2024-03-19: .here i choke on the truths i denieD
- Cutscene: .here i choke on the truths i denieD
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim
- Where: The Photon Power Labs
- Date: 2024-03-19 (ICly mid-December 0098)
- Summary: Yuliana finally shares her feelings in therapy, and Dr. Kimura must write in his notes that the Empress took advantage of Yuliana in a suggestible state in order to secure control. (Content warning: medical torture, self-harm, domestic abuse)
First thing in the morning, the day after Leina retrieves Yuliana back to the PPL, she rings her wife. (She has to borrow a phone to do it; it's not like she was carrying hers in her strange runic pilot's suit.) Thanks to their efforts, she managed to avoid dreaming of the Void; but, of course, she misses her wife terribly. She worries for her, and judging by how early the call must have come in from Japan's timezone, she's been positively gripped by her worry.
... she still wants to stay a while, though. But of course she needs her wife's help to do so, since she left in such a strange way; she wants Elisa to visit, anyway. Thanks to her, she's able to secure what she needs to be away -- a bag of clothes, her tablet and her phone, Plyushokrova.
She calls her often, even as she undergoes another round of treatment. She is unsteady and fearful; and in the halls, as well. She speaks less to the scientists about why she's so nervous, why her temper is so short after she'd been doing so well. Weeks pass before she even broaches the subject with Dr. Kimura, mid-December.
"... you must think me quite stupid," she grouses, discontent, as her fingers lace together and she leans forward on her knees. Her shoulders hunch, and she glances aside, to the edge of the couch. "Getting back in there. Or that it serves me right... don't you?"
"I think," Dr. Noburu Kimura says, in a more open posture, "that you made the decision you felt you needed to make. I wasn't glad to hear you were so shaken... I was glad you survived. And I was relieved you asked Leina for help, too. I think reaching out to her was very insightful, Yuliana." He gestures, with a hand. "But I would like to hear what you think about it."
"... I... I'm glad my Elisa is working so hard to keep me safe," Yuliana says, haltingly, "but... the Empress frightens me, these days. Ever since She almost grasped me, last year, She's been so angry, so -- panicked. Sometimes, when I meet with Her, She is beside Herself. She wishes to be with me, desperately... She's lost all Her patience. Of course I love Her, but, but -- my Elisa has to remind Her I'm mortal. She doesn't care if it hurts, so long as She can claim me..."
"It sounds as if it's become more frightening than it was," Dr. Kimura summarises what he's heard. "Is it worse, now?"
"Mm," Yuliana nods, grasping and re-grasping her hands, in the hollow between her knees. "She kept yelling, you know, jou-w lloia Niy-ia ot ou ou-th'haill, jou-w u-yll ou-th tia-j Ni:a..." She glances up to see the confusion on his face, hearing those rough syllables from her throat, and she grimaces and looks back down. "I mean -- 'you are Mine and no other, you will not deny Me'. Stuff like that. Yelling about how Her shard -- that's what She calls Elisa -- must return me to Her, and I had to tell her at once, and how I had to open the Gate at once... She felt so abandoned. She was anxious, and it made Her angry. She was angry at me for ignoring Her... She was angry at Elisa for not bringing me to Her... and She was angry at the Earth, I guess, for distracting me from what was important. She's always been possessive, but..." Yuliana wilts, sinking down. "I think getting so close and failing really hurt Her. Especially since I... I didn't want to be so close to Her all the time. I kept acting to, to reduce the time I spent there. So of course She's angry... She must surely feel that I don't love Her any more, even though I say always I am Hers. Because I don't act like it."
"It isn't your fault," Dr. Kimura says, calmly. (He is used to weathering horror, even if it isn't usually this literal.) "By all accounts, you were enduring nightly psychic torture, and the Empress wasn't listening to you when you tried to tell her it hurt. Even if her feelings are hurt, she could express that by talking to you instead of lashing out at you and Elisa. You've told me how Elisa is capable of talking reasonably with you and adapting her behaviour, after all, so it must be something gods are capable of."
"I... guess." Yuliana frowns, deeply, as her own self-valuation wars with the damage the Empress has done. "But it wasn't always like this, you know. It's not like -- She's just this tyrant battering me down. Don't get the wrong impression."
"I won't jump to conclusions," Dr. Kimura assures her. "And it must be very difficult to bear her anger, if you remember a better time. Can you tell me what it was like before?"
