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 suppose. But as far as I know, no one's thrown him in a cell yet. So let's hope that continues." Mostly because he'd rather not deal with having to keep guard over Eva's son.

"Oh, well. Next time the ship is under attack, I'll remember to run to your location if I need cover."

"Just spread the word that anyone who touches my friends gets a home-cooked round of cosmetic surgery, courtesy of me. That should scare them all off. I'm a scary lady."

Actually, maybe that warning was a little too late for Iniss, who'd already undergone some impromptu cosmetic surgery. Zouichi touched the bars with one hand, almost absently.

"Eva, I know we've only met just recently, but... when I was on Earth, I had to hurt people. A lot." He hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Not always for the best of reasons. If you ever need anyone to talk to..."

She frowns a bit. It's hard to know what to share and what not to, what she wants to keep to herself and what she truly doesn't mind certain others knowing. She spent a very long time unable to keep secrets of her own.

"When you say not only for the best reasons...do you think that's something I'd relate to?"

"You tell me." He paused for a long moment, gathering his thoughts. "I told you what I did back on Earth, didn't I? I fought and killed a lot of... I guess maybe you'd call them terrorists. Except by that time, there weren't really enough national governments left to mount any sort of resistance against them. So they were more like a new administration than anything else. I was operating under orders from my own organization, but I abandoned those when I heard they'd mounted an attack on headquarters. By the time I got there, it was too late. Everyone at HQ was already dead, and they were just mopping up the bodies."

It's hard for him to revisit that past, but it's harder to tell someone else about it. The words come out blunt and harsh. "So I killed everyone inside."

Another pause.

"You might argue that that's what I do all the time, kill people who don't really have a way to fight back. But I didn't do it because I had to protect someone or complete an objective. I did it because I wanted to get back at them. I could have stopped, but I didn't want to. I didn't even bother trying."

It was true that the DRF did terrible things. They followed a power-mad autocrat, executed people in the streets, killed billions in their thirst for power and the promise of rebirth and immortality. But it didn't mean everyone in its ranks was evil, and in his actions, he'd revealed himself not as a guardian, but as a killer. Like them.

She listens quietly, but he doesn't need to elaborate after "I killed everyone inside". Kin recognizes kin. She knows why he did it.

"Yes, I think maybe we have more in common than I originally surmised." She gives him a grim smile. "I risked Marco's life for revenge, once. And getting it made me feel no different. Did it help you?"

She doubts it did. It's easy to trick yourself into thinking violence is what you want when all you really want is some way to turn back time.

He looked almost sad. "Well. Most people don't like to hear how their last hope for survival effects that survival."

"It..." he began, then stopped. "It didn't help afterward. But while I was doing it..."

While he was in the thick of it, snapping bone and incinerating enemy combatants with their own incendiaries, it had been so tempting to just stop thinking and never, ever start again. He wasn't sure if it was something his creators had instilled in him, or some essential flaw in himself. Maybe both.

She nods. It's hard to think about anything other than the sheer violence of a situation when you're in it. Philosophy and worth and value all get washed over by the sounds of bones breaking and blood dripping, people gurgling for breath. If it doesn't elicit horror, it invokes something else - apathy, almost. Detachment. And when your mind's stormy enough, apathy's pretty tempting.

Her head's been stormy for twelve years now. That's a lot of time to crave peace.

"Were you alone? Or was Fuyu with you?" She asks it quietly, so he knows that if he doesn't want to answer he doesn't have to. She's the one in prison, after all.

"She was with me, but she was also trying to see if she could save anyone inside. She was all right."

The AIs, with their added level of detachment from the real world and their personality biases toward levelheadedness and calm, served as a means of support. They were more likely to feel sorrow than anger.

"I dragged someone else into it. I don't know if Dr. Jackson's alright, but I know he's not alright with it." She stares at her hands again. "I almost want to say I did it so quickly, like I didn't have a chance to stop myself, but that's a lie. I had plenty of moments where I knew what I was doing and pressed on."

"If you keep letting yourself do it," Zouichi said quietly, "One day you're not going to be able to stop..."

He didn't sound like he was entirely talking about Eva.

She slumps over the bars, staring at him, considering. "Do you really think that's true?"

Zouichi looked back at her. "If I didn't believe it, it wouldn't bother me as much. But maybe the correct way to put it is not wanting to stop."

She nods. "And eventually you have to stop, because there's only a finite amount of damage you can do. But stopping means reckoning, and so it's just one more crime, one more death, that's all you need to buy you a little more time before you have to start caring again." She twists her tongue in her mouth. "Except you want to be at that point where you can't start caring at all again."

He smiled a little, mirthlessly. "Fortunately, I don't think I'm quite at that point yet."

It wasn't as though he didn't feel anything in a heated battle. In fact, mostly it was just routine; dispatching faceless numbers in the most efficient way possible. But a few times, it had been truly exhilarating; he had felt alive in a way he never had elsewhere. It was intoxicating.

"Neither am I," she says with a similarly joyless expression. "But it's sad that sometimes it's what I aspire to."

"The minority of the time, I hope," he said. "Apathy is a difficult emotion to combat. I'd say even more so than sorrow or anger." Though he was mostly familiar with the latter. Being angry was much easier than being depressed or afraid.

"It's difficult because it's so tempting. Feel enough pain or rage and just the idea of feeling nothing seems better than any alternative." She shakes her head. "If only there were a little switch you could hit - Care, Don't Care, Care, Don't Care. I suppose it'd ruin something of the life experience but most days I don't care about that, either."

Because Zouichi didn't know what else to do, or how to help her move from that place where it was more tempting to feel nothing than pain or anger, he put one gloved hand through the bars, palm open.

"Don't give up," he said softly.

She blinks at the hand, then reaches hers over and places hers, palm down, over his. She gives a wry smile. "I'm not allowed to. You should know that about me by now."

He smiled a little. "I know. I just thought a reminder would be nice every once in a while. You know. In your doddering old age."

"From the mouths of one year-old babes," she says. "Now go leave me some dignity and arrest someone for fiddling with Stacy or whatever it is you Security people do."

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An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

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