roci: (2-17)
james holden ([personal profile] roci) wrote 2018-02-15 05:10 am (UTC)

Holden worries at the inside of his cheek. He's not sure if he can, not in a really organized way. Whoever handed over all the info in Jedao's "file" maybe had a higher appreciation of Holden's ability to follow breadcrumbs than they should have, because a road map would have been really useful.

"Okay, well," he says, "Kujen erased your memory of conversations you had with people outside the black box, and he spent years fucking with your personality and making you forget about it."

He looks to Jedao. Damn it, damn it -- Jim has felt inadequate to this from the first day, but it's always been for reasons of intelligence, unsubtlety, even age. Not feeling like he's too weak for it. But he finds himself stuck in a mental loop right now, wishing over and over that Jedao won't keep asking, that Jedao won't force Holden to talk about the parts of the file he can only stand a little at a time.

It's only once that his sheer disgust with Nujen got him actually past the point of just nausea and horror, and the ops deck smelled sour for long enough that Jim gave up on file review for that day. And that was hearing Jedao's voice break the silence -- Nirai-zho, are you there--

Jedao's going to be able to tell how little Holden wants to get dragged through this part of the file. And if that deters Jedao from hearing something he needs to know, Holden will never forgive himself.

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting