2022-11-26: I ran from the truth, and it just made me tired.
- Cast: Leina Ashta, Puru Two
- Where: Londenion Colony, Side 1
- Date: U.C. 0096 11 26
- Summary: Leina Ashta has finally got ahold of Puru Two after the latter lost control of her senses during 2022-11-11:_Unicorn_and_Dragon_~SHATTERING~. She comes to check on the girl's health, and finds that it isn't particularly stellar.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
In between the Minovsky interference that's been rife after the attack, a series of text messages finally slip through.
>hey callisto its me
>banagher told me what happened
>can we meet up? pls?
She tries to make it sound informal, casual, but concerned. However, the fact of the matter is she's terrified...
... not of Callisto, definitely not, but of her disappearing. Again. Last time it took eight years to see her again.
Who knows how long it might be this time? If ever?
Elpeo dying from afar gave her a strong anxiety over this kind of separation, that maybe it'll be the last time.
It was a significant relief when she got an answer, as she took a shuttle to the Colony's location. Leina arrives dressed simply, in a cream colored jumper and a pair of skinny jeans, some faded tennis shoes. She double checks her text messages and then...
... knocks, "Callisto?" ...waiting, with a certain anxiety welling in her throat, leaving a lump. That she could feel her here is a great relief. However it did not fully remove the worry that what happened might drive her away in the end.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
*Bzzzzzznnnn*
A black-framed personal phone vibrates atop the dresser in a dark room. The screen briefly flicks on, then off again after a moment passes.
*Bzzzzzznnnn*
Again.
*Bzzzzzznnnn*
Puru Two sits atop a perfectly functional bed, legs crossed. She holds a length of bandage tape between her teeth and is tightening it around her knuckles, the curtains drawn and the lights off. This seems like an activity you should be able to see for, but then, not everything she does is logical, these days.
Minutes pass before she makes the logical choice: the anxiety of not answering will soon outweigh whatever the contents of the actual message are, so go pick up your phone, you idiot.
>> yes of course
>> sorry hands kind of hurt after the fight
>> not great
Her replies sent, the clone sinks back into her unmade bed and pulls a pillow over her face with a frustrated, vindictive noise. It's like an oily film is coating the sea of her mind, poisoning her every interaction and her every thought. Everything filtered through that fear, that realization, that took place outside Side 3 not so long ago. But she's licked her wounds long enough, right? People are beginning to fear. To wonder.
***
The door to the girl's quarters are spartan, but there's no mistaking the number. Leina's knock is not answered immediately, nor is any press of the buzzer. Either there's nobody moving inside, or the insulation is so good that she can't hear any footfalls from within.
A beat.
The door's light flicks green, and it soon slides open. There stands the first sister-clone of Elpeo Puru, her fingers and knuckles covered in white bandage tape. She has a band-aid on her cheek, but otherwise is in remarkably good shape for someone who took as much of a beating in the cockpit as she did. Her face is in a neutral, almost frozen state. It's as if seeing Leina reminds her to enable the animations again.
"Leina, hi. Were you waiting long? You want to come in, or something...?" she asks. Voice a little distant, but not... too bad? It's hard to tell.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina stands there waiting, and waiting. She does not yet knock again, as Callisto feels close - and does not feel like she's moving further away. When the door slides open, there's a certain relief, that melts back into worry the moment she looks at her face.
Not from the injuries, but from the neutral expression.
Callisto asks her a few things. Leina stands perfectly still, other than the movement in her chest, and in her throat.
And then all of a sudden she just steps forward and throws her arms around her. Not too tightly in case she's injured in the ribs or back, but just tight enough to know she's there, she's real, that she's not sleeping on her shuttle and dreaming.
"Was I waiting long? What kind of question is that?" She whispers, and there's the smallest hint of a tease, "Dummy. What's a few minutes - hours - days longer?"
And then there's a shift from tease to pure sentimentality, "You're here. That's what's important. And - yeah."
She takes a half step back, but remains loosely in a hug, as she smiles, her sea green eyes just trying to take in her expression, "There's nothing I'd like more right now than to come in."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callisto seems steady enough on her feet, or perhaps a little too steady. Her heels gird against the shifting of her weight as Leina's arms wrap around her.
