TLV IC Inbox

[falkeditupagain]

[It seems someone has decided to change his voicemail following graduation. Hes trying so hard to sound professional, business like, but Hanna's usual enthusiasm bleeds through easily.]

You have reached the mailbox of Hanna Cross. If you don't have an appointment, my secretary will follow up with a return message shortly. [a short pause.] meaning me. I'll get back to you, don't worry.

And if this is an emergency what are you doing on the phone? Cardio is your friend. byyyye!

Comments

[lestercraft]

In the version that they lived through, rather than the memories they got from the flood, that he knows are real in some way thanks especially to Edwin and Charlie?

"Honestly, compared to everything else of the King's, his prison was... relatively unremarkable. Just a series of- giant holes in the ground, maybe fifteen feet deep, sixty paces around the wall." Because distance was harder to measure when you couldn't see, but depth was easy to try and reach. He gives a hum. "You know, I don't even remember getting put in there? The King was trying to get into my head at that point, trying to get me to let go of John, o-or just break me. But since I refused, he left us there to rot. To try and win by a war of attrition."

[falkeditupagain]

"Why is there always just some stupid hole you're supposed to rot in? You'd think they'd think of something else. No one is original any more." Whether it's in his own mind, lost in a series of doors that might as well be a pit or a literal pit of a prison.

Hanna can't help but crack a smile, thinking of the look on the King's face if he even had one. Perhaps he had a tone that gave it away. "It is funny though... I bet he was pissed, skinny little man like you giving him the finger. Arthur Fucking Lester and his balls of steel."

[lestercraft]

"Ah-" and he gives an awkward chuckle. "Well, less skinny before. Part of it did involve trying to starve me out. When breaking my mind didn't work, he tried my body instead."

He rubs his thigh, a little above his knee. "And when trying to wear me down slowly didn't work, since John and I broke out after a month regardless, he lost patience and tried to do it more... quickly." A tight smile, more of a grimace as he huffs. "Broke my leg in three places before John was forced to agree to leave me, before anything worse."

[falkeditupagain]

"I figured," He doesn't mean to draw any negative attention to it in any case, though he gets it. It's always a weird thing to be smaller than you see yourself, much like when a person might look in the mirror and feel confused because the person looking back isn't quite as young as they feel they still are.

Hanna sucks a sharp breath in through his teeth, "I mean, I was wondering why he didn't just start with that method honestly. But I figure something might have happened to John if he'd just killed you to get him to figuratively and literally detach?"

[lestercraft]

"We do have an answer for that, actually," he points out cheerfully. "When we were tricked into a ritual that was supposed to rejoin John and the King, John was already too changed to go back - whether it's because he found his own sense of self or because he was entangled with me I'm not fully sure, but regardless - the King couldn't just take him. And because I had a- a-an anchor, of sorts, to my own mind, my soul, he couldn't separate us, nor could he just destroy me, since it'd destroy John as well. And killing me still prevents John from leave my body, since that way means I can't actually choose to end our arrangement, so he'd be trapped in my corpse forever."