D'Angelo watched Jack's sinuous swagger deteriorate into an almost skittish shuffle that she unconsciously tried to conceal. The strength of sustained rage upon which she was so reliant for fortitude dwindled and threatened to go out, leaving cold, silence, and darkness.
Three things that the human psyche recoiled from as from little else. There were, of course, friendly darknesses, easy silences…but cold made both unfailingly sinister. It was something ingrained into the mind of every human: a fear of being cold in the dark and the silence.
It was amazing humanity had ever mastered spaceflight, willingly surrounding themselves with cold, dark silence.
"It's strange being back here," Jack mumbled from just ahead of him. She hadn't noticed it, but she'd gradually closed the distance between them. If he took a stride that was more than a shuffle, he's end up stepping on the back of one of her heels.
Which would irritate her, and he has no desire to do so. She spent so much time angry; he had no intention of adding to that reservoir of ill feeling.
Justified ill feeling, most of it…but ill feeling nonetheless.
"I feel like…I'm pissed off. I'm a dangerous bitch. But then I'm a little girl again." Her voice trembled, then she snorted. "Shit, it's complicated. Let's go plant that damn bomb." She started off, her steps assertive and rather too long for someone of her stature, but the physical projection of toughness, of unapproachability vanished within twenty paces, returning her to what was—by her standards—'crowding him.'
He didn't mind. He approved: all things good in the galaxy knew he was safer to crowd than most people she'd ever come in contact with.
He didn't like this place. He couldn't feel its ghosts the way Jack did, but there was something malevolent here. One of the things that stalked the dreams of small children lurked here, made him wish he could truly battle the incorporeal.
His own inner demons could comfortably transplant themselves here, if he hadn't stripped them of their powers long ago.
He glanced at Jack again. He couldn't strip other people's inner demons of their powers, but he could help those being stalked do so on their own. If there was a way to help Jack do so, he would find it. It was all he could do as he looked for effective ways to further his goals.
Goals which, he could honestly say, would cause her neither harm nor give her a reason to hold a grievance with him.
"This…it's a two-way mirror?" Jack walked as close to it as the catwalks permitted, reached out to touch the cold glass, coated in condensation. The little droplets caught and returned the light from the glowstick he carried. Light to banish the darkness, words to banish the silence…but there was little he could do for Jack to combat the cold. She would never reach out to a fellow human being as a defense against chill.
Perhaps, he thought as he watched her examine her reflection, that was best.
"I used to scream at them for hours and they always ignored me."
He suspected this was not the fault of the other children. The two-way mirror was suggestive.
The path towards Jack's cell continued, with Jack becoming more and more agitated, trying harder and harder not to show it. But these things could not be completely hidden from d'Angelo's eyes.
Things like Rogers' complete callousness over this place. Rogers hadn't exorcised her inner demons: she'd destroyed them utterly and at a young age. She gave nothing power over her, let nothing influence her.
She was strong because she was a dead thing. A walking corpse that didn't know pain or fear because it lacked the faculties to feel either. One of these days she would be torn apart by some enterprise upon which she embarked and there would be an end—an ugly, painful end—to Eva K. Rogers.
He hoped he would find a better way of accomplishing his goals before that happened. One way or another though, people like Rogers seemed to have the devil's own luck. Unfortunately, sometimes one had to work with a devil.
"I must have come through here when I broke out, but I don't remember it…"
People often blocked that sort of thing out-particularly if 'panic' was involved. He found himself wishing she could block out a great number of things, and could only hope that a sympathetic, undemanding ear might have helped diminish her inner demons in some small way.
That was the power of this place: he rarely thought about 'inner demons' as being 'inner demons'. He didn't usually think so hard about them—it gave them power. He'd become well practiced in not giving them power.
He found himself also wishing that the reason for the dead varren, the freshly killed varren, would hurry up and stumble of across their path. A good fight would be what Jack needed to bolster her through the rest of this hellhole. Without some kind of additional fortification, she would not make it to the cell in any condition to do anything about it. The place would have gripped her too hard, squeezed her too hard…and even if the place was gone she would take it with her and would never be able to diminish its hold on her.
And that would be a shame.
People who lived this sort of hell deserved to be free of it, healed from it.
This sort of hell deserved to be leveled, blasted from human memory and submerged in the indignity of being forgotten as its victims moved into better places, better places with regards to body, mind and soul.
This cell was lucky he hadn't been here. He would have razed it to the ground long ago. The least he could do now was to see that as much of it that could be destroyed was. And this was not limited to merely eradicating the building.