Open Post 001

[2020mod]

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musebox • rules • character list

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[enigmaestro]

"How am I?" He tossed back a look, one perhaps unintentionally wry. No one else was watching them, he pushed open the door. "That's a riddle with a fluid answer."

It was about nine hundred square feet, with a mirrored lower floor. Not the largest of hiding holes, A proverbial fox's den. But for what it lacked in space it resounded in tech: clean laptops lined a wall, digital maps of the City moved from unattended pens on a slick black desk. A long refrigerator lined a corner, keeping supplies (medical or otherwise) chilled.

His hands shook a little, when he ushered Max inward. They shook sometimes, when he remembered things, an action his very body was taught to repulse. Coffee rounds at City Hall, during Max's first week. He couldn't stop it fast enough, the shaking.

Katurian hated when he remembered.

"I -- " a throat cleared. "I suppose I owe you an answer, to where I've been. But I'm sure you can guess."

[motherofnemesis]

"It wasn't a riddle at all." It was dry, almost amused but not quite managing it. At the very least he hadn't lost his trademark - sense of humor, she supposed it could be called.

The hideout looked untouched, almost precisely how she recalled it from planning sessions and mission debriefs. She'd had to take advantage of the medical supplies in the refrigerator more than once on the mission debriefs (her blood was all scrubbed out of the floor now). A year was a long time, but in the grand scheme of a decade it felt suddenly short, like she'd been here last only yesterday.

She couldn't remember seeing his hands shake before. Surely they had, before. But she couldn't remember it. For a moment it stopped her before she continued in, that faint tremor unfamiliar. Worrying, a little. Was it fear? Left-over feelings from what she had no doubt had been a great deal of 'questioning' by the government? Apprehension for right now? These days everything had become a sign of something.

"You don't particularly owe me anything." A faint, slightly self-deprecatory wave as she perched on the back of a chair, balancing casually. "I believe the debts are lined up on my side." But she did want to hear this, and from him specifically rather than second-hand. "But while I can guess, I'd prefer to hear it from the horse's mouth. As it were."

AHHH SORRY ABOUT THAT

[enigmaestro]

"You always were disapproving of my artistic tastes," he spoke in clipped tones, looking down his nose just for a moment. But even that was just a little game, a playful facade: the joke of hurt feelings under the joke of everything being all right under the joke of normalcy. None of this was normal, none of this was fine, and then that moment of facade had passed and he was left again with that unquenchable fear. He curled one fist into the other, calming the slight quakes. Secondhand, he thought, as he held his own. Secondhand.

She said he didn't owe her anything. Edward swallowed, the clash of ideas in his mind suddenly painful. This was only going to hurt, he thought. He didn't know who.

"I was captured, as you knew. For a long time, as you've figured out." He didn't doubt Max's abilities of deduction. Edward met her eyes and held them, maintaining something less of his usual, pristine composure. "I -- they. It was months. A year. I had learned to -- to feign obedience. I had learned the mechanisms of the system, learned to adapt to w-what they wanted. Some of my -- "

Eddie dropped his eyes, and moved over to the edge of the room, the far wall. He pulled up a digital map, one depicting blueprints of a known holding cell. It wasn't new information for Betsy, but it was a handy visual aide.

"My torturers didn't realize how much they said. They never realized that I was interrogating, too. I found out about their indoctrinate programs. Brainwashing programs."

His fingers danced over the green LED light, pulling up the basement schematics of that holding cell.

"I learned how to feign obedience."

sldkfhd no it's fine! also sob i'm writing novels forgive me

[motherofnemesis]

"I didn't have time for them," she said. It was a subtle difference, and perhaps one that didn't matter to anyone but her. (Almost certainly.) She didn't watch his face, now. She watched his hands, the angle of his body, where he turned. The things that would give her more warning than any expression of his would, in the event of danger. But when he caught her eyes she held his gaze, her own level and unflinching. Listening to what he had to say with an almost icy calm.

To her side, her hand tightened on the table, her knuckles growing pale with strain. The only concession she allowed herself to those cell schematics. "I've seen those before," she said, a neutral interest to it. "The ingenuity in their adaptability is impressive." Six years ago and only a few months. It was nothing in comparison to what others had gone through.

It was still nothing she enjoyed remembering.

She kept her eyes on him, ignoring the schematics in favor of assessment. Safer, speaking both emotionally and simply in awareness of the situation. Brainwashing. That was a new one, and she didn't like the sound of it. For a long moment she weighed those words, considering them, and when she finally spoke it was brisk and open.

"The idea of you being obedient is almost funny." Hopping down from the chair, she came closer, within arms reach. Calculated. "So now what?"

A beat, and she sighed. "Eddie. A year of that, you don't need to be jumping directly back into work. You need to be recuperating. Resting." She looked up, held his gaze. It was the truth, skirted around delicately, her brain working overtime on scenarios. Was what he said the truth? There were other possibilities. Brainwashed but sincerely believing he wasn't, brainwashed and knowing but not caring - the mind was a delicate plaything and his was too clever to risk not knowing precisely what was going on in it.

She didn't know what to think. Not without more data. Believing him was the option she liked best, but the option she liked best never seemed to be the one that actually happened these days.

It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you. But surely if he was really brainwashed they would never have let him say anything about it? Maybe this time they'd caught a lucky break. Maybe maybe.