Participants:
| Scene Title | No You Won't |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | When Elle Bishop makes the choice to try and have Warren Ray's mind altered for him, she finds out too late exactly what the repercussions of that decision mean. |
| Date | September 24, 2010 |
About an hour ago, Harper recieved a text message from one Elle Bishop, promising of yet another incident that will likely lead him to liquor once again. Elle is getting shockingly good at that, these days.
I need you to come up to Warren's apartment ASAP. Bring whoever it is you were planning on using to fix Warren's brain. Have tentative agreement to fix him, but also have him strapped down. Please hurry. — Elle
Elle is currently sitting at the subject in question's side. A bowl of strawberries is sitting in her lap. With one hand, she's munching on one. With the other, she's being kind enough to feed Warren one of the red berries, watching him thoughtfully. "Hopefuly, Harper will be here soon. I really don't want to have to deal with a bedpan or anything. That'd be so gross."
Warren chomps on the strawberry, munching down on it while staring at the ceiling. "I think I should have asked for a last meal, but I wouldn't want you to burn the apartment down." he teases, despite his terribly vulnerable position of being strapped to all four posts of the bed. "If he messes up, will you kill Harper for me?"
"Probably a good idea. I did make cookies without burning them, the other day for the first time." Granted, that was from a tube that you cut the dough from, but still! Elle smiles faintly down to Warren, munching on her own strawberry as she holds Warren's berry out for him to continue to chomp on. Even as he asks his question, Elle smiles faintly. "No, I wouldn't kill him for you. I might get mad at him, though." Probably not.
That the front door swings open with haste enough to slam against the opposite wall is perhaps expected of the situation. An hour's response time may seem delayed, but for what is happening here, preparation was necessary. Multiple feet are moving thorugh the apartment, easily five or six individuals, none of them talking save for the distinct voice of Desmond Harper. "Stay here, if we need to move to containment I want both of them taken with as little hassle as possible, am I understood?"
«Yes, sir» is a response that is synthesized thorugh the respirator mask of what can only be an Institute Retriever inside of the apartment. Footfteps draw closer to the bedroom where Warren is tied down not a few moments later, door thrown open and a white-clad man in a chemical suit standing in the doorway, black respirator mask concealing his face, eyes shrouded behind round-lensed goggles, assault rifle aimed into the room. He stops on spotting Elle sitting at the bedside, his head angling around to check the room before calling out, «All clear. Subject is restrained.»
"You can't restrain my imagination!" Warren calls out to the man before a maniacal laugh, blinking once, then opens his eyes to reveal a silvery gaze, staring without indication of what he's staring at. "If I were untied, do they think some men in suits with a few guns could stop me?"
Her brows raising, Elle turns to peer at the man with a thoughtful look on her face. Slowly, without making any sudden moves, she moves the bowl of strawberries to the end table, and slowly raises to her feet to move away from the bed that Warren is strapped to. Both of them? Surely they weren't planning to put her into a coffin, too.
The brunette stalks over to one corner of the room, seating herself in a chair to allow the men access to Warren. "He's all yours. Try not to destroy his brains, I suppose." She tilts her head to one side, a passive look on her face.
Stepping aside from the door, the Retriever angles a look down to Warren, then turns his attention up to Ella. Saying nothing over the soft hiss-click of his respirator, the retriever remains silent as Agent Harper quietly enters the bedroom. With his jacket buttoned down and shoulders lightly dusted with falling rain, Harper offers a stern look to Elle and Warren, then askance to the retriever. "You suppose," Harper states flatly, his brows lowered and lips downturned into a frown. "If I were any more disappointed in you, Bishop, I'd paint the walls with your brains right here and now, am I clear?"
There is absolutely no amusement on Harper's face, and that only becomes more clearly enunciated when a familiar, tall and dark man emerges thorugh the bedroom doorway. The Haitian is as stoic and silent as always, his camel-tan suit crisp in contrasy against chocolatey skin. The frown he wears displays clear disapproval, and his mere presence ensures the lack of electrifying surprises.
"I did not give you orders to do this, I did not give you permission to restrain Warren. Did I not make myself completely clear the last time we talked," Harper voice raises as he takes a step closer to the bed, "that Warren has important work to do, and that I did not want you interrupting it!?" Harper never raises his voice.
"Oh don't mind her, she's just in love with me. That's completely my fault. I am the leader of a cult." Warren points out, then raises an eyebrow as the silver flushes from his eyes to reveal normal blues again. "Well that's a strange feeling. And who might you be?"
