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[gidge]

PICK YOUR POISON
PIC PROMPTS / TFLN / RANDOM SCENARIO
HAN SOLO velocities	BETTY MCRAE bombsheller	RIVER TAM subsulcus	RIVER TAM (AU) comprehender
SIMON TAM vest	BRIA THAREN exulted	NADINE CROSS bridaled	GU JUN-PYO toddler
available on special request: veronica sawyer, benjamin linus, imani, maria deluca, mushu, poseidon, niccolò machiavelli, malik al-sayf, chloe

Comments

[fogey]

"Suit yourself," he says first, because like, he sure tried to offer you sit down and drink something for this.

In fact, he's going to swallow a gulp of his bourbon before saying anything else, because he sure needs a drink, thinking of that memory again.

"The Academy." Then, "Her Academy. I saw what they did to her there."

[vest]

Well, lāshǐ.

Sitting down and having a drink would not have helped at all. When he does finally sit down next to Five, it's less about needing to and more about finding a way to look inconspicuous. A habit picked up meeting with criminals in blackout bars -- the only other time he's spoken to strangers about River and the Academy. And a habit he's not particularly good at pulling off. His posture is an obvious attempt at being casual, but every muscle is still tense, his back still ramrod straight, one foot on the floor ready to run at the first sign of the law.

Her Academy is something Simon takes note of for later, when he's not about to have his heart beat out of his chest.

"What, exactly, did you see?"

They can cover the 'how' later, it's much less of a priority than figuring out what the hell Five knows about his sister. Because 'what they did to her there' is a vast pit of information even he only knows bits and pieces of, the scraps collected by a group of underground resistance fighters with barely any access.

[fogey]

He gives Simon a cool look, out of the corner of his eye. Five's a good read of body language, but he doesn't need Commission-grade skills to guess at how Simon's feeling.

"I didn't see how, exactly, they screwed with her brain. Just the effects of it."

Just, Jesus, like that isn't plenty. Just how she'd been a vibrant, sweet girl, just how they'd taken her and tortured her, just how she'd only been a kid.

[vest]

To be fair, he was much better at acting like he didn't care when he had nothing else to lose.

Simon frowns, some of the tension easing out of his jaw at least. His heart rate is still above the ideal for being at rest, and his foot is still on the ground, but this could be worse. Five could have seen much, much worse.

At least as far as he knows.

"Yes, the effects are hard to miss."

River doesn't talk about what happened there, at least not in ways that are easy to interpret. She'd told him once that he'd found her broken, and he hadn't been able to refute it. They'd effectively killed off the parts of her that made her his mèimei, who was too smart by half and liked to tease him, who didn't wake up screaming most nights. He's still not sure he'll ever get that back.

[fogey]

Five opens his mouth as though to say something, then seems to think better of it. He turns back to his drink instead, taking another swallow.

"No kidding."

She'd been normal, before, more than. And now...truthfully, he thinks she's amazingly stable, all things considered, but there's no going back. There never is.

"How long was she in there?"

[vest]

She's doing better, that's true enough. Simon wouldn't be sitting here in a bar if she wasn't. He'd be either with her or standing in an infirmary going over her charts, like studying them would reveal some new insight into how to fix things.

"A little over two years."

Not much time to a man who was alone for forty, but still far too long for a young girl to be tortured.

[fogey]

Five's been through a lot, but he'd be the first to admit he, at least, wasn't ever tortured for two straight years.

"Jesus."

[vest]

That's about the reaction one would expect, and Simon's tension eases just a little more. Five isn't going to hold this over his head as a threat, which is a nice change of pace. He'll have to learn to get used to people not being monsters. Probably to counter the fact that there are actual monsters.

"She doesn't talk about what happened there, so if there's anything you think might help her treatment let me know."

Because that, truly, is the priority.

[fogey]

Oh, Five would counter that he is a monster. Just not in this way.

No fucking wonder she doesn't talk about what happened there, Christ. Who would?

"Doubtful. I didn't see anything that indicated specifics of what was happening to her."

Maybe someone more medically-inclined could pick up hints and clues, but Five's better at physics than biology. All the medicine-adjacent skills he has come from years of having no one to take care of his own illness and injury but himself.

[vest]

In all honesty, there's not much Simon would be able to do with the details of what Five saw beyond letting it fuel his guilt for not getting there sooner, for not being able to get her out in months instead of years.

It's disappointing, but Simon nods and manages to not sigh and give himself away.

Then he goes out on a limb.

"How long were you in your Academy?"

And, look, he feels like he's shown far more of his cards, and River's, to Five than is strictly reasonable. He wants to know more about who he's dealing with, and if the Academy he's from is anything like the one he broke into.

[fogey]

Now that's a baleful look Simon's getting now. A sore spot, after River.

"Thirteen years." Then, "It was nothing like hers, obviously."

The Umbrella Academy might've been messed up in its own ways, but it was a long way from that.

[vest]

Simon nods, even after that look.

"I doubt we'd be talking like this if it were."

He'd heard the stories about other children that had come out of the Academy, aphasic and insane. Dead. Five is none of those things.

What worries him, though, is how River had talked about him. That she'd used phrases that she'd used before in reference to herself. Easy enough now to write a lot of that off as his sister being, you know, crazy, even if she is getting better. Still...

"I apologize, if she got... Confused. About the association, if she picked up on it."

[fogey]

"Obviously not."

Five hasn't heard those stories, but it's not hard to guess. If River was in this state after two years, imagine longer. Also: the other poor kids can't be any better off.

He shrugs off Simon's apology, finishing off his drink and calling for another from the bartender. Whether or not he'd planned on another glass before this conversation, he sure as hell needs one now.

"It's not your fault. It's not her fault, either."

[vest]

Imagine longer, and imagine children that weren't already predisposed to River's kind of intuitive awareness.

He allows himself a moment to feel grateful that Five isn't going to hold any of his sister's potential ramblings against them before he grimaces.

"No, I suppose the best thing about this place is that the Alliance can't keep hunting us down."

[fogey]

"It's unlikely, anyway."

He doesn't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but he remembers Theon speaking of enemies from Westeros causing trouble in this world. He's still waiting for the Commission to catch up with him sooner or later; because they always do, eventually.

His drink arrives, and he takes a healthy gulp from the fresh glass.

[vest]

Honestly? It's kind of refreshing to be talking to someone as cynically vigilant as he is. Simon was, after all, considering where in this new world he'd be able to run with his sister if a threat presented itself.

As if there aren't already plenty of threats.

As if, technically, his sister isn't one of those threats, should the Alliance rear its ugly head.

"Thank you for that. I'm feeling very welcomed with the looming threat of a government agency showing up and trying to kill us."

Wow. He did a joke.

[fogey]

Five does not smile. He does not, as a point of fact, actually smile, ever. But there is a twitch to his lips before he can help himself, that gets buried in his glass. When he emerges, he's back to his cynically vigilant self.

"If you'd prefer to be caught off-guard, that's up to you."

[vest]

Simon doesn't smile, either. He does, sometimes, but not now.

"No, I think I've spent too long looking over my shoulder to be that at ease."

He'd had his drink, and he doesn't order another. That's part of being on guard, for him, as much on guard against a threat as it is on guard to help River. He can't do much for her if he's too drunk to give her the proper dose of something, or sleeps too heavy to notice her if she needs him in the middle of the night. She's being healed, though, in ways he never could, which means he's going to have to find some other worry to occupy his mind.

[fogey]

"For what it's worth," he says, slow, "you're more likely to run into other dangers in Chicago."

Not that it's exactly comforting, but...in a way, it can be. Danger that doesn't hate you, specifically, can be something of a relief after needing to be on the run.

[vest]

It is a relief, however small, to know there's not a specific target on his back. Or on River's.

"Yes, I've heard."

A beat.

"River mentioned a unicorn."

This might be an attempt at confirmation, though he can't know that Five wasn't here for that adventure. She'd mentioned it randomly, as far as he could tell, and he'd immediately chalked it down as 'as yet unidentified metaphor' instead of 'true thing to ask about.'

[fogey]

"A what?"

Yeah, he wasn't around for that.

[vest]

"Unicorn. Mythical creature, horse with a single horn on its head..."

He realizes about halfway through that that isn't exactly the explanation Five was probably looking for.

"From what I could gather, it killed someone, except it didn't, and then they sang it to death."

Okay, on this one, he really can't be blamed for putting 'my sister said she fought a unicorn' down under 'crazy.'

[fogey]

He's just giving Simon a long, increasingly exasperated, judgmental look.

Then his eyebrows go up, and he takes another swallow of his drink just to deal with having had to listen to that.

[vest]

Yeah, that's a look Simon is used to.

He actually smiles at that as he looks back down at the bar, but it's bitter and small.

"I'm sure you've noticed my sister has a difficult time communicating. A side-effect." Simon takes a deep breath, sighs outward, and says, "From what I've seen of Chicago so far, either that's exactly what happened or it's a metaphor for something worse that I haven't managed to figure out yet. Maybe for something she doesn't even understand."

River doesn't remember it, because she never lived it, but Simon can't help but think of her cuffed to the floor of the ship's pantry telling him, I don't know what I'm saying, I never know what I'm saying. Remembers the sense some of the things she'd said had made once they found Miranda. He worries.