Scene #8413: Instinctive Drowning Response

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	If you have any compassion for unloved girls, and can't stand what the world, even family, can do to them, then now might be the time to look away. It's barely the next day, since Dimo of the Silver had left her sister Kratia at the door, swept in to fix everything; to heal Petra, to cure her of her physical and mental scars, to cover Lilian's shameful handiwork, to give them all a fresh start, better than before; and against all reason, failed. It's barely over twelve hours since Petra sent her phone call, and expects her next meeting. After weeks of pure isolation, following after weeks of fraying already, two visits in less than a full twenty four hours feels overwhelming. The lights are enough of a clock to go by, and now the time passes by all too rapidly, disappearing into the haze of disassociation. Petra isn't sure what time Matthew Rook is supposed to arrive, and finally free her from this living hell as he'd promised; to do everything he'd promised in exchange for what she told him and promised to tell him. But even as the door opens again, she know it is too early. That composed voice of advancing age on the other end of the line would never thump and rattle so audibly in the airgap hall. She can't imagine him fumbling with the door, and bursting into the room in such a hurry. And it isn't. Because it's her. After all this time, all this ruminating, and all this loneliness, Lilian comes back to her, just moments after she'd already cracked, and she hadn't even gotten a warning. No ice cold malice prickles against Petra's skin this time, and no stomping and incoherent shouting follows, as it usually does. Lilian's hair whirls out behind her as she spins around and slams the door, then locks it from the inside. Her heels click in frantic succession as she hurries over to Petra, bag banging against her side. The feeling is of night-chill relief sweeping over her, as if Petra were suddenly aware of how hot and sticky and exhausted she somehow was, and is just now stepping out under the darkened sky. The expression on the woman's face is mingled concern and relief on the immediate border of tears. "Oh thank god. Oh my god you're-- oh thank god you're okay . . . Oh thank god." Lilian's words come out in a stream of fumbling repetition; meaningless emotional babble reserved for people less guarded than she. "Oh god I finally got through to see you. I'm so sorry, Petra. They just suddenly-- there was an extradition and-- they wouldn't let me even see you because I'm with the Paladins and-- Jesus Christ I can't stand them; he just kept calling you 'they' and-- no, no, no I can explain it later; let's sort this out first." Lilian's attention is captured by her bag, for the brief time she fumbles around inside of it, fuller than it's been before, and pulls out pill bottles her hand; the print on the side dates them over a week ago. "It's just a little while. You'll be fine, Petra. I promise. They kept me away for too long so I-- No, I've already promised. I promised Rita and Tangent and-- I said I'd fix this somehow, so I'm going to fix this. I can't leave you here any longer. Not after-- Now that I know what's going on. So just hang tight. I'll come by every day until--" Lilian's headlong, monotrack fussing is stopped cold when she swings in close to Petra, crouches down with the bottles in hand, and finally notices the collar. It'd taken her so long, too. The one and only, gut-wrenching possibility is that she was too distracted by seeking Petra's face first. A sharp breath hisses between her teeth, drawn roughly into the back of her throat and swallowed with croaking dread.
Lilian Rook	"What did they do to you, Petra?" Lilian's widening stare, dawning slow horror, scans her again. "What did she do to you?! Petra! Petra are you okay? No of course you're not-- Oh my god I'm never going to be make it up to you if she hurt you. Everyone just keeps hurting you and hurting you and I kept letting them because I didn't know and-- I'm getting you out of here today!" She won't stop. She can't shut the flow of words. Thoughts and feelings that have built up inside and waited weeks to pour out for Petra. Now, Lilian reaches out to grab Petra by the shoulders, trying to pull her up with her, and then can't help but swoop in for a tight, squeezing hug. "Everyone else may have given up on you, but I haven't! There's still some people I can trust to fix this. I can tap Persephone, at least. She of all people can do it, and she'd listen to me, and she'd understand why I did this to you; she'd be the only one. Come on, we're going to--" The way Lilian falls silent, interrupted, is so different than Petra has ever seen before. The gentle rapping of brass and hardwood on floor from just outside the door causes Lilian to freeze in a way Petra has never felt. Like being spotted by a predator. In the press of bodies, Petra can feel Lilian's heart rate spike, her pulse fluttering well into the range of 200bpm. It takes a second to realize that the rattling sound coming from behind is the sound of pills shaking in Lilian's trembling hand. In that uncannily instinctive way that children learn to anticipate the timing of cohabitors they fear to provoke, Lilian stands bolt upright in the same instant the door is pulled open, whirling to face it in the same moment it settles into the frame the same way she twists between threats in combat. Stiff, electrified up on her tiptoes, two things take a minute to add up: why doesn't Lilian just disappear and pretend she was never here? and why did she just hide the pills behind her back? The man who enters the room, casually allowing the door to slide shut behind him, is about as one might imagine from hearing him. A tall, straight-backed man, with a neatly kept circle beard and combed black hair shot through with grey, and cold blue eyes, dressed in fitted brown three piece suit, a diamond pattern tie, and polished oxfords, walking with the superficial assistance of an authentic brass-capped hawthorn cane. He'd look like any posh British trust fund brat's retired father, if not for the unnerving ease of motion in his frame for his ostensible age, and the sense of being immersed in ice cold pond water his discontent radiates outward. He even speaks with the accent in his smooth delivery and gravelly voice, though somehow his version feels a little less real? than Lilian's does. A little too crisp and textbook perfect, without any idiosyncratic wearing in.
