2023-02-14: .rusalka came with me, and i cannot release heR
- Log: .rusalka came with me, and i cannot release heR
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Alma Stirner
- Where: The Silent Castle, Kaffeklubben Island
- Date: 2023-02-14
- Summary: Alma comes to keep Yuliana company, when she's left to her own devices for a while. Despite her best efforts, Yuliana keeps on hurting her. Now she knows why Alma's condition disturbs her so much... Yuliana isn't having much fun, any more. The worst part is: it's Yuliana's fault. At least she still gets cake. (Content warning: brainwashing)
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Things were tense, in the Silent Castle, from the fourth through to the twelfth. Yuliana fell into a coma, and woke not for a week. The Nega Force were retrieved, in that time -- Wen and Parminder, at least -- and they've been minding their own business, for a few days. Parminder's mostly been trying to sort Wen out. He did decide to kitbash it, 'it' in this case being 'deconditioning over a decade of indoctrination and some good old brainwashing'. Probably not that difficult. He looked up the WikiHow, don't worry about it.
(Oh, and Elisa had resources on it, but that's not as funny.)
Fortunately, though, on the morning of the twelfth -- not that the day cycle really means much here, still, they're currently trapped in a perpetually dark grey dawn as eternal polar night s l o w l y breaks in favour of eternal polar day -- Yuliana did wake, and Elisa's been treating her, since then. It's been a little while since then, by now... at least a solid day, even with how loose and metaphorical 'days' are this far North. Maybe two? Maybe two days, by now.
The sitting room, therefore, is dark, though it is lit by its glittering chandelier above, and the fireplace crackling in one wall. The stone walls are made colourful with green hanging tapestries, and on one of those comfortable couches sits Yuliana, a fur across her lap. Elisa has already arranged suitable clothing for her altered body; her top ties about her neck and leaves her back free, such that the black tendrils which rest on the armrests are untangled by cloth. (They are a little like snakes, and a little like hands, and a little like flowers, and a little of too much makes for something worse than the lot of them.) Her shaved head does nothing to conceal the fins behind her ears, boneless and webbed like wings or worse.
They have to rest on the armrests, because her lap is occupied with the head of a tiger. Sokrovishche -- little Sokrova -- knows better than to jump up on his more delicate mistress entirely, but he can still certainly express some affection in the typical feline fashion. (And, being fair, he's a VERY large cat. He is also a very green cat, with fetching black stripes. That's probably normal.) Yuliana pets him, smiling, and does not move to stand.
Much of -- or even the entire castle -- has been consumed by Yuliana's typical silence, since they returned, as if she were beside the Awakened personally here. There are few, if any, places to hide. But where it is worst (where it is best) is still, as ever...
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Alma hasn't spared a thought for Wen and Parminder yet; she sees no real reason to -- they matter to Yuliana, but she's still sort of smarting at Cascade and it's hard to separate that from her feelings about the rest of the non-Yuliana members of the Nega Force.
Her sense of time is totally shot, to boot; spending a long time heavily sedated and then moving straight to constant polar greyness doesn't do you a lot of favors on that front. She is awake right now, though. Elisa has informed her she's needed for Yuliana's sake, and so she's moved deeper and deeper into that silence.
Making her way from her own room to Yuliana's is almost meditative. It forces Alma to be in herself and only herself, and there's something about that that's... if not reassuring, certainly familiar, by now. She's here for Yuliana's sake alone.
... close to Yuliana, now, she moves to stand next to the couch. "Yulie," she starts, unsure what to say. She's changed so much -- and yet, she is so much the same...
"Can I sit...?" she asks, tentative. "I missed you so much... I don't know what's left for me outside of you, anymore, so --"
She cuts herself off. She really oughtn't be so needy; she's here for Yuliana's needs. Instead, she... allows herself to look down to Sokrova, giving the green cat a content little smile.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Alma might have a little trouble, given that the sitting room isn't the same as the main bedroom. That's the problem, with castles; they have more rooms than sense. This one, in particular, is easy to get lost in. ... something about the intent behind it.
