double Why Not theater

[windhover]

Say something.
an open RP post.

Saw it on anontalk, figured I might as well give it a try. Aaand since I'm still on a roll for posting my writing stuff to this journal...

Title: Confessions
Word count: 2,840
Warnings: contains strong language and references to physical/sexual abuse and assault.
Summary: This is the room where, if all goes according to plan, history will be changed. If not, this might as well be their resting place.
Notes: Originally wrote this a couple years back to supplement both a story I've been working on and a forum RP campaign I was running at the time; it was intended to be the first in a multi-part series, but I've since lost track and forgotten what most of those parts were supposed to be (orz). Still, I'll keep the "I." on this one in case I ever do end up returning to the rest of it.

Right

Dingy.

It’s one of a few ways to describe the room: dingy, cramped, poorly-lit, mottled-gray walls and a one-way glass folded into a tight box with a single bulb hanging from the lid to light the interior. The project cannot afford a more luxurious space—secrecy must be prioritized over comfort. Dingy is really the summation of the room, the room where, if all goes according to plan, history will be changed.

Two men sit at either end of a table, which occupies most of the dingy room. One writes notes on a tablet of paper. The other prods curiously at a machine that rests on the table between them.

“So… Is this thing on, then?” he asks warily. “Is that what this little light means?”

“Yes,” the other man replies plainly, “it’s recording. Please don’t press any of those buttons.”

“Oh—sorry.” His hand quickly retreats, fumbling along the inner lining of his coat. “Heh. Never seen one of these before. Guess I don’t know what I’m doing. That’s sound-only, right?”

“Correct. There are no cameras. Only our voices will be captured.”

“Good. Heh. Don’t know why I’m so scared of letting people see my face.” He continues to pat down his pockets. “I mean, it’s not like I’m scared to die, or scared of what those freaks will do to me. And the people who matter, the people you’re trying to lynch—they know me by my voice, anyway.”

“We are not trying to lynch anyone. We only want the truth to be heard.”

“Sure. Fine. Whatever.” He finds what he’s been looking for and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Is it all right if I smoke in here?”

“Do as you wish.”

“Right. Thanks.” He lights up and takes a long drag off the cigarette, placing the pack on the table. “It’s just one bad habit after another. Quit the Order, took up alcohol. Quit the alcohol, took up smoking. It never ends.” His lip twitches. “Tried to find God—you know, Christianity and all that. But He didn’t find me. Guess anybody who’s not an Earthling just isn’t worth His time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, well, so am I.” He coughs. “It’s all the stress, you know? So much stress, ever since I was a kid, since they took me. Maybe even before then. I don’t remember. Sometimes I wonder about that—whether it’s bad that I don’t remember or not. Maybe it’s better that I don’t. But not knowing is hell—not knowing whether I was plucked out of Hell or screwed out of Heaven.” He takes another drag. “That’s a Christian thing, you know—some of it stuck with me—Heaven and Hell, two afterlifes instead of just one, your soul stuck in one place for all eternity based on whether you’ve been good or not. Bizarre.”

“I am familiar with the basic tenets of Christianity.”

“Whether you’ve been good or not,” he repeats slowly, as if tasting the words in his mouth, rolling them together with a plume of smoke. “That’s all it really boils down to, isn’t it? Elaborate moral codes, traditions passed down through generations, cultures, civilizations, to act one way or another, to hold society together—that’s what religion is for, isn’t it? To lay out rules, so people can live, and give them a reason to follow those rules—faith—Horus, Okkan, even the Dragon King, even the Christian God or Allah. God is great, God is good, and following His rules will only lead to the betterment of society; it’s the same no matter where you look, no matter the name of the God or even how many Gods there are. It’s the core of every belief system there is. God is infallible, as are His laws.”

He brings the dwindling cigarette to his lips once more, then seems to think better of it. He pauses, flicks his ash to the floor, licks his lips, continues.

“But man is not infallible, and neither are his laws. All religions are built by man, but they are not built to worship him. Horus was not a God, but a man. Any religion that worships a man is not a religion but a cult, and that’s exactly what the Order of Horus is—a cult.”

Silence fills the room. The other man takes his time before responding. “We are not here to discuss the issues of the Order on the whole; we are here to discuss the issues of those who are and have been its highest practitioners.”

“Issues… Heh.” His laughter is hollow, entirely without mirth. “Yeah, I’ve got some fucking issues. I’ve had ‘em since day one. They’ve been building up all this time, just one after another, so much I just had to keep pushing them down, back down, further down, until finally, finally, when I should finally be living a normal life, for once in my life, they all come surging up all at once, all those years, all the shit they’ve done to me, the shit I had to put up with, the shit I just can’t forget no matter how hard I try, it just all comes back and slams into me like a fucking tidal wave and I…I can’t…” He forces himself to stop, presses a shaking hand to his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“No. I want to.” He swallows the lump in his throat. “I have to. Those fucks have been doing so much wrong for so many years, so many hundreds of years, and I have to help put it right. Even if all this amounts to nothing, I have to know I didn’t just roll over and die with all this shit inside me. I have to know I did something.” He laughs again, more uneasily than before. “Shit… Almost forty fucking years old, and here I was about to start crying. Over nothing. Just words.” He tries to laugh harder, but chokes instead. “I’m fucked up. So fucked up.”

Another silence follows. The other man clears his throat. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to begin.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Shoot. Whatever.”

The other man flips to the next page on his tablet. “Please state your name for the record.”

“My name…” He snorts. “My name is inconsequential. I don’t even remember my real name, the one I was born with—it’s gone forever, I guess.” He sets the butt of his finished cigarette next to the pack and starts to take out another one. “That’s the first thing they take, you know,” he adds, lighting his new cigarette. “The name. They scoop up some kid who probably won’t die within the next few years—some holy ritual—slap some new, noble-sounding name on him, and present him to the world as the grand magister maintenant. In the old days, I hear they used to pick orphans; no family to convince not to give away the whole secret, makes the whole thing easier. But orphans aren’t exactly easy pickings anymore. It must be hard on the families, to give up their child—to give up the fact their child even exists, really—but it’s not like the Order cares about that. It’s all about appearances.”

“We’ll get to that later. What names have you gone or currently go by?”

He hesitates, drums his fingers against the table. “When I was five years old, I was taken, renamed Roderick Haldor, and declared grand magister maintenant. Seven years later, Grand Magister Claudius deemed me unfit for his legacy, and ordered my death to be publicly proclaimed. Another child was taken and groomed to replace me, in the wake of my ‘untimely death,’ while I was renamed yet again—this time, Ziehren Ljotur—and demoted to personal attendant for the new grand magister maintenant, Auguste Villefort. So I guess you can call me Ziehren.”

“Why were you deemed ‘unfit?’”

Ziehren shrugs lazily. “Who knows. Claudius was going senile back then, and he knew it, which was why he kept such an iron grip on his power. He was too afraid of letting anyone else get near it.” He pauses to take another breath of smoke. “Of course, I was twelve then. I was probably getting too old for him. He wanted someone younger. I don’t know why he didn’t just have me killed—it would’ve been easier, I wouldn’t be sitting here opening my trap about all this—but I guess maybe Magister Kellis wanted me around for some reason, too. I don’t know. I’ll probably never know, but that’s one thing I feel okay about not knowing.”

“So, you’re saying the reason Auguste Villefort took the place of Roderick Haldor is—”

“Grand Magister Claudius was a pervert. A pedophile. There’s no nice way around it. Look, the whole world already knew he was a bastard, so what I’m saying now isn’t going to make any damn difference in how they see him. Grand Magister Claudius was a bastard, and he liked to feel up little boys. That’s it. I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, but there’s nothing nice you can really say about that man.” Ziehren takes an even longer drag than before, no longer focusing on the man before him. “Kellis, too… He wasn’t a pedophile, but he was sick. The things he could do with a smile on his face—so sick.”

“What kind of things?”

“Later. I’ll get into that later. I don’t think I can do it now.” He buries his face in his hands, his cigarette carefully wedged between two fingers, and sighs. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I keep… This, I don’t know.”

“Take your time.”

Ziehren does as he is told, shakily returning the cigarette to his lips. “Maybe—maybe Claudius was touched as a kid, too. That’s how it starts, isn’t it? Maybe the Order did it to him, too. Maybe that’s why. But that doesn’t excuse anything he did. The things that were done to Auguste—to Villefort, what they did to him, it doesn’t excuse anything he did, either. It’s just a cycle. I couldn’t have been that lucky to end up with the Order in the first place, but I must have been lucky to escape the cycle, if only a little.” He allows his body to relax, leaning back against the seat of his chair, but his face is still tight with emotion. “Villefort. I tried, you know. I tried to keep them from screwing him up, from screwing him around, but I don’t know how much I succeeded. I guess I didn’t succeed at all.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that’s he’s probably just as screwed up as Claudius. He doesn’t look like it, though, does he? Like I said, it’s all about appearances. I don’t know about the pedophilia, but…” He laughs, seemingly attempting to sound lighthearted, but the attempt only comes off as a failure. “He’s killed men with his bare hands, he’s raped for pleasure, he’s shot himself up with who knows what kind of junk… He’s unfeeling. That’s his problem, bigger than anything else. When I knew him, he was a person. But all the shit they did to him—all the shit that he did to others—and the image he has to keep up in public, the beloved grand magister—every personable quality was beaten out of him. By the time I quit the Order, I didn’t recognize him anymore.”