Lilian Rook	"Miss Soroka. Thank you for your patience. They'll be releasing you shortly, so please, if you would, come with me to the car. I'll see to everything." are the first words out of his mouth, his eyes roving around the room to conversationally lock on to her before they even bother to settle on Lilian; as if she were his absolute last choice of things to look at in this room. "And you." The shift of tone is night and day. Effortless and dizzyingly vertiginous. Much the same as Lilian's way of swinging between moods, though a little smoother. "Why am I not surprised? Running back at the last moment to try and cover up your mess and hide it from me, as per usual. You're still the same little you've always been." It takes a couple of seconds for the word to register. Like the delayed sound of thunder following after the flash of lightning. It's spoken with such casually wielded ease. The sort of effortless little transgression that can only ever be made by someone who knows they're in like-minded company. Lilian breathes in sharply and bears it. Somehow, Petra knows exactly what she's thinking; that she's holding out some pointless hope it was a one-off mistake. "No--" Lilian flinches habitually. A word she's not allowed to say. "My apologies, Matthew, for giving you the wrong impression." That's probably where she picked up 'apologies' instead of 'sorry'. And she calls him by his name to his face. "There's been a mixup. The Paladins--" Matthew is already looking past her. There's no intent to listen to a word she says evident anywhere on his face. Instead, he cranes his neck just far enough to see Petra, and talks right over Lilian if she were standing silently at attention. "A collar? Oh don't tell me I'm looking at what I think this is." "What . . . ? No! I--" "Oh of course I am then! Why would I dare to expect any better?! I knew all along that if I took my eyes off you for one minute, you'd turn out exactly like this! I always said-- I always said that would lead to this! And now look!" "N-- That's not it, I swear! Let me--" "Do you know it's going to take to make this disappear? Do you have any idea?!" "Please just--" "Pack it in! You should be grateful I haven't disowned you on the spot! You and I are going to have a long, long talk, and then I'll decide what it'll take to convince me to let you come within a million miles of my property ever again!" "I'm begging you, just one moment to--" "Stop talking OVER ME! I'm not FINISHED!"
