fridgetothefire | 017 ☣ Infirmary post + some housekeeping things

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017 ☣ Infirmary post + some housekeeping things

[Backdated to Tuesday]

[She's been in the infirmary since late Sunday night, but she spent most of Monday sleeping. She looks a little pale, propped against pillows, hooked up to an IV, but she seems comfortable enough.]

Hello, barge.

I am so bored. Worse, I can't read without getting a headache right now. So.

[She holds up an infirmary clipboard, the paperwork turned over so she could draw neat, careful charts on the back.]

Come in, sign up for a half-hour time slot and book. Books are sorted by genre and how many hours I estimate it will take to finish them. If you read to me, I'll bake you something nice later.

[OOC: feel free to ignore the regimented tyranny of storytime and talk to her about whatever, either on the network or via spam.]

[Private spam for Ben, before the attacks.]

[She knocks on his door, a cold, shaken look on her face.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[It's more than Ben was expecting, honestly, in more ways than one. A lot of words, yes, but also a lot of things he doesn't know how to put into context. He barely knows Erik, although he well knows Anya's feelings on the supremacy front; he vaguely understands the connection between a daughter and a father, though he also knows that technically, this Erik and this Anya are not related.

Then again, technically, neither are he and the individuals he considers his brothers and sisters. He's quiet while he considers.]

I... doubt it was a conscious decision on your part, if you are questioning it now. Trust builds on the basis of an individual's actions and words, how they align, and how they relate to the individual building, or dissolving, the trust.

Is simply asking him out of the question?

[Trust is based on evidence. That helps, a little - there's a reason for what she feels for him, it's not just what she wants to see. But at the suggestion, she makes a growly, frustrated noise in her throat.]

If he lied, if he'd betray me like that, then I don't want to tip him off that I suspect, and if he didn't lie, then I don't want to come off like a paranoid crazy person and wreck whatever we've. Managed to have. I don't even really think he has, I just - for like three minutes I was so ready to rip his throat out and I felt - shattered, alright, just cored out. And I don't know how to make either of those feelings go away.

The uncertainty is based on a lack of confirmed knowledge.

[Ben isn't really taken aback by this, either; he absolutely believes she would have killed Erik, or someone, in her distress, probably more readily than most and possibly even more than she actually does mean it. And he understands the confusion, or at least he does once he replaces her anger reaction with what had once been his characteristic fear.

Cornering either of them, he realizes again, is an exceptionally bad decision.]

But... I understand. As best I can. And for the record, I feel you are neither paranoid nor crazy to expect a second individual to make the same decisions someone important in your life has already made. I would expect that a great deal of the strength of your reaction is residual emotion, unresolved from your relationship with your father.

I don't know him. I can't say how he would react to knowing this. [He probably wouldn't be able to even if he did.]

[She breathes, listening carefully, turning it over in her head. Nothing he says is new information to her, and yet - the way he lays it out, matter-of-fact and calm, renders her own reactions so much more - manageable. She toes her shoes pulls her knees up to her chest and holds them, heels on the edge of the chair.]

I think - I think there's a loophole, is the problem. There's this gap between the things he promised me and the things I - need, to be able to rely on him. And it's implied, there have been. Good signs. I could confront him about that, I think, without it being about all of this.

[Her vicious doubts and fears and the reckless way they precipitated.]

Not even confronting, necessarily. A clarification.

[Ben watches, not exactly anxious but vigilant; he knows everything he said is, in its most basic sense, true. How she'll take it, though, how she'll apply it to her own experience is in doubt, and it's this that makes him uncertain.

But she's calming. Withdrawing, yes, with her body language and her thoughts, but calming.]

Has he stated that you are important to him in some way? That your safety, well being, and comfort are a priority of one kind or another?

[She tucks her hair behind her ear, reflexive, neatening, and tries to remember the exact words.]

He said - he said it didn't matter to him, that I'm human. He said I was special to him.

[It sounds bizarrely juvenile, out of context, and her mouth twists a little.]

He promised not to be like my real father, that's what I begged for. I told him Magneto was just full of war and there wasn't any room for me any more, and he promised he always would. Have..the room. To care, I guess.

[She reels it out piece by piece, and it sounds suddenly prosaic to her own ears. It all seems more trustworth and much smaller at the same time.]

But it's not just about me. It's about...something bigger, something more general. I couldn't bear being the one exception if he had the same ideas, if he still looked down on everyone else like me.

[Ben merely takes the information in, characteristically neutral and intent. He still doesn't understand the relationship or how it could be so important, but he doesn't need to; he understands, well enough, what she wants. He thinks.]

Then perhaps that needs clarifying, for your peace of mind and for potential future relations. Perhaps presenting this matter as your own point of view, you need not call his into question at all, but may yet gain from the information.

