exnihilo | 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?]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Harvey has been keeping himself bust-- it's water change day, so he's in chinos and his sleeves are rolled up but there's no tie. Four betta fish swim in cups, acclimating to the temperature of water that the cups float in slowly. It smells a little more moist in here than normal, but that's what happens when you clean up after your fish. ]

[ Hands now fresh washed, he smells of soap and Harvey and little else. ]

Come in.

[She sits on the edge of the bed, watches the bright little fish. She feels like there's something meaningful just out of her grasp.]

Where do you think they came from?

Maybe they were plucked from death, and sent here too.

[ Almost everything is. Even some of the wardens are dead. ]

The Boy wanted them. I'm not real sure why.

It's a bit like that, real space life. You just go from ship to ship, tank to tank - other passengers shuffle around and everything gets recycled and everything is. Taken care of. Insulated. And nothing ever changes.

[Distantly spoken, as much as anything.]

[ That's an interesting comparison. ]

[ He comes closer, sitting down next to her. ]

Sounds like being goldfish... The little plastic castle gets to be new every time, for you.

[She makes a noise that starts off as a laugh, but ends as a muffled, strangled sob. New every time. She curls up against him, hides her face in his shoulder.]

[ Well that was brilliant,Harvey says. ]

[ Two-Face snarled; feelings and tenderness are not foreign to him, but the suit didn't quite fit right. ]

[ Harvey just sighed inwardly, and wrapped his arms around her. He was sorry, he really was. ]

[She's the one who put the metaphor on the table, picked at it. She didn't have it in her to crack it open but - there it is. She holds him tight and cries, a different kind of release than smashing up Riddick's room, and some distant, isolate part of her notes that she has never had this before, never been held while she feel apart. She's faked it for sympathy on missions, but whenever she broke down for real, the only creatures who knew who she was preferred to let her spin out and shatter, then scooped up the pieces to build their doll again. She doubts even the girl who lived by the sea had ever done this - if she had, if she had someone who would hold her through tears, then that someone would have claimed her body before it went on the auction block.

She cries until it feels like she's been wrung completely dry, and she keeps holding on after, nuzzles her cheek against the damp fabric of his shoulder.]

...sorry I'm such a mess.

You're not a mess.

[ Harvey kissed her hair; his voice was smooth and soft, capable of the gentleness she needed. Two-Face let him. They were there fore her now, both of them. ]

[ He enjoyed being a shield, a rock to lean on. He'd been happiest as a husband, a partner. He enjoyed being a part of something. Now, he was a part of himself, and Mira.... well, they both happily butted up their pieces against hers and folded her into their experience. ]

You're just seeing the seams now, that's all. You can choose to unravel them and put them back together, or you can tighten them and like who you are now.

It's your choice.

[I don't want to see them, she thinks, like a child covering her ears against bad news. But she can't quite say it to him, with his patchwork always on display.]

...what if I choose wrong?

[The crux of it, the terrifying thing, and she's not sure there's a right choice at all because she doesn't feel like she has enough scraps to work with, but even if there is, she doubts she could make it.]

There's always a chance you will. That's the burden of choice, Mira.

[ He draws out his coin, curling his fingers around it. ]

Our choice is not your choice. But our choice is no choice at all. We don't wish that on anyone... though sometimes we may give a person a taste of what it is like.

Why?

[Why share, or why no choice when they wouldn't wish it on anyone. Two questions. He can choose - or something - which to answer.]

[ Harvey firmly refuses to answer the latter; Two-Face would rather not discuss why they share since it's Harvey's bone to pick. Deadlocked, they snap and snarl at each other briefly, before they send the coin up. ]

[ It comes down, caught, and briefly glanced at. It comes down clean, in Harvey's favor. ]

Justice.

Crime against a person inherently strips someone's choice away. We give them a taste that. To know what it's like to have someone who stops you, tells you what you can do, what you can be, what you're allowed to feel.

So they know what it's like. What they've done to others. They lose the right to choose. The coin chooses them. And if they survive-- they need to know just how fortunate they were.

The only time I ever dared to choose, I got it wrong. I -

But not choosing him would have been. Not worse. Nothing? It was. Something or nothing, instead of between things. And it didn't even matter, in the end.

Choice always matters.

[ He looked down at her, oh-so-serious, mangled mouth in a thin line where it can press together at all. ]

Even if you choose wrong, it's still yours.

It didn't make any difference.

Vaddum still lived, I still belonged to them, and -

[And he left her there, waiting like an idiot]

- nothing changed.

Edited 2014-04-10 19:31 (UTC)

Sometimes that happens. That's-- the human condition. Sometimes you can do everything right, Mira... and still fail.

[She heaves another little sob, but it hurts like a bone being set by menders, cleansing, right. The human condition. At the very least, she's not alone. She curls up in his arms for a very long time, shaking apart and hiding her face, and eventually falls into an exhausted sleep.]

6. Open spam + Open video + private to Arthas

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