dear_mun | (no subject)

In or out?

[ Some people beg to be let out, others write diatribes demanding to be left alone. He mentions cruelty, but that could go either way. There are those who run towards it and there are those who spend their whole lives running from it. Aberdeen has been both in the past. Now there's only the job. ]

Undecided.

[ That was the whole point of this exercise - controlled environment, variable subjects, how well can you hold your cover on your own, without your controller? Cieran would rather be strangling someone, or putting a bullet through them.

Guns are simple. She seems like she'd understand the sentiment, if not in the exact same words. ]

You?

If there's a job, I do it.

[ If there are orders, she follows them. If there's a point, she tolerates it. She's a poor person but she's a good operative — if only given her very narrow specialization. Mostly she listens. She listens and she reports. Any other task and she knows someone else will be chosen instead.

Maybe that's kind of blindness, that level of faith. ]

Otherwise — boxed.

[ Blind faith is what they were raised in. You train, you learn, you work hard and get better - and when you're ready, you wait. Above all, you trust the person they give you, you respect the cover agent whose job it will be to die for you, or to retire you when you start to fail. You trust their judgment.

You trust what they tell you to do.

Cieran doesn't know any different from a carrot or a stick, because he's never had either. ]

Boxed is a strange word for whatever this is. [ Engage in conversation, establish a modicum of trust. The less threatening you seem, the more effective you are. Embry's voice. Cieran doesn't hear his own voice in his head anymore. ] Getting boxed happens often for you?

[ Textbook modes of engagement don't work with Aberdeen. She doesn't have tells, she doesn't do inflection and the topography of her expression shifts only when she speaks — which isn't often. Her eye contact isn't avoidant — if anything, it's aggressive. She stares hard, like she could pare you open if she just looked long enough, like she's concentrating on something very hard that is both in and beyond you. ]

"Often" is a subjective word.

[ Staring - he can take that. But where her gaze is seeking to agitate, or intimidate, Cieran's own is blank. As though a space to be filled completely, and what little exists is a polluted color of practiced passiveness. He's one of five, five of many, many parts of one whole.

Remember what you're told. ]

How would you define "often"? One out of a pattern of many?

[ Aberdeen is also part of one whole, though the Order has never been so tidy — not even in the very beginning when it was just the founders and the French. Lines have never been so clearly drawn and rather than black and white, the world is cast a dozen dozen shades of grey. Aberdeen's job is not to judge these different shades but rather to discern them, to be able to observe the various strings and understand the frequency at which they each vibrate.

Aberdeen is not subtle. If she experiences curiosity, she expresses it — there's a reason why she works from home rather than operate in the field. ]

You ask a lot of questions.

[ The problem with operating in the twenty-first century using Cold War era tactics is that some things that shouldn't survive the play of time, of course, had survived through tenacity and stubbornness. Antiquated means of murder and espionage have inherent disadvantages to them, with the advantages outnumbered by alternative choices both more efficient and accessible.

And yet, you couldn't find a more loyal set of agents as those the Project has trained. ]

It's kinda hard to have a conversation without them.

I don't have conversations.

[ The words are simple, straightforward and as subtle as gunfire but those that know her well enough know better than to engage Aberdeen in anything beyond the task at hand. While there are those who have managed to wriggle their way closer, it has not been an easy task for anyone involved and those that do manage something of an orbit around her know better than to expect anything in return beyond explicitly-made exchanges. ]

You must be awful at socializing.

[ And Cieran slips.

Pleasantness is something they're trained into; to be accessible but faintly remote, to be sociable but unmemorable, to leave no lingering impressions other than a face among many that doesn't stand out. They're taught to handle the long play, to be embedded in places where their only contact back "home" are clandestine meetings with their cover agent and controller - and sometimes they are one and the same.

Cieran is not allowed to be rude in public, unless protocol demands it.

(Until you are an agent, you are nothing but property.) ]

That was uncalled for, sorry.

[ That gets Aberdeen to tilt her head slightly, not unlike an owl that's looking at something that's just caught its attention and manages to hold it. Come to think of it, that entire mental image seems appropriate. The way her eyes aren't quite blank but manage to still be impenetrable behind their dark sheen. It's not quite predatory but falls short of emotive. Gears are working, thoughts are forming, unraveling and flying past that stare but observers aren't allowed access too it beyond the broadest strokes: the land mines that come out of Aberdeen's mouth and line the path of conversation. ]

Honesty will get your farther than pretense.

[ It's not a universal statement (Aberdeen's a mathematician and knows better than to apply things like absolutes to interactions). But it's true as far as her own specifics are concerned. In every case. One hundred precent success rate.

Honesty will always get a person farther with Aberdeen than politeness. ]

Honesty is not my advocacy.

[ The humor of this is not lost on Cieran; honesty about dishonesty has a certain irony to it, just a little. ]

It's yours?

[ She reminds him of Matthew - the open sharpness, the tangible look of being like a bird of prey. Would she have the same claws as he does, Cieran wonders. ]

Do rousing speeches of encouragement ever help the way one thinks they will?

[ she'll take realism and something to ground her over false encouragement any day. ]

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It depends on the person, right?

[ Cieran doesn't have an opinion either way. It's not how things work for them. ]

I suppose that is true. [ she taps a finger against her bottom lip thoughtfully. ] I have never been on the receiving end, but they seem to make soldiers enthusiastic well enough.

Sometimes it's not a good thing, to get a rise out of your men like this.

Emotions aren't very reliable.

It's not comforting to you?

I don't think choosing between a rock and a hard place is supposed to be comforting. Both seem like awful choices.