ataraxion | NINE: video

[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.

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[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.]

[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.

[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.

[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?

Edited 2013-01-18 20:47 (UTC)

[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.

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

And who were they.

[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.

Right.

Missions of...what sort?

Told you before. Any sort. Anything she wanted done.

I'm searching more for examples.

What, like fighting things? Rescuing people? Sneaking in places and stealing stuff? I was there eleven years, Edgeworth. Don't even know how many missions I went on.

Did you -

[He stops himself. After a moment:]

...Never mind.

[A pause of her own, some caution, maybe, but she still says,]

Just ask.

...Were you compelled to kill?

[The way he phrases it gets her caught for a second, wondering if he means compel literally, like some of the pathoses she's encountered can do. If he means kill like assassination, like in the field, attack or defence, like lives lost in the wake of an act of destruction. But there's still only one answer.]

Yeah.

[Right. His throat is stupidly tight, and he mutters - ]

Sorry.

[Not knowing what he's apologizing for. For asking, maybe. For taking advantage of this state. Maybe for the answer itself. Because isn't society supposed to prevent that? Isn't that what he's devoted to - keeping children from killing, keeping them from being killed...

Right.]

[Taylor's never particularly good with sorrys, either giving or receiving them. Giving, they never feel like they're enough. Receiving, she never knows what they're for.]

Not your fault.

[And it probably said something for the way the Academy had trained her that she didn't consider being ordered (made) to kill the worst thing that had happened to her.]

That's not why I...

[He stops and just closes his eyes a moment. Right.]

Are you going to be all right?

[That's not why, but he stops himself. And Taylor thinks maybe it's best not to ask for the rest. So she just answers.]

I'm always alright.

...No, you aren't.

[Quietly enough.]

Yeah, Edgeworth. I have to be.

[And at that point she just looks at the camera for a moment more, before cutting the feed.]

NINE: video

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