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o p e n

CHARACTERS: Anne Cunningham
LOCATION: the kitchens
WARNINGS: Anne cursing like a sailor
SUMMARY: Anne attempts to make a sandwich, which is obviously not going to end well.
NOTES: In case you wondered, this is basically Anne cooking.

In the kitchens, there is the sound of loud, superfluous cursing. It's been going on for quite a while at this point, and the sound of it reverberates on the walls of the large kitchen. There are sandwich fixins set up around Anne, and she is attempting to put them onto bread, but keeps spilling everything everywhere. Each time she makes a mistake, she curses loudly and knocks something else over, which just leads to more cursing. It's an endless, painful cycle which doesn't seem to have any sort of happy conclusion in sight.

"God dammit," she hisses at the mayonnaise as she accidentally splatters some on the counter, and she grabs an eggs from the bowl beside her and smashes it over the pathetic attempt at a sandwich. Taking one long, defeated look at the sandwich, she scowls and smashes another egg on it.

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He nods back, smiling, though it fades when she touches his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Thanks.” He forces himself to look at her; he is sincere about it, it’s just difficult for him to talk about something like this even with people he's known forever. “Really, thanks.”

He's too surprised to hold back a comment, even if it would probably be better to drop the topic. "Wait, you said guards attack each other?" He only saw prisoners attacking each other at Alcatraz, but he's not at all surprised to think of prisoners attacking guards. Guards against guards, on the other hand, is something he never considered. He'd be in hot water if he fought with anyone who worked beside him--not just from the higher-ups, but because it'd show a lack of unity and invite attack.

In response to her last comment he nods. "People like to judge, even if they don't know anything."

Body language is a complicated thing, and one Anne can't claim to be an expert at deciphering, but she can get enough insight from his reaction to that to know it's a big deal. And so she lets it drop, quickly, just giving him a quick nod in a response to his thanks. Because she has things she'd rather not talk about, too. She understands. "No problem."

It's impossible, really, to fault him for being too surprised to drop it. Especially because she knows it's not the kind of thing that really gets thought about, especially not when it comes to people like prison guards, people who are supposed to be on the right side of the law. "Yeah, doesn't happen a lot, but my..." she clears her throat. "I heard about a guard who got attacked by another guard at a prison in my state a few years ago." Anne can't bring herself to tell the whole story, especially right now. Grasping at the less intense subject, she nods. "Yeah, they do. Makes me feel like it might just be human nature, as shitty as that sounds."

"Seriously?" He wonders if the attacking guard had been paid off by someone. Or maybe the victim had been the one accepting bribes and the attacker was dishing out some justice. Or maybe it was just a quarrel. Firo knows people kill for a whole rotten cornucopia of reasons; and prison guards are just that, people. He shakes his head, but leaves it at that conclusion. If he knew how close to home the subject was, he would've dropped it sooner.

"Of course it's human nature. I think you could even say human nature itself is shitty." He laughs, "...Not that there aren't any good people out there. Actually, I've met a lot. A lot more than I woulda' thought, anyway."

"Seriously." Anne swallows, and looks away. She can't even look at him with the subject in mind, and she wonders if she was crazy to bring up the point in the first place. She must have been, she figures. What other reason could she possibly have to dredge up something so raw, so painful and personally affecting? Sighing, she lets it go.

"It really is. Makes you feel crappy about everything, doesn't it? Yeah, there're good people. More than I'd have expected with the way I do things. But the world's still shitty and people are still shitty a damn... listen to us. We've turned into a couple of cynical assholes. What happened to us, anyway?" she offers him a small smile, trying to keep her tone light like she's joking.

He smiles back. "Turned into?" As far as Firo's concerned, he's gotten much better in this respect. Or he was getting better before he was taken away from his friends and family.

"We could always blame this place, but I don't think I've actually met too many awful people here yet."

Anne actually laughs at that, giving him a surprisingly warm smile. "Good point. I guess I always was one. Can't really blame this place, either. I've gotten much better here than I was back home, if I really think about it. Back home, well..." a shrug, and she tries to be dismissive of it. Because she really doesn't want to think about or talk about the fact that if she ever left the Tranquility, back in her old world she'd be completely alone. The only person she really had left back home ended up here with her.

"Well, I hope I'm not bringin' you down." He says it jokingly, but, well, Firo can take being told to shut his mouth if he has a friendly enough relationship with a person. It's only the real jerks--or so he'd say--who he would hurt for making the same demand.

