| Captive Audience, Pt. III |
| Summary: | Tisiphone has visitors of varying temperaments while in the brig. |
| Date: | Gotta check on this. |
| Related Logs: | Captive Audience Pt. I, Pt. II, Pt. IV. |
| Players: |
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Tisiphone is housed in the same cell she tried to shoot the skinjob in, not days before. Next door to her? The suspected skinjob, one Rear Admiral Abbot.
If there's a daimone of Irony out there, somewhere, it's giggling and rubbing its hands together in sheer delight.
There's not much to amuse oneself with, when all you've got is a bunk, a sink, and a toilet. No books. ("What am I gonna do, papercut myself to death? Snort.") And so she paces, limpingly, some wild beast caged in human form and bulletproof glass.
Karthasi is not armed, and placidly submits herself to a frisking in order to confirm the fact, giving the MP who seems more than a little put off not being able to take the word of a Chaplain a warmly encouraging smile. "It's quite alright. Rules are rules," she reasons for her, while some others look through the items she's bringing along.
"We're going to need to send someone in with you, if you're taking this kit in," one of the MPs looking through the stuff warns her, to which she gives a quiet sigh, but nods her head gamely. "Of course," is all she replies. She doesn't tell the MPs how to do their jobs— she wouldn't presume. Finally, after much preparation, the alloy-and-glass door at the side of the cell is opened, and Greje peeks around from behind a burly MP sort who precedes her into the place before he steps to one side and she straightens up, a black rolled kit under one arm, a standard-issue military Common Scriptural in her other hand. "Tisiphone?" she calls, gently. "Do you mind if I come in?"
A hundred and twenty pounds of hardened killer — currently concealed in the shape of a dull-eyed, wan-faced grounded pilot with a bad limp and an arm against her midsection — pauses her pacing at the far end of the cell. It's where the MPs tell her to stand whenever the door's opened, anyway. She's efficient like that. She straightens a little, and scrubs her hand over the barely-there bristle on her scalp, as if it can be tidied. "Sister," she greets. Her voice barely carries, and cracks from disuse. "Of. Um, of course. Please. Come in."
"As you were," Greje tells Tisiphone mildly, sliding some military parlance in there with a kindly enough voice that it hardly -sounds- military. She looks the woman over with an almost motherly eye, for a moment, "How are you feeling?" she wonders, "Are you being treated alright?" She speaks for the prisoners. Cylon and human alike, evidently. If only Tisiphone knew that she'd been in this very cell fretting in similar fashion over the Eleven not long ago.
"If you'd like to sit, there's, um. The bunk, and the bunk. Or the bunk," Tisiphone jokes, rather flatly, a pale hand sketching over the broad expanse of her current all-inclusive universe. She leans back against the wall, folding her arms low on her chest. "They're treating me fine. Finally figured out that 'no meat' also means 'no gravy on the potatoes', so dinner's been a little better." A soft huff of breath, meant to be a laugh. "I. I really don't know how I'm feeling anymore, Sister. It was so straight-forward, and now it isn't, anymore."
"No. I shouldn't think it is, Tisiphone," Greje replies, stepping over to the foot-end of the bunk and perhcing there, setting kit on her lap and book atop that. "Not after Eleven died saving your comrades-in-arms. Knowing what might have happened if you had succeeded in your endeavor must be… difficult," she euphemises softly. "Come and sit with me? I brought you a copy of the scriptures. They won't let me leave it, but— I'll gladly sit here with you as long as you'd like to use it."
Difficult? Tisiphone's brows twitch, then furrow together a little before smoothing out again. "No," she says, with a faint shake of her head. "No. Not so much. It danced us around like puppets on Leonis, and this is just. More of the same. Eight Basestars out of how many hundred, like it's some great victory? Now we'll start thinking they're trustworthy. If it saved us, Sister-" The word is spoken with ill-concealed dubiousness. "-all it did is save us for later." She pushes off the wall and limps over, sinking down on the edge of bunk with a wince, her good leg tucked under her injured one. She doesn't look up from her knee for a time, her short nails scratching restlessly at the bandages beneath her trousers.
Karthasi listens quietly, chin tucked near her shoulder as she sits with her body facing the windows and her head facing Tisiphone. "Then you stand by what you've done," Greje concludes. "Or, rather, what you tried to do. I don't suppose you can ask for much more than that, to know in your own heart that you acted with correctness and justice."
"They're abominations," says Tisiphone, as if it explains Absolutely Everything That Needs To Be Said. She could be a computer program, herself, with that level of simplicity. IF cylon THEN destroy. She's the poster-child of many traits. Few of them flattering. "Mockeries of the form the Lords and Ladies crafted us in." Scratch. Scratch scratch. Still she doesn't look up. It seems to be taking all her courage to say these things; saying them to the Chaplain's face is beyond her. "I don't know about justice, Sister. But I. I don't regret wanting it destroyed, and trying to do so myself, where my commanders wouldn't. That's not what I regret about any of this."
Karthasi looks over Tisiphone's profile, cool green eyes almost welcoming, trying to coax out some eye contact, but not forcing the issue. A pause, after Tisiphone stops talking, then, "Go on," she half-whispers, picking up the book, then the kit, and putting them back on her lap in reverse position.
