Oh, there’s no destroying the power, but one can ‘plug up’ the ‘hole’, so to speak, between them and more physical realities by destroying the manifestation.
[ There is a sigh and the soft tinkling of a spoon in a teacup. ]
At the same time, who’s to say a, er, “fresher” hell, a new and potentially unknown expression that may or may not be created by the “gap”, is any better? Hence why I’m unsure if destruction is the proper route and containment, at least en masse most certainly isn’t.
[ Jon takes a moment to actually drink a bit of his tea before he continues. ]
And the fact of the matter is I don’t, but I’m not about to take the chance or rely upon the “Admiral’s” better judgement or even, possible means of control.
Suffice to say, I hope very much to be wrong in my suspicions.
[Lark smirks a little at the mention of the Admiral's judgment, because really, the creature has none.
Which sparks the bitterest part of Lark and he forgets the books, just for a moment.]
Did he tell you this isn't even his ship? Back when he offered you the deal? Did he tell you that he's being hunted down by his own kind because he's a mutineer? That he hijacked a Barge when people started asking too many questions, and inmates aren't just prisoners but hostages now? I just have to know how transparent it is to be in his employ.
[ That has him pausing, just a moment, but the fact of the matter was that he'd gotten the most important information, the most important guarantee, from Iris: his deal would be fulfilled. That was what he needed, more than anything. And given his own feelings under the Eye, he can't say that there's terribly much wrong with a rogue avatar of the End, at least in theory.]
He hadn't mentioned it, no. Then again, the whole thing has the air of a shady deal around reality's back, to be honest.
Though I'm certainly familiar enough with hostage situations...
[ That comes with a low, dark laugh.
He was, after all, trying to get quite a few people out of one.]
[ Jon's never been one to trust gentleness, especially not from monsters. He was hardly one to trust politeness, really. Or, to be frank, much of anything. At the same time, he's also not the sort of person to change who he is for anyone, which was probably why his friends numbered in... Georgie. There'd been Tim (been), and he'd thought for a time he at least had a working relationship with Basira but that had turned out to be her stringing him along in the hopes of him incriminating himself for Gertrude's murder. Elias was laughable, especially at this point. Melanie had always thought he was a dick, even before she'd met him, he was reasonably certain Daisy still vaguely wanted to kill him every once in a while, Sasha was dead, and then there was Martin.
Thus-]
Yes.
[ He lets it out in a breath.]
It means that when one of you do, actually kill me... I'll understand. I might even empathize, given my own predicament. But there's nothing you, or anyone else could say that could possibly make me leave. Not before I'm done.
You're not the only hostages. And I... I owe them that.
I understand. I do. We all have people we'll choose above others; even I do now.
So I really do hope you aren't paired with me. Especially not permanently. There's nothing I can do to make you leave, and there's nothing you can do to make me help you use me.
[A faint, sad smile] This is why I've had so many wardens.
[ There's a self-deprecating sort of laugh as he, on the other side of the line, rubs at his eyes. ]
It would be my luck, to be honest.
[ But he can't help- he is curious. And curiosity is like an addiction for him, as he'd somewhat mentioned before. He's careful because he doesn't know if what he does can be transmitted by the Admiral's devices, and he's learned from Jude Perry that dangerous creatures seldom enjoy having things forced from them.]
I would like to know, if you don't mind sharing, if the issue is simply that you refuse to allow anyone to profit from your stay here or if you merely have no desire to change.
[The answer, in a word, is 'both'. But if Lark wants to be honest--and for now he does--the answer can't be compressed into a single word.]
I have changed. I've carved out, and given up, and reshaped pieces of myself in order to survive here with my mind in one piece. I've dug around for things that are broken so that I can try to heal them, in case that will get me out--but also because I want to be whole.
But there are things about myself that make me who I am. Things that I love. I can't let the Admiral erase those or I wouldn't be me.
