["Glitch, down," Shaw says, her voice muffled by the closed door. There's the clack of doggy nails hitting wood, quick little pawsteps plodding away, and then the door opens.]
I'm making black tea, but I won't be offended if that's not your thing.
[She says, stepping back to usher Skye into the small, studio-like cabin: a kitchenette, dining area, sitting area, dog bed, and lofted sleeping space all neatly arranged in a single room.]
The inmate ledger is this, uh-- magic book thing; every inmate has a page. Someone wrote in yours that you've had trouble with hallucinations and possession.
[When Shaw says possession and hallucination, an expression flits momentarily across Skye's face that can best be summed up as oh, that bitch before it all goes behind a mild, talk-show-approved mask.]
No clue. It was handwritten, and they didn't sign it. Was it bad intel?
[Shaw pours out two cups, passing one over. Bear the Belgian shepherd watches from his bed, and Glitch the Staffordshire terrier clacks back over to sniff at Skye's shoes.]
Sounds like it. But it's the sort of personal that people should know, if they're going to be living here with you - or trying to work out how to spring you.
[She drops down into one of the dining chairs, fingertips drumming on the table surface. Her own tea comes with her, but goes untouched for now.]
[Shaw studies her - trying to gauge whether her relayed flood experiences are a flippant non-answer, or something genuine.]
Privacy's great in theory.
[She says slowly, trying to thread the right amount of sympathy into her tone. She is sympathetic, but appropriate emotional display isn't her strong suit.]
In practice, too, for some things. But for other things, people not knowing anything about you is gonna cause problems. You've got to know by now that this place isn't easy on anyone who doesn't always know what's real and what isn't, and a lot of people here are way too used to treating that like it's normal.
I don't hallucinate, and I've never been possessed. But I'm not great at believing that things are real anymore, even at home, and sometimes I worry that I have a mind-control chip in my brain.
[Her words are flippant. Her tone is not.]
I'm dealing with it, but all the magic crap here sure doesn't help.
I wouldn't count on that always being true. I'm not trying to freak you out, but the Barge has a way of ripping you open. Even if-- "the thing" never shows up here, I'd put money on at least one flood making you think it has.
[Shaw purses her lips, something akin to ruefulness flitting across her face.]
Yeah, uh-- I'm not great at selling the Barge, especially when I think the methodology could use a lot of work. But okay, another counterpoint: this is a crappy place to plan to spend an eternal afterlife, and if you're not planning to spend an eternal afterlife here, possession will be an issue again someday if you don't come up with a gameplan.
[She wraps her hands around her tea mug, still untouched otherwise.]
Some of them less important now, if possession's really not an active issue. But if you're hallucinating, or you think you might be hallucinating but aren't sure, I wanna know the best way for me to handle it. Whoever wrote the ledger note said that trying to talk you around isn't a good approach, and might even make things worse, which-- I get, I guess.
It wouldn't hurt. It wouldn't help, either. At a certain point it's all just untrustworthy noise.
[She shrugs. And how horrible is it, that she can't really think of anything that would help at all.]
Just don't back me into a corner. If I think something isn't real, I'm going to be chill and pretend I don't see it because I don't want to look stupid going apeshit on a potted plant or whatever. I thought Varker was a hallucination when I got here, but I didn't do a thing to him until he started strangling me.
[That's easy and intuitive enough. Granted, she's not fully sold on "don't talk about it and pretend I don't see it" as a workable long-term method for dealing with potential hallucinations, but that feels like an issue for a permanent warden to tackle. Especially when there's other, more immediate things on the table, like--]
Varker tried to strangle you? Is that resolved, or is he still going after you?
"I kicked him in the nuts, he threw me across the room and gave me a concussion. I blacked out and didn't actually figure out he was real for another four days."
She pauses.
"Well, I thought he was a real dude and the mouth wasn't real, and he'd probably just grabbed me with his hands, since the bruises were still there when I woke up. I took pictures." Because - well. Of course she did.
"So that was my first day dead. We've avoided each other since then."
She filches Skye's words out of habit; she'd learned early on that borrowing the emotion-words of others is generally better than trying to fumble her way through coming up with her own. And all of it does sound awful, but even above and beyond the strangling, she's thinking of the unreality issue. The Barge probably will make her worse, she thinks, though she doesn't voice the thought out loud. Just like it did me.
Keeping visual record is a good strategy. At least she has that.
"Uh-- okay, not that avoiding each other isn't a good plan," Shaw says, dragging her brain back to the strangulation issue, "but strangulation out of nowhere is still a hell of an escalation. You talk to any other wardens about it when it happened?"
"I died, then a guy with an extra maw on his face tells me I'm in hell and fucks me up. Hell, demons, that tracks. And then by the time I'm figuring out it's less hell and more the world's weirdest rehab, a guy kills like fifteen people and gets a couple days in time out. So like, what's the point?"
She wasn't one of Sebastian's victims, but she pays attention.
"Anyway, Varker's a whiner and a coward. Now that he knows I'll fight back he hasn't bothered me."
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I'm making black tea, but I won't be offended if that's not your thing.
[She says, stepping back to usher Skye into the small, studio-like cabin: a kitchenette, dining area, sitting area, dog bed, and lofted sleeping space all neatly arranged in a single room.]
The inmate ledger is this, uh-- magic book thing; every inmate has a page. Someone wrote in yours that you've had trouble with hallucinations and possession.
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[When Shaw says possession and hallucination, an expression flits momentarily across Skye's face that can best be summed up as oh, that bitch before it all goes behind a mild, talk-show-approved mask.]
Some book. Who wrote that?
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[Shaw pours out two cups, passing one over. Bear the Belgian shepherd watches from his bed, and Glitch the Staffordshire terrier clacks back over to sniff at Skye's shoes.]
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[She takes a big gulp of tea without sipping first and burns her tongue.]
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[She drops down into one of the dining chairs, fingertips drumming on the table surface. Her own tea comes with her, but goes untouched for now.]
That last flood - were you affected?
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I saw something that look like a crocodile crossed with a corpse flower and went back to bed.
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Privacy's great in theory.
[She says slowly, trying to thread the right amount of sympathy into her tone. She is sympathetic, but appropriate emotional display isn't her strong suit.]
In practice, too, for some things. But for other things, people not knowing anything about you is gonna cause problems. You've got to know by now that this place isn't easy on anyone who doesn't always know what's real and what isn't, and a lot of people here are way too used to treating that like it's normal.
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[Her words are flippant. Her tone is not.]
I'm dealing with it, but all the magic crap here sure doesn't help.
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I'm lucky, really. I don't hallucinate when I'm not possessed, and now I'm dead and the thing isn't here, so it's actually not an issue.
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What's your point?
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Yeah, uh-- I'm not great at selling the Barge, especially when I think the methodology could use a lot of work. But okay, another counterpoint: this is a crappy place to plan to spend an eternal afterlife, and if you're not planning to spend an eternal afterlife here, possession will be an issue again someday if you don't come up with a gameplan.
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Oh, yeah?
[And despite the eyeroll, she does genuinely want to hear more.]
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You're making oblivion sound great.
Did you want something from this conversation?
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[She wraps her hands around her tea mug, still untouched otherwise.]
Some of them less important now, if possession's really not an active issue. But if you're hallucinating, or you think you might be hallucinating but aren't sure, I wanna know the best way for me to handle it. Whoever wrote the ledger note said that trying to talk you around isn't a good approach, and might even make things worse, which-- I get, I guess.
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[She shrugs. And how horrible is it, that she can't really think of anything that would help at all.]
Just don't back me into a corner. If I think something isn't real, I'm going to be chill and pretend I don't see it because I don't want to look stupid going apeshit on a potted plant or whatever. I thought Varker was a hallucination when I got here, but I didn't do a thing to him until he started strangling me.
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[That's easy and intuitive enough. Granted, she's not fully sold on "don't talk about it and pretend I don't see it" as a workable long-term method for dealing with potential hallucinations, but that feels like an issue for a permanent warden to tackle. Especially when there's other, more immediate things on the table, like--]
Varker tried to strangle you? Is that resolved, or is he still going after you?
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She pauses.
"Well, I thought he was a real dude and the mouth wasn't real, and he'd probably just grabbed me with his hands, since the bruises were still there when I woke up. I took pictures." Because - well. Of course she did.
"So that was my first day dead. We've avoided each other since then."
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She filches Skye's words out of habit; she'd learned early on that borrowing the emotion-words of others is generally better than trying to fumble her way through coming up with her own. And all of it does sound awful, but even above and beyond the strangling, she's thinking of the unreality issue. The Barge probably will make her worse, she thinks, though she doesn't voice the thought out loud. Just like it did me.
Keeping visual record is a good strategy. At least she has that.
"Uh-- okay, not that avoiding each other isn't a good plan," Shaw says, dragging her brain back to the strangulation issue, "but strangulation out of nowhere is still a hell of an escalation. You talk to any other wardens about it when it happened?"
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"I died, then a guy with an extra maw on his face tells me I'm in hell and fucks me up. Hell, demons, that tracks. And then by the time I'm figuring out it's less hell and more the world's weirdest rehab, a guy kills like fifteen people and gets a couple days in time out. So like, what's the point?"
She wasn't one of Sebastian's victims, but she pays attention.
"Anyway, Varker's a whiner and a coward. Now that he knows I'll fight back he hasn't bothered me."