"Well, for -- for a long time, I didn't really understand," Yuliana explains, and grows more unsure of herself, as she does. "But She was there since the beginning, really. You know the tanks?" She's mentioned the cramped sensory deprivation tanks before, in passing, and he's read her file regardless; he nods, and she continues. "It wasn't just to test -- well I guess it did show I could reach out and get help, but they didn't know to look -- or I guess it was just to beat us down, you know, you'll do anything after long enough in there. But, you know, it's -- it's hell." Her speech only grows more disorganised and anxious, as she describes it. Dr. Kimura is silent, as she pauses, and waits for her to speak.
Finally, Yuliana repeats: "It's hell. After a while they realised I was biting my lip, scratching myself, gave me something to do. Focus on. It was there. So they made sure to fit a mouthguard and mitts on me before they threw me in there, and then I really had nothing. And it's -- when you've got nothing going on for a while, when they take you out it's blinding, right? Except there was -- it wasn't always nothing. The tapes -- they had things they played, and -- you know, like that, it was completely overwhelming. Everything was about that track. All about the, you know, those wolves would just be tearing someone apart, and it'd just be saying -- I still don't remember what it was saying. Took me ages to remember this much." She takes a breath; it shudders. "Something about -- being hungry -- I guess. I know it droned on. When Elya got it out of me I felt like my ears were being bored right through. Guess it's loud when there's no other noises -- anyone shot a gun next to your ear? But then it'd cut out, nothing, black. And your mind keeps going over it. There's nothing else there. If you don't make sense of it, you just -- you go mad. You go mad. And I guess you do go mad, because I wouldn't really -- you know, any weird stuff, I was just like, I was seeing things? Your mind makes stuff up. Then they bring it back. With those machines they strap on your head or the, therapy or, drugs. Whatever."
She hasn't gotten to the Empress yet. Dr. Kimura lets her keep talking, scribbling down notes on his clipboard.
"But it took them longer with me. Like, a year. Because I didn't have to dwell on it. I wasn't alone there. There was -- She was there. She was there. It was hard to focus on Her too, but I knew -- I knew there was someone watching me in the cracks around the Newtypes. There was a Woman. She was there. And I didn't go mad, not like some of them did. It was hell, but I remembered my name. I wasn't stupid, like -- I did what they wanted -- it's not like I wanted to go back there. But I could look at myself in the mirror. I was brighter. The look in my eyes. I wasn't dead inside. Because I wasn't isolated, even when they wanted me to be. I wasn't alone. Someone's always loved me, you know?" Finally her wavering voice hitches, and she buries her face in her hands. "S--someone's always cared about me. And you know, She -- She cared so much -- She broke a piece of Herself away just to come here and save me. She sent Elisa, and Elisa saved me. I love Her," but she cries about it, anyway.
There's something Dr. Kimura notices, though, in that disjointed account. "What did you see, in the mirror?" He asks. "How was it different?"
"Oh -- my eyes," Yuliana says, shrugging, as if she doesn't quite see why that's what he's pulled out from it. "I used to have really light eyes, like my ayah," her father, that is. "But with all those stints in the tanks, they got, kind of -- deeper? Darker? Brighter," and she doesn't see any contradiction in the terms. "The stress I was going under with Devi's efforts to break me down, I suppose. I was under a lot of stress. I had to rely on Her more and more."
"Is it possible," Dr. Kimura asks, "that the Empress was influencing you while you were compromised?"
And Yuliana blinks at the tears in her eyes, having put that possibility aside without even thinking about it. "No -- no, I don't -- think so," she says, but she can't muster much certainty. "I mean -- it's not like I'm a thrall or anything, right? At least when Elisa does it, it's -- they're really not much fun after a while." And if Dr. Kimura has ever treated anyone who would give him another perspective on that statement, he's professional enough not to let it show.
"But Sokrova is green, and he's not a thrall, either," Dr. Kimura points out. "He simply gained the capacity for tameness to better suit the one who changed him. Do you think it's reasonable to consider whether the Empress might have begun changing you before she gave you those tentacles -- on a spiritual level?"
"I'm sure She had a good reason," Yuliana says, hugging her arms to her midsection.
Dr. Kimura pauses, and then asks: "Yuliana, why did you decide that the world around you was fake?"
"Because... there was a world that was more real," Yuliana says, slowly, "with a Woman like me. Since She was like me, I wasn't like -- you. I was just visiting. I was just watching. No one could see me... but She saw me. It was, um -- isolating, I guess."
"... don't you think that helplessness helped Dr. Devi when she told you not to tell anyone what was going on?" Dr. Kimura's voice is even, and not unkind. "Since no one else was real, of course they couldn't help you. Of course there was no point in telling them anything. Yuliana... do you think the Empress would have been happy, if someone else rescued you?"
"..."
Yuliana doesn't have an answer for that.