goneawaycomms | Counselor Aiden Price

Simply, I don't respond well to any treatment.

[It's already quite obvious that he's never been handled properly. He doesn't want to say it out loud.]

How you respond to something is in your control. Reckon it's the only thing that always is.

[But Dan doesn't say this like he's lecturing or dismissing Price, only prodding around the edges of Price's statements in hopes of defining them more.]

That's...

[He sighs.]

Nevermind.

[It's not compliance that helps, nor containing his reponses. It's just that it doesn't actually matter, people have assigned a label to him and whatever he does they will twist to make it conform to it.]

No, go on. I'm listening. [And Dan really is.]

I have already gone through this kind of dynamic before. I only overcame it and started functioning because I moved to an environment that was more favourable...But I wasn't even twenty back then, at my current age with my criminal record I doubt there is a place that is right for me.

[He deflects. Then sighs again, he might as well say it more directly. This is an informal conversation, after all.]

Even if I wanted to...'Do the work', even if I did it, everyone would still torment me, and I am tired of having to work ten times as hard as everyone else to achieve a neutral opinion at best while they never get judged as harshly for the bad things that they do.

[Dan listens. He gives Price his quiet, focused attention, turning over in his head how to get through to someone whose grievances with the world may be partially self-inflicted, but are quite valid. How do you get someone to accept injustice? How do you get someone to accept that an unfair world is still one worth being good in?]

Well, I might could be the only person on this Rig with a longer criminal record than you. [There are no war crimes on Dan's record, but his is lengthy, and he knows the struggle of having it stand between him and a new start.

He takes a moment to think.]

Maybe all the people here would treat you poorly. But I can tell you for certain, as someone who's traveled and met thousands of people in my time, that not everyone would. I wouldn't. I don't. [He shrugs.] And there are more when I came from.

I am perfectly capable of masking, I have done it for most of my life, but you have to understand that whether I decide to hurt people or not I would still have to lie to them and manipulate them when I need to.

[No matter how ugly it is, the 'monster' that is only good for destroying things is the real him. Destruction always comes with building something different, but no one sees that of course. They are so limited in their petty morals. He smirks.]

I doubt you committed more crimes than I did.

Edited 2021-08-29 11:21 (UTC)

So? Lying and manipulating is how people survive. [He knows Price has seen enough of his memories to know Dan and his kid ran grifts.] The point is just not to hurt anyone with that lying and manipulating. Then you don't get the blowback.

[Dan laughs.] Maybe not, but my whole existence is illegal. Point is, I know what it's like for a crime to follow you around.

[Dan doesn't judge people based on their crimes; the world does that enough. The past doesn't matter to him, only what people do going forward, and that's always something they can change now.]

[Price hums without saying anything. Perhaps this should be taken as an opportunity to go somwhere else and start anew, but what is he without the Director and the Agents? He's nothing wthout them.]

You don't seem convinced.

If it makes you feel better, I can see why you are making that point.

[He feels stupid thinking of how much he wants and needs connection when he's perfectly aware that he can't truly be a part of it. He's said a few times that he feels 'the urge' to do bad things in order to explain himself but those are merely responses. Yet they're not responses in the way that Dan means, in the way that can be controlled easily, they are just hardwired deep within him, and are ultimately triggered by the awareness that he is permanently unsafe, and they are hardwired because in his life they are the only available answer.

Project Freelancer was the only time in his life where he felt at home, he could find things exactly where he put them. It was almost a paradox how the world of science with the neverending variables within his experiments where easier to secure than mundane one on one relationships, despite the latter not having even a hundreth of its impact.]

What you fail to understand is that what I was in Project Freelancer was the best person I have ever been. I don't see the point in being anything other than that. Stepping down from my job would be a downgrade even to you and your fellow empaths, you can trust me on that.

Project Freelancer ain't coming back. [There's probably no way for those words not to just sound harsh.] You say you don't see the point in trying to be anything but the person who just waits for Project Freelancer to come back, but you're miserable, so obviously something's got to give.

[He gives Price a sad shrug.]

If the Director was here, maybe...This would be different.

[He can't help but wonder how things would have been. Even if they still failed to get their agents back, they would at least have each other. The Director was just so perfect to have around, because he would be the one to do reckless and aggressive things for him, Price just had to enable them and hardly receive any backlash.]

But yes, it's all gone and it will never be the same.

You're right, it won't never be the same. Time to start fresh. [Dan raises an eyebrow, as if to suggest what he thinks Price's new beginning should look like.]

Look, if you ever truly want me to go and not talk to you again, you can just tell me. But make sure it's for you, not for some misguided sense that I'm not an adult enough to know what I can handle or what risks I'm fine running.

[Price is filled with dread at the mere thought of starting fresh. It's too tiring and too late.]

Without Project Freelancer I am nothing.

[He swallows his pride because apparently he didn't make it clear enough. Although he's been reckless lately, he still chooses his words carefully. When he says nothing he means nothing.]

You can stay with me, but you will not like what you see.

Without Project Freelancer you're still my friend. Or at least, I consider that to be the truth. [He figures Price won't. Doesn't matter. Dan's sincere.

The fact that Price isn't taking the opportunity to tell Dan to go away forever tells Dan that Price wants him to stay after all.]

I don't have to like what I see.

[Price isn't sure what to feel about it. On one hand he's relieved - or at least he understands he should be relieved - that being Dan's friend is an available identity, but on the other hand...It's not something he can rely on.]

Alright.

[He would like to say 'I don't know if I can bear a new beginning' but this conversation is awkward enough already.]

[Dan lets that lukewarm acceptance hang in the air for a moment, figuring it might be the best he gets from Price today.]

So. Since we established that I'm sorry and we're still friends, do you want to go get lunch from the mess hall?

[The mess hall is full of people that hate Price, but they probably will not attack him when he's with Dan. He's been keeping to himself for a month, and not because he wanted to, so simply being able to see people around him could be comforting.]

Sure. Let us go.

[Yet he still kind of hides behind Dan on the way to the mess hall, just in case they meet someone hostile in the meantime.]

Counselor Aiden Price

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