trans_9 | An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

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An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

She thought her life would be different by now, but she's a prisoner again. Voluntary, she guesses, which makes it a little bit different than the first time. At least she can blink on her own this time. Not that she's using her body to do much good.

Ironically, she almost always looked better when she was a more total prisoner. Without her makeup and hair clips and changes of clothes to arrange herself into some approximation of health, without even a mirror to confirm her suspicions, she looks a wreck. Dark circles line her reddened eyes; her hair is unbrushed and falls in tangled clumps over her face; chapped, bloodied lips and fingernails bitten down to the flesh speak to her uneasy transition back into captivity.

Eva's given up all attempts to look 'okay'. She ripped a man's face open with her bare fingers. She's been a long road away from 'okay' for a while now, but she spent too long mistaking her anger and stubbornness for strength and resilience to recognize it. She's wised up now.

She really wants a drink right now. Instead she has some books - selected poems by Pablo Neruda and an anthology of poetry by women poets in the Andes - and a pillow and blanket. She's curled up on the cot with the former book in her hand, but drifting in and out of sleep. Her breath comes lazy and heavy as she alternately reads, dreams, and watches the door to the brig with heavy-lidded eyes, looking for nothing.

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"Oh, bless you and the printing press," she says, leaning up to the bars so she can get closer to him and take the books. "Neruda's repetitive in his own poems, much less if you read them each twenty times."

She doesn't quite tell Goliath the truth. At least not immediately. 'Ripped a guy's nose open with my fingers' is a bit of a mood killer. "Conduct unbecoming of an officer. I reported myself."

"Aren't you a little young to be the jail warden?" she teases, pulling that humor out again as her shield. "In here voluntarily, even. I've been an upstanding citizen and reporting all my wrongdoing."

"Doesn't mean you need to stay here. I know you've got access to a shower and clean clothes," Kang pointed out, entirely blunt. "You're doing this to yourself on purpose, aren't you?"

He smiled slightly, still a little bit tired, "There's no need to. I'm fine now."

"Everyone's come by. Some of them even bring me presents. Look, books," she says, gesturing to the neatly-arranged pile on the floor. It stands in stark contrast to how messy Eva herself is. How strained her voice is with her attempts at levity, as if if she stops to really acknowledge how she feels about the whole thing she'll burst into tears. "It's like I'm an attraction at the San Diego Wild Animal Park or something."

She sighs a bit, relieved. At least it's one more day before she has to explain this mess to her son. Laying things out for Cassie is difficult enough, although she supposes Cassie counts enough as a friend that a loss of respect would be a body blow.

"I'm here because I reported myself. I'd rather talk to Marco first before I go into any more detail than that." She makes a 'quiet' gesture with one finger over her lips. "Don't want to ruin it for the whole family or anything."

"Not really. Mostly just not seeing the point in cleaning up. If people want to buy tickets to see the crazy person in the zoo, they may as well get the whole package." She takes a deep breath. She doesn't see the point in pretending to be well when she so obviously isn't. Healthy people don't rip other people's faces off and get joy out of it.

And it's incredibly hard for her to care right now. Her image of the put-together, composed survivor has been shattered. Since she can't put it back together, she may as well give up. No need to put effort into something you can only do half-assed.

"Good. You're not allowed to die on me."

Oh, dear. Well, if everyone's talking...

"What are they saying? Because, for the record, I haven't killed anyone or stolen anything. Or besmirched my wifely honor or anything like that."

If you looked at it in cold, hard, tactical terms, sure, it made sense to systemically take limbs out, like pulling wings off an insect, but Daniel wasn't ready to accept it. He couldn't believe he was listening her rationalize why violence first was the perfect answer. If only he could believe her completely when she said everyone else's safety was important, but he remembered how she was earlier, more concerned with nearly suffocating the man and then the lack of recording than everything else.

"He was down already!" Daniel's voice raised before he controlled it. "It wouldn't have taken much to tie him or knock him out. We both know that. When I got there, you weren't interested in questioning him, were you? That was only because I told you we needed him alive."

