patheticvillain | thirty-eight ➢ private video & spam

spam } horatio

[When Cassel picks the lock on Horatio's door and slides inside, silent as a cat in the dark, he finds the man asleep in a hammock hanging gently above creaky floorboards. For a moment he regards him in the dim light coming from the hallway, considering all of his options. He could easily turn Horatio into something unspeakably vile as punishment. It might even be right.]

[Instead, he pulls a black silk cloth out of his pocket and, leaning up on his tiptoes, ties it around Horatio's eyes and behind his head. Then he sits in the corner of the room, legs crossed and eyes half-open, waiting for the man with his naked hands to wake up.]

private } daneca

I need your help with something. Or someone, I guess.

What do you do for blowback? I have some techniques that I used on my mom, but - you probably have better ones. She never really tried to control it.

private } needy

[In between all of this, he's almost surprised by the arrival of Needy's file. He's still a warden here. Even though Czeslaw's gone, he gets another chance.]

[As he reads it, a smile grows on his face. Nothing he's reading is good, but it's not - foreign, either, even when it technically is. He doesn't feel lost. He feels - intrigued.]

[He's still half-smiling when he opens the feed, cocking his head at her through the connection.]

So. You pissed?

open spam } gardens

[He sits under a tree, making statues.]

[Maybe this will frighten people, now that they have some context: he's got his gloves off, folded carefully at his side. There is scrap metal - soda cans and piles of paper clips - by his knee. This he uses to build his statues, long, thin, somewhat overwrought looking things, melded and twisted by his transformation into something vaguely human.]

[Occasionally he pauses and takes a sip of the open mug of steaming coffee at his other knee. Then he goes back to building ugliness.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah. That'd be great.

. . . Do you think you could make one for Horatio?

Yeah, sure.

[She feels a little guilty about his blowback even though rationally she knows that it's not her fault and even if she wasn't here, he could have still been an emotion worker. It's still hard not to feel responsible though for...]

[Well, for one of their own.]

[It's weird, how protective he feels. Or maybe not so weird. Maybe it's a holdover from his mother, a trained, nearly Pavlovian reaction to emotional blowback. Maybe it's unhealthy and wrong.]

[Then again, maybe it's the beginning of something Cassel never had before he died: a sense of community, not just family but a group of people who protect each other because they're all worth protecting. Solidarity.]

I'm worried about him. I'm really mad at him, but I'm worried about him too. It's weird.

[Daneca's about to say it's not that weird, but then she remembers who she's speaking to. Cassel has never really belonged anywhere. Even after he found out he was a worker, being a transformation worker is something that sets him apart from everyone else. It made him more of a commodity to his brothers, an asset to the Zacharovs. Nowhere along the line did someone just care about Cassel because he was Cassel.]

[So caring about anyone else because they were simply there as they are is something new for him even if Daneca doesn't have to think about it.]

We're all in this together, for better or for worse. If we don't look out for each other and help when we can, who will?

Yeah. Nobody else - gets it.

[He worries his lip, then smiles a little.]

Thanks, Daneca. For - the perspective.

[And everything else.]

Hey, it's what I'm here for.

[Usually she reminds Cassel of what the better choice is when he's about to make a mistake - regardless of whether or not he listens - but sometimes she points out when he's making the right choice all by himself.]

[She likes those times the most.]

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