Raising his hands and opening his mouth, North is half a breath away from accepting her apology and reassuring her that she has absolutely nothing to be sorry for, but then that last bit---
He narrows his eyes suspiciously. Not of CT, but rather in an "oh god, what happened now" kind of way. "What stone call?"
Ah, well. "It was weeks ago at this point. Honestly I'm surprised it didn't wake you up, she was shouting pretty loud but— she called me at like, three in the morning, clearly drunk and just started laying into me for leaving her. I explained myself and she hung up when she realised she wasn't getting the reaction she wanted from me. I'm not even sure what she did want except to convince me of the lie that she actually hates me."
"I'll be real with you, CT, the first couple nights of getting the barn set up were so exhausting that I could've slept through the end of the world," North jokes, half-heartedly laughing. God, that's embarrassing. South, what the fuck.
"...But, uh, yeah, I'm sorry about that. You guys used to be, you know, pretty close. She took the whole insurrectionist thing pretty hard, and even after we found out it wasn't like that, I think she still took it personally that she hadn't been in the know. You were pretty special to her."
"...yeah. She— she was special to me too." She really was. South was by far her best friend at the program by the time it was all over, her trust in Wash shattered much earlier by his wilful ignorance. Even if they never figured out what they were, never took a chance, it did hurt to leave her. "I know she cared about me. I think she would've done just about anything for me if I asked, except the one thing I needed her to. You know? You know what she's like. If I'd tried to tell her the truth and that one day I'd have to leave, she would sooner have told me to drop it than help or come with me. She's not... a big picture sort of person."
Another sigh. It's not like she likes feeling this way about South, but even South herself couldn't deny her assumption once she laid it at her feet.
"And that's... this is all why I wanted to see how you were doing. I know what it's like to love that amazing, infuriating woman and still be stuck standing here not knowing how I'm supposed to help her without— throwing myself on the railroad tracks. You know? I can't do that, I won't—but if I'm feeling it, then I know you must be feeling it worse."
Oh, CT, you have no idea. You're speaking to the man who died on those tracks, woke up, and laid right back down.
"Yeah, well. None of us got out of Project Freelancer without getting messed up. That's why so many of us are here, I figure," he jokes hollowly. "You seem like you're doing better here. New girlfriend and all, so I hear."
"You heard right. That's Ellen. Who South also— picked a fight with, actually, but—" A shake of her head, they've already covered that South's behaving in deeply embarrassing ways, no point in dwelling on another example. "Yeah. I've had chance to get settled. Despite everything I'm doing pretty well. But the first few months are always rough. And you're dealing with more than most do before their first big— nightmare."
Trying not to let him deflect too much. The twins have missed the more dramatic monthly occurrences by virtue of arriving at the tail end of the year where things are, comparatively, blissfully, quiet, and stumbled into their own personal problems instead.
"...I guess I'm just trying to say I at least kind of get it, if you need to talk to someone who does. I don't think anyone else at the program knew her like we did."
Christ. There's still things he needs to know, but the longer she's talking to him the more worried she is it'll only do more harm than good right now.
"I don't think anyone in the universe ever knew South like I knew her, but you came pretty damn close," North says with a quiet laugh. "I really appreciate it, CT. You're good people. It's just--- complicated, you know?" A beat. "Did you ever find out what exactly happened?"
There's a quiet understanding in her eyes and the smile she gives—no, she could never know South exactly as well as he did, it'd be impossible, she understands that much.
"I know. I don't think this could be anything but complicated," she says, because it's true. Her relationship with her own brother was too, in its way; but that was a relationship that ended when she was only a teenager and he ran off to join the actual Insurrection. "But no, I don't know the full story. All I got was that she led the Meta to you."
"That's the gist of it. She wanted Theta gone. And she wanted it so bad that she put me in harm's way, knowing it'd devastate me to lose Theta, knowing that I might not survive. And what do you know. I didn't." North sighs, scrubbing his hand over his face in thought and frustration. "I--- In a lot of ways, I do forgive her. You know? She was getting treated unfairly by the project, and she really didn't have any reason to understand why Theta meant so much to me. But at the same time, I'm like--- how could she do something so stupid? How could she take such a huge risk? She complained all the time about wanting to be her own person, but one time I end up with something that's just mine and she's willing to risk getting me killed over it? Or was she just so damn overconfident that she didn't think anything bad would happen?"
CT manages to hide her wince at treated unfairly by the Project, words that are entirely accurate and said without knowing even knowing the true horrifying extent of it. Christ, how is she meant to tell him?
She doesn't hide her wince at the whole story in itself. "Jesus christ, that's... I don't know if that's better or worse than what I was imagining."
Both, maybe? Better than shooting her brother in the back in cold blood, something Carolina's limited knowledge didn't rule out, especially considering Wash, but worse in other ways. Worse in how fucking thoughtlessly selfish it is without being, by South's own twisted logic, intentionally malicious.
"Knowing her, the overconfidence had to be at least half of it. She always did make herself do things the hard way, always so sure she'd pull it off." Sometimes right, sometimes wrong. "I bet the possibility that you'd actually die never crossed her mind until it was too late and that's... well, that is stupid. Just— unbelievably thoughtless."
It's spoken with the kind of frustration that only someone who knows some of South's patterns all too well would feel. No venom, just... exhaustion and exasperation.
She chews the inside of her cheek. "...she really said all that to your face? The complaining, I mean. I... for some reason I thought whenever she vented that at me she was, well, keeping it away from you. I mean, she'd talk to me about you guys— pretty much any time you had an argument or you jumped in front of a bullet for her or something."
Wow. North was literally taking bullets for her, only to find out she was complaining to CT about it. What overwhelming gratitude. North grits his teeth and sighs, refraining from commenting.
"Yeah, no, she said it to my face. Said it was annoying how we got lumped together all the time. How she just wanted to be herself, and not us all the time. I dunno. I didn't really understand it, I don't think."
She catches that subtle clench of his jaw, but prying into exactly what part of what she said got that reaction would be... more invasive than she'd like to be, however helpful it might be to her ability to have this conversation.
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But— I don't know, I think... I always got the sense that she wasn't even really angry at you, exactly, just... angry at everything. Everyone. Sometimes it was like she only spoke the way she did because she didn't know how to do anything but go on the attack."
When you don't know how to process your emotions, sometimes it's easier to turn even things like worry into anger.
She bites the inside of her cheek hard enough she almost tastes iron. She can't let this sit any longer, she just can't. "...look, North, I don't even know how to get into this, and even when I do, it doesn't change what she did, but... there's— something you don't know yet, about the program. About the program as it relates to you and your sister specifically."
Thank god she had a test run of this with Carolina. Even then, it's harder to figure out how to say it to the man's face.
For a split second, her eyes sheen gold, and then it's gone and you could think you'd never seen anything amiss at all.
"You know how the Director and the Counselor liked their little... experiments? Letting Carolina take two AI. Inserting Beta into the team as Texas. The whole existence of the leaderboard. You and South were— another one of those experiments. Not from the beginning, I don't think, but from soon enough in I'm not sure when exactly it started. I know I noticed the way all your joint assignments favoured only your specialities at some point, but—"
She shakes her head, waves the details off. Focus on the important bits.
"I do know that knocking her rank down after that mission on the oil platform was part of it. As was every other knock to her rank she took after. They needed her to rank as low on Alpha's roster as they could get her so that they had an excuse to never, ever give her an AI, no matter what happened. All while knowing they'd give you one as soon as your number came up."
You know those cartoons where someone has a life-altering realization that changes their entire idea on their world, their choices, the events of their life, and the people around them, and the animators choose to illustrate this with a graphic of a pane of glass shattering behind their head?
Yeah.
North just kind of... stares at CT dumbly, not saying anything.
CT's first thought is the near absurd: Oh, god, I broke him.
Her second is similar, but a lot more eloquent, an awareness of the weight of the information she just threw through the metaphorical window like a brick. If she'd been shocked to see it in the files, and Carolina had put together the pieces so quickly, then... what must be going on in his head, she can't begin to guess. (And she refuses to look. Stop trying to tempt her.)
"I'm sorry. I know it's— a lot. But I also know that you deserve to know the truth, even if it doesn't... undo anything, or make what happened any less horrific."
"No, no, I uh... I appreciate the heads up," he says, as if he was just informed it might rain during his jog. Yeah, he's coping.
Suddenly everything is lining up. The assignments, the leaderboard, the AI, the way the Counselor and Director talked to South---- if those were the things they said while North was present, what did they say when he was gone? South was already prone to envy.
North already knew his death was engineered. But he did not realize to what extent, or by whom.
"Do you want any beer? I think I'm going to get one out of the icebox."
Part of her wonders if she should be discouraging this, given his sister's blatant struggles with abuse of the stuff, but... honestly after what she just dropped on him, he's got a right to a damn beer.
"Yeah, sure, I'll take a beer." It's not her usual drink of choice, always been a gin sort of person, but it's not really about the taste right now. It's a deliberate choice to agree, to mirror as a part of... whatever social ritual this now is.
