twenty-two ☼ spam, BLOO TEAM

[deshabille]

[Mal still doesn't understand what Thanksgiving is. She doesn't strictly speaking need to eat, and when she does it, she much prefers rougher fare than what the prizes consist of, such things being what she's used to. And she certainly doesn't know what a laser is.]

[However, she's inexorably drawn to blowing off steam and making a grand fool of herself, so she straps on all the ridiculous trappings of this inexplicable game and sets off into the hallways. She tends to improvise extra armor for herself, made out of scraps of metal, bits of cloth, and such, for maximum visual bafflement but minimal extra protection. By the end of the first day she's died and reset several times and is cheerfully ignoring the fact that she did just recently die not a week ago.]

[Her aim is not as good as one might expect of a soldier, but then, as Bush might scoff, infantry: what's to be done with them. She can be found anywhere, but most particularly holed up by the art room behind an easel, grinning like a loon.]

spam } mira, 11/30

[This is . . . refreshing. Sort of beautiful, actually, in a utilitarian way. The Barge gives her time to grieve, and then it forces her back to her feet. More merciful than a battlefield, more structured than everything that came before. She is pleased. If she were a cat, she'd be purring as she knocks on Mira's door.]

[She has read the file. Of course she has. It fascinates her, the swirling impossibilities twining around her legs, forcing her to believe in them. A world or worlds like these breed different sorts of men and monsters - and then there's Mira, born again. And again. And again.]

[It does not escape Mal's notice that she's approaching a suspect. She's not frightened, though. If anything, it makes the whole prospect more interesting.]

Comments

[deshabille]

[It was, more or less, an order. She doesn't normally give them in that fashion. Time and practice have taught her to be direct. But Mira is not a direct sort of person, and that's fascinating; she wants more of it, so she encourages it, in her own indirect way.]

[Stepping inside, she feels instantly, perfectly, comfortably on alert, her senses as heightened as they ever are. Something tinny in the back of her throat, vibrating in her ears. Mira is not looking anywhere but where she is going. Mira is very careful, or is not it.]

[Mal stops still in the middle of the floor, standing on her toes to brush her fingers against the test tube worlds. She is grinning. She has utterly forgotten to answer the question.]

[exnihilo]

[She sets it for one cup, watches Mal's fascination with amusement while it brews - pleased, flattered, and also a little strained by the attention, the tugging weight of it.]

David wanted me to have a project. Something more cerebral than kitchen duty.

I don't think he ever really understood that I didn't mind menial things. He felt they were degrading to his intelligence. But then, he was much smarter than most of us.

[Or maybe it doesn't bother her because she was made more successfully into a tool, because her lipid brain grasping for culture and parents is so much more susceptible to her makers' suggestions than his mechanical empiricism. He could do more, comparative advantage. His drudgery was a waste, QED. She doesn't know if she wants to be upset or not, that she finds it comforting, kneading bread and chopping vegetables and putting ingredients together.]

[deshabille]

[Something familiar, now - a tinny and blue smell, like nothing she's ever smelled before except maybe once. She closes her eyes against the little test tube worlds and tries to remember. Somewhere close, the oddest sense of deja vu, she wonders if maybe, just maybe--]

[Noise. Mira's talking. Distraction. But maybe she should focus. Mira is important, too.]

[Her eyes open, narrowed against the sensation of steam against her cornea. She grins again.]

I'm not taking you off kitchen duty. You can take on another task if you want it, but I don't know that you need it.

We haven't talked much. Which is funny, considering we've both been here quite a while.

I'll take that tea, thank you. We used to drink tea in the army hot and sweet and milky. Called it saloop. It's full of memories.

[She will remember.]

[exnihilo]

I'm not terribly social when I'm not working.

[The most demure. u_u But of course Mal will know what all of that means. She puts lemon in her own tea, programs the second cup to Mal's specifications. Memories, after all, are important.]

