You could go blind doing that... (Rina, now open)

[Anonymous]

To wake up was to feel the white-flash thump of a defibrillator taken straight to the chest.  

300 joules.  Flash.  

There was some sort of stinging pain all down the left side of his body.  Flash.  Something beeped.

Liv opened his eyes.  He couldn't quite recall if that was his memory.  He'd never been resuscitated.  He'd never been injured like that.  That was--

His terminal alarm chirped on its table, its tone even and utterly unsympathetic.  On his way to shut it off, he stumbled over a belt and a discarded shoe, and felt one foot slip on the slick spill of a synthetic silk tie.  Beep. Beep Bee-.  His bedsheets were singed, which hadn't happened for at least two weeks.  It was not a good day.  It was so very much not a good day that he didn't even bother to curse it.  He brushed his teeth, showered, and dressed in bleary silence.  

He hated to miss sleep.  And today--today was National Sadism Day!  Wasn't that every day?  Too good to be true.  Liv ran a brush through his hair one more time and headed down to the ATC, glad the ride was shorter than the one he'd had to take for his shift in the Lower City.  

The ATC was cacophonous compared to the Pilots' quarters.  All sorts of undisciplined psychic static.  What a place to go on your day off.  It was sort of a relief, wasn't it?  Besides, he was avoiding people.  Down here, the worst he'd have to deal with was probably Lockwood.  He meandered down the dormitory hallways and stopped when he'd gotten to where he was headed, outside Argan's door, leaning against the wall.  

"Hello, darlin.'"

[Anonymous]

Nika never dreamed. He just had never had one. He slept deeply and peacefully, it was never interrupted by nightmare or dream. Well, at least, Nika couldn't ever remember dreaming. He didn't ever recall having had any when he awoke the next morning.

But it did mean that he tended to wake up pretty easily, and was never groggy for very long. He swung his legs out of bed, glancing over to where his room mates bed was. He didn't see June around much and he was fine by that. He stretched, scratching at his belly.

Nika paused, his attention going to the door. He could feel blood on the other side, just, standing there. But he wasn't sure who it belonged to or what they wanted. So he just ignored it and padded barefoot to the bathroom. He wanted a quick shower before he started.

Letting the water run so it would get warm, Nika started brushing his perfect teeth. His mother had paid a small fortune to make sure he and his sister had beautiful smiles. He always found that a little ironic, considering what he was.

A short while later, the candidate was clean and pulling his uniform on, his still damp hair pulled back into a thick hair clip at the back of his head. The blood was still there, making Nika a little curious. It wasn't anyone he knew, the feel of it unfamiliar to him. He tugged his shoes on and pushed the button to open the door, his pretty face blank as he stared up at the skinny Pilot leaning there. He had a tendency to stare rather intently at people, forgetting it was rude, "Sir? Did you want something?"

[Anonymous]

Liv looked the Candidate over.  He was pretty.  Not to Liv's taste, which ran more toward the animated-slash-charismatic than the opaquely creepy--but pretty.  From what he'd read in the file (Liv, read CE-access-level files? Perish the thought), he was a hemokinetic.  Cute, cute.

Well, not at all.  But it explained Llyn's candidate choice.  Llyn liked creepy.

"That is an excellent question," Liv said.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he felt the now-familiar tickle of Falstaff's intrusion, and waved him off.  "Later."  Whatever it was, it could not be important.  It wasn't.  The probe unraveled with a smoky neuronal crackle.

"Do you want anything?" Liv said.  He put out an arm, straight, across Nika's path.  "Don't go, please."  Not really a request.  "I'm just curious."  His face crimped into a pleasant, tenuous smile.

[Anonymous]

The candidate frowned slightly, brain kicking in that he needed to be wearing his mask. It was almost like someone flipped a switch on the boy, his face animating enough to show some actual emotion, "Sir?"

Nika wasn't sure why the Pilot was here and he was rather annoying. Why was he here and why wouldn't he go away. He was just standing there, giving Nika a strange smile.

"Um, right now? I want to go get breakfast." His expression showed a bit more irritation now, disliking this rather pointless interaction, "Is there some reason you wanted to talk to me?"

