towerofanimus | Things are heating up

Entry tags:

Things are heating up

Characters: Ψiioniic & Signless, possibly others as they move around.
Setting: Their room to start with, morning of the new experiment developments
Format: narrative
Summary: Signless is reacting to the new increase in paranoia, and it's not going to be pretty for Ψ
Warnings: doubtless swearing, paranoia and anger, some mention of the body mods done to Ψ

Waking up meant returning to the reality of what had been done to him, so Ψiioniic had decided he didn't much like doing it. Even so there were only so many hours a troll could sleep in the day, and since he was used to a lot less sleep than most, he couldn't even manage to escape into dreams for long. So he woke as usual at around the same time as Signless.

The presence of his moirail was just about the only thing that made it all bearable. "Evening," he murmured when he saw his friend was stirring as well. "Should we go get some breakfast and see who's around?"

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Signless had actually been awake for a while. He was burrowed in his blankets, only the tips of his nubby horns and a bit of wild black hair poking out.

He'd been getting some serious brooding on.

The fact was, he'd been worried for a long while now. Here he was, in a pretty fucking delicate situation, courting disaster and a painful death, and he knew that some kind of horrible consequence was right around the fucking corner. How would they take him? Would it be a drug in his food? Or would they just show up and grab him, like had happened to Psiioniic?

And speaking of Psiioniic, what had really happened to him for that week? He claimed to really know nothing about their captors or where he had been, but was that really possible? He had to have seen something, been told something that was useful, but he was remaining uncooperative. What if they'd managed to use his brainwashing to turn him against Signless? It wouldn't have been that hard. Or what if this wasn't really Psiioniic, at all? Without horns, and with that white covering on his body, who could really tell WHO that was? Was it really logical to think that they could disfigure Psiioniic so much without killing him?

And now he was trying to get Signless downstairs to eat their drugged food.

"Why would I want to do that?" he snarled, burrowing a little deeper into his blankets.

"Umm..." That wasn't the response Ψiioniic had been expecting. True, all trolls were grumpy when waking up after sleeping with no sopor, but that was something they'd all gotten used to when travelling from town to town, spreading Signless' teachings of peace and equality.

Mind, Signless could be even grumpier than the normal troll if something was bothering him or he'd had a bad vision-dream the day before, but he didn't usually snarl at Ψiioniic quite like that.

"Becauthe you're usually hungry after not eating all day? And because you like to mingle and thee who else you can recruit?" he ventured, straining to get a better look at his moirail.

He could feel Psiioniic moving around and shifted, crimson eyes gleaming out of the shadows cast by the blanket as he watched him suspiciously.

"Why're you so fucking set on me eating that shitty food?" he growled. "It could be drugged. Maybe they're coming to get me today and turn me into even more of a freak than I am already! Is that what's happening? Did they tell you?"

"Who told me? What?" Ψiioniic stared at his moirail, thoroughly confused. "What are you talking about, SS? You think they're drugging the food? Actually, I wouldn't put it patht them. But why do you think they're coming to get you today?"

Was there something going on that Signless hadn't told him about, not wanting to worry him? That would be just like his moirail. He always tried to take the burdens on his own shoulders, sparing his comrades, even though they kept telling him that they were happy to take some of that weight from him. "What aren't you telling me, SS?"

"I don't know! But they could be!" Signless burrowed more deeply, still glaring balefully at Psiioniic. Was he really his enemy? How could he tell? And what if he was wrong? Then he'd be really hurting his moirail.

Fuck, he needed to figure this out. Maybe it was better to act like nothing was wrong.

"Nothing, nothing," he muttered, pulling the blanket off. "Fuck, all this waiting is just making me paranoid. I keep expecting something to happen, and nothing ever does!"

"You're paranoid by nature, I'm pretty sure," Ψiioniic pointed out, but he wasn't entirely satisfied by the explanation. "It'th what's kept you alive this long, though, so I'm not really complaining. I honethtly don't think they'd bother poisoning the food, though. When they took me, they jutht... came for me. They had some kind of neutralizing field or thomething."

Signless scowled. That was really logical, actually. And that immediately made it suspect. It was too logical.

"Maybe they can't neutralize me because I don't have psychic powers," he said, hunching back again and clenching his claws. "So they'll have to drug me to get me. That's what you don't want me to realize, isn't it?"

This conversation was making less and less sense as it progressed. Ψiioniic frowned. "Thome of the others taken didn't have powerth either, SS, and they said they were taken the thame way I was. What do you mean, what I don't want you to realithe? Why wouldn't I want you to realize anything?"

