2023-09-20: .finding my meaning in my miracleS
- Log: .finding my meaning in my miracleS
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Leina Ashta
- Where: The Silent Castle / Magillanica
- Date: 2023-09-20
- Summary: Yuliana finally manages to ring Leina back -- and actually talk about her feelings about Denver Colony, as well as her and Leina's experiences in labs. Leina encourages Yuliana to focus on her feelings, instead of the meaning the world imparts on miracles. Though she's angry about Rena, she at least seems to care for Leina... and Leina is concerned about the relationship which has the most care about it, in Yuliana's life, even though Elisa's created a thoughtful medication to solve Yuliana's cooling blood. (CW: Discussions of gaslighting/medical abuse)
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Of course, Yuliana's phone keeps a record of its numbers.
And that's how Yuliana figures out how to contact Leina.
Yuliana's capacity to contact Leina is still limited by both of their circumstances; Leina's said she's up in space, of course, and the Silent Castle is still being hammered by a dozen shadowy bad-faith requests. But eventually, she manages to get a text message through, while rather in the middle of something else; shaping a ZZ Gundam, you see, reminds her that Leina exists.
(Sorry, Judau. You're just not the Ashta Yuliana thinks of first.)
She does, at least, send a text message ahead of her, instead of just calling out of the blue. She's being considerate. She deserves a medal for her thoughtfulness, frankly. Has anyone ever been more thoughtful than Yuliana is? She doubts it.
Four text messages come through all at once, are you there, are you there? -- but being fair, the time stamps indicate that she's just been tossing two out a day, and separated by a matter of hours. She's not constantly texting her. This isn't constant texting. (Yuliana knows what that looks like, and so she's quite secure in the fact that she's not doing it.) She does seem to have specific times she remembers, though: soon after when it would be mealtime in Area 9. And now, apparently, when she's in the middle of putting together her models.
But having established that she'd like to talk, Yuliana sets her camera up on its stand on her gunpla table, all busy with soldering iron and engineer's blueprints and an industrial-strength nail file and outrageously small paintbrushes, amongst a dozen other tools. The camera captures, behind her, shelves of model machines. Yuliana must have built them by hand, because there's a tiny Da Xukong 0 up there, and God help the man who makes a model kit of that arachnoid machine. She wears a grey Orenburg shawl, a traditional expression of Zaftran wealth; the thin warming garment contrasts with the black of her robes, made indistinct by the camera's approximation.
"Leyasha!" Yuliana greets her, smiling with that same uniquely Zaftran nickname. "How lovely to see you again! I do hope you don't hold our parting against me," she wrinkles her nose, "it was a matter of technical difficulties, you understand."
Translation: her bestie's a jerk.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
While Leina's phone is touch and go right now while Cathedra sets everything up unfreezing all of her accounts - (annoying!) - she did manage to set up a datapad on Magallanica to inform her of everything coming through.
Which she has set up right now beside the tub, which she's unwinding in. While not everything is up and running, the Vist mansion does have hot water, and it's right beside the communications center.
She did feel a little bad about INDULGING in this way, but-
A sigh. The hot water felt so good.
And then the notes of a magical girl OP start to play. Just the opening bars, a buzz and... she reaches out and grabs the datapad.
And checks.
"Oh! Huh. I guess she would after we got cut off..." Leina fires off a quick reply and sets it back aside and sinks down in the tub, closing her eyes, "... she was so anxious..." Leina murmurs, also sinking into thought.
"... I really don't know what I can do for her."
There's... this long moment of rumination, and deciding... "... just listen, maybe."
Her eyes remained closed and then-
An abrupt splash as she sat up, "Wait-" She grabs the datapad, "-when did she say she wanted to do this!?"
As she does some quick time conversions and, rises quickly out of the tub, grabbing a towel.
-=-=-
Yuliana doesn't know this, but Leina only finished hastily drying and brushing her hair RIGHT before sitting down for the call.
She's wearing one of her Sheryl Nome album shirts, at least in what's in view, and has a butterfly barrette clipped to her hair. "Yuliana!" She says, all smiles, thankful that she can't smell from a distance that she's still fresh out of the bath. "What? No not at all, we're used to that kind of thing out here."
All Spacenoids get used to that kind of thing goes unspoken.
