchies, or Heroes. He wasn't hated by everyone. Just by enough people for it to be a concern. But of course it doesn't matter now. There's no need to correct her. Most people who know of him hate him these days. It amounts to the same thing in the end.
"Anyone with any sort of wealth or power should be used to enemies. It's simply a part of life." Lifting an eyebrow at her he adds, "Something I'm sure you know well."
He looks at his dinner as he asks, "Have you ever been tempted to prove them right? To show everyone that you're Gotham's worst nightmare?"
A casual question. As if they aren't talking about murder and insanity.
For a second she imagines it, vivid and easy. A handful of lamb thrown across the table to splatter his tailored suit. A plate snapped in her hands and dropped like a gunshot in the restaurant hush. She can hear Carmine's voice as clearly as if he's sitting at the table. You are a Falcone. You are not an animal.
She swallows the bite she already has and sets the fork down with care.
“Yes,” Sofia says simply, polite as bone china.
Then she picks up the lamb chop with both hands and eats it exactly like an animal, deliberate and unhurried, looking at the middle distance while she does it. Making her point to no one in particular. To the ghost of her father's voice. She lets him see the choice. Let him measure what it costs her to be civilized.
She sets the bone down, wipes her fingers on the napkin, picks up her fork and knife, and returns to eating with the perfect composure of a woman raised to host state dinners.
"Every day," she says, voice pleasant, as though the last thirty seconds didn't happen. "The temptation is constant." She cuts a precise piece. "But Gotham already decided I was its worst nightmare before I'd done anything to earn it."
She eats, sets her utensils down properly at the two o'clock position.
"So I'm selective," she says. "About when I prove them right."
Becoming a monster because of being treated like one is hardly a rare story. It's not one Logan fell into. He became a monster for other reasons. Yet it's curious how Sofia reacts to such social pressures. Insisting on playing both roles, if only to prove she's in control of her own fate.
She cares too much about what other people think, Logan suspects. In between thinking how she looks like a balverine when she eats with her hands.
The switch doesn't get a reaction out of Logan, except for a curious tilt of his head. After all, she's showing him this part of her. It's only polite to pay attention.
"And what about you?" he asks after a moment of silence. "What do you want to be?"
Sofia’s knife stills. The question is soft enough to sound kind, and she hates it for that.
It's not a question she gets asked. People tell her what she is. What she was. What she should be grateful for, or ashamed of. Nobody asks what she wants to be. Not since before Arkham. Not since Carmine looked at her across a room very much like this one and decided she was more useful as a sacrifice than a successor.
For a heartbeat she thinks of answers that would have made Carmine proud. Legitimate. Respectable. Smiling for cameras while men with blood on their hands call it charity. Then Arkham cuts in, colder. Wanting does not protect you. Wanting is how they steer you.
She sets down her cutlery, then picks it up again, correcting the placement with exacting care.
“What I want to be changes depending on who’s asking,” Sofia says, voice pleasant.
She takes a small bite, chews, swallows. Then she looks at him, steady.
“I want to be unavoidable,” she adds. “Not as a story. As a fact.”
Her mouth curves, faint and controlled. “And I want to be free enough that nobody ever gets to decide what I am again.”
It was too much to hope she might give a single, earnest answer. She plays the game, and she plays it too well. She's not about to stop, even for a moment, just because he asks a particular question.
That doesn't mean her answer isn't informative, of course. It is.
From the admission of manipulation to the precision with which she places her knife and fork. Everything tells him something. He just has to pay attention.
Not that her last answer is hard to miss. An answer he would never dare to give himself. True freedom. True independence.
Logan gives a single, small nod. "That's a good answer."
Sofia's fingers tighten around the cutlery, briefly. She loosens them before he can notice.
A good answer. She can't tell if it's approval or placation, and it bothers her more than she'd like that she cares about the difference. Ten years of hearing doctors say that's good, Sofia in voices designed to manage her. Ten years of every honest thing she said being catalogued and weaponized.
"It's the only answer," she says.
And then, because she can feel the dinner shifting into something too close to vulnerability, too close to the space where Carmine would have leaned in, she redirects. Deliberately. The way she changes modes like changing shoes.
"Your fish is getting cold," she says, and nods at his plate. Her voice is lighter. Hostess again, the version of herself that runs a room without raising her voice. "And you haven't told me what you want to be."