So she watches him move toward the ice box, and calculates what the hell she needs to say next to get him to do more than appreciate the heads-up. She doesn't have to try to look to see the way the pieces are slotting together behind his eyes.
Don't worry, CT. North is responsible. He just doesn't often get the chance to drink, what with having to make sure South is okay. Forgive him for indulging a few times.
He comes back with a pair of cold ones, popping the caps off with a metal bottle opener and passing CT one. Then he stares into his, not drinking it yet. "...So was there an end goal in mind, for this whole thing? The experiment."
CT taps her nails against the cold neck of the bottle and pulls a face, this one tinged with that quiet rage that always seemed to simmer beneath the surface even when she wasn't tossing the conversational equivalents of live grenades into the room back in the program.
"As far as I could see? No. It was all just this— pointless psychological trial, like they just wanted to see what she'd do, how far they could push it before... something happened, I guess."
It took longer than they may have expected it to, by the sounds of it. But something definitely happened.
"They'd probably have tried to spin it as somehow valuable data if caught, I think the twins in the other squads might have been their sorry excuse for control and comparison variables since Hawaii and California got AI—" Huh, was that from Carolina, or the Eye? She honestly can't remember. "—but it's all nonsense. They had your psyche profiles. There's no chance they didn't know the bomb they were arming. She still set it off, but— okay I'm getting too metaphorical... no. No, there was no clear end goal. But it still worked as they expected, I'm sure."
"Wow! That's great. Really cool." For all his sarcasm, North feels like he's going to throw up.
In a lot of ways, this makes it... a little less South's fault, at least? And there's some comfort in that, he thinks. She still has to be accountable for the things she chose to do, for letting her hatred of Theta get out of control, for not thinking her ridiculous plan through---- but she was manipulated. It's not like this was all circumstance. This was engineered. The Director played with fire, and let North be the one to get burned.
"It's extremely fucking stupid," CT echoes, sympathetic wrinkle in her brow. After a second's consideration, she reaches to give his shoulder a squeeze. "If I could've told you sooner, I would've, I just... didn't want to risk making things worse."
Rushing back to South before he was ready would've done neither of them any good. This brings new context, context South needs for her own actions, too, but...
"What happened still happened. She still chose to do what she did to you," she affirms, again. "...but the woman we're seeing now is not the same woman we started that program with, is she? Not really."
"No," he admits quietly, eyes falling to the table. "She's always had a temper, y'know? Most of the time in a fun way. Just--- my spitfire sister, getting mad about something stupid. We could laugh about it later. But over the past couple years, she just... stopped laughing. She got so angry. And then I did too. ...It scares me."
She keeps the hand there, won't remove it unless he shrugs her off. It's something Connie would've done, more than the person she became later. "The Project did a lot of damage to all of us, but what they were doing to you two..."
It's something else. She doesn't even have the words. Fucking stupid, but also just... a nightmare.
"...it is scary. South loves you, North, I could see that even on her worst days of complaining. To turn her into someone that could hurt you like this— that's why I was so worried when she turned up. If she could hurt you, she could hurt anyone, in a way I would never have expected of her before. And knowing someone can do that to you— it's scary, and it makes you react in ways you're not used to. I— actually don't remember ever really seeing you angry. Definitely not the loud kind, anyway."
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He narrows his eyes suspiciously. Not of CT, but rather in an "oh god, what happened now" kind of way. "What stone call?"
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Ah, well. "It was weeks ago at this point. Honestly I'm surprised it didn't wake you up, she was shouting pretty loud but— she called me at like, three in the morning, clearly drunk and just started laying into me for leaving her. I explained myself and she hung up when she realised she wasn't getting the reaction she wanted from me. I'm not even sure what she did want except to convince me of the lie that she actually hates me."
She sighs, drinks some of her coffee.
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"...But, uh, yeah, I'm sorry about that. You guys used to be, you know, pretty close. She took the whole insurrectionist thing pretty hard, and even after we found out it wasn't like that, I think she still took it personally that she hadn't been in the know. You were pretty special to her."
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"...yeah. She— she was special to me too." She really was. South was by far her best friend at the program by the time it was all over, her trust in Wash shattered much earlier by his wilful ignorance. Even if they never figured out what they were, never took a chance, it did hurt to leave her. "I know she cared about me. I think she would've done just about anything for me if I asked, except the one thing I needed her to. You know? You know what she's like. If I'd tried to tell her the truth and that one day I'd have to leave, she would sooner have told me to drop it than help or come with me. She's not... a big picture sort of person."
