This has spoilers for tocs 2 end game

[reanbeanmachine]

[Crow's wounds required immediate treatment, and while he was in the care of Heimdallr's hospital something went... Wrong. Word got out somehow who he was, leader of that terrorist group, the sniper whose bullet set off the war. Some bribes, some shady dealings, and before the intelligence agency or RMP could react, he was home from his room.

Luckily for Crow by the time he's kidnapped he's in stable condition, and his captors want him to recover, so he's been transported carefully. Where he finds himself though, well that's hard to say when he wakes up chained to a bed in a featureless room with no windows, and a drain on the floor. At least his bandages are fresh.]

Comments

[awakenerd]

...Crow... I don't... Know what to do. I want to make you happy. I don't think just leaving will work.

[filetofish]

It's not like I can't come back if I want to.

[awakenerd]

You can't leave without me, or at least one of the class, and I don't think, they'll let me...

[filetofish]

So convince them. What am I going to do? Panic at them?

[awakenerd]

...

[He chokes back a laugh but honestly getting them to let Crow live, to let Crow be here and not in a cell, is a major victory, and yet he now feels like he's not done enough. Like he's failed Crow majorly. He digs his fingers into his arms and breathes in slowly.]

I'll talk to them.

[filetofish]

...Thanks.

[Cause he's pretty sure if he has to keep being around people he's going to throw himself off of something.]

[awakenerd]

I can't... Promise anything.

[filetofish]

I know. But I appreciate the effort.

[awakenerd]

...Crow... You going to be able to sleep?

[filetofish]

No.

[Nah he's too keyed up.]

But it's fine. You sleep.

[awakenerd]

No. I like talking to you. I just don't know what to do, for you.

[filetofish]

You can sleep. I don't really want to talk anymore.

[He's not mad. He's just stressed and tired and wants to be alone. He's only here because Rean was so sad about it... and he does like being close. He just also finds it exhausting, and yet too scary to sleep though.]

[awakenerd]

All right.

[He's not sure he'll manage sleep, but he can let his breathing go even and his silence stretch, with just Crow clinging to his back and the soft sounds of Trista at night muffled by the walls outside the window.]

[filetofish]

[It's nice. Crow can't fall asleep himself, but he does stay there quietly, lightly almost-dozing, til morning. And then he goes back to his usual reclusive ways. He feels guilty for not wanting to be around his friends, but he doesn't. It should feel nice, welcoming, happy, but all he feels is paranoid and exposed.

At least he has his room -- for the next week or so. By then the gathered evidence has been gone through, and Claire's had time to report to the few higher-ups she has. In an ideal world, that'd be the end of it. But it's not an ideal world. It's an ugly one, ruled by a man for whom Crow's survival is inconvenient, and who can't be seen to let anyone get away with crossing him so violently.

So one afternoon, officers arrive to arrest Crow. He's got some serious crimes to answer for, and serious ones to testify for as a victim. Although the latter is sort of a formality, or perhaps an extra way to control both Crow and Class VII. They're certainly not giving him any consideration as a victim, or as someone still injured. There's nothing Rean can do -- this is fair, due process. Does he really want to start another conflict?

Officers serve as a wall that Rean and the rest of Class VII would have to break through to stop it. All they can do is watch. And at first, Crow's handling that pretty well. He's visibly shaking when the handcuffs go on, but he just ducks his head and tries not to make it any harder on himself or on the people who care about him. But then they get out the door and the press is there. This shouldn't be remotely surprising given the significance of what he's being arrested for, but the sudden flash of cameras is all it takes for Crow to absolutely lose it.

He's not thinking when he tries to bolt back into the dorm. He just can't handle it, and he can handle even less being shoved and pulled on, so it escalates from quietly tense to a chaotic disaster in a matter of moments. Ultimately he has to be dragged forcibly into the armored car, hysterically struggling and screaming (don't touch me, don't look at me, go away, I'm sorry please stop--).

Rean's not allowed to go with. He's not even allowed to visit. He gets turned away if he tries. "The security risk is too high", they say. It's a delicate situation. A political case. He can read the paper and listen to the radio, though. Crow's a lot calmer in his subsequent appearances, but he doesn't look put together in photos. He looks like some kind of walking corpse. Like he's either heavily sedated or dead inside or both (it's both). Even if Rean shows up in person, Crow won't acknowledge if he sees him. He appears to have resigned himself to execution, and it also appears that's how things are going to go.

Except then suddenly halfway through his trial some "shocking evidence" is reported on in the newspaper. A report, supposedly verified by the military, painting Crow as the victim of some elaborate plot by those aspiring to take the throne. In a way that's not a lie, as Rean is one of the few who knows, but all the details are fabricated and twisted until all of Crow's own agency, all of his personal anger and the charisma with which he led, are gone. In their place is a falsified image of an abused child grown into a brainwashed young man -- and Crow never says a word against it. He just meekly goes along with it, "confirming" the speculation under oath, wrapping himself in the lie and letting the press and public opinion dismantle everything he's ever tried to make of himself.

The sadness in the photos then isn't feigned. The weariness is real. It's so easy for people who never met him to look at his pretty face and exhausted body language and decide he's an unfortunate tool of someone else's game.

The verdict is not guilty.

When the second case starts, that altered public image works in Crow's favor. He seems less drugged-up when he testifies there, so his voice is shaking and the photos show someone traumatized and terrified of the people he's speaking against. There's video, too. Leaks of video evidence and Crow's bizarre rising popularity come hand in hand with a spike in the promotion and usage of the orbal net. It's degrading -- both the tapes made by his tormentors and the ones made by the news, where he can't meet their eyes in the courtroom and has to be allowed to leave multiple times, when questions and recountings leave him shaking and crying and so utterly humiliated it can be felt right through the camera lens.

