Open Post 002

[2020mod]

• Step one: start a thread in this post!
• Step two: specify who the thread is for (or open) in this post!
• Step three: make people reply to this post!
• AND THAT'S THE WAY YOU DO IT.


And don't forget, there's still the ooc discussion post! And nothing needs to be contained to this post! Create new logs to your heart's content! This AU is yours, so have at it!


musebox • rules • character list

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[enigmaestro]

"Don't--!" Edward hissed out the command, as impulsive as a thought. He spoke it to no one, no one visible, as he hunched his shoulders and grabbed at his face. A moment, just a moment. And then he hazard a step, and another, and he was upright and impassive walking down through the trap door.

Into the bunker. Down the rabbit hole.

Crisp, clean. Sanitized. Like every other Resistance bunker that Eddie had once presided over, there was no bodily evidence of its denizens. Fluids, hair. Skin cells. He flushed the entire room once or twice a week, always on an unpredictable schedule.

He would protect them all.

"Don't." It came out a whimper.

On the final staggered step down, he opened his eyes. Max Gibson. Always dutiful, always vigilant, always Max Gibson. Two seconds of a cornered smile on his mouth, and then Eddie Nygma was all back to business.

"If only your peers had your dedication," he mused to her.

[motherofnemesis]

She knew he was coming from before he opened the door, the security system as always top notch and her awareness of it constant and keen. She didn't feel safe anywhere. Being here didn't help that feeling.

It took him entering the room to make her really look up from her work, though, a glance up and something of a smile, or maybe just a more welcoming expression. It was good that he showed up.

"There are plenty of people with a lot of dedication," she said calmly. "How are you today?" The stagger hadn't slipped her eye. Her first step was always determining how he was that day, and today is no different.

[enigmaestro]

He doesn't mention the hours prior. He doesn't mention his conflict with Norman. The shadows in his brain are unspoken.

"Fine," he said. Edward strolled over, adjusting his tie, and took a seat before an unbooted laptop. A button press, and he avoids her eye contact. "Just fine."

It was easier to lie, much easier, before he had been captive to the state. Before the months of torture and dissonance. Now he swallowed and tried to consciously still his shivering hands.

"Busy evening?"

[motherofnemesis]

Her gaze lingers for a long moment, watching him avoid eye contact, sit, measuring up the stance of his body and how he's moving and cataloguing it, trying to see what can be drawn from it.

Fine she doesn't quite scoff at, but she's always found it funny that they all still use it. It's become such a relative word these days. None of them have been actually fine for a long time.

"When isn't it?" She drops her gaze back to her work for a moment, flicking back and forth between three screens as she tries to corral coding and make it do what she wants. "How's yours coming?"

[enigmaestro]

"I, uh. I had a, ah." He was a few syllables short of a confession. The confrontation with Norman, which he convinced himself had been true -- a real thing. The shadows screaming in his brain, when he figured were probably false.

"A busy day, too."

While true, it was obvious that was not what Eddie had intended to say. Sweat popped on his forehead and he took a deep breath, only sliding a sly glance over to Max when he thought he had himself under control.

She can't know, he thought. She'd do something to stop me.

Limit his freedom, he feared. The blood in his veins.

"I, ah, I hadn't heard back. From our agent in Exported." The radical anti-imPort grassroots group. The bicep of the Establishment's public muscle. "Is she, ah, is she alive?"

[motherofnemesis]

She looks back up almost as soon as he starts talking, watching with her head slightly tilted and then almost as soon as he lies (because that was a lie, she's almost positive) her hands taken away from her keyboards and folded flat on the table in front of her.

"She's alive for the moment." A confirmation, casual, waiting to determine how to get at what it is that he's not saying. "Laying low. She has to be careful, they know they have a leak."

They all have to be careful. There's only a few ways to stay truly safe, and none of them are foolproof.

"What sort of busy day?" It would be a casual question, but she's not trying to pretend it is, back still very straight and arms still on the table in front of her, still and her focus on him instead of her work. She dislikes lying to people she considers allies, even in something as basic as manner, and he's not an exception to that rule.

[enigmaestro]

"Oh," began Edward. He cleared his throat, his eyes darting. He shifted on his feet, inundated by his own thoughts. She was watching him, he knew. She was analyzing him. He had so little weaponry against her right now, in this room. She was thinking of what to do with him.

She had to be.

"Is it relevant?" He glanced over at her again, this time keeping his gaze straight. "My day, I mean." There was a tightness in his chest, a gripping. Iron and cold and insatiable. He took a few breaths, his palms flat on the desk before him as he pretending to peruse a debriefing. It wasn't going to be enough to throw someone as apt as Max Gibson, he knew, but his effort was instinctive.

"I don't need to talk about it," he said. Breaking the glacier between them. "If that's what you mean. I haven't -- I haven't had a bad episode in a long while."

[motherofnemesis]

Avoidance was easy to understand. Wasn't it always? How often did any of them actually want to confront the things wrong within reach? They were always aiming for the higher causes. Maybe because they needed a distraction from themselves.

"I wouldn't know." She met his glance, kept her eyes on him still when he looked down again. "Is it?" A dare, in a way, for him to tell her the truth here.

Or perhaps dare wasn't quite the right word. A request, an attempt to show that she was willing to listen. They couldn't subsist on subterfuge forever - or they could, but it wasn't for the best.

And there it was - an opening up of something, if not much. Direct statements or not, it was harder these days to be certain of what he was saying. "Do you think it's getting better?"