A frown forms on Elle's face as Harper promptly scolds her; however, she doesn't make any moves to protest or respond, her eyes upon Desmond's face. As the Haitian steps in, the little brunette's frown grows even further, her eyes travelling between him and her 'boss'.
A glare is shot to Warren, briefly, before she turns a more sorrowful look toward Harper. "I— I'm sorry. I was talking to Mortimer, and he told me that you had offered to fix his head, but that he couldn't make the decision himself. He hinted that he wanted someone else to make the decision. It was more Mortimer who asked me to do this."
She glances toward Warren again, frowning. "I'm sorry, but if you want me to follow orders, I'd appreciate a little help for my own personal stress levels, so I can continue to perform at my very best." She turns a frown to Harper.
"Consider it done, you're officially relieved from duty pertaining to Warren Ray." Harper flatly states as he crooks his head to one side and motions for Rene to make his way over to the bedside. The Haitian's approach is slow and practiced one, moving across the hardwood floor with a solemn look to Elle, but ultimately chooses the other side of the bed, standing at Warren's side without so much as an introduction or word one.
"I don't want you coming anywhere near him any longer, it is obvious that I shouldn't have trusted you with this assignment, and I'll have to be reassigning another handler to Warren's situation." Looking over to Elle, Harper's brows pinch into an obviously upset furrow. "Focus on your other assignments, that is not negotiable."
Watching Elle for a moment, the Haitian soon turns his attention to Harper, one brow raised inquisitively, as if waiting for instructions.
"Don't I know you from somewhere?" Warren asks, having no actual memory of the man, but damned if he's not familiar somewhere in that addled mind. He looks over at Elle, then Harper, frowning slightly. "You realize she's Mortimer's girlfriend? Where's your heart? Your sympathy? Have a daily cry, listen to Enya, have all the secret gay sex orgies you can handle. Straight men have secret gay sex all the time."
Elle's brows raise at Harper's remark; she's silent for a long while, turning slowly to peer at Warren with her head tilted to the side. Her jaw works a bit as the Haitian moves over to him. Then, a stiff nod is offered. "I can live with that — but shouldn't Warren have a say in this? Once you've done whatever it is you're going to do."
Harper may get the distinct feeling that this is mostly a show for Warren, however, as she turns to peer at him with raised brows. "But, I'm fine either way." She shrugs quietly, raising to her feet. Her heels click on the floor as she moves a bit closer to the door, putting a bit of distance between herself and the Haitian…or perhaps herself and Warren.
The expression on her face is entirely neutral, however, as she leans against the wall. At the very least, she wants to see the results of this.
"Warren isn't going to have a say in anything, because when we're done here he's not even going to remember ever having met you." Harper motions over to Rene, then looks down to the floor. "Clean him out," is the harsh explanation from Harper, "I want selective edits to his entire mind, remove every recollection of Bishop and her association with him. I want only the manageable personality traits left behind. When you're done, I don't want to see even so much as a glimmer of insanity inside that man's mind."
Just like that, Desmond Harper is ordering selective memory wipes.
Just like that, the Haitian is leaning over with an apologetic look, resting one hand on Warren's forehead, palm shadowing his eyes. I am sorry, his expression pleads wordlessly. Not because of what he has to do, no, but because the Haitian knows that what he's about to do is going to hurt.
Immensely.
Warren goes silent and still for a moment, then his eyes widen, and he jerks at the restrains, moving his head up to focus on Elle. "I love you Elle! I won't forget you no matter what!" he yells out to her, before Rene has his hands on his head. Mortimer closes his eyes tightly. Will he even have this name anymore? Will he even exist anymore?
"No, damnit, you can't do this to me, I brought them to you!" he yells out in a completely different demeanor again, this one more violent, trying to avoid the Haitian's grip. Alex. "I was going to agree before, I change my mind now, I change my mind!"
Then, he calms down again, and just gets a wide grin when he holds himself still. "Before I go, Harper, I just wanted you to know, your mother sucks dicks in hell." With that, Warren Ray, this incarnation of him, lets out one final loud maniacal laugh.
Elle tilts her head toward Desmond at his explanation, nodding slowly. Part of her inwardly frowns, not quite thrilled by the fact that this new and improved Warren won't have her in his memories. Yet, at the same time…she offers a faint hint of a smile. She won't have to deal with him any more. Blue eyes travel briefly over to Harper, lingering fondly for a moment.
