Elizabeth Regan

One of the things that stuck out for me from the War of the Chosen expansion was that, at least for periods, the Commander was conscious within the tank, or perhaps, more accurately within the network. There’s a very particular kind of horror endemic in that, especially as it’s not just the Elders who are aware of that fact. Even if the scientists don’t know who’s in the suit, they’re very much complicit in the ongoing imprisonment and torture of another human being. The fact that it’s a person in there very much drove the underlying idea.

So, the original visual concept came from Madame Leota’s tombstone at Walt Disney World’s Haunted Mansion (her tombstone may be as cool on the west coast, but I’ve never been). If you’ve never seen it in action, check out a video here; the effect is pretty unsettling when you’re not expecting it. In the case of the original, it’s literally just a spooky effect. Leota’s important to the house lore, but more in the sense that she’s keeping an eye on the visitors. In the creation of this piece, I wanted there to be a certain confrontation between subject and viewer.

The suit, obviously, had to go. The obstruction of the face aside, the suit helps to obscure that it’s a person —fragile flesh and blood— encased within.  Though the dehumanization is important, I had a bigger thing I wanted to get at, which was, in this case, depersonalization.

The choice of a hospital gown was very much intentional: the ties to medical procedures and the mechanics of being tanked aside, there’s a stripping to it. An XCOM uniform retains some sense of who Lizzie is or was; there’s an element of individuality still to it. A hospital gown removes that. She’s no longer a Commander; she’s a subject — albeit a valuable one. She does not exist in a position of power, but is a victim of the power of others.

She’s not entirely sure why she was given this posting in the first place. She’s a battlefield strategist, not a scientist. She likes General Hayden, yes, and the rest of the staff. She just wonders if she wouldn’t be better used as something –anything– more suited to her skillset than a liaison.

She pinches the bridge of her nose; at least the so-called coffee shop has a respectable selection of teas.

She stares at her laptop, attempting to find something meaningful to write in the report. The farther from the field she has moved, the more onerous paperwork has become. She minimizes the window, resolved to take a break to clear head, and finds herself distracted by the image that greets her: Cecily sitting on John’s shoulders outside of her parents’ place in Pilsen, bundled in her winter best.

She’ll be glad to be back with them on Friday night, even if it means sitting through tourist traffic.

Her phone buzzes, snapping her from her thoughts.

John’s caller ID photo smiles up at her; she hadn’t realized she’d been at it so long. “Miláčku?”

“Maminka!” A happy voice chirps.

“Cecilka, zlatíčko! Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s coming. He made Nahý angry again.”

Tanya shakes her head; she can’t imagine the cause of tonight’s skirmish.

“Were you a good girl for him?”

Her daughter giggles. “Yes, Maminka. Oh, wait---”

There is the sound of something on the other end and Cecily’s voice is somehow distant, but now distinctly joined by another. “Tanya?”

“John? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. More importantly, the kids are too. How ---”

“Kids?”

“Cess, Libuše, Nahý ---”

“John ---  Libuše, Nahý, and the others are cats. And not even our cats.”

“Nahý sleeps in Cess’s bed. Libuše sleeps on you when you’re home, and on me when you aren’t. They’re certainly ours.”

She sighs, exasperated, though it’s more by her absence around the house than by her husband’s incomprehensible insistence that the four cats who happen to hang around are somehow theirs. 

“Are you alright? Cess mentioned something about Nahý being upset.”

“He jumped into the tub again.”

“With Cess?”

“And started trying to groom her. As she was taking a bath.”

Tanya laughs. The cats aren’t theirs and certainly aren’t hers, but the persnickety sphinx had taken a shine to her daughter. He’d curled up at the floor of her crib when they’d first brought her home, and slept at the foot of her bed ever since she’d outgrown her crib.

He’d even taught her to meow, a fact which still occasionally gives her pause.

“What happened?”

“I went to take him out, and he took offense. I’ve got a nice chunk missing from one of my sleeves.”

“I don’t know why he gets so upset with you. He lets me take him out of the tub every time. Did you scare him?”

“It’s because he’s your cat,” her husband insists. “He lets me stay because you like me.”

She shakes her head, though the gesture is lost over the phone.

“Look, I’m just finishing up, and I’m about to head back to my place. I’ll Skype you when I’m there?”

“We’ll see you soon. Be safe getting back.”

She hadn’t considered the consequences when she’d selected her specialty. She’d simply let the whims and curiosities of her own insatiable need for answers guide her choice. Cognitive magic was intricate and complex; it required a certain kind of tenacity, a willingness to venture into the more theoretical aspects of healing magic.

It was not for those faint of heart.

But the results could be incredible. Memory charms undone; damage reversed. If she’d meant to heal, then returning people to themselves was the truest application of the art form.

People didn’t often think of Slytherins as healers; they heard cunning and ambition, and found them incompatible with nurture and care. They fell easily into the trap of failing to see past the stereotype, failing to understand that it took ambition to solve daunting challenges, that it took cunning to work your way past otherwise impassable blocks. It was about power, yes, but the power to know, to do, to reverse the unthinkable.

Idealism was a fantastic blinder; passion was, perhaps, an even better one.

The trick in reversing the magic lay in understanding the fundamentals of the damage and its cause, in knowing how to rip the threads of curses and charms from a mind without causing harm in the process.

Of course, the corollary was that her knowledge of just how to inflict that damage, how to manipulate a mind through magic, how to bend and break, was substantial. In finding new ways to heal, she’d come up with new ways to harm.

New, very effective ways.

She reads over the letter once more, a summons from within the Department of Mysteries. She’s never had much detail on their work; even the few times she and their agents have crossed paths, securing any information about the work was virtually impossible --- even if it would have made a difference in treating one of their own.

A notice of recruitment does not fill her with confidence. She sinks into her chair and scrubs a hand over her face.

She’ll need to think through this carefully.

She could report as ordered, learn the secrets of the Department and finally get some answers. She dismisses the possibility almost immediately; she won’t stand by and watch her work be misappropriated, let alone participate in its perversion.

Not reporting, of course, presents its own challenges. She doesn’t relish the idea of running; she suspects they’d find her eventually, and drag her back. She’d be left at their mercy, and out of options.

Unless…

The idea is madness. She didn’t work this long and this hard to simply cede her healer’s license. She did not spend an apprenticeship in agony to simply give up.

But to give them her work, to hand over the kind of secrets she has striven to keep, is unthinkable.

If she does this, she will have nothing. Yes, she could find work in a shop somewhere, brew potions for an apothecary, or oversee the rarer editions in some shop, but she knows there will be questions, whispers, implications that her own work had backfired upon her, stories only inflamed by the Ministry.