video | un: Barton

[pretendtoneedme]

This is gonna piss off Ross and I'm all for that, but even after all the shit that's gone down in the last six years I don't know how I'll explain this.

[The video had opened on what there is to be seen of a partially overcast sky between two of the taller buildings of Dualis before tilting down; obviously whoever's broadcasting is walking along the road, because the picture continues to move at a steady pace down what looks to be a slightly less metropolitan-city-ish shopping district. Part of the hand holding the phone is visible, but nothing else about the person speaking can be seen yet.]

And my limit of pissing him off got blown by about the time I woke up in cyberpunk Egypt, so I've got two questions for anyone with any kind of answer - how in the hell do we get home, and does anyone have some tools I can borrow so I can break some sensitive electronics?

[...yeah, that's all he's volunteering for now. Sorry about that.]

Comments

[skyward_eyes]

That's a fair question. Twenty. I've been certified since I was in my late teens, but I had been training with polearms since I was twelve. And form is useful. If nothing else, practice matters. A lot.

If you've had experience, then you know losing muscle memory is the worst.

But, basically, I'm a war orphan raised by a mercenary academy.

[Go ahead, Clint, worry.]

[pretendtoneedme]

[Oh, there is worry, all right. Or, well, not worry. There's a long, drawn-out pause where Clint puts together everything Nida's just said with what he's dropped hints about throughout their conversation, and there's a solid count between fifteen and twenty of nothing but silence before Clint breathes out again, heavily, speaking at the same time. The kind of noise a person makes when they've metaphorically been punched in the gut.]

From one hour to the next. Did they handcuff you to your bed at night?

[It's a worryingly specific question and an even weirder phrase. Clint's not even aware at the moment that his words didn't come out in Russian.]

[skyward_eyes]

[Yes, it is a worryingly specific question, and leaves Nida with a bad taste in his mouth. It feels like the sort of question that comes from having been through a situation. Or having heard about it. And the idea of it makes Nida bristle. If he ever heard of a place doing that, he'd do his best to shut it down.

Unless, of course he learned that the Natasha he'd met was a product of such a place. And then he'd do his best and die trying. He'd met Natasha only a handful of times, and he'd developed a healthy respect for how dangerous she was with every single movement she made.]

No, there wasn't anything like that. Detention could be hell if you broke some rules, but not the sorta hell you seem to be thinking? We were soldiers. Soldier's aren't very good, even trained from that age, if you do that to them.

[Oh how wrong he is. But there is a bit of hope in his voice, as if he's asking Clint to tell him that isn't something that actually happened to someone.]

[pretendtoneedme]

[He's not even going to try and pretend that he can. If Nida's a trained soldier like he's claiming to be, then he's well aware of all the shit in the world (any world) that's messed up, and Clint doesn't believe in hiding the bad things from a person who can take them. He rubs his face with his open hand, putting pressure on his temples to ward off what might be a headache forming, sighing heavily again.]

You got that wrong - they don't become soldiers, they become... automatons. Robots. Brainwashed to kill at a command, refuse forming any kind of bond because bonds are weakness, lethal at any distance with something as little as a paperclip. Controlled and molded into good little death-dealing drones that can slip in and out of personae like they're putting on a shirt, because they have no personality of their own.

[He pauses.]

You're lucky. It takes a pretty extraordinary person to break out of that. It sounds like you got the shit end of the stick, but at least it wasn't that.

[skyward_eyes]

[Well... now he feels sick. Yeah, in that frame of reference, Nida is lucky. Thing was? That could have been something he might have been. Another world, a slightly stricter training regime? Who knows. Sure, he'd probably still think some, but he was created to be something like that.]

I'm nowhere near extraordinary enough to have managed to break free of something like that. It was hard enough not to just be the little para-military drone I was without serious help. I barely even knew how to make friends.