One does tend to get where they're going eventually, though, and Alma has the added advantage of being able to move towards the sound of silence, ever mounting, ever pressuring. At the eye of that storm is Yuliana, the gentle queen of the Silent Castle.
She looks a little surprised, to see Alma entering, though. She at least enters without Yuliana having to direct her to enter. Give her that much credit, compared to some of the servants, here. "Rusalka," she greets her, in turn, and ignores the feeling in her gut as she welcomes her.
She can't really be called still as Alma advances that tentative question, but she's only moving in the worst ways, with the flapping of those fins behind her ears. Yuliana hasn't entirely figured them out. She did not give her an instruction manual, when She changed her to fit her whims and purposes.
"Come," she says, after a moment of silence, gesturing to the couch beside her. The tiger on her lap whuffs, flicking an ear towards her as he looks up to track her movements curiously. "He is Sokrova," Yuliana introduces him, scratching behind one of those green and black ears. "Sokrovishche, in full." For once, Yuliana's nickname isn't longer than the real deal.
(They say in Zaftra that suffering builds character, and so complicated names of affection are just another way to survive hard winters and hardened men.)
Yuliana is silent, for a moment more, as she looks down to her menacing lapcat. "I... regret that the Republic trapped you in the Institute," she settles on, delicately. "I will tear my price from them in blood. I assure you of that." Yuliana takes a breath, burying her fingers in green fur. (Sokrova 'chuffs'. It's a happy tiger sound.) "And... you bear no fault for what came of it. You cannot be held accountable for following my orders while I was... compromised." Yuliana sighs, melancholy. "I could blame you, I suppose... it might even be satisfying, for a few moments... but it would all be more evasion, in my mind. I understand I went to great lengths, to avoid blaming the Republic for what they had done."
She looks aside, to the crackling fireplace.
"No more. I will not be sated until their bones crack between my teeth."
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
A large green cat is still a cat, and Alma enjoys animals... well, the normal amount, at any rate. "Yulie!" she says again, now a little more enthused, once she's been greeted. She doesn't reach out to pet the tiger, but she does continue appreciating, as she sits down.
"I didn't really mind it. It was actually... I don't want to say it was nice, but it was only ever as bad as the okay parts of Flanagan," she admits. "I was mostly just sedated a lot. I can't be that mad about it... I could've used the sleep!" Though there's a laugh there, it does come a little bit at strain.
"... thank you, though. It's nice to know you care about me. I had... a bad dream -- about you throwing me away because someone asked."
It's hard for her to stop herself from looking at the ways in which Yuliana's body has changed, this close -- but does it really matter, she asks herself, as she lets her eyelids drift shut for a moment, settling in for the contentment of emptiness.
"If you want their bones between your teeth," she affirms, "just ask me and I'll put them there. I'd go get them myself, but..." Here, she reaches behind herself, rubbing at the back of her head and letting out an embarrassed 'nishishi~' laugh before admitting, "My track record for running off screaming on my own is pretty bad."
That... does draw her attention back, in turn, to following Yuliana's orders while she was compromised -- and not just the order to retreat. "I wish Cascade and Anita were here," she murmurs. "I miss them a lot... ahhh, but don't take that as me saying, 'I'm not fulfilled by just you,' or anything! I'm just needy."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana scowls, as Alma says her experience wasn't bad. Envy is her closest companion, and it spikes in her so easily. After all she endured -- after that HELL -- Alma can call her own experience okay?! "Good for you," she mutters, aggrieved filler text as she weighs how much she wants to absolve Alma, really.
Perhaps it's just more of that foulness of mood, speaking of the Institute, which causes her teeth to clench. "Bad dreams aren't uncommon, in Medical," she tells her, stiff. "I'd be unhappy if such a dreadful experience kept weighing on you. Occupy yourself with happier things... Rusalka. It better suits you."
She probably feels sick because she's been hating Medical herself, all morning. Evening. For the current span of time.
