Matt grinds his teeth together for a second before forcing himself to stop, because the pressure of the weight that's distributed on his face makes it much too loud, and then he slowly lifts his head and changes the way his legs are to do a sit-up kneeling position, where the weight is more on his shins and calves than knees (because unfortunately the lawyer-version is right, his knees are too important to waste on free people who didn't react well to them, as terrifying as that was), and tentatively takes his hands off the back of his head, instead putting them on the front of his legs, to brace his weight upwards, spine straight.
It's not very comfortable and his heart starts to thud louder with fear, but he ignores it. Fear is useful sometimes and a hindrance other times, a knife without a hilt.
He formulates a quick plan of response, and makes his voice matter-of-fact rather than defensive when he says, trying to not let the anger show, "It is not torture when it happens to slaves. People are tortured, slaves are trained. And even if it were to have happened to a free person, it does not qualify as torture if it is very brief, and warned about beforehand, and carefully planned and executed so as to cause no harm, and padded before and after by luxuries, and for the explicit purpose of making someone better at the necessary skill of enduring pain and still being functional and able to think. One has to have a high distress tolerance as a slave or, well, break and die."
He turns his head to face where he's pretty sure Claire is. "And the constitution of the United States is next to impossible to amend, even for amendments that are not supported by popular opinion and political arguments of all parties, including the abolitionist party members."
Then he directs his attention and voice to the snuff-bait. He understood the snuff-bait's response well--the snuff-bait liked Foggy, his owner, and so what he had really wished Matt was for him to either have a nice owner as well, or else not be a slave, which would be insulting from anyone else, but from himself, it's more sad and sweet than anything else.
"That's a kind notion," he said, making his voice gentling in contrast to when he'd spoken to the snuff-bait earlier (it never pays to be rude to the favorite slave of free people, absolutely never), "But in a world where they did not reform slavery after the end of the American Civil War to be on the basis of debt collection, crime, protectionism, or parental rights to sell offspring, I would be...rather useless. And I would not like to be worthless."
Fill, Opposite's response
It's not very comfortable and his heart starts to thud louder with fear, but he ignores it. Fear is useful sometimes and a hindrance other times, a knife without a hilt.
He formulates a quick plan of response, and makes his voice matter-of-fact rather than defensive when he says, trying to not let the anger show, "It is not torture when it happens to slaves. People are tortured, slaves are trained. And even if it were to have happened to a free person, it does not qualify as torture if it is very brief, and warned about beforehand, and carefully planned and executed so as to cause no harm, and padded before and after by luxuries, and for the explicit purpose of making someone better at the necessary skill of enduring pain and still being functional and able to think. One has to have a high distress tolerance as a slave or, well, break and die."
He turns his head to face where he's pretty sure Claire is. "And the constitution of the United States is next to impossible to amend, even for amendments that are not supported by popular opinion and political arguments of all parties, including the abolitionist party members."
Then he directs his attention and voice to the snuff-bait. He understood the snuff-bait's response well--the snuff-bait liked Foggy, his owner, and so what he had really wished Matt was for him to either have a nice owner as well, or else not be a slave, which would be insulting from anyone else, but from himself, it's more sad and sweet than anything else.
"That's a kind notion," he said, making his voice gentling in contrast to when he'd spoken to the snuff-bait earlier (it never pays to be rude to the favorite slave of free people, absolutely never), "But in a world where they did not reform slavery after the end of the American Civil War to be on the basis of debt collection, crime, protectionism, or parental rights to sell offspring, I would be...rather useless. And I would not like to be worthless."