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Petra Soroka     In the late afternoon, as the sun dims outside, the bar of Remee's hotel is calm, the low murmur of sparse groups mixing with pleasant jazz to create a cushion of background noise. Ivory cushions and dark wood evoke a refined atmosphere, accented with occasional red and gold decorations. Beyond the bar stools themselves, loveseats are scattered to create a dozen private corners for reading or conversation, and in one of these seats is a blonde girl, rotated to sit sideways, with her boots dangling over one of the arms.

    Petra's playing on a handheld console that she retrieved from her mech, lounging in the bar after becoming too restless for the empty room. Remee's been gone for hours now, and even though Petra doesn't *really* believe the excuse she gave about errands, what is she going to do? Confront the person who's keeping her safe, and let her know Petra knows she's lying?

    It's not really her business, anyways. But the rumination is still uncomfortable.
Lilian Rook     The thing with private booths is that they're meant for private meetings. Drinking alone is something you do in your room, and playing videogames in the corner space is something you get kicked out for fast. Of course it would only be natural that nobody bats an eye at Petra in the back having company. Nobody had seen her come in, or order, or be served, but the brain is a consummate rationalist when it comes to distracting inconsistencies. The blonde girl must have simply been waiting, and the older one must have simply acquired the open wine on the table when they weren't looking.

    It would only make sense. They look so comfortable together. The new company is so confidently settled in, one leg over the other, book spine opened in one hand, half-full glass of red on the table between seats, even softly humming some tune to herself. They might even be waiting for a third. They must be good friends.

    It's only Petra who can be absolutely certain that she should have been alone until Remee's return. However much she trusts her senses over the distracting allure of a handheld console is the sole measure by which she can be sure that she didn't hear a single sound up until she'd just started to notice, dissonant with the ambient jazz, the subtle tones of someone quietly singing to themselves barely five feet away from her. So soft as to be barely noticeable, yet somehow eerily beautiful over the prevailing volume of more energetic music already playing.

"Deir daoine go bhfuil mé gan rath is gan dóigh"
"Gan erraí, gan éadal, gan bólacht nó stór"
"Ach má tá mise sásta mo chónaí igcró"
"Ó cad é sin don te sin nach mbaineann sin dó?"

    Remee may be keeping her safe from John, but Lilian Rook is seated right across from her. Midway through a new book, partway through her red, halfway still dressed in her pressed black and red and white academy uniform, and only glancing up over her page when Petra visibly reacts to her presence.

    "You know, I almost couldn't tell it was you. I don't know whether it's the change of clothes, the lack of smell, or the lack of attitude, but . . ." She reaches smoothly for her glass. "But it seems I chose a good time."
Petra Soroka     Petra, with earbuds in, is slow to notice Lilian's presence. She's radiating a sense of complete, innate belonging in these semi-luxurious furnishings, an unquestioning assurance in the way she's draped over the seat. Despite the way her age and unprofessional pose might attract attention, she's completely absorbed in her game, paying no mind to her surroundings.

    It's an unusual state for this constantly on-edge girl to be in. She's even humming to herself too, absentmindedly, sporadically matching the game music playing in her ears, unable to hear herself or care about the inconsistency of her notes.

    It's only when there's a brief silence in her game that she hears Lilian. All at once, the muscles in her face contract to draw her eyebrows together, tense her cheeks, squint her eyes, cycling through confusion, fear, alarm, anger, all within moments. Petra rips her earbuds out and pulls herself up, pulling her handgun out of its ankle holster in a single, less than fluid motion.

    "What are you--?!" Caught completely off-guard, she raises her voice far beyond what's acceptable for inside a bar. She flinches and holds the gun below the table, hopefully not in sight of anyone who's turning to stare at her now. She continues, hushed. "What the hell are you doing here, Rook? How did you--*why* did you even come here? What, should I have been worried about you fucking murdering me in my sleep too?"

    She's still freshly bathed, dressed in a casually cute dress, and altogether fresher looking than Lilian's ever seen her, but she's suddenly much more recognizable. She's trembling, if Lilian looks closely, though it's hard to tell whether it's fear or anger.
Lilian Rook     It's hard to tell whether it is anticipation of Petra's panic, or just sheer, ice-blooded apathy, that keeps Lilian firmly reclined in her seat even when the pilot obviously stumbles to draw a weapon. Drawing not the slightest bit of attention by reacting, Lilian slowly raises the glass to her face, swirls and smells as is proper, sips down another quarter of it, and flips her page with her thumb. Her lack of alarm feels, at once, deeply mocking, and yet easy to be grateful for, given that the rest of the bar doesn't so much turn to stare at Petra's jerky panic now.

    "Far too slow, Soroka. There's no point in concealing a weapon if you get too relaxed to bring it to bear immediately. And too late besides. I've been here a while, you know." says Lilian, pausing to gently set the glass back down. "Besides, you seem to be labouring under some misconceptions." Her eyes on the page are moving top to bottom, rather than left to right. "'Too'? I assure you that putrid little boy hasn't the slightest clue how to track down and murder someone in their sleep." she says. "And there's no point in worrying if I will, given that nobody could do anything about it anyways." She flips the page again. "Sit back down. If I wanted to kill you, I'd have done it while you were lying around in your room. Your friend has been gone for hours. And put that silly thing away. Even if you fire from this distance, you'll only make me cross."

    Lilian taps a fingernail to a particular line to hold her place, then slides one of the tome's many bookmarks into its new spot, closing the volume with a quiet clap. "If I were only out to mock you, I needn't have chosen to do so in private. So I'd like it very much if you listened and behaved yourself. Can you do that?"
Petra Soroka     Petra's glare wavers in the face of Lilian's unshakable apathy. Her expression doesn't soften, but self-consciousness creeps in. It *always* plays out this way, doesn't it? Lilian inciting something, Petra reacting angrily, and then that fucking stone-cold facade makes *her* feel like the one in the wrong. Like a child.

    It's so infuriating, in fact, that Petra very nearly doesn't do what she's asked. Just for the hell of it. She could refuse to deescalate, pull the trigger--for all her bravado, and for all the power that justifies it, humans just can't stand up to a .50 caliber bullet fired at point blank range, right?

    There's a long few seconds where it could go either way, Petra frozen in place, gun shaking. Then she slowly, carefully sits back down, none of the tension leaving her body. The gun is hidden from Lilian's view, but Petra's elbow is still cocked in a way that broadcasts that she's holding it. Her eyes still don't waver from Lilian's face, a feat only possible because Lilian isn't bothering to look back.

    "Why do you think you can just barge in here, threaten me, and then demand that I sit down and listen to you? What the fuck could you have to tell me?" Petra purses her lips. That comes across like she's actually interested in what Lilian has to say, just covering the question with anger. No. "You should leave. You're not welcome here."
Lilian Rook     "Sit." Lilian repeats, firmly, as Petra fidgets with her gun. For her own part, she is in the process of finding a place to put her book aside for the moment, giving Petra just the slightest grace period. "I genuinely cannot imagine why you try so far hard to not let anyone feel what you're thinking when it's so plainly written on your face all the time anyhow."

    Finding its place again in her slightly overstuffed messenger bag, Lilian carefully depots the rather large and valuable-looking piece of literature in its safekeeping compartment, picks up the bottle, measures another portion of it into her glass, leans back in her chair, sets it back down, and then she looks right back at Petra, and that is the very last instant she pretends to sound harmlessly bored.

    "Because, Soroka, I evidently can." says Lilian. Her eyes lock on to hers over the rim of her glass, and don't let go. "I'm glad you were wise enough to realize that I am not asking you, but just as disappointed that you seem to still harbour misconceptions about 'threat'. That boy threatened you. He is a threat. I am already here and you cannot prevent me from doing whatever I please; your friends rushing to your rescue would be wasting their effort. I am happening to you. So it is very much your best interests to shut up, sit down, pack away the attitude, stop trying to play pride games with me when you're clearly quaking in your boots already, and make it as easy as possible for me to speak to you without breaking both of your legs."

    The sigh that fogs her wine glass is explosively exasperated. Lilian sounds like she's snapping at an obnoxious school child just barely old enough to know better. In more than one way, it really seems like she might be. But the sheer, excruciating discomfort behind her obnoxiously gorgeous green eyes might as well groan out loud like a crackling iceberg. The spark of tension, the flicker Petra's gut instinct knows as someone making their will check, is too obvious. For that moment Lilian speaks of snapping Petra's bones, halfway through her sentence, there is a moment where it is chillingly apparent that she really did just think about it, and thought hard.

    It's not a way that Lilian has even bothered to look at Petra before.

    "I will not be taking your opinion into consideration. I didn't ask to come in." says Lilian, and all at once, she continues as if nothing had happened, inching up towards being barred from driving by another luxurious sip. "And you wouldn't even have any authority for me to ignore besides. You aren't the owner. You aren't an employee. You aren't even a guest. You're a rescue. I don't have any reason to listen to a single bloody thing you want from me, which is why you should listen very closely."
Lilian Rook     Lilian takes a deep, deep breath, and the sheer weight of performative patience and forbearance in it would be completely intolerable were it not for the fact that there is no third party around for her to even be humiliating Petra by it. Her teeth grit together in the half-second pause between when she means to continue speaking, and when she actually does.

    "I shouldn't need to repeat what I think of you, as it seems you haven't stopped thinking about it ever since I first said so. But I will, because it is important that you keep it in mind." says Lilian. "You don't belong here, Soroka. You shouldn't be doing this. You have no reason to be living out of the hatch of a military robot and you aren't actually prepared to do so. You could go back at any time. You could live anywhere. There are endless other things you could do instead of fight. You don't have the heart for it, and you don't have a good reason for it. You're a glorified civilian, scared and confused and clinging to the coattails of others to get a night of rest. It's even more obvious than always, how much more you belong in a place like this than a cockpit." Lilian exhales. "So, it's . . . normal, for you to feel like this, Soroka."

    Lilian sets her empty glass down. "That child is also someone firmly on the side of trying on the life of an Elite of his own accord, but you two aren't the same. His amateur power trip is because someone handed him enough power to harm people with in the first place. His public bravado comes from being let into the Concord, where for a while at least, even more powerful people will enable him. When he comes out here to roleplay his school bully revenge fantasies, it won't be on a cute little ideological level you can argue with him over. I can tell already, that he is the juvenile manifestation of exactly the sort of might-makes-me-right psychopath the Paladins were formed to keep out of the lives of ordinary people. Fresh on his high, deep in his cups."

    Lilian shifts her weight uncomfortably, and disguises it by smoothly swapping which knee bends over the other. "I don't want you to feel pathetic for running and hiding here, Soroka. You're an ordinary person. And as nasty as you are, you haven't earned a psychotic, violent stalker for it. And more important than that, I'd like you to consider the very same bit of wisdom that drove he and his little friends mad in the first place."

    "Even if you ran away. Even if you think you have no home. Even if you did a few bad things. Even if you joined the wrong side. That doesn't mean you don't deserve fairness. You haven't crossed any of those lines yet. There are still people you're supposed to be able to rely on, and systems you're supposed to be able to trust, even if you've outgrown the fairy tale of police and stability and democratic law."

    Lilian gasps in agitation, as if she can't quite get to what she really needs to get across. Her stare roams around the room, then snaps back to Petra, full of restless impatience. "In other words, rules are rules, and oaths are oaths; I don't believe that justice is selective, or that people should be hung out to dry just for being insufferable. That boy is going to come for you; your well-meaning friend probably made it worse. He's going to come for you for no greater reason than taking my side once. And when it happens, you aren't going to be ready for it, because you are very ordinary at heart, and his is just twisted enough to scare you. And when that happens . . ."

    "I have a very important rule, Soroka. Thirteen actually, but one is about people who have spent something of theirs for me. I can't find an ounce of care inside me with which to pity you, but the moment you say the word, or if one of your friends should, I won't hesitate to do exactly what I've already sworn to. Don't be poisoned by his idiot pride. Rely on the people you should be able to."
Petra Soroka     Petra can't think of a time where she's looked directly at Lilian's eyes before. She can't help but be transfixed by them, drawn in by their terrible gravity, searching deeply into them for... something. Some bottom to the depth, something to grasp onto, anything that can let her *actually properly converse* with her. Lilian's words wash over Petra, her surroundings dim, and she... just feels small. So, so tiny, in the face of this whirlpool.

    Inexorable. Insignificant. Lilian has already happened to her.

    So thoroughly does the performance of defiance leave Petra, that all she does at Lilian's repeated demand for her to listen is nod mutely. Her right arm slumps, curling inwards, gun no longer poised to threaten. Petra's eyes are still locked on Lilian's, but she gives off the impression of a mouse paralyzed by a flood of epinephrine, too little, too late.

    Petra slowly wraps her arms around herself, as Lilian continues talking, thawing as she moves away from the threat of breaking her legs. Her mouth opens, silently, then closes tight when Lilian's demeanor shifts.

    She stays quiet throughout Lilian's whole speech, and for an expectant gap after. When she does finally respond, her voice is thin, almost a whisper. "...I didn't take your side. I took Hibiki's. And I know that doesn't change anything about what he's doing, or about what you're saying, but it's important. Even if you're right and I agree with you, I'm not on your side." She swallows. "Because I'm... ordinary."

    Petra finally breaks eye contact, dropping her gaze to the table. She shifts her shoulder, a distracting urge prompting her to trace the inlay of the wood with her finger, but the electric signal dies out without causing any more movement than a twitch. "Like you said. There's a lot of people I can rely on. I've met a lot of reliable people since becoming an Elite, and so many of them are kind, and I know I can trust them. But... I'm not one of them."

    "That boy is a complete pig, he's psychotic and rude and dangerous, but... it's not like he's the only person like that? The world is filled with unhinged freaks, whether Elite or... normie. If I'm here, even if I can't handle everything right now, I can become stronger and eventually become someone to rely on. Back there? I'm already too strong, there's no way for me to comfortably settle in and trust the slow, impersonal systems to do anything. It feels like... doing that makes me less of a person."

    She laughs quietly, choked with emotion. "Maybe I do understand 'fighting with your feelings' better than I thought. Or at least, I want to."
Lilian Rook     "And Tachibana took mine, which is a good enough reason for him, even you have no idea what she sees in me." Lilian says, quickly and irritably, to Petra's correction. "Frankly, I don't particularly care which side you think you're on. Sides are an illusion in the first place. There's never a real line between them; only whose colours each individual person thinks you're wearing. The only way to categorize the world clearly is 'me' and 'everyone else', and you aren't ready for that by a mile." Lilian picks up the bottle by the neck. "Ideally, you never will be."

    She waits just long enough to let Petra keep talking. "No. He isn't the only one." Lilian agrees. "There are much, much worse than him. And in the days that sort of person still mattered to me, I'd have killed to let someone, anyone else, handle it." Wine sloshes roughly into Lilian's glass. She raises a finger in threatening patience, and half the contents disappear before she slaps the bottom back down on the table.

    "They didn't, of course, because slow impersonal systems are only good at slowly unpersoning anyone who really needs them. Discipline, justice, fairness, has to be swift and deeply personal to be worth anything, and most people lack the commitment for either of those things. Your conceited obsession with fleeing from what others aren't graced with, out of nothing more than your own sense of twisted pride, is completely sickening, and I don't want to know any more about it than I already do, but it is completely irrelevant to what I am telling you."

    Her tone drifts elsewhere, briefly becoming even and repetitiously singsong; the sound of recalling something from memory without needing an instant to think. "The First Code. Thou art responsible to thy blood first above all else, both the blood of thy line, and the blood shed for thee." Lilian looks back to Petra. "I told you, in no uncertain terms, to detest me, blame me, spare no other thought, and seethe about your grudge all you like. Instead, you proved yourself a liar, and put yourself at risk to be around me. It's too late to pretend that it was some trivial thing, or only part of some quest for self-discovery."

    "If you go and get yourself beaten, or maimed, or worse by that troglodyte, all because you spoke truth to pettiness rather than nurse a healthy hatred of me, and I sit back and let you reap the rancid spoils of caring what I thought for an instant, then where is the slow and impersonal system in this picture? Isn't it just me?"
Lilian Rook     Lilian raises her voice, just a little. "Being too strong is what makes you less of a person, Soroka. And you aren't even close to that yet. Not if you're taking after Tachibana." The bottle is emptied out, filling the glass nearly to overflowing, even more roughly than before. "You'll notice when you've stopped being a person, when you try to fight with those feelings, and realize that the only thing you feel about your opponent is that you're just so tired of their existence, and then urge to be rid of them will settle in like a dull ache behind your eyes, and you'll never be without it again." Lilian cuts herself off to chug the rest of the drink, in as far as anything that distressingly elegant can be called chugging. The glass stem cracks just a little between her fingers, catching the lounge lights when she sets it back down empty.

    "I'm certain your little Watch friends already have plans to coddle you through this. If one of the few I can trust are involved, you might even make it through just fine. But I'm telling you, right here and right now, that I can make him --all of this-- go away, just like that, and the only reason I haven't already is that it's a waste of time; I don't need defending, least of all by me."

    "But I won't allow myself to be another slow and impersonal system. That's a rule. I will not abide an ordinary girl being terrorized for wanting to do right by me one time. If there should be anything to rely on in the world, it should be help for help and harm for harm. Now, tell me you understand, so I can move on to something more important, and then tell your friends, so I won't have to repeat myself."
Petra Soroka     Petra shakes her head, vehemently. "It's not! It's not just pride. You think you're doing good, right? That you're enacting justice? In a way that other people, Elite and otherwise, can't and don't. Is it wrong for me to want to become someone like that?" Her face darkens, and she shivers. "Though our ideas of what justice looks like might be slightly different."

    "I still hate y-you." There's no venom in her voice, she just sounds forlorn. "You're unreasonably cruel, you have so little regard for other people that you hurt them for fun, you're so dismissive of what everyone else goes through--and I didn't put myself at risk for you, no matter what your influence was in this whole mess. Those battle lines do not exist, and I didn't draw them. I'm not too proud to ask for help from Remee, or Hibiki, or Rita, and I will and have."

    Petra tugs at the hem of her dress, her body language withering even as her words become more confident. "But not you. I owe you nothing and you owe me nothing, you have no obligation to me. You're not my friend, or my ally, or my peer, as you've repeated so many times. So don't bother to start pretending that there's any connection between us now."

    "If I get hurt, mock me for it. If I fight him off, find some way to make me feel like shit for that, too. But other than that, just leave me alone."
Lilian Rook     "Yeah. It's wrong." Lilian says to Petra. Perhaps just over the line of too subtly tipsy to say 'Yes, it is'. Who knows. "People get serious about changing the shitty way the world works, and they get strong, only after it's already maimed them. If you want to do real good in a way that other people aren't, work at a fucking kitchen; they aren't enough of those, and by contrast, there are already too many idiots with guns and ideas about justice. Don't . . ." Lilian breathes in sharply, all at once. "Don't fucking thirst to be wronged so hard that it makes you strong. If it ever happens someday, you'll only wish that it hadn't."

    Apparently not the slightest bit convinced by Petra's stammering declaration, Lilian picks up the strap of her bag with a sigh, closing her eyes and looping it over her shoulder. "That's right. You're not my friend, or my ally, and certainly not my peer. But don't lie to my face, Soroka. I told you to get lost, and you went and connected us anyways. If you want nothing to do with me, then why did you haul your ass out to Siberia just to see me?" She mutters as she stands up. "This is exactly why I told you to give up and get in line with the other whiny pissants instead of listening to Tachibana or Rita. I don't need more connections. I'm . . ."

    Lilian doesn't so much as linger long enough maintain eye contact while speaking. She's already up and moving; standing and turning and leaving without a second thought. "I'm already full up on 'regard'. I don't have room in here for any more of you. Fuck off and let me be dismissive already. You have no idea what cruel even is." She walks away without even dignifying Petra with another look in the eye, picking up her verse where she left off, buzzed enough from a full bottle to keep singing to herself without care. Paying more attention to it --that hauntingly beautiful voice that is all the more frustrating for soulfully coming from such a shithead-- Peta is able to foggily grip the archaic lyrics this time, until Lilian leaves through the lounge doors.

"Deir daoine go bhfuil mé gan rath is gan dóigh"
"Gan erraí, gan éadal, gan bólacht nó stór"
"Ach má tá mise sásta mo chónaí igcró"
"Ó cad é sin don te sin nach mbaineann sin dó?"
"Ach má tá mise sásta mo chónaí igcró"
"Ó cad é sin don te sin nach mbaineann sin dó?"


"They'll say that I'm worthless and hopeless and poor"
"Without goods, without clothes, without cattle or store"
"But if I'd be happy with not having more"
"Then why should it matter what I don't care for?"
"But if I'd be happy with not having more"
"Then why should it matter what I don't care for?"