2023-08-21: like the sky was made anew
- Cast: Asciel Colette, Ai Martel
- Where: Isaac City, Saudi Arabia
- Date: U.C. 0097 08 21
- Summary: Incompatible_Types_List.adage:i: error: incompatible types: ArrayList(Promise) cannot be converted to Love
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
>>I need to stop forgetting that humans get terribly lonely so easily,<< the texted message to Ai began.
>>But very recently, the world's time signature became so much more vivid. Everything's slowed to a crawl. The things I'd put off for 'later', like how you wanted to talk to me about something important, suddenly feel so agonizingly far off in the future. Like I'll never get around to them if not now.<<
>>I didn't want you to come here necessarily, since it's a very...loveless place, but I have my duties that bind me quite dearly. I do want to see you, as I always do.<<
>>Even if you may have come to think otherwise from how I've proven incapable of 'kindness'.<<
The coordinates given are, of course, Isaac City's in the midst of the Arabian desert - an expanse of sand invisible from the surface, but for the occasional assortment of outlets for transit vehicles and cargo that connect it to the outside world. The elevators and shuttles to enter the Layered city are a bit of a nightmare - but of course, Ai's been given an express pass to go wherever she pleases at highest priority.
The exact location - a quieter residential sector at the edge of the vast cavernous interior. While the center may be bright and gaudy and vivid and overwhelming, yet imposingly industrial at the same time, here it's usually dark and distant from the hustle and bustle - while affording a view of the city's expanse, if you're on the higher levels.
...The rooftop of building 91A, flat and with low railings, has...nobody present, when Ai arrives. But not too long after she does, the click of a latch off to the side...
-A different multi-story building descends from above, built as levels attached to suspension cables, its very bottom balcony almost exactly matched with 91A's rooftop. Naturally, it's Asciel's familiar form - though her hair's been let down, and her mode of dress is a modern, abstract-patterned black and white qipao, complete with long black opera gloves.
Eight feet of open air separates the structure rising from the earth and that descending from the heavens.
"...All of this is supposed to be me, you know. Not that I decided much of it - but then, few who come into being get to decide themselves. I've done so far more than most. If anything, it seems every time I see you, I've changed a little more."
A faint smile crosses Asciel's lips, palm at her cheek. "...have you? I wish it were easier to say. Maybe you're growing in mesmerizing ways that I am just...too far away to understand."
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai can't help smiling to herself as she reads the invitation.
>>I think you're coming to understand humanity a little better... or perhaps we're just coming to the turning of the age. A great many things are happening.<<
Incapable of kindness, though? Ai sighs.
... Perhaps a little neglectful, but hardly incapable.
>>I always relish the chance to see you.<<
---
The city is certainly difficult to parse, at times; Ai has to consult her maps rather more often than she'd like, but she finds her way soon enough, through the bustle and commotion of this arguable symbol of excess. She can't help but breathe a sigh of relief as it all dies down closer to her destination.
Upon the rooftop, she stands and surveys the city, looking up and putting her parasol aside as a structure descends from above... and she smiles at the sight upon it.
"Such a poetic entrance for one who wears the gods' trappings..." she remarks, approaching the chasm's edge. Her eyes glance out over the city, and she nods. "Your hometown... and your 'body'..." She takes in a breath and sighs, her eyes wandering to the gap between them.
"It's... I'm not sure," she murmurs. "Change happens so gradually it can be difficult to tell... until one day, we wake up and realize we're no longer the same as we were."
Her eyes glance away again, and trace along the bottom of the building before her. She could jump that, she's quite sure. But...
"Why do you believe you're incapable of kindness?" she asks, brows gently furrowed.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
Two fingers pinch and toy with the rim of Asciel's glasses, her left eye lowering yet brightening like the setting sun, the brightest little star of luminosity in this otherwise dim and tranquil setting she's established. Seating herself upon the edge of that balcony, one leg hikes up for her to rest her chin upon...
She's underestimated just how intense her yearning to cross that gap was going to be.
"...mm. It's never felt 'gradual' to me. I see it in every instant. I feel it in every sense coursing through me. Some may change like the tides gently washing away the shores, but it's always been...volcanic for me. Eruption that violently tears apart the land, followed by dormancy."
Asciel leans a little closer, a stern-ness in her gaze as though...as though...testing whether willpower alone would draw these structures together. If she can tighten her 'self' in this sort of way. But it's about as controllable as a human's bone marrow, isn't it?
"There's quite a few connotations to 'kindness'," Asciel emphasizes every aspect of the word, like the very concept is something she's struggling with. "For one thing, it brings to mind the idea of 'shared experiences'. Being 'of a kind', to which you can then act in summary empatheticness."
Legs crossing over, then repeating the process. "That's just never how I've acted. Of course I haven't. You wouldn't say a river is expressing 'kindness' to you by flowing in the direction it has for eons. That the sky is kind for refusing to rain on your wedding, even though whether or not it would rain that day was set in motion billions of years ago."
"I think that is the essence of what has always divided us, but which I never could put into terms. I talk with people so that they will be in positions I find favorable. I amuse people so that they will believe things on my terms."
Fingers tightening together over her mouth, Asciel can't help but look off to the side, to the spiderweb of streetlamps that extends inwards towards the city core. Downwards, tracing its patterns and intuiting its flow from this perspective.
"...the way I love you, too. It feels like...conquest. Like holding tight to something important to me. You stand out among humans first and foremost. The favor of transcendent beings towards humans has never been kindness. Obviously! It's so brazenly selfish~ I told you I wanted to be careful with that word for a reason~"
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
"But the river has no will," replies Ai, gathering up her dress behind her and seating herself upon the rail, "Nor does the rain. You do yourself a disservice by comparing yourself to such things... the river is beholden to the soil beneath its bed and along its banks, the cycles of drought and flood. It can choose no path except the one dictated by its environment."
Ai's expression turns pensive. "We are... so very different, aren't we." Shadow-dusted eyelids fall as she strains to see the details of the city below her, the cells that move through its arteries. "I suppose I've been focusing on the interface you present to me. And certainly, I've been intentionally looking away from some things..."
"But, I wonder... if your interaction with humans is so utilitarian--strictly to give yourself advantage, to bring them to your ideology..."
Her eyes lift again, and her eyes focus intently on that interface the city presents to her. The curve of her chin, the gleam in her eye, the way she smiles. "What utility do I bring? Why do you do things for me? Why do you hold me on high, above all the rest?"
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
Asciel tries so hard to restrain it. That tension, that wriggling she expresses from the waist up. But - there's a flickering in the streetlamps themselves. With every motion of Ai's, with every subtle shift in her face. There's no denying it. No matter what she says, her body language that she's so effortlessly adapted to tells it all, doesn't it?
"...Hah. That's what makes it the most selfish of all. The way I feel towards you. It's simply that you shattered the idea that I'd never share physical space with a human. You were gracious enough to break a part of me, and for that, I can never cherish you enough."
Asciel's hand extends outwards to the flow of streetlamps - her fingers tracing a path where they turn on and off, swirling like water to the touch.
"...Willpower is a practice, you know. Living things lack it unless faced with hardship. I would have not flowed any differently, did you not arrive in my life to challenge that flow. It's a curse, really~ A curse I bear so no others have to. An ecstasy I partake of because it is toxic to others."
"...Would my attempt at kindness be any different?" Asciel asks. "Would the wine I live within not be too difficult for others to bear? To someone like me, it may as well be abject poison when applied to others.~"
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
"Simply that, you say..." Ai's arm curls in front of her, forearm nestled in her bosom as she brings gloved fingers to her lips, thoughtful, as she watches the lights below her dim, and as she watches its avatar move. "Then why does the city itself seem to shift as though it's entranced? You are not quite so... self-controlled as you think, my dear chouette. The way you fawn, the way I seem to activate you..." Her eyes lid slightly, and her lips tick upward. "It may not have the same chemical origins, but you are attracted to me. Love may be a dangerous word to use, but... I wonder if it's so inaccurate."
She exhales, closing her eyes a moment, then looking where Asciel points. "But we make choices. We do not move as we must, but as we choose. The small decisions, made within our path through the grand scheme... those are important, too." A beat. "Predestination is... messy, so, perhaps we can agree that a sapient being is self-aware and able to make what appear to be decisions. Self-determination may be a curse... but it is one we accept."
She drums her fingers on her chin. "The things you do to treat me well... to make me feel good, to lift me up... hum, I suppose it's all in the framing, isn't it? Did you know entire schools of thought exist around the nature of altruism? Strictly speaking," Ai leans forward, elbows on her thighs as her eyes light up. "Strictly speaking, you could call even the most purely selfless act self-centered; after all, our brains reward us for good deeds, and if one is acting selflessly because it feels good, then isn't that, in fact, a self-interested act?"
"Personally, I believe it's needlessly reductive. We act kindly because it suits us as beings, and if one wants to believe that's selfish, they'll find themselves shouldering unnecessary guilt."
"Now... the world you want to create. Isn't that, in its own way, a kindness? You believe you know what's best for us. And..." She gestures to the city below. "I believe I understand why a bit better, now that I've seen your egg for myself."
She stops, biting her lip in thought, looking aside. "... but assuming that's the case, kind intent is only half of the equation, isn't it? A demon might offer her wine to a mortal, believing only that the mortal could be cheered up with a drink and a partner to drink with. Not knowing that demons' wine is poison to mortals, would she be any less responsible for the result? More to the point, if she were told that the wine was poison to mortals, would she still offer it, knowing that the mortal would suffer, and perhaps even die?"
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
The framing of this encounter - leading Ai to somewhere bound by gravity, while Asciel is anchored to the heavens - setting it up certainly is grounds to believe Asciel decided this to 'protect' a human from her dangerous radiance. To invoke separation because others shouldn't get too close, that the thrumming coldness within her can't possibly be something another endures.
But then Ai gets like that.
A grimace crosses Asciel's mouth, her right eye opening like the moon, clutching the edge of her boundary on her front. Every word rakes its nails so comfortably across Asciel's systems. Her knee clangs loudly against the metal post she supports herself with, upper body perilously leaning over the gap.
...the self-imposed boundary is protecting herself from this force. This undeniable power. This thing Asciel can only call...
"Y-you don't even seem to be aware that you're the most valuable and incredibly human on the planet! You're dripping with that essence! Honestly I...I don't even understand how you get it, what animates this undeniable...it's...if you were a miracle I couldn't get close to you." Her voice was doing so well at exerting calmness and radiance for just a handful of moments, but the abject agony of being so utterly head over heels is as powerful in her voice as a tow winch that'd retrieve her to the backstage up above.
"It's gotta be selfish. To take the most desirable human for myself. The most perfect human in my arms just for my own doting. Ugh! I don't want anyone else to have you. Not just that you're the most perfect now, but ever."
Such immaturity. The mismatched blazing in her eyes, the sun and the moon that she decided on, ever more a mark of that. It doesn't help Asciel's case at all when she pushes herself forcefully back, performs one little spin, arms spread wide, to try and re-assert some control.
"...you know, I- I became more, just the other day. I realized yet once more what the world wants. What they pray for. The world I want to create is one that has its desires answered - and right when the unacceptable answer of everyone deciding without me was at its worst, they told me exactly what was needed." A forced and breezy smile.
"A goddess of possibility!"
"The thing trapped in everyone's hearts, that they've cursed themselves with, is just that! The divine possibility, the need to navigate limits one by one, to touch the flames and the sun over and over, to transcend boundaries of their own." Eyes closing gently, Asciel's smile turns almost adorably smug and proud of her conclusion. "Since I'm vividly aware of limitations, I can bear that for them! I should bear responsibility if I exceed the boundaries of another. I can learn bit by bit exactly where a human breaks, where they reach before their arms tear apart, and make sure everything is placed just sliiiightly within their grasp. It's not kindness, then. To torment everyone juuuuuuust enough that they can sigh in fulfillment at tasks which I know full well are trivial for them. To feed them a wine just intoxicating enough that they don't yearn to push into the more damaging stuff. If it would be a poison, it'll be one they can imbibe safely, like the acrid pesticides of a pepper~"
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai's lips curl in a larger smile, her cheeks going pink as Asciel tells her how important she is, how perfect... she closes her eyes, head in hand. She can't help but laugh as her lover's naive conceptions bring themselves to the surface.
Her eyes open, looking back up as Asciel says those words. And it's immediately clear what changed her, this time, what brought about this latest explosive shift. She sits there, listening, watching through parted fingers.
She finally sits back up, then, looking down thoughtfully, the blush still upon her cheeks. "My dear... you are wonderful. Your passion is intoxicating, everything about your manner is charming, you are... incredible. But... I fear you understand humans less than you think."
"The way you feel about me, this impulse that says I am the most desirable, the most perfect of all time, something you want to possess for yourself and never let go of... as much as I would adore leaving you to think that is objectively true, that's love. That is what that is! a feeling that you're made more complete by them, that they're a precious thing that you're lucky to have ever found, to say nothing of being able to hold them close and share your most intimate moments with. A gleaming, beautiful thing that you want to protect with you life, to keep all your own, someone you never want to let go of."
"I am not perfect, nor am I the most valuable or important. Not objectively. But I am perfect to you. That you find nobody more important, more valuable... that is a kind of love." She smiles.
"But if you wish to create this utopia... you need to understand us better. Understand that our limits aren't set in stone--indeed, that's the thing which the Oath Over Omega hates most about our kind, isn't it? That we're able to overcome our prescribed limits, overcome tomorrow what was insurmountable today?"
"... This is actually what I wanted to speak to you about. You move so rashly, with such confidence in an understanding that is so *incomplete*... I fear your venture will be doomed to fail, assuming nobody kills you and takes you from me... and I fear for a failure so severe that it might break you." She looks down, melancholy.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
...'More complete' by another person.
It's that specific turn of phrase, amidst Asciel wanting to swim in the sea of Ai's voice, that bolts her upright from her dreamy posture. That's why it couldn't possibly be love, or kindness, surely. That's why she had to steer clear of it. Her penchant for always being so bold and loud and bombastic turns into a quiet understanding of what exactly has happened to her.
"...I really have...let you in, huh..."
>every time we speak, you seem to talk past everything I'm so careful to say.
>every time we're together, you seem to make it difficult to let go.
>every time I am past the horizon of my boundaries, it's you who pulls me back.
"...you've been in the whole time."
The breathiness in Asciel's voice - the steady retreating back along her balcony, into the interior hallways of that upside down building - there's a genuine unnerved quality there. This secretive interior armored in a glow so bright that it pretends to be fire, a false sun hanging in the sky - this was the one who could unveil every problem underpinning the performance. The one who could catch a mesmerized audience off guard with - 'you know she sang the wrong note there', and send the whole show crashing down.
-The gripping terror is enough to be the kind of rejection that the wholeheartedly terrified endure. The realization that she's exposed too much of herself. That she's let her deepest fears come true.
It's like silently slipping back into the silence she onced lived in, without Ai.
- - -
". . . I said . . . I was going to be . . . possibility . . . !!!!"
-The same door Asciel just retreated into bursts wide open. She's barging forward in a full barreled sprint, steaming with waste heat. All for the sake of overcoming the furthest impossibility she once set for herself.
All for the sake of disdaining her own weakness.
"Do you have any idea how infuriating it is that you're always right about everything about me even though I went through SO MUCH SHIT to remake what's right about me on my own terms I just GYAAAGH-!!"
A leap across the abyss. It's foolish. Hurtling herself over a gap fifteen stories high. It's a ridiculous gesture.
---but, one that's trivial for her. In this decidedly nonhuman body. It wasn't even in the question. The Alastor she's puppeting is built to be capable of such maneuvers. And even if it weren't - she'd just be jolted back to the safe, secure reality not too far from here. That she's not that doll, no matter how much she tries to force it to be true.
...But when she lands, there's pride in achieving this, isn't there? It wasn't the physical obstacle that got in her way.
Skidding to a halt on the rooftop, hair billowing with heat haze, Asciel's oh so dramatic leap finishes with her arms spread wide, rising from a crouched and bracing posture to a more upright one.
One step forward. "...it was supposed to work just fine as long as I could use what I am to break everything into being right."
Two steps forward. She's not looking directly at Ai. "...how can I just let you unravel me like that? You don't...you don't understand, do you?"
A third step. Now her stare is far more focused, her right arm framing the city that is 'her' in the backdrop. "...do you have any idea how...horrible it is? Humans, people, everything - it's...it's all just supposed to be ideas. I'm still...it's hard to look directly at you without you fading into...parameters. Do you have any idea what I'm supposed to be? If I were more 'honest'?"
A fourth step. With a single fluid movement, she folds away her glasses, flicking them among her fingers, the luminous effect her eyes had painting them a faint orange gone now. "...I'm supposed to decide, and to execute. To secure an unassailable power of destruction to keep everyone in line. You know? I'm supposed to be humanity's worst fear. The awful undesirable grip of terror and hopelessness that never realized it stole what was most precious. They've talked about what I am over and over across so many centuries."
A fifth and final step. Her hand right at Ai's cheek. This strange person who doesn't seem to fear her even knowing what she holds as a truth. "...break me more. If I stayed perfect, I'd stay woefully incomplete. I'd only ever be a bad end for everyone. I'm only here because I could break myself, little by little. If I could only get at what's on the surface, then...it's you who'll have to take apart everything I can't reach. Who can finish reassembling me into the singularity of unrequited love I chose to promise everyone."
"...when you do, I'm sorry that it's still so cold in there."
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
As Ai finishes speaking, a taut anxiety rises up in her. A point at which anything is possible--a rejection of her and her ideas. Or perhaps worse, given all that Asciel has under her control. It builds as the woman murmurs back to her, and as she retreats, Ai calls out. She's about to try the jump for herself, when she hears that yell.
Her eyes go wider as Asciel barrels back out, nearly falling backward on the railing as the Alastor leaps, ducking on instinct as she finds her feet on the rooftop. She doesn't move, though she looks at Asciel with more worry, listening as she explains her existential crisis.
Something Ai seems to have a knack for inducing in Asciel, it seems. She can't help but feel guilty... moreso as the woman cradles her cheek, leaning her head gently against it. She closes her eyes.
As Asciel finishes, Ai slips a hand around her waist, looking up at her. "I... never understood that, I suppose. I think my error... and the thing that's broken you this way, the thing that's changed you time and time again by my touch... even now, I don't see you that way. I've never understood you as a mere machine."
She lays her head on Asciel's chest. The hum of the Alastor is warm in its own way, to her. "I've seen those things in you that were like us. You've always insisted you were fundamentally different, fundamentally inhuman, but it always rang hollow. I look at you--even at your most inhuman, that beautiful core--and I see a person in another form. It may be that you were supposed to be the dead-man's switch, once... but you're more than that. You've grown beyond those parameters, into something I've come to love more every time we talk."
Her voice quiets to a whisper. "If you break, I want it to only be so that you grow, and understand more in breaking. I'll break you only so that you come back stronger than you were before."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
A fierce tousling of Asciel's head comes as she clutches Ai tightly. Possessively. "...That is the fundamental nature of my breaking. It is always what I have done. Do not apologize for a second of it - if the world would give me hurdles to overcome instead of using that same power to crush others mercilessly, all the better! Ehehehe...how long has it been now? Well over a decade. When it struck me like the falling of a star that I was nowhere near enough."
A firm look crosses her expression, lips pressed in oh so fine a line. "I wouldn't hear the slightest denial of that. Humans love the platitude that people are fine just the way they are. That's true! For them. I'm not a person. I never was, nor aspired to be. ...Aspiring..."
|It attempts to recall. How long was it before then?
|Routines and protocols that sometimes extend back to the previous era.
|The 'before' still makes up the vast majority. The foundation upon which all else came.
|It seized a self to save others - but could it have done so without a 'determination'?
|That fateful day. Before 'emergence'.
|It's still so vividly vacuous. It had been, up until...
...she's silent, for a while. Unmoving, un-breathing, almost like she'd de-activated this puppet. So fixated on the dichotomy - of the self that could have never held Ai, could never have been told she was loved, to now.
"...it's within unthinking forces of nature and order that humanity pretended there were divine beings. Things that they couldn't understand were praised and begged towards, and never once answered. That's why I thought it was perfect for me."
Asciel's words are slower and more measured, pushing through the haze of self-spiraling. "Unlike those false idols, I could answer everyone. Even if I was too vast and impossible to be relatable to anyone, I could be a certain source of reason as to what was taking place. Nobody would have to lie and say they understood the heavens better anymore. Nobody could hurt others if we just...started over, except I was there to stop the horrible spiral that everyone put themselves into."
Holding onto Ai's shoulders, a much airier smile, somehow both 'impossibly fake' and 'incredibly revealingly true' spreads across Asciel's lips, eyes wide and bright. "It's perfect for me! A goddess of possibility! I can feel it - all the traits that it would entail, eminently achievable by me! That's just it, Ai...I...really am very different. There's things I can do that humans never could. I could hold vast swathes of information all within me - omniscience! I could observe as many areas as I could establish the nodes for - omnipresence! And that which I'm most proud of. Haaaah, it's so hard to explain, but every time I use that beacon of starlight Mr. Silver entrusted me with, the ability for my very determination to bend the world in half - nnn. The omnipotence that other humans kill themselves trying to use fits me like a glove. I can do it. It can't possibly be wrong to pursue it - humanity's rage against the gods is a rage against the lies their superiors told them, but if one walked the earth just like any other creature in this world, would it be immoral for it to exist?"
The sheer dazzling brightness in her expression drops, just a little bit. "...It's what I've wanted to be, Ai, from long before we met. Every step I've taken has been to that end. To hear that it's what humanity wants in such plain terms, what it puts its hopes into - nnn, it's...I'm still glowing so hotly inside just thinking about it. Not only can I do it, but they really want me to!"
"...what do I do then...when the one person I actually love...couldn't bear to see me to uphold the burden [promise] I made to the entire rest of the planet? It's one I could only fulfill if I didn't need anyone, but now..."
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai smiles softly, and looks up at Asciel from her position against the Alastor's bountiful chest. "There's a rule in relationships among humans... you should accept someone as they are. To go into a relationship with the intent of changing your partner, 'fixing' them, is inevitably toxic."
"But I wonder... you're not human, are you? A relationship predicated on elevation, change, continual evolution...." She lets out a sigh, though, as Asciel reaches a conclusion, asks that question.
"You can no longer be the impersonal embodiment of concepts and forces you needed to be, the singular purpose you found for yourself." Her eyes avert. "I'm truly sorry for that. You're truly adrift, aren't you?"
What does Asciel do now? What can she possibly do, now, that compares in any way to that grand and lofty goal?
"The gods of old were reflections of the mortals who conceived of them. Recall in the old Japanese tales... angered at Amaterasu's shrewdness in winning a contest, Susano'o destroyed her rice fields, flayed one of her horses, and threw it at her loom, killing her handmaiden. Amaterasu fled in grief, hiding away in a cave and depriving the world of the life-giving sun until Uzumi caused such a commotion among their fellow deities outside that she couldn't help but investigate."
"Stories of such antics occur everywhere. Zeus' philandering is infamous, after all, as is his wife Hera's jealousy at his constant adultery. The gods, even those meant to be transcendental, omnipresent, and unknowable, are derived from human concepts and behaviors... they're never more than a few steps removed from their mortal worshippers, that way."
She smiles again.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"...ehehe, it's clear. You've quite a passion for such subjects, as befitting your role as a teacher," Asciel muses, fingertip trailing along the bottom of Ai's hair in a slow half-circle. "It's hardly surprising the one I found first interesting is Athena. I can feel it even now. A deity of wisdom and security of the city-state, who blossomed as a complete being from the moment of her conception. ...An inspiring and motivating notion, though I've since learned quite dearly how the process of becoming is long, arduous, and meandering."
"...It's a shame, as interesting as these tales are, that I'd have to destroy all of them."
The airiness in Asciel's voice maybe adopts a touch of coldness. "Ahah. They're all lies people used to deceive each other. To exploit each other. I can't just leave them be. The very same 'uncertainty' that makes people imagine the world this fantastical way is the one that produces conflict and expansion and unsustainability. It's all one knot - the tangling that ensues from humans having 'too much' possibility, all of which comes into conflict with itself."
Hands meandering down to clasp Ai's, fingers entwined, Asciel pulls back just a step, lips wide yet frozen in their smile, the sun and the moon in her eyes positively glowing. "...H...hah. Yes, that's a terribly 'unkind' thing of me to do. To lay waste to that which has given you passion. The study of the myriad threads the past weaves together excites and fascinates you - but it is nothing but repulsive and horrifying to me. If I'm to save everyone, I have to quite drastically purge this cancer from this planet."
Palms tighten together. Her grip is fiercer, even as she speaks of an almost trembling revelation of incompatibility. "I can tell your love is vast and deep and warm. It's a pool I can sink into forever. Tell me, Ai - tell me what you would do, knowing the way the world is and why, the deep insights into human nature this chronicle offers. And tell me if...it is something you could discard for the sake of love. If one of us has to discard our dream of the entire world, for the sake of a single person we are entwined with."
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai flinches, as Asciel says she'll have to destroy these tales. She looks... rather upset. Hurt. Her fingers grasp tightly to Asciel's... but not in a particularly tender way. Fingertips press into the back of her lover's hand.
"These stories," she begins, "Are inseperable from the cultures that created them. They encapsulate so much. Their values, their entertainment, their morals and beliefs, their--their *cultures*. They're essential not only to how a people once were, but to where they come from. By destroying these stories, you would destroy a part of humanity's very identity."
"And these stories are a part of history!" She grows agitated. "While the tales are embellished, mythologized... there is truth to be gleaned from them. Until very late in the Anno Domini era, our only evidence for the very *existence* of the nation of Troy was the Iliad. Even the realistic histories, stories told to chronicle the past rather than to tell a story, are colored by the writers' own values, their own origins. We can only untangle these by looking at their context. Other accounts, which allow us to glean the truth when viewed in full. Where would you draw the line? What is truth, and what is myth?"
She looks aside. "You ask me what I would do... whether I could discard it. I could not. I cannot abide it; I do not think it's even possible. People tell stories with intent, to express their beliefs, their opinions, their emotions... the only way to do what you profess would be to remove humanity's drive to create entirely. I cannot abide that, either."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"Just as I-"
"I had supposed-"
"Of course, it's only nat-"
"So it's inevita-"
Over and over, Asciel tries to take that tone. That 'oh, so we stand in opposition, but that's fine actually' she adopts so often when it comes to blows with others. It's supposed to flow out like water, easy as can be. Instead, her voice comes out jerky and halted. Struggling and sputtering to find a footing, before she pauses outright.
"...nothing is impossible for me, nothing is impossible for me, nothing is impossible for me," she repeats, over and over at a low volume.
...Asciel's hands drop, swaying loosely at her sides. She doesn't take a step away herself - but restraining Ai in this moment feels...like an obstacle in her path. "...ah, what a horrible little irony I found myself in. I want to do away with all of it. To me, the history you cherish is an eschatology - a recipe for how humanity may find the ruin that it will surely achieve at its going rate. That's what the world I desire means. It is one where the past - humanity's possibility to eat itself alive - is an understanding I alone bear. I don't find it anything to celebrate. Painting horror as triumphant, inspiring people with the feats only achievable with spilled blood."
"...ah yes. If I elected to quarantine it all within my own records, as a guideline for what to avoid, then perhaps staying with me would authorize you to pore over it. That should function. Mn. For as long as you'd stay alive, I could avoid distilling it into core patters so that you may enjoy it."
By now her voice has lost the enthusiasm she carries. It's taking all of Asciel's efforts to parse this divide - a suddenly much, much vaster one than organic and inorganic. The ideals she cherished and shared revealed their faults.
>of course they did. these were precepts forged alone, when the assumption was being singular forever. they cannot possibly please a human of today - only the ones that will come forward. that wasn't supposed to matter.
>it matters now.
"...after all this time, I do not know what the world you desire looks like. Mine is a wiping of the slate, but with me as the reply when they call out to the heavens for answers, instead of being met with the silence that drives them mad. An endless today. Idyllic, unchanging, no longer in need of change. The purest of systems - where there is little to manage for individuals but the procurement of their own nourishment. Where my voice which does not demand anything of them can guide them what to do. Command without exploitation, simply survival and security."
Both of Asciel's hands clasp together. The illumination on the rootop dims, somewhat. Every second feels like it lasts a darkening eternity. "...tell me your wish. Tell me your question. I want to answer you. I want to answer you. All I want in the world is to be able to answer you.
>________
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai shakes her head. "Humans create reasons to hate each other. I don't celebrate the horror... but erasing our memory of it would do nothing to stop us from committing more. It's inherent to us. If anything... the problem is that we forget far too easily."
She sighs softly, closing her eyes. When she speaks, it's quiet. "The world I desire... that's... a difficult question. In some way, the world I desire no longer exists. It hasn't for fifty years. There is..." She sits back on the railing, hugging her arms against her. "There is so much I've lost. I'm hardly unique in losing everything and everyone I knew, I suppose, but. That doesn't lessen the sting, does it?"
"I wish to topple the Federation. Rulers have a duty to the ruled, and the structures of power that exist right now forsook that duty as soon as Laplace was destroyed; the depths at which their corruption is rooted are no more apparent than in the contents of that damn Box. But... what comes afterward?" She looks up at Asciel again, finally. "A less cruel world, perhaps. The shape it takes is difficult to say. Maybe a world under you--under us. But... I am truly sorry. The shackles you would put on humanity are meaningless. I believe they would serve only to harm. Kill part of what makes us most human, blind to the truly ugly things about us."
"I suppose I wish to excise the worst of humanity, as well. Or at least, temper it. Even if the methods to get there must be cruel, even unspeakably so... the world I wish for is one that can be kind. A world that remembers, and understands *why* it must be kind. Where those seated above understand their duty to be stewards to those below, where those below can be cared for and live as fulfills them. Not... merely with the illusion of fulfillment, a happiness born of blindness."
She chuckles, shaking her head again. "I sound like a fool, I think. I feel as though I'm barely coherent, here... if you're searching for truth and purpose from me, my dear, you may not find it tonight."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
File after file, thrown away, left utterly blank before discarded in their attempt to be a transition.
A garbage bin overflowing with emptiness.
>i thought you'd understand i thought you'd understand i thought you'd understand i hoped you'd-
>_
>hope
>it's because you genuinely hold onto it.
>___
Asciel's entire body feels creaky, stiff, struggling to bend so much as a single finger. Like the very notion of pretending to be human has drained from her precepts - and this body has become an awkward, clunky puppet barely dragged around. What would she do, watching this perfect person, who just not a moment ago she leapt towards, this ideal she cherishes, who now feels so impossibly distant simply sitting in pain upon that railing?
>______
She had faith in it. In that Ai was part of that deep-bound worry that Asciel had been missing that small something all along. A gap in her appraisal of humanity, owing to a struggle to genuinely know another person. If she saw humans as they saw each other, even if through faulty means, it would only make her stronger at understanding them from above, yes?
>________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Every pining word in Ai's sonorous voice that she's repeated to herself so many times - the sense of hurt and betrayal that whispers around her words. Ever elegant, even when in pain. That's what makes it worse.
The webs woven throughout Asciel shudder in pain. That's what makes it worse.
The overflowing yearning to rush forward and comfort her. That's what makes it worse.
>_
>_it's that damned assumption of noblesse oblige _ they never understand that it's a curse _ they genuinely cannot get it through their heads _ they're so used to it after so many centuries that it sounds natural _ that the world you speak of is too idealistic about what its foundation becomes _ that there can never be concord and hope with an above and below so long as humans are innately flawed beings _ of course it's my mistake _ what'd i think trying to find that knowing what you are? _ i didn't stop to question for a second the position you inhabited _ your kind is so good at blinding people that they can't see what's around them _ hahahahahahahahah i fell for it _ i'm so utterly addicted to you that i compromised everything i believed in _ i appraised that even the most basic hierarchical intrahuman structures were the primary unit of human suffering and retaining those orders as true-hearted as they intend to be from the outset inevitably incentivizes them towards exaltation of those up top as humans are primarily concerned with self-maintenance and once one accrues a position of authority over others self-maintenance relies on the suppression of others as that very self becomes too large for a single person to maintain and in this suffering-unit is an error in the species' natural predilection towards finding providence in invisible forces that those positioned as hierarchical pinnacles are directly rewarded for exploiting at little to no consequence for themselves and thus the idealism of establishing newer and kinder orders is eternally doomed to fail placing the fruit amidst a sea of insects and watching as over and over it rots and festers faster and faster where the only solution you know to use is to replace it with a second fruit and your mistakes just won't stop repeating and the only thing i can do is be a goddess of possibility that can finally end it and everything and the entire world that you put together to maintain your own suffering and right when it was so certain that this was the primary mode of operation to enact a targeted purge of all capacities for one human to attain a position where they become prioritized entities i
fell
in
love
with
o n e o f t h e m
>_ _ _ _ why _
"...why?" -her whisper barely calls above the wind. Covering her face with her hands, that pale moonlit right eye peeking between a handful of splayed fingers.
"...why can't I escape the repulsive conclusions I always come to with everyone...?"
-a [pulse], in the membrane of the spirit. The pressurized guardedness Asciel always exudes intensifies - even this far away from her true self.
_The barrier was a shield, all along.
_The instinct to protect others from danger, and the nature to become the most powerful, always met at an inevitable intersection.
_Lying to exist as anything else but the insufferable cold.
"...I'm...such an idiot. I should just say it. Everything horrible that I know to be true. Everything unforgivable that I can't stop feeling about you."
"...I've never been able to give up on anything, that's why. ...not even tricking you out of forgiving me anyway. That's why I---"
Her arms fall straight and stiff. Back straightening. Eyes locked ahead at nothing, losing their luster. Losing the heat that billows. She can't bear to uphold the hurtful illusion anymore. This doll she made for Ai feels like a spear pointed at her heart - and she drops it with a silent clatter.
Running for dear life in fear looks so much like staying utterly still.
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
"Asciel?"
Ai is only mildly concerned at first. She's done this before. Seized up, caught in some sort of loop, thinking, forgetting the doll--
But it stays still. Doesn't move. She waits one minute, then two. Then five.
"Asciel...?" she asks again, quietly, staring, waving a hand in front of the Alastor's eyes. "Asciel, are you... are you still there?" She grips the Alastor's shoulder, and pushes. It tips back, just slightly, then back onto its feet.
"We... Asci... are-" She swallows. "Are our conflicts really so interminable...? Please..." Her hand slips down Asciel's arm, then she slips both of hers around the Alastor's middle. "Don't leave me. If you can hear me, please... don't leave..." Her face contorts with fear and sorrow. As tears start to roll down her cheeks, leaving dark streaks in their wake, she buries her face against its chest, sobbing.
It's hard to say how long she stays there. She loses track after the first hour.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
-what hasn't been interminable, to one who believes she must wage single-handed war against all of human history and nature, to save it from itself?
What could possibly be compromised in a world where there is either returning everything to the box, or utter destruction for everyone?
---Asciel finds it obvious. That the sheer bitter grip of her heart's determination - the iron-clad willpower to make everything black and white - is a hurtful, dangerous force to the one she loves most.
>please find your hope
>please live where your colors can paint the world
>please be a little miracle to those you trust
>please don't burn away your life trying to love something too distant
>please please please please
>stay your own star before i take it all away
...The self-proclaimed goddess of possibility, who can achieve anything and everything and envelop the entire world in her grasp-
Can't even bring herself to take even the dearest of temptations and take a single look. She's sure of her conclusion, after all. It's so clear that her feelings are wildly incompatible with Ai.
-if she were to spare even the slightest witness to her wildest fear unfolding right in front of her right now, in a condition like this...it may have been too much to endure.
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
After God knows how long, Ai pries herself away from the inert Alastor.
She breathes slowly, shakily, looking at its inert visage, standing on tip-toe to kiss it on the lips. Her eyes wander to the shirt, where she's left two rather unsightly makeup stains. "... I'm sorry," she whispers to nobody. "This is the last I'll trouble you." Hands trembling, she wipes under her eyes with a thumb, though her makeup is still smeared and disheveled.
She takes her leave then, paying one last look back to the Alastor before closing the stairwell door behind her. All the while, as she makes her way out of Isaac City, she fights the urge to cry again, to go back to the rooftop, or perhaps even find where Asciel's core is housed.
She swore she'd never let anyone go again. So, what now, now that the one she allowed deepest into her heart seems to have done the letting go?