outer_divide | (no subject)

[Xavier is sitting on a cot in the Flop, hands clasped in her lap as she smiles into the camera. It's a weary smile, but a friendly one. Her hair is tied back in a low, messy knot.]

Hello. My name is Jocelyn Xavier, and I have a request of everyone.

I'd like to know some details about your home, your history. Nothing intimate, of course – just basic facts that might help us discern some sort of pattern in our abduction. Your statistics, essentially – and your skills, if you don't mind sharing.

I'll start us off.

I come from Earth. America, originally, but I've been traveling for several years. The current year is – was – 1956. I recently turned thirty years old. [Her expression tightens, just slightly, as her voice quiets.] Both of my parents are deceased. My step-brother and his father, as well.

[Her next words come quickly, as she forces old emotions away.] I spent eight years at Oxford University, in England. I have PhDs in genetics, biophysics, psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology.

[She hesitates, then, brow furrowing she glances downward; she seems to steel herself as she looks back into the camera.]

I was a soldier for three years. [It would be dangerous to admit, at home, and might raise suspicions here. But she's asking for honesty, and she's holding enough back already.]

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Did you?

[Approve of Ada's need to kill her tormentor? Get in the way? Help?]

...I understood. [Her smile now is thin and worn.] To say I've never felt murderous would be a craven lie, and I've suffered far less.

I don't believe - I cannot believe that taking lives is the right answer. But I won't judge her for doing so. [She shakes her head.] Who am I to do that?

[Her voice is soft, now, soft and frayed.] I've seen people kill for so many reasons. Ada's are not petty, or fanatic, or arbitrary. That does mean something, in the scheme of things.

You understood, but you didn't approve.

[He can still recall each conversation he's had with Charles. Specifically those that left them at odds with each other, courtesy of their ways of thinking. It only makes it that much harder to hear those options stated so clearly.]

If there are any similarities between our worlds, then she would have wanted you by her side, whether you agree with her methods or not.

She left.

[She says it simply, but her gaze falls; she remembers that last conversation, the quiet resignation of it, the aching emptiness it left behind.]

I could have followed. But what then? How could we do anything together, if we couldn't agree on how to do it? How could our friendship stand, if all we did was rehash the same old arguments?

You'd find a way to work together.

[Though he already knows that isn't possible; that at some point in his own future, his friendship with Charles is going to come to an end. He can't stay at the mansion with people who would rather wait for the war to find them than to take a proactive step in their favour.]

You're both too idealistic. Though you, at least, seem to realise that.

[She smiles, just slightly.] I wouldn't be much of a therapist, were I not perceptive.

You're a therapist.

[It's delivered in a nice, flat tone. While the job may work hand in hand with her ability, it doesn't make him feel any more comfortable with talking to her. Not if she's the type to try and analyse everything he says.]

Only on request.

...It's how we met. Ada wasn't a patient - she was a volunteer.

[No, that makes even less sense, as far as he's concerned.]

A volunteer where?

[Her voice is soft, now.] A friend of mine was running a clinic for Holocaust survivors in Israel.

(no subject)

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