2024-01-25: !we hate the mirroR
- Log: !we hate the mirroR
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Eight Orlodhari
- Where: The Photon Power Labs
- Date: 2024-01-25 (Early April 0098)
- Summary: Eight tries to help Yuliana, while Yuliana gets confused between whether she want to assist or attack Eight. She finally manages to trust her enough to divulge her fears, though -- and once she has Eight listening, she doesn't STOP divulging. In the end, Eight has to leave her in a heap.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
It's early April, and Yuliana, after fleeing back to her wife following Asciel's attack on Dakar, has finally consented to return to the Photon Power Labs. The night she gets there is reasonably calm and quiet; Yuliana comes to the PPL under cover of night to avoid too much scrutiny from authorities, after all.
The 'Ghost' sits in the PPL's hangar, an unexplained shuttle painted in such a way that it reflects light and heat. It appears grey because it is nestled in the grey of all those steel walkways and scaffolds.
Meanwhile, inside --
Yuliana carries a duffle bag over a shoulder, having changed into a pair of grey jeans and a brown and cream t-shirt advertising the band FREIGHTER HATER before she exited her vehicle. (Arctic clothes are overkill, in the Japanese spring.) A red and cream neckerchief is tied about the back of her neck, tumbling down her front.
And, notably, a strange snakelike tentacle supports the bag from underneath, even as it's carried over one of her broad shoulders. There's a second one at her other side, peeking out from underneath that shirt, which sways in the air as she walks.
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
Eight Orlodhari has a few reasons to be here at the Photon Power League. One, of course, is simple visiting; her kids are old enough for visits, and there's some good friends there she'd like to give a chance to see them. But... That's an 'also ran' for this visit, because she's been specifically requested by one Yuliana Kafim.
So the twins are here--but in the other room, while Eight herself stands practicing her quiet breathing. She hasn't been back to check on them in a little while, and that's on purpose; Lavhi is here with them, just at the moment. She already fed them and put them down for bed, and now she's... doing other things. Right now that's looking up to see Yuliana Kafim in ordinary clothes with her tentacles out. Tentacles that she has, as it happens. And a band shirt.
"...Yuliana," Eight greets her. This is why she came, after all. But she didn't know when to expect her.
"Welcome to the ground again."
Eight's in a red dress with a brown jacket, and low boots.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana did kind of disappear after talking about Eight, after all. How inconsiderate!
She does happen to catch her, though, just kind of standing in the hall and breathing. Yuliana fixes her with a quizzical expression, head drawing back and tilting to the side. "What on earth do you mean?" She asks, at least not overtly hostile for all her confusion. "And what are you doing?"
She stops a good few paces from her, at least, to avoid plunging her into that horrific silence. How... polite.
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
"You just got here," Eight points out. "Because you have your bag still. And you probably flew, because I doubt you're staying out there. So, welcome to the ground."
Pause. What is she doing, though? Eight pushes off the wall to ensure she's standing up straight, in a proper stance in case... whatever, but--
"I'm practicing breathing exercises. It's a way of dealing with anxiety. One of those 'coping mechanisms' I told you about."
"I'm not allowed to have things on my mind myself?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Ah," Yuliana says, her hand settling on her hip. "So it's just some brilliant deductive reasoning, and not some oblique comment."
Well, she's not overtly hostile, anyway. No one said she couldn't be a little paranoid on the side.
She shifts her weight to her other foot when Eight pushes off the wall -- keeps her endless eyes on her; but she doesn't close the space. "Relax," she tells her, dryly, her gaze lidding as her brow raises. "I'm not about to start a brawl under Sayaka's roof. I'm not that stupid." The way she puts it, the Wrath of Sayaka would descend upon these super-strong Cyber-Newtypes and personally decimate them for insulting her hospitality.
Can you really discount the possibility?
"Tch... so it's one of those things Dr. Mikamura keeps talking about, anyway," she still hasn't managed to call her Rain, despite all the woman's efforts. "But what could possibly be on your mind?"
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
Paranoia, then. That's Yuliana. "Right. I'm just guessing."
Yuliana indicates she should relax, and explains why. Eight remains stiff for a moment--and then relaxes after all, letting her shoulderblades touch the wall again.
No, she won't discount that, especially not if Yuliana feels that way. "All right," she says.
Dr. Mikamura--so Rain is getting through after all. "Is it that surprising?" Eight wonders, and because she's feeling a little sharp herself, she shares, even though she knows it's insensitive even before she says it.