She picks up her own fork, cuts another careful bite.
It's a good answer because it's the only answer. Because Logan can tell any other answer would be a lie, and that's important. Her honesty is important.
That she turns it back onto him isn't surprising. He didn't push for more information, didn't ask more questions that might risk testing her patience. It's understandable that she would take the opportunity to find out about him instead. Information is power, after all. She showed she shares that believe when she gave him the schematics.
Logan looks at his meal and, slowly, starts to pick at it again. It is nice, he's just not a good eater.
"I don't know what I want to be." Honesty deserves honesty. "I don't think it matters. The sea can't be anything but the sea. A city can't be anything but a city. I'm a prince."
He sets his cutlery down and takes a slow sip of wine, before looking at Sofia.
"But what I want to do? I want to protect my people, and that means not letting our history fall into the wrong hands."
Sofia watches him set down his cutlery after barely touching the fish and thinks, briefly, that Carmine would have had something cutting to say about a man who can't finish a meal. Then she thinks about Arkham, about eating everything on the tray because you never knew when they'd decide to skip a meal as punishment, and she lets it go.
"A prince," she says. Not mocking, for once. Just placing it, fitting it into everything else he's told her tonight. The suit. The posture. The way he watches a room like he's responsible for everyone in it.
She takes a sip of wine, sets it down.
She's quiet for a moment, turning her fork slowly between her fingers.
"You don't know what you want to be, but you know what you want to do." She considers that. "That's backwards from me. I know exactly what I want to be. What I'm doing to get there changes every week."
She looks at him, and for a moment the calculation drops. Not warmth. Just recognition. Two people sitting at a table in a city that belongs to neither of them in the way they need it to, eating food that's getting cold.
"Protect your people," she says quietly. "Must be nice. Having people who are yours to protect."
She picks up her knife and fork again, cuts a precise bite.
A small pause.
“Just don’t forget you’re doing it here,” Sofia adds. “And here, the wrong hands are usually wearing gloves.”
She lifts her glass. “So. Tell me one practical thing, Prince. When you say ‘history,’ are you talking about something that can be carried out under a coat, or something that needs a truck?”
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no subject
"You didn't answer my question," she says.
Not aggressive. Just noting it. Filing it away.
She sets the glass down and looks at the table between them, thinking. When she speaks again her voice is measured, and the mannerly Sofia is all the way back now, precise and contained and more dangerous for it.
"You're right that loud gets people killed." She adjusts the stem of her glass slightly, a small, controlled movement. "I know that. I've watched this city eat itself over things people should have left alone."
She looks up at him.
"But you just told me Gotham could burn." Her voice stays even. "And you want me to trust that you're handling it quietly." A pause, deliberate. "With no backup. No one who knows what you're doing. And a map I gave you six days ago."
She folds her hands on the table. The ruined napkin sits just outside her careful posture like evidence of who she'd been an hour ago.
"A gentle touch," she repeats. "Fine. I can be gentle." Her eyes don't move from his face. "But I need to know you're not walking into something you can't walk out of. Not because I care what happens to you, Logan—" a beat, "—but because if you fail, that's my city."
no subject
The shift is impossible to miss. Highlighting how much of what she presents is simply a tool to get what she wants. He can't begrudge her that. Doesn't he do the same with his mannerisms? How often does he glare or stay silent or arch an eyebrow to apply unspoken pressure to his companion? Too often to count.
There's no point using any of that on Sofia. She'd see right through it, he could tell from the start.
"There are only two people who have walked into the heart of this danger and survived. I am one of them. If I can find these objects, I can make sure they're destroyed or contained safely."
He tilts his head, gaze still locked on hers. "But there is no one else who can help. There is no backup. There is me, or no one."
"I can provide you with details, delayed so you cannot interfere but not so much that you are blindsided. As a courtesy. You can help as you wish, if you wish, or not at all. Gotham is not my city, but I don't wish for its destruction."
no subject
“There is me, or no one,” Sofia repeats, and the words come out soft with disbelief—then sharpen into something uglier. “Ego with nicer lighting, then.”
She lifts her glass and finally drinks, a small, precise sip. When she sets it down, it’s perfectly centered. Controlled. Mannerly. A knife laid neatly on a napkin.She picks up her wine glass. Drinks. Sets it down.
"Delayed details," she says. The words come out flat, but she's thinking behind them, working the shape of what he's offering. "So I can't get in the way, but I'm not blindsided when your 'clean' turns into something I have to explain to the GCPD."
Her fingers rest against the stem of the glass without gripping it.
"Fine," she says. Not capitulation, assessment. "That's workable."
She looks at him directly.
Her gaze stays on him, unblinking. “You don’t get to call it a courtesy when it’s a leash.”
A pause—then her voice turns practical, almost bored.
“Fine,” Sofia says again. “You want quiet with structure? Here’s structure.”
She ticks it off with her fingers, counting like an accountant tallying a debt.
“First: you give me a twenty-four hour window and a neighborhood. Not an address. A neighborhood. So I can keep my people away and keep yours from getting lost.”
“Second: if you’re compromised, you send one word, which we ca agree on, and you leave. I don’t care what you’re holding. You leave.”
“Third: if I hear about a ‘piece of art’ moving through the wrong hands, I act. Not to interfere. To contain the fallout. If I find out you've let something detonate in my city because you were too proud to ask for help in time, the details you give me become something else entirely."
She doesn't name what. Doesn't need to. Sofia’s mouth puckers, slightly.
“And in return,” she says, “you get what you actually came for: the living map. Judges, cops, flooded streets, whose warehouse is really whose, which corners are watched and which ones are hungry.”
She lets the silence stretch, then adds, quieter:
“You say you don’t wish for Gotham’s destruction. Great. Prove it.”
no subject
But there's no point trying to explain. She wouldn't understand, and she has no reason to care whether she makes him angry or not. Yet another person who speaks from a place of ignorance and insists on commenting anyway. Disappointing.
He breathes steadily as Sofia works through her thoughts, forcing himself to focus keeping it even so that his annoyance doesn't slip through. For a moment he debates pointing out the folly of threatening royalty, but opts against it. She wouldn't take it as fair warning. No, she'd consider it more ego. So instead he simply watches and listens.
After she's finished, Logan takes a sip of wine as he considers the offer. He mulls on it for a few moments and then nods.
"Very well. I'll accept your terms."
no subject
She picks up her glass again, holds it for a moment, then sets it back down.
"Good," she says.
She straightens slightly in her chair, something settling in her posture. Not relaxed, never relaxed, but resolved. Like a decision that's been made and signed.
"One addition." Her voice is quiet, matter-of-fact. "When this is done, whatever done looks like, you tell me what it was. All of it. Not a neighborhood. Not delayed details." She meets his eyes. "Everything. What you found, what you destroyed, what you couldn't."
She smooths the edge of the ruined napkin with one finger, an absent gesture.
"Not because I'll do anything with it. Because I let a stranger into my city and I want to know what walked out." She looks up. "I think that's fair."
A beat. Then something shifts. Not warmth exactly, but a deliberate return to manners, the way she'd worn them before Arkham. She reaches for the menu, opens it with both hands, sets it between them like a truce flag.
"We should actually eat something." Her voice comes out almost conversational. "You've been very patient with the bread situation." She glances up at him over the top of the menu. "Is there anything you don't eat? Allergies. Preferences. Things that remind you of home in a way you'd rather avoid."
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Logan considers her final condition for a moment, and then nods. "That's fair."
Perhaps by then she might believe him. She might understand enough not to dismiss the truth. And if she doesn't? Well. It will be too late for her to cause a problem anyway.
He watches Sofia change her mannerisms, again, as she shifts the conversation. It's informative, the way she acts, and when she chooses to switch tactics. Logan has to wonder if he'll be able to understand it all better after a bit of time cooperating with one another. He's not so sure.
"No allergies, no." In truth, he's never had as large an appetite as she's demonstrated, but he's not going to tell her that. "Although the sea bass sounds nice."
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"Good choice," she says, and means it this time differently than she had about the restaurant, less performance, more reflex. The Falcone daughter who knew which dishes to recommend at which tables, who understood that a well-chosen meal was its own kind of language.
She flags down the waiter with a slight lift of two fingers. Precise. Unhurried.
"The sea bass," she tells him, "and the lamb. And another bottle--" she glances at what Logan and her had been drinking, "--the same."
The waiter disappears and Sofia sets the menu aside, folding her hands on the table in the ruin of the evening's earlier chaos. The feathers of her coat catch the light. The napkin stays ruined where it is.
"The lamb here is good," she says, almost conversationally. "My father used to bring clients here. Before." A small pause, neither nostalgic nor bitter. "The kitchen hasn't changed."
She picks up her water glass, which she hasn't touched all evening, and drinks from it.
"You should eat something substantial," she adds, matter-of-fact. "Whatever you're walking into this week, it won't improve on an empty stomach."
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So many little gestures to seize the smallest amount of control, or establish her dominance. Making sure he knows just how much this is her city, and to remind him that he's an outsider. There's a tiny part of him that recognises that perhaps she isn't doing this on purpose, or at all, and that part is discarded quickly. It wouldn't do to underestimate her.
Although he won't he bending to even the smallest amount of pressure, either.
"Eating too heavily isn't advisable for someone who wishes to remain alert," he counters. "I'm sure the sea bass will be very nourishing. I shall enjoy the lamb vicariously through you."
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"Vicariously," she repeats. Like she's deciding whether she finds that funny or annoying. She decides on both.
“How very disciplined of you.” She says, aiming for pleasant, picking up the fresh glass of wine the waiter has just poured. "But the sea bass is light. You'll be fine."
She reaches for her water again, takes a small sip, and sets it down with care. The restaurant’s hush wraps around them; she fits into it perfectly now, as if the earlier mess had been a costume she’s already discarded.
She drinks, sets the glass down with care.
"My father used to say the same thing. Keep the mind sharp, keep the stomach light." She glances at the empty breadbasket (her doing) with something that might be faint amusement at her own expense. "He had a point. I spent a lot of time proving him right."
Her eyes come back to Logan, steady and assessing in the way they've been all evening, but with slightly less edge to it now. The deal is done. The territory is mapped.
"You'll have to tell me what Albion food is like sometime," she says. Casual. Filling the space while they wait. "If it's terrible, you don't have to be diplomatic about it. I've eaten Arkham food. My standards for horror are well established."
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"I've always preferred lighter meals. No one ever told me it benefits the mind. It was only ever suggested that I eat more, as you just did." Something he doesn't hold against her, saluting her with his wine glass before taking a sip. Perhaps the more personal explanation will appeal to her, even if it makes a point of deviating from her father's way of thinking.
The watchfulness is to be expected, he returns it in kind, after all.
"I wouldn't suggestion Albion's food for anyone outside of Albion. It's not terrible, but there are cultures with more refined cuisine." Albion always had bigger things to focus on than making food taste better.
Logan tilts his head, considering the woman across from him. "Did your father teach you how to run your business?"
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Carmine taught her plenty. He was a stickler for manners, how to hold a fork, how to hold a room, how to make men feel safe. And then he taught her the last lesson by handing her to the city in chains, framing her for his own sins. The family went along with it. Of course they did. Arkham finished the education: trust is a liability; legitimacy is a costume; survival is a skill.
The trial or lack thereof, the newspapers, her father's silence when she needed him to speak. Her cousins' face. How easily they'd let her go.
"He tried," she says aloud. Her voice stays even. "The lessons didn't always land the way he intended."
She adjusts the stem of her glass slightly.
"I learned how to run a business. I also learned what happens when the people running it decide you're more useful as a liability than an asset." She doesn't elaborate. Doesn't need to. "The curriculum was comprehensive." She tilts her head, conversational. “Arkham taught me the rest.”
Her eyes come back to his, steady.
Then, she asks lightly, “Why? Are you trying to figure out what I’m capable of, or what I inherited?”
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Some of it he understands on a personal level. Some of it, he know from watching others in their own trials. It's as informative to him as the fact that she shares this much at all. Not everyone would.
"I'm trying to understand you." Another thoughtful pause before he shares, "Learning about someone like you helps me understand the city. As you mentioned before, I'm new here. I have plenty to learn."
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The food will arrive soon and she's aware of it the way she's aware of most things, peripherally, tracking.
Someone like me. She thinks about what that means to him. A Falcone, a criminal, a woman who spent ten years in Arkham and came out wearing feathers. A local asset. A liability he's decided to manage carefully.
He's not wrong. She is all of those things.
