The Devil, Reversed
Characters: Wren and Wu Setting: courtyard/level 2, late afternoon After exploring with Ryan, which was something Wren thoroughly enjoyed, she decided to take care of an issue. She knew it was something other people wouldn't understand, but she did, and she felt the intense need to 'fix' it. And while she didn't believe she could alter her room, she could at least change one thing about it.
That had her going to the tool shed. She'd picked out a hammer, a crowbar, and some nails, and, these items cradled in her arms, she started making her way across the courtyard with a look of determination on her features.
Wu had been quiet today, withdrawn as usual. He’d tended to the survey, dressed and showered in similar clothes to what he’d worn yesterday, and... sat there. He read through entries from others through the morning, never commenting, spent far longer than he needed studying his other outfits. Stared in the mirror for a while.
He could feel apathy looming in the wake of yesterday’s relief. How long would he be here? Shorter than his sentence, yes, but many things were shorter than his sentence. And dwelling on it wouldn’t silence his stomach, which was growling enough now to shatter Wu’s reverie. So he’d left his room behind, pausing on the upper floor long enough to see Wren enter the tool shed. A new face?
Curious, Wu had moved downstairs quickly and quietly, rolling his sleeves as he walked and slowing a touch as Wren returned. “Are we to be carpenters today?” he asked evenly, noting the tools and material bundled in Wren’s arms.
Wren was surprised to be addressed, though she stopped and gave her attention to the older man who'd spoken to her. She glanced down at the tools she carried, then nodded. "Yes, sir." she said to him, automatically addressing him with respect. "I find I have something to remedy, and required them." she explained.
“What is in imbalance that you would correct?” Wu asked evenly, his tone suggesting he found absolutely nothing odd about this as he moved closer to Wren, studying her intently. Thin, pretty, young, possessed in how she carried herself... Scarred, Wu noted, catching sight of hints of scar tissue around Wren’s forearms. “And Wu, not sir,” he corrected after a moment, even if he liked the touch of respect she’d given him. Others here could learn from that.
"I have been placed in room fifteen." Wren explained. She didn't seem to mind when he stepped closer and laid heavy attention on her person. She had grown up with a figure in her life that was very similar. Older, intense, focusing that attention on her. "W-wu." she repeated, hesitant. She wasn't sure she would remember to call him that instead of 'sir'. But she would attempt, if that was how he wanted to be addressed. "My name is Wren." she added after a moment, remembering she needed to tell people that. In the commune, even new members knew who she was before they met her. She'd been The Prophet, after all.
“And the placement offends you? Or the number itself?” he asked curiously, nodding in the direction she’d been heading as if to say that she didn’t need to wait for him. Wu could walk, it would do him better than dwelling in silence. “Wren,” he echoed as she had, nodding to confirm.
"It is the number, Sir." Wren told him, then she winced faintly. "Wu." she corrected herself. She walked in the direction she'd been heading, starting into the stairwell. "Fifteen is the number of the devil." she explained. "If I am to stay in that room, I need to reverse it."
Wu was lucky for his poker face, it had done him more good over the years than he could possibly recall. He’d lied to clients, stayed even to the moment of drawing a gun, even denied his prosecutors a flicker of remorse at trial, and now? Well now he kept himself from laughing in amusement over the situation. “Fifteen, and you would make it fifty-one, which is discordant with the rest,” he observed, remembering the countless psychics and charlatans of Chinatown he’d once lived around. Was this girl one of them, then? “And why not simply claim another room? There cannot be more than twenty of us here, if that.”
"Actually, I was planning on turning the numbers upside down." Wren explained, understanding she'd worded things improperly. "I apologize for the confusion. Reversed, The Devil becomes a positive thing. Left alone, and there's nothing but darkness." she said, as she walked up the steps. She didn't answer immediately about shey she didn't take another room. "I suppose it had not occurred to me that I could do such a thing." she admitted.
Now he knew what she was talking about, following from vague ideas of numerology to the idea of inversion. “Tarot,” Wu confirmed quietly as he walked after Wren. He’d seen the cards many times, had always denied his own readings. Some of his men, the simpler ones, put too much faith in such things. And he’d never wanted them to doubt him because of omens in cards. “Perhaps a switch would not be permitted, if we are kept by people with plans,” he said at length, “But I would not object if trading your room for mine would set your mind at ease. We have much more present concerns than the devil.” Plus? Wu would get a private laugh out of it.