Petra Soroka	Forensic pathologists can easily tell whether a corpse in the water drowned or died from other causes. When someone drowns, when that dying breath reflex automatically intakes water instead of air, that water is absorbed into the alveoli of the lungs like a sponge. Human bodies tend to mostly float in water, but with the extra density of that inhaled water, drowned corpses bloat and sink to the bottom. Petra hasn't moved from the floor of her cell ever since making that phone call. The debris of her room; rust-brown paper towels, food waste and empty cans, torture implements. Adding to the flotsam is the splintered remains of the table, matched by a whirlwind of lines scarred into walls and floor, and the shattered support of her bedframe. The one thing she did clean up, and managed to take to the waste chute, was the shattered remains of the pill bottles scattered across the ground. Other than that, there was no need to move from the floor. The only reason she did at all during her period of solitary confinement was when the muscle aches or hunger pangs became too much to bear, and the absence of them feels even worse. Beads of heavy, quivering mercury irregularly pulse from parallel lines on her wrists and fall to the ground, sliding back into her skin within seconds. The only part of her life now that isn't timed atomic-precise. Until she fumbles her way through the door. Petra looks up from her blanketed fetal resting place with disbelief for a moment, before desperately, shamelessly lighting up. "Lilian? Lilian! You-- you're really--" She surges to her feet with enough unprecedented physically expressed excitement that the cords of muscle-metal overexert and send her stumbling, and she rushes in to wrap her arms around Lilian immediately. "I thought you were-- they all said--" Petra presses her face into Lilian's neck and shudders, voice choking up. "Lilian! I-I-I missed you! Oh my god, I, I, I, you weren't the one who...?" Every point of contact with her dry-warm skin like sun baked rocks tingles against Lilian, feeling like champagne bubbles popping against her. Petra pulls back, scanning Lilian's face with frantic saccades, still making sure that it's real. Tears well up in her eyes, quicksilver beads with the same weight and texture as her blood, then spill out with wails as Lilian notices the collar. "Lilian! I'm sorry! I thought it was you, I thought-- I-I-I thought, you needed to get rid of me, for, for, survival, but didn't want me dead, I thought you sent her, y-y-you, you were friends, she said you-- that you signed off--" "I'm getting you out of here today!" Petra freezes, all of her vibrating-yearning energy evaporating as if drenched with ice water. Her eyes are wide, skin sheet white, trembling. "...Wait. Lilian." Her voice only comes out as a croak. "No, no no. No no no no no no. Oh, god. Lilian. Oh my god. I-I-I'm so sorry, Lilian. I--" Repetitions of her name, over and over, as if cramming before a deadline. Petra grabs on to Lilian's wrist, shuddering with urgency, then selfishly leans into the hug. "Oh my god. I made a mistake. Lilian, you-- you c-can't, I thought you were gone and I-I g-got so s-s-scared, you need to go, I, I--"
Petra Soroka	Petra takes Lilian's signal and pulls away as quickly as she can from the other girl when the door opens, the violence of the followthrough inertia sending her tumbling to the ground. When Matthew enters the cell, Petra is sprawled on the floor, every upraised and scabbed silver-toned wound visible, paths carved down her legs and arms. She looks up at him, eyes wide with horror, darting to glance at Lilian with desperate unvoiced apology. In his presence, the crushing tightness where her heart should be tenses her muscles so much that movement feels strained, but Petra struggles to her feet slowly enough that her strength doesn't send her offbalance. "And you." Petra flinches, reflexively. Then she locks in place, stiffly upright, matching his look at her with appropriate, deer-in-headlights deference, the natural squeezing pressure settling around her spine to hold her still, until he says that. Petra twitches, her hand automatically reaching out to Lilian's before stopping halfway and balling into a fist. "C-Commander Rook i-isn't responsible for, for this." Why did she default to Commander? "I was, I was, visited by another Paladins Chevalier. They did this to me. It wasn't-- it wasn't--" Petra's protests are drowned out by Matthew's shouting. She helplessly trails into silence, looking between the two with both hands clasped over her mouth. I made a mistake I made a mistake I made a mistake I made a mistake oh my god I'm so sorry Lilian, please, don't let this-- Let this what? There was no taking it back. There was nothing Petra could do. She couldn't even raise her voice loud enough to be heard, only able to faintly wheeze out air. It's so much worse than I thought. I should've just died-- I should've waited a fucking day! I'm so sorry!
