forensicks

[Walter has recorded a video message from the point of view of someone who has just come through the door into his cabin and sees Walter at his desk in the chair turned around to face the viewer. He gives a little salute-wave.]

Didn't get me. But nice try.

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From:

mukha

"Oh, yes, I don't have to worry about owning any land." Stepan Trofimovich, the pet of a rich woman, saw to that.

"I was a fugitive, Walter. I lived in a different hotel room every night. Sometimes I stayed with a comrade, but that was rare since most of them wanted more money than a room would have cost. Before all that, I lived alone. I've not lived with other people since boarding school."

It doesn't matter and isn't really the point, but he feels the need to clarify.

"And the shitty little room I have here was actually connected to another one, but of course 'inmates can only have one.'"

From:

forensicks

"Oh... right..." Walter gives a distant nod, realizing he's definitely been told this in some form. Though he didn't want to cause upset, he's glad that Pyotr at least can say things about his past that seem to be real, like that talk he had with Lucy on the network once... He blinks again, trying to remember if he's ever heard of any particular revolutionary comrade besides, well, that guy. If Stavrogin even in Pyotr's wildest dreams hadn't wanted to be there, then someone else must have been writing the papers that Pyotr was helping distribute, right? Not to take that story entirely at face value, but. It was quite common on the barge for there to be a dramatic few weeks or days leading up to one's death and abduction, a real Shakespearean final act. That impression was reinforced by the "special person" raving about his depravity, but Walter can't quickly glean names from his memory, further limited by his own status during the flood. Maybe Pyotr's collaborators really were that detached...

"I guess I just thought there were more of you. Or at least that there used to be. And—there should be," he concludes earnestly. "Who can keep up with you."

From:

mukha

Oh, poor Walter. Pyotr forgets sometimes how little he tells even the people closest to him. He might have talked more to Walter about his past, in a normal way, not the weird Barge way, if circumstances were different. As is, he firmly believes there ought to be a good deal of distance between them so that focus can be kept on what's important, like the group or escaping the ship. It's true that the group isn't even really a group, not without a unified plan or program, and his thoughts on what they are likely to accomplish have evolved overtime. Yet it's never occurred to him to talk more personally, and now that Walter is fishing, he isn't sure what to say. But the first thing that comes to mind is:

"No, it was just me and Stavrogin. There were others, but they were not important. They were just..." Useless fools. "... material to be organized."

He doesn't want to talk about Stavrogin, certainly not in a 'meaningful conversation' way, but there is something he has been meaning to make clear about comrades and his past.

"We weren't 'gay,' you know." He is mentally prepared enough to avoid blushing, at least. "Stavrogin and I, I mean. I know you think that we were because of the dream, but it was nothing like that. We were close at one point, as friends and comrades, and there was affection between us, but it was the kind of affection that was normal between male friends of my time and culture. Nothing more. I am not—I'm not like most of the people here. You know that, right?"

From:

forensicks

"Oh, I didn't mean to say that," Walter rushes to smooth over, that he didn't immediately say who was that guy in the dream, your boyfriend? It's still obvious enough when he has implicitly compared Pyotr's love for Stavrogin to his own love for Misty... Meaning Walter can't hold it against Pyotr that he would use anyone but Stavrogin. "Though it was kind of odd the way that other woman was portrayed in the dream, I'll admit." The contrast between Pyotr's two companions was the main thing that made Walter start looking through the lens that his friend might be gay, truly in that If You Were Gay way. "But I see what you mean." He would be rude to insist otherwise considering how they got onto this topic - rather than the weird assumption that Walter and Pyotr were a couple, Pyotr should be with his "roommates"... but not a pressure to actually be gay with his roommate(s). The truth is that "affection" sounds like more action than what Walter saw in the dream, but that's not... his business.

Walter frowns again. It's actually revealing that Pyotr even admits they were close at one point, intriguing enough that he decides to go pretty far validating. "Of course it's different. You're not wishing he was here to try all out all the stuff that's magic or from the future or anything, I take it." That's eerie even in the straight relationships with people who knew each other before, Walter thinks, wardens idly wondering when they'll meet again.

From:

mukha

"No, I don't want him here."

Pyotr has, during states of distress and heightened emotion, concocted a lot of nebulous, bizarre fantasies about how the Barge relates to the main story of his life, which is of course the story of Stavrogin. Everything is always about Stavrogin, and he is very aware of that. But never in those fantasies does Stavrogin end up a fellow inmate on the Barge, nor would he have any interest in a deal or keeping up the farce of being a warden. And after the way his image was desecrated during the hell flood? There are still times when Pyotr spitefully wants Stavrogin to suffer, but in his heart, he would never wish for the insults this place heaps upon its residents to touch the real Stavrogin. Such a thing is almost unthinkable.

It is to Pyotr these things happen to, not Stavrogin. He wouldn't say it's the way things should be, but it is the way they are.

