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Post by Ylanne on Mar 27, 2020 18:11:41 GMT -6
In some language that Drulović had once heard of years ago, Ĭtpraṽmår meant something like "rugged mountain range." It was an odd irony, one of many that came to her attention, however fleetingly, that the prison that carried this name sat in the middle of a flat plain, in a tidal basin about a two hour drive from Wing City - shorter, if you treated speed limits as merely optional guidance. There were hardly even any hills around the place, as far as one could see. Strategically, of course, this made perfect sense. It made escape that much more difficult, and therefore that much more doubtful. The thousand-odd denizens of the place lived in a series of buildings inside three fortified walls, except for those who worked the farmland surrounding it. The flatlands stretched forever in each direction until you could almost forget that they weren't actually that far from the bustling city at all.
In the week or so since Drulović had arrived at Ĭtpraṽmår, she'd settled into an uneasy routine. They woke by six. The cell doors allowed prisoners to wander about their assigned unit freely until an hour before dusk, except for required headcounts, and assigned working hours for those prisoners set to some task. Drulović was one among a small group of about ten, two of whom she'd known in her previous life, and the other eight she'd had yet to meet. Some were quick to make themselves scarce, especially when any of the guards lingered too closely. Once a week, prisoners' visiting family or friends were allowed to bring food and cooking supplies, but Drulović's day hadn't yet come, and in any case, the list of pre-approved visitors she'd submitted was still pending review. She'd heard a decent bribe could ease the process, but money certainly was some large object, contrary to popular belief. Smoke rose from firepits in the yard, as those with funds and outside support prepared their own meals, and chatted at ease, filling the air with the scents of hickory and garlic and fish. She could hear the prisoners in the other buildings, allowed access to different yards, different day rooms, than she was. Though she never saw them. Come nightfall, prisoners were locked in their cells, for the nighttime counts to be done on the other side of the doors, until dawn came by again.
It was simple, and it was isolating.
No mail had yet come for her. The lawyers hadn't been by to see her. Even the damned reporters hadn't yet made it out here. Ĭtpraṽmår, it seemed, meant lonely plains.
The old woman sat on a worn wooden bench in the yard, watching carefully as three of her fellow prisoners walked together, circling the yard one round at a time, their footsteps falling softly on the beaten, yellow grass, with patches of dirt emerging between. Weeds sprouted around the bench, and around the edges of the wall, colored warm yellow with the mid-morning sun, and she heard the sound of a teakettle about to whistle coming from inside the building. Drulović's hand trembled as she held a cup of weak tea, offered kindly by the woman in the cell next to hers, sipping slowly from it. It was not the same as her own, but for now, it would do.
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Post by demikara on Mar 27, 2020 18:22:31 GMT -6
Prison was dead boring and human prisons were dead easy to get into and out of as an erutin. There was a booming black market trade in Terra’s prisons and the erutin cheerfully took a slice of that pie that was ever growing. And so long as there was no proof, there was nothing Terra could do about it, suspicions be damned. Given who she was, it was even easier for Hope to enter or exit any prison she felt like. It was hard to stop people who could just port right in after all, the the erutin empire was not sharing that tech with anyone at all. The former Belkan empire had developed it and they had ended up beign subsumed into the Erutin empire for a damned good reason. That technology was not the sort of thing they wanted to get out to other nations after all, and Hope was well aware of the active sabotage campaign waged to make sure no one else got the capability. She should be, after all. She was the one who set the campaign off.
The prison had been picked out beforehand and had active security measures. Their former head of intelligence would be kept safe here from spies and interlopers and anyone trying to pick her brains. Or well, the erutin government technically had a treaty. But Hope was one person, and acted against her empress all the damned time. And the woman knew it. The two got along like a house on fire. They’d burn to the ground if left alone. So Hope had a leash and stayed at the far end of it, and this…this was toying at the edge of it.
It had been easy to take the spot of the actual prisoner. A little knockout powder and porting them to a secure location elsewhere, and Hope was in as one Amanda Jones, in the same unit as Arianne Drulovic. The schedule was dead boring, but the switch had been made in the dead of the night. And she certainly wasn’t about to recommend the beds to anyone. She was sure they could be made less comfortable, but it would be a trick. She had been waiting for yard time though.
