Scene #8989: Girls Like You

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	A domed metal building sits out in a field of vivid grass, smooth white metal lit faintly orange by a glowing outcropping of rock some distance away. The skylight on top lets daylight stream inside, patterned by the leaves of trees reaching overhead, but little else breaks the flat landscape besides the typical irregularities of nature, and the pale-dirt path winding away from the dome draws a long line back to the central cluster of buildings in the distance, where the landing pad had been. It's the kind of place meant to be accessible by small trucks trundling slowly over the uneven road, and vehicles barely a step above golf carts-- a familiar cousin to the heart of the complex, rather than a part of the inner circle. Within it is a glittering skeleton of wire and piping, ten feet tall and suspended in the center of an open central chamber by cables to spread its limbs and hold it upright. The white walls of the interior are broken up by shocks of bright green and orange running like electrical circuitry around the paneling, holographic blue and bright plastic countertops placed around for displaying measurements and tools. Soft-angled white crates with orange banding are placed around the chamber, some of their tops cranked open to reveal the piles of translucent, iridescent shards poured inside. There is also, within the building, two girls. Over the weekend, Persephone received a near-incomprehensibly awkward email from a near-incomprehensible source. Rambling, stilted paragraph form, pre-baked with explanations and justifications for 'why' and 'how' as if the writer spent multiple hours at the computer making bullet points of defenses in her head, the email (tangibly nervously, infested with qualifications) requested Persephone's presence on a certain terraformed moon of Saturn, nearby the lab she had visited before, in order to help repair a mech-- Petra's mech, the Beauty of Ash. Though Petra never acknowledged, or even saw, whatever Phony might have said in return, she was there waiting on Io when she said she'd be, already busying herself with the lengthy process of putting it all back together again. Now, the unlikely pair has fallen into a quiet rhythm, after Petra's less-than-eloquent attempts at guidance to Persephone's role in the process. Hardlight crystals, as she'd explained, only maintain their shape when observed optically or psychically. Normally-- and this was a tangent she'd went on in the email too, but she felt compelled to repeat it to Persephone's face, as if pleading her case for the sin of exposing Phony to the itching discomfort of Petra's presence-- there's machinery to nullify the ambient psychic presence of the Iorite and the kids at Applied Ontology, but it'd take additional hands to operate, and Petra's aura provides a sort of shortcut to briefly inflicting oblivion on the material of her own mech.
Petra Soroka	So it goes. Persephone levitates a cluster of broken pearlescent shards of the former Beauty of Ash, interlocking them in a sheet of dendritic crystal formed in a layer around the mech's skeleton. Then they both close their eyes, and Petra's aura briefly overwhelms Phony's gentling presence, numbing the repair bay to the sixth and final sense to break down the crystalline structure of the hardlight. Dissociated light radiates beyond-violet as if superheated, cooling through blue, green, and red, until it settles back into its glasslike transparency, fused together. Petra not only seems intent on not talking much during the work, but seems almost incapable of it. The tension bunched in her shoulders, slightly hunching her posture to give her the faint impression of scuttling around like some sort of bug, also constricts her throat, making her words always come out as either clipped or barely-above-whispered. She hasn't said any slurs or insults so far, at least, which still makes this about the most positive interaction the two of them have had, and it's clear her anxiety isn't just from Persephone's presence. After a round of fusing the Beauty of Ash's second leg together, forming the faceted diamond prism below the knee, Petra explains that she'll need a few minutes to do... something electronic, is the best that can be gleaned from her vague stammering. Almost absentmindedly, like she briefly forgets that this is a weird behavior to do in front of someone else, Petra forcefully wedges herself into the scaffolding supporting the hydraulic skeleton, almost-but-not-quite sitting while tinkering with the spread of circuitry and servos arranged on the morphmetal sheet that she hovers in the air as a workbench. Gloves on, long-sleeved t-shirt on, jeans and her old green glittery scarf, she has none of her scarred up skin below her face visible for Phony to be offput by, and her hair hangs to either side of her face while she diligently pokes at her work.
Persephone Kore	A few days ago . . . Persephone lounges on her couch in an all-scarlet bedroom with a view to space, solar system diorama over her head like a halo and colorful toys crowded around her. Consuming her sticker-smothered laptop's entire screen is a really, truly, baffling message. She bites her lip, then presses a palm to the display. Hey. Why are you the way that you are? Oh. Oh, Petra... Now: The landing-pad had welcomed the Queen in Veils onto itself, and the white building's door had opened itself, and the Beauty of Ash had helped to reassemble itself, because I think it'd be nice if those things happened. Don't you? Even without being able to feel my 'heart-to-heart', it's just objective how the world ratchets down into a sweeter state with me around! Every time she shuts her eyes for the repairing, it's a smile. So opening them again should be a frown, but impossibly it isn't; the sunrise of almost-orange eyes behind dark eyelashes is still a smile but in a different way. As if trying to turn the lights off made them brighter, and turning them back on made them brighter still. If you kept doing that, someday you'd get the Sun. I'm not really sure what went wrong. I'm not really sure what I'm setting right. But it still feels nice to. While Petra reaches into the Beauty's electronic guts, Persephone sits nearby, legs crossed at the knee and hands in her lap. She's zoned out almost like meditating. "Hey," she says, when she's relaxed enough to forget not to talk. If this is a reflection of your heart, "do you like being looked at, or not being looked at?" Her eyes re-focus, making contact. Hand cups her own cheek indulgently. "... Haha, sorry. That's sort of an awful question, isn't it? I won't ask that." "How about this instead: why now? What changed, Petra?"
Petra Soroka	It's impossible to flinch at the 'sound' of Phony's voice, gentle as it is even in the quiet humming of the repair chamber, nor is it possible to forget about Phony's presence in the room, even when not talking, and even when shielded from the radiance of her heart, so what makes Petra jolt must be 'Petra, specifically, being addressed by Persephone'. Wedged into the scaffolding, she whips her head upwards to look at Phony at her first 'hey', too quickly, and ends up slamming the back of it into the metal with a loud clang. She lets out a strangled whine, doubling over and clutching at the back of her head. "Ack-- augh, sorry..." Getting bonked like that knocks words loose from her, though the first ones that come out are an apology for hurting... herself, and she awkwardly blinks back tears while nursing the sore spot with her hand. With her guard temporarily broken by the impact, and the pounding in her head dulling her ability to second guess her words, she starts confusedly feeling out a response before Phony retracts the question. "Ah... uh... you mean, you're thinking about the--? Oh, right. Right. Okay. Sorry." Petra looks down at the ground, her semisolid metal workbench sliding sideways in the air on an invisible rail to move out of the way. If Persephone didn't know Petra lost her psychic powers, it'd be a little hard to tell, looking at her. The tools she picked up along the way always end up filling the same roles. Supporting her cheek on her palm, folded forwards, Petra's face is squished sulkily to face the quarter-reformed mech, glittering in the sunlight. "... I mean, Hibiki needs me to. For something on her world. And... and Lilian needed me to, because it was too repulsively awful otherwise. And the... everyone here. Dianna and Elara. All needed me to, because even though it healed over, there wasn't any closure for anyone." Petra's face rolls across her hand, drooping down again away from the Beauty of Ash. The angle of light coming through the skylight refracts through the mech's legs, forming rainbow caustics dancing across Petra's jeans, and she fidgets with working her finger into a distressed hole in the denim, twisting the fabric around. "Or do you mean... why do I care. You know. Like, 'me'."
Persephone Kore	"Oh!!" I wish you didn't hit your head reflexively, but it's already too late, so instead a gentle pressure touches Petra's scalp a moment later in a way that magically doesn't aggravate the bruise. Persephone moves with the closest thing to 'urgency' that she ever does, clack-clack up from where she's sitting and halfway to Petra's side by the time she apologizes. "Ahaha, no, don't say sorry!! Forbidden! Illegal." Her hand's extended to soothingly touch Petra's shoulder by the time she catches herself. How do you know if someone wants to be touched? It's so easy. You just read their mind! But, Petra... Phony's hand falls back to her side. She slips behind Petra instead, hands-on-knees bending down and peering over the top of her blonde hair to see what she sees. "I meant you-you, Petra. Ahahaha. There's no such thing, you know, as doing anything for other people?" Reflective surfaces catch Persephone's Petra's back gets warm as if the sun were shining brightly on it. Maybe it is! "'Lilian needed me to'... what that really means is, 'I want to help Lilian'." "But is that all? You're so selfless, but there's got to be a little selfishness too, right? There is in any good wish."
Petra Soroka	"Ack, sor--" Petra barely catches herself before breaking the law immediately after it was declared, with predictable irony. She stiffens, wide-eyed at Phony when she reaches out towards her, leaning back some, but not recoiling in the same ways she had the previous times Phony's attempted to touch her. Is that because she's less opposed to the idea, or just because she's moderating her expressions of hostility? Petra would always say that the other way-- the normal way-- to know if someone wants to be touched is to read their body language, like everyone else does. But her shifty guilt, skittish anxiety, brittle tension, and the abstract sense of pathetic pining leaking into all of her motions today don't tell a story anyone could read. She certainly doesn't lean in to encourage the physical contact, but when she curls up into herself while Phony leans over her, she seems more like a sick dog than like she's hiding from her. It's frustrating! And confusing! And alienating! And the one thing Petra knows absolutely for sure, is that. Before, she even said that was the point. "Mmmm..." The natural swaying motions of Petra's head come to a total halt with Phony so near to her, breathing so shallowly that her chest doesn't rise and fall. Her only movement is still twisting her finger around in the hole in her jeans, gradually working it larger by messing up the fabric. "Yeah. What I said was-- was sort of that answer, though. I know it's not selfless to do things for other people." "But I think it, means, um... more like 'I want to be someone who helps Lilian'. Not that. Not exactly." Her eyes wander along the paneling on the ground, tracing a line from the pointed terminus of the Beauty of Ash's leg, to a mess of cabling shoved in the far corner, leftover from whatever previous projects might've had a home here. "Does that make any sense? As a difference?" "Like, that's what I mean when I-- when I say that. I don't know if the person who made the actual most selfless wish ever could even get it. I don't mean 'for' others to help them, the way you do, I mean 'for' as in-- parasitically siphoning that feeling of 'wrongness' that Lilian developed herself, and using it like it's mine." "That's why... this." Coming back here, returning the Beauty of Ash home. "All of this, really." The entire year before that, too.