-- CENTRE OF GRAVITY DISRUPTED: ADJUSTING
There's no cracking noise or cringe of discomfort from the clone, so it seems the damage must be limited to her hands. "Oof." she can't help herself, out of surprise more than anything else. "You're not hurt too bad, then...?"
-- DAMAGE ASSESSMENT: MINIMAL
She is not wearing the uniform of a Londo Bell officer or a hospital patient, or anything, just a colony-store brand black turtleneck and slacks. Very regular. Very normal.
"I'm... not going anywhere in a hurry." Callisto says with a wry smirk, voice not too loud. It's a quiet hallway, and all. She gives Leina a gentle pat on the back and steps to one side, "Come sit down then, we should catch up..."
It looks perfectly tidy inside. A little spartan, perhaps, but that's a provided military dormitory for you. But perhaps it matches a similar emptiness of its current occupant...
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
It's not too surprising to her, how steady Callisto is on her feet, the only thing that she can sense as off is the mechanical, neutral way she was looking at her before. She can only imagine what she's been thinking, what she's gone through. "Finished PT a few days ago. I'm not one hundred percent..." Her eyes look upon Callisto's hands, "... but who is?"
As she pats her on the back, "... I admit I'm happy to hear that." She steps past her down the hallway, into the spartan military dorm like room.
It's so empty, but she makes herself at home anyway, sitting down at the bedside, and pulling her bag off her shoulder as she rummages through it. "Have you been eating well? I brought you something, just in case." As she actually reaches into her bag, and takes out a bento box of food. It might make sense if Callisto remembers her ex-boyfriend is Shiro Kabuto, that she cooks a lot of Japanese style lunches.
Her eyes slip over to her, searchingly and-
"We don't have to talk about what happened if you don't want to." She tells her, not one to walk on eggshells, keeping her tone gentle, affirming, "There's no need to force it, or make you relive it, or any of those things."
She offers her the box...
"We can talk about anything. Anything at all."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
"Oh, how've I been eating...? There's a place for officers to eat, so I've just been going there. It's okay. I don't feel like cooking much with my hands all sore." Callisto muses as the door closes behind the two of them, the ambient hiss of hydraulics briefly pulsing as it does.
The bed is perfectly made, not that its owner seems to mind as Leina takes a seat on it. Even with injuries from punching the controls, it seems military training ensures your bedsheets are crisp and your clothes are folded at all times. "Thanks for bringing something nicer." she adds after a moment, eyeing the box of home-cooked goods. There's a soft rustling as she then moves to fill two glasses with water. Her mouth is dry, she must have slept for too long without drinking.
Silence reigns for the next few moments as Callisto paces around, setting down glasses, et cetera. Putting off the inevitable, which Leina pursues with pinpoint accuracy. Her movements still, then slow.
-- CAUTION: INTENT DETECTED
A feeling, more than anything, roils upwards and outwards from the girl's mind and soul. It isn't like a tidal wave, crashing through everything; it is a turgid and freezing mist, like someone has left the freezer open on a summer's day. It is dread, given form.
She turns to look at Leina, wearing a difficult expression. It is a mask of trying not to look scared, but also trying not to look emotionless. The mask of someone who isn't sure how to wear their face anymore.
"I don't... want to not talk about it." is the answer she goes with. The ebb of the frigid feeling of long-buried horrors surfacing throbs with her pulse, creeping through the extra-sensory world like a spiderweb of cracks. "I wanted to talk about it with everyone... really."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"... Hey, you're welcome. I'll whip up something nice for you later."
She says with a sort of casualness of someone who uses food as a way of showing she cares for people. And she is a good cook in that sense, she even made it work on a shoestring budget back in that Junkyard slum when getting milk was an uphill climb some days.
As Callisto grabs the two glasses to fill, Leina just lets her walls fully drop, as she feels the freezing chill of that psychic dread. It feels almost physical, the way it causes her to still, then slow down as if plodding through the dread with some difficulty.
Worry knits her brow, and then...
... she reveals that she wants to talk about it, despite all that horror, and dread, and uncertainty of who she even is anymore - at least to how Leina is parsing her face and lining it up to her feelings.
"Okay. Then I want to talk about it with you..." She tells her, then actually starts first, because she wants to ease her into it, rather than sit in silence and put it all on her to talk, "...I was on the Ra Mari when it happened. I had this flash, this prediction that I needed to be there. And so I was. Eight and I felt... something truly horrible had gone wrong during this attack on the Frontier Colony. Then the Unicorn came hurtling in not too long after. Banagher told me what happened after Kamille patched him up. Then I fielded... telling everyone else."
