xp_logs | Genosha - In the Balance

Doug Ramsey and David Haller are cellmates. The therapist and the man whose entire power is about talking. Somehow their conversation is not as productive as you might think.

Doug had been quiet the first day he and Haller had spent in a cell together, but ever since the guards had returned him after his interrogation, he'd been silent. Totally flat-faced, and staring at the wall opposite his cot. And not with the barely contained anger that he'd felt after seeing what had happened to Rachel. This was different.

It took more time than it should have for Jim to realize something was wrong. It wasn't so bad when he was with the others, but when he was alone the events of the last several days began to press in on him with increasing insistence. He couldn't even remember Doug being returned to the cell. He realized, uneasily, that at least part of it was because the younger man was so quiet he'd done nothing that would have triggered a response.

"Doug?" No response. Jim rose from his own cot and walked into his field of vision before he tried anything further, like one would a spooked horse. "Doug, are you okay?"

"Fine." The reply was instinctive, but the flatness of the word belied it. He finally looked up at Haller and shrugged diffidently. "I mean, as fine as can be expected in jail." The truth was, he was much worse than that, but if he sat very still and tried his hardest not to think at all, he could maybe get there. Maybe.

"You don't look fine," the telepath said bluntly. He didn't see any fresh bruises, but that was no reassurance. Not when matched against the deadness in Doug's response. And there was his posture. The younger man was sitting unnaturally still, devoid of the normal fidgets most people engaged in to accommodate comfort or boredom.

Jim's eyes narrowed.

"Did they do something to you?"

"They did something to all of us." That was perhaps an evasion, but what had happened to him, and the memories it had brought painfully back to the surface, all in front of someone he cared for, weren't a topic Doug was prepared to talk much about. Haller could decide if he meant the casual roughing up they'd gotten during their intake, or what had happened to Rachel, or whatever.

"Doug. Look at me, please." It was a request, not an order. The older man knelt down so it would be easier to catch Doug's eyes, should he ever decide to raise them. Jim gave a small shake of his head before continuing. "If you don't want to talk about it . . . okay. But please don't think I can't tell something's wrong. You're not really 'here'. I'm worried about you."

Doug supposed there was a rather ridiculous amount of irony in Haller being able to tell from his body language (or lack thereof) that something was wrong, and calling him out on dissociating. But Doug wasn't really in a laughing, joking type of mood. He looked up at the other man and shook his head. "You're right. I don't want to talk about it." He winced. That had perhaps been a bit harsher than he was intending. "Sorry. It was...bad. But if I start..." He waved a hand.

"You'll what? Have to feel something?" Jim gave him a wry smile. "I know it's easier not to. Believe me, we know. But we need you here. Not just your body and brain still functioning -- you." He shook his head, a mirror of Doug's own gesture. "They -- there's a lot they've taken from us that we couldn't do anything about. They can lock us up, and they can hurt us, and threaten the people we care about. But unless they want to put us through that machine, they don't control us. Not really."

"You think that's not the end state?" Doug asked, a note of cynicism invading his flat voice. "I mean, there will be a show trial and some executions for the proles, but the smart money says Moreau will have us in those suits as quickly as he can manage it." Doug's lip curled. "Arbeit macht frei," he quoted the slogan above the gates of Auschwitz.

Jim completely failed to acknowledge the automatic retort of his Inner Jew. "Maybe I should have said 'until' instead of 'unless', but the point stands. Whether it happens or not, it hasn't happened yet. Worry about what's happening now. Not what could happen in the future." He straightened, crossing his arms over his chest. "Besides, the Genoshans didn't catch everyone. We can't pin our hopes on a rescue, but we can't write it off. Either way... it's not over. Not yet."

Haller's words echoed the thoughts Doug had held during Moreau's little grandstanding demonstration. But that had been...days ago? It felt like longer. Much longer. He had no idea how long the interrogation...his mind shied away again from remembering. He shook his head mutely. "They got so many of us..."

"But not all." The older man put his hands on his hips, and when he spoke again his voice had a markedly different cadence.

