When Atlas ain't looking and he's been allowed invisibility once more, he still stands there shell-shocked. The words go through him. Next week. Four days from now the drugs will be back and he'll be both relieved in the sick part of him and wanting to yank his arm from the needle. He knows he won't. He won't fight for a moment. He won't even run. He'll report back to Atlas, just as he's told.
He feels stiff when he walks onward to his cot, leaving Birdie behind him. He's the horror story for them all. They'll be careful, now that he's done. Whether that will matter in the eyes of Atlas, he isn't sure.
He pulls his metal cot out and hates the whine it makes. His pillow and sheet are arranged in as much of a pile as he can manage of it, with a single feather at the top.
It had come from a pillow. He'd kept it. Avoxes weren't supposed to keep things, but he had and no one noticed it in the room's sterility. He put it with his too-small cot, and as he went to sleep, he held curled in his hand-- because everyone knows that Avoxes are only whole when they sleep, and maybe that's the truth in Atlas's sense of them being caught between alive and dead. It took him two more days to remember why it mattered, and even then it came in the most abstract sense, the most distant of logic. The feather is for Sigma. It's for Sigma the gamemaker whom he serves tea to every day. Sigma who means the world. He needs to give to Sigma. For a one day that has to do with his friends but he's not sure what it entails.
When the month passes and so comes his monthly reconditioning, he forgets what the feather is for but he finds it there and when he falls asleep, when he's closest by wherever it is the other part of his soul's gone to, he grips it tight in hand. It comes back later than before with each month, yet even still he clutches it tight in his sleep.
He curls himself up small on his pile and holds the feather in hand. In a week, he won't remember why it matters and when he forgets this time, he's not sure if the knowledge will come back. The one good thing is that he won't recall why that should hurt either.
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He feels stiff when he walks onward to his cot, leaving Birdie behind him. He's the horror story for them all. They'll be careful, now that he's done. Whether that will matter in the eyes of Atlas, he isn't sure.
He pulls his metal cot out and hates the whine it makes. His pillow and sheet are arranged in as much of a pile as he can manage of it, with a single feather at the top.
It had come from a pillow. He'd kept it. Avoxes weren't supposed to keep things, but he had and no one noticed it in the room's sterility. He put it with his too-small cot, and as he went to sleep, he held curled in his hand-- because everyone knows that Avoxes are only whole when they sleep, and maybe that's the truth in Atlas's sense of them being caught between alive and dead. It took him two more days to remember why it mattered, and even then it came in the most abstract sense, the most distant of logic. The feather is for Sigma. It's for Sigma the gamemaker whom he serves tea to every day. Sigma who means the world. He needs to give to Sigma. For a one day that has to do with his friends but he's not sure what it entails.
When the month passes and so comes his monthly reconditioning, he forgets what the feather is for but he finds it there and when he falls asleep, when he's closest by wherever it is the other part of his soul's gone to, he grips it tight in hand. It comes back later than before with each month, yet even still he clutches it tight in his sleep.
He curls himself up small on his pile and holds the feather in hand. In a week, he won't remember why it matters and when he forgets this time, he's not sure if the knowledge will come back. The one good thing is that he won't recall why that should hurt either.