empires_heir | Project Harvester AU

Armitage itched everywhere, not an itch that he could do anything about, but an ever-present near-electric buzz behind his eyes, under his skin, gathering at the base of his skull in a way that made him irritable.

He knew that without the inhibitor around his wrist it would have been so much worse, the same way he knew that it meant something was coming, and not the kind of something to look forward to. He didn't have visions like some of the others, he might have had without the inhibitor, but the only time they took it off of him was during training or when they were running tests, because every time he tried to use his abilities on purpose the control just slipped through his fingers but he could use them instinctively, and usually to protect himself.

That, more than anything, was the reason for the inhibitor. Because even after a decade of trying he still didn't have any more control than he'd had when he'd first arrived there all of six years old. He'd never really made friends, he'd never really wanted to, he knew after the first year that those who didn't learn vanished, or had some sort of unfortunate accident. By the time he was ten, the rumors had reached saturation, that even though he couldn't -or didn't want to- learn to control his abilities, he'd survived, the only one left of the group he'd arrived with.

The buzzing had reached a plateau after morning meal, and he'd given up trying to get an actual answer out of anyone, the other trainees didn't know anything more than he did, and if they did, it wasn't as if they were going to tell him, so in lieu of trying to wrench answers out of anyone, he'd simply returned to his quarters, pacing the small cell, and trying to will the sensation of something's going to happen away to something manageable.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

prevailsthelight

Ben honestly felt like he'd been beaten to an inch of his life. He was drugged to semiconsciousness, arms cuffed together in front of him, legs also cuffed. He was barefoot, stripped down and redressed in something simple and dark - there was an embroidered symbol on the shoulder, but he didn't recognize it from the quick glimpse he'd gotten of it in a reflection.

He blinked up at the ceiling of the jumpship blearly, aware enough to think but not enough to look around. The inhibitors on each of his wrists weren't helping him much in that regard, either.

When the back of the ship opened, though, and the outside air rushed in warm and muggy, Ben had a sinking feeling that he knew where they were.

Before he could start putting the pieces together, he heard an order barked from behind a mask: "Knock him out."

And then it was all darkness.

When he woke, he was lying on a bed in a small, square room. Ben started and looked around, but his body responded and he was free to move for the first time in days. He tried and regretted it immediately, body protesting the movement after so long lying still and flat.

Still, Ben forced himself to at least look around. This room was familiar, though he'd never been inside it before. The exact color and texture of the walls, the disquieting hue of light, the grey sheets making the bed up to perfect military precision.

He knew this room, though he'd never known it empty.

"Armitage?" He asked the open air.

Edited Date: 2018-02-08 04:58 am (UTC)

From:

empires_heir

It had been three days since Ben had been brought in and processed. Three days for his system to work through it all, though, Armitage was fairly sure that some of that had been a medically-induced coma, but it wasn't anything he'd be able to help with himself.

Three days of having a still and silent roommate. Three days of having the chance to memorize Ben's face, not that he didn't already know it well. Though, he thought he knew it so well because he'd made it up, imagined it so often that it would be impossible for him to misremember or not recognize.

He startled a little when Ben finally moved. Without the inhibitors he'd probably have been able to feel the fluctuation in the Force that indicated he was awake, but he hadn't, he hadn't even had prior movement cues. And then he spoke, and all Armitage had to say in turn, after a moment of startled-still silence was: "How dare you?" Though he realized that was probably insufficient so he added: "You aren't supposed to be real." as clarification.

From:

prevailsthelight

Ben started and jerked his head around, looking to the other side of the room: another bed, a small wardrobe with a mirror on the door. And a face he'd only seen though the strangeness of a Force Bond.

Ben automatically tried to reach out with the Force but, disquietingly, nothing happened. It was like he was simply not Force-sensitive anymore. Bizarre. He'd been too drugged earlier to try through the inhibitors, but now they were in full effect.

He glanced down at himself. Two was definitely overkill. They were being cautious, he supposed.

