2.21 - Voice + Spam

[breakingmyheart]

[Library & Kitchen Filters]

I've been unpaired from Jesse. I still plan on keeping both my jobs. If that's alright.

[Even though she kind of hates both of them, it's marginally better than having nothing to do all day.]

[Private to Megamind]

...I can help. With the project you were talking about.

[Open Spam - Deck]

[So it's been a fortnight. The breach was - well - things happened. She's been through her most grotesquely violent death toll to date. And then she got off the Barge in LA and stole from a cashpoint for the express purpose of buying drugs, which - didn't happen, in the end.

Small mercies. She might not have been feeling any worse for having succeeded but deep down she knows the better would be very, very fleeting.

And then the Admiral separated her from Jesse. Or Jesse asked to be unpaired. She doesn't know. He said he didn't, she'd like to believe him, but she wouldn't really blame him for spotting a lost cause either. Megamind called her a model Inmate not so long ago but it doesn't feel like she was modelling anything except peaceful noncompliance.

She doesn't often break the library -> kitchen -> (gym) -> shower -> sleep cycle but she needs some time and fresh air to decompress and so after the dinner shift she's out on deck, sitting on a bench and somewhat reading a book but not really paying attention to it.]

Comments

[fridgetothefire]

[Anya's been watching out for her, a little. She didn't want to hunt Tosh down when she was obviously trying to stay out of everyone else's orbits - it's a pattern Anya is familiar with - but she has been waiting for an opportunity. She scoots onto the bench next to Tosh, speaks quietly without looking at her, gazing out at the view instead.]

I'd like to talk to you. But if that's not okay, I can go.

[breakingmyheart]

[This honestly comes as a surprise. For a very fleeting moment, she resents being given the option of saying no - because it'd be far too easy to take her up on it and disappear back into her cabin, back into hiding - but it passes. Because Anya's trying to be kind. Despite -

Apparently both she and Jesse were wrong and some people do still care about what she did.

She closes the book, sets it to one side.]

No. No - it's okay. We can talk.

private

[megamind]

Yes, ah. I see. I'll be glad to get you up to date.

[ Jesse already told him the news so... yeah. How about not bringing that up. ]

private

[breakingmyheart]

Thanks.

Where are you up to with it so far?

[fridgetothefire]

I know you weren't - available, when everything went down, right after they unplugged you, or whatever they did. I don't know if you went over any of it afterward. Most people wouldn't, I think.

[Anya would have, but she is more afraid of ignorance than pain.]

At the time, I just wanted the Admiral to send you somewhere else. Anywhere else. Mostly because I was scared.

But a little bit because I know what it's like to be surrounded by people who hate you. It's not...a good environment. For anybody.

private

[megamind]

Right now just grinding data. I've got a sliver of a biome, and -- in the end, well. There's only so much relevant data I can pull.

I'm thinking a fairly regular data-dump into a virtual environment may be the best way to go, unless I can get them bodies. Which isn't impossible via robotics but...

Yeah, this is going to be complicated and I really am looking forward to it and -- at the same time-- not.

[breakingmyheart]

[She did. Everything she could read, she read.]

No, it isn't.

[But she doesn't really feel hated. She just feels...adrift, forgotten, disregarded. She was the worst thing that happened to the Barge until the next thing.]

private

[breakingmyheart]

What about holographics? There've been a couple of Wardens here I - well - reverse-engineered.

[fridgetothefire]

[Being dismissed can be awful too.]

I was in zero, for part of it. I pretty much deserved it. More than most people there at the time.

[breakingmyheart]

[The sudden upset on her face is obvious.]

Christ, no, you didn't. Nobody deserved what I did to them.

[fridgetothefire]

[She turns to meet Tosh's eyes, her own gaze somber and steady.]

I did.

I tortured my baby sister, in my world. She was fourteen. She was the only person who had tried to be kind to me in years. I was the closest thing to a functional parent she ever had. I hurt her and then I killed her.

[It's not bland, it's not flat, but it's not terribly emotional either. It's a solemn, if partial, recital of charges. She's making something like an offering of it. Everyone knows Tosh's guilt; Anya gives a little of her own in return. And by certain harsh standards of justice - an eye for an eye, torture for torture - yes, she deserves it. It's a brutal system, but fundamentally a fair one.]

[breakingmyheart]

[For a long time she's got nothing to say to that. She thinks she understands why Anya's telling her this - no other Inmate has to wear their reason for being there quite as openly as Toshiko does - but she's got no idea what to do with the information.

Eventually she looks away, into the dark.]

