maskormenace | 006. ( video. )

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006. ( video. )

( Ah, it’s a heartwarming holiday scene, viewers. Sarissa, lounging on a couch, somehow inexplicably still with severe tank top tanlines despite a) it being winter and b) her wearing a tank top, which surely should theoretically make the tanlines less apparent. Not today, apparently. It reads “Sorry for the thing I said when I was hungry,” but perhaps “Sorry for what I’m about to say now I’m drunk” would be more fitting. She’s got a neon curly straw sticking out of a bottle of bourbon, and a cocktail umbrella tucked behind her ear, and appears to be wearing tropical board shorts. It’s just that kind of day. Or night. Whatever.

Sitting next to her is Pablo, who is wearing a striped cardigan, black shorts, and fiddling with his bangs and a straightening iron until he notices that Sarissa is recording. He frees his hair and sets the iron aside, picking up instead his own drink of choice (non-alcoholic; it's a capri-sun pouch) so he can more easily listen. )

Okay, but like. Okay, no, sorry, but if you think about any of the stuff that all of us across all our bloody worlds have gotta have in common, it’s art, yeah? Like— creativity. Art and poems and music, the expression of everything that makes us who we are given some kinda solid shape. Whether its colours or melodies or whatever form we gotta grab and twist about, it’s expressions of the world and how we understand it, right? It’s a way to know that we’re not going out of our bloody minds, because there’s thing element that we can understand and connect with, and it links us to other people. It’s why people got all fired up about the Spice Girls, a while back.

( That isn’t actually what happened, Sarissa, but sure. Go with that. ) And Pablo here, he’s an artist. Makes the world make sense with colours. Everything is colours and— and texture. It’s stories all layered up and up, kind of like people. We’re all hundreds of thousands of stories all layered together and then laid out.

What? Oh, uh...

( Pablo seems to not know what to say about that, given his silence, though if he feels put on the spot it doesn't show on his face. He starts to shake his head, but then instead opts to say: )

Right. Well you know, I don't know if it even has to exactly make sense, if like... we can still look at it and feel something, because either somehow we do understand it, on the level of like... uh... ( He gestures circularly over his head, glancing in Sarissa's direction for a moment but then upward. How to say it? ) You know, intuitively, even if we don't know why, or what anything really means. Or we don't understand but try to, or-- sometimes people don't want to. It all depends. But, uh-- yeah, it's still a little bit of everything and everyone we've ever known, too. Like stories.

( He stops talking and looks back over at Sarissa. )

Or a jigsaw puzzle. Or, uh— there’s this art, in Japan? Kint— ah, shit. Kintsuko...roi? It’s um, it’s like the to do with change and journeys and things gathering more meaning. I guess. I mean technically it’s about repairing broken stuff with gold lacquer, but it’s like an extra layer? Like a new addition to the story. Somethings not less perfect for being broken, and it doesn’t lose something. It gains it? I don’t know, make that a metaphor, if you wanna. People and art fit together. ( She grins, a bit ridiculously. ) And if they don’t, we can glue ‘em together with gold lacquer. It could get very Klimpt. Or Kahlo.

( Sarissa frowns, then, as she delicately sips her bourbon. ) Does anyone else do that? Like finding ways to express the way they understand things more tangibly? Like an enigma machine for your thoughts?

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[He had to play it all back in his head again, to peruse over what she had spoken. But it did make sense, in her way -- he was learning Sarissa's nuances.]

A power soaked in responsibility. [That came almost as a whisper; memory powers were remarkable, and hers was no exception. Changing someone's story? Even the mere concept, juxtaposed with the possibility of this world, proved breathtaking.] At least you understand yourself in relation to that potential. Your ethical code.

[However ethics, unlike DNA, were not genetically coded. This could change, her perspective could evolve, her will to invoke... Chilton took a deep breath. Sarissa was a friend.

Not a patient. Not that kind of patient.]

I see your more optimistic point, how people could benefit from you. But given our memories, our stories -- our narrative, even, given their force upon our personalities. You are not wrong to consider the implications this deeply.

Touching people is risky, sometimes. There's been a few times when my memories have started bleeding into someone. Not like they think they're theirs, just that— they see them. Like kicking a bloated corpse. All those grubs and viscera, just— burst out. All the stuff that shouldn't get spread about. Making them see anything like that isn't right, not even by accident. And me lookin' in their heads? Rummaging through their secrets? That's not something I like either.

( She holds up a hand, and huffs out a laugh.)

My ethical code means I shouldn't touch people, probably. Not risk it. My care bear code is more cuddly and selfish, but.

But what if they consent? Your abilities could... Do wonders, really, sheer wonders. In certain psychiatric avenues. Granted, it would be a limited sort of treatment -- such formidable capability cannot ever be made generic.

[He pauses a beat, humming a breath.]

A kind of memory retrieval. A combat to repression. You could very well be the salvation for a few.

Edited 2016-12-31 02:54 (UTC)

Could dig up things they were happier without. Things that got buried for a reason.

( She's not arguing, exactly, more playing devil's advocate. Sort of, and drunkenly. )

It has been— even accidentally showing my sisters some of my memories has been... I mean, they haven't run screaming. Yet.

But you’re frightened that they might? Even when you know your bond with them is ironclad. [It is his own presumption overlaid with what she’s told him.] Your anxiety isn’t illogical. Abandonment, and fear thereof, is one of the most human responses we can conjure.

