007. Text // shoot here and the world gets smaller

[manufactured]

This month certainly has been interesting so far, hasn't it. Joanne - I know you're not going to reply, dear heart, but you might want to place a moratorium on calling things "exciting" for the next short while, seeing as apparently it just curses the entire situation.

Though perhaps I'm biased in some way; after all, my body doesn't exactly play nicely with fire anymore.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not one for bolstering one's spirit; either you'll find your own fortitude in times like this or you won't, and bluntly put the direction you choose to take is of very little consequence to me. However, that isn't to say that it doesn't hold my interest; whether you've run screaming into the flames or avoided them, my question is one of progress. Not physical, as I have no doubt that we'll receive updates on whether what we're doing is truly enough or not – but rather internal.

Consider it a question of morale, I suppose. How we're holding up, how things are looking for the days to come. Whether we all hate ourselves a little less, if that's the sort of thing you have to report.

If nothing else, it seems an acceptable concern to have at the moment.

[...That is literally the most stilted "how is everyone doing, hope you're all having a happy crisis and not literally dying in a fire" that has ever been written, but you know what, it's going to have to work for now.]

Comments

[manufactured]

...Hopefully that's all in memories, and not this life as well contributing on the engulfed in flames front?

[frostythehitman]

mostly
i mean, i did set my arm on fire once and send it to retrospec
but that's not much compared to other-me
kinda hard to beat dying in a missile explosion when it comes to the whole up in flames thing

[manufactured]

Thrown in a live volcano and hit with rockets, myself. Trust me, I am aware of how unreasonable past lives can be.

[frostythehitman]

AND?
damn
consider me impressed
which one came first

[manufactured]

The volcano. The rockets were for the sake of ensuring the job was finished.

Which, seeing as I remember them being fired, it obviously was not before they were deployed.

[frostythehitman]

well that's stupid
if an active volcano couldn't kill you how the hell are rockets supposed to do any more damage than that
DID they end up working?

[manufactured]

To my knowledge.

I haven't remembered anything that happened chronologically beyond that point, but that doesn't really mean anything. I had a talent for not dying and remaining that way.

[frostythehitman]

you and me both then
but i gotta say
the lava AND the multiple rockets is kind of upstaging me

[manufactured]

I'm not sure if that's an honor or not, but I'll take it for now.

Was there a reason in your case, or was it just truly absurd amounts of resilience?

[frostythehitman]

a reason i died or a reason dying didn't stick?

[manufactured]

The latter.

[frostythehitman]

i don't know the specifics because i was kind of dead at the time
but apparently after i died i got picked up by the soviets
and they managed to bring me back from death or something
or mostly, anyway
my arm was gone and my brain was all messed up but aside from that i was alive again

[manufactured]

People can live through some interesting things, I suppose, for a given degree of living through them. And the possibility for resuscitation borders on ridiculous at times. After all, there's a reason people say that you're not properly dead until you're warm and dead.

[frostythehitman]

that sounds like the exact motto they must've operated on
because they also kept putting me in deep freeze storage for years at a time and then defrosting me whenever they needed me again
you'd think that'd kill someone too but hey
like you said
cold and dead =/= warm and dead

[ He almost says "are you sure you didn't work for them" as part of this but HA HA that seems a little too on the nose considering the dream he still remembers of being strapped to a lab table at Albert's mercy!! C8 ]

[manufactured]

If you hadn't explicitly said it was the Soviets, I would honestly wonder if you'd come across my former employers. They were somewhat like that on the human rights front.

[...So, I mean. Just saying.]

[frostythehitman]

[ oh well that explains that dream then. Also: COOL. THAT'S COOL. YUP. ]

what kind of stuff did they do

[manufactured]

The politest way to put it is "unorthodox weapons development."

[frostythehitman]

yeah that sounds about right
why did you work for them

[manufactured]

Because I was one of the people they experimented on.

[frostythehitman]

[ The same reason Bucky did, then. It makes James wonder about everyone else in Department X. Were the scientists who froze and brainwashed him guinea pigs themselves? How deep does it go? ]

is that why you couldn't die except from a combo of lava and a bunch of rockets

[manufactured]

Technically. They didn't do that directly to me; they just made me believe it was a splendid idea to do it to myself.

[frostythehitman]

ugh
of course they did
it's so much easier to keep someone on a leash if they think they chose to put it on themselves
it really does sound like our "employers" knew each other

[manufactured]

I wasn't a terribly pleasant person myself, mind. After a while I saw fit to take up their mantle of my own accord.

But not before I destroyed them, both personally and completely.

[frostythehitman]

[ now this gives James pause. On the one hand, 'taking up their mantle of his own accord' sounds like doing horrible things without even needing to be coerced. On the other hand, destroying the people who manipulated him sounds very good in James's book. In fact, he hopes someday he'll remember doing the same. ]

so what do you think about him/other-yourself then

[manufactured]

In several ways, he disgusts me. There's no forgiving what he did, as well there shouldn't be; there's no excuse for it, and any good he may have done in destroying those who harmed him is invalidated by everything he spent his life doing.

Ultimately, however, I think I pity him for the lack of choice he had in the matter, seeing as it informed everything he did. He deserved to die and I hesitate to sympathize, but I can't hate him. So pity it is, I suppose.