Comments | damned: Day 59: Library

gald_digger in damned

Day 59: Library

Oct 04, 2011 21:16

Anise couldn't get out of the Cafeteria fast enough. The stench of rotted food was overwhelming, and she was starting to feel sick. Most of her nausea came from seeing the people around her eating it, though. Even her friends! Anise didn't know what to do... What if lunch ended up being the same ( Read more... )

seishin, zero, byrne, albedo, guy, stefan, bella, kairi, badd, peter petrelli, anise, depth charge, nigredo, tear, damon, two-face, rapunzel, castiel, edgar, hijikata, indiana jones, utena, alaric, riku, claude, guybrush, hakkai, peter parker, claire stanfield, locke, lana skye

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tasteoftruth October 5 2011, 03:40:06 UTC

The girl had been right, not eating breakfast was a fairly stupid idea. Badd found his stomach growling after they were escorted out of the cafeteria. He wondered if a group hunger strike would do anything--or mass suicide, who knows. Deny the general his fun by getting themselves out of the way.

Badd wondered when he'd turned so morbid. He shuffled off with the crowd, still hiding from Byrne in the mass of prisoners, but when he threw a glance back over his shoulder he couldn't find his partner. Fine, then.

Badd pulled a book off the shelf at random and huddled himself down in a chair in the corner. It was only slightly less comical than hiding your face with a newspaper, but anything that made him look busy and undisturbable.

[Byrne, disturb me!]

corvus_veritas October 6 2011, 02:22:57 UTC

By second shift, Byrne was downright upset about more than just the rotting food or Niikura's apparent knowledge of the Yatagarasu thanks to Gant. Gant was dead, as reported by Ms. Skye, and to make matters worse he was also not as honest of a man as Byrne had (probably foolishly) expected of him. True, Gant had always been a little...strange, but the prosecutor had never thought he would go so far as to be a murderer.

Meanwhile, the bulletin board conversations with Badd were only making things worse when the detective sounded unconcerned about being manipulated and about Byrne losing his gun. That wasn't like him at all. What was wrong? And what did he have to 'take care of' that was more important than letting his best friend know that everything was alright? Geez!

...Well, maybe it was important business, and maybe he just hadn't found the time to get back to the bulletin board to tell Byrne that. Maybe there was a reason. Byrne was going to attempt to remain hopeful. For now ( ... )

tasteoftruth October 6 2011, 02:58:44 UTC

...shit.

Badd looked up from his book, hiding his panic behind a scowling stony visage. "I said we'd talk later," he repeated, and then turned his attention back to the book. "I already told you why I missed our meeting." He gave it the tone of missing a business meeting, something frivolous. As frantic as he'd been about Byrne's disappearance yesterday, he treated his own disappearance as a minor failure of scheduling.

Even if Byrne went away angry and offended he'd still be gone and Badd wouldn't have to talk about what had happened last night. Byrne was the one man Badd couldn't face disappointing (he'd failed him enough already, hadn't he?) and even as he knew he was behaving like a petty child he couldn't bring himself to up and confess. Or apologize. Or do anything that acknowledged he'd been weak and buckled under the lightest of influences.

corvus_veritas October 6 2011, 15:57:35 UTC

If Badd thought that dismissal was going to drive Byrne away, he was horribly underestimating his partner's determination right now. "Hold it!" And there was the trusty pointer finger, seeing use for the first time in awhile since he'd gotten here. "Who do you think you are, just shoving your best friend away like that?! Why are you treating this like it's no big deal when we both know it is!"

Seriously! Why was Badd insisting that being forced to shoot teenagers or losing his gun was nothing to be concerned about? Byrne knew him better than that. Something was wrong that either Badd didn't want to admit to or would rather forget about. Didn't he see that they needed to talk about it? And now it was too tempting to just rip that book from the detective's hands and throw it on the floor, and Byrne wouldn't care how much of a scene it would make. (As if his raised voice probably wasn't attracting a little attention on its own, anyway. At least he had the decency to keep from yelling outright - they were in a library, after all.)

tasteoftruth October 7 2011, 01:10:34 UTC

Badd stared at the finger as if considering biting it off. He closed the book and indicated a nearby chair. "Sit down. You're making a scene," he said, voice still devoid of any emotion besides minor annoyance.

He didn't want the gun anyway. He had a suspicion that it would be returned to Byrne the way the papercutter was returned to Badd every night, and he didn't trust himself to not use it against innocents again. The kids on the bulletin seemed to have been forgiving, but they hadn't known what was going on in his head. The institute hadn't made a monster out of him...it would have been better if they had. He'd take being a howling beast over being a human who knew right from wrong but put murder on the wrong side of the line.

corvus_veritas October 7 2011, 22:15:43 UTC

"No." Byrne wasn't going to budge. But he would at least put the pointer finger away and lower his voice, as Badd was right. As much as he wanted to throw that book and yell and swear and act like a complete idiot, it wasn't going to do them any amount of good. Didn't need to make this worse by having people stare at them, especially if the soldiers noticed and decided to intervene in some fashion ( ... )

tasteoftruth October 8 2011, 14:52:59 UTC

Worried about him? Byrne was the one who had already died. He was the younger, weaker one and the one who needed to live far more than Badd did. "There's nothing to talk about," he said slowly, not raising his head to meet Byrne's gaze.

"They made me think I was subduing a prison break and stuck me in the rec field with a gun. And I started shooting at everyone who came through and I hit a few of them. One of 'em...couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen." And he hadn't even been the youngest. The boy with the spiky hair had seemed twelve in the dim light.

It hadn't been anyone he recognized, but what if it had? Skye had been so quick to make sure her sister hadn't been out there, she hadn't even bothered considering that Badd's moral fiber would have prevented him from harming a detective's daughter. And she was the veteran, so she was probably right.

If it had been Ema, or that little girl Anise...wanting to commit murder was almost as bad as doing it.

corvus_veritas October 8 2011, 23:43:45 UTC

There, now Badd was talking about it and they were making a little progress. Good. Byrne sighed; his moment of anger was passing. Now he was just plain worried sick...although truthfully, his brief temper tantrum had really been a weird form of worry all along, hadn't it?

"It wasn't your fault," he said, voice softer than it had been since the shift started, "Those sick bastards screwed with your head like they screwed with mine." And it was unforgivable. Maybe they'd hurt Byrne, messed with his head a little, made him hallucinate the image of his daughter, but that had only been a cruel trick to mess with him and him alone. This, they had forced Badd to physically hurt innocent children. Used him like a weapon. To hurt kids. How much lower could this place go on the moral scale? The more Aguilar was determined to make these people's lives a living hell, the more Byrne was convinced the lunatic was running this place just because he could. That was it. By this point Byrne was literally running out of reasons to explain why they would ( ... )

tasteoftruth October 9 2011, 00:41:54 UTC

Badd knocked Byrne's hand away and turned to stare at the corner. His voice stayed level, as if he was talking about someone else a long time ago and far away--he was so good at hiding his emotions. He'd almost broken down at Cece but he'd also been bleeding out and so nobody had noticed. With Byrne he'd just shut down. Nothing else to be done. No one was helped by mourning.

Or lies.

"They made me think it was a prison break," Badd murmured. "But I shot them of my own volition. I wanted to shoot them. Even if it was a prison break I had no right to try and kill kids." Hallucinations were one thing but somehow they had managed to mess with his values. They had broken his will with the slightest touch and built it back up again, and he hadn't been strong enough to even think that murdering those kids was bad.

Who knew what was in there now? What would he do tonight...where else had they twisted his morality?

corvus_veritas October 9 2011, 18:53:52 UTC

"No!" Stop blaming yourself! I just said it wasn't your fault, damnit! Byrne wanted to shout that, to grab Badd and shake all of the self-loathing out of him, but somehow he managed to stop himself from overreacting again. He shook his head. Calm, stay calm Faraday or else you won't be able to do anything to help him. He needs you now, not your hysterics.

"I refuse to believe that," he started again, slowly, "I know you, and I know what they can do. They're trying to break our will - you told me that yesterday. This place is hell bent on destroying us from the inside out. You think you wanted to shoot those kids, but--but you just think that! I know you would never--!" Calm. Remember, calm. "...You'd never want to do that. It was them, they made you think you wanted to ( ... )

tasteoftruth October 13 2011, 01:48:54 UTC

Badd's voice dipped lower, as it became harder to hold back his self-directed rage. "Byrne, they barely touched me and I broke for them." The memories of what happened after he was taken upstairs were violent but fuzzy. "Maybe my senses can be tricked, but I know what I was thinking. I wanted to shoot them. Kill them, if I had to. I blamed them for being here and I didn't even remember being tortured into believing it."

Badd scowled, though Byrne couldn't see him with his face turned. Damn idealist. "You always want to believe the best of people, Byrne. It's what got you killed. You can't believe the best of anyone...not even me."

If they could make him shoot at children they could make him do just about anything. They could make him hurt Byrne. If he was so much weaker than he thought, his friend was in danger just being around him.

corvus_veritas October 14 2011, 03:56:52 UTC

"No," Byrne protested yet again, a bit firmer this time, "No, you're wrong. Just because you don't remember them torturing you, that--that doesn't mean a thing! Who's to say they didn't wipe those memories from you or something?"

He reached his hand out to Badd again, this time for the other man's wrist. It hurt to hear Badd say something like 'you can't trust me', even bringing Byrne's own death into the picture, but it wasn't going to break his resolve. "I don't care what you keep saying you did or thought you did," he continued on; his voice was becoming noticeably shaky now. "I won't stop believing in you. Or anyone, for that matter. It's not worth it to distrust everyone, making enemies before you make friends. I don't care if I died with that belief!"

...He regretted that last sentence as soon as he said it, eyes widening a little to show that outwardly. Saying that was almost like suggesting he didn't care that he had died--or would die, which was wrong. He did care, he did, but he didn't want to just stop seeing the good in ( ... )

tasteoftruth October 18 2011, 23:04:03 UTC

Badd looked up. He stood like a monster rising up out of the ocean, rolling his shoulders back and glaring down at his partner. "You did, and then all your problems were over. I guess it doesn't matter how many people were hurt because of your stupidity...what happened to the people your 'trust' left without a father, or a clean prosecutor to avenge them, or a partner to back them up. Your naive trust didn't help them any, and it won't save you now if you don't have the sense to realize when someone's a danger to you ( ... )

corvus_veritas October 21 2011, 19:40:42 UTC

...... If words could be like knives, then Badd might as well have done Calisto's job and stabbed Byrne's heart out with that speech.

The prosecutor's face turned pale, as pale as if he'd just watched his puppy get run over by a truck, and he didn't budge until Badd had already begun walking away from him. At that point, he whirled around, said a whole load of things and would have shouted them if they weren't inconveniently in a library full of people. "Badd? Badd, no, I... Come on, I didn't mean it like that...Tyrell! Please, I'm sorry! Don't walk away from me! Tyrell!"

But Badd kept walking, and Byrne didn't have the strength to pursue him. Not after what he'd just said. It did matter how many people were hurt, goddamnit, but it wasn't stupid to trust--Calisto had just--it wasn't--didn't mean to say it like that... No, god no, why was this happening? He said one sentence wrong--one sentence--and now Badd was pissed off at him and it would be a miracle if the old detective changed his mind anytime soon. And it was all Byrne's ( ... )

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