oh reckless, a boy wonder (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gramarye) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
multiversallogs2012-01-08 08:34 am
gramarye) wrote in multiversallogs2012-01-08 08:34 am
Entry tags:
tremble, little lion man, you'll never settle any of your scores
Who: Wolfgang.
What: Consequences.
Where: Militia holding cells, Bonetown, Brock Marsh, Badside... basically all the b's
When: The week following this and this.
Notes: While this is mostly meant as a follow-up narrative detailing the aftermath of the previous two posts, if you'd like your character to recognise him or something, feel free. He'll be hanging out mostly in Badside and other rough districts.
Warnings: Violence, police brutality, post-traumatic stress
Wolfgang is certain he has a concussion; he's dizzy and can't focus on anything, he has a splitting headache and he keeps losing consciousness -- that he does so for more than a few minutes at a time is indicative of something serious, but no one has offered medical attention and when he asks, they just laugh at him. He hopes the others are all right; he never sees anyone else and they never answer his questions, if they even bother listening. He only remembers bits and pieces about what happened, but what stands out in his memory is a child crying. He hopes they didn't hurt any children.
They treat him differently when they realise he's not a woman. He supposes he should be grateful for that, but it's sickening.
He ends up tearing off a part of his shirt and pressing it to the wound on his forehead, adding pressure to it to encourage it to stop bleeding. He vomits once, or maybe twice, he can't really remember too clearly, in the opposite end of the small cell they put him in, and he sits across from it with his head between his knees and his hand pressed to his forehead, hoping it will help with the nausea. When they call him Einhorn he is confused, trying to remember where he is and what his name is supposed to be. He tries to pray, but he keeps losing consciousness in the middle of it. He has had doubts before about whether God is listening or whether He cares, but right now he desperately needs to believe that He is there.
At one point he's hauled into a little room and interrogated. They know he's been there before, they know what he bought there and that, yes, he's aware it was all obtained illegally. Stelanmancy is tightly regulated, for obvious reasons, and that it was used to bring in drugs, well. The only thing worse would be weapons. They know what else he's done, because they went through all his belongings and spoke to everyone who knows him, mostly his contacts in areas like Badside and Griss Twist. They tracked his Network activity, hacked into his private messages and read them all. There's no bad cop, good cop routine -- only bad cop and monster cop. One of them hits him in the head directly over his open wound and he passes out for a while. He can't tell them anything about the pharmacy they raided, nor, he realises, do they really care; they're after a confession, any confession, or the names of people he's worked for, neither of which he'll give. Mostly, he says nothing. They're also giving him shit because of that assaulted an officer thing, which is the only thing he can bring himself to fervently deny. He did not -- or he did not mean to, at least, but no, he did not, how could he? He's just human, how could he have done anything? Nobody believes him.
The trials are laughably speedy affairs -- apparently there is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty, nor are they allowed a jury of their peers. He's presented before a Judicator who is shown evidence of his various crimes, which is mostly a formality before the verdict -- guilty, of course. If he were innocent, he wouldn't be here, obviously. He is not even allowed to defend himself -- not that he could, he could barely make the short walk from his cell to here. He won't recall all the details later, he stands there quietly trying to make sense of what is going on around him; his head injury makes it difficult to process complex thoughts, he's in a lot of pain, and no one has bothered to give him his medication, which makes him sick and irritable on top of miserable and hurt, and that does him no favours.
He is finally given a choice: jail or city service.
Wolfgang chooses the service, nothing they can put him to is worse than what he would have done on his own, and he's not too proud to do manual labour for a living, if he can even manage to do it with the state of his body. But when they start talking about brands, he begins to panic. It disgusts him that he has to beg, please, no, not my face. It's not vanity; anyone would panic at the idea of being so obviously disfigured. A scar elsewhere on his body, at least he can cover -- he just could not stand to see it every time he looked in a mirror.
It becomes very clear to him that God is punishing him.
