01 | 🕐 | audio

[mirrortouch]

[ It's not something that really ever becomes routine, it doesn't matter how often he wakes up someplace strange and uncharted. The voice on the line sounds about as scattered as he feels. ]

My name is Will Graham, it's- [ He's pulling back his sleeve to look for a watch that's not there. ] I don't have the time. I don't- I don't have the time.

[ Hang on, don't get too lost. ]

It's not clear to me exactly where I am, but- [ a dry laugh ] you probably already knew that. This isn't even my phone. But you probably knew that too.

[ He's missing details. He's missing plenty. His voice trails off for a short while before he can get his bearings enough to speak again, and even then it's almost unconsciously. ] I don't know. I don't know.

[ It's as if the fact that he has no idea sparks him back into the present. His voice grows more composed, if somewhat cracked. ] So if you're hearing this, if anyone is hearing this - [ is anyone hearing this? ] - any singular indication will be key.

[ Another beat. ]

I feel as though I've strayed a long, long way from home.

[ The air goes dead, and then so does the line. ]

Comments

[godsays]

Zane.

[ Just Zane. He claims no family identity. He was illegitimate, in the first place, and his father only offered him legitimacy when he thought Zane was about to kill him. Pathetic. ]

[mirrortouch]

[ Alright. He will bite. ]

Which side of the - inmate/warden line, as it were, have they got you pinned on, Zane?

[godsays]

I was an inmate.

I graduated.

Now I have an inmate.

[ It's not a comfortable transition. It's not a comfortable state of being. ]

[mirrortouch]

And yet reform doesn't seem to have made you the any less violent for it. Acting on the impulses or not.

Normalcy [ whatever that means ] seems something unobtainable, a tomb's baited prize sitting atop the highest shelf.

[godsays]

Someone here told me who you are is about what you do, not what you think. It seems to me that it's all a part of it - but that the choices you make are the most important. Even when I heard God's voice every day I chose not to kill, often. I choose not to now.

[mirrortouch]

There is a certain - divine connotation that comes with showing restraint.

[ Will adjusts his glasses, unseen, and can't help but ask: ]

You couldn't quiet the voices, but you did stop. How is that, if you don't mind my asking?

[godsays]

The voice. The one.

I just didn't obey until I wanted to. It became comforting. It was a friend. It was the voice of suspicion in my mind. I never trusted it.

[mirrortouch]

For some people, that voice of suspicion sounds a lot like the rest of their thought process. Like separating a black from a slightly darker black. Or picking out a bad egg without having to crack it open first.

[godsays]

It told me to kill everyone I saw.

...Almost.

[mirrortouch]

So, why did you do it? Listen?

Nobody kills without reason. Even if it's not a particularly good reason, there's still reason.

[godsays]

This one, because he slighted me. This one, because I could see through her, and she wanted to deceive me. This one, because he was in my way. Why does it matter? I killed someone here because I was in rage and she was there.

[mirrortouch]

It's not a particularly bad reason.

[ He killed Randall Tier because he was there, because he would have died otherwise. The rest is a different story. ]

But how did it make you feel? Killing them, that sort of power over them.

[godsays]

[ For Zane, the answer is obvious. He sidesteps it. ]

If it didn't feel good, it wouldn't be a problem.

[mirrortouch]

How stalwart you are in your recovery.

I wonder how I might elevate to the same level. [ Dryly, sarcastically: ] Perhaps there's no hope.

[godsays]

I wouldn't trust hope. Stubbornness, maybe. Or a reason to push.

I don't think you're like me. I was raised to be a killer. Sharpened into a knife, every day.

[mirrortouch]

What reason have I here? It's a literal dead end.

Tell me. How you see me.

[godsays]

How I see you?

I think you're broken. I think the world gave you too much to handle and your mind can't take it.

But you're here now. You're in the Barge. We've all touched the darkness here. We've all faced things that are too large for us. You're not alone anymore.

[mirrortouch]

[ It's not a bad presumption. It's not a bad assessment either, though Will finds it interesting whatever it is that he had to go on when he chose that choice of words.

'Broken', particularly by the world, it's been used in definition of him so often and so intimately that it hardly phases him by this point in the game.

