Scene #9159: The Beauty Of Ash

Owner	Pose
Metamorph One	Being dragged out in front of practically the entire program is essentially a formality. The damage is long done. Anyone who remembers it has settled their feelings and allowed them to calcify by now. The long process of restoring the Beauty of Ash was both a tangible issue and little more than a dreadful clock ticking down. Flamel's psychic surgery is little more than cleaning up for the event. Once it can't be delayed any longer, the public service is almost nothing more than a form of shame and immiseration inflicted on Petra. Dianna intends it to be. Elara only barely leans on 'almost'. When Petra is dragged out on the day, forced to be presentable, pinned between metaphorical spotlights like a bug to a tray, the first thing she notices is that she doesn't recognize at least half the faces there. Many that she does are only by intuition, rendered alien by age. The foggiest memories she has must only be a couple of years younger. Some of the clearer ones are nowhere to be seen. The remaining bulk clearly don't know who she is either. Something that should be a foregone conclusion-- teary, miserable, pointless, and not good enough at all-- leaves her with an aftertaste of something stubbornly perverse. What should have happened in the gorgeous leafy commons she remembers takes place in a slick and eye-catching company-branded expo dome down a branching corridor she has no recollection of being there. While barely a dozen pilots stands at the very back, watching her in a complicated way that drags nails along her insides, the rows ahead are bewilderingly numerous. The full two thirds front are filled with unfamiliar faces, packed in side to side, alternating between gossiping things she can't hear and utterly riveted for reasons she can't discern. Most of them watch her mouth rather than her eyes, or eyeball her clothes as if memorizing. Dianna tears the smartphone out of a girl's hands when she tries recording. A boy in the middle back that Petra only foggily recalls attempts to be quiet about smacking someone she doesn't remember in the back of the head. Every single one is wearing a VPT. The atmosphere is heavy. There are a few tears. One or two people try waving. A few girls younger than her cry. The pilots glower without exception. The hostility is shockingly palpable, between scores of people who wish they could dissect her with her eyes. Not all of it is even aimed at her. She can almost see the precise line, as if segregated on purpose, between those in the room drinking in everything she says and committing it all to memory, and those who only look at her in intermittent guilty-angry-sick glances. It takes five minutes or five hours; somewhere in between those. Dianna and one other pilot are both easily seven years older than the small mass of 'subjects' who try to catch her after, practically bodyguarding her out of the room. Elara touches her shoulder, which is as close as anyone comes to talking to her. But rather than being allowed to go home and collapse about it, she's guided around the inner ring and upstairs, to a private office that hasn't changed a bit.
Metamorph One	The same just-slightly-shoddy desk from the first wave of local flora. The same iorite 'salt lamp' on the corner of it. The same shelves stuffed with e-books and 3d sculptures sourced through early providers to Sapient Heuristics. The same doctorates on the wall. The same astronaut pen. The same pots for clones of the old succulents. The same tapestry of photographs; smiling faces nurturing near little saplings in harsh Io gravel, rows of adults with their arms strung together around a a stripped down first generation Eidolon, an assembly of children in company blue and grey arranged like a class photo near the river valley, then a larger group in white and orange at the same place years later. A photograph of a little talent show from before her time. One of a visit from their sister program, containing Doctor Carpathia. A complete blueprint of the last generation psychokinetic frame. A scattering of letters, sent physically, on ripped up manual paper. A plaque with only names. It's all exactly as she remembers. Which is wrong. Not a single picture contains a VPT. There is not a face she hadn't once been told the name of. Even the pencil crayon drawings haven't grown. Angkasa isn't quite as she remembers, but that's to be forgiven, considering the latter half of middle age. The unimposing five foot five, the perpetually focused-on-something expression that makes up for it, fully silvered hair tied up in a bun that hasn't not been the messy kind in a decade, dark skin that hasn't been treated poorly at all by Io's weak sun, lab coat worn purely for aesthetic stereotype over a turtleneck sweater, the same unusually yellow amber eyes. 'Sit down, Miss Soroka. You and I don't have much to talk about, but we do have to talk."
Petra Soroka	It's hard to say whether the experience was more worse or less worse than she was expecting. 'Better' can't possibly apply no matter what, given the circumstances. The dread leading up to the apology had months to intensify and calcify, suffocating like acid in her throat, but the stress of being brought up on stage to apologize to the group could never compare to voluntarily stepping off the landing platform and confessing to Dianna face to face. The crushing flow of inevitability is comforting, in part, but deindividuation dulls the blow more than a lack of agency. Some of it might even just be stage fright, which is ridiculous enough to almost make Petra giggle out loud when waiting off to the side with Dianna and Elara before it starts. Holding it back makes Petra choke on her own breath and fall into a coughing fit, accompanied by a momentary sizzling of her aura before she reins it back in. She'd spent an hour beforehand meditating herself into the mindset to keep it as toned down as possible, but there's no better herald for Petra's introduction than a sting of pain and unhappiness. The one face that might actually be friendly in this whole ordeal isn't in the audience at all, and Petra doesn't look for it. In their politely infrequent-but-just-frequent-enough conversations, neither Petra nor Valerie had brought up the upcoming deadline to each other, but Petra got the message clearly enough anyways. Val wouldn't be in the crowd to support her, because she doesn't, in this: another point for the pageant of shame and misery, only less bold than Dianna was in saying it. It'd feel wrong even if she was here, even without the emotional context and unspoken communication. Scurrying around the outer reaches of the compound, working within the satellite buildings and occasionally poking around at the more-developed natural landscape far from the center of the facility, Petra could keep the image of the lost, precious home clear in her mind, like it wouldn't grow different while she wasn't watching, only grow more mature. The moment she stepped inside, though, the sense of vertigo and disorientation was enough to make her sick to her stomach, a feeling that hasn't gone away even after stepping out of the spotlights. She might've spent a year here just two-- just three years ago, but the precious thing in her memory is seven years gone at this point. Once re-exposed to the reality of Applied Ontology, the sudden uncertainty of being able to distinguish between her memories and confabulated nostalgia mixed with guilt, resentment, alienation, and shame, makes walking through both unfamiliar and familiar hallways feel like a fever dream. It feels like trying to reassemble a skeleton by tearing out her bones and finding they don't match up right. Petra is gratifyingly shaken and queasy once Dianna comes to escort her to her next cell. Neither the younger kids hounding after her, nor the pilots or the facility decor get her to raise her eyes from the patterns in the floor, except for a hard swallow against a thudding heartbeat when Elara taps her in passing. She breathes like she's ran a marathon, and her delirious dream-haze only breaks once the familiar door fills up her entire vision, hypnotically out of place. Petra's eyes flicker around Angkasa's office like she knows she shouldn't be looking, and then she ducks her head and takes a seat. Hands folded in her lap, fingers worrying the hem of her shirt (striped polo over long sleeves, it's like being presentable without being dignified), Petra guiltily turns her face to the side and fixates her vision as if she's deeply interested in a small chip in the corner of Angkasa's desk. Her voice comes out hoarsely disused even though she's just been talking, but there isn't a trace of stuttering or tears for once. "... Director Angkasa. Yeah. I guess we do."
Metamorph One	Petra's (un)easy agreement sets the tone almost immediately. There's a heated sense in the intensity of Angkasa's stare that there were several ways for this to go, and hearing Petra say the words was all that bid her wait. Her fingers shuffle over one another and re-lace. The callouses are all old. She mostly uses a pen these days. "Did you really hate it here so much?" The choice is set. The dressing down was for an evasive Petra. Cutting to the quick was for disingenuous Petra. Tired hurrying through was for catatonic Petra. Being gentle was for shuddering and weeping Petra. With so little pretense, she sees no need to hide her feelings, nor communicate them unclearly. Right. This place was always like that. Everyone always learned to say things so directly. They were so unambiguous, and so genuine about everything. It was always a little bit shocking to hear, every day, what is normally only guessed at. "It's neither here nor there, but I never had the chance to ask why. You'll humour me, won't you?" says Angkasa, half-certain and half-needful. "I'm sure it wasn't any one thing . . . But there are reasons for leaving, and there are reasons for hurting. I told myself that you just didn't care; that your old home was a tool of convenience for your 'grown up' ambitions. But I don't get that impression anymore." "You could have stolen any machine, Petra. Why was it the one I gave you?" Her throat is slightly raw. "Didn't you think about it? Whether it was because you felt something for it, or if it was the one thing you wanted to harm the most."
