omar | 13: Spam: Man got to live what he know.

13: Spam: Man got to live what he know.

[Open spam]

[Omar is a roamer. As long as he's not forced to stay in his cabin -- in his cell, comfortable as it may be -- he spends very little time there. He's just as likely to sleep in an empty cabin, or even once or twice in the Enclosure. He keeps bizarre hours, and he keeps them largely to himself.

None of this is new. This is how he's been since he got here the first time. Since his last death toll, though, he's become even more erratic in his efforts to stay unpredictable, and the recent spate of unwarranted brutality has him feeling especially restless. He can be chanced upon at all kinds of odd times and places: at the library early in the morning, in the showers and the laundry room around noon, eating in the dining hall in the late afternoon. In the evening, smoking up on the deck with so many of his fellow passengers, because it's not actually that he's antisocial -- just very, very careful.

Careful enough that he takes data, and so some of the newer passengers may or may not be surprised to glimpse him out of the corner of their eyes every now and again. Maybe even writing something down.]

[Spam for Cold and Dark]

[But there's a predictability even in unpredictability, and he does from time to time spend the night in his cabin, if only to keep up the illusion that he does so much more often. It might take a more careful observer a while to figure out when he's likely to return, but the time comes around eventually.

It's late in the evening, but he's been up for the last 36 hours, and he's tired -- and therefore both baffled and a little annoyed to hear a knock on the door right when he's about to lay his head down.]

Man, who is it?

[Edit: Voice to Ricki, post-Tiffany spam]

You know what? I remember a time this place didn't feel like a cross between a day care and a circus.

[Edit: Spam for Luna, post-pairings announcement]

[Omar's been playing the warden shuffle for a while now. At best, it's been ineffective -- the closest thing he's gotten to a decent temporary warden, in Horatio, got ripped away from him halfway through the month. At worst, it's been disastrous. So he's not inclined to pay much mind to the announcement, not anymore. He goes about his day. Let Luna Lovegood come to him, if she likes.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I hurt her, actually. Or tried to. I wasn't in my right mind at the time.

[He frowns, like he's suddenly realizing that he never told Ricki the most important part of the story the other night.]

One thing you ought to know about me -- I got a whole lot of bodies on my name, back home and up here, but ain't a one of them a taxpayer.

[That might be Baltimore slang too, he realizes. Cops and robbers slang.]

A civilian. I don't do that. Not ever.

You must know that that makes only one of us.

[He says, because he's sure he does, but feels all the same that he can't let it go unsaid.]

But I like that. Very principled. So you were floating on some flood or breach-

[He does know, although there's a part of him that's been avoiding the thought until Ricki says it out loud. He's never been able to entirely bypass dealing with people who do the things he doesn't, but it doesn't sit right with him; especially not in someone whose acquaintance is more than a necessity. He wrinkles his nose slightly, but lets it pass without comment.]

A port, but more or less the same thing. Sort of a Hotel California type of deal, if that ain't after your time--?

[Voices in the walls. Voices whispering, leading him into all kinds of trouble. Brandon's voice, loudest of all.]

[It'll come out in '77, so Ricki shakes his head.

He shifts, though, stepping away from the door and towards his tiny bathroom. He kicks the door open, and toes a shoe to stand in front of it, then steps in, out of sight, to run the water in his little sink.

He badly needs a shave. Instructs;]

I'm listening.

[Go on.]

[He watches him go, puzzled, and then ends up following out of an innate dislike -- distrust -- of talking to people he can't see. He leans against the doorframe.]

Haunted hotel, basically. Ghosts getting in your head, talking you right into badness.

[It had been his warden's father for her, he remembers suddenly. She'd been so happy to talk to him, and then Omar had forced her to hand over his watch. Something shiny to lure Brandon back to him. He grimaces -- it was a long time ago now, and he knows it wasn't his fault, but the shame had eaten him up for days afterwards.]

Anyway, some of that badness was messing with Anya, so I wrote her a letter after that.

[Ricki glances up, and meets his eyes in the mirror, gives him a sheepish tug of a smile through the shaving cream.]

Just be a minute.

[He promises, or asks, maybe. He could use the second to pull himself together. But it's fine, with Omar standing there, as long as Ricki can turn back to the sink, to his own face in the mirror, and to slowly, tangibly uses each careful pass of the stupid little barge-issue safety razor to return himself to human.

Between passes;]

She write you back?

Edited 2015-07-01 01:59 (UTC)

She did. That was how we met -- felt I owed her a favor after all that.

[...Which, come to think of, she never actually cashed in. Hm. That's... hm. He folds his arms and looks out over the room, a little pensive.]

