bodilesswarrior | 32 - Video - Backdated to 3rd

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your love it burns away my darkness

32 - Video - Backdated to 3rd

[She's never felt so small.

It's the sort of thing she would hide, usually, but not today. Her shoulders are slumped, and her expression is worn, and her voice is dull.]

Everyone I know - I'd just like you to check in.

[Iris, of course, has been at her side since they got back. It's helped - it always has, holding her close - but it can't overcome everything else.

She made a promise.]

[Emperor]

You, especially.

[A strained, bitter smile.]

You can say "I told you so" if you want.

[Spam! Open to All]

[She needed to get out. Out of her tower, out of her head.

She's dressed in an old black tank, hair pulled back in a short, low ponytail. Her hands are wrapped in frayed strips of cloth.

As soon as she gets to the gym, she picks a punching bag and starts wailing on it. It's not about precision, or stamina; she'll pummel the leather until her hands bleed.]

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No one gave me any trouble and I did nothing of consequence.

[Crisp, lightly bitter. He's fine. It was fine.]

[Barbara closes her eyes, for a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose.]

You did nothing significant for an entire month on an enemy vessel.

Your enemy.

I didn't help Iris and I didn't torture anyone. So, yes?

...Were you planning to torture people?

I thought about it.

But it's not actually an efficient way to change people.

[This is not growth; his atrocities have never been for stupid reasons, or lazy ones.]

...Not generally, no. [She's quiet, for a moment, as she peers at him.]

Did you have an Inmate?

I had an item which seemed to think so. But no file and no reliable confirmation from that admiral that we had any arrangement he was bound to honor.

[He might have been more ruthless, less circumspect, if that were the case.]

[So whatever he did might have been for nothing, at least for his Inmate.

The fact that this stayed his hand - it matters.

A few moments, and then, quietly - ]

Why didn't you leave?

I'm still dead at home. Truly dead, not risen.

And you graduated, which means you get to live again.

Ah ah, no. I checked. I did not graduate. There, I was a warden immediately. And wardens don't get life comped.

[She stares, for a second, before laughing, low and harsh.]

One day, I'll figure out this entire goddamned system and all of its rules, and maybe then I can make some kind of actual difference.

[He finds her bitterness inexplicably cheering; it's not schadenfreude, or not mostly, he doesn't think. Perhaps it's just the backhanded reprieve of not being the only one to fail.]

Did that work for you at home?

[Real question.]

Yes! [She doesn't mean to shout, but all of the ragged frustration just pours out in her voice.] I couldn't fix everything, that takes time, I couldn't always save everyone, but what I did mattered.

[He nods; appreciates the difference, glad to hear she does too. He could bring up the time he tried to unmake this lurching, cyclical place, when the admiral's infinite resets prevailed partly through her intervention. But it's not something she would actually regret, and it's not something he particularly wants to throw in her face. It would only pile on the hopelessness, and he has has little enough hope to offer.

Tangents, though. Those he can do.]

Barbara, how much do you know about the British East India Company?

[She's fine with tangents - and, knowing him, there's a definite purpose - so she only stares for a second before answering.]

Started out as a joint-stock company, ended up ruling swathes of India with private armies. Shockingly, it got very corrupt.

Can you be corrupt when you're the one making the rules?

...wait. Don't answer that.

[He can't help a skewed, sheepish smile. It was a semantic question rather than a moral one, but he heard how it came out; he is not incapable of laughing at himself.]

The point I meant to make - there was a clause in the company charter. If the company failed to turn a profit for three years running, it would be dissolved. It's that institutional hunger, the literal insatiability of it, the constant need for new resources, like Rome's endless need for new lands to settle its previous generation of legionnaires, that, and no oversight, that always yields a certain blunt flavor of force. The impatience and sloppiness and overkill of it. Opportunities are lost, but enough are exploited, there are always some results.

Sometimes the admirals remind me of it.

[He thinks of the Rix, and their hunger; he thinks of London below, cast into his sister's roughly translated role, an aesop as subtle as a blazing comet.]

Edited 2014-12-05 20:15 (UTC)

[That draws a bit of a smile. He is self aware, to an extent; he'd be far more infuriating otherwise.

It fades as she listens, and considers.]

I can see that. As far as we know, he's not accountable to anyone. He's not - there's no management, not really. He does what he wants.

What he wants does seem to be a good thing - broadly speaking - but that's not always enough.

He gets his results. Zane, Morgana, David. I can't deny what's been done for them.

And yet. The machine of it churns on and on, and I feel chewed up and stuck in the gears and - I wonder, sometimes. What his clause is.

Do you have any guesses?

[He doesn't respond right away, reticent because it really is a guess, a wisp of suspicion, too surreal and too trite. He doesn't have anything so rigorous as a hypothesis, nothing really vast or alien or subtle enough. But he has a guess.]

When we were in Oxford, did you know about Dust?

[Her lips quirk, just slightly.] In any reality, knowing things is why I do. [The smile fades, as she considers.] You think he's something like an angel? [Something born from the conciousness of the multiverse, shaping the course of life.]

I think maybe he eats them.

[That really should be existentially horrifying, and part of her recoils appropriately - but it doesn't show, not even slightly, because the rest of her is too busy scrutinising the idea.]

I suppose every level has its predators. Do you think it's malicious or just instinctual?

One has malice for other people.

[No, he doesn't think it's malice. They are too demonstrably beneath him.]

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