"Yes, tarot." Wren confirmed, smiling at him over her shoulder as they got to the second floor. "It is nice to hear someone knows what I speak of. A girl on the journals likened it to magic." she said, sighing slightly even at the thought. It had been inadvertant, of course, but the girl had insulted her on some level. She didn't hold it against her in the slightest--she was far from the first person to scoff at her beliefs. Prison had been full of strife in that regard.
When Wu offered to change rooms, she blinked, surprised. "You would switch with me?" she asked. "I...I would still like to reverse the numbers...I would not feel right about leaving you in such a room with a focus like that on it. I will need to think about it."
That wasn’t a surprise to hear, given what he’d seen on the journals himself. Giggling excitement, unabashed glee, as if these people thought this was a summer camp. Which Wu could understand, but not approve of. “I have witnessed many auguries such as this,” he offered conversationally, still neat and even in tone as they walked. “It is not magic, it is faith.” Which may have sounded dignified, but the two were equally useful in Wu’s world.
“If it would ease your worry, yes, I will trade to this room. There is no connection to mine, and it is next to the room for practice of one’s faith or religion. Number twenty-three, it may suit you well,” he observed, thinking that if it did? Wu could have some clout in the form of this girl’s opinion. Every good impression paid off, or would in time.
"Do you believe in fate?" she asked. "Destiny?" she continued, intrigued that he not only understood what she was talking about but had experience of his own. "What other auguries have you witnessed?" she asked. She wasn't sure if the 'spiritual' room was going to be much use for her. After all, her own beliefs weren't required for 'worship', she didn't have a church to believe in, it was all around them, all the time. There didn't need to be a specific place. However, she did appreciate the sentiment. It was nice of him to offer with the idea of her peace of mind in his intentions.
He was more interested in finding out about Wren than in answering her questions, but one could lead to the other. Besides, it wasn’t something Wu was asked often, which earned a touch of favor just for originality. “I believe in karma, as well as order between the heavens and earth. If destiny implies restoring that order, then yes, perhaps I believe in that as well,” Wu answered more thoughtfully than he normally would’ve bothered with, slowing his pace enough to gather his thoughts. “As for my experiences? I have seen readings in the leaves of tea, in lacquered bones, even in the entrails of sparrows once, when I was a very young boy.” That had been a whole world and forty years away, but Wu remembered it well.
It didn't grate against what Wren believed in, so she accepted it readily enough. "Karma is a concept I like." she told him honestly. She did. The idea that things balanced out was a nice one, even if she wasn't entirely certain Fate always opted towards fairness. "I know how to read tea leaves, I have read bones, and I do know how to read entrails, though when I learned, they were from rabbits." she explained. "I wasn't fond of the entrails readings, however. But I know how to read them."
He gave slight nods with each reference to her knowledge as they walked, lips pursed thin in consideration. “And where did you learn such things, Wren?” Wu asked, pointedly using her name in some meager effort to build familiarity. He wasn’t naturally warm or engaging, but Wu knew how to establish those things anyway; no businessman succeeded if he was bad at dealing with others. “They are old ways, yes? Things that in this country are mocked or, as you say, considered magical.”
"I know a few others as well. Runes, for instance." she explained. "I learned them at the commune I lived at. Though people tell me it was a 'cult'. To me it was home. I was considered the Prophet of the people there. I felt, in order to truly do my best, I needed to be well versed in everything possible to do with Fate." She got to her door, and started to try and pry the number one off with the crowbar. "They are old ways." she confirmed. "And yes, I have learned since everything happened that most people scoff at such things. They believe them to be false, silly." She sighed. “I have been mocked quite a lot.”
Now it made sense, and now Wu had no problem believing Wren’s words. Of course she’d be mocked, it would sound absurd to anyone who didn’t believe as she did. Which included Wu, really. He didn’t believe in prophets or larger truths, but had seen cults before, as well as looked back to his time in Hong Kong and saw how quickly the country changed under the new faith. “Homes are often mocked by those who lack them in the truest sense,” he offered, watching her work at the door. “Just as beliefs are doubted by those who only know uncertainty.”
"Do you have a 'home' so to speak?" Wren asked, getting the one free, then she started work on the five. She would feel much better, once the numbers were upside down. Then she would feel much less like there was a hideous focus in that room, regardless of whether or not she remained in it. Perhaps she needed to reverse a few other numbers as well.
Wu nodded as he watched the first number work loose, one corner of his mouth tugging in faint amusement. She was determined, that was obvious. “New York, Manhattan to be precise. Much is waiting there for me,” he answered evenly, taking a longer look at what he could see of Wren’s scars as she worked. “And you? Where was your home before you were taken from it?”