Persephone Kore	Body language, for the new world's new people, is a sort of secondary timbre. So Persephone's slow to respond to that hunched-over sickness, but I'm not completely dumb! Ahaha. After a moment or three, she circles around to Petra's side- where Petra can easily keep an eye on her- and crouches down on her heels to stare up at the work on the knee. "'To be someone who helps Lilian'..." she repeats, as if it were really wise, because I think it is! "Ahaha, can you really just decide to do that? To become someone different, just like that? You really are special, Petra." The way she eyes-shut smiles, cheek squishing out from between face-cradling fingers, can't possibly be anything but utterly sincere. "And I'm not as selfless as you think I am," she adds, eyes tracking back up to the gorgeous mech. "Even Orange, I had selfish reasons for. But you're right, that I sort of don't quite get it?" "Like..." The way she bites her lip, even without being able to feel what I'm feeling, signposts that she understands she's asking something maybe-radioactive. "What do you mean, her 'wrongness'? I don't think there's anything wrong about Lily-R, except the ways other people hurt her."
Petra Soroka	"--can you really just decide--" Petra's gaze unfocuses for a moment. A year of suicidally heedless cruelty flashes before her eyes, from ripping herself out of her home in space, to hatefully stubborn arguments with Lilian and Persephone, to a campaign of abuse with uncountable casualties, in her delirious self-destructive fervor to hammer herself against Lilian until one of them shattered, knowing that either way, the 'Petra' from the start would be dead by the end of it all. "--just like that?" PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "When she shows up, you're going to behave. You're not going to project that horrid itching misery, you're going to look at her face properly, you're not going to touch her, you're not going to talk about suicide, killing, slurs, or 'NPCs', you're going to do what she says, and you're not going to act weird and say this all proves your point about something." Petra blinks, slow to respond. "Well. Um. It took work." That staggering vertigo actually, somehow, doesn't dampen Petra's mood. When not recoiling from Persephone, and while under orders to treat her politely-- that's other case, Petra contemplates to herself, of the convenient selfishness of doing things 'for' people-- it is, kind of, nice to be smiled at. Petra's opaque thoughts aren't just a result of her aura, and Phony's calming presence isn't just from her psionics. Being looked at and addressed by Phony when she's in Petra's view-- even peripherally, while Petra keeps watching the ripples of refracted light dance over her lap-- is a different kind of anxiety building. Petra mumbles something inaudible (like an apology, but because she didn't verbalize it properly, she can't be held in contempt of court) and drags the workbench back in front of her, scooping up the wires spilling off of it. Soldering wires to their assigned places in the transplanted mechanisms of the Beauty of Ash is something she can focus on more comfortably. "... I think it's fine-- better, that it took work. Like, I mean... that's the goal, right. Purposeful self-creation. The more special people than me did more of that; like Lilian. I'm just... trailing behind." Petra trails off into still silence, her morphic tools in hand hovering in braced anticipation, at the communicated sense that Phony is risking going into dangerous territory. After a second, though, she suddenly lets out her held breath, almost-laughing with the relief of being given a much easier question than she expected. "Oh. Um. That-- I'd meant, about you asking 'why' earlier. She had the feeling that this-- like, leaving it unresolved-- was wrong. So that's why I... you know, like... became someone who it was wrong for too. I don't know. It's not like I was scrambling around doing anything to make amends to people last year." Petra scoffs quietly, not making eye contact. "That other wrongness is, like, the one thing I never had to steal from anyone; that's the one thing I've got that's 'me'. You know that, at least. I'm the only fuckup in the multiverse so bad that I'd actually get kicked out of space."
Persephone Kore	"Well. Um. It took work." I look up at you over my own knees, and she laughs fondly, and while she's distracted from the Beauty of Ash, its refractive scatter shifts and twists. The light is being bent into pretty little patterns, into childish stars and hearts. "It's satisfying work," she half-agrees. "... Like Lilian. Like me. Like you. We all made ourselves, didn't we? But I was only becoming what I always knew I was. I mean, you're doing something a little different, Petra. You're searching for new ways to be. That's a new kind of special, I think." "Haha, does that really seem less impressive to you?" Persephone rises up to her feet again, beaming down with a hand on her hip. "Be a little kinder to yourself. That's an order~." "I'm the only fuckup in the multiverse so bad that I'd actually get kicked out of space." The smile vanishes. The way her lower lip pushes out is almost-but-not-quite a frown, but if it were, it'd be a sympathetic one. I hope. "I don't know what happened," Persephone says. "I wasn't there. I know you're meaner to yourself than I would be, Petra. So if you tell me you deserved it, if you tell me they had to, I really won't believe you at all." "But Lily-R is good to space. And space is good to her. If she's teaching you how to be, you'll come by someday, won't you?"