He waits, maybe for something else to be said, before he speaks very plainly: ]

"Loneliness" isn't calculable by mere quantity of company, or even quality.

It's a space boat. It's a space boat prison. I'm feeling an overabundance of abandonment.

[godsays]

Loneliness is when there's no one to understand. No one who's like you.

Just... masters. And servants. And enemies.

[ His father; the soldiers; other Mistborn. In that situation, the enemies were the closest he ever got to understanding. That was why he fell so wildly for Vin. ]

Anyway, it might be a space boat prison, but you're alive. And you don't have to be anyone's tool, here. You don't have to be used.

[mirrortouch]

[ Well, he's nailed 'loneliness' on the head. Maybe Will's felt a lot of that throughout his life. It's made him consequentially disgruntled about this turn in the conversation. ]

The implication therein being that I function as a usable tool to begin with.

[ He's malleable, or he was, or maybe he still is, but it seems like it was once upon a time. Perhaps his moorings aren't bedrock, but they certainly aren't sand anymore either. ]

There's no one like me here. [ And he can say that with confidence, maybe an edge of arrogance. ] But that's not to say there aren't those that are of interest.

[godsays]

Don't be so sure. There are a lot of people here who can't be... matched.

[ Zane thought he would be unique, too. Because of his sheer power. Mistborn can move metal, enhance their strength and speed, influence thought and emotion. All dependent on the metals that they swallow and burn. To him, being a Mistborn meant being more than everyone else. It still does mean that, sometimes, when he doesn't catch himself. ]

You might find people who understand more than you think.

And sometimes it doesn't matter if you're brittle, or dull, or broken. There are men who would try to use you anyway.

suddenly private!!

[mirrortouch]

It's especially the brittle, the dull, and the broken who are used as targets, as - impromptu aides, mercenaries in a war they never thought they were to fight. They're malleable. Easier to twist and turn in the direction you'd like them to point.

I've felt the feeling.

[ It's a small admittance, but most of the world back home knew he'd been framed, he'd been made out to be a public mockery of himself. Here could be a chance to get a fresh start, but everyone already knows he's an inmate, don't they? Will finds little interest in prolonging the inevitable. ]

Where there was once a ... suppleness, a rudimentary adaptability, my moorings are built stonier now. There's whispers of a past presence, a voice that was not my own. Whispers mean nothing to me [ or so he thinks, so he can say ] and I'm loathe to admit that it could happen again.

But it won't happen again.

private :O

[godsays]

Whispers have their own power.

[ He won't believe that whispers ever do nothing. Sometimes he swears he can still hear the voice, like an old friend, in the back of his mind, suggesting that he kill, that no one will care, that whoever it is deserves it, or is going to betray him, or is in the way. ]

You might never be free of it.

[ Not very reassuring, is he? I'd say you weren't insane, but you might be. Freedom from scars is an illusion. Zane knows that, with every unlikely beat of his heart around the spike embedded in his chest. It's why he hurt so much when he found out that Iris knew him unscathed in another life. He wants to know what he would have been like, and he'll never know, not from within his own eyes. ]

private B)

[mirrortouch]

[ 'You might never be free of it,' Zane says, and Will knows immediately for it to be true, if he hadn't known it all along. Hannibal's voice walks its way through his mind as though light-footed, floorboards creaking in his wake. It doesn't matter how many weeks pass, how assured of himself he becomes.

There's a sad sort of smile that's crossing Will's face right now, that might be visible if he wasn't so prophetically allergic to the video chatting. Technology, man. ]

I harbor doubts. In abundance, I harbor doubts that I will rid myself of the idea. [ The worse of the cases do tend to stick with him, human totems and cellos carved into vocal cords. The eyes of God, as though a color palette. ] The trick of the matter, as you've learned, is to let them merely lie in wait. To say 'no' to the inevitable.

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[godsays]

And hope that someday you don't get tired of saying no.

[ This has happened to him. He couldn't keep the violence trapped under his skin anymore. He killed Syo. Touko. Whichever. And he'd blamed himself afterward, sick with guilt.

That isn't the way to be either, he knows now. Sometimes killing is necessary. Sometimes it isn't. Best to move forward and cope with the consequences. ]