...I was tortured during a flood last month. I only told my Warden. What was done to me doesn't change what I did to you and the others, and what I did to you doesn't change what you did to your sister. It's just...

[A horrible, repetitious cycle. She shakes her head helplessly.]

[fridgetothefire]

It just hurts. I'm sorry.

[A sympathetic sorry, not a culpable one, blunt and yet sincere.]

But for me...it didn't change what I'd done, but it changed me. I already felt guilty, but not enough to really stop blaming her, or my situation, or...anything except admitting that it was on me.

When I was down there, I heard her screaming. Reliving what I'd done to her was part of what you did to me, right next to burning alive. And that part I brought on myself, and there wasn't any way left not to face that. The connection was obvious and inescapable. And yet...if being confronted with the harm I'd done made me suffer enough to qualify as torture, then. Then it was like proof that I wasn't too callous, that I wasn't irredeemable.

It...bizarre as it sounds, it gave me hope.

[breakingmyheart]

...oh.

That's...

[It actually makes perfect sense.]

That doesn't sound bizarre. I understand.

[fridgetothefire]

[That makes her smile, small but sure, surprised and touched. It's not something she's shared with anyone else, and being understood is...nice.]

It was still an awful thing, and it always will be, always will have been. And I can't speak for anyone but me. I'm not, like, glad it happened. But I'm okay, maybe better, for having come through it. And for what it's worth, just for me, I forgive you.

private

[megamind]

...how do you reverse engineer a warden?

private

[breakingmyheart]

Their bodies, Megamind. They were both holograms.

[breakingmyheart]

You -

[It's more than anyone else has said to her. She feels her eyes prickling with tears and looks away because God, how embarrassing.]

It's worth a lot.

[More than she can quantify, really.]

Thank you, Anya.

[fridgetothefire]

Yeah.

[She doesn't think it's embarrassing - she'd cry too, if her own Wanda were around to forgive her - but she gazes at her hands in her lap, gives Tosh the small privacy of averting her gaze while she controls herself.]

If I think about it, some of the people I love most in my life right now, I don't think I ever would have trusted or gotten so close to if they hadn't helped me in that moment. I'm grateful for that. Mostly, you know, to them. But still.

I'm not saying, like, 'bad things happen for a reason' or any philosophical crap like that. Just...yeah, it was bad. Scarier than most of the stuff that happens here, because we didn't know if it would end or how to protect ourselves. But it wasn't any purer or more damning sort of evil. It was awful, but I think most of us have recovered.

Whatever drove you to that place...I hope someday you can too.

[tolaywaste]

[Sometimes Alex wonders if he should resent her. After all, he resents Erik a lot of the time, the choices he made, the actions he took. But that's more - personal. And maybe that's the difference. Alex felt pain when Tosh took over, and those he loves felt more (which is where the only small glimmering of resentment comes in), but he can't bring himself to hate her.]

[He's been keeping an eye on her, from a distance because she doesn't know him or give a damn. It's so rare that she's up here at all that he pauses, trying to figure out if he should say anything at all or just leave.]

[In the end, he clears his throat, a little awkward.]

Anything interesting?

[breakingmyheart]

[Toshiko slips off her glasses with one hand and rubs the other over her eyes.]

...So do I.

And - I hope you're right about that. More than anything else, really.

[About most of her victims having recovered. Disasters on the Barge aren't so much forgotten as just eclipsed, she knows that, and even though Silent Hill seems to have caused most of the freshest wounds that doesn't mean the marks of what she's done have healed or disappeared.]

[breakingmyheart]

[She startles a little, closing the book she was barely reading anyway.]

Oh - no, not really. I was just -

[Going to go. Around almost everyone on the ship, she's just going to take the quickest escape route when it presents itself. But then something occurs to her.]

Did you come to talk to me about Anya?

[tolaywaste]

I - what?

[For a moment he's legitimately baffled, then concerned. Is Anya sick? What's she talking about?]

Not Anya, no. She's not - Why? What happened to Anya?

[breakingmyheart]

Nothing - ! Nothing's happened. She just came to talk to me a little while ago, that's all.

[...not about Anya, then.]

[tolaywaste]

Oh.

[He starts to go through the possibilities of what Anya might have wanted from Tosh, what she would have wanted to learn or share, and quickly realizes there's no point theorizing. Anya's too complex to theorize about. For him, specifically.]

[Instead, there's just a brief, bright, affectionate smile, and a shake of his head.]

Sorry. I don't know why I thought she might have done something stupid, that's more or less the opposite of what she does.