Petra Soroka	"It is different. It's less impressive," Petra insists, utterly incapable of taking the praise as praise rather than an ideological stance. "That's the difference. Having something about yourself that exists in spite of the world-- like, having enough of a 'you', in absence of everything else-- that's what's impressive. I've never had that. Take away everything around me, and 'I' just stop existing." "I don't really-- I don't do anything different from everyone else on Earth. I'm just... better at picking and choosing which building blocks to take and use. But at the center, there's still just, nothing. Unlike you, I don't...." Petra, in the midst of uncharacteristically fluid conversation with Persephone, abruptly hits a mental wall. Her trains of thought all come to a crashing halt, frozen mid-gesture and then rapidly cooling, as a fresh hit of self-consciousness hits her again-- she might've been told to be kind to Phony, and try as she might, she can't actually scrounge up any sense of feeling suspicious or threatened by her, not while they're both here on Io together, but that's not a free pass to talk to her as if they're familiar. She'd demanded that Persephone come here and work for her benefit, despite the fact that it was Petra's fuckup and it was her responsibility to fix it, and then to combine that with rambling about her garbage philosophy is kind of reprehensible. Lilian had said to treat her like a member of Lilian's family; she's someone to make a good, or belatedly tolerable, impression on, rather than a friend. Whatever connection Petra might have had to Phony is long discarded, because of Petra's own actions. She lamely tugs up her scarf around her mouth after going quiet. Uh... sure. I can try. Sorry." A beat, and then she narrows her eyes. "Shit. Ignore that." Persephone's almost-frown instantly validates Petra's decision to retreat into her shell. She can't even envision a frown on Persephone's face, so this is as close as it gets-- and she's elicited similar almost-frowns every time she's interacted with Persephone before, so she's breaking her promise to Lilian to make this time different. Sympathy boils away on contact, leaving Petra guiltily avoiding looking at Persephone's face, tapping her boots on the ground in an irregular rhythm. "But you can't take my side and theirs. If they said the same thing, you'd have to believe them." Petra raises her head up suddenly. "Not-- not, like, that I'm not on their side. Like, I..." Her gaze catches the dancing refracted patterns in the light, lingering and causing her voice to hitch. "It... took me long enough, but, you know. I don't, like, begrudge them, at all. It's the healthiest choice."
Petra Soroka	"If she's teaching you how to be, you'll come by someday, won't you?" Petra pauses before answering. Long enough that Persephone can see her eyes flicker to the side, imagining it, catching her gut feelings and holding them for a moment longer to interrogate them, and then draining away into resolute disappointment. "I... can't. And shouldn't. I can-- I am, doing my best, to be good for Lilian. But I'm not..." Putting thoughts into feelings is as laborious a process as usual, and these aren't thoughts Petra particularly enjoys voicing out loud. "... able to be good in a 'pure' way? I can't be good for her except in places where there's already enough bad that I can-- can make it less bad. I can't make good places better." "Like, um, you know. I know my strengths. I-- I don't think it'd be impossible, for me to be safe for being around the SH kids, as a blank slate." Even that admission makes Petra a little shifty, and she fidgets around with her wrists between her thighs, wandering off on a tangent to vent the stress. "Like-- one time, in the radio, I talked to some-- Dylan, I'm pretty sure. From Sapient Heuristics. In the radio. And, like, she was-- I didn't do anything weird. She was cool. And I got, anxious, I guess, and left, but nothing bad really happened." "But I don't, have a blank slate with Lilian. Or here. So... I still make some things worse, just by existing."
Persephone Kore	"But I'm not... able to be good in a 'pure' way?" Phony's head tilts to the side in an almost doglike look of confusion. Her hair can't quite decide how to hang, so it ends up drifting as if underwater or in zero-G. And then her smile returns: "Aha? Ahahahaha. You know, for someone who has 'nothing' inside her, you're really good at absolutes!" She's innocently bright-and-sharp now, eyes smiled shut. "If it's all just building blocks, then 'being impure' is a block you should throw away!! Or if you can be marked forever, let's put some good marks on you too! Oh, or is that what you're already doing? But then, we were talking about 'someday', so if good marks are possible you can't say you'll never be good for them." She winds down, covering her mouth with an armwarmer-clad hand for a fond little laugh, and then pressing it to Petra's lower back as if she could infuse her with some of that warmth. "... But, really, everyone is a little bit nothing. Do you think I'd be special if I grew up somewhere else? I don't! I wouldn't even be named 'Persephone'." The mention of Dylan passes by with just a fond twinkle in Phony's eye. It means something like I knew you'd get along. Finally, after a moment of watching warmly over Petra's shoulder, she circles back to something from before: "But you can't take my side and theirs. If they said the same thing, you'd have to believe them." "I'd take your side over theirs. It's supposed to be 'for everyone, and no-one left behind'." So casually earnest she doesn't look in Petra's eyes to say it- or, no, she's looking up at where the Beauty of Ash's eyes would be, if it had any. "I don't think they'd say the same thing. And even if they did, it'd be about the Petra of ten years ago; not the Petra with me now!" Ten is a guess. "But anyone space leaves behind, in the end, it'll have to become strong enough to take back. Otherwise it was a failure from the start." "Did I ever tell you? That I used to want to run away?"
