NINE: video

[puppydogeyes]

[The room Taylor's sat in is dark, unidentifiable from the wall behind her, but soft, blue-tinged light from another source washes over her face intermittently. It highlights how drawn she looks, pale, tired. She's a mess, really. Even by Tranquility standards.]

It's January, right? Been counting on the jumps since I got here. [She isn't slurring as she speaks, but the lack of focus in her expression and sluggishness to her movements makes it clear she's inebriated to anyone who knows what to look for.] Guess it doesn't matter though. Just start calling them by numbers. I was meant to turn twenty in December. Be an instructor back at the Academy. [She frowns for a moment, taking a drink out of an unlabelled bottle.] Or maybe they'd have terminated me.

[Another pause, and she shifts off to the side for a moment, putting the bottle down. When she comes back into view she’s holding something else – a mask. Her mask, an mongrel canine face, beaten, bruised and bloody. She holds it up, hanging off the fingers of one hand.]

Turns out these show you ghosts. Hallucinations. Whatever. If that isn't fucked up enough to get you thinking don't touch them, you're a fucking idiot. [Very evidently angry, suddenly, half a snarl on her mouth. She looks at the mask again, then drops it to one side.] Didn't want to see my old man the little he was around, sure as fuck didn't want to see him here. Thing I've been thinking, though - what do you see, you wear someone else's?

[She doesn't hold the second mask up for the camera, but it's there in her hands, looks like a modern military gas mask. She's quiet for a long while, like she maybe forgot she even had the comms running, all of the anger and energy drained out of her again.]

Tommy's gone. Gone last jump. Told him he would, cause everyone goes. [A thin smile, strained, sad, and then gone again.] Guess I didn't wanna be right.

Comments

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[jurisimpudent]

What I said. You're more competent than the rest of us, God knows.

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[puppydogeyes]

You've been-- [She stops, frowns, but then just repeats it again, gets all the way through.] You've been arguing with me for months.

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[jurisimpudent]

Yes. ["And?"]

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[puppydogeyes]

So shouldn't you be telling me how much I'm fucking up? Trying to get rid?

[She knows even as she says it that it's not really true. Things haven't been like that with Edgeworth for a while.]

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[jurisimpudent]

[He narrows his eyes.]

Tyke, have you been assuming this whole time that when I've been arguing with you, it's been from some sort of...hatred?

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[puppydogeyes]

Not hatred. Just... the start of this, I didn't think I could do it. Tommy and Jenna, they had my back, but...

[She rubs a hand over the side of her neck, shuts her eyes for a moment.]

I never gave orders before. Thought I could only take them, but there was no one else to do it. [To step up and take Dean's place.] And then I had to fight you every inch.

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[jurisimpudent]

Not remotely every inch.

[The mission to comfort is sort of swept aside in favor of clarifying...something that he never even realized he had to clarify.]

I fought you on things I thought were important. Having an investigatory force was - is - important. And stocking our ranks with people who are capable of strategic thought, mediation, and conflict resolution, not just people who can fight - that's important, too. I fought you on those points because fighting you on those points was best for the future of the security force, not because you were bad at leading. Honestly, Tyke - I argue with judges, and there is no higher form of authority in the land, no one whom I'll obey more quickly.

private; encrypted 10%

[puppydogeyes]

[She isn't in the right kind of place to actually think about any of the stuff that he references there. To argue about it again, and that's not the point, anyway.]

You fought me over your own safety, Edgeworth.

[And the safety of the people on the ship, her team included, was always the most important part.]

private; encrypted 10%

[jurisimpudent]

[That shuts him up a moment. Finally:]

I fought you over a matter of efficiency. My safety wasn't the central issue; a proper allocation of time was.

private; encrypted 10%

[puppydogeyes]

Your safety is the central issue cause everyone's safety is. You don't get to pick and choose. If you're not worth the time, no one is.

And if you can't trust me to keep you safe, then being competent... that's all bullshit.

private; encrypted 10%

[jurisimpudent]

But -

[He scowls, shoving his hands into his pockets.]