He didn't like the way Signless had gone all tense, like he was getting ready for battle. It seemed strange that the stress of this situation could have gotten to his moirail so quickly, when they were used to exactly this sort of thing and had been for sweeps. He reached out, intending to pat at his moirail's shoulder. "Shoosh, what'th gotten into you?"

Signless stiffened, and raised a hand as if to smack it away, but pity stayed the gesture. He averted his gaze and grimaced, his teeth bared a little with nervous energy as he struggled between his paranoid near-certainty that Psiioniic had betrayed him, and his logical mind that told him that he didn't know for sure.

"It's just that, I don't know what happened to you while you were gone," he growled, picking at the covers with his claws. "Maybe they fucked with you more than I know. I'm sure they have spies all over the tower, Psi, looking for the right moment to put down this rebellion I've started."

His sight might be less than perfectly reliable at the moment, but Ψiioniic didn't miss the way Signless almost hit him away. He hastily withdrew his hand, not wanting to further provoke whatever it was that had put Signless into such a bad mood. The last thing he wanted to do right now was get into a fight of any kind with his moirail, let alone a physical one.

"I doubt they're even paying any attention to uth yet, SS, we haven't done anything." He shook his head, bewildered and more than a little hurt - and also frightened by the possibilities Signless was bringing up. "You think they... what, programmed me or thomething? Turned me into a sleeper agent?"

He wanted to protest that he would never turn on his moirail. Even the Condesce hadn't been able to order him to do that, after all - he'd defied her and killed himself rather than harm his best friend. But it was true that they didn't know the extent of what had been done to him by the surgery, and they HAD been fucking around in his brain.

That hurt on Psiioniic's face felt like a stab right in the wind tube. Signless covered his face with both hands, struggling with himself. He pitied the fuck out of this troll, and the last thing he wanted to do was to make him even more miserable and alone than he already was.

"I don't want to believe that shit!" he exclaimed. "But I just can't stop thinking about what might happen. It's driving me fucking crazy, Psi."

And now that the idea had been planted in Ψiioniic's mind, it was probably going to drive him crazy, as well. On the other hand, for all his justifiable paranoia, Signless had also always been the type to believe in his friends come hell or high noon.

When Ψiioniic had first joined the rebellion and admitted that he'd been sent to assassinate Signless, he'd expected to be treated with caution and wariness at absolute best, and outright distrust and contempt at worst. Instead Signless had never once shown the tiniest amount of doubt in him, treating him like a close friend from that moment on.

It was largely Signless' unshakable belief in him that had allowed Ψiioniic to truly break free of his enslavement. Having Signless doubt him now... well, it scared him shitless. The situation had to be bad, much worse than Signless was telling him, for him to distrust Ψiioniic.

"Then... maybe it'th betht if you don't tell me anything, or let me be involved," he said, voice quivering slightly and his lisp noticeably worse again. "I can't thabotage what I don't know about. If... if you're really that worried..."

Signless remembered that time, too. He had never doubted Psiioniic before. Not when Psiioniic came to assassinate him. Not when the Condesce had ordered Psiioniic to kill him a few weeks before.

Never.

What had changed?

"It's me," he whispered.

"It'th okay, SS," Ψiioniic hastened to assure him. He wasn't sure what that comment meant, exactly... some inner dialogue of Signless' that he wasn't actually meant to understand, most likely. But he could tell his moirail was upset by the whole thing, and the only thing Ψiioniic could do to try to ease the pain was convince him that he didn't mind being treated like an outsider.

Even if it really, really hurt.

"I get it, you can't take any... any rithkth," he continued gamely, hunching in on himself. "I'll jutht... thtay here, and try to thtay out of trouble. I promithe."

"No, no! It's me!" he exclaimed. "They've changed me! I've known you for sweeps, and never once, not for an instant, been worried you'd betray me. Even if I had thought you might, I'd just swing you back to my side. I've never, ever had thoughts like this."

He rubbed a shaking hand over his face. "They've already gotten to me."

Hesitantly Ψiioniic reached out and patted his moirail's head. "Shush," he soothed his friend, not knowing what else to do. The thought that they might have done something to Signless was horrifying. In some ways it would be worse than what they'd done to Ψiioniic. At least he knew he'd been experimented on and altered.

"We'll figure it out," he promised. "Together, the same way we alwayth do. Don't doubt yourself, either."

"Something is wrong! It's either me or you," Signless protested, though the shooshing was helpful. He turned his head and buried it against his moirail's chest, then shivered away a little, horrified by the smooth, unnatural slickness of the substance covering his body.

"We'll figure it out," Ψiioniic repeated helplessly. He didn't know what else to do other than keep saying that, and keep patting Signless' head to try to calm his moirail. If there was a good answer to this situation, he had no idea what it was.

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Things are heating up

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>Cnd's heart: Break

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