anidiotchild | 二

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二 | voice

Dr. Crane has offered to assist in the infirmary when he's available. He's a trained psychiatrist, specializing in psychopharmacology, so if you have an issue along those lines, feel free to contact him.

And if anyone else on board has a medical background and would like to help out in the infirmary, please contact me or Merlin with your information. We could also use volunteers with first aid training willing to be added to a list of people to be called in case of emergency or staff shortages during a crisis situation. There is a screening process, and inmates need to have the informed consent of their warden before being taken on as staff. Thank you.

[Private to Homura]

I have your file. Would you like to meet somewhere and talk about it?

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All right.

Where and when?

The infirmary has a private office for the head doctors. I'm sure Merlin won't mind if we borrow it for a while. Would this afternoon be alright with you?

Very well.

[It's about half past two when she shows up, still in her (flawlessly cleaned and pressed school uniform) because she doesn't have much of a casual wardrobe and it's just easier to have five of the same outfit waiting for her in her closet when she wakes up.

She doesn't much like the Infirmary - any clinical environment, really. Every time she reset the timeline she woke up in the hospital; the white walls and the scent of antiseptic are forever tied up in feelings of failure. But this place doesn't have the wide windows and the vast open spaces of the hospital in Mitakihara, and she dismisses the similarities as superficial.

She hangs at the threshold nonetheless.]

Dr. Tam?

[Simon - who has mostly been wearing sweaters and jeans here, not really seeing the need to be more formal considering it was more or less how Merlin dressed as well - glances up and puts away the file he was looking over before taking a couple steps closer to her.]

Simon's fine. [It was a little informal, but, well, she was his inmate, not a patient, and it seemed sort of silly for her to call him by his title. The only ones who did it with any sort of regularity back on Serenity were the Captain and Jayne.] How are you settling in?

Fine, thank you. People have been...kind, generally.

[And on occasion they had been overly defensive or patronising or both (Chang), but having her feels hurt would require her to have feelings, at least beyond a background malaise of despair and frustration.]

That's good. [It's been, more or less, the same experience for him, thus far. No one's been outright hostile, which is better than can be said about back home, sometimes, so there was that.]

Would you like some tea? We have coffee, and maybe some milk or juice, if you'd prefer that.

I'd prefer tea. Thank you.

[Her gaze sweeps the room, looking for the office he mentioned.]

Alright. [There's an electric kettle in the office, so he starts heading in that direction, glancing back at Homura and wondering what exactly he's supposed to do, now.]

Do you have any questions?

[She tags along after him at a slight distance.]

May I read my file?

[Simon almost wasn't sure if he should say yes to that or not. On the one hand, it wasn't like she didn't know what the file had already said, but at the same time, he didn't really know what good it would do.] If you'd like. Why do you want to see it?

[And he's holding the door to the office open for her.]

[She gives a little nod of thanks and steps past him, sitting down in a chair that's near but not at the workstation.]

I don't trust the Admiral not to leave out pertinent information.

[Simon goes to turn the kettle on and then retrieves the file from one of the desk drawers, handing it over carefully.]

He seemed fairly thorough.

I'm the only person who can know that for sure.

[It's a very level statement. She opens the file on her lap, reading silently, her expression a flat blank.]

I guess that's true. [He's quiet while she reads, and goes over to pour two mugs of water when the kettle boils, dropping in teabags before looking back over at her.]

Do you want anything in your tea?

No, thank you.

[A few minutes pass. The Admiral hasn't missed anything out at all. And it's unnerving, to know he's powerful enough to see all of it, to look across the multiple universes she's created and weave together her history from each one.]

...You were right. He was thorough.

[He didn't expect anything less, really. While there was still a part of him that just really did not understand what was going on here, because it made no logical sense even though he wanted it to, there was another part that had accepted it, reluctantly.

He handed her the other mug of tea.]

Is it missing anything important?

[She closes the file, sets it down on the desk and accepts the mug, holding it in one hand.]

No.

[She's not looking at him, and she doesn't know what to say, because nobody else has ever known this much about her. No-one else has even had more than an inkling. Not Madoka, not Kyubey, nobody. She doesn't know what to feel; she doesn't know what he thinks. Her other hand curls into the pleats of her skirt, forming a tense fist.]

[Which he's noticing, and again, he doesn't really know what to say. Or what to do, really. She's not River, and her life was so unbelievably different from the life of anyone he'd ever known before, and he didn't know where to start trying to make things right.

Especially given that he really understood what it was like to willingly give up everything to help someone you cared about. Maybe that was something they could talk about.]

Did you get the answers you were looking for? In your post to the network?

No.

[But she doesn't really even know if she was looking for anything at all. It just felt dishonest not to tell people they'd been tricked. They thought she was mad or misguided, but she doesn't care. She doesn't need to ingratiate herself to these people.]

I wasn't expecting anyone to believe me. They never did.

I know. [And he couldn't really imagine how frustrating that must have been. It had been bad enough that his parents hadn't believed him or hadn't cared enough when he'd just known River was in trouble.]

But the Admiral isn't Kyubey, Homura. He's done some good for people here.

For them. You don't know what he does to them, when they're done.

[She abstractly realises that the hand holding her tea is shaking slightly, and she sets it down.]

He's an Incubator. I know he is. Why would this place exist if he wasn't getting something out of it?

I don't know. [There's no use lying about it. He tries to keep his voice calm and - hopefully - reassuring, because he (sort of) knows why this would be scary for her and he doesn't want to brush her off or act like he isn't taking this seriously.]