Lilian Rook	For that last trickle of seconds where Lilian can still hold Petra tight against her body and gush out her feelings, instants slipping through her fingers without her realizing how so very few she has left, she finally takes her time to do nothing but exist and be present; to squeeze and cradle the girl she'd done all of this to, spitefully press herself so close against her skin that she can't even accidentally recoil, absorb her sobs into her frame, and try not to cry in return. 'I thought you were-- they all said--' "Whatever they said is wrong. Nobody else understands. Nobody but us." Lilian's fingers run through Petra's hair and down the back of her neck in calming strokes that feel so utterly ignorant of what was forced to change. 'I-I-I missed you!' A rattling inhale comes within a hairsbreadth of cracking into a sympathetic sob. "Me too." 'Lilian! I'm sorry!' "No, come off-- Don't say sorry. Everything you needed to apologize for, you already have, and everything I need to somehow make right is-- God there's so much-- Please don't say sorry to me until you can forgive me, okay?" 'I-I-I thought, you needed to get rid of me' "No, no. Never. You know I couldn't." 'for, for, survival,' "Petra . . . You know I'd never accept that, Petra. I didn't get this strong just to scrape by on survival. You know how selfish I am-- I always want too much." Lilian takes another deep, shuddering breath. 'y-y-you, you were friends, she said you--' "Yeah. I guess we were." 'Oh my god. I made a mistake. Lilian, you-- you c-can't, I thought you were gone and I-I g-got so s-s-scared, you need to go' The way Lilian's hands take Petra by the shoulders, the way she looks at her in the mercury-stricken eyes, is all so hopelessly, painfully naive. For once, Petra knows something that Lilian doesn't, is right about something that Lilian isn't, and it's the most awful feeling. The girl in front of Petra can't possibly not know, unless she'd neglected every means at her disposal to foresee any of this; unless she'd spent weeks falling apart in worry, only to rush in at the earliest possible second. This must be the one and only time Petra has ever known Lilian to let time get away from her. Wasting so much of it, doing nothing to catch up to it, letting the seconds pass with someone without counting them; it's so different. And so, the instant Lilian let herself just be around Petra, she never even gets to finish saying, "We both made mistakes; too horrible to just take back. I'm not going anywhere Petra. Whatever it is, we can" overcome it together. The moment is gone. Just like that. It runs out at a rate of exactly one second per second, and it can't ever, ever, be brought back. Because that was five minutes ago, and this is the present, and Lilian never wanted to go back, only catch up. Matthew Rook presses his palm to his forehead in disbelief, or perhaps just exasperation, looking away from Lilian and shaking his head in the stricken silence that follows. He begins pacing around her, at a respectable distance, like he has it memorized, and runs his fingers through his hair.
Lilian Rook	"Unbelievable. You're unbelievable. I already knew you were bound to try and clean this up-- that's why I took the morning off, and, unsurprisingly-- but now I see you've already got this poor girl trained to spout off memorized lines on demand! What is wrong with you?! Do you honestly have no shame?!" Lilian tenses up, vibrating with the effort of waiting for him to finish, as instructed. But there isn't a greak. She only draws breath a little too sharply, and Matthews spins around to stab his finger towards her and yell "What did I just tell you?! Don't bother answering you little snake; I know well enough you don't! You've never said a truthful word in your fucking life, and you expect me to listen to you now?!" Hering him raise his voice into bellowed cursing should seem jarring. It should seem at odds with his bearing and composure. And somehow it doesn't quite. "Now! In the middle of all the blood and--" He stops to flick a bit of debris away in disgust with the tip of his-- "Good god what else have you been doing in here?" Lilian's ability to keep silent this one-sidedly and for this long is a kind of terrifying similar to the moment you start to notice a sleeping pet isn't breathing but before you fully process it. Her proclivity for talking one and a half times as long as she needs to has an obvious root. The rattling sound from behind her draws Matthew's attention. "What are you hiding behind your back?" "Nothing, sir." "I'm not asking. I'm giving you an opportunity to admit it." Lilian's hand comes out from behind her back. Open and empty. Petra feels two small weights settle into her pocket. "Do you think I'm stupid? You must think I'm an idiot. You've played that little trick a million times before, with your drawings and your journals and the bloody kitchen knives and the clothes you stole and everything else that we could have shown to get you help! But if you want to throw away one more chance in the thousands we've given you, then fine! Fine!" The slide from 'I' to 'We' is so effortless that it's easy to miss why it suddenly feels more intimidating; more wrong. "You're always hiding things, so I'm used to it anyways! Scissors, plasters, belts, paperwork, photographs, uniforms-- What difference does it make?!" The way he exhales, exactly like a weary, overworked, unappreciated father is spine-chilling. His fingers slide back through his hair and fall to his side. The whiplash in his bearing swaps course. His shoulders sag and his voice rasps. "Why do I bother? You've never taken me seriously. Not even once. Your own father." "I've always--" "You don't listen to a word. Nothing I say has any power over you." "That's not true. The things you say mean a lot to me." "Well I'm fairly fucking sure I told you to never do anything like this."
