bodilesswarrior | 17- Video

17- Video

[Her hands are clasped in front of her, lips a thin line. She looks more irritated than traumatised.

She can still feel the press of a mask, if she tries.]

Well, that was fun. [Her voice is dry and flat.]

Status, everyone?

[Private to people who went through the door]

What did you see? What do you remember?

[Private to the Emperor]

[A wry smile curves her lips.]

Guess the breach was prophetic.

[Private to Bond]

[It's a different sort of smile, this time, slight and sharp.]

I would have beaten you eventually.

[Not she; it would be easier, to think that way, but not particularly honest.]

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[He does, and he doesn't. He thinks of it as an accurate amount of distance - she's the one who took herself lightyears away, after all. And he's had enough people die on the table to know how different it is from giving an order, and how different it isn't.]

Not really. But we can rephrase if you'd prefer.

[People in general are a mess of contradictions; the Emperor, probably, more than most. She only shakes her head.]

What happened after that?

Then the war began.

Slowly, as befits engagements committed across the span of lightyears.

A rixmind had been established on Legis by the time of the Empress's death. It managed to communicate with an - object, towed by an incoming battlecruiser several lightdays behind the original infiltration force. An object with strange quantum metamanipulative abilities we still don't truly understand. For lack of a better word, Alexander uploaded itself to the object, enabling it to roam and conquer. It also made contact with the Captain of the naval vessel sent to intercept and destroy the cruiser, and revealed the secret to him, which it uncovered when its mind originally seized all the devices of Legis XV - including the Empress's internal medical minder.

Captain Zai sent a message, protected by the privilege of senatorial immunity, to Senator Nara Oxham, who revealed it to the Empire. An unimaginable blow.

The Empire didn't dissolve overnight, of course. But it was riven and - something like paralyzed, on the brink of chaos if not quite past it, while Alexander crept closer to her heart.

[He doesn't mention the failed council vote to raze Legis with nuclear weapons to destroy Alexander before it could contact anyone and create an in vivo reservoir of genetic diversity at a stroke. It didn't happen; to his mind, it doesn't matter.]

[She expected he wouldn't tell her everything; and that, in itself, will tell her something.]

How did that feel? [She feels a bit ridiculous, as she asks; like the sort of therapist you get on sitcoms. But it's important, she thinks, to know his state of mind as his world fell apart.]

[He meets her eyes, steady and sincere.]

Terrifying. Infuriating. Frustrating, because the civil situation was too precarious for vast or sudden moves and yet the crisis of Alexander's invasion demanded decisive action.

We felt trapped, and betrayed, and desperate. We still do.

Edited 2013-11-25 04:07 (UTC)

[Barbara's nod is slow. She knows what it's like - the walls closing in, and one wrong move could shatter everything inside.]

Do you have any idea how to handle it, once you graduate?

[He smiles, a clean bitter twist.]

Several ideas. I have nothing to do here but plan, after all.

[She smiles, too, wryly sympathetic.]

Curse and a blessing. [She's worked her mind in frenzies, here, over what ifs and what wills, so many thoughts racing over each other and knotting together.]

It's harder, when you're so removed. [Nothing to observe, no one to consult. Planning, essentially, in a vacuum.]

[His smile softens a little and inclines his head.]

It doesn't matter.

No? [She cocks her head, just slightly.] Why not?

If we graduated, we could just make a deal to exterminate the Rix in their entirety. But we won't graduate as long as we're willing to commit atrocities to protect our people, and protecting them is the only thing worth graduating for. If that willingness erodes, so does any desire to improve further, because freedom without the will to use it is pointless.

[That's some catch, that catch-22.]

We expect you'll try anyway, of course.

[He feels a little genuinely sorry. He does like her; he'd like to get out, and he'd like to be to the vehicle to get her whatever it is that she needs. But he truly doesn't think it's possible.]

You're so sure there's not another way. [Barbara shakes her head, slow and certain.] That's the thing, about being ruthless all the time - you forget there are other options. You forget how to look.

[Her eyes narrow, slightly.] Besides - I don't think it's just about your people. Just about protection. Do you?

[He's angry, now, though he keeps his voice steady and even. He isn't hiding it, just - controlling it.]

Sometimes there are, and sometimes there are not. Don't mistake us for a tin-pot dictator. We are not ruthless all the time - it's not a viable way to build a civilization, the Empire would have shuddered apart in revolution a thousand years ago if we were.

We have looked. We have backed ourself into smaller and smaller corners, looking.

[A small sigh, through his nose, eyes closing for a moment, and he lets some of the anger leech away. Most of it isn't for her, anyway.]

If we found better options, we would employ them with delight. But being strategic isn't the same thing as having the rectitude to foreswear abhorrent tactics, and that we will not do. We are almost immortal and so are our enemies. If we return, our back will be to the wall again soon enough.

