(closed) story time.

[mindtricks]

CHARACTERS: roy walker & cassandra anderson
LOCATION: medbay
WARNINGS: knowing roy, trigger warnings for depression and suicide.
SUMMARY: roy will tell the story of Κασσάνδρα, the seer no one believed.
NOTES: backdated to the 14th, continuing/in response to this.



[ she hasn't been to the medbay before, feeling no more inclined to accept medical treatment now than she did when she walked away from peach trees. dredd patched up the wound on her side, it's fine. even now, she's not here for that but rather to see roy. he's given no last name, but she can't imagine that it will be particularly difficult to find him, especially given that she knows what he looks like.

he'll be the first person she actively seeks out on the tranquility. hearing him tell her about the seer with her name should be interesting — and it should take her mind off the fact that she failed her final assessment, that she lost her primary weapon. that still nags even though she's no longer in mega city one (and that is another thing she wouldn't mind being distracted from.)

she's — curious.

anderson spots him and steps closer. ] Roy. [ in place of the sir that he wouldn't accept. ]

Comments

[fallasleep]

[ The days pass in the medbay like it passes in the hospital - agonisingly slowly. But at least he has the tablet with him, courtesy of a boy named Alex. No wheelchair, though - he gave it away - but he doesn't need one anyway. There's nowhere that he particularly wants to go, and that hasn't changed even though he is on a spaceship. There's no use in feeling curiosity, really.

He's looking through his tablet, his fingers turning an empty vial in his hands over and over when he hears his name. He looks up and blinks, and there is genuine surprise in his eyes when he sees Anderson standing there. ]

You actually came.

[ A pause, and he shakes his head. He shuts off the tablet - he learned how to do that easily enough, despite it being nothing like what he's seen before - and he's still turning the vial over and over in his hands. ]

Grab a chair or something so you don't make my neck hurt.

[mindtricks]

[ they pass no quicker in anderson's room; especially not after peach trees. it's such a contrast to how busy she's been in mega city one. there'd always been training at the academy, tests, physical exercises — here, she has too much time on her hands.

the surprise comes as a surprise to her — she said she'd be there, hadn't she? but where it's written in his eyes and over his expression, hers doesn't make it that far. she's a little stiff in the shoulders, so used to standing at attention that she's a little unsure how to approach someone without that layer of formality now. ]

Of course.

[ she does as he says. there's chairs around and she takes one, settling into it, hands on her knees and back straight. there's questions about why he's here that she could find the answer to easily enough. for the time being, she's content to wait and see if he offers any information, where he's going to steer this conversation. ]

[fallasleep]

[ He doesn't watch her take a seat. Instead, his eyes are still fixed on the vial. His first failed attempt. Alexandria helped him get this one, but there were only three morphine pills in it, caused by a misunderstanding. Maybe she's smarter than she thinks she is; maybe she already expects what he's trying to do, and that's why she took most of the pills and left him with only three. But she got him the other vial, the one in his neighbour's nightstand.

But that's only sugar, because that man is a hypochondriac. Roy still feels a surge of sheer, unadulterated rage at that, but he tempers it down easily. He slips the vial beneath the blankets and rests his hands on top of his knees. ]

Cassandra was a princess of Troy, [ he begins, staring up to the ceiling. ] She had a lot of siblings, but the most famous ones were Paris and Hector, but this isn't their story. This is hers. When she was young and barely flowered, she went into Apollo's temple and stayed the night. The next day, her parents found her sleeping with serpents licking her ears, and from then on Cassandra hears the voice of spirits, and she can tell the future.

[mindtricks]

[ she isn't actively trying to read his mind, no more than usual at least — stray thoughts that she sometimes ends up picking up even when she isn't trying, the way one would hear a sentence of someone else's conversation without straining one's ears. that's only sugar. ]

Barely flowered? [ she's from a post-apocalyptic world, metaphorical and flowery language is not her forte. excuse her. but a moment later she is already nodding at him to continue. ]

[fallasleep]

[ He stops, the story screeching to a stop in his mind. The anger shifts a little, turns into something more like curiosity, and he tips his head to the side. ]

Barely flowered into womanhood, [ he clarifies. ] It's a metaphor, meaning that she's probably a teenager. Around fifteen or so?

[ He leans forward, bending at the waist awkward. As always. And the anger is back, its spikes turned towards himself. As always. But it's an anger he's used to, and he leans forward, unable to help his next question: ]

You don't have flowers in your world? Or metaphors?

[mindtricks]

[ the explanation earns him an incline of her head, nonverbal acknowledgment of his words before she answers this question. with the explanation in mind, she can understand where the metaphor comes from, but it's not how anyone would phrase things in her world. there's different values there and it reflects in speech — though that is not something she is really well-aware of, just something that strikes her now. ]

I know what flowers are, but I have never seen one. [ mega city one is a concrete jungle where hardly anything grows. and outside of the cities — the radiation killed everything, there, america is a wasteland. ] There's a few trees.