[She'd try to explain, if he asked, not in the universal tropes of what family should be, but her own bloody empty places, that he was the center of her world when she was very small and it shaped her, and she'll never stop wanting the love of someone who fits that deep old imprint. She can live without it, but not with the same kind of happiness.]

You're right. I will. I should have before, but I didn't want to...upset things. Cowardly of me.

[The fact that for now he does care about her, even if it's only her. It's so much more than she's had for a long time. But she's resolved now - she just has to find the right way to go about it.]

Edited 2013-06-22 21:03 (UTC)

[Perhaps someday. She doesn't seem like someone who would laugh at or ridicule him for asking simple questions; even those who don't, their answers are rarely useful. They don't think about explaining what are, to them, universal concepts to someone who doesn't even possess the proper vocabulary for them.

Now he presses his lips for a moment because "coward" is a trigger word for so many people; he doesn't understand that, either, but that's something he's resigned himself to being confused by for a long time.]

Not cowardly. Sensible, especially considering the position you found yourself in with your actual father. It's not noble to continually, willingly subject oneself to a hopeless situation in which one is, effectively, powerless. It's stupidity.

But you have learned that you are not a victim. You have, here, the opportunity to make a different choice, now.

Thank you.

[She was already settled, more or less, but it's kind, and it fortifies her, makes her smile easier. She mulls over it a little more, stretching out as she considers possible ways to broach the subject. She doesn't have to figure it out immediately; she has a plan, and that's enough for now.

She's still a little jittery, though, leftover adrenaline still circulating in her system after her mind has been set more or less at ease, and she goes back over her own reaction, and his, poking at the interesting bits. Finally she asks,]

What's it like for you, when you kill someone?

[It's only the truth, which is why Ben doesn't understand when people call him kind because of it. He gives her her space and her silence, listening instead to the quiet piano music still playing on his CD player and trying to think of what else she might need from him at this time. The space, the quiet, is hers for as long as she needs it; his attention is optional, until she calls for it again.

Of course, the question is too broad for him, though he does wrestle with it for a moment. The confusion pulls his eyebrows together ever so slightly, bright brown eyes searching for what it is, exactly, she's wanting or needing to hear.]

What is what like? The sequence of events, the motivation, and my frame of mind before, during, and after all depends on why I've killed them.

What different reasons have you had?

[She's not entirely sure what she's searching for, whether it's information or vicarious experience. She has a sense of the shape of it but not the proper names. She'll be able to clarify, she thinks, from a list of options.]

Several. I have killed because I was ordered to do so, in order to survive, or because I believed it was required of me; I killed because I wanted to in the full belief that it would make someone else happy. I have killed because I became confused, because I could not stop myself and nor could anyone else and it was what I was taught. Because I did not know better and because I did not care to know better. Because I was angry, and hurt, and in pain.

[He's not proud of this list, but it doesn't matter; all of it happened and he lists them off calmly, watching her for the cue. He will speak of any of them, and he once tried to warn her that he is not a safe individual. She had purported not to care, then. He wonders idly if it will continue to be true, though his expression betrays nothing of this idle, intent curiosity.]

Edited 2013-06-29 00:34 (UTC)

[She peers at his face while he recites it, sympathetic in a small, cornered way to some of the reasons he isn't proud of, a little lost-looking around the edges, a little hungry, and a little scared, too, but of her own interest and the things lurking behind it, not of him.]

When you wanted to. What was your frame of mind, during, when you wanted to.

[She constructs the question of his own words; she isn't sure which one of them she's trying to make it easier for.]

[Ben is quiet and still as he considers this. He wants to be honest, and if he is honest, there are two very specific, separate occasions he must talk about. One was very recent. One was definitely not.

The X5 straightens where he's sitting in his chair, hands folded together between his knees, gaze and voice steady.]

It's happened twice. The very first time I helped kill someone, it was because I wanted to.

[It's easy to remember; thinking back he remembers it as his fondest moment inside Manticore, the one time every desire he had, his unit had, and Manticore had for him all aligned and he knew exactly what to do, and he did it, and it felt like peace. He has no way of knowing if that's where the madness started though in his clearer moments, he suspects maybe it was.]

I had been telling my unit about the Blue Lady for almost a year when it happened; I'd begun to believe it, I think. I think I had to. I think we all had to. We'd been in training for combat, of course, from the time we could physically handle the sequences, as soon as we could begin to exercise fine control over our motor functions. It was a field exercise: we were turned loose, unarmed, to apprehend a man armed with a knife and a gun in the forest inside the compound.

He was meant to have his freedom if he escaped but of course, he didn't. When we caught him, he had... a mark. A heart, with a knife in it. Because I had begun to believe in the Lady, that she could protect us, that she would, I saw it and I knew - I knew - that he was a Nomlie. I knew that if we did not kill him, he would rise up and kill us. I couldn't let that happen.

