chlorophylliac | 009 || Voice

[Prefect hovers for a split second, frowning at the sight of her paled skin, her drained complexion. He doesn't let himself linger on it though, if she wanted to talk about it then she would.]

There should be windows down there.

[He mumbles, distractedly, as he turns towards the wardens area. There should be windows, or they should figure out an alternative way of holding Ivy for seven days, because letting someone get physically sick as a punishment for their actions isn't right, and he is pretty much certain that he believes this for moral, non-brainwashed reasons.]

[She doesn't respond. It's a casual cruelty she's grown used to. In the fullness of her abilities she could better alter her metabolism and the reactivity of her skin - make it easier to bear, as she had in Arkham - but she's impotent here.

Nonetheless, the CES is offering as close as she could ask to an ideal environment for her recovery - scattered trees, dappled cloud, sunlight and soft rain. She strides past Prefect, stripping off the shirt without a thought and letting the sun and water pour onto her.]

[Prefect drops his eyes to the ground when she strips herself bare, and follows a few paces behind her. He takes it as given now that he won't speak again unless she asks him for something, or instructs him too. He'll just stay close enough that he's there if she wants him, and if she doesn't want him, she can tell him, and he'll just stop, and wait for her.

It doesn't occur to her that this is him doing her a favor, by now it just feels like a service that she's entitled too. That he's responsible for the provision of.]

[The effects of the CES are immediate. Within minutes she feels a fresh rush of energy; the half-dead vines wound around her wrists surge back to life, and it doesn't take much more than a couple of stray leaves to go about recreating her outfit. She turns her face to the sun and just revels in it for a while, the warm light and cool rain on her skin. She could stay here all day; she still might.

Eventually it occurs to her that Prefect's still here with her.]

All out of lectures, are you?

[Prefect glances up, a little surprised when she speaks to him. Not that there's any reason why she wouldn't. They talk enough.]

Did you want a lecture, Sister?

[He lets that hang in the air for a moment before his brain catches up with his mouth, and he glances down again, frowning and shaking his head slightly.]

I don't really know what the situation was. I wouldn't know what to say.

[She doesn't want a lecture. But she does quite like arguments.]

You knew less still about the situation in Gotham and you saw fit to critique my methods nonetheless. [She glances back at him over her shoulder.] You people weren't told about the circumstances of my imprisonment?

We were told that you tortured and killed someone. And-- Sister, no matter what they might have done, I do still believe your methods were wrong.

[His tone strengthens slightly as he says this, and there's a flash of indignation there. He's still following her though, not suggesting that her killing someone should be worthy of revoking her CES privileges.]

[Which is interesting. And makes her wonder how hard - how far - she can push. But she knows one of these days she's going to burn up all his obedience and goodwill in one go, and she's unlikely to regret that, either.]

You were misinformed. I didn't kill him; I didn't even intend to. He did that himself.

[He watches her back, forehead knitting into a frown.]

You tortured him, and deliberately drove him to it. [Just a guess. But he's been around long enough to know that loophole] Someone tried to do that to me once, Sister. It didn't change what they disliked about me though, only cemented it.

[It's not even a loophole, in her eyes. She's not shrugging off responsibility for what ultimately happened; she certainly doesn't think that it would warrant a slighter punishment. She just likes accuracy in reporting.]

What was it that they didn't like?

It was extremely complicated. I... rejected him.

[His tone is slightly flat when he says this. Sylar is at the very top of his list of people he doesn't want to talk about. The whole business between them was more depressing than it was fun gossip material. He forces his voice to lighten as he continues though.]

The point is though, it didn't achieve anything that he'd wanted. It just made me certain that I'd been right about him.

[She files away that information but it doesn't feel terribly relevant to the situation at hand.]

More fool him. That is generally what happens when you challenge someone on a matter of principle.

It was complicated.

[Prefect repeats, folding his arms across his stomach.]

But I don't think it's just on a matter of principal. I don't think that... violently injuring someone, ever makes them believe that you are right. I don't think it really makes them change, or ever really regret whatever it is they've done. They just regret that you found out about it, or that you reacted to badly to it, or that they got caught...

[She turns all the way around to look at him, one hand going up to push thick damp locks of hair away from her face. There's something bleak and opaque in her eyes.]

I mutilated him until he felt his only chance at recovery was to take his own life and hope the Admiral restored him whole. Why are you assuming that was motivated by an attempt on my part to change him?

[He's right to do so, but not to as great an extent as she's allowed T'Pol and Dick to believe. That aspect was more something that would have been nice but was by no means necessary.]