Petra Soroka	Petra lets out a sigh that wheezes at the tail end, pressure constricting in her chest. She had a million opportunities to think about what she'd say when it eventually came to this, but if she ever came up with answers beyond fragmented anxious thoughts, then they're out of her reach now. Becoming recentered in the moment makes time slow to a crawl, each breath intentional, the movement of air and cloth on her skin tracked to each heartbeat like she's suddenly slammed to a halt after a sprint. Looking at Angkasa makes her acutely aware of her own physical changes over the past two years, but simultaneously like they're insignificant to the point of meaninglessness. Some muscle tone, some scars, the silly idea that she might have changed so much that you can tell just by looking into her eyes; the collared shirt to hide her neck even though the typical ornament there is gone. Fundamentally, nothing's changed. It's still 'Petra'. She squeezes her hands between her thighs, shoulders bunched up. "I've met... a lot of people ever since... leaving. Lots of ones I trust, too. The ones who try to be kind to me say, um, that there must have been something wrong here, that I was right to hate, or else I wouldn't have felt that way. The ones who don't, say I'm a monster for-- for hurting and stealing from somewhere like this." "And both types could only, come to those conclusions, because of things I said. There's not another source for it." Petra's eyes are unwaveringly locked on the desk, talking low and steady. The teetering impulse to cry and fumble her explanations and hope for reassurances flickers on the edge of her consciousness, but even if she tried to push towards it, there's no emotional momentum left in her to actually do it. It's purely vestigial. "So... I guess I must've said enough evidence for either, at some point." Petra swallows hard, voice scratching from tension and failing her. She forces it to start again, dull pressure and heat building in her head like tears that would drown her before actually spilling out. In trying to get her thoughts in order enough that she can create a coherent answer, she careens off on another tangent, not sure why she feels worse with every word either of them say but doggedly following her train of thought to its conclusion. "Do you remember, um-- well, someone must have found it at some point, I don't know if you ever saw it-- I mean, you were busy all the time anyways-- but someone must have. Before I... left to go back to my parents, the night before, I snuck into the hangar to leave one of those-- you remember, um, those little stone bracelets that were popular for a bit? The ones that were supposed to, like, be in pairs and let you know how the other person was feeling no matter how far apart-- yeah. Back then, I put one of those with the Beauty of Ash, you know, because... I was a kid, and I thought I'd never be back, and I was worried it'd 'forget' about me, ha. And then..." "... I grew up," she finishes dryly unhappy, finally understanding where her own story is going. "And came back. And then I was more worried that it'd 'remember' me. As a... neurotic little poisonous loser who was too stupid and angry to ever actually amount to anything. A-- a rotten little in-between." Petra's hair hangs down around her face, one side fringe frizzed by cold sweat and mussed unevenly to obscure her while she ducks her head. Absentmindedly, she runs a finger through to try and push it out of the way, and it just falls right back into place again. The words she forces out of her mouth sound both obligatorily reassuring, confessing to a parent that she's aware of her wrongdoing, and achingly sincere. "... Sorry that it seemed like I didn't care at all."
Metamorph One	'And both types could only, come to those conclusions, because of things I said. There's not another source for it.' "That's right. They'd only have you to hear it from." says Angkasa, patiently. "And those words had to come from somewhere inside of you. I'm sure those feelings are there." The way of talking is ancient memory. The dreamlike experience of being spoken to with the language of a counsellor and none of the agenda. Someone who uses precise and externalized language simply out of old habit for the genuine need of its use; patient for the sake of it, and not to fish for the answer they want. "But people aren't always very good at believing the same thing as you meant by those words. Especially out there. Especially with you, Petra." "Maybe there's evidence for both inside you. I believe it. I have no reason not to." says Angkasa. She's putting it together as it goes, but it takes no effort. Her fingers are relaxed together. Her chair doesn't shift at her weight. "But I want to know what you feel. Not what they think you feel. Even if you know it less clearly than them, knowing what your words are is important to me." 'Do you remember' "I remember." 'I don't know if you ever saw it' "I saw it." 'I mean, you were busy all the time anyways' "Because I was always so busy with all of you. I never let the machines make me forget who they were for. You know that." 'I was a kid, and I thought I'd never be back, and I was worried it'd 'forget' about me, ha. And then...' "And I miss when you were like that. Even if you never fit in, that you were someone who could feel that way in the end; feel love for the part of you that could have been . . ." Angkasa's eyes wander to your polo shirt, then down to her desk, squeezing shut as she takes a bracing breath. It's a slow and centering one. Buttressing against an upwelling of old disappointments; would-haves and should-haves. "I knew we'd never be Sapient Heuristics. We didn't ever have the luxury of worrying about whether you loved each other, the world, even us. The only thing that ever mattered was what we built together." '... I grew up' "So I wish you didn't. And I wish you wouldn't call it that. If you felt too ashamed to come back to your friend, then you were hurt too much. More than you needed to grow up, or the wrong way other than you needed. That silly little feeling inside you, that your friend would remember you because of a bracelet; that was always supposed to be what we all wanted." Her sigh shudders. "I should never have let you go. I wish I'd done something else. It was weak of me to tell myself that you'd be safe if you'd gone back home." '... Sorry that it seemed like I didn't care at all.' "I want to accept your apology." There's no 'but'. There's no condition. It's an admission of an innocent desire from a woman over twice Petra's age, and a promise to herself to try and keep it. "So I'm going to try." she sighs. "I think I'm too old to feel angry at you anymore, Petra." says Angkasa. Her eyes wander to the decorated wall, and she becomes a little quieter. "I wanted to be, but once I saw you, I was only sad. And . . ." She looks back to Petra. She hasn't blinked in a while; holding it back. "Relieved. That the world didn't snuff out one more of the children I remember. That emotion is stronger than all the other ones." "Even if it was only for a short time, something from here, from that time, is still in you, and I'd be devastated if it was lost."
Metamorph One	Releasing her hands, Angkasa gently presses the heels of her palms to her eyes, and exhales. Her fingers move to her nose, then slide down and away. "It's not very often that anything comes back to me, Petra. The reality for us here is that we mostly lose old things and gain new ones, and try to accept that they're valuable, even if they're not the same. It's hard to know what to think when something I thought was gone is okay. I might be afraid of letting you go again." ". . . How do you feel about your friend now?"
Petra Soroka	"'Especially with me,'" Petra repeats, followed by a short laugh like a car failing to start. Reframing and probing for her own feelings in response to Angkasa's prompting only happens on a short delay, the work of refining honesty into words something that she's actually practiced extensively in the past years even without an environment catered to it. Or, as she used to say a lot more often, because of the environment not catering to it. "I... don't think I'd like the person I'd be if I stayed here. Last time, I mean." Having to specify which abandonment she means causes Petra to stumble for a second. "Maybe there's some way that-- something someone could've said to vent enough heat from me that I could've stayed. I don't know what it is, but, maybe. But I don't think there was any way to stop me from being-- being, unhappy, I guess. Here. You know, uh..." Petra indicates lamely towards her head with a sweep of her wrist, accompanied with the under-skin sensation of holding your hand over a CRT. The words catch in her throat as she tries to say them, inserting an apology in her sentence where a gap tore open. "This all started before I even came back. Sorry, for... well, and then it just got worse and worse, until leaving, and then worse still, and then... ended up like this." "I-- I don't even know who I'm supposed to blame, but me." Obviously, she's relying on the narrative synergy of her psychic alienation to avoid explicitly trying to put words to the rest of it. "For a while it was... here, this. Maybe there's something that I could pick out to-- to justify that, but I don't know what it is anymore, and-- and that sort of retroactive narrative becomes true by looking for it and then saying it. But really..." Petra's voice drops to a mumble. "I know I'd hate being the me that was never here in the first place even more. So, where does that leave me? 'I needed to come here, but also you weren't enough'? Isn't that just parasitic? Or a stepping stone? Isn't that awful?" Petra shrinks down further in the chair, palms braced on her knees and shoulders curled forwards like every inch of height she gained since sixteen vanished. She starts to ramble, jumping from topic to topic rather than patiently engaging in call and response, words pouring out. "I actually met a bunch of people from Sapient Heuristics, which, like, what are the odds, y-you know? Well-- I guess you'd have to know that I know Phony. But others besides her too. And, like, I-I guess they really are like that, huh? Not 'growing up' like that. There's this girl, Dylan-- a-and, it's kind of terrifying to interact with them, right? I-it makes me feel like, I recognize just enough of the emotions and stuff that I can get close and make them vulnerable to me, but then there's enough wrong with me that I feel like I could ruin it by being myself. It's like, I'm perfectly shaped to be the one piece of shrapnel that can shatter the illusion. Siphoning poison in if I'm not careful." "I felt like that a lot, here, too," Petra practically breathes it out. This is the exact kind of retrospective story she could never find the words for when prompted by Angkasa in the midst of it all. Either too focused on whatever recent individual event was causing problems for her, or too indecipherably vague and undirected to be of any practical value, useful only in the narrative summary.
Petra Soroka	"It was weak of me to tell myself that you'd be safe if you'd gone back home." "... It was a rational decision though, right? By my-- my parents, and you." As much as she tries to make it sound rhetorically obvious, it comes out as pleadingly self-reassuring. "I mean, that was the thing, wasn't it? Like, god, who else would even have parents who'd take them back, right? And with stuff the way it was, like, the difference of paying for one less kid could've been what tipped stuff over, and...." Petra swallows past the lump in her throat and trails off into silence. "W-well, no point in... getting c-caught up in all of that, again. That was a long time ago. It's not really why I-I ended up... here." "Relieved. That the world didn't snuff out one more of the children I remember." "Well, how could it. It only does that to the ones who couldn't run back to their fucking parents." Petra's bitter self-loathing vents out through her teeth, immediately undermining her previous declaration. Right after, her breath hitches in her throat and her shoulders tremble, and she shakes her head again. "S-sorry. God, sorry. I'm sorry." "I might be afraid of letting you go again." Petra stays silent at that. It's not entirely by choice. Her head is down, fingers digging into her knees to try and forcibly stabilize her shaking shoulders. ". . . How do you feel about your friend now?" "I-I d-don't know," Petra shudders out before taking a gasping inhalation that crackles with phlegm, and then words just flood out of her in a rush. "I-I don't know. I'm h-happy it's all back together, th-that what I did is f-fixed, at least as best as I can, a-and-- and it had to end up back here, I-I couldn't tolerate if I did anything else, b-because... b-but, but, I h-hate thinking about, not knowing who might end up with it a-after, or more likely, th-that it'd just sit somewhere gathering dust, and-- like, that's the fate it gets for knowing me? J-just, always a little more broken, and always a little worse off, each time I'm b-back, like--" Petra balls up her fists, staring down at her lap. "Just... g-getting scarred more each time I make contact. I-it's not fair. The Beauty of Ash deserved better than me. I-I've gotten really good at spinning up justifications for why anyone else deserved it, b-but, not it. It's never d-done anything wrong. So I just h-hope, it ends up cared for, I g-guess."
Metamorph One	"Especially you." Angkasa repeats it after Petra. It serves no real purpose, except perhaps not allowing Petra have the last, self-loathing word. Petra's confession stings. At fiftysomething, Angkasa has unlearned hiding it long ago. The way she tightens up her finger and looks up and down Petra's face suggests that she had been prepared for it. It takes her a little while to reply all the same. 'Braced' and 'I suspected' aren't the same as having a speech prepared. And even then, what she says lacks even the gently challenging tone of a therapist or a concerned friend. It's somewhere between fact and resignation. "Sometimes it isn't possible to be who we want to be right now. It's not always one or two 'right choices' away; at times, all you can do is choose the least bad and wait. I know. But you're still so ashamed of being 'unfixable' that I wonder if you ever think 'right now'." She goes quiet for a little while after. Something in the middle of it all has stuck with her. At first she can't help her gaze wandering back to the wall, and then she doesn't try to stop it, letting the impulse satisfy itself, and swallowing the tightness in her throat back down. "Sometimes you can blame things instead of people, Petra." says Angkasa. "I really do think that. When 'people stop being the reason for things', those things can be blamed for what happens to those people. I think it's the one kind of blame that doesn't rot your heart if you never forgive it." A million other things Angkasa wants to say well up from her chest, and catch in her throat. Everything she's ever thought about telling Petra, back when she thought she'd never see her again, claws for its turn to become real, and is systematically defeated, one by one. The whole process takes minutes, not seconds. Angkasa fully cedes her place for the entire time. Petra talks on uninhibited, until the urge to deluge her with irresponsible old feelings passes. 'It's like, I'm perfectly shaped to be the one piece of shrapnel that can shatter the illusion.' "Petra." is injected into the ramble with the exact same tone as 'Soroka'. "I know that is an expression of something real that you're feeling; even something you've probably always been feeling. But I think calling it-- us, Sapient Heuristics, this-- an illusion, is too much." Angkasa takes a deep breath, and focuses forward. "That's not 'only' self-loathing. That's trying to decide that everything we've built is 'up to interpretation'. Like you can disagree with everyone else whether it's real or not, or break it by not playing along. You're old enough, and you've been through enough, to understand that by now; I'm sure." "And I'm sure Persephone has told you the same thing a million times, if you two are friends, so if you won't believe her, then listen to me." she says. "It isn't an illusion, or a dream, or an idea. It won't vanish when you look away, and it didn't. If it was ever 'pure', it isn't now, and it's all still here. You're one girl, and whatever bad things are inside you, they aren't more all the evil of the entire Multiverse at war put together." "If I'm still angry at you for anything, it's that."
Metamorph One	'... It was a rational decision though, right?' Angkasa's tone softens. The energy slowly bleeds out of her voice, turning morose. "Out of all the decisions I regret, most of them are the rational ones." she says. "What's 'rational' is what's accepting that the way things are won't change, and negotiating with it. If someone else explains it to you some other way, it'll just be a synonym." Angkasa sighs. "Most of them wouldn't have run away if they could. I'm sure they resented you for having the choice, but the reality is that those children wanted to believe more than they wanted to be safe. And you just never really believed very much." 'It's not really why I-I ended up... here.' Angkasa straightens up and goes back to folding her hands. 'It's never d-done anything wrong. So I just h-hope, it ends up cared for, I g-guess.' The silence that ensues is so long, so suffocatingly thick, that the usual sub-audible hum of the facility enters hearing, becomes noise, and is filtered out again, leaving Petra with strange feeling that there should be the ticking of a mechanical clock or the babble of a humidifier or something to break it. Once her own pulse slows down, it's quieter than space was. "I don't want it to gather dust either." Angkasa says, voice pulling up just above a croak. "I don't feel like it 'deserves a rest'. I think it still has so much to live for. There's so much promise that was never realized. Don't you feel the same way?" she says. "I think it would hurt it to give it to someone else. I'm sure it would heal eventually, and I could find someone who would care for it, and take it on the adventures we built it for, and told it that it would have . . but I wouldn't want it to have to be abandoned by someone who didn't want it. Our children aren't supposed to do that. Even if you weren't, I don't want you to do it." "But I don't know if I can trust you. If the Beauty of Ash got its second chance, if it came back home to the girl it was always meant to grow up with, and only wound up abandoned again, I think that would break my heart. So I don't know what to do."
Petra Soroka	"But you're still so ashamed of being 'unfixable' that I wonder if you ever think 'right now'." Being reproached steadies Petra in a way that being reassured doesn't. Years of conversations ended before getting to these confessions, because finally saying the truth about herself to Angkasa always would've ended up with that wince, and the hesitation that comes after, and permanently recontextualizing what 'Petra' is worth in her eyes. But now, all of that has long since happened. The trainwreck of suppressed feelings and self-loathing finally slides to a stop in this room; there's nowhere else for it to go after this. Angkasa's disappointment is, really, the last one that Petra had to be afraid of. So hearing that is like uncorking a blockage that had built up over Petra's entire life. No less unhappy, but the tension and friction inside her heart eases, letting her words come out more easily. The sense of talking about past regrets and belated confessions, and scoring emotional hits on each other through well-intentioned honesty, makes the dissonance between 'Petra, one of the children of space', and 'Petra, as she is now' grow too great, and the duality finally shatters. It's not a conversation between an estranged child and her former caregiver anymore, just a conversation between two adults of different maturities. She'd call it 'closure' if that word didn't inherently carry associations about 'deserving' in her mind. Petra takes a breath in and out, and slouches in her chair rather than curling into herself. She traces circles on the wood on the end of its arm with a fingernail, quietly scratching in the empty air. "... Yeah. It doesn't really come naturally to me. But you know, I've actually been working on that lately. Doing the thing that's right in the moment, for the people I care about, instead of overcomplicating it. I said I wouldn't like who I'd be if I stayed, but..." Petra slides further down in her seat, toes pointed to the floor to wobble her chair back and forth while squeezing her hands on her lap. "... I kind of don't hate the person I am now. Less than I ever have before, at least." "Basically all of my worst moments in the past year have been from making up for the mistakes I made in the... hahh, decade before that. I haven't really made many new ones. It's not enough to be satisfied with, but..." Petra lifts her hand and loosely flicks it, like the sin could drip off her fingers like ichor. "Maybe, fixable." "That's not 'only' self-loathing. That's trying to decide that everything we've built is 'up to interpretation'." "But--!" Petra sits back up, jolted out of rambling to be petulantly contrarian. Her voice is wobbly, unstable and unsupported, hobbling by the momentum of the childish need to relitigate and clarify. "That's the thing, though. I don't have to be worse than the entire rest of the multiverse. I j-just have to... the problem is that I'm closer, because... people let me in, and... a-and, ah...." She meekly droops her head, out of steam to argue. "... Yeah. Sorry. You're right. I, uh..." Petra takes a few seconds to sort out her thoughts, sounding out the words as she goes. Thank god her time away made her better at reassessing her feelings. And at wording them, too. "Conflate... hurting and breaking, I think. Damage to a person, or... um, emotional harm, isn't damage to the project. Sorry."
Petra Soroka	"Most of them wouldn't have run away if they could." "Yeah. I know." Petra's low admission is sour enough that it feels like it sucks the moisture from her mouth. "I know they wouldn't. Just me. I was the only one stuck wanting to believe instead of actually doing it. I know what rational means, because I sure made a lot of rational fucking decisions, and every single one of them made everything worse." Petra sets her jaw and stares a hole in the carpet, swallowing past the dryness in her throat. "I probably wouldn't have even thought about the idea if I wasn't half-assed enough to still be reading the letters from my parents then. I mean... 'rationality' or whatever, but... the lab struggling was really just convenient for.... But I did choose to leave, anyways." In the silence, Petra stays sullenly rigid for a full minute, stiff with tension and hunched in her chair like her stomach is cramping. Effortfully, she shifts her posture, crossing her ankles and ratcheting her head up to touch the back of her seat, trying to wrench the weight out of the air. "... Sorry. That's all... a really long time ago. That's just the way things ended up being." The loudest sound in the silence ends up being Petra's breathing, labored just enough by emotion that the hitches and rasps grate on her ears. The longer the pause goes, the more futile trying to control it by calming herself becomes, so to spare Angkasa and herself from the sound, Petra throttles her breathing to shallow ventilations, barely letting any oxygen into her system. Slow suffocation in order to preserve the sanctity of the room, like she's in desperate prayer, even though she couldn't say what for. Her nails scratch into her jeans, head bowed. "Don't you feel the same way?" Rather than gasp in shock and shoot up to confirm Angkasa's sincerity on her face, Petra barely reacts at first. Somewhere in the silence, context clues traced the hazy outline of this shape in her mind, so hearing the words doesn't take her by shock. After a delay, her shoulders shudder, and tears drip off her downturned face to fall onto her clenched fists, and she tightens her grip on the denim, trembling. "I-I'm so... s-spoiled. S-still. After... e-everything." Petra gasps the words out, the built-up ache of tears finally too much to withstand. She shakes her head, not in denial, but in helplessness. "H-how am I s-supposed to... know? Anything I... s-say, would be-- be shaped by-- th-there's no way for me to... separate missing i-it from wanting to agree that it'd be g-good for it to be mine. I-I can't feel in a vacuum. G-give me the option a-and I'll-- I'll spin up a th-thousand reasons why it's the right decision to do what I-I already want to. The only way I-I've learned how to make... to make g-good decisions is, just t-to do what other people want." "I-I-- of c-course I miss it. There hasn't... been a d-day since bringing it b-back that... that I haven't imagined.... B-but I don't know if I'd trust me, e-either! I'm not-- I-I'd never abandon it a-again, but... but I'm not... wh-why would the third try be any better? Why would that-- that fix things, instead of... y-you wouldn't let me b-back here if I-- if I asked. The-- the d-damage builds up, the associations st-- stick. T-today could be a c-clean break for you." Petra scrubs her eyes with the back of her hands, sniffling hoarsely. Her voice cracks, slipping into an unvoiced whisper at the end. "I-I still love it, though. Thank you for making it. I'm sorry."
Metamorph One	'... I kind of don't hate the person I am now. Less than I ever have before, at least.' Angkasa doesn't seem to take it either way. She neither seems happy for Petra nor bitter than it came after leaving. She doesn't even seem relieved. Her straight-backed air of acceptance exudes something else. 'It'd have happened by now, or it'd happen later'. Letting her hands relax against each other, she glances faintly in sidelong recollection, on her habitual side, summoning up half-forgotten words until they build momentum of their own. "That was what we were supposed to do together all along. If the time wasn't right, if things got in your way, and it wasn't possible unless you left, then . . . that was part of the program too." "Even though the world outside interfered, if you're still alive, and even 'maybe fixable', then I can't complain. We haven't lost." 'Conflate... hurting and breaking, I think. Damage to a person, or... um, emotional harm, isn't damage to the project. Sorry.' "I forgive you." says Angkasa. Like 'it's fine', or 'don't worry about it'. She's always said it that way, and she's seldom ever used an alternative. It's always been easy to believe it. "It's not my place to forgive anything else, but I'd forgive you in a heartbeat for something that came from wanting to worry about them." she says, then looks down. "All of us have thought it, once or twice. As they grew up. Whether we could really be good enough for them, or if we'd poison our own dream for the vanity of having to be in it." 'I probably wouldn't have even thought about the idea if I wasn't half-assed enough to still be reading the letters from my parents then.' "You were eight." Angkasa glances up suddenly. Her voice would be sharp, if the edge hadn't been lovingly worn down so many years ago. "There aren't that many children here who don't remember a time when their parents may as well have been God. When someone is that young, their heart is so much weaker than an adult's that we can crush them without even thinking." She tries to stay firm through every last word. Her voice cracks anyways. "Back then, you tried to stay. How could I think you betrayed them?"
Metamorph One	'The-- the d-damage builds up, the associations st-- stick. T-today could be a c-clean break for you.' . . . But by then, the tightness in her throat, the hoarse edge to her voice; it's as much because of Petra as all of what she remembers. Despite everything that's happened, despite all that the program went through, the tireless work of so many different hearts, growing up in the precious freedom of space, had broken down those walls that are called 'adult', and Angkasa has made sure never to build them back up. Her eyes sting because Petra is crying. Her nose burns because she's thinking of the Beauty of Ash. Her chest aches because Petra hurts even more. "Petra . . ." Saying her name alone is nearly enough to make her cry. Director Angkasa wipes her eyes on her coat sleeve because she has to finish in spite of it. "I know that separating you would be the rational decision. I know. And we've both thought a lot about those." she says, taking a deep breath that shakes a little at the end. "But I sewed up a teddy bear for a lonely little girl, we all breathed life into it, and I told it that you would be its best friend in the entire world, so it had to look out for you and protect you no matter what. Even though you abandoned it before, even though it got ripped and torn, nothing could ever be sadder than leaving it in a cupboard to be forgotten. If after everything that's happened, you finally took its hand in yours, and even all stitched up and ragged, everything was finally like I promised it, that would be the best thing that could happen." "I know it's been waiting for you all this time, Petra. Even if it were loved by someone else, it would still be waiting for you. That's the kind of heart I gave it."
Petra Soroka	"Whether we could really be good enough for them, or if we'd poison our own dream for the vanity of having to be in it." Petra nods quietly, lingering for a few seconds to make sure that the forgiveness and reassurance doesn't overwrite the reprimand and the reasons for it in her mind. It's a little mental synthesis exercise, to cohesively encode an apology as a lesson rather than a meaningless string of words meant to get out of trouble. She hasn't always been the best at doing that, but Angkasa makes it easy; 'I forgive you' is a familiar phrase with weight and intentionality, one that makes Petra want to rise to those expectations. Once that moment of reflection is done, Petra belatedly snorts, and it turns into a cough. "Yeah. No kidding. I think it constantly, about more people than just the ones here, even." "You were eight." "When does it start though? When am I act--actually responsible for it? If the things I chose when I was eight, put me in a situation to make bad choices at fourteen, and those put me in a situation to make bad decisions years later, and then I make more years later because it's screwups all down the line, then-- I mean, other people apparently figured out how to choose better than me. It can't just..." Petra's voice quiets down, dampened and despondently unhappy. "I mean, my parents never got it. Even after I went back, they never got it. And they're just, like, normal, so I can't blame them. It can't just have been for no reason at all. If I betrayed the project, then I can at least... make up for that." "Petra . . ." Hearing her name said gently squeezes Petra's chest so tightly she can't breathe. Crying, apologizing, pathetically floundering and trying to scrounge blame onto herself, they're all just tactics she's learned to mirror in order to wring that gentleness out of people. The voice in the woods that mimics human speech to lure travelers to their deaths. Now, because she's sitting here sniffling like a child, there's no way Angkasa won't insist on the offer, and.... "I know that separating you would be the rational decision. I know." ... But that's not really what's happening here, is it? There's no social paradigm in her mind that could construe her as the deceitful predator, here. She's fresh off of prostrating herself in front of a crowd that barely knows her in order to get through to the dozen that do. There's people here that are angry at her-- if she was trying to weasel her way out of that, then she went about it in the literal worst way possible. If her being miserable here was for a selfish ulterior motive, then what the hell could it actually be? And her time away hasn't been so long that she's forgotten how this little world works. Expecting that Angkasa couldn't be acting truly to her beliefs without being angry at Petra is nonsensical to the point of being delusional. She has to be saying what she means, because fostering that habit in herself has always been an intentional effort, and who is Petra to deny that?
Petra Soroka	"If after everything that's happened, you finally took its hand in yours, and even all stitched up and ragged, everything was finally like I promised it, that would be the best thing that could happen." Petra gasps out a sob, and presses her forearm across her eyes to wipe tears onto her sleeve. She swallows back a second one, dizzily lightheaded like she can feel the motion of the moon around Jupiter, room swaying between reality and unreality. It takes her a full minute to stabilize herself, so that sounds can get past her lips as more than just the sniffling whimpers that she's a little, quietly, relieved that she's not too old to make. "I-if-- if you really... think that, th-then...." Petra takes a breath and lifts her face up to look at Angkasa, blotchy and an utter, soggy mess. "Th-then I'll l-love it and take care of it forever. I p-promise. I'll do my-- I'll do better than my best this time. If I'm not s-so bad that it's better off without me, then I'll absolutely, completely be the b-best I can for it. B-because I--" Petra slowly lowers her head back down, exhaustion washing over her now that all the tensest parts of the day are over. "Because I... really do love this place. I was a b-bit of an awful kid, ahaha, but... I h-hope that's worth something, even though I won't be around anymore. S-so, because of that... I'll treat everything I t-take with me as well as I can. The Beauty of Ash, a-and, the spark of here you still see in me. Thanks, Miss Angkasa."