♻ 002 | spam

[tucky]

[After a few days, Tiffany checks herself out of the infirmary. They were willing to let her go-- except for her teeth, she's mostly healed up; even her bruises are gone-- and she was starting to feel stir crazy, so out she went.

Except now she doesn't know where to go. She knows there's her cabin, but she doesn't want to spend all her time there-- it looks like a Litchfield prison bunk, so it's not the most comfortable place around. She's new, so she doesn't know the best common areas to hang out in. There are a lot of doors, but most of them are unopenable to her. So she wanders.

Despite her bravado and argumentativeness, the things people have been telling her since she arrived-- that she's dead, that she was chosen to be here, that she's here to make amends-- are getting to her. She doesn't fully believe them, but she can't completely disbelieve them either. If they're right (and what if they are?), everything she thought she knew about God and faith and atonement has been turned on its head. There was that man-- that Catholic-- who'd tried to help her reconcile this with what she believed, but it hadn't worked all that well. She's relatively new to her faith, and without someone spoonfeeding it to her, she's shaky in it. She's used it as both a comfort and a crutch in the past, and now she isn't sure that she has it at all anymore. She doesn't know whether that makes her feel depressed or furious; she doesn't know whether she wants to punch someone or curl up and cry. She isn't ruling out doing both.

Predictably, she finds her way to the chapel. Finding a Bible in the cabinet, she sinks down onto a bench and flips through it aimlessly, barely taking in what she's seeing. She tries the trick of opening to a random passage a couple times, but it only ever seems to be just that-- random. Sadness is the overwhelming emotion here-- sadness, confusion, feeling alone and lost. When a teardrop or two lands on the pages, she doesn't bother to brush them away.

At some point, she also wanders into the dining hall, circling the room and poking around for something to do. It's not time for a meal, but the cafeteria was a popular place to hang out and relax in Litchfield, so she figures it might be the same here. Unfortunately, she's leaning towards anger right now, and she's spoiling for a fight. That's not a good thing, on a prison ship filled with inmates just like her.]

[OOC: Permissions post for this character!]

Comments

[tucky]

[No threat of dying, because they're already dead. Her frown deepens, but she doesn't comment on that part.]

What's wrong with 'em? Everybody likes sex.

[velocette]

That's what I thought, too. Maybe it's just shock. Or maybe they're not sure how to get into it in a place like this.

[tucky]

People find ways. I was in a women's prison and all them lesbians were always doing it.

[velocette]

That would get awkward, I think.

'Lesbians' in the sense that some men who go to prison might get friendly? Or are lesbians just generally more criminally minded where you're from?

[tucky]

No, lesbians are women. But I don't...

[She frowns, thinking.]

I don't know if they're more criminal. Maybe. We got a lot of 'em.

[velocette]

[He considers a moment]

I suppose one of the main reasons anyone turns to crime is a loss of a support system. And lesbians, if they're found out, would certainly lose family or friends. Desperation can make a criminal out of a saint.

How are the cops where you're from?

[tucky]

I don't think they go after the lesbians more than anyone else, if that's what you're asking.

[velocette]

That's better than the queer men back home get. But I mostly was thinking about brutality--about what the wardens are like.

[tucky]

Yeah, the Litchfield guards could get nasty sometimes. Police outside weren't always the nicest, either.

[velocette]

Sounds about right. You'd be surprised how few people on board were actually ever in prison before this.

[he grinds out his cigarette on the bottom of his boot] There were race riots going on all over back home. So cops kind of used that--the tension, the cover of the rioting--as a way to be rougher in everyday arrests. Beating drunk people for public intoxication, or--well I suppose I'm a statistic now, they shot me three or four times in the back for stealing fish.

[tucky]

Race riots...?

[Damn.]

Who started 'em?

[velocette]

The country has been a pressure cooker for years...the Civil War didn't dissolve all the tensions of slavery and poverty. Take a whole class of people who hardly anyone wants to hire, who have nowhere to live, who are resented by the people they're competing with for survival--and then compound that by a hundred years and I think the riots were just a matter of time.

The last riot in my city, though, that was started in a bar. I don't know who called the police or why, but they broke in, started smashing the windows and lights and bottles, and the bartender just lost it. Everyone started fighting. It lasted most of the next day, before there were enough cops to round us all up.

[He holds up his arm thoughtfully; there's a long scar on the underside of his forearm]

[tucky]

Yeah, you don't need to tell me about poverty. There's a lot of that where I come from.

[Not a lot of riots, though.]

You get charged with anything?

[velocette]

[He nods, finding a little peace with the understanding. An awful lot of people here are from middle class to upper class backgrounds.]

That time? I think they just put me away for underaged drinking. There weren't a lot of white kids in the fight, and I think the general feeling at the time was that they wanted to keep it a 'black-white' issue so they never charged me with assaulting a cop. [Although he had, and they should have.]

[tucky]

[She kind of snorts at the idea of anyone being put in prison for underage drinking.]

What about here? How do people group up?

[velocette]

The trend is for people to try to stay by themselves at first--it's a safe tactic in most new places, so it makes sense. But then they tend to find inmates who have committed similar crimes. They don't usually start to branch out to wardens until they're paired and have no choice.

Things are a lot more fluid here than what I knew. Some wardens still think like inmates, which makes them easy to work with. Sometimes they'll pull favors for inmates they aren't even assigned to, sometimes they'll stand up for an inmate if another warden is peacocking.

[tucky]

So whites don't stay with whites?

[Sticking together based on crimes committed makes some sense, though. It wasn't near-universal back in Litchfield the way the racial divide was, but there was a reason Tiffany's own crew consisted almost entirely of ex-methheads.]

[velocette]

A lot of them try. There's the Admiral's deal hanging over their heads if they fail, and for some of them, I think that's a death sentence--for them or a family member.

I've seen more than one Warden demoted, though. They lost almost all their friends because of it, and no inmate would come near them.

I take it you haven't found any inmates here that you like, yet?

[tucky]

[She just shrugs.]

But, you know-- that weren't really an answer. Do you get looked at funny if you try to talk to the wrong group?

[velocette]

[He thinks about it a moment.]

Some of them, yeah. The heavier prisoners--by that I mean the murderers, especially the serial ones; the ones who started wars. They don't like being approached except by people who understand where they're from.

Younger inmates, too, they're like any kid who's drunk on youth, they'll try to push your buttons and test you before they'll listen to anything you say. Age groups definitely stick together.

But we have so many ports and sometimes floods that it gets hard to hold onto hard lines like that. Someone who annoys you one day might be how you stay alive tomorrow.

[tucky]

You got kids here?

[That's pretty surprising, too.]

Thought they'd have their own separate place.

[velocette]

I would have, too. But we've had teenagers, some as young as fifteen I think. [He pauses, surprised for a second] ...I was a teenager when I got here, actually.

Mostly they settle in pretty well. They're more adaptable than I would've expected. Maybe the Admiral thinks they'll help soften up some of the older inmates.

[tucky]

Oh, yeah? Does it work?

[velocette]

Not for me. [Smirking, just a bit] I had my fill of babysitting tiny thugs back home.

Do you like kids?

[tucky]

Don't know if I got an opinion either way.

I was usually the youngest, growing up. Got a couple cousins that were younger, though.