Petra Soroka	Petra has a lot she might say about the permanence and customizability of her constructed self, but that strays dangerously close into philosophical ramblings about disagreeing with Persephone, which is illegal-- by Lilian's law, rather than Phony's. But on the topic of 'putting good marks on her forever', Petra, whose scarf is hiding hickeys and whose sleeves are hiding burn marks, lets her eyes drift awkwardly to the side. "Well. Marks last a while. I guess." "I'd take your side over theirs." Petra doesn't even process the words at first. Phony placing her hand on Petra's back made her go totally still, barely breathing again, dimly shocked-looking and keeping her attention on Persephone's face as she talks. She holds herself like the skittish animal and delicate explorer at the same time; both embodying the nervous animal ready to bolt at the smallest motion, and the hand stretched out, careful not to make any sudden movements to break the spell. Belatedly, she finally reacts, blinking in bafflement and shaking her head fractionally. "--What? Huh? No, it doesn't need to be a-- I'm not left behind. I'm just left. It doesn't have to be an ideological statement." That'd be the first thing that wasn't, with Petra. Knowing what the Beauty of Ash is meant to look like-- whole in an old photograph, crushed and impaled in Petra's mindscape-- the internal skeleton, still bare from the hips up, stops at the shoulders. The head floats above, angular and near-faceless, with a single eye cracked in the middle. So looking at empty air is a surprisingly good substitute. "There's not, like, going to be anyone else like me. There's no reason for me to... be considered like, part of the whole at all. Just, the things I've done, mean that as long as I'm around-- like, specifically me-- there's other people it can't be home for." Petra grips either side of the scaffolding she's sitting on, planting her feet on the ground like she's intending to stand up all of a sudden. "It's not a failure, like, Applied Ontology did anything wrong. It's just-- I work best as a useful, tool. I don't have to be distant. I just can't be here." "Did I ever tell you? That I used to want to run away?" Petra affixes Phony with a weird stare, and then says, without a trace of irony, "... Why?" Rather than pulling herself to her feel, Petra lifts herself up by her handholds, and then slowly drops herself down to the ground, sitting with her knees up to her chest, looking up at Phony. Her face turns to the side, faintly bitter. "... I barely know anything about you, really. Just, people always talking about their relationships to you. But I don't have one really at all."
Persephone Kore	Thankfully, this time, I don't frown. You can't blame me if I look 'sympathetically pained', can you? Ahaha. But I'm still smiling, even if it means something a little different. When she has to relinquish her touch on Petra, she does so by sliding her hand up your back and along your arm, so that contact is never broken until fingers part from fingers. So I'm not just 'pushing you away'. Then she leans back, and I wish I had something to rest against, so the Beauty of Ash supports her with its arm. As if Petra were still touching her, even then. "Let's say that's true." Which it isn't. "Is it 'forever'? Is that the one thing about yourself you're not strong enough to change? That other people can't change about you? If they can't forgive you, if they can't love you, they'll never be able to love Earth." "... Why?" Persephone doesn't-quite-laugh, and looks off to the side, and crosses her legs the other way. It might take a moment to recognize what self-consciousness looks like on her face. "Because I'm selfish. And greedy! And absolutely irresponsible. And being Sapient Heuristics' perfect princess isn't enough for me." Even though she shouldn't be, she's smiling nostalgically. "I was twelve, you know. When I heard those words the first time. 'If you can't do it, no-one can'. They were saying that to a little girl, about the whole universe. And possibly they were right." Her fingers drum on the support-structure, nails pinging. Her shoulders push up, emulating a sigh. "... I'm not struggling under some great burden you know. I'm not bravely keeping on. I'm okay. Really. Ask anyone who's felt my heart! But everyone wants what they can't have. And it would have been nice, to be 'ordinary', before there stops being an ordinary." She looks back just to wink. "Don't tell?"