I've done all of that work. I've been the one who has outlasted warden after warden. Whatever progress I've made is mine. What right does some stranger, someone who didn't even know me when I got here, have to benefit off of my life? I'm not here bleeding and burning and fighting just so someone can show up at the eleventh hour and claim credit. They get a miracle--to save dead loved ones or rescue dying worlds. Do you know what I get? I get to go home. Home to a world that's trying to kill me and all of my people. That's all. That's my prize.
Some months back, my co-workers staged... well, an 'intervention', as embarrassing as the whole thing was. They were trying to convince me that I ought to stop trying to figure out who killed my predecessor, stop suspecting them of having been involved or possibly even having killed her. They asked me to put down my guard, to pretend as if the matter was dealt with, leave it to the police.
[ A careful pause. ]
I discovered not long after that that someone I'd once called a friend, one of my assistants, had in fact been dead for almost a year. That her murderer had overwritten everything we knew of her with a 'new' Sasha and taken her place. That she'd been feeding my paranoia in an attempt to get me to free her from an item that the Institute had in artifact storage.
[ A pause.]
I did. And she almost killed me, as well as both of my other assistants at the time. She would have if I hadn't been saved by, of all people, Jurgen Leitner.
[ He lets that hang in the air for a moment before he continues. ]
I don't suppose you can see where I might be going with all this?
Well, after a rather... illuminating discussion with him, as I've alluded to previously, I needed a moment to myself, a cigarette, and I slipped away to take care of matters.
And when I returned, it was to his corpse sitting in my office and a bloody metal pipe left there clear as day.
Suffice to say I ran. But that is very- that is very much besides the point.
[ There's a slow inhale, a tired tired exhale.]
It led to a certain reevaluation of my methods, my ideologies, m-my worldview, really. I like to think I've... I've made an effort to be different, to... to heal wounds, old wounds. The oldest, in some ways. To... reach out where before all I'd done was step away.
[ He huffs, a truncated laugh.]
I've had some missteps. I... well, I'm certainly no role model, of course. But I think the point I was getting to was that that 'intervention' didn't do much more than make me certain of my course at the time.
[ Some of the tension leaves his voice, because they're no longer talking about personal things, just conceptual things. Just... things to talk about.]
The point is... I'm not sure how much any warden does, or could do to- I don't think- I can't imagine earning such a thing by changing another person, by... by manipulating them, ultimately. Because that's all it would be.
I think.
[ There's a soft rushing shuffle, his hand through his hair right beside the communicator, quiet but slightly discordant with the whir of the tape recorder underneath.]
That... may all just be my projection, however. O-or perhaps just the perspective of someone w-who tends to watch, to chronicle, as opposed to more active- is what I was getting at.
[Lark just listens, letting Sims work them through what is clearly deeply uncomfortable territory and then through to his new life on the Barge. Lark can detect lies easily when they're in person; dishonesty has subtle chemical markers, and the steadiest voice is still marked by a skipped heartbeat or a tic. Over the network, Lark's talents are reduced to the ones he learned as an attorney working with horrific people, but he can't pick out any lies.
He doesn't really want to like a new warden. The few he likes already are deeply important to him and, therefore, complicate his life a lot because he would love nothing more than to massacre every one of his jailers.
But it's hard not to like Jon after listening to him so silently.]
Manipulation is all it would be. And it's why I just- I've never...I trusted some of my wardens. But I was keeping them from getting on with the lives they wanted and they left, or they were kicked out. That's the hard reality.
I haven't had many active wardens. The few I did have didn't last very long. [Because Lark is a deeply manipulative person, perhaps? Hmmm.] The ones who stuck around the longest didn't interfere in my life at all. We were friends. I trusted them to guard the things that I can't function without, and they did. In return, I tried not to get into too much trouble.
But they weren't really observing. The biggest help I ever had came from someone who...I think you would've liked him. He understood the importance of watching and inferring. He watched me without my even knowing, and when I was getting out of line he had facts to knock me back into place. And he wasn't even a warden at the time. He just paid attention and then told me what he saw, what I was blind to.
