Perfidious Albion (Chapter Twenty)

[challis_2070]

He wondered idly if they’d let him have breakfast or if they’d take him away again before he’d get a chance to eat at all. He wasn’t entirely sure which option he preferred here, other than ‘be left alone’, which seemed unlikely.

He wondered alongside this thought, if Millbee or Dinnerbone had talked to anyone on the server about him being... ‘unavailable’ and if Bitsy/BTC would understand why that was. He had finally gotten around to telling him about being the same person that had spoken to BTC in person, which had gone…’amazingly’. He had only done it because the therapist had suggested he couldn’t run forever from admitting it, even if only to himself. Well, up until now it had actually gone okay.

Would it make the man feel bad about it? Unlikely. Could he derive some amount of pleasure from the knowledge that BTC would have to live with the truth? Oh very much so.

Ah

It looked like he’d get breakfast before anything farther would happen today. Time to attempt to decide how much to eat based on several possible future outcomes for him. Joy.

—--


He was almost entirely sure that the universe was out to get him, personally.

Things he was sure of - Pyro was (well, very was, if he was here on base)... was willing to actually still play with him on the server. And even would still work on that model of Belfast…well, they might want a similar outcome even for different reasons. Thank god for being able to have separate worlds for such things.

Second thing- Pyro was almost certainly being held on the base somewhere, whether or not it was with the other prisoners/internees/poor bastards, he was not sure.

Third thing- he absolutely had to go find his controller at some point and yell at him about the situation. He was getting to the point where he could not continue to pretend everything was good. His controller would offer a solution. Maybe he didn’t want that solution? Was there any other possible solution that didn’t involve a court martial?

…

Well, Pyro’s father was somehow still on base, despite having Pyro.

…

He had been told to leave the man alone.

…

Letters were totally allowed under that scheme, as it let the other man decide to respond to him or not, right??

…

He really needed to talk to that therapist again.

—--

Luck will only get you so far, it seemed. Breakfast was…nice. But…

Why won’t they just leave him alone? Or release them? He thinks some of them might have been released. Well, he fucking hopes that’s why there were fewer people at breakfast than he remembered being there yesterday. He couldn’t be sure and

…

The vast majority of people here should be English.

…

Would…would they actually kill their own people? Not people they thought as ‘beneath’ them, as being ‘insufficiently English’, but actual 100% sure English people? He couldn’t tell if they really would or wouldn’t any more. He hadn’t thought they’d care about them having Irish ancestry, why would they? (didn’t most of the islands here have recent ancestry from elsewhere?... at the very least French? He remembered that from school, right?) They were English, aye? But now? He hadn’t thought they’d attack fellow English people, either! Or intern them!

His head hurt again and he was somewhere else again, without the others. Ah. Had this Controller decided to use him as some kind of…teaching aid?? God, he hoped not, but it was looking that way.

He stared blankly at the two men in front of him. He supposed it made sense, as much as any of this made sense, that this Controller had decided to use only the man (child. Fellow teenager…) that he thought had the most potential. He did have potential. Potential to not be a monster (Was that something Controller was capable of any more? He might have once said yes). He was vaguely aware they wanted an answer of some kind. Why would he give any answer? It wouldn’t get them to stop, to leave him alone.

“leave me be” why did he feel compelled to say anything at all? It wasn’t making them stop.

This seemed to have upset the student and pissed off the Controller. Not at him, at the student. Oh “You have to learn to ignore it when they say that.” Well, yes…if you want to torture people, you’re gonna have to turn off the part of you that really doesn’t want to do that.

He wondered if he could piss off the Controller sufficiently to make him leave him alone. A dangerous game to play…“They’re dead then? Not even the English are safe?” He could feel the wheels turn in the man’s head.

“They’re.not.dead.” The Controller hissed at him. “They’re not dead and you know that.” Did he? Could he really know that? He almost felt smug. And terrified, as he feared he was right. But also smug. Mostly afraid.

The student seemed to be confused before he seemed to have come to the realization of what he had to be referring to, the only other people Pyro has seen as of late.

“Oh sure sure. How many fewer will there be?” The look on the man. There would be fewer, aye. Maybe not dead (by God), but sure as hell would prove the point just as well.

“They’re not…take him to lunch, we’ll deal with this after.” He’d count that as a win so he would.

—--

Ah, lunch. The student hadn’t looked happy to bring him here. There were fewer prisoners/internees again, he was right. And the student (child. Fellow teenager. Soldier bastard) didn’t know for sure any more than he did where they had gone.

He’d left him to lunch then, to get his own or to get yelled at by the Controller, Pyro could not say and could not muster the energy to care about the difference.

“You think you can eat?” The other one he’d been with overnight. Another teenager. Were that the ones left? No. But it felt like it. The smugness he had felt when they’d arrived and he’d seen there were fewer people again, as had the student…it was gone and replaced with fear.

“Oh it’s ye. Not much. But aye.” He was grateful for the help, even if he wasn’t in as much pain as he’d initially feared he’d be in by now. “There are less people now.” He could vaguely see the student again. He was aware this made him a bad person. He’d deal with that later.

The other boy grimaced at him. “We’re…not sure where they’ve gone. Rumour is that they’ve been released. But…” But you can’t be sure, can you.

“Mmm. They’ve been known to do that, at home. Not have thought they’d do it here, though.” He still wanted it to not be true. It sure as fuck was true at home.

“Ah. That’s…don’t hear much about what happens…over there.” Most of them were English, and that made this fear all the worse for them.

“I’d have not thought them that low as to do to their own…” he left the statement hanging in the air.

The student had arrived back for him and looked spectacularly unhappy to have heard that last part of the conversation. Well, bad luck to him. He looked at the other boy with undisguised fear before the soldier took him away again.

—--






Notes, Translations, etc

No, the other prisoners/internees are not being killed. They’re being released (for real, not dead). But Pyro has the point that none of them know that (until they are released themselves) and that it looks suspicious as all fuck to those still left.