Petra Soroka	Up until now, the process of reconstructing the Beauty of Ash has involved Persephone manipulating shards of the hardlight nervous system that were broken off of the frame, essentially inert and dead until fused back on. Psychically touching the skeletal, half-finished internal frame is immediately different-- her wish is absorbed like a sponge, echoing and amplifying in the pores of paraspacial psychic vacuum, resonating through the mech like a struck tuning fork. A flash of light in a hall of mirrors, a loud clap in an empty hallway; the void of the pearlescent mech is one whose outline is begging to be filled. The Beauty of Ash moves fluidly, preemptively, shifts to support Phony's lean, moving beyond what her wish had intended under no power besides the fading resonance of her momentary psychic touch. Its headless frame bends at the suggestion of a hip, elbow cocked, facelessly servile to provide an angled crook in its arm for Persephone to nestle into. Phony's wish, to have something to lean on, responded to and iterated upon to provide something comfortable to rest against. Petra twitches and opens her mouth when the mech starts to move, tracing down its bare arm with her eyes, but doesn't protest. From where she's sitting on the floor, she picks her nail at the grout between two gleaming white tiles, the low buzzing of her aura causing the Beauty of Ash's movement to stutter right at the end of its half-kneel. "Oh. Um. It's starting to work again. That's a, good sign." "If they can't forgive you, if they can't love you, they'll never be able to love Earth." Petra keeps her gaze trained on the little triangle of ground visible between her boots, fidgeting with the hem of her jeans. She looks, for all the world, like she's intruding here on Phony's permission, rather than that she's the one who invited her here in the first place. "... I don't really know. I don't know if I have any place in a... 'loving world'." "I've changed a lot; I know I have. But... what if the core of 'me' is also the thing that makes me unlovable? Like, the only thing that's been consistent, across me, for this whole time. If that can change, then... I don't even know if I'd want it to. That's sort of, a little bit, why I was..." Her voice softens to a distantly guilty hush, "... Why I was a little scared of you. And then it's scary to get forgiven, too." "And it would have been nice, to be 'ordinary', before there stops being an ordinary." Petra makes a short, dry laugh. "Being ordinary is my least favorite thing about me. I can't imagine-- no, actually, I can. Just hypothetically, though. I think I'm not really ordinary anymore, but I-- I had enough time of being, that. What's really hard to imagine is you not, like, being perfect. Literally anyone else would always say that you could literally do nothing wrong ever, and you were never capable of making a bad decision in your life, and...." Petra rests her chin on her crossed arms, drained in some abstract way by trying to pattern match Persephone's experiences to her own. "Running away is kind of the worst decision there is. So you're at least, like, able to want wrong. Or were."
Petra Soroka	"Don't tell?" "I won't," Petra protests petulantly, reading implicit accusation into it. "I don't have any reason to tell anyone. You're here helping me; I wouldn't just turn around and blab about your secrets, or whatever." She's silent for a short stretch, and then, "... Hey, Phony?" The words come out as a whispered whine; she doesn't even seem to be aware that she slipped into using Persephone's nickname. "Can I tell you about something, that I kind of really hate?" Petra's eyes are locked on her hands twisted together around her ankles, shoulders drawn forwards in a seated fetal position. Embarrassment and reluctance to speak are worked out through digging her fingernails across her hands, erratically leaving red inflamed lines on the exposed skin. "Everyone always acts like you're my enemy. That... I'm always thinking something horrible, or, wanting to hurt you in some way, or that, just bringing you up around me is something that might set me off, and... I kind of, really hate it. I don't, um, hate-- hate you." She lapses into grumbling, sourly self-loathing to barely edge out over self-consciousness. "I feel like I've been typecast into being your-- your opposite. People seem like they're practically, like, eager to walk on eggshells about you around me. I-I never, actually, hated you."
Persephone Kore	For what feels like the first time in a while, Persephone is surprised by something. A little awed gasp leaves her- oh, you're so good!!- and she looks up into the Beauty's eye adoringly, before resting her cheek against its arm. Eyes shut. A deep, slow breath leaves her, hair drifting with it like tree-branches in a summer breeze. "I think I love this little machine of yours," she says aloud, and also pours as directly into its heart as she can, as if it were a dog she could praise. "There's a really deep love in it, isn't there? Being receptive to other people, maybe, is always a kind of love." "... I don't really know. I don't know if I have any place in a... 'loving world'." 5R Phony opens her eyes and smiles sadly, but whatever that makes her feel, she lets it sit. "... Hey, Phony?" "Hey, Petra?" "Can I tell you about something, that I kind of really hate?" "Haha. Yeah!" "I-I never, actually, hated you." "I know. I can't feel your heart, but you never acted the way people who hate me act." Her lips part for a pause; eyes linger on Petra's scratching fingernails. "People were mean to you, a lot. And mean to me, a little. People keep acting like I need to be protected? And like you're something dangerous on contact? And like being extra-good, means I'm more fragile, and not less! And I hate that absolutely!! They're eager to walk on eggshells because--" because they need to feel like there's a way I'm helpless, but I don't really know that, and it's mean of me to say, so she laughs instead. "Sorry. I guess I can want wrong. But I don't like it either. The symbols people make of us." ". . ." "We're both a little bit messed up, aren't we." Persephone rests again for a moment, in uncomfy contemplation. The trees outside sway, casting moving shadows on the ground, and it sounds like wind, but there isn't any. She peels herself off the Beauty in Ash to sit next to Petra, mirroring her posture almost exactly, and smiles sideways with cheek squished into crossed arms. "I don't know," she says, with no context at all. "Haha, sorry- I mean, I don't know, if the core of you is what makes you 'unlovable'. I can't tell you that at all. But, I, have to hope that it isn't I think?" "Because, maybe I'm not strong enough to wish for a better world if it leaves you behind."