But I've spoken with inmates who have gone back to their lives and come back, and there are wardens on board who have done the same thing. There's no proof that he is what you're afraid of, either.

[She's quiet for a long time, her chin ducked down, strands of hair obscuring her face.]

It doesn't matter anyway. It works out the same no matter what he really is, right?

No. I understand why you don't trust him, and I'm not asking you to. I'll try to talk to some of the other wardens, who have had their deals completed and what it was like for them when they returned home.

[She shakes her head.] One of them already talked about that. She didn't understand - nothing bad will happen to any of you until you leave for the last time. When there's nothing more he can get out of you.

You don't know that. He might not be an Incubator.

[She picks up her mug, takes a sip of tea and then sets it back down.]

Might not. Then I'll assume he is, and if I'm ever proven wrong I'll apologize.

Alright. [They'd have to settle for that for now, he supposed, which was... frustrating. He wasn't sure how she was ever going to make progress if she spent most of her time thinking everyone was just damning themselves in the long run.]

Alright.

[She watches him for a few moments.]

What did you make your deal for?

[Simon hesitated before answering. He'd known it was coming, but it was a question no one had asked him yet, even the captain, although he had a feeling Mal already knew what he was here for and was too polite (if that could really ever be said about Malcolm Reynolds) to ask, and he didn't really know how to explain it with her. The worlds they came from were fairly different, she didn't know about the Alliance or the war or any of it.]

My sister. She- [He sighed, folding his arms and resisting the urge to lean back against the desk.] In my... universe, I guess, humans have terraformed dozens of planets and moods capable of sustaining human life. The government is called the Alliance, and when my sister was fourteen, she enrolled in a government sponsored academy we'd never heard of before, but had the programs she was most interested in. She was a genius, incredible at everything she put her mind to, so it seemed like it was the perfect fit for her. She wrote me letters, for the first few weeks, but then they stopped and we didn't hear anything for months. The next letter I got didn't make any sense, and I figured out it was a code. It said "They're hurting us. Get me out."

So, after spending a lot of time and money trying to figure out where exactly they were holding her, I broke her out and we've been on the run from the government ever since, but she's not quite- [He made a bit of a face, trying to explain.] Before I came here, I was able to sneak her into an Alliance hospital to take scans of her brain, to try and see what they'd done to her. They used her brain like a- [He barely restrains himself from swearing, not really looking at Homura as he continues explaining.] Like a playground. The only reason you'd cut into someone's brain is to lobotomize them, or remove a tumor or an abscess, there's no reason to cut into a healthy one. They stripped her amygdala, the part of the brain that helps you process emotion? [Which she probably already knows, but.] So she has no filters. She just feels... everything, she can't turn it off or ignore it like we'd be able to. And she's not- [He trailed off again.]

Anyway. I can try to find ways to help compensate, with medication and treatments, but there's nothing I can do to just completely undo the damage they did. And nothing else has been working, so after we got back on the ship, when the Admiral offered me a deal... I took it.

[And even if he was some kind of Incubator - which he still didn't think he was, at least, not in the way Homura was familiar with - he had a hard time caring about what was going to happen to him at the end of all this. He just wanted River to be safe and have as normal a life as she could.]

[Homura doesn't say anything to this for a long time. The details are - disturbing, but almost immaterial.

He'd made a deal to save someone he loved, someone who'd been deeply wronged, forever branded. And as much as she'd like to feel aloof of that, to pity him for making the same mistake she made - would she have chosen differently? If she could have told herself the consequences of offering up her soul to protect Madoka, if she could make the same decision again knowing what it would cause, would she have walked away? Could she have left her best friend's body in the ruins of Mitakihara?

No. Not while there was even the barest sliver of hope that something might change. That something - anything - could draw her out of the endless cycle she'd condemned herself to.

When she speaks again, the sympathy in her tone is muted but it's there, obvious in stark relief to the dead tone she usually uses.]

I'm sorry they did that to her.

Me, too. [And he still couldn't help but have moments where he thought about if he'd just gotten there sooner, if their parents had believed him, if, if, if maybe things would have been different.] Her name is River.

[And he's dropping the subject for now, although he won't mind if she wants to ask more questions. God knows he's had plenty of those back on Serenity.]

What have you been doing with your spare time, here?

[She gives a small, quick shrug.] Reading. The gym.

[Nihilistic conversations with Arthas. But however pointless it feels to hold onto the skills she's developed, she's working to do it anyway.]

[That's... better than nothing, he supposes. Maybe.]

Would you like a job? There are several departments that look for inmate help, I'm sure it'll help fill your day. It can be pretty [What's the polite way to phrase this...] Slow around here, some days.

[You can say boring, Simon. She'd agree with you. But a use for her time doesn't sound awful, and she nods once.]

A job doing what?

There's work in the library, or the gym, the engine room, the gardens, there's a maintenance team... [You're a bit young for the pub, but.] Or, here, I guess. What interests you?

I'm prepared to offer some first aid training if there's a shortage of other volunteers.

I suppose that makes three of us.

Not a bad turn out, all things considered.

What happens if we all leave? I assume the Admiral would try to find other doctors, but he didn't exactly recruit me by letting me know I would be replacing his former medical officer.

If we all leave, it's no longer our problem. That said, I would hope that there would be enough individuals with basic medical skills to cater to the barge until a doctor reappears.

That's very reassuring.

I've become rather used to living with uncertainty.

I suppose you have to, if you've been here long.

I've been here for almost three years.

I'm sorry.

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