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

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.

[Ricki nods. Steeples his fingers.]

My perspective on this one is twisted, and I'm afraid not very helpful at all.

[Ricki isn't asking for and doesn't need Omar's reassurance, he thinks, and so he doesn't give it -- but the truth is that twisted or not, this is the most help he's had from anyone since he woke up and realized Leslie and Bruce were two years gone. Even just to have someone actually listen to him... it's been too long since he even had that much. He sighs softly, shaking his head.]

Point is, there ain't all that many left I'd call honest. And when the ones that do have heart can't stop acting like fools--

[Well, that's really depressing, is what it is. He picks at a thread on his jeans.]

I don't expect to get out of here except the way I went before, Ricki. I can't say I was ever all that happy about it, but the idea of spending the rest of my life here now...?

There's this book. Play. I read it when I was a kid. Happy Birthday Wanda June. Girl goes up to Heaven, gets a chance to speak down and console her parents. 'Don't worry, mom and dad, I'm having a lovely time up here riding the carousel with all the animals and soldiers and men who went to the electric chair.'

[He says, settling in now, back against the headboard.]

They'd never have let me had it if they'd realized. Strict Evangelical upbringing.

[And it sounds to him like nonsense, maybe. Like nothing. Except;]

I got a lot of comfort from it. The idea, snuck in this book, that a Higher Power might be alien. Might not want the things from us we thought He wanted. I think as a kid, I didn't understand that one day that actually meant dying, and ending up a toy boat on a system of ethics as incomprehensible to me as any other someone tried to cram down my throat.

I thought, maybe, if it had power over me, I might respect it. The truth is I don't. I can't.

[He shrugs. He's calmer now, but not really in a good way -- the fire in his eyes has dimmed.]

It don't respect us either, boo.

That, I've had a long time to reconcile.

[Evangelical, and sitting here with Omar, after all. Ricki does not have an uncomplicated perspective on judgement from above.]

Ignore that bullshit for a minute. Leave the Admiral out of it, and talk to me about morality. You blinked when I told you I had collateral- there's a pack of cigarettes in the top drawer.

[A gesture; toss.]

Lay it on me. What's wrong with that? You're not going to hurt my feelings.

[He blinks now, caught off-guard by the interjection, eyes darting to the drawer. He pulls it open, takes the cigarettes out, and procures one for himself before tossing the pack gently onto the bed.]

What's wrong with that?

[He echoes it skeptically, lighting up as he does. Is that a real question?]

It's wrong. [He agrees, as he pulls one out himself, lights up.] I won't pretend it isn't. But it happens infrequently, and when it does, it's them or the lives of a hundred good men who stand between us and a repeat of the Stalinist purges, and that little historical chapter had a body count at a conservative five million.

[He raises his brows slightly, letting out a quiet sound that might almost be amusement.]

Well, then, we ain't really talking about the same thing, are we?

[Not that he necessarily condones what Ricki is talking about, either, but--]

Ain't no good men standing between a gangster and his dollar. Not truthfully.

My civilian- I clipped a fellow in Kowloon while I was shooting at someone who needed shooting at, and I don't mind admitting I just about flung myself off a bridge.

[Because it's not entirely truthful to pretend he guns down civilians left right and centre.]

That was one of the worst things I've ever done. But it isn't necessarily so clear cut.

Say there's an undersecretary to a Polish minister. Young kid, thirties maybe. Loses his heart to a dancer. You go in for a little bit of a burn- bring me information on what you're doing with Germany. He does fine for you the first time, but panics and threatens to go to the police the second time, and if he does he's going to get you and a few good Polish agents killed. You don't have time to be sure there's going to be a safe extract, and it's your mistake to begin with but they don't deserve to be killed for it- neither does the kid, mind, but really, it's in everyone's best interest that we know what Germany is getting up to, given the hell of a war that's just been going on. At this point historically we're all learning the truth for the first time so the sense of urgency there is pretty bloody high.

[It gets complicated.]

[It does, and he gives this its due thought for a while.]

What do y'all do if he won't say nothing the first time around? Come to that -- what else you got to incentivize him along the way?

[Good questions. Ricki takes a deep drag of his cigarette.]

Everything is words. If he holds up the first time, we leave him be. Maybe we don't even let the secret out, though now and again we have to, to let them all know we can. Resisting is the smart thing to do. It would be very, very easy to pretend that the good men stay out of our clutches, that there's something you can just do right enough to avoid someone like me.

[He leans forward, and just shows him. When Ricki starts a burn, he is warm, and sweet, and understanding. He is as reasonable and irresistible as anyone has ever been, with just a hint of the urgent about him, like he's truly afraid that Omar won't see that Ricki is the one who can solve all of his problems.]

We don't need state secrets. We'd just like access to the Berlin trade import files, see what food supplies are coming into the city. Surely this isn't worth all that? You're standing to lose your job, your marriage, never mind the reputation of the poor girl, over what's really just the price of sugar behind the wall? Let me help.

[Subsiding, and Ricki is himself again;]

Except it lasts a few hours, before you get to that line. You've got a glass of scotch or three in him, or if he's a teetotaler you've kept him talking until three am, which works nearly the same. You've confused him, though, is the main thing, and you're the life line. Let me help. The best part is, if you're any good, you believe it while you say it. I think it's true, every single time.

[Omar takes in the display somewhat impassively. He can see where it could work on someone else, and how, but it just doesn't do anything for him... whether that's because he knows it's false, or because it's so outside his realm of experience -- import files and state secrets -- as to be abstracted, or whether it's just because whatever it is he likes in Ricki, it's the part he already knows -- or at least thinks -- to be real.

Then again, he's not sure he quite likes the reality of this, either. He sits back, drawing on his cigarette, going quiet for what might be a little too long as he mulls this over. It's not, of course, that he never lies, or that he's never dealt in trickery; that's always been an important weapon in his arsenal. Hell, he's lied under oath. But there's still that line in him... there's trickery against the Barksdales and the Bells of the world, and against the Maury Levy Esquires, and then there's trickery against some naive little gofer that happened to dip his pen in the wrong ink.

Finally--]

Story for you.

Please.

[Ricki says, surprised and warmed, and eager to hear how this goes.

He could use a heartbeat, to sit back and smoke and remember which him he currently is.]

So y'all can feel where I'm coming from a little bit, here.

I was around... I'd venture to say maybe eleven or twelve years old the first time my brother had me come out robbing with him. I'd been a scrapper before that, mind -- already had this on me. [He gestures along the scar that runs down his face.] But I ain't had a job, you know? I wanted to get in the game. So Anthony took me out with a friend of his and we go down the way a bit, and then they point out this man on this bus stop bench and they say, a'ight -- that's the man we gonna rob.

And I ask, who the man be, and why we be robbing him? And they tell me, because he be there all alone. So we go and we put our guns on him, and I'm thinking, you know -- okay, now here I am. Playing for real. Only he turn out to be this dude just trying to get home from work in the middle of the night. Sixteen dollars on him, and him asking if he can just keep his license so he don't have to go out to the DMV and miss his shift the next day.

Only sticking up I did the rest of that night was holding my brother's boy up until he gave me that sixteen dollars to give back. I'd looked down the barrel of my gun, down at this working man's face, and I'd thought-- what did this man think his day was gonna be when he woke up this morning?

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