Released six days after his arrest, he takes the train back to Bonetown, where he avoids everyone he knows the way they avoid him. Whether they don't want to associate with him or they just think it's too dangerous to be seen with him, he doesn't know and doesn't care. He doesn't want to deal with their pity right now. He's still limping the whole way, his body still one giant bruise, and it's a long walk from the nearest train stop without his bicycle.
They went through his apartment. He knows this, intellectually, because in court, they brought forth a lot of damning evidence he thought he'd hidden pretty well -- but it's different, actually opening the door and seeing the carnage. He doesn't have a lot of stuff, nothing he minds losing too much, but it's still hard to accept, seeing his things strewn around so carelessly, obviously rifled through by strange, uncaring hands. His bike's trashed, the cross bar bent and the chain missing; it should be the first thing he replaces because it will help him get work, but he has so little money right now, he's forced to think more immediately about food and shelter. The eviction notice is taped on the wall by his front door, which the landlord at least closed, but didn't lock.
It almost makes him laugh, looking at that little hole with that narrow staircase that leads to his bedroom, wondering how any Militia agent managed to fit in there.
Almost.
His room's not in too bad a state, but as he sets to packing he realises that all his medication is gone. That hits him -- it's gone. How is he going to make it through the week without it? He has to push down the immediate panic, because panic won't help here, but he knows enough to know how dangerous it is to quit this stuff so suddenly. He has two options: quit and die, or keep buying and risk getting caught again. They told him he forfeited his right to the kind of access to health care everyone else here enjoys, not that he'd go to a hospital anyway -- some deep-seated fear of doctors and hospitals has driven him his entire life, and he can't push that aside now, even under dire circumstances.
He's just going to have to risk getting caught again, even if the very idea has him breaking out in a cold sweat, stomach tightening into a painful ball.
He leaves Bonetown, moves to Badside. He doesn't have much money but it's too cold to sleep outside, so he takes the first hotel room that will actually rent a room to him. His face is a wreck; the swelling's gone down, but it's still bruised. In Bonetown, nobody asks Wolfgang what happened, which he supposes is to be expected -- word's probably gotten around. Wherever else he goes, people are kind to him up until they see the brand shining through the gloves he wears -- not to try to conceal it (pointless) but because it's Ruudary and cold out. Then they abruptly become tight-lipped and hostile, with a few exceptions. He shows up to work in Brock Marsh only to be politely escorted off the premises and informed that he'll have to find employment elsewhere -- it really is polite, because he swears when the security guard walks him to the front gate, the look he gives him is a kind of fierce sympathy. The bar he finds himself in when he needs to get thoroughly, sloppy drunk is the same way -- people looking at him with understanding and anger, but not anger at him.
What the hell?
It's another two days before someone he meets in a Badside bar tells him the most anyone knows -- that a lot of people were released without being charged, that a lot of people were hurt, that they think a woman might have been killed, but nobody is sure. He tells Wolfgang about the video broadcast, and shows him their copy of the recording -- and he's mortified. He has to politely excuse himself to the bathroom, where he starts to shake and sob, desperately choking for air. Reliving all of that terrible week in acute detail, he is suddenly there again, hearing people screaming and feeling every terrible blow, his bones straining, the smell of blood, the immediacy of the fear of death, what it feels like to be tased -- like the fist of God clutching your spine and rattling it. More than anything he hates himself for this weakness, and that's sick, this is what they do to you -- they make you blame yourself.
It takes him a long time to calm down. He wishes he hadn't seen it and does not have the energy to be angry with the guy who showed it to him, who surely meant well. But it does raise questions.
That someone recorded it, well, he's not surprised, it's like that on his Earth, too. If the people never recorded any instance of police brutality, no one would ever hear about it or care. It would probably have immediately gone up on Youtube or Facebook and spread virally from there, he's seen it happen in places he's lived and others. But here? The government controls all broadcast avenues, if they let it leak, it would have been for intimidation purposes -- this could be you, so get in line. That message, though -- they'd never let that slip. It was posted anonymously, he was told, no one could trace it back to anyone's CiD.