"It was so straight-forward," Tisiphone repeats. Scritch-scritch. Scritch-scritch. "I thought it was. Maybe it still would have been, if I had gotten through the glass. I'm not sure anymore. I don't think the guards would have killed me. Maybe-" She takes a deep breath abruptly, holds it for a few seconds before she's willing to exhale. "Maybe my sisters were wrong. And now. I'm still here. And I failed, and. I've hurt everyone that matters. It all went wrong. Maybe it was wrong from the beginning. I don't know anymore." She clears her throat as her words start tightening off, breathes out a sigh, and finally looks up and over at Karthasi with a sad, wry tug at one corner of her mouth.
"Maybe it was. But you thought you were doing the right thing, at the time. Your intentions were good, even if in the end your actions may have been misguided," Greje couches her sentiments in such terms as to forego giving any indication of whether -she- thought it was right or wrong. "Remember that intent. It's over now, and done. You'll take what comes after with a good grace, knowing that you could not have acted any other way and been true to what you believe."
"It can't be changed. Looking back means you can't see what's ahead." Tisiphone says this as if she's desperately trying to remind herself of these little details. "You're- right, Sister. Of course." Another deep breath, slowly sighed out, as she scrubs at her shorn scalp with both hands. Finally, after staring at the black-cover'd book of scripture for a long crawl of seconds, she reaches to take it. "Did you have a chance to talk to it?" she wonders at length, thumbing delicately through the pages. "Before it died."
Karthasi lifts up the kit easily to let Tisiphone get to the book underneath. "Yes," she answers. "Yes, I did. I thought… I thought there was a connection, there. Perhaps I am simply a credulous heart," she allows with a tired smile. "In any event. No looking back, yes? Be steel your heart against regret, be strong your foot to keep you on your path. Don't… be unflexible, unwilling to see other points of view, but— at the same time, don't abandon your own, and be lost without."
"With. Your training. Ecclesiastical…theory." Tisiphone fumbles with the phrasing. "It. I'm sure it was fascinating for you. I had wanted to talk to it, when I came in, before…" Her hand shapes a mute, you know, against the pages of fine-lined text. "But it was sleeping." The pages rasp softly as she continues searching for some specific passage, eyes flicking up to the Chaplain, then back down to her book. "Maybe you were soft-hearted, but maybe I was hard-hearted. I. My family was… Forgiveness came after punishment. And not always then. I still don't… let go of things well."
"It was. In fact, their beliefs are not… fundamentally different from our own. I only wish there was a way to let them know that," Greje sighs quietly. "I had… hoped… that Eleven might be a first line of communication. But… that wasn't to be." She looks down to the book, "You should read from the Oresteia," not to be confused with the Orestaia. "In which… punishment begets punishment, which begets further punishment still. In which the Furies pursue the polluted, in hopes of continuing the reign of violence… and how they were tamed, and named the Kindly Ones."
A sudden, toothy grin from Tisiphone, though it would be dishonest to call it humour-filled. "Of all the triplets to choose from, they had to choose the Erinyes for my sisters and I," she says to Karthasi, shaking her head once. Her eyes look into some distant memory for a moment, dull and wry, before she recites: "Would that I were not among the men of the fifth age, but either had died before or been born afterwards. For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and the gods shall lay sore trouble upon them." She looks down at the book for a moment, the pages opened to a hymn to Nemesis, she of divine retribution, then abruptly — though gently — closes it.
"Hesiod," Greje places the quotation with a sorrowful smile. "In the end, Justice placated the Furies, and mankind consented no longer to take an eye for an eye, but to submit complaints unto the courts of justice, that pain may no longer beget pain unto itself in the world, but that cooler heads may prevail. The JAG has this, now. She's… a good woman, Tisiphone. Give your trust to her and… have the strength to stand up under whatever might come to you, now."
"Whatever they decide my punishment shall be, I will endure it," Tisiphone agrees, her words soft-spoken and almost ritualistic. "I made my peace with the Lords before I entered into this. If they decide my life is forfeit, so be it. It doesn't matter, anymore, if I think it's right or wrong. Anyway." She shakes her head sharply, as if to cut off some line of thought, and offers the book of scripture back. "Thank you for visiting, Sister. I hope I'll see you at the chapel before too long."
Karthasi takes the book back, and takes her cue, as well. "You'll be alright. Whatever they decide, you'll be alright," she intones, presumably referring to some manner beyond the physical. "I'll come and see you again, if you'd like. I brought…" she lifts the little kit she brought with her, "Nail clippers and things. Some lotion," she slides the latter out of the kit, opening up the flip lid and offering it out to squeeze a little onto Tisiphone's hands, if she wants some. "If you ever need me, only let the guards know to go and get me. Day or night, alright?" she tells her, standing up.
Tisiphone's nails are too gnawed to benefit from the clippers, but the hand lotion is accepted with grateful, cupped hands and a moment's worth of shy smile. She stands as Karthasi does, rubbing her hands over and across themselves, saving a tiny amount of the lotion to rub along her right forearm where a thin white scar remains. "I will," she promises, lingering near the Chaplain for a moment longer before, reluctantly, moving over to the opposite side of the cell so the door can be 'safely' opened. "Lords and Ladies watch over you, Sister."
"And also over you, Tisiphone. Gods bless," Greje whispers, tucking the lotion bottle away and getting the kit and book arranged in one arm to lift her other hand in a gesture of blessing before she turns to go.