[center][h3]Loom: Midtown Swait District[/h3]
[i]Day 2, Evening, 2254[/i]
Zadkiel[/center]

"You should know that this isn't your fault."

Ricket woke up to cold concrete against his cheek, rough and damp. The world came in through a concussive fog, the kind of headache that blanketed the real pains like the one in his jaw. It screamed as he tried to move, jagged bone against jagged bone, and was almost certainly broken. A man in a cheap folding chair was talking to him from what felt like the other side of a bottle, muffled and distorted past the ringing in his ears. He tried to talk, regretted it with a sharp groan of pain, and spat old clots to the floor. The man gave him a minute to compose himself.

He was in a dungeon. That was pretty much the closest thing to it that he could figure, a concrete box cast in dim halogen yellow by the strip-light in the ceiling, and the only way out was a door that looked meant to take on some form of moving truck and win. In front of the door was a man that looked meant to take on some form of moving truck and win, shaved-gorilla big with buzzed hair the color of snow and sunglasses on indoors. He looked like he meant business in his black jacket, black shirt, black slacks, and Ricket remembered that he meant business from that time he'd kicked him across an alley and very nearly through the brick wall on the other side. It was coming back to him in staccato flashes, the chase, the catch, Goliath over there making a mosaic out of his mandible. As he tried to move the heavy chains around his neck and shoulders, wound around his wrists and trailing down between his legs to a hook in the floor behind him made themselves apparent, and as his mind cleared he found that he could struggle at best to a kneeling position so long as he didn't expect to raise his head much.

He managed an articulate gurgle, regretting it almost immediately with a groan. It had sounded something like "What?", and so that's apparently what the man in the chair decided to run with.

"This." He repeated, motioning around with a slight circle of his finger. He was as monochromatic as his gigantic friend, dressed in white from head to his apparently bare feet. The long sleeved tee was nothing special, nor were the slacks aside from being pristine, and the long white of his hair fell down to just below his chest in straight sheets. More than anything he looked tired, weary, like he'd carried a heavy load for long enough it was a part of him now, and he'd been slouching back in the chair before he'd leaned forward to better talk in his gentle, vaguely-Swedish sing-song. "The chains, the beating, the awful things you've done. Your life, if you can call it that. It's not your fault."

Inhuman strength wasn't getting Rickets anywhere with the chains, his arms and legs and back flexing against the thick metal and finding it unyielding. He was starting to panic, which was starting to make him angry, and his demonic heritage began to show itself more clearly in the claws curling from his fingertips, the sharp barbs curling through his knuckles. His shattered jaw was beginning to heal, and he talked through the pain anyway.

"What...are you...on about...?"

Not exactly Shakespeare, but it would do. Or maybe it wouldn't, judging by the 'give me patience' Heaven-ward eye-roll the man in the chair made before turning those baby-blues back to Ricket.

"Your name is Anthony Ricket, or at least that's what they call you. You've been ducking Peacekeepers for some time now." He watched him, his eyes even and tired, and the unpleasant sensation that he'd given this talk plenty of times before was hard to miss. "You've done some very bad things, Anthony."

"Fuck...you."

Ricket was starting to feel better, or at least starting to get stupid instead of scared. Who did this fucker think he was, some surface-dweller? Ricket had clawed his way out of Hell, for crying out loud, did the guy think his little bondage chamber and walking refrigerator were going to cow-tow him? He met the man with sharp eyes of defiance, and the man just sighed and put his hands together in front of his face. He closed his eyes. He moved slowly, as if it pained him or he had arthritis or something, and spoke just a little bit quietly. Rickets was annoyed to find himself straining to hear him.

"I'm going to be honest with you, Anthony, I really would like to skip this bit. Really. I'm going to tell you what's going to happen, and you're going to tell me to go to Hell, or to go--pardon my language--fuck myself, and play the big bad demon, and talk all about how much of a beast and a monster you are and it just isn't going to get you anywhere. It really won't. If you have to get it out of your system then I get it, but if you can just hold it together for me a little while longer this whole process will really just be so much simpler."

