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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[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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on mun's renewed inspiration

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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.