2023-10-29: .surely they are hurting you, just as sure as I
- Log: .surely they are hurting you, just as sure as I
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Leina Ashta
- Where: The Silent Castle / Leina's Treatment Room (Video call)
- Date: 2023-10-31 (ICly 0097-10-29)
- Summary: Yuliana rings Leina to tell her about her success talking to Elisa, only to find that the doctors forgot to turn her phone off before starting her treatment. Yuliana... doesn't take seeing the results of that treatment well. But Leina insists she's not in danger, so she tries to talk to her, and eventually even tells her about the data they plan to delete. But Leina isn't well, and Yuliana ends up panicking and hanging up -- and Sayla steps in to stop Leina from calling her back in her current condition.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana's taking tea at the Silent Castle with Wendy Yuan. She does chat with her friends, sometimes; if only because Elisa has a good many things to take care of, Yuliana can't be attached to her constantly. (Except to say, of course, that she's still nearby. Naturally, Yuliana lets her wife know whenever she leaves the Castle.)
"Did you see that they're holding that conference, in Ravnui?" Wendy asks, as she finishes off her cup of tea. "For those cybernetic enhancements... I'm thinking of having a look, since it's not like the Republic is doing any upkeep these days."
"Oh, yeah?" Yuliana asks, sipping at her own tea. "Why not? It's not like we've got anything on for the next couple of days."
Wendy lays her spoon down, beside her cup. "That's true... the next meeting's not until next week, right, Captain?"
"Yeah, I didn't want to deal with it until after we got this stuff in Zaftra done." Yuliana finishes up her own cup, and of course those strange, red-ringed eyes of Wendy's catch it.
"Do you want to come with me?" She offers, as she stands. "I'm sure Dr. Kafim wouldn't mind if we went together. There's some interesting engineering in places like that, so..." Snipers work in pairs, and Wendy hasn't failed to notice what's been going on, lately. If she can get Yuliana out of the house for a bit --
"Pass," Yuliana holds up a hand, sinking back against the lounge. She frowns. "I don't know, maybe I'll go out tomorrow... but I'm just not feeling up to it right now."
"Oh," Wendy says, and smiles, a shade nervously. "Okay. Then I'll head out, okay?"
"Sure. Have fun," Yuliana waves her off, mildly.
And if Wendy finds her muted responses strange, she's wise enough, at least, not to look at it directly. If the Captain is depressed, it's not really her business. Even now she's less standoffish, trying to pry into her life...
Well, the Captain knows where to find her if she wants to talk.
Yuliana is quiet, for a time, after she leaves. A servant comes in to collect their cups, and of course she thanks them, but incidentally; it's nice that they can actually talk to her, these days, but few of them ever have much to say to the Gentle Mistress. She curls herself on the couch, her black robes cascading over her arms in the light of the fireplace; inside her home, she's not wearing a scarf, and the green fold hanging about her neck is plain to see. Two of the crystals are still quite light -- but the one in the middle is sin-darkened and roiling.
She scrolls through her phone, idly. They at least have a connection, right now. It's sometimes difficult, under their current conditions, but Parminder -- and his team, imagine him having a team now -- fixed a lot of the failures. He's really quite clever, she supposes. Not that she'd ever tell him that.
Someone with teal trim at the edge of his uniform glances at her, through the open door, as he passes. She smiles to him, shallow. Of course they would want to know where she was, just in case the Strong Mistress wished to know where her counterpoint took rest. Of course there are eyes on her.
But no one comes to see her, and so it isn't long until Yuliana finds herself navigating to her contacts list. Given Elisa's decision... wouldn't it be best to do it this way?
Yuliana dials Leina's number, and sets her phone down on the couchside table, tilted up to capture her face. She smiles, and she is still able to offer warmth, in the expression. "Leina? I'm not interrupting anything, I hope?"
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
BGM Change: Puella in Somnio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ808JR2PNY
'Open your eyes. What do you see?'
The world is filtered in blue, shapes taking place of windows and curtains, tables and vases. A distortion of the artist. There's a sense of distance in how the lips form the answer. The lips form words as they look upon the stage.