There was no point at which I...didn't trust you to keep me safe. That wasn't a factor.

private; encrypted 10%

[puppydogeyes]

[Taylor doesn't say anything. Doesn't ask to get any further explanation of what he means, because she doesn't believe it as it is.]

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[jurisimpudent]

[And he's quiet a moment, reminding himself that he can't lose his temper if he's going to help her out of this. Finally:]

You ordered me to start training to defend myself. What did I do?

private; encrypted 10%

[puppydogeyes]

You thought I'd kick you off the team if you didn't.

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[jurisimpudent]

...Wouldn't you have?

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[puppydogeyes]

Maybe. [A shrug.] I don't know. Lot of shit's happened since then.

[And she wouldn't kick him off now.]

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[jurisimpudent]

[He opens his mouth to say something bitter about the fact that, well, she's not sure whether or not she'd have denied him the chance to help people - but no; bitterness is for another time and another place.]

You know that fighting is repugnant to me, don't you? Completely repugnant. In committing violence, I'm violating the central tenant of what I've been raised to believe - that it's possible to protect those who are important to you through words, through truth, through righteousness of speech and deed rather than through the intimidation of violence. You needn't become defensive; this isn't a critique of your mode of thought. But when I gave up that argument, that was ultimately a compromise not just of what I believe, but who I am.

private; encrypted 10%

[puppydogeyes]

[She's quiet again, for a long moment. Never really thought about it that way, and suddenly she wishes that Edgeworth would be sent home next. Where he could be safe, back with his weird court system and becoming a lawyer. No need to learn how to fight. She still doesn't think it's got as much to do with her as it does his desire to be on the security team, but there's an almost apologetic tone to her voice when she finally speaks again, even if she doesn't say sorry.]

We're in a place where you don't get to make that choice.

[Maybe his ideas of using words and everything else, that would work on people. She knows it could. But it wasn't just people they'd had to deal with.]

But I never had that choice, so I know what that's like. Kind of.

[Violence had been in her life for as long as she could remember. There was no being raised to believe in anything different - no knowing anything different. But she knew something about the course of your life being forced into a shape you didn't want, simply because of the place you'd somehow ended up.]

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[jurisimpudent]

[He glances away, very slightly, and there's a finely drawn discomfort on his face. He doesn't like hearing her talk like this. He doesn't like the knowledge of who she used to be. He doesn't like hearing about not having that choice. And he especially doesn't like it when she's drunk, when she can't control her tongue. It makes him feel...unfair.

And yet he remembers that as well. That piece of information just goes into his mental file on her. That and the earlier talk of being terminated twist together squeamishly into a different perspective altogether.]

I wasn't saying that because I wanted to complain. I merely...I am pointing out that I stayed on. I didn't quit. If I'd had no faith in you, in your competence, then I'd have simply given up.

private; encrypted 10%

[puppydogeyes]

[Maybe if she was in a better state she'd be quicker at really listening, but maybe some of it's starting to get through to her anyway. Still, she huffs a small laugh.]

Don't think you could give up if you tried.

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[jurisimpudent]

[And that shuts him up again, because that had sounded...sort of like a compliment. Or it's addressing, at the very least, something Edgeworth considers a virtue. So he can't't simply say yes, that's true, because that would be immodest, but nor does he want to call himself weak-willed to someone who is ultimately his superior -

So instead he blurts out, finally, something stupid.]

Who was it that you worked for at home?

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[puppydogeyes]

[Working for isn't quite the right way to put it, she doesn't think, but there also isn't a good way to correct it. She looks off to the side again.]

The Cartazonos Academy.

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[jurisimpudent]

[She doesn't even question that, doesn't even hesitate...She's drunker than he thought.]

And who were they.

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[puppydogeyes]

[She had noticed, a bit, but the lines of his arguments sometimes jumped around, found new anchors or theoretical scenarios to measure against.]

That's... [A really complicated thing to answer. She frowns for a moment, tries to think of where to start.] Headmistress Sparrows, she gets all these girls - like me, you know. [With pathoses, she means.] Has us do lessons, and training. Sends us out on missions.

You live long enough, you're perfect enough, maybe you get made an instructor. Then you're teaching and training the next load of girls.

private; encrypted 10%

[jurisimpudent]

Right.

Missions of...what sort?