cactusy | IC contact for lastvoyages

"Former MI-6 guy, current flunky for an evil robot. One of the people who tortured me." She pauses, drumming her fingers restlessly on the mattress. "He's pretty annoying. Kinda hoping I get to shoot him someday."

Huh. "Make sure it's somewhere painful," Steve advises.

"D'you know how many simulations you've been through?"

"7,053 last time they gave me a count. Maybe more. I don't know how much of the end was real. I saw the city explode; that probably wasn't real. So, uh... 7,054 at minimum. Probably."

Another pause, and her eyes flick back to him.

"You know I don't think this is real either, right?"

Steve sits back, huffing out a breath. "I mean. Who could blame you? The 7,055th time's the charm, right?"

He's taking her seriously, though. He hopes she knows that. That's a lot. How could she ever trust anything was real, after that?

His mouth twists, not quite smiling, not quite grimacing. "It sucks, though. Always waiting to wake up."

She quirks a brow at that first comment, smiling a little, though it fades almost immediately.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do about this whole... breach thing. Guess I can't get away with avoiding Cook, Eiffel, and Caffrey forever."

"I mean, you can, probably. But then there'll be the next one, and the next one." So she'll end up having to avoid a lot of people.

"But it's - in a simulation. You're still you, right? The breaches are different."

That, and she really quite likes all three of them, and had even before the breach.

"The breaches are different," she allows, with a small nod. "But those breach thoughts are still... sticking around. I have way more opinions on zombies now than I did a month ago."

"Yeah, well, so did I after one bit my warden in the neck," Steve allows. "And I didn't even need a breach."

But okay, that's beside the point. This breach was a little weirdly personal for him, but that's not Shaw's fault. Or her problem.

"They'll probably fade, after a while. But that doesn't help you now, I know." He considers. He'd told B to write everything down, once upon a time. So he could keep everything separate.

"What if you... wrote down how you feel about the people here. Kept a record of it. Then you could go back to it, after breaches? Disentangle the relationships, at least."

Sort of the opposite of what B had had to do.

"It's not that I'm having trouble telling the difference," she says, slowly. "It's that it's... in there. Even though it's not me."

Steve considers that. "Yeah. I get that."

And even if it fades, coming right up out of it, it's a lot sharper. A lot bigger.

"I don't know that there's a lot you can do about it," he finally admits. "It just takes time, which is the last thing you want to hear when you're right in the middle of anything."

"But people will understand. So I think that part of it, at least - you don't have to worry about that. Don't keep away from people you care about just because it's awkward. This whole ship goes through awkward once a month."

He thinks of his own experiences. Of the friends he would've lost, if they'd let breaches get in the way. "I don't blame anybody for anything they did in one of those. It was just somebody who looked a lot like them, that's all."

"Yeah, not really worried about that. I didn't hurt anybody, anyway." Another pause, and then she adds, "Not like you're thinking, anyway."

Those three had certainly been hurt by her death - a death that she had arranged and asked for, after she'd been bitten.

"Most people here don't see breaches the way you're talking about. You got any idea how many people I've talked to who've told me all about how they're dating so-and-so or like family with such-and-such because of a breach?"

It had weirded her out then. It weirds her out exponentially more now.

That - does give him pause, because, "Oh. Huh. No, actually," he has to admit.

Because honestly? That weirds him out, too. "Jesus. I - I mean. I can see it, but. I guess there's no way I could do that. I -"

He blows out a breath. "I had one friend. One of my best friends." One of the only people he feels like have ever really understood him. "We did some shit in breaches. Good and bad. But we decided we weren't those people, we hadn't done any of it, because - " He shrugs. "Neither of us wanted to ruin the real friendship we had with what other people wearing our faces had done. But I guess that was us. That's me. I never was good at doing what was popular," he admits, with a quiet, helpless little laugh.

"I only know Cook, but she's one of the most pragmatic gals I know." So she'll understand however Shaw decides she needs to see it, he thinks.