"It's hard, leaving my kids in the other room. But I have to break myself of that."
Pause. "...If you must know, I worry a lot about my children. About what I'm doing, how I'm doing it... I don't really remember my own childhood."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"You can infer that's what happened," Yuliana says, which isn't entirely like saying 'yes, that happened', but that's Yuliana.
But she explains just why she's minding her manners, and Eight seems to take it on board, the way she relaxes again.
Her lips curl up in a sneer, though, when Eight shares just what's bugging her. "That must be so hard for you," she says, too haughty to really be sympathetic -- before she sighs, and shakes her head, a hand coming up to brush her bangs from her face.
"... no, but I suppose it would be, really," she says, a little more conciliatory. "Even I worry about leaving my nephews behind, and they've my mother to rely on. But I trust you've not left children that young in a room alone," with a withering stare, just in case she has, because apparently Yuliana doesn't trust Eight as far as she can throw her, "so what precisely has you worried?"
She shrugs, leaning against the wall herself, putting the burden of managing her bag on one of her tentacles as her arms fold across her chest. "After all," she goes on, despite having just asked a question, because she is rude, "it's not as if remembering your childhood would change your approach terribly much. My style of teaching frequently clashes with my mother's, you know -- I can tell you that for certain, given we're both involved. And it's not as if she taught me poorly! But even someone as young as you has lived an adult life since being young, Eight." How does she make a familiar address sound so uncomfortable. "So don't stand there and tell me you've lost something incomparable in the amnesia, when anyone who hasn't should have told you it's immaterial in the first place."
Yuliana throws up a hand as she says: "Honestly! What are all those friends of yours even telling you!"
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
It's close enough. Eight will take it. And besides--Yuliana sneers at her, of course, and Eight is prepared for an argument if not a fight, but...
But Yuliana actually comes around. Eight lifts an eyebrow at first--and then she listens. Her nephews. "You have kids living with you?" she asks, unaware of that. And that withering stare--
She glances at the tentacle again--but doesn't comment immediately, while Yuliana's talking. She doesn't get to answer immediately, of course. Instead she hears Yuliana point out that it wouldn't necessarily change anything...
'Eight'. Yes, it is a thing. "No," Eight says, "Everyone's told me I don't need that."
A sigh. "And no. They're with their father. So there's no reason I should worry." She does anyway, though. "My friends..."
She sighs. "My friends have told me it's called separation anxiety. And that if I can't get a handle on it, then I'll make them just as afraid of being away from me as I am of being away from them. ...So I'm getting a handle on it."
"But I suppose you're right. I worry that not remembering loses me something... But it's not as if I need that memory."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana nods, when Eight asks about the children with her. But she doesn't linger on it, for now -- surprisingly, she's talking about Eight, instead.
"I should hope it's anxiety," Yuliana points out, raising a brow. "I would hate to think you don't trust your own husband with the children." She wouldn't hate to think that; she thinks it would be very funny. But she doesn't let that show on her face, so no one can prove anything.
"But tell me," she goes on in her next breath, employing the same methods she uses to keep her victims off-balance even if she's offering Eight advice, because she seems ontologically confused about whether she's spiting her or cooperating with her, "what would you lose, precisely? I've seen your records --" Eight released her dirt herself, to get ahead of Yuliana's blackmail, and naturally Yuliana examined it all, "and the lessons from your past would be unconscionable to pass to an infant. Argue you've lost something from dawn to dusk, but the loss is yours, not theirs. You remember what happened next, still, don't you? In that," she gestures, loosely, "Winterworld Resort." She knows very well it's Winter Wonderland. She is STILL being rude.
"Whatever made you satisfied to live in your flesh is the thing worth keeping," but her eyes narrow, and maybe she's not just being an asshole, "not a dozen memories of drugs and hypnotism."
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
"Of course it is!" Eight says, a little heated but not quite a snap. "I mean... Obviously, I trust him. He's wonderful with them. He's taken care of them as much as I have, though I've been feeding them."
...Only then does she consider what else Yuliana said, of course. "...It's not what I would lose compared to what I actually had. It's what I lack compared to a mother who had a real childhood. It's whether not having that means I'm missing something I should be able to give them."
She's rude, but Eight's committed enough to talking about it, now. "...But I do remember what came next. I remember that very well. And that's part of what I'm modeling from."
Whatever made her satisfied...
"...True," she says. "Besides, my parents are helping, like your mother is with your nephews."
"Anyway it's not... mostly that, even. That's just part of it."
"...Do you ever feel that way?" Eight wonders, then. "When you leave them? Like you're afraid they won't be there when you get back?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Obviously," Yuliana agrees, when Eight gets heated -- all too easily, as if it's more about smoothing over Eight's ruffled feathers than an observed truth.
She should probably stop stabbing her, but it's a free action.
Her fingers tap on her arm, as she listens to Eight talk about what she lacks, her lips tugging back to a corner of her face. (It's uncomfortable to think about.) At least she recognises Yuliana's correctness eventually.
"... I can't very well say that you're not missing anything," she says, at length, disgruntled, "when some wounds are irreparable. But if you're such a good actor, cope." Is that how Yuliana sees it? That Eight is just -- acting normal? She scowls, fingers drumming faster. "But that's not what I'm worried about," she answers Eight's question, sourly. "The boys are under my wife's protection. Nothing will touch them." And that's true in so many ways, but don't think too hard about it.
"No -- it's not them I'm worried about," she goes on, her frown deepening.
"It's going out like this -- exposing myself -- where I have to think that I won't get back to them. Their mother died, you know, and they're old enough to be bothered by it. I think of what it would do to them, if I died after taking them in. Maksim once told me I should have been the one to die, since I was a soldier, and Lyubov was a civilian. An innocent frustration, for a child... but don't you think it would haunt him, if I left and got killed?"
And she actually sounds bothered, as she thunks the back of her head into the wall, looking up at the hall lights.
"But even though I think like that -- and it's not as if I hadn't thought that way before, I've known for a long time my wife would be unmade were I to perish -- even though I know it would crush them, I am still so heedless, in battle and out. I risk so much, coming here. And whenever I'm behind controls, I throw myself wantonly at any danger... even though I know I'm faulty, and the impulse will only destroy me."
Looking at the lights, instead of Eight, she confesses: "I do carry guilt over that."
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
It is pretty free. Eight probably shouldn't be engaging, but she's feeling raw enough that it's like poking her tongue at a loose tooth--she shouldn't do it, it's painful, but she's going to anyway.
But Yuliana is at least honest in this. Eight nods. Some wounds are irreparable; that acceptance is part of how Eight was able to heal the ones that aren't. But... Acting? Is that how Yuliana thinks of it?
"I will," Eight says, cope.
"...I see." So Yuliana's faith in her wife is that high. Eight thinks it's a little unfair to Lavhi that she can't say the same... but probably not that unfair because she doesn't want to go full codependency either.
It's complicated.
"...Mm," Eight says. "That..." She nods, when Yuliana suggests it would haunt Maksim. She is sure that it would.
"...I don't have as much of that fear," she says, "Because I haven't been in battle in a long time. I've been taking care of them full-time, and plan to for a while longer. But I had that fear, when it was just me and my partners. In addition because it's my decisions that determine whether we all live or die." As Captain, that's just how it is.
"...I had to learn to value myself a lot more," Eight says, "When I was younger. I'd throw myself into whatever I was doing for the benefit of someone else, and they had to remind me I wasn't just a tool."
"...Still did it to a point, growing up." She turns, and looks at Yuliana. "But it's possible to overcome something like that. A little at a time. It's not hopeless."
"...Not hopeless, to overcome that rage, either."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Of course I value myself!" Yuliana snaps, automatically, because what could be of greater value than her own good self? But she protests too much, and she quiets down to let Eight finish speaking, though she does grasp at her scarred arms with her fingers.
(Hundreds of scars, large and small, and all to the same end: Yuliana has all the heedless anger of a Cyber-Newtype, and none of the early warning she'll be harmed. They put so much emphasis on developing her strength and her endurance when they realised this... but it was convenient for her to remain a berserker, even so.)
She glares, looking down and away, when Eight meets her eyes. She doesn't want her to see the recognition, in hers. It's embarrassing, and her cheeks flare with the feeling.
"I don't see how it isn't hopeless," she grumbles, all a-mutter. "I'm..." broken, "an angry woman. Ever since that day. And it's not as if it's always just about me, either... it's pointless to pretend I'm past that." Past what? She doesn't explain the influence she's currently struggling with, immediately.
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
It is automatic. Eight doesn't argue it directly--not more than she already is, in what she's saying. She doesn't linger on Yuliana's scares--because she knows it. She feels it. Even though she was different, when she came out of it...
"It's hard," Eight admits. "It's really hard. Underneath the helpless blank I had... so much anger. At anything."