Wanting nothing more than to rip the condescending asshole's head from his shoulders and shove it down the macho-man's throat, Rickets was beginning to realize that he might actually be in trouble. He'd been struggling the whole time against the chains, which absolutely should have popped like bobby pins by now, and only really succeeded in reminding himself how generally battered he felt. The way the man was talking said he'd done all this before, which said that he'd survived doing it before, and (whether he wanted to admit it or not) there was something intimidating in that. How many other people had he put through whatever this process of his was? Had they all been demons? What the fuck was going on, here?

"Who the hell are you?" His jaw, if not completely fixed, was at least stable enough to support speech. Chalk one up for the bad guys. "What is this place?"

The man smiled slightly in relief--if nothing else, he'd been given a brief reprieve from the vitriol he knew full well demons such as Ricket were capable of. "Thank you. This is the Brightman-Dial Treatment and Housing Facility, though most just call it the BDT. It's also your new home, so welcome to it. As for me, here I am called Jasper Dial."

"Never heard of you."

"I hadn't expected you to." He agreed, visibly glad to have the conversation turned in a more pleasant direction. Placing his hands on his knees, he stood like an old man might despite being no older than fifty at most (and probably much younger than that, though it was hard to tell). His feet bare against the concrete, his hands tucking neatly into his pockets, he slouched as he stood but didn't break eye-contact with the demon and kept the pleasant smile on his face. "You might not believe me, Anthony, but I'm glad you're here. Really, I am. This world has done some awful things to you, it's about time we got you somewhere safe."

It was hard to tell quite what to feel, as far as Ricket was concerned, but the more the man talked the more 'confused' became a primary emotion, followed swiftly by his old friend 'angry'. Really, what the fuck was this guy talking about?

"Is this some prison, then?" Ricket laughed, the sound rough and aggressive past his lengthened, bloody teeth. No one could mistake him for a human now, any vestige of disguise gone. His face had pulled into a rictus mask, his lips stretched back above rows of teeth. His eyes sunk to jaundiced gleams in the skullish contours of his face, forehead stretching and molding to a crown, there was nothing left of the human he'd pretended to be. "Something the Peacekeepers cooked up? Maybe you should worry less about what the world has done to me and more about what I'm going to do to you as soon as I slip these chains."

The man's disappointment was visible, his shoulders and head dropping, but he raised them once more with a forced smile. "Alright, Anthony, you're doing really well. Let's not mess that up, alright? You're not going to slip those chains, just like you wouldn't do anything to me if you did. That time in your life is past and done with, it's over now. I'm happy to say that starting today, we start in on a new chapter in Anthony Ricket's life, the one where you start to make something of it."

"If I'm not going to hurt you if I get out of these chains," Ricket grinned, letting his teeth click together a bit, "then why not take them off?"

"Oh I will, Anthony. I absolutely will. As soon as you've put your old life behind you, as soon as you can see how far down this dark road you've gone, I will personally undo those chains and let you make your way upstairs to greet the rest of our little family." There was something painfully annoying about being spoken to like that, something deeply irritating about such condescension. The man they called Jasper Dial around here was talking to him like a fucking child, like he was some kind of retarded, and Ricket was quickly deciding he was having enough of it.

"Look, fucker, I don't know who you think you're talking to but if you think you're going to--"

"Stop."

And he did. Ricket absolutely stopped, because the air [i]buzzed[/i] when Jasper said that little word and suddenly his mouth was shut. It was simple as that. And much through he tried, Anthony Ricket could not open it to continue the diatribe that had been building while this idiot told him what a good boy he was. Jasper looked relieved, smiling appreciatively.