[fallasleep]

[ Now that's more than a little odd. Roy blinks. He slumps back against the pillows, tipping his head backwards as he tries to think. When he speaks, it's slow, as if he's trying to stop himself from talking, really. ]

I'm not particularly good at science, but I remember people saying that we only have oxygen because there are plants around. [ A bit wryly. His eyes flicker towards her. ] So how do people even breathe in your world?

idek if that's true but i guess it's feasible enough??

[mindtricks]

[ why would he stop himself from talking, though? anderson can't help but find him — odd. interesting, but odd. ] Technological advances have made it possible to generate it.

[ wouldn't it have been ironic for them to survive the nuclear war only to die from lack of oxygen as all the plants around them die? ]

it is!

[fallasleep]

[ Because he doesn't want to want to know. Because if curiosity is a trait of someone who thinks the world is worth knowing about; that it's still worth living for, because there are more things in the world for him to discover.

Roy quirks his lips up; a facsimile of a smile. ]

That's convenient.

[ He takes a breath, and continues the story. Because he doesn't want to know more, he tries to convince himself. ]

Cassandra hears the spirits, she knows the future, and she knows, too, that she has the god Apollo to thank for it. So a week after she received her gift - and tells her father that Troy is heading towards a possible famine, or siege, she isn't sure, but she knows the city will need stores of grain in the future - she goes back to Apollo's temple to thank him.

But Apollo doesn't want only her gratitude. He looks upon Cassandra and finds her fair of face, so the god descends upon the temple. Cassandra looks upon him and falls to her knees, and Apollo tells her he wants her for himself. He wants her as his priestess, [ his lips curve up, a dark smile, ] and as his lover. His whore.

[ That's an embellishment. But he's been embellishing the story so far - he can't help it, really - and he watches her for her reaction. ]

[fallasleep]

[ She seems to want to say something. Some reassurance, perhaps. A part of Roy wants to reach out and shake her until the words fall out, but that's nothing more than the want to see someone giving a shit. But shy should they; why does he want anyone to care when he's going to die anyway?

It's sheer self-pity, waiting, and Roy dismisses the thoughts. He stares up to the ceiling again before speaking. ]

So Apollo asked Cassandra to be his lover. In payment, perhaps, for the gift he has given her unbidden. She hasn't asked for it, though she is thankful, for now Troy will be safe in a siege. [ A soft laugh. ]

When she refused, Apollo raged and raged, and he decides to punish her. He does not take away her gift of hearing the spirits of the future, but instead makes it so that no one will ever believe her. Cassandra's ears are licked open by serpents, but now the same serpents stop the ears of all else she speaks to.

Then war comes when her brother Paris steals Helen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the world, from her husband Menelaus. [ He cracks a smile at her, a bitter thing. ] For ten years the siege went on, Troy kept safe by Cassandra's words, but no one listens to her. In the end, she was taken as a war whore by Agaememnon, Menelaus's brother, King of the Greeks, and was murdered by Agaememnon's wife and her lover when they reached home.

She died in terror and despair, for she saw her death coming. Yet there was nothing she could do to stop it.

[mindtricks]

[ the idea is almost selfish: to want for someone to care only to die and leave them devastated and yet, anderson can't blame him at all. everyone wants someone to care, don't they? (she remembers being ten years old and all alone in the world, knowing that she'd just lost the two people who had cared about her. the hall of justice had been a second chance of sorts.)

she can't help but wonder if this is the abridged version, if somehow he's trying to get rid of her now. ] I didn't know about Apollo's involvement. I knew she died.

[ it's a good thing she's not terribly prone to symbolism, or it might worry her. ]

[fallasleep]

[ Can she still hear his thoughts? Maybe. Roy folds them up, tucks them in the corner of his mind. He won't be able to stop wanting and needing, but he knows enough how to stop thinking, if only for a while. (Never permanently, no matter how much he wills himself to stop breathing.) ]

People in myths always die. Even Hercules did.

[ A little dryly. He's not going to let her escape the symbolism, though. ]

Do people always believe you when you say you can read minds?

[mindtricks]

[ she isn't looking right now. people don't welcome the intrusion, she knows that much, and while there's not necessarily inherent respect for that (perps or suspects don't get consideration and she doesn't see anything wrong with looking with anyone else, either), she does take it into account to some extent. ]

People always die, not just in myths. [ and maybe that's the wrong thing to say to him. it's true, though: sooner or later, everybody dies. ]

They do if I tell them what they're thinking. [ besides, mutants in her world aren't precisely rare, for all that they're not well-liked. ]

[fallasleep]

[ People always die, she says, and Roy knows that to be true. Knows that to be a fact. People die everyday; he lived in a hospital for months, so why won't he know that? But people die when they shouldn't, live when they deserve or want to die, and Roy thinks that the world has no sense of fairness whatsoever because-

(Because if he can give his life for Alexandria's father to live, he would. Hell, he would even give it to the man who puts his teeth in his water glass. Because then his life will mean something.) ]

So they do, [ he says instead of all the thoughts whirling in his mind. He looks into her eyes and thinks that it's a pity, really, that she's not looking anymore. ]

Then you're not much of a Cassandra, are you?

