The Last Voyages: Inbox

[makingitworse]

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[musicdied]

"I did not recognize him," Yelena says, expression hardening a little. "But I will be keeping an eye out, in case he is someone new."

Not everything that happens during a breach reflects who someone is in real life - but someone whose breach identity would bind a pair of orphans to him in order to train one as his own personal spy and assassin bears watching. Just in case that part is a mirror.

[makingitworse]

"I haven't seen anyone who looks like him, so maybe not... I, um, don't think I'd probably wind up friends with that one, even if he turns out to be a nice guy normally," Bob has to admit. There's enough lingering feelings there, at least right now, that it'd be hard to be fair.

[musicdied]

"Neither would I," Yelena says, matter-of-fact. "It is...not that unusual, for things that happen in a breach to colour the way you see someone. There are some people who claim to be able to throw it off completely after the breach ends, but they mostly are lying to themselves."

[makingitworse]

Well, she wound up friends with spider-guy because of a breach... she's talking to him now because of the breach. (Though he thinks maybe she'd do that anyway. She talks to him a lot.)

"Even the bad parts? Do people hold grudges after breaches for stuff we did when we weren't-- us?" He doesn't think he did anything to piss off anyone in the breach, he hardly talked to anyone at all actually, but it's good to know for the future.

[musicdied]

She lifts a hand, waffles it back and forth. "I am sure someone has, because some people can hold a grudge over anything. But it is more...if someone hurts you in a breach, you still have the memory of them hurting you. Other things might outweigh that, but it is still there."

[makingitworse]

"Does that happen a lot, then?" Bob says thoughtfully, maybe a tiny bit guiltily. Not over the breach, but knowing about all those times he can't remember-- and some he can-- when he was definitely not... at his best, and might have hurt people. "Getting hurt by people we know when we're not, um, ourselves."

[musicdied]

"It happens more with floods than with breaches," she replies. "Like the one I told you about before, where we all thought we had some other person's life." She takes a sip of coffee, weighing her words before she continues. "For the first six months I was here, I locked all of my weapons away when there was a flood, except for the one that only would hurt someone who was trying to hurt me. Just so I did not do any harm that I would not choose to do when I was in my own mind."

[makingitworse]

"That's really smart," Bob admits. He doesn't have any weapons or he'd probably do the same thing. Should he do that with his drugs? Or, well... he kind of already has, since there's somewhere he never goes for very long. Which is probably one reason he hasn't used any yet.

He decides he's heard enough about disliking people for doing things they weren't fully in control of. It's just too uncomfortable. So instead he asks, "Where did you get a weapon that would only hurt someone trying to hurt you?"

[musicdied]

"My second temporary warden," Yelena says. "I made a request he decided meant I was trying to trick him into giving me a weapon."

She hitches one shoulder in a little shrug. "I had been armed for weeks already, but I am not going to turn down a free knife. And it came in handy when I was replaced by - someone you would not want to meet."

[makingitworse]

Which would have to be a flood, since otherwise she wouldn't have her normal weapons. "I guess your plan worked, then. Everything locked up except that one. That's a really good plan." He looks down at his coffee. "I can't think of anything I could lock up, at least. The worst thing I can do I'd just have to touch somebody."

[musicdied]

"It kept him from hurting anyone. I am not sure how much that actually mattered." Unlike the breaches, her memory of Dreykov's interloping is still a black hole.

She reaches over and lays a hand on his arm. "This was a choice I made for my own reasons. It is not something anyone expects. It is not something most people even try to do."

[makingitworse]

"No, I know." He looks sheepish. "Sorry. I think I still feel weird after-- all that. Being so dumb and useless in that spy school." It feels like he needs to do something out here, to prove he's not a waste of space. Even though he's never found a way to prove that, before.

[musicdied]

"You were not useless," she says, quiet but fierce, and while some of it might be the remnants of Alice's knee-jerk impulse to defend her brother against all comers, most of it isn't. "What those children were being groomed to be - it is nothing to aspire to. You were not less because you were not a liar or a killer."

[makingitworse]

Bob's mouth opens, then closes again, and he ducks his head. "I felt useless. In there," he says after a moment, hugging his coffee mug up against his chest. He still does, really, but at least in there he had a reason for it beyond generally being a fuck-up his whole life. "That guy was just a hostage to keep you around, you know? Just a kid. He couldn't even keep you safe."

[musicdied]

"Maybe," Yelena says. "But he kept her human. She knew that there would always be someone who was there for her, someone she did not want to let down."

She hesitates for a moment, looking away to scan the dining hall, blessedly still empty. "I was six, did you know this? When my father gave me to the man who turned me into what I am. Gave me back, I should say. I belonged to them since I was just a baby. My sister tried to stop it, but she couldn't. And when she escaped, she did it alone."

Her smile is a shaky thing. "You were not a spy, and you were not a killer. But that version of you protected his sister better than the Black Widow was able to protect hers. I would not call that being useless."

[makingitworse]

He watches her, sidelong, for a moment as she speaks. He can hardly compute the idea that he somehow did anything good. Made anything better. That's just not how his life is. Success is not a feeling he thinks he would recognize even if it happened. When she smiles back at him, shaky or not, he has to look away, look down.

"I'm sorry," he says after a long pause. "About your sister. And your father." And maybe it's deflecting a little, but it's still true. Being betrayed by your parents-- well. It's the worst. That much he understands, even if there's so much about her life he doesn't really know still.

[musicdied]

"It was a long time ago," she says, as though that makes the hurt any less real. "And I did not tell you to make you feel bad for me. I told you because you do not need to be a spy or a superhero to make an impact on people's lives. It is easier to see the bad sometimes, maybe, but that does not mean that's all there is."

[makingitworse]

It's easier to feel bad for her than to consider that he, himself, did something that helped. It wasn't even technically him, really. "I've got a lot of bad," he warns, shaking his head. "And the only impact I'm used to making on people isn't a good kind. I try to help, and then just make things worse, usually."

[musicdied]

"I do not exactly have a great track record with making a positive impact myself," she says, matter-of-fact. "Mostly I am only useful in a crisis, and only if I am not the one causing the crisis. But maybe that is why we are here. Either we find a way to be better, or any damage we can do is contained."

Her smile this time isn't shaky, but it is wry. "And I think I probably have you beat in the damage department."

[makingitworse]

"Maybe you killed more people than I did," Bob allows. Even if he killed those people whose shadows remain in his cabin, she was an assassin for a long time. (Enslaved for a lot of it, too, so it's not like those ones were her fault.)

He hitches one shoulder in a shrug. "But you've made a pretty good impression on me, at least."

[musicdied]

"Likewise." She nudges the side of his foot with the toe of her shoe. "Does that mean you still want to be friends?"

[makingitworse]

He looks back up and smiles a bit back. "Yeah. I do." As if anything would convince him otherwise, really, at this point. She didn't even know him, but she's still been so kind to him. And she's funny, and smart, and checks on him after stupid Barge shit.

"Do you?" he has to ask, only a little bit joking. "After having me for a brother?"

[musicdied]

"I would adopt you, but I do not want to inflict my parents on you," she deadpans. And then, so he can't misconstrue her meaning. "Yes. I still want to be your friend."

A brief pause, and then, "Did you know, our names were a cryptography joke?"

[makingitworse]

"They-- what?" He blinks at her. "What's that mean?" Clearly, he did not. Now she gets to explain, and they can move past the feelings talk.

[musicdied]

"Alice and Bob are characters used in problems and thought exercises for cryptography papers and training." She shrugs a little. "More for electronic security than manual ciphering, but it is a common convention in security and academic circles."