Lilian Rook	The way he shakes his head at her and moves on is mindblowing. The very idea that there is someone in this world who can look at Lilian Rook like that; like trash, not worth his time; hits Petra all at once as visceral fact. The idea that someone could get away with it, without more than a strangled breath and quietly balled fists, from Lilian, is even more outrageous; and yet here it is. That girl, always so right, always impossible to argue with, just wilts under this; something so crude, aggressive, transparently manipulative; every time it connects to one of those clearly unrelated or technical truths. It's impossible to believe, even seeing it, but Matthew completely ignores her in favour of coming up to Petra instead; throwing away her in favour of her. The fact that he can he look at her with cold knowing and genuine, viscerally sympathetic pity, is disarming and disorienting enough to feel the ground fall under her feet. She is the good one and Lilian is the bad one. She is the victim and Lilian is the deviant. It's so obvious that she need not even say anything. Just let it happen. "I'm so sorry, my poor girl." Petra need only look over his shoulder to see Lilian stare angrily at her feet for hearing those words never meant for her. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so brave. Whatever 's done to you, I'll make certain never happens again. Please, when you feel ready, go to the car; the staff will direct you to it. I'll be in close touch with you each step of the way to see that reparations are made." Matthew reaches out to put his hand on her shoulder-- something so warm and comforting from this man would be such an incredible relief right now, with so much tension and fear already in the room. It's so easy to want a comforting gesture. Just a little sign that she's safe and done no wrong. Enough to feel gut-dropping when he stops, and worse when it connects that he's staring at the bite marks where his weathered palm would go. "I knew it." "Sir?" "I knew it'd break you down eventually. All of this. That's what." "Sir I don't underst--" "This delusion that everyone but your mother and I keeps enabling, that's what!" "Sir." "You know, I was nearly convinced at first, when you could pick out normal clothes and run off to school to date boys like a ." The backblast of Petra's own word is scorching. "But ever since I gave up on trying help you; ever since I let them have their way, it's steadily gone this way for years!" "Please stop, sir." "I knew that chasing that absurd fantasy would only drive you mad in the end. You can't cope with reality! You never quite had all your marbles together, but look at you now!" "Matthew stop." "Violent! Psychotic! Unstable! A pathological liar, completely detached from reality! You've fallen to preying on young women where nobody can see, because you couldn't deny nature but couldn't admit it either! You're completely off your rocker and anyone, anyone, can see the real culprit! Look at you! You're dressed like a whore for Christ's sake! Is that a tattoo?!" "Matthew." "Good lord. What am I supposed to do now? My is a crossdressing rapist." "For once Matthew just FUCKING LISTEN TO ME!"
Petra Soroka	"But now I see you've already got this poor girl trained to spout off memorized lines on demand!" So, so long ago, hundreds of days and hundreds of conversations, back when Petra didn't understand anything, she whined to one of her stupid friends about a stupid, petulant feeling. 'Isn't it unfair, that Rook sounds so right, all the time? Whenever she talks, she draws these battle lines, and anyone on her side is right and anyone across it is wrong, and it doesn't matter what you say because it'll always be compared to what she says first!' Stupid. Stupid. They all agreed with her, consoled her, of course. Anything she says in defense of Lilian will be used against her. Even saying the name-- even acknowledging her, or looking at her, or trying to convince Matthew of anything, will be interpreted as Lilian's fault. What can she even say? Petra silently struggles in place, sick choking her throat, helpless to intervene while Matthew escalates. Even without being his target, each time he raises his voice turns her stomach and aches in her muscles, rigidly tense. It's almost worse when he doesn't, when he sighs and moves on. Petra has railed against people calling Lilian evil plenty, she's recoiled with disgust and disavowed the people calling her a villain, a bitch, a time bomb, a tragic monster. But treating her as worthless is so perversely jarring that Petra is jolted out of her horrified silence. "N-no, no, it really wasn't-- it really wasn't Lilian." The suffocating sense that she shouldn't use that name makes it escape from her rose-gold lips as barely above a whisper. "I-it was Chevalier Dimo, it was-- it's easy to prove, it's something she does, she did it to-- to birds, and stuff, that I saw before, it wasn't Lilian. It was p-part of the extradition, it's not--" Petra clenches her fists at her side when Matthew approaches. It's so easy to just be one of the good ones. It's what she's always done, whether she's trying to grovel and pander to help herself, or help someone else by 'being a good example'. Oh god. This feels just like Katja, when we were kids. It feels like with Mr. Soroka, all the way back then. Petra faintly, weakly, speaks up, gently trying to verbally tug the conversation away from that unbearable end point. A feeble use of the sympathy that a man like him feels for her, to try to pull him away from berating Lilian. It doesn't work. It never does, selfish bitch. You can't hold girls like us in one hand and people like you in the other. "Maybe we should... both go to the car? I don't... I don't want to stick around any longer than, than... You don't need to..." Petra's voice falters and fades into nothing. She presses her lips together and shudders, quicksilver tears leaving polished lines streaking down her face. Every horrid word out of Matthew's mouth is made all the more unbearable by echoing things Petra hurled at her too. The same weapon, clumsily wielded, still was enough to draw blood.
Lilian Rook	The fact that Matthew stops for even a moment cannot possibly because he wants to listen. The way his rigid expression widens his eyes in silent shock and nascent livid anger can only come from not being used to Lilian actually screaming back at him. The second it takes to gather his thoughts, and let Lilian hang herself with her own rope, is something she dives in to use while she still can all the same. "Just listen to her! You clearly believed her before! How would I teach her to say any of this?! I've been here for two minutes! Ask the bloody guard! Do you want me to find the files on the extradition?! I have them right in my bag, along with the heap of permissions I had to go through! You like paperwork right?!" "You expect me to--" "I know you'll find an excuse anyways, but how stupid do you want to look in front of her?!" The way Matthew simultaneously bristles up and abruptly shuts his mouth tells Petra many things at once. That Lilian knows exactly what makes him tick, and precisely how to get to him, and just doesn't. Not unless Petra's dignity is on the line, for some reason. It tells her that Matthew's attachment to her ends where her usefulness as a sympathetic ally and informant against Lilian does. It tells her just how obsessed with his image he must be; enough to hate losing face more than he hates facts. And it tells her that Lilian has already given up on being treated any better, if she's sacrificed her opportunity to take her side for the moment she has. "And what fucking difference does that make? Your coworker didn't put this poor girl here. You did. This isn't your coworker's world; it's mine. Your coworker's signature isn't on the papers, it's that vain little scrawl you notarized just to spite us. I have no power to admonish your coworker; it's out of my hands. But you, I have to take responsibility for." "You don't have to do anything! I can take responsibility for this myself!" "Are you out of your mind?! How do you think that will reflect on me?!" And there it is. One more tumbler falls into place and Petra feels the axle click. The reason Matthew showed up at all, rather than just gleefully sink Lilian from afar. "You deserve to be dragged through the mud, expelled, fired, and summarily thrown in a hole like this yourself! But unfortunately for us all, you kept the family name, and so as always, we're the ones who'll suffer undeservedly for it! You're always like this! Suckling off our goodwill, like a leech, bleeding us dry for what you need, and never listening to a single word; never making a single compromise! Of course you'd think nothing of what you'd bring down on our reputation; that doesn't concern you! You've never worked for anything!" "You have no idea how hard it's been to--" "To tart up in a dress and abandon everything you were entrusted with to roleplay a soldier?! Or do you mean it was hard to coerce these people into pretending along with you? Because I bet it took some doing to force them to pretend they don't see the obvious too!" "Nobody else has trouble with it! They don't even think about--"
Lilian Rook	All the momentum of surprise is gone. Everything Lilian is saying is clearly suicidal. Petra already knows, deep in her chest, that there's no point. That these are just the last, angry gasps of someone who knows she can barely make it any worse. Watching the two of them scream over each other just feels like watching an animal bleed out by the side of the road. "They don't have to think about how it feels for me to be forced to refer to you like a daughter everywhere I go! In front of the fucking help for Christ's sake! How do you think it affects us to pretend that we never has a ?! Like everything older than two years--" "Ten! It's been ten years! You never had a--" "--never happened! But of course extorting and gaslighting your own fucking family is something that's easy for you, isn't it?! We're only here to put a roof over your head and food in your mouth and a degree in your hands and money in your bank; nothing important!" "I don't even use your--!" "It's always been impossible to take anything away from you! Even for your own fucking good! I still don't even know how you got ahold of those fucking reagants! You knew the convenient little pills the Extras make wouldn't work, and you knew how risky using those would be! Surely someone told you they'd destroy your meridians! Surely you noticed the years of progress in magic you lost! Didn't you have a single second thought when you were vomiting blood into the fucking sinks and leaving it for the help?!" "Not even once." "You can't use them that way! They're not for enabling your fucking fetish! But you didn't listen then and of course you wouldn't listen now! How did you even find the money-- no I bet you stole them, like everything else!" "Thank me for not 'forcing' you to get them, then." "You snotty little freak! You think I'd thank anyone for turning my into a delusional ?!" That one was bad. Worse than Petra dared, back then. Enough that the collateral damage scorches her by the sidelines. Enough to make what passes for cold adrenaline spike her veins and the hum that is her heart skip and rattle. Lilian was right back then, too. That the words are so worn out as to be meaningless to her. She's already so charred that she barely flinches at the weight of it all. "I'd be happier to have lost that coin flip that you people do." It's those words; so esoteric as to be meaningless, but understood by all in the room; that finally crack Lilian's composure. Petra can feel it first. That warning. Stronger than any time it's ever been. So vivid and frigid and acridly asphyxiating that it was never about her. It was always projecting it away from the one place it deserved to go. She knows, instinctively, that they're all in the moment before what will happen in another world, in no time at all, where Lilian finally gets Her Turn.