[mindtricks]

[ she's seen good people die. she's lost her parents to residual cancer and there have been moments when she might have wished that some perp had died in their stead. that kind of thing doesn't happen, though, and wishing for it is futile. so instead she tries to make a difference. the frustration at the unfairness of the world isn't foreign to her, she just channels it into something else. ]

Maybe not.

[ and he was avoiding her eyes before, but now he isn't and so she looks back, steadier than she feels because the darkness inside of him hasn't left her entirely unaffected, she's just seen worse and she's had practice keeping it from showing. ] That isn't such a bad thing.

[fallasleep]

It's a good thing.

[ Maybe he's correcting her; maybe he's speaking just for the sheer sensation of making his mouth move. But it's true, really; that she's no Cassandra of myth, because Cassandra of Troy had a terrible life and a horrible death. Maybe Roy is beyond help, really, because he still wouldn't wish that on her, even though her very existence and attitude seems to invalidate all that he is. ]

[mindtricks]

[ he isn't a perp and he isn't dead yet. in cassandra's eyes, that means he isn't beyond help yet, not really. the darkness inside of him is extensive and she's not going to think that she can rescue him, but if there's one thing she's learned it's that hope is tenacious. no one's really beyond hope until they're gone. ]

Thank you. [ whether that's for calling it a good thing, or for the story, or for both — who knows. ]

[fallasleep]

Either you're lying, or I am. And I know I'm not lying.

[ Does he sound childish and petulant? Yes, he is, and he knows it perfectly well. He knows that he's being no better than a child stomping his foot with his fists shoved onto his hips, staring defiantly outwards.

He knows that he's throwing a childish tantrum, but he doesn't care. He has to win this argument. He has to. ]

[mindtricks]

[ she knows he's both lying and not — it isn't really a lie when he's torn himself. and she could argue that point, they could easily discuss this to death and they're both right so neither of them would likely give in.

instead: ] Come with me.

[ when she goes to explore. ]

[fallasleep]

What? Now?

[ It's easy enough for Roy to fall back on a sharp-edged voice filled with mockery; easy for him to twist his lips as he looked at Anderson like she's an idiot. ]

In case you haven't noticed, I can't exactly get out of bed.

[ There's a part of him that realises how much he uses his broken back as an excuse. There's an even smaller part that recognises it as an excuse.

But the part of him that says that he should change all that has long been drowned out. ]

[mindtricks]

Not right now.

[ she's been looked at like she's worse than an idiot. been called worse, too. that - and, in part, her training - makes it easier to ignore the sting. ]

Haven't they invented wheelchairs yet in your time?

[fallasleep]

[ He barks a laugh at that. ]

Of course they have. [ A pause, and he looks away. ] It came with me to this ship, but I gave it away. [ He shrugs. ] And I haven't really been looking for another one.

[ Or rather, he's been deliberately ignoring all possible attempts to look or even ask for a new one. If he has no wheelchair, he can't get out of bed. If he can't get out of bed, there's no reason for him to keep breathing. It all leads back to that, in the end.

He wonders if she is still looking into his mind. Wonders if she's getting sick of the repetition yet. ]

[mindtricks]

Then you know you can come exploring with me. [ she'll just ignore the last two sentences; there's wheelchairs and so his broken back is no reason to stay in bed. an excuse, but no reason — she has been looking and it's not annoying so much as uncomfortable. there's a sense of illness that isn't physical to it. ]

[fallasleep]

Maybe I can. But I just don't want to; haven't you realised?

[ Maybe she hasn't, but neither has he. He has never said this out loud before; not once. It's so much easier for him to try to believe that he's incapable of getting out of bed, to make excuses so that he might believe he can't, then to realise that he's just a selfish, useless bastard in the end and he won't.

Roy takes a long, shuddering breath, closing his eyes. His hand gropes at the blankets, and he finds the vial of medicine again, staring at it.

The first thing Alexandria has ever gotten him. Her first attempt at trying to help him die, unwitting though it is. The first time he made use of and lied to her. ]

[mindtricks]

[ she has realised — or at least realised that a large part of him honestly doesn't want to and that there's only a small part that might be willing to go. she's not a blind optimist: she recognises a hopeless situation when she sees one. this isn't it. (or if it is, perhaps she is blinder than she'd like to admit, or more stubborn about it.) ]

No. [ she considers for a moment, mouth a flat line. ] I'll ask again.