networkinthenight | [audio] @silver; Backdated to the fifth [open]

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[audio] @silver; Backdated to the fifth [open]

[Someone had been around the docks when...all of that happened, broken an arm, and spent the following days snugly shut up tight in her house. Not a weakness she wants on display, of course, but she's angry, and having been in no useful condition for supply-regathering isn't much of a boon to her pride. But a handful of days shut up are little better.]

Couple things, just, quick.

Couldn't stick around the ferry and people's chief concern seems to have been food, which is fine, but I'm wondering if anyone got gardening supplies, and if those made it? I've mentioned it in passing to a handful, but especially given the exact worry I had was just proven right, no excuse to not be proactive anymore. We have good gardening types here, and it's better for the town as a whole if we can set a couple plots up...immediately? Fast as possible. A couple of small greenhouses are kind of a must at this point too. I'm not really up to building and clearing condition right now, so anybody brave enough to turn soil and move rocks and handle basic construction, drop me a line. People I talked to before, uh, the same I guess? We can divvy up who goes where, five people per square foot's a bad spread of resources.

Second thing - I'm getting the impression nobody's liking those flowers very much. [She's...largely unperturbed. Distressingly accustomed, at this point. Were the month not getting off on such a broken foot she'd be amused.] If it's crippling and you're desperate for something, stop by and I can give you a little cone to breathe through. Plague doctor-style, but tiny. Cute. [Deadpan:] You'll look like little birds, and it'll smell like pine.

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Day one you didn't know what he was getting into any more than the rest of us did. If someone had asked me the same, I'd have said the ferry too. Unless you encouraged him along every step of the way, considered the consequences and still believed it, the blame just isn't equal.

Intentions are everything.

[It wants to protest, but it's running out of steam to argue, even for its own punishment that it knows it deserves. So it looks back down again, finally levers the shovel into the earth, and turns it over.]

I'm still sorry.

And you don't have to worry about conflicting orders. Crowley isn't my handler anymore. He requested it. Inspector Javert might, possibly, but I don't see him as often as I see you.

You should be.

[Correct, just quick enough to perhaps teeter toward harsh. Though she's quick to add,] And I appreciate it. Accept it.

He requested it?

[The Soldier almost smiles.]

He was a terrible handler, Misty. Never even gave me anything halfway useful to do. Only got me into trouble. It's almost a relief.

[It doesn't occur to it that, with Crowley's example, she might well request it, too. She, after all, is a good handler.]

[In a juvenile way that's absolutely fantastic to hear, because if she's ended up a handler she at least wants to be the best one. The rest of her is surprised at what she interprets as a rather large gesture for the current (unflattering) version of Crowley living in her head.]

Course he was, but it's always the worst ones that hang on the hardest.

Do you prefer that--?

I don't prefer things, Handler Misty.

[The rote way it says that is almost amiable, though. Like it's making a little private joke out of it between them. It gets back to shoveling with a will, feeling a little better about life in general.]

Prefer what, though?

[Who wouldn't smile at that? It's nice, getting levity out of him. Rewarding. Encourages that they'll resettle just fine.]

Prefer him as a handler, or not as a handler? Are they something you would be happier without?

[Uh oh. Better get that squashed quickly.]

No. The Asset needs handlers for instruction. Crowley was just a bad one.

What happens if you don't have instruction?

[It's an odd system, and operating without any context hardly helps. This is as much pure curiosity as it is examination meant to relate to them, personally.]

[(We get fuckin' bored.)]

I need tasks. Standard idle activities only take up so much time.

[Really, it can only patrol around the village so many times a day before it starts feeling dumb. And even more hungry than usual. And its knives are already sharp enough to split molecules.]

You couldn't find more? You're plenty smart enough to keep yourself entertained if you had to, I'd think. And there's hanging out without it being about doing things--

Handler Misty. I have never been allowed free time. I wasn't out of cryofreeze if there wasn't a mission.

[It turns more earth.]

I have on idea what to do with myself. Even if I had an idea, I'm not sure I could give myself permission to do it.