“What do you think brought about this change in him?”

“I thought I just answered that,” Ziehren snaps, suddenly sounding irritable. “Er. Sorry. I just… I don’t know, this is just hitting up all my nerves.”

“That’s all right. Please answer the question, if you can.”

Ziehren hesitates, takes a deep breath, and stubs out the cigarette next to the pack. “It was a lot of things. Everything, probably, from the first day they took him. I tried to keep Kellis from hurting him, I tried to keep him away from Claudius… It didn’t amount to much, though. I was just the attendant. I was supposed to look after him, but I didn’t have any real say in what the maintenant did or where he went. I couldn’t protect him as much as I wanted to.” He hesitates again, as if carefully pondering his next words. “I guess he figured that out on his own. I don’t know whether he knew I was trying to protect him, but I guess he knew that he’d have to protect himself if he didn’t want to be cast aside like me. And because of that, I’ll give him one thing to his credit—he did something I could never have done.”

“And what is that?”

“He killed Claudius,” Ziehren continues, in a remarkably matter-of-fact tone. “He wrapped his hands around the old man’s throat until his eyes nearly popped out. The bastard never saw it coming.”

The other man appears to be taken aback, but quickly regains his composure. “All official reports indicate that Grand Magister Claudius died of natural causes, due to his advanced age.”

“Natural causes?” Ziehren snorts again. “When you’re found with a crushed windpipe and ugly handprints around your throat, the cause of death isn’t generally listed as ‘natural causes.’ But, really, who could say otherwise?” His gaze levels with the other man’s. “The inspectors were probably right to cover it up. I’m not saying it was right for Villefort to murder anybody, but look at it like this. News that Claudius had been murdered probably wouldn’t have been too surprising. It might even have been welcomed. But news that the maintenant had been the murderer? That was unacceptable. Not only was it unacceptable, but if the maintenant was convicted for that crime, and the Order was forced to find another maintenant, it would stir up all kinds of chaos. Nobody was willing to risk that chance. I don’t blame ‘em, either.” He pauses, and his focus again strays away from the man. “It’s just… After that, it was like he couldn’t stop. The rest of ‘em from Claudius’s reign, they all started dropping like flies, Kellis, the other magisters…”

“Magister Kellis’s death was reported as accidental.”

“Right, because they found him all twisted up, face-down, at the foot of some stairs. It’s not a stretch to imagine that he just fell on his own, what with his gimp leg and all.” He pauses again to take another puff of smoke. “The servant who found him said there was blood everywhere, all over the floor. On his cane, too. But it was all coming from the back of his head, and it wouldn’t have been that easy for that much blood to get on his cane.”

“Are you saying—”

“Look, I’m just saying what I know. I mean, it might’ve been someone else with a grudge against Kellis; hell, just about everyone in that place had a grudge against Kellis, except the other magisters and Claudius. He probably—no, definitely, he deserved to die. Not that it was right to kill him like that. Anyway, the investigators must have had the same suspicions as me, because they decided it was accidental on the spot. Just like that.” His eyes narrowed. “Auguste got off with more blood on his hands. Just like that.”

Ziehren falls silent. The other man flips to another page in his tablet. “Mr. Ljotur…”

“Ziehren.”

“Ziehren. What would drive Auguste Villefort, if he is as guilty as you claim, to commit these acts? What motivation could he possibly have?”

“What, for killing those guys?” He smirks. “Easy. He killed Claudius because he didn’t want to be replaced, like me. At that time, he was the same age as me when I was replaced with younger meat… He knew what was coming to him. I don’t know why he actually wanted to become grand magister so bad, but he did, and he made sure the old one wouldn’t just do away with him.”

“What of Magister Kellis?”

“Hm. You know, I’ve given that one a lot of thought over the years.” Ziehren takes a deep drag, nearly finishing off his cigarette. “It’d be easy to just say it was for revenge. But that’d be too easy. It was never like Villefort, either; he’s just not the vengeful type of guy, as far as I know. But there is another explanation.” He stubs out the cigarette, but does not move to retrieve another. “Darser Kellis is the only man Auguste Villefort has ever feared in his life. The man terrified him. In order to become stronger, he had to eliminate that fear. So he did.”

“Why did Villefort fear him so much?”

The look Ziehren gives the man then can only be described as grave. When he speaks, his tone matches his expression to perfection.

“Ever wonder why his right hand is virtually crippled?”