These men and women had killed innocents. He wasn't arguing it and he'd never condone it. But that didn't mean Stacy's crew turned into them just to fight these guys. Daniel couldn't pretend that they were automatons. It was like slaughtering and torturing humans that actually worshiped the Goa'uld. They were just as much slaves as the Jaffa, only they didn't realize it or they gloried in it. In some cultures, Daniel was sure they'd fight to the death for their gods. Willing to go any extreme for their faith. If Eva had her way, he supposed she'd lump them all in a group and what was it he heard before, 'kill them all, let God sort them out'? Actually it was more likely originally, Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius, but some things never went out of humanity's unconscious-

Daniel pushed himself away from the bars. He wanted to understand, at least try to make some sense of how pointless this was, but was finding this was the one language he couldn't piece together.

"You're troubled," he agreed. He didn't say 'vile'. Not vile, but Daniel didn't know what to think of her anymore."You need help. Not a jail cell."

Edited 2011-09-06 06:13 (UTC)

Sandy opened to respond buy when she said wifely honor she snorted and laughed "Wifely honor?" That just seemed silly.

After she finished laughing, "Well what did you do then I mean...they don't lock you up like this for jaywalking...do they?"

Kang rolled his eyes and gave Eva a stern look, "Nobody really knows why you're in the brig. I don't even know, and I'm not going to make you tell me if you don't want to. At least tell me you're eating?" He was worried about her, physically and mentally.

At that, he laughed. "You're the second person to say something like that to me so far. It's still a little bit strange to hear from humans."

She really shoudln't be leaving med bay with all of the injured people there, but that would be before she found out Eva was in one of the cells. Kaya could barely blurt out a half hearted apology before she zoomed down to the brig, hardly caring who saw, or the fact that she looked quite tired.

Eva had been through enough, why this? Why now?

Kaya wasn't hesitating to go see her, and once she did, her state alone was enough to bring her close to tears. She didn't look like herself, not at all, and this bothered her. Wasn'tit enough that the stupid ship made her almost kill before, did things to her (very aggravating) son, and killed another good person?

"Eva," she said, almost out of breath. "What are you doing in there?"

"Of course I'm eating. I have a son to return to." Besides, a variety of people will give her hell if she doesn't. She may not care much about her fate, but it is a bit heartwarming to find out she's so beloved.

She laughs too. "Stacy just brings us all together, doesn't she?"

A sound that sounds like a cross between a huff and a chuckle leaves the man, and there might be a small bit of amusement on his face. He hasn't seen her either - he knows her name from the paperwork, but that's about it.

"I'm Shoutarou. Rather new around the ship ."

Leaning back against the wall, Kang's look softened a bit, "Good. I'll try to bring you something to eat besides slop tomorrow." He considered bringing her some wine, too, but thought better of it. She didn't need to be drunk on top of everything else she was doing to herself.

"Oh, I'm sure there's still a few here that wouldn't mind me being gone." It didn't bother him, really. He was more than used to it after being pretty much universally hated on Krynn for being a draconian, and if some crewmembers (Marco immediately came to mind) didn't like him, tough.

Edited 2011-09-06 06:54 (UTC)

Eva looks like he reached through the bars and slapped her with those words. For a moment, her eyes narrow as if she's been insulted, but really, who is she to argue? Of course she's troubled. If her current appearance didn't speak to that, the fact that she willingly, enthusiastically mutilated another living person with her bare hands should.

"I don't need help," she snarls, backing up to the corner of her cot. "I need to stay away from those sorts of situations, but I'm not going to be helped by some overqualified dream analyzer sitting me down in a corner and telling me what to think. What I can think is the only thing I have left."

And even that's warped. They left her with nothing. They stole her face, her life, her place, her family, and at the end of the day what she has left is a broken family, a body that feels like someone else's discarded clothing, and a mind that doesn't work right anymore.

And Daniel, so like Peter, is there to tell her she needs help like this untouchable angel of reason from on high. She wants none of it. She wants none of their pity. They'll shuffle her off in a corner because she's an unpleasant reality, leave her to do all the work on some shrink's couch, ignore the problem, ignore it even more than she ignores it.

Deep down, she knows she's being paranoid and irrational. She just doesn't care. The implication she needs help makes her want to reach through the bars and slap Daniel, no matter how much she knows it's the truth.

"Oh, right, you were the one with the detective agency, weren't you?" She's content to press him for questions, rather than have him ask her why she's here.

"Things got a bit messy during an encounter with those terrorists. Don't worry, no one important was hurt. I just made some bad calls and thought it'd be best to get some downtime." That's the sugarcoated version, but she doesn't want to tell Sandy about the brutality of what she did. Not even close.

"I could use wine. Wine's one of the major food groups, isn't it?" she says, as if reading his mind. Either way she'll be hitting the sauce as soon as she gets out. Probably in private, rather than in the public realm of the tavern.

"Oh, please, like we want to put up with the hassle of another election," she teases, then realizes that given Superman's death, it might have come across as insensitive.

"Downtime huh?" Sandy looked at her flatly and folded her arms, "In jail?"

Yeah sorry Eva, Sandy's not buyin' it.

"Oh, honey, you're out of breath," she says, rising from the bed and running her hands over her face. She'd been dozing. "You didn't run all this way for me, did you? I'm not going anywhere, obviously."

She furrows her brow and bites more of her fingernails as she considers telling Kaya what happened. On one hand, Kaya's old enough to know, and she knows about Eva's involvement with bombing downtown. On the other, in some ways Kaya's not been part of the same sort of all-consuming war Eva has, and something still doesn't sit right with telling Kaya that the woman she looks up to ripped open someone's face.

"I turned myself in. I made some bad calls and this is just an obligatory part of sentencing for conduct unbecoming of an officer."

"Well. Mandatory downtime behind bars. You know, just everyday rest and relaxation," she says dryly. Figures Sandy would call her on her crap.

Frustrated, Daniel huffed out a silent snort of air through his nose. Of course it was that simple. Why didn't anyone ever think of that in the entire human history? He pressed closer to the bars again, unwilling to let her try to fade into her corner of the cell. He wasn't ready to call it quits and give up on her. He thought he'd seen some good in her, and once he was convinced it was there, Daniel had a hard time letting go.

"Okay. What are your options?" Daniel pushed. He was never very good at keep out signs. "Stay in a jail cell for the rest of your life? Bury your head in the sand and hope it goes away? What happens if there's another combat situation, and the fight gets brought here?"

He doesn't need to tell her that anything else could happen. It was a big ship after all and a big universe- a big multi-verse, and the only thing you could predict was the fact that you couldn't predict anything. Did she prefer to martyr herself to the brig? Maybe she did. Maybe she was trying to punish herself, but apparently she'd forgotten about her son.

Edited 2011-09-06 07:18 (UTC)

"So...you locked yourself up for a vacation...in the brig." Sandy reasoned.

She then gave the wall a tap with her foot.

"Nope." A simple deceleration. One word was all it deserved. "Try again."

"Maybe," Kang snorted softly, smiling. If he brought her any, it'd just be one cup.

Luckily, he knew Eva well enough that he didn't take her comment badly, and he hadn't been all that close with Superman himself, even if he had respected the Councilor. "We're damn lucky he was our only casualty, but hate to lose him regardless." He pushed the thought of Kali being killed away, wings rustling slightly.

She hasn't forgotten Marco at all. It's fortunate Daniel doesn't mention that, because if she can't stand the affront to her sanity, mentioning Marco would send her off the handle.

And as much as she knows her son will be scared and ashamed of what she did, she also knows he'll know the strength it took to take responsibility and surrender herself to captivity. And he'll know that she's a little better than she was five years ago, when she was first freed, when even being caught in traffic felt like such a trap she'd lash out and break windows. Right now, this is the last good example she feels she can set.

"This is a temporary stay in the brig. Two weeks, maximum, depending on how we figure time works here." She bites her lip until blood pools at her teeth. "And I don't know what happens after that."

She can plan to take herself out of combat situations, but despite her trigger temper she knows she's generally more of an asset than a liability. Staying away would be hard for her. She can give herself a goal, like coordinating and protecting younger members. Maybe she'll do that.

But she doesn't appreciate Daniel's attempts to rehabilitate her, as if she's a project to be worked on. A delicate excavation of damaged debris to find that good that must lurk beneath the surface. She knows she's good. She also knows, now in crystal clarity, that she's twisted and violent and unwell. It occurs to her that maybe Daniel needs to hold onto her good more for his sake than just for hers. Maybe he needs to convince himself his first impressions of her weren't all wrong, or that if she, the brutal basketcase shell of a host can be recovered, his wife can. Or maybe none of that matters.

"That'd be me, miss." And he'll be content to answer them, for the most part.

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An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

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