Ascent to Darkness By Volaya
Ironically, there was an Interrogator in the old cottage. He was unmistakably that, with his own self-contained seperation from the world around him, with those eyes that slipped right away from you so that you looked somewhere else automatically, with that almost sinuous bearing that came from so much time with the Nall. He was an unrepentant Interrogator, no less, with no light on his skin and none of the softening that occurred when you tried to break free from those old chains of habit.
She supposed the term was ex-Interrogator now.
When she and Davian had lived there, only a year and a half ago, she had been trying to get away from just this. She had been trying to get away from the soft hiss to her voice, from the memories of pain and death and isolation. And so it was ironic, or maybe only fitting, now that Davian and his whole sweetness and light philosophy had abandoned her, that an Interrogator should be living in the cottage where he tried to teach her peace.
She had gone there last. You only return to somewhere that used to be your home when it's unavoidable, and never consciously. Your feet just take you when you aren't paying attention, and there you are, standing on the walkway and noticing that the walk is clear, but the rosebushes hadn't been trimmed. You think, from habit, why did they put human rosebushes in Beacon, in a supposedly Vollistan settlement, of all places?
Volaya did all this, had seen that her old cottage in the Vollistan settlement on Sanctuary-now-called-Concordance was inhabited, and then with a surge of complete indifference to what might come of it, she opened the door and went in. And there was the Interrogator.
She had wandered for a long time after she left the hotel room she shared with Volanta, when she first got back. Their hotel room with two beds, one for her and one for him. It would have made her laugh, if she had thought too hard about it, the way that had ended up. For a long time it had looked like it would be the other way around, all sex and no understanding, but here they were together sleeping in seperate beds. She said I love you every night. So did he. Come to think about it, she didn't really feel like laughing.
Deck four still had that smell about it. Volanta had called it old socks, but there was a more human quality to it, a wetter, earthier, bloodier smell. It wasn't a Vollistan smell at all. Glimmercoat's had a different server, not the one that had decided he didn't like exhibitionist Vollistans making out and kicked them out. The lifts had been gone forever, and she tried to avoid the hovercabs when she could - she hated having to talk to the drivers, to tell them where she wanted to go.
The Domes were still the same, her spot under the monorail track by the river intact and empty. And that was the problem, because once she was in the Domes she went home.
It was funny, in the ridiculous useage of the human word abused by so many meanings, that it still felt like home. Eerie was maybe a better word for it; the space inside had been changed considerably, but when she thought about it they were all changes she might have made. It was still hers, sort of.
The nameless Interrogator looked at her for awhile, his cool black clothing and placid face contrasted with this tattooed Vollistan in a T-shirt and sunglasses that had stepped somewhat defiantly into his home without knocking. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking or what he was feeling, because it always was with the good ones. She had a moment or two of fear for whoever elsse still lived here, and then a surge of triumph came over her like a wild empty high. He lived here, and he hadn't changed. Davian had been wrong. You could stay and not change. You could do it.
Then she just stopped thinking. The little bit of her that usually sat out, watching and steering her, was gone. The Interrogator displayed no surprise as she stepped quickly across the room towards him, or as she lifted her hand - it was glowing red, her entire aura had somehow slipped to red - and slappped him in the face. There was no flicker in his controlled skin, no twitch of muscles on his face, and then he was in her mind.
What the hell, she thought, and knew he heard her, I asked for this.
He was subject to her brief digression as she thought on human stories, on the supposed psionic power that let someone learn about the people who had used an object just by holding it. She imagined, briefly, that this person who was now perusing her thoughts at his leisure and without any particular resistance by her had read her life from the walls here. She imagined him sitting comfortably on that sofa covered in the fur of some large animal, in front of the fireplace, with that wineglass on the glass table full. She imagined him sifting through all the scenes she had lived through here, closing his eyes and seeing Davian slowly turning the crank on the ice cream maker while she hid under the bed or locked herself in the bathroom or even helped him.
She only let him in for a moment or two, a minor indulgence as she allowed him to soak up those thoughts, to experience that bright spark of anger that was always somewhere under the surface and the gulf of darkness beneath it. She reached out for a split-second, sensing the recognition in him, and then she made a convulsive effort to push him away. The fight was on, a struggle between the two consciousnesses for right-of-way, if not actual domination. A part of her mind was laughing, or maybe she really was laughing physically, gold flaming up through that red light. It didn't really get better than this, walking into someone's home and mindraping them. It didn't get more Interrogatorish than this.
Halfway through, the tone changed considerably. Her hand was still on the red mark she'd left on his cheek, fingers spread over the hint of stubble that was completely invisible on his powdery skin. It was a point of pride not to show your emotions if you were an Interrogator, or at least to only show the ones that you wanted other people to see. It was a point of pride not to let anything surprise you. She felt a great deal of satisfaction when she kissed him and he flinched back slightly, the statue act he was trying to pull shattered.
She laughed, all red and gold, and kept him flinching. She'd been right that he was an Interrogator, though. He fought back. They didn't get as far as the couch. It was the sort of thing that only Interrogators could do, she thought, act like it was perfectly normal to have a boyfriend you don't sleep with and then come in and have this sheer violence, mind and body, with some stranger who lived in your old house.
It wasn't like she'd ever slept with anyone other than Volanta anyhow.
When it was done she stood up, peeling her abraded back off the floor with the light sheeting from her in pale shell-white shivers. Six words, in Naliese of course: I'm going to use your shower. He grinned back at her, as ferally as she knew she was grinning at him, and rubbed at the bleeding fingernail-marks on his hip. She grinned wider, and found herself singing in the shower. It was the first time she had sung in the shower since she was fourteen, she thought, or maybe fifteen.
By the time she got out he was pulling the statue act again, his skin darkened once more. He watched her pull on her clothes, and even though he'd fallen back into the completely unreachable confines of his own mind, even though she couldn't read his face, she knew what he was thinking. She was thinking the same thing.
As she tucked her pistol holster around her hips, empty of its usual weight, and looked at him with a grin that she knew was expressionless and disconcerting, and which matched his pretty closely, she decided not to say it. There was more triumph when she turned and walked for the door, and she heard it from him, the first actual coherent sounds he had made. In Naliese, of course. It was nice to win another victory.
See you later.
There was more than one way to be yourself, she thought. And there were a couple of ways to be yourself where you ended up where you wanted to be, on top, instead of slithering through the confusion that came when you got yourself mixed up with someone else's self.
She spared him a nod, found her sunglasses, and left whistling.
From 2003, I think.