Petra Soroka	"I think I love this little machine of yours." Without being able to look up at Phony, or raise her voice above a faintly hoarse whisper, Petra keeps picking at the ground as the squeaking mech settles to a halt with Persephone cradled in its arm. "... Yeah. Me too." "But I don't like it either. The symbols people make of us." The way Petra exhales in the silence that comes after that sounds like releasing a breath she's been holding forever. Her forehead sinks into her forearms, curling up around her knees, all at once seeming much more tiny and immature like Phony's words scoured layers of built-up expectations away. She stays quiet for as long as Phony does, silent and still in the moment to drag it out without any sudden movements to break it.. "We're both a little bit messed up, aren't we." Petra's response is a tiny hiccup, muffled by having her face buried in her knees. When Phony moves to sit by her, Petra turns her head to squish her cheek into her arm, just like Phony is, with her chin tucked into her shoulder to keep her mouth still obscured. Her eyes stay on Phony's face, only skittering away a little bit whenever they actually lock eyes. "... Y-you know, maybe. I might be a little bit fucked up. I..." She slows to a halt, as if straining against some invisible barrier to keep talking, and squeezes her eyes shut to keep going. "... sort of, just think of myself as a fuckup. But I might be a bit fucked up, too. If even you are." "I don't think it excuses anything, probably. But...." "Because, maybe I'm not strong enough to wish for a better world if it leaves you behind." Hugging her legs, eyes still shut, Persephone's words make a shudder run through Petra's shoulders. She squeezes her knees, voice strained. "So it'd be my fault. The-- the one, the absolute only one who's able to ruin it all for everybody, if there's nothing good enough about me to come out even when the world's perfect. Maybe that's true, though. I-I mean, it was true here. M-maybe I did get hurt here, and only got better once I ran away to do terrible shit on Earth, because I just can't be good when the world is good to me." "Since you can't ever see my heart, that's as close to proof as we'd ever get, right? But... I don't... I-I don't...." Petra hiccups again, strangled down to a whisper. "I-I don't want to. I d-dhon't want to be left behind, Phony. I don't h-hate you, and I don't hate it here, and I-- I know, a-after everything, it's gen-- generous for me to even get a goodbye, but..." She squeezes her fingers, and her voice cracks when she raises it just above a whisper, garbled by the precursor to tears that aren't falling. "I don't want to say goodbye to space! I know, I have a place-- a place to live, where I'm not alone, and I'm useful, and people're-- people are starting to like me, and that's more than I ever got here, but..." Petra scrubs the back of her hand against her cheek, hard. There's no tear track to wipe away, but her face is tense enough that it hurts, and her voice is strained with it. "I hate it. I know it's the right thing to do. But I hate knowing that it's-- that it's over."
Persephone Kore	Oh, no. Oh, Petra... Right after the shudder, Persephone's hand strokes from the back of Petra's head down, like soothing a flighty animal- no, that isn't fair. Don't call her that. She's a person who's been through a lot. "Ahaha, but it'd be my fault too? And..." But for the first time in a long time, she doesn't have the words. Her bittersweet sideways expression gets bitterer, and sweeter, and her eyes fill up with pain until they're watery, and her hand stays there on Petra's back, pinching the fabric. "I-I don't want to." Then don't!! she yells inside her heart, but it's a near-silent movement of her lips. "I hate it. I know it's the right thing to do. But I hate knowing that it's-- that it's over." "Petra. Please. I can't- I'm not letting you go. If that's wrong, if that's what it takes, I- I'm not good enough to, to-- oh--" It's not the right thing to do, but as she gets more and more frustrated with having to 'speak' and not just 'touch', Phony lunges and wraps her arms around Petra, one around her shoulders and one around her shins, and squeezes. She's really warm, and really soft, and really strong, and even though maybe being squeezed this tight ought to hurt, I don't want it to. She shivers. And then sighs. And then- without even a little noise of effort- lifts Petra up and sets her across her lap sideways, still hugging, but more loosely. Their foreheads are together; faces an inch or two apart. "Please don't make me let go of you," she murmurs, a little clearer now, eyes shut. "I'm not good enough to. I don't want to be good enough to. Let me be that selfish. Be that selfish. And stay. Okay? Everything else... just say you still belong in space, and we'll figure it out together."
