patheticvillain | fourteen ➢ video + various private messages

[Video clicks on: Cassel looks decidedly calm, leaned back against the white wall of his bedroom. Which he's not, but he's been thinking about this for a while - especially after fourth wall day - and he wants to pick people's brains.]

I never finished high school. This is not a political science lesson. Don't call me on my basic misunderstanding of the democratic process. I just have some questions.

Where I come from, people who can do [the briefest of pauses] magic are illegal. Or - performing it's illegal. And it has been for a hell of a long time. The problem is that you don't know if you can do it or not until it manifests, all by itself. You don't know if you can do it until you've already done it, by which time you're already a criminal. Surprise!

I don't know the order of history where you people are from. But for us, these laws have been in place for, like, a hundred years. Which is when things started getting bad. Some big-deal government asshole in a suit and tie tells you you're a criminal for doing something you can't help doing, I guess you just think: sure. Why not. I'll be a criminal.

Explain the point of this to me, somebody. Do people really not think this shit through? Maybe people just really want to have a bad guy. I'm okay with that answer. [He kind of believes it himself.] I'd just really like to take a survey, since nobody's asked a moral question for 0.5 seconds and I haven't had the pleasure.

[He goes to switch off the feed, and then remembers something.]

Oh, and if anybody else has similar crap to share, yadda yadda. We're building an environment of mutual un-der-stan-ding on this cruise. [Eyeroll, and feed cut.]

filter | kon + charles

I'd like to get started on this memory thing. Whenever you both have time. Kon said it was cool but he wants to sit in.

private | zane

You know that feeling like you're about to do something incredibly stupid? I have that. [He's so pissed B(]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Enormous.

Definitely a crazy daddy.

You said there were other kingdoms that were worse. Why?

[She always has this issue, not wanting to discuss it and not wanting to give any more power to the Sarrum by refusing to. So she compromises; she doesn't need to broadcast to the ship.]

Uther would have executed me, if he could have. In Amata, I was chained to the bottom of a pit for two years. [Her voice is so hard, but she manages to keep steady.]

[This resonates. Deeply. Because - after everything, Lila holds power over him. She always will. She's his greatest guilt. Despite what she told him, he would still die, some days, to keep her from having to go through that.]

[His breathing is a little shaky. Other than that, he doesn't sound any different when he responds.]

What did you do to them? Afterwards.

[She wants to be able to say she pulled herself out of that pit and killed them all. She used to fantasize about it - about Aithusa growing faster, about escaping on dragonback, about setting fire to the whole of his kingdom before setting her sights on Camelot.

That's not real, though. They're only fantasies. The truth is much more bitter, much more embarrassing; the truth is that she barely escaped, that one man's mistake had allowed her to drag herself free and flee silently. The truth is that she didn't even get to watch the Sarrum die, just as she hadn't seen Uther's last moments.

She prefers the lie.]

He died for it. [And in her voice is the promise of all that she wanted the Sarrum to suffer, even if it didn't play out that way.] And one day, the rest of his kingdom will, too. [Because she knows that when a king finds something so loathsome, his people do too.]

[He allows himself a moment to think about this. He died for it, and the rest of his kingdom will, too. This sounds like the kind of thing that Morgana needs. And Morgana sounds, right now, a little bit like Lila. So he smiles, some parody of kindness, and nods.]

Yeah? Good.

No more cages.

Not ever. [She likes Cassel for his meanness; he doesn't draw back when she says she wants people to pay - and she knows well enough that had she said this to Felix, he would have retreated from her. And he already had, so it was pointless to linger on. But maybe that's why she bothers with Cassel: he understands cruelty and revenge.]

Do you have magic, Cassel?

I have magic.

[It's one of those things he's never sure what to term. Maybe it's magic, maybe it's a mutation, maybe it's - ]

Where I come from, it's called a curse. [And that makes him grin, because - why not term something a curse, if you're not the one who has it?]

[Not that he doesn't think what he has is a curse. He does. Now he knows that better, more consciously, than ever.]

[She doesn't return it right away, because that is familiar too. As often as she's told herself otherwise, cursed isn't very far from how she's felt since she realized she had magic. It's fitting. It's awful. It's honest.

She lets herself smile.]

And who decided it should be called that? [She knows. Their worlds aren't that different, in these respects.]

I bet you can guess.

I bet I can.

[And she adds, a little more vulnerably, almost without intending to,] Do you believe it?

[He toys briefly with the idea of lying to her. In the end, he doesn't.]

Yes. I believe it.

Do you?

I wish I didn't. [It feels hypocritical, but if that's what she has to be, then that's it.]

[A pause. Then:]

I was the only one who could do exactly what I can do, back home. I was a valuable commodity, so valuable that there could never be a price for me. I'm irreplaceable. Which meant everybody wanted me.

It made me a thing. A tool to some people, a toy to others, a dangerous pest to everybody who wasn't a worker. That's why I think it's a curse.

[She chuckles when he's done, then laughs, and she knows it will turn into something manic if she lets it, something straight out of Jefferson's tea party, and there are days when she wishes she could just forget that place, but she can't. So she bites her tongue, and shakes her head.]

I'm the last High Priestess in Albion. [The laugh breaks through again, sharp and high, and she has to press her lips tightly together.] I was the last.

[She pauses for a moment before finally focusing on him again.] What would you do, if there were no consequences? What would you do to those people?

[She was the last. Which hurts to hear, not in a personal way, but still - it makes pain echo in him dully, because it reminds him of himself.]

If there were no consequences -

[He'd do a hundred different things, but lately, only one thing's seemed appropriate.]

I'd make them all live exactly what I lived. Give 'em a taste of hell.

Being a toy. A commodity. A thing. [She couldn't sound more approving if she tried. That's precisely what she wants, too.]

They'll try to talk you out of it. Don't let them. [STAY STRONG CASSEL fight the man, don't graduate etc etc.]

Exactly.

[He sounds pretty pleased, too. He likes effortless understanding, enjoys not having to explain himself, because nobody ever seems to understand unless they do so instantly, like she seems to.]

I won't. [Even though this is probably a lie. He feels himself inching closer on a daily basis, but - there are things he doesn't want to let go of. Not yet. The idea of revenge still sounds good.]

Good.

[Seriously, don't listen to her Cassel, because one day they just won't understand each other instantly, and he'll be on the better side of things for it.]

fourteen ➢ video + various private messages

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