Edited 2023-04-08 03:26 (UTC)

"She's cool," Shaw affirms. "But we were a thing, and that always makes stuff... weird."

"Only if you let it," Steve says, but of course, way easier said than done, and he knows it.

"I spend a lot of breaches alone. If I ever figure out the secret, I'll let you know."

Personally, he just thinks it's the way things go for most of the people he must share enough with to have the same name and face, when these things happen.

"I won't."

And she feels that she can say that with certainty.

"Guess we'll see about her. I would've loved to spend that breach alone."

Even just being a zombie the entire time would have been fine, as far as she's concerned.

"Yeah, well. There's something to be said for not putting things off."

Steve isn't sure why or how or when she'd died, but he had spent it living with a ticking clock over his head. It hadn't been a picnic.

"Guess I have a bad habit of that, though."

He's been thinking a lot about how he failed his last warden, after that breach. But that's on nobody but him.

"She did ask about you. So did Malcolm and Will. And I think Iris might have something for you." He reaches out with one foot, nudges the mattress. "You got a lot of friends here, simulation or not."

"Iris is nuts," Shaw says with a sigh, not actually sounding remotely angry. "Malcolm's-- I dunno."

Another pause.

"You've got a bad habit of... putting things off?"

"She is, but usually in the good way," Steve admits. He doesn't know Malcolm, though, so he can't really comment.

"Yeah." He sighs. There are several examples, but one that's currently at the forefront of his mind. "My last warden - she was from a world like that. With zombies. Her deal was to put an end to it - get rid of the cause, or a cure, or something that was gonna stop it all. But she left, 'cause she'd already been here a while and gotten one deal, and she couldn't stand to be away from her family anymore."

He exhales through his nose. "I graduated a couple months later. I wasn't even trying. Maybe if I'd tried... I could've done it sooner. Helped her get what she needed."

"Who got the deal, then?" she asks, frowning a little as she sits back up, propping herself up on her elbows. "A temp?"

"Nobody. Didn't have a temp, I don't think. But temps don't get deals, anyway, so even if I had one, they wouldn't have gotten anything."

"A waste," she snorts, shaking her head. Realizing how that might sound, though, she adds, "Not really your fault, though. She should've been able to tell you were close, right?"

"It was a waste," he agrees; he didn't care at all at the time, but in the time since...

Well. Nothing he can do about it now. Except feel guilty. He's pretty good at that.

"I don't know that I was close when she left. I don't know that I was close the day before it happened - I don't know what day it did happen or what the fuck did it," he says, shrugging almost aggressively. "Like I said. I wasn't even trying. Never was. Never did." Not really. Not for very long. "Seems kinda unfair, when I see people who really are."

"You don't even know what you're trying for half the time, right?"

That's certainly the sense she's gotten, in talking to both wardens and inmates. "Everybody's kinda flying blind, trying to figure out the Admiral's secret standards for them. It doesn't have any rules, it's not consistent..."

"I mean, some cases are a little easier than others."

But she's generally right, is the other half of that statement. And he, in particular, has no idea what he was shooting for, other than... however he is now. Which doesn't necessarily feel like much of an accomplishment, most days.

"No. There's no rules because everybody is different. I - "

He stops, shuts his mouth almost audibly. Chews on something internally for a long moment before he admits, very quietly, "I saw a lot of people graduate, and I didn't know why. I guess maybe that is how it works. We're not always better people at the end of it."

He... thinks he must be like those people, whose graduations felt so unfair. Figures.

"But some people are," he adds, and he means it. "Some people work really hard and they deserve every ounce of freedom. And more. It's why I won't ask him for anything. Part of why. But a big part of why. Inmates aren't just ways to get what I want. That's a shitty way to think of them, and I won't do it. I won't make anyone feel that way."

"'Better people' can be complicated."

Shaw isn't exactly the biggest fan of dealing with shades of gray, but at this point - considering everything she's did in her past, everything she's done recently, and everything she's seen others do - even she can admit that.

"I don't feel bad about being here for a deal."

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