"The city is its people," she says. "Specifically its grudges." She smooths the tablecloth once, absently. "Gotham doesn't forget anything. It just waits."
She glances toward the door briefly, then back.
"So if you want to understand it, understand that." Her voice is even, instructional. The Falcone daughter who knew how to hold fundraisers, arrest a room. "Whatever you're looking for, someone in this city knows about it. Someone resents it. Someone's been waiting for the right moment."
Her eyes stay on his.
"That's what I am," she says simply. "Useful in that sense."
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Except Logan knows that. Knows there's so much for him to learn. That's why he's here. Making himself known to someone who it would probably be wiser to avoid. Although this isn't all that strange, either. A foreign prince inviting local nobility to his table to extend respect is a time honoured tradition.
Not that he thinks Sofia cares for tradition.
Logan doesn't take his eyes off of her, soaking in every word she has to offer. "And who do you hold a grudge against?"
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She thinks of Carmine first, like she always does. His silence. His pen signing her away. The family nodding along because it was easier to let her rot than risk the empire. She thinks of the city, too, for loving the story more than the truth.
"Who don't I," she says, and it comes out lighter than she intends. She drinks.
The waiter appears with their food, setting the sea bass in front of Logan with quiet efficiency, the lamb in front of her. She waits until he's gone before she continues, cutting into the lamb with the correct knife, perfectly positioned. Old habits from old lessons.
“My grudges aren’t a public service,” Sofia says, tone polite. “And they aren’t free. If you want to know who I hate, you can earn that later. For now, you should be asking who hates you, and how fast they can find you. But..."
She takes a bite. Chews. The restaurant moves quietly around them.
"Gotham itself, sometimes," she adds, and her voice has gone thoughtful rather than bitter. "For being exactly what it is and expecting everyone else to be better."
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It gives him time to consider her answer. She's far from stupid, which means she likely gained enemies from her rise to power. Asking was a long shot, and she gave him more than he was entitled to. Earning further trust is more than understandable.
"I assume everyone has a reason to want me dead or ruined," he tells Sofia as he sips his wine. "Mostly dead. There's always been someone who did, from the moment I was born. I've only given more people better reasons to want the same."
Being in the crosshairs is something he's used to. Just because he's not in the limelight of Albion's throne doesn't mean he's any safer.
He finally takes up his cutlery and starts on his meal. "You have a complicated relationship with this city."
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Everyone has a reason to want me dead. She believes him. More than that, she recognizes it. The particular exhaustion of someone who has stopped being surprised by enemies and started simply accounting for them.
She takes another bite of lamb, chews, sets her fork down briefly to reach for her wine.
"Complicated," she says, and something in her voice is almost fond. Almost. "That's one word for it."
She picks her fork back up.
"I was born into this city. Grew up watching my father own it." She cuts another piece, precise and unhurried. "Spent ten years being told I was its worst nightmare. Now I'm back and nobody quite knows what to do with me." She eats. "Including me, some days."
She glances up at him.
"You said everyone's wanted you dead from the moment you were born." Her voice stays conversational, neutral. "Not really a grudge, is it? Sounds like a condition." She tilts her head slightly. "You get used to it, or you don't."
She reaches for her water glass.
"Which one is it for you?"
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"Anyone with any sort of wealth or power should be used to enemies. It's simply a part of life." Lifting an eyebrow at her he adds, "Something I'm sure you know well."
He looks at his dinner as he asks, "Have you ever been tempted to prove them right? To show everyone that you're Gotham's worst nightmare?"
A casual question. As if they aren't talking about murder and insanity.
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For a second she imagines it, vivid and easy. A handful of lamb thrown across the table to splatter his tailored suit. A plate snapped in her hands and dropped like a gunshot in the restaurant hush. She can hear Carmine's voice as clearly as if he's sitting at the table. You are a Falcone. You are not an animal.
She swallows the bite she already has and sets the fork down with care.
“Yes,” Sofia says simply, polite as bone china.
Then she picks up the lamb chop with both hands and eats it exactly like an animal, deliberate and unhurried, looking at the middle distance while she does it. Making her point to no one in particular. To the ghost of her father's voice. She lets him see the choice. Let him measure what it costs her to be civilized.
She sets the bone down, wipes her fingers on the napkin, picks up her fork and knife, and returns to eating with the perfect composure of a woman raised to host state dinners.
