cactusy | IC contact for lastvoyages

He exhales hard through his nose, his own little signal of irritation. Now that he's noticed how well she is not doing, it's hard to switch gears again.

"Not necessarily, but I'll go with it."

She appreciates it, because she certainly thinks this is more important.

"Zhao and Rogers care about doing safety patrols. B makes personal alarms for people. Cook thinks 'free guns for everybody' and nobody bothering to keep tabs on their inmates is stupid, too. It's not just me."

"Okay. And have you all talked about your concerns and come up with a plan or division of labor to manage them? Have you proposed changes to the Admiral of the rest of the wardens in ways that aren't 'let's break into personal cabins for weapons and also take over the speakeasy that they've made for themselves'? The inmates are furious. You're going to get yourself killed."

He rubs the corner of his eye, growling under his breath. "Systemic issues require systemic change. God I sound like a politician."

"Okay, first of all, I never wanted to randomly break into personal cabins; everybody blew that totally out of proportion. I think wardens should already be spending a lot of time in their inmate's cabin and keeping track of what they have in there. I missed Graham having two knives last month. That was on me."

She pauses, blowing out a breath.

"I shouldn't be in charge of anything big. Think we all know how that'd go. It should be someone like Rogers, or Zhao; I'm support staff."

"It getting blown out of proportion is exactly the problem. We're in an enclosed ecosystem here. Once the rage starts it's going to spread and keep spreading, and every person who tells a story will make it worse. Trust me, I'm good at making that happen."

Need rubs his face tiredly, leaning back in his chair a little. "The guy who killed me never should have had a knife. That's on his warden, too, you're right. As is the bullshit his warden said to me after. That a bunch of inmates who enjoy murder got to spend the majority of an inhibition-lowering flood unsupervised is also on their wardens. There's a lot on you. Don't make it harder."

Oh hey, speaking of.

"If I knew who killed you - if you'd tell me - I'd keep an eye on him, too. This isn't about some grudge against de Lioncourt, Caffrey. I'm just as pissed off about what happened to you."

"He hasn't brainwashed me. Dr Reid checked with the Admiral himself to confirm it. What happened was bad, yeah. Was it as bad as getting gutted by one of those plant things? Not in my personal experience."

He presses his lips into a firm line. "I appreciate it, Shaw, I do. But have you talked to the wardens of any of the inmates you're tailing? Told them your concerns, asked what they're doing, how their inmates are doing?"

"I mean I'm pissed off about what happened to you just now. I know you're not brainwashed; his powers are gone."

She leans forward, resting her forehead against the table.

"Most of the inmates I watch have temps, not permanent wardens. I leave notes about them in the ledger. And I don't tail them, I just keep a close eye on them when I see them around. Haven't seen Creel in a while; he's another one on the list."

"Who cares if they're temporary instead of permanent? They're still the wardens those inmates have right now. They might not have a full file to work from, but they're bound to know the inmates better than you. I'm not being insulting, it's just the truth. They're the ones with the greatest degree of contact. They're the ones who can tell you what the current plan for management is."

He reaches out on instinct and runs a hand over her hair, worried. "Look, I get that you hate this. I do. The way the Barge isn't so much 'run' as 'turned loose with crossed fingers.' But when you're the foreign entity joining an existing structure, no matter how chaotic, you have to take things from where they are, not where you want them to be."

God, he really does sound like a politician. Neal makes a face and shakes the weird feeling off. "You know how to tell a compromise is fair? No one leaves happy."

She doesn't shake him off when he touches her, though her forehead digs a little more insistently into the table.

"I spent the last few years learning that individual lives matter and that I can make a difference for them. And now you're all asking me to look my inmate in the eye and tell him that this doesn't matter and there's nothing we can do about it."

“That’s not what I said.” He’s shifted to gentler now. He can’t help it. “What I said was, to paraphrase: when you’re new in town, don’t try to bulldoze the neighborhood without showing your neighbors some design schematics.”

"I do want to raid the inmate speakeasy," she grumps. "But I wouldn't have made a stupid post about it if it weren't for the bugs."

“Do that and we’ll have a fight where I stay mad the whole time.” It’s teasing, but also true. “Shaw. You will never, never, never be able to secure every corner of the Barge. But the more you push to try, the more militant the inmates will be about their space, for good reason. If you want to protect people, offer self-defense classes. Target shooting for people who don’t know how to use guns. You can’t uproot the problem. The problem is why the Barge exists. Learn to sculpt the branches instead.”

He flicks the top of her head. “I thought a landscaping metaphor would pair well with the construction metaphor.”

"I'm not going to; Rogers and Zhao said no."

Because Finch and Reese aren't here, so she lets them give her orders in their stead.

"The metaphor was good."

Neal stays quiet a moment, thinking they've reached the point in the conversation where there's not a lot of point to making more points, as it were. He's not sure how much of what he said sunk in, but he'll have another chance.

"Shaw, what's going on? You're off, whether you want to admit it or not."

"You really wanna know?" she says. "It's a lot."

“I want to know.” His definition of a lot has changed significantly in the past nine-ish months.

"Besides the obvious."

It's not really a question. Shaw sighs, her eyelashes scraping against the table as she opens her eyes and stares at the cheap laminated wood millimeters from her face.

"I spent a while back home never knowing whether or not what I was experiencing was real," she says, her voice too calm and collected for the subject matter. "I was in the hands of people who were invested in keeping me thinking that way. And every time I start to feel like I have a handle on it here, something happens to make me think that there's no way this place could be anything but fake. So I figure either I never escaped at all and I'm still strapped to a bed in a lab, where I've been for who-knows-how-long. Or I did escape, and everything that happened after was real, but then they grabbed me again. Or maybe nothing is real. Maybe my whole life as I remember it is a construct."

She doesn't think this is likely - but sometimes, in her darkest moments, the possibility comes to her anyway. She remembers what Lambert had told her once: After seven thousand simulations, it's only logical that some of your old memories have been replaced by new ones. You're not sure of anything anymore, are you?

She swallows hard, but the tenor of her voice doesn't change.

"I spent a week feeling sometimes relaxed, and sometimes exhilarated - good and bad exhilaration. But now I'm back to being tired, and feeling like there's an empty pit inside me. The bugs disappeared, and it all came back to me in a rush." She pauses, and remembering her conversation with Sheehan, decides to take a stab at assigning emotion-based words to the experience: something that makes less sense to her, but that she assumes will make more sense to Neal. "I'm really sad. I guess."

He wishes a hug would make a difference. He wishes the things he knows best how to do would reach that hollow place he’s become too familiar with himself, but he also is speechless with the horror of what she’s saying. It’s not pity, not at all. Shock, yes, and fury definitely.

There’s no platitude or expletive he can think of that touches what he wants to convey.

So he keeps his voice soft and teasing instead, with an undercurrent of gentleness. “I mean, do you really think the people that took you are this creative? Please.”

She shrugs a shoulder, her upper arm scraping lightly against the tables edge, and still doesn't lift her head.

"Honestly? You'd be surprised. It's, uh... it's an artificial intelligence thing. Unlimited imagery to work with."

Edited 2023-06-24 03:10 (UTC)

He winces. "Oof. Artificial intelligence. I don't suppose there's any artificial empathy worked in there?"

"Not in this one."

It's kind of their biggest problem at the moment.

IC contact for lastvoyages

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject