2024-09-01: .the sins of our mothers inform today's hatE
- Cutscene: .the sins of our mothers inform today's hatE
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Sashenka Dian, Maksim Morozov, Makar Morozov
- Where: The Silent Castle, Kaffeklubben Island
- Date: 2024-09-01
- Summary: Yuliana explains what happened to her nephews, once Elisa is whole again. She admits that she should have listened to her mother -- only to be horrified as she hears what the Peace Mediation Organisation's crimes really were, and why Sashenka developed her own sense of bigotry. But Sashenka still loves her daughter, so Yuliana has no reason to doubt her logic, either.
"Was the colony on fire, Auntie?" Makar asks, sat in Yuliana's lap as Maksim sits beside them on the sitting room couch. She can't ward their questions away forever; telling them some version of what happened, she supposes, might settle their nerves.
(They told her they were frightened.)
"Not quite," Yuliana shakes her head, frill flaring out to either side of her head. "The Coordinators put a big force field around it, and that's why I and the others couldn't shoot it down."
Maksim frowns. "What's a 'Coordinator'?" He asks, as his snake, Swordtooth, coils lazily about his arm.
"They're bad men who live in space," Yuliana explains, gently -- and her mother, Sashenka, looks up from her needlework when she does. "They used to live on Earth, too, but we made them leave after the State realised they were no good. They made their kids better at everything with weird science, but unfortunately, they only used those abilities to hurt us."
Maksim's frown deepens, as he points out, "... but the State hates us, Auntie. Are we bad, too?"
"No, baby, no," Yuliana hurries to assure him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Just because they were right about some things, that doesn't mean they're not still wrong about most things."
"But you never said anything 'bout a Coordinator before," Makar points out, kicking his legs.
"Well... they hurt Wendy very badly," Yuliana settles on, after a moment. "Elya fixed her up, so she's all better, but she's green now because they were so awful to her. And even if they'd left her alone, they're the ones who decided to drop Junius Seven on us. On lots of people who didn't do anything wrong, just like you."
"They're scary," is Makar's conclusion.
"I know, sweetie," Yuliana says, wrapping him up in a hug. "But your Auntie's real tough, and your Aunt Elisa is stronger than anyone, too. We won't let anyone hurt you, okay?"
"'Kay," Makar mumbles, squeezing her tightly. She holds him, there, until he stops trembling, and this time Maksim doesn't make fun of his little brother.
What he does, instead, is tap a fist to his chest once Yuliana straightens again. "I'm gonna learn magic, just like Aunt Elisa, and then I can make the Castle go all wobbly all on my own!" Maksim boasts, as Swordtooth slithers up over his shoulders and drapes there. "So you won't have to cry, Kara! I even got to watch Ingvar block the waves," he adds, clearly more energised than horrified. "It was so cool."
"It is really cool, isn't it?" Yuliana smiles, and lifts her hand to deliver unto him -- a high five. "When you're all grown, I know you'll be able to protect people too, Sima."
"Yah-huh!" He grins, and he, at least, is distracted from his sadness. "C'mon, Kara! If we go find them, they'll tell you all about it!" He hops up from the couch, and grasps Makar's hand, tugging him off the couch, too.
"'Kay," Makar says, running after his brother.
It's only once their little footfalls fade down the stone hall that Sashenka speaks up, from where she's sitting on her chair. (She doesn't have to worry about the children running off; everyone knows to look out for them. It takes a village, after all.) "I'm surprised to hear you say that," she says, her tone a touch dry. Her skin is, too -- but she's an elderly woman, by now, so her wrinkles can be excused. "Weren't you the one to insist I not 'put ideas' in their heads?" The reason they didn't know about Coordinators was because --
Of Yuliana, who sighs, tucking her legs up on the fainting couch and wrapping her tentacles about them. "I should have listened to you, mama," she says, conciliatory. "I thought you were just being spiteful... and then I thought you'd got the targets all wrong. If I'd just heeded you, I would have known..."
"It's all right," Sashenka forgives her, with all the magnanimousness of a mother. "All children find some place to rebel. Your concerns weren't so different to mine, really... if Earth makes for itself a Superman, they have no guarantees that Superman will value their lives when that creation is done. But you were too young to hear the details about that... back then."
"What happened, mama?" Yuliana asks, her frills fanning behind her ears to indicate her intent attention.
"The Second Huffman Conflict," Sashenka starts, putting her needlework aside, "has multiple layers of meaning. Yes, Britannia and the OCU were fighting like dogs -- that did happen. But we set it all up, dochura, so that we could get live testing data for our B-Type Devices. The horrors you have seen... they began long before you were tricked into signing your contract. We thought to gain supremacy in war through the use of human resources. Sacrificing one man to die in one of those mass-produced wanzers we debuted the first time around -- no one viewed it as much different to sacrifice two so that the first man could pilot a superior machine." She takes a deep breath. "No... I spoke with many who found it to be the ethically superior option. You didn't need a soldier's brain to create a B-Type Device. If we could equip our soldiers with this technology -- why -- we might have seen a marked increase in pilot survivability."
"Mama!" Yuliana cries, clasping her hands to her chest, as her frills pin back against the sides of her head. "That's horrible--!!"
"I know," Sashenka says, gently. "I know, dochushka. The Peace Mediation Organsation worked to... facilitate it all, so we do share some blame. I saw the -- efforts -- our country was making to create the perfect soldier, in my time there. Our efforts to enable those soldiers were only one facet of the whole... and your experience was another. The Republic blamed it all on us -- but they couldn't take away what I had seen. The creation of Superman is the creation of a being with hatred in their heart. That's why I knew... that Coordinators and Naturals couldn't live together, in this world."
"S--so-- do you think I'm--?!" Yuliana starts, clutched by her own anxiety.
Sashenka levels a serious gaze to her daughter. "You can't deny it, Yulya. Did you not just say that I'd gotten the target of my distrust wrong -- instead of my distrust being wrong at all? You've gotten kinder over the years, but I remember the child you were. You were not gripped by hatred, before they took you... and when you emerged, you knew hate. Am I wrong?"
"No -- no, I can't deny it, but -- but --" Yuliana tears up, as she accuses her mother, "you're looking down on me, aren't you?!"
"No." Sashenka's denial is far less choked. "No, dochura. You are my one and only daughter. I will love you, even if you tear down the sky before my eyes! No individual victim of these crimes of science is to blame for the inevitability of conflict. But they are intrinsically 'other' -- unnaturally superior to us. If you bore down on me, I could not defend myself from your wrath... just as I could not hope to write a document which bested the work of a woman whose brain has been edited from birth for superior cognition. The Natural has much to fear, because there is always the threat that the Superman will turn against them."
"Mama... that you did that... that you knew about all that, I... you looked at people like the scientists looked at m-me--!!" Yuliana wails, burying her face in her hands with a sob.
And Sashenka rises, to come and sit beside her daughter, wrapping her up in an arm. "It was before your time," she assures her, gently, stroking her hair. "If I knew it would happen to my own daughter -- I could not have brokered the deals I did. Shh, shh... your father and I are both appalled at how they treated you. You didn't deserve it, Yulya. You are still my daughter. No?"
"Yuh-huh," Yuliana mumbles, burying herself against her mother, and crying. It takes her long moments to recover long enough to say, "... Axis Shock must have been... proof those people getting together would just make them want to hurt you... right, mama?"
"That's right," Sashenka tells her. "That's why we wanted them gone. Because they were conspiring in our society, trading our secrets to Zeon."
"Never thought much why I did it," Yuliana mutters.
Sashenka shakes her head, smiling. "You can't be blamed for following orders. You were a soldier, despite my best efforts."
"Should've listened to you," Yuliana says, still buried in her mother's robes.
"If only more children did," Sashenka sighs.