Mask or Menace ☂ IC Phone Post

[numberthree]

INBOX Voice | Text | Call | Video | Surprise Me A flat computer automated voice comes on and states in monotone: "This is the voicemail box for Allison Hargreeves. Leave a message at the beep."

Luther

Diego

Klaus

Five

Ben

Vanya

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[numberthree]

[ Allison is certain she's regretting this already, from the moment his first rambling set of words appears in flat text in front of her vision. But she's, also, certain she's the only person in this house that gets what it's like to suddenly be out the ability to talk. For months and months and months, with no warning. She doesn't wince, and it's definitely a choice, that one, but she hopes that she won't be loudly regretting this in less than an hour, or a day.

Allison switches back to speaking, because her days of being able to already down and counting. Sue her. ]

No. There's no sound. It's just another part of The Network you can use on your communicator. Except it's in your head. Write the message by choosing the letters with your thoughts, and hit send once it's complete. Same as texting. Everyone has it, from the moment they get here, but no one seems to know that they have it. It's designed as part of a battlefield program that apparently we all have, and no one about, and no one seems to need anymore.

The late leader of Aegis showed me it during our Swear-In.

[privatepurchases]

[He has to think about this. Staring at her, Gabriel frowns before shrugging his shoulders and frowning. His shoulders shrug and he frowns, his features contort in confusion.]


I'm happy to listen if you so desire. I'm a vain creature- no. Not-

[He frowns]


...Maybe I am vain, but it matters to me. Is that strange??

[numberthree]

You think you're vain --

[ Allison's voice, though it is not hers, edges ironic, and she very specifically doesn't lift her eyes as she turns her own hand in Gabriel's larger ones, painting a nail. Both because it takes focus to do anything with his larger hands, but also because after reading his message to her, there's just something too biting ironic to it is. ]

-- this isn't even my voice. It's yours, and I'm already going to miss it.

Each word I use is already one closer to whenever this ends and I have none of them again, not really, and I spend a week, or two, three, regretting every word I never figured out how to say when I had the chance to say them. Even if it wasn't my own voice it was being said in. It's one step closer still than I had before this happened.

[privatepurchases]

what happened to your voice?

[Gabriel stares at her slim hand and considers this because...]

I can't imagine not talking. No matter what anyone says. I was made to do it. I'm her messenger. And you're an actor!

[numberthree]

I was.

[ Those words are so small. Two only. Four letters, and five spaces if she'd typed them. Words she hasn't said to anyone. Not even Luther. They sounding damning in her ears, even when she keeps Gabriel's voice blank, focused on the nails she's painting with excessive slowness given the awkwardness of her new hands.

Anything but looking that punch in the teeth in the eyes. To anyone.
Especially someone who doesn't understand. What it means. That she did.

Especially, when the rest --

Gabriel's lips press for a moment, then. ]

As to how.

I made a bad choice, and it had a heavy price.

[privatepurchases]

[...Human beings are frustrating. First there's Anathema who doesn't know what she's doing now, and it excites her - not knowing.

Then there's this person, mourning it, and he realizes...he has no frame of reference for that. He doesn't end, per say - except -

Allison's hand man unconsciously touch his just now before her eyes stare at her and he looks...ashamed? Confused?]

I know what that's like. Making a bad choice. When I first got here I was infected by that otherworldly anomaly. I went mad with power and it burned my wings. The only thing that can technically kill an angel is hellfire and this...was that.

[He pauses.]

It put into perspective of something that I did back home - trying to kill Aziraphale.

[He bites his lip.]

Except that he defied her orders and our plans and-

Not important. What's important is. Your life is short. It's too short to be consumed and suffer.

[numberthree]

[ Allison's gaze shoots up for a second, the strangest huff of breath at his last words. ]

You're really in the wrong house for that kind of sentiment.

[ It's still nothing quite like straight-on, but he knows enough and too much already.
Even in just what he's mentioned off-handedly that Luther said to him.
Without that opener, it's more word that she never would have. ]

[privatepurchases]

...I stand by what I said.

[Staring at himself is strange. Frowning, he sets the concern aside.]

I'll drop it out of courtesy. Do you want me to show you how to fly? I can walk you through it. You should try it at least once.

[numberthree]

Your choice. [ Allison doesn't have much need of him to drop it, but then she's, also, the one of them who bears up the best and the most untouched, unchecked by even Diego's drastic acidity. Gabriel had hardly done anything to even near the arena of what she could take from anyone before she hit her double digits. ]

Maybe. When these are done, and dry, and set.

[ Which isn't the job of a few seconds. She skipped a base coat, but she's not skipping that there will be multiple layers of the color, and a setting top coat after that, too. Which he's bound to figure out as he has to stay there a good while, within drying between rounds, too. ]

Why do you have wings if you don't use them to fly? Why are they there?

[privatepurchases]

I was made that way.

[A pause. Gabriel watches the acting painting with interest because this is great and they're such a nice purple.]

I suppose that's not entirely accurate. When we were issued corporations mine didn't have wings but I have wings.

Human beings conceive of angels and think of a human looking being with wings. I added some because I'm made of wings. I'm built for speed. I fly by riding lightning. Or jogging. Do you jog?