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Entry tags:
- a knife wants to cut,
- actually a toddler,
- fucking trolleyology,
- girl from a lacuna,
- interdimensional discard pile,
- little orphan angry,
- nobody's child,
- nobody's mother,
- poor life choices,
- seriously mira what are you doing,
- temper tantrum,
- they kept her sharp,
- tool of the gods,
- well if he can't even explain,
- what good is the admiral anyway,
- why does she like arthas
6. Open spam + Open video + private to Arthas
[Open Spam - hallways, deck, dining hall]
[Mira has finally read her file. And it's useless. Worse than useless. There's nothing about her past, her family, not even the name of the planet with the kites. The admiral is supposed to be omnisciennt, and she's still no one, from nowhere.
Worse - she's barely even no one coherently, they've broken her down and made her forget again and again. When you sharpen a knife, you have to scour away the layer of oxidation, the nicks and imperfections, all the little cumulative effects of time and life and use. They kept her very sharp.
She hurls her pot of sempervivum against the wall, hears the ceramic shatter brightly, watches the dark soil scatter across the pristine floor, the bulbous clutches of stiff leaves lolling askew in the mess. She throws her chair, and her lamp, and her notescreen, everything she can pick up that isn't extruded from the walls, but most of it isn't as breakable.
She snatches up the file and storms to the deck, cheeks hot and red, eyes wet, half blinded, flings the pages over the deck railing. She imagines jumping after them, but not seriously - she told Harvey the truth, she doesn't want to die. She wants to live, and she feels like she never, ever has. Not even the killing was hers, they didn't even let her keep the one thing that was always bright and real, the one thing they wanted her for. She wants to scream and hurt and break things, and there's nothing to break in the cold inverse-crush of space. She knows this from both of her lives.
She makes a strangled, frustrated animal noise in her throat, whirls, stalks toward the dining hall, which has plates and fruit bowls to smash and tables to flip over. She doesn't have a plan or a goal, just hurt and rage and viciousness.]
[Public, later]
[Her eyes are still a little red; she doesn't look like death warmed over but she doesn't look happy, either. Her tone is terse, not quite defiant. Challenging, maybe.]
If you knew, I mean really knew, that killing someone innocent would save millions of lives, improve more, would you do it?
[Private to Arthas]
What would you do if you couldn't remember who you were before?
[Who would be left?]
[Mira has finally read her file. And it's useless. Worse than useless. There's nothing about her past, her family, not even the name of the planet with the kites. The admiral is supposed to be omnisciennt, and she's still no one, from nowhere.
Worse - she's barely even no one coherently, they've broken her down and made her forget again and again. When you sharpen a knife, you have to scour away the layer of oxidation, the nicks and imperfections, all the little cumulative effects of time and life and use. They kept her very sharp.
She hurls her pot of sempervivum against the wall, hears the ceramic shatter brightly, watches the dark soil scatter across the pristine floor, the bulbous clutches of stiff leaves lolling askew in the mess. She throws her chair, and her lamp, and her notescreen, everything she can pick up that isn't extruded from the walls, but most of it isn't as breakable.
She snatches up the file and storms to the deck, cheeks hot and red, eyes wet, half blinded, flings the pages over the deck railing. She imagines jumping after them, but not seriously - she told Harvey the truth, she doesn't want to die. She wants to live, and she feels like she never, ever has. Not even the killing was hers, they didn't even let her keep the one thing that was always bright and real, the one thing they wanted her for. She wants to scream and hurt and break things, and there's nothing to break in the cold inverse-crush of space. She knows this from both of her lives.
She makes a strangled, frustrated animal noise in her throat, whirls, stalks toward the dining hall, which has plates and fruit bowls to smash and tables to flip over. She doesn't have a plan or a goal, just hurt and rage and viciousness.]
[Public, later]
[Her eyes are still a little red; she doesn't look like death warmed over but she doesn't look happy, either. Her tone is terse, not quite defiant. Challenging, maybe.]
If you knew, I mean really knew, that killing someone innocent would save millions of lives, improve more, would you do it?
[Private to Arthas]
What would you do if you couldn't remember who you were before?
[Who would be left?]
[Spam]
[This is not a threat. It is something in the species of a complaint: repetition depreciates the worth of things. Art is art partially because it is unique.
