patheticvillain | thirty-eight ➢ private video & spam

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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.]

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I mean. [He smirks.] I can be bossy if you want me to be. But I'm not too cold anymore, and I've never known how to be clinical. As for telling you what to do, I mean, that's bullshit. I'll tell you when you fuck up, but from what I can see, most of what you did that hurt people, you did to people who deserved it.

[The smirk vanishes as he tips his head slightly to one side.] Low Shoulder was scum, Needy.

...I know they were.

[But she looks suprised, to hear him say it. Without her face screwed up with anger and nerves anymore, two tears silently fall, trailing down her cheeks.]

I couldn't let them get away with it, Cassel. Somebody had to make them pay. For Jennifer. For everyone. It might as well have been me.

[He's quiet, letting her say what needs said. Part of him still doesn't disagree with it. Part of him would hurt them himself, if he could do it and get away with it. But part of him is always going to be bent on revenge. It's what he's known for long enough. It's what, he hopes, will make him understand enough about Needy that she won't hate him too much for being her warden.]

[But it's not something he can rely on for making good decisions. Every time he's tried to get revenge, everything got twisted up and wrong. Ugly. Backfired, blew up in his face.]

[Just like this did for Needy.]

You're crying. [Not a judgment. Just a comment.] Why?

I'm not... [She swallows.] I d-don't...know.

[She closes her eyes and lifts her chin, like she's trying to be proud, be angry. But all she does is sniff hard as she tries to catch her breath again and keep the tears from getting any worse.]

I don't regret what I did. I don't see what else I could have done. By then.

But it still feels somehow...like I made a mistake. Like my whole life went wrong. Demons and death and fire and murder. This wasn't supposed to be my life.

[She is so proud, and so angry. He can't help but smile at her for that, even though she's crying. She's got a lot to be proud of, grisly murder notwithstanding. She survived, didn't she? That means a hell of a lot.]

No. It wasn't supposed to be your life. You weren't supposed to have to get revenge on the guys who put a demon in your best friend. Whose life is like that? That's bullshit.

Some of what happened is your fault. I mean, actually killing them, yeah, you did that. But the rest of it, that's not your mistake, Needy. It's something someone else threw you into.

[Briefly her expression turns into a glare as she looks at him, her jaw set. If killing Low Shoulder was wrong, she doesn't want to hear about it. Why does it always have to be her that turns the other cheek?

But if they're going to argue about it, she doesn't want to do it right now.]

So then why am I the one who's being punished for it? Why am I here?

[He doesn't want to argue about it now, either. Furthermore, he isn't even sure he thinks she was wrong. It's complicated. On one level, he knows it's wrong to kill people; on another, he thinks they did deserve it; on a third, he thinks it was wrong, more than anything, that Needy had to do it, that there wasn't some sort of cosmic justice meted out against the people who took Jennifer away and replaced her with whatever the hell Needy spent so long fighting against.]

[But the world isn't fucking fair, and he's just going to have to figure out a way of explaining that that isn't stupid and won't get his head kicked off.]

You're here to start over. To find a way to go back to the world so you don't have to be on the run or locked up or afraid ever again.

I've been trying not to scared. Not anymore, not ever again. Sometimes it works.

[But a lot of the time, if she succeeds, it's only because she doesn't have anything to live for anymore. It doesn't matter if she lives or dies.

Maybe that's why the idea of having a purpose, having a plan, bothers her. Because it might mean she'll have to be afraid all over again.]

[He shrugs one shoulder.]

And sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes when you're not scared you're not anything else either. Or -

My warden, he told me being angry's like a substitute for other emotions, a lot of the time. A strong substitute. You get angry because you don't want to be sad and vulnerable, or scared and vulnerable, or just plain vulnerable. But just because you cover over it doesn't mean it isn't still there, waiting to bite you in the ass.

Anyway. Even if you don't believe that. I don't want you to have to live like you were living. Living scared feels like being chewed up from the inside out, and living pissed isn't much better. So I want to help, if you'll let me.

...Who was your warden? Are they still here?

[A lot of what he says, well it makes sense and it doesn't. She's reserving judgement, for now. And not going to comment on it straightaway either.]

His name was Kon. Kon-El. Also known as Superboy.

[He's still pretty thrilled by this, even if he didn't know who Superboy was before he got here.]

He was an inmate when he first got here, and then he stayed on to, you know. Give a little back, or whatever. He went home after I graduated, though. He went home and got married and started a whole new life.

Christ.

[Just another passing comment on the Barge being the Barge. She's dead and she's in space and she's being mentored by a wizard who was mentored by Superboy. Because sure. Sure. Why not, sure.]

Is that what's supposed to happen to everyone though? You do your time, you give shit back, and then you just...move on? To something brighter and shinier?

Because I have to tell you. Right now, I don't see that ever happening to me.

Okay, several points about that. One, no. Most people, when they graduate, they fuck off. This place is rough and most people don't want to give shit back.

Two, I never thought I was gonna stick around either. I never thought I was gonna graduate. But shit happens.

And three, I don't know if I'm ever leaving. So if that's your definition of 'brighter and shinier,' no. Not everybody.

I don't know if I'm ever going to leave either.

[Her voice is softer when she says this. Hollow. And a little far away.]

I don't like being a prisoner, feeling like I'm stuck here. And I don't think I'd ever want to be a warden. But I can't think of anything that I'm missing out on back there, that I want to return to.

There are other places to go, you know. Other worlds. And who knows, maybe you'll find one you like.

There are options here, is all I mean. [More than he ever thought he'd have, for sure.]

I'm not used to...thinking that far ahead. Having options. Feeling like I have a future, I guess.

[She's known in her heart that that's been true, for awhile. But it's still scary as hell, saying it out loud. Making it real.]

I don't know when that happened, exactly. It just did.

[He lets the silence settle briefly before he even bothers to think about pursuing that. In the end, he decides not to. Not much, not right now. Instead, his voice goes soft too, to match hers. There's no fear in it, but he is - sober.]

It probably didn't happen all at once. It's not gonna go away all at once, either.

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thirty-eight ➢ private video & spam

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