'What do you hear?'
Tinnitus. Some vague part of herself knows it's not supposed to be like this. That's not how that sounds. The ringing grows louder.
Far off lips form words again.
'How do you feel?'
A panic wells within her, bubbling up. She can feel the physical symptoms but they feel so distant.
someone is
r i g ht t h er e
he r e
m i lli o n ki lom e t e r s aw ay
Vertigo takes her, swirling about, and...
SNAP.
'Again.'
'Again.'
'A g a in.'
Eyes open, vision fuzzy, as she squints against the light, groaning against the benzo fog. Her ears were still ringing somewhat.
"With us?"
Leina has to think about that. Comprehension returns just in time for her to nod, "...yeah..."
"We ran into one of his triggers again I'm afraid. Looped you back to a traumatic event."
"Mmmm."
"I'm sorry if you're feeling more out of it than usual, we had to give you a larger dose to get you settled..."
"S'alright..."
"I know it's another setback, but I'm optimistic that if we keep at it, we'll get this one too."
"'kay. I'm okay."
She leaves the room, Leina listens to the applause of tinnitus, louder and louder.
And... something cuts through it. The tinny melody of a Sheryl Nome song, having been translated into a chip tunes.
A hand gropes to a belonging bag, and fishes out a phone. The call is accepted automatically...
"Mmm. Not really." Leina answers, but Yuliana with visuals, will see the signs, she's in a hospital gown. And that look in her seagreen eyes, a little unfocused...
"Hey." She smiles, vaguely.
"Just. Had a session."
She probably doesn't need to explain what kind.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
She is in public, but Yuliana shifts to the familiar nickname, anyway, seeing that hospital gown. "Leyasha? Are you all right?" She asks, the pressure of anxiety crushing her tone down to a harsh whisper. She straightens, and focuses, her necklace swaying against her neckline. "Are they hurting you?"
That's the first thing her mind jumps to -- seeing a girl all blissed out on benzodiazepines and draped in easy-access finery. The camera catches the way her muscles tense, across her shoulders, as if she could spring through and drag Leina through the screen.
(She probably couldn't.)
Her hand is out of view of the camera, but the sign of her fist clenching and unclenching is carried up her arm, anyway. A session... treatment... "You're sure this isn't a bad time?" She asks, her questions still pointed. "I can call back." She won't say it isn't important, because of course she wouldn't bother Leina with trivial things, but she can offer her that much.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"Mmm."
It's something like a yes. Then...
'Are they hurting you?'
"Hmmm?"
Her eyes screw up in this this strange sense of the unexpected. It takes her a moment to think up the answer...
"Ah. Nah. Just..."
There's a struggle to recall what Hinoki said, she was answering on auto pilot, which for her is indicating 'I'm fine' 'I don't need to be fussed over.'
All the brush offs she'd finely honed from the moment ever since she learned the phrase 'I'm a big girl.' as a child.
"... we ran into one of... triggers."
She finishes awkwardly, as if the word Murasame or 'him' felt like a step further than what she wanted right now, "Hard to get the clapping out." Leina looks up, and it's like she's trying to communicate something by that, but it's nonsensical in casual conversation.
"I'm here. S'okay. You... need me?"
She asks after a moment, perhaps there being more of a raw honesty in the unfiltered haze of the question.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana's hand tightens again, as Leina stumbles over and into an answer. She reminds herself to be patient, the virtue all dug into her skin like nails.
(She's painted them. She hasn't painted her nails since... ever, really. First time for everything.)
It's fine. It's fine if Leina is vague. She's not well. (They MADE her unwell.) And so Yuliana tries to keep patience on her face, just the same. It's not her fault.
And, "Ah," for some reason Yuliana understands immediately what Leina means by clapping. Perhaps it's just because this is so frequently how she wakes. Words aren't always so... literal. "It's all right... you're still recovering." Yuliana isn't really the touchy-feely type, when it comes to reassuring others, but she tries to offer it gently.