Sokrova chuffs, and pushes his head under Yuliana's hand, and she smiles faintly as she realises he's just trying to steady her. She wonders, briefly, whether Alma would be easier to deal with if she couldn't talk, just as her tiger doesn't.
... but she can't quite bring herself to tell her to be silent, either.
(There are enough silent dolls around here, with not an interesting discussion between them. Those wretched --)
No, she insists, to herself, as she pats her tiger.
Deliberately, she takes a breath.
"Perhaps we will go, in time," she tells her, instead. The divisions of 'we change, in a sentence: "Do not worry... we will tell you when their doom has come. But do not cry for Cascade," she insists, a stab of venom through her throat. "They would sooner kill me than cleave to me. If they've any wisdom at all, they will not appear again."
Anita... well, Yuliana can't rightly say she'd kill her, given the results of a fight long ago. Even when Yuliana destroyed the Nu Gundam and devastated Rena...
Sometimes, it's wiser to say nothing at all.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
"Yulie..." Rusalka startles, as she's muttered at. "They did a lot of horrible things to you... I bet they would have done them to me too, if they'd had a little more time." Then again -- the Federation has never been as interested in Alma's flavor of strangeness as Zeon was, and Zeon already tossed her aside.
Speaking of which, as Alma's told to occupy herself with happier things, she scoots another few inches in toward Yuliana -- almost close enough to be leaning on her, now -- and smiles at her. "Okay! As long as you're happy I'm here, I don't need to worry about it... ahahaha, I shouldn't have even brought it up!" She's told that neither should she cry for Cascade, and thoughts of the Cyber-Newtype slide out of relevance.
"The most important person to me is still you," she affirms, and there's a need in it that she can't quite remember why she felt was so important, even as she's saying it. "And you look like you're starting to feel a little better! It seems like a better place to be was all you really needed..."
She's not offput in the least by Yuliana's changes -- even though part of her, perhaps, nags at her that she should be offput, that something about all this is wrong. Yulie is still Yulie, after all, and she'd decided long ago that so many things could simply fade away in the light of everyone's shared humanity.
(... what's a few extra appendages between friends?)
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Mm," Yuliana hums, noncommittal, when Alma assures her she wouldn't have been spared forever. A better person might not voice their most miserable thoughts, but this is Yuliana, who mutters: "Why couldn't it have been you instead...?"
Why did she have to suffer, while Alma got to nap?
It isn't fair. It isn't fair!
"... never mind." She takes her breaths to steady herself, though, and even gives a little gesture of indication to Sokrova that Alma is fine to bother. He promptly streeetches his neck out to sniff at her. "He doesn't bite," she assures Alma, "unless I ask him to." That might not be quite as assuring. Perhaps he can distract Alma for a moment, though, as Yuliana tries to sort through her jealous anger to get to what she has to say.
"... I am... pleased you're here with me," she settles on, after a moment. "It is good, now, that you are well." Isn't that the sort of thing Elisa tells them...? ... Yuliana isn't nearly as good at this. "It was -- hard, when my superior officer betrayed me." Devi even said Pham wanted her to be conscious, for the torture she visited on her. Doesn't that imply she could have been sedated, saved all that pain, even if she'd never wake up again..?
She takes another breath. "I... took some comfort from you, then." And not even in the way which removes her comfort from the universe, probably. "Though I couldn't be afraid..."
Just like Alma can't be --
Yuliana shuts her eyes, and her lips press tightly together.
"It's not your fault," she tries again, swimming upstream against the waterfall of her own malice. "It's not your fault. I'm happy with you. Look, Sokrova likes you, too." He's a friendly terrifying green tiger!
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
'Why couldn't it have been you instead,' Rusalka hears, and she believes it. It is, after all, her duty to bear burdens Yuliana cannot; the burdens Yuliana was given clearly extend beyond her capacity. She'll have to do more for her, her fairy reflects, and there is some joy in the work. Even after the 'nevermind,' the thought persists.