"Every day," she says, voice pleasant, as though the last thirty seconds didn't happen. "The temptation is constant." She cuts a precise piece. "But Gotham already decided I was its worst nightmare before I'd done anything to earn it."
She eats, sets her utensils down properly at the two o'clock position.
"So I'm selective," she says. "About when I prove them right."
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She cares too much about what other people think, Logan suspects. In between thinking how she looks like a balverine when she eats with her hands.
The switch doesn't get a reaction out of Logan, except for a curious tilt of his head. After all, she's showing him this part of her. It's only polite to pay attention.
"And what about you?" he asks after a moment of silence. "What do you want to be?"
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It's not a question she gets asked. People tell her what she is. What she was. What she should be grateful for, or ashamed of. Nobody asks what she wants to be. Not since before Arkham. Not since Carmine looked at her across a room very much like this one and decided she was more useful as a sacrifice than a successor.
For a heartbeat she thinks of answers that would have made Carmine proud. Legitimate. Respectable. Smiling for cameras while men with blood on their hands call it charity. Then Arkham cuts in, colder. Wanting does not protect you. Wanting is how they steer you.
She sets down her cutlery, then picks it up again, correcting the placement with exacting care.
“What I want to be changes depending on who’s asking,” Sofia says, voice pleasant.
She takes a small bite, chews, swallows. Then she looks at him, steady.
“I want to be unavoidable,” she adds. “Not as a story. As a fact.”
Her mouth curves, faint and controlled. “And I want to be free enough that nobody ever gets to decide what I am again.”
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That doesn't mean her answer isn't informative, of course. It is.
From the admission of manipulation to the precision with which she places her knife and fork. Everything tells him something. He just has to pay attention.
Not that her last answer is hard to miss. An answer he would never dare to give himself. True freedom. True independence.
Logan gives a single, small nod. "That's a good answer."
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A good answer. She can't tell if it's approval or placation, and it bothers her more than she'd like that she cares about the difference. Ten years of hearing doctors say that's good, Sofia in voices designed to manage her. Ten years of every honest thing she said being catalogued and weaponized.
"It's the only answer," she says.
And then, because she can feel the dinner shifting into something too close to vulnerability, too close to the space where Carmine would have leaned in, she redirects. Deliberately. The way she changes modes like changing shoes.
"Your fish is getting cold," she says, and nods at his plate. Her voice is lighter. Hostess again, the version of herself that runs a room without raising her voice. "And you haven't told me what you want to be."
She picks up her own fork, cuts another careful bite.
"Fair's fair, Logan."
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That she turns it back onto him isn't surprising. He didn't push for more information, didn't ask more questions that might risk testing her patience. It's understandable that she would take the opportunity to find out about him instead. Information is power, after all. She showed she shares that believe when she gave him the schematics.
Logan looks at his meal and, slowly, starts to pick at it again. It is nice, he's just not a good eater.
"I don't know what I want to be." Honesty deserves honesty. "I don't think it matters. The sea can't be anything but the sea. A city can't be anything but a city. I'm a prince."
He sets his cutlery down and takes a slow sip of wine, before looking at Sofia.
"But what I want to do? I want to protect my people, and that means not letting our history fall into the wrong hands."
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"A prince," she says. Not mocking, for once. Just placing it, fitting it into everything else he's told her tonight. The suit. The posture. The way he watches a room like he's responsible for everyone in it.
She takes a sip of wine, sets it down.
She's quiet for a moment, turning her fork slowly between her fingers.
"You don't know what you want to be, but you know what you want to do." She considers that. "That's backwards from me. I know exactly what I want to be. What I'm doing to get there changes every week."
She looks at him, and for a moment the calculation drops. Not warmth. Just recognition. Two people sitting at a table in a city that belongs to neither of them in the way they need it to, eating food that's getting cold.
"Protect your people," she says quietly. "Must be nice. Having people who are yours to protect."
She picks up her knife and fork again, cuts a precise bite.
A small pause.
“Just don’t forget you’re doing it here,” Sofia adds. “And here, the wrong hands are usually wearing gloves.”
She lifts her glass. “So. Tell me one practical thing, Prince. When you say ‘history,’ are you talking about something that can be carried out under a coat, or something that needs a truck?”
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