Chapter Text
Aventurine didn’t really wake up until after he was already sitting in the hot seat in Lady Jade’s office. He knew the one, for sure. He’d been here before, facing that woman’s cool, amused smile. However…
“I’m pretty sure I was asleep a few minutes ago,” he complained. He was fully dressed, though, and he vaguely remembered stumbling in on his own two feet. But why—?
“Congratulations, Aventurine,” said Lady Jade brightly. “I must say, you’re quite the deep sleeper.”
His eyes widened and then a familiar spike of pain ran through his head. Oh… yes. He wasn’t normally a deep sleeper. Unless he took special steps in advance. Which he’d done last night, and quite a few other nights recently. Rubbing his head, he mumbled, “Can’t we do this when it isn’t my day off?”
“Day off?” Jade inquired sweetly.
He really wasn’t in the mood for this. “My calendar was clear, yeah. I’m as shocked as you are.” Then a hideous intuition arose and he narrowed his eyes at Jade.
“And so we return to the beginning. Congratulations! A majority of the department administrative assistants have pooled their influence and purchased you a present.”
Aventurine blinked. This was… not what he expected. The administrative assistants? What had he ever done for them other than the occasional holiday gifts? Floundering, he ventured, “Purchased… from you?”
Jade inclined her head but said smoothly, “I merely made arrangements.”
That was when Aventurine realized somebody else was in the office as well, somewhere behind him. His blood ran cold, but he covered it with a weary sigh. “All right, fine. What is it?”
Beaming, Jade said, “Let me introduce you to Inuki. She’ll be your new personal assistant, starting today. I cleared your schedule so you could spend some time bringing her up to speed on your requirements.”
“Good morning, sir,” said a light, feminine voice from his right side. The third party hadn’t even been behind him, just sitting on the couch (“the audience seating”). She’d been hard to notice compared to the existential dread of waking up to Jade smiling evilly at him. But he paid attention now.
She was young, maybe younger than Topaz, and her looks didn’t particularly stand out. Her medium-length hair was brownish, and tied up in a ponytail. Her features were ordinarily attractive, in the way some people would describe as ‘cleans up nice’. Her eyes… okay, her hazel eyes stood out. Not the way his did, but… like the eyes of somebody who wanted the best for him and was genuinely pleased to be meeting him. Him; not the Stoneheart, but the person.
He disliked her immediately. Then his dislike doubled as he remembered that she was the one who had come to his apartment, roused him from his drugged sleep, forced him to dress, and steered him to Jade’s office. He frowned. “How the hell did you get me out of bed?”
Inuki flexed an unimpressive bicep as she said, “I work out, sir!”
“Yeah, right,” Aventurine said automatically, already casting about for a way to escape this ‘gift’.
She smiled at him. Aventurine thought she’d been smiling since she greeted him, but he discovered at that point he was wrong. He squeezed his eyes closed and rubbed his head again. “Please. Don’t smile at me like that the first thing in the morning. That’s unholy.”
“Yes, sir.” He peeked and saw she’d turned the unpleasantly cheerful smile down a few notches. “Don’t worry, sir. It’ll be all right. I’m fun to have around.”
Fun?? He turned a bleary, accusing gaze on Lady Jade, and found her smiling enigmatically, just like always.
She met his eyes. Her lips pursed. “Come now, Aventurine. You’ve been without an assistant for long enough. You were just saying so the other day.”
“I could have found one myself,” he mumbled.
“Oh, certainly,” said Lady Jade graciously. Her voice sharpened. “But your hires seem to either run away after two weeks of increasingly hard work, or completely ignore their job until they find themselves another position. I promise you, Inuki will not do either.”
“Well, I’ll do my best,” corrected Inuki, which struck Aventurine as a suicidal thing for somebody to say after Lady Jade had just made a promise about their success. She glanced at him with dancing eyes. “Tell you what, sir. Let’s consider the next two weeks a trial period, and if we’re not clicking at that point, I’ll accept another job offer.”
Jade gave Inuki a long, thoughtful look and then murmured, “Will you? I suppose either way the IPC wins…”
That blinding smile flashed across Inuki’s face. “Exactly so, ma’am. Now, if you’ll excuse us, I’d like to go see my new office!”