patheticvillain | twenty-five ➢ private + spam

Not know like know. But I know you and I know your brother. I know you've got a power that's not the same as Barron's. Which I never found out exactly what that were, but. Gloves. If I put two and two together? More than just two of you. Different powers. You're not new to 'aving your 'ead messed with.

[She's been watching the cat; now she tilts her gaze cautiously at Cassel.]

...That a four or a five?

Edited 2013-10-02 22:11 (UTC)

[His mouth twists. Not a smile. Something a lot more complicated.]

Well, you're right on the money. I don't know. Maybe four and a half.

[He chucks Jonesy under the chin and pulls back slightly, shoving his hands in his pockets.]

It was memory, by the way. Barron's. Memory work. [Which, if Iris is paying attention (and obviously she has been), will explain a lot.]

[He ticks off on his fingers, the muscles in his jaw spooled tight, not letting himself pause:] Dream, memory, luck, physical, death, emotion, transformation. Seven types. My mother is an emotion worker. [Lip curls. He wants to say Barbara knows, but he doesn't.] So it's all the ones I hate in one go. Emotion, memory, transformation. That's why she did it.

Not as petty as all that. Kind of as petty as all that. Complicated.

That's why I don't hug you.

[Even though she still wants to, now more than ever; but Iris knows intimately the kind of revulsion that idea inspires. She still has the sour taste in her mind from having to unpick Riddick and Guerrero, and it shows now in the thinned line of her mouth.]

...I can do that. Memories and emotions. I don't, I mean. I share mine, sometimes, but I don't mess with what's there.

[Usually, she doesn't say, because she did.]

But I could. Arkin's pulled 'er teeth now, I 'ope?

Thank you.

[He means it. Appreciates it. Some people don't think about it - she does. She can see the finite cracks that exist in him even now, and while once that would have terrified him, now it just makes things easier.]

He has. He's . . . working on her. [Cassel knows enough about Arkin that he doesn't envy Elena at all right now. Then again, he doesn't envy Elena at all ever.]

I let Zane do it. Go into my head, push and pull around in there. Months and months ago. That was the first time that it ever felt okay. And now he's the only one who's allowed, whenever he wants or thinks he should.

[Clearing his throat, he runs his fingers through his hair. And then he says the last part.]

It was. Situationally appropriate. Because there was a girl named Lila, and I turned her into a cat. For three years. [A slow blink.] It was . . . very. Complicated. But that's where my mind went, when she pushed me back there. Or maybe she did it on purpose. I don't know.

[The mention of Zane brings the smile out onto her face; a sharper, brighter one than her Rorschach smile.]

Zane's come so far. I'm so proud of all of you, but Zane. 'E's been like a hatching phoenix. 'E did that Rioting thing on me the other day and all. I'd just got done with fixing Alpha's bullshit and I felt like a used-up sponge. It were brilliant.

[And then she narrows her eyes.]

That's never appropriate. No matter what you did. There's part of your 'ead trying to tell you you deserved it, isn't there? Tell it from me to shut its gob.

He's good at it. He's good at more things than he realizes. [He's amazing. He's the best family Cassel's ever had. But that, surely, shows on his face; he doesn't need to say any of it.]

[All that wasn't quite what he meant, although it's definitely part of it. There's a poeticism that he ascribed to - still does - and that part finds it fitting. Almost beautiful.]

[He tilts his head.] No . . . not quite. It would've once, though. It would've just taken the change and run with it. I would've wanted the excuse.

Good. I'm glad to 'ear it. Thematically appropriate I can accept.

[She smiles for Cassel alone now, rueful and knowing.]

Welcome to being a warden, lovey. I wish I could say it'd be the last time, but it won't. We're their only targets for all that rage and resentment and shite they bring with 'em and all we can do is keep putting ourselves and each other back together. Good thing we're amazing at it, eh?

[It should sound depressing, but Iris' expression and tone frame it like a great adventure she's privileged to be along for. Then she smirks softly.]

Zane were me warden for a flood, did you know that? That one where we all switched 'istories.

Good thing we're amazing at everything, [he counters with an eager grin, and it's a good thing, too, because the next question brings back memories. That flood. He had been something else entirely then, angry and brainwashed and even more damaged than usual. He had upset Chris (and every time he's upset Chris is a little mark of pain on his soul). He remembers Zane vaguely from the flood, but mostly from after, when he was locked up in his room. When Cassel broke in to say hello. And then everything else.]

[There's a torrent of memory that he has to process before he nods.]

I knew. It was - it feels like a long time ago.

Aye. I didn't much like my alternate either. I'd met 'er once before, in Berlin - sort of. She mindcontrolled my... a friend of mine and tried to make 'im kill me. In the flood version she'd succeeded, so she'd taken over from me and fetched up 'ere as an inmate.

...Just as well you didn't run into 'er. Even depowered.

Because she messes around in people's heads.

[She nods.]

It were... rather sobering, coming back from that flood. See, I'd met 'er, but I'd never walked in 'er shoes before. Easy, that way, to just put it down as bad and carry on. Not examining where the bad came from.

[He purses his lips, thinking. He knows where some of the bad comes from in his case, in Lila's, in Barron's. No longer allowed the luxury of blaming his black heart or hers or general Sharpe wickedness, he's had to actually examine some things. It's uncomfortable.]

So where did the bad come from?

Fear. She got so she couldn't let anyone or anything be out from under 'er thumb, because she were so terrified to be alone. To not be loved.

[She's leaning her face into the cat's soft, purring bulk as she speaks, acutely aware of her own constant neediness; especially lately, with the comas spurring it closer to desperation.]

And arrogance. It's always too easy to convince yourself you know what other people need. Somewhere along the line she lost the 'abit of asking 'em first. That's why she terrifies me. Not because she were dangerous; because she's still me.

[Cassel has never seen Iris look away from anything before. It makes him curious in the way that is still ingrained in him; he looks for weakness without realizing it. She's not weak, but she's revealing too much.]

[He reaches up to stroke Jonesy on the cheek, and then touches Iris on her cheek abruptly with two fingers, somewhere between affectionate and reprimanding.]

There's something like that in everybody.

Show me?

True.

[She reaches - gently, slowly - to place her hand over his and lets it happen. Iris' awareness isn't an invasion; more like a mirror held up outside Cassel's own self.

It shows him that she knows he spots weaknesses because she recognises the process from inside her own observing mind. How it delights and amuses her that they've both been drawn to Barbara with her straightforward steel-blade spirit, Chris with his honest forest-fire enthusiasm. How she loves him, how her faith in his capacity to use his power for good is unshakeable.]

...and this was Bianca.

[Small and howling in lonely terror inside her constructed fortress of charm; baffled and furious at Zane and his obdurate calm; fiercely determined to gather control of everyone she touched, strand by slow strand.

She riffles past some of the floodmemories like a pack of cards - that other Barbara and her cold smile, Guerrero and his detached opportunism, both carrying an erotic charge like black lightning - and settles on the one she wants. It's David Cain: and everything about him in Bianca's and Iris' memories both paint him in an outline of trust, solid like a stone wall.]

...see, she remembered 'aving my life. In 'er 'ead it'd been 'er all along.

[She had touched him and found his mind riddled with the wrong self; and Iris' fingers tighten at the lurching panic of a betrayal that hadn't been. Bianca's eyes narrow and her mind reaches out to shred and tear, and then Iris shuts it down.]

Same feelings. Same needs. Not like I didn't know that, not really; I just. Didn't know it.

[His eyes half-close as he feels her memories on his, her mind brushing close. He doesn't try to conceal anything, and though he doesn't quite understand why, he's answered the question he asked Zane all for himself: the only way past distrusting yourself is to push, to be open, to take risks, to lay yourself at someone else's mercy even if it's terrifying.]

[So when Iris's memories show Barbara, he smiles and exudes comfort; Guerrero is a flat line of distrust, Cain an indrawn breath of displeasure, though distanced, and the trust both Iris and Bianca feel in his presence both temper and confuse this. Every inkling of a memory or thought of Chris make Cassel beam, his spirit bright and fueled and open and wholly trusting, fierce love with a perpetual twist of wonder.]

[Bianca - the thing is, he recognizes her. Flinches, smiles. Breathes in, out, and murmurs. And maybe there is a moment when he understands what took him so long to believe Iris wouldn't hurt him. Bianca is part of her. And he recognizes.]

[He shakes his head to clear it and looks at up at Iris, a little puzzled and a little sad. Lay yourself at her feet, he thinks, because she isn't, and sighs.]

Here. Take this.

[And pushes it forward, baldly held out in both hands, a collage of fractured memory and butchered emotion: his mother, locked inside her own charm, her own smile, the flighty wave of her hands, holes in the tips of her gloves. The tips of her nails like hooks. The erraticism of her expression, love teetering to anger, those rare moments when Cassel saw her afraid. Her with Zacharov, her with his father, her with marks, her with Philip, Barron, Cassel himself, curling her hair, fussing over him, loving, twisting, controlling, pulling them apart.]

[You're brothers, she says, love each other. And they cry.]

[Was she lonely, is what Cassel suddenly wonders with another sigh of almost-relief, was she lonely, did she want love, did she need it the way Bianca did? Was she lonely and afraid? He wants to go back and rescue her, but there's no way. No way.]

Edited 2013-10-03 21:08 (UTC)

[And Iris flinches in turn now, in the kind of sick unsurprise of a twist ending foreseen; she knew nothing of Cassel's mother but it's obvious - hadn't Iris herself recognised Cassel from the start?

She's holding her fingers still with an effort, speaking in a low monotone that's not in any way hypnotic.]

[this, here, this is the part of my mind that could reach out and take control, this is what to watch out for, you'll know it if you see it.]

I told Zane not long ago that neither of us are very trustworthy people; and that's why both of us'll die before we break a promise.

[And she squeezes his hand lightly and takes the memory back to Chris and Barbara; not the private places of either in his mind or hers, only the flare of exultant, fortunate love. Zane, too, blazing, broken phoenix that he is. Iris knows she doesn't deserve it, but it's been granted her anyway, a grace beyond grace. She doesn't need to look for Cassel's reflection in that mirror either.]

...We've been blessed, you and me.

[He'll know it if he sees it. A murmur of assent, and then he allows himself to swim in the sensation. Not just of love, but of being loved, of knowing that that can't be taken away from you, can't be stolen. Security, or as close to it as people like them can get.]

[There's a difference between subservience and inclusion, between obsession and love. Sometimes he feels sick, wondering what would've happened if he'd never had the chance to learn that here. To be told that he's not a tool. That he doesn't deserve to be hurt. That he doesn't need to be useful.]

[That he's blessed.]

[He opens his eyes and smiles, bright as the sun.]

We have.

Poor Elena. She thought she could get to you.

[Iris knows she did; but she also knows, without having to look, that Elena missed what she thought she was aiming for, missed it profoundly and doesn't even have the capacity to know why.]

[She thought I was somebody else - he doesn't say this. Just tilts his head, nods, squeezes her hand, and glances at Jonesy.]

She's confused. But she'll come around.

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