The bird caws at Sydney promising to keep quiet true to its sound it doesn't alert any scientist or guards to Sydney's room, instead it focuses on building its nest under her bed and killing rats in the sleeproom.The crew suspicious as to why Sydney stays in her room for so long instead of doing trials or talking to them decide to listen in on her while her door is closed.
OOC: Another long post as an apology for taking so long to respond! Hooray! This is rather long, and I have a prior commitment I'm late for, so I'm not going to highlight the names right now.
“I’m worried about her. She’s doing fine inside, but when we get back out here she just… sits in her room. She doesn’t arm wrestle, she doesn’t pester us, she just sits in there. I assume she mostly draws? Her overalls have had a few new doodles on them the last few trials she’s joined us on…” Christine rambles to Grace, flopped rather dramatically on the floor while Grace sits at her own desk.
“Maybe she’s just depressed. Lots of that going on around here. Not too weird. The nurses’ll adjust her meds and it’ll be fine,” Grace hums, not looking up from the embroidery loop she’d found in the orphanage a few days ago. She’d been nearly giddy when she found the little trinket, removing the flayed human skin it had originally stretched and stuffing it under her dress so she could sneak it back into the sleeproom. She’d washed it in the sterilization chamber, but it is still slightly stained that coppery brown color of dried blood.
“They don’t do much to keep us from… y’know… We need to say something. Do something! What if she starts throwing herself at grunts!”
“She already does that,” Grace interrupted.
“What if she starts throwing herself at grunts without a weapon in her hand? What if she stops fighting back? Gunner would be devastated and we’d be down a stun rig!” Christine continued, gesturing up at the ceiling with her arms as she spoke.
“That’s the only reason you don’t want her to die? Because Gunner would be upset and you’d be mildly inconvenienced?” Grace eyed her friend skeptically.
“I… She can be a lot sometimes, but I do care about her. She’s so young…”
“You’re only 2 years older, my dear. You’re a child compared to me, an infant compared to Gunner.”
“I just worry. She reminds me of me when I got kicked… when I left home. I was so young. I thought I was so grown up, I didn’t need their disapproving gazes or their hateful words, I could survive out there on my own. Look where that landed me,” Christine sighed, letting her arms fall to the side.
“Worrying about you kids is my and Gunner’s jobs,” Grace said with a smile, turning to face the girl on her floor.
“Gunner would argue it’s only his job,” Christine replied with a playful grin.
“He would. But he can’t stop me from worrying. It’s burned into me like a brand. Carved into me like a tattoo. I was a mother from the moment my own passed until the day my father died and they took my babies from me. You girls fill that hole my siblings left in me, and you can pry that comfort from my cold dead fingers, darling.”
“I’m going to check on her. Would you please come with me?” Christine asked gently, sitting up on her palms.
“If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll help you snoop.” Grace hummed, putting her embroidery down and standing to go.
The door to Sydney’s room is closed, as usual, but the facility doesn’t allow the reagents’ doors to lock. Christine and Grace approach normally at first, but as they get closer they begin to hear incoherent speaking. The pair crouch quickly, unfamiliar with anyone outside of their group that Sydney would be talking to, and they sit in front of the door with their ears pressed to the cool material. For a long moment, there’s silence, then they hear Sydney begin to talk to someone again.
“-so young I watched Mother Gooseberry! They never got to do that. Well, Grace may have, she had younger siblings I think. But the others would have been way too old to enjoy her show.” There was a pause as Sydney adjusted how she was sitting, from the sound of it she was on her bed.
A fwipping noise carries out of the room, and a few bits of scratching.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Sydney asks. She waits for some kind of response. Outside of the view of her teammates, the crow tilts its head as if to encourage her to keep going.
“I was excited when I saw Dr. Futterman for the first time. Scared, obviously, I didn’t want to be hurt. He looks different now too, but I knew it was him. Then I saw Mother Gooseberry. She looks so… different. Like a doll someone played too rough with. I don’t think they let her straighten her hair here, and they did something to her face. I know it’s her though, knew from her voice alone. I would recognize Mother anywhere.”
Another pause, the crow stares like it is asking a question no one can hear. Sydney decides what the question is and responds.
“I watched her show every day until they forced me to stop. I was probably too old to watch by the time they made me stop, but her show was like… like drugs. I couldn’t stop watching, she made me feel so seen. My folks didn’t like how seen I felt, I guess. They sent me to this place, it was so loud and boring. They didn’t like what Mother had taught me. They tried to teach me other things, probably better things if I’m honest. At the time though, it just made me angry. I was nearly 14 by that point, I wasn’t some little kid!
“Ha… God I sound pathetic, telling you all this. Can you believe that that isn’t even how I wound up here? They sent me back to that place later, and that place transferred me to Colorado, and that place in Colorado transferred me here. Bet my folks think I’m just in some nice little padded room, rotting away. Maybe they assume I’ve been lobotomized by now, made all passive and sweet and dumb. Wonder if they ever asked to visit me, got told no, got suspicious. Probably not. They hated me after everything, after the dust settled and they’d had time to process what I’d done.”
Sydney’s venting trailed off. There was silence for a while, and then a sniffle. Then a quiet little sob, almost inaudible. There was a rustling of feathers again, and her crying got a little heavier before it evened out.
“I think I regret it. Stupid as that is. I’ve killed so many people here, but I think I regret that one. Maybe I only feel bad because it got me stuck here. Maybe I genuinely miss my family and hate what I did to them. How badly I hurt them. They lost two children that day, and I didn’t care until I had the blood of countless men and women I don’t even know stuck under my nailbeds along with his. God, I’m a selfish bitch. I can’t even be kind to the people who trust me here. I lied to them about you.”
There’s a soft little caw.
“Yeah, I suppose it was worth it to keep you safe. Who knows what Chris would do to you if she found out you were here.”
Christine jolts at her name, knocking into Grace before wobbling and toppling over, slamming into Sydney's door with a thud before the unlocked barrier swung open, revealing the eavesdroppers.
“For an Amelia loyalist, you deeply lack in the stealth department sometimes, Chrissy,” Grace huffed, standing up and dusting off her dress.
“What the fuck?!” Sydney yelled, shooting up from her position laying on her bed, startling the crow off of her bed, where she’d been petting it for comfort, and onto the floor.
“You lied about the bird?” Christine asked, not sounding mad as much as she just sounded confused. “Why?”
“It was nice to me. I couldn’t rat him out to you, you were talking like you wanted to kill it!”
“I just didn’t think it was wise to trust it! I wanted us to keep our doors shut and keep it out of our spaces! To watch what we say around it! I can’t believe you lied to me!” Christine shouted back, her frustration growing.
“Well now you know! It’s been here with me the whole time, eating pests and building its nest!” Sydney spat in reply.
“I can’t believe I was worried about you, of course you were doing some weird underhanded… bullshit! Ugh!” Christine stormed back off to her room, leaving Grace and Sydney alone with the bird.
“She’ll be fine. She just needs time, like always. We can talk about your pet another time, dear. In the meantime, please stop isolating yourself, you had her worried,” Grace said pleasantly, her eyes soft and her tone genuine.
“How much did you guys hear before you broke down my door?” Sydney asked.
“We heard you talk about your childhood. I think you were complaining about being so much younger than us, and then you told your friend about how you came here. I’m sorry your past is so troubled. I wish there was some way I could have helped you back then. I’m sure the guilt eats at you,” Grace hummed, shooting Sydney a sympathetic glance Sydney chose not to take offense to.
“If I’m not able to tell her myself before her next trial, can you let her know I’m sorry I lied? I just didn’t want her to hurt the bird…”