Those sea green eyes are just awash with sympathy and concern, "I didn't tell them everything - promise. I know not... everyone knows. I said just enough that they'd understand. All of them want to talk about it with you. Everyone of them want to see you again."
She folds her hands over the top of the bento box rather than holding it out into space again, "Just like I do."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Ah, the one-two punch of guilt atop the dread. When Leina mentions the ship's name, the Ra Mari, there is guilt. Guilt that she has not been there, where she belongs. Guilt that her friends and allies are constantly being harried, being hurt. Guilt that she does not fit amongst them, or so she feels. Callisto winces involuntarily.
"What did you two... feel?" she asks, pacing slowly past her bed. Towards a nightstand, unable to keep from tidying. Must remain in motion. She aligns a small, electronic lamp to sit more perfectly square with the centre of the furnishing. "Just a feeling that something was wrong?" bandaged fingers linger on the edge of the light. Cobalt eyes stare blankly at the dead bulb.
Callisto turns, then, arms by her sides. She picks up a small remote from her nightstand. "I meant to tell them..." she mutters, sourly. Notes of the old Axis accent creeping into her tone. "But kept making excuses. I told Arriety. I meant to tell the others..." her thumb sinks onto the touch-sensitive button emblazoned with a snowflake. The air conditioning hums on.
Food and water are forgotten, tongue feeling thick in her mouth. "But now--what? That scumbag wearing Aznable's mask reached into my brain and PULLED--" she reaches up and grabs ahold of her own forehead, staring now at Leina with pupils having grown dull and frighteningly large. "--something loose--" each word is accompanied by a stuccato burst of emotional resonance, crackling over her skull and fingers like scarlet lightning.
And like that... it is gone. The fire disappears, leaving only tiredness in its wake. "... and turned me into a puppet, dancing on Glemy Toto's old strings. I don't want to turn those weapons on anyone, so... that's why I'm just rotting away here. Hiding."
Another beat.
"I'm ... really scared. That's why."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
The guilt is palpable. It wasn't intended, but in the end it's inevitable isn't it?
BGM Change: Regression (Instrumental) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xZ81Z-Dj4g
Her eyes follow her past the bed as her cobalt eyes focus on the light, "That ... something awful happened, to you." Her eyes watch her as she moves to the nightstand, she is an observer in these moments. A listener. How she meant to tell them. The anguish at the idea of Full Frontal pulling something out of her, those far too large pupils, as that staccato emotional burst of scarlet lightning causes her to rub the side of her temples. She's taken her walls down. There is no filter. And she does not put them back up.
She accepts it. All of it.
Tiredness, over being his puppet. How she's scared, how she doesn't want to turn those weapons on anyone, and so she stands still, stagnating in these thoughts.
When she's finished, Leina puts the box to one side. Then pats the bed beside her, "... Want to sit with me? You can keep pacing if you want."
If she does, she reaches over and takes a single hand, squeezing it. If she doesn't, she just keeps her eyes on her, seeming unoffended.
"... There's no shame at telling people at your own pace. Noone is entitled to that part of you. Not even your best friends, or your loved ones." Leina lifts jumper, and the blouse, showing the right side of her abdomen, and the ugly scar there. Its margins are uneven, it definitely was badly infected, and didn't heal well. "Most girls at my school haven't seen this. Even my closest friends. I hide it. I don't change in front of them."
She lets it fall back in place, as something awful rises up to the surface in her mind, like this darkness that she keeps hidden beneath her sea - deeper and deeper. "They don't need to know about that time when I gave up trying to escape. When I just submitted to doing what he wanted. When I was truly 'his' - a prize piece in his collection. ... I still can't look at myself in the mirror some days. And I definitely can't smile looking at my reflection. I feel like I'm still... his."
There's this deep breath, as her shoulders rise up and down, "I know it's not the same thing, but... Banagher looks so happy at the thought of me playing a piano, like his mother used to, and I can't tell him that I panic even hearing Beyer sometimes." She gives her a helpless look, "It's not the same thing-"
She reiterates, because she feels her pain isn't even a fraction of Callisto's and yet, she uses them as a frame of reference to try and understand, however there's a sense of tinny anxiety in her tone, of light panic, "-I don't have to worry about hurting anyone but myself - seeing him disappointed when he finally figures out I can't. He didn't put me in those machines. Noone can say some phrase and force me to play. It's not..."