We killed him. They'd trained us to even if we weren't, at the time, ordered to and we all knew what we were intended to do, so we did it. We wanted to be safe. [He pauses, and now here is some hesitation, the concern that the flaw that still exists in him had started as far back as then, further back. That he is going into too much detail.

But she asked about his frame of mind. He remembers it crystal clear.] I can still remember feeling... satisfied. I remember tasting his blood in my mouth and feeling like I finally understood what we were meant to be. I remember thinking we could keep ourselves safe.

[She listens, quiet and intense. She doesn't show a lot of emotion, but not in an inscrutable way, not like she's hiding it or shutting away her feelings. She's just waiting, taking it all in. There's a little sadness in her eyes, because the way Ben was raised will never not bring that out in her, but it's a moment of silence rather a dirge. There's no judgement in her, just a wary recognition as he finishes, something that might be relief, couched in tentative stillness.]

The other one was Ladd, right?

[She doesn't think he fit any of the other categories.]

[Ben is watching back every bit as intently, save for the part of his mind actively remembering; he never knows what to do with the sadness, though he's seen it quite frequently by now. The relief is subtle but noticeable, to someone looking for anything positive, any kind of warning sign.

Someone also accustomed to exhibiting emotion on a much slower, subtler scale than most.]

Yes. The other one was Ladd. Nothing will make me regret that decision.

Edited 2013-07-01 01:11 (UTC)

Good.

[She'd told him how she felt when it first happened, but they weren't close then, and she was still learning how much she could love Lua. Her approval is isn't based on fear and resentment anymore; it's fierce and implacable.]

[It's the razor-sharp edge in her that he's come to respect as much as anything else that the society they both have a hard time finding their way into would find acceptable; an edge so much sharper in her than in most. An edge that would actually kill, has actually killed. Maybe if he'd grown up with the mother that instead gave him up to be broken and honed, he wouldn't have the same edge.

But he does, and he finds himself wanting to smile again, though he still doesn't.]

He was out of control and had been for several months. No one was doing anything. When the Lady asked for his sacrifice, it was easy to do.

And what did it feel like? Actually. Getting him.

[It's lighter now, less shuttered, less ashamed of her own low-simmer hunger. It's Ladd. She still doesn't know what he'd have done to her if Bruce hadn't intervened before he lost patience with her. It's okay to want him ripped open.]

It felt right.

[The answer is immediate, unhesitating. He'll never regret it and he sees no reason to pretend otherwise. At the time it had felt right for different reasons than the ones that settled in later.

Disappointing Rhade had not felt good at all, and it's the only reason he's remotely conflicted about it now.]

There was a woman - I thought she was the Blue Lady. She asked me for him, and my warden was not there to stop me, and neither was anyone else. It seemed like less a coincidence and more... rightful punishment.

I lured him into the CTS. We fought. He was stronger than I am but I'm better trained. I broke his neck, took his teeth, and left him there to rot.

It only took Gaheris a few days to find him, once he'd returned. We went to Zero together. I'm not proud of upsetting Gaheris, but it still feels right.

I think. This place isn't supposed to be about what people deserve. But that doesn't mean he didn't deserve it.

[Because he really, really did.]

I don't claim to know what this place is about, or what it is supposed to be about. It was the first time in a long time I realized I didn't have to stand back and watch something happen.

That I could act. That I could do something that others couldn't, for several reasons. That it was safer for me to act than for most.

[Ben is, by and large, polite and standoffish these days. He's been called gentle, and sweet, and kind. But there's an edge that lives beneath all that, hammered into being by Manticore and honed by relentless training during his formative years, and it's there as he speaks. Just a glimpse of what he was intended to be from the start.]

[Anya is ruthless deep down to her core. She hides it less than he does, for all her occasional effusiveness, and she responds to it in him, responds even more strongly to what she sees as the nobility alloyed into it. The drive to act against someone who should have been stopped.]

I know I've said it before. But I'm still glad you did. He scared me.

[He scared her in a way raw danger can't, the slouching malice, the way he could hurt Lua in ways the Admiral might not be able to repair.]

[There's still no judgment in Ben for that, for what he can read in her now more easily than most of the emotions he's learning slowly, painstakingly to navigate. He hasn't spoken so bluntly of it, his enjoyment in it, since he tried to reach Max through her haze of horror for him.

Since he gave in to it in an attempt to make something, anything, make sense.

Now he tilts his head ever so slightly to a side, and replies evenly.]

Gaheris was displeased, and that is not something I am proud of. But I would do it again, if I found the circumstances... replicated.

Not the Lady. The rest of it. If someone needs stopped, and no one will stop them.

[It's a promise, in between the vague, deliberate words. He's spent too much of his own life being afraid, and now he's found that he can fight back. He will.]

017 ☣ Infirmary post + some housekeeping things

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