"I've got a strong stomach, sure, but I think your file went into it plenty."
She pops a second half-dozen carton of eggs out of the fridge, just in case he wants to throw in a few more.
"My mental framework says that even if your decision-making takes a hit, as long as you have some ability to make choices, you have the ability to make better ones, even if it's harder for you than it is for other people."
"You'd be wrong." The sticky, potatoey mess is considered for a long moment before he avails himself on an egg or two further, mixing carefully. Consistency is fine, it goes back on the pan, thin enough to hopefully crunch up. "If it was as simple as 'make better choices', none of us would have had the problems we did. Not just Genesis, Sephiroth or myself, but every single SOLDIER, monster and person we infected. This wasn't the equivalent of getting drunk and making a few bad choices."
"Who says making better choices is simple?" Shaw asks, arching an eyebrow at him. "It's hard as hell, not to mention confusing and complicated. A lot of the time you don't know what the right or wrong choice was until you're looking back on it in retrospect, and sometimes not even then."
The knife is put down, as is the pan. It should go in the oven but having something in his hands right then would have been a terrible idea, had he access to his full strength. Limited only to human norms, it's .. safer, he can't bend steel as he is. "You're not listening. This isn't some debate about morality and choices and what makes a person a person. There's no cure. There's no way back once it starts. If it happened to you, you would degrade once infected with our cells, just as we degraded. You will kill, and you will want to. Your body will warp and mutate, and you will become a monster. You will hate, you will rage, you will find excuses to lash out, and take as many with you as you can. It is inevitable, and it is terminal."
Angeal points one eggy, potato-and-cheese shredded finger at Shaw, expression dark, voice a low growl. It's not a sound that should come out of a human throat, turning his voice rough and grating, but there's stranger onboard this ship. "Sooner or later, you will be an unthinking creature of destruction, until something puts you out of your misery or you disintegrate. I watched it .. again and again and again. It isn't something you willpower your way out of. We are monsters, we are an infectious disease, and sooner or later instinct and nature would win, just like it did with ALL of our victims. My mistake wasn't in making sure I died before I stopped being able to think or could spread my cells any further, it was that I involved Zack. I should have killed Genesis myself and then seen to my own death without dragging him into it."
And. And maybe Sephiroth too. He didn't know if he had what it took to bring down Sephiroth. Maybe he would have died trying.
Shaw is entirely stony in response: not in a hostile, angry, or resentful way, but in a way that aggressive tone and body language aren't actually touching her. She's fully engaged, completely present with him as she meets his gaze, but nothing about her indicates that she's going to back off just yet.
"That sucks," she says, matter-of-factly. "It's a horrifying thing to have hanging over your head. But you aren't there yet. You still have control here, you still had some control at home, and you owe it to yourself and the people around you to keep using it well, the way you were trying to before you decided to have Zack take you out. You also have a hell of a lot more resources and options here than you did back there. You got any idea what Zack's deal is? I've never talked to him about it, but I'd put a lot of money on it being related to doing something to fix this mess."
Only now is the tray snatched back up - and put with precise care in the oven to cook. He'd always prided himself on his self-control, and it hadn't failed yet in the Barge. Throwing things around in a temper tantrum might be tempting, but not something Angeal indulged in.
"It's irrelevant here, and the only reason I have an opportunity to change things. The Admiral's been gracious enough to put a stop to all of that while I'm onboard. Probably part of routine disarming of inmates. If I am sent back to the time I died even temporarily returned to health I should have time to ..do something." As fast as anger came on it ebbs by degrees; it's not an emotion that he can hold onto for long. Never could. "I don't know what any of Zack's deals were, but if any involved what we are and what happened to us, it didn't affect my fate any." Timelines may diverge, with the Admiral's interference. Whatever saving happened may have simply happened to another Angeal.
"Okay, first of all, no way is it irrelevant," Shaw says, as she steps back to give him better access to the oven door. Stretching up on her tiptoes, she pulls a bottle of whiskey down from an upper cabinet. This is an intense conversation, and intense conversations call for a drink - maybe not during, but certainly after.
"It colors how you think about yourself, your past, and your actions. And second of all - I'm using Zack as an example, not as, I dunno, some kind of catch-all solution. I'm not saying Zack's gonna fix everything, so don't even worry about it. I'm saying he's using this place as a resource, and you can, too."
"Irrelevant going forward in this specific way," the SOLDIER grumbles, wiping his hands on his pants instead of anything more useful like an apron or towel. "Here I am not dying, losing my mind or able to cause anyone else to suffer the same affliction." Still a monster, but one with its wings clipped and claws filed and teeth extracted; he can do no harm that he doesn't intend to, and it was one of the greatest blessings this ship offered. Not a day went by where he wasn't grateful for it.
It absolutely colored things, but so did having that pressure stripped away. "Let's pretend I haven't been making use of anything here and have just been spinning wheels since I arrived." He crosses his arms over his chest, watching not Shaw but the oven. "What resources should I be making use of?"
"Before I can answer that - I have to know what you've been doing already."
Though she thinks he probably has been spinning his wheels in a lot of ways, she's under no illusions that it's due to laziness or boredom. Guilt, self-loathing, and fear are heavy burdens, and the best way to keep them from consuming you is distraction, not inactivity.
"You work a lot, yeah?" She nods at the oven. "You're doing this in your off-time."
Angeal shakes his head. "Nah, assume I've been doing nothing at all, since you're putting off a pretty strong impression that I must be.. I don't know, just sitting in my room all day feeling sorry for myself." The longer they speak the more certain he's becoming that she's gotten ... inaccurate information from somewhere, and has run with it. "You put it out there, so follow through. Zack's using this place as a resource, I'm apparently not, what should I be making use of?"
"Dude, you drummed up an industrial kitchen's worth of potatoes to cook all by yourself; the last thing I think you're doing is sitting around. I think you're probably doing a lot of work to keep yourself from wallowing, but whatever you are, you're not lazy or pathetic. Or the kind of guy who feels sorry for himself."
Self-pity is pretty distinct from self-hatred, after all. She leans back against the counter, crossing her legs at the ankle as she studies him.
"A deal's the kind of thing that's far into the future. You could get one someday, and it could help you out in stopping the progression of this thing, but I'm not gonna ask you to depend on something that's twenty steps ahead of where you are right now. So I'm thinking, step one, we find you some super-powered babysitters - so that if we end up with a flood that lifts whatever the Admiral did that's stopped your infections in its tracks, there'll be people who can help rein you in and keep you contained, without you feeling like your only options are hurting people or dying. Back home, no one's immune. That's not going to be the case here."
There's more to go, but until the first round is finished and he knows how it went, peeling the next wasn't going to work .. they'd just get browned. "Habit," the SOLDIER rumbles. "Been kept busy since I was a kid, hard to stop." Not that he wanted to. Being active was being productive, and it felt nice to be able to do something more meaningful with his time than just sort magazines or something.
Deals would mean graduation and being a Warden and graduating his inmate - that's a long, long way away, assuming the Admiral even offered him the position. Counting on it was a bad idea, and so after a moment of consideration, it's put away. He's content with Zack's four - that's a grand track record. "If the Admiral for some reason lifts constraints, then 'contained' is the best possible option, not a babysitter. The true prisons down below cancel anything supernatural, don't they? If something happens, putting me there is for the best."
He probably won't even put up a fight! "Giving me a superpowered babysitter just risks having a superpowered second Angeal running around. Not really worth it, even if the Admiral can reverse the process."
"I didn't say 'someone immune' just to say it," Shaw says. She pulls down two glasses, setting them next to the whiskey bottle, but doesn't pour just yet. "I don't just mean the Admiral undoing it or bringing people back to life - I'm talking people for whom the laws of physics on your world won't apply. I bet I could find at least three wardens who could do it."
In truth, she can only think of one off the top of her head - but the Admiral nets enough powerful, invulnerable wardens that she's banking on there being a lot more.
Angeal rakes a hand through his hair, leaving bits of cheese behind. He's going to need a shower later. "Unless they also have the power to blanket nullify everyone in their vicinity, you're not ... treating this the way you need to be." There's frustration creeping into his tone, but he's not sure he's going to adequately explain this to someone else in a way that's going to get through.
"You're HOPING they might be immune, you don't actually know, and I'm unwilling to find out the hard way if you're wrong. And even if they're immune, what about everyone else? You need to stop thinking about this as ... something contained to just me, something that can be mitigated with handcuffs or a single magical individual with take-down skills and a sleep spell. Unconstrained by the Admiral, I.. it's an infectious pathogen that has nothing to do with physics to begin with. Stop thinking 'person' and start thinking 'plague'."
Admittedly, blood borne and thus harder to pass on than a common cold; if Hollander could have found a way to turn him or Genesis into an airborne contagion surely he would have just to see what would happen. "Though frankly it's medical I should be discussing that with."
"Good news," she says, lifting a hand and wiggling her fingers at him. "I'm medical. Now, how about you don't assume I'm gonna go about this in the dumbest way possible. We won't assume they're good for this and then spring it on them in the moment, we'll talk to them about it - here and now, before any emergencies happen. If I'm wrong, and if John Doe the all-powerful shapeshifter who doesn't even have to have a body if he doesn't want to says that he'd somehow be susceptible to an infection, then we'll regroup and try something else."
A pause.
"You're not a pathogen. You're infected by a pathogen. And to get you to Zero - which is a good idea - we're going to need that immune person with takedown skills."
"Don't know if the file left it out but it's wired into my DNA, so it's me, not something I'm infected with. Pretending otherwise doesn't help." Part of not being human, he can be part disease AND human shaped! "For someone in medical your ideas of containment and control leave a lot to be worried about, Shaw."
The ovens door is opened slightly to check for color and signs of crispness. "If things progress at the same rate as before I should be reasonably clearheaded for at least a couple of weeks before the impulse gets too strong. I shouldn't need to be forced, just .. kept contained until restrictions resume. Treat me like a plague carrier until then. Those white head to toe suits, all of it."
"It's wired to your DNA, but you're still more than just the pathogen; my point still stands. And maybe at home it would give you that much time, but..."
She shakes her head.
"Floods do all kinds of crazy things. There's no way we can mitigate every single bad thing this place could throw at us, but we can still try, and lining up some people willing and able to non-lethally get control of you is a part of that. I want you to be part of that conversation. And if you wanna do another meeting with medical, that sounds like a solid plan, too."
There's a noncommital grunt. "And I already explained this isn't something you can willpower your way out of, so being a person is in this specific context, kind of meaningless." He'll add the context part this time, just in case.
He's seen a total of one flood directly, with the fog and rust and blood, and it had been .. singularly unpleasant, but Angeal had suffered no direct effects from it. The people around him though.. Cloud, and his pathetic, desperately needy copy.. the things in the dark.. "..If I do talk to someone in medical, and I don't mean you, I want it clean slate. Don't talk to them ahead of time. Preconceived notions can influence diagnostics; if you're told you're looking for a chicken you're not going to be keeping an eye out for chocobos."
"Diagnostics?" Shaw echoes, her brow furrowing. "The hell are you thinking about diagnostics for? You don't need to be diagnosed; you already know what the pathogen is. Shouldn't you be giving them as much intel as you can, up front, without making them try to puzzle it out?"
"Because frankly, Shaw, you don't know as much about what this is as I do and if you talk to someone about it you could send them off on a wild goose chase pursuing the wrong damn thing." Another peek into the oven, it's a good reason to keep his attention on something not his Warden, though his tone's back to tinged with irritation. "I didn't say I wouldn't, just that I don't want YOU to. If you roll in and tell someone all about how I have space flu, and it's actually space cancer, you've just wasted all of our time."
"Got it," she says, giving him a quick nod. "For the record, I don't think it's a flu you can just walk off, I think we should be looking into chemo instead of assisted suicide. But I won't approach them ahead of time, and I'll let you do the talking. I do want to be there, though."
"I'm not going to a doctor appointment with someone who isn't family," Angeal rumbles, though something shifts from irritation to amusement. "I can ask for a recording, or keep one if the communicators let me record, but a lot of medical exams require stripping and we're not that good of friends yet."
