2023-06-12: Royal Comforts
- Cast: Mineva Lao Zabi, Suberoa Zinnerman
- Where: The Garuda - Mineva's Quarters
- Date: U.C. 0097 06 12
- Summary: After the meeting to decide the course of those still pursuing Laplace's Box, Captain Zinnerman visits Mineva to talk about what she's been through. CW: Discussion of brainwashing and torture.
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
It's not long after the meeting. Mineva is in her quarters--one of the more upscale rooms, but notably, not the room she was held in during her captivity, and hardly the most lavish accomodations aboard. Though she still wears her dress clothes, the top buttons of the jacket are undone, the mantle is cast aside on the floor, and... the presence of authority is nowhere to be found.
All the emotions she held back are pouring out of her. She sobs quietly against her desk. All that happiness at their safety, all the anguish at Leina's predicament, the unmitigated care and support they've received... it pours out of her in her tears.
By the time she's done, red-eyed, makeup streaked down her cheeks, the sun's set, and all that's visible out the window is the dim moonlight shining off the clouds below. She dabs her eyes with a handkerchief, wiping away the dark smears.
This is the beginning of a new chapter, isn't it? The last one hasn't even ended...
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
There is a chime at the door to Mineva's quarters. "Your Highness - Mineva." It's Captain Zinnerman's voice. "May I come in?"
When she grants him leave to enter, he steps inside. Unusually, he's without the long, weatherbeaten coat he normally wears, having left it in his quarters, so he's just wearing his usual olive-green fleece and military slacks. He's never been a man to stand on ceremony, pointedly refusing to wear dress uniform in audiences with Full Frontal, and it seems even despite her engaging with her role as a leader, Mineva is no exception.
He takes a seat opposite her at her desk. "You conducted that meeting very well," he says, to break the silence. "It must have taken a tremendous effort to maintain your composure."
"You and Banagher have been through a tremendous ordeal," he begins, carefully. "Is there... anything you want to talk about?"
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
"Captain Zinnerman? Come in," she says, glancing back behind her as he enters before returning her gaze to the starlit sky outside the window. "Thank you..." She nods, undoing the cuffs of her jacket. "It did." Turning to face him, it's not difficult to tell that she's been crying.
She gestures to a pair of comfortable-looking chairs. "Please, sit." She takes a seat herself, and lets out a sigh. "I..."
"I can't help but wonder if I abandoned Leina." It comes out almost without thinking. "That if I'd stayed in that cockpit with her... maybe we could have all come home."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"... Maybe." Zinnerman repeats the word, thoughtfully. "Or maybe she would have disabled the Unicorn and brought you and Banagher straight back to the Vists - or worse. Considering what she's dealing with, it's impossible to know for sure."
"I know what it's like to feel helpless when the people you care about are in danger," he says. "I often feel like I abandoned my family, when the Globe City raid happened." He could not have changed anything - if he had been there, he would probably have died too.
Perhaps he feels as though that's a fate he'd rather deserve.
"The question is... could you have trusted Leina, while her decisions are not her own? The way you trust Banagher?"
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
Mineva nods, looking down, toward the coffee table in front of her. "She... wanted to get me away. I don't know where to. Maybe just to safety, and she'd radio Vist for pickup, but it felt like whatever she was doing, she was putting us above her duty to them. She said she did this all for us... to make us safe." Looking up, she adds, "Maybe they hadn't broken that part of her."
It's hard to say.
When he brings up Globe City, Mineva nods a little, frowning. "Survivor's guilt, I guess... but... I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. Neither would Marida, I think."
She glances out the window as he poses another question, thinking. "... no. I don't think I could have. But I could have reached her. I almost did, after they captured me."
The way Leina recoiled, though, pushed back into denial after that... she's not as sure as she sounds.
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
Zinnerman grunts when Mineva points out that neither she or Marida would be here now without him. "A fair point." He considers for a moment what Marida's fate might have been if he had never found her.
He closes his eyes for a moment, and firmly puts that thought aside for now to focus on the girl in front of him.
"Almost..." He frowns. "What happened, exactly?"
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
Mineva takes a deep breath. "During the meeting with Martha, the one I mentioned earlier... she had Leina standing guard in the room while we ate--while she ate. I asked Leina if she was happy here, just watching us eat... and I also asked Martha about what they'd done to her."
"Martha..." She takes another deep breath. This is difficult for her. "Martha ordered her to hand over her gun, and kneel down..."
"Then she held the gun to Leina's head. Leina didn't flinch. Didn't move at all, it's like it wasn't there." Her voice is starting to tremble.
"She made her forget... Martha used a code phrase, and then she didn't remember any of it..."
"And told me I could either work with her, or she'd use her power over Leina to hurt her more... I had to accept. To buy time, at least... and then she left us alone." She's quiet for a long time after that, gathering her thoughts. Trying to calm down.
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"... A trigger that interferes with short-term memory retension." Zinnerman's frown deepens. "I'll pass that on to Ivan, he might be able to do something with that."
He places his hand on top of Mineva's. "I told Banagher that we had all underestimated their ruthlessness. I am realising now just how badly we did. Meddling with minds and memories like this..."
He shakes his head. "This has to end."
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
"... Don't tell Banagher. Not right now... I didn't let him know while we were locked up, and I should be the one to tell him." She seems to calm down, a little, at the gesture. She places her other hand, small and delicate, over his, looking down at them and and takes a few more slow, practiced breaths.
"When we were alone, I... told her about what happened. What Martha did to her. That I watched her make her forget..."
She looks up at Zinnerman again. "She believed me. She trusted me... but it. She started to spiral... think about the consequences of what she'd done, and... then she stopped. They've drilled it so deeply into her, the idea that this was the only way, that... there was no other option."
"A team came in, then. Gave her the code phrase, and... escorted her out."
"I don't know if it's going to be important, but the code phrase was... 'drink from the river Lethe'."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"... The conditioning might induce a panic attack if she has to confront the inconsistencies in her behaviour," Zinnerman says, thoughtfully. "It was a good thing you didn't try to reach her in the Banshee cockpit - the loss of control there could have been disastrous."
Lethe - an ancient reference to something. He'll have to look it up.
"Knowing the words may well be important - at the very least, we now know to avoid it." There's a brief wonder if he could use it to disrupt Leina if she attacked them now, but... the potential to damage her memory is too high.
"It's going to be difficult to reach her with how deeply they've laid this," he says thoughtfully. "Just one person's efforts may not be enough - especially while she can return to the Vists and they can modify her memory again."
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
Mineva nods. "I wouldn't have. It was... it was hard enough to think while I was in there. I don't know... how, but when we were worried that it was Elpeo Puru, somehow... we weren't quite wrong. It might be hard to believe, but there's some part of her in the Banshee. Something angry, and possessive, and terrible." She shudders a little thinking about it. "I don't think I could have gotten through to her in there."
A small smile comes to her lips as Suberoa considers what to do. "Captain Zinnerman... I can't tell you how grateful I am to have you here, helping us. I know I've been a lot of trouble for you, but..." She exhales. "I trust you with my life... and there's nobody I'd want helping us find and protect her more than you and your crew."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
Zinnerman considers this. "While Ensign Garvey was piloting the Shamblo, her behaviour was very different compared to normal. She was ordinarily very... self-possessed, very in control, but once she started piloting her anger would spike in very unusual ways. I wonder if something similar was going on, comparing the Shamblo and the Banshee."
He makes a note to ask Banagher about his experiences with the Shamblo. Mineva thanks him for helping them, despite everything, and voices her trust in him, and he bows his head. "I will do my best to be worthy of that trust."
"... Do you know anything more about Leina's behaviour on the Garuda?"
