Megan Louise Mills (inspiteofall) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2013-01-19 15:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | day ten, meg, meg and wu, wu |
Destabilized
Characters: Meg and Wu
Setting: Block A walkways, Late afternoon
It was a game of patience and deduction for Wu once he’d left his room and locked up. Home-made lock picks in the form of carefully bent forks had been stashed inside a suit jacket he’d thrown on before heading out, and now that he was here? All he could do was walk the spaces of each floor, listening outside of doors, knocking on others, always waiting.
It wouldn’t do to get caught breaking into a room so soon, after all. That was why he was waiting on one in particular, to boot: he wanted absolute certainty of Ryan’s location before that particular lock got popped, any interruption would trigger the unfounded wrath Wu was carrying. And he wasn’t that eager to go back to Southport, not yet.
He was still lingering on the second floor, nursing the cold remnants of a coffee and trailing his fingers along the railing that framed the courtyard, eyes distant on the doors ahead of him as he moved. Reece’s was somewhere along here... as much as Wu liked the younger con, he couldn’t discount him entirely. Not yet. Moving up towards the door, he lingered just long enough to give the knob a testing twist, a surreptitious gesture before he moved on nearly without a break in movement.
In her own way, Meg was playing the same game albeit with significantly less in the way of patience. Her run in with Brady had been surprisingly informative, allowing her not only to strike a name from her list but also making her realise a need to come up with a solid method with which to approach the rest of the men on it. She had got lucky with Brady, able to stumble onto the topic then make a judgement based on his reaction but it wouldn’t work like that every time. There was the concern that had arisen from how easily he had effectively disarmed her – with him it hadn’t mattered but in a situation where she was actually using her make-shift weapon as she’d intended was another matter entirely.
Those were the thoughts that preoccupied her mind as she wandered the block but not so much so that on reaching the second floor that she didn’t notice the man moving from door to door. There was something in the way he walked that drew her gaze and, without thinking, she began to trail after him, her feet that were once again bare thanks to the warmer weather making no noise against the floor as she did so. She kept what she thought was a fair distance between them but was close enough to see when he reached out for one of the door knobs, testing it before moving on again and she frowned a little. Whatever he was doing, it was suspicious and while she was normally the type to not judge that kind of behaviour, with everything that had happened to her she was less forgiving than she used to be.
She didn’t say anything straight away though, wanting to try and understand what exactly he was up to first and risked moving a little closer.
Wu hadn’t realized it so soon after his talk with Becka, but in the wake of his depression leaving? He didn’t just feel better, he was better. He’d known she was in her room hiding, had drawn inspiration for his search from nothing, and now? Now he knew he was being followed. There was no clear reason why, either; simply the return of dangerously sharp perception to the man who’d used it to build an empire. And Wu welcomed it, clearly; one corner of his mouth tugging in half a smile as he drew up to Reggie’s door next, raising a hand as if to knock. “I have met many of the women here,” he said abruptly, not looking Meg’s way as he spoke to her instead of knocking on the door. “You are not one of them. Which are you?” She looked like a... Mazie, maybe. Mojo. Meg. Definitely an ‘M’.
The moment Wu addressed her, Meg stopped in her tracks, not wanting to be any closer now he knew she was there. The tone of his voice gave her pause as well, her first instinct to refuse to answer seeming like a incredibly bad idea. No, there was something to it, an authority that, as much as it bothered her to admit it, she felt she had to submit to. "Meg," she said quietly, an almost petulant note thrumming through the reply - whether it was due to being caught out or annoyance at herself for answering his question she couldn't have said.
Maybe it was the suitcoat, crisp shirt and slacks where so many others here had gone utterly casual; Wu did enjoy professional attire. Or maybe how he carried himself in that upright, driven way that bled into every moment with a suggestion of restrained fire. Whatever it was, Wu turned to look at her, some even nerve showing in his eyes as he regarded Meg intently. Often in the past, people had squirmed under his gaze if they had reason to worry. Here? So far, no one really had, though so far no one seemed to have reason to. “Meg,” he repeated as he always did, pinning the name to the face in his head. “I am Wu. Why do you follow me?”” Wu asked and introduced in the same breath, hands folding together behind his back as he left Reggie’s door untouched entirely.
There was something disconcerting in the way Wu looked at her that sent a prickling of self-consciousness crawling along Meg’s back but to her credit she didn’t look away or try to avoid it. She even went so far as to throw him a faintly defiant look at his question as if making up for how easily she’d answered his first. “Why are you testin’ peoples doors?” she countered, folding her arms across her chest.