(She is the Gentle Mistress, you see, compared to Elisa.)
Yuliana settles back down against the couch, from where she'd looked ready to spring right off of it. One of her hands sneaks back into view, grasping at her opposite arm. "I..." She starts, glancing away from the camera. She could tell her a pleasant lie, certainly. But in this state -- "I do," Yuliana admits, quietly, "but I'm just not sure I should say what's on my mind, with you as you are. Um..." She hums through her lips, a shade awkwardly, as she grasps at something beside it. "I spoke to your mother," she says, after that beat of a pause. "She seems well. Had some lovely advice on housing people, really."
That's not all Yuliana's been up to, recently -- she also helped blow up Gryps-II -- but for some reason, she doesn't bring that up in casual conversation.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"Mmm. Yeah. Kinda. I'm mostly..."
A hand makes a gesture, as if the gesture was more articulable, to say 'I'm mostly there. I'm fine. I'm functional. People don't notice. I pass most of the time as all the way there.'
"... yeah."
She finishes with, and it's not long after her hands sneak back into view that Leina says, "Nails. Did 'em. Nice." She adds, staccato, like the details are coming back 1-2-3.
"Hm? Mom?" Leina blinks owlishly, as if that's bringing her back into focus, "S'okay, don't worry 'bout... that. If you wanna talk."
A beat.
"Green suits you."
And then...
"Charity work, really makes you think about how to get roofs over everyone's heads."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Yeah," Yuliana agrees. She knows. She knows about getting done next door and coming right back into the office, through the side-doors they installed, pretending like her head wasn't all full of cotton balls as she yelled at Cascade Wattana for not doing their paperwork while she was out. At no point did she say she was yelling at them because she couldn't string the letters together on the screen, head still in twenty pieces.
Well. At least Leina isn't yelling, right now.
"Oh!" Yuliana says, when Leina focuses on her nails -- and lifts her hand, to show them to the screen properly. They're a lovely emerald green, of course, with stripes of a green more bright and acidic on top. It's the sort of colouration one might find in nature to advertise venom. Fitting, really.
She smiles, warm. "Thank you, dear. It's not really a presentation style I'm used to... I'm still getting the hang of it. But of course it makes sense, doesn't it? I've no more need to advertise safe harbour to women, now I'm married." A beat, and she thinks to spell it out, in Leina's current condition: "Wearing men's clothes, I mean. It was never an issue with my gender -- just a signal to those like me. We did have to sneak around a little, in the REA..."
She settles her hand back on her arm, and tilts her head. "It does. I was... embarrassed, that I hadn't thought of building more houses, but... well, Shari did point out that I'm hardly a civil engineer." Which means she's been talking to Shari, too. That's... well, it's a thing.
But even though Leina keeps inviting her, Yuliana heard the way she tripped over even naming Murasame by pronoun, back there. As much as she'd like to tell her what she managed to do, in this situation...
... isn't it better to say anything else?
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
She certainly isn't yelling right now. Then again, was she ALLOWED to yell? After all, Murasame's whole regimen was one of self-denial, submission. If one truly thinks about it, one would arrive on the idea that outbursts were contrary to what he wanted from her.
Perhaps after cultivating Four, he had decided 'spirited' was a quality of his past work. Her erratic nature did cause a lot of trouble for the Titans after all.
Leina does raise her hand, she doesn't go all out with her nails, but there are subtle shades of orange and dark sparkles near the end of the nailbed. With a waggle of her fingers, she displays what she has on tap for October.
They're not lengthened at all, perhaps the pragmatic compromise to her nature as someone who needs to be able to use her hands.
"Huhhhh." Leina drawls out as Yuliana describes it, brow furrowing, "Just 'cuz that?" She asks, with a hint of confusion, "You seemed... comfortable in them."
There's no applied pressure there, just the honesty of pharmacology. "I mean... I like it, always have... just-" Another gesture of her hand, as she loops back around...
"Still have... problems, feeling like..." She looks more abstracted, "His."
Which his in this case? Perhaps it's blurring together some for her, though certainly she means more Glemy than Murasame doesn't she?
It's... there's a glance at the screen, then... "It's, different skillset right? No shame. You designed lotsa stuff in, wanzers." Then after a short pause, she adds, "Gundams."
For a while, it feels like she's completely forgotten her invitation in, but then- "Huh... what was it you wanted to...?" Just the flicker of a memory that Yuliana needed something in particular.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana's outbursts were -- are -- just a fact of her condition. As a Cyber-Newtype from the mid-eighties, she was a success just from remaining alive; a few personality flaws were just considered the cost of doing business.
"I was," Yuliana admits, glancing away, when Leina talks about how much more comfortable she seemed in trousers. "And I suppose my Elisa found it charming, too. But... She much prefers me this way."
A light pause, and she says: "I really shouldn't get into it."
Because it's private business? Or because it's bound to remind Leina of Glemy? Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.
"Yes," she says, instead, smiling, "Shari did say that, back then. Mechanical engineering is a different skillset entirely... well, not that I was ever able to finish Da Xukong 0 myself. I was working on it, but..." Yuliana sighs, and shakes her head. "After all that business with the REA -- my Elisa didn't consider it safe for me to work on weapons like those, so I had to hand over my plans so Shari could finish them. I suppose it's for the best... she figured out all the issues I was struggling with, making an eight-legged machine. And the Abyss Engine's entirely her design..." She still sounds melancholy, though, relating Shari's work. No wonder, perhaps -- it was her project.
Engineers do get like that.
Maybe it's talking about something sad like that which makes Yuliana frown, fingers tapping at her arm, before she puts a smile back on her face and returns her attention to her camera. "It's just... something your mother and I were discussing, back there. But it's a matter to do with," her fingers drum, "that man," she decides on vague wording, "and in your current condition... shall I just tell her, and let her handle it?" Yuliana doesn't entirely get through that sentence without gritting her teeth a little, but she's trying, damn you. "I'm sure she can find a more... suitable time to speak."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
The inflection on 'She' is something Leina almost misses. Almost. From lounging on the stretcher, she finds it in herself to sit up just straighter, pushing herself up in the bed, straightening up her gown subtly from where it gets caught and remains while the rest of her moves properly.
"Feels strange to me. You know, from another dimension that... has a gender? And - a preference? You'd think... you know?" Her eyes go unfocused for a moment, "Huh... maybe it's... from here, originally? Like she was."
As Yuliana speaks of Shari however, Leina looks like she's initially in agreement, but somewhere in the middle of it she seems to look like something's off, just a little uncomfortable.
Yet, she still does answer...
"Feels kinda... sad though, you loved working on them. And it's not like you're... always safe in a fight. Yet you still fight?"
It's a similar thing that disquiets her perhaps, though for a different reason.
In the end though... Yuliana mentions 'that man' and Leina's head vaguely cants to the side, then, "Oh. Doctor Self-Denial."
There's a snerk, in that moment, like she found that funny, "Yeah, bet he didn't practice what he preached in his lab..." Is that a dirty joke? It's hard to tell, either way, it's perhaps surprising, in the moment.
Maybe it's just the drugs, but she seems able to discuss it. "We didn't do it today." A fingertip circles around by her head, "You know, get him out."
There's a hitch in her breath, then the breath becomes a spasm part way through, and there's a glimmer in her eyes. "Nngh... Nah she's probably... torn up right now. She gets - you know? They won't let her in with me during because it's upsetting."
She sinks back against the stretcher, "'Upsetting'." She repeats, "God. Didn't wanna do this but... was this or... let Doctor Self-Denial in my head for fucking ever!"
Leina throws up her hands, which takes her out of the frame for a moment, but eventually she remembers the phone was in them and it comes back down.
"S'okay... don't wanna... 'upset' her more... can just say it."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"..." Yuliana parts her lips and says nothing, at first, when Leina wonders about how strange it is that the Woman in the Void is a Woman in the Void. The question unsettles her. Perhaps it is sacrilege. "I don't... She's not seen fit to tell me why. But She is that She is, and ever has She adored me." Like she was... the woman from Leina's vision?
