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[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.

Comments

[destinymaker]

[ Durandal's eyebrows go all the way up, then he breaks into a short laugh. ]

I would hope it has not. If I feel any residual craving for cheese or strange affinity to riddles, I will let you know though.

[ Being a rat was strange... He remembers it, certainly. He remembers how he felt - but it's less a memory that feels like part of himself and more like recalling a particularly vivid dream.

Walter does seem awfully serious though, or at least is play-acting the seriousness very well. It feels out of place, and after that moment of levity Durandal returns to a more serious cadence very quickly. ]

So what brings that up, after all these weeks?

[forensicks]

...man, maybe that's why I made a blanket fort the other day.

[Perhaps the mood would be better suited if he remembered whether the rat was the bandit's son or what have you. The absurdity is yet another component of the mental torture, though. Walter is... bitter. It's a smiling expression he unleashed a lot that Durandal is seeing for the first time.]

You see, my warden said that was normal. That we all grapple with it after enough breaches. For me to worry about someone struggling with reality at all, well, I'm just a big jerk who hates everything.

[destinymaker]

[ If Durandal had been aware of how close Walter and Pyotr are, this would have made him instantly understand why. ]

Well, for my part I don't think it's impolite to worry about your acquaintances losing their selves. In fact, I'd rather appreciate it if you kept that scrutiny.

Being a rat was an... interesting experience and maybe even amusing in hindsight, but I have no interest in being shown untrue worlds.

[ The breaches seem like they're custom-designed to showing them the things they can't have, a manifest nightmare of the 'what if I had chosen differently back then' kind. "Keep thinking like that and you're gonna run out of time", Rau had told him and Rau had been right. It's worthless to entertain. ]

[forensicks]

That's a good point. [A new thought that Walter can agree with.] If you can't completely perceive the world around you, no choice but for someone else to hold you accountable. You could say all we've got is each other.

[Though, wardens don't really do that. Almost more like Walter's talking about inmates. He turns a book over in his hands, a small one he's been carrying around with him in his cargo shorts.]

I've been thinking about a lot of things that have happened here over time, I guess. The flood... excuse me, other type of event that somehow can't be blamed on the Admiral either... was pretty hard for my good friend Pyotr Stepanovich. I think the breach might have been, too. I'm sure you'd hate it if anything you did happened to be making it harder for him.

[Or else I would have to make things harder for you.]