She earned the same show of amusement that Wu ever gave when challenged so mildly; a light crinkling at the corners of his eyes, and just the slightest bunch in his cheeks as if the reflex to smile was there, but suppressed. “I have need to speak to the men among us, and investigate their rooms,” Wu said evenly, not looking to hide his intentions. His plans to break in? Sure. But the core idea, that was something he could share. “There have been... trespasses made. Misconduct. I would know who is responsible.”
Meg wasn’t much of one for reading faces and certainly didn’t know Wu well enough to recognise his expression as one of amusement but she appreciated the straightforward way in which in he answered her question. That didn’t stop tension from flooding into her small frame when he expanded on his reasons however and she began shifting slightly from one foot to the other in a futile attempt to try and relieve some of it. “Oh yeah?” she replied, trying to sound disinterested when in fact she was anything but.
Internally, Wu was at once both amused with himself for the realization that he was acting as the law here, or something close to it, and curious about the undeniable signs of tension that flooded Meg despite her attempts at nonchalance. Did she know something? Had she seen something? Or, most worringly, had there been more than one victim during the blackout?
“Yes,” he confirmed evenly, watching every little nuance of Meg’s expression for confirmation of his questions. “One of the women here was subjected to violations of a sort that no one should be. Even among beasts, there must be lines that are not crossed,” Wu mused, making his stance on it all clear, “When her needs have been seen to, and when I have narrowed a list of suspects, I will make my accusation. And the dog who has done this will not know peace.” And despite there being no shift in his expression, there was some extra vein of iron threading his voice with those last words, something entirely merciless.
Whatever answers he was looking for, Meg’s face would have given them away far more quickly than any words she could have said, her emotions writ as large across her face as they were contained on Wu’s; horror, anger and beneath it all that yawning desire to break down and cry. There was little solace to be had in the fact that she wasn’t the only person to have been victimised or in that the conviction with which Wu spoke made him another name to strike from her list. “She doesn’t know who did it?” she asked, a wobble creeping into her voice beneath the bravado with which she had spoken before.
“She was ambushed. Restrained. Savaged,” Wu recounted, his expression slightly hardening with venom with each new word. “Her attacker used protection, did not speak, kept her from seeing him. But all men are fools, this one is no exception. He has follies in this crime, and they will prove to undermine him. Even if I cannot positively confirm him, I will come close enough to spoil any trust among the others.” He knew his theory for catching the rapist wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have to be. It just had to make it too dangerous for this man to strike again.
As he went on, the growing venom in his voice was matched by a rising bile in Meg’s stomach as despair on behalf on whoever had been attacked battled with rage as the dominant emotion in her mind. “Fucker deserves worse than spoilt trust,” she spat, resisting the urge to reach up and touch the needles still twisted up in her hair, reassure herself that they were still there. With the differences between what had happened to her and this new victim, there was no way to tell if the attacks had been committed by the same person or whether there was more than one rapist running around, a thought that only caused the bile to rise further, but either way, she wasn’t the kind to offer clemency. Then the thought occurred to her that the ‘she’ Wu was talking about might be one of the women she knew and she paled slightly, hating herself for thinking it almost as much as the thought of one of them being hurt. “Shit, it weren’t Mojo was it? Or Carmel?”
She was concerned for her friends, clearly, and that? That was an exception Wu could make to his personal rule about not divulging too much. “It was not, but this is all I will say until the one who was attacked is willing to speak for herself,” he answered, noting that he’d need to meet this Mojo eventually, just for his own sake. And if it had been Carmel? There would be no simple plan to just expose the rapist; Wu would kill him in the cruelest ways he knew, vicious methods that had earned him his moniker. “And while the attacker deserves worse, I will not dole it out myself. Murder would end my stay here.” Wu added with a thoughtful note, studying the extra hints of anger and tension threading through Meg. This wasn’t just concern over a rapist, or for her friends. “What spurs you in this moment? It is not simple anger or worry, I know those things,” he pointed out, eliminating the likely excuses.
“You gonna what then? Leave him to the mob?” she posed, the tone of her voice indicating she didn’t have a problem with the idea whatsoever. Clearly the older man was playing the long game, something she didn’t hold him against the slightest, but she had no qualms about getting her hands dirty and given Brady’s reaction to what had happened to her, she doubted she was the only one. But then she had more reason than most to want to dish out her own share of pain as Wu had so succinctly noticed even if he needed to question the reasons why. “I gotta have a reason?” she said, not answering him right away, more in control of herself than she had been when she’d revealed what happened to Brady.
“Everyone has one,” Wu countered in a quiet, intent tone, eyes fixed on Meg’s expression. Even when he couldn’t read the finer points of someone, he could project an air of being able to. He could make people sweat the idea that he was doing just that. “Whether recent or faded in the past, all things have roots. Violence is no exception,” he added, not touching on Meg’s questions about Wu’s plan. If he was elected to lead, could he rightly serve up a rapist to the rest of the house? Or would his first test be to dole out punishment and see to it that it was accepted?
She frowned at that, uncomfortable with the amount of scrutiny she was under. “Ya sound like the shrink back at Tutweiler, you know that?” she said, wondering if Wu realised just how on the money he was with his comment, of the demons that still haunted her from years past and the all too new pain that had come to join them.
She got a flicker of a smile there, one half of Wu’s mouth twitching in the briefest moment of levity. “I do not know this place,” he said first, “And I am a man with... great amounts of blood that has been spilled, and many years to look at it all.” But he knew he’d be close; he understood the vicious side of the human mind. Hell, he considered himself an expert on it. “What is your reason, Meg?” he asked again, no more gently than the first time, but now with a clearer perspective of who he was asking.
She could have given him a laundry list of answers, reasons she believed, reasons she didn’t, one’s she knew to be true and others she wasn’t so sure of, how her life had brought her to the moment where she was standing in front of a man who spoke about violence with an eloquence she’d never heard of in a fucked up new-age prison with ideas above its station. She only needed to give Wu one though and that was almost harder than giving him a list.
Part of her yearned to explain what had happened to her but she couldn’t stop herself from feeling like it paled in comparison to this new attack, that it counted for less because she hadn’t been forced, because she’d been drunk and stupid enough to think that sleeping in a public room was a good idea. Instead she offered him up a answer that was as true as it was woefully inadequate. “I don’t stand for people being made victims sir,” she said quietly, bestowing the title on him without even realising she had done so. “I won’t.”
“Then you stand against the world itself,” Wu noted, though there was clear approval in his words, his eyes, even the tiny nod he gave Meg at her answer. “But not alone. In this, we may be what they wish us: a community.” That had always been Wu’s goal, so he liked to think; giving the immigrant girls who’d become his whores a way out of the oppression of China, raising his soldiers above common lives of dock workers and shopkeepers, and even giving his people some measure of control that usually belonged to government, to law, or to other criminals. “You will not speak of my intentions to others,” he said then, more decisive once again, “Words travel faster than I in this place, and if my suspicions are right? I will not have my prey be alerted. When the time is right, we will end these misdeeds as a group.”
It wouldn’t be the first time, she thought to herself, gaze dropping to the floor for a moment as memories of her and Dominic swam to the front of her mind, the ghost of his voice whispering in her ear ‘It’s just me and you MM, us against the world’ and a phantom hand catching hold of her own, their fingers intertwined. It was a kindness really that Wu spoke again so soon, the tone of his voice enough to pull her back from herself, and Meg found herself nodding in agreement before fully processing what he’d actually asked of her. When it did sink in, she froze and looked back up at him, a battle quietly warring behind her eyes.
She understood what he was asking, the reasoning behind it and fully believed that whoever the man in question was, he deserved everything that came to him and that Wu would ensure that it happened. At the same time though, there was no guarantee that the man he was looking for was the one who had attacked her and she wasn’t prepared to give up on her hunt. “What about ending other misdeeds? If there’s more than one of these guys?”
“That is the purpose of our new jobs, I believe,” Wu offered. “To provide at least some clearer path for those who are wronged. An idea of who they may speak to.” Really, it was about the only reason he really wanted to lead; getting out in front of the troubles that happened here was what he needed, a chance to act decisively and without hindrance from the others. “Are there other misdeeds, Meg?” he pressed quietly, still intent on her expression. “I would hear them if there are, no matter how trifling they may be.”