"Montana." Wren told him. "But it is dead." she added, grunting slightly as the five was harder to get off the door than the one had been. But she didn't ask for help. It wasn't his work, it was hers, so she planned to do it herself. "There is nothing left, everyone is gone, and if I were to return, it would be to a land of sorrowful ghosts."
A wiser man would’ve seen how her words could fit around his own life, and a wiser man would’ve abandoned plans like the ones Wu had. Not him, though; he was set on leaving this place and going back to Manhattan. There were traitors to find, vengeance to exact, and order to restore. “I have lost my home three times now, in this life. Each time before the cells, before here, it was... hard to think of beginning again. Hard, but not impossible,” Wu advised impassively.
“Do what you must in this place, and when you leave it? You may find a new home. The restless dead move on only when the living who remember them do.” Yeah, listening to himself, Wu knew his depression was creeping in. He rambled and tended towards the philosophical when it happened, which was just one more reason to shut himself away until it passed.
Wren paused in her task, looking at Wu for a long moment. Then she continued. "I'm afraid I am painfully aware that I do not fit in the world where one might think I should. I've never been there. Prison taught me that no matter how we were all alike...I am nothing like any of them. It's been met with a lot of cruelty. Earlier, there was a man who was very kind to me. But he's more or less been the first. In prison...no one was friends with the 'freak'."
Meeting her gaze for a long, wordless moment there, Wu just studied her. There was stark honesty in Wren’s expression, some quality he never thought to see in a woman her age, but with it? He knew she was right, she was from a life as far from normal as his had been, or further even. She’d been a prophet, a class above the rest by the sound of it, and to try going back? How could anyone, if that was all they knew? “Prison teaches many lessons, the first of which is that there are no friends. There are the exploitable and the guards, and the exploitable work out every frustration on each other and any who catch their notice. With your beliefs and your pride in them, I am sure you caught the eye of many.” He knew that if a man with ideas like hers had been in Southport, he wouldn’t have lasted two weeks.
"I caught people's eyes." Wren confirmed, finally pulling the five free. Then she set the crowbar down, and started lining up the one, upside down. She showed him the forearm closest to him. "This is just the scars of defending myself." she explained. "I was moved after that. I was placed where women were a little less overtly violent, but I never had an easy time."
If she was offering, Wu wasn’t going to shy away. He looked over her forearm for a moment before reaching right out to grasp her wrist lightly, turning her arm over to continue his study. “How long was your confinement before coming here?” he asked as he took in the slash marks that crawled all the way to the heels of her palms. “These are old scars, I would assume you have labored under this hostility for some time now.”
Wren was mildly startled by the contact, though she didn't attempt to stop him, allowing him to turn her arm, and she brought her other out and turned it over so he could see those scars as well. "Three years." she confirmed for him, it not occurring to her in the slightest to be dishonest. It more or less never occurred to Wren to be anything but truthful.
“A long time for someone so young,” Wu noted, studying the scars for a moment before releasing her wrist. “It is good that you have this chance, prison is no place for one such as you. In time, if the promise we were made is true, perhaps you can find kindred spirits once more.” He was earnest with that, too, hoping for the young woman to have something better. Something more sane, perhaps, but Wu wouldn’t share that.
Wren looked at Wu for a long moment before she started back on her task. "I am unsure what it is I would be looking for, in a kindred spirit. I have been told many things, but nothing that helps me. I am hoping my time here will help." she admitted. She'd been told she was abused, that her life was a series of offenses that if anyone had known about them, she would have been removed from the situation when she was still a child. It was hard to reconcile that in her mind.
He was watching her in kind, both as Wren looked to him and resumed her task. Focused, that was a trait he liked. It got things done. “They say it will help all of us. I would be more accepting of that if I knew who ‘they’ were,” Wu noted evenly. “But it cannot be worse than where we were before. This much, I believe.” Not when he’d come from a cage where he was supposed to wither and die. “I will leave you to your work, unless you require help with it,” he went on as Wu took a slight step back, nodding at the doors behind him. “And should you wish, my offer to change rooms will remain.”
Wren wasn't sure her own perspectives were wide enough to comment, but he seemed wise and she trusted his opinion. "I believe in things getting better." she told him. She wasn't sure how they could possibly get worse, at any rate. Any future she had that didn't wind up with her walking through a sea of bodies was better. She paused in her task to look at him again, giving him a smile. "I will keep that in mind, Wu. It was very nice to speak with you, I hope we do again." she told him genuinely.