We need more wardens like that. [For the first time, Lark sounds confident, like he's seen a trail that wasn't there before.]
So, yeah, no, I don't think it's just you projecting.
[ The thing that Lark will learn if they have any further association (which is almost certain, given the library and he may even have something of a clue already) is that Jon isn't actually much of a liar.
He has relied on lies in the past, poorly, because deception is, unfortunately, necessary when one is in a perilous situation but he is also abysmal at it. He can't act worth a damn, can't really be anyone but himself and unabashedly most of the time. He can fain politeness for a while, like anyone, but even then, his limit is rather low.
Even what lies he had used were situational: 'I'm not surveilling his house, I'm doing his performance review' or 'I definitely wasn't stabbed by a monster with knives for hands, clearly it was a breadknife and I did it to myself' which, really, is such terrible lying that it's practically a kind of truth. All the subtlety of a 13 year old trying to get a later bedtime, this one.
If anything, Jon is more of a cypher: his truth is plain and loud and clear... but it may be expressed in ways that require a bit of thinking (and almost certainly patience) to puzzle out.
But he listens, silent, with the kind of rapt, quiet breathes that speak to someone who isn't just waiting for what they can say back. Manipulation is all it would be. Playing into someone else's plan.
He understands that. Intimately. Even now, what he's doing, what he's becoming... it's part of something else, someone else's desires. And even if it's giving him things he wants along with all the things he doesn't, he too regrets every bit of progress, wishes he could throttle Elias for every encouraging smile.
He listens to the rest the same way, though. There's a quick, singular hiccup of sound at 'someone he would have liked' since there's parts of the person he describes that sounds achingly close to Georgie for him. Yes, sometimes there needs to be someone to knock you back into place. He hadn't even known how much until he'd gotten her back properly.
He wonders how well he'll do without her here.
But as he ends, what Lark will hear is a kind of relief, an exhale with a bit of a raspy chuckle at the end of it and the soft liquid sound of someone taking a sip of something when the communicator is tucked up against their shoulder. Once he's swallowed-]
I shall do my best to take that as a prescription and not a compliment.
[ A deeper breath in.]
Well, I certainly don't want to take up too much of your time, Mr. Tennant- er... Mr. Tennant or Lark? Everyone seems to prefer first names around here but as you like.
[Truth be told, this is the first time anyone has asked him. Formal terms really haven't been handed out to any inmate. Hell, Arthas was probably the Prince of Darkness or some shit, and he still got mocked.
Then again, Arthas was a giant of a try-hard, so...]
How about a compromise? Mr Tennant when we're working in the library, Lark when we're not.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[ There is a sigh and the soft tinkling of a spoon in a teacup. ]
At the same time, who’s to say a, er, “fresher” hell, a new and potentially unknown expression that may or may not be created by the “gap”, is any better? Hence why I’m unsure if destruction is the proper route and containment, at least en masse most certainly isn’t.
[ Jon takes a moment to actually drink a bit of his tea before he continues. ]
And the fact of the matter is I don’t, but I’m not about to take the chance or rely upon the “Admiral’s” better judgement or even, possible means of control.
Suffice to say, I hope very much to be wrong in my suspicions.
no subject
Which sparks the bitterest part of Lark and he forgets the books, just for a moment.]
Did he tell you this isn't even his ship? Back when he offered you the deal? Did he tell you that he's being hunted down by his own kind because he's a mutineer? That he hijacked a Barge when people started asking too many questions, and inmates aren't just prisoners but hostages now? I just have to know how transparent it is to be in his employ.
no subject
He hadn't mentioned it, no. Then again, the whole thing has the air of a shady deal around reality's back, to be honest.
Though I'm certainly familiar enough with hostage situations...
[ That comes with a low, dark laugh.
He was, after all, trying to get quite a few people out of one.]
no subject
But his tone is gentle, but perhaps a little lethal now.]
