fourteen. spam. co co rico co co rico, in a flash of lightning.

[indispensible]

[She has been, if truth be told, a little lost since Stark left. Not because she was dependent on the schedule created by making sure he didn't do anything stupid, but simply because she misses him. His magic is still working, it seems; the things he enchanted for her function just as they always did, her golem-dog following behind her alongside Mike as she makes the rounds of the Barge.]

[Having his magic still at her back gives her a very specific sense of power - or maybe support. She knows she's powerful. It's nice that someone has her back anyway.]

[She spends most of her time on maintenance, at Anya's direction. But since she doesn't have an inmate to boss around anymore, she has more free time than she knows what to do with; since there are so many obviously dangerous people since the latest collision, she's experiencing a nice uptick in paranoia, too. She pays extra attention to the Mirror additions - not conspicuously, not drawing attention to herself, but she watches all the same.]

spam } psyke

[She has been watching this one - the one who was Jean - especially closely. Whenever she comes out of her room, Vin is there waiting. When she doesn't come out, Vin's there, too, listening with flared tin at the door for any sound that might filter through.]

spam } ben

[Vin is not as good as she might be at identifying the subtleties of emotion. If she was, she'd be able to put a proper label to this feeling. Right now the best she can do is betrayal, even though it isn't Ben's fault. And sadness. She is sad.]

[She sits outside his cell in silence, unblinking, waiting for him to speak. Wonders if he's going to spend the whole month in here. Probably he is.]

Comments

[warisart]

[He doesn't blame her. Not exactly. He doesn't know her, either, isn't exercising the kind of effort it would take to separate her from the faceless crowd of enemies though she looks similar enough. It isn't always the physicalities he picks up on, anyway, and even when the bodies match? So much is wrong here.

Ben barely even registers the pain. He woke up, groggy and disoriented, in the cell again and that's familiar enough that the sound he makes strangles and dies in his throat before it makes it to something intelligible. Then he pulls himself upright, stands stiffly, and returns to his corner.

He feels betrayed, too. He feels sad, too. And he feels isolated. He does not speak for a long time.

When he does, it's barely audible, and he says it to where his thumbtip is idly tracing the knob of his opposite wrist. He is thinking about the bloody fragments in the interior pocket of his field jacket, his only hope, coveted and all important. He does not mention them.]

How long until I disappear?

[indispensible]

[Her eyes widen, just on the edge of perception. Maybe Ben will notice. She imagines, looking at him, that he won't bother. This hurts, too. This feels like a betrayal.]

[She watches him touch his wrist. Does he know how easy it is to break all the bones in someone's hand? She thinks he must. This version of him better than any other. Look how breakable he is. He was broken before she ever got to him.]

[It's a good thing she isn't the comforting sort or she'd be trying to comfort him now. Instead she waits in silence for the ring of his too-quiet words to die away. Her voice mirrors his in the end when she speaks, a breath rather than words, a certainty rather than hope.]

You will not disappear.

[warisart]

[He was broken before he woke up alone in his room on the Barge for the first time; he'd been ground down to dust between outside pressure he had no control over and inside pressure that he'd partially created himself in an effort to find a way, any way at all, to equalize. There'd been none for him before, not until the Admiral, not until Jesse, and Alex, and Anya.

He's coming to realize he was still broken even hemmed in by their security; he was a cracked ornament held together in a palm, whole only as long as the fingers are closed around it. Now he's alone. Now it's just him. Now he's falling out of the shape he'd been cobbled back together into, and it's only a matter of time until he's discovered.

Until he disappears, because he's already in the basement. He's already the nomlie. That's the next step, only she says no.

Ben breathes out, can't help the faint tremor that goes with it, and does not stop tracing the bone under his skin.]

Then I already have.

[indispensible]

[Unconsciously she reaches out and touches the same bone in her wrist, holds it close to her ribs as though letting go will mean letting it break. She doesn't know what she's doing - not in so many words - but that isn't exactly new for her. So often she stands in the middle of a maelstrom, figurative or literal, with no direction whatsoever, and simply strikes out in one direction of another by feel.]

[Sometimes that ruins everything. But sometimes it doesn't.]

[She watches the tightness of his jaw and doesn't allow her expression to soften.]

Then you think I must have disappeared, too?

[warisart]

You are powerful.

[This is a reprimand, something obvious, something self-evident. She is on the outside of the cell. She stopped him. She has the power, here, and he does not. He hates her for it, fears her, and expects that she will have orders for him or she will have consequences for him one way or another soon, soon.

She can't disappear. She is on the outside of the cell. He is on the inside.

He is the mistake. (A nearly dead part of him exhales, vindicated, tired and horrified and ready.)]

My designation is X5-493. My name is Ben. None of you can take it from me.