myironeyes | (no subject)

[Public Video]

The kitchen is, as usual, understaffed. We were understaffed before this latest shake-up and now we are more understaffed. We require at least one temporary warden supervisor for the lunch shift and four or five new inmates.

Those interested should speak to Riddick or myself.

[Open spam, backdated throughout the last few days]

[Marsh can be found in odd times at odd places - late and night on the deck or early morning in the greenhouse, hunched over, making soft, choking noises, his little cockatiel crooning worriedly and attempting to preen his short hair. Folded in a corner of the ice-damaged stairwell, a hand splayed over his spikes, breathing hitched, shoulders shaking, looking like nothing so much as a man desperately trying to sob and unable to manage it.

The crying from Iris's room - it's psychic, he doesn't just hear it. It gets in when he is too tired to fend it off from ripped-open places, and then it becomes him, the loneliness and fear and grief, the confusion of the very young. He remembers himself - it is not overwhelming, not like Ruin at its worst, nothing like that - but he cannot stop feeling it. And the feeling is not entirely unfamiliar.]

[Private spam for Bianca]

[He decides, eventually, that it cannot be a trick, that something is real, must be suffering. Or perhaps he doesn't care anymore, as long as it stops. He arrives at her door with his jaw clenched from the effort of holding the lost, abandoned feeling back, and it still drips through his cracks, stings like salt in his punctures. He knocks.]

[Private spam for ~~C'Rizz~~ the Dalek Emperor, backdated to shortly after the arena]

[It's not a pleasant return, but he falls to the necessary housekeeping with a grim sort of gratitude. He asks the admiral for a resurrection, then swallows a truly foul amount of powdered pewter and a small sliver of feruchemy-laced gold. Then cooks until he stops seeing Iris on every blank nonmetallic surface, and brings the egg soup to C'Rizz's room. He knocks, then lets himself in.]

It's me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The Emperor has exhausted himself shouting across the network, and is more quiet and significantly better informed now. He squints at Marsh, huddled up in a blanket that is too rough and completely fails to simulate the feeling of restraint in his/their casing.]

You are not our inmate.

You are the Eutermesan's warden.

[Inasmuch as they can sound dubious, he does.]

...yes.

[WHAT THE DEVIL WHY THIS SAZED THIS IS THE WORST VACATION EVER WHERE IS HIS LIZARDBABY.]

...I made you soup.

Ingestion of solid food is inefficient. We have not required it for many megarels.

[The smell is so strong as to be almost nauseating. Homey. Many of the voices recognize it; there is a clamouring in their mind. He clasps bony hands over his ear depressions, and still hears.]

We are your Emperor! You will be silent!

[The voices do not moderatet. Not even the Daleks..]

It's liquid food, your majesty.

[So there. Marsh is not impressed at all. He sits next to the shriveled thing that was C'Rizz and runs a hand over his head gently, feeling the difference in texture compared to healthy scale, burns brass and soothes away some of the distress. Not the voices, though he can only guess whether they are the cause, when C'Rizz didn't have them under inmate limits, but the emotion they cause, that's beneath the shouting. It's alright, hearing them.]

[They aren't angry voices, by and large. Quizzical, matter of fact, calm. But so many. Daleks, Eutermesans, Kromon, Humans-- the odd Gallifreyan, now-- the Emperor has not killed many since they took their position, but their head was full enough already.

(Eat, beloved, you must eat, doesn't it smell like winter soup, don't you remember home?)

So much stimulus. Strange stimulus. Marsh's hand feels sandpaper-rough and hot.]

Do not touch us, human! Do not! We will eat!

[He likes it, although he knows it's intended as a insult. Human. Sometimes he almost feels it. He withdraws his hands, but keeps up soothing some of his inmate's agitation.]

You should go slowly, if it's been so long.

[Don't make yourself sick.]

[The first spoonful is horrifying. It is an old feeling. How did they ever do this, constantly, day in and day out. Their guts twist.

(You always had a weak stomach. Shh.)

He/they regroup and try again, grimly. They will survive.]

You preserve us. Because of your code of warden behavior. Correct?

No. Not really.

[Gently, or at least unworried, with a slightly far-away tint to the words, and he isn't sure if it's melancholy or just that he doesn't have the energy for too much bitterness against one more mortal sadist. He has the energy for petty grudges, though.]

If it were Ryan - warden-from-there Ryan, that he had before you - I'd probably let him suffer.

I like you, you know. Even though you're terrible.

Explain!
[it is sullen. They/He forces down another bite of soup. Old cravings are reawakening. Nausea fights with starvation.

There is a memory: that changing is what he does. He adapts.]

You didn't let people control him. I know you had your own reasons, but I don't really care.

And you're already in pain. All the time, and I - me too. I don't want to make you hurt more.

You, too, would be an exemplary Dalek.

[It's stubborn and... a bit defeated already. This universe is tiring and too familiar to be dismissed. There are soft voices at his ear and his body is maleable. The clatter of silverware against bowl is alarming and too present. Everything is so close and not at a constant arm's length.

He cannot hear his people. He had a sense of connection to them, even in the un-universe of his barge, but none are here.]

The pain is a feature of the casing. It is not as you know native to us. But it is steadying.

[Sulk. Sulk. Blame.]

I wish I could spare you.

He feels the same.

[It's not 'no one deserves that'. Deserving has little to do with it.]

There are other ways to find steadiness.