"I can tell you're only placating me, though. That 'of course' was too much, particularly after that song with the puppets. Also, as someone who, prior to this boat, never had the opportunity to become numb to repetitive horror and demonic torture, I still have enough sense not to wish this place upon anyone, let alone someone I'm supposed to care about."

Maybe he would wish it upon Shatov. Why couldn't this be happening to Shatov instead of him? Maybe he's on some other ship, like the one with the Nurse.

From:

forensicks

Walter lets out a nervous chuckle. "I don't know what exactly I'm supposed to say, man; you're clearly aware that certain things might sound pretty gay to me... though that's your business... but I'm trying to understand." He's turned in his chair attentively by now, no stray attention on the jigsaw puzzle. "So it's like how you care about him is different from the other relationships around here."

As opposed to, say, the extent of physical affection... There are some options of saying "we weren't gay" that Pyotr is very much not taking... oh goodness...

"Or is it really something else? Afterwards if things were a lot more peaceful, you might want some marriage that wasn't with him or anything?" Walter is trying so hard!! He is trying to speak the language and refer to traditional marriage rather than just box Pyotr into the idea of straight instead!!

From:

mukha

"'I understand' would have sufficed." He draws a hand to his forehead, cringing. "Why do you keep telling me that it's 'my business' like I'm divulging something sordid?" His face feels hot, not out of shame over anything to do with Stavrogin, but because he is realizing now that he was right. Walter really does think he is some kind of disgusting pervert, like all these Barge people.

How dare he! His jaw clenches, and he shoots him an angry look.

"I see now this conversation was needed indeed, embarrassing as it is for the both of us. But no, Walter. Stavrogin isn't and never will be my husband. He's not my 'boyfriend.' We aren't and never were 'dating.'" He laughs cynically. "He was my friend. My comrade. An aristocrat with connections, who helped me get back into Russia so that we could start a revolution together. Lizaveta was his fiancee, and if things were different, yes, I too would like to marry a girl and live a normal life, believe it or not. I just never met the right one. I don't know many girls, and I'm not exactly popular with the ladies. Being a bloody pauper because my idiot of a father spent the inheritance left to me by my mother doesn't help."

He isn't ashamed of his relationship with Stavrogin, but Walter need not worry that he would share 'his business.' These things aren't talked about where he's from, at all, and this conversation has cemented that they shouldn't be.

"I admit, I hoped that Lucy might... but no." He sighs. "I've irritated her, and I suspect that freckled green girl is more her type anyway."

From:

forensicks

There's plenty of clearance in this thin dining room chair; Walter's legs swing awkwardly as he almost literally kicks himself. No!!!!! He was trying to sound convincing that it was totally different from a marriage! Ack...

"It just was starting to sound like you thought there was something to misunderstand." He puts up his hand. "But I get it now. No more misunderstanding." He's serious. Even if intimacy is less totally unspeakable when he was growing up, Walter is used to the idea that someone should be the last word on what's said about their relationships, at least.

He puts his hand down, slumping. "Maybe that's for the best that you two didn't go anywhere, the. Greenie creeps me the heck out."

From:

mukha

"Nothing to misunderstand," he confirms with a nod.

It's the most natural lie to tell, even if he has mixed feelings about having to tell it. But it really is for the best, he reminds himself.

They can shift to the much easier conversation now of insulting Tendi. "Yes, I'm afraid I don't quite understand Miss Maclean's taste in women either. I wouldn't want to end up the third person of that ménage à trois. No, no thank you... Goodness, now I know a little about how you must have felt. Sorry, I didn't mean to speak so flippantly about sensitive matters..." And tilting his head, he looks at Walter with the most gentle, sensitive look he can manage:

"How are things going with Ms. Quigley, by the way...?"

From:

forensicks

He knows a barb when he feels one but he deserves it so okay then!!! "O-oh... Cheese and crackers, I never quite pictured that..." Walter looks up at the blank ceiling to clear his mind of images. Although in reality Misty had been "hooking up" with Sweeney and Natalie simultaneously and then become serious and exclusive with the latter, Walter has been able to think that it was some light serial monogamy. After all, that's what was presented to him, when Misty solemnly said that they couldn't be together not because of that but because she was taken.

"Well, we still hang out a lot, which is good. Better than I deserve in most moral frameworks, really." That's what Malcolm would call glib. "But even if she accepted things... Like the thing..." You know. The pie. (He usually says "let me in" but he is not providing any innuendo ammo right now!!) "I'm not sure it was ever an option for us to be together properly. Maybe in a crash scenario, the extenuating circumstances would arise, but." But for now, she's a warden who can come and go freely. She could be with Natalie, or anyone she wants. He purses his lips, shifting gears, voice a bit higher. "You know, there were cops everywhere when the stroke took me out. Considering that I had just killed one of them. I've wondered if... It would be for the best that they keep thinking that they saw me die for good."

Even the "real" Misty he remembers. If she actually went looking for him after that... That would be the dream.