Another sigh. It's not like she likes feeling this way about South, but even South herself couldn't deny her assumption once she laid it at her feet.
"And that's... this is all why I wanted to see how you were doing. I know what it's like to love that amazing, infuriating woman and still be stuck standing here not knowing how I'm supposed to help her without— throwing myself on the railroad tracks. You know? I can't do that, I won't—but if I'm feeling it, then I know you must be feeling it worse."
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"Yeah, well. None of us got out of Project Freelancer without getting messed up. That's why so many of us are here, I figure," he jokes hollowly. "You seem like you're doing better here. New girlfriend and all, so I hear."
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"You heard right. That's Ellen. Who South also— picked a fight with, actually, but—" A shake of her head, they've already covered that South's behaving in deeply embarrassing ways, no point in dwelling on another example. "Yeah. I've had chance to get settled. Despite everything I'm doing pretty well. But the first few months are always rough. And you're dealing with more than most do before their first big— nightmare."
Trying not to let him deflect too much. The twins have missed the more dramatic monthly occurrences by virtue of arriving at the tail end of the year where things are, comparatively, blissfully, quiet, and stumbled into their own personal problems instead.
"...I guess I'm just trying to say I at least kind of get it, if you need to talk to someone who does. I don't think anyone else at the program knew her like we did."
Christ. There's still things he needs to know, but the longer she's talking to him the more worried she is it'll only do more harm than good right now.
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There's a quiet understanding in her eyes and the smile she gives—no, she could never know South exactly as well as he did, it'd be impossible, she understands that much.
"I know. I don't think this could be anything but complicated," she says, because it's true. Her relationship with her own brother was too, in its way; but that was a relationship that ended when she was only a teenager and he ran off to join the actual Insurrection. "But no, I don't know the full story. All I got was that she led the Meta to you."
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CT manages to hide her wince at treated unfairly by the Project, words that are entirely accurate and said without knowing even knowing the true horrifying extent of it. Christ, how is she meant to tell him?
She doesn't hide her wince at the whole story in itself. "Jesus christ, that's... I don't know if that's better or worse than what I was imagining."
Both, maybe? Better than shooting her brother in the back in cold blood, something Carolina's limited knowledge didn't rule out, especially considering Wash, but worse in other ways. Worse in how fucking thoughtlessly selfish it is without being, by South's own twisted logic, intentionally malicious.
"Knowing her, the overconfidence had to be at least half of it. She always did make herself do things the hard way, always so sure she'd pull it off." Sometimes right, sometimes wrong. "I bet the possibility that you'd actually die never crossed her mind until it was too late and that's... well, that is stupid. Just— unbelievably thoughtless."
It's spoken with the kind of frustration that only someone who knows some of South's patterns all too well would feel. No venom, just... exhaustion and exasperation.
She chews the inside of her cheek. "...she really said all that to your face? The complaining, I mean. I... for some reason I thought whenever she vented that at me she was, well, keeping it away from you. I mean, she'd talk to me about you guys— pretty much any time you had an argument or you jumped in front of a bullet for her or something."
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"Yeah, no, she said it to my face. Said it was annoying how we got lumped together all the time. How she just wanted to be herself, and not us all the time. I dunno. I didn't really understand it, I don't think."
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She catches that subtle clench of his jaw, but prying into exactly what part of what she said got that reaction would be... more invasive than she'd like to be, however helpful it might be to her ability to have this conversation.
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But— I don't know, I think... I always got the sense that she wasn't even really angry at you, exactly, just... angry at everything. Everyone. Sometimes it was like she only spoke the way she did because she didn't know how to do anything but go on the attack."
When you don't know how to process your emotions, sometimes it's easier to turn even things like worry into anger.
She bites the inside of her cheek hard enough she almost tastes iron. She can't let this sit any longer, she just can't. "...look, North, I don't even know how to get into this, and even when I do, it doesn't change what she did, but... there's— something you don't know yet, about the program. About the program as it relates to you and your sister specifically."
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Son of a bitch.
Scrubbing his face with a hand, North sighs. "Oh god, what happened."
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Thank god she had a test run of this with Carolina. Even then, it's harder to figure out how to say it to the man's face.
For a split second, her eyes sheen gold, and then it's gone and you could think you'd never seen anything amiss at all.
"You know how the Director and the Counselor liked their little... experiments? Letting Carolina take two AI. Inserting Beta into the team as Texas. The whole existence of the leaderboard. You and South were— another one of those experiments. Not from the beginning, I don't think, but from soon enough in I'm not sure when exactly it started. I know I noticed the way all your joint assignments favoured only your specialities at some point, but—"
She shakes her head, waves the details off. Focus on the important bits.
