Anya Lehnsherr | Earth 97400 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fridgetothefire) wrote2014-02-17 08:14 pm
fridgetothefire) wrote2014-02-17 08:14 pm
041 ☣ something for everyone
[Filtered to graduates/wardens who were once inmates]
What did you sacrifice, to graduate?
Someone asked me recently, and I didn't have an answer. I'm wondering if that's strange.
[Filtered to wardens who were never inmates.]
Do any of you feel trapped here? Or have you, in the past, because you needed your deal so badly? It just - it seems like a much more important distinction, in some ways, between wardens and inmates, than being able to get a drink without asking someone to buzz you in first, that we can walk away and they can't.
But I'm not sure it's that straightforward.
[Filtered to inmates]
How many of you want to change? Not to graduate, that's a very different question, and not necessarily into - whoever the admiral wants you to be. Just change, in general.
Do you want to be different than you are, in any way, or not?
[Private to the Admiral]
[Wryly, amiably.]
I don't suppose you'll tell me what you're getting out of all this.
[Spam for Harvey]
[For a long time, she practiced in private. In Bruce's room, in Cass's. She'd work with Natasha or Sokolov or Bea in the gym, because that's where they were, but when she was on her own, without the clear label of 'student' hanging over her, she'd do it with a yoga mat and a locking door. Old paranoid habits, needing to be underestimated. She's realized, lately, how much more convenient the gym is, has been gradually trying to acclimate herself to working through drills under anyone else's eyes. She's there now, moving through forms and combinations Bruce taught her, counting out her breaths. Her lungs are - compensating, slowly, better than they were, even if she'll never quite hit the same caliber of athleticism that she might have otherwise. It feels good, not just to push herself, but to know she's going somewhere.]
[Private to Abigail; wibbly timed to after their conversations with Ben.]
I told you once that I was being as straightforward with you as I knew how to be. In the interest of resurrecting that - this scares me. Not what Ben's doing, me and you.
But I will do everything in my power to take care of both of you, as much as you need.
What did you sacrifice, to graduate?
Someone asked me recently, and I didn't have an answer. I'm wondering if that's strange.
[Filtered to wardens who were never inmates.]
Do any of you feel trapped here? Or have you, in the past, because you needed your deal so badly? It just - it seems like a much more important distinction, in some ways, between wardens and inmates, than being able to get a drink without asking someone to buzz you in first, that we can walk away and they can't.
But I'm not sure it's that straightforward.
[Filtered to inmates]
How many of you want to change? Not to graduate, that's a very different question, and not necessarily into - whoever the admiral wants you to be. Just change, in general.
Do you want to be different than you are, in any way, or not?
[Private to the Admiral]
[Wryly, amiably.]
I don't suppose you'll tell me what you're getting out of all this.
[Spam for Harvey]
[For a long time, she practiced in private. In Bruce's room, in Cass's. She'd work with Natasha or Sokolov or Bea in the gym, because that's where they were, but when she was on her own, without the clear label of 'student' hanging over her, she'd do it with a yoga mat and a locking door. Old paranoid habits, needing to be underestimated. She's realized, lately, how much more convenient the gym is, has been gradually trying to acclimate herself to working through drills under anyone else's eyes. She's there now, moving through forms and combinations Bruce taught her, counting out her breaths. Her lungs are - compensating, slowly, better than they were, even if she'll never quite hit the same caliber of athleticism that she might have otherwise. It feels good, not just to push herself, but to know she's going somewhere.]
[Private to Abigail; wibbly timed to after their conversations with Ben.]
I told you once that I was being as straightforward with you as I knew how to be. In the interest of resurrecting that - this scares me. Not what Ben's doing, me and you.
But I will do everything in my power to take care of both of you, as much as you need.
[text]
I'm a person.
[She's still working on it, some days. Remembering the right answer. But she does know.]
[text]
What's your favorite part of the person you are?
[text]
[By which she means, unreservedly, and that she tends to make people better for their acquaintance, that it makes her better too, and that it is a thing she's prone to, the rule rather than the exception. She means a lot of things.]
[video]
How?
[And maybe there's more fit into that word, too. How do you love? How do you love well, how do you care for more than one person? Connections have always been distant for him, no matter what he's tried. So he wants to hear about it, the way he heard stories of Camelot or Oz as a child.]
[video]
I tell people about my pain, instead of hiding it away. I tell them I lived, and that I'm strong enough to carry it and bare it to the world. Sometimes nothing happens. But sometimes they hear something they needed, and they trust me with some of theirs. I've always been good at figuring people out, at seeing what they want and why it matters and what they'll do for it. I used to use that to put them in situations to do what I wanted, even if it hurt them. But now I use it to imagine who they feel like, from the inside, and I feel it with them, and for them, and I want them to carry their pain as lightly as I have learned to carry mine.
[video]
Is your pain like a second skin to you--something you only kind of notice, like you would notice the paint in your bedroom? Or is it more like your bone marrow?
[video]
Yes.
[video]
They're beautiful.
[Yeah, no filter wins the day again. But he means it, not just in an aesthetic sense.]
Are you able to talk about them? [She had said she was, but he asks because he means in depth. It's a warning as much as it is a request.]
[video]
[Not because it hurts. Quite the opposite.]
But the rest, yes. A lynch mob burned the inn my family was staying at to the ground when I was four. I was trapped inside.
[She says this with total equanimity. She's made her peace with that memory, with all the strange jagged parts of it.]
[video]
Glad you made it here. I'm even glad you made it here, with all your scars and memories. [He's sure she understands why; she seems to feel the same way.]
All my scars are in here, [tapping his skull] I don't mean psychologically--just on my brain. I wasn't always colorblind or deaf, you know? But people relate better to the things they can see and touch or experience themselves. We need more people like you around.
[video]
Should I sign? I'm still learning.
[video]
[He's glad for the chance to practice, and for the chance not to miss a part of an interesting conversation.]
You're friends with my inmate?
[video]
[But she isn't sure how to explain that, where to start or whether she even should, so she replies to his earlier statement, taps her own chest.]
I have scars inside, too. On my lungs. There's always more to people than you see.
[video]
You can never be sure how much of what you see is real. People change, people project. There's too much symbolism in our heads, a craving for patterns.
Does it hurt to breathe?
[video]
Sometimes symbolism is real.
[Real the way money is real; a conceit that is real in its effects.]
[video]
What do you do? If you get tired faster, probably not track and field sports?
[video]
[video]
[video]
[That's life, here.]
[video]
[video]
But I'll try if you want.
Re: [video]
[Someone else probably could, but he can't see himself paying much attention to them. There's one good reason for that:]
You can 'talk' to me when I can't hear. You're the best teacher for me.
[video]
Is guitar good?
Re: [video]
Guitar is best maybe. I can feel the different notes it makes.
You take payment?
[video]
[Things she can learn. Trade in kind.]
[video]
[video]
[video]
[video]
[video]