[deshabille]

[She takes the cup as she listens to the - what? Confession? Admission? Something in between, or something with no emotional consequences at all? - in silence. Not terribly social when not working. So she ought to stay working.]

[Still. It's odd, to someone like Mal, so invested in people; why avoid them?]

Why?

[exnihilo]

Because it's all lies.

I'm supposed to be - charming and impressive but eminently forgettable, delightful enough to get anything and go anywhere I need to but too scintillating to be a real person, just a story about the wonderful sorts of people you meet traveling, an interstellar fairy tale. And I'm very good at that, but I don't like it, and I don't need it, here.

So I don't bother.

[deshabille]

[This is all true. A little depressing, but surprisingly perceptive, for what Mal knows of Mira thus far. Her entire impression during this meeting, in fact, is of Mira being more perceptive than Mal would have expected. She understands herself while not understanding herself. It's curious.]

Well, what do you think you're like? If not scintillating and charming. If not a story. Or what do you want to be like, if you'd rather that question, but it seems sort of on the nose, doesn't it? I'm no psychiatrist.

[exnihilo]

[She's had a lot of time to brood on it, before and after coming to the barge. She tilts her head at Mal's questions.

Professional is the word she thinks first, immediate and unqualified, although she is not entirely sure which of the questions it is the answer to. Professional, she thinks, is the word for a knife that owns itself.

Who is she when she's real, who was she with Darling, who was she with Oscar Vale.]

Reckless. Dangerous. Thorough.

Young.

[deshabille]

[Young. Yes. Mira is very young. She makes Mal feel a bit old, which is strange, because for all of her age she often feels as though she's experienced nothing at all in her life. Reading that file, though, she felt the weight of years heavy on her shoulders. The weight of memories.]

[She shifts her weight, a touch uncomfortable at the reminder of her pending immortality.]

Takes a special kind of person to be reckless and thorough all at once. I, for example, am reckless, but very rarely thorough.

[exnihilo]

I would like to make choices recklessly, but then see them thoroughly through.

[Does that help? Does that make it more or less odd? She isn't sure. Except that Mal is looking, no matter how roundabout her way of reacting, and Mira wants her to see. Wants to draw herself with clean lines.]

[deshabille]

[It's not even really about odd; it's about impossible. This, what Mira is saying now, is not impossible. It's improbable, but it can be done. And that's what makes Mal grin all of a sudden, a grin that is as wicked as it is, indeed, reckless. It sends mixed messages. But she can't help but be pleased, whether or not Mira killed her after all.]

I see what you mean. It seems very extraordinary, to me.

[exnihilo]

It seems - not ordinary. To me.

I'm not sure those are quite the same thing.

I don't especially want to be unique. I've had enough of that. But I wouldn't like to be ordinary, either.

[deshabille]

Extraordinary does not exactly mean unique. I am extraordinary. But if you'd like the truth, I'm not quite unique.

[This is actually quite the confession, for Mal.]

You seem remarkably well-disposed to me knowing all of your secrets.

[exnihilo]

I'm pleased with how many of my own secrets I know.

[People like to share their accomplishments. She is learning to be a person.]

[deshabille]

[She smiles, genuinely pleased.]

What's your favorite secret?

[exnihilo]

[She considers, for a while, long enough that the silent would be strange, if they were the sort of people who worried about strange. Her favorite.]

I give good gifts.

[deshabille]

Really. I never quite mastered the art. Probably all that narcissism.

That's a favorite secret that's partially about other people, though. Isn't it?

[exnihilo]

That's why it's my favorite.

[deshabille]

Mm. And the best gift you ever gave?

[exnihilo]

[Iris's, she thinks. Arthas's was a smaller target to hit, but the clue - that was right in an unprecedented sort of way.]

...I think that's a secret I will keep.

[deshabille]

[Her smile is surprisingly warm, for someone so often so cold.]

Understood. [It sounds like a yes, ma'am, as though she's accepted an order.] You'll have to give me something sometime, to give me a taste of it.

[exnihilo]

I suppose I will.