She tells her quietly, "... it's not the same, what you're going through feels like a scar that's just so much deeper..." She tries her hardest not to look down towards her midriff, "... than on the surface."
Pause.
"I'm... going to tell you something. A secret." Her sea green eyes look at Callisto, "About Full Frontal. I spoke to him once, he came upon Mineva and Banagher, they put me on speaker." She frowns lightly, but takes the time to gauge her reaction. This is difficult, and in a sense it's a gamble. Callisto would feel her extreme anxiety. She actually has the recording with her, but she fears that Callisto hearing his voice right now would - be horrible for her, "... He's a Cyber Newtype Callisto. They used Char's Psycoframe, and imprinted some of his memories and feelings on him. He regards himself as empty - but to be some 'vessel' of Spacenoid Will. But its a lie... the Commander of the Sleeves?"
There's this sense of despondency about her, deep, about the way things just don't change, how its another turn of the cycle. However, she feels she deserves the truth, "He's under the control of someone else. I don't know who."
She seems, scared... herself. "He knew about me too. Just by, hearing a few things, he figured it out. And Sayla went to great lengths to bury... that stuff. Whoever's behind him just has really good notes on all of us... and I think he's just well-read."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Like puppets, tangled in their strings...
The girl with the orange hair lingers on her feet, briefly stepping onto the tips of her toes for just one moment. Yes, isn't that right? You're not the only one who wanted to give up, who was puppeted by that abominable man. The thought is unspoken but evident, eyes widening briefly, pupils focusing.
... and it all traces back to him ...
Leina's talk of having lived, for a time, in complete submission to the whims and wishes of Glemy Toto fills her with such an indignant rage that it shatters the disassociative fear that gripped her heart. Rather than be carried away on the current of fear and pain that Leina carries, it somehow stops her in her tracks. Wake, you foolish girl! You're not the only one suffering!
Her eyes linger on Leina's scar. Why? You've seen plenty of injury, even death. You're no stranger to pain, girl.
(She knows why.)
... I hate him still.
even in death.
"I didn't... remember." she mutters, hand straying to her forehead. "That you were also that man's tool, that he used you, tried to sculpt you..." The subconscious wave of emotional pressure simply ceases to be as lucidity washed over her like the initial burst of a cold shower. Her gaze is level again, her posture rightens. The girl with many names gingerly sits down next to Leina as invited, suddenly very tired.
And she listens. Part of being a good listener, for now, is that she does not interrupt. Not even to ask questions--she wishes to have the whole context, first. And when Leina has spoken of this secret, only then does she open her mouth.
"I don't... really... understand. Not all of it." she admits quickly enough, and doesn't even sound upset at it. Callisto turns her hand over in Leina's, squeezing gently. She's back to her senses, definitely. "I mean, I don't understand how it works. I guess I understand what you mean, though."
The truth of it takes the venomous wind out of her sails. Just a bit.
"That the guy who nearly broke my mind is just another puppet himself, huh...?"
She doesn't seem entirely sure how to take that. Not straight away. "I guess, there is one thing I want... to say, to you--first, I mean. Because I think you might understand."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
I hate him too.
In that moment of empathic connection, of understanding without misunderstanding.
But what I hate more, is knowing he cared for me in his own way...
... making it impossible for hate to be the only thing I feel.
"It's okay." She says, validating of that lack of memory. "It's... hard for me to think of it as comparable." She whispers, even though - it is comparable. Callisto herself says how it is in her own words.
"You suffered so much at his hands."
When she sits down, a hand squeezes hers. "It's okay. You don't have to. I was in such a different place than you. There's... many things I don't understand about what you've gone through - just like the things I didn't understand back then."
She sounds faintly abstracted in these moments, but is trying to ground herself in the warmth and pressure of the hand she's holding, "I didn't understand Elpeo's feelings until it was much too late..."