She frowns, teeth raking, lightly, over her bottom lip when Leina asks about Da Xukong 0, her safety in fights. "Sometimes," Yuliana says, quietly, "I think it was... my punishment for slipping away to defend Pendragon while she was occupied. But-- but surely I'm being silly," she assures her and herself, a moment later. "My Elisa was just worried for my safety. She wouldn't chastise me that way." Still, Yuliana fights, and that's terribly dangerous. Yuliana has no answer for that part.
Yuliana has to laugh, though, when Leina comes out with that level of recognition. "Leyasha! Please. We both know someone like that hasn't known fulfillment for decades." OH NO, SHE'S MAKING IT WORSE.
But she smiles, and she's sympathetic. "It's all right. It's all right, Leyasha. It's a process. You are further than you've been. So long as they're not hurting you..." She really can't trust hospitals, can she?
And Leina lashes out, and Yuliana blinks, but she bites at the inside of her lip and lets her throw up her hands without comment. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine if she's hurting. She's allowed. She's been through a lot.
"He won't be in your head forever," she promises. "You're working to get him out. You're working very hard, aren't you? You should be proud of all you've done already." And it unsettles her, what Leina wants to know, but -- Leina wants to know, and Yuliana's been in too many situations where no one will tell her anything when she's wearing a gown like that.
"... we're just working to unmake him even further," she settles on, after a moment. "And -- and it's not just my plan -- your mother approached me, so don't worry that it's me going off on my own again." Yuliana shouldn't HAVE to give this disclaimer. Her plans should be JUST as trustworthy as Sayla's! But... given the situation, it's what she has to say. "But I was also able to -- to speak with my wife, about the data we took from the Garuda. Once it's all settled, we'll be deleting the research from all our systems... there won't be anything left. It was, um... I was able to secure that." No, Leina doesn't have to know about the uncomfortable details. "I just... wanted you to know there won't be some copy floating around to ruin you, later... you know, I think about all the copies of my research out there, sometimes." She rubs at her arm, looking away, her tone unsettled. "Knowing so many people have read about me just through notes like that, it's uncomfortable... I didn't want you to have to worry about that."
Yuliana frowns, her fingers tightening. "Should I have told you that much...? Please don't feel burdened by it, just -- you wanted to know... it's being handled, all right? You don't have to worry." Her eyes close, and she chastises herself: "Ah, it's what Elya meant when she said to think in broader terms than kindness... stupid!"
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"Adored... what a word."
Glemy adored her too. He enjoyed making a point of it, adoring his works while looking at her in the mirror, a hand upon her shoulder.
He never did notice that her smile was always a little too forced. Glemy didn't tend to notice many things like that.
Unsurprising, for someone who raised girls as ladies or weapons.
"... If she's a goddess then like - what that does her 'adoration' mean? Like if she's so far above us mere humans? Then, what are you to her? Her favorite doll?"
Her nose wrinkles subtly, like the whole idea leaves a bad taste in her mouth, "Is that why she's making you dress up when this isn't even your wife's preference? It's... upsetting. Feels like you're being made to make yourself all presentable for inspection."
Hearing it was her punishment, Leina's eyes subtly flicker with something... "Look I was upset too when you got caught but... punish you? I hope not. Like geez... feels like the results speak for themselves. Anything more than just a 'I told you so' that's just twisting the knife."
And Elisa is such an expert with a knife isn't she? After all, Yuliana isn't aware it's there. Love can convince anyone that the scalpel carving away their insides is a soft caress.
Yet, when Yuliana laughs too, Leina far too casually says back, "Only wish that was true, you were up there right? You had to have seen how nearly all of his assistants were young women."
Leina gestures with a hand in a sort of naked disgust for the dynamic, "You know the type, think I heard the words 'Doctor Murasame is a great man' from about FOUR of them up there."
She comes down from that moment of high emotion all sullen, as she listens to her speak, looking away for many long moments...
