trans_9 | 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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"Well, that and because if I didn't, Daniel Jackson would have reported me and I like to pretend I still have some semblance of dignity." She covers her mouth and closes her eyes. "But yes. That's why."

Kang didn't really agree with torture, mostly because it rarely worked; the prisoner would say anything to make the pain stop. He also didn't see the point in keeping a prisoner alive if they weren't useful, or were a threat. He didn't feel all that upset about the fate of the Catastrophist, though.

"I've talked with him before. He's... interesting. I'm not quite sure what to think of him yet."

"He's...naive. A lot like Peter. But he's not necessarily wrong. I acted disproportionately to the situation." She bites at her fingernails again, replacing the places there was once Catastrophist blood with her own. "We'd neutralized the threat. The cultist, he just wouldn't obey me. Was that too much to ask?"

"I understand," Kang said quietly. He'd felt that once before, wanting so badly to hurt, to kill, and taking pleasure in it. He hadn't been thinking clearly; he'd been so angry. "I know it doesn't excuse it."

He wanted to grab Eva's wrists and stop her from injuring herself more; he didn't like seeing her like that.

She finally looks over and meets Kang's eyes. "I thought I'd feel better. Like if I pretended he was someone else, I could work out that demon. And it just made everything worse, Kang. He died and my hand was still inside him."

Kang smiled wryly, wings rustling slightly, "Hate has a funny way of doing that."

She tries to smile back, but it looks twisted and forced and ultimately unpleasant. "Is that what it was? I thought maybe I was just having a really bad hair day."

"No, you're having a really bad hair day today," Kang snorted softly, trying to get even the hint of a real smile from her.

"Heh." She tries, but it's just not happening today. "You don't think I should return to Command service, do you?"

Frowning slightly, Kang glanced up at the ceiling and then back down to Eva, "Not immediately, no. I don't think this one incident should be enough to keep you from ever returning, though."

She twists her mouth and breathes deep. "It's not one incident, though. I mean, I haven't been running around torturing people, but losing my head isn't exactly a new development."

An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

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