3ww: Accident, Loyal, Obscene
3WW #CLXIV
Accident
Loyal
Obscene
= = =
"Why do you continue to be loyal to them?"
"They raised me, and well. No abuse, lots of encouragement."
"What about love? Did they love you? Do you love them?"
"That wasn't something said, but shown and experienced. Proof of love was in the way they treated me and the other fosters. Always respectfully. Like I said, no abuse, lots of encouragement."
"You're sounding like a broken record: 'No abuse, lots of encouragement' - doesn't that sound like programming to you?"
Annabelle bit back the sharp retort. As much as she didn't want to admit it, she did feel as if her memories of childhood were strangely distant, bland; some seemed to be in black and white, while others in vivid color.
"It's no accident that you have conflicting, inconsistent memories," declared the man in the black cape as if privy to Annabelle's thoughts. Annabelle shifted uneasily in her seat, and pulled again at the cords binding her hands behind her back. The more she pulled, however, the tighter the cord. Annabelle winced. Her captor sighed.
"Like I said, I have no wish to harm you. The pain you cause your wrists is all you."
"Yeah. It's my fault I'm trying to free my hands so I can defend myself against some dude who's kidnapped me. Sure," spat Annabelle.
The man in the black cape's face was still in deep shadow, cast by the black fedora on his head, but Annabelle thought she saw movement -- perhaps a grimace? -- where the mouth would be. So. Perhaps his professed distaste for this "assignment" was the truth?
The man in the black cape observed Annabelle scrutinizing him. He felt proud. She was standing up for herself. She wasn't cowed, whimpering, begging to be released. She was angry and scared, but instead of letting them take over, she was tapping anger and fear and using them as sword and shield. Sure, her thoughts were leaking, but the quality of the thoughts. She certainly had potential.
If only she wasn't so old.
His students were experts by the time they hit puberty. How was he going to start teaching a twenty-something woman? It would be a waste of time, he knew it, but his employer had paid an obscene amount of money to counter every objection, reason and excuse he had put forth. Had he compromised his principles for the money?
A strong change of emotion resonated through the room. While the man in the black cape had been deep in his thoughts, he hadn't been paying attention to Annabelle's. She now sat with head bowed, shoulders slumped, the very picture of a defeated and broken captive. Opening his senses to her, the man in the black cape staggered as waves of sorrow, fear and regret crashed against his psyche. What the hell?
Leaning in to get a closer look at her, the man in the black cape was greeted with a violent headbutt that almost made contact -- he had sensed the hypervigilant steel underneath the roiling emotions just a split second before Annabelle's head would have tried to stun him. He stayed where he was, just a hairs' breadth out of her reach, and was rewarded with a snarl of anger, fury written across Annabelle's face.
Ah. She definitely had potential.
This was going to be interesting.