This is why he disliked people. All this pointless interaction and chatter. They really were like sheep, mindless and dull.

[Anonymous]

"Oh, no."  Liv pushed himself off the wall.  One leg out, he hung in the middle of a step forward.  His foot came down.  Click.  Hands folded behind his back, he spent a moment looking down at Nika.  The air rippled with pleasurable heat.  

"You don't talk to a Pilot like that, chappie!"  Carefully, he unhooked the fingers of his right hand from his left, drew his arm out from behind his back as though unsheathing a weapon, and raised one finger.  It was a tut, tut gesture.  A shame on you gesture.  He tapped Nika's nose with his fingertip and pulled his hand back.  He let it settle in the air over his head, palm open, fingers spread with a flourish.  

Liv looked slowly from Nika, who appeared confused, to himself, up the length of his arm, and out to the strange, posed bird of his hand.  His fingers twitched.  One by one, he let them curl inward.  It was like making a shadow puppet.  His thumb wiggled happiness at the last of its freedom and then folded down.  Liv watched all of this with childish puzzlement, as though the hand weren't his, but a kind of show; as though the shape he had made with it were something new, unusual, and unexpected.  Slowly, he shifted his weight, rearranging his shoulders.

"It is," he said, delicately.

Then--

Swung.  His fist hit Nika's face.  There was a a wet-meat crunch.

"--not a good idea."

[Anonymous]

Staggering back, Nika's hands flying to his face, pale eyes widened in shock. He was too startled to even stop the blood that spurted out of his nose and started to run down his face. That had hurt.

Confusion slowly gave way to rage and Nika had to struggle to resist the urge to make Liv bleed from his eye sockets. Instead his tongue darted out, licking at the blood near his lips, finally stopping the flow. He was angry, but he knew better then to lash out as a Pilot. As much as he might want too. And those thoughts were only barely shielded from the Pilot.

He stared back at Liv, licking his fingers, cleaning the blood off them, eyes locked on Liv's, "I apologize. Sir." He did his best to keep the boiling rage down, control it. Llyn would be proud he was sure. He had taken those lessons to heart. And despite the throbbing in his nose, Nika did enjoy the blood.

Just wait. Watch what he was doing, see what he wanted and give it too him. Nika would really rather this annoying sheep would go away.

[Anonymous]

Liv let his mind spool out, collecting like looped threads around the tight, nauseous coil of Argan's brain.  It sparked and prickled.  The overwhelming feeling of it was wrong.  He caught the tight-pressed desire for blood and the impassive, blank disdain, then drew back without touching anything.  The tiniest china teacup perched on the shakiest mental sideboard did no more than rattle against its saucer as he wound past.  He had promised Llyn he wouldn't do any real damage.  

If his smile had dropped it was back now, but stretched a little more tightly.  

"Wrong answer."  

When had he heard that before.  White light.  Wrong answer.  Ah yes.  It never did matter what anyone said.  It was an excellent lesson to learn: rote recitation, when faced with a Pilot, was not a clever strategy.

Liv jolted forward, caught Nika by the wrists, and slammed him up against the wall.  His knee came up, grinding into the Candidate's groin.  Back a little.  Forward, bone against soft flesh.  Not quite where it hurt, but close.  He let go one wrist and grabbed Nika's throat, digging his thumb in hard.  He couldn't fight back.  Liv had no moral qualms about this rule of Candidate-Pilot conduct.

"Very, very wrong.  You don't.  Lie.  To a fucking.  Psychic."

[Anonymous]

Even after the punch to the face, Nika had not been expected the knee shot. He gave a strangled cry, curling forward, the dark, icy rage inside him welling up. He jerked back, head slamming against the wall when Liv grabbed his throat.

He wanted to kill Liv. Badly. His lips pulled back into a snarl, pale eyes narrowing. The boy was only just keeping from lashing out at the Pilot. He couldn't speak a defense or argue his point. Or even try and apologize again. His control was too thin.

His hands curled into fists, nails digging into his skin, breaking it. Control. Control. Fight the urges. The dark, unnatural mind of his seethed with the desire and urge to tear Liv apart. Bleed him dry, rip his flesh open, hear his screams. But he settled for glaring at the Pilot, angry and confused.

[Anonymous]

No response but anger.  Well, that was all right.  That was the point of the exercise.  Liv was Nika's mirror.  He'd keep going until his words matched his thoughts.  It was a crude kind of honesty, but it was the best he'd found.

The truth, Sulo.

He hadn't needed the lesson.  He had.  He hadn't fucking needed it.  Something primeval screeched in his head.

The truth hurts.

He let go the other wrist and moved to one side.  Wrenched open Argan's door.  Half-open.  He weighed more than the kid, for once, and used his mass to slide him along the wall and half into the door.  Stopped.  Opened the door--slammed it shut--stopped a centimeter from Argan's face.  

He smiled, rocked back on his heels, relaxed.

He opened the door again.  Pushing it in and out, he felt the torque, tested the old-fashioned hinges.  It was a heavy metal door, solid steel.  Pulled it open... let it swing back.  Open...  back.  This time he didn't stop it.

[Anonymous]

Nika snarled his rage, thrashing against Liv. But while Nika was strong for his size, he was small and going up against a trained fighter. As best he managed to loosen Liv's grip a bit, but not enough to get away.

His head pressed into the doorway, he watched the door come closer. He didn't flinch, he just snarled at Liv, the hate radiating off of him. He wasn't even shielding anymore. The cold, dark, unnatural rage was projecting loud enough that even a non-psychic would have been able to sense it.

When the sold door connected with his head, he cried out, his vision going black for a moment, pain exploding in his skull. Probably concussed. He stopped struggling for a moment, too stunned to respond, sagging against Liv's hold on him.

The pain in his skull made him dizzy, though his expression didn't give much away. The anger controlled by the stunning effect the door had had on him, Nika's expression was blank, looking slightly confused.

He struggled to collect his thoughts through the blinding pain, clear his head. His lip curled back again as he shook his head, this time the pain helped him to chase the stunned feeling away, "Don't touch me."

[Anonymous]

"Wrong."  

Liv steadied Nika's jaw with one hand and examined him.  The door had left a slowly pooling bruise on his forehead and a scrape across one eyebrow.  Blood crusted his upper lip.  A drop dangled at the end of his nose and fell.  It landed on his shirt and bloomed into a red Rorschach orchid.

He wondered when he'd start to feel bad.  He didn't yet.

Liv held Nika's head carefully to one side and leaned forward to speak into his ear.

"Hypocrisy is kind of hard to understand until you experience the wrong end of it.  Loads of things are like that, actually."  His voice skimmed the words, breathy and quite serious--at least an octave lower than the tone he used for his usual banter.

He leaned back, opened the door, and slammed it shut on Argan's face.  

Then things were moving very fast, in stop-motion flicker.  These was no time to think.  Again.  Explosions of red and black sprang off his mind, and sparklers, and pain.  Sparklers.  He slammed the door again, slid it back, and

 shoved Argan through to the floor of his room.  

Liv felt ill.

[Anonymous]

"Wrong."

Nika coughed, jerking his head out of Liv's grip, hating the feeling of the other mans hand on him. He didn't like it at the best of times and right now, Nika didn't like Liv much. There was rage there, but no hatred. That was an emotion Nika didn't really have. He wasn't happy about the situation, but his feelings toward Liv were mild dislike at best.

"Fuck you." Nika didn't even struggle that time as Liv slammed the door into his face. Then again. And a third time. He screamed once and there was a loud crunching sound as the solid door shattered the boys cheekbone, his skull giving way.

His vision blurred and he felt something dripping down his cheek. Blood, and something else, thicker, like jelly. Collapsing onto the ground as Liv tossed him in, he didn't move for a moment, confused and still reeling from the repeated blows to his head.

Fingers found his eye. Not where it should be. Sitting up, Nika ignored Liv, more interested and curious about what was going on with his eye. It hurt when he poked at the ruined mass, dangling against his equally ruined cheek. He wasn't going to be so pretty after this. Oh well. "Hmmm." Nika wished he could see what it looked like.

