30 ❦ Video

[chlorophylliac]

[Ivy is sitting in the lovingly upgraded greenhouse, on the edge of the fountain pool she's created at the centre, and absolutely nobody was surprised. There's a plant/animal hybrid on her lap; anatomically a small rabbit, but what it's covered with is more like moss than fur and its eyes are completely black.]

The first greenhouses used on Earth were recorded by Pliny the Elder, two thousand years before my time.

The Roman Emperor Tiberius wanted cucumbers all year round, so, his gardeners made it happen. Their specularium predated the invention of glass; they used oiled cloth or sheets of mica. They weren't used constantly, only at night, to protect the plants from the cold after they'd had the benefit of the sunlight during the day.

More sophisticated versions appeared over a thousand years later. The Vatican, in the thirteenth century, to house plants brought as trophies from tropical exploration. Korea, two centuries afterward. What my contemporaries would consider a modern greenhouse didn't appear until the eighteen-hundreds.

By my time, commercial technology allows plants to be grown out of season, thousands of miles from the environments where they evolved, untroubled by parasites or predators or the vagaries of the weather. Even the most diseased specimens can heal in a place designed for precisely that.

[She falters, briefly, gaze going out of focus. It looks like she's fighting something off, consciously or otherwise.]

Which is perfectly fine, if all you want is something that will thrive in an artificial environment. But when you return it to its home -- with all the threats and dangers that plant is subject to --

[Ivy tunes out again, gaze going flat and empty.]

The following Warden and Inmate have been paired:

A.J. Crowley // sauntervaguelydownwards → Arthas Menethil // darknessb4me

The warden should expect a file to be delivered to his cabin shortly. Please familiarize yourself with the information therein and introduce yourself to your new Inmate as soon as possible.

[She blinks slowly, coming back to herself.]

Sometimes the rot runs particularly deep, of course. I hope you'll be very happy together.

Comments

[chlorophylliac]

[There's a pause. She is, by now, aware that she could probably graduate - and that when she does, she may very well stay on. She already knows what her deal would be.]

I think once a place has taken so much from you, there's an instinct to make it give something back.

[thelastbullet]

[For that matter, so does Jimmy: he knows he's changed, considerably, and he knows what he would ask for if he stayed on as a warden.]

That doesn't sound like something a warden would say.

[chlorophylliac]

I assume when you get to that point, you start to believe you're the one with the debt to pay.

[thelastbullet]

One assumes so.

Would you do it, Miss Ivy?

[chlorophylliac]

Just Ivy, thank you.

[In answer to his question, though?]

...I don't plan to.

[Though right now she doesn't plan on graduating, either.]

Would you?

[thelastbullet]

Maybe. If the mysterious graduation ever happens- I might. [Though he still doesn't think it'll happen anytime soon, and he still has no idea what would have to happen before he could graduate.]

What are you planning?

[chlorophylliac]

Difficult to plan anything in an environment quite this static.

[thelastbullet]

So you could graduate and come back a week later, back to being an inmate? [He... could see it happening for himself. Probably the reason he's still an inmate.]

[chlorophylliac]

[Dryly:]

If I was stupid enough to get killed twice in two weeks, I'd deserve it.

[thelastbullet]

[He smiles a little and inclines his head to concede the point.]

So no plans, then?

[chlorophylliac]

Try and wake up the same person I was yesterday.

[thelastbullet]

You still want the same things you did before you came here?

[chlorophylliac]

It sounds like you don't.

[thelastbullet]

I didn't want anything before I came here. I wanted to die, and I did. It'd get inconvenient to keep doing that, here.

[chlorophylliac]

It would.

And of course, the Barge can teach you the futility of dying for as long as you're here but it's a longer road to not wanting to.

[thelastbullet]

[Jimmy hasn't seen the value of human life for a long time, and this had included his own. He's starting to, now, but shooting Omar has clearly demonstrated that he's not quite there yet.

Her words still hit the mark, though, because he realizes: he doesn't want to die anymore, and wouldn't even if he were to go back to Atlantic City right now. He hums in agreement, but doesn't look her straight in the eye when he answers.]

Right.