| Captive Audience, Pt. II |
| Summary: | Tisiphone has visitors of varying temperaments while in the brig. |
| Date: | Need to check on this. |
| Related Logs: | Captive Audience Pt. I, Pt. III, Pt. IV. |
| Players: |
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Junior Lieutenant Apostolos's current situation may well be proof that the God(dess/let) of Irony exists — not only is she housed beside a suspected skinjob, but her cell is the same one she tried to shoot through, not days before.
The skinjob cooties linger. This she knows. KNOWS.
The bullet-cracked panel has yet to be replaced, though the other panels provide more than enough view of the prisoner within. She's in her fatigues, sitting on the edge of her bunk with her dinner tray in her lap. She stares down at it as if the contents of the tray do not, in fact, contain anything that fairly counts as 'dinner'.
"Hi, guys." Bannik comes into the brig, carrying some of the leftover cookies he has from his time as Lord of the Mountain. "I brought these for you." He puts them on the duty MP's desk. "Just some left overs." But even though his voice is cheery, his face has a bit of a wince to it occasionally, like something is paining him. "I was wondering if I could see Lieutenant Apostolos?"
"Sure thing, man." And so it goes. The sign-in. The pat-down ("Easy around the ribs, could you, guys?" requests Bannik). And finally, he's buzzed in to see his big sister.
Scrape. Scrape. Tisiphone drags her fork through the food on her tray, as if moving it around will make it look more appetizing, before muttering, "Frak it," and setting it aside on the foot of her bunk. She pushes herself up and hobbles around the back perimeter of the cell, using the wall as support, to get to the sink. She half-fills the plastic tumbler, swirls it, dumps it. Half-fills it a second time, drinks it. It's just after she's put it down that she hears the (relative) commotion of someone being buzzed in, and turns to look. "Tyr. Hey." Her voice barely carries.
Bannik makes his way into the cell, taking a look around left. And then taking a look around right. And then: "What the Hades, Tis? Really? You were going to kill the Cylon. What were you thinking, even? That you were some kind of lone hero to the Fleet? That you were going to make up for the death of billons of people in the vegenece of a single sidearm? What was going through your head? Or was anything?" His voice is raised. But it's of the way it always is with Tyr when he's scolding Tis: 'Come on, guys.'
"Are you done?" Tisiphone's expression doesn't change much while Bannik works up his yell. The still-too-pale face is a little too shuttered to be properly /serene/, but there's nothing ruffled about her at all. She starts hobbling her way around the edge of the cell, heading for the front wall-slash-windows, making small, pained noises as she goes. Her leg's still none too happy about having weight put on it. "Did I hear you right? 'I tried to kill a Cylon, what was I thinking?' Why don't you use real small words, 'cause apparently I'm not comprehending so good."
"No!" Bannik, apparently, is not done. "I'm going to keep going, because I've been thinking about this for a couple days, and you're going to listen to me as I get it all out." And so he steam rolls on. "Not only did you try to assassinate a Cylon that Command wanted alive, but you did a piss poor job of it. Look at this!" He taps the bullet-proof glass. "Bullet proof. You know what else you have familiarity with that's made from just about the same material? Your Viper cockpit canopy, that's what! You didn't even /ask/. 'Hey, Tyr. I'm thinking about shooting a Picon Five-sveN at my canopy. Think it'll stop the bullet?' You just went and /did it/, deciding to play soldier instead of leaving it to the Marines — who, by the way, are here and clearly could take you down — and sticking to your /Viper/ where we /need/ you to go and kill Cylons in a Command-approved way." He holds up a finger. He's not done yet. His voice is getting louder and more strained.
Hobble. Hobble. Tisiphone reaches the front of the cell and folds her arms across her chest, leaning her shoulder and upper arm in against the side of the glass, her injuried leg barely touching the ground. Her sun-bleached brows lift slightly when Bannik holds up a finger, then lower again as she closes her eyes. She's not feeling very full of shouts at the moment, and so she listens.
And now Bannik gets to the kicker. His voice tightens. His chest heaves (ow, ow, ow). "And you know what pisses me off more than /anything/, Tis? That when you got shot, and you knew you'd get shot, you didn't even think about who I would have to share gossip with or who would sock someone who tried to mess with me or who I'd go and yell at when she was being a big jerk!" He takes a deep breath, eyes watery. "So damn it, Tis, why'd you have to go and do that?"
"It would have been a fair trade." The answer doesn't come until a long, long crawl of seconds after Bannik's angry words trail away to angrier silence, Tisiphone's pale eyes dragging open again as it does. "They were armour-piercing rounds. It should have worked. They cracked the APC windshields back- back home all the time." Her mouth twitches. "Ten years and things change, I guess." Including the construction of bulletproof glass. "What do you want me to say, Tyr? It's not supposed to be a matter of, 'THIS Cylon, we want you to kill, we want you to die trying to kill, but THIS Cylon, we want you to make nice with.' It's wrong. It needed to be done."
"No! It's not a fair trade. There's one of you, Tis. Unique. Unrepeatable. These things? They come back. They — they. I don't know. There are many copies." And they have a plan. Bannik is sputtering now. "And — gosh, Tis, what's going to happen to you now, anyway? A court martial?
"I think so, yeah. I'm not sure yet. They only moved me down here this morning. Guess I'll know when the JAG suit shows up. For all I know right now, they're putting me against a wall for this." Tisiphone's mouth twists again; not sad, but bitter. The thought of being killed for trying to kill a Cylon, no doubt. "Kinda funny if that's the case. Why bother to throw me to the medicators at all if that's the case, you know?" Ah, black mirth, her stalwart companion at times like this. She turns ninety degrees, leaning her folded arms against the glass so she can look out directly at Tyr. "What do you want me to say?" she repeats, frowning. Not angry, but confused. She's never been good with interpersonal relations, even at the best of times.
Bannik pauses and thinks about this, as if he's truly pondering what he wants her to say. "I don't want you to say anything. Saying things doesn't fix them; you need to feel it, for one. And besides that —" His voice trails off. "I don't want you to do anything. I just wanted you to know how scared I was. Because darn it, my ribs are bruised, I got this-close to being airlocked to purge this whole place of sin, and my big sister's a hard-headed martyr."
"I'm sorry I missed the end-rite." There. /That's/ something she knows she should say. It also neatly dodges the whole 'hard-headed martyr' bit. Tisiphone's head tilts a little to the side, a bit more emotion creeping into her features. Curiousity, by way of wary puzzlement. "The Sister tried to- airlock you?" Her frown returns. Surely that /can't/ be right.
"Well. No. It was set up so it wouldn't actually happen. But gosh, when you just fell down a flight of stairs — that wasn't planned, by the way, I sort of missed a stair — it seems pretty darn real." Bannik makes it sound like he was clumsy; actually, he was being shoved around and was blindfolded and zip-tied behind his back.
"I'm glad you're okay, Tyr. It was an important thing you did. You helped a lot of people. Especially the ones who'll never realize it." Tisiphone makes a sound in the back of her throat, brow creasing, as she shifts her weight and leans her forehead against the glass. Her shorn scalp is just starting to show a faint prickle of fresh hair. "I don't know what you want me to say," she repeats, for the third time. Her shoulders sink, deflating with a soundless sigh. "It was. It all made sense. It was all so clear. I don't think it is, anymore."
Bannik nods his head once at that last sentence. "Well. That's a start," he says finally. "A start to realizing that it's not just about what's going on in that frakked up head on yours — and I don't mean that angrily, I mean that because it's true — and about all of us as all of the human race. Starting with the family you've got here on Cerberus." He taps on the glass. "This is where I'd tell you to give me a hug, but we've got bulletproof glass between us, and my ribs hurt. But I'm sending you mental ones, okay? And I'll see you soon."
Family? Now /there's/ a damned odd look given across from Tisiphone to Bannik. She clears her throat and shifts uncomfortably, but doesn't comment upon it. Instead, she unfolds her arms and puts her palms flat against the glass. The corners of her mouth twitch again, stuck in a tug-of-war between sorrow and warmth. "Don't worry about me, Tyr," she says to him. Of all things. "Whatever happens. It'll be okay."