Then, she turns toward Warren, the mask slipping for a moment as an almost tortured look forms on her face at his first outburst. She looks like she wants to go to him, but she holds herself in place, placing a hand against the dresser as if to keep herself from running to him. She's silent, however, one hand reaching up to clamp over her mouth.
Happy birthday, Elle. The only person who even remembered your birthday is about to forget you forever. Wincing, she turns her face toward the ground, closing her eyes tightly.
Harper has nothing for Waren, just a stoic look as the Haitian's hand completely covers Warren's eyes, and the dark-skinned man's eyes shut and brows furrow, before the harrowing process begins. Warren's scream is a reflexive one, his back arching against the restraints of the bed, muscles tightening and fingers curling against his palm. Neck muscles tense, jaws clench and Warren's growling, throaty cry of pain draws no look of sympathy from Harper or the expressionless gas mask of the retriever at his side.
Memories blossom and burst like overfull baloons in Warren's mind, memories of the Locos, of Mortimer and Alexander's divergent actions. Like a random letter cut out of different magazines, Warren Ray's mind is cut up and reassembled like a montage, holes filled in with a different personality's recollections. It is creating a Frankenstein's Monster of Warren's memories, keeping his association to the name Warren Ray, but excising the history of Mortimer and Alexander like a surgeon cuts out a cancerous growth from a body.
Warren's scream rings thorugh the apartment until the moment the Haitian lifts his hand from the young man's brow, letting him fall down to the bed, muscles relaxing all at once, eyes open and mouth parted but no real reaction in his eyes. Harper visibly tenses, brows furrowed as he asks, "Is he…"
The Haitian shakes his head, slowly sliding one hand over Warren's face and closing his eyes. When the Haitian's attention turns to Harper again, he is straightening to stand at his full height as he murmurs, "He will be well, ut he requires rest. He will remember nothing of this when he awakes… and nothing of you."
Harper's brows furrow, arms crossed over his chest and head tipped down into a look of approval, finally exhaling a sigh he'd been holding in. "I hope you're happy."
Elle keeps that hand clamped over her mouth as Warren screams and resists the restraints, unable to stop her eyes from glistening with tears as she watches what she probably went through at least once in her life. Her fingers dig into the dresser, the woman leaning heavily against it. As Warren falls quiet, Elle turns away from the room, facing the wall and running her fingers over the smooth surface of the dresser.
"I'm—" She chokes up for a moment, before closing her eyes and shaking her head. "I didn't want him to forget me…" Tear-soaked eyes are turned toward Harper. "He was the only one who remembered my birthday. Not even I remembered it." She quickly turns her face away from Harper, shaking her head.
"Perhaps you should have thought of that before you forced my hand," Harper admits with a gruff tone of voice, looking down to Elle and then over to Rene. "Go," Harper states flatly, "take the team with you, I don't think we'll wind up needing them." Rene's reaction to Harper's request comes with a slow and firm nod, then a motion to the retreiver in the room as he moves for the bedroom door, taking the hiss-clicking and white-clad man out of the room with him, leaving Elle and Harper along with Warren's restrained form.
Moving over to the bedside, Harper begins to remove the restraints holding Warren in place, looking up to Elle all the while as he does. "I don't want you to have any contact with him any longer, do you understand me? I had to excise you from his memory because of his fixation. If you weren't willing to coordinate with him any longer, than you tied my hands. You, did this to him." Harper motions down to Warren, finished with the untying of the young man's restraints before moving to stand up straight.
"Now, get yourself out of here. I need to make sure he's well before I go."
Warren doesn't hear any of that as his eyes finally begin to open, a host of knowledge rushing through his head from the three personalities, settling like some amalgam of cities that's begun to restructure itself into a single functioning entity. He focuses on Harper, but doesn't move, he just stares. "Time is infinite, but things in time, the concrete bodies, are finite. They may indeed disperse into the smallest particles; but these particles, the atoms, have their determinate numbers, and the numbers of the configurations which, all of themselves, are formed out of them is also determinate. Now, however a long time may pass, according to the ternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all configurations which have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again…"
He raises a hand, rubbing his forehead with a cough from all the yelling. "Harper, I hope we haven't been having secret gay sex, because I just coughed up Nietzsche and I don't think they have a throat spray for that."