Petra Soroka	The flash of vindication that Petra feels at hearing Phony's voice wobble isn't wanted or welcome, but it's instinctual. A small damning reminder of the perverse incentive that underlies every bit of unhappiness that Petra allows herself to admit, casting all sympathy from Phony as something Petra extorted just to hurt her, intentionally or not. Petra shudders, back pressed up against Phony's hand, not pulling away even as she internally condemns herself for it. Being tentatively touched at arm's reach is something tolerable to Petra by now, but being scooped up into a hug takes her completely by surprise. A small strangled noise escapes her throat, and then she abruptly falls silent, putting up no resistance as she's lifted and cradled on Persephone's lap. Her chin droops to her chest, hair spilling over her face. Where Phony touches her, it feels like Petra's entire body is absent of tension-- not out of relaxation, but like a cheap plastic toy with its limbs rolling loosely in their sockets, one hard squeeze away from shattering. There's a few seconds after Phony prompts her that Petra doesn't make a sound. And then her shoulders start trembling, a thin, hot exhalation of air wheezing out of her, curling up tighter in Phony's lap. "I c-can't... choose to be more selfish. I've... a-already been too selfish. They..." Tears drip down from Petra's obscured face onto her fists in her lap, clenched rigidly tight and shaking. "I-I'm not like you, Phony. I don't... owe people any-- anything because of how good I can be for them. I owe them because of how b-bad I've been. I can't... opt out, or a-anything like that. I-it's not my choice to make." Petra curls up further, top of her head slipping under Phony's chin, jittering with held back emotion. Her voice lowers, squeaky and unstable. "... H-how could I? Draw the line. D-draw any line at all. Say there's... some p-point, where I need to care about me, when I-I'm still in debt to every-- everyone j-just for... existing. There's no world where I can say I deserve to b-belong without making someone else pay my tab for it." "S-sorry. I know that's... not the right ans-- answer. It's j-just..." She lets out a shuddering breath, then twists and buries her face into Phony's shoulder. Scattered attempts at continuing her thought get interrupted by hiccups and erratic, tear-laden breathing, sweater slowly dampening through, until all she eventually manages is, "... I'm s-sorry."
Persephone Kore	The hard squeeze that would shatter her never comes. Persephone tenses and tenses, and then shudders a little, because I'm kind of so so mad, and I don't even know at what, and that makes me even so madder. And she resentfully relaxes then, but the long nails of her left hand still drag down the cloth on Petra's back, wet cheek squished against the top of Petra's head. 'Sorry'. Where do I even start? What is there to forgive her for? "Please don't. Don't, don't, don't say that, Petra," she murmurs, anguished. A fluttering breath rises, and has to be choked back. "You're still trying so hard to be good. To be better. So hard it makes me sick." Her right hand slips back from under Petra's knees, comes up, and tries to worm its way into entwining with Petra's hand. Palm to palm, a little too tight. You're who these hands were meant to reach. There's a long pause for a little breath, and that defibrillates her back into meditative rhythm. In, out. "If you have to pay me back, be selfless instead," I say, moving smoothly from contradiction to contradiction. No, it's not a contradiction. They can both be true. Because: "I need you to come with us. I need you to take my love. I promise nobody but you is keeping score! That part of you that says you don't 'deserve' it- that's Earth." "I want you, I need you, to tear it out. If you can't help feeling like you're in my debt, reach inside yourself and crush it. Please. Please." Her thumb is digging into the back of Petra's hand just a little too hard. Her breath out crackles. "I don't know what else to do."
Petra Soroka	Every time Petra makes some shuddering adjustment, or shakes her head, or curls up to make herself smaller, it's in the direction of getting closer to Persephone. In reality, it's just because whenever her muscles relax for a moment or the various complications of tangling human limbs arise, she gets pushed away a little bit, but it feels like she's making endless adjustments to squeeze tighter into Phony's embrace, and like Zeno's Paradox her efforts are fractionally more in vain. She squeezes Phony's hand, and tries to match her slow breathing without thinking about it. Air rasps and phlegm crackles in her throat with the meditative breath, but it barely pulls her back from the edge of crying again. "... Wh-what good's trying if I started so far behind the starting line that I'll never even see it no matter how fast I run? I-I don't know if trying to be good's ever managed to do anything, compared to the people who just are. It just-- just makes me feel, a little better. So it's selfish." Petra falls silent again, quietly hiccuping every few seconds. The more helpless Phony sounds, the more that she shifts from serenely empathetic to desperately anguished, the more inversely soothed and sane Petra feels. If her existence is enough to drive Persephone to this level of hurt, then it's something that's bad enough to actually reflect how badly Petra feels about it, too. Validating Petra as being 'good' doesn't have any effect at all, but being hurt by her and having something she can do to treat that hurt clarifies Petra's own feelings in reflection. That isn't enough to feel better. But it's enough to start to want to feel better. "I-I don't know. Go out there and ask them what I 'deserve'. And then-- then tell them it's their fault for not still wanting me around after they reached out and I s-spit on their hand. It can't be as easy as blaming Earth, it's not as easy as blaming space, and if it's not blaming me either, then...." Petra trails off, and the hanging time between the surges of emotion that blot out her capacity for reason gives her time to swerve topics. Gently, though, and fragilely. "... Is it okay if I-- I call you Phony? I-it's not like we're friends, but... I think..." Petra lets go of Phony's hand to wipe her cheek with the heel of her palm. She takes a slow breath herself, muffled and warm through the damp spots in Phony's sweater. "If that counts as being 'a little closer to space', then that's what I can do today. I can be a little better to you specifically, right? I don't know if that counts for anything, but it feels-- feels like it does."