Chapter Text
“The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.”
—Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs
Richard considers his life as having two parts: the unmaking, or making, of him, and his deployment. This excludes, of course, anything that could precede the un/making (birth, family, capture, and so on) or follow the deployment (we will get to this later.) Richard Keane is, first and foremost, a product of his environment, that is, he was made to be something and he became it with fierce dedication. It could be said that he became what he is to survive, but there is a notable difference between the Richard Keane’s of the world and those who, for example, carve out a place for themselves without carving open their fellow men, and, if they do, they do so with intense hesitation and deep regret afterwards. The only things Richard Keane has ever regretted are his mistakes. He makes very few of these.
Richard Keane’s life, he will insist, begins with his unmaking/making, and perhaps it did. For many of us, the making starts when we are made, e.g. conception, or the first breath that is drawn, or being placed in one’s mother’s arms, etc. Richard was made to be one thing—a child, a predator, happy—and became another to survive, and then, to go above and beyond survival and dominate. Richard will insist—this is often, he has rules, you must know them—that he does not aspire to go beyond his place. That he is not ambitious.
You may not believe this. You likely know Richard. Is he not, if anything, a lion?
(“You’re not much more than food for us,” he had said, which is an exaggeration and not. Leopard seals may, on occasion, hunt and consume young Weddell seals. Leopard seal selkies are not as likely to do the same; though they may hunt seals, selkies do ascribe to some loose kinship across species, despite conflicts between their mundane counterparts.
Richard keeps few memories of the before-that-is-not-the-making, but one is of a Weddell seal pup writhing in his mother’s jaws, screaming and spraying blood on her face and his.
“Here, eat,” she had said.
So he ate.)
Richard is not like Connor. Richard takes pride in not being like anyone.
Richard’s life started—if it begins where he says it does—when he was taken. Connor, too, was taken, though much later in life, and broken with a swiftness perhaps only the military is capable of. He was hastily glued back together and sent out into the world. Richard, on the other hand, is the product of many long years of conditioning. His deployment was delayed by Connor’s apparent readiness to enter the field, though after several months, his handler’s superiors were eager to see how they functioned alongside one another and how the vastly more expensive project—Richard—performed. Additionally, it was suspected that Connor would have a rather brief run; he likely could not sustain his ideal level of functioning for very long, given the conditions he lived under. He did not have access to his skin, ever, and he had been brutally “recalibrated” with the promise that he would, one day, go home. It was a lie they offered when they could not convince him that anything else was worthwhile. He would not tell them what waited at home, though they tried to get it out of him. They hoped, of course, that Connor would lead them to more selkies. Richard could not.
Richard could not, because they had killed the others. He has not seen the water that shade of red since.
Richard’s making cannot be recalled in a set order of events. They destroyed everything he loved and then they destroyed him. Like Connor, the white laboratory room became his home. Like Connor, they beat him and screamed at him until he lay, shivering, a husk of a child, starved, alone, sobbing dry…and then they offered him a blanket. These were unfamiliar hands that did so. She had a kind smile. She called herself Amanda. She thought selkies were wonderful creatures and if Richard did what she said, he could be very happy here. She did not want him to be hurt like they had. It was cruel, very cruel. He was only a child.
He wanted to believe her. She did not remind him of his mother but he imagined she would, eventually. She was tall and made of sharp edges and pristine in his dank room but she smiled, and no one smiled at him anymore. She said he could hold his skin, if he was very good, and maybe even keep it forever if he showed them that he could be trusted.
I will be very good, he promised.
(He wanted his skin back. It smelled like his family. He thought himself cunning, even then.)
Amanda said, yes, of course, I know. And then she hit him.
“Don’t lie.”
Richard did not apologize. Apologies, he learned, were worthless. They hit him whether or not he apologized. Apologies accomplished nothing. Amanda even said that his apologies were useless if he did not act immediately on them. “You have to fix your mistakes. Your feelings are not relevant. There is only the task and you accomplishing it properly. Do not waste your breath.”
He caught the “I’m sorry,” before it could spill out and earn him another backhand.