Elle frowns down at the surface of the dresser, her eyes clenched shut. He's better off like this, she tells herself. As much as she loathes losing out on Mortimer…he'll at least be sane. That doesn't stop it from hurting. She takes a few shuttering breaths, fighting off the tears. It is thus that she remains silent through Harper's words.
Then, she shakes her head, turning toward the door— toward Rene. "Wait!" She calls this to Rene, then turns a scowl to Harper. "I loved part of him, Harper. I fucking loved Mortimer. If you want me to never see him again, then that's fine. It's better that way." She clenches her fists at her sides. "But don't make me be the only one who remembers. Make me forget him too. It's not difficult, just about two months." Her voice cracks as she speaks.
Then, Warren speaks, and Elle falls quiet, the color draining from her face as she turns a sad gaze to him. Her heels carry her backwards toward the door with harsh clicking sounds, the brunette staring at Warren as she moves slowly away with tears streaking down her cheeks.
Offering an askance look to Elle, Harper furrows his brows. "Request denied. Live with the consequences of your actions, Bishop, and perhaps you won't make so many mistakes in the future." Bob Bishop, for all his detatched fathering, truly did care about Elle. But Desmond Harper isn't Elle's father, he is her boss and he handles affairs of business without the delicate touch that Bob may have in the past. While the Institute values her successes, it also punishes for failures.
This isn't the Company anymore.
"Warren," Harper states once Elle has left the room, "you gave us quite the scare there." Moving to the bedside, Harper offers a feigned laugh and a shake of his head. "I tried calling you but the phone was off the hook, security hadn't seen you come in or out…" there's an incline of his head towards the door, "I'd worried something happened, so I had a few people in the building come in to check on you. Turns out you just had a rough night of drinking the other night it seems." Not that Warren can entirely remember a night of drinking, but it seems plausible enough.
"How're you feeling?" There's a scrub of one of Harper's hands over his chin as he asks the question, the sounds of footsteps making their way towards the door as the Haitian and the retrievers head out into the apartment hall, Rene's attention on Elle as he guides her out of the apartment.
"I don't drink, it interferes with my medication." Warren says as he continues to lay there, his eyes flushing with their mercurial color as he looks around the room. "I feel… like I need to build! But I'm too tired to get up. And I feel like your close proximity is very homoerotic. These eyes can read things, bodies are just like complex machines. I can read it in your body languages, I know you have secrets, Agent Harper."
While Warren Ray is quite surely lying out of his ass, presumably, he slowly begins to sit up, trying to catch his breath in his weakened state. "My head feels so clear right now, it's as if I've just woken up from some incredibly bad dream." He looks from left to right, then slumps slightly. "Hokuto…"
Elle stares at Harper with sad eyes as he denies her request, tears springing from her eyes. She doesn't offer a word in response, now. Instead, she casts one last look to Warren, before she lets out an audible sob, turning and rushing her way out of the apartment, with little need for the Haitian to guide her.
She pauses in the hallway, offering Rene a teary-eyed gaze, before shaking her head and moving past him to the elevator, tapping the button repeatedly as if it will hurry the elevator along. In her open sobbing, she doesn't even think to take the stairs in her hysterical rush to get away; it's much quicker to jam her finger against the button.
No, Elle Bishop isn't happy about this in the slightest. Finally, she thinks to take the stairs, and assuming she isn't stopped, she simply offers the Haitian a brief glare, before storming toward the door of the stairs.
One brow arching at the invocation of Hokuto's name, Harper dismisses the errant thought with a shake of his head. "Building sounds about right, you do have that robotics project I put you on," Harper notes with a raise of one brow. "You'll be happy to know that I heard word from the top brass as well, that if this project goes smoothly you're being considered for enlistment into full agent status." Cracking a smile, Harper folds his arms across his chest.
"And whatever it is you see in me," Harper notes with the crack of a smile, "isn't a secret." One brow lifts as Harper turns away from Warren, walking to the door of the bedroom. "Just glad nothing was wrong, Ray. Get back to your lab when you feel up to it," Harper notes in the doorway of the bedroom, flashing a feigned smile before stepping off and out of Warren's line of sight.
Warren just falls back on the bed, hands behind his head. He doesn't say anything more when Harper leaves, though he does say a few things to himself in a bit of a mocking tone. "All I heard was blah blah blah 'You work for me', blah blah blah 'get back to work'. You've gotta love the common man, all bark and no thought." That little utterance to himself, and finally being alone, he just closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep.