2023-07-16: .don't expect me to be fair when you're saying there's no permanencE
- Log: .don't expect me to be fair when you're saying there's no permanencE
- Cast: Eight York, Yuliana Kafim
- Where: The Ra Mari II / The Silent Castle (Video Call)
- Date: 2023-07-16
- Summary: Eight calls Yuliana to deliver the news of Permanence Pasternak's death. Yuliana... does not take it well, though Eight takes her anger very well indeed. Though Yuliana's being terribly unfair about it all, she's able to give Eight some leads on Permanence's family, anyway... along with plenty of insults over Eight's decisions.
<Pose Tracker> Eight York has posed.
This is a duty that Eight could definitely leave to someone else--but she won't. It's her place, to inform someone of what happened to Permanence... and given who she's informing, she wouldn't leave it to someone else. So Eight has put back on her maternity uniform for a formal video chat.
She is in her quarters, in the office that she still uses; the background behind her will be shelving primarily, and a partition with the 3SA's symbol on it, specifically for video calls. She is of serious expression.
And she has gotten Yuliana Kafim's number.
The Captain of the Ra Mari II--at the time of Permanence Pasternak's death--sends ahead a message, first, over the same lines she'll be using. 'I have an important matter to discuss with you by video', she will say.
And then the call.
Eight York waits for Yuliana to pick up... or not.
They'll see.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
'How did you get this number?', was the very friendly text reply, eventually followed by: 'Fine.'
Yuliana reclines in a sitting-room; the walls in the background are made of stone and bathed in sunlight streaming in from some window or another, and the couch she's on is all fine crushed velvet. She is dressed in black robes; she's thrown a purple scarf about her neck, to be presentable to someone else. There is nothing... visually strange about her appearance.
Save for her eyes, now endless, and the way her smile is a little too sharp and cluttered as she accepts the call.
"How wonderful to see you," she says, though it isn't. "What is the occasion, today, mm? Come to invite me to your baby shower?" What kind of gift would Yuliana even give a young mother?!
(Probably a spindle. She's a horrible woman.)
<Pose Tracker> Eight York has posed.
Eight doesn't answer the question! It's great.
Nor does Eight comment on the strangeness of Yuliana's appearance. Instead, she maintains a formal posture, sitting up straight, and listens to Yuliana's lovely conversational opening.
It's about right.
"Would you come if I did?" Eight can't help but wonder. "...No, this isn't just a social call." Yuliana is sitting down; Eight isn't sure she's going to care, but...
"I'm calling in my capacity as Captain of the Ra Mari II." She pauses. "A woman you know was part of our crew. One of your comrades from the Institute."
"...Permanence Pasternak died in battle against the Sleeves, for the Three Ships Alliance. She saved a young man's life, and helped win a battle. She was very brave."
"You're one of the few people I know who knew her... so I thought that you should know."
"I don't know what kind of relationship you had with her. I hope you will accept my condolences regardless."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana's smile just creeps a shade wider -- a shade more smug -- as Eight wonders if she'd even pay them a visit. But this isn't a social call...
That green-eyed monster narrows her gaze, when Eight invokes the Institute, lips pressing to a thin line.
The kind of relationship she had with her...
...---...
The testing room has a cockpit setup inside it, all hooked up to a screen. It emulates the experience of being inside a wanzer, though it's all simulated; this is the most convenient way to test their subjects, inside the lab. And it is, all in all, a tragically standard experiment -- Yuliana's been through it a million times.
Go through the simulation program, then they'll throw her in with another of their sensitive souls, then they'll separate them to test their performance separately again.
Give her some credit: she resists the urge to yawn, as she aces the program.
"Who is it this time?" She issues, to the doctor who appears to escort her to the next room.
She receives no reply, but an instruction: "Go inside, and take the cockpit to the left."
"Yeah, yeah," Yuliana grumbles, as she stalks in.
The simulation cockpits are set up right next to each other -- she has an excellent view of the woman brought in with the aid of a guard. Older than her, though her straw-blonde hair familiarly Zaftran. She's not seen her here before; a new acquisition, then. Yuliana's gaze drops, dour, to the handcuffs the guard unsecures, so she can be properly seated. "Stupid of you," Yuliana says, in their mother tongue, and ignores the guard entirely in saying it. "You think you're getting out of here that way?" It might be an unkind question, seeing the way that woman's grey gaze widens, looking to her.
"What is this?" She asks, as if Yuliana hasn't heard that question a hundred times, already.
And so Yuliana laughs, looking back to her screen. "Welcome, tetushka!" She cackles, and her glee is entirely too sharp, entirely too malicious. "Enjoy your stay!"
The instructions come -- as always -- pumped through the speakers. They're to run the simulation in close quarters with each other, now. Yuliana wonders, darkly, what miserable language they'll use to describe the obvious this time. Of course she grows more vicious, exposed to the Awakened's transgressions. Of course that's why she hates them --
Oh, and whoever's next to her will perform worse, she supposes. It hardly matters to her. Let the dear old aunt choke.
She laughs, and she is unkind, hearing the other woman's frustrated growl. "Aww, are you all discombobulated?" She asks, with too, too much sympathy, too saccharine and sweet. "Guess all your talent really goes out the window when you have to rely on your own two hands, huh?" Yuliana's taking more damage, now, too, but she's at least giving as good as she's theoretically get.
"You're Yuliana, then," the woman says, teeth grit. "Look. I'm Permanence --"
"I don't give a shit, tetushka!" Yuliana cuts her off, with a savage grin. "I'll learn your name if you survive a few months, how about that?!"
"So you've been here a while," Permanence reads between the lines.
And Yuliana forces air through her teeth, tongue clicking against the back of them. "Tch. Longer than we've been here, that's for damn sure!"
"Haha..." It's Permanence's turn to laugh, now, as she shifts her clutch back and to the right. "If you think you're the only fixture they've been passing around, you're even more fucked in the head than they're telling me. Don't you get tired of this?"
"Obviously," Yuliana lances back, as she reaches up to flick a series of toggle-switches in front of her. "But you people keep pouring in, so there's no escaping it!"
Permanence clunks her throttle forward, in her seat. "Not what I meant."
"And what's that supposed to mean?!" Yuliana lances back, turning and glowering, only for a sharp noise to call her back to her screen. "Pfeh!" She spits, as the simulation reports total structural collapse.
And the scientists, through those speakers, report the end of this leg of the experiment.
"Do svidaniya, your Grace," Permanence says farewell, dour, as she stands from the cockpit and glares at the guard securing her anew. "I hope the scraps are worth it."
"You got something to say?!" Yuliana snaps, but she only gets one step towards Permanence before the guard glares her down, over the other woman's shoulder.
"Yuliana, you will proceed to testing room C," the scientist's voice reminds her, again.
"Oh, fuck off," Yuliana mutters, and just who she's addressing as she glares at Permanence and stalks out of the room is up for debate.
Obviously, her performance in the third test suffers after being exposed to trash like that, too.
...---...
... Permanence may have spoken of her guilt over being led into that conflict by the scientists -- or shared it some other way -- in their time together. Yuliana is not so eager to divulge. "She looked down on me," she spits, lips curled, "but she couldn't help anyone. Not her little friends, not Wira, and certainly not--!!" Her, but even as her words heat, she realises how ridiculous the sentence sounds when it ends that way.
Perhaps Eight was prepared, though, for an '80s project to react so gracelessly. It's difficult to say the emotion burning in Yuliana's gaze is apathy. "-- wait," she scowls, as if to pre-empt the obvious next step. "Just... tell me what happened. How you let this happen!" Of course she is angry; what else would she be? "That tetushka, she got out -- and then she felt the need to get herself killed anyway? She trusted you!"
Yuliana, being fair, is looking for more reasons to validate her belief that the Ra Mari II's denizens cannot be trusted. But, her anger... has anyone ever gotten angry at Eight, for what happened?
<Pose Tracker> Eight York has posed.
Eight waits. If Permanence did share it with Eight, Eight doesn't invoke it--but she seems to understand that it was a tense relationship in the first place. Yuliana spits her answer, and Eight suppresses her immediate instinct--to snap back that indeed Permanence could help someone, after all.
She was prepared for this. It's not something she expected to go smoothly. Then--Then, Yuliana asks the question, and maybe she is the first to be angry at Eight for what happened...
But there is a part of Eight that thinks that this is the right reaction after all.
She doesn't understand 'tetushka'. "She did. She trusted me. I gave her a place on my ship, and she took it. For a while, that was that. She worked in custodial."
"But she wanted to give back. When she heard what happened to Leina Ashta, when she saw Banagher Links and what he went through... She couldn't stand by. So she asked to fight, and I let her. My choices exposed her to danger. That's true."
"...She requested a backup weapon, rather than face capture by people like Murasame. And when her mobile weapon was disabled, she used it. She fired at Angelo Sauper with a rocket launcher, and saved Banagher's life. The target retaliated. There was no body to recover."
"She did in fact help."
"...it's fair and right, for you to be angry with me for this. But I won't accept anything that devalues her choices, either. She made this decision... and there's people who are alive today who wouldn't be otherwise, because of her.'
"She was a hero, Yuliana. And I'm proud to have known her."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
If (when) Eight visits Moscow, she will surely hear the old women being called babushka. It might make more sense, then. Just as those women are being called grandmothers, tetushka is what one might call an aunt: an older woman, but not yet old enough to be wizened.
Yuliana bristles, when Eight acknowledges that she trusted her. Her scowl deepens -- "ch!" -- when she tells her just who was involved; she can't deny that it's better Permanence died, if she died for those two.
Even so, it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. When it comes down to it... she hates the Institute more than she hates her cellmates.
(There's a reason she's left Cascade alone, ever since they disappeared into the depths of the Shuffles' embrace.)
"Glaza boyatsya, is that it?! Don't give me that crap!" Yuliana yells, and unlike Permanence, she's not nice enough to translate her Zaftran unprompted. 'The eyes are afraid', she says -- left to implication, 'but the hands are still doing it'. An expression for committing to action despite the fear. "You let her fight in those conditions?! Take some responsibility as Captain! Don't just tell me you're proud as if there's nothing you could have done! You have no right to lambast me for not valuing you piteous wretches enough if you won't even tell a wounded warrior to stay out of it!"
Yuliana leans forward, on the couch, one hand visibly grasping the armrest. Tense. "That's the sort of person who claims autonomy in a powerless situation by insisting they can protect everyone around them! If even I can recognise that, you have no excuse, York! Her choices?! I don't need to say shit about her choices! It's your choices I've got a problem with! You knew we'd just gotten out of that shithole! You knew Leina's situation would fuck anyone like that up! Requesting a backup weapon?!" Yuliana rips a hunk out of the armrest, now, to wrench her arm up and slam her fist painfully down on it instead. "You might as well have signed off on her suicide!"
It's not entirely Eight's fault, of course. Yuliana is angry at herself, just the same, for trying to handle Leina's situation when it was too close to hers. But this is what's in front of her -- and as ever, what's on the table plays.
<Pose Tracker> Eight York has posed.
Eight doesn't know the Zaftran. But she assumes it isn't pleasant. She let her fight... Eight listens to the whole thing. She listens to that anger, and the way that Yuliana actually breaks the armrest. She remembers how she did something similar, not long ago. And still...
"That's accurate," Eight says calmly. "When I say I respect her choices, I mean that I won't act like she didn't know what she was doing. But I did know the position she was in. She was starting to heal. She'd finally started to put her life together. ...And I could've insisted that she stay behind. She came to me--she asked--if it was 'her' idea, or if it was the idea of the conditioning making her want to fight."
"...She did something dangerous, and she died for it. And the only reason she had the opportunity to do it is because I let her."
"That is my responsibility. We needed the pilots, we needed the help, and I let her help even though I knew it was a risk. I make no excuses. She died because of my decisions."
"...And I'm going to live with that. While she won't. So take your issues with my decisions. I just want you to know that she knew what she was doing. She didn't do it because of the conditioning."
"...I let her die, but she did it free. As herself. And sometimes that's the best people like us can hope for."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana's blood boils, in her veins and in her throat. How can Eight look into her camera and say this to her?!
(Naturally, she does not think of the Cyber-Newtypes she drove to medical exits from the military. She does not think about how easily she adopted the us-versus-them framework of the Institute. Why would she? Eight's the one who did wrong.)
"So, what?! It's fine because it was her decision?! Are you satisfied with people dying for you so long as they pass a motives purity test?!" There's someone else she's not thinking of, here, too. "So long as it was necessary to save your skin -- to complete your goals -- that's fine, is it?!" She is not thinking of Alma Stirner, deliberately, forcefully, and repeatedly.
Being fair: it's really not the same.
"The best -- the best people like us can hope for?! ... damn it!" Yuliana slams her fist into the armrest, again. Her camera's good enough that it picks up the wince, as she does it. If she sounds a little choked-up, though, that's definitely just audio artifacts. "The desperation you need to leave everyone behind like that..."