But then what happens if I like, ordered you to keep yourself busy?

You don't need your own permission, you know. Permission doesn't really need to be a factor.

It does. I'm not a person, Misty. I'm not. Like you.

[Focusing on the task at hand. That's something it can do. Even feels kind of nice, having a task that requires it actually use some strength.]

And please don't order me to keep myself busy. I. Really don't know what I'd do.

Please don't say you're not a person. I don't believe it, and I don't think I could pretend otherwise.

[She's grown...comfortable enough with whatever 'Handler' fully, properly entails for her role in their relationship, but it's more his benefit than hers. This is the line in the sand.]

That's coming from someplace raw and I'm not gonna force it, but it ain't true.

[There's not much it can say to that. It's an order, even if it's couched with a "please", even if it's from someone who is only a handler on technicality and the Soldier's own silence about knowing of where the status came from. So it keeps its gaze down at the garden earth and says,]

I won't say it, then, if it bothers you.

[In front of her, anyway. It'll try.]

I care about you, you know.

[In case there's been some confusion, there.]

I don't want to press something that's not ready to be pressed, but you're - I don't know. Important. I don't have a lot of people, and I want the ones I have to be as comfortable as they can be.

[She wouldn't be the first handler to say that, that she cared. Somewhere in the back of its brain, the Soldier knows it's heard those words from people that held its leash, and known they were a lie.

It doesn't seem quite as much like a lie, this time. Like with Scarlett. Crowley. It isn't sure it can say it cares for people in particular, back. That seems like a person thing. (You are a fucking idiot. Shut up, Sergeant.) And it just said it'd try not to talk about not being a person. But it can say:]

You're important. You're. Safe.

[That's probably the biggest thing it can think of to call a person. They're safe. It means that it doesn't expect them to cause it pain or make it do things it doesn't actually want to. That it might actually kind of trust them a little. So far all of three people even come close to that, and Misty's one of them.]

[It's nicer to hear than it rightly should be, but her bar is woefully low. No source of specific pride, but something to be held fondly and appreciated for what she can infer it to mean. There's a quite defined smile, there.]

I plan on staying that way, I hope you know. Only get safer with time, if anything.

That sounds nice. Safe is. A good thing to be.

[And it's nice to make her smile. Like Scarlett's little smirks and Crowley's speechlessness sometimes. It wants to collect all of those and save them somewhere, somehow.

It's running out of garden to turn, though. Maybe it's time to see if she'll change the subject to something a little less stressful than personhood and relationships with a murder machine.]

Should we try to plant anything today?

Mm...If you're feeling up to it we could try a test batch, sure. We'll need to keep space for the greenhouse, but we'll sneak a couple in on the side just to test the seeds.

[An approving nod.]

Should probably be beets, but they're gross.

[Why wouldn't it feel up to planting something? It doesn't sound like it would be very labor-intensive. New and different, maybe, but it's seeds and ground and maybe water.

Besides, the thought has occurred to him that seeds still might not grow. It offers,]

We should test something to make sure it grows. Before putting in too much time and materials on the greenhouse. Just in case.

[She nods once, needing little by way of convincing.]

Just a couple, for a trial run. Won't kill very much time, but I guess a couple minutes a day can go to checking in on them.

[She's moving back around front - having wisely resisted the urge to keep seeds on her, they're tucked in a cabinet.]

Any kinds jumping out at you?

[This is a tactical question, of a sort. This is something it can weigh in on, so it does, following her to the door but staying just outside so it doesn't get dirt in her house.]

It should be something that would be high in calories and that could potentially eaten right out of the ground without cooking, if necessary. Something that might result in multiple edibles rather than just one per seed.

[It doesn't know enough about how fruits and vegetables are grown to know what kind of plant that might be, sadly.]

Leeks, daikons, cabbage, kale...

[Only one of which is really available for eating raw, but the timing unfortunately leaves most of his astute points out of reach. Winter growin': if only they'd been one boat earlier.]

We'll try daikons and kale, see how they do.

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