(People are supposed to be unique. She is repeated too. A drifting, looping, lurching, pendulous present. More like the wretched, copied, hesisenberged Oscar Vale than she even knew.)
There is a broom closet on the eighth deck filled with useless bullshit. It all fell on her once when she poked her head in, exploring. It'll do.]
I'm going downstairs.
[She spins on her heel, marches for door, still a taut coil of savageness. He can follow or not.]
[Spam]
Would you mind company?
[Spam]
No.
[No, she doesn't mind. Contrary as her mood is, she might have spat out a rejection, or insisted she didn't care, except that she deeply, truly does. She has spent so much of her pointless, forgotten life alone.]
[Spam]
Whose jaw did you break? [He wants to know exactly who to think of when he sees the number 8 ball.]
[Spam]
[They strolled around his gallery arm in arm. They are very definitely banging.]
[Spam]
Did he confer with his coin afterward? [It is an entertaining aspect to the man, fascinating and frustrating both. The act of making a decision is so very human, in Dent's reach yet just out of it. Not to mention the concept of fate and predetermined actions - he is a man Hannibal would not mind observing, but experience has made interaction bothersome.
Or perhaps Abigail has made interaction bothersome. He does consider that, too.]
[Spam]
[She doesn't, really, want to think about him. He's easy. He's comfortable. He makes her nearly as happy as - Ha! - she can remember being, but without the terrific raw vulnerability of her time with Darling. She never feels like she's going to lose herself, with Harvey. And right now she has an excess of herself, and excess of understanding of a past that answers none of her questions, and she wants to fall apart, fly apart, leave some of these pieces behind.]
[Spam]
May I ask why you wish to break things?
[Spam]
Every time. Every time I cared enough about anything to disobey them, they shut me down and pulled me apart and scrubbed it out of me!
[Crash, splinter, creak. A busted plaster lamp crunches under a boot into chalky fragments, too soft to be any good as shanks.]
There's nothing left but their wind-up killer doll and I don't. Even. Have. A. Target.
[Spam]
Lashing out at the sensation of being directionless is understandable. Especially if there is nothing left to care about.
[How does that make you feel, he asks, and watches her under a mien of calm clarity. Beneath that are simple desires. She is a tool, a toy that he wishes to possess.]
[Spam]
[Half-defiant, half sulky. She collapses to sit on an overturned bucket, elbows braced on her knees, hands in her wild hair, fight and breath equally drained out of her.]
[Spam]
[Until exhaustion takes. He looks down at her, expression unreadable. Just out of arm's reach, he crouches slowly.]
Do you recall anything you cared about?
[Spam]
I cared about a man who betrayed me, and that's why I'm dead. And I cared about the people I killed.
[Maybe that's why mercy for poor shattered Oscar Vale, she thinks in a quicksilver flash like minnows through the fingers. Because she'd already killed him once, made him hers. The trouble with copying souls.]
[Spam]
Do you know how they made you forget? Was the manner technological?
[Spam]
[Clipped, bitter, quiet.]
[Spam]
[But he is very good, and he is offering.]
[Spam]
I had dreams, sometimes. Little scraps of the hours before I died.
[Before they bought and remade her.]
[Spam]
Tell me about them.
[He makes it an order, gentle rather than stern, to see her reaction to it.]
[Spam]
I'm young. Fifteen. I'm on a beach, sand and waves and glittering seaside skyscrapers. There are kites in the sky, living ones, gossamer pink aerial-sessile things, farther off. I wade into the water. I love to swim. I'm young and strong. There are some clouds, but I'm not worried, I don't want to go back to shore yet.
The storm comes up so fast. A huge wave crashes over me, and another. I can't get to enough air, I gulp and gasp and choke, tossed and trampled. I flounder and thrash until I drown.
[Spam]
Are you afraid of drowning?
[Spam]
[Yes. Yes she is.]
I don't think about it often. I haven't been to many seaside locations.
[Spam]
[He pauses, considering.]
Come to my cabin this week. We'll see what other memories can be raised.
do you want to switch to timeskip spam or assume they were interrupted and start a new thread later?
[And it's not just acquiescence; she lifts her head a little more, breathes a little easier, smiles very faintly. Nervous, but hopeful.]
I vote timeskip ahead!
Later that week, he goes about his usual routine: walks on the deck, trips to the library, briefly choked down meals. He spends plenty of time in his office, though, and in that time he waits for her, sketching the death of Baldur.]
whee
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