Lilian Rook	But Matthew senses it too. Of course. He's known her for longer. Parents like him ignore most of what their child feels and does, but they always have such horridly thorough attention to detail for all the little cues when their child might be doing something against them. His hand squeezes the brass knob of the walking cane, lifted an inch from the floor, and with cold, absolute conviction, he says, "Do it. Go on. I dare you. Make my day." "You don't mean that. You don't understand--" "I've never been able to take anything from you before, but now I have you dead to rights. It's only by ties of blood that I'm deigning to make this go away in the first place. Give me the slightest excuse to wash my hands of you. Go on. Come have a go." "We both know how far you can push me around, Matthew. You're not God almighty." "We both know how well and utterly fucked you are this time, too. Have you forgotten? I've had an entire day of notice. I say the word, and you're pulled out of your classes, barred from every school in the hemisphere, fired from your little roleplay academy, permanently banned from carrying arms on criminal charges; I'll have you out on the streets; the house is mine, the books are mine, the materials are mine, the staff are mine; that means your precious little favourite is mine. Even that decrepit old relic you scraped from the basement that you carry around like a blanket belongs to me. They won't keep you in the Paladins. They won't keep you at your side family either. Your accounts will be frozen. Your so-called friends will never look at you again. I'll have all your documents challenged and reverted to how they should be too. Make my day. I'll try again with a more grateful replacement in ten years time." Matthew's grip tightens. The breath that Lilian draws in sounds as if she might be dying. Petra is sure she smells death. Feels its approach on her skin, as all humans one day discover that they can. Red Dwarf was right. "That's too much to lose. That's just too much. Don't leave me with just this one choice, Matthew. You know I'd never want to--" "You don't have the stones. You could have tried to kill me at any time, even years and years ago. We both know what a fucked up little psychotic bastard you are. But you didn't, and you won't, because you couldn't. And do you know why?" "Because--" "Because somewhere in there, deep, deep down, beneath all the layers of insanity, my is still in there, and knows what's right. knows who is, knows I'm father, knows this 'Lilian' character isn't real." "Fuck you Matthew." "You can't do it because you'll never stop being my ."
Lilian Rook	It takes entire seconds for the syllables to travel from Petra's ears and register in her conscious mind. That moment must be what it felt like to watch the detonation of the first nuclear bomb. To know that the potential for something so dread and terrible existed in this world, only hidden from knowing until now; to have a moment's glance into true, transcendental evil, and to feel, on an instinctual level, the weight of absolute taboo crush her chest and shudder her bones. She shouldn't have heard that. It wasn't for her ears to know. It should never have been said, and should never be said again. But it can't be taken back. It can't be unremembered. It can't ever be put back underground. The knowledge is there, forever, and it has no purpose in the world but suffering. It's not that he did it. Lilian didn't react to that. It's that he did it just to share it with the Multiverse. Lilian's eyes slide in mute, deaf horror, over to Petra. Her chest rises and falls with the telltale irregularity of an impending panic attack. Her nauseated stare locks with Petra's, and in that shared second, she sees the exact instant that Lilian breaks one more time. Repeatedly. Artfully. Made one notch worse. Brought lower than one more person. Gathering one more ugly crack. How pretty. How beautiful. How exquisite the gold joinery will be, after however many years it takes her to overcome this too. Matthew's hand chokes up on the cane, and in that shellshocked and tinnitus-ringing moment of opportunity, swings it into the side of Lilian's head like the shillelagh it clearly is. Petra hadn't been able to touch her once, in all of their fights, but the wood and brass connects with Lilian's cheekbone with the kind of crack that sadists dream of, and her head smashes against the near wall, where she slides like a limp doll halfway to the floor. A thin smear of blood streaks down the wall from cracks her cheek had made in the tile; an enchantment of force, for a fucking walking stick. Matthew smears the residual red on the grip over Lilian's clothes, like a spare rag. "My sincerest apologies for the ugly scene you had to witness, Miss Soroka." says Matthew. He doesn't even deign to put his hand back on the grip, carrying it by the middle now. "Though I'm certain it's but a fraction of what put you through. Have no worry. I'll finish cleaning up this mess once you've been dropped off. You're quite right that we shouldn't linger here any less than absolutely necessary." His hand to her back ushers her towards the door, with all the gentle patience of guiding a distraught child away from the freshly wrangled runaway dog that'd bitten her. "The restraining order is already filed, so rest easy. If shows face anywhere near you, that'll be that. Please, come with me, and tell the chauffeur where you'd like to be taken." He doesn't so much as look back over his shoulder when leaving the room.
Petra Soroka	That Petra's thoughts are swirling with desperate ideas of how to help Lilian is not praise for her moral character. Thinking of plans, of ways to hurt Matthew, of ways to fix this and save her and make it better, is just a form of escapism, fleeing from the suffocating stress with a self-aggrandizing sense of righteousness. Everyone always wants to be a savior and no one ever steps in. Phony could help-- Phony has to be able to help-- AME does that, that propaganda thing, maybe that could-- oh god I'm so sorry-- what could-- what could get her away from this-- I hate this piece of shit so much-- how dare he-- "To tart up in a dress and abandon everything you were entrusted with to roleplay a soldier?!" "L-Lilian is one of the best fighters I know, I--" It's pointless, of course, to say anything with the momentum spiraling out of control like this. It's invasive to intervene and selfish and voyeuristic to even be here, and fucking unbearable not to say anything and impossible to make a difference. Clawing, maddening guilt, at how narrow her idea of 'hating your family' was. "E-everyone agrees with that. She's a hero to millions of people, she's, she's a-a-a knight. She's saved s-so many people and she fights harder than anyone." Fuck him fuck him fuck fuck fuck fuck-- Petra's mind is an aimless, furious cloud, shuddering with her arms wrapped around herself tightly enough to dent metal. Even when she said she understood, she-- she-- all of these words, coming out of Matthew's mouth, were only ever theoretical before. Talked about in broad retrospect, details glossed over, only ever reflected on by people distanced enough to reflect. Oh god I'm so sorry Lilian. I'm so sorry. Everything I said, I-- I-- Every word, even just his raised voice for emphasis, leaves collateral damage on Petra. By demographic association, something she only barely begun to wrap her head around in the past month. By allegiance and care for Lilian, by wracking guilt from the sense that it all comes half from her own mouth rather than Matthew's. All she can do is mentally repeat it, as if silent, desperate wishing could make it real. I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I take it all back I don't-- "I'd be happier to have lost that coin flip that you people do." Petra flinches, her wide-eyed stare of horror wincing and falling to the ground. Instinctually, she hugs herself tighter, pressing her forearms against her chest to reassure herself that they're not on display. Her reactor hum works up into a whine, blurring her vision. If Lilian is going to act, then Petra is going to step in and help, she'll fight with her, even though she'd be giving up her route to freedom, and even though she doesn't know how strong he is-- Isn't that insane? You can't do power level comparisons with someone's dad. That's crossing a line, that-- That-- feels hollow. Fuck him. Why the fuck does he get to have this power over her just because he's her dad? I know a lot of murderers, is that-- is that really the only option? There's no way Lilian would be happy with th-that. That-- that can't be-- holy shit I want him gone.
Petra Soroka	---------- Petra is stunned, hand clamped over her mouth. Her eyes slide over to meet Lilian's, perfectly round, hydrophobic silver beading up in the corners. Weakly, through her trembling fingers, Petra whimpers in the brief silence. "Lilian..." There was, actually, one time where Petra landed a hit on Lilian, during their multiple fights. One time. 'You keep talking about how you owe everything to them. Every part of your upbringing. You're not so stupid that you'd forget about that part of it. So yeah. Fucking admit that it helped make you a person.' Petra stares at Lilian's crumpled body, eyes wide and pupils constricted and spilling over with metal tears. Her chest spasms with sickened, shallow breaths, only barely holding back the urge to vomit because of his presence. Docile, shivering, lifeless, Petra doesn't resist when he guides her out of the room. She should. She knows she should. She should scream and run to Lilian and help her and do something, no matter how angry it makes Matthew. Especially because it would bother him. She doesn't. She can't. Almost sounding dizzy, as she's led through the prison halls. "R-restraining order? N-no, no, no, I don't want that, I-- don't I need to consent to that? Don't I need to, to go to court myself, and sign off on that? Thank you, but," Automatic. Pathetic. "I'm fine without that."