at the highest peak. mourn & shiv

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

SHIV IRVINE

Mourn Adroxis was someone Shiv could never help but get just a little bit excited to see.

It was in a masochistic way, she knows that much at the very least. She knows that the only reason she likes seeing him is because he has never once underestimated her, because he has treated her as a proper adversary from the very first moment that they had met. Not exactly in direct competition with each other for profits, but in competition for reputation, for respect, for anything else that they could find something to compete over.

If she didn't want to wring his neck every time they met, she thinks that maybe in another life they could have been on the same side, perhaps. Maybe even friends.

Taking Talon's mantle, following her steps and going into politics had never been in the cards for Shiv. She had never thought that she might want to hold office, that she would want to fight for the people of Nine from the seat of Mayor. She liked the private district, liked funding lobbyist to create better conditions for her workers, like fighting for them from her place behind the line with them. A private citizen, just like the rest of them. But every time she goes into the office now, she sees Elijah's warm face, his kind eyes, the crooked slant of her husbands mouth as he smiles at her from behind his glasses.

She needs another way to fight for them.

And the mayor's office is the best place she can think to do that.

But she needs Mourn to back her, if she's going to win. That much she's almost certain of. She needs the support of as many of her fellow well-respected factory owners as she can get, but Mourn especially.

"Hello darling," she says when his assistant lets her into his office. "Long time no banter." She gives him something of a smile, maybe a little bit too sharp, but familiar all the same. She dives right in. "What, no 'Irvine for Mayor' sign outside the office? Should I have one sent over?"

It's playful, if nothing else.

[gamemaker kelsier]

m o u r n .

"you are weak
but not foolish
you have learned
how to die."

Of course the candidate list had been passed around ages back. Nothing really ever slipped through the cracks in Nine, least of all through the elite. Mourn hadn't been surprised, Shiv Irvine was always sticking her nose where it didn't belong so it was only a matter of time until she went for Mayor.

He was waiting for her to show up at his door any day. Most candidates did eventually come for an Adroxis to stand behind them, cheer them on. Something about the Adroxis name seemed to really rile people up, instil some District pride.

Or perhaps just district fear.

"Oh, yes, send her in," Mourn waved at his assistant, a young man who he'd employed for other means but had taken a liking to. He was a hard worker and his many piercings and brooding expression did the trick of staving off the masses.

"Shiv Irvine," Mourn said with a smile, "Looking sharp as ever, where have you been hiding yourself?" He gestured for her to sit and leaned against his desk with his arms crossed. "Talon must be so happy that you're following in her footsteps, but what a shadow to live under, goodness."

The game with Shiv had always been the same, prod and push just enough, never too far because a friendship was more beneficial for the both of them.

"Give me a reason to back you," he said, getting straight to the point and spread his arms wide in front of him, as if to say, the floor is yours.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

SHIV IRVINE

His questions aren't particularly surprising, but Shiv still feels them like bullet dulled against a vest, deadly weapons that on anyone else would level them, make them want to curl up into a ball on the floor and start crying because fuck she misses Elijah like she's never missed anything in her entire life but—

Shiv has never been in the business of making anyone else privy to her emotions and she was not about to start.

Not even for Mourn Adroxis.

Scratch that, especially not for Mourn.

"She is," Shiv replies to his quips, ignoring his questions about where she has been. Her sabbatical from Warri Refinery had been unplanned and unwanted, much as she knows that it was needed. She steps further into the room when he gestures for her to sit, but she doesn't take the spot he's pointed out quite yet.  "I suspect she's been waiting for the day she could talk my ear off about her ideas for a green initiative since we were fifteen and hated each other."

She cocks her head to the side though when he goes on, a degree of false petulance decorating her eyes.

"Oh come now, Mourn," she says. "Simply who the fuck else are you going to back?"

[gamemaker kelsier]

m o u r n .

"you are weak
but not foolish
you have learned
how to die."

She didn't fall to his first round of ammunition, not that the artillery had been that heavy. Mourn knew that whoever took Nine on needed to be strong. The district was often in some sort of ruin due to the last dredges of a rebellion that had never quite died, not in Nine at least. There was still evidence of last year's riots in every bullet hole in the buildings that lined the town square.

"Well you've got the confidence I suppose," he said calmly, "But we both know that you're going to need more than that, Nine is unruly, you show the slightest weakness and all hell will break loose."

Of course, Mourn knew that he was part of that hell. Yes, his factory employed a lot of people, yes his family name belonged to a Victor, but like everything else in Nine the Adroxis family had an underbelly and he was at the head of it. If Shiv showed weakness, he would be one of the first to go for her throat.