Past what? No, Yuliana doesn't explain. But Eight wants to know now. "What else is it about?" she wonders.
She can guess. She doesn't want to guess. She wants to know. "...I don't think you should pretend anything."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"And everything," Yuliana agrees, mildly. They might not be as dissimilar as she'd like to think they are.
How uncomfortable.
She turns her hand up, gazing at her palm, as her fingers flex over it. "No," she murmurs, quietly. "I shouldn't pretend. But it's pleasant..."
(A pleasant farce, freedom and rescue.)
"... it's about the will of God," she says, at length, far more reserved. "I am moved by Her spirit, and Her will I speak to this world. But where do I end, and where does She begin? Can I say I want to push myself, harder and harder and harder, until my flesh unravels and I lose my grasp on physical existence..."
She blinks, overlong, and shuts her eyes as her hand curls to a fist.
"It's not just about brute force -- though I suppose She's plenty of it, should I truly stray from Her. It's the strength of Her reactions, the deep well of Her desire. The manner in which She alters me, reconfiguring my parts until She finds a solution to soothe Her worries. It's about influence... and expectations. And the way I change my own behaviour, knowing Her anxieties. It frightens me... but it's flattering."
And Yuliana doesn't hear for a moment the similarities between how the Empress compels her behaviour, and the way Elisa does.
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
And everything. Eight sees it; it's strange, but she's already in her emotions about this. If she can see the similarity in Yuliana...
Well, she already knows that the face of her enemy is one that loves as surely as she does. And if Yuliana really is going to not be their enemy...
The will of God, Yuliana explains. And it isn't just brute force, either. It's... a lot of things.
"I don't know," Eight admits. "That's a... That's a hell of a thing."
Frightening, and flattering? Eight can only extrapolate feelings to feelings. But...
Influence. Changing her behavior for someone else. That Eight can see, and understand.
"But I'm sure there's room for 'you' there," Eight says. "Because love doesn't overwrite who you are. It makes you more, not less."
"...Hope's the first step."
"...That's what I believe, anyway. That's what love has done for me."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Mm," Yuliana hums, discontent, when Eight calls her Marriage a hell of a thing.
"It makes you more... but you're wrong," she says, fist curling up to press against her heart. "Of course it overwrites you. It changes you... enriches you. It's dizzying! You become more than yourself, bringing someone else into your heart... that's what my love is like."
What was that about codependence, again?
"... but when my rage isn't simply my rage," Yuliana frowns, opening her eyes to look down at the tentacle resting by her leg, "what hope is there to escape it, really? I thought I could... but She's just being tolerant, you know. If I ever got any real space, She'd have me crush it in an instant... oh, I know it was just to save me from the dangers, but I still feel...!"
Yuliana shakes her head, still not managing to look at Eight. "Never mind," she says, roughly. "It hardly matters, anyway."
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
Eight does not swear often, and not just because she has two infants. So calling anything a hell of a thing is a definite statement.
But Yuliana has another way of thinking about it. Dizzying, is it? Eight is familiar with dizzying love, but it's not quite how she's understood it. ...No, it's very different.
"I see."
Eight can do a lot; Eight can talk about therapy, and coping mechanisms, and all the things that help her. But indeed; so far as she knows, there is no eldritch deity imposing Will upon her.
She feels...
"..."
"I think it does," Eight says. Matter. "I think it matters a lot."
She remembers, then--the dream. The vision. Of what Yuliana would, and would not do...
"I think you underestimate yourself," she settles on, too.
"...But I appreciate your advice. I'll remember what I do have. Not just what I don't."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana folds her arms again, and if it's more a gesture of hugging herself than defiance, no it isn't.
Does it matter? Is she underestimating her self?
"Mmn," she grunts acknowledgement, when Eight accepts her advice, one foot lifting to press against the wall behind her.
"...", her lips part, and nothing comes out.
"..."
She swallows.
"I've always been desperately jealous of you," she says, at a whisper. "You have so much I never had. You got out... you get along. You even have your own children... I feigned a normal life to enable my operations, but you managed to really have one. Did all this really happen... because you were pleasantly blank, and I have no such distance? Or were you more sympathetic, a scrap of a girl instead of a woman grown? You know, they could have realised what was happening, in the Mycenae War... if they hadn't been so quick to believe what I told them out loud."
Her eyes shut, again.
"Now... I'm so grotesque, the things which bring me pain are just things to frighten others. It's so... stupid. I'm betraying my Wife's affection, and for what? Because I don't appreciate the fact She did notice me? I've never heard anything more ungrateful."
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
Acknowledgement is something. Eight is quiet, for a long few moments. That anxiety isn't gone, but it's in the back of her mind, quiet. At least Yuliana hasn't come close enough that her aura is overwhelming her yet. But that whisper is a different thing entirely.
"...It's not because of you, or because of me," Eight says softly. Seriously. "It's not because I was better and you worse. Nothing like that."
"It's because they got me out. ...Because someone saw me, on the way out, and decided to bring me home. And gave me care, instead of expecting me to keep fighting, and to keep working for them. They gave me a life."
"...Sure, I took advantage of the opportunity. I worked hard. But I wouldn't have had that chance, if I'd been in your place."
"If you want to change, I don't think it's too late, Yuliana. But it's long, hard work. And it's going to take time."
"..."
"Love isn't about gratitude, Yuliana."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Love isn't about gratitude? "I don't get it," Yuliana mumbles, miserably, unlacing an arm from her tight arrangement to bury her face in it instead. "I don't get it!!"
(Did Elisa expect her to keep fighting? Yuliana thinks of the anger she was met with, when she said she wouldn't pilot Emptear. But does that count, when so much more frequently Elisa was worried over Yuliana's deployments, concerned for her welfare, preferring she stay home while respecting her freedom to fight? It can't; it mustn't. She hasn't had to work a day since she escaped...)
"Someone did see me. She did bring me home," she insists, instead. "I have a life. So I don't understand... why it's still like this. It's me, isn't it?!" Even if Eight says it's not about her being any worse, what other explanation is there?
There's a difference between there being an explanation, and an explanation she can accept.
"Of course I want things to be different," she insists, which isn't quite what Eight said. "But nothing's changing. Even when I thought it got better, it crashed down around my ears in an instant! It's not fair!" And it's fortunate that her hands are both occupied, judging by the way her fingers grasp her face.
Perhaps if she pulls enough of them off, she'll get through all the layers they made to the person she is.
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
There, in Yuliana, that human thing, that misery. It is what makes it hard to let go. But Eight doesn't know what she can do. ...She knows she has to risk it, though--has to risk upsetting her.
"..."
It's her, Yuliana says. And no, it's not what Eight says. So instead of dealing with the changed goal posts, she asks something else. She quiets, and asks:
"When was the last time you decided for yourself how your life was going to be? ...Decided for yourself whether you were going to fight?"
"That's what the Yorks gave me. They gave me choices. And an environment where I could learn to make them for myself."
"If you don't have that... Then maybe that's the difference."
"...Because much as I'm proud of how far I've come... I know that it isn't just 'me'. Because if it were, it would've been all of us. Not just the lucky one."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Eight asks that question, and surely as she'd shot her, Yuliana sinks down the wall to the floor. Her bag goes thud, as it hits the ground. It's pinning one of her snakes, but she doesn't notice.
"I thought I was," she says, and she is quiet because she's been gutted.
"But I thought that for eleven years. Now I'm carrying out the Empress's wishes, instead... and I'm still following orders from... well, never mind that," she still won't betray Celestial Being's confidence, even after so much recent tension. "Maybe there were things in there I wanted to do for myself... or maybe they were all just playing me. Tch... it's easy to use me up, huh? I act so fucking tough, but I've never been the mechanic."
Her legs curl to her chest, her other tentacle coiling around them. "Alexis once asked whether I was mechanic or screwdriver," she explains, distantly. "... he knew I was a tool long before I could accept it." And she rests her forehead against her knees, hiding it there.
Curling up.
"Maybe the last time I made a decision... was when I ran off to enlist when I was eighteen. Stupid of me... of course they tricked me into their program as soon as I did. But when you Spacians dropped that colony on Sydney, the floods were beyond imagining... I was only a little girl when my mother made us cling to a road-sign. The waters kept trying to drag us out, and the metal cut my legs, because they were too cold to move any more... if my mama hadn't covered me with her body, I would have been swept out like so many others. I don't know how long it was... but then the wanzers came, and the water didn't bother them at all. They could move through it like it was nothing... nothing like the kids I saw get swept out."
She still doesn't look up, muted and miserable. "That's why I wanted to join the military," she says, and her voice remains small. "It happened again, and they saved us again, and... it didn't touch them. Even when the water rose up around them, they moved through it like it didn't matter at all... of course that's because they deployed heavy machines for those rescues, but I didn't think of that as a child. I just thought... if I had a machine like that... it wouldn't touch me. I wouldn't be stuck..."
