12 Monkeys (TV Series)

Thief (2017)

James Callis: Athan, The Witness

Quotes 

• Athan : [voiceover]  My days are spent living amongst ghosts. Tedious. Predictable. I'm just an observer. Connoisseur. Traveler. I've seen society rise... and fall. As I'm Primary - or some variation of - I have visions. Often of how those I'm closest to will meet their end. I find that freedom is the best way to cope with my particular affliction. Without this freedom, those visions that have plagued me - my demons - my curse of foresight... I fear I might go mad. Fortunate for me, I possess the means to stay sane. The ability to travel anywhere, any when, at will.

  [his splinter vest malfunctions] 

  Athan : Well, that's unfortunate.

• Athan : There will come a time, one imagines, when even the simplest grocer will stock medicines that could have saved a millenia of corpses. You, um... you had a staph infection. A simple infection. Nothing more.

  Eliza : How long have I been here?

  Athan : Couple of days. I had to give you a sedative. You were lucid briefly. You put up a hell of a fight.

  Eliza : And did you have your way with me?

  Athan : No, that's not part of the cure. And I find you far more interesting conscious.

• Dr. Cassandra Railly : My patient - the night he came in, there was an H1N1 panic in the garment district. 200-plus people in the ER. Everyone with a cough thought they were gonna die of the flu. When you're busy like that, it feels like time is running from you. And you just need it to stop. You just need everything to stop. You need people to stop bleeding, stop choking, for their lungs to stop filling with fluid, to stop crying, to stop screaming! -... - It doesn't. It doesn't stop.

  Athan : No, it doesn't stop. It takes, and it runs.

  Dr. Cassandra Railly : Like a thief.

  Athan : You speak about time as if it were an enemy.

  Dr. Cassandra Railly : We can call ourselves healers all we want, but all we're really doing is just fighting the clock. And it always wins.

• Eliza : Where am I?

  Athan : My home. I told the nurses I'd take you to a proper hospital.

  Eliza : No. No, this is no hospital.

  Athan : A hospital, by my definition, is a place where you have the least chance of dying.

• Athan : It's a real shame about the mask. You have a face Lazarus himself would rise to see.

  Eliza : See, of the two of us, I suspect that your mask is older, more finely crafted. But no man's charm is so practiced who knows himself well.

• Eliza : [holding Athan at gunpoint]  You're misplaced, sir.

  Athan : You have no idea.

  Eliza : You've no fear of a pistol at your back.

  Athan : In my experience, they're inconvenient from any direction.

• Athan : Why the mask?

  Eliza : If you're promising death, best to look the part.

  Athan : Must be dreadful to wake up on the table and wonder whether it's a demon or a doctor tending to you.

  Eliza : Worse for them not to wake at all.

  Athan : So you're a doctor yourself, then.

  Eliza : [laughs contemptuously]  Oh, right, we are. Only men-folk for the sawbones, women only fit for cleaning up the shite and piss.

  Athan : Please don't make assumptions. The history I've seen is one of great women sung badly by clumsy men.

• Athan : You dined here before?

  Eliza : Of course not. Why?

  Athan : You feign ignorance. But I decipher from your carriage that you are not from the slums that you serve. The past is merely a shadow that the present cannot hide. It stalks us.

• Eliza : I'm an educated, learned woman, blessed with a pretty face, and most men wish to either strike me, or bed me. Now, despite all opportunity and provocation, you didn't attempt the first, which makes me believe you desire the latter.

  Athan : Well...

  Eliza : But you're right. I did escape my privilege with just enough education to help those who had none. And with a little bit o' the old cockney so they'd trust me with a needle. So given the choices that I've made in my life, you should understand that your, your lifestyle doesn't interest me, your ways of purchase do not impress me. But I do rightly thank you for the nurses, and I shall return them to you filthy and haggard.

  [she gets up to leave] 

  Eliza : Please. Enjoy the beauty of your decadence.

• Athan : There are... other places where... where a woman like yourself would never be made to feel less than anything...

  Eliza : Oh, fantasies!

  Athan : If I could show you... if I could take you there... would you come with me?

  Eliza : We've no world, Athan, no hour, but the one that we're given. And only here are we meant to serve and be tested.

  Athan : [groans]  Yes, but... what if you could see the puzzle from above? And then... and then you could rearrange all those pieces?

  Eliza : Then you would be a god, and no man or woman were ever meant to be such.

• Athan : [voiceover]  And now, I finally understand what I must do. Return to the place of my birth, and become the demon I have always feared. And I will create others. The Army of the 12 Monkeys. And then shall come a plague. So that time itself can be broken. So that one day, we will have forever. When the forest is red.