ArchivedLogs:What's Important

What's Important
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Toby	2014-01-03 '
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. It's been a while since Jackson has moved. Throughout his first two days here he's been impeccably polite, if increasingly /exhausted/ sounding. As morning dawns on the third, he's exactly where he had been last night at lights-out, curled up on his side underneath his thin grey blanket. Quiet but not /still/, his shivering has ratcheted up to noticeable levels even beneath the covering. At least, it would be noticeable in the light; with it out his cell has little to see besides the blackness. The boots come without the light turning on this time, framing Toby's face in the door as the footsteps stop in front of Jax's cell. "Good morning, prisoner 32760-080." His voice rumbles softly, head tilting slightly to one side as he studies the other man. "Food is here." He drums his fingers against the steel of the door, where they make quiet little sounds. "Can you verify your name, please?" Jackson doesn't move, not at the sound of the footsteps nor at the light that finally breaks through the pitch-black of his cell when the shutter is open to frame the man beyond. There's no answer at first, and he doesn't look up when it finally comes. "Good mornin', sir." Soft, and then a pause. "Jackson. Holland-Zedner." "Stubborn, stubbon, stubbon." The guard doesn't seem to be in the mood to play, today, however. The slot at the middle of the door opens, and a tray is roughly shoved through before the steel clanks down past the door. "You are one stubborn son of a bitch, 32760-080. That will not make you friends in here." His voice is as steely as the thick door that separates them. "And you will need all the friends you can get, I think. This is not a place in which you will adapt. I have seen a lot of prisoners, 32760-080. I've seen them come, and seen them go. Through the front gates or through the morgue, and so far, I know which one you're heading towards." Jackson draws in a quick sharp breath, a tiny gasp of sound as the tray is shoved through. Even then he doesn't move, though. His eye closes, though his (inordinately pale) face turns towards the square of light coming through the window in the door. "Jackson, sir," he corrects his name softly. It's very slow, when he finally does start to get up. It takes effort even to shed the blanket, to slide his legs slowly around to the floor. "M'usually," he offers while he goes through this laborious process, "a pretty friendly person. Think I'd still like to be, really. But once in a while there's." His fingers curl against the mattress, gripping there tightly as he pushes himself shakily into a sitting position. "Things more important. Than makin' friends." "Perhaps, things more important for a cause, but little more important for you, 32760-080." Toby's smile is twisted at the edges, and he shakes his head with a little chuckle. "But perhaps you think you're not important anymore. Just the cause. Is that it? A martyr, already?" Toby watches Jax's movements carefully, brown eyes examining his every move with one hand on the shutter of the window. Just in case. The tray has breakfast on it. Today, that is a 'fresh' orange - more of a tangerine, really. A pack of grits, three slices of bread, 2 cups of skim milk. To go with the bread, there is two blister-sized packages of jelly and 2 of margarine. In a separate plate on the tray, there is a sandwich - turkey, exactly 2 ounces, with mustard smeared on it. "No. Think I'd do the /cause/ a fair bit more good alive," Jackson admits with a quick laugh. He takes a long moment once sitting up, fingers just scrunching and releasing at the mattress. His first attempt to push to his feet just ends with thumping heavily back down onto the bed. The muscles in his heavily tattooed arms tense, relax. He draws a slow breath. "But me? Ain't nothin' more important to /me/, sir. Everyone dies. But they're tryin' right hard out there t'make me somethin' --" He takes another breath slowly, out, in, out, and tries again. Thumps back down against the mattress again. His eyes close once more as he steadies himself. "T'make me somethin' horrible. Somethin' I ain't. I'm gonna die some day, I hope it ain't /soon/ but whether it is or not I'm gonna die /me/." Another deep breath. This time when he pushes to his feet he actually stays on them. Wobbly, but upright. Slooow as he makes his way to the door, taking the tray off its shelf to sit heavily right down on the floor with it. He eyes the food. The milk. The turkey. His teeth grind briefly. "I'm vegan." He comments this quiet, soft and otherwise rather inflectionless. Followed by: "Thank you, sir." His hands are shaking badly as he starts to eat the bread, devouring the first slice with barely even any chewing. "-- What's important t'/you/?" Toby's smile turns wolfish. "And so very few of the prisoners I have met have ever said they were responsible for what they did. And yet." He taps on the door, taking a step back from the window as the prisoner approaches and takes the tray, but returning to the window to watch as the other man sits down. He glances down the corridor for a moment as something is shouted at him from afar, but quickly turns his attention back to Jax, eating in the darkness. "I watch the news, 32760-080. You need all the friends you can get." Toby laughs for a moment, shaking his head. "Whatever is being said, whether it's true or not, you'd be dead out there. Here, you at least have a chance to be alive. If you get the right friends." The guard drums his fingers on a thick arm, ignoring the prisoner's comments about the food completely. "My country. I've served this country since I was old enough to, and I'm not about to let someone destroy it." The second piece of bread vanishes as quickly as the first, but after this Jax slows down -- with a visible /effort/, he actually has to sit on his hands to stop himself just devouring /all/ the food in two seconds. "You know, that's six times s'long as my name. /Twelve/ times if y'just go by Jax." There's a note of amusement in his voice. He stares down at the food. Twitches. Once the twitching /stops/, he stops sitting on his hands, slowly opening up the packets of jelly -- it takes several fumbling tries -- to dump one out onto the last slice of bread. He actually bites, this time. Chews. Pauses to speak rather than wolf down the whole piece at once. "Think we're on the same page on that count, sir. The things I've seen --" His head shakes once, quickly. "Lettin' that kinda torture continue? S'destroyin' what this country stands for sure as anything." "You killed over a million Americans. If you lined up the bodies, it would stretch from here to the Gulf." Toby says, disgust ringing in his voice. "You killed more Americans than the entire Civil War. You think that was a less important issue? You committed the single largest atrocity in the history of this country." He pauses, and suddenly his voice is whisper quiet. "I don't care who else is responsible, 32760-080. More than one person can hang for the same crime." The metal window slams shut.