The Empire isn't the only consideration, of course. It's just the only one that really matters.

[He decided, when Anastasia refused to help him, where his priorities were.]

[She doesn't flinch at the anger, clear but contained - if anything, she welcomes it.]

I understand that. Sometimes, there isn't another way. Sometimes, our own moral compass has to come in second to the greater good. [She will never see killing as anything but a tragedy. That doesn't mean she won't do it, if she has to.]

Sometimes, though - it's very easy to use that as an excuse. [There's something worn in her voice, now.] To forget individual lives.

[He tips his head back, closes his eyes. He's just - he feels very weary, sometimes.]

The human mind isn't really built to understand the scale of a galaxy. We cheat, of course, we're very good at that. Marks on a stick. Scientific notation. Cross-dimensional calculus. Bureaucracy and demography and retinal ping census databases. So we can find out, we can say there are approximately 20 trillion people in our care and we're even right but neither one of use really has any clue what it means.

You have to understand, Barbara. We love Anastasia. Despite everything, we still love her. And the only thing we regret about her assassination was its ultimate futility.

We didn't forget. We didn't forget what her life was worth. She was the Reason. Everything was for her. Except it can't really be, can it? My dear heart is not worth chaos ripping through trillions even if I can't really conceive of it. Even if I'm only delaying the wound, not preventing it.

We didn't forget. We chose. And in similar circumstances, we would not choose differently.

[Barbara's silent for few long moments, hands clasped loosely in her lap, gaze heavy.]

I do understand. [How many times has risked Dinah's life for the greater good?] Sometimes - our hearts, our love, have to come in second to our responsibilities.

[He sighs.]

I'm sorry. I don't...regret.

[He only regrets, slightly, not being ruthless enough to pull it off. If he'd destroyed Legis XV as planned - but that's not helpful.]

I don't expect to graduate. But I'm not trying to fight you. I want to cooperate.

[And he hopes, with some tiny, fractious, childlike part of himself. With the part of him that is in love, that wants to go home with Zane at his side, with the part of himself that remembers the relief of abdication from his mirrorverse self, even if it's not an option for him. If anyone is sharp enough to do it - maybe. Maybe Barbara.]

[Barbara smiles, just slightly.] That's a big step by itself. [It won't be easy, she thinks; not for either of them. But few things worth doing are.

The smile fades, as her brow furrows.] Regret - it can be dangerous. It drags you into the past, when you need to focus on the present. It makes you hesitate.

It makes sense, for you to stop doing it. Everything about you makes sense, for an Emperor.

Things is - you need to remember how to be a person, too. I think you've already made progress, with that.

[He considers his hands. They look warmer than they are, a little burnished from his father's side and sunshine, smooth, hale, without the usual wan pallor of the dead. But still cool to the touch.]

I don't feel anything I don't fight for.

[Calm, conversational.]

We didn't talk about this there because I was alive. But it's - it's not as bad as it sounds. It's a matter of focus and will. And I fight for most of the things I...start to feel, would have felt, because the more you let go of the less you are yourself, the less you are part of the world at all.

But it hones a person. Everything frivolous is sheared away. Everything is deliberate.

I don't think that precludes what you're talking about. But you ought to know.

Edited 2013-12-19 21:54 (UTC)

[Barbara is silent, for a moment, as she considers the implications. That's one thing she can't understand, not truly; she can shut her emotions off and struggle to find them again, but they're always a part of her.

She thinks, perhaps, he's stronger than she is. And it makes her smile, just a little.]

I think the fact that you're still holding on to that - means we've definitely got a good place to start.

[It doesn't feel like a start, to him. It feels like an infinite, asymptotic end, his struggle with his symbiant, the equilibrium they maintained for so long, the trenches they've carved in his neural landscape, everything whittled by long struggle to what he will surrender, and what he won't, with very little left to be dealt with. But he makes a wry face and doesn't contradict her. This is his idea of cooperation.]

I've known a lot of walking ghosts.

It's not bad, mind you. No fear, no hunger, no pain. But it's not the eternity I want.

[She considers, for a moment, before she answers.] Not the one she wanted, either.

Don't generalize. It wasn't immortality she rejected. It was dying, again, writ slow.

[That's how he interprets it. And he's at least partly right.]

All right. [Or maybe that's what he tells himself, or maybe it's a bit of both. She doesn't let the scepticism show, not yet.]

Either way, though, shouldn't it have been her choice?

That depends on the cost, doesn't it?

Even so. She chose to die.

[He has always been in the business of giving his sister what she wants. Despite the tangle of bitterness, this is still what he tells himself.]

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bodilesswarrior - 2014-01-09 01:16 (UTC) - Expand

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