Before she smiles, "How are you holding up? I know when last we left off..." She lets it trail off, as if to reopen the subject if - Yuliana wants to, but of course - it's not necessary either if she wanted to go in a different direction.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"I do hope I didn't interrupt you," Yuliana says, polite niceities which she can't know are so much funnier contrasted against Leina's previous scene. It might be suspicious, if she were psychic, but she definitely has no way to know Leina was very much in the middle of something.
She's not from space, she'd insist, so she's not used to it. Luckily, she doesn't have to.
"... ah?" She asks, a hand coming up to brush down her shawl from her head, settling it in light waves across her neck and shoulders. She smiles, softly, her hand curled by her neck. "Ah, it's a little silly... I was struggling with my feelings over what I accomplished, by Denver, and I worked myself up into rather some anxiety about it all... you know, I'm not really someone who speaks on things so easily, given what the REA demanded of me. I was a state secret, so of course I had to keep my secrets inside myself."
Her secrecy she blames on the REA, and certainly it's true that her reluctance to disclose started there.
She doesn't bring in anything else.
Rather: "But my Elisa reminded me I'm not in that place, any more... you know, she encouraged me to talk about it." With Leina, specifically, but Yuliana doesn't see any need to share that part. "Not that I'm so disturbed about it all, now... but that's why I was acting so strangely, you know? It was just..." She pauses, for a gossamer moment, searching for the word, "... quite lonesome."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"Not at all!" Leina answers quickly, hoping she got her hair JUST dry enough.
And then Yuliana explains, as she speaks upon it, upon Denver. And Leina takes the time to listen to it, beyond it.
It was difficult that day, knowing what she was threatening. What would have happened had she carried it out, but... instead...?
What she accomplished...
There's a nod, and Leina considers how to say it before eventually settling on something, "You were pretty worked up, it's understandable you'd want to talk about it." Leina says with a sense of sincerity, "I think Doctor Kafim is right, if you're feeling this way, that it's best to speak about it."
'Quite lonesome.'
Leina nods sympathetically, "I get you. I've had episodes like that myself out of nowhere sometimes lately..." Her gaze looks abstracted for a time as if she were trying to line something up, this lingering uncertainty.
Is it truly the same?
"If you need to work out something about what you did, I'm definitely willing to lend you an ear."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana doesn't seem to notice that her hair is damp; or at least, if she does, she isn't commenting. It's fine.
"It's understandable," Yuliana says, first. "That you would feel similarly. Murasame also tasked you to carry your secrets under your skin, Leyasha. When you cannot speak what is done, you..." She falls quiet, for a moment, her hand curling by her heart. "Reality isn't real," she settles on, softly. "What's happening isn't happening, so you're left to deny the truth of your eyes. Left adrift... for of course you cannot speak the truth, when you yourself can scarcely believe it. No one would believe you, and you'd be punished for trying, anyway..."
She falls quiet, for a moment, gaze weighted by grief. "But -- that is in the past," she insists, at length, shaking her head. "You are not tasked to return to the laboratory any more, Leyasha. Neither I." Her smile is thin, when it returns, but at least it returns.
Perhaps it's unwise for her to tear open those wounds, but... she does feel some obligation to look out for Leina. Now she's gone through something like Yuliana did... well, Yuliana knows how much she struggled with it.
(Struggles with it, still.)
"You see, I was... confused," Yuliana settles on, finally getting to her concerns. And really, put her down for another medal, trying to ease Leina's before getting to the point. She's trying so hard. "Since... the miracle I enacted, it... Rita was able to continue my works. And what I did, I... I've tried to explain it, but I can't. The -- the setting-down, and the shifting -- you know, they would have exploded, I had to silence them, still... and then bring them to another place. But I couldn't tear down the whole sky, so vast was the field, I... oh, do you see?!" Yuliana's hand slams on the table, shaking the camera, momentarily. "My brain slips to utter nonsense as soon as I try to put it order! And -- and that it was something Rita could help with, it just --"
Yuliana sighs, and rests her elbow on the table instead, so she can prop up her head on a hand. "The slumber, the movement -- it wasn't so dissimilar, you know, to my Dance. Not -- not the normal kind, the... devotional, the bringing forth, the tearing down. It felt the same... except that Emptear protects me, you know, so I wasn't torn to pieces when I did this. I didn't bleed at all..."
