IC CONTACT

[ukan]

Leave a message, knock on his door, etc.

Comments

[yedinyy]

It's her thought exactly: she had a permanent warden and plenty of friends, but the indignity can't always be suffered. She's glad for the proposal, and makes her way over to the library after freshening up in her cabin for a second.

She's in a dress and high healed boots, always put together, and greets him with a wave and a whispered hello.

[ukan]

He smiles and gestures her toward his favorite vantage point, which at the moment has stacks of magazines he's been browsing.

"We're alone except for whoever's on duty here," he says, very quietly. Alone is good. But they're not so alone he'll risk being overheard. "I keep thinking about what you said...about inmates getting the truth."

He pours them each a small bit of brandy and gives her an apologetic sort of smile. It's all he has left of his stash right now.

[yedinyy]

It's more than Elizabeth has: she deals with stress by smoking, not drinking, and so the small amount of brandy doesn't bother her for a second. She picks up her glass and leans her elbows on the table.

She wonders if that's really what he's been thinking about, but it's worth her time. She looks faintly relieved, more open than she actually is.

"We hear all these things," she agrees. "And the wardens hide behind ignorance. It's easier for them."

[ukan]

"They do. It doesn't help us any that the inmates who graduate all come to agree that the ignorance is to be lived with. Even if they don't come back they still end up siding more with the wardens."

He sips, shrugs. "There are some good people here as wardens, I believe that. But they're still part of the problem."

[yedinyy]

"The good ones keep the system going most of all," she points out, just rolling the glass in her hand for now.

"It's hard to change something when you don't know what needs changing-- worse when you have the knowledge and just use platitudes on your former peers."

[ukan]

"Some of it is ignorance but honestly it's the knowledge that bothers me. I've seen my file. So have four wardens. They know where I was born, who my parents were, my first mistake, my most humiliating moment. What do I know about them? Even the one I cared about? Nothing but what they tell me."

He falls quiet and watches her to see if her mind goes where his has.

[yedinyy]

Now she takes a drink, and her eyes go a little sad-- poor Elizabeth, to be in this place, with all its injustices. It's because he's a man that she does it, of course, but it's subtle for now to see how he reacts to it.

"My previous warden gave me his file before we were paired," she tells him, just to make sure that he knows they're on the same path.

"I actually still have it."

[ukan]

Lark merely studies her with the same sympathy he shows men, but Elizabeth is one of very few who can probably see the cunning behind all the empathy, that she is being evaluated just add he expects everyone with any broken pieces evaluates him. The only difference is that Lark's needs are broader.

"Imagine if wet could offer files to inmates on all the wardens. Even those who didn't graduate."

[yedinyy]

"They'd never go for it," she says, shaking her head, and thinking of the files she already has on people. Not that she knows them-- not all their deepest fears, their most shameful moment, the worst horrors. But she tries so hard to get to them.

"It'd take too much power away from them. Steve-- he would. Ricki. But not many more."

[ukan]

" Which is why I'd never tell them. They'd be more likely to withhold or lie if they knew anyway."

He smiles as he says this to take the ruthlessness out of it. These are his friends he's talking about spying on and extorting.

[yedinyy]

"The Admiral would never listen to a request coming from us," she counters, though the warmth of a good plan is starting in her belly. God, she's missed this- a partner in crime, almost, but this feels more like justice, like doing something to change the system.

[ukan]

"Never. I think of it like this: the Barge is a bear trap I'm caught in, and I can beg the same person who trapped me to let me go, or I can gnaw my own leg off and plan out how to drowned him as he bathes later." He smiles, such a warm expression for what he just said, for how dangerously cold his tone was if you listened hard enough.

"Which means compiling my own files. But that's almost pointless; my own biases will no doubt color what I find. No matter how badly inmates need the information, it's not something I can do alone--which is why I've never gone anywhere with that idea. That," a derisive scoff, "And there are long-term inmates who would sabotage it out of loyalty to the wardens if they knew I was mining their pals for personal secrets."

[yedinyy]

Oh, there is something so deeply disturbing about him-- she knows what it is, she knows he's something beyond human. He's said as much on the network, but she doesn't let it frighten her.

He needs her. Or he needs someone, and she is restless enough, unhappy enough, angry enough that she can listen to this. "So you need someone to help," she states, as she takes another small sip.

[ukan]

"Always," he agrees, "But what I really need is someone who cares what the lies and the ignorance mean. Someone who can be angry about it without losing perspective."

Like her, yes.

[yedinyy]

"And I'm the first person to fit that picture?" Because they're not close, he has no reason to trust her with this plan.

[ukan]

He looks at her a moment, and lets that speak: of course she's not; he's been at this much, much longer than he's said, and he is exhausted from it.

"What you've said, especially earlier, is the sort of perspective I've been looking for. Some have parts of it," so she's not the first to come to mind, and he has people already working for him, "But only parts."

[yedinyy]

She considers him for a second, rubbing a thumb over her lower lip. She looks to the side of her, to see if there still isn't anyone really close- how she wishes for a tap to run right now, a radio to turn on to drown out their noise. It's a habit more than anything, which started when she was a girl and just became more necessary since she joined the KGB.

"So don't try to tell me you don't already have files on people," she says, finally. If he doesn't, she won't.

[ukan]

"A few. Incomplete, obviously, and with my own biases." But he had to start somewhere, right?

[yedinyy]

"Who do you have?" He called her here: he can give things up first.

[ukan]

"A warden who left almost a year ago, Scott, Jean. Bits and pieces on Iris," which he is pretty sure she might suspect. Iris is crafty so he tends to just throw caution to the wind and run with whatever impulse strikes him when she's around. "When I have temps, I try to pick up a few things about them."

[yedinyy]

"And do you want to write everything? Or just the incriminating parts?"

She can do both, really.

[ukan]

"Oh, everything. The parts that seem innocent are often where you can find the most important information." If he hadn't been a lawyer he thinks he might have been a historian; he loves sifting details.

[yedinyy]

Or a spy, really. It's where she lives, in those details, in those little things she can use as hooks.

She nods again, running her thumbnail over her lower lip in thought. "I have some things, too." On far more people than that, and she suspects he's lying about his amount.

[ukan]

"What kind of things?" He is lying, of course. And he doesn't just keep notes on wardens. But you don't give everything away at a first meeting, or at all, if you can help it. Especially not without hearing something in return.

[yedinyy]

"Things they tell me," she shrugs. "Where people are from, what year..."

Really, anything. But he must know that, too. The problem with these kinds of alliances is just this: neither of them can really trust the other, and that doesn't often make for a productive partnership.