Even the pounding headache took a backseat to this new discovery. Delicate fingers prodded at it, causing it to leak a bit more. It hurt in a very interesting way.

[Anonymous]

Something had crunched.  Liv didn't register what it was until he caught the belated mental flash of pain, strung in a jagged streak across his cheekbone and eye.  He put a hand up to his face.  

Liv had always been extremely sensitive to others' feelings, thoughts, manipulations.  All part of being a no-one.  He stared down at the Candidate on the floor and felt pathetic.  Hadn't in years, old boy.  Argan didn't care, that was it.  He was just playing.  Liv was...

Jealous.  

Wish everything were a game, don't you?  Was that the lesson?  There was blood everywhere, spattered on the doorframe, shot in a fine aerated spray onto the carpet.  Liv wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  He hated the smell.  Fucking--fuck.  This could be bad.  Llyn would not be best pleased.  

"I've called for a medical crew."

Falstaff's voice came in as though funneled over the wrong frequency, with screeches and feedback.  

"What the fuck did you do to me?"

"You know the theory: mirroring.  My former Pilot obviously conditioned certain responses."

"What the fuck did you do?"  Flame whooshed on, blue and air, near one sleeve, and Liv smothered it against the wall with his palm.  

Silence.  

"I believe this was premeditated?"

"That's not what I'm talking about."  He wasn't sure what he was talking about.  It didn't matter, did it?  Tomorrow he'd have a laugh about it with Gabe.  Anyway, it wasn't the same.  But there was that white flash.  Odd moments.  It wasn't the same thing at all.  He stared at Nika.  He'd had injuries; never one like that.  His eyes was ruined, leaking, strung on a red thread.  Liv had to turn his head away, covering his eyes with his forearm in a pretense of pushing back his hair.

What was he supposed to say--Don't ever do what I just did to anyone?  Unless they deserve it.  Most beautiful hypocrisy.  It was beautiful.  There you are, Livvy.  

"I'm sorry," he said.

His voice sounded odd, burbling.  He hadn't meant to say that.

[Anonymous]

Liv's voice caused Nika to turn to face him. His once pretty face was a ruined mess. The right side was by far the worst, swelling distorting his mangled face. His eye was dangling half out his head, dripping slightly down his cheek. He stared at Liv for a moment, then started laughing.

Was the stupid Pilot serious? He was sorry? He had broken his face and ruined his eye and he said sorry. That struck the candidate as rather funny, "You are sorry? Stupid." Nika didn't really care at that point if that would get him further punished, "If you want to hurt someone," he paused, sitting blood and some fragments of a molar out before focusing on Liv again, "Then don't be half-assed about it."

He didn't say the next part aloud, aware Liv could read his thoughts. But one day, Nika would make Liv sorry. He would remember this, store it away and bide his time. He was really past the point if worrying over the next punishment. He didn't even know what had sparked this one. It didn't seem to really matter one way or the other what he did or said, the Pilot was going to hurt him. And pain was fleeting, and sometimes enjoyable. And Nika could be patient when he felt like it.

A medical crew arrived, fussing around Nika. He disliked them touching him, but he did his best to keep his mask somewhat in place and didn't jerk away. He hissed in pain when they examined his face. But he was alright to walk back with them too the medical bay. Pilot Intram would have to be contacted to see what was allowed to be repaired.

[Anonymous]

Fuck, fuck, fuck.  

Liv backed up and let the medics do their work.  He jammed his hands into his pockets and dug one heel into the wall, too hard; it squeaked downward.  Fuck you, Argan.  Fuck you.  It hadn't taken the edge of his anger, but it gave Liv a certain bitter pleasure to realize that he'd added another notch to his tally of enemies.  Sadism is the new masochism, boyo.  He'd pissed Nika off--he hadn't had the balls to teach him anything.  Well, live and learn, Livvy.  He won't.

Liv had the uneasy feeling Argan wouldn't learn anything, and the even more uneasy feeling that he didn't give a fuck anyway.  No, no.  That wasn't quite true.  Argan had been a test run and an alibi.  Liv's thumb twitched in his pocket.  

