ArchivedLogs:Puzzled

Puzzled
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Toby
In Absentia	2014-01-09 '
Location <???> Jail Cell, Federal Corrections
Cramped and small, this concrete room offers very little by way of comfort or privacy. There's a cot on one side with thin grey mattress, thin grey blankets, thin grey pillow. On the other side sits a lidless steel toilet with built-in sink atop it. There's not a whole lot by way of /room/, about six feet by eight feet. No windows to the outside, and a solid door rather than bars; a barred window in the door is usually kept shuttered from without, as is the slot in the wall where a shelf protrudes and meals are often slid through. A single wan light in the ceiling provides dim illumination whenever the guards care to turn it on. Breakfast has come and gone for the prisoners inside the mutant prison, and, slowly, guards walk back and forth escorting people to the showers or to the recreation area, one at a time in each of the wards. It is an hour or so before lunchtime when there is a sharp rap on the outside of Jax's metal door. Not that Jax is, any more at least, so strictly constrained by meal times - as well as the promised daylight bulb that runs all through the night, a box of energy bars lets Jax graze at will. A small box that caused a large controversy between the prison medical department and the warden. "Prisoner..." The voice - Toby's voice - trails off, as soon as it had started. Instead, the window on the door is slid open, and a pair of eyes look in. "Time for you to get some exercise." The guard takes a step back as he calls back to the control center on the radio, and a few moments later, the door to Jax's cell is swinging open. These amendments to his living situation have shown a /drastic/ change in Jax. No longer lying listless and pale in bed, struggling just to walk the few feet from cot to door. In fact, when this call comes to his door, Jax is already in the middle of exercise. Somewhat /constrained/ for lack of space but even in the tiny confines of prison cell it's possible to do push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, burpee -- at the moment he's down low to the ground, arms in pushup position and legs working in and out in mountain climbers reps. It's worked up a faint damp sweat already in the white undershirt beneath his orange coveralls -- currently mostly unzipped. Moves to the sink briefly, to splash water on his face and cup his hand for a drink. There's a faint look of surprise on his face at the mention of exercise, showin in the lift of dark eyebrows and the slight widening of his eye. "Oh -- oh." His fingers scuff through his vivid purple-and-pink (and near-black, at its root) hair, and he quickly zips up his coveralls. "Thank you, sir." Though he doesn't actually /approach/ the door immediately upon its opening, watching it cautiously at first for a signal that he is free to move towards it. "S'your mornin' been alright?" The other man's partial nudity doesn't even cause the prison guard to blink. In fact, he doesn't seem to notice at all. Toby beckons him forward, standing to one side to let Jax step through the door. "Down the hall, straight." It is not the same way that he led Jax the last time to one of the fitness rooms. "Alright. Nothing too interesting, which is how I like it. Better than the alternative." Toby looks tired, despite his words. There are a ring of bags underneath his eyes, and his forehead has seemed to adopt frown lines that have had lots of frown line children. That same look of confusion is back as well, from when Jax was in the infirmary. It had faded, if not vanished, over the interim days, but it seems almost stronger than ever. The room Toby leads Jax to is marked with a red sign next to it. Staff Only, it says on the plaque next to the door, as Toby unlocks it with a swipe of his ID. "In." The room, as it turns out, is an exercise room as well. Where the other one had treadmills and exercise machines and was deep inside the facility, though, this one has a running track around a too-small basketball court with a set of freeweights along the side. More importantly to Jax, perhaps, is the small meshed over windows set high in the wall, shining bright light into the room and blinding out the flourescent lights set in safety mesh. Jackson only gives a small nod to these directions, slipping out of the room and heading where Toby indicates. "Yeah," he agrees with a quick breath of laughter, "quiet's -- pretty preferable, lately. I feel you there." He stops at the door, that same surprise returning to his face at the sign outside. His brows wrinkle when Toby swipes the door open, but he moves slowly in wen directed -- and then quicker, drawn like a magnet to the pools of light streaming in through the window. He stops in one of them, turning his face up towards the sunlight with a shaky gasp drawn in. For a few breaths he doesn't move or speak -- just drinks /in/ the sunlight; it /glimmers/ faintly around him, brighter where it meets his skin. "-- Thank you," he finally remembers to say, looking back to Toby with -- also a puzzled look, now. "You sure you're alright, sir?" The door swings shut as Toby steps into the room. "Yeah." He sits down into a chair near the freeweights and gestures to the room around him. "Make yourself at home." He glances down to his watch and studies it for a moment. "Probably about thirty before you have to go to the showers, 327...." Toby trails off abruptly in the middle of the sequence of numbers, and his eyes look up to Jackson's face. "They released some videos. From people who were in the Prometheus facilities. Your kids. Your husband. Others." His voice is low and graveled, and his face is pulled into an expression of distaste. He shakes his head once, and his expression becomes tighter. He is silent for several seconds even as his eyes bore into Jackson's, as if he could read the truth there if only he looked hard enough. Then he looks away, fingers drumming along muscular arms as he turns his glare onto the floor. "I think I understand you a little bit better, now, Jackson." The guard looks up at the prisoner, and he nods once. "And also not at all." "Videos?" At first Jax just looks confused even more, until Toby mentions his kids. His head bows, his troubled expression swiftly clamped down into something calmer, though the light quivers around him briefly. "Oh -- oh. They -- why did they -- that's. A lot of hurt to be talkin' about. Publicly. Ohgosh, my boys, have people been --" He cuts off this thought with a quick shake of his head, looking back at Toby from beneath a fringe of colourful hair. The light around him quivers again at the use of his name, his posture straightening more upright. "What's it y'understand, sir?" A faint dusting of pink spreads across his cheeks. "Or don't." "It doesn't make sense. There's no story that fits." Toby growls out, clenching his fists. "If you are a terrorist, why didn't you take the opportunity to kill that HAMMER officer when you had the chance? If you aren't, then why would the government be so stupid as to try and arrest you for this? When things go wrong you don't." His lips narrow and he shakes his head. "I know how the Defense Department handles things, and it's not like this." A long pause, and the guard stands up to pace. "It has to be one of them. Either you are or you aren't, but instead it's neither." Round in circles he goes, words and paces looping over each other. Jackson hasn't moved from his spot smack-dab in the brightest of the sunlight, but he does stay turned to watch Toby rather than keep his face turned upward. He lifts his hand and runs fingers through his hair at the question, shaking his head slowly. "I mean, what's a terrorist, really? S'someone fightin' against the government where they don't want it. I ain't no kinda murderer. S'why I didn't kill Captain Rogers. But I ain't hardly the type either to just /sit back/ and --" His hands spread in front of him. "We've gotten hundreds of people outta Prometheus labs. Places they were bein' tortured and killed. /Raping/ children, dissecting 'em while they was still alive, just --" His fingers flutter towards his eyepatch. "I expect they imagined everyone would stay silent when they accused me of -- orchestratin' what happened with Vector. Because /they/ weaponized him, and a mess /that/ big, they sure needed to try and make /someone/ take the fall for it. An' I been kind of a /thorn/ in Prometheus's side for years now." "That's a hell of a mess to clean up, but." Toby's lips thin, and he stops to turn to look at the other man. "I've been a corrections officer for a while. I've seen people in jail for killing someone over a parking space, for cutting in line. I've seen people kill each other just for looking at them wrong. I was a Marine before I was an officer." He shakes his head again. "This is a shit way to clean up their mess, if that was what they were trying to do." A long pause, and Toby sinks back into his chair, back hunching slightly as he rests his elbows on his knees. "You know, there are very few innocent people in prison. I mean, it happens, but not a lot. You learn to stop wondering, because usually you're wrong, and you get /sick/ and tired of giving someone an inch and having them try to take a mile." A pause. "But." "I'd guess they just expected everyone t'stay quiet," Jackson supposes with a small frown. "Everyone's been scared of 'em for so long. I mean, /I/ didn't hardly expect -- until you telled me just this minute I had no idea anyone had even --" He swallows, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Just kinda figured I'd be forgotten here forever. It'd probably have been a decent way t'clean up their mess, if the people they done hurt hadn't come forward." His eye lowers to the floor at that last but. "Two hundred six people," he says, very quietly, after a pause. "That's how many my team's taken outta those places to date. Forty-one more that I saw them just straight-up kill when they realized everyone was gettin' freed. Six'a my folks dead at their hands. When I found my son he was more blood than skin. Teeth torn out, nails pulled out -- most'a those people is. Homeless folks, /kids/ whose parents kicked 'em out an' they got snatched off the streets and locked in cages." His hands curl into fists at his sides. "So I mean -- yeah. If it's terrorism breaking into those places to get people back to their lives then sure I done that. But it weren't /never/ to hurt nobody. I ain't even killed a single one of /their/ folks /while/ they was shooting us dead." "Then that makes us very different people, Jackson." Toby's eyes are hard as he takes in the other man for a moment. "When people shoot at me, I shoot back." He pauses for a moment, straightening up as he runs his hands through his hair. "You are not a very popular person right now, I think, in government. I can think of a very short list of people who might be less popular. A few of them are also kept here." He sighs and lets his head fall back to the ceiling for just a moment before glancing down at his watch. "I am glad I am not going to be on your jury, Jackson. I would not look forward to weighing two hundred people and a pile of sins against an innocent mistake and millions." The guard sighs, one, looking over the other man. "You should get some exercise in while you still can. You need to work out your muscles from being in such a small space." "Weren't an innocent mistake," Jackson points out, very quietly. "/I/ found Vector not havin' no idea what he was capable of. /They/ -- /created/ him on purpose. /To/ kill millions. Ain't nothin' innocent about /that/, sir." His head dips in a quick nod at the suggestion. "Right. Thank you, sir." He gives Toby one last thoughtful look, and then takes off, a brisk jog that soon escalates to a run around the small indoor track.