Not trusting her voice for the moment, Meg nodded. Words that had come easily to her when talking to Brady now sat frozen on her tongue, the rage that had fueled her then quenched for the first time by shame. Perhaps it was having to tell them to a man old enough to be her father who in just a few minutes of talking to had earned him more respect in her eyes than over a decade of abuse had managed to do for Bob Mills. Perhaps it was because the words of the administration teamed with their willingness to let what happened go unpunished had started to make her doubt herself, especially in light of what had now happened to someone else, and wonder if she was partly to blame for what had happened to her. Regardless of what it was though, she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep silent with Wu expecting an answer from her, not now he knew she had something to say.
“I only found about it yesterday,” she began, an admission which in and of itself seemed to diminish what had happened. “An’ the way they told me made it sound like it was my choice but if I don’t remember it happening, how could it a been?”
The solitary upside to the icy nature of Wu’s fury was the clarity of it, the way he could still reason and organize his thoughts even in a rage, up to the moment blood was spilled. Here and now it was in full effect, knotting both of Wu’s hands tight with the realization that Becka wasn’t the first victim, but also sorting through Meg’s words. She’d only found out yesterday, which meant there had been some measure of time. She’d been told about it? By her rapist? “This is no place to speak of such things,” he said first, a small mercy for Meg’s sake. “The activity room is close. Come.”
Which was all he said for the short time it took for Wu to walk away from Reggie’s door. He’d have to make up ground in his search later, involve help... it would be tended to. Right now? There were fresher wounds to appraise. And once Wu had led the way over, assuming Meg would be close behind, he fixed his full attention on her again. “You must not spare any detail in the telling,” he eventually said. “Start with how many days since it has happened.” Because as much as it was a wild assumption to make? Rape would definitely fit the bill for ‘continued crimes’.
“There ain’t a lotta detail to be had,” she confessed, hating that all she knew was the circumstances that had led up to what had happened, circumstances she had no-one to blame for but herself. A time frame however was one of the few things she could give him and while shame clinged to her voice as she spoke, there was at least a certainty beneath it all. “Happened six days ago, I was upset ‘bout me ‘n’ Dom so I’d been drinking. He’d put me to bed but I couldn’t sleep so I went down to the laundry room to try there. That’s the last thing I remember before waking up down there in the morning and even that’s pretty fuzzy. I come back upstairs and Dom’s gone, just fuckin’ disappeared and there’s a message on the computers saying he’d been removed and I...” She trailed off, tears of frustration pricking at her eyes that she refused to let fall. Instead she squeezed her hands into fists, nails biting into the soft skin of her palms, and used the pain as a distraction, forcing her to concentrate. “Obviously I asked them in charge why he’d gone and they drip feed me answers, first just told me I’d done something with someone else. Then when I pushed for more information, they tell me, and this is yesterday I get this message, that I’d ‘engaged in sexual intercourse’ with someone. No name or anything, just that.”
Yes, there was a vast amount of detail missing from what had happened, and if any of it tied to Becka’s assault? Wu would’ve been very comfortable declaring the two to be related. He couldn’t, though; could only work with what was there. And the time frame fit, he thought, with a day before the punishments in the courtyard... with ‘continued offenses’. Or was he making it fit to cast Ryan in both crimes? Wu wasn’t sure. “And you have asked who this someone is,” he inquired, sympathizing with Meg’s clear distress but making no move to comfort her. The Devil didn’t do that, even the small displays he’d given Becka were trifles, not real support. “You have stated clearly to them that this act was not consensual, that they have witnessed your rapist, and that you have a right to confront him. If not, you must. Every day, until they answer.” And whether she did or not, Wu would expand his search, though this was a trail beyond cold...
Meg frowned a little then - what Wu was suggesting sounded so ludicrously simple so why hadn’t she done that? Thinking back on the questions she had asked, she couldn’t help wondering if the reason the answers she’d received were so vague because she herself hadn’t been specific enough. It only took a moment though before anger surged in the wake of those thoughts and she spun on her heels suddenly desperate for something to lash out against, something to break, anything to provide an outlet. “They won’t!” she cried, dangerously close to stamping her foot in childish anger. “If they wanted to they would’ve already but they’re scared of what I’ll do if I know. They took Dom away ‘cause they knew what he was capable of but they left me here and think that by keeping me in the dark it’ll be safer for everyone but they’re wrong!”
Wu recognized a brewing tantrum when he saw one, and silently he hoped that Meg could control it before he had to bring her back in line. He’d feel guilty doing so, but that wouldn’t stop him. Still, it hadn’t broken free yet, and that meant he could just maintain his imperious stare on her as she yelled and wound herself up. “Believing that we may predict our captors’ reasoning is as foolish as believing in wishes,” Wu scolded first, summoning something sterner in his tone without needing to raise his voice.