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
"It's possible." The princess bites her lip briefly. "The Banshee always had this aura. whenever it fought us, it was like were these... immaterial hands, crawling all over us, grasping at us. When they showed the feed of Leina in the cockpit at Dakar, I could see them everywhere. She was covered in them, held tight."
At the question, Mineva looks into the middle distance, thinking, and shakes her head slowly. "No. Not much at all, I'm afraid... I know they weren't giving her enough food, or enough sleep. If she's in a survival situation down there, I don't know if she's in a condition to take care of herself. They were pushing her hard, too. Whenever she wasn't on guard duty with me, I think they had her undergoing some sort of..." She pauses. "Treatment."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"The hands were... clutching her? Like the psycoframe was holding on to her..." That can't be good. Zinnerman rubs his beard, concerned.
"... It sounds as though they were putting her through basic needs denial - it's a common tactic in prisons to break an unruly inmate's spirit." The way he says it - it is the grim voice of experience, delivered matter-of-factly. "It doesn't line up with them keeping her as an active pilot, though - it makes the most sense to keep your combatants as healthy as possible - sleep AND nourishment deprivation interferes with focus and control, and hinders injury recovery after the fact. Either the access to Vist's wealth makes the cost of keeping her combat-ready negligible, or..."
A thought occurs. "Or breaking her spirit has another purpose."
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
Mineva nods. "Yes... and it was... reaching out. To Banagher and I. It's like all the power of the Unicorn turned inward, toward... making her something else. You've seen the way it moves, the way she pilots. The one time I saw her pilot, before any of this... she wasn't nearly this experienced. Is it possible for them to have trained her so much in the months they've had her?"
She frowns, thinking. "I... Banagher mentioned that Martha wants to kill Leina. Whatever she needed her for... she doesn't need her anymore."
Mineva closes her eyes, sighing. "I know they took her to get to us. As a hostage, to hurt us, to break us... but is that it? Do you think... was it to make her mind weaker? So that echo of Elpeo could take over, just... use her as a vessel?"
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"... That might be what Murasame is experimenting with finding out," Zinnerman says, as Mineva picks up on the suspicion he's now harbouring. "If the psycoframe makes the echo's presence and influence stronger... The Puru clones were all highly-trained for their age, the first time Marida got in a mobile suit with us she was... much more skilled than her age would have suggested."
It had caught all the Garencieres Team by surprise, and horrified them, as they realised the cruel past of the child that had come into their care.
"It may be that Elpeo's piloting skills were part of the personality echo... And the NT-D amplifies aggression..."
The conclusion feels too dark to speak aloud.
"We can't let this happen."
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
Mineva nods softly. "What I felt, what was in the Banshee was... something angry, bitter, and sad... aggressive, too." This can't be the Elpeo that Leina talked about, the ghost by her side. It's hard not to think of how awful this must be to watch, for her.
"They... God, they would have discarded Leina as soon as they had what they needed. That's really all she was there for, to strike at us, at the Unicorn..." Her lip trembles, and she nods in agreement.
"I promised I wouldn't give up on her... and we're not going to break that promise."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"And she thinks she's doing it of her own free will. For your and Banagher's own good."
Zinnerman's wrath grows.
"You're quite right, Mineva: We cannot give up on her. It will be very difficult, but... there must be a way to reach her."
He squeezes her hand. "Now - is there anything else you need, that the Team can provide? I'm sure Gilboa would be happy to bring up some of his famous stew." He smiles, warm and fatherly.
<Pose Tracker> Mineva Lao Zabi has posed.
That's the worst injustice of it all. Twisting Leina's love into something to hurt them, something to hurt herself.
"I'll be there every step of the way. She loves me and Banagher... even if she thinks we don't know what's best for us, she trusts us... and that must count for something."
The offer earns a smile and a small laugh from Mineva. She nods. "Yeah... I've missed that a lot, actually. I'd love to have some."
She makes a note to share it with Leina when she gets back.