dear_mun | on mun's renewed inspiration

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on mun's renewed inspiration

Must I be subject to your nostalgic whims? We had our time together. We agreed we were done. I was happily retired from your roster.

You can't expect anyone else to indulge you in this. You said yourself, you've traded up to the latest model of "Whedon ice queen". Why bother calling in a General when you have the Cavalry?

[To be absolutely fair, it's the direction Agents of SHIELD is taking that's brought this on: the damaged genius and the memories rewritten.]

I'm the patron saint of loneliness. I make you uncomfortable. You don't miss me.

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I have very little patience for people who lie to me anymore.

[Or for comfort, or for trust. He watches those movements. Calm and poised. assured.]

I like board games.

Thank you.

[He's got a prodigious capacity for violence. The typist opines that he's a killer and a pyromaniac, and she's learned the hard way that certain tendencies don't scrub out. He might be an unconscionable risk. On the other hand, look at those cheekbones.]

I am not here to lie to you. No one in my house lies. In fact, they're utterly incapable of it.

I want to make things simple for you, Agent Ward. I want you to have a less complicated life. I want to lift any burden of responsibility you might feel, and remove any conflict or uncertainty. I want you to help me to help others; to fulfill needs, as I said.

If you accept my offer, you and I will agree upon a time in the future. On that day, everything I took from you, I would give back. As a parting gift, you could tell me what it is about yourself that you want to keep, and what you want to change. That would be one way I could compensate you for the time you spent with us.

You know that all of this is scientifically possible.

[She's showing no signs of dishonesty. She believes her own spiel, thoroughly and without reservation. Her very sincerity is part of what makes her so manipulative.]

Have I lied?

[There's only so far that someone can take this kind of thing. Not what she's saying, but what he is, what he's offered. It sounds too good to be true.

It sounds like, truthfully - what they did to Bucky Barnes.

but didn't he envy him? People will lie to you and betray you And his mind whispered to himself John Garrett.

That's just it. The heart of all of his betrayals go back to John and his mother. The hurt and heartache of it all. He trusted, but they lied.

She's not lying.]

No.

[It's not forever.] You're talking about a rest. A vacation.

[She tucks one ankle behind the other, primly sipping her tea. A sophisticated woman in a silk blouse and camisole and a pencil skirt. On her, it looks like tactical gear. She makes it seem bulletproof. She's no less a natural leader than the superior officers he'd had before. She did call herself a general.]

Yes. [This would be an inconvenient time for him to remember that Tahiti masqueraded in Coulson's mind as a vacation.]

Just like going to sleep and waking up. You would not be aware of the passage of time. You wouldn't dream. You'll rest completely.

[Resting.

The thought makes his shoulders hunch. There's a degree of anxiety leaving his body. She can probably see it.]

...It sounds too good to be true. But you believe in it.

I do believe in it.

[And there's a high price to that delusion. But where she's headed, where this ends for her, isn't ever a consideration while the mundane is playing at recruitment scenarios and helping to substantiate other people's Dollhouse AUs.

This time, when she smiles, it's more believably benign.

She'll refill his tea if it gets low. A small gesture, easy to read. Take your time. She's not busy.]

[There's another sip. Thoughtful. Just a vacation right? That's what she said.]

And after a period of time I'd get my memories back?

[He could deserve that. come back stronger. Better able to keep Skye safe.]

Of course. It would be criminal otherwise. [It's criminal regardless. In the interests of being as truthful as she assured him she would be, she amends the remark:] Morally reprehensible.

We function with some integrity.

[Her charges, her word. It isn't in the script, and yet she winds up promising them all.]

You'd be no worse off. I promise.

[he studies the table before nodding slowly] what do I have to do?

[Someone makes provisions for such eventualities.

She slides a contract across the table, with a pen on top, right to the spot he's been staring at.]

You sign. And then, very little else.

How long would you like to stay?

[He's welcome to ask what's typical. The pertinent section of his contract is blank for now.]

How long do most people stay?

[Just a vacation. He can handle that. Besides she believes in it and maybe...

Does he want to get shut down?

It's hard to think for yourself ~~At his current canon point.~~]

[Her canon point is completely variable. Sometimes everything that's going to happen has already happened. She knows what she knows. It's easy to play backward from there. It changes little things: whether she's realized the existence of the soul, how much she drinks and if she drinks at all, the extent to which she values power and control and whether she's learned to separate the two.

Regardless, it's nothing Ward needs to worry about.]

Five years.

[Under the circumstances it might be too much of a commitment for everyone involved.]

I don't expect that of you.

What would you say to one? [Just twelve short months.]

[One year.

He takes the pen, reading the top of the contract, scanning all the way down before signing his name and sliding it back to her.]

[An effective salesperson knows when to stop selling. She's made her pitch. She becomes an unobtrusive presence while he reads. He's a fast reader, anyway. There are no surprises lurking anywhere in the contract. Of note, at its core, it treats him as a patient participant in trial neurological research for a pharmaceutical company. Rossum.

Gently:] Any further questions?

When do we start?

[That sense of freedom.]

We could start now. Any delay would only be for your benefit; for instance, if there's something you'd like to do that can't wait a year.

[Skye and Fitz and Simmons. He shakes his head] I have all the time in the world. You just - tell me what I need to do. Not to mention where and when.]

[She's closer to being satisfied with that than not. She stands up.]

With me, please.

[Follow the Louboutins.]

What you need to do is sit in a specific chair.

You make it sound like you're expecting to have to put in more effort.

The methods I'm...familiar with for these sorts of things are a little more ... unorthodox.

[Difficult. The word is. He's seen people being brainwashed with HYDRA. She makes it sound easy.]

What a strange world it would be if there were ever an orthodox method. It is, after all, more common than most people suspect, and still not terribly common at all.

If I had to guess the major difference, I'd assume it was a matter of who the system is intended to benefit: the people operating the technology, or the person the technology is used upon. In this case, happily, everyone benefits.

[Once they're standing in front of the chair, she studies him while he studies it. He's scarred, she's given to understand, but repairs can be attempted.

There's a man in a sweater vest slotting a blank wedge, a storage device, into the head of the chair. DeWitt says nothing to him, even if his early FitzSimmons-like excess of energy means a certain likelihood that he'd want to say something to her.]

First, we're going to make a copy of your mind as it is. The requisite backup of your original personality. It isn't painful. I hesitate even to describe it as uncomfortable, speaking from personal experience.

[It's only mildly unpleasant. After that, a clean wipe, and then the brain-mapping and installation of Active architecture: that last part is painful, but what he won't remember doesn't count.]

[He doesn't really acknowledge the pain from that first part. He's trained to feel nothing in those situations but that last part -

"If you throw him the rope I'll throw you in there too!"

"Ward!"

"Don't do this Ward I know you're a good person."

"You can chose to be good-"

"You can chose to be"

"You can chose-"

He does scream, but really it's an involuntary reflex, writhing - that latent sense of "I've made a terrible mistake" disappears.

And he opens his eyes. It feels like days later and he's just so tired.]

...Did I fall asleep? I'm sorry. It won't happen again.

[If she's in the room at the time, which isn't often, she doesn't mind being the one to follow the script.]

For a little while.

[It probably is a mentally taxing ordeal, but beyond the initial step she really wouldn't know, herself. If it's any consolation, Ward's going to get some very nice Zac Posen pyjamas. And, of course, he doesn't know it, but it will happen again. He's going to have a treatment and "fall asleep" on a regular basis. She doesn't answer the apology but it's curious that he supplied one; not troubling, just curious.]

[Sitting up he rubs at his wrist before looking back at her and then at his hands again]

...Am I home?

[Regressing into a childlike state for someone who never had a childhood means going back to feeling...sorry. For everything that he never said sorry for.]

[On her part, a conversation with a doll means exercising a careful simplicity, making herself easier to understand, verbally and nonverbally. If she was a little maternal before, it's much more deliberate now.]

Yes. This is home.

[There are some things that you can't dig out of a human soul. Some truths that are far too ingrained.

Except that for the first time in years, in a whole lifetime, Grant Ward hears the word "home" and doesn't shiver.

Doesn't weep.

Doesn't want to go home or fight his way out.

Instead he smiles.]

That's good. I'm glad to be home.

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other thread's in captcha so just have this.

I'm so irrationally excited.

grant, look at your life. look at your choices.

literally planning terrible things with some AoS friends

count me in. and i vote "romeo" for the doll!state name.

Romeo it is! and def.