That verdict is guilty.

No one's really surprised in the end by Crow's public statement, declaring he'll be working with the imperial government to make Erebonia stronger and defeat other usurpers and blah blah blah blah. No one except people who actually know him, of course. To Rean, to everyone else he's friends with, it's a bizarre 180 from the Crow Armbrust they know. Something's going on behind the scenes, and they're not subject to any of it.

It's been three months by the time they next meet. It's May, and whether Class VII went their separate ways or went on into Year 2, they've been left to carry on with the mystery hanging over them. But one evening, while Rean's at home studying away, there's a knock at the door. When he opens it Crow's there, unaccompanied, dressed smartly and crisply and looking barely like himself. There's dark circles under his eyes, he's pale, and his face is completely emotionless.]

...Hi.

[awakenerd]

[He tried. He never actually stopped trying. From the day they took Crow away to the day Crow's public appearances stopped, Rean was there. They never let him near, and there was never a good opportunity to use Emma's help to brainwash their way to Crow. There was always too much security for her. No amount of influence from Machias or Jusis or Millium or pleading to Claire could get him to Crow's cell.

He'd even, in desperation, gone to his father. Once. Some way through the first trial. Then he'd been given the option, continue to unquestioningly fight for Erebonia and his friend the terrorist would be exonerated, or let matters continue...

He'd accepted the terms but even those had never involved getting to see or even talk to Crow. Still, the direction of the trial changed after that, though how quickly and skillfully it did often made Rean wonder if it hadn't been planned to anyway.

It didn't matter. He was busy fighting on the front lines or waiting outside the courthouse when he wasn't in class. The rest of them had scattered to their own lives, though when he was in Heimdallr Machias or Elliot would come wait outside the courthouse with him. Machias would try to distract him with pop quizzes on study materials and Elliot would talk about friends and music but the tense awareness was always on Crow and how every appearance in the media was worse.

By the time May rolls around Rean's run himself ragged between school and attempts to get to Crow and the military.

So when Crow shows up unannounced he actually knocks over his chair leaping to his feet in shock.]

Crow...?

[filetofish]

Can I come in?

[It's barely there, but Crow definitely flinches when the chair goes over. He's otherwise still though, unnaturally so, as if all the life's been drained right out of him and it's just an empty shell standing here. His gaze is lowered to a spot on the wall somewhere in the vicinity of Rean's knees, enough to look submissive without cowering, and his voice is soft and devoid of all the lively cheer or anger or pride it used to have.]

[awakenerd]

[His gut twists and his heart feels like it's wrenching right out of his chest.]

Yeah. You don't need to ask.

[Can Crow? He wants to hold Crow and never let him go, it's difficult not to grab him and aggressively drag him into his arms right now.]

[filetofish]

Okay.

[He only moves when Rean gives permission. Then he walks in, back straight and graceful and yet somehow looking like a dog slinking close to the floor. He sits, stiffly, on the edge of Rean's bed, quiet and polite and completely wrong.]

I'm fine.

[He answers before Rean can ask, in an almost robotic voice, like he's reciting a script. Everything about him is too controlled, except the fingers of his right hand twitching against the blanket, subtly pinching it between his fingertips like the texture is grounding.]

I'm sorry I worried you. You were there, weren't you?

[awakenerd]

[He stands for a few beats, just watching Crow, watching how wrong he looks like this, how fucked up he obviously is.

He picks up the chair and rights it carefully, only to give himself a few more seconds to think, for his heart to break and for his self hatred to burn bright and be buried under everything else in the space between bending down to retrieve the chair and setting it back upright.

He steps towards Crow after that, walks up to him and stops, kneeling in front of him instead of towering over him. He doesn't bother with the door that's open to an empty dorm--not even Sara is in her room, having gone back to the Guild, the building is just the two of them anyway.

Carefully, testing, he puts a hand on Crow's knee while he looks steadily up at his face.]

Never apologize to me again. I'm the one who failed you.

[filetofish]

[Even with Rean so close, Crow won't meet his eyes. He finds somewhere else to look, like eye contact is going to hurt him somehow. He doesn't otherwise move, either. There's another subtle flinch, a little curl of his fingertips, but nothing else.]

Okay.

[He's got nothing useful to say. Not that he doesn't want to talk. If he didn't, he wouldn't have come here. But he's had a few hard months, and even from the outside it looks like the real Crow is locked up somewhere, unable to escape except through those tiny gestures.]

You couldn't have changed anything.

[Are those human words? Hmm.]

It's fine. I'm alive.

[awakenerd]

....Crow. What happened?

[He wasn't there. He couldn't protect him again. Again. And he will hate himself for his entire life for being a failure to Crow not once or twice but constantly for months.

But he hasn't got time to hate himself properly so it's just, filed away, and his focus is on Crow entirely.]

[filetofish]

...

[Hmm. That's a hard question. He doesn't think he can answer without breaking his mask and the mask is important. Buuut he really wants to tell. He wants there to be someone, just one person, that he can talk to.

Ultimately he ends up somewhere in the middle: a slight humourless smile and a hint of real inflection.]

Obviously, I've reformed.

[awakenerd]

...Reformed? What the hell?

[filetofish]

I'm free as long as I follow the rules. It's easier that way.

[He's trying, but some bitterness is leaking. He's still Crow, after all, he's just been forced into a different mould.]

Didn't you always want me to be a good person?

[awakenerd]

You always were a good person!