"Oh, good!" Alma says, gently but enthusiastically petting Sokrova, finally allowing herself to get more fully comfortable. "Ehehe... that is one both of us went through," Alma reflects, at the mention of betrayal by a superior officer. Should she have been more upset with Barbara, all those years ago...?
"You and Sokrova like me?" comes the question -- and then a grin splits her face, and she laughs with genuine enthusiasm. "Both of you...! Aaah, I'm so spoiled!" She gives Sokrova a few more enthusiastic pets, and then finally does allow herself to cuddle up to Yuliana.
... it's a little harder with what's changed about her, but that doesn't stop Alma. She's a 20-year veteran of the cuddling thing.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana, after a moment's hesitation, puts a reassuring arm around Alma --
-- and not one of those snakelike tentacles, because she knows they're hungry, and she doesn't entirely trust her labile mood not to suggest they follow through.
"You're such a sweet girl," she says, still a shade downcast. "But what you'd think if..." Well, if she could really think about it, Alma wouldn't be so kind to her. Wasn't that the whole point of forcing the issue? And now she has... it won't be long, Yuliana reflects, morose, before Alma's baying for the marrow of her bones just the same.
It doesn't matter. There's no way she could harm her, even once she learns the truth. If Elisa thought there were any possibility at all... well, Yuliana supposes she wouldn't survive for long.
It doesn't matter, she tells herself, again.
"It doesn't matter," she tells Alma, and that works a little better.
"... you said you missed Anita, didn't you? It would be troublesome to keep her here... her ship would soon come calling. But... perhaps you could go and see her," she supposes, one wretched thing she can instruct her on. It's stupid, of course. Rosetta has cast her lot in with her crew of abominations; she's her enemy, too. But, Alma -- "I should want you back, of course," Yuliana adds, with a moment's sharpness. "... but I scarcely see why you ought to be confined to the island, should you want to take a day trip."
Don't think, of course, that Yuliana is upset she's under house arrest. She's the one who promised Elisa she'd seek permission before she left! It's a normal precaution to make, when she's so fragile, after such terrible injury. Her orders to Alma are in no way a reflection of her own bindings.
Anyway, it's not like she's any better. She asked for this, and even when she tried to go back on it...
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
"Aaah, it's fine. It's okay to be gloomy when you're going through something!" Alma says, and it's hard for even her to be sure how much her feelings on the matter are colored by having just been told that anything less than that 'doesn't matter.' She settles into Yuliana's grasp, letting herself forget the rest of her ties to the world.
She can't feel them, right now. Yuliana, on the other hand, is quite real -- perhaps even the only real thing Rusalka perceives.
Yuliana tells her she can go see Anita, and Alma pouts. "She doesn't get it -- she thinks there's more to my life than you. She won't listen -- and I don't... I'm not --" What she tries to find is, 'I like her,' and what comes out is, "I don't want her to get hurt, in all this." Never mind where the hurt originates.
"Still, maybe you're right! I guess I could see her sooner or later..." Here, Rusalka begins at last to plan for such a thing. "I should find a new mobile weapon to help you with, too. The REA didn't really give me something I could handle -- and now that's gone, too..."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"It is," she agrees, gaze vague as she looks down at the tiger who backs off to curl at their feet, and she supposes Alma's right enough about that. She's upset because she went through something upsetting. That's entirely natural.
She listens to Alma struggle, and the disgust wells in her stomach again, fingers twitching at Alma's arm. She remembers all the excuses she made, for her country. All the ways she found to avoid saying the words...
She focuses on the easy answers, first. "It was... wrong, of them," defined across from 'us', and she hears her hesitation with another bitter spike, "to demand you use something so unsuited to you. The girl could help you -- little Sharochka. Or one of my associates, perhaps. ... the other ones," she adds, after a moment.
"I've been assisting Celestial Being in secret for some time now, you see," she explains, because she doesn't fear Alma knowing these secrets. "I suppose that makes me a traitor, but given what they did, I don't suppose there's much to betray. Given your association with me... it would be reasonable to assist you." Given that Alma is essentially an extension of her will, that is.