So who?
That question preoccupies him until he gets tired of thinking and sweating and shaking and struggling to make it through the day. He spends a lot of time getting drunk in Badside, both to drown out the memory and to dull the effects of withdrawal; it doesn't help much and he's getting desperate. Now and then, a tiny voice whispers to him -- You were right to leave. They're all like this. They're always like this. He cuts it off savagely.
No, he's a coward, a traitor, and a deserter. This is what he deserves.
They treat him differently when they realise he's not a woman. He supposes he should be grateful for that, but it's sickening.
He ends up tearing off a part of his shirt and pressing it to the wound on his forehead, adding pressure to it to encourage it to stop bleeding. He vomits once, or maybe twice, he can't really remember too clearly, in the opposite end of the small cell they put him in, and he sits across from it with his head between his knees and his hand pressed to his forehead, hoping it will help with the nausea. When they call him Einhorn he is confused, trying to remember where he is and what his name is supposed to be. He tries to pray, but he keeps losing consciousness in the middle of it. He has had doubts before about whether God is listening or whether He cares, but right now he desperately needs to believe that He is there.
At one point he's hauled into a little room and interrogated. They know he's been there before, they know what he bought there and that, yes, he's aware it was all obtained illegally. Stelanmancy is tightly regulated, for obvious reasons, and that it was used to bring in drugs, well. The only thing worse would be weapons. They know what else he's done, because they went through all his belongings and spoke to everyone who knows him, mostly his contacts in areas like Badside and Griss Twist. They tracked his Network activity, hacked into his private messages and read them all. There's no bad cop, good cop routine -- only bad cop and monster cop. One of them hits him in the head directly over his open wound and he passes out for a while. He can't tell them anything about the pharmacy they raided, nor, he realises, do they really care; they're after a confession, any confession, or the names of people he's worked for, neither of which he'll give. Mostly, he says nothing. They're also giving him shit because of that assaulted an officer thing, which is the only thing he can bring himself to fervently deny. He did not -- or he did not mean to, at least, but no, he did not, how could he? He's just human, how could he have done anything? Nobody believes him.
The trials are laughably speedy affairs -- apparently there is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty, nor are they allowed a jury of their peers. He's presented before a Judicator who is shown evidence of his various crimes, which is mostly a formality before the verdict -- guilty, of course. If he were innocent, he wouldn't be here, obviously. He is not even allowed to defend himself -- not that he could, he could barely make the short walk from his cell to here. He won't recall all the details later, he stands there quietly trying to make sense of what is going on around him; his head injury makes it difficult to process complex thoughts, he's in a lot of pain, and no one has bothered to give him his medication, which makes him sick and irritable on top of miserable and hurt, and that does him no favours.
He is finally given a choice: jail or city service.
Wolfgang chooses the service, nothing they can put him to is worse than what he would have done on his own, and he's not too proud to do manual labour for a living, if he can even manage to do it with the state of his body. But when they start talking about brands, he begins to panic. It disgusts him that he has to beg, please, no, not my face. It's not vanity; anyone would panic at the idea of being so obviously disfigured. A scar elsewhere on his body, at least he can cover -- he just could not stand to see it every time he looked in a mirror.
It becomes very clear to him that God is punishing him.
Released six days after his arrest, he takes the train back to Bonetown, where he avoids everyone he knows the way they avoid him. Whether they don't want to associate with him or they just think it's too dangerous to be seen with him, he doesn't know and doesn't care. He doesn't want to deal with their pity right now. He's still limping the whole way, his body still one giant bruise, and it's a long walk from the nearest train stop without his bicycle.
