Elodie isn't surprised when she doesn't need to give her address. She waits till they're a few hundred feet up to stare out the window at what just happened, glaring down at the crowd that had suddenly turned from unable to see her to unable to focus anywhere else. She jerks, turning, when one of her tentacles that had curled around a metal bar grips it too tight and the metal starts to creak. Just about in time, too, because there is, naturally, an attendant. Can't have the VIPs get too unattended. They might need to get their own water. What a shame.

She stays by the window as he approaches, though, and to his credit he doesn't ask her to sit down. Not sure if that's because he sees how many points of contact she's got, between tentacles and grabbing a rail above the door, or if he's just paid enough to ignore the safety hazard. 

"Can I get you anything? Beer, tea, coffee, digestive?"

"Privacy, and since that's not happening, tobacco."

She doesn't expect either, and is thus shocked when the attentent re-emerges from the back with a small tin and an ashtray. "Press the call button or yell if you need me." She blinks twice and manages to mumble a genuine thanks, acknowledged with a gleaming smile, before he once again disappears into the back. She takes out her rolling papers and, in the privacy of the helicopter, where nobody can see, stops holding back the shaking once she's lit up.

God damn she hates this.

*

The helicopter sets well short of her apartment, on request. She goes the last leg over the roofs, staying far away from the edges where the pedestrians below could see her. She's got one, thin window that opens into her bedroom, and she slips through that, thankful that she didn't run into any parkour-ing 'dashers. She takes a second to freshen up, change shirts, and goes out to the only other room in her cheap-ass flat.

She emerges into a mess that wasn't hers. The carving she had been working on, previously on top of her table, had been set to the side and replaced with the disassembled guts of something electronic, tiny tools haphazardly strewn about the workspace. A bag of takeout containers sits on one of her stools at her kitchenette counter, gently steaming, one open and half-eaten already, fried rice from the look of it. The skull and crossbones adorns her walls, next to a bookshelf full of things that aren't books (paper's expensive). Her desk, the last piece of major furniture, sits next to the door out, untouched by the chaos.

On the sofa, Sasha AuClair sprawls at the eye of the storm, black curls falling in their face as they tap at their phone. One battered sneaker gives her a wave as she enters. "Hey mom."

"Hey kiddo. Work was shit, but quick." The phone flips around, showing the still of her pinning the police commissinar down. "Yeah... yeah. I'm gonna be in trouble for that."

"Mother's on the warpath about it already." Sasha confirms, rolling up off the sofa as Elodie starts to unpack the takeout. Chinese-American wasn't her favorite, but it was the right sort of retro to be in again, and extra-spicy General Tsao's was never something to complain about it. "What happened?" A bright eyed eagerness, not quite innocent. Only a few months of being able to see them again in person, weekends and the occasional, awkward group outing with her ex-wife as well. Elodie smiles, bittersweet, and starts to tell them about it.