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Time. He's unwell. And he doesn't want my help.

[ Severus is more bothered by this development with Charles than he'll admit, but he can't just drop everything to pander to him, and he lacks the skills necessary to be gentle about correcting or rehabilitating terrible behavior. Firing Xavier from his own department is the most passive way Severus knows how to react. ]

Chatty for a ghost.

Time can do that to people. Maybe I'll see if I can speak to him...assuming I can find a moment to try.

Laurens and I go way back. His crew assumed I was in command when they boarded the ship, and I urged him to reconsider his actions, after all the people on board vastly overpowered and outnumbered his own. It was a bloodbath. Out of sixty of them less than a dozen survived, and when they were taken into custody, Ward slid into secure holding and slaughtered them all in cold blood.

I stood over Laurens' cold dead corpse myself and swore to find Ward and exact justice for those murders. I took Laurens' bracelet. There's enough of him left inside for him to remember that it's his, and who gave it to him. He's there, but he's not.

How did you come know it was Ward? Ghosts are commonplace for my society. We have one that teachers history. Unfinished business, be it desperate or benign; they behave like exaggerated impressions of themselves. Accurate in broad strokes but not the finer details. Other things fill the gaps. Habits, compulsions. Answers to history exams.

There's a recording of him doing it. Smiley saw that we got it. They'd been gone before then, but after that Ward and Resnik seemed to go into hiding. He was doing the dirty work for her, though, like she had power over him.

I don't know if I'd call it unfinished business. The only thing he wants he can never do--leave this helltrap. He's a part of it now, and from what he's saying: so, apparently, are we. Laurens was never so chatty before though. And his reasons for directing us have to be considered suspect.

I'll have to rewatch it. We are part of the ship. That, or we are too contaminated with its influence to leave yet. I'd say we should have all stayed on Arima, but between the compulsion and the native reaction, I don't believe it was even possible. Lehnsherr knows how to get a reaction. I think he was aiming for one from us, though.

It's audio only, but effectively it's what it sounds like. Ward silenced them in order to keep them from telling us any more than they already had, but he didn't seem that happy to do it.

I think so too. Erik is many things but his first instinct is self-preservation. His mind isn't on puzzles, and frustration and anger are his first port of call. He's easy to agitate; we're the ones who have to listen.

I'm inherently skeptical of recordings, they seem awfully easy to manufacture. But I imagine that's largely due to living in a society that does not engage with technology at all. Resnik is the engineer, correct? He's doing something right if he's getting the ghosts in the machine to pay attention. Right for the ship or us, though?

You need a reason for, not only falsifying the recording, but also killing the pirates. Laurens knows he's dead, I know he's dead--that part isn't in any question.

So she says. We've learned that you don't need actual engineering skills to repair the jump engines. Our current theory is she was a high ranking prisoner, Gallagher's wife in fact. In any event, Ward wasn't the damn captain, either.

Smiley likes chaos. He's been known to encourage it--and the more broken we are, the more excited it gets.

I'm inclined to question everything.

[ Which is not a dig at Nathan; he appreciates the older man's intensity and attention to all this, obviously. Severus is just still rather spy-like and Trusts Nothing, etc. His paranoia is up to 11. ]

But they know something. Perhaps even something true. Smiley needs to get a bloody life. And think about something besides the rivers of Hades, probably.

Oh, they know. They know everything. But talking is another matter entirely. It's like they're stuck. You've seen it with Smiley, haven't you? Ask the same question get the same answer. Not almost the same answer--the same answer completely.

When Neal Caffrey came back I thought it was like...the ability to be straight had been taken clean out of his mind. But then I didn't really know him before he went nuts, so maybe he was like that before. Maybe he had an agenda all of his own. But it fit in with how Smiley acted, the constant dodging around. No matter how often you said 'lay it out for me', there was always obtuseness that you couldn't get past.

Laurens is the same. And you know, old hands like me, we get frustrated by the riddles. After all this time all we want is some of the mist to clear, when all it seems to do is thicken.

It's actually a behavior pattern I've seen and even studied before at home, believe it or not. There exist many types of enchantments to protect secrets or ensure that promises are made unbreakable (on pain of death, usually). People unable to explain, reveal, or betray a certain thing, bound by a force beyond them. No one's ever managed to come up with the perfect way to crack it. My best advice for a theory is put together everything they are saying, and see if you can make anything out from the only thing they very much aren't.

Really? First hand experience of this sort of enchantment definitely trumps my list of positives.

That said, the real question is how much do you want to know the truth when you're being deliberately lead to and asked to puzzle it out, most probably for nefarious purposes?

It doesn't necessarily mean it's the same thing. It just means I'm not as immediately baffled by descriptions of such behavior. I don't know what manner of science could do something similar. I would like to know everything.

Sure, sure, you said. You'd like to know everything. I just can't shake the feeling that's playing right into its hands in some way.

But what can you do? Ignorance isn't that appealing; if it was, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation.

I believe it'll be a matter of balancing what you want and what you're willing to sacrifice to get it. I want answers; I'm not willing to throw myself into an abyss knowing I'll come out mentally compromised as a gamble for those answers. So instead it appears I'll be playing a longer game. The sense of urgency from the powers that be - 'Hurry hurry, oh, now what if you've missed it?' - isn't one I think all of us should be courting. Some of us, perhaps. How've you been this jump? Since the hallways.

Maybe some of us. I like to go back and forth, keep the damn thing guessing. The best way to keep from being played is not to follow your own rules. Shake it up. Predictability leads to an early death--and it's not much fun, either.

I've been better, frankly, than I was before. It showed my son, twisted him up when I didn't do what it wanted and jump into the bright light with both feet. You know that old phrase "Know thine enemy"? Well I know mine. I looked into his eyes, and I told myself never to trust what I see.

Corridors are still a no-go zone, but the parlor tricks are losing their effectiveness.

I suppose my boss was a soft option, given what you and others seem to have gone through.

[ Ha ha Severus brushing off the fact that he has no one a ha

ha ha

ha. ]

Don't say that too loud. Tempting fate. And fate seems like something popular here, given the fixation on Roman mysticism.

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