They went through his apartment. He knows this, intellectually, because in court, they brought forth a lot of damning evidence he thought he'd hidden pretty well -- but it's different, actually opening the door and seeing the carnage. He doesn't have a lot of stuff, nothing he minds losing too much, but it's still hard to accept, seeing his things strewn around so carelessly, obviously rifled through by strange, uncaring hands. His bike's trashed, the cross bar bent and the chain missing; it should be the first thing he replaces because it will help him get work, but he has so little money right now, he's forced to think more immediately about food and shelter. The eviction notice is taped on the wall by his front door, which the landlord at least closed, but didn't lock.
It almost makes him laugh, looking at that little hole with that narrow staircase that leads to his bedroom, wondering how any Militia agent managed to fit in there.
Almost.
His room's not in too bad a state, but as he sets to packing he realises that all his medication is gone. That hits him -- it's gone. How is he going to make it through the week without it? He has to push down the immediate panic, because panic won't help here, but he knows enough to know how dangerous it is to quit this stuff so suddenly. He has two options: quit and die, or keep buying and risk getting caught again. They told him he forfeited his right to the kind of access to health care everyone else here enjoys, not that he'd go to a hospital anyway -- some deep-seated fear of doctors and hospitals has driven him his entire life, and he can't push that aside now, even under dire circumstances.
He's just going to have to risk getting caught again, even if the very idea has him breaking out in a cold sweat, stomach tightening into a painful ball.
He leaves Bonetown, moves to Badside. He doesn't have much money but it's too cold to sleep outside, so he takes the first hotel room that will actually rent a room to him. His face is a wreck; the swelling's gone down, but it's still bruised. In Bonetown, nobody asks Wolfgang what happened, which he supposes is to be expected -- word's probably gotten around. Wherever else he goes, people are kind to him up until they see the brand shining through the gloves he wears -- not to try to conceal it (pointless) but because it's Ruudary and cold out. Then they abruptly become tight-lipped and hostile, with a few exceptions. He shows up to work in Brock Marsh only to be politely escorted off the premises and informed that he'll have to find employment elsewhere -- it really is polite, because he swears when the security guard walks him to the front gate, the look he gives him is a kind of fierce sympathy. The bar he finds himself in when he needs to get thoroughly, sloppy drunk is the same way -- people looking at him with understanding and anger, but not anger at him.
What the hell?
It's another two days before someone he meets in a Badside bar tells him the most anyone knows -- that a lot of people were released without being charged, that a lot of people were hurt, that they think a woman might have been killed, but nobody is sure. He tells Wolfgang about the video broadcast, and shows him their copy of the recording -- and he's mortified. He has to politely excuse himself to the bathroom, where he starts to shake and sob, desperately choking for air. Reliving all of that terrible week in acute detail, he is suddenly there again, hearing people screaming and feeling every terrible blow, his bones straining, the smell of blood, the immediacy of the fear of death, what it feels like to be tased -- like the fist of God clutching your spine and rattling it. More than anything he hates himself for this weakness, and that's sick, this is what they do to you -- they make you blame yourself.
It takes him a long time to calm down. He wishes he hadn't seen it and does not have the energy to be angry with the guy who showed it to him, who surely meant well. But it does raise questions.
That someone recorded it, well, he's not surprised, it's like that on his Earth, too. If the people never recorded any instance of police brutality, no one would ever hear about it or care. It would probably have immediately gone up on Youtube or Facebook and spread virally from there, he's seen it happen in places he's lived and others. But here? The government controls all broadcast avenues, if they let it leak, it would have been for intimidation purposes -- this could be you, so get in line. That message, though -- they'd never let that slip. It was posted anonymously, he was told, no one could trace it back to anyone's CiD.
So who?
That question preoccupies him until he gets tired of thinking and sweating and shaking and struggling to make it through the day. He spends a lot of time getting drunk in Badside, both to drown out the memory and to dull the effects of withdrawal; it doesn't help much and he's getting desperate. Now and then, a tiny voice whispers to him -- You were right to leave. They're all like this. They're always like this. He cuts it off savagely.
No, he's a coward, a traitor, and a deserter. This is what he deserves.