[He stops now, expression stilled, as he watches her solemnly.]

Because you aren't here for selfish reasons. You might have done bad things, but you did them because you wanted to protect the things that you loved, and because you wanted to force people to stop hurting them.

[He gives a little shrug, still frowning.]

I think that if you hurt someone here, it would be because you were angry at them for something they'd hurt, and because you wanted to send a message, to stop them from doing it again.

[He's guessing someone hurt some flowers, but that's a pretty serious offense in Ivy's book, so he's not going to act like that makes it any less significant a crime.]

[Somewhere deep down, during the moments of lucidity that are alarmingly few and far between of late, Ivy can acknowledge that she isn't here because of her relationship with the Green. Maybe not even strictly because of the people she's killed, or allowed to die, or threatened or controlled.

She's here because she hates. Because she's been on a quest for revenge for years, but the man who wronged her is almost certainly dead, and her unsatisfied anger is a wound she's dragged open and left raw until it infected every part of her. Because she's so terrified of being manipulated and abused that she'll commit atrocities far worse. Because she's incapable of love, or at least incapable of acknowledging it.

Nine months ago, in a renovated animal shelter in Gotham, she was conscious enough of all that to control it. Maybe even to consider growing beyond it. Sometimes - often, nowadays - that knowledge becomes obscured, the very heart of her too tightly bound in thorns and poison to be reached.

At worst, and least often, she's fully conscious of the fact that she's cloaking her most human vulnerabilities in her identity as the Green's guardian and doesn't care. And that's the very worst, because it makes her weak and a traitor.

She turns away again, moving deeper into the Enclosure.]

That's a generous assessment to say the very least.

[As she sets off again, Prefect moves to follow her again. He drifts a few feet behind, letting her go as she pleases, after a week starving in Level Zero, he's relieved to see how quickly she recovered.]

It doesn't mean that I think you're right, Sister. In how you try to achieve that safety for your plants, but I don't think you'd want to hurt somebody just for the sake of making them hurt.

[Sometimes Prefect was completely, gloriously wrong about things.]

I think that you're... if not always good, Sister, always noble.

[She could let him believe that, of course. If it was anybody else, she would. It would take nothing much to convince him that she's just misguided, that her problem is not her motivation but her methodology.

But she can't. Because she has a curiously honest relationship with Prefect, and she doesn't plan on cheapening it now.]

You're wrong.

[Prefect frowns, a few paces behind Ivy. The last time they spoke about her motives, he'd been fairly convinced of her beliefs. That she wanted to protect plants, and that she didn't believe in non-violent means being possible for achieving that.]

Then, why did you do it?

[Her voice is hard and cold.]

Because he tried to force himself on a woman living on board this ship. Nothing I could have done to him would have been punishment enough.

Was this enough?

[His voice is earnest, and the question's careful and sincere. Honestly, he doesn't think there is an objective 'enough', for what Ivy's talking about. Watching someone else suffer doesn't really satisfy any pain already inflicted. Closure is a promise that we make to ourselves, that experience never actually delivers on.]

[She scoffs.]

I don't deny that his blood is ultimately on my hands, and no.

Then what was the point? Did you think it would be, or did you know right from the beginning that it would be completely meaningless?

[Ivy rounds on him again, and the cold fury in her voice is starting to burn hot.]

He deserved it. It is not my responsibility to teach him a lesson, or dissuade him from his animal behavior, or try to change him. He deserved to know what it is to be hurt, humiliated and violated by someone stronger. And while I dearly hope he'll remember it the next time he thinks of putting his hands on another woman, it was not my intent to educate him. I did what I did to hurt him. And if that isn't enough of a point, then I can't say I'm sorry to have disappointed you.

Do you think that his actions change the meaning of your actions?

[Prefect doesn't sound angry, but he is insistent.]

He-- he tried to hurt, humiliate, and violate that woman, because he felt like it. Because he wanted to... to have sex, or to feel powerful, or whatever, and you did the same thing to him, because you were angry, and you wanted to make him suffer and feel week. You didn't do it for his victim, and you didn't do it for... for whoever his next victim might be, and you didn't do it because you thought it would change anything, and you didn't do it because you thought that it was just. You just did it because he made you angry and you felt like it so no, I don't think it's enough of a point.

I just think, he felt like doing a horrible thing, so he did it, and then you felt like doing a horrible thing, so you did it, and any credit you give yourself for having done it is too much because at the end of the day it was just some thuggish, pointless atrocity just like everything else that happens here!

009 || Voice

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