"Sorry," he finally told Armitage, but there wasn't much actual apology in his tone. He wasn't going to actually apologize for being real. "But I always have been, I thought you would have recognized that."

From:

empires_heir

He grimaced at the apology, and the statement that implied he thought Armitage was stupid, the expression more than a little like he was trying to bite back an out and out sneer, "I suppose I ought to have known that the one thing I thought I'd actually managed on my own in this damned place would turn out to be out of my control the same as everything else is."

Even though he'd had three days to get used to that idea, it still stung, and despite trying to keep it out of his voice, that hurt was definitely still there even though he was trying his hardest not to let it show.

He'd been part of the project for nearly ten years, and still only had a fraction more control than he'd had when he arrived, and the only reason he hadn't had an unfortunate accident like the others who couldn't learn, was because of who his father was, and -perhaps- due to the potential he had if he could only access it.

From:

prevailsthelight

Ben grimaced a bit as well at the harshness of his own words - he'd been through a lot in the past couple of days, and none of it was Armitage's fault, certainly.

"You're the one who found me," he said after another moment. "Somehow, when you shouldn't have been able to. I was protected against something like that, but... you get there anyways." Of course, he'd also not done much to assure Armitage that he was actually real- it had seemed cruel, when Arimtage had been suffering so long in what was essentially captivity.

He tries to start pushing himself up but his arms refuse to support his weight - he's sore and heavy all over, so instead he manages to roll onot his side to face Armitage.

"How long have I been here?" It'd been several days on the ship that he could recall between bouts of being drugged to unconsciousness and back, and he definitely felt more stiff than he had since then, but who knew how long he'd been here in this room and how long he'd been in some other room.

From:

empires_heir

That wasn't much of a consolation, as Armitage didn't have any idea how he'd done it either, though the scowl did relax, a little.

"Three days in my room." He replied, "I don't know about before that, and no one's likely to say even if you ask, so there's not much point unless you enjoy wasting your time." He was trying to find some weakness, some chink in the armor that he could dig into, something he could use to make sure Ben felt as stung as he did.

From:

prevailsthelight

Ben nodded and again tried to push himself up - if he couldn't sit up, he wanted to at least try to get his head up. He'd been prone for so long that even if his body hated for him, his mind wanted movement.

"What exactly is this place? I picked up a lot in context, but I've never actually asked..."

From:

empires_heir

"No one told you?" He asked, sounding unsurprised, but also a little bit like he thought Ben might be lying.

He spread his arms then, to encompass not just the room but the entire facility, "Welcome to Arkanis Academy. Only, not the one that's on the brochures or in the informational videos. That's well above us. We're the hidden academy, the one no one's supposed to know about." Like Ben, Armitage had a Force-suppressing band on either wrist. Most of the other students -not that Ben would know it until later- only had a single one on their dominant hand.

"This is where they train us to use our natural abilities with the Force, so that we can be a nasty surprise for the Resistance, should they find any of our elite soldiers in the ranks." He didn't know for sure if Ben was actually a child of the Resistance, but he was still digging for something that would sting.

From:

prevailsthelight

Right, because they were totally going to tell him where he was. Or they were leaving it to Arimtage to explain to him. Ben rolled onto his back, really wishing his legs worked.

"That explains a few things, then. We suspected, but... None of those 'elite soldiers'," and here Ben did manage to mime quotation marks around the words, "were very good, so we figured it was just latent talent coming up in the heat of the moment."

They definitely hadn't been wielding lightsabers. Instead, they'd been snipers with preternatural aim, or a propensity for dodging attacks, or guessing where the enemy was coming from.

He sighed, then tried again to push himself up. "You wanna help me up? I really need to take a leak."

From:

empires_heir

"There only would have been a handful of them in a raiding party, not the whole team." He started to explain, though his nose wrinkled at the statement, "There's no need to be vulgar."

He was tempted not to help just for that reason alone, but he was also already tired of watching Ben struggle like a beetle on its back, and so he offered a hand, "Though if you expect I'm going to help with that as well you're sorely mistaken."