Does that change anything for you?
no subject
Thus-]
Yes.
[ He lets it out in a breath.]
It means that when one of you do, actually kill me... I'll understand. I might even empathize, given my own predicament. But there's nothing you, or anyone else could say that could possibly make me leave. Not before I'm done.
You're not the only hostages. And I... I owe them that.
no subject
So I really do hope you aren't paired with me. Especially not permanently. There's nothing I can do to make you leave, and there's nothing you can do to make me help you use me.
[A faint, sad smile] This is why I've had so many wardens.
no subject
It would be my luck, to be honest.
[ But he can't help- he is curious. And curiosity is like an addiction for him, as he'd somewhat mentioned before. He's careful because he doesn't know if what he does can be transmitted by the Admiral's devices, and he's learned from Jude Perry that dangerous creatures seldom enjoy having things forced from them.]
I would like to know, if you don't mind sharing, if the issue is simply that you refuse to allow anyone to profit from your stay here or if you merely have no desire to change.
[ Only a brief pause before-]
I do understand both points.
no subject
I have changed. I've carved out, and given up, and reshaped pieces of myself in order to survive here with my mind in one piece. I've dug around for things that are broken so that I can try to heal them, in case that will get me out--but also because I want to be whole.
But there are things about myself that make me who I am. Things that I love. I can't let the Admiral erase those or I wouldn't be me.
I've done all of that work. I've been the one who has outlasted warden after warden. Whatever progress I've made is mine. What right does some stranger, someone who didn't even know me when I got here, have to benefit off of my life? I'm not here bleeding and burning and fighting just so someone can show up at the eleventh hour and claim credit. They get a miracle--to save dead loved ones or rescue dying worlds. Do you know what I get? I get to go home. Home to a world that's trying to kill me and all of my people. That's all. That's my prize.
no subject
[ His voice is softer, clearly contemplative.]
Some months back, my co-workers staged... well, an 'intervention', as embarrassing as the whole thing was. They were trying to convince me that I ought to stop trying to figure out who killed my predecessor, stop suspecting them of having been involved or possibly even having killed her. They asked me to put down my guard, to pretend as if the matter was dealt with, leave it to the police.
[ A careful pause. ]
I discovered not long after that that someone I'd once called a friend, one of my assistants, had in fact been dead for almost a year. That her murderer had overwritten everything we knew of her with a 'new' Sasha and taken her place. That she'd been feeding my paranoia in an attempt to get me to free her from an item that the Institute had in artifact storage.
[ A pause.]
I did. And she almost killed me, as well as both of my other assistants at the time. She would have if I hadn't been saved by, of all people, Jurgen Leitner.
[ He lets that hang in the air for a moment before he continues. ]
I don't suppose you can see where I might be going with all this?
no subject
[He is guessing anyway, of course, because it's what he does. But he wouldn't put money on it yet.]
no subject
And when I returned, it was to his corpse sitting in my office and a bloody metal pipe left there clear as day.
Suffice to say I ran. But that is very- that is very much besides the point.
[ There's a slow inhale, a tired tired exhale.]
It led to a certain reevaluation of my methods, my ideologies, m-my worldview, really. I like to think I've... I've made an effort to be different, to... to heal wounds, old wounds. The oldest, in some ways. To... reach out where before all I'd done was step away.
[ He huffs, a truncated laugh.]
I've had some missteps. I... well, I'm certainly no role model, of course. But I think the point I was getting to was that that 'intervention' didn't do much more than make me certain of my course at the time.
[ Some of the tension leaves his voice, because they're no longer talking about personal things, just conceptual things. Just... things to talk about.]
The point is... I'm not sure how much any warden does, or could do to- I don't think- I can't imagine earning such a thing by changing another person, by... by manipulating them, ultimately. Because that's all it would be.
I think.
[ There's a soft rushing shuffle, his hand through his hair right beside the communicator, quiet but slightly discordant with the whir of the tape recorder underneath.]
That... may all just be my projection, however. O-or perhaps just the perspective of someone w-who tends to watch, to chronicle, as opposed to more active- is what I was getting at.
[ A low, self-depreciating chuckle.]
Someone who's barely into the job at that.
no subject
He doesn't really want to like a new warden. The few he likes already are deeply important to him and, therefore, complicate his life a lot because he would love nothing more than to massacre every one of his jailers.
But it's hard not to like Jon after listening to him so silently.]
Manipulation is all it would be. And it's why I just- I've never...I trusted some of my wardens. But I was keeping them from getting on with the lives they wanted and they left, or they were kicked out. That's the hard reality.
I haven't had many active wardens. The few I did have didn't last very long. [Because Lark is a deeply manipulative person, perhaps? Hmmm.] The ones who stuck around the longest didn't interfere in my life at all. We were friends. I trusted them to guard the things that I can't function without, and they did. In return, I tried not to get into too much trouble.
But they weren't really observing. The biggest help I ever had came from someone who...I think you would've liked him. He understood the importance of watching and inferring. He watched me without my even knowing, and when I was getting out of line he had facts to knock me back into place. And he wasn't even a warden at the time. He just paid attention and then told me what he saw, what I was blind to.
We need more wardens like that. [For the first time, Lark sounds confident, like he's seen a trail that wasn't there before.]
So, yeah, no, I don't think it's just you projecting.
no subject
He has relied on lies in the past, poorly, because deception is, unfortunately, necessary when one is in a perilous situation but he is also abysmal at it. He can't act worth a damn, can't really be anyone but himself and unabashedly most of the time. He can fain politeness for a while, like anyone, but even then, his limit is rather low.
Even what lies he had used were situational: 'I'm not surveilling his house, I'm doing his performance review' or 'I definitely wasn't stabbed by a monster with knives for hands, clearly it was a breadknife and I did it to myself' which, really, is such terrible lying that it's practically a kind of truth. All the subtlety of a 13 year old trying to get a later bedtime, this one.
If anything, Jon is more of a cypher: his truth is plain and loud and clear... but it may be expressed in ways that require a bit of thinking (and almost certainly patience) to puzzle out.
But he listens, silent, with the kind of rapt, quiet breathes that speak to someone who isn't just waiting for what they can say back. Manipulation is all it would be. Playing into someone else's plan.
He understands that. Intimately. Even now, what he's doing, what he's becoming... it's part of something else, someone else's desires. And even if it's giving him things he wants along with all the things he doesn't, he too regrets every bit of progress, wishes he could throttle Elias for every encouraging smile.
He listens to the rest the same way, though. There's a quick, singular hiccup of sound at 'someone he would have liked' since there's parts of the person he describes that sounds achingly close to Georgie for him. Yes, sometimes there needs to be someone to knock you back into place. He hadn't even known how much until he'd gotten her back properly.
He wonders how well he'll do without her here.
But as he ends, what Lark will hear is a kind of relief, an exhale with a bit of a raspy chuckle at the end of it and the soft liquid sound of someone taking a sip of something when the communicator is tucked up against their shoulder. Once he's swallowed-]
I shall do my best to take that as a prescription and not a compliment.
[ A deeper breath in.]
Well, I certainly don't want to take up too much of your time, Mr. Tennant- er... Mr. Tennant or Lark? Everyone seems to prefer first names around here but as you like.
no subject
Then again, Arthas was a giant of a try-hard, so...]
How about a compromise? Mr Tennant when we're working in the library, Lark when we're not.
no subject
Though with that, I believe I'll leave you to your evening.
Unless you had another question, of course.
no subject
no subject
[ Not laughing or upset by that. Just... interesting. Hmm, as the dialogue said.
Not really what he would have expected.]
You're, er, certainly welcome. And I'll get to work on the archive space. Till then, though.
[ And that's a sign off.]