016 ☣ Some private video messages

[fridgetothefire]

[Private to Cassel]

Okay, now that I can carry and pour things, let's do this. You, me, cooking sherry and an insane amount of chocolate. Cabin 4-20.


[Private to Junko]

You know, you should give me a makeover.


[Private to Pietro]

Let's talk. Tell me you're not busy.

Comments

[patheticvillain]

You make a lot of generalizations.

[fridgetothefire]

So tell me I'm wrong. Tell me it wasn't another axiom of life that kept you trapped.

[patheticvillain]

I can't tell you you're wrong. But then again, she kept me alive.

[Something in his expression flickers, then, because that's more or less exactly what Barron had said to him. Whose excuses is he making right now? Whose words are in his mouth?]

I can't know what she was thinking when she did it. I can't ever know that.

[fridgetothefire]

It doesn't really matter what they were thinking.

[She's gone a little quieter, less belligerent but even more certain, withdrawn a little into the core of herself.]

My father kept me alive, too. It's something, I'll grant them that. But it's not enough.

[patheticvillain]

Then what's enough?

[It doesn't come out how he wanted; it comes out desperate, demanding, hungry. He wants answers more than he wants anything else, other than to be, above all, useful. He wants that, but he wants the truth, too.]

[fridgetothefire]

If you love something, set it free?

[It's sheepish, painfully awkward, the awful sappiness of it declared and self-deprecating, front and center.]

I don't know how to say it concisely and sound any less dumb. But I know it when I get it. Bruce cared for me without controlling me or shutting me away. Other people here would too.

[patheticvillain]

[He thinks, briefly, painfully, rebelliously, of Barbara, and frowns. What comes next is a mantra, so important that he has to say it over and over.]

Blood is blood. Blood's blood.

[Twice more, and then he stops, with a crooked, self-defensive smile.]

Why do I keep saying that?

[fridgetothefire]

Blood is mostly water, actually.

I dunno, it does sound a little creepy-brainwashy.

[patheticvillain]

You could be brainwashing me, too. With brownies. I'm just saying.

[fridgetothefire]

Please. If I were brainwashing you, you'd have more sense.

[patheticvillain]

You'd probably do it more subtly than by drugging me first thing, too. Right?

[fridgetothefire]

Honestly, my style was more manipulating people into doing things that deep down they were always willing to do. Brainwashing is less reliable than using the motivations that are already there.

Beat this.

[She hands him a whisk.]

[patheticvillain]

Allegedly, it was about half that anyway. Well, allegedly it was all that. Maybe there was brainwashing too.

[He takes that whisk and beats the shit out of those eggs.]

[fridgetothefire]

It's not a very technical term, is it?

I never...I never tried to manipulate people emotionally, is the thing. I wasn't really a person, so I didn't have the leverage. There was nothing there worth listening to or caring about. I just...put the right people in situations where I knew they'd do the thing I needed.

[She starts mixing a few other icing ingredients into the now-melted chocolate.]

Which had some nasty consequences. But they all made their choices; I didn't change anybody. Not even in the insidious pressure and influence and seeming care way.

[patheticvillain]

What the hell does that mean, "I wasn't really a person"? That sounds like bullshit to me. All of that sounds like bullshit.

[fridgetothefire]

I mean, as far as everyone I lived with was concerned, I wasn't. Mutants were people, and I was a throwback, an unfortunate pet. At best I was a rather clever monkey, but clever monkeys are actually hideous pests who steal food and make messes of everything.

Nobody listens to something that belongs in a cage.

[patheticvillain]

My girlfriend lived in a cage for three years. She made sure people listened to her, after that.

[This is conversational, almost cheerful. He's proud of her, even now.]

Sometimes I get the feeling that you look at people like they're all unfortunate pets. Like "if I poke it with a stick right here, what'll it do?"

[fridgetothefire]

[She blinks, taken slightly aback.]

That's...the opposite, though? Thinking of people as people - what do they want, what matters to them, how do they see the world - that's the only way you really figure it out.

[patheticvillain]

But you don't care. At least not all the time.

[fridgetothefire]

Not at all the time. But most of the time. It's not a survival strategy anymore - if I don't pay attention to someone and misjudge them and they yank my rib cage out, then...whatever, the admiral will bring me back.

So now that I have a choice, I generally don't waste my time on people unless I care about them at least a little.

[patheticvillain]

You have no reason to waste your time on me, then.

[fridgetothefire]

And yet.

[She finds a wooden spoon.]

Okay, you pour that into the dry mix slowly while I stir.

[patheticvillain]

Or else you're an idiot.

[He rolls his eyes, but he pours. Slowly.]

[fridgetothefire]

[She stirs steadily as the batter evens out.]

When we first met, I said it didn't cost me anything to be nice to you. Since then, I've learned that you're interesting company, more perceptive than most people I talk to, and you have a wonky gear shift in your brain on the topic of family where somebody stuck a wrench when you were too young to stop them.

So I care enough to want to meddle. It still doesn't cost me much.

[patheticvillain]

[He glances sideways at her.]

Not much, but still something?