The air hung very still and quiet in medics' wake.  Absent the immediacy of injury and violence, Argan's room looked like a derelict crime scene.  Drying blood and a rocking open door.  Liv shrugged back and kicked himself forward off the wall, head pitched forward  His hair straggled stickily over his forehead.

He'd spent ten years in the ATC--it was no longer difficult for him to navigate the corridors, even stuck in a weird fucking thought-loop of... shit.

It wasn't guilt.  Liv's decisions, however ersatz, had been rational.  Nika Argan was a sociopathic dickhead, and he had merited a hand-me-down lesson.  And so what if it was a hand-me-down, a relic of old Hazzie.  So what if it was?  No.  The fucking problem was all of those little insidious ancillaries.  What Falstaff was up to.  Those thoughts and memories that categorically did not belong.  They weren't Liv's.  When he'd woken up, he'd been Hasdrubal.  

Excuses.  He'd carried an unproductive exercise too far; that was all.  And if he was cracking up?  It'd been a long time coming.  Feedback loops.  His thoughts caught on the idea and slid away.  Fucking Falstaff.  What was it he'd said--that project Hazzie was always--

Liv had his head down, navigating by bare peripheral vision and what heightened telepathic awareness he could muster.  Turning a corner, he nearly barreled into a taller figure.  He did a quick box step--sideways, backwards, sidle, stop--and caught himself with one hand to the guy's chest.  One bloody hand.

Well, that didn't look suspicious at all.  

"Damn."  Thoughtful pause.  He looked up and recognized, vaguely... Hamilton, Pilot Royal.  The scruffy one.  Slowly, he drew back his hand, reached for his handkerchief, and wiped at his sticky fingers.  Stopped, caught halfway toward the urge to salute, and glanced up again.  "Er..."  

No in my defense, this shirt ought to be chucked anyway.  No glibbery at all.

[Anonymous]

Bart had been down checking up a bit on his candidates. He was a little worried about both of them. Despite being stage 2, Bart wasn't all that sure then knew what exactly was going on. Where they were and what it meant for them. And they were good kids, he didn't want to see them broken and abused in TRIM.

He had not really expected to run into Pilot Sulo. He glanced down at his rumpled white wife beater, a large blood hand print smeared across it. Bart frowned, brushing his mind over Liv's. He could ask, but this was faster and far more truthful.

It seemed Liv had gone a little primal on some candidate boy. Didn't look very pretty. And not something Bart tended to approve of much, but Liv didn't seem all that alright. He put one arm on Liv's shoulder, steadying him, his drawl slow and relaxed, "Hey now. Ya don't look real good." The kid seemed pale, "Ya wanna go get some coffee?"

There was paper work to get done, as always, but Bart didn't really want to just leave the Pilot wandering around covered and blood and looking rather dazed, "I couldn't help but notice that ya are a bit bloody. Wanna talk it over?"

[Anonymous]

You should see the other guy.

Probably wouldn't be appropriate.  

Liv added a new layer of mental shielding.  It fit gently into place.  

His next inclination was to say no, thanks, fuck off, but then, lately his inclinations had been... incredibly dumb.  Anyway--no, was it?  No; he'd most immediately wanted to say where's the fucking punishment?  Damn, Liv, been a Candidate for too long.  He shifted away from Bart's hand and nodded on a diagonal.  

"Sure.  Mind if I just wash up?"  He jerked his head at a nearby washroom and didn't wait for an answer before heading inside.

Damn.  He stared at himself in the mirror, surrounded by echoing tiles and the smell of ammonia and bleach.  Damn damn damn.  Blood speckled the front of his vest and one shoulder of his shirt, and he had a streak of something sticky across his sleeve.  And his pants pockets... oh well.  Oh well.  He washed up quickly, scrubbing at his clothes, and ditched the vest altogether.  It went up with a satisfying thwump when he bundled it into the incinerator.  Normally, Liv ended all ablutionary sessions with a good long mirror-gaze, but right now he didn't particularly want to.  Rolling up his sleeves, which flapped wetly against his arms, he shouldered his way back out to Pilot Hamilton.

[Anonymous]

"Yeah. No worries." Bart leaned against the wall, waiting for Liv to clean up. He was aware that he had a large, bloody hand print on his chest. But he wasn't worried about it. Bart would just throw it away later, but the fact it was there didn't bug him much.

He wasn't going to get mad at Sulo yet. He wanted to know exactly what went on and he had learned enough from his scan to know that he hadn't killed anyone. So he didn't have to arrest him. Poor kid seemed pretty shaken.

"Lost the vest I see. Too bad. Though blood doesn't come out real easy. Now, wanna go get that coffee? I know a real good place not far from here."

[Anonymous]

"Yeah, it was a favorite..."  Liv picked at his shirtfront with a show of rue.  "Sorry about yours, by the way."  Bart didn't seem the sort to care.  He might be one of the Good Ones, or he might only be nice.  Liv had never been able to tell the difference.

The thing about people who were nice was you never knew.  The suspended sense that something was about to crash through the bottom.  That it couldn't possibly be true.  Liv found kindness faintly terrifying.

He let silence sink in around them as he followed the older Pilot down the corridors of the ATC.  Bart didn't seem the sort to care about that, either.  He hadn't heard from Falstaff in a bit.  He didn't really want to; he'd only get the usual cryptic avoidance.  Sound familiar?  They swiped out of the building--Liv, with irrational relief, realized he wasn't in Official Trouble.  Oh yeah, Pilot.  Well, duh.  Outside the sun shone in an early-morning way, like a grapefruit, a bit of sharp chill, liquid pink, rindy white in the air, and a strong hint of yellow.  Everything sparkled.  

Liv glanced toward Bart and realized it'd be a much, much better idea to talk to him than it'd be to talk to almost anyone else.  Gods, Gabe--he just wouldn't get the Unofficial Sulo.  

It was normal to do things like this sometimes, though, wasn't it?  Things like this, and.  Well.  New Pilots had that freedom.  Of course he'd use it.  Bart might just give him a talk about care and they'd pal around and Sulo, you are pathetic.  

They'd stopped in front of a classic-looking place done up in dark-red, stippled stone.  The Coffee Place.  How reassuringly literal and at the same time so proud, even hubristic; the definite article.  The Coffee Place.  It had an open front and a cheery, dilapidating awning, which cut the sun off abruptly as they passed under it.  Liv didn't say anything until they'd settled in a corner booth with their drinks.

"Well, thanks," he said at length.  "If you want to know what happened, you can just--"  He peeled a careful hole in his outermost mental shield, and offered it up.  "--you know.  I'm sorry."

[Anonymous]

"Ah well. Just means ya can by another one." Bart gave Liv another easy smile, sliding his hands into his pockets as he straightened up, "And don't worry about this shirt none. Shoulda been chucked ages ago."

Bart never really felt the need to fill silence, so he meandered down the hallway. Even with a clear destination in mind, Bart always just seemed to be ambling along. He probably should go a little faster, but he felt he earned a bit of a break. He didn't really take them all that often.

Lazy.

Now now. You are just being mean honey.

Of course. Just don't be gone too long.

Never am. 'Sides, this is like work. Helpin' a subordinate and all.

Bart paid for their coffee, his own pleasantly strong as he was rather addicted to caffeine. Shot in the dark. He sat down, savoring his drink. He wasn't in an hurry to make Liv talk, silence never felt awkward to him.

"Yer welcome." Bart smiled again, delicately feeling the hole Liv had opened up. No reason to make it at all uncomfortable for Liv and Bart had years of experience getting into the people's minds. He was quiet for a bit, as he scanned the memories, going them over.

A frown slowly formed as he sat back, pulling out of Liv's mind, "Well, that sort of conduct ain't very becoming in a Pilot. You wanna tell me why you went crazy all over some kids head with a door?" Bart took another sip of his coffee, watching Liv over the rim of the festive colored mug, "Sad as it is, kids get raped. And most people don't bust their eye out through blunt force trauma over it."