wecanavenge | ✘ | 001

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✘ | 001 | VIDEO

[The video clicks on, and Erik is sitting at his desk, looking calm, but angry. He might start shouting, he might have a reasonable debate. It's hard to tell. He folds his hands on the desk top, and leans toward the camera.]

My name is Erik Lensherr. [Reasonable debate it seems, but there's a challenge in his face, his eyes, his voice as he goes on:] I am a mutant. I am a Jew. [He pauses for a fraction of an instant, like he's daring anyone to say anything. The instant passes, and his jaw tightens.]

I will not be remaining in your prison. You will release me, or we'll have a problem, you and I. Is that clear?

[He reaches off to the side, out of frame, and when his hands come back into view, he's lowering his helmet onto his head. (Still silver, he didn't have time to make it fabulous.)] And Charles? I hope you don't plan to spend your time here blending in. [Guilty spite. Sorry bro. :c]

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[He shrugs disinterestedly.]

You're in mixed company; though I myself boast no such abilities there are many that do.

You are an Inmate here. You mentioned being Jewish, and barring on the assumption that you consider yourself devout, then the best way to explain is to say that you died with something on your soul that would have prevented an easy passing into whatever afterlife you have in mind.

Here you have the opportunity to make up for whatever that 'something' happens to be, or you may earn the chance to return to life and make your own way as though things had not gone wrong. Or...you can stay once you're done and help some other wayward soul along.

Edited 2012-01-13 17:30 (UTC)

I'm not dead. [He clenches his hand, hard, and the stapler shakes, then drops back into the drawer before it can be flung across the room. The rest he absorbs, but doesn't comment on, not yet. He has wayward souls at home to help.]

Then you were about to be. [A meaningful look] The time you spend here -- consider it the instant between what you remember and an action that might be the choice that saves you or the final nail in your coffin.

Edited 2012-01-13 17:38 (UTC)

[No, that doesn't compute either, and Erik is swiftly moving away from reasonable debate toward table flipping.]

This is ridiculous. Do you expect me to believe any of this? That I'm supposed to save myself by accepting my new imprisonment?

No on initially does. I find this place quite ridiculous on a regular basis, but it still is.

Consider this not prison so much as asylum.

That makes it sound so much better, thank you. Perhaps next you'd like to call it a work camp.

Non, I do not think that I would. The most work you'll have to do here will be whatever job you seek on your own or that your Warden requests that you seek, once you are assigned one.

We're short-staffed in the Infirmary, I've heard. But there's also the kitchens, the library, the pub -- wherever you would be most comfortable.

I've been to prison, young man. I'm not at all familiar with you -- perhaps you have, as well. When you've stopped panicking, you'll soon start to realize how very different it is. On that note, if you'd like to get past the shock quickly, I'd visit the main deck and look over the side. Suspension of disbelief requires that one test it on something more substantial than the words of an old libertine.

[He doesn't consider that the old man wouldn't know what he's referencing, so he takes that as blatant disregard. Or worse, one of those people claiming it was all an elaborate lie. So the fact that he's actually offering up jobs just enrages him.]

You don't know what prison is.

Thirty-two years in various institutions, before, during and after the revolution.

That's France, cherub.

I promise you, I am familiar with prisons. ...Also, someone should warn you that time is a complicated matter in this place.

Edited 2012-01-13 18:12 (UTC)

But I'm afraid you are unfamiliar with what he's lived through already. I can assure you, acting like you hold some superior knowledge of human suffering over him will only end badly.

And if you were paying attention you would have seen I am not. I said that if he is familiar with prisons then he will find this place is not one once he has calmed down.

Your attitude is only going to make things worse. This place might not be a conventional prison, but neither was his past experience. He is going to come to terms with that on his own time, and pushing the company line on him now will make calming down an impossibility.

This place is not a prison, conventional or unconventional.

But it feels like one to Erik, and I'm afraid that's what's important, right now. I understand that you're trying to be helpful, but he needs to accept what's happening on his own terms.

He's speaking publicly. It goes without saying that people will respond. Heaven forbid any of them tell him the truth.

It's a truth he's not going to be willing to hear, and your pushing him and trying to rationalize is just going to make things worse. Surely he can't be the first arrival to feel like they're being held unjustly?

No, it's rather common. I've found talking to them like they're people helps more than hinders.

I can promise you, that isn't how he's choosing to view this.

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impure_tale - 2012-01-13 19:07 (UTC) - Expand

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wedonot - 2012-01-13 19:19 (UTC) - Expand

[The French Revolution, that makes so little sense, but given what Charles told him when he first arrived...It may be possible, and he may accept that that's what's happening here, but it doesn't do anything to cool his head.]

A childhood under the Reich, a year in Auschwitz and a number burned into my arm. That's Germany, engel. [Everything is a complicated matter here, it seems. He stands, lifting his hand slightly so the communicator rises with him.]

If you can accept working in an institution that keeps others against their will, then you don't know what a prison can be at all.

I'm afraid I haven't the faintest idea what a Reich is or the location of 'Auschwitz', so you will have to pardon my ignorance. As I told you, time is complicated here. I can only assume you were born after me or that we never walked the same earth at all -- bizarre as such notions would be anywhere else.

[a sobering glance]

And generally, I don't accept such institutions. However, I also consider institutions to be the product of the living, not the dead or what lies in between. And truly, if you continue to doubt that, all I ask is that you visit the main deck. Look at the sky. Look over the rail.

[That's still a little too hard for him to accept, at least right now. Too many Holocaust deniers back home, it's all he can equate this to, and it makes him too angry.]

I have looked, and we have nothing more to discuss if that's all you can offer.

Death and near-death are both difficult things for one to wrestle -- unless you knowingly chose that end. No one is expecting you to accept everything now, but you are not alone here. I would like to hear your story sometime if you'd be willing to sit down to a class of wine and tell it. You give me the distinct impression that not many people have listened. I'm both a Warden here and a former Inmate, myself, and I assure you that beyond your status as an Inmate and what that implies for all persons who arrive just as you have, I am completely ignorant of your situation and the world from which you come.

[He nods toward him]

Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade. Most call me the Marquis. You said your name was Erik Lensherr. Am I remembering that correctly?

You are, and you must forgive me; I meant to give the impression that I'm not interested in telling my 'story.'

Then my advice would be for you to make yourself less intriguing.

Stay away from me. [He's had his fill of men finding him interesting.]

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