"... They're not. It's just... hypnotherapy, the process. It sucks knowing that-" She huffs, and there's another momentary outburst, "-why is the only way to get him out the same way he got in there to begin with!?"
Unfiltered, though perhaps the fact she can be angry and frustrated is good in this sense.
"I'm... I'm glad I'm almost done. It's... I just want to be done. I want to pick up the pieces and - move on. I hate it. Just - how much he interrupted my life. I just - I want the girls at school to stop sharing some pirated video of me being a dumbass at Dakar!"
A hand rubs the side of her head, agitated, as she looks away. "I wanna graduate, I wanna go on to college! I want him out of my life!"
Yuliana though describes unmaking him further, and Leina's brow furrows, looking at the screen, "Unmake?" Something about the word unsettles her, until she listens more...
"I. Oh." There's... this prolonged pause and... "I... yes, that'd be... good, yes. I... appreciate it."
Leina does clear her throat, and then asks quietly, "Is there... I haven't read it. Akane told me... that, I shouldn't." So instead she does look Yuliana in the eyes, "I really do appreciate you looking out for me, but... I- I am curious... is there... anything in there that could help anyone?"
There's a soft ask within the question, perhaps a plea, "Someone besides just me? I'm... I can't - I shouldn't read it but - if you know then..."
She asks, and perhaps there's the question, 'Could my suffering have meaning to anyone else besides me?'
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana scowls. "Of course not," she says, sharply. "She loves me. She always has. It is well if my presentation pleases Her. It is... better, when She's happy. When She's not anxious or angered. And who am I to question Her wishes? Surely there is a reason." She looks down at her hands, and echoes: "There is a reason."
She just doesn't... know what it is.
And she laughs, nervously, when Leina talks about twisting the knife. It's obviously nervous even given the current climate, because she laughs for real soon after. "I already said it was nonsense," she insists. "My Elisa does everything for me. She'd never issue correction like that." Then why did she say it? Why did it even seem like an implausible possibility?
She's imagining things. She's imagining things, because Elisa would never cut into her.
"Ugh," she pulls a face, when Leina points out his assistants. "You know, I didn't have that much time to look -- I was avoiding people, up until the march of shame. But now that you mention it... what a wretched man."
Yuliana frowns, listening to Leina's struggles. She lets her rage; the rage, at least, is familiar to her. And in that rage -- "These girls, they're sharing those videos? I see. I'll take care of it." A pause, before she realises Leina is the sort of girl who needs clarification: "Oh -- don't worry. I don't intend to visit them personally." Whether Yuliana only just decided this when she realised Leina might have a problem with her doing so is something she's going to keep to herself. "But I've an analyst on my team who can make things disappear from those leak sites. It's not out of my way to insist he take care of something like that." And what about accessing their devices to delete the data?
Well, Yuliana might be able to sell Parminder on bullying some teenagers, assuming it's funnier than the alternative. (And the alternative is just another bullied teenager, really.)
But when Leina asks her that last question, Yuliana looks away, for a moment, before she wrestles with herself to direct her gaze back to the camera. "You will forgive me," she insists, "but I wasn't able to read most of the data, myself. My wife said it would... upset me." She frowns, her arms folding across her chest. "But what I saw, glancing through -- it was nothing revolutionary. The same... the same dehumanising spiel all doctors use. It wasn't... it was all about how best to hurt you, Leyasha. How could such a thing help someone else?" Her question is a shade hapless, a little shadow of being out of her depth.
Oh, there were other people, too, in those documents. Even Yuliana! But she's focused on Leina, right now. She takes a breath, and goes on: "Please," she issues her a rare plea, "be a little more selfish. Don't think that keeping such an awful thing around might theoretically help someone, when -- when it's so much more likely you'll be hurt again. You know, it's not just the REA I have to fear, now? Now my files are, everywhere... anyone could decide I'm worth the trouble. Even if you say good people have access to those things, it only takes one person copying them -- being slighted -- getting bribed -- or just indulging in some base corruption." Yuliana frowns, her fingers tightening. "I don't want for you to have to look over your shoulder like that, all right...? Of course my Elisa is trustworthy, but -- but I'd rather such delicate information be destroyed. What happened to you was terrible, Leyasha. Let it be put to rest, just as you're putting it to rest in your own head. Let him be forgotten."
