ravenrock | (no subject)

Time & Place: A.) Washington D.C., 2274 | B.) Enclave-controlled Detroit, 228X
Description: A.) Bellamy and Abner’s first mission together | B.) The Gang Solves A Murder
Content: It’s Fallout, you know the drill

A.) Introductions

This is a retrieval mission. One of our own, a traitor to the cause. You'll be accompanying Agent Rook. He has the details, along with a photograph of the target. Your duty is to assist with the retrieval and protect your superior from any harm in the process. You'll be meeting him outside the main gate at 0600 tomorrow. Do you understand? Good boy.

It was a quarter to six when Abner took his position by the gate, folding his arms tightly over his chest. February was fucking cold, and his civilian disguise didn't offer much in the way of insulation. At least they'd given him a scarf—as much to hide the shock collar as anything else, but it kept his face warm. He pulled it up to cover his nose as he scanned the area.

There. Someone else was emerging from the bunker. Smaller than him, almost child-sized. Was that supposed to be his superior? He stood at attention as the figure approached, just in case.

- - -

B.) Whodunnit

Abner remembered in flashes. Blood. Bruised knuckles. The sight of someone’s face being pummeled into a wall, over and over until it looked more like a crushed melon than a human head. And before that—a whisper in his ear, a voice he didn’t recognize, saying words they weren’t supposed to know.

Do you remember your training?

So yeah, he’d definitely killed someone. That wasn’t the important part. The important part was that he hadn’t done it alone. Someone, somewhere, had the controls to his brain. And that was blatant misuse of Enclave property.

He’d turned himself in immediately, of course. Fully cooperative. Now all that was left was to sit patiently in the interrogation room, hands folded on the cold metal table in front of him, waiting for the detective to ask his questions.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“Thank you.” Abner folded his hands in his lap, staring down at the familiar scars lining the backs of them. On a normal night Dr. Holland would be making her rounds right about now, checking in on Subject 51 and his siblings. There was no lights out in the dimly lit corridors of the lab, but that was his cue to settle down and turn his brain off until he was needed again.

“Was just wondering,” he continued after a moment of thought. “Something you said earlier, when I told you how I go away. You mentioned...” He’d been repeating the words in his head to remember them for later, but now he was drawing a blank. “A...feud state? Something like that, sir.” It didn’t sound quite right, but hopefully Anderson would get the point. “I’ve never heard of that before. They don’t have a name for what I do. Not that they told me, anyway.”

"Fugue state?" Hank asks, his brow knitting up before his face relaxes. Right.

"Settle in, I'll be back with something to eat in a bit." Which isn't an answer to the question, but it buys valuable time for him to grab one of the legal books in the office, printouts of older records scrawling its pages, well preserved over time and one of the few old world legalities still respected.

He comes in holding it, setting a tray on a plain table beside of Abner, looking at the page and starting to read aloud.

"'While memory disturbances are often associated with organic brain disease, crime-related amnesia raises the question of dissociation, a term that refers to the disruption of normally integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environment. A dissociative state is an altered state of consciousness concurrent with a traumatic experience. Dissociative amnesia, formerly termed psychogenic or functional amnesia, is a disorder characterized by the inability to remember important personal experiences and events after a traumatic experience of psychological origin.' That's what a fugue state is. We can prosecute a thing that the perp wasn't mentally there for. Even with a motive, they're an unwilling participant in actions conducted by a person that's them, but not them. Like as fuckin' close to possession as you can get."

He steps back and leans against the open barred door, crossing his arms.

"Usually when it happens we just send 'em to a psych, try to figure out what happened. Most people wouldn't fake that shit, no one wants to get arrested. So if it happens, shit is real. I've had a few cases where I had to work out what motivated that kind of violence. Usually uh... usually it's something pretty heinous. Pretty traumatic."

What he suspects happened to Abner, just from looking at him.

Abner's vague sense of unease grew as he watched Anderson retreat, leaving him alone in the cell. He stared at the door–left open–and felt the urge to close it behind him. The lieutenant might get mad, though, and he didn't want that. So he stayed in his corner, knees drawn up to his chest, watching the door like a dog waiting for its owner to return.

He'd been trained not to ask questions. This one, in particular, felt like something he shouldn't even want to ask. But it would help with the investigation, right? He could tell himself that. Focus on that, not on the itching curiosity about his programmed condition and the idea that someone might actually understand it.

When Anderson reappeared he sat up straighter, shifting to a less guarded position. For once the food went ignored as the man started to read aloud. Abner focused on his voice with an almost frightening intensity, none of his usual fidgeting or twitching. The words had sparked something in his brain–hollow, dreamlike fragments of speech, half-remembered through a drugged haze.

Subject observed entering dissociative state during–

–recommend proceeding to phase–

"Dissociation," he said, as soon as Anderson finished his speech. "They called it that once, I remember that. But it wasn't...it wasn't trauma, sir." It wasn't, right? He felt the mask slipping as he curled back into himself, wrapping his arms around his legs. More blood on his wrists and nails where he couldn't remember scratching. "They did it on purpose, back when I was someone else. He wouldn't do what they said otherwise. So I guess it's not really the same as what you're talking about." He sounded almost disappointed. "Is there another word for when they do it on purpose, sir?"

Edited 2020-08-14 20:51 (UTC)

Hank smears his hand over the upper half of his face, rubbing his forehead like he has to work out a muscle strain from just using his brain to explain stuff.

Not that he explained fuckin' anything. He read that shit out loud from a textbook.

"Trauma doesn't have to be an accident, Private. Trauma can damn well be on purpose." He shrugs tiredly then, shaking his head with a heavy resignation. "More often than not it is."

“Oh,” Abner said softly. “I guess that is the right word, then.” He paused, mouth open, like he was going to say something else, but only followed it with a slight shrug. “It’s okay, sir. Trauma or no, they always do what’s best for us.”

With that—and with no acknowledgement of the misplaced plural—he folded his legs and pulled the tray of food into his lap. The novelty of getting people food on a regular basis hadn’t worn off yet, but he tried to pace himself this time, trusting Anderson not to take it away from him. Still hot. He’d miss it when he went back to IVs and raw meat, but he knew that was all he deserved.

He slid the empty tray back across the floor when he was done, wiping his hands on his pants. “Thank you, sir. And...I mean for everything.“ Food, shelter, kindness—it was almost overwhelming. Almost made him feel like a person.

And, most concerning, a tiny part of him didn’t want it to end.

It's a fucking tragedy that this poor guy's gonna have to go back to that. He knows there's kindness in people, though. Mrs. DePleur, the librarian. Even the mercenary man stationed in City Hall.

"My father was the child of vault dwellers, right out of the Detroit Vault. My mother's mom was from the vault, my grandpa Enclave. Dad always taught me a good American is kind. Mom taught me a good American is strong in their own way.

"Glad I pulled off being a good American to them," and not some fucking stranger who beats up people to, what? Prove she can? A dim glimmer of an idea strikes him then. He'll just have to keep it to himself. Maybe he can talk to the guy in city hall to make it work.