"It's true that no one else is running but that can change," he said. He stood straight then and moved to a cabinet against the wall behind his desk to take out a couple of wine glasses and a bottle of red.

"So I'll ask you again, why should I back you."

Mourn turned around and smiled at her then, easy and soulless all at once.

But it wasn't so much a question, as it was a demand.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

SHIV IRVINE

She wants to take him apart and shred the pieces.

It's not exactly because she's particularly angered, she supposes, but she hates it when people question her. She's spent the last twenty years fighting at every single turn, has had to prove over and over and over again that she is more than anyone ever believed that she could be. For so long, all people wanted to see her as was the intern that had fallen in love with the boss, the girl who's heart surely had to be bigger than her brain if she was willing to give up her future for the man.

Jokes on them because if there's anything those whispers did, it was that they motivated her to become the boss instead.

But the mayor's race was a series of being questioned all over again. People wondered how she was going to fill Talon's shoes, how she was going to outshine her sister. They wondered how she was going to get out from under her sister's shadow, how she was going to win despite some of the nastier rumors about where her sister had gained footing, how she had gained power. And Mourn, it would seem, is no different, can't help but wonder if she's really the woman for the job.

Infuriating.

She does her best not to let it show, but she can't help it when she rolls her eyes at his thinly veiled threat at the possibility of someone else running. There had been two other potential contestants, two men from two of the smaller gangs on the North side of the city.

But she'd stomped those out.

"I've certainly got more than just my confidence," she says. "It'd be remiss to ignore the fact that I am both a new face in politics, and yet have all the benefits of a familiar name in politics. More than that even, I'd bet plenty of your own workers know exactly who I am. Getting the district's confidence is going to be easy work."

[gamemaker kelsier]

m o u r n .

"you are weak
but not foolish
you have learned
how to die."

He'd wanted less pretty words, more bite. It wasn't so much a question of what she could do for the district, it was how she could do it. If she didn't have claws, even if she won, she'd lose. The gangs would walk all over her, grind their heels for good measure, it was just fact.

Mourn had hit a nerve though, he noticed it in the way she rolled her eyes and the way she'd seemed to tense up with her answer. That meant he'd won a point, not that they seemed to be counting.

Mourn poured them both a glass of wine and held one out in a silent offering. Whether she took it or not was up to her of course, but it would be the polite thing to do. They both had to play these games, both had to settle into them as if it were a choice. Mourn had wanted to be an artist, twenty years ago he'd been ready to run away with the girl he loved.

Times change, want matters little, there's too much focus on need.

"You've got a point there," he agreed but her platform hardly mattered if she couldn't back it, "My workers will back you if I do, they're rather loyal you see."

Christ, it was a pretty game at least, chiselled tongues and draped with finery, the words they spoke sashayed careful laps around the room. "Although I could say no, I suppose," he said idly, "That could be interesting, I'm sure I know someone who'd love to run for mayor if you've got no opposition, what's a game without stakes right?"

He stared at her, a challenge in his gaze.

Mourn was no pawn and though he'd seen Shiv do great things he wouldn't attach his name to the meek.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

SHIV IRVINE

You've got a point there.

She has to resist the urge to roll her eyes again, if she's being honest. She knows that she has a point; that's why she'd said it. Nonetheless, she takes from him what he will give her, and she isn't in the business of turning down a moment of support.

Especially not now.

She knows that in order to get the votes of his workers that he's going to need to publicly endorse her. More than that even, most of the people in this district barely want anymore to pay attention to politics in the first place. If voter turnout from the last election was anything to go by, then the people were slipping further and further from relying on the proper channels. To get them to even consider going to the voting booth in the first place, regardless of who they voted for in the end, was the first battle. Not that she's particularly worried about competition; the two that'd tried had been weak, easily stomped out.

Mourn though—she doesn't miss the veiled threat.

She doesn't know that she'd win against him.

"More easily won, for starters," she replies to his question about stakes, words quick. She doubts it's the answer that he wants, but she has never been one for games. She doesn't like to mine words, really, and she likes even less this little dance that they continue to draw themselves into. "We both know that neither of us wants to make an enemy of the other, Mourn," she goes on, taking the glass of wine that he extended towards her, finally slipping into the chair that he'd gestured to earlier. "Isn't it so much better the devil you know?" She takes a small sip of the wine. It's tart; she likes it. Not that she'll tell him. "You know that I'll fight for your people."