END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

[sailmods]

[the prisoners wake up on cold, hard floors.

the lights are bright, glaring, a sterile cell with sterile bars facing a sterile hall. the prisoners with you, across from you, and no one else. no rocking of a ship in waves, nothing. just the prisoner and their prison.

time passes, one assumes. the rhythmic click of Friday’s heels down the hall. it’s almost like the ticking of a clock.]

Comments

[decohere]

She laughs softly at the end of his comment, still wiping at her eyes. Each swipe of her sleeve leaves them damp all over again. Everything is sinking in, how close she is to losing everyone she loves.

"I told you he's better than anyone else estimates." Because Maximilien has always been there for her, without question, without asking anything in return.

"If it were anyone else. Maybe I wouldn't even... second guess. The offer," and so she recognizes that she's entirely selfish. But she likes Maximilien far more than most on the ship, that the possibility of losing him to save the rest feels a rather unfair bargain.

So she hopes there's other ways. Hopes people don't just rush into wishing his life away to save theirs.

[be_seeing_you]

"You did," he says, smiling tragically for her. "You were right from the start." Though, it's been true for a while now that Number 6 has had a grudging respect for Maximilien.

"Ava, he is your friend." His tone of voice seems to say that it's obvious she'd feel this way. It's the way anyone in her place would feel. "We won't give him up without a fight."

[decohere]

She's always been particularly protective and defensive over Maximilien, the way she's grown over the Captain as well. Their first real conflict. Because she knows what it's like to spend your existence treated as a resource for others to use at the expense of your own wellbeing and freedom, and the nasty resentment towards humanity that grows because of it.

She knows it doesn't make it any better for anyone that ends up a victim of the resulting backlash.

But she's glad that Peter has trusted her faith, that there is a better way to deal with them than further punishment and isolation. Because she only escaped her own destructive patterns due to somebody reaching out to save her.

Maybe others might think that Maximilien is obligated to sacrifice himself for the wish of everyone else in order to prove he's become a better person than when he stepped on the ship, or at least overlook the risk because of the calculated greater good... But it's not what Ava wants for him, wants him to have the opportunity to live free like the rest.

"Wouldn't be any good of a friend if I didn't fight for him too."

okay with wrapping this one down here?

[be_seeing_you]

"You are a good friend," he affirms. "You always have been. You'll get your chance to prove it." If Number 6 has anything to say about it, she will.