Didn't expect to see her on the warden side, but I always knew she had heart.

When I got my first temporary, it was this hotshot shrink. You remember Cambridge?

[They'd both been around before Ricki was, he's sure. Besides, the man had made an impression.]

I wasn't sure I'd last the month.

Only spoke with him once or twice, but I recall the man.

[He had, indeed, been memorable. And as for Omar's history with temporary wardens... Well, that just reminds him why he's so angry all over again. His jaw tightens a little.]

Half of them now ain't nothing but children. And I don't mean in age -- I've known far younger boys with far more sense in 'em.

I've played double-double games with Moscow trained hoods, and I've never felt so cat and moused in my life. He struck me as someone who was having a ball.

[And yes, Ricki had egged him on in retrospect, but if it had been a string like that- Anya had saved him, in a big way. He rinses the blade clean, starts up again.

But that brings them back to where they started.]

What happened?

[He's quiet for a moment.]

Know that girl Tiffany Doggett?

Yep.

[He's interested now. Tiffany is-

Well, he won't offer that unless Omar asks. For now, his expression betrays nothing but benign curiosity.]

Sound like she more or less cut ties with the Admiral over that Lourdes girl.

Arming her up again?

[His eyebrows lift in surprise. He doesn't know why, when;]

Well, that makes the pair of them.

She better hope it do. She say her credit with the Admiral is all used up for anything else.

Now, the girl got heart, too, so I thought I'd try and talk some critical thinking into her, but...

[He shakes his head, lip curling with irritation. He knows he overreacted, but that doesn't mean it isn't still frustrating.]

So any inmate of hers, here on out-

[Right. Right. Ricki sighs, and cleans the blade again.]

Comes by for bible study, sometimes. [A tiny little crook of a smile in the mirror. It's embarrassing, but it's true. He's got the good book hidden in one of the drawers.] I like her fine. Can't say as I'd trust her to shepherd me anywhere. Can't say as I'd want my life in her hands.

[Omar's gaze is on the bedroom behind them, but his eyes cut over to Ricki's mirror-glance, brows lifting at bible study. Granted, he has his monthly Sunday mornings, but it's still a surprise.

The rest, however, isn't. He sighs.]

The thing of it is... back in the day before, I ain't saying the wardens was anything like perfect, or even all that good at what they was doing, but I never doubted that most of them really was trying to do right. Honest people trying to do an honest day's work, and not just playing at it.

How many we got like that now, you think? 'Cause it feel like a painfully low number to me.

Count 'em up. You've got to figure the bad ones are loudest, the good ones stay paired.

[He scrapes the last bit of foam away, and reaches for a cloth to wet.]

Anya, good. Steve Rogers, heart in the right place, good in a crisis. And Lloyd likes Lettie, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

Man, Letty a straight up thief. She told me so herself -- she in the game as much as I am. Maybe more.

You're in the game, I'd trust you more than I would half of them. You're not going to drug my tea, lock me up for nothing, ask me the kind of questions that wardens like to ask about who it is I'm disappointing.

[Ricki shrugs, languidly.]

You see it different?

I ain't in charge of nobody's so called moral development.

[Ricki wipes his face clean with a wet towel, and then drains the sink, tidying neatly up after himself. What he'd said to Crowley had been true; he's tidy.

Right now, he's focusing on Omar, because he has the feeling he's stepped on his toes somehow, but genuinely doesn't understand.]

Be patient with me, Omar. [He finally just asks, tired and earnest.] I've had a hell of a week. Sit down with me and start from scratch. You have rules that I've never heard of.

[He lets out a low sound, a little frustrated; he'd thought they were on the same page up until this point. He goes to sit back down in the desk chair, this time stretching out and propping one foot up on the wastepaper basket, molotovs be damned.]

It ain't my rules that are bothering me right now, yo. It's the man upstairs. This place supposed to be all about our betterment or whatever -- how's he gonna say that girl is any better than me? When she come up here from robbing citizens?

Oh. Then we're just on different points.

[Ricki's utilitarian side has him interested in which wardens are good for the quality of life of their inmates, and Letty counts for him.]

You're wondering about who gets to be a good guy and who gets to be a bad guy? Your work being not so different than hers, and in some respects, your ethics being a little more developed. Mine, for that matter- I played a part in saving British Intelligence from utter destruction a few days before they caught up to me, I'd like to imagine that would have made a difference, but I'm in here and worth less morally than a more conventional criminal.

[That, he follows.]

Yessir. I don't think of myself as being all that righteous when you get down to it, but I ain't the one getting paid to tell the rest of y'all what kind of bad life choices y'all made. Or how y'all ought to learn to do it like me.

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