"Thank you." He added politely, for good measure. "I really do appreciate it. You don't know how often I've heard your kind go down that little tangent. 'You don't know me', 'I'm a terrible, powerful demon', 'If you think you can break me', and all that. Trust me, it's not as original as you think, which isn't exactly a surprise. It's a perfectly reasonable response to your situation, which is exactly my point. Everything you are, everything you've done so far, is a perfectly reasonable response to your situation. It's how you're wired, how you're programmed. Born of the void, without the God's love to sustain you, you lash out like any child would." It would have been easier for Ricket to ignore him if he could speak yet, but apparently he still couldn't. His jaw just wouldn't work, his vocal chords just wouldn't hum. [i]What the fuck was going on?[/i]

"It's only natural." He was continuing, and this part of it all seemed particularly rehearsed, as if he'd said it dozens of times before if not more. "Really. Without essence you'll die, and only be stealing it from others can you attain it. What a horrible existence, Anthony!" For perhaps the first time he appeared some form of distressed, honest emotion curling into his voice as he knelt to meet the demon's silent eye. "I can't imagine what it must be like, to be without something so essential--that's where the word comes from, you know, 'essential'. 'Essence'. Something of absolute importance, the intrinsic nature of something that cannot be further reduced. That something that makes you you, that defines your character. And that, Anthony, is why I say that this isn't your fault."

Reaching forward, Jasper placed a hand on the demon's shoulder. Though he recoiled, sharply, and at first opened his mouth to snap at the wrist and hand of this creature that bound him, he stopped halfway to it at the look in Jasper's eyes. There was something there, an alarmingly pleading warning, that gave him pause, and for the first time since he woke up Ricket was afraid. He closed his mouth, then, and watched the man's warning turn to a relieved smile with wary eyes that tried not to be afraid.

"Thank you." Jasper added, closing his eyes and nodding. "I appreciate your restraint. Do you see, Anthony? Even with nothing of yourself but what you've stolen, even with nothing to define you or nurture you, you are capable of dignity and nobility. [i]That's[/i] what this is about, Anthony. [i]That[/i] is why I want you to know that all of this, all the pain and horror of it, is not your fault. So I'm going to give you that essential piece, that something that will define you. Today, in this room. And once you have it you'll never have to debase yourself again. There are very few individuals in the world, Anthony, who can claim to be truly righteous, but freed from the awful lack that you and your kind are born into and from you will be...righteous."

He sighed and breathed out, shuddering softly with conviction. When he opened his eyes, the blue practically blazed above his now warm smile. And, as an after thought.

"You may speak now."

When his jaw unclenched and he was sure that his vocal chords would work, Ricket chose his words carefully and slowly. One at a time.

"You. Are. [i]Fucking[/i]. Crazy."

And Jasper deflated. He sighed, letting his eyes fall shut and his head fall slightly, his shoulders losing the vitality they'd had and returning to their slouch. He seemed older in an instant, and weary, but beneath all that weight was resolve, and he got to his feet with the same achy motions as before as Ricket continued.

"No, really. Do you even hear yourself, right now? You're the one that should be in chains, asshole, how about you let [i]me[/i] do some fucking counseling for a bit! I'm not about to--"

But he stopped, just then, and not because Jasper made him. Instead he stopped because the most incongruous of sounds was echoing around the chamber, and it took him a minute to realize that it was coming from the gorilla's cell phone. It spat out some tinny jingle, obviously never changed from whatever it once had been at the store it was purchased from, and as he made no move to answer it Ricket looked back to his crazy captor to find his eyes closed and his lips pursed in the first display of irritation he'd seen. Jasper Dial, it would appear, did not like to be interrupted mid-session.

"...you need to take that?" Ricket finally snorted after the fourth repetition of the ring, smirking up from where he knelt as the man straightened without opening his eyes. He extended a hand and, silently, the giant plodded over and placed a slim black cell-phone into Jasper's palm. He swiped it open with visible patience, the bodyguard settling impassively at his side as Jasper placed the phone to his ear. He hadn't even know he had [i]service[/i] down here. His other hand he extended to the demon, who incredulously watched him raise a [i]give me a minute[/i] finger and strike up a conversation with forced cheer.

"Roanne. It's been too long."