Still, it troubled her. No one ever explained miracles to Yuliana. (No one, that is, except her wife.)
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
It is understandable. Leina has spent a lot of time coming to terms with the isolation experiments, but... that isn't quite the loneliness she means.
For now her eyes wander to the side at Murasame's invocation. And what he did to her. Secrets under her skin.
It's... unusual thinking of it that way. Her mind keeps telling her she could have said any time, even if she's told again and again, she couldn't.
"I..." After a moment, there's a distinct nod of agreement that it's in the past. It's better to think of it that way than, right there, so easily drawn back to the surface at any given moment.
That any feelings of being normal, that any idea that her feelings are real - can be cast doubt upon so easily.
And yet, that is reality, isn't it? That some parts of her reality are still...
Rather than respond, she just listens for a time, about how the act that she took was so similar to that which Rita took. Leina jolts subtly as her hand slams down.
Does she see?
Leina looks sidelong, abstracted again, "Does it help you to call it a miracle? Or is that what's confusing?" Leina asks quietly, "It's an easy word to get really hung up on. At Gryps II, some would say we performed a miracle, and turned away the Colony laser. But in the end, using a Psycho-Field? It's not much different from so many other kinds of barriers, like GaoGaiGar's Protect Shade..."
A lambda driver, she doesn't say.
"... I don't call these things miracles myself. Or at least, I try not to, it feels like it just..." Leina trails off, then there's a shake of her head, "... I feel like people really get hung up on the label. Instead..."
She smiles at her, "... I like to think of the people in our lives as the truest miracles of existence. People that mean something to you, not... things you do."
But her thoughts then turn to remembering the dance, and how Emptear protects her, "Protects you, so it keeps... like what happened before, from happening." Leina says softly, as she folds her arms, in thought. It really must disturb her that it feels so similar to what Rita does?
"I think... I think the problem is that you're getting caught up on someone else's script for you. Rita's... or perhaps, just what the world at large would think, seeing it." She tells her quietly, "If you want to see it as similar, you certainly can, but I don't think there's any need to either. What makes it similar in your eyes? And what makes it different? How would you like to see it?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
It's rather unspeakable, which makes speaking it all the more notable.
It would be nice to say that Yuliana has recovered past it, by now, several months on.
Wrong, though.
She listens to Leina's explanation. Despite herself, the fins behind her ears unfurl, fanning lazily as she listens. What is a miracle, what is explicable...
People!, she echoes, in her mind, with a sceptic's tone, before she thinks: but isn't that a fine description for Elisa? And so the doubt on her expression shifts to understanding. She nods, and doesn't interrupt.
Finally Yuliana sighs, smiling to the camera. "My Elisa said something much the same, you know," she says, at length. "That just because both our works act upon the world, they needn't be the same work... the common factor is simply that we both act on this world, and through that of course we could affect each other. At Ra Shalom, too, I suppose... the resonance." She doesn't see the need to explain too deeply; the Banshee was part of that experience, after all.
"It just... frightened me, I suppose... that I was simply doing as Newtypes do. I'd not thought of it that way -- you know, I've never heard of a Newtype coming apart at the seams when they're not even in some Psycommu or Psychoframe to accentuate their powers -- but when I was in a robot, and, you know, Rita said..." Yuliana frowns, there, looking away.
"It scarcely matters what she said -- she was wrong! She simply assumed we were the same, when we're nothing close, my Elisa was so upset, I --" her voice raises and then cuts out, as she swallows, sharply. "Never mind that," she insists, a shade hoarse.
"What matters is -- you've rather a point, I think," she moves on, shaking her head. "What matters is how I would define it, not what this world might see. And I know that Her gifts are singular and unique, and the miracles I wreak are unlike yours. That's what's important," she says, fingers playing about her wedding ring.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina watches Yuliana's expression as she talks, observing the subtle shifts, including in the fins. How does one read fins? She definitely tries-!
Leina nods again at 'the resonance', and part of her wonders, some of those episodes felt...
... no it couldn't be. Yuliana is correct, it has to simply be...
After a moment of consideration, Leina starts to reply, "I understand why that bothers you, but... you're not afraid of me, or what I do right?"
She does ask, gently, with the assumption the answer is 'no', "So it'd be, you afraid you're doing something that you'd consider a 'violation'? ... Right?"
And then she does... note...
"... It can happen." Leina tells her, "Without being in... technology like that. My brother... once, when Haman shot me." Her eyes grow, unfocused, "It was like the world went red... everything, slowing down. A heartbeat... it wasn't mine... but I could feel it everywhere."
...
"... and what surrounded him..."
...
Leina trails off, but... "He was... angry. Just so angry." She whispers, "But, it's an understandable anger right? Like, at the wedding, when Doctor Kafim got angry at Captain Aiden for trying to kill you."
In the end, Yuliana says she has a point, and Leina nods again, in confirmation, "Exactly. So I guess..."
A pause, a moment to consider, "... it's more a perception problem for you right? Maybe it might help if you break it down to the senses. If you're looking at it, and seeing the results as similar..."
As she tries to walk through it, "Then, don't look at the results... instead focus more on how it made you feel to do it."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana's fins definitely seem to reflect her emotions, though not in the most human way. She seems receptive enough, anyway.
"Mmm... no," she answers, predictably, when Leina asks if she fears her; though there's a moment of humming hesitation as she thinks about it. "Yes, that sounds right," she goes on, when Leina presses her for confirmation again.
She frowns, though, as Leina tells her what Judau did. "I... see," she says, and she is unsettled. She latches, instead, to: "Yes -- of course I can understand such a thing." It's reasonable to be so angry, in the light of someone like Haman acting that way.
But the fact that Newtypes have done such a thing, just like she did --
It's hard for her to be the same as them, even knowing what she does.
She grunts, thoughtfully, looking aside. "I... felt I was out of time. I was angry at you -- and, I suppose at myself, for giving you the time to rescue that fool woman... I knew that the dead would try to destroy our Earth, but I let my own fool sympathies rule me." Her fingers ball to a fist, as she chastises herself -- and perhaps gives more context to her words that day, just the same. "I knew that Rita would burn herself to nothing, and I -- I would not let that happen. I went to great lengths not to allow it!" Anger creeps into her voice, but she takes a breath, and tries to calm herself.
"It had to be me," she says, at length. "The Empress Herself spoke such to me, when I slept, as She drained the heat from my heart. I had to end it... it fell to me to see our survival." Yuliana's survival. "I knew I had to do something... that's why I bided, as everyone threw themselves against me. This was more important. But when I tore the sky open, to drop those tanks to another place, I... I grew afraid," she admits, and not without shame. "I knew their names, myriad, all into me. So many. Each yearning. Each denied. I doubted myself... and so I asked for aid. Even then, I..." She was afraid. To ask for help -- is terrifying.
She doesn't quite finish the sentence.
"I felt ill, when it was done," she says, instead. "I felt I'd tremble out of my own skin. I knew I had to destroy those creatures, but I could not finish what I'd started so easily. It's the first time I'd begun something so..." Yuliana starts, and pauses, shaking her head. "No, my Dance must have been the first. But I suppose -- this is the first time I recognised how what I did was seen. Interfaced with. I... I could scarcely focus. I felt the Vo--"
Here Yuliana presses her lips tightly together --
"My mind came to focus on the Psychoframe," she settles on, instead. "I grew... angry. Time must have passed, for I did not feel the transgressions of the dead tearing at reality any longer. But that's when I took it, the Psychoframe... the cause of all these ills. I could not bear for them to reclaim it. My Elisa brought me home, and I -- I could scarcely move even to set Emptear down." She laughs, and the sound is thin. "I think I must have told her she'd have to carve me out of it... she refused, of course. She'd never risk harming me. She talked me through it, she carried me out... I couldn't even unbind my eyes... she took care of everything. She said I was magnificent... I'd saved them all... I did feel proud, when my mind could settle on that." Her smile grows a little less fragile, warmer, reflecting on her wife.
A moment's warm fuzziness, there, before she blinks and her head straightens. "Oh! Yes, I forgot!" Without quite explaining, she reaches past the screen to pick up something unseen on the table. It turns out to be a red puffer, which is still obvious enough to see her breathing in, though she does turn her face away.
Reaching back to the table, she puts it down again, and turns back to the camera. "Do excuse me," she says, smiling to the camera. "Just some medicine my Elisa's prepared for me -- something about maintaining my internal temperature. I've grown... colder, lately. She was a little concerned, so she gave me this..." Whether that chill has anything to do with the Empress's actions -- well, she doesn't quite link the two, out loud.
But if all the hot blood drained from her heart, then...
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina does nod at Yuliana's answer. In a lot of ways it's, akin to all she'd read, seen, experienced on internalized misogyny, internalized homophobia. ... She certainly experienced quite a lot of that in Neo-Zeon.
Hate is always adaptable, especially when it's hate of the self.
It does worry her, this cult. How it could spread a new movement of hate. Yet... for now, she decides to pick her battles. She understands that all that would happen is Yuliana would just reject the similarities.
There are so many more Newtype feats Leina could note, discuss, talk about. And yet, she decides to keep it unto those shared experiences.
Her head cants slightly at what Yuliana has to say about Rena.
"I don't mind you being angry by the way. Ultimately it was a selfish impulse. But I've always disliked it when I'm put in situations where people I care about - or people who have been in labs like you and me would be made 'sacrifices' of the few against the many."
She understands, remembers the thought that Yuliana was there for her sake, for Rita's. How strange that someone who hates them so much would risk so much for two of them. No wonder she's tying herself in so many knots.
But still she listens, she listens to her, listens to how she felt. And...
... her blood runs a little cold at the comment on draining the heat from her heart...
Yet, despite it all, it doesn't sound all that different from a Newtype's experiences, performing such a thing, just - different - indeed, when she speaks of focusing on the Psycho-frame, on feeling these transgressions of the dead...
... Leina wonders truly, what actually is the difference at all?
"I'm glad she had such patience with you." She says ultimately of her being coaxed out of it. "I- hm?" And then she watches her take the medication, "Oh I."
She remembers the earlier comment and wonders, "It's, a thoughtful delivery system..."
Again she trails off...
... ultimately she decides that perhaps, that's the way to go...
"After hearing all that, I think more than ever, the best way to go is to focus less on the superficial similarities of the two acts than, how it made you feel doing it. You sounded a lot more focused, less anxious while discussing it that way. It just seems healthier."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
If Yuliana hates Newtypes for their transgressions, and Yuliana performs the acts of Newtypes, where does that leave her? What is the difference? It's a mire of cognitive dissonance.
No wonder she needs Elisa's logic so.
(The Silent Calling, at least, does seem to be offering the support services they advertise. Whether their counsel is entirely something Leina would agree with... it is a type of assistance.)
"I warned her!" Yuliana snaps, leaning forward and fins flaring up, when Leina speaks of Rena. "I warned her, and she defied me and all logic and got herself eaten! It was her own damned decision!" With a dissatisfied growl, Yuliana settles back in her chair, fingers curled to support her cheek. "You are fortunate the situation allowed me to grant you what time you required to reverse her stupidity. You would never comprehend the sacrifices I've made, gladly --" But saying that makes her consider what a sacrifice is, its form and its shape. She thinks of the offering she makes of herself. The words turn bitter on her lips, and they twist. "Never mind."
It's a pertinent reminder that Yuliana does hate, the arrogant anger in her voice as she blames Rena for Denver Colony. It stands in stark contrast to the softness she offered Leina when she tried to connect with the silent weight she carries, all those secrets she had to keep. There does seem a notable difference, between them, an affection she holds for Leina entirely absent in the way she speaks of Rena.
... for all the comfort exceptionalism might offer her.
It's easier, talking about herself. And speaking of Elisa, at that. Yuliana's smile all but glows. "She is so patient," she sighs, all lovey-dovey, "and such a strong woman."
She feels warmer, heart through to her blood, when she sets that inhaler down. "Needles frighten me terribly," she admits, hands curling at her chest; her fingers play about her wedding ring, and she gazes down to it, all emerald and onyx and diamond. "When it comes time to see to my health, sometimes I'm still scared to death, even though I know it's my darling Elisa... but the Republic never gave me medications this way, so when she asked how she could make it easier, I thought to try inhaling them. Well, pills are still easier for a lot of things, but... ahh, there's some kind of difference or another, it all rather panics me too much to remember." Yuliana smiles, and offers: "My Elisa could explain it better, I'm sure..."
Yuliana thinks Leina would be happy to ask Elisa for casual explanations like that, of course.
"But... you are right, of course." Yuliana sighs, closing her endless green eyes. "I grieve for your insight at such an age, given whence it came... even so, I am glad for it, Leyasha. I must decide for myself my own meaning... it's something I'm able to do, now."
She smiles, a shade ruefully. "And really, if I'm more focused on my feelings... that can only be a good thing. I'm afraid I fall to the vice of unfocused yearning myself, at times... though I've such important things to do, I lack my wife's discipline, unfortunately." When Yuliana accused Leina of lacking focus...
... well, she might be a Newtype, but they're not entirely dissimilar.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina flinches in the face of the anger, but it doesn't cause her to shrink away, "I never said you didn't!" She protests. "I just had to try. Renalle went through... so much I did, like Rita and you." And indeed, she is fortunate, because...
... there are so many ways that could have gone wrong. Including Yuliana absorbing those souls of hurt children, and whatever that entails.
"She is." Leina affirms, and there is certainly some thought over it.
... but the more she thinks about it...
"I understand being scared of needles. I... after all you went through." Leina's gaze becomes abstracted, "I don't even... remember most injections. I only saw the marks after. Sometimes I... still look for them to see if there are still new ones."
Part of her wonders why more medications aren't done this way, perhaps she'll ask her mother later, part of her remembers that doses in inhalers need to be higher?
It's interesting hearing Yuliana ascribe a vice to herself that she once ascribed to Leina herself. "Well... unfocused yearning, I at least get it? Strong emotions like that, directed anywhere... it just means you're passionate right?"
As she then notes simply, "Not everyone can be Doctor Kafim. And you shouldn't really expect that of yourself right? You should just try to be you, and explore those feelings."
Perhaps... the obedience part of their last conversation got to her.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Renalle didn't suffer as I suffered," Yuliana scowls, but at least doesn't linger on the topic. She's happier to think about Elisa, after all. And when it comes to what they endured...
Yuliana's hand comes down, to rest on her arm, reflexively covering port scars as she looks down at herself. "It can be... kinder, not to remember," she suggests, slowly. "There are still some procedures I can't bear to know... my Elisa just puts me to sleep. I should trust her more... you know, I don't hurt when I wake up, now... but it's just too frightening. I don't want to know anything about it..." She sighs, looking back up to the camera. "But... it's different, when you can't trust them, isn't it? The Republic tended to keep me conscious -- they wanted to measure my reactions -- but forgetting what happened in Medical... mm, that wasn't so kind."
She smiles, and hopes it is reassuring. She thinks she is wearing a reassuring expression. "It's normal to check. Expect to do so for a while. It's hardly the worst way to cope with it all." She is still trying to help Leina adapt to a life of freedom, in some fashion.
She has to laugh, though, when she thinks of her passion. "Hahaha... yes, passion is the word," she agrees, and her smile is easier, now. "I am a woman of a thousand passions. My wife, she exalts one... ah, but you're right, of course. Only Elisa can be Elisa! There is no being in existence who could replace the woman I've married."
Her smile warms, as she rubs at her ring. "And she loves me so fiercely... I could be nothing but myself, for who else did she marry? Though my heart's unruly, it is unmistakable. Yes..."
Yuliana smiles, serene, all calmed by the love of her wife.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"But she did like I did, as a child."
Leina points out, as she knows Yuliana was at least able to empathize with Leina's situation as a child to some degree, that it was a bad place for a child to be in Zeon.
'It can be... kinder, not to remember.'
"I'm... sure that's true." She says after a moment, disturbed, "Sometimes I wish I did, but I know it's not a wise impulse. It's just... knowing not everything is there. Knowing something is absent, you want to know what it is? Even when it's better... if you don't. It's like, a part of you is missing."
There's... something eerie about hearing Elisa putting her to sleep, it is certainly kinder than the REA but... should, Elisa be Yuliana's Doctor too? It certainly isn't ethical in any way.
"It was cruel of them to treat you like that, there was no point... other than the cruelty. When even Dr. Murasame treated me... better than that."
She murmurs, softly sympathetic.
Yuliana however laughs it off, that idea of her being undisciplined, and indeed Leina manages a smile too, "Exactly. It's understandable, you know? You wouldn't hold anyone else up to the standard of Doctor Kafim right? So why would you be so hard on yourself for that?"
As she just then notes quietly, "I think it's just healthier to acknowledge you're two very different people in a relationship like yours. That you feel differently, react to things differently, process things differently. Otherwise you'll tie yourself in knots worrying about not being worthy of her or something, right?"
As she then concludes on a singular point, "But she'd never say you were unworthy of her right? She'd never even think that! She loves you, and that's what matters."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Rrrmmnnn..." Yuliana grumbles, when Leina insists that Rena is like her; as much as she'd like to tell her that her interpretation of her history is wrong, part of her feels uncomfortable with insisting that Leina doesn't know what she's talking about when it comes to her past. It's a disquieting push and pull which she eventually decides to let go, glancing away but not quite managing to verbally cede the point.
"... I... regret that you don't feel whole," Yuliana settles on, after a moment, listening to what Leina has to say about remembering procedures. "It must hurt terribly." She evades the question of whether she wants to know what she's forgotten, because she rather doesn't -- but if it upsets Leina so much...
She's trying to think of her.
Elisa, of course, is always thinking of her wife -- and had Leina asked, Yuliana would have insisted that she could trust no one but her wife to be her doctor. Ethics are supposed to protect the patient, aren't they? And there's no one who protects Yuliana more than Elisa, so it's certainly ethical for her to care for her.
She thinks of the REA's lack of ethics, instead, a frown crossing her face. "They were very cruel," she agrees, quietly. "But the point of the cruelty was to control me, I think. Because I couldn't run away... when they disregarded my feelings, when they frightened me, they only emphasised their power."
Which means that Yuliana can, at least -- understand she was being controlled.
Back then.
(Elisa's never frightened Yuliana on purpose, after all, has she?)
Yuliana laughs, though, shaking her head. "No, never," she says, without hesitation. "My Elisa has always celebrated my worth. Ah... you're right, of course," she smiles, sweetly. "I've always been the gentler soul, between us... and I express my feelings with much more volume." She says express her feelings, rather than feeling them; she has long known that Elisa has her own depths of emotion, after all, though she's so much more placid in her manner.
"And she prepares, and I am given to flights of fancy... oh!" Yuliana realises, her head lifting as her eyes blink and widen. "What's the time?" Her hand lifts to the screen so she can brush it to check, and Yuliana laughs, again. "Speaking of plans... she said she would be done with those damnable meetings by lunch!" Which means that wherever Yuliana is, it's close to noon. "Ahh, it's been so stressful, Leyasha, I can't stand all these protracted talks that wretched Federation's putting her through... tch, the things they must be saying... but it is time to say farewell, for I must go to her, now! She'll need me!" And her pique over the Federation's diplomatic talks loses to Yuliana's eagerness to go to her wife, in the end.
"But I am glad," she remembers to say, for Leina, "that you listened to me, though you've your own wounds to mind. I am grateful, Leyasha. I... do value your opinion, you know. All my best to your people, yes?"
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Yuliana grumbles, but Leina doesn't try to push the point further. She just lets the one she made stand.
Closing her eyes, she does nod quietly, "I've... come to accept in therapy that some memories will never come back. And that some gaps that I saw from others were..."
A lingering pause, "... not from my emotional perspective. It feels like I'm... an observer, to someone else, when it's me."
It is difficult, to process these memories as hers as a result.
"I... agree certainly, that that's what they intended, but I think, if someone requires cruelty to control someone and demonstrate their power then they are very small-minded people..."
And indeed... she thinks of people she's known. What a world, where Glemy Toto is preferred to the REA...
The gentler soul? For some reason that's a little jarring, but after a moment she's certain that's true. She listens to her and then the abrupt change of tone.
"I can relate. We're going through similar right now. I wish you both the best of luck with them."
It makes her uneasy, certainly, to know the Federation is negotiating with them, and what those negotiations might be...
... she can guess certainly what they're about...
"Thank you. I enjoy hearing from you as well. Enjoy your lunch, the both of you, alright?"
It's given her a lot to think about. Certainly... she's going to let Cathedra know, just in case the EFF is trying to do under the table negotiations for a stockpile of Psycho-frame material.