"I do know that knocking her rank down after that mission on the oil platform was part of it. As was every other knock to her rank she took after. They needed her to rank as low on Alpha's roster as they could get her so that they had an excuse to never, ever give her an AI, no matter what happened. All while knowing they'd give you one as soon as your number came up."
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Yeah.
North just kind of... stares at CT dumbly, not saying anything.
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CT's first thought is the near absurd: Oh, god, I broke him.
Her second is similar, but a lot more eloquent, an awareness of the weight of the information she just threw through the metaphorical window like a brick. If she'd been shocked to see it in the files, and Carolina had put together the pieces so quickly, then... what must be going on in his head, she can't begin to guess. (And she refuses to look. Stop trying to tempt her.)
"I'm sorry. I know it's— a lot. But I also know that you deserve to know the truth, even if it doesn't... undo anything, or make what happened any less horrific."
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Suddenly everything is lining up. The assignments, the leaderboard, the AI, the way the Counselor and Director talked to South---- if those were the things they said while North was present, what did they say when he was gone? South was already prone to envy.
North already knew his death was engineered. But he did not realize to what extent, or by whom.
"Do you want any beer? I think I'm going to get one out of the icebox."
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Part of her wonders if she should be discouraging this, given his sister's blatant struggles with abuse of the stuff, but... honestly after what she just dropped on him, he's got a right to a damn beer.
"Yeah, sure, I'll take a beer." It's not her usual drink of choice, always been a gin sort of person, but it's not really about the taste right now. It's a deliberate choice to agree, to mirror as a part of... whatever social ritual this now is.
So she watches him move toward the ice box, and calculates what the hell she needs to say next to get him to do more than appreciate the heads-up. She doesn't have to try to look to see the way the pieces are slotting together behind his eyes.
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He comes back with a pair of cold ones, popping the caps off with a metal bottle opener and passing CT one. Then he stares into his, not drinking it yet. "...So was there an end goal in mind, for this whole thing? The experiment."
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CT taps her nails against the cold neck of the bottle and pulls a face, this one tinged with that quiet rage that always seemed to simmer beneath the surface even when she wasn't tossing the conversational equivalents of live grenades into the room back in the program.
"As far as I could see? No. It was all just this— pointless psychological trial, like they just wanted to see what she'd do, how far they could push it before... something happened, I guess."
It took longer than they may have expected it to, by the sounds of it. But something definitely happened.
"They'd probably have tried to spin it as somehow valuable data if caught, I think the twins in the other squads might have been their sorry excuse for control and comparison variables since Hawaii and California got AI—" Huh, was that from Carolina, or the Eye? She honestly can't remember. "—but it's all nonsense. They had your psyche profiles. There's no chance they didn't know the bomb they were arming. She still set it off, but— okay I'm getting too metaphorical... no. No, there was no clear end goal. But it still worked as they expected, I'm sure."
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In a lot of ways, this makes it... a little less South's fault, at least? And there's some comfort in that, he thinks. She still has to be accountable for the things she chose to do, for letting her hatred of Theta get out of control, for not thinking her ridiculous plan through---- but she was manipulated. It's not like this was all circumstance. This was engineered. The Director played with fire, and let North be the one to get burned.
"God. That's so fucking stupid," he finally adds.
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"It's extremely fucking stupid," CT echoes, sympathetic wrinkle in her brow. After a second's consideration, she reaches to give his shoulder a squeeze. "If I could've told you sooner, I would've, I just... didn't want to risk making things worse."
Rushing back to South before he was ready would've done neither of them any good. This brings new context, context South needs for her own actions, too, but...
"What happened still happened. She still chose to do what she did to you," she affirms, again. "...but the woman we're seeing now is not the same woman we started that program with, is she? Not really."
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She keeps the hand there, won't remove it unless he shrugs her off. It's something Connie would've done, more than the person she became later. "The Project did a lot of damage to all of us, but what they were doing to you two..."
It's something else. She doesn't even have the words. Fucking stupid, but also just... a nightmare.
"...it is scary. South loves you, North, I could see that even on her worst days of complaining. To turn her into someone that could hurt you like this— that's why I was so worried when she turned up. If she could hurt you, she could hurt anyone, in a way I would never have expected of her before. And knowing someone can do that to you— it's scary, and it makes you react in ways you're not used to. I— actually don't remember ever really seeing you angry. Definitely not the loud kind, anyway."