Amused, the dark skinned apparently human prisoner took a seat next to Arianne. “You’ll be pleased to know I paid your bribe for you. As a favor one spy to another. Your visitors should be approved by the end of the day.” Hope smiled and let her eyes flash the electric blue of her implants, rather than the deep brown of the inmate she was imitating. The other was old, but supposedly still sharp. She’d have noticed. “Hope Anona. Though you should call me Amanda, while I’m here like this. And the real Amanda is just fine. She’ll be back tomorrow with a bit of a headache for her troubles and no clue she missed a day.”
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Post by Ylanne on Mar 27, 2020 18:37:01 GMT -6
Drulović's eyebrow raised, and she set the cup down on the bench, where the breeze stirred the tea ever so slightly. "It's been an incredibly long time, you must know," she said. "I suppose it's hard to be forgotten these days, and harder still for us. Too many of our spies skulking about." She tilted her head slightly to the side, offering a small, sad smile. "I remember the last time we'd met on a bench like this. You had the children with you. You'd suffered a terrible whipping beforehand. You could hardly move." Drulović turned her head back to look straight ahead, her gaze vacant. The three prisoners walking their rounds passed them, glancing momentarily at the two, before continuing on their way. In the sun, the wrinkled, knotted scar on the side of her head looked almost like a dried gourd. The bruises had long since faded, but many marks remained, the scars her own agent had left blending easily into those from decades past. The old woman shivered, slightly, the wind chilling her.
"I'm glad Ms. Jones is well. I'm sorry to see you in such a state as this," she said. "It's a sad place." There were few trees, even, to see within the yard, and neither of them could see much over the wall. The first of three. A pair of guards paced along the wall, occasionally looking down, but their walk too, was casual and meandering, like the prisoners below them. Drulović sipped at the tea again, then set it back on the bench, the cup teetering a moment. Her knees ached.
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Post by demikara on Mar 27, 2020 18:43:23 GMT -6
"The Empress' wrath is a terrible thing to have fall on you." Hope said simply. "And half belkan children aren't gifted with the lifespan of an erutin. They're older than me now." It was terrible to see. "I don't think you could have helped much of your state. Even the best of us can be surprised, and you were among the best of us. But I do wonder why you're staying here." She said simply. "You're people would have secreted you away before the trial itself if you had asked it. Why didn't you?" Why was she still here, when she could be free somewhere, out living her life and not trapped.
Hope smiled. "The children are doing well though. I have grandkids now. They'll die before I'm even the same as a 25 year old. I don't know if I'll have much to do with their kids. At that point, it will have to be hard, I think, for me to be erutin and them to be belkan. And its not like we had much of a relationship. I left them to be taken care of by people far better suited to the family life than me." She wasn't exactly mother material.
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Post by Ylanne on Mar 27, 2020 18:51:31 GMT -6
"Your children have great need of you," said Drulović, her tone suddenly sharp and biting. She looked directly at Hope then, seeing the Erutin she remembered behind the human image without much effort at all, the old woman's eyes flashing quick with anger. "What should it matter that they are half-Belkan, that their lifespan is shorter than yours? You are their mother, their kin, giver of their lifeblood. And you've simply chosen to leave them to the care of others for your convenience rather than confront the hard things?" She shook her head. "What an awful abandonment. They deserve to have a chance to know their own mother." Drulović fingered the button at the top of her shirt, that stubbornly refused to stay closed, it was too loose and cracking even. A playful wind tussled the air between the two, and Drulović turned her head away again, hair moving from her face behind her shoulders. They, too, ached with pain that would not quiet. "Go to visit your children. They have far more need of you than I."
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Post by demikara on Mar 27, 2020 18:58:10 GMT -6
"Adalie and Trent know me as their mother's friend. Rachel passed away during one of the bombings of Terra and Henry renounced me as a xeno. Bo passed away without having children of her own. Zuri...no one can find her. She ran away at thirteen and I've not been able to find what happened to her. And oh how I looked." It didn't matter. The child could change her shape and didn't want to be found. So she hadn't been found. "I'm down to my little half belkan twins. And I love them dearly, but they don't see me as their mom. And I was in no position to be a mom then either. Now answer the question instead of digging at my bones." Six children. And she had lost three to time, one to the indoctrination of a former empire, and two others to her own inability to be a parent.
