Bolton's Office Hours

[theoverseers]

[Want to chat with Bolton privately? Here is where you do it! Bolton's office hours will be held in conference room B in the library for approximately four hours in the morning several days a week. During that time the blinds will be drawn and that room will be off-limits unless you're there to talk to Bolton, though the other three study rooms will still be available for use.


Comments are screened for privacy.]

Comments

[theoverseers]

[Bolton answers the door, but he seems pleasantly surprised to see her.]

Good morning, Thomasin.

[curdle]

And to you.

[ Her face, however, is hard to read. She walks inside and takes a seat, putting both her hands on the cup and gripping it tight. ]

You must tell me why I am named the heretic.

[ Except he definitely does not, and will probably say as much. She's pleading, not stating. ]

There can be but little to remember. I awoke with my mother's blood upon me. Please.

[theoverseers]

[He's not unmoved by her plea, but he's quiet for a long moment as he takes his seat. Looks around his workspace, finds the pen that he'd been writing in the book in and takes a paper towel.

When he speaks, as he's writing, it's not what she wants to hear.]

We're not supposed to tell people about the source of their titles.

[But he slides the paper towel over to her with letters written carefully so as not to rip the paper. If she can read Xander's handwriting now, she can read this.]

Nod if you can read this.

[curdle]

[ She watches him closely, her heart pounding, though the words he says make her face fall anyway. What is this? ]

But you...

[ Thomasin's voice trails off like she's looking for a way to word persuasively enough. In reality, she's trying to read the napkin, which she takes from Bolton and pulls closer to her. She stares down at it for quite a bit, then looks back up. Her eyes lock on his face. ]

Why? I know 'tis not just what happened in my last dream. I know it is not for Father's choice.

[ She ducks her chin down and brings it back up, willing him to see the comprehension in her eyes. ]

Can I not at least tell you my thought?

[theoverseers]

[There's a look that's almost pride in his eyes when he notices the nod.]

...Sure, tell me what you think it's for.

[he hesitates before he starts writing, making it look like he's poised to simply note down her statement.]

[curdle]

[ She doesn't have to fake the trepidation in her voice when she starts talking, which is good, because she's still not a very accomplished liar. ]

I still cannot know all that happened last... [ no ] ... the last night I remembered, but the witch showed herself. She let me be, knowing that I would take the blame of it. Maybe she knew of Mother's madness, and thought we should kill each other...

[ She can't linger on the struggle with her mother, or she'll lose herself in panic and self-pity again. She cuts the thoughts off with what she considers a simple statement of fact! ]

Her purpose matters not. I am a matricide. Father is dead, the twins gone, all our animals save the goat fled into the woods or slaughtered. I keep thinking what I might do, as if this had yet to happen, but 'tis already done, and all I can do is guess at my choice.

[ Her choice of actions fades in and out. One moment it's something she's disconnected from, the next it feels as real and immediate as it had in her dreams. ]

I cannot survive the winter, not with what we have. But if I travel for the colony, I do not know the way, and I go to it through the wilderness. They will never let me escape alive. And if they do... it is because they know none will believe me. They hated my family and I have none to testify for my story, and I will have to tell them what became of the farm. They'll believe just as Mother did. If the witch or the goat let me live, I will starve on the farm, or hang in the village for a witch. And however I die, my soul is damned to Hell... so it means nothing if I deed it away.

That was my choice. I thought on my future then as I do now, and chose to conjure the beast and make bargain with him. Black Phillip is Satan and I his handmaid.

That is what I think 'tis for.

[theoverseers]

Mm.

[He begins writing, careful to keep it legible and not tear the flimsy paper. He really should've brought a notebook with him, damn it.]

Everyone that you've met here, everything that you've learned from them... You read and write now, you've worn pants, you've drank milkshakes and eaten cheeseburgers - wouldn't that also be considered heretical, in your time? [Not to mention meeting Literal Autotune Satan, a fire demon, and a grim reaper] But you've adapted, you've grown. You had the steepest learning curve here, Thomasin, but you never let that stop you. It's something you should be proud of.

You could have been the Champion of Curiosity too. But for a girl, from your time period, that's pretty much the same as the title you do have, right?

[He pushes the napkin toward her in a move that makes it look like he's reaching for the coffee to pour himself a full cup.]

No one will make you go back.

Does it really matter, what choice you made back home, when you're here now?

[curdle]

[ She's trying not to watch him write too intently, but that's a hard resolution to keep to. It feels as if Bolton is determining her future, even though all they are discussing is in the past by at least a month.

A month of this outlandish, lifeless place. A month of eating food she could never have conceived of having access to, growing close to those her family would have never mingled with, learning of worlds and species that should not exist. A month of speaking with people who think her words have value and are willing to hear her. She takes the wrong initial message from what he's saying: even without any memory of her transgressions at home, she has embraced this new world. Given the chance to maintain her family's faith, she opened herself to the heathen ways all about. It is not that this place changed her. She, herself, always wished to change, and only now -- and maybe earlier, she supposes, with the Devil -- has she been given opportunity. ]

Yes.

[ She looks down at the paper. Tears bloom in the corners of her eyes as, after a lengthy pause, she repeats herself. ]

Yes. There is no chance left to me of salvation -- that is what I thought. Now I know not what the truth is, but if my soul is deeded away, what matters it what I think?

[ Christ can un-witch us if you will but speak truth to me. That was what Father had said, when she was no witch at all, and the next morning he was dead. She closes her hand around the second napkin, the tears now tracking down her face. None of them live with this neverending terror of damnation -- maybe Margulis did, but he is long gone to whatever end awaited him -- they seem never even to think of it. Can she ever be like that? If she lives and stays, what will happen to her? She has too many questions to even think them coherently; they tie themselves into knots until there is but one great tangled mass of them, pulsing like a vein at the center of her mind. ]

Did he send me?

[theoverseers]

[There's a lot of things he wants to say to her, but it's hard to put them into words. He doesn't know what to tell this poor girl out of time.

He reaches out and puts his hand over her closed hand.]

No one sent you here, Thomasin. When I was going over your profile, I wanted to meet you because you deserve better. You deserve a chance to learn, and grow, and to have another option.

[He takes his hand back, curls his fingers in but keeps his hand close to hers.]

...I don't want to sound like him. That's not what I'm trying to say at all, I'm not trying to tempt you or lure you into anything, I just. Want you to have the chance to see that there's so much life to live, that there's so much that you can do.

I was about your age the first time that I heard someone say people like me were going to burn in Hell. It...scared me. But it didn't change me.

No one controls you. What you think, how you act, what you feel, all of it is your own. "Contract" or no contract, you've already faced one iteration of the devil here. And if Phillip tries to get you, I'll let you control the laser next time.

[curdle]

[ She stares wide-eyed at Bolton's hand first, and his face later, through the water in her eyes. Part of her feels sick to death at what appears to be the implicit confirmation of her thoughts, and part simply resigned to it, but mostly she's just trying to find any way to understand and respond to what he's saying. Her voice is very thick. ]

I have learned.

[ She still believes in God. After everything, and surely even as she signed away her soul, she knows a God exists. But either he does not care what happens to them, and will not act, or he is condemning them outright. She would have believed the latter most easily before she met her friends here. Not a single one of them would be considered as showing the hallmarks of salvation, not even the ones with faith after a fashion, and perhaps that is why they were selected. But even if she accepts that they are bound for Hell, she cannot bring herself to think of them as evil.

This is why she was so certain she would conjure the devil, isn't it? She knows she will not be saved. If she had accepted the death awaiting her with a heart full of faith, maybe she would rest peacefully in heaven, as Margulis had wished for her. But Thomasin is not that pious girl. The others think her faith is pure, and she an innocent, because they are so far removed from how she sees things, and perhaps she has represented herself that way. But she wanted to live on in this sinful world, to which they are never supposed to attach great importance. She wanted to live well in it. Now that she knows what the next life holds, she wants it more than ever, and she assigns more importance to her fellow Champions' acts here and now than their distance from the elect. This is who she always was, and Bolton and Jamie probably know it better than anyone else -- better even than Shadow, to whom she had told the most. He has seen the darkness of her soul.

And he thought she deserved better. Thomasin sniffs and blinks a new set of tears down her cheeks in an attempt to compose herself and not do what she thinks and what she feels like, which is to throw herself across the table and start sobbing directly into his shoulder. ]

I told Yurika -- I thought this low condition was yet better than the farm. It is. You...

[ Thank you. ]

[theoverseers]

[From the minute he sees the tears in her eyes, he wants to hug her and let her cry. She doesn't deserve to be here, none of them do, but in the grand scheme of history this extraordinary girl will be ultimately forgotten, her story and history lost. He knows, because the thought had occurred to him that they might well have been from the same Earth, but centuries apart.

But he's an Overseer, he's responsible for their captivity, and he considers himself lucky that she didn't flinch away from his touch when he first laid his hand over hers.

So instead, he offers her the soft, well-used handkerchief that he carries in his pocket. He can't stop himself from reaching over to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, though, at the tears that run down her cheeks.]

Even after the experiment is over, there's nothing that says that you have to go back to where you came from. You can go with anyone here you've met, or everyone, there's probably some way to stay together.

[Whoever survives.]

There are parades, where I'm from, where thousands of people wear their brightest, proudest colors. They paint their faces and wave flags and dance in the streets just to show the world that they're alive. It's celebration, it's defiance, and it's beautiful.

[curdle]

[ She readily accepts the handkerchief and starts dabbing her eyes, breathing in and out as deeply as she can -- using the same sort of technique he had tried to instill in her after she dreamed of Caleb, actually, which she finds hard to believe was only two weeks ago. She's trying to imagine the celebrations he's describing, to picture them in her mind while her actual line of sight fixes squarely on the table. ]

I should like to see it. [ She sort of sighs. ] There is so much I would like to see.

[ It hasn't occurred to her yet that he's implying more than one of them will leave here eventually any more than it's occurred to her what a Pride parade actually entails! But the first part, slowly, starts to set in. (The second can wait until like a full month after endgame happens, when she is actually physically at Pride. She'll get it someday.) ]

Say you that this will end while divers of us [ in English this sounds like a slightly truncated "diverse" and means... you know... multiple people ] yet live?

[theoverseers]

[His hand moves to rub her back gently while she breathes.]

You can. Someday, I hope you can.

[Her question catches him a little off guard and his hand stills.]

...It's possible.

[And with the power of hindsight you now know why he knows that it's possible, though he's reticent to say anything more.]