I thought my bond with Georgia was ironclad. ( She smiles very slightly, pulls the straw out of the bottle, and flicks it to the side, before tipping the bottle up and her head back and taking a long draw from it. ) There's no such thing. The tighter you hold onto people, the more likely they are to break away from your hold. Sand, fingers. ( A sigh, and it's just a resigned, tired thing, no matter how drunk she might be. When next she speaks, she sounds tired. )

Do you enjoy analysing people? Is it more fun than turning the glass inward? Because I think and I think and I think and I can never make sense either way. You say fear of abandonment is human, but— maybe human's should be able to have faith in the people they love. And maybe if they can't they're doomed.

[A long beat follows.] I do enjoy it, yes. [He admitted it. A rare veracity. The sort of confession that keeps his eyes lowered, off-camera.] Or perhaps we should not have faith in anyone -- save for ourselves. Perhaps that is an argument to be made.

[He did not keep his eyes averted.]

At least, that should be the nascent, initial step. Then we might project less, as a species. We might humor fewer illusions, and avoid disillusionment entirely.

What kind of world would that be?

( She lifts the bottle, but stops short of actually drinking again to keep talking. ) What kind of people would we be if we resigned ourselves to never having faith in another person? And, and– and if we think we ourselves are the only individual deserving of faith. We might avoid disillusionment, but think about everything else we're be avoiding. The— the bonds and the trust, the relationships we have with people, yeah? Rule out having faith in people and there's a steaming shitload of other stuff you rule out in the same bloody motion.

Not a world suited to your tastes, it seems.

[Meaning, he wouldn't push the issue. Chilton was discovering a fine line with Sarissa; she was electric, explosive, emotionally-speaking. And his goal wasn't to cause her distress -- there would be no triumph in that, for others had gotten to her before he could.

He was now more interested in the role of positive influence.]

What else must be ruled out, would you say? If we were to accept such a premise.

Do you mean what would we lose? If we only had faith in ourselves... wouldn't everything fall apart? We have faith in the law, in justice being upheld, in doctors doing their jobs, in our elected bleedin' representatives protecting us, even when they're dickheads that wear budgy smugglers. We might acknowledge the systems are flawed and corrupt and dangerous, but some part of us still has to have faith at least in fragments of it, or the whole thing would come apart.

( Chaotic rebellious tragic idealist. )

The whole point of being alive is other people. If we negate the ability to have faith in anyone but ourselves, then there's basically no reason to do anything. We'd be hollow.

Well, I mean, we needs to have faith in ourselves before anyone else. Though it is true that the buck might stop there.

[Prime examples of the buck stopping there: Will Graham.]

We tend to project, as a species. In part because the human mind is reluctant to trust its own logic, its own instinct.

You trust yourself, don't you, Sarissa?

[Something of a leading question, and he isn't even apologetic over it.]

Doctor Chilton, it has been a long time since I trusted myself with anything.

I hope to help you change that, Sarissa. Sincerely so.

Am I a pet project, now? ( She says it with no heat or malice, just a quiet, tired amusement. ) I'm cracked, mate. Statues held together with wax'll just fall apart with the heat. Romans learned that.

I doubt you would want to be considered as a "pet project".

[But he neither confirmed nor denied his intent.]

I simply believe that you... Deserve to feel better.

Deserving? That word is incendiary. Justice and vengeance and good and bad. What we deserve is based on who the person with the rules and guidelines is. I know what I deserve. Feeling better ain't it.

I would like to respectfully register my disagreement regarding your opinion concerning yourself.

[Chilton had known a lot of malicious people throughout his life, a lot of dark individuals. Hell, he wasn't so light himself -- but his misdeeds paled in comparison to those that others committed in his Baltimore, so he was good only comparatively. And compared to him, Sarissa seemed morally superior.

But not everyone considered morality to be a sliding scale, and that was what baffled him about her.]

Not to invalidate your own feelings about the matter, of course. I am simply offering a different perspective.

I—

( she pauses a second, an awkward trip over her tongue, and she rubs her forehead. Lies and truths come easily at the best of times, and then there's now, with her inhibitions steeped in bourbon. )

I wanted to help people. That's why I became a cop, and it's how I fell into being a mercenary. I wanted to help people and I think I've always managed to make situations worse, instead. Your rules and guidelines, your code book, they ain't wrong from your perspective, but you don't know all that's rotten in the state of Sarissa. It's not as impressive as poisoned blades and pearls in goblets or murdered kings, but it's as messy and melodramatic.

( A blink, then. ) I think I'm in the self-indulgent, depressing stage of drinking. I might— go. Before I get beyond being tolerational.

I assure you, I have heard -- and witnessed -- worse.

[He does not, however, clarify that by worse he means detailed and grotesque descriptions of murders, because Frederick Chilton had spent most of his professional career treating the criminally insane. Relativity was only reassuring when compared to presumably decent things, and he anticipated that Sarissa wouldn't appreciate this spectrum.

Besides, he reasoned, it might bubble up more memories of this Georgia. He anticipated the ex-beau to be something of a narcissist, and his experience with narcissists have all been quite deadly.]

I think it is important for you to... Express your woes. Your feelings. And regardless of our friendship, I am willing to hear it all.

[Professionalism be damned.]

Thank you.

( It's quiet, but sincere. She tries to muster a smile, and fails spectacularly, though the shadow of it is hangs at the corners of her mouth regardless. )

We can, um. I think I do need to work stuff out, I just need more— ( a vague gesture, somehow meant to indicate time and space and the world, or something, before her hand drops to her side. ) We'll talk soon. When it works for you.

At your convenience. [He finishes, ensuring the emphasis of her terms, her definition. While Chilton had aspirations for Sarissa, it was crucial that she come to the same conclusions -- on her own.] Until then.

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006. ( video. )

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you know, I feel like "gross imagery" could warrant a warning but it's wordy and awkward

"warning: sarissa is too cool" there i solved it

GENIUS

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