Which is fine, actually.
At length, she sighs. "You need not harm your prior associate," she assures Alma, "save to the extent that she actively impedes us. ... there's no need for you to kill her, either," she thinks to add, recalling those hot, angry memories of battle. "Her ignorance is a sad thing, but many are ignorant of the truth we bring. You can only demonstrate the truth through your own belief... this is why it is so important to believe in something, Rusalka."
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Yuliana's alliance with Celestial Being would have been cause for concern not that long ago. As it is, Rusalka simply lets it slide into her thoughts without much in the way of further concern. "I'll have to get in contact with their mobile weapon teams," Rusalka agrees, and there is so much that becomes easier with the clarity of a task before her.
Rusalka remains still, as she cuddles up to Yuliana, though. The impulses to provide genuine warmth are fainer -- surely it is because the ordeal has been tiring for her too, but the companionship she provides is a terribly motionless sort. Were it not for her chattiness about any topic that comes into her head (so long as she's fairly certain it's at least vaguely related to Yuliana) she'd probably not be moving at all.
... she feels terribly about imposing so much on Yuliana, when -- as she's observed -- it's Yuliana who's going through so much. "What else can I do to help you, Yulie?" comes her next question, instead. She's offered too much specificity, Rusalka thinks -- what she needs to be for Yuliana now is whatever Yuliana happens to need.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
She is still, and she is, still.
Another twitch of her fingers, then, is all that announces the first response she chokes down by some base miracle -- that Alma's wretched fawning is the least helpful thing she could possibly imagine! She wants to yell at her, of course, but it wouldn't do anything.
There's nothing she can do.
"Try to think just a single independent thought in that vapid little head of yours, would you? For me?" She doesn't quite have the self-restraint not to mutter that, though, cruel as it stands. But she -- flinches, strangely enough, after she says it. "No, I mean... don't tear yourself up about it." Ugh, she's going to, isn't she? She's going to have one of those stupid attacks of hers and hurt herself like an idiot with no other way to cope.
(Her fingers lift from Alma's shoulder, the side of her hand resting against it instead, so she can scratch at the inside of her thumb.)
"I just want something to be normal," she confesses, sotto voce, as those boneless wings mantle over her ears.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Before, these sorts of episodes would, indeed, send Rusalka spiraling -- but she's been instructed to occupy her thoughts with other things, and Yuliana's void encompasses so much, is so vast, is so oppressive. Here, now -- all she gives her at first is, "Don't worry, Yulie... I'm stronger than that! I can always be as strong as the whole team needs me to be..."
Her brow furrows for a moment as she says that, and something about it gnaws at her. Sokrova gets a few careful scratches on the head as Alma tries to figure out what it is she's even trying to say in the first place, but the impulse slides away from her for now, as Yuliana's hands do as well.
Normal... what can she do to make something normal for Yuliana. What can Alma Stirner do to make Yuliana's world more normal. "... I could go make you some cake! You, um... do still need to eat, right?" She has to assume that Yuliana still eats food, but she can't be sure, given the circumstances.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Yes," she affirms the attempt, too far away to examine it, "you are strong. Well done."
What she recognises from that statement -- it's the desire for strength. (To be strong enough to avoid termination.) That's the desire she affirms. What little good it does her.
There's no making this better. It can only get worse. Perhaps she'd even deserve that... is what she'd tell herself, normally, before she gladly laid down to a torturous death.
Disgusting.
She blinks, looking to Alma, startled out of her own morose thoughts. "Cake...?" She frowns, glancing down to those things not quite like snakes, at her other side. "Yes -- yes, I still eat food," she insists, and adds an extra word to Alma's question in the process.
She puts on a smile.
"That would be lovely. Thank you," Alma, "Rusalka."
Perhaps it's kinder this way. Perhaps she can decide all this... was just what someone else did with her body. Or perhaps it's just what she's expected to do, as the curtain rises, the same as they've done each night since opening. Perhaps the cruelty is the point.
Elisa would want her to hurt, too.