Edelpocalypse fic
Characters: Jack, Edgeworth
A million deaths was a statistic, and so was one. So were one thousand, four hundred and fifteen.
"Don' even know what fuckin' happened," muttered security Jack Kelly one afternoon. Of late he'd tended towards silent resentment; any breaks with this disposition would come in the form of reduced silence rather than reduced resentment. If Kelly had some point to make, he shouldn't have resorted to taciturnity punctuated with brief periods of veiled implications. He was just wasting time.
Strange, though, that Kelly would say such a thing. There was no lack of documentation of what, precisely, had happened. Some samples:
-Patient 35449: A prefrontal lobotomy had rendered the patient unable to speak or care for himself. He'd survived the operation by six months; some five months after the operation, his roommate (Patient 35022) had been murdered in a fit of rage by Patient 31101. 35022's replacement had been self-absorbed by generous accounts, all but catatonic with panic by reports less kind: he hadn't made sure that the patient, fifteen years old, who'd once been brash and loud and joyous and fearless, whose procedure had been framed as a favor to the other patients who would no longer have to put up with the shouting, had fed himself. So 35449 had died.
-Patient 45456: The patient, who had claimed to be able to do magic, had stepped on an exposed piece of metal in the showers. The injury had become infected and had attracted the interest of a bored Dr. Mayuri Kurotsuchi, for whom said claim to superhuman abilities had been cause enough for interest. Dr. Kurotsuchi had picked apart the foot and then moved up. The leg had been amputated. Patient 45456 had died in a fall three weeks later. The exposed metal had not been removed.
-Patient 50958: The patient had been "a stuck-up little shit," from a signed statement by head nurse Paul Morlock. He had engaged in a number of forms of nonviolent protest, including hunger strikes and sit-ins. Two weeks after his arrival, head of security Gary Smith had personally gone to oversee his punishment. Patient 50958 had died a few days later of internal injuries.
-Patients 30994 and 41233: The patients had initiated a relationship by all accounts no more than two weeks before their deaths. Nevertheless, they had evidently committed some sort of lover's suicide. Their bodies were discovered with their hands still intertwined.
-Patient 23502: Patient had suffered from delusions of immortality. Security Hidan had disproven said claims, though when asked to give a full account had refused, citing religious grounds.
-Patient 39998: Found dismembered on the floor of her cell. On the ceiling above her someone had illustrated a map of the stars in her blood.
-Patient 56023: Suicide by drinking cleaning fluid when recruited into janitorial duty.
-Patient 31883: Suicide by slicing throat on shattered glass.
-Patient 20744: Suicide by hanging.
-Patient 69345: Murdered by Patient 21842.
-Patient 44992: Murdered by Patient 21842.
-Patient 41009: Murdered by Patient 21842.
-Patient 55837: Murdered by Patient 39800.
-Patient 46882: Murdered by Paul Morlock.
-Patient 39085: Murdered by Jessica Sanders.
-Patient 42852: Died under uncertain circumstances.
-Patient 38669: Murdered and partially consumed.
-Patient 45923: Decapitated sometime on the evening of November 19th.
-Patient 59984: Partially flayed. Died of infection.
-Patient 48255: Tongue removed. Died of infection.
-Patient 30599: Lobotomized. Died of infection.
-Patient 66322: Lobotomized. Died of infection.
-Patient 55610: Lobotomized. Died of infection.
-Patient 39221: Typhoid.
-Patient 45000: Influenza.
-Patient 39918: Rubella.
-Patient 20098: Influenza.
-Patient 66341: Dehydration.
-Patient 49444: Starvation.
-Patient 55413: Vivisection.
"Chris', yeah, real nice," muttered Jack Kelly, staring off to the side. "Thanks fer tellin' me. Needed a catch-up." Quieter: "As if I didn' know."
---
Clean hot water and tea were constantly available. The tea itself wasn't the highest quality, but it was better than nothing, and better than the bitter brew produced by what was rationed to the lower staff. Of the three varieties available, the best by far was the simple, unflavored black tea; it tended to get bitter rather than strong, but the flavor itself was clean, and it had a pleasant aftertaste. The green tea had a decidedly fishy flavor; that undertaste had been mitigated by the mint that had until recently been growing in the office, but the mint plant had died. The Earl Gray tasted more of must than of bergamot. Sometimes it was nevertheless worth drinking.
"Dunno," Kelly had said with a shrug. "Guess they're all pretty good."
It was a wishy-washy answer. It was absurd to expect anything else.
A tin of cookies had been stretched to last a few weeks and had improved the taste of the tea considerably. Those had been a pleasant few weeks. It had been in early summer, and the field outside the window had for a few days been populated with a purple flower. Though the window itself would not open, the weather outside looked quite lovely. For a day or so it hadn't been overcast and the sun had shone through the window and there'd been very little to do, the entire population perhaps soothed by the weather they couldn't even see. Kelly, too, had been comparatively cheery, the tired shell of his defensive irony burnished for just a little while into how it had been - slightly harsh, slightly twisted, mostly good-humored.
Then the cookies had run out and the flowers had died. It had, of course, been an inevitability.
"This one ain't bad," Kelly said, drinking the Earl Gray, weariness bruising his eyes.
---
It was a matter of organization and it was a matter of efficiency and it was a matter of maintaining face. Others on the upper staff handled the contact with patients and lower staff; what was left was simple streamlining. The serial numbers were an innovation in which to take enormous, heartfelt pride, of course. They had the dual benefits of dehumanizing the patients and making the records more orderly, easier to find. But there were other smaller innovations, too, no less beneficial to the institution as a whole. Putting the patients to work, for example - it allowed less time for resentment and reduced the strain on the staff so that they could concentrate more on their therapeutic duties. Instituting a rewards system had led more than one patient to report another for a larger room or more luxurious meal; now they were less likely to trust one another and less likely to foment rebellion.
Of course, those innovations had been in the first few years. Things ran smoothly now. There was no need for anything new, now, because there was no threat. It was all simply routine, continuing things as they had been and as they would always be, working perhaps towards some goal or perhaps towards nothing at all. The institution had reached its Platonic ideal.
---
There'd been a note left in the in-box. They'd be getting a new variety of tea soon. It would be a smoked lapsang souchong, imported (ran the bubbly, cheerful, familiar handwriting, inscribed in pink ink) straight from the Himalayas, delicious with all sweets.
"Tha's i'," said Kelly, his brow furrowed, the corners of his mouth twisting dangerously low. "Tha's yer good news."
It was surprising that he acted in this way. Kelly had any number of duties, executed with a grim sort of faith; he hardly made a mistake and never faltered, throwing himself into his work wholeheartedly. It wasn't exactly work that allowed much free time. Nevertheless, he came by every day to drink a cup of tea. It seemed as though he would have been excited about being able to try a new variety.
"Don' matter none," Kelly said, a strange sort of force in his voice.
But again it was odd. And honestly, this truly was good news, and quite relevant to Kelly himself.
But Kelly had stared, then slowly closed his jaw and worked it. "Got a question fer ya," he asked after a long moment of uncomfortable silence. "Answer i' or jus' think on i'. Th' fuck're ya even doin'? Th' fuck ya even take this job for? Ya even remember?"
There was another long pause. Kelly was the one who broke.
"I don' even fuckin' like tea," he muttered.
Edgeworth stared at him and tried to think of something to say.
---
Here was what he finally came up with, as Kelly was standing to leave:
"It's, ah, your birthday tomorrow, by the way, isn't it?" he asked, and looked down at the papers on the desk before him.
There was a pause. "Yea'," Kelly finally answered, his tone wary, his expression still dangerous. "Surprised ya remembered."
Edgeworth didn't respond. He just flipped to the next page. There was a pause before Kelly left.
---
He remembered the reasons he had taken the job. He remembered quite clearly. He was not, after all, a fool, nor in a dream. He had taken the job when it was offered him because he knew that it was what was necessary. In those days, things had been uncertain and chaotic, and he'd known that people would turn to violence. He'd thought he could prevent that. He had, perhaps a few weeks previous to his acceptance of the position, realized that there was no chance to break free. He'd realized in a fundamental way he never had before that they were all going to die here. He'd thought he might at least improve the quality of life, if only a little.
That was why he'd taken the job. Later he'd held onto it because it was simply work.
Now he didn't know. He wasn't sure. Because when Jack, jaw still gritted from the argument that had resulted when Edgeworth had refused to take an oral report, insisting instead that it had to be written down, slapped the form down on his desk, Edgeworth had felt nothing more than a flash of annoyance. Because here was what Kelly was supposed to have written:
Date: 9/17/88
Supervising staff: Jack Kelly
Patient: 20508
Relevant information: Patient has recovered from comatose state.
Instead, he wrote "comotose," and rather than the serial number he'd written "Reeve Tuesti." And all Edgeworth felt, as he looked down at that paper, was annoyed.
A million deaths was a statistic, and so was one. So were one thousand, four hundred and fifteen.
"Don' even know what fuckin' happened," muttered security Jack Kelly one afternoon. Of late he'd tended towards silent resentment; any breaks with this disposition would come in the form of reduced silence rather than reduced resentment. If Kelly had some point to make, he shouldn't have resorted to taciturnity punctuated with brief periods of veiled implications. He was just wasting time.
Strange, though, that Kelly would say such a thing. There was no lack of documentation of what, precisely, had happened. Some samples:
-Patient 35449: A prefrontal lobotomy had rendered the patient unable to speak or care for himself. He'd survived the operation by six months; some five months after the operation, his roommate (Patient 35022) had been murdered in a fit of rage by Patient 31101. 35022's replacement had been self-absorbed by generous accounts, all but catatonic with panic by reports less kind: he hadn't made sure that the patient, fifteen years old, who'd once been brash and loud and joyous and fearless, whose procedure had been framed as a favor to the other patients who would no longer have to put up with the shouting, had fed himself. So 35449 had died.
-Patient 45456: The patient, who had claimed to be able to do magic, had stepped on an exposed piece of metal in the showers. The injury had become infected and had attracted the interest of a bored Dr. Mayuri Kurotsuchi, for whom said claim to superhuman abilities had been cause enough for interest. Dr. Kurotsuchi had picked apart the foot and then moved up. The leg had been amputated. Patient 45456 had died in a fall three weeks later. The exposed metal had not been removed.
-Patient 50958: The patient had been "a stuck-up little shit," from a signed statement by head nurse Paul Morlock. He had engaged in a number of forms of nonviolent protest, including hunger strikes and sit-ins. Two weeks after his arrival, head of security Gary Smith had personally gone to oversee his punishment. Patient 50958 had died a few days later of internal injuries.
-Patients 30994 and 41233: The patients had initiated a relationship by all accounts no more than two weeks before their deaths. Nevertheless, they had evidently committed some sort of lover's suicide. Their bodies were discovered with their hands still intertwined.
-Patient 23502: Patient had suffered from delusions of immortality. Security Hidan had disproven said claims, though when asked to give a full account had refused, citing religious grounds.
-Patient 39998: Found dismembered on the floor of her cell. On the ceiling above her someone had illustrated a map of the stars in her blood.
-Patient 56023: Suicide by drinking cleaning fluid when recruited into janitorial duty.
-Patient 31883: Suicide by slicing throat on shattered glass.
-Patient 20744: Suicide by hanging.
-Patient 69345: Murdered by Patient 21842.
-Patient 44992: Murdered by Patient 21842.
-Patient 41009: Murdered by Patient 21842.
-Patient 55837: Murdered by Patient 39800.
-Patient 46882: Murdered by Paul Morlock.
-Patient 39085: Murdered by Jessica Sanders.
-Patient 42852: Died under uncertain circumstances.
-Patient 38669: Murdered and partially consumed.
-Patient 45923: Decapitated sometime on the evening of November 19th.
-Patient 59984: Partially flayed. Died of infection.
-Patient 48255: Tongue removed. Died of infection.
-Patient 30599: Lobotomized. Died of infection.
-Patient 66322: Lobotomized. Died of infection.
-Patient 55610: Lobotomized. Died of infection.
-Patient 39221: Typhoid.
-Patient 45000: Influenza.
-Patient 39918: Rubella.
-Patient 20098: Influenza.
-Patient 66341: Dehydration.
-Patient 49444: Starvation.
-Patient 55413: Vivisection.
"Chris', yeah, real nice," muttered Jack Kelly, staring off to the side. "Thanks fer tellin' me. Needed a catch-up." Quieter: "As if I didn' know."
---
Clean hot water and tea were constantly available. The tea itself wasn't the highest quality, but it was better than nothing, and better than the bitter brew produced by what was rationed to the lower staff. Of the three varieties available, the best by far was the simple, unflavored black tea; it tended to get bitter rather than strong, but the flavor itself was clean, and it had a pleasant aftertaste. The green tea had a decidedly fishy flavor; that undertaste had been mitigated by the mint that had until recently been growing in the office, but the mint plant had died. The Earl Gray tasted more of must than of bergamot. Sometimes it was nevertheless worth drinking.
"Dunno," Kelly had said with a shrug. "Guess they're all pretty good."
It was a wishy-washy answer. It was absurd to expect anything else.
A tin of cookies had been stretched to last a few weeks and had improved the taste of the tea considerably. Those had been a pleasant few weeks. It had been in early summer, and the field outside the window had for a few days been populated with a purple flower. Though the window itself would not open, the weather outside looked quite lovely. For a day or so it hadn't been overcast and the sun had shone through the window and there'd been very little to do, the entire population perhaps soothed by the weather they couldn't even see. Kelly, too, had been comparatively cheery, the tired shell of his defensive irony burnished for just a little while into how it had been - slightly harsh, slightly twisted, mostly good-humored.
Then the cookies had run out and the flowers had died. It had, of course, been an inevitability.
"This one ain't bad," Kelly said, drinking the Earl Gray, weariness bruising his eyes.
---
It was a matter of organization and it was a matter of efficiency and it was a matter of maintaining face. Others on the upper staff handled the contact with patients and lower staff; what was left was simple streamlining. The serial numbers were an innovation in which to take enormous, heartfelt pride, of course. They had the dual benefits of dehumanizing the patients and making the records more orderly, easier to find. But there were other smaller innovations, too, no less beneficial to the institution as a whole. Putting the patients to work, for example - it allowed less time for resentment and reduced the strain on the staff so that they could concentrate more on their therapeutic duties. Instituting a rewards system had led more than one patient to report another for a larger room or more luxurious meal; now they were less likely to trust one another and less likely to foment rebellion.
Of course, those innovations had been in the first few years. Things ran smoothly now. There was no need for anything new, now, because there was no threat. It was all simply routine, continuing things as they had been and as they would always be, working perhaps towards some goal or perhaps towards nothing at all. The institution had reached its Platonic ideal.
---
There'd been a note left in the in-box. They'd be getting a new variety of tea soon. It would be a smoked lapsang souchong, imported (ran the bubbly, cheerful, familiar handwriting, inscribed in pink ink) straight from the Himalayas, delicious with all sweets.
"Tha's i'," said Kelly, his brow furrowed, the corners of his mouth twisting dangerously low. "Tha's yer good news."
It was surprising that he acted in this way. Kelly had any number of duties, executed with a grim sort of faith; he hardly made a mistake and never faltered, throwing himself into his work wholeheartedly. It wasn't exactly work that allowed much free time. Nevertheless, he came by every day to drink a cup of tea. It seemed as though he would have been excited about being able to try a new variety.
"Don' matter none," Kelly said, a strange sort of force in his voice.
But again it was odd. And honestly, this truly was good news, and quite relevant to Kelly himself.
But Kelly had stared, then slowly closed his jaw and worked it. "Got a question fer ya," he asked after a long moment of uncomfortable silence. "Answer i' or jus' think on i'. Th' fuck're ya even doin'? Th' fuck ya even take this job for? Ya even remember?"
There was another long pause. Kelly was the one who broke.
"I don' even fuckin' like tea," he muttered.
Edgeworth stared at him and tried to think of something to say.
---
Here was what he finally came up with, as Kelly was standing to leave:
"It's, ah, your birthday tomorrow, by the way, isn't it?" he asked, and looked down at the papers on the desk before him.
There was a pause. "Yea'," Kelly finally answered, his tone wary, his expression still dangerous. "Surprised ya remembered."
Edgeworth didn't respond. He just flipped to the next page. There was a pause before Kelly left.
---
He remembered the reasons he had taken the job. He remembered quite clearly. He was not, after all, a fool, nor in a dream. He had taken the job when it was offered him because he knew that it was what was necessary. In those days, things had been uncertain and chaotic, and he'd known that people would turn to violence. He'd thought he could prevent that. He had, perhaps a few weeks previous to his acceptance of the position, realized that there was no chance to break free. He'd realized in a fundamental way he never had before that they were all going to die here. He'd thought he might at least improve the quality of life, if only a little.
That was why he'd taken the job. Later he'd held onto it because it was simply work.
Now he didn't know. He wasn't sure. Because when Jack, jaw still gritted from the argument that had resulted when Edgeworth had refused to take an oral report, insisting instead that it had to be written down, slapped the form down on his desk, Edgeworth had felt nothing more than a flash of annoyance. Because here was what Kelly was supposed to have written:
Date: 9/17/88
Supervising staff: Jack Kelly
Patient: 20508
Relevant information: Patient has recovered from comatose state.
Instead, he wrote "comotose," and rather than the serial number he'd written "Reeve Tuesti." And all Edgeworth felt, as he looked down at that paper, was annoyed.