She tells her this, not because Elpeo is someone she sees as a stand in for her, but because she was someone who was Glemy's puppet too, molded and shaped into a weapon, "...and... I don't think she ever understood mine. She saw me being treated like what seemed like a princess to her - while she was a weapon. Saw me as the source of her problems... as someone who had what she wanted, rather than him as the cause of her suffering. To this day I don't... I don't know if he did that on purpose or not, made me a distraction to keep her under his control."
A bitterness, deeper than her tone enters into her words, as she feels a phantom pain against her throat, like the icy touch of steel, "It wouldn't surprise me."
However, even for all the things they can't understand about the other's experiences, the common ground remains, of being controlled by that man, made puppets of a different sort - even if one way is more literal. Even if it haunts them in such different ways.
There's a tilt of her head into a nod, and a frown, "Yeah. Just like us." Even if she doesn't think the scale is comparable, she can at least recognize herself as his puppet.
Then she says she wants to say something, to her first, as she thinks she'd understand. And Leina shifts subtly in her position on the bed, her thighs and the center line of her body shifting towards Callisto, her neck turning just enough to look her in the eye.
"I'll try... I want to understand."
She wants to understand, the perspective of someone she thinks of as her little sister.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
"Before this... business with the masked guy happened, I was already starting to have some doubts." Callisto begins. Her voice doesn't waver, or even sound all that nervous. The finality of admitting it comes easier than she expected. "About this whole thing... I mean, with me. Callisto. 'Callisto.'" she over-emphasizes each and every syllable the second time, tongue lingering on the 'o'.
"I don't think what I said that day was... a lie. I don't think it was wrong. If Banagher didn't tell you--" she glances up again, meeting Leina's gaze with her own. "--that I think I can't... stop being Puru Two. I can't not be Puru Two." the words linger on her tongue again, even if these ones are slightly more bitter to come to terms with.
"New name, new identity... new life..." she raises a hand briefly, fingers curling before her face. As if it belonged to someone else, she observes it dispassionately. "But I can't, you know? I tried to push that name, that part of me, into a corner and say: look, I'm better now!" the fingers curl into a fist. "I'm not the little lab-rat I used to be! I'm a good Cyber-Newtype, I swear! But..."
And the hand drifts back down to the bedsheets, where it lay still. "Look where all that running got us. Some jackal in a goofy mask plucked my conditioning out like it was brand new. I can't... ignore that."
There's a sigh.
"I want to be honest with you, and your brother, and all of our friends--that I'm not just Callie, the spaced-out girl from the engineering club, I'm also... Puru Two. And trying to throw it away made everything worse."
Her peice said, Puru Two bites her lip softly. "Guh." she adds. "That's hard to say straight."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
As she begins, there's some uncertain in Leina's eyes, in her feelings. She doesn't know what's about to happen. What she's about to say. However, she can tell its coming easily, so she waits. And gaze met, she hears the truth. That even if Callisto isn't a lie, she can't stop being Puru-2.
If there's anger in her feelings in that moment, it isn't directed at Callisto. If there's sadness, that's because there is. However, she still doesn't interrupt, doesn't try to deny its true. She listens to her, her eyes closing briefly, as if she were simply trying to absorb the emotions of the moment, to process them, as her eyes reopen to look back at her face, with the hand curled in front of her.
The honesty is like a knife. However, she knows its not one wielded maliciously. In the end, it's more like a knife she's wielding upon herself, and she's only having to feel it second hand.
It's hard to say straight?
Leina sits there in silence for a few long moments, then shifts - removing her hand from hers putting her arms around her, one on the back of her head if Puru-2 lets her, drawing her down to her shoulder. That hand rubbing so gently that it barely disturbs the hairs, in just that faint back and forth.
"How long have you been working yourself up to that, that it came so easily - yet was so hard at the same time?" Leina whispers quietly, "If you don't think you can stop being Puru-2, then I accept that you're Puru-2. ... Because that's who you think you are. You can be both things, you can be the Callisto - Callie, you can be Puru-2."
There's a lengthy pause, and there's this tenuous smile, "You can be many things. You're a whole sea unto yourself, with all of its complexity. The way I think of you - you're something else, besides Callie and Puru-2."
As she gives her a fond look, full of affection, "And that is my precious little sister. You don't have to accept that. And you don't have to be that. You are who you believe you are - and who you want to be. Not who I want you to be." Her smile grows, "I'll still be there anyway, no matter what - because Callie? Puru-2? You are both those things..."
A beat.
"... but you're also so much more than that to me."