“That we are here at all says we cannot grasp their intent. That they have brought your husband here, then taken him away... why? For your attacker’s sake? Or to see what you will do without him, when confronted with the knowledge of what has been done to you?” He wasn’t much taller than Meg, but Wu still leaned in a bit as he took a step closer. “Control yourself, Meg. It is the only way you will find anything of worth in what has been done to you.” And that? That was spoken more like an order, and said with the airs of someone who knew just how true it was.
“I’ve never believed in wishes,” Meg snapped, falling further back on childish petulance as she had done so many times in the past. She had never dealt with someone like Wu though, who didn’t rise to the bait but instead stayed calm, and while the look he gave her and the tone he used did little to quell her rage and frustration, something in his words reached her. Perhaps it was because they echoed a sentiment she had been sent in a message a few days before that had struck a chord with her or maybe it was because that, beneath the storm of emotions, she was intelligent enough to recognise the truth in what he was saying. Either way, it was enough to make her go still even if tension still radiated through her small frame. “Bolster your courage or fall beneath the collapse of your anger,” she murmured, the words like a mantra as she tried to force herself to calm down, eyes closed for the moment.
“Wise words,” Wu offered softly as he heard the murmurs from her, nodding in agreement. He was curious about who’d spoken them, thinking it sounded like it could have been Jun-he. The young Korean had experience enough, that was for sure. “These are words to carry with you to war, to see you through it. Trust them against your fiercest temper or deepest doubts,” he advised, playing on what people tended to think of with a man of his age, that there had to be some sagacious quality. “And ask our overseers the questions I have posed to you. Ask them daily; who has done this to you, why is he hidden away. Whether their answer is one you welcome or not, it will be an answer. And the next step you take will be clear when you receive it.”
“What if they don’t answer?” she ventured. The administration had done nothing in her eyes that warranted her trust and she had no reason to believe that they actually cared at all for her well-being. “What if all this is some fucked test like you said?”
“You ask again. You seek out others to ask with you. You pursue every means available,” Wu answered. “If they chose not to answer you because you are one voice, this is expected. But if you confide in others, and one voice becomes two, then three, then thirty? They must acknowledge it, even if their answer is not the one you seek. And if it is not? We are shown how little we can trust them.”
Which wasn’t what she wanted, not in any sense, but Wu was trying to convey something more than the immediate satisfaction Meg wanted. “They have destabilized you in what was allowed to happen and in taking Dominic away. If they will not correct any measure of this? Destabilize them in turn,” he explained. “I will join you in this question, I will ask it daily until one of us is given an answer.”
The way Wu described it made it sound so easy that Meg almost laughed but then it was a solution that never would occured to her. It was logical, detached and the total opposite of how she usually acted but she knew she couldn’t fault it. It didn’t rob her of her doubts or her undying cynicism when it came to their overseers’ and the intentions they may or may not have but it was something concrete she could do and even if it didn’t yield results, she was at least taking action until she could take up her search again. The knowledge that he would join her in her efforts when he had no obligation to made it’s mark on her as well and the man went from having earned her respect to taking his place on the short list of people she was willing to go out to bat for. “Thank you,” she said. “I dunno what it’ll all come to but I appreciate it, what you said, how ya said it. Not a lotta folk get through to me so yeah, I owe you one. Know I don’t look like much but you need me for something, you let me know.”
“Looks indicate very little,” Wu assured her, “There was a time when I appeared to be nothing but a malnourished Chinese boy, lost in this country. What I looked like was not what I was.” Which was his way of saying that he knew there was more to Meg than the wild look, the short stature, or the tantrum behavior. “And I will accept this offer when it is needed. And it will be.” He was absolutely sure of that; Wu had a way of finding uses for every debt he accrued. But with so much discussed, with so much progress from not having known her name to now? He knew he still had work to do, once he was done seeing to Meg’s well being. “May I see you somewhere? I have matters to see to, but would not leave you unattended if you are restless.”
Meg hadn’t expected him to laugh her off but it was still gratifying to have Wu not only take her offer seriously but to accept it. His however she turned down with a small shake of her head and gestured over to the games consoles. “Think I’m gonna stay here a bit, try and get my head a little straighter.” And she had spent enough time alone in her room with just her thoughts for company, the change of location would do her good.