Moby Dick will drive anyone to murder [Open]

[aboutthatevac]

[[OOC: Kerrigan is in the brig for around three weeks ICly. Characters can come up to her at any point in those three weeks here.]]

Kerrigan was used to cells. At least this time there wasn’t a mass of purple flesh on the floor, pulsing as it spread closer to her. That had been a different place- in another life and yet the memory remained. The fear remained.

She was defenseless. No, that was not true. Even without weapons Kerrigan was far from defenseless. The power dampeners may have taken away what was left of her psychic powers but she could still defend herself if needed, as unlikely as it was. Several weeks in the brig for stabbing someone a dozen times even after she’d told them exactly who they had in custody. It was laughable. It wasn’t what she deserved.

Maybe that was why they’d given her Moby Dick to read. Kerrigan only had her omnicomm for a few hours of the day and there was nothing else to do in here so she was allowed to read selections from the Media Library. She told them she didn’t care and to pick something randomly. They had to have given her this book on purpose. Not only was it torturous but the message was fitting- a man obsessed with revenge. The story had potential if only reading it didn’t leave her wanting to claw her eyes out (if only she still had claws). She would read and toss it aside. Then after hours and hours of nothing but silence and thinking and remembering she would start reading again. Anything to get away from the memories.

Comments

[aboutthatevac]

Kerrigan rolled her eyes. Considering how smart Sherlock claimed to be she would have thought that the "to you" in her last sentence could go unstated. No one had mentioned her attack had left him a gibbering idiot. But now she saw what he was getting at.

"The case is closed. I confessed." And was serving an absurdly short jail sentence.

[on_your_nerves]

"That's not the case I'm talking about," he said slowly, looking almost bewildered.

Stepping closer to the bars and the shield, he looked in at her, his expression interminable, his eyes sharp and focused, taking in something but what exactly it was, that was difficult to tell and he likely wasn't going to explain what he was looking for.

"They hurt you. That's what you wanted me to understand, wasn't it? That's why you forced it all right here without so much as a by your leave." He tapped his temple. "You were hurt and you wanted someone else to understand. I'm not naturally...inclined to empathize with others, but you made sure of it, made it unavoidable, didn't you."

He looked disgusted, his lip twitched with just a little bit of anger that was still bleeding through, and there was something else, some spark of something that he wasn't used to feeling and that he was trying to keep from slipping through.

That he'd felt violated by it. Victimized. Shaken.

But then she had, too, by what they'd done to her.

He was furious, but he understood, and what she'd done to him had forced him to understand, and while it had been horrifically, horrendously wrong, he was deciding to view it in essence as a cry for help. There was desperation behind it, like the desperation of so many that had come to his door back home.

"You were taken into the dark by very bad people and tortured until you snapped and harmed others. Those same people are hiding quite a few things from us and likely plotting nefarious plots to use us all for their own purposes. That's a case, you're a client, and this entire ship is a crime scene."

This was what she'd wanted, wasn't it?

[aboutthatevac]

Sherlock wasn't the only one who looked almost bewildered. It took some time, even after Sherlock had finished speaking, but the shape of her mouth changed from the hard line it had been for most of their conversation into a smile.

"I'm glad I didn't kill you. This ship has needed someone like you for some time."

In other words, she's starting to like you, Mr. Holmes.

[on_your_nerves]

"I'm sure there have been others like me. Given how so many seem to have been disappearing, by all accounts, it makes this all a bit tricky."

Sherlock turned away.

"I'll start on it right away, but don't expect instant results. I'll be in touch."

[aboutthatevac]

Kerrigan was about to let him leave but she had to speak.

"I am sorry."

She had picked up Moby Dick, opened it, and was staring at the pages but not reading.

[on_your_nerves]

Sherlock stopped in the doorway and hovered there for a second. He wasn't a man prone to forgiveness and even thought he was willing to see that justice was done on her case, that was partly for the challenge and partly him trying to put himself above it all, trying to let the anger go.

That did not equate to forgiveness. He was still quite angry.

Yet he did believe she meant it.

So he settled for:

"Understood."

Then he was gone.