gotgreenmagic

So she was adjusting, a little bit, maybe. More like she was back in the swing of talking to people she didn't know all that well - Snape, Findthee, Ruby to an extent. She was never particularly sincere with them anyway, so pretending to be back to normal was easy.

But some others? Mozenrath, McCoy, Kirk...they were trickier to lie to. Or easier to be honest with. It was hard to tell.

She stood on the deck and crossed her arms tightly, waiting for Mozenrath to show.

It didn't take long. Scotty had afforded him a week of privileges in the CES before they would have to meet and discuss things. Provided his Warden hadn't gotten fickle on him, things should have been fine, but then Scotty was so busy investigating the explosion in the kitchen that he was almost certain he hadn't had time to think about being an ass. All of this, and yet Mozenrath had only gone up to the CES one other time, in order to ascertain that what he had told Akio was true.

There had been time for just a quick once over, and while he wasn't the most thrilled about taking scenic walks, he was -- whether he liked admitting it or not -- worried about Shego. Access to the CES meant possibly getting her far away enough from everybody else that she'd actually talk.

He saw her right away as he came up. "I'm here."

Shego lifted one hand. "Hey." Practically at the entrance to the above-deck areas as she was, she stepped aside to let him get past her. "How's it going?"

"I'm fine." This wasn't necessarily how it was supposed to go. But then he wasn't the most versed in this sort of thing, nor did he want to be, and THAT wasn't what was going on here anyway.

She nodded. "Good. Great. So what did you have to do for CES access, anyways?"

"Everything I was doing before my new Warden showed up." He smirked.

It occurred to her that everything he'd been doing before Scotty had shown up was pretty much everything a normal person would do for the absolute minimal level of preserving their own health and wellbeing, but she didn't feel like starting a fight. Not with him, anyway. So she just didn't comment.

The CES was dark and chill under a night sky, but not pitch-black; the sky was clear and the stars were brilliant, a half-full moon glowing overhead. As illusions went it was pretty darn convincing, and it felt satisfactorily like being somewhere else.

"Not bad," she said quietly.

Edited 2010-03-21 01:36 (UTC)

It would have been a short argument. He knew exactly what it was he'd done. It'd come at an irritating cost, certainly, but it still established the sort of relationship they were meant to have -- one where his good behavior was contingent on his Warden going out of his way to make certain he didn't anger him.

He didn't even pause to take in the scenery once they got inside. "What happened, Shego?"

She glanced over her shoulder at him, then looked away.

"Nothing. Almost nothing. Nothing that...it's...it's not important."

"No, Shego." He didn't get angry. He wanted to. But he also knew that at her best she could punch his lights out. "Not nothing. You've been different."

"Bad different or just different?"

"Bad for you. You've been quiet and submissive and..." He almost said scared but there was only so much he could really pick up on just from talking to her over the journals, and he wasn't sure he trusted that suspicion.

"Check you out. I didn't know you were so perceptive, sunshine," she said weakly, then sighed. "Listen, I just...some stuff got dug up, and...I don't know. Maybe 'quiet and submissive' is better for this hellhole."

Probably not the best choice of words. A million things ran through Mozenrath's head at once, but first and foremost he felt denial -- that he was hearing this from her at all. That it sounded like she was giving up. He really didn't know what she meant about things being dug up -- he didn't know her past all that well, or if it was something that specifically happened here, but all roads, in his own refusal to be told what he should be, pointed to one person.

Mozenrath drew in a calming breath, and for a minute he couldn't look directly at her. When he spoke, for the first time in a long time he actually sounded dangerous.

"What did he do?"

There was something in the tone of his voice that raised the hairs on the back of her neck and she turned, surprised, to face him properly.

"I. He. You mean -- nothing. He didn't do anything." That wasn't precisely true. "Nothing deliberate, anyway."

"I would tell you if it was me," he said, a little coldly. "If I can't help you, fine, but I need to know something."

"It's not - I don't - it's that freaking flood, okay?" Shego snapped. "I thought I was okay and over it and past it and all that jackass needs to do is forget to shave for a week, show up to work wasted and oh, hey, suddenly I'm having the same nightmares and the same freakouts again and I can't, alright?"

She fisted two hands in her hair and pulled. "I just....can't."

"Hey -- " As her tone raised in pitch and intensity he started to feel a familiar pang of defensive panic -- usually reserved for himself. It's the way he felt when he knew he was getting too angry to control himself, and the way Scotty tended to make him feel when he didn't leave well enough alone. He took hold of her upper arms when her fingers twisted into her hair, though. "Hey, it's okay." He didn't even know if those were the words he should have been using, but he wasn't really thinking about that.

"No, it is not." Shego twisted away from him, freeing her hands from her hair because they'd started glowing and she had no immediate plans to set her head on fire. "It is not okay. I am not okay. This entire freaking situation is so completely and totally not okay that I just - I -"

She yelled incoherently and hurled a ball of green energy at nothing in particular, barely having the awareness to aim away from Mozenrath. This was what she'd been afraid of, letting the lid off her frustration and then not being able to get it back on, but acknowledging that didn't make it any easier to handle.

A ball of green fire shot past Mozenrath, narrowly missing the door and striking a nearby tree. Debris and smoke and ash burst forward with the impact and sent his cape and headdress fluttering in the hot, musky breeze it created. Oddly he didn't flinch -- not in fear anyway; there was an uncomfortable twitch when some ash got in his eye. He held up a hand and the air around him appeared to give him a wide berth.

He didn't have the impressive aspects of his power anymore, but at least he had little things to maintain his personal space and comfort. At least it helped him look calm.

After all, if there was one thing he was accustomed to, it was throwing firey tantrums.

"Does that feel a little better?" he asked.

"No," she said quietly. She sat down, lacing her fingers together over the back of her neck. "Actually, it feels a little bit worse."

"I can't make your decisions for you," he said, stepping toward her purposefully, "but I'd honestly rather you be angry because someone hurt you than afraid to react at all."

She glanced up at him. "I don't - that's not it. I'm not mad at anybody. I'm sure as heck not scared. I just..."

She groped around for the right words. "I just miss feeling like there's a point, y'know? I miss feeling like my existence serves any purpose other than as a box-ticking exercise for some blond jerk from the future."

"Shego, that's stupid," he snapped. "Your master plan is to play dead until Kirk throws you out of here so you can what? See how you can be of use to someone else?"

"No," she snapped back. "I don't have a master plan. I don't have anything anymore, that's kind of the point."

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