Public showers are fine, but physicals are apparently where he draws the line. "I'm sure afterward whoever I speak to will want to go over it all with you anyway."
"I'm not asking to peek in on an actual exam, dude; come on," she says, rolling her eyes. "I'm still thinking intervention and prevention here. Giving the medical staff an overview of signs and symptoms to look out for, and working out steps to take if this thing breaks loose on the Barge - that's what I want to be there for. If you want check-ups, that's a good idea too, but that's your business."
It takes him a moment to hunt down a pair of potholders and fish out this particular attempt at hashbrowns with cheese. It smells.. like hashbrowns and cheese, but might not have the crispiness he's after. One way to find out! "I admit I don't know how these kinds of things go on other planets, or even other companies, but at Shinra, you go in for anything, and you're expected to do the entire workup. Blood draws, physical exams, whole nine yards. Even if you're there for a sniffle. Always seemed reasonable to me, but I guess that's not standard?"
"Sure it is," she says, shrugging. "But considering everything we'd been talking about up to this point, I just figured we were talking disaster preparedness debriefings, not doctor's appointments. So why don't we do both - I'm there for the first, and you do the second solo. Deal?"
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2025-01-07 08:19 pm (UTC)She pops a second half-dozen carton of eggs out of the fridge, just in case he wants to throw in a few more.
"My mental framework says that even if your decision-making takes a hit, as long as you have some ability to make choices, you have the ability to make better ones, even if it's harder for you than it is for other people."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-07 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-07 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-07 08:54 pm (UTC)Angeal points one eggy, potato-and-cheese shredded finger at Shaw, expression dark, voice a low growl. It's not a sound that should come out of a human throat, turning his voice rough and grating, but there's stranger onboard this ship. "Sooner or later, you will be an unthinking creature of destruction, until something puts you out of your misery or you disintegrate. I watched it .. again and again and again. It isn't something you willpower your way out of. We are monsters, we are an infectious disease, and sooner or later instinct and nature would win, just like it did with ALL of our victims. My mistake wasn't in making sure I died before I stopped being able to think or could spread my cells any further, it was that I involved Zack. I should have killed Genesis myself and then seen to my own death without dragging him into it."
And. And maybe Sephiroth too. He didn't know if he had what it took to bring down Sephiroth. Maybe he would have died trying.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-07 09:23 pm (UTC)"That sucks," she says, matter-of-factly. "It's a horrifying thing to have hanging over your head. But you aren't there yet. You still have control here, you still had some control at home, and you owe it to yourself and the people around you to keep using it well, the way you were trying to before you decided to have Zack take you out. You also have a hell of a lot more resources and options here than you did back there. You got any idea what Zack's deal is? I've never talked to him about it, but I'd put a lot of money on it being related to doing something to fix this mess."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-07 09:38 pm (UTC)"It's irrelevant here, and the only reason I have an opportunity to change things. The Admiral's been gracious enough to put a stop to all of that while I'm onboard. Probably part of routine disarming of inmates. If I am sent back to the time I died even temporarily returned to health I should have time to ..do something." As fast as anger came on it ebbs by degrees; it's not an emotion that he can hold onto for long. Never could. "I don't know what any of Zack's deals were, but if any involved what we are and what happened to us, it didn't affect my fate any." Timelines may diverge, with the Admiral's interference. Whatever saving happened may have simply happened to another Angeal.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-11 03:25 pm (UTC)"It colors how you think about yourself, your past, and your actions. And second of all - I'm using Zack as an example, not as, I dunno, some kind of catch-all solution. I'm not saying Zack's gonna fix everything, so don't even worry about it. I'm saying he's using this place as a resource, and you can, too."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-11 05:56 pm (UTC)It absolutely colored things, but so did having that pressure stripped away. "Let's pretend I haven't been making use of anything here and have just been spinning wheels since I arrived." He crosses his arms over his chest, watching not Shaw but the oven. "What resources should I be making use of?"
no subject
Date: 2025-01-16 08:02 pm (UTC)Though she thinks he probably has been spinning his wheels in a lot of ways, she's under no illusions that it's due to laziness or boredom. Guilt, self-loathing, and fear are heavy burdens, and the best way to keep them from consuming you is distraction, not inactivity.
"You work a lot, yeah?" She nods at the oven. "You're doing this in your off-time."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-16 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-16 10:24 pm (UTC)Self-pity is pretty distinct from self-hatred, after all. She leans back against the counter, crossing her legs at the ankle as she studies him.
"A deal's the kind of thing that's far into the future. You could get one someday, and it could help you out in stopping the progression of this thing, but I'm not gonna ask you to depend on something that's twenty steps ahead of where you are right now. So I'm thinking, step one, we find you some super-powered babysitters - so that if we end up with a flood that lifts whatever the Admiral did that's stopped your infections in its tracks, there'll be people who can help rein you in and keep you contained, without you feeling like your only options are hurting people or dying. Back home, no one's immune. That's not going to be the case here."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-17 09:28 pm (UTC)Deals would mean graduation and being a Warden and graduating his inmate - that's a long, long way away, assuming the Admiral even offered him the position. Counting on it was a bad idea, and so after a moment of consideration, it's put away. He's content with Zack's four - that's a grand track record. "If the Admiral for some reason lifts constraints, then 'contained' is the best possible option, not a babysitter. The true prisons down below cancel anything supernatural, don't they? If something happens, putting me there is for the best."
He probably won't even put up a fight! "Giving me a superpowered babysitter just risks having a superpowered second Angeal running around. Not really worth it, even if the Admiral can reverse the process."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-20 09:20 pm (UTC)In truth, she can only think of one off the top of her head - but the Admiral nets enough powerful, invulnerable wardens that she's banking on there being a lot more.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-21 01:35 am (UTC)"You're HOPING they might be immune, you don't actually know, and I'm unwilling to find out the hard way if you're wrong. And even if they're immune, what about everyone else? You need to stop thinking about this as ... something contained to just me, something that can be mitigated with handcuffs or a single magical individual with take-down skills and a sleep spell. Unconstrained by the Admiral, I.. it's an infectious pathogen that has nothing to do with physics to begin with. Stop thinking 'person' and start thinking 'plague'."
Admittedly, blood borne and thus harder to pass on than a common cold; if Hollander could have found a way to turn him or Genesis into an airborne contagion surely he would have just to see what would happen. "Though frankly it's medical I should be discussing that with."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-21 01:51 am (UTC)A pause.
"You're not a pathogen. You're infected by a pathogen. And to get you to Zero - which is a good idea - we're going to need that immune person with takedown skills."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-21 02:07 am (UTC)The ovens door is opened slightly to check for color and signs of crispness. "If things progress at the same rate as before I should be reasonably clearheaded for at least a couple of weeks before the impulse gets too strong. I shouldn't need to be forced, just .. kept contained until restrictions resume. Treat me like a plague carrier until then. Those white head to toe suits, all of it."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-21 02:16 am (UTC)She shakes her head.
"Floods do all kinds of crazy things. There's no way we can mitigate every single bad thing this place could throw at us, but we can still try, and lining up some people willing and able to non-lethally get control of you is a part of that. I want you to be part of that conversation. And if you wanna do another meeting with medical, that sounds like a solid plan, too."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-21 02:22 am (UTC)He's seen a total of one flood directly, with the fog and rust and blood, and it had been .. singularly unpleasant, but Angeal had suffered no direct effects from it. The people around him though.. Cloud, and his pathetic, desperately needy copy.. the things in the dark.. "..If I do talk to someone in medical, and I don't mean you, I want it clean slate. Don't talk to them ahead of time. Preconceived notions can influence diagnostics; if you're told you're looking for a chicken you're not going to be keeping an eye out for chocobos."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-22 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-22 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-22 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-22 06:20 pm (UTC)Public showers are fine, but physicals are apparently where he draws the line. "I'm sure afterward whoever I speak to will want to go over it all with you anyway."
no subject
Date: 2025-01-22 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-22 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-22 07:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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