"Dougie," said Cyndi, "you realize we're only as beat as we let 'em make us, right? I mean okay, you can be emo if you want, it's not like we don't have a crapload of reasons to be, but perpetual wallowing is totally not a good way to go. Haller's king of the wallow and even he can't do it twenty-four seven, hence, like, me. You gotta find an outlet for that crap, or you're basically doing their job for them."

"An outlet? Like what?" Doug asked even more cynically. He knew that one of the other 'alters' had taken over, but it was tough to tell some of them apart, with his powers gone. "They got to me," he admitted, not that it wasn't obvious. "They found the right levers to use, and then they -pushed-." They'd used Terry, and threatened to use Marie-Ange. They'd read him like an open book.

"Well, talking's a good start," Cyndi pointed out. She shook her head. "'Course they got to you. They're like, professional getters-to. Plus they seem to know a lot about us, and we got zip about them. Not exactly fair, y'know." She lowered her arms with a sigh. "Plus, you did kinda give them a good starting point during 'intake' or whatever. Bet it's why they picked you first."

Doug had made himself a target, he knew that. And he blamed himself for it, because he doubted they would have pressed him so roughly if he hadn't given them the opening for it. He was used to being able to read others, and he'd had his own tricks turned back on him. He should have been more prepared, should have been tougher, should have been...better.

But he couldn't articulate all of that. So he shoved it down along with everything else and answered with a noncommittal grunt. "Yeah, I guess."

"Hey." Cyndi drove the heel of her foot into his cot with jarring suddenness. She looked Doug hard in the eyes, and her voice dropped into an uncharacteristically serious octave.

"There isn't a single thing we do or don't do that doesn't say something about us," the alter said. "Saying shit, not saying shit, whatever. All the other guy needs is eyes and a working brain to find the levers." She lowered her foot, her tone softening. "You got picked 'cause you gave a shit. Of all the things you could've shown them, that's not one you gotta be ashamed of."

Unfortunately, as right as Cyndi might have been, she was having a hard time getting through the cloud of self-loathing that Doug was stuck in. At least he was more engaged, and not just staring at the wall. That was about all the victory any of Haller's alters were likely to get. "Not ashamed," he said. "Just..." They'd used Terry against him. And him against Terry. That was his fault.

"Helpless? Guilty?"

The tone had changed again. Now it was lower, harsher, but the harshness wasn't directed at Doug. Cyndi's swift movements and exaggerated posture had changed as well. Now it was more self-contained, assured in a way that gave the thin man a greater sense of size than his physiology alone.

"Kid, we're all that," Jack said. He jabbed a finger at the door of their cell. "Every thing they do, every thing they show us, it's to make us feel that. Don't know there's a way to stop it, either, so don't know there'd be much point in telling you to shake it off. Just remember one thing." The alter let his hand drop and turned his eyes back to Doug. "We're not alone here. They use us against each other -- sure. But we're also all we've got."

Neither of the more aggressive alters (and it was more difficult for Doug to tell the difference between them, where before he would have seen the instant Cyndi gave way to Jack) was really going to break through to Doug, ultimately. He'd been hit - and brutally hard - in nearly every part of the person he'd built himself up as, and the facade he showed to the world had been ripped away to reveal the self-loathing boy beneath, as he struggled vainly to grasp at the fragments of his armor, like a castle of cards floating away in the wind.

Jack regarded Doug with equal silence. From someone older the abject resignation might have provoked a barb or a blow, but Jack wasn't programed that way. He looked at Doug and he saw a kid. A kid who'd been wounded without even being bled.

It didn't sadden him because Jack didn't get sad. But the tangled composite that was Haller was getting angry, and worried, and that made Jack angrier still.

Most of all because he could see nothing more to do.

The alter sighed and moved back to his own side of the cell. He lowered himself onto his cot and gave Doug one final searching look. "Well," said Jack, "guess I've said my piece. I'll leave you now. But you want to talk, we'll be here."

Even though I know you won't.