He tilts his head to the side as he thinks. "I guess it's always different for everyone back home. It's gloomy as hell here, but... it's weird. The people seem better behaved than back home." Which isn't to say that he likes the general population here more. He just doesn't see the same interpersonal crimes he accepted as normal back home committed as often.

"No, I'm not that easy to bring down," still smiling, she shakes her head at him. Firo is someone she likes enough to to not bother with all those complications like getting upset or anything like that.

"I've noticed that too. It seems like everyone knows there's nowhere to go. If we fuck up back home, there's always somewhere to run. Here, we're trapped. If you fuck up here, SEC grabs you and throws you in the brig. Not something I think anyone wants."

He smiles back. "Glad to hear it."

It’s very difficult not to look nervous when she mentions the brig, having a pretty guilty conscience and all. “I never thought about it that way… Thanks. That’s a real comfort.” The last part is loaded with sarcasm. He has no reason to make trouble, but even so he doesn’t like the threat of yet another prison cell hanging over him. He has enough worries already.

As much as she tries not to, Anne actually laughs in earnest at that, raising an eyebrow at him. "Comfort is my specialty, in case you couldn't tell," she jokes. "Well, as long as you don't cause any major issues you shouldn't have to worry about it, and you seem smart enough not to pull anything like that."

"Smart?" Oh geez. You might want to talk to him a little more before you say something like that, Anne. He laughs, "I'm not very smart, actually. But I'd like to think I'm not enough of an jerk that I'd cause trouble for the heck of it. Not in a place like this."

"No. No you're not a jerk." She takes a moment to just look him over, and then smiles slightly, contemplating on ruffling his hair for some reason. She doesn't. "You seem like a nice guy. Shame you ended up stuck in a shithole like this."

That was a very good decision on Anne's part, given how touchy Firo is. Nothing personal, but getting patted on the head isn't very gangster-y.

He blinks. Nice? Considering some of the things he's done, he wouldn't consider himself nice. He blushes slightly and ducks his head. "Oh, um... Thanks. I could say the same about you." It's good to have someone normal to talk to.

Anne isn't normally inclined to pat heads, so the impulse is a strange one.

She smiles faintly at that, shaking her head. "Thanks, I guess. But if you think that, then you don't know the whole story." She sounds like she could be joking, but her serious nature says otherwise.

"You can't be that bad." He's sure he's met much worse; Szilard would be hard to top. He smiles and tries to introduce some levity, "Unless you steal kids' lunch money in your spare time?"

"Well, I guess in that case I'm not that bad. I may be a bad cook, but I'm not bad enough to need to steal kids' lunch money so..." it feels good to joke. It's not something she does very often. "If that's what it takes to be that bad."

"Glad to hear it. I think you'd have pretty slim pickings for targets if you did." Thank goodness. This is not place for kids.

He smiles. "Do you have better criteria?"

"People who'd hurt someone who didn't deserve it," she answers very simply. "I guess that's my criteria. For what makes a bad person."

He nods; that's something he can get behind. "And how do you decide who'd deserve it?" There's no doubt in his mind that a lot of people do. He's curious how she decides it and if their definitions match up.

"As much as I hate the world sometimes, as much as I hate people sometimes... not everybody deserves it. But the sort of person who deserves being hurt... I'd say it's mostly anybody who kills innocent people. And honestly I wouldn't mind beating the shit out of a few rapists." A shake of her head. "But it's hard to say. A lot of gray areas. Obviously, since it's coming from me. I've done way worse than some of the people I think would deserve it."

Depending on who she considers an innocent, Firo'd say their opinions on this line up pretty well. He'd just add anyone who messes with family. "Won't get any argument from me there." There's a special part in the cold, black depths of Firo's heart for rapists. In his mind, anyone who'd touch someone like that is nothing more than trash.

"If you've done worse, can you still judge?" It's a question he doesn't mean to let slip--it's more philosophical than he'd like--but it's something that he'd been thinking about.

A pause as she stops to mull that over, and then she shakes her head. "No," she admits, glancing away. "But then again I do all sorts of things I have no right to do."

"Everybody does. Just don't get caught at it and, if you do, don't admit you did anything wrong." He says it in a cheery tone, despite the slightly cynical sentiment behind his thinking.

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