The problem with Arianne was that she was very good at what she did, even in captivity. "Why didn't you escape? Why don't you leave now? You could arrange it as easily as you breathe."
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Post by Ylanne on Mar 27, 2020 19:08:12 GMT -6
"You're in a position to be a friend to them both, then, and not abandon your obligations, whatever words you use to call them by," said Drulović, her tone scathing, entirely ignoring Hope's own questions. "The phrase I've always known, you understand, is kith and kin, those souls closest to us, the ones of whom we are owed much and to whom we owe much in return. To have had the opportunity to be mother and friend - what luck. What fortune. And yet how carelessly you dispose of it, like trash." Neither of her own daughters had written her even once in the past nine months. Neither had answered her calls. Neither had even been to any of the last three houses she'd lived in, not for Christmas or Easter or birthdays. "At least Adalie and Trent are alive now for you to be part of their lives, but look what gratitude you've shown them for that gift." She'd let her hand fall down to the bench, where her palm pressed flat against the splintering wood, the knuckles she still had gone white, her hand still trembling. She didn't yet have a jacket, only the brown shirt and trousers they'd issued her on arrival, and so the early summer winds, too cool to be comforting yet, beat ever so often against her flesh. She watched as the same winds stirred up small clods of dirt, bits of weeds drifting over the yard, scattering to dust.
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Post by demikara on Mar 27, 2020 19:12:24 GMT -6
"They were raised as Belkans. If they knew the truth of me, they would hate me. And I won't discuss this further with you Arianne. I made my choices long ago. They lived better lives with the Redwing family than I could have given them. They had the protection of someone with power and love and adoration besides. A firm hand when one was needed and room to grow. What could I have given them Arianne? What could I have offered when they empress thinks of me as her personal plaything and when I upset her regularly. I could be perfect and I would still upset her."
It was better to be as free as she could be and deal with the fall out. "Why do you stay here Arianne? I know perfectly people would pay to get you out, if they thought they could get one secret from you."
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Post by Ylanne on Mar 27, 2020 19:36:17 GMT -6
"Of course you might upset your empress," said Drulović, shaking her head again. "That's only to be expected in a monarchy or empire. But the difference is that you are their kin, and you've been only derelict in those duties. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, much more than you've demonstrated thus far." She lapsed into silence, drinking the last of the tea, and made a face as she set the cup back on the bench. "It's weak, and bland, you know." She sighed. "Why do you care so much why it is that I'm here? Are the papers not enough for you, to satisfy whatever morbid curiosity this is? What grave matter is it to you, or even to your empress? It's a sad place, and mean. I can't say I care too much for it." She shivered again, the winds brushing some of her hair against her cheek, and she fingered her medallion of the saint. "It's cold."
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Post by demikara on Mar 27, 2020 19:44:12 GMT -6
"Oh the empress doesn't track my every move. She has no clue I'm here. I'm sure if she did she'd be pushing me to get you to talking about something other than my children." Hope considered the other curiously. "I can see about getting you a jacket later today. You're old after all, in a way I'm not. And the papers aren't ever enough. They wouldn't be enough for you, if you had the chance to talk. I make a good spy because I'm curious about everything. In this case, I'm curious as to why a spymaster decided to stay cooped up in this tiny prison. You could be...what's the Terran expression? On an island in the Carribean? Free in some luxurious place at least."
"And you can hardly say I'm the only one derelict in my duties to my family. Spies don't make good parents, Arianne."
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Post by Ylanne on Mar 27, 2020 20:06:04 GMT -6
"At least I've tried with my daughters," Drulović said, though the words felt empty. But for crimes neither she nor her mother had any hand in at all, Natalija would never forgive her, and for what she'd done, however inadvertent and unknowing, Jelisaveta would never forgive her either. The old woman lay her arm down over her lap, staring at the stubs of her absent fingers. The actual wounds had healed by now, but she wasn't quite used to the look of her hand. "If you asked each of those currently in leadership on Terra why I am where I am today, I imagine you might hear at least ten different answers. Because I'm a vile war criminal receiving my just desserts, now, perhaps, or because I'm a corrupt old biddy whose past indiscretions finally caught up with her, or because I'm a sly and conniving snake in the grass, or because I'm a relic of the past set out as scapegoat, or because Ms. Khayyam simply played me for a fool. Or perhaps because I deserve to die in a cage." She shrugged. "They're all right, in their own way, I suppose."
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Post by demikara on Mar 27, 2020 20:10:31 GMT -6
"And if I were to ask you why you're here, when you could not be?" Though she had been trying that. "Or would you just keep giving me a run around?" Probably jsut the run around. Hope leaned back on the bench and looked to the sky. "I could get you out of here today, if you wanted. It'd take a handful of seconds." If that. Hope was very good. "I could send in an agent, take your spot. You'd pass away in jail quickly, and all the while be a free woman. And I'm hardly the only one who can do that. So again. Why stay here?"
Hope was good at what she did, had the manpower to spare. It wouldn't be difficult for her to manage to have her agent 'die' as the for TIB director in her sleep. A natural death for an elderly woman who was past her prime and had one hell of a life. "Or do you truly believe who deserve to die in a cage?"
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Post by Ylanne on Mar 27, 2020 20:27:43 GMT -6
"It's a matter of basic justice," said Drulović, speaking with a sigh. "Of course, they're right about what horrific violence I inflicted on others in my time. Why should I live at liberty while my victims never had that same chance? No magic can truly summon the dead from beyond the veil, and so, there is nothing else for me to give in payment for what I have done. Perhaps it's not right, in some sense of the matter, but it's the smallest sliver of justice available now." She looked headlong at Hope, in her assumed form, beside her. "Besides, it's a matter of scruples. Terra is supposed to stand as symbol of justice - of hope." She emphasized that word pointedly. "What justice is there here for us, if those responsible for unspeakable acts simply go unpunished?" Her shoulders bowed inward, and pain crept along her spine unbidden. "It's a blasphemy."
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Post by demikara on Mar 27, 2020 20:33:13 GMT -6
"Oh please. We don't get to choose our names." She grumbled. "So you're doing this as a symbol. Heroic enough I suppose. And as prisons go, it's a nice enough one. And I hear Terra has rules against torturing prisoners, so hey. Better than an erutin jail, or being at the pleasure of her imperial majesty." Hope didn't like the empress but knew perfectly well the woman could order her brain zapped blank and empty if she wanted, so she paid the appropriate lip service and did as she was bid, for the most part.
"I've already been the hope of a revolution. I don't need naymore heroics in my life, but you apparently do in yours." At least they had gotten off the topic of children. "Let's talk of lighter things though. I'm here all day after all, since Amanda won't wake up until the morning." Which meant the handover would be int he middle of the night. "Or I can just keep you company. It'll be a nice quiet day for me."
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Post by Ylanne on Mar 27, 2020 20:40:10 GMT -6
Drulović laughed at that, threw her head back and laughed. It was a hollow, broken sound. "I've never fancied myself a hero. What a terrible, awful fate that would be. I'm much more like to be the ghoul haunting the underside of an abandoned bridge than the caped crusader. I'm hardly a symbol of justice - more a symbol of what shame burdens us instead." She looked upward, at the guards making their rounds atop the wall, posture at ease, loose grips in their weapons all suggesting they were not concerned with any imminent riot or escape. The prisoners who'd been walking had retired to another bench, were laughing and joking about something, in a Terran language unfamiliar to her. "It's not the worst place I've been in my lifetime by far, no. But I miss my books, and my tea, and most of all, my daughters. I doubt there are many who would care too much, though." She looked straight at Hope again, staring, unblinking, rage and despair and sorrow, what vestiges of them remained, burning bright. "I am what I am. And I'm old, now, and I'm crippled, though that's hardly news to you. You remember. But you can keep your damned pity. I have no need of it." She missed good company. And she missed home-cooked dinners, and long walks in the regal forest, with halos of fog gracing the trees, and sumptuous Christmases with all the fixings, and deer hunts in the wild woods, and twilights by quiet lakes, and steam rising from a hot bath by candlelight, and quietly sung old Slavonic in church halls. But she shared none of this. "I'd be glad just for your friendship, but I suspect that's not why you're here."
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