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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"I'm afraid I left my cherry chapstick in my other set of body armor, or I'd lend you mine."

Zouichi raised an eyebrow. "I thought they only did that in cartoons. And movies. Maybe that was rock hammers."

P.S. Inside the box was a shiny metal harmonica with a cord attached for easy hanging-around-the-neck action.

"Nope. It was a real thing. Waste of a cake, though, in my opinion." She pops open the box and pulls out the harmonica. For the first time in a few days, her face lights up a bit. "Oh, this is good. This is lovely. Thank you."

"Didn't they eat the cake and then use the file?"

He smiled a little. "I thought you could learn to play the blues. You know, annoy all the Security personnel assigned to guard you and all. Make them work for it."

"Yes, but you have to dig the file out first, and that makes the all unappetizing-looking."

She blows on the harmonica, playing with it a bit until she finds one solid note. "You do realize you're going to have to put up with me practicing my major scales for your entire shift, don't you?"

"On this ship, I think people would be happy with any cake. Or GLaDOS would be out of business."

He feigned surprise. "You mean you're going to use it against me, too?"

"Anyway, what happened during that battle? I only heard the basics."

"Oh, don't get me started on GLaDOS. The last time I was in there she sent me through a Pac Man maze and had me shoot lasers."

She doesn't respond to that beyond playing a few more notes on the thing, before wiping it off and delicately tucking it into her shirt pocket. Her expression gets grave. "So you're not going to believe I'm in here for violating dress code."

"Maybe I should try it sometime. I think one of the other crew members was talking about tracking her down sometime and seeing if she can't be reprogrammed. Just a tad."

He shook his head. "From an impeccable dresser like you? Probably not."

She sighs and cracks the knuckles on one hand. "Officially, I'm in here for unbecoming conduct for an officer. I've resigned from my position on the Quarter, too. So I'll be in here a few weeks."

"I heard you roughed up one of those cultists pretty badly. But I don't see why you should have to resign because of it."

After all, she hadn't even killed him.

"I rip a man's face open with my bare hands and you don't see why I might have some reservations about returning to my post behind a giant space cannon?"

"...Okay, I didn't hear that part."

Although to tell the truth, it wasn't as though he didn't punch people's faces open on a fairly regular basis... and they still let him operate heavy firearms. "I assume you were trying to accomplish something?"

She shrugs. "Technically, I was trying to interrogate, but...he made me mad. It never should have escalated that far. Which is why, if I can't keep emotions off the battlefield, I need to not be behind the big guns."

He sighed. "I guess I can't argue with your reasoning, but... it's not like you're the only one who's ever lost it on the field."

"No. Hardly. But I'm pretty sure I was looking for excuses to lose it on the field, and that's the dangerous part."

Oh, well, that changed things.

"Anything in particular that made you go looking for that excuse?"

"I imagine the years of torture and slavery had something to do with it," she says, totally flat.

"Sure. But you must have had an opportunity to go off on someone before. And as far as I know, you haven't, at least since you've been on this ship. So I was wondering if something in particular set you off."

"I haven't, actually. This was that rare, once in a lifetime opportunity."

And God, what did people expect from her? Her whole life was stolen; all she was left with was this damaged tableau of a family, a body that doesn't work right and a mind that feels a far cry warped and distorted from what she used to be while the Yeerks mostly got off scot free; then she got whipped up onto a spaceship, into another war, one where she doesn't have to be a puppeted body and a bystander but a warrior, and people expected her to keep her head?

She realizes her fists are clenched.

"But, you know, rip off one nose and everyone's a saint."

"It is a rather dramatic departure from normal interrogation procedures." Usually waterboarding, for instance, came a little before 'rip someone's nose off'.

"So... what? Now you're a monster who needs to be locked up before she lashes out at someone else?"

"I turned myself in, Zouichi. This isn't a precautionary measure so much as ensuring the Captain treats all cases of torture the same." She rubs her face. "It's a departure for interrogation, but I had it used on me during my own torture. So it's not like I invented the low-budget rhinoplasty."

Not what he'd meant, but in any case, he gave her a disbelieving look. "Really? The only reason you're here is because you want to follow proper procedure? You should know better than anyone else that the punishment a crew member receives here can vary wildly depending on their personal connections."

"And you just got done telling me you didn't trust yourself as a tactical officer. Sounds a lot like a precautionary measure to me."

She snorts. "Oh, believe me, if I had my way Iniss would be in here instead. But yes, procedure. And I want to make a good example of taking responsibility for your actions to my son. Since I've sort of made a bad example for anger management."

She shakes her head. "The resignation's precautionary. The brig time isn't."

"Good luck with that, I guess. Has he ever seen the inside of a brig cell? Because he seems much more likely to have run afoul of the law than Allenby."

He frowned a little. "Speaking of your son, apparently the rumor mill has already been set into motion about your incarceration here, and I believe quite a few people have misconceptions about it. As per usual."

"Probably not as part of a sentence, no. But as you know, I could spend a great many hours ranting about how they treat Yeerks on this ship."

"Oh, joy. The rumors aren't scandalous, are they? I'm not responsible for Councilman Superman's death, am I?" 'Councilman Superman'. That's a clunky moniker.

He raised an eyebrow. "Do people spend time in the brig when it's not part of a sentence?"

"Oh, you are. And you're having an illicit affair with Kang. Also, you stole forty cakes. And that's terrible."

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