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
There was no way to get to the heart without it. To perform surgery, one has to break the skin. To heal, one sometimes has to harm.
Will it work? Eight has no idea. A large part of her doubts it. Almost as large a part thinks it shouldn't even if it could, after what she's done. But those 'parts' are only part of the whole, that wants to be the sort of person who tries.
Eight doesn't ask who she's following orders from. She listens instead to Alexis. "...Alexis Kerib was the sort of person who wouldn't even ask a question if he didn't stand to benefit from you hearing it, I think."
That's her impression, anyway.
But Yuliana curls up, and... explains. 'You Spacians', she says, and Eight is as much one of those as anyone.
"...As a child, maybe that was enough. Enough to have something to strive for."
Eight focuses on Yuliana, turned entirely towards her. "But as an adult, you know--it's not just the machines. It's the people in them. The choices they made. The choices you can still make."
She could explain why she joined. But she doesn't.
Instead, "You can let them help you. You can stick with it. But only if you make the decision. No one can make it for you."
"You've already seen what comes of the decisions others make on your behalf."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Elisa can get to Yuliana's heart without breaking the skin.
But Eight's no Elisa, and Yuliana hides from her gaze.
"... I thought that if I just used other people, I wouldn't get hurt," Yuliana mutters, thinking of how Eight points out Alexis's worse qualities. "But I was just fooling myself. It was all just a hobby they were generous enough to allow me... to distract me from how much it hurt when they used me up."
She hiccoughs, from her little huddle inside herself. "I only ever wanted to help people," she sniffles, but doesn't show her face, which means no one can prove she's crying.
"I want... I want my Wife to trust me. I want to make my own decisions... and I don't want to be punished like this!" Her voice hitches, and raises, in a cry. "I don't want to be afraid! I hate looking over my own shoulder, just to make sure I'm doing the right thing!" Don't be mistaken, of course -- the Empress's idea of the right thing is vastly different to Eight's. "And I don't want to die... even if it's just a conceit of this reality, is that really asking too much?"
Yuliana sinks into her own knees. "I want someone to help me," she says, her voice growing small and strangled again. "I always just wanted someone to help me. But when I cried out in the tanks, no one came. No one heard me... it was pointless to try. But I was good, and they let me out into the world. I did what they wanted... maybe I ended up enjoying it, but what do you want from me? It wouldn't have stopped, even if I hated what I did. And when I became that sort of person, no one looked at me like someone who needed help any more..."
Is that really what happened?
Maybe it's what Yuliana thinks happened.
"Now," she sighs, "now these people want to help me, and, and I -- I keep waiting for it to be one big set-up. Another test of loyalty. Just tricking me into letting my guard down so they can use me for their own purposes... I know Leina wouldn't do such a thing, but I can't help it. Even when I want to help, I find myself thinking, I have to be useful... I have to... I have to..."
Mumbling, she trails off.
<Pose Tracker> Eight Orlodhari has posed.
Eight is definitely not Elisa. And she has no argument that focusing on using others to avoid being used in turn is a good thing, something that Yuliana should hang onto.
It's best that Yuliana doesn't see Eight's expression when she says what she only ever wanted, though. Eight more than doubts that, especially with what Yuliana says she wants now.
"...Not wanting to die is a normal want," Eight says, diplomatically.
But she sees her, small and shrunken down there. What she always wanted, what she wants now... And how she justifies the things she's done.
"...It's hard," Eight says instead. "Hard to trust. Hard to let them help. It requires a change--a change in how you do things, in how you expect things, a little at a time."
Eight is glad, in the moment, that Yuliana can't sense her feelings.
"You find that what you 'can't help' is a lot smaller than you think it is, when you do. Even if it's still not everything." Eight pushes back off the wall. "...But I'm tired," she admits, "And I need to get back to my husband."
"I hope I've been able to help clarify your thoughts, Yuliana. And I meant what I said."
"...Remember that 'useful' isn't anything to do with love." She starts to turn, to head down the hall.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
And yet, for once, Yuliana is being honest.
She DID just want to help.
Perhaps the greatest crime of the REA was making that so hard to believe.
"Go," she mumbles, releasing her. It's only when she hears Eight's footsteps recede that she latches her arms around herself, and cries more openly, a hitching formless wail.
If love isn't about being useful, why would she offer herself up the way she has...? If it was them, she gladly accepted it...
... Eight might not want to take her kids down this section of hallway.
Yuliana's gonna be here a while.