She feels her throat tighten, but she makes a last appeal, anyway: "It's not just me. Your mother wanted this done, too. I -- I wasn't able to promise it to her on the spot -- since I haven't touched the data personally since I brought it back. But I went, and I asked, and it's fine, and... ugh, she'll be cross with me for telling you, won't she? I thought that you'd be anxious not knowing if it could be done, but... I shouldn't have called," she says, her fingers tightening, too. "I shouldn't have bothered, I can't do this sort of thing, I don't even think of building houses, what am I doing--?" She blinks, overlong, and shakes her head.
"I-- I have to go," she insists, and the hitch in her throat is audible, now. "I've done enough. I have to go. You'll be okay. Don't -- don't get up too quickly, you'll fall. Dosvedanya." With that last hurried piece of advice, she reaches forward, and ends the call.
It's what she gets, isn't it?
It's what she gets for trying to be kind.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"Yeah?" The look Leina gives her is still sharp, even through the pharmacological haze, like she's beginning to truly get her bearings here. "He cared about me too, but the only thing that made him happy was doing what he said. What I wanted? Getting out of there - back to my brother? That didn't figure into it."
There's visible frustration there, "So much of what he said to me was convincing me that I should want what he had to offer me - because he was grooming me into being a Lady of Neo-Zeon!"
Perhaps it'd be wiser to hold back, but wisdom doesn't figure into it right now. Especially with the anger over her whole situation figuring into it.
It's easy enough to interpret it as lashing out, but her logic is fairly sound right.
"You calling it 'correction' doesn't fill me with very much confidence!"
Leina points out, upset over the idea of it. Even as Yuliana returns to the subject of his staff, and there's just this disgusted sound from her lips.
"Probably manipulates everyone he meets. It's the only way he knows how to interact with anyone. They're just - wanting to get ahead in a man's world. Of course they fall for it."
Still, it's upsetting, as she crosses one arm across her abdomen. It's one thing to joke, to feel distant from it. But the more they talk, the closer she feels to it. The more personal it feels, the more upsetting.
"It's already been deleted multiple times." She sulks, regarding that, "Damage has already been done. Can't even just - tell them it's private why I was out all those months."
A hand rubs the side of her face in irritation, "They just use it as an excuse to claim the Spacenoid girl was a big hypocritical phoney all along. That I sold out the moment-"
She interrupts herself with a noise of disgust, "God those assholes. That's what they focus upon when I'm in a stupid mobile suit! What do they THINK was going on!?"
She does worry for a moment until she clarifies she doesn't intend to visit them personally...
"... Alright."
She doesn't sound... excited, because she thinks the damage was already done but, "Thanks."
But as Yuliana speaks on the data, Leina blinks, and then looks down as she clarifies, "Oh." She has to mull that over for a long while...
"I... don't know? There could be applications that..." Then quieter, "...I don't know." She flinches at the idea that it was just to hurt her, that it was just to hurt the others.
"I..." Two fingertips rub the bridge of her nose as Yuliana pleads with her to be more selfish, "... nngh.... it's all so messed up... like I'm dealing with some shitty Ex-boyfriend who posted revenge pics all over."
She can't sense the growing panic, and right now her mind isn't in the best place to see the signs, so as Yuliana keeps going and going...
... which is why she hears it all too late, "Huh? Of course you should have - Yuliana!?" She's about to dial her back, when the phone gets plucked from her hands...
By one Doctor Mass.
"Mom what!? Give that back-! It's-"
"I will not. You're in a state of diminished capacity right now, Leina." Sayla tells her gently but with a certain finality in its firmness, "The fact you answered her call at all right now is firm evidence that I needed to intervene."
"Nnngh..." Her head sinks back against the stretcher pillow, before she murmurs, "Hate this."