Yuliana has always said she wants to live. She's crossed every line in the sand, for that. Why, then, can she imagine it, keen as a memory? All the times she's faced death down, they're all... so...
(Oh, she isn't remembering anything.)
<Pose Tracker> Eight York has posed.
Technically, Eight didn't explicitly say Yuliana was like 'us'. ...But it seems she accepted that, all the same. Eight knows Yuliana isn't really being fair. But that doesn't matter. Because the things she says...
"I'm a Captain, Yuliana." Eight pauses, the blonde keeping her hands folded on her desk, neutrally. "Every day I make decisions that can lead people to their deaths. They trust me to make the decision that will achieve the hopes we bring to our missions. Sometimes that means some of them don't come home. ...That's what I was trained for. That's what I accepted, when I accepted leadership."
"I'm not satisfied with it. But that's the job."
"...Because it's not just desperation. She found something she was willing to spend her life for."
"...Sometimes we get more. Sometimes we find new homes. Sometimes we find partners," like Yuliana's wife, "And lives. And I want to fight for the chance for all of us to get that. She did, too."
"...Anyway the point isn't that you shouldn't blame me. You should. She was under my command. Her death is my responsibility."
"And she'll be remembered as the hero she was."
Did Yuliana ever have to deliver this news to her subordinates' families? Did the REA let her have that?
"We're going to track down what family she had, if we can. But you knew her. So you deserve to know what happened to her."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Oh, Yuliana was allowed to play out many trappings of her role, so long as she never forgot the leash. She knows she's being unfair. Even so --
When has she ever been fair, to Eight York?
Permanence found something she was willing to spend her life for, Eight says, and that only chokes Yuliana further. Her lips twist into an ugly grimace. She looks away from the camera, but isn't quite thinking ahead enough to lean out of shot to scrub at her face. "She could have had more," Yuliana mutters, bitter, into her fingers.
"She really could have had a normal life... if you hadn't got your dirty hands on her."
The way Yuliana coped with her powerlessness, in that group...
Yuliana is quiet, for a moment, though her shoulders lift and tense, face all buried in her hand. She swallows, audibly enough to be picked up; her lips pressed to a stern line, as she lowers her hand and looks back to the camera. "Don't bother looking for Provenance," she says, voice colder. "You'll not find her."
A breath.
"Because you're looking for Providence Pasternak, you understand," she issues, a moment later. "He's rather changed his style. Not that it mattered to me, but she kept going on about it... well, back when we had the REA's internal networks at our fingertips, tracking and tracing a citizen was trivial." Yuliana frowns, looking at something past the camera, rather than acknowledging it directly. "Not that I ever got around to saying it... I had my own grievances with the State, back then. They rather took precedence."
The incident at JOSH-A, surely. It's when Yuliana first made an enemy of the REA and deserted her post.
She wouldn't have had much opportunity to speak with the other test subjects, when next she returned.
<Pose Tracker> Eight York has posed.
...This, Eight does not endorse. She does not give her tacit approval to Yuliana's bitter murmuring by replying. She could've had a 'normal life', maybe...
But Eight is certain, somehow, that Permanence did not regret signing on to the Ra Mari II. And she won't dishonor that.
It has the advantage of pretending that Eight is willing to ignore Yuliana's emotional outburst.
But don't bother looking? Eight lifts an eyebrow--and Yuliana explains. She listens. The REA's internal networks... and Providence Pasternak.
"...Thank you," Eight says to Yuliana, and means it. "For sharing that information. I'll seek him out."
"I appreciate it. ...That's all I came to say. Unless you have something to add?"
"If not... Take care of yourself, Mrs. Kafim. My condolences. I won't forget."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"He's a teacher out in Moscow -- or he was when the year began," Yuliana says, scowling. She wonders, for a moment, why she's helping her. She didn't even like Permanence! "His sister -- Pursuance -- she's a hairdresser. Has her own salon, Pursuing Perfection, or something like that. Don't ask me, it's been a while since I checked."
... well, she liked the idea that she might have escaped, anyway.
She falls silent, and barely visible at the edge of the camera is the way one hand crosses her body to grasp at her other fist.
"... I appreciate that you were willing to inform me," she brings herself to say, slowly and painfully. "Decent of you. But since she died on your watch, you'd